Digital Commons Network^™

A Formal Method To Analyze Framework-Based Software, Trent N. Larson

Theses and Dissertations

Software systems are frequently designed using abstractions that make software verification tractable. Specifically, by choosing meaningful, formal abstractions for interfaces and then designing according to those interfaces, one can verify entire systems according to behavioral predicates. While impractical for systems in general, framework-based software architectures are a type of system for which formal analysis can be beneficial and practical over the life of the system. We present a method to formally analyze behavioral properties of framework-based software with higher-order logic and then demonstrate its utility for a significant, modern system.

Organizing And Personalizing Intelligence Gathering From The Web, Hwee-Leng Ong, Ah-Hwee Tan, Jamie Ng, Pan Hong, Qiu-Xiang Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we describe how an integrated web‐based application, code‐named FOCI (Flexible Organizer for Competitive Intelligence), can help the knowledge worker in the gathering, organizing, tracking and dissemination of competitive intelligence (CI). It combines the use of a novel user‐configurable clustering, trend analysis and visualization techniques to manage information gathered from the web. FOCI allows its users to define and personalize the organization of the information clusters according to their needs and preferences into portfolios. These personalized portfolios created are saved and can be subsequently tracked and shared with other users. The paper runs through an example to show …

Detection Of Slide Transition For Topic Indexing, Chong-Wah Ngo, Ting-Chuen Pong, Thomas S. Huang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents an automatic and novel approach in detecting the transitions of slides for video sequences of technical lectures. Our approach adopts a foreground vs background segmentation algorithm to separate a presenter from the projected electronic slides. Once a background template is generated, text captions are detected and analyzed. The segmented caption regions as well as background templates together provide salient visual cues to decide whether a slide is flipped and replaced. The partitioning of videos according to slide changes not only structure the content of video according to topics, but also facilitate the synchronization of video, audio and …

Hci Research Issues In Electronic Commerce, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Sid Davis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This article outlines a number of important research issues in human-computer interaction in the e-commerce environment. It highlights some of the challenges faced by users in browsing Web sites and conducting searches for information, and suggests several areas of research for promoting ease of navigation and search. Also, it discusses the importance of trust in the online environment, describing some of the antecedents and consequences of trust, and provides guidelines for integrating trust into Web site design. The issues discussed in this article are presented under three broad categories of human-computer interaction – Web usability, interface design, and trust – …

Hcl: A Specification Language For Hierarchical Text Classification, Aixin Sun, Ee Peng Lim, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hierarchical text classification refers to assigning text documents to the categories in a given category tree based on their content. With large number of categories organized as a tree, hierarchical text classification helps users to find information more quickly and accurately. Nevertheless, hierarchical text classification methods in the past have often been constructed in a proprietary manner. The construction steps often involve human efforts and are not completely automated. In this paper, we therefore propose a specification language known as HCL (Hierarchical Classification Language) . HCL is designed to describe a hierarchical classification method including the definition of a category …

Context Building Information-Centric Decision-Support Systems, Steven J. Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

As the volume of data and human-centered information available to decision-makers continues to increase at an ever-accelerating rate, the need to represent information in software-processable formats becomes more apparent. At the same time, the availability of information from diverse sources through the World Wide Web provides the opportunity to widen the scope of input to decision-support systems, if this information can be made accessible through automated means. Past approaches to information-centric interoperability have been based on the use of a shared static object model, but this becomes impractical when we consider the loosely-coupled decentralized nature of the Web.

This paper …

Some Thoughts On Human Nature: A Discussion Of Human Strenghts And Weaknesses, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

This paper attempts to explore the behavioral characteristics of human beings from a point of view that is not based on inter-human comparisons, but on an examination of the intrinsic physical, biological, intellectual, emotional, and social characteristics of this species. It is argued that the experience-based nature of the human cognitive system greatly reduces our ability to adapt to changes in our environment, exploit opportunities, and create new knowledge. A fundamental biological survival instinct drives the human being to seek a level of certainty and security that is irreconcilable with a continuously changing and largely unpredictable environment. The symptoms of …

The Underlying Design Principles Of The Icdm Development Toolkit, Kym J. Pohl, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

For the past sixteen years the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo has pursued the design and development of agent-based decision-support systems. Throughout this journey the CADRC has relied on a suite of development tools that greatly assist in the creation and management of such systems. This suite of tools is known as the Integrated Cooperative Decision-Making (ICDM) software development toolkit.

Not only does ICDM function as an accelerator (i.e., rapid development) and stabilizer (i.e., built-in robustness and fault tolerance) in the development of decision-support systems, but it also …

Integrating Local Search And Network Flow To Solve The Inventory Routing Problem, Hoong Chuin Lau, Q Liu, H. Ono

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The inventory routing problem is one of important and practical problems in logistics. It involves the integration of inventory management and vehicle routing, both of which are known to be NP-hard. In this paper, we combine local search and network flows to solve the inventory management problem, by utilizing the minimum cost flow sub-solutions as a guiding measure for local search. We then integrate with a standard VRPTW solver to present experimental results for the overall inventory routing problem, based on instances extended from the Solomon benchmark problems.

Design And Implementation Of An Online Database Panel, Frenny Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing need for administrative panels such as the one described in this project. More and more website administrators wish to make changes to their online business without having to directly modify the database file. This project provides the perfect solution for this scenario by placing all database access on the World Wide Web. Administrators can now use this software to add, edit, and delete tables, fields, and records. Additionally, users will be able to generate queries without knowledge of Structured Query Language. This project acts as a summary of my computer science education at this university by …

The Future Of Cryptography Under Quantum Computers, Marco A. Barreno

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Cryptography is an ancient art that has passed through many paradigms, from simple letter substitutions to polyalphabetic substitutions to rotor machines to digital encryption to public-key cryptosystems. With the possible advent of quantum computers and the strange behaviors they exhibit, a new paradigm shift in cryptography may be on the horizon. Quantum computers could hold the potential to render most modern encryption useless against a quantum-enabled adversary. The aim of this thesis is to characterize this convergence of cryptography and quantum computation. We provide definitions for cryptographic primitives that frame them in general terms with respect to complexity. We explore …

Three Power-Aware Routing Algorithms For Sensor Networks, Javed Aslam, Qun Li, Daniela Rus

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper discusses online power‐aware routing in large wireless ad hoc networks (especially sensor networks) for applications in which the message sequence is not known. We seek to optimize the lifetime of the network. We show that online power‐aware routing does not have a constant competitive ratio to the off‐line optimal algorithm. We develop an approximation algorithm called max–min zP_min that has a good empirical competitive ratio. To ensure scalability, we introduce a second online algorithm for power‐aware routing. This hierarchical algorithm is called zone‐based routing. Our experiments show that its performance is quite good. Finally, we …

Content Aware Request Distribution For High Performance Web Service: A Performance Study, Robert M. Jones

Dissertations and Theses

The World Wide Web is becoming a basic infrastructure for a variety of services, and the increases in audience size and client network bandwidth create service demands that are outpacing server capacity. Web clusters are one solution to this need for high performance, highly available web server systems. We are interested in load distribution techniques, specifically Layer-7 algorithms that are content-aware. Layer-7 algorithms allow distribution control based on the specific content requested, which is advantageous for a system that offers highly heterogenous services. We examine the performance of the Client Aware Policy (CAP) on a Linux/Apache web cluster consisting of …

Warcraft Iii - Maps & Benchmark Problems, Nathan R. Sturtevant, Blizzard Corp.

Moving AI Lab: 2D Maps and Benchmark Problems

Maps extracted from Warcraft III from Blizzard Corp. for use and distribution as benchmark problems.

Contains 36 maps and benchmark problem sets, scaled to 512x512 and converted to a simple grid-based format.

Implementing Qos Management For Workflow Systems, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth, Krzysztof J. Kochut

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes. As organizations adopt new working models, such as e-commerce, new challenges arise for workflow systems. One such challenge is that of quality of service (QoS) management. QoS management includes mechanisms that specify, compute, monitor, and control the quality of service of the products or services to be delivered. A good management of QoS directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce activities by better fulfilling customer expectations and achieving customer satisfaction. In this paper we present an implementation of a comprehensive QoS model for workflows …

Geospatial Data Handling For Web-Based And Mobile Applications, James Carswell

Articles

One of the main bottlenecks for web-based GIS usability is in the transmission and handling of the vast amounts of geospatial data involved. The shear volume of raster, vector, attribute, and other data to be analysed, queried, transmitted and displayed over the WWW in real-time is prohibited by connection speeds. In this paper we introduce e-Spatial technology, a fully integrated open standard web-based solution to manage multiple spatial relationships directly in an Oracle Spatial database and to deploy in real-time spatially enabled (or standard) applications completely independent of data volume. Indeed, no application code is ever installed on the client …

Web-Based Spatial Information Management Systems, James Carswell

Conference papers

In this paper we discuss the innovative software solutions offered by e-SpatialTM technology for the deployment of web-based and mobile spatial information management systems. This technology has been developed within the Oracle 9i Database environment and allows users to build and deploy spatially enabled Internet applications on any Oracle supported hardware platform and on any device running a Java Virtual Machine (e.g., standard web browsers, PDAs and other mobile devices). The paper focuses on a Land Information Management System (LIMS) application developed for the Irish Department of Agriculture. The application utilises the e-SpatialTM Information Server to deliver a spatially enabled …

An Enterprise-Based Grid Resource Management System, Mark J. Clement, Joseph Ekstrom, Quinn O. Snell, Kevin B. Tew

Faculty Publications

As the Internet began its exponential growth into a global information environment, software was often unreliable, slow and had difficulty in interoperating with other systems. Supercomputing node counts also continue to follow high growth trends. Supercomputer and grid resource management software must mature into a reliable computational platform in much the same way that web services matured for the Internet. DOGMA The Next Generation (DOGMA-NG) improves on current resource management approaches by using tested off-the-shelf enterprise technologies to build a robust, scalable, and extensible resource management platform. Distributed web service technologies constitute the core of DOGMA-NG’s design and provide fault …

Applying Xml/Xslt Technology: A Case Study, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan

Kno.e.sis Publications

Typically, paper-based semi-structured documents are used to communicate technical requirements in the industry. One approach to improving the efficiency and flexibility of searching and manipulating these documents is to obtain them in electronic form, and then make explicit the technical content in a form amenable to pattern matching and symbol manipulation. This paper explores the role of XML Technology for these purposes: the use of XML language to make explicit the content of a document in a standard fashion, and the use of XSLT to manipulate the content and mediate between applications that need this content. In order to recognize …

Combining Two Heuristics To Solve A Supply Chain Optimization Problem, Hoong Chuin Lau, Yuyue Song

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we consider a real-life supply chain optimization problem concerned with supplying a product from multiple warehouses to multiple geographically dispersed retailers. Each retailer faces a deterministic and period-dependent demand over some finite planning horizon. The demand of each retailer is satisfied by the supply from some predetermined warehouse through a fleet of vehicles which are only available within certain time windows at each period. Our goal is to identify a combined inventory and routing schedule such that the system-wide total cost over the planning horizon is minimised. This problem in essence is an amalgamation of two classical …

Performance Study On Two Distance Vector Routing Protocols For Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Yi Lu, Weichao Wang, Yuhui Zhong, Bharat Bhargava

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Boosted Image Classification: An Empirical Study, Nicholas Howe

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

The rapid pace of research in the fields of machine learning and image comparison has produced powerful new techniques in both areas. At the same time, research has been sparse on applying the best ideas from both fields to image classification and other forms of pattern recognition. This paper combines boosting with stateof-the-art methods in image comparison to carry out a comparative evaluation of several top algorithms. The results suggest that a new method for applying boosting may be most effective on data with many dimensions. Effectively marrying the best ideas from the two fields takes effort, but the techniques …

Leadership Antecedents Of Informal Knowledge Acquisition And Dissemination, Siu Loon Hoe, Steve Mcshane

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Knowledge management is emerging as one of the leading influences on an organisation’s survival and competitive advantage (Blumentritt & Johnston 1999). Knowledge management is concerned with the effective acquisition, sharing, storage and utilisation of knowledge (Huber 1991; Saffady 1998). Corporate leaders are increasingly aware of the notion that an organisation’s long-term survival depends on its ability to generate new knowledge and continuously learn from the environment. The importance of a superior organisational learning capability as a source of competitive advantage is a common refrain among both managers and scholars (e.g. Kohli & Jaworski 1990; Nonaka 1991; Quinn 1992; Slater & …

The Case For Cyber Foraging, Rajesh Balan, Jason Flinn, Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Shafeeq Sinnamohideen, Hen-I Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose cyber foraging: a mechanism to augment the computational and storage capabilities of mobile devices. Cyber foraging uses opportunistically discovered servers in the environment to improve the performance of interactive applications and distributed file systems on mobile clients. We show how the performance of distributed file systems can be improved by staging data at these servers even though the servers are not trusted. We also show how the performance of interactive applications can be improved via remote execution. Finally, we present VERSUDS: a virtual interface to heteregeneous service discovery protocols that can be used to discover …

G-Portal : A Map-Based Digital Library For Distributed Geospatial And Georeferenced Resources, Ee Peng Lim, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As the World Wide Web evolves into an immense information network, it is tempting to build new digital library services and expand existing digital library services to make use of web content. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of G-Portal, a web portal that aims to provide digital library services over geospatial and georeferenced content found on the World Wide Web. G-Portal adopts a map-based user interface to visualize and manipulate the distributed geospatial and georeferenced content. Annotation capabilities are supported, allowing users to contribute geospatial and georeferenced objects as well as their associated metadata. The other …

A Digital Library For Geography Examination Resources, Lian-Heong Chua, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Zehua Liu, Ee Peng Lim, Rebecca Pei-Hui Ang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We describe a Web-based application developed above a digital library of geographical resources for Singapore students preparing to take a national examination in geography. The application provides an interactive, non-sequential approach to learning that supplements textbooks.

Machine-Learned Contexts For Linguistic Operations In German Sentence Realization, Eric K. Ringger, Simon Corston-Oliver, Michael Gamon, Robert Moore

Faculty Publications

We show that it is possible to learn the contexts for linguistic operations which map a semantic representation to a surface syntactic tree in sentence realization with high accuracy. We cast the problem of learning the contexts for the linguistic operations as classification tasks, and apply straightforward machine learning techniques, such as decision tree learning. The training data consist of linguistic features extracted from syntactic and semantic representations produced by a linguistic analysis system. The target features are extracted from links to surface syntax trees. Our evidence consists of four examples from the German sentence realization system code-named Amalgam: case …

Data Management In Location-Dependent Information Services: Challenges And Issues, Dik Lun Lee, Jianliang Xu, Baihua Zheng, Wang-Chien Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Location-dependent information services have great promise for mobile and pervasive computing environments. They can provide local and nonlocal news, weather, and traffic reports as well as directory services. Before they can be implemented on a large scale, however, several research issues must be addressed.

Fast Filter-And-Refine Algorithms For Subsequence Selection, Beng-Chin Ooi, Hwee Hwa Pang, Hao Wang, Limsoon Wong, Cui Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large sequence databases, such as protein, DNA and gene sequences in biology, are becoming increasingly common. An important operation on a sequence database is approximate subsequence matching, where all subsequences that are within some distance from a given query string are retrieved. This paper proposes a filter-and-refine algorithm that enables efficient approximate subsequence matching in large DNA sequence databases. It employs a bitmap indexing structure to condense and encode each data sequence into a shorter index sequence. During query processing, the bitmap index is used to filter out most of the irrelevant subsequences, and false positives are removed in the …

Security Analysis And Improvement Of The Global Key Recovery System, Yanjiang Yang, Feng Bao, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Key recovery is a technology that allows the owner of encrypted data or a trusted third party to recover encrypted data, mostly by reconstructing lost decryption key. In [HLG99], Harn et al proposed a Global Key Recovery System (GKRS) that combines the functions of the key recovery authorities and the public key certification authorities (CAs). Among other features, user-dominance, i.e., a user is allowed to select his own public-private key pair and especially a public element for verifying the validity of the public-private key pair, is considered extremely important by [HLG99] for wide acceptance of GKRS. In this paper, we …