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The Update, April/May 2012, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Humanities, Arts And Sciences.

Update

Inside this issue:

-- Department of Mathematics Holds Annual Event
-- Department News
-- Earth Week 2012
-- National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association
-- Immigration Policy: Current Crisis & Future Challenges
-- Midwest Pressed Exhibits in New Orleans
-- SAVE: Students Against a Violent Environment
-- School of Music Events
-- Student Spotlight: Department of Physics:Byron Tasseff
-- Two Student Exhibitions Held in Dean's Triangle Gallery
-- UNI Hosts Regional and State Physics Competitions
-- Student Spotlight: Department of Computer Science: Aaron Mangel
-- UNI Forensics
-- UNI Mathematics Faculty Host Waterloo Schools Professional Development
-- Alumni Spotlight: …

Knowledge Engineering In Search Engines, Yun-Chieh Lin

Master's Projects

With large amounts of information being exchanged on the Internet, search engines have become the most popular tools for helping users to search and filter this information. However, keyword-based search engines sometimes obtain information, which does not meet user’ needs. Some of them are even irrelevant to what the user queries. When the users get query results, they have to read and organize them by themselves. It is not easy for users to handle information when a search engine returns several million results. This project uses a granular computing approach to find knowledge structures of a search engine. The project …

Cloud Information Summarization With Mobile Interface, Hrishikesh Paranjape

Master's Projects

There is a large driver for making existing data accessible everywhere, not just for people who happen to be at connected computers. This project aims to design, develop, and test Information Summarization System with its mobile application, which will allow end user the quick mobile access to underlying data on the web. The mobile application allows users to search for information about topic of their interest. This application will make use of existing established search engines to summarize the information on requested topic. The computation will be done on the cloud and communication between client and server will be done …

Cross-Lingual Text Classification With Model Translation And Document Translation, Zhang Zhang

Master's Projects

Most enterprise search engines employ data mining classifiers to classify documents. Along with the economic globalization, many companies are starting to have overseas branches or divisions. Those branches are using local languages in documents and emails. When a classifier tries to categorize those documents in another language, the trained model in mono-lingual will not work. The most direct solution would be to translate those documents in other languages into one language by the machine translator. But this solution suffers from inaccuracy of the machine translation, and the over-head work is economically inefficient. Another approach is to translate the feature extracted …

Conflict Detection And Resolution For Product Line Design In A Collaborative Decision Making Environment, Xiaoqing Frank Liu, Eric Christopher Barnes, Juha Erik Savolainen

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ensuring that the non-functional requirements (NFRs), of a system are satisfied is an essential task in software development. However, this task is complicated by the fact that many NFRs conflict with each other from multiple perspectives. It is essential to resolve conflicts collectively in a collaborative decision-making process since stakeholders often disagree on how conflicts should be resolved. in this paper, we describe a method for dividing high-level NFR conflicts within a product line into more manageable sub-problems. Stakeholders make use of an argumentation based collaborative decision support system to determine which design alternatives provide the best trade-offs between NFRs. …

Entropy And The Complexity Of Graphs Revisited, Abbe Mowshowitz, Matthias Dehmer

Publications and Research

This paper presents a taxonomy and overview of approaches to the measurement of graph and network complexity. The taxonomy distinguishes between deterministic (e.g., Kolmogorov complexity) and probabilistic approaches with a view to placing entropy-based probabilistic measurement in context. Entropy-based measurement is the main focus of the paper. Relationships between the different entropy functions used to measure complexity are examined; and intrinsic (e.g., classical measures) and extrinsic (e.g., Körner entropy) variants of entropy-based models are discussed in some detail.

Undergraduate Students' Self-Reported Use Of Mathematics Textbooks, Aaron Weinberg, Emilie Wiesner, Bret Benesh, Timothy Boester

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Textbooks play an important role in undergraduate mathematics courses and have the potential to impact student learning. However, there have been few studies that describe students' textbook use in detail. In this study, 1156 undergraduate students in introductory mathematics classes were surveyed, and asked to describe how they used their textbook. The results indicate that students tend to use examples, instead of the expository text, to build their mathematical understanding, which instructors may view as problematic. This way of using the textbook may be the result of the textbook structure itself, as well as students' beliefs about reading and the …

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 …

Improved Duplicate Bug Report Identification, Yuan Tian, Chengnian Sun, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bugs are prevalent in software systems. To improve the reliability of software systems, developers often allow end users to provide feedback on bugs that they encounter. Users could perform this by sending a bug report in a bug report management system like Bugzilla. This process however is uncoordinated and distributed, which means that many users could submit bug reports reporting the same problem. These are referred to as duplicate bug reports. The existence of many duplicate bug reports may cause much unnecessary manual efforts as often a triager would need to manually tag bug reports as being duplicates. Recently, there …

Commit Patterns And Threats To Validity In Analysis Of Open Source Software Repositories, Alexander Curtis Maclean

Theses and Dissertations

In the course of studying the effects of programming in multiple languages, we unearthed troubling trends in SourceForge artifacts. Our initial studies suggest that programming in multiple languages concurrently negatively affects developer productivity. While addressing our initial question of interest, we discovered a pattern of monolithic commits in the SourceForge community. Consequently, we also report on the effects that this pattern of commits can have when using SourceForge as a data-source for temporal analysis of open source projects or for studies of individual developers.

Ecosystem Services: The Making Of A Metaphor We Live (?) By, Richard B. Norgaard

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

What started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution. The metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead. Indeed, combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project-by-project without major institutional change, the simplicity of the stock-flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the …

Manipulation Of Online Reviews: An Analysis Of Ratings, Readability, And Sentiments, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Noi Sian Koh, Ling Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As consumers become increasingly reliant on online reviews to make purchase decisions, the sales of the product becomes dependent on the word of mouth (WOM) that it generates. As a result, there can be attempts by firms to manipulate online reviews of products to increase their sales. Despite the suspicion on the existence of such manipulation, the amount of such manipulation is unknown, and deciding which reviews to believe in is largely based on the reader's discretion and intuition. Therefore, the success of the manipulation of reviews by firms in generating sales of products is unknown. In this paper, we …

Effect Of Temperature And Relative Humidity On The Development And Fecundity Of Chilo Partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae), A. Tamiru, E. Getu, B. Jembere, T. Bruce

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

The spotted stemborer, Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae), is one of the most important insect pests attacking maize and sorghum in Ethiopia. Recent studies have indicated that the pest is spreading to new locations where it was not reported before. In the current study, laboratory investigations were carried out to determine the combined effect of different levels of relative humidity and temperature regimes on the development and fecundity of C. partellus, as these physical factors are known to play an important role in the life cycle of insects and adaptability to local climate. Developmental time, longevity, potential fecundity and realized …

Discovering Fine-Grained Sentiment In Suicide Notes, Wenbo Wang, Lu Chen, Ming Tan, Shaojun Wang, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents our solution for the i2b2 sentiment classification challenge. Our hybrid system consists of machine learning and rule-based classifiers. For the machine learning classifier, we investigate a variety of lexical, syntactic and knowledge-based features, and show how much these features contribute to the performance of the classifier through experiments. For the rule-based classifier, we propose an algorithm to automatically extract effective syntactic and lexical patterns from training examples. The experimental results show that the rule-based classifier outperforms the baseline machine learning classifier using unigram features. By combining the machine learning classifier and the rule-based classifier, the hybrid system …

Emotion Detection In Suicide Notes Using Maximum Entropy Classification, Richard H. Wicentowski, M. R. Sydes

Computer Science Faculty Works

An ensemble of supervised maximum entropy classifiers can accurately detect and identify sentiments expressed in suicide notes. Using lexical and syntactic features extracted from a training set of externally annotated suicide notes, we trained separate classifiers for each of fifteen pre-specified emotions. This formed part of the 2011 i2b2 NLP Shared Task, Track 2. The precision and recall of these classifiers related strongly with the number of occurrences of each emotion in the training data. Evaluating on previously unseen test data, our best system achieved an F 1 score of 0.534.

Run Your Research: On The Effectiveness Of Lightweight Mechanization, Casey Klein, John Clements, Christos Dimoulas, Carl Eastlund, Matthias Felleisen, Matthew Flatt, Jay A. Mccarthy, Jon Rafkind, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Robert Bruce Findler

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Formal models serve in many roles in the programming language community. In its primary role, a model communicates the idea of a language design; the architecture of a language tool; or the essence of a program analysis. No matter which role it plays, however, a faulty model doesn't serve its purpose.

One way to eliminate flaws from a model is to write it down in a mechanized formal language. It is then possible to state theorems about the model, to prove them, and to check the proofs. Over the past nine years, PLT has developed and explored a lightweight version …

Estimation Of Performance Indices For The Planning Of Sustainable Transportation Systems, Pankaj Maheshwari, Alexander Paz, Pushkin Kachroo

Graduate Publications & Presentations

What is sustainable transportation system?

Fulfill the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations

Utilize resources without compromising their health and productivity Leads to development that improves quality of life

Assimilate economic, ecological, social, and bio-physical components of resource ecosystems

Minimize the use of renewable and non-renewable resources, provide affordability and equity between generations

Quantitative Literacy Interventions At University Of Cape Town: Effects Of Separation From Academic Disciplines, Vera Frith

Numeracy

The aim of the Numeracy Centre at the University of Cape Town is to develop students’ quantitative literacy (QL) in a manner consistent with their programmes of study and intended roles in the community. Our theoretical perspective on the nature of QL is in line with that of the New Literacies Studies and sees academic QL as practices in different academic disciplinary contexts. This means that for us the ideal curriculum structure for developing QL would fully integrate it into the teaching of the disciplines. This is in practice not achievable in most cases, especially since many students do not …

Cognitive Approaches For The Semantic Web, Dedre Gentner, Frank Van Harmelen, Pascal Hitzler, Krzysztof Janowicz, Kai-Uwe Kuhnberger

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

A major focus in the design of Semantic Web ontology languages used to be on finding a suitable balance between the expressivity of the language and the tractability of reasoning services defined over this language. This focus mirrors the original vision of a Web composed of machine readable and understandable data. Similarly to the classical Web a few years ago, the attention is recently shifting towards a user-centric vision of the Semantic Web. Essentially, the information stored on the Web is from and for humans. This new focus is not only reflected in the fast growing Linked Data Web but …

Proceedings Of The Graduate Student Symposium Of The 7th International Conference On The Theory And Application Of Diagrams, July 5 2012, Ozge Alacam, Farrukh Arslan, Andrew Blake, Lillian Fanjoy, Luke Macneill, Gorkem Pacaci, Alistair Stead, Peter Vivian, Cengiz Acarturk, Gem Stapleton, Peter Rodgers, John Howse, Andreas Hamfelt, Nathan Miller

Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Proceedings of the Graduate Student Symposium held at the 7th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams, ("Diagrams 2012"), held at the University of Kent on July 5, 2012. Dr. Nathaniel Miller, professor of in the School of Mathematical Sciences at UNC, served on the symposium organizing committee.

Mathematical Competitions In Hungary: Promoting A Tradition Of Excellence & Creativity, Julianna Connelly Stockton

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Hungary has long been known for its outstanding production of mathematical talent. Extracurricular programs such as camps and competitions form a strong foundation within the Hungarian tradition. New types of competitions in recent years include team competitions, multiple choice competitions, and some exclusively for students who are not in a special mathematics class. This study explores some of the recent developments in Hungarian mathematics competitions and the potential implications these changes have for the very competition-driven system that currently exists. The founding of so many new competitions reflects a possible shift in the focus and purpose of competitions away from …

Comparing Us And Chinese High-School Physics Teaching In Terms Of The Use Of Inquiry, Lingbo Qian

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Inquiry based teaching has been widespread in the United States as well as in China in the last two decades. It was implemented by many teachers and shown to be effective in both countries. This study examines the extent to which inquiry-based teaching in high-school physics is practiced in US and China through the use of lesson observations and a survey. Nineteen lessons taught by 19 teachers (9 US and 10 Chinese) were observed (N=19). Results show that both US and Chinese teachers know well about the inquiry-based teaching. However, in practice, little inquiry-based teaching was observed in the two …

A Scalable Distributed Syntactic, Semantic And Lexical Language Model, Ming Tan, Wenli Zhou, Lei Zheng, Shaojun Wang

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents an attempt at building a large scale distributed composite language model that is formed by seamlessly integrating an n-gram model, a structured language model, and probabilistic latent semantic analysis under a directed Markov random field paradigm to simultaneously account for local word lexical information, mid-range sentence syntactic structure, and long-span document semantic content. The composite language model has been trained by performing a convergent N-best list approximate EM algorithm and a follow-up EM algorithm to improve word prediction power on corpora with up to a billion tokens and stored on a supercomputer. The large scale distributed composite …

Establishing A Foundation For Automated Human Credibility Screening, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., Judee K. Burgoon, Nathan W. Twyman, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Justin Scott Giboney

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Automated human credibility screening is an emerging research area that has potential for high impact in fields as diverse as homeland security and accounting fraud detection. Systems that conduct interviews and make credibility judgments can provide objectivity, improved accuracy, and greater reliability to credibility assessment practices, need to be built. This study establishes a foundation for developing automated systems for human credibility screening.

Countermeasures And Eye Tracking Deception Detection, Ryan M. Schuetzler

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

A new development in the field of deception detection is been the development of rapid, noncontact tools for automated detection. This research in progress paper describes a method for assessing the robustness of eye tracker-based deception detection to countermeasures employed by knowledgeable participants.

Correct Reasoning: Essays On Logic-Based Ai In Honour Of Vladimir Lifschitz, Esta Erdem, Joohyung Lee, Yuliya Lierler, David Pearce

Faculty Books and Monographs

Co-edited by Yuliya Lierler, UNO faculty member.

Essay, Parsing Combinatory Categorial Grammar via Planning in Answer Set Programming, co-authored by Yuliya Lierler, UNO faculty member.

This Festschrift published in honor of Vladimir Lifschitz on the occasion of his 65th birthday presents 39 articles by colleagues from all over the world with whom Vladimir Lifschitz had cooperation in various respects. The 39 contributions reflect the breadth and the depth of the work of Vladimir Lifschitz in logic programming, circumscription, default logic, action theory, causal reasoning and answer set programming.

Object Recognition Based On Shape And Function: Inspired By Children's Word Acquisition, Akihiro Eguchi

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper explores a new approach to computational object recognition by borrowing an idea from child language acquisition studies in developmental psychology. Whereas previous image recognition research used shape to recognize and label a target object, the model proposed in this study added the function of the object resulting in a more accurate recognition. This study makes use of new gaming technology, Microsoft’s Kinect, in implementing the proposed new object recognition model. A demonstration of the model developed in this project properly infers different names for similarly shaped objects and the same name for differently shaped objects.

Algorithms For Community Identification In Complex Networks, Mahadevan Vasudevan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

First and foremost, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Narsingh Deo, for his excellent guidance and encouragement, and also for introducing me to this wonderful science of complex networks. Without his support this dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the members of my research committee, professors Charles Hughes, Ratan Guha, Mainak Chatterjee and Yue Zhao for their advice and guidance during the entire process. I am indebted to the faculty and the staff of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for providing me the resources and …

Eastern Ichigan University Graduate Catalog, 2012-2013, Office Of The Registrar

Graduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Simulation Visualization Rhetoric And It's Practical Implications, D'An Knowles Ball, Andrew J. Collins

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Modeling and simulation has moved far beyond simple data representation into the world of visual communication over the past 15 years; ultimately, the acceptance of M&S within mainstream science and society will depend on the results that are produced visually. A simulation’s function is of primary importance to its end result, but it cannot be denied that the discipline of M&S now prizes fancy graphics to communicate. Rhetorical methodological decisions have the greatest impact on the end user, and considerations that bring visual rhetoric to modeling and simulation should be examined as a necessity to application. This paper will expose …