Digital Commons Network^™

Move To Component Based Architectures: Introducing Microsoft's .Net Platform Into The College Classroom, Meg C. Murray

Faculty Articles

A transformation has been occurring in the architectural model for computer-based application intense software systems. This new model, software-as-a-service, will have a profound impact on the design and development of software for many years to come and as such college level computing curriculums will need to incorporate the concepts and methodologies associated with this new architecture. The platform is built upon a view of interrelated, distributed peer-level software modules and components that work in tandem to achieve specified functional goals. From Microsoft's viewpoint, migration to the new platform requires a radical shift in the software development lifecycle. It is becoming …

A Graph Model For Dynamicwaveband Switching In Wdm Mesh Networks, Mengke Li, Byrav Ramamurthy

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

We investigate the problem of waveband switching (WBS) in a wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh network with dynamic traffic requests. To solve the WBS problem in a homogeneous dynamic WBS network, where every node is a multi-granular optical cross-connect (MG-OXC), we construct an auxiliary graph. Based on the auxiliary graph, we develop two heuristic on-line WBS algorithms with different grouping policies, namely the wavelength-first WBS algorithm based on the auxiliary graph (WFAUG) and the waveband-first WBS algorithm based on the auxiliary graph (BFAUG). Our results show that the WFAUG algorithm outperforms the BFAUG algorithm.

On Cooperative Learning Teams For Multiagent Team Formation, Leen-Kiat Soh

School of Computing: Technical Reports

In this paper, we propose a team formation methodology based on cooperative learning teams, adopted from the area of educational research. Cooperative learning is a type of learning where students work in teams and learn through team-based interactions. In education, research in assigning students to appropriate teams and enforcing fair assessment of student performance in a team have generated useful policies and rules. In our multiagent systems project, we use these policies and rules as the underlying framework to evaluate and form teams. We have built a system called I-MINDS as an infrastructure to support cooperative learning among remote and …

A Key Management Scheme For Wireless Sensor Networks Using Deployment Knowledge, Wenliang Du, Jing Deng, Yunghsiang S. Han, Shigang Chen

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

To achieve security in wireless sensor networks, it is important to be able to encrypt messages sent among sensor nodes. Keys for encryption purposes must be agreed upon by communicating nodes. Due to resource constraints, achieving such key agreement in wireless sensor networks is non-trivial. Many key agreement schemes used in general networks, such as Diffie-Hellman and public-key based schemes, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks. Pre-distribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory used when the network size is large. Recently, a random key predistribution scheme and …

Uncheatable Grid Computing, Wenliang Du, Jing Jia, Manish Mangal, Mummoorthy Murugesan

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Grid computing is a type of distributed computing that has shown promising applications in many fields. A great concern in grid computing is the cheating problem described in the following: a participant is given D = {x1,...,xn}, it needs to compute f(x) for all x ∈ D and return the results of interest to the supervisor. How does the supervisor efficiently ensure that the participant has computed f(x) for all the inputs in D, rather than a subset of it? If participants get paid for conducting the task, there are incentives for cheating. In this paper, we propose a novel …

Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces With Emotion Recognition, Fatma Nasoz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is on creating Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces to facilitate enhanced natural communication during the Human-Computer Interaction by recognizing users' affective states (i.e., emotions experienced by the users) and responding to those emotions by adapting to the current situation via an affective user model created for each user. Controlled experiments were designed and conducted in a laboratory environment and in a Virtual Reality environment to collect physiological data signals from participants experiencing specific emotions. Algorithms (k-Nearest Neighbor [KNN], Discriminant Function Analysis [DFA], Marquardt-Backpropagation [MBP], and Resilient Backpropagation [RBP]) were implemented to analyze the collected data signals …

A Load-Balancing Shared-Protection-Path Reconfiguration Approach In Wdm Wavelength-Routed Networks, Lu Shen, Xi Yang, Byrav Ramamurthy

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Wavelength-routed networks (WRN) are very promising candidates for next-generation Internet and telecommunication backbones. In such a network, optical-layer protection is of paramount importance due to the risk of losing large amounts of data under a failure. To protect the network against this risk, service providers usually provide a pair of risk-independent working and protection paths for each optical connection. However, the investment made for the optical-layer protection increases network cost. To reduce the capital expenditure, service providers need to efficiently utilize their network resources. Among all the existing approaches, shared-path protection has proven to be practical and cost-efficient [1]. In …

A Gcd Attack Resistant Crthacs For Secure Group Communications, Xukai Zou, Byrav Ramamurthy, Spyros S. Magliveras

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

In this paper, we propose an improved CRTHACS scheme for secure group communications. The scheme resists several GCD attacks which exist in the original CRTHACS scheme [2] and were recently reported in [1].

Infrastructure Support For Controlled Experimentation With Software Testing And Regression Testing Techniques, Hyunsook Do, Sebastian Elbaum, Gregg Rothermel

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Where the creation, understanding, and assessment of software testing and regression testing techniques are concerned, controlled experimentation is an indispensable research methodology. Obtaining the infrastructure necessary to support such experimentation, however, is difficult and expensive. As a result, progress in experimentation with testing techniques has been slow, and empirical data on the costs and effectiveness of techniques remains relatively scarce. To help address this problem, we have been designing and constructing infrastructure to support controlled experimentation with testing and regression testing techniques. This paper reports on the challenges faced by researchers experimenting with testing techniques, including those that inform the …

An Extended Kernel For Generalized Multiple-Instance Learning, Qingping Tao, Stephen Scott, N. V. Vinodchandran, Thomas Takeo Osugi, Brandon Mueller

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The multiple-instance learning (MIL) model has been successful in areas such as drug discovery and content-based image-retrieval. Recently, this model was generalized and a corresponding kernel was introduced to learn generalized MIL concepts with a support vector machine. While this kernel enjoyed empirical success, it has limitations in its representation. We extend this kernel by enriching its representation and empirically evaluate our new kernel on data from content-based image retrieval, biological sequence analysis, and drug discovery. We found that our new kernel generalized noticeably better than the old one in content-based image retrieval and biological sequence analysis and was slightly …

Statistical Procedures For Evaluating Daily And Monthly Hydrologic Model Predictions, Marilyn E. Coffey, Stephen R. Workman, Joseph L. Taraba, Alex W. Fogle

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

The overall study objective was to evaluate the applicability of different qualitative and quantitative methods for comparing daily and monthly SWAT computer model hydrologic streamflow predictions to observed data, and to recommend statistical methods for use in future model evaluations. Statistical methods were tested using daily streamflows and monthly equivalent runoff depths. The statistical techniques included linear regression, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, nonparametric tests, t-test, objective functions, autocorrelation, and cross-correlation. None of the methods specifically applied to the non-normal distribution and dependence between data points for the daily predicted and observed data. Of the tested methods, median objective functions, sign test, autocorrelation, …

Discovering And Ranking Semantic Associations Over A Large Rdf Metabase, Christian Halaschek-Wiener, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, I. Budak Arpinar, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Information retrieval over semantic metadata has recently received a great amount of interest in both industry and academia. In particular, discovering complex and meaningful relationships among this data is becoming an active research topic. Just as ranking of documents is a critical component of today's search engines, the ranking of relationships will be essential in tomorrow's semantic analytics engines. Building upon our recent work on specifying these semantic relationships, which we refer to as Semantic Associations, we demonstrate a system where these associations are discovered among a large semantic metabase represented in RDF. Additionally we employ ranking techniques to provide …

Art Network Discussion, Paul Thomas

Creative Connections Symposium @ BEAP2004 September 4, 2004

No abstract provided.

Speech Enabled E-Learning Technology For Adult Literacy Tutoring, Jason Meade

Theses

This research presents the work involved in developing a speech-enabled e-Learning prototype for use in literacy tutoring. As the main objective was to develop an interface for literacy learning, initial research concentrated on establishing a framework for literacy e-Leaming through the use of speech technology. Requirements for best practice e-Learning and the relevance of learning theories to an e-Learning application were also investigated. The technologies to facilitate this, such as text to speech technologies and mark-up languages, were addressed during the implementation of speech-enabled prototypes. Both server-side and client-side prototypes were implemented to investigate speech technology. Testing found the server-side …

Creating A Video Device Application, Kevin Septor

Honors Theses

A video device, such as a webcam, has the capability to be used in many ways, including recording video and behaving like a security camera. A TV tuner card can also record video, and in addition be used for watching television. However, the video hardware and device driver the operating system uses to access it are only capable of delivering raw frames of video. A user space application is necessary for exploiting the capabilities of such a device beyond reading sequential frames of video. This research explores the desiderata in a powerful video device application, and introduces a program that …

A Similarity Based Concordance Approach To Word Sense Disambiguation, Ramakrishnan B. Guru

Masters Theses

This study attempts to solve the problem of Word Sense Disambiguation using a combination of statistical, probabilistic and word matching algorithms. These algorithms consider that words and sentences have some hidden similarities and that the polysemous words in any context should be assigned to a sense after each execution of the algorithm. The algorithm was tested with sufficient sample data and the efficiency of the disambiguation performance has proven to increase significantly after the inclusion of the concordance methodology.

Using Spki/Sdsi For Distributed Maintenance Of Attribute Release Policies In Shibboleth, Sidharth Nazareth, Sean W. Smith

Computer Science Technical Reports

The Shibboleth middleware from Internet2 provides a way for users at higher-education institutions to access remote electronic content in compliance with the inter-institutional license agreements that govern such access. To protect end-user privacy, Shibboleth permits users to construct attribute release policies that control what user credentials a given content provider can obtain. However, Shibboleth leaves unspecified how to construct these policies. To be effective, a solution needs to accommodate the typical nature of a university: a set of decentralized fiefdoms. This need argues for a public-key infrastructure (PKI) approach---since public-key cryptography does not require parties to agree on a secret …

A Sat-Based Polynomial Space Algorithm For Answer Set Programming, Enrico Giunchiglia, Marco Maratea, Yuliya Lierler

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The relation between answer set programming (ASP) and propositional satisfiability (SAT) is at the center of many research papers, partly because of the tremendous performance boost of SAT solvers during last years. Various translations from ASP to SAT are known but the resulting SAT formula either includes many new variables or may have an unpractical size. There are also well known results showing a one-to-one correspondence between the answer sets of a logic program and the models of its completion. Unfortunately, these results only work for specific classes of problems.

In this paper we present a SAT-Based decision procedure for …

Staging Transformations For Multimodal Web Interaction Management, Michael Narayan, Christopher Williams, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. In addition to improving access and delivery capabilities, such interfaces enable flexible and personalized dialogs with websites, much like a conversation between humans. In this paper, we present a software framework for multimodal web interaction management that supports mixed-initiative dialogs between users and websites. A mixed-initiative dialog is one where the user and the website take turns changing the flow of interaction. The framework supports the functional specification and realization of such dialogs using staging transformations – …

Program Transformations For Information Personalization, Saverio Perugini

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation. The central thesis of this dissertation is that modeling interaction explicitly in a representation, and studying how partial information can be harnessed in it by program transformations to direct the flow of the interaction, can provide insight into, reveal opportunities for, and define a model for personalized interaction. To evaluate this thesis, a formal modeling methodology is developed for personalizing interactions with information systems, especially hierarchical hypermedia, based on program transformations. The …

Dit-Call: Naturally Speaking But Slow, Dermot Campbell, Marty Meinardi, Bunny Richardson, Eugene Coyle, Olivia Donnellan, Pak Kui Leung, Ciaran Macdonaill, Elmar Jung, Charles Pritchard

Articles

This paper introduces a new development in speech technology and describes its planned application in an EFL context. Special attention is paid to the pedagogical potential of the resultant language tool.

Using Autonomous Robots To Integrate Middle School Academic Standards, Technology Standards, And 21st Century Workplace Skills, Barbara M. Burckart

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The amount of knowledge that students are required to master continues to grow. Teachers struggle to find age appropriate ways to integrate state academic standards, technology standards, and 21st century workplace skills. Improved problem solving skills are deemed important to these standards as well as in the workplace. This dissertation utilized a robot design project to examine the changes in problem solving skills of seventh grade science students. In the process, 21st century workplace skills, technology standards, and South Carolina middle school science and math standards were identified and integrated into the learning process.

To test the validity of the …

The Education Of Information Security Professionals: An Analysis Of Industry Needs Vs Academic Curriculum In The 21st Century, Albert L. Fundaburk

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This research compared the employment of the skills and attributes needed by information systems security professionals in an information systems security work environment with those taught in NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education. Using two surveys the goal of this research was to determine if the skills and attributes identified in the CISSP were employed in an information systems work environment and if these skills were taught in colleges and universities designated as NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education.

The skills and attributes within the10 domains of the CISSP were identified by 23 questions …

The Impact Of Distance Learning On Faculty Contracts And Policies In Florida Community Colleges, M. Kate Legrand

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Distance Learning is state of the art and is fast becoming a primary instructional delivery method in Florida community colleges. However, the present laws and policies that govern Florida's community college educational system are created based on traditional methods for delivering educational services. The potential change in faculty roles and responsibilities brought about by distance learning has raised questions about the impact distance learning will have on overall labor conditions for American faculty. In some instances, the use of alternative methods of delivering educational services has resulted in inconsistent policies. As more faculty become involved in teaching online courses, there …

Implementation Of An Individual Professional Development System Using A Web-Accessible Database, Edward R. Lovitt

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Higher education is looking for ways to encourage new careers in education and retain current faculty working in the field. A successful working relationship between supervisors and faculty is crucial to continued attractiveness of a career in education. These shared relationships exist in "learning organization" models, which are used in professional development offerings that stress the importance of learning by individuals, as a way to benefit the entire institution.

This developmental study focused on building partnerships with supervisors and faculty. These partnerships require contracts or individual development plans that can be reviewed for progress and modified for future needs. The …

Applying Security Risk Management To Internet Connectivity In K-12 Schools And School Districts, Carol C. Woody

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Internet connectivity has been added to the classrooms of United States (U.S .) K-12 schools, but recognition of the security risks and related management responsibilities to address increased risk exposure is not apparent. Providing a sufficient level of access for K-12 students to learn through exploration and experimentation needs to be balanced with sufficient limitations to minimize the risk of technically proficient participants inflicting harm through school resources. Problems of inappropriate use such as adjusting grades, tampering with work of other students, and defacing Web sites by K-12 students are already appearing in U.S. newspapers. In addition, the growing level …

A Framework For The Identification Of Electronic Commerce Visual Design Elements That Enable Trust Within The Small Hotel Industry, R. Todd Stephens

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Trust plays an important role in any customer relationship or transaction. This is especially true in the world of commerce. Buyers and sellers must make the conscious decision whether or not to trust the other party. Trust is an integral part of commerce and has been in existence since the beginning of human social interactions. With the emerging use of the Internet as a business medium of exchange, trust maintains an important role in electronic commerce. This research reviews the role of trust within the small hotel industry and the design elements having the highest impact toward developing trust between …

The 7 C'S For Creating Living Software: A Research Perspective For Quality-Oriented Software Engineering, Mehmet Akşi̇t

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This article proposes the 7 C's for realizing quality-oriented software engineering practices. All the desired qualities of this approach are expressed in short by the term living software. The 7 C's are: Concern-oriented processes, Canonical models, Composable models, Certifiable models, Constructible models, Closure property of models and Controllable models. Each C is explained by the help of a set of definitions, a short overview of the background work and the problems that software engineers may experience in realizing the corresponding C. Further, throughout the article, a software development example is presented for illustrating the realization of the 7 C's. Finally, …

A Platform For Software Engineering Course Projects, Bi̇rol Aygün

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The importance of projects in software engineering courses is well known. Both synthetic and real-life projects have various advantages and disadvantages. Our aim was to create a framework where students can develop projects which reflect some of the complexities of real-life, involving many concurrent, interacting, asynchronous processes, each in a different stage of development, with wide temporal differences among them - some occurring within millisconds of each other and others executing sporadically over much longer periods. In this project, which was carried out in different arrangements in several software engineering courses in three universities, the students developed both the sub- …

Java-Based Digital Library Portal For Geography Education, Zehua Liu, Hai Yuan, Ee Peng Lim, Ming Yin, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

G-Portal is a Java-based digital library system for managing the metadata of geography related resources on the Web. In addition to providing a flexible repository subsystem to accommodate metadata of different formats using XML and XML Schemas, G-Portal organizes metadata into projects and layers, and supports an integrated and synchronized classification and map-based interfaces over the stored metadata. G-Portal also includes a classification subsystem that creates category structures and classifies metadata resources into categories based on user-specified classification schemas. Furthermore, G-Portal users can annotate resources and make their annotations available to others. In this paper, we describe the design and …