Digital Commons Network^™

The Web Based Meeting Scheduler, Mayukh Sharma

Computer Science

In this paper I present a Web based Meeting Scheduler which is a web-based easy to use group calendar application for scheduling events, reserving meeting rooms and scheduling meetings. Meetings and events may be scheduled for invitees within an organization as well as prospective customers and clients from outside the organization by adding the following website (www.meetingscheduler.org) to the address bar of a browser. Any user with an account on the system can choose a meeting date from the calendar and provide the subject for the meeting, a description, the location and any specific conference room information. A meeting may …

Teaching Encryption: A Learning Theory Approach, Manu Kishore Bhogadi

Computer Science

Bloom's taxonomy for cognitive domain is an effective taxonomy for structured learning. The six levels in Bloom's taxonomy for cognitive domain are based on the levels of difficulty. This paper focuses on teaching communication security and encryption by applying Bloom's taxonomy in the creation of educational materials and assessments. Delivering education material to the mobile phones is made possible with the advancement of mobile technologies, and the use of mobile technologies in teaching is gaining popularity because of its benefits. In this paper, delivering educational material to the mobile phones is experimented with by using a flash cards application for …

Automatic Evaluation Of Mobile Web Pages, Ankita Sehgal

Computer Science

The use of mobile devices to access the information on the World Wide Web is growing rapidly. The growth has created a surge in the number of webpages being designed for mobile devices. In order to support efficient mobile browsing, some markup languages (e.g., WML and XHTML Mobile Profile) and standards (Mobile Web Best Practices) have been developed to specifically support the rendering of information on mobile devices. Evaluating the mobile webpages manually against the guidelines requires a tremendous amount of work. This research paper focuses on automatic evaluation of mobile webpages, a process which offers many advantages in terms …

A Software Agent System For Private Email, Hari K. Mukka

Computer Science

The primary concerns in existing Email and instant messaging systems are authentication processes, privacy and security issues. These messaging systems transfer the message content through servers using protocols like the Simple Message Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP), and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to allow users to communicate. During these processes, messages are being stored on the servers which can be easily accessed by the network administrator. Invasion of privacy, integrity of Email content, lack of authentication, and unprotected back-up of messages stored · on servers could be common underlying problems in the existing architecture. The goal of …

Electronic Payment System Decision Support With Bloom's Taxonomy, Harika Mattaparthy

Computer Science

The primary goal of this paper is to develop an online course that enables students to learn about electronic payment systems by applying Bloom's taxonomy. There are six levels in Bloom's taxonomy, with knowledge representing the simplest level and evaluation representing the highest and most complex level. These levels of intellectual behavior are vital in learning. To help students understand and analyze the concepts of electronic payment systems, three labs have been developed that map with the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy. The first lab introduces students to the electronic payment system concepts; the second lab helps them understand the …

A Data Visualization Tool To Identify Patterns Formed By Subsets Of Data, Md Golam Morshed Osmani

Computer Science

An object may be identified by its properties which may comprise both continuous data values and categorical data values. Sometimes a particular property (categorical) value may select a group of objects which have similarity in their attributes (continuous). This feature is observed in gene data sets as well as other multivariate data sets. This paper presents a tool to identify patterns formed by data subsets based upon some categorical attributes. The tool reads data from various data sources, filters data according to supplied criteria and shows them as a Parallel Coordinates graph which a user can manipulate to find the …

Design Of The Photo Album Ontology, Mridula Sarker

Computer Science

At present, growing demand of the management of huge volume of web contents, especially photos, require the software tools, which can store, index and retrieve the photos from the repository more efficiently. In this paper, we proposed a design solution using the semantic web technology. The goal is to integrate this knowledge-based ontology into the photo management system to improve the experience of the user's accessibility in the photo warehouse. Most of the existing photo album management software tools are built using the convention of traditional approaches, such as key-word based search or low-level image annotation approaches, which make it …

Dynamic Algorithms For Sensor Scheduling And Adversary Path Prediction, Shivendushital Pyarelal Pandey

Computer Science

In this thesis we describe three new dynamic, real time and robust sensor scheduling algorithms for intruder tracking and sensor scheduling. We call them Tactic Association Based Algorithm (TABA), Tactic Case Based Algorithm (TCBA) and Tactic Weight Based Algorithm (TWBA). The algorithms are encoded, illustrated visually, validated, and tested. The aim of the algorithms is to efficiently track an intruder or multiple intruders while minimizing energy usage in the sensor network by using real time event driven sensor scheduling. What makes these intrusion detection schemes different from other intrusion detection schemes in the literature is the use of historical data …

Optimizing Incident Management Strategies Using Simulation, Anshuman Manori

Computer Science

Incidents, pre-programmed or random, are major sources of congestion on urban freeways. With many of urban freeways in the US operating close to capacity, the need to reduce the impact of incident-related congestion has become critical. Incident Management Strategies (IMS), when properly developed and deployed, have the potential to reduce such congestion on urban freeways. The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic framework for the calibration and application of a -simulation model for testing the impact of alternate IMS on an urban transportation network. Initially a framework is presented in a conceptual form, and demonstrates the calibration …

Xgraphml-A Tool For Transforming Uml To Graphml, Sandeep Raavi

Computer Science

This paper proposes and implements XGraphML, a tool which transforms a file from a UML format to a GraphML using XSLT and JAXP technologies. The tool connects ArgoUML with VEGGIE through this transformation. ArgoUML is an open-source tool used to model software artifacts through UML diagrams and uses UML as a standard saving mechanism. On the other hand, VEGGIE (i.e., the Visual Environment for Graph Grammar Induction and Engineering) utilizes GraphML as a standard saving mechanism. XGraphML takes a UML file as input and produces a corresponding GraphML file. Based on XGraphML, software engineers use ArgoUML to model software artifacts …

A Technique To Detect A Black Hole In Ad Hoc Networks, Vijay Anand Suravarapu

Computer Science

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are important because they are widely used in war zones, rescue missions and other civilian applications where it is almost impossible to use any other networks. MANETs are temporary networks where nodes are allowed to join or leave the network at any point in ~ime. Though MANETs offer flexibility, self maintenance and dynamic topology, they suffer from limited resources, have less computational power and are susceptible to attacks. Due to the dynamic nature of MANETs, the secure transmission of data is one of the key issues in MANETs. Thus there is a need to safeguard …

Design And Implementation Of Social Networking Website Features, Srikanth Goud Aakula

Computer Science

People want to communicate and interact with each other over the internet. There are various websites which are helpful for this kind of socializing. The popularity and adaptability of each website depends on the features it provides to its users. This paper deals with some of features which help users extend their social-networking experience. A social-networking website is designed and developed with features targeting different areas of the social-networking environment like networking, technical support, and profile. This paper focuses on developing features which shall extend the social-networking experience of the user rather than building an entire social-networking website. The website …

A Clustering Approach To Improving Test Case Prioritization: An Industrial Case Study, Ryan Curtis Carlson

Computer Science

Regression testing is an important activity for controlling the quality of a software product, but it accounts for a large proportion of the costs of software. We believe that an understanding of the underlying relationships in data about software systems, including data correlations and patterns, could provide information that would help improve regression testing techniques. As an initial approach to investigating the relationships in massive data in software repositories, in this paper, we consider a clustering approach to help improve test case prioritization. We implemented new prioritization techniques that incorporate a clustering approach and utilize history data on real faults …

A Free And Flexible Poker Environment, Daniel George Debilt

Computer Science

This paper introduces a framework and software that allows poker players to create and play original and custom poker games, through a TCP/IP connection, for free. This paper describes how the concept of playing usercreated poker games over the Internet is not known to currently exist in a flexible, private, and free environment and also critiques what currently does exist and is available for use. This paper also summarizes the software development process used and the deliverables that ultimately led to a working software application. Future version features and application extensions are also discussed that may enhance the user experience, …

Development Tools For Content Creation In Virtual Environments, Guy Eric Hokanson

Computer Science

lmmersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) for education are designed and implemented to enable students to learn complicated concepts in an exploratory and inquiry based manner. The environments are constructed so that multiple users can interact with the educational simulation and learn to think like a scientist. Developing these IVEs requires a multi-disciplinary development team that consists of more than just software engineers. It requires content experts to provide the information needed to create the best and most interactive lessons possible. While some content experts have a strong interest in technology and are capable of working with the development environment directly, many …

Rend: Reliable And Energy-Efficient Node-Disjoint Paths In Wireless Sensor Networks, Siva Yanteru

Computer Science

In wireless sensor networks, finding most reliable and most efficient paths between source node and destination node is considered NP hard problem. We can increase reliability by ability to find node-disjoint alternate path when there is any disruption in the path from source to destination. If we can find reliable paths by keeping efficiency in consideration then we can increase both reliability and efficiency of paths between source and destination. In this paper, we present routing protocol for finding two node-disjoint paths between each pair of nodes in a wireless sensor networks. In proposed protocol, each and every node has …

Resource And Bandwidth Allocation In Hybrid Wireless Mobile Networks, Benjamin John Bengfort

Computer Science

In the lead up to the implementation of 802.16 and 4G wireless networks, there have been many proposals for addition of multi-hop MANET zones or relay stations in order to cut the cost of building a new backbone infrastructure from the ground up. These types of Hybrid Wireless Networks will certainly be a part of wireless network architecture in the future, and as such, simple problems such as resource allocation must be explored to maximize their potential. This study explores the resource allocation problem in three distinct ways. First, this study highlights two existing backbone architectures: max-coverage and max-resource, and …

A Closed Form Optimization Model For The Conflict Neutralization Problem, Yan Wang

Computer Science

In this study, we proposed a novel closed form optimization model for the Conflict Neutralization Problem (CKP) and implemented an efficient algorithm for solving the problem. A novel tableau representation of the CNP model was presented and described in detail. We implemented a special structured branch and bound algorithm to solve the problem. Key components of the implementation were described. To test the computation performance of our algorithm, we designed and conducted three sets of experiments. The experiment results were reported and analyzed in this report. The test results showed the efficiency of the algorithm for solving the Conflict Neutralization …

Outlier Identification In Sensor Network Clock Synchronization, William Davis Voorhees

Computer Science

We first present a survey of clock synchronization research that describes the problem and various challenges to implementing an efficient protocol for clock synchronization in sensor networks. We then present several changes to an existing protocol that we believe will enhance the accuracy. These changes are implemented in a software simulation and a large experiment is conducted that involves several runs of the simulation using various parameters for error bounds and outlier detection. We present our results and show that modifying the outlier detection range used by many existing algorithms can improve network clock accuracy and provide a stabilized average …

Neutralization Of Conflict Areas Using An Ant Colony Heuristic Approach, Pavan Kumar Bapanpally

Computer Science

In this paper, we present a unique approach to solve the Neutralization of Conflict Areas problem using an Ant Colony Optimization technique. The Neutralization of Conflict Areas is a known problem, and over the years, considerable research has been conducted to find strategies [7] to solve the problem. To effectively deal with this kind of problem, many search algorithms and techniques have been proposed. The Ant Colony Optimization technique has been very successful in solving problems such as the travelling salesman problem, vehicle routing problem, and routing and scheduling problems. The suggested approach to the problem presented here is to …

Anonymity And Hostile Node Identification In Wireless Sensor Networks, Phillip Steven Reindl

Computer Science

In many secure wireless network attack scenarios, the source of a data packet is as sensitive as the data it contains. Existing work to provide source anonymity in wireless sensor networks (WSN) are not frugal in terms of transmission overhead. We present a set of schemes to provide secure source anonymity. As the state of the art in WSN advances, researchers increasingly look to heterogeneous network topologies. We leverage high powered cluster head nodes to further reduce transmission overhead and provide excellent scalability. A significant threat to WSN is the insider attack due to the ease of tampering with low-cost …

Teachers' Perspectives On Changes In General And Special Education: Examining The Pieces Of The Puzzle, Janine Kane

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

To understand the impact of special education and educational changes that have occurred in rural schools in Iowa since 1975, this ethnographic qualitative inquiry examined the dispositions, beliefs, contexts, and recalled experiences of four teachers who began teaching around the time the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) was enacted in 1975 and continued teaching until after the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted in 2002. In addition, the research project explored the teachers' views of the impact various educational changes had on them, their colleagues, and the students they taught.

The group of four participants, with …

The Impact Of Mathematics Professional Development On Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Content Knowledge For Teaching And Implementation Of Innovative Pedagogical Practices, Vicki Oleson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study sought to understand the process of change elementary teachers experienced as they participated in mathematics professional development. This investigation explored the impact of mathematics professional development on teachers' content knowledge for teaching, their ability to implement innovative pedagogical practices, and the relationship between these two components of teacher change. Data collected from a semester-long professional development course involving 20 teachers from rural southwest Iowa was analyzed for this study.

Data was collected from six teachers involved in the professional development course. Data collected during the professional development course included a pre and post test of teachers' content knowledge, …

Efficient Modular Arithmetic Units For Low Power Cryptographic Applications, Rajashekhar Reddy Modugu

Masters Theses

"The demand for high security in energy constrained devices such as mobiles and PDAs is growing rapidly. This leads to the need for efficient design of cryptographic algorithms which offer data integrity, authentication, non-repudiation and confidentiality of the encrypted data and communication channels. The public key cryptography is an ideal choice for data integrity, authentication and non-repudiation whereas the private key cryptography ensures the confidentiality of the data transmitted. The latter has an extremely high encryption speed but it has certain limitations which make it unsuitable for use in certain applications. Numerous public key cryptographic algorithms are available in the …

Synergy Between Biology And Systems Resilience, Ashik Chandra

Masters Theses

"Resilient systems have the ability to endure and successfully recover from disturbances by identifying problems and mobilizing the available resources to cope with the disturbance. Resiliency lets a system recover from disruptions, variations, and a degradation of expected working conditions. Biological systems are resilient. Immune systems are highly adaptive and scalable, with the ability to cope with multiple data sources, fuse information together, makes decisions, have multiple interacting agents, operate in a distributed manner over a multiple scales, and have a memory structure to facilitate learning. Ecosystems are resilient since they have the capacity to absorb disturbance and are able …

The Role Of Skeletal Development In Body Size Evolution Of Two North American Frogs, Sarah Beth Havens

Masters Theses

"In order to better understand the evolution of miniaturization in Acris blanchardi, a North American Hylid with a unique life history and of ecological interest in the United States. The development and ossification sequences of 48 larvae, 5 juveniles and 5 adult A. blanchardi were examined. The adult was described by Maglia et al. (2007) to be a miniature and to display morphological novelties. In addition, 44 larvae, 2 juvenile and 5 adults of Pseudacris crucifer a closely related frog that has been suggested to be a miniature, were examined. The cranial and postcranial adult elements of this species, as …

The Curatorial Muse, Michael J. Kowalski

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

An appreciation of the tension between the predicate, "to curate," and the subject, "the curator," is essential to understanding the convergence of creation, criticism, and administration in the graphic arts of our time. Curators were ideally positioned to step to the fore when the idea-versus-object dichotomy began to collapse in the work of Duchamp. The roots of activist curating can be found in Western Classical culture. The prevalence of conceptual art at the end of the twentieth century, combined with the explicit denigration of physical craft by artists, created a void into which activist curators moved. The curator's role as …

The Value Of Fictional Worlds (Or Why 'The Lord Of The Rings' Is Worth Reading), James Harold

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Some works of fiction are widely held by critics to have little value, yet these works are not only popular but also widely admired in ways that are not always appreciated. In this paper I make use of Kendall Walton’s account of fictional worlds to argue that fictional worlds can and often do have value, including aesthetic value, that is independent of the works that create them. In the process, I critique Walton’s notion of fictional worlds and offer a defense of the study and appreciation of fictional worlds, as distinguished from the works of fiction with which they are …

Design And Critical Performance Evaluation Of Horizontal Axis Hydrokinetic Turbines, Suchi Subhra Mukherji

Masters Theses

"The current work discusses the hydrodynamic performance of horizontal axis hydrokinetic turbines (HAHkT) under different turbine geometries and flow conditions. Hydrokinetic turbines are a class of zero-head hydropower systems which utilize kinetic energy of flowing water to drive a generator. However, such turbines often suffer from low-efficiency. A detailed computational fluid dynamics study was performed using a low-order k-[omega] SST (Shear Stress Transport) turbulence model to examine the effect of each of tip-speed ratio, solidity, angle of attack and number of blades on the performance of small HAHkTs with a power capacity of 10 kW. The numerical models (both two-dimensional …

Educational Applications Of Achievement Goal Theory, Michelle Hinzman

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In the past two decades, achievement goal theory has been found particularly useful in explaining student motivation (Kaplan & Maehr, 2007; Kaplan, Middleton, Urdan, & Midgley, 2002). The purpose of this study was to analyze differences between the achievement goals espoused by middle school and elementary teachers. A mixed-method approach was utilized that required teachers in an urban, eastern Iowa school district to complete a survey regarding their motivational beliefs. Select teachers were then identified based on survey results to be observed and interviewed in an attempt to further analyze instructional practices as they related to student motivation. Results of …