Digital Commons Network^™

Civic Play And Civic Gaps: Can Life Simulation Games Advance Educational Equity?, Christine Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, Chad Raphael, Amanda Waldron

Communication

Digital games and simulations (DG&S) could help mitigate inequities in civic education and participation, which are found in many contemporary democracies. Yet incorporating DG&S into the curriculum may reinforce or introduce inequities for students who are less engaged by game-based learning. A quasi-experimental study of 301 U.S. high school students in social studies classes examined whether prior academic performance, civic engagement, civic game play experience and gender affected how (and which) students benefit from playing a life simulation game. Dependent variables included several civic dispositions: justice-oriented citizenship norms and interest in politics, news, and global issues. The simulation game especially …

Hornbrook Formation, Oregon And California: A Sedimentary Record Of The Late Cretaceous Sierran Magmatic Flare-Up Event, Kathleen D. Surpless

Earth and Environmental Geosciences Faculty Research

Early Late Cretaceous time was characterized by a major magmatic flare-up event in the Sierra Nevada batholith and early phases of magmatism in the Idaho batholith, but the sedimentary record of this voluminous magmatism in the U.S. Cordillera is considerably less conspicuous. New detrital zircon U-Pb ages from the Hornbrook Formation in southern Oregon and northern California reveal a significant and sustained influx of 100–85 Ma detrital zircons into the broader Hornbrook region beginning ca. 90 Ma. Detrital zircon ages and hafnium isotopic compositions, combined with whole-rock geochemistry, suggest that sediment was largely derived from the Sierra Nevada, requiring uplift …

Locating A Wildlife Corridor For The Wild Tiger In India, Carmen George

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The tiger (Panthera Tigris) has been on the ICUN red list of endangered species since 1972. In the early 20^th century, 100,000 wild tigers roamed Asia and today approximately 3,600 remain. India is home to over half of the remaining wild tigers and continues to struggle in creating effective conservation plans. Poaching, habitat destruction and prey depletion are several primary causes of tiger population degradation and remain major barriers to rejuvenation of healthy populations in the wild. Wildlife corridors are essential to the process of repairing fragmented habitats. Through the use of GIS and remote sensing this …

Partial Covariance Based Functional Connectivity Computation Using Ledoit-Wolf Covariance Regularization, Matthew R. Brier, Anish Mitra, John E. Mccarthy, Beau M. Ances, Abraham Z. Snyder

Mathematics Faculty Research

Highlights •We use the well characterized matrix regularization technique described by Ledoit and Wolf to calculate high dimensional partial correlations in fMRI data. •Using this approach we demonstrate that partial correlations reveal RSN structure suggesting that RSNs are defined by widely and uniquely shared variance. •Partial correlation functional connectivity is sensitive to changes in brain state indicating that they contain functional information. Functional connectivity refers to shared signals among brain regions and is typically assessed in a task free state. Functional connectivity commonly is quantified between signal pairs using Pearson correlation. However, resting-state fMRI is a multivariate process exhibiting a …

A Passive Testing Approach For Protocols In Wireless Sensor Networks, Xiaoping Che, Stephane Maag, Hwee Xian Tan, Hwee-Pink Tan, Zhangbing Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart systems are today increasingly developed with the number of wireless sensor devices drastically increasing. They are implemented within several contexts throughout our environment. Thus, sensed data transported in ubiquitous systems are important, and the way to carry them must be efficient and reliable. For that purpose, several routing protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks (WSN). However, one stage that is often neglected before their deployment is the conformance testing process, a cruicial and challenging step. Compared to active testing techniques commonly used in wired networks, passive approaches are more suitable to the WSN environment. While some works …

Stack Layout Randomization With Minimal Rewriting Of Android Binaries, Yu Liang, Xinjie Ma, Daoyuan Wu, Xiaoxiao Tang, Debin Gao, Guojun Peng, Chunfu Jia, Huanguo Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Stack-based attacks typically require that attackers have a good understanding of the stack layout of the victim program. In this paper, we leverage specific features on ARM architecture and propose a practical technique that introduces randomness to the stack layout when an Android application executes. We employ minimal binary rewriting on the Android app that produces randomized executable of the same size which can be executed on an unmodified Android operating system. Our experiments on applying this randomization on the most popular 20 free Android apps on Google Play show that the randomization coverage of functions increases from 65% (by …

Cost-Sensitive Online Classification With Adaptive Regularization And Its Applications, Peilin Zhao, Furen Zhuang, Min Wu, Xiao-Li Li, Hoi, Steven C. H.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cost-Sensitive Online Classification is recently proposed to directly online optimize two well-known cost-sensitive measures: (i) maximization of weighted sum of sensitivity and specificity, and (ii) minimization of weighted misclassification cost. However, the previous existing learning algorithms only utilized the first order information of the data stream. This is insufficient, as recent studies have proved that incorporating second order information could yield significant improvements on the prediction model. Hence, we propose a novel cost-sensitive online classification algorithm with adaptive regularization. We theoretically analyzed the proposed algorithm and empirically validated its effectiveness with extensive experiments. We also demonstrate the application of the …

Efficient Aerial Data Collection With Uav In Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks, Chengliang Wang, Fei Ma, Junhui Yan, Debraj De, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Data collection from deployed sensor networks can be with static sink, ground-based mobile sink, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based mobile aerial data collector. Considering the large-scale sensor networks and peculiarity of the deployed environments, aerial data collection based on controllable UAV has more advantages. In this paper, we have designed a basic framework for aerial data collection, which includes the following five components: deployment of networks, nodes positioning, anchor points searching, fast path planning for UAV, and data collection from network. We have identified the key challenges in each of them and have proposed efficient solutions. This includes proposal …

Cnl: Collective Network Linkage Across Heterogeneous Social Platforms, Ming Gao, Ee-Peng Lim, David Lo, Feida Zhu, Philips Kokoh Prasetyo, Aoying Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The popularity of social media has led many users to create accounts with different online social networks. Identifying these multiple accounts belonging to same user is of critical importance to user profiling, community detection, user behavior understanding and product recommendation. Nevertheless, linking users across heterogeneous social networks is challenging due to large network sizes, heterogeneous user attributes and behaviors in different networks, and noises in user generated data. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised method, Collective Network Linkage (CNL), to link users across heterogeneous social networks. CNL incorporates heterogeneous attributes and social features unique to social network users, handles …

Experience Report: An Industrial Experience Report On Test Outsourcing Practices, Xin Xia, David Lo, Pavneet Singh Kochhar, Zhenchang Xing, Xinyu Wang, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nowadays, many companies contract their testing functionalities out to third-party IT outsourcing companies. This process referred to as test outsourcing is common in the industry, yet it is rarely studied in the research community. In this paper, to bridge the gap, we performed an empirical study on test outsourcing with 10 interviewees and 140 survey respondents. We investigated various research questions such as the types, the process, and the challenges of test outsourcing, and the differences between test outsourcing and in-house testing. We found customer satisfaction, tight project schedule, and domain unfamiliarity are the top-3 challenges faced by the testers. …

Should Fixing These Failures Be Delegated To Automated Program Repair?, Le Dinh Xuan Bach, Le Bui Tien Duy, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Program repair constitutes one of the major components of software maintenance that usually incurs a significant cost in software production. Automated program repair is supposed to help in reducing the software maintenance cost by automatically fixing software defects. Despite the recent advances in automated software repair, it is still very costly to wait for repair tools to produce valid repairs of defects. This paper addresses the following question: "Will an automated program repair technique find a repair for a defect within a reasonable time?". To answer this question, we build an oracle that can predict whether fixing a failure should …

Not All Trips Are Equal: Analyzing Foursquare Check-Ins Of Trips And City Visitors, Wen Haw Chong, Bingtian Dai, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Location-Based Social Networks (LBSN) such as Foursquare allow users to indicate venue visits via check-ins. This results in much fine grained context-rich data, useful for studying user mobility. In this work, we use check-ins to characterize trips and visitors to two cities, where visitors are defined as having their home cities elsewhere. First, we divide trips into two duration types: long and short. We then show that trip types differ in check-in distributions over venue categories, time slots, as well as check-in intensity. Based on the trip types, we then divide visitors into long-term and short-term visitors. We compare visitor …

Real-Time Detection Of Seat Occupancy And Hogging, Huy Hoang Nguyen, Nakul Gulati, Youngki Lee, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a cheap and effective solution to detect if specific seats at a shared public table are occupied -- either by humans or by objects (i.e., the seats are being "hogged"). The hogging of seats, in particular, is a big problem for our campus library and required a large amount of manpower to correct (to find and clear hogged seats). We propose using two different cheap sensors, a capacitance sensor and an infrared (IR) sensor, to solve this problem. In the rest of this paper, we show how using these sensors can accurately determine if a …

Modelling Cascades Over Time In Microblogs, Xie Wei, Feida Zhu, Siyuan Liu, Ke Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most important features of microblogging services such as Twitter is how easy it is to re-share a piece of information across the network through various user connections, forming what we call a "cascade". Business applications such as viral marketing have driven a tremendous amount of research effort predicting whether a certain cascade will go viral. Yet the rarity of viral cascades in real data poses a challenge to all existing prediction methods. One solution is to simulate cascades that well fit the real viral ones, which requires our ability to tell how a certain cascade grows over …

Analysis Of Aspects And Star Ratings In Consumer Reviews, Maruthi Prithivirajan, Vivian Lai, Kyong Jin Shim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents an analysis of star ratings in consumer reviews in Yelp, an online social platform for sharing consumer reviews about local businesses. In particular, we analyze consumer reviews about food businesses. We analyze how well or poorly the star ratings (on a scale of one star to five stars) associated with these reviews tally with the sentiment derived from the textual portion of the consumer review.

Security And Privacy Of Electronic Health Information Systems: Editorial, Elisa Bertino, Robert H. Deng, Xinyi Huang, Jianying Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Digital technologies have dramatically transformed our daily lives by bringing countless conveniences and benefits. As an evolving concept, electronic health information has become the focus of attention in both academia and industry. By leveraging modern digital technologies like the internet and the cloud, electronic health information systems will be a key enabling technology in improving the quality and convenience of patient care, encouraging patient participation in their care, reducing medical errors, improving practice efficiencies, and saving time and cost. The complexity of electronic health information systems, however, raises several new security and privacy issues. It is thus critical to investigate …

Leadership Department Newsletter: October-November 2015, Andrews University

Leadership Department Newsletter 2015

No abstract provided.

Reversible Peg Solitaire On Graphs, John Engbers, Christopher Stocker

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

The game of peg solitaire on graphs was introduced by Beeler and Hoilman in 2011. In this game, pegs are initially placed on all but one vertex of a graph G. If xyz forms a path in G and there are pegs on vertices x and y but not z, then a jump places a peg on z and removes the pegs from x and y. A graph is called solvable if, for some configuration of pegs occupying all but one vertex, some sequence of jumps leaves a single peg. We study the game of reversible peg …

Grit And Student Performance: A Mixed-Method Analysis Of A Non-Traditional Technical High School And A Traditional High School, Ronda L. Wallace

Dissertations

Grit, defined as the tendency to pursue long-term goals with sustained zeal and hard work, was shown to predict achievement in academic, vocational, and avocational domains. In 2009, Duckworth and Quinn found that grit predicted student effectiveness in school and the concept of grit was largely unrelated to talent. Grit provided incremental predictive validity for achievement outcomes, particularly in settings of high challenge. From the combination of persistence, self-control, and more broadly, conscientiousness, emerges the concept of grit. The purpose of this study was to compare the relative grittiness of students from two different high school settings. The first of …

A Comparison Of Single Gender And Coeducational Classrooms, Student Engagement, And Achievement Scores, Myra Pendleton

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in the academic achievement in reading among students enrolled in single-gender and coeducational classes, as well as the impact of teachers’ perceptions on the outcome of academic achievement. The study used a mixed-method approach to address this purpose. This study reported quantitative findings from reading scores on the Acuity test for 396 students in grades two through eight, from four elementary and two middle schools within an urban district in Missouri. Acuity scores were examined in several ways: comparison of the means for coeducational and single-gendered classrooms …

Tools For Economic Analysis Of Patient Management Interventions In Heart Failure Cost-Effectiveness Model: A Web-Based Program Designed To Evaluate The Cost-Effectiveness Of Disease Management Programs In Heart Failure., Shelby D. Reed, Matthew P. Neilson, Matthew Gardner, Yanhong Li, Andrew H. Briggs, Daniel E E. Polsky, Felicia L. Graham, Margaret T. Bowers, Sara C. Paul, Bradi B. Granger, Kevin A. Schulman, David J. Whellan, Barbara Riegel, Wayne C. Levy

Department of Medicine Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Heart failure disease management programs can influence medical resource use and quality-adjusted survival. Because projecting long-term costs and survival is challenging, a consistent and valid approach to extrapolating short-term outcomes would be valuable.

METHODS: We developed the Tools for Economic Analysis of Patient Management Interventions in Heart Failure Cost-Effectiveness Model, a Web-based simulation tool designed to integrate data on demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics; use of evidence-based medications; and costs to generate predicted outcomes. Survival projections are based on a modified Seattle Heart Failure Model. Projections of resource use and quality of life are modeled using relationships with time-varying …

How Algorithmic Trading Undermines Efficiency In Capital Markets, Yesha Yadav

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article argues that the rise of algorithmic trading undermines efficient capital allocation in securities markets. It is a bedrock assumption in theory that securities prices reveal how effectively public companies utilize capital. This conventional wisdom rests on the straightforward premise that prices reflect available information about a security and that investors look to prices to decide where to invest and whether their capital is being productively used. Unsurprisingly, regulation relies pervasively on prices as a proxy for the allocative efficiency of investor capital. Algorithmic trading weakens the ability of prices to function as a window into allocative efficiency.

This …

Increased Taxonomic And Functional Similarity Does Not Increase The Trophic Similarity Of Communities, Thomas K. Pool, Julien Cucherousset, Stéphanie Boulêtreau, Sébastien Villéger, Angela L. Strecker, Gaël Grenouillet

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Aim: Despite a long-standing research interest in the association between the biodiversity (i.e. taxonomic and functional composition) and trophic structure of communities, our understanding of the relationship remains limited. Community assembly theory predicts that niche partitioning will result in communities with a diverse array of functional traits, which in turn may facilitate a correspondingly diverse array of trophic interactions that define the trophic niche of those communities. The aim of our study is to test this prediction.

Methods: We built a database composed of functional traits and stable isotope values (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) for …

In Praise Of Ex Ante Regulation, Brian Galle

Vanderbilt Law Review

The plaintiffs' daughter was four years old when they brought her in to the local medical clinic. Clinic staff gave the girl a sedative to keep her calm while they examined her, but they miscalculated the dose, and she later died.' Tort liability, or the specter of it, is supposed to discourage these kinds of preventable tragedies. The clinic's owner, fearing a potential crippling award to bereaved families, should have trained his staff more carefully. As it happens, the owner instead had carefully scooped all the assets out of the firm. When the girl's parents won a $34.6 million award …

Dreissenid Mussel Research Priorities Workshop, Mark D. Sytsma, Stephen Phillips, Timothy D. Counihan

Center for Lakes and Reservoirs Publications and Presentations

Currently, dreissenid mussels have yet to be detected in the northwestern part of the United States and western Canada. Infestation of one of the jurisdictions within the mussel-free Pacific Northwest would likely have significant economic, soci­etal and environmental implications for the entire region. Understanding the biology and environmental tolerances of dreissenid mussels, and effectiveness of various man­agement strategies, is key to prevention.

On November 4-5, 2015, the Aquatic Bioinvasion Research and Policy Institute and the Center for Lakes and Reservoirs at Portland State University, the US Geological Survey, and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, convened a Dreissenid Mussel Research …

Candy, Mai Urai

Arrow Rock

No abstract provided.

Space, Mai Urai

Arrow Rock

No abstract provided.

A Fleeting Moment, Mai Urai

Arrow Rock

No abstract provided.

The Study Of Effective Tier Ii Reading Interventions For Primary Grade Students, Sheila Cox-Hines

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine effective reading interventions for primary grade students, utilizing the Response to Intervention (RtI) model. The purpose of RtI is to enhance the quality of education for children, if appropriate levels of academic instruction are present (Hanover Research, 2015). The research questions were posed to garner perspectives of the Intervention Team (IT) leaders as to Tier II interventions that aided students who indicated difficulty with reading, and the duration of the intervention, prior to achieving progress toward the specified goal. Additionally, research questions were stated to determine which Tier II reading intervention yielded …

Evaluating A Process To Make An Online Environmental Model Accessible Under Ada, Kehara Taylor, Larry Theller

Purdue GIS Day

Assure compliance with federal (ADA) and international accessibility guidelines to reduce the risk of litigation and penalties. / / Increase site usage by making all of your Web properties accessible to people with disabilities (WCAG, Section 508, AODA, Canada's Standard on Accessibility). / / Prevent privacy breaches involving personal and health information. / / Protect confidential company and OPSEC information from leaking to the public through online exposure. / / Web content and applications, as well as Microsoft Office and PDF documents can be validated for any compliance regulation including custom rules. /