Digital Commons Network^™

Hierarchical Interconnection Network Architecture For Real-Time Systems, Bülent Örenci̇k

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

A hierarchical network suitable for interconnection of real-time client processes in a distributed multiprocessor environment is presented in this paper. A multi-layer {\it Communication Unit} (CU) prototype is developed for this purpose. This unit offers the client processes communication services for real-time operation. These services are structured in such a way that they do not depend on the characteristics of the communication medium. The basic hardware of the CU consists of a PC compatible card connected to the VME Bus. Client processes run on target cards (Motorola MVME-162) which are attached to the same bus. Target cards together with a …

Imaging Tissue Conductivity Via Contactless Measurements: A Feasibility Study, Nevzat G. Gençer, M. Nejat Tek

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The feasibility of a new imaging system is investigated. This system will be used to image electrical conductivity distribution of biological tissues via contactless measurements. This will be achieved by introducing currents in the conductive medium using time-varying magnetic fields and measuring the magnetic fields of the induced currents. Consequently, the imaging system consists of transmitter and receiver coils placed nearby the conductive body. In this study, the basic features of the coplanar and coaxial coils are studied. The validity of the simplifying assumptions for the governing field equations is investigated. It is found that, for operating frequency of 100 …

On The Structure Of Graphs With Few P4s, Luitpold Babel, Stephan Olariu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present new classes of graphs for which the isomorphism problem can be solved in polynomial time. These graphs are characterized by containing — in some local sense — only a small number of induced paths of length three. As it turns out, every such graph has a unique tree representation: the internal nodes correspond to three types of graph operations, while the leaves are basic graphs with a simple structure. The paper extends and generalizes known results about cographs, P₄-reducible graphs, and P₄-sparse graphs.

User Response And Organisational Fit For Information Systems In Earth Observation, Jeff Kingwell

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

A group of seventy six scientists and data managers in the Australian research agency CSIRO were surveyed to establish their needs and preferences in relation to information systems for Earth observation data. After study of available alternatives, three prototype Earth observation information management systems were installed and the user response was evaluated through interview of fifteen of the group. The prototypes consisted of web-based client servers which permitted users to interrogate databases of Earth observation datasets; to search for information about sensor or satellite performance, and to retrieve data and information products. The chosen systems were CILS, the CEOS (Committee …

Reflective Remote Method Invocation, George K. Thiruvathukal, Lovely S. Thomas, Andy T. Korczynski

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is available in the current Java language design and implementation, providing the much-needed capability of allowing objects running in different Java processes to collaborate using a variation on the popular Remote Procedure Call (RPC).

Although RMI provides features which are desirable for high-performance distributed computing, its design and implementation are deficient in key areas of importance to the high-performance computing community in general. This paper addresses the key deficiencies of RMI and how these deficiencies affect the design and implementation of distributed object applications.

Reflective RMI (RRMI) is an open RMI implementation which makes better use …

Java Grande Forum Report: Making Java Work For High-End Computing, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This document describes the Java Grande Forum and includes its initial deliverables.Theseare reports that convey a succinct set of recommendations from this forum to SunMicrosystems and other purveyors of Java™ technology that will enable GrandeApplications to be developed with the Java programming language.

Wide-Area Implementation Of The Message Passing Interface, Ian Foster, Jonathan Geisler, William Gropp, Nicholas Karonis, Ewing Lusk, George K. Thiruvathukal, Steven Tuecke

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Message Passing Interface (MPI) can be used as a portable, high-performance programming model for wide-area computing systems. The wide-area environment introduces challenging problems for the MPI implementor, due to the heterogeneity of both the underlying physical infrastructure and the software environment at different sites. In this article, we describe an MPI implementation that incorporates solutions to these problems. This implementation has beenconstructed by extending the Argonne MPICH implementation of MPI to use communicationservices provided by the Nexus communication library and authentication, resource allocation, process creation/management, and information services provided by the I-Soft system (initially) and the Globus metacomputing toolkit …

Aegis Data Analysis And Reduction (Adar) In Support Of The Aegis Weapon System (Aws), June Bullard Gaines

Theses and Dissertations

The AEGIS Weapons System (AWS), part of the AEGIS Combat System (ACS), is an integral part of the defense system on U.S. Navy AEGIS-class ships. AEGIS Data Analysis and Reduction (ADAR) has been developed to assist in the evaluation of the AWS data. ADAR, along with the AWS and ACS, has evolved through the years to accommodate advances in technology and computer programming languages. Additionally, ADAR has evolved so that users located at sites other than the Naval Surface Warfare System Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD), Dahlgren, Virginia, can reduce tactical system data and perform data analysis using the reduced data.

This …

A Transaction Model For Mobile Computing, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Bharat Bhargava

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We introduce a prewrite operation before a write operation in a mobile transaction to improve data availability. A prewrite operation does not update the state of a data object but only makes visible the value that the data object will have after the commit of the transaction. Once the transaction has read all the values and declares all the prewrites, it can precommit at a mobile host. The remaining transaction's execution is shifted to the stationary host. Writes on a database consume both time and resources at the stationary host and are therefore delayed. A pre-committed transaction's prewrite values are …

Java, Java, Java, Chaman Sabharwal

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Everyone is talking about Java. The driving force for this chatter is Java''s simplicity and potential power. Java is programming language, and a language for the intranet and the World Wide Web (WWW). Java is a Write On one platform and Run on Many platforms (WORM) language. For network-friendly, platform-independent applications, Java (originally Oak) is an object oriented programming language. Java source code is compiled into a virtual machine code or bytecode. This makes the Java platform independent. It can be placed on a Web site, and executed on the client side on a PC-Intel, Mac, Motorola or UNIX-Solaris machine …

Algorithms For Message Delivery In A Micromobility Environment, Amy L. Murphy, Gruia-Catalin Roman, George Varghese

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

As computing components get smaller and people become accustomed to having computational power at their disposal at any time, mobile computing is developing as an important research area. One of the fundamental problems in mobility is maintaining connectivity through message passing as the user moves through the network. This is usually accomplished in one of two ways: search or tracking. In search, an algorithm hunts the mobile unit through the network each time a message is to be delivered, while in tracking, a specific home keeps up to date information about the current location of the mobile unit. Our paper …

Terabit Burst Switching Progress Report (12/97-2/98), Jonathan S. Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This report summarizes progress on the Terabit Burst Switching Project at Washington University for the period from December 15, 1997 through March 15, 1998. Efforts during this period have concentrated on working out details of the burst switch architecture, evaluating a variety of implementation alternatives and developing the physical design of the 160 Gb/s ATM switch to allow demonstration of the burst switch within a realistic network context.

Lime: Linda Meets Mobility, Gian Pietro Picco, Amy L. Murphy, Gruia-Catalin Roman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

LIME is a system designed to assist in the rapid development of dependable mobile applications over both wired and ad hoc networks. Mobile agents reside on mobile hosts and all communication takes place via transiently shared tuple spaces distributed across the mobile hosts. The decoupled style of computing characterizing the Linda model is extended to the mobile environment. At the application level, both agents and hosts perceive movement as a sudden change of context. The set of tuples accessible by a particular agent residing on a given host is altered transparently in response to changes in the connectivity pattern among …

Agnostic Learning Of Geometric Patterns, Sally A. Goldman, Stephen S. Kwek, Stephen D. Scott

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Goldberg, Goldman, and Scott demonstrated how the problem of recognizing a landmark from a one-dimensional visual image can be mapped to that of learning a one-dimensional geometric pattern and gave a PAC algorithm to learn that class. In this paper, we present an efficient on-line agnostic learning algorithm for learning the class of constant-dimension geometric patterns. Our algorithm can tolerate both classification and attribute noise. By working in higher dimensional spaces we can represent more features from the visual image in the geometric pattern. Our mapping of the data to a geometric pattern, and hence our learning algorithm, is applicable …

Learning From Examples With Unspecified Attribute Values, Sally A. Goldman, Stephen S. Kwek, Stephen D. Scott

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We introduce the UAV learning model in which some of the attributes in the examples are unspecified. In our model, an example x is classified positive (resp., negative) if all possible assignments for the unspecified attributes result in a positive (resp., negative) classification. Otherwise the classificatoin given to x is "?" (for unknown). Given an example x in which some attributes are unspecified, the oracle UAV-MQ responds with the classification of x. Given a hypothesis h, the oracle UAV-EQ returns an example x (that could have unspecified attributes) for which h(x) is incorrect. We show that any class learnable in …

Requirement Elicitation For Environmental Life Cycle Processes, Mariam Y. Burmawalla

Theses

To develop a user-satisfying product the most essential ingredient is to understand user's needs and expectations from the system. Lack of communication between the user and the developer results in an unsatifying output from the user's point of view. Thus proper understanding between the stakeholder and the developer is the most important requirement during the development of any system.

Requirement elicitation process is one such means of expressing wants and requirements from the system by both the parties. Based on Software Engineering Institute's model, requirement elicitation is a web-based application that allows all the people involved in the system to …

Using Multimedia Microworlds To Motivate And Engage Adult Learners, Susan B. Stoney

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

As educational institutions come under increasing pressure from outside forces to restructure the way students learn, efforts are being made by researchers to find ways to assist students to learn through independent thought and to solve problems in a resource-based, self-paced environment. Such an environment needs to be sufficiently interesting and novel to motivate students who begin to use it, and to continue to engage them as they progress through it. This study has sought to identify what such a learning environment needs to encompass in order to motivate and engage adult learners so that they will not only want …

The Adjoint Alternative For Matrix Operators, C. H. Cooke

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The following inverse problem is considered: given a matrix B of rank r, does there exist a matrix A such that

B = T(A) = adjoint (A)

where the classical adjoint operation is intended? Conditions are determined on the rank of B which decides whether or not B lies in the range of the matrix adjoint operator.

Object-Oriented Programming And Parallelism, Atanas Radenski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Initially, object-orientation and parallelism originated and developed as separate and relatively independent areas. During the last decade, however, more and more researchers were attracted by the benefits from a potential marriage of the two powerful paradigms. Numerous research projects and an increasing number of practical applications were aimed at different forms of amalgamation of parallelism with object-orientation. It has been realized that parallelism is a inherently needed enhancement for the traditional object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm, and that object orientation can add significant flexibility to the parallel programming paradigm.

Network Security: An Evaluation Of Security Policies And Firewall Implementations, Melanie L. Abbas

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This paper begins focusing on network security issues. The areas of physical security, access security, and connection security are explored. Connection security provides the biggest need for improvement in the entire security field. This type of security is managed best with firewall implementations. Various firewall models are discussed.

Software evaluations were performed on three different commercial Internet security tools. The software was compared on the basis of ease of installation, functionality, level of security provided, and output available. In summary, the value of the firewall is dependent on the need to implement a firewall in an organization.

However, a security …

Database Security: Evaluation Of A Multi-Policy Access Control Model, Fei Dong

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

As an increasing number of organizations become dependent on access to their data stored in the database, the need for adequate security measures is becoming more and more critical. Enforcing data protection means safeguarding data from unauthorized or improper disclosures or modifications. Access control policies should be independent of the mechanisms that will implement the physical control of access: this allows control mechanism to be available for different policies. Although considerable work was done on access control models and related mechanisms for databases (Castano & Fugini, 1994), current access control models and mechanisms are not flexible enough to meet the …

A Framework For Controlling Quality Of Sessions In Multimedia Systems, Alaa S. Youssef

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Collaborative multimedia systems demand overall session quality control beyond the level of quality of service (QoS) pertaining to individual connections in isolation of others. At every instant in time, the quality of the session depends on the actual QoS offered by the system to each of the application streams, as well as on the relative priorities of these streams according to the application semantics. We introduce a framework for achieving QoSess control and address the architectural issues involved in designing a QoSess control laver that realizes the proposed framework. In addition, we detail our contributions for two main components of …

A Hierarchical Filtering-Based Monitoring Architecture For Large-Scale Distributed Systems, Ehab Salem Al-Shaer

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

On-line monitoring is essential for observing and improving the reliability and performance of large-scale distributed (LSD) systems. In an LSD environment, large numbers of events are generated by system components during their execution and interaction with external objects (e.g. users or processes). These events must be monitored to accurately determine the run-time behavior of an LSD system and to obtain status information that is required for debugging and steering applications. However, the manner in which events are generated in an LSD system is complex and represents a number of challenges for an on-line monitoring system. Correlated events axe generated concurrently …

An Alternative Method For Determining Adjusted Function Points As The Basis For Software Cost Estimating, William Alexander Eldred

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

As software costs become an increasingly higher percentage of total computer system costs, it becomes increasingly more important for software development managers to have the ability to predict development costs with reasonable accuracy early in the software development cycle. Software development cost estimates are based in large measure on software size. Function points are considered by many to be a de facto industry standard as a size metric. The function points technique, unlike lines-of-code, can be applied early in the software development cycle and is language independent. Critics claim that the function point “value adjustment factor,” which purports to capture …

Module Embedding, Atanas Radenski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

This paper proposes a code reuse mechanism called module embedding that enables the building of new modules from existing ones through inheritance, overriding of procedures, and overriding of types; the paper also describes an implementation scheme for this mechanism. Module embedding is beneficial when modules and classes are used in combination and need to be extended together, or when modules are more appropriate medium than classes.

Concept Vectors: A Synthesis Of Concept Mapping And Matrices For Knowledge Representation In Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Mark L. Dyson

Theses and Dissertations

A review of the literature relating to intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) reveals that the bulk of research to date is focused on the student, and on methods for representing the knowledge itself. From student models to learning schemas to presentation methods, comparatively little attention has been paid to the problem of educators attempting to build viable lesson plans for use in an ITS environment--yet when this problem is addressed in the literature, it is recognized as a potentially daunting one. This thesis addresses the problem of ITS lesson plan development by proposing a practical, computable approach for knowledge engineering that …

Electro-Deposition Of Polymer Chains On An Adsorbing Wall: Density Profiles And Wall Coverage, Grace M. Foo, Ras B. Pandey

Faculty Publications

Growth of polymer density in an electro-deposition model of polymer chains on an impenetrable wall is studied on a two dimensional discrete lattice using a Monte Carlo simulation. Polymer-polymer repulsion and polymer-wall attraction for the adsorbing wall (along with the neutral and repulsive interactions) are considered in an external field. Effects of the field strength (B), temperature (T), and chain length (L-c) on the density profile of the polymer chains and wall coverage are investigated. The spatial density profile shows onset of oscillation near the wall at a characteristic field (B-c) which depends on chain length and temperature, In low …

Learning To See Analogies: A Connectionist Exploration, Douglas S. Blank

Computer Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

The goal of this dissertation is to integrate learning and analogy-making. Although learning and analogy-making both have long histories as active areas of research in cognitive science, not enough attention has been given to the ways in which they may interact. To that end, this project focuses on developing a computer program, called Analogator, that learns to make analogies by seeing examples of many different analogy problems and their solutions. That is, it learns to make analogies by analogy. This approach stands in contrast to most existing computational models of analogy in which particular analogical mechanisms are assumed a priori …

Bias And The Probability Of Generalization, Tony R. Martinez, D. Randall Wilson

Faculty Publications

In order to be useful, a learning algorithm must be able to generalize well when faced with inputs not previously presented to the system. A bias is necessary for any generalization, and as shown by several researchers in recent years, no bias can lead to strictly better generalization than any other when summed over all possible functions or applications. This paper provides examples to illustrate this fact, but also explains how a bias or learning algorithm can be “better” than another in practice when the probability of the occurrence of functions is taken into account. It shows how domain knowledge …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 13, Number 10, December 1997, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

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