Digital Commons Network^™

Ontology-Based Visual Word Matching For Near-Duplicate Retrieval, Yu-Gang Jiang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes a novel approach to exploit the ontological relationship of visual words by linguistic reasoning. A visual word ontology is constructed to facilitate the rigorous evaluation of linguistic similarity across visual words. The linguistic similarity measurement enables cross-bin matching of visual words, compromising the effectiveness and speed of conventional keypoint matching and bag-of-word approaches. A constraint EMD is proposed and experimented to efficiently match visual words. Empirical findings indicate that the proposed approach offers satisfactory performance to near-duplicate retrieval, while still enjoying the merit of speed efficiency compared with other techniques.

Word Sense Disambiguation In Biomedical Ontologies With Term Co-Occurrence Analysis And Document Clustering, Bill Andreopoulos, Dimitra Alexopoulou, Michael Schroeder

Faculty Publications, Computer Science

With more and more genomes being sequenced, a lot of effort is devoted to their annotation with terms from controlled vocabularies such as the GeneOntology. Manual annotation based on relevant literature is tedious, but automation of this process is difficult. One particularly challenging problem is word sense disambiguation. Terms such as |development| can refer to developmental biology or to the more general sense. Here, we present two approaches to address this problem by using term co-occurrences and document clustering. To evaluate our method we defined a corpus of 331 documents on development and developmental biology. Term co-occurrence analysis achieves an …

T-Plausibility: Semantic Preserving Text Sanitization, Wei Jiang, Mummoorthy Murugesan, Chris Clifton, Luo Si

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Collecting Open Source Intelligence Via Tailored Information Delivery Systems, William Sousan, Qiuming Zhu, Ryan Nickell, William Mahoney, Peter Hospodka

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The Internet offers a plethora of freely available information for possible use in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) operations. However, along with this information come challenges in finding relevant information and overcoming information overload. This paper presents the results of an ongoing research in a Tailored Information Delivery Services (TIDS) system that aids users in retrieving relevant information through various open intelligence sources. The TIDS provides a semantics-based query constructor that operates in a “What You Get is What You Need (WYGIWYN^TM)” fashion and builds ontology based information tagging, theme extractor, and contextual model.

Gsi: Geo Scene Investigation! On-Site Programming (Grade 7), Discover Mojave: Forever Earth

Curriculum materials (FE)

GSI: Geo Scene Investigation! introduces students to the differences between observations and interpretations and to some of the fundamental principles of geology. Students identify specific geologic processes and landforms in the landscape surrounding them at Lake Mead National Recreation Area (NRA) by solving mysteries with a set of geology-related clues.

Text Analytics For Semantic Computing - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Cartic Ramakrishnan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This tutorial was give at the Second IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing Santa Clara, CA, USA - August 4-7, 2008.

Similarity Assessment Techniques, Michael A. Zang, Adam Gray, Michael Hobbs, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

This paper serves as a layman’s introduction to similarity assessment techniques, their distinction from contemporary computing paradigms, and their real-world applications. The following content derives from the experience gained by the authors in applying similarity assessment techniques to resolve the real-world problems of CDM customers, in particular those faced by the United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM).

Introduction To Thinking As Communicating, Anna Sfard

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This book is a result of years-long attempts to change my own thinking about thinking, a task seemingly as improbable as breaking a hammer by hitting it with itself. In this unlikely undertaking, I have been inspired by Lev Vygotsky, the Byelorussian psychologist who devoted his life to “characterizing the uniquely human aspects of behavior,”2 and by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian-British philosopher who insisted that no substantial progress can be made in this kind of endeavor unless the ways we talk, and thus think, about uniquely human “forms of life” undergo extensive revisions.

A Simplex Model For Layered Niche Networks, Philip Fraundorf

Physics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Tme Volume 5, Numbers 2 And 3

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

History Of Mathematics In Mathematics Education: A Saussurean Perspective, Michael Fried

The Mathematics Enthusiast

It is not only because of a certain eclecticism in mathematics education research that semiotic ideas have begun to take root there: it is also because of the dawning recognition that key areas of interest in mathematics education genuinely have a semiotic nature. For this, one need only point to research focused on meaning, communication, language, and culture (e.g., Presmeg, 1997; Ernest,1997; Radford, 2001; Brown, 2001). The ways in which semiotics informs cultural aspects of mathematics education, particularly those connected with the history of mathematics, were highlighted in a discussion session at the 2003 meeting of the International Group for …

Semantic Web: Promising Technologies, Current Applications & Future Directions, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Algebra For All?, Brian Greer

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In 1957, the director of one of the major math curriculum projects in the UK was quoted in a newspaper as saying: "Up went Sputnik and down came all the pure mathematicians saying we must do sets and be saved". The corresponding message from the National Math Panel Final Report is "Up went the economic performance of China and India and down came all the pure mathematicians saying we must do algebra and be saved".

A Self-Organizing Neural Model For Multimedia Information Fusion, Luong-Dong Nguyen, Kia-Yan Woon, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a self-organizing network model for the fusion of multimedia information. By synchronizing the encoding of information across multiple media channels, the neural model known as fusion Adaptive Resonance Theory (fusion ART) generates clusters that encode the associative mappings across multimedia information in a real-time and continuous manner. In addition, by incorporating a semantic category channel, fusion ART further enables multimedia information to be fused into predefined themes or semantic categories. We illustrate the fusion ART’s functionalities through experiments on two multimedia data sets in the terrorist domain and show the viability of the proposed approach.

Alien Invaders! Pre-Visit Lesson: Introduced And Invasive Species (Grade 6), Discover Mojave: Forever Earth

Curriculum materials (FE)

In the “Alien Invaders!” program, students use the Forever Earth vessel to investigate how quagga mussels might affect Lake Mead. Students collect water quality data such as clarity, pH, and temperature to determine whether current habitat conditions would allow quagga mussels to survive and thrive. Students learn about the consequences the quagga mussels could have on the lake and its living and non-living resources. Using the knowledge they’ve gained, students create their own management plans to prevent the spread of quagga mussels to other waterways.

This activity involves students in the concepts of introduced and invasive species

Timeline Prediction Framework For Iterative Software Engineering Projects With Changes, Kay Berkling, Georgios Kiragiannis, Armin Zundel, Subhajit Datta

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Even today, software projects still suffer from delays and budget overspending. The causes for this problem are compounded when the project team is distributed across different locations and generally attributed to the decreasing ability to communicate well (due to cultural, linguistic, and physical distance). Many projects, especially those with off-shoring component, consist of small iterations with changes, deletions and additions, yet there is no formal model of the flow of iterations available. A number of commercially available project prediction tools for projects as a whole exist, but the model adaptation process by iteration, if it exists, is unclear. Furthermore, no …

Mobile Interaction Design: Integrating Individual And Organizational Perspectives, Peter Tarasewich, Jun Gong, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, David Dewester

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While mobile computing provides organizations with many information systems implementation alternatives, it is often difficult to predict the potential benefits, limitations, and problems with mobile applications. Given the inherent portability of mobile devices, many design and use issues can arise which do not exist with desktop systems. While many existing rules of thumb for design of stationary systems apply to mobile systems, many new ones emerge. Issues such as the security and privacy of information take on new dimensions, and potential conflicts can develop when a single mobile device serves both personal and business needs. This paper identifies potential issues …

Assessing The Costs Of Sampling Methods In Active Learning For Annotation, James Carroll, Robbie Haertel, Peter Mcclanahan, Eric K. Ringger, Kevin Seppi

Faculty Publications

Traditional Active Learning (AL) techniques assume that the annotation of each datum costs the same. This is not the case when annotating sequences; some sequences will take longer than others. We show that the AL technique which performs best depends on how cost is measured. Applying an hourly cost model based on the results of an annotation user study, we approximate the amount of time necessary to annotate a given sentence. This model allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of AL sampling methods in terms of time spent in annotation. We acheive a 77% reduction in hours from a random …

A Multimodal And Multilevel Ranking Scheme For Large-Scale Video Retrieval, Steven C. H. Hoi, Michael R. Lyu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A critical issue of large-scale multimedia retrieval is how to develop an effective framework for ranking the search results. This problem is particularly challenging for content-based video retrieval due to some issues such as short text queries, insufficient sample learning, fusion of multimodal contents, and large-scale learning with huge media data. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal and multilevel (MMML) ranking framework to attack the challenging ranking problem of content-based video retrieval. We represent the video retrieval task by graphs and suggest a graph based semi-supervised ranking (SSR) scheme, which can learn with small samples effectively and integrate …

Education In The Environment: A Strategy For Continued Interagency Outdoor Education Programming: Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending May 31, 2008, Margaret N. Rees

Reports (PLI Education)

Highlights of the university’s focused efforts during the past three months include the following:

• Progress was made on three projects to meet Southern Nevada Agency Partnership (SNAP)
  strategic messaging needs: an anti-litter exhibit, a volunteer restoration program with educational
  components, and activity stations to tell the story of Lee Meadows restoration efforts.
• 175 people attended the Our Places Tell Stories conference March 4-6, 2008.
• The Nevada State Environmental Education and Interpretation Certification Program will be launched beginning June 17, 2008.
• Forever Earth was scheduled on 51 days involving 1985 individuals.
• Discover Mojave Outdoor World conducted seven events for 152 participants.

An Improved String Composition Method For Sequence Comparison, Guoqing Lu, Shunpu Zhang, Xiang Fang

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Background: Historically, two categories of computational algorithms (alignment-based and alignment-free) have been applied to sequence comparison–one of the most fundamental issues in bioinformatics. Multiple sequence alignment, although dominantly used by biologists, possesses both fundamental as well as computational limitations. Consequently, alignment-free methods have been explored as important alternatives in estimating sequence similarity. Of the alignment-free methods, the string composition vector (CV) methods, which use the frequencies of nucleotide or amino acid strings to represent sequence information, show promising results in genome sequence comparison of prokaryotes. The existing CV-based methods, however, suffer certain statistical problems, thereby underestimating the amount of evolutionary …

Ranking Search Results For Translated Content, Brian Edwin Hawkins

Theses and Dissertations

Translation Memory (TM) is a valuable tool that helps human translators in doing their job. TM consists of a collection of previously translated texts, called translation units, that may prove useful in the translation of new text. The main problem faced by translators who wish to take advantage of TM is that, although search tools do exist, there is no standardized way of effectively ranking search results. This thesis proposes a method for ranking TM search results together with a novel approach to efficiently finding common substrings that is used in the ranking process.

The Impact Of Being Born With Cleft And Cleft Reparative Surgery On Overall Health And Speech Outcomes, Khatansuudal Evsanaa

Master's Theses

Orofacial cleft is one of the most common and treatable birth defects in the world. If left untreated, orofacial cleft can impair normal speech development, growth, and could lead to a number of health consequences later in life. The main motivation of the study is to measure the impact of being born with cleft and the cleft reparative surgery on overall speech and health cleft for teenagers in India using difference-in-differences approach along with household fixed effects method. An overall health outcome was measured using height, weight, grip strength and BMI, and the speech acceptability was measured using a “Universal …

Foundations And Interpretations Of Quantum Mechanics, Cory Johnson

Honors Theses

The first famous thought experiment of Einstein gives rise to his theories of relativity, the bedrock of modern astrophysics and cosmology. His second famous thought experiment begins the investigation into the foundations of quantum mechanics. It leads to a paradox, inspiring various 'no-go' theorems proven by Bell, Kochen, and Specker. Physicists and philosophers worldwide become increasingly dissatisfied with the probabilistic complementarity interpretation (Born-Bohr) and eventually offer their own accounts of the theory. By the end of the 20th century two alternative approaches stand out as the best candidates: Both the hidden variables interpretation (de Broglie-Bohm) and the many worlds interpretation …

Virtual Aesthetics And Ethical Communication: Towards Virtuous Reality Design, David Williams

All Theses

This thesis argues that ethics can and should be applied to Second Life avatar design and behavior. Second Life is a unique virtual reality due to its connection to the physical world primarily through financial devices. Users buy and sell virtual and physical goods over these networks; the avatar, it is argued, is the primary instrument for persuasion in these contexts. Avatars facilitate a virtual aesthetic that is primarily 'natural.' By creating aesthetic avatars, the developers of Second Life enable audiences to affectively associate with other 'residents.' Not only is the avatar designed for aesthetic appeal, but it enables users …

A Study In Rule-Specific Issue Categorization For E-Rulemaking, Claire Cardie, Cynthia R. Farina, Adil Aijaz, Matt Rawding, Stephen Purpura

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We address the e-rulemaking problem of categorizing public comments according to the issues that they address. In contrast to previous text categorization research in e-rulemaking, and in an attempt to more closely duplicate the comment analysis process in federal agencies, we employ a set of rule-specific categories, each of which corresponds to a significant issue raised in the comments. We describe the creation of a corpus to support this text categorization task and report interannotator agreement results for a group of six annotators. We outline those features of the task and of the e-rulemaking context that engender both a non-traditional …

Cultural Advantage For Cities: An Alternative For Developing Countries, Florentin Smarandache, Victor Christianto

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Incorporation Of Evidences Into An Intelligent Computational Argumentation Network For A Web-Based Collaborative Engineering Design System, Xiaoqing Frank Liu, Ekta Khudkhudia, Ming-Chuan Leu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Conflicts among the stakeholders are unavoidable in the process of collaborative engineering design. Resolution of these conflicts is a challenging task. In our previous research, a web based intelligent collaborative system was developed which provides decision-making support, using computational argumentation techniques. Enhancements were done to this system to incorporate the priorities of the stakeholders and to detect arguments that self conflict. As an effort to make this system more effective and more objective in the process of decision making, we develop a method to assess the effect of evidences in the argumentation network, using Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and fuzzy …

It's All About The Teachers: Bank Street's Math For Teachers As Professional Development, Robin Hummel

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This work describes a professional development initiative that was based on the graduate course, Mathematics for Teachers in Diverse and Inclusive Educational Settings (K-6), taught by Linda Metnetsky at Bank Street College of Education. The author wrote and implemented this professional development initiative for teachers in her former district: a large, middle class, suburban school district outside of Philadelphia. It consisted of six full day sessions, held from October through April during the 2004-05 school year. Eleven teachers from third, fourth, and fifth grades participated, and the impact of this professional development on two participants is the focus of this …

Automating Mini-Ontology Generation From Canonical Tables, Stephen G. Lynn

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis work we develop and test MOGO (a Mini-Ontology GeneratOr.) MOGO automates the generation of mini-ontologies from canonicalized tables of data. This will help anyone trying to organize large amounts of existing data into a more searchable and accessible form. By using a number of different heuristic rules for selecting, enhancing, and modifying ontology elements, MOGO allows users to automatically, semi-automatically, or manually generate conceptual mini-ontologies from canonicalized tables of data. Ideally, MOGO operates fully automatically while allowing users to intervene to direct and correct when necessary so that they can always satisfactorily complete the translation of canonicalized …