Digital Commons Network^™

Non-Repudiation In An Agent-Based E-Commerce System, Chin Chuan Liew, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim, Beng Suang Tan, Kok-Leong Ong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Abecos is an agent-based e-commerce system under development at the Nanyang Technological University. A key factor in making this system usable in practice is strict security controls. One aspect of security is the provision of non-repudiation services. As protocols for non-repudiation have focused on -message non-repudiation, its adaptation to afford non-repudiation in a communication session for two agents in Abecos is inefficient. In this work, we investigate and propose a protocol for enforcing non-repudiation in a session. The protocol is believed to be applicable in any e-commerce system; agent- or not agent-based.

Qos Scalability For Streamed Media Delivery, Charles Krasic, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Applications with real-rate progress requirements, such as mediastreaming systems, are difficult to deploy in shared heterogenous environments such as the Internet. On the Internet, mediastreaming systems must be capable of trading off resource requirements against the quality of the media streams they deliver, in order to match wide-ranging dynamic variations in bandwidth between servers and clients. Since quality requirements tend to be user- and task-specific, mechanisms for capturing quality of service requirements and mapping them to appropriate resource-level adaptation policies are required. In this paper, we describe a general approach for automatically mapping user-level quality of service specifications onto resource …

Fine-Grain Period Adaptation In Soft Real-Time Environments, David Steere, Joshua Gruenberg, Dylan Mcnamee, Calton Pu, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reservation-based scheduling delivers a proportion of the CPU to jobs over a period of time. In this paper we argue that automatically determining and assigning this period is both possible and useful in general purpose soft real-time environments such as personal computers and information appliances. The goal of period adaptation is to select the period over which a job is guaranteed to receive its portion of the CPU dynamically and automatically. The choice of period represents a trade-off between the amount of jitter observed by the job and the overall efficiency of the system. Secondary effects of period include quantization …

Teaching Operating System Concepts Using Multimedia And Internet, Amit Narielwala

Theses

The prime objective of the thesis is to research and demonstrate the benefits and advantages of using Internet and multimedia tools for an interactive educational leaning experience. As we speak Internet is developing as a mainstream communication medium via personal computer as a tool at a breathtaking speed. The information technology field is a prime reason behind such phenomenon as it continues to mature and expand. In what is described as the "information age", the students of information technology need to master and devour new complex technological concepts and ideas at faster rate than ever before. The traditional approach using …

Agents : Concept, Technologies & Applications And Search Engine To Compile Urls Containing Documents Related To Environment Science For Njpies, Dhaval P. Shah

Theses

Agents are emerging technology that is making computer systems easier to use by allowing people (computer users) to delegate work back to the computer. They act on user's behalf and achieve user's goals. The advent of these software agents gave rise to much discussion of just what such an agent is, and of how they differ from programs in general. Agents are in research area for a long time. Earlier they were considered a part of just Artificial Intelligence. Nowadays they are just not in research area anymore. Commercial agent based applications are existing in the market because of the …

Temporal Probabilistic Logic Programs, Alex Dekhtyar, Michael I. Dekhtyar, V. S. Subrahmanian

Computer Science and Software Engineering

There are many applications where the precise time at which an event will occur (or has occurred) is uncertain. Temporal probabilistic logic programs (TPLPs) allow a programmer to express knowledge about such events. In this paper, we develop a model theory, fixpoint theory, and proof theory for TPLPs, and show that the fixpoint theory may be used to enumerate consequences of a TPLP in a sound and complete manner. Likewise the proof theory provides a sound and complete inference system. Last, but not least, we provide complexity results for TPLPs, showing in particular, that reasonable classes of TPLPs have polynomial …

The Second Generation Integrated Collaborative Decision Making (Icdm) Model: A Three-Tier Approach To Agent-Based, Decision-Support Systems, Kym J. Pohl, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Ten years ago the CAD Research Center at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, California identified a standard framework for agent-based, decision support systems. Employing inter-process and inference engine technologies of the time, the CAD Research Center termed this ‘blueprint’ the Integrated Collaborative Decision-Making (ICDM) framework. Over the past twelve years ICDM has been successfully used as a foundation in several systems. These systems focus on a wide range of domains of application including architectural design and ship cargo stowage. Success of the ICDM framework in conjunction with the availability of newer technologies has prompted an evolutionary leap in …

An Agent-Based Netcentric Framework For Multidisciplinary Problem Problem Solving Environments (Mpse), S. Markus, Elias N. Houstis, A. C. Catlin, John R. Rice, P. Tsompanopoulou, D. Gottfried, Ke Su

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Knowledge Sharing With Customers On The Www: Approaches By National Tourism Organizations, Xinran You, Joseph O'Leary, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The importance of knowledge management has been emphasized increasingly in recent literature. Knowledge has been regarded as the most important corporate asset in an organization (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). But what is knowledge? According to Harris (1996), "when information is combined with context and experience, it becomes knowledge". Hence, knowledge is the integration of information, context, and experience (Ponelis and Fairer-Wessels, 1998). In the tourism context of this paper, there are two components of knowledge: (1) customer knowledge--understanding of customers by marketers that leads to more effective marketing actions; and (2) destination knowledge that either the travelers or travel experts …

Website Design: The Concepts Of Informational And Computational Equivalence, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

“To the end users, the user interface is the system.” This slogan has been widely used in human-computer interaction field to stress the importance of user interface design. In the Internet and electronic commerce area, the website is not only the system, but it also projects an image of the organization in cyberspace. The design of websites is central to businesses as they create the first impression of organizations to visitors. For a virtual organization, the website is also the only medium that visitors rely on to form their impression of the organization. In this paper, we look at theories …

First 20 Precision Among World Wide Web Search Services (Search Engines), H. Vernon Leighton, Jaideep Srivastava

Library Faculty Works

Five search engines, Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, and Lycos, are compared for precision on the first twenty results returned for fifteen queries. All searching was done from January 31 to March 12, 1997. Steps have been taken to ensure that bias has not unduly influence the evaluation. Friedmann's randomized block design is used to perform multiple comparisons for significance. Analysis shows that Alta Vista, Excite and Infoseek are the top three services, with their relative rank changing depending on how one interpreted the concept of "relevant."

Citation:

Leighton, H. Vernon and Jaideep Srivastava. "First 20 Precision among World Wide …

The Robustness Of Relaxation Rates In Constraint Satisfaction Networks, Tony R. Martinez, Dan A. Ventura, D. Randall Wilson, Brian Moncur

Faculty Publications

Constraint satisfaction networks contain nodes that receive weighted evidence from external sources and/or other nodes. A relaxation process allows the activation of nodes to affect neighboring nodes, which in turn can affect their neighbors, allowing information to travel through a network. When doing discrete updates (as in a software implementation of a relaxation network), a goal net or goal activation can be computed in response to the net input into a node, and a relaxation rate can then be used to determine how fast the node moves from its current value to its goal value. An open question was whether …

Neural Networks And Structured Knowledge: Knowledge Representation And Reasoning, Franz J. Kurfess

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This collection of articles is the first of two parts of a special issue on "Neural Networks and Structured Knowledge." The contributions to the first part shed some light on the issues of knowledge representation and reasoning with neural networks. Their scope ranges from formal models for mapping discrete structures like graphs or logical formulae onto different types of neural networks, to the construction of practical systems for various types of reasoning. In the second part to follow, the emphasis will be on the extraction of knowledge from neural networks, and on applications of neural networks and structured knowledge to …

A Comparison Of Eclectic Learning And Stagger, J. Cory Barker, Jargalsaihan Batsaihan

Faculty Publications

This project compares two machine-learning methods, Stagger and Eclectic on their classification correctness. Both systems were tested with real-world data sets previously used and tested in other machine learning and statistical literature. The Eclectic System performed better than Stagger on every data set.

Dynamic And Interactive 3d Simulation Over The World Wide Web, Rajesh Vennam

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The thesis presents the development of a new and novel three-dimensional simulation tool over the WWW using Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). VRML is a 3D analog to HTML and serves as a simple, multiplatform language for publishing 3D Web pages. In general, most people use VRML for developing three-dimensional models or worlds that provide little or no interaction for the users. This tool combines interaction and dynamic object creation. A thorough study of VRML is done to explore the features of VRML that could be combined to develop methodologies for creation of dynamic and interactive 3D objects over the …

Analysis Of N-Tier Architecture Applied To Distributed-Database Systems, Alexandre G. Valente

Theses and Dissertations

N-tier architecture has been more commonly used as a methodology for developing large database applications. This work evaluates the use of this architecture instead of the classical Client/Server architecture in developing corporate applications based on distributed databases. The comparison between architectures is performed using applications that execute transactions similar to those defined in the Transaction Process Council Type C benchmark (TPC-C). The environment used for development and testing was the AFIT Bimodal Cluster (ABC); a heterogeneous cluster of PCs, running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 OS. The comparative experimental analysis demonstrated that the N-tier architecture allows more efficient bandwidth utilization between …

An Application Of Word Sense Disambiguation To Information Retrieval, Jason M. Whaley

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The problems of word sense disambiguation and document indexing for information retrieval have been extensively studied. It has been observed that indexing using disambiguated meanings, rather than word stems, should improve information retrieval results. We present a new corpus-based algorithm for performing word sense disambiguation. The algorithm does not need to train on many senses of each word; it uses instead the probability that certain concepts will occur together. That algorithm is then used to index several corpa of documents. Our indexing algorithm does not generally outperform the traditional stem-based tf.idf model.

A Multilevel Secure Workflow Management System, Myong H. Kang, Judith N. Froscher, Amit P. Sheth, Krzysztof J. Kochut, John A. Miller

Kno.e.sis Publications

The Department of Defense (DoD) needs multilevel secure (MLS) workflow management systems to enable globally distributed users and applications to cooperate across classification levels to achieve mission critical goals. An MLS workflow management system that allows a user to program multilevel mission logic, to securely coordinate widely distributed tasks, and to monitor the progress of the workflow across classification levels is required. In this paper, we present a roadmap for implementing MLS workflows and focus on a workflow builder that is a graphical design tool for specifying such workflows.

Considerations For An Effective Telecommunications-Use Policy, Michael E. Whitman, Anthony M. Townsend, Robert J. Aalberts

Faculty Articles

Recent changes in federal telecommunications legislation have underscored the importance of an up-to-date and effective telecommunications-use policy in business organizations. With the proliferation of the Internet, intranets, and email as commonplace business tools, the potential for misuse and subsequent liability has become an increasing concern. Even though the recent Supreme Court decision struck down the obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), it left intact legislation that effectively mandates development of a sound telecommunications-use policy. In addition to potential liability for systems misuse, organizations have also had to address issues of individual employee privacy within the new systems.

This …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 15, Number 6, June 1999, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

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

Scan-It: A Computer Vision Model Motivated By Human Physiology And Behavior, John G. Keller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation details the development of a new computational vision model motivated by physiological and behavioral aspects of the human visual system. Using this model, intensity features within an artificial visual field of view are extracted and transformed into a simulated cortical representation, and a saccadic guidance system scans this field of view over an object within an image to memorize that object. The object representation is thus stored as a sequence of feature matrices describing sub-regions of the object. A new image can then be searched for the object (possibly scaled and rotated), where evidence of its presence is …

Methodology For Integrating The Scenario Databases Of Simulation Systems, Emilia M. Colonese

Theses and Dissertations

The use of many different simulation systems by the United States Department of Defense has resulted in many different scenario data representations contained in heterogeneous databases. These heterogeneous databases all represent the same data concept, but have different semantics due to intrinsic variations among the data models. In this research, I describe a unified scenario database to allow interoperability and reuse of the scenario data components while avoiding the problems of data redundancy. Using the object oriented approach, the data and schema of the scenario databases, represented in an object oriented model, are integrated into a global database also represented …

Evolution Of Recurrent Cascade Correlation Networks With Ditributed Collaborative Species, Ghada Nasr Aly

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Routing And Caching Mechanisms For Mobile Ip Networks, Baher Ali Esmat

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Visual Constraint Programming Environment For Configuration Problems, Rania A/Hamid El Sayed

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms: Classifications, Analyses, And New Innovations, David A. Van Veldhuizen

Theses and Dissertations

This research organizes, presents, and analyzes contemporary Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) research and associated Multiobjective Optimization Problems (MOPs). Using a consistent MOEA terminology and notation, each cited MOEAs' key factors are presented in tabular form for ease of MOEA identification and selection. A detailed quantitative and qualitative MOEA analysis is presented, providing a basis for conclusions about various MOEA-related issues. The traditional notion of building blocks is extended to the MOP domain in an effort to develop more effective and efficient MOEAs. Additionally, the MOEA community's limited test suites contain various functions whose origins and rationale for use are often …

Parallel Digital Signal Processing On A Network Of Personal Computers Case Study: Space-Time Adaptive Processing, Fernando Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Network based parallel computing using personal computers is currently a popular choice for concurrent scientific computing. This work evaluates the capabilities and the performance of the AFIT Bimodal Cluster (ABC); a heterogeneous cluster of PCs connected by switched fast Ethernet and using MPICH 1.1 for interprocess communication for parallel digital signal processing using Space Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) as the case study. The MITRE RT_STAP Benchmark version 1.1 is ported and executed on the ABC, as well as on a cluster of six Sun SPARC workstations connected by a Myrinet network (the AFIT NOW), and on a IBM SP for …

Cobol Reengineering Using The Parameter Based Object Identification (Pboi) Methodology, Sonia De Jesus Rodrigues

Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on how to reengineer Cobol legacy systems into object oriented systems using Sward's Parameter Based Object Identification (PBOI) methodology. The method is based on relating categories of imperative subprograms to classes written in object oriented language based on how parameters are handled and shared among them. The input language of PBOI is a canonical form called the generic imperative model (GIM), which is an abstract syntax tree (AST) representation of a simple imperative programming language. The output is another AST, the generic object model (GOM), a generic object oriented language. Conventional languages must be translated into the …

An Auditing Capability On Top Of The Java Virtual Machine (Jvm), Margo Fouad Fawzi Hanna

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Developing Techniques For Enhancing Comprehensibility Of Controlled Medical Terminologies, Huanying Gu

Dissertations

A controlled medical terminology (CMT) is a collection of concepts (or terms) that are used in the medical domain. Typically, a CMT also contains attributes of those concepts and/or relationships between those concepts. Electronic CMTs are extremely useful and important for communication between and integration of independent information systems in healthcare, because data in this area is highly fragmented. A single query in this area might involve several databases, e.g., a clinical database, a pharmacy database, a radiology database, and a lab test database.

Unfortunately, the extensive sizes of CMTs, often containing tens of thousands of concepts and hundreds of …