Digital Commons Network^™

Cognitive Architectures And Autonomy: Commentary And Response, Włodzisław Duch, Ah-Hwee Tan, Stan Franklin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper provides a very useful and promising analysis and comparison of current architectures of autonomous intelligent systems acting in real time and specific contexts, with all their constraints. The chosen issue of Cognitive Architectures and Autonomy is really a challenge for AI current projects and future research. I appreciate and endorse not only that challenge but many specific choices and claims; in particular: (i) that “autonomy” is a key concept for general intelligent systems; (ii) that “a core issue in cognitive architecture is the integration of cognitive processes ....”; (iii) the analysis of features and capabilities missing in current …

Combining Emotion And Facial Nonamanual Signals In Synthesized American Sign Language, Jerry Schnepp, Rosalee Wolfe, John Mcdonald, Jorge Toro

Visual Communications and Technology Education Faculty Publications

Conference proceedings from the the 14th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility-2012. ASSETS '12. Boulder, CO, USA, October 22 - 24, 2012. New York, NY, USA: ACM. 249-250.

Intelligent Shelter Allotment For Emergency Evacuation Planning: A Case Study Of Makkah, Kwangsoo Yang, Faizan Ur Rehman, Hatim Lahza, Saleh Basalamah, Shashi Shekhar, Arif Ghafoor

Cyber Center Technical Reports

Given maps of an evacuee population, shelter destinations and a transportation
network, the goal of intelligent shelter allotment (ISA) is to assign routes, exits and shelters to evacuees for quick and safe evacuation. ISA is societally important due to emergency planning and response applications in context of hazards such as floods, terrorism, fire, etc. ISA is challenging due to conflicts between movements of evacuee-groups heading to different shelters and transportation-network choke-points. State of the practice based on Nearest Exit or Shelter (NES) paradigm addresses the former challenge but not the latter one leading to load-imbalance and slow evacuation. Recent computational …

Design And Comparison Of Immersive Interactive Learning And Instructional Techniques For 3d Virtual Laboratories, Shuo Ren

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Virtual reality (VR) as a learning environment plays an important role m engineering education. Utilizing the VR learning environment as a supplement to engineering-based laboratories is especially beneficial for students to prepare for the physical experiment and to grasp the experiment objectives and procedures. Such a methodology can also play a significant role in distance education.

This work presents the methodology design for the physical-to-virtual transformation of two undergraduate mechanical engineering laboratory experiments, namely the "Jet Impact Force on Vanes (Jet Force Lab)" and the "Elastic Test of a Beam in Pure Bending (Beam Bending Lab)" at Old Dominion University. …

Level Of Agreement In The Mental Models Of Human Factors Practitioners And Systems Engineers Working In Collaborative Teams, Jerry A. Gordon

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Emerging research in complexity science recognizes traditional techniques for engineering systems do not always work for complex systems. Designing complex systems requires individuals to have knowledge of engineering as well as human performance. To this end, design efforts rely often on multi-disciplinary teams. While any two members of a design team may view the system design problem in vastly different manners, this study sought to identify a possible systemic effect on approach by the differing education and experience obtained by social practitioners, represented by human factors, and technical practitioners, represented by systems engineers. It further examined the impact of the …

Information Technology News, Georgia Southern University

Information Technology: News & Publications (2012-2023)

• Evin Hughes, Dual Major in Information Technology and Writing and Linguistics Wins Muhammad Ali Writing Award for Ethics

College Of Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

College of Engineering & Computing: News & Publications (2010-2023)

• Evin Hughes, Dual Major in Information Technology and Writing and Linguistics Wins Muhammad Ali Writing Award for Ethics

Schmidtea Mediterranea Planaris As A Novel Animal Model For Investigating The Dynamics Of Nervous System Development In Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Jesse Lowe

Theses and Dissertations

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a prevalent developmental disease that is caused by excess in utero exposure to ethanol. The importance of timing and dosage of ethanol has been elucidated by previous investigations conducted with humans, rodents, and other model organisms, but challenges associated with determining functional deficiencies have necessitated the introduction of a novel animal model for investigating the dynamics of FASD. In this thesis, we propose that the freshwater flatworm planarian species, Schmidtea mediterranea, has the capability to fulfill this need. Planaria have the ability to completely regenerate fragments into intact, functional animals, and in these studies, …

Classification Of Genomic Sequences By Latent Semantic Analysis, Samuel F. Way

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Evolutionary distance measures provide a means of identifying and organizing related organisms by comparing their genomic sequences. As such, techniques that quantify the level of similarity between DNA sequences are essential in our efforts to decipher the genetic code in which they are written.

Traditional methods for estimating the evolutionary distance separating two genomic sequences often require that the sequences first be aligned before they are compared. Unfortunately, this preliminary step imposes great computational burden, making this class of techniques impractical for applications involving a large number of sequences. Instead, we desire new methods for differentiating genomic sequences that eliminate …

Cmos Characterization, Modeling, And Circuit Design In The Presence Of Random Local Variation, Benjamin A. Millemon Sr.

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Random local variation in CMOS transistors complicates characterization procedures, modeling efforts, simulation tools, and circuit design methodologies in highly scaled CMOS devices. Mismatch is not only a concern for closely matched device pairs in analog circuits; digital circuit designers also have to consider the effects of random variation. Device characterization, modeling, process development, and circuit design engineers have to work together to mitigate the impact of random local variation. This thesis outlines the primary challenges of CMOS characterization, modeling, and circuit design in the presence of random local variation and offers guidelines and solutions to help mitigate and model the …

Feature-Based Opinion Mining And Ranking, Magdalini Eirinaki, S. Pisal, J. Singh

Faculty Publications

The proliferation of blogs and social networks presents a new set of challenges and opportunities in the way information is searched and retrieved. Even though facts still play a very important role when information is sought on a topic, opinions have become increasingly important as well. Opinions expressed in blogs and social networks are playing an important role influencing everything from the products people buy to the presidential candidate they support. Thus, there is a need for a new type of search engine which will not only retrieve facts, but will also enable the retrieval of opinions. Such a search …

Identification Of Proper And Common Names In The Anterior Temporal Lobe: An Fmri Study, Usha Tadimeti

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Temporal lobe epilepsy is a neurological disease that affects millions of individuals worldwide. They are usually treated through surgical resection of portions of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). Surgical resection is effective for seizure control, but produces language and verbal memory deficits such as anomic aphasia, which adversely affects an individual's quality of life. The purpose of this study was to develop a functional MRI protocol for mapping the function of ATL in healthy subjects, and to better understand the role of the ATL and other regions of the semantic system. Such a protocol may ultimately be used by surgeons …

Identifying And Attributing Similar Traces With Greatest Common Factor Analysis, Fred Cohen

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper presents an algorithm for comparing large numbers of traces to each other and identifying and presenting groups of traces with similar features. It is applied to forensic analysis in which groups of similar traces are automatically identified and presented so that attribution and other related claims may be asserted, and independently confirmed or refuted. The approach of this paper is to identify an approximate algorithm that will find a large subset of greatest common factor similar groups of arbitrary factors in far less time and space than an exact algorithm using examiner-provided selection criteria for factor definition.

Advanced Intelligent Control And Optimization For Cardiac Pacemaker Systems, Wei Shi

Dissertations

Since cardiovascular diseases are major causes of morbidity and mortality in the developed countries and the number one cause of death in the United States, their accurate diagnosis and effective treatment via advanced cardiac pacemaker systems have become very important. Intelligent control and optimization of the pacemakers are significant research subjects. Serious but infrequently occurring arrhythmias are difficult to diagnose. The use of electrocardiogram (ECG) waveform only cannot exactly distinguish between deadly abnormalities and temporary arrhythmias. Thus, this work develops a new method based on frequency entrainment to analyze pole-zero characteristics of the phase error between abnormal ECG and entrained …

The Xbox 360 And Steganography: How Criminals And Terrorists Could Be "Going Dark", Ashley Podhradsky, Rob D’Ovidio, Cindy Casey

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Video game consoles have evolved from single-player embedded systems with rudimentary processing and graphics capabilities to multipurpose devices that provide users with parallel functionality to contemporary desktop and laptop computers. Besides offering video games with rich graphics and multiuser network play, today's gaming consoles give users the ability to communicate via email, video and text chat; transfer pictures, videos, and file;, and surf the World-Wide-Web. These communication capabilities have, unfortunately, been exploited by people to plan and commit a variety of criminal activities. In an attempt to cover the digital tracks of these unlawful undertakings, anti-forensic techniques, such as steganography, …

Update On The State Of The Science Of Digital Evidence Examination, Fred Cohen

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper updates previous work on the level of consensus in foundational elements of digital evidence examination. Significant consensus is found present only after definitions are made explicit, suggesting that, while there is a scientific agreement around some of the basic notions identified, the use of a common language is lacking.

Keywords: Digital forensics examination, terminology, scientific methodology, testability, validation, classification, scientific consensus

A Crowdsourcing Approach To Labelling A Mood Induced Speech Corpus, John Snel, Alexey Tarasov, Charlie Cullen, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

This paper demonstrates the use of crowdsourcing to accumulate ratings from na ̈ıve listeners as a means to provide labels for a naturalistic emotional speech dataset. In order to do so, listening tasks are performed with a rating tool, which is delivered via the web. The rating requirements are based on the classical dimensions, activation and evaluation, presented to the participant as two discretised 5-point scales. Great emphasis is placed on the participant’s overall understanding of the task, and on the ease-of-use of the tool so that labelling accuracy is reinforced. The accumulation process is ongoing with a goal to …

Eurotech Students In Germany: Preparation, Experience And Outcome, Daisy A. Michaels

Master's Theses

Higher education study abroad programs for U.S. students are on the rise. A variety of undergraduate disciplines are being coupled with international components to bring U.S. students to a higher level of global awareness to meet the demands of today’s economy. The University of Connecticut’s Eurotech Program is an example of this trend. Its students earn degrees in both German and engineering in a five year program. They are given practical training through study and internships in Germany under the auspices of the Baden-Württemberg Exchange Program. One of the Eurotech Program’s major goals is to enhance job opportunities for its …

Curriculum Development For Recession Displaced Workers In Green Construction Industries, John Earl Killingsworth

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

More than 8 million U.S. jobs were lost during ‘The Great Recession’, pushing unemployment from 4.4% in 2007 to 10.2% in 2009. Nearly half of all job losses occurred among lower-skilled workers in construction and manufacturing industries. During this same period, however, jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy industries grew an unprecedented 9%. As part of a $4.8M grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the University of Nebraska began development of a workforce transition program to ‘retool’ recession displaced workers for career opportunities in new and emerging green industries. To date, the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) of …

Glottal Excitation Extraction Of Voiced Speech - Jointly Parametric And Nonparametric Approaches, Yiqiao Chen

All Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to develop methods to recover glottal flow pulses, which contain biometrical information about the speaker. The excitation information estimated from an observed speech utterance is modeled as the source of an inverse problem.
Windowed linear prediction analysis and inverse filtering are first used to deconvolve the speech signal to obtain a rough estimate of glottal flow pulses. Linear prediction and its inverse filtering can largely eliminate the vocal-tract response which is usually modeled as infinite impulse response filter. Some remaining vocal-tract components that reside in the estimate after inverse filtering are next removed by …

Real-Time Face Detection And Recognition, Parker Hill, Brendan Morris

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

The face has become a popular biometric for identification due to the wide range of features and difficulty in manipulation of the metric. In order to work towards a robust facial recognition system, this work contains a foundation for using the face as a recognition metric. First, faces are detected from still images using a Viola-Jones object detection algorithm. Then, Eigenfaces is applied to the detected faces. The system was tested on face databases as well as real-time feed from a web camera.

The Presence Of Regional Accents In Electrolarynx Speech And The Resultant Effect On Overall Intelligibility., Brian Madden, Eugene Coyle

Conference Papers

During voiced speech, the larynx provides quasi-periodic acoustic excitation of the vocal tract. In most electrolarynxes, mechanical vibrations are produced by a linear electromechanical actuator, the armature of which percusses against a metal or plastic plate at a frequency within the range of glottal excitation. In this paper, a phonological analysis of a section of results from an online perceptual intelligibility test was performed which compared speech produced using a novel hands-free electrolarynx and a commercially available electrolarynx. A portion of the test consisted of a closed-set format containing a selection of four sets of four random CVC audio samples …

11th Annual Undergraduate Student Symposium, Farquhar Honors College

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The Undergraduate Student Symposium, sponsored by the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, presents student projects through presentations, papers, and poster displays. The event serves as a “showcase” demonstrating the outstanding scholarship of undergraduate students at NSU. The Symposium is open to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Projects cover areas of student scholarship ranging from the experimental and the applied to the computational, theoretical, artistic, and literary. They are taken from class assignments as well as from independent projects. The projects do not have to be complete; presentations can represent any stage in the concept’s evolution, from proposal and literature …

2012 - The Seventeenth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Seventeenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 10, 2012. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Using A Virtual World For Robot Planning, D. Paul Benjamin, John V. Monaco, Yixia Lin, Christopher Funk, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

We are building a robot cognitive architecture that constructs a real-time virtual copy of itself and its environment, including people, and uses the model to process perceptual information and to plan its movements. This paper describes the structure of this architecture. The software components of this architecture include PhysX for the virtual world, OpenCV and the Point Cloud Library for visual processing, and the Soar cognitive architecture that controls the perceptual processing and task planning. The RS (Robot Schemas) language is implemented in Soar, providing the ability to reason about concurrency and time. This Soar/RS component controls visual processing, deciding …

Science And Society: The Role Of Long-Term Studies In Environmental Stewardship, Charles T. Driscoll, Kathleen F. Lambert, F. Stuart Chapin, David J. Nowake, Thomas A. Spies, Frederick J. Swanson, David B. Kittredge, Clarisse M. Hart

Civil and Environmental Engineering - All Scholarship

Long-term research should play a crucial role in addressing grand challenges in environmental stewardship. We examine the efforts of five Long Term Ecological Research Network sites to enhance policy, management, and conservation decisions for forest ecosystems. In these case studies, we explore the approaches used to inform policy on atmospheric deposition, public land management, land conservation, and urban forestry, including decisionmaker engagement and integration of local knowledge, application of models to analyze the potential consequences of policy and management decisions, and adaptive management to generate new knowledge and incorporate it into decisionmaking. Efforts to enhance the role of long-term research …

Risk Quadruplet: Integrating Assessments Of Threat, Vulnerability, Consequence, And Perception For Homeland Security And Homeland Defense, Kara Norman Hill

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Risk for homeland security and homeland defense is often considered to be a function of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. But what is that function? And are we defining and measuring these terms consistently? Threat, vulnerability, and consequence assessments are conducted, often separately, and data from one assessment could be drastically different from that of another due to inconsistent definitions of terms and measurements, differing data collection methods, or varying data sources. It has also long been a challenge to integrate these three disparate assessments to establish an overall picture of risk to a given asset. Further, many agencies conduct these …

Development And Application Of An F/M Based Anaerobic Digestion Model And The Rt-Ribosyn Molecular Biology Method, Matthew Raymond Cutter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A simple anaerobic digestion model has been developed for a continuously-stirred tank reactor (CSTR), which links the specific biogas production rate to the food/microorganism ratio (F/M). The model treats the various microbial populations involved in the sequential biological processes involved in anaerobic digestion as a composite and links the entire biomass specific growth rate directly to the specific biogas production rate. The model was calibrated by determining the specific gas production rate for a range of F/M values using a municipal wastewater seed sludge. The model predictions for steady-state biogas production rates were compared to observed biogas production and volatile …

Development Of A Radar-Frequency Metamaterial Measurement And Characterization Apparatus, Stephen I. Faris

Theses and Dissertations

The overall purpose of this research was to design, build, and test an apparatus for the measurement and characterization of radar-frequency metamaterial performance in the S-band through Ku-band (2-18 GHz). Measurement and characterization is vital to metamaterial taxonomy and ultimately vital to metamaterial definitions. Thus, the current lack of clarity in metamaterial definitions has served as the primary motivation for pursuing a method for taxonomy and thus, this apparatus. The technical goal of this thesis was to aid in the understanding of a metamaterial's radar-frequency response by developing an apparatus that would take simple, yet significant measurements of a metamaterial's …

Hierarchical Fuzzy Logic System For Implementing Maintenance Schedules Of Offshore Power Systems, C. S. Chang, Zhaoxia Wang, Fan Yang, W. W. Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart grid provides the technology for modernizing electricity delivery systems by using distributed and computer-based remote sensing, control and automation, and two-way communications. Potential benefits of the technology are that the smart grid's central control will now be able to control and operate many remote power plant, optimize the overall asset utilization and operational efficiently. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach for the smart grid to handle uncertainties arising from condition monitoring and maintenance of power plant. The approach uses an adaptive maintenance advisor and a system-maintenance optimizer for designing/implementing optimized condition-based maintenance activities, and collectively handles operational …