Digital Commons Network^™

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 21, Number 1, September 2004, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A ten page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

Recommender Systems Research: A Connection-Centric Survey, Saverio Perugini, Marcos André Gonçalves, Edward A. Fox

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Recommender systems attempt to reduce information overload and retain customers by selecting a subset of items from a universal set based on user preferences. While research in recommender systems grew out of information retrieval and filtering, the topic has steadily advanced into a legitimate and challenging research area of its own. Recommender systems have traditionally been studied from a content-based filtering vs. collaborative design perspective. Recommendations, however, are not delivered within a vacuum, but rather cast within an informal community of users and social context. Therefore, ultimately all recommender systems make connections among people and thus should be surveyed from …

Ao2p: Ad-Hoc On-Demand Position-Based Private Routing Protocol, Xiaoxin Wu, Bharat Bhargava

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Towards Personalised Web Intelligence, Ah-Hwee Tan, Hwee-Leng Ong, Hong Pan, Jamie Ng, Qiu-Xiang Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Flexible Organizer for Competitive Intelligence (FOCI) is a personalised web intelligence system that provides an integrated platform for gathering, organising, tracking, and disseminating competitive information on the web. FOCI builds personalised information portfolios through a novel method called User-Configurable Clustering, which allows a user to personalise his/her portfolios in terms of the content as well as the organisational structure. This paper outlines the key challenges we face in personalised information management and gives a detailed account of FOCI’s underlying personalisation mechanism. For a quantitative evaluation of the system’s performance, we propose a set of performance indices based on information …

Creating And Detecting Doctored And Virtual Images: Implications To The Child Pornography Prevention Act, Hany Farid

Computer Science Technical Reports

The 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) extended the existing federal criminal laws against child pornography to include certain types of "virtual porn". In 2002, the United States Supreme Court found that portions of the CPPA, being overly broad and restrictive, violated First Amendment rights. The Court ruled that images containing an actual minor or portions of a minor are not protected, while computer generated images depicting a fictitious "computer generated" minor are constitutionally protected. In this report I outline various forms of digital tampering, placing them in the context of this recent ruling. I also review computational techniques for …

Pattern Search Ranking And Selection Algorithms For Mixed-Variable Optimization Of Stochastic Systems, Todd A. Sriver

Theses and Dissertations

A new class of algorithms is introduced and analyzed for bound and linearly constrained optimization problems with stochastic objective functions and a mixture of design variable types. The generalized pattern search (GPS) class of algorithms is extended to a new problem setting in which objective function evaluations require sampling from a model of a stochastic system. The approach combines GPS with ranking and selection (R&S) statistical procedures to select new iterates. The derivative-free algorithms require only black-box simulation responses and are applicable over domains with mixed variables (continuous, discrete numeric, and discrete categorical) to include bound and linear constraints on …

Visual Unified Modeling Language For The Composition Of Scenarios In Modeling And Simulation Systems, Daniel E. Swayne

Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense uses modeling and simulation systems in many various roles, from research and training to modeling likely outcomes of command decisions. Simulation systems have been increasing in complexity with the increased capability of low-cost computer systems to support these DOD requirements. The demand for scenarios is also increasing, but the complexity of the simulation systems has caused a bottleneck in scenario development due to the limited number of individuals with knowledge of the arcane simulator languages in which these scenarios are written. This research combines the results of previous AFIT efforts in visual modeling languages to create …

Shared-Storage Auction Ensures Data Availability, Hady W. Lauw, Siu-Cheung Hui, Edmund M. K. Lai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Most current e-auction systems are based on the client-server architecture. Such centralized systems provide a single point of failure and control. In contrast, peer-to-peer systems permit distributed control and minimize individual node and link failures' impact on the system. The shared-storage-based auction model described decentralizes services among peers to share the required processing load and aggregates peers' resources for common use. The model is based on the principles of local computation at each peer, direct inter-peer communication, and a shared storage space.

A Qualitative Investigation On Consumer Trust In Mobile Commerce, Keng Siau, Hong Sheng, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Sidney A. Davis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile commerce represents a significant development in e-commerce, offering accessibility, ubiquity, mobility, and localisation to users. Despite the potential of mobile commerce, trust is a major obstacle in its adoption and development. Many consumers feel uncomfortable with the idea of conducting commerce over wireless, hand-held devices. The focus of this research is to understand trust in mobile commerce and to identify factors that are important for trust development. The research builds on Siau and Shen's framework which depicts two key factors influencing trust in mobile commerce. This research not only validates and expands on the existing framework, but also provides …

Proxy Signature Scheme With Multiple Original Signers For Wireless E-Commerce Applications, Guilin Wang, Feng Bao, Jianying Zhou, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In a proxy signature scheme, a user delegates his/her signing capability to another user in such a way that the latter can sign messages on behalf of the former. We propose an efficient and secure proxy signature scheme with multiple original signers. Our scheme is suitable for wireless electronic commerce applications, since the overheads of computation and communication are low. As an example, we present an electronic air ticket booking scheme for wireless customers.

On The Security Of The Lee-Hwang Group-Oriented Undeniable Signature Schemes, Guilin Wang, Jianying Zhou, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Undeniable signature is an intriguing concept introduced by Chaum and van Antwerpen at Crypto89. In 1999, Lee and Hwang presented two group-oriented undeniable signature schemes with a trusted center. Their schemes are natural generalizations of Chaums zero knowledge undeniable signature scheme proposed in 1990. However, we find that the Lee-Hwang schemes are insecure. In this paper, we demonstrate five effective attacks on their schemes: four of them are insider universal forgeries, in which one dishonest member (maybe colluding with a verifier) can get a valid signature on any chosen massage, and another attack allows a dishonest member to prevent honest …

Security Analysis Of Two Signcryption Schemes, Guilin Wang, Robert H. Deng, Dongjin Kwak, Sangjae Moon

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Signcryption is a new cryptographic primitive that performs signing and encryption simultaneously, at a cost significantly lower than that required by the traditional signature-then-encryption approach. In this paper, we present a security analysis of two such schemes: the Huang-Chang convertible signcryption scheme, and the Kwak-Moon group signcryption scheme. Our results show that both schemes are insecure. Specifically, the Huang-Chang scheme fails to provide confidentiality, while the Kwak-Moon scheme does not satisfy the properties of unforgeability, coalition-resistance, and traceability.

Jumpstarting Phylogenetic Analysis, Mark J. Clement, Keith A. Crandall, Kevin Seppi, Quinn O. Snell

Faculty Publications

When a new epidemic strikes, it is often important to determine the relationship between the current organism and others that have been successfully treated previously. The phylogenetic analysis problem generates the most likely family tree for a group of organisms based on DNA sequence data. This process can take a prohibitively long period of time with current algorithms. If trees resulting from prior searches are used to seed the search, correct trees can be found much more quickly. This jumpstarting algorithm can generate superior phylogenetic solutions much more quickly than existing algorithms.

Gentoo Linux: The Next Generation Of Linux, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

One of the reasons scientific programmers love Linux is its less-is-more philosophy. We can configure it to be anything from a desktop replacement with USB port support to a blade in a large SMP compute engine to a powerful Web server. Although Linux's market penetration in these various sectors remains to be seen, plenty of people are pumping resources into the Linux world. In this article, I?ll explain why Gentoo Linux (www.gentoolinux.org) is a good choice for scientists, and how its structure gives us the flexibility and ease of management we need.

Modeling Usage Of An Online Research Community, Yi Zhang

Dissertations

Although online communities have been thought of as a new way for collaboration across geographic boundaries in the scientific world, they have a problem attracting people to keep visiting. The main purpose of this study is to understand how people behave in such communities, and to build and evaluate tools to stimulate engagement in a research community. These tools were designed based on a research framework of factors that influence online participation and relationship development.

There are two main objectives for people to join an online community, information sharing and interpersonal relationship development, such as friends or colleagues. The tools …

Sb9: The Ninth Catalogue Of Spectroscopic Binary Orbits, Dimitri Pourbaix, Andrei A. Tokovinin, Alan H. Batten, Francis C. Fekel, William I. Hartkopf, Hugo Levato, Nidia I. Morrell, Guillermo Torres, Stephane Udry

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

The Ninth Catalogue of Spectroscopic Binary Orbits (http://sb9.astro.ulb.ac.be) continues the series of compilations of spectroscopic orbits carried out over the past 35 years by Batten and collaborators. As of 2004 May 1st, the new Catalogue holds orbits for 2386 systems. Some essential differences between this catalogue and its predecessors are outlined and three straightforward applications are presented: (1) completeness assessment: period distribution of SB1s and SB2s; (2) shortest periods across the H-R diagram; (3) period-eccentricity relation.

Applications Of Mobile Computing For Fish Species At Risk Management, James Carswell, Keith Gardiner, Michela Bertolotto, Nick Mandrak

Conference papers

This paper describes the on-going development of a web-based and Mobile Environmental Management System (MEMS) prototype specifically tailored to perform context-aware queries and updating of spatial datasets. Spatially enabled computing can provide situation aware assistance to both web-based and mobile users by presenting the right information at the right time, place, and situation using context-associated knowledge. Contextassociated knowledge is assembled by combining knowledge gained about information accessed in the past with the activities planned by the user, together with other situation dependencies (e.g. location) of these activities. The MEMS datasets are provided by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans …

Deformable Geometry Model Matching By Topological And Geometric Signatures, Kwok-Leung Tam, Rynson W.H. Law, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a novel method for efficient 3D model comparison. The method matches highly deformed models by comparing topological and geometric features. First, we propose “Bi-directional LSD analysis” to locate reliable topological points and rings. Second, based on these points and rings, a set of bounded regions are extracted as topological features. Third, for each bounded region, we capture additional spatial location, curvature and area distribution as geometric data. Fourth, to model the topological importance of each bounded region, we capture its effective area as weight. By using “Earth Mover Distance” as a distance measure between two …

Enhancements To Crisp Possibilistic Reconstructability Analysis, Anas Al-Rabadi, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Modified Reconstructibility Analysis (MRA), a novel decomposition within the framework of set-theoretic (crisp possibilistic) Reconstructibility Analysis, is presented. It is shown that in some cases while 3-variable NPN-classified Boolean functions are not decomposable using Conventional Reconstructibility Analysis (CRA), they are decomposable using Modified Reconstructibility Analysis (MRA). Also, it is shown that whenever a decomposition of 3-variable NPN-classified Boolean functions exists in both MRA and CRA, MRA yields simpler or equal complexity decompositions. A comparison of the corresponding complexities for Ashenhurst-Curtis decompositions, and Modified Reconstructibility Analysis (MRA) is also presented. While both AC and MRA decompose some but …

Investigating Deception In Cyberspace, Holtjona Galanxhi, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of anthropomorphic avatars provides Internet users the opportunity and freedom to present their desired identity. As cyberspace becomes a heaven for deceptive behavior, human-computer interaction research will need to be carried out to study and understand these deceptive behaviors. The objective of this research is to investigate the behavior of deceivers and truthtellers in the cyberspace environment and to examine how their intention to deceive may influence the choice of their avatars. The effect of using avatars to support communication will also be studied. This research provides insights on communication and trust issues in avatar environments.

Pre-Conference Proceedings Of The Focus Symposium On Intelligent Software Systems For The New Infostructure: Baden-Baden, Germany, Collaborative Agent Design Research Center

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Over the past several years the papers in this annual series of symposia have increasingly centered on the realization of a human-computer collaboration environment in which computer-based software agents with reasoning capabilities provide meaningful support to human decision makers. It is therefore quite appropriate that the first paper in the 2004 Proceedings should address the historical evolutionary path of ‘intelligent’ software leading to the goal of a semantic Web environment. The realization of this goal is now in sight, driven by public security threats that are increasingly relying on technology for effective countermeasures.

Transport Logistics Planning With Service-Level Constraints, Hoong Chuin Lau, K. M. Ng, Xintao Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we study a logistics problem arising in military transport planning. A military organization operates a large fleet of vehicles in a depot to serve the requests of various operational units. Each request has a fixed start and end time, and is served by a prescribed number of vehicles. We address the following two problems: (1) how many vehicles are at least needed to meet a given service level of requests; and (2) suppose we allow each request to shift its start time by a constant duration, call all the requests be met? A Niche genetic algorithm, together …

An Online Survey Framework Using The Life Events Calendar, Jared Kite, Leen-Kiat Soh

School of Computing: Technical Reports

We describe an online survey framework programmed as a Java applet with a MySQL back-end. Our framework is built specifically as a Event History Calendar for the study of tobacco users and their behavior over a six month period. We introduce the notion of a Life Events Calendar and the relevance of an intelligent survey system in this context. We describe our methods and our component application approach and expand on the opportunities for artificial intelligence research with the system.

Discovering Transcriptional Regulatory Rules From Gene Expression And Tf-Dna Binding Data By Decision Tree Learning, Jianhua Ruan, Weixiong Zhang

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Background: One of the most promising but challenging task in the post-genomic era is to reconstruct the transcriptional regulatory networks. The goal is to reveal, for each gene that responds to a certain biological event, which transcription factors affect its transcription, and how several transcription factors coordinate to accomplish specific regulations. Results: Here we propose a supervised machine learning approach to address these questions. We build decision trees to associate the expression level of a gene with the transcription factor binding data of its promoter. From the decision trees, we extract regulatory rules that specify how the binding of a …

Preserving Trust Across Multiple Sessions In Open Systems, Fuk-Wing Thomas Chan

Theses and Dissertations

Trust negotiation, a new authentication paradigm, enables strangers on the Internet to establish trust through the gradual disclosure of digital credentials and access control policies. Previous research in trust negotiation does not address issues in preserving trust across multiple sessions. This thesis discusses issues in preserving trust between parties who were previously considered strangers. It also describes the design and implementation of trust preservation in TrustBuilder, a prototype trust negotiation system. Preserving trust information can reduce the frequency and cost of renegotiation. A scenario is presented that demonstrates that a server supporting trust preservation can recoup the cost of the …

Enhancing Web Services Description And Discovery To Facilitate Composition, Preeda Rajasekaran, John A. Miller, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web services are in the midst of making the transition from being a promising technology to being widely used in the industry. However, most efforts to use Web services have been manual, thus slowing down the ever changing and dynamic businesses of today. In this paper, we contend that more expressive descriptions of Web services will lead to greater automation and thus provide more agility to businesses. We present the METEOR-S front-end tools for source code annotation and semantic Web service description generation. We also present WSDL-S, a language created for incorporating semantic descriptions in the industry wide accepted WSDL, …

A Framework For Trajectory Based Visual Event Retrieval, Ilker Ersoy, Filiz Bunyak, S. R. Subramanya

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a framework of a system for the query and retrieval of video data based on video events in huge video repositories. the events are formulated using domain-independent event primitives which are represented by spatio-temporal relationships between objects in the video scenes. Complex events are expressible as combinations of simpler events. This facilitates support of event queries from a variety of points of view. in addition, the framework is expected to provide adaptability of the framework to multiple domains.

Probabilistic Disease Classification Of Expression-Dependent Proteomic Data From Mass Spectrometry Of Human Serum, Ryan H. Lilien, Hany Farid, Bruce R. Donald

Dartmouth Scholarship

We have developed an algorithm called Q5 for probabilistic classification of healthy vs. disease whole serum samples using mass spectrometry. The algorithm employs Principal Components Analysis (PCA) followed by Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) on whole spectrum Surface-Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization Time of Flight (SELDI-TOF) Mass Spectrometry (MS) data, and is demonstrated on four real datasets from complete, complex SELDI spectra of human blood serum.

Q5 is a closed-form, exact solution to the problem of classification of complete mass spectra of a complex protein mixture. Q5 employs a novel probabilistic classification algorithm built upon a dimension-reduced linear discriminant analysis. Our solution is …

Workflow Management Systems And Erp Systems: Differences, Commonalities, And Applications, Jorge Cardoso, Robert P. Bostrom, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Two important classes of information systems, Workflow Management Systems(WfMSs) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, have been used to support e-business process redesign, integration, and management. While both technologies can help with business process automation, data transfer, and information sharing, the technological approach and features of solutions provided by WfMS and ERP are different. Currently, there is a lack of understanding of these two classes of information systems in the industry and academia, thus hindering their effective applications. In this paper, we present a comprehensive comparison between these two classes of systems. We discuss how the two types of systems …

Discovery Of Web Services In A Federated Registry Environment, Kaarthik Sivashanmugam, Kunal Verma, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The potential of a large scale growth of private and semi-private registries is creating the need for an infrastructure which can support discovery and publication over a group of autonomous registries. Recent versions of UDDI have made changes to accommodate interactions between distributed registries. In this paper, we discuss METEOR-S Web service Discovery Infrastructure, which provides an ontology-based infrastructure to access a group of registries that are divided based on business domains and grouped into federations. We also discuss how Web service discovery is carried out within a federation.