Computer Engineering Commons^™

100 Ways You Can Use Google (Besides Searching), Marziah Karch

SIDLIT Conference Proceedings

Google has dozens of tools for educators and students. Learn how to make forms that feed into spreadsheets, blogs, social networks, websites, collaborative documents, videos, and more. During economic downturns it's more important than ever to make sure you and your students are utilizing free tools for collaborative learning and communication.

A System For Natural Language Unmarked Clausal Transformations In Text-To-Text Applications, Daniel Miller

Master's Theses

A system is proposed which separates clauses from complex sentences into simpler stand-alone sentences. This is useful as an initial step on raw text, where the resulting processed text may be fed into text-to-text applications such as Automatic Summarization, Question Answering, and Machine Translation, where complex sentences are difficult to process. Grammatical natural language transformations provide a possible method to simplify complex sentences to enhance the results of text-to-text applications. Using shallow parsing, this system improves the performance of existing systems to identify and separate marked and unmarked embedded clauses in complex sentence structure resulting in syntactically simplified source for …

Affine Region Tracking And Augmentation Using Mser And Adaptive Sift Model Generation, Matthew James Marano

Master's Theses

Relatively complex Augmented Reality (AR) algorithms are becoming widely available due to advancements in affordable mobile computer hardware. To take advantage of this a new method is developed for tracking 2D regions without a prior knowledge of an environment and without developing a computationally expensive world model. In the method of this paper, affinely invariant planar regions in a scene are found using the Maximally Stable Extremal Region (MSER) detector. A region is selected by the user to define a search space, and then the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to detect affine invariant keypoints in the region. …

Synthesis Minimizations And Mesh Algorithm Selection: An Extension Of The Ultrasonic 3d Camera, Taylor Johnson

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this Capstone project was to perform synthesis minimizations and optimal mesh algorithm selection for some of the digital components of a prototype Ultrasonic 3D Camera, the subject of my group senior design project for computer engineering. Both of the high-level design tasks that I performed were unnecessary for the scope of the senior design class, whose focus was simply to perform a proof-of-concept or create a basic, functioning prototype. The steps I took in performing synthesis optimizations and mesh algorithm selection went beyond the scope of the senior project, by doing the polishing that …

Bottom-Up Ontology Creation With A Direct Instance Input Interface, Charles C.H. Wei

Master's Theses

In general an ontology is created by following a top-down, or so called genus-species approach, where the species are differentiated from the genus and from each other by means of differentiae [8]. The superconcept is the genus, every subconcept is a species, and the differentiae correspond to roles. To complete it a user organizes data into a proper structure, accompanied with the instances in that domain in order to complete the construction of an ontology. It is a concept learning procedure in a school, for example. Students first learn the general knowledge and apply it to their exercise and homework …

Where Does Your Institution Stand?, Wendell Brase, Mark Askren

Information Technology Services: Publications

Media coverage of sustainability and "green" issues is hard to ignore these days. But less clear is a specific understanding of what this agenda means within higher ed IT organizations. For starters, it's useful to self-assess whether your campus is a leading innovator on all things "green" or satisfied to remain inconspicuous in the middle of the pack. If your institution is trailing but wants to assert a leadership role in environmental stewardship, you need to get engaged to understand what it will take to catch up and how IT can be a leader, not just a contributor, to such …

Reusable, Interactive, Multilingual Online Avatars, Charlie Cullen, Carl Goodman, Paula Mcgloin, Anna Deegan

Conference papers

This paper details a system for delivering reusable, interactive multilingual avatars in online children’s games. The development of these avatars is based on the concept of an intelligent media object that can be repurposed across different productions. The system is both language and character independent, allowing content to be reused in a variety of contexts and locales. In the current implementation, the user is provided with an interactive animated robot character that can be dressed with a range of body parts chosen by the user in real-time. The robot character reacts to each selection of a new part in a …

Corpvis: An Online Emotional Speech Corpora Visualisation Interface, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan

Conference papers

Our research in emotional speech analysis has led to the construction of several dedicated high quality, online corpora of natural emotional speech assets. The requirements for querying, retrieval and organization of assets based on both their metadata descriptors and their analysis data led to the construction of a suitable interface for data visualization and corpus management. The CorpVis interface is intended to assist collaborative work between several speech research groups working with us in this area, allowing online collaboration and distribution of assets to be performed. This paper details the current CorpVis interface into our corpora, and the work performed …

Fuzzy Optimal Swarm Of Autonomous Aircrafts For Target Determination And Convergence Control System, Zach D. Richards

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis project proposes analytical and theoretical algorithms for a networked swarm of autonomous vehicles, such as those used in planet exploration, and to be used in target location determination and convergence, an algorithm of this type could be used in an Autonomous Stratospheric Aircraft (ASA), thus having the possibility of being used for the exploration of a planet as well as many other applications. Upon locating an unknown location of a specified target, the algorithm would then swarm and eventually converge upon the location. There are two similar, but fundamentally different algorithms proposed in this project. These algorithms are …

Gathering Cows Using Virtual Fencing Methodologies, Dean M. Anderson, Marek Doniec, Carrick Detweiler, Iuliu Vesilescu, Daniela Rus, Barbara Nolen, Roy Libeau

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Free-ranging livestock are classically controlled by herders. Holding, moving, or gathering free-ranging cattle requires flexible husbandry practices for efficient and effective lowstress animal management. Behavioral theory and practical experience indicates cattle can be taught to respond to auditory cues. Preliminary research has demonstrated that cows can be gathered autonomously using recorded audio cues associated with manual gathering. However, efficient gathering requires movement in the proper direction. Therefore, we believe using audio cues administered from directional virtual fencing (DVF™) equipment can facilitate proper animal orientation and facilitate the gathering of animals with minimal human intervention. Results from applying directional audio cues …

Bluetooth Hacking: A Case Study, Dennis Browning, Gary C. Kessler

Security Studies & International Affairs - Daytona Beach

"This paper describes a student project examining mechanisms with which to attack Bluetooth-enabled devices. The paper briefly describes the protocol architecture of Bluetooth and the Java interface that programmers can use to connect to Bluetooth communication services. Several types of attacks are described, along with a detailed example of two attack tools, Bloover II and BT Info."--from the article

Equational Coalgebraic Logic, Alexander Kurz, Raul Leal

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Coalgebra develops a general theory of transition systems, parametric in a functor T; the functor T specifies the possible one-step behaviours of the system. A fundamental question in this area is how to obtain, for an arbitrary functor T, a logic for T-coalgebras. We compare two existing proposals, Moss’s coalgebraic logic and the logic of all predicate liftings, by providing one-step translations between them, extending the results in [21] by making systematic use of Stone duality. Our main contribution then is a novel coalgebraic logic, which can be seen as an equational axiomatization of Moss’s logic. The three logics are …

Application Of Parent-Child Uav Tasking For Wildfire Detection And Response, Stephen T. Kubik

Master's Theses

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a dominant force in the aerospace industry. Recent technological developments have moved these aircraft from remote operation roles to more active response missions. Of particular interest is the possibility of applying UAVs toward solving complex problems in long-endurance missions. Under that belief, the feasibility of utilizing UAVs for wildfire detection and response was investigated in a partnership that included NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate, and the United States Forest Service. Under NASA’s Intelligent Mission Management (IMM) project, research was conducted to develop a mission architecture that would …

Implementing Arabic-To-English Machine Translation Using The Role And Reference Grammar Linguistic Model, Yasser Salem, Arnold Hensman, Brian Nolan

Conference Papers

This paper presents work-in-progress investigating the development of a rule-based lexical framework for Arabic language processing using the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) linguistic model. A system, called UniArab is introduced in this research to support the framework. The paper outlines the conceptual structure of UniArab System, which utilizes the framework and translates the Arabic language into another natural language. Also, this paper explores how the characteristics of the Arabic language will effect the development of a Machine Translation (MT) tool from Arabic to English. Several distinguishing features of Arabic pertinent to MT will be explored in detail with reference …

Emotional Speech Corpus Construction, Annotation And Distribution, Brian Vaughan, Charlie Cullen, Spyros Kousidis, John Mcauley

Conference papers

This paper details a process of creating an emotional speech corpus by collecting natural emotional speech assets, analysisng and tagging them (for certain acoustic and linguistic features) and annotating them within an on-line database. The definition of specific metadata for use with an emotional speech corpus is crucial, in that poorly (or inaccurately) annotated assets are of little use in analysis. This problem is compounded by the lack of standardisation for speech corpora, particularly in relation to emotion content. The ISLE Metadata Initiative (IMDI) is the only cohesive attempt at corpus metadata standardisation performed thus far. Although not a comprehensive …

Metadata Visualisation Techniques For Emotional Speech Corpora, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

Our research in emotional speech analysis has led to the construction of dedicated high quality, online corpora of natural emotional speech assets. Once obtained, the annotation and analysis of these assets was necessary in order to develop a database of both analysis data and metadata relating to each speech act. With annotation complete, the means by which this data may be presented to the user online for analysis, retrieval and organization is the current focus of our investigations. Building on an initial web interface developed in Ruby on Rails, we are now working towards a visually driven GUI built on …

The Design And Testing Of Hand Held Devices To Assist Persons With Disabilities To Navigate Bus Services, Daniel Fitch

Undergraduate Review

Many transit systems around the U.S. are using global positioning systems to track their buses. Some of these systems provide bus locations in real-time on web maps. With internet integration becoming common in portable electronics, this research project analyzed the opportunity to utilize mass market devices to assist the general public and persons with disabilities to access and navigate fixed route bus services. This study has taken advantage of the state of the art automatic vehicle location systems aboard the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority and MetroWest (Boston) Regional Transit Authority bus services, Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping services and Microsoft …

Emotional Speech Corpora For Analysis And Media Production, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

Research into the acoustic correlates of emotional speech as part of the SALERO project has led to the construction of high quality emotional speech corpora, which contain both IMDI metadata and acoustic analysis data for each asset. Research into semi-automated, re-usable character animation has considered the development of online workflows based on speech corpus assets that would provide a single point of origin for character animation in media production. In this paper, a brief description of the corpus design and construction is given. Further, a prototype workflow for semi-automated emotional character animation is also provided, alongside a description of current …

Linguatag: An Emotional Speech Analysis Application, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

The analysis of speech, particularly for emotional content, is an open area of current research. Ongoing work has developed an emotional speech corpus for analysis, and defined a vowel stress method by which this analysis may be performed. This paper documents the development of LinguaTag, an open source speech analysis software application which implements this vowel stress emotional speech analysis method developed as part of research into the acoustic and linguistic correlates of emotional speech. The analysis output is contained within a file format combining SMIL and SSML markup tags, to facilitate search and retrieval methods within an emotional speech …

New Classes Of Codes For Cryptologists And Computer Scientists, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Historically a code refers to a cryptosystem that deals with linguistic units: words, phrases etc. We do not discuss such codes in this book. Here codes are message carriers or information storages or information transmitters which in time of need should not be decoded or read by an enemy or an intruder. When we use very abstract mathematics in using a specific code, it is difficult for non-mathematicians to make use of it. At the same time, one cannot compromise with the capacity of the codes. So the authors in this book have introduced several classes of codes which are …

Functorial Coalgebraic Logic: The Case Of Many-Sorted Varieties, Alexander Kurz, Daniela Petrişan

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Following earlier work, a modal logic for T-coalgebras is a functor L on a suitable variety. Syntax and proof system of the logic are given by presentations of the functor. This paper makes two contributions. First, a previous result characterizing those functors that have presentations is generalized from endofunctors on one-sorted varieties to functors between many-sorted varieties. This yields an equational logic for the presheaf semantics of higher-order abstract syntax. As another application, we show how the move to functors between many-sorted varieties allows to modularly combine syntax and proof systems of different logics. Second, we show how to associate …

Desitv - The Indian Tv, Saurin Shah

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

DesiTV – The Indian TV project would utilize latest technology to provide live channels from the Indian Television World to Online World. The project would hence serve Indian demographic providing regional entertainment. It would contribute to the knowledge on how to utilize new technology and use it to provide better entertainment to the online users. Additionally, the project would help in learning how to build website/blog, how to host/post content and how to set up servers for broadcasting live channels. Also, how to maintain servers downtime and provide technical support. It would also contribute in the learning of how to …

Back-Up Server For Computer Science Department, Victoria Gaylord

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Because Western Kentucky University does not maintain a back-up system for its departments, the Computer Science Department has implemented its own. Using Bacula software on a Unix server, files from faculty desktop computers and servers are backed up to a tape drive on a daily basis. The server is protected from outside threats with a carefully configured firewall script. This paper explains how both the firewall and the back-up software were implemented and how successful that implementation has been.

Sexual Conflict Over Egg Allocation: A Dynamic Programming Approach To Modeling The Evolution Of Male Harm And Female Resistance, David Kelley

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Sexual conflict, which is expected to be ubiquitous among polygamous species, is known to occasionally result in male adaptations that are harmful to females. One theoretical model indicates that males may benefit from physically harming their mates by triggering a “terminal investment” reproductive response by them. Using dynamic programming, we explore how females optimize their lifetime egg allocation, how selection acts on males to exploit such allocation, and how females respond to resist this exploitation. The model reveals alternative female response pathways; one of the most effective of which is simply to forgo plasticity in egg allocation. By switching to …

Accessible Interactive Campus Mapping System For Syracuse University/Suny-Esf, Aaron C. Knight

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This written component of my Capstone Thesis in Computer Science covers the conceptualization and realization, and the process in between those stages, of my project, the Syracuse University Accessible Interactive Campus Map system. The system in its present state is launched at http://map.syr.edu. This project creates a usable and useful map and directions system for the Syracuse University and SUNY-ESF communities, which have long suffered without any properly oriented or fully functional map, much less an online one of any use. What this project also does is turn the Syracuse University Accessibility Map, produced by the Office of Disability Services …

Phobias: The Evolutionary Trend, Grant Brown

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Using Concept Maps To More Efficiently Create Intelligence Information Models, Christopher E. Coryell

Theses and Dissertations

Information models are a critical tool that enables intelligence customers to quickly and accurately comprehend U.S. intelligence agency products. The Knowledge Pre-positioning System (KPS) is the standard repository for information models at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). The current approach used by NASIC to build a KPS information model is laborious and costly. Intelligence analysts design an information model using a manual, butcher-paper-based process. The output of their work is then entered into KPS by either a single NASIC KPS "database modeler" or a contractor (at a cost of roughly $100K to the organization). This thesis proposes …

A Study Of Rootkit Stealth Techniques And Associated Detection Methods, Daniel D. Nerenberg

Theses and Dissertations

In today's world of advanced computing power at the fingertips of any user, we must constantly think of computer security. Information is power and this power is had within our computer systems. If we cannot trust the information within our computer systems then we cannot properly wield the power that comes from such information. Rootkits are software programs that are designed to develop and maintain an environment in which malware may hide on a computer system after successful compromise of that computer system. Rootkits cut at the very foundation of the trust that we put in our information and subsequent …

Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically And Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom,' By Yochai Benkler, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the …

A Map Estimator For Simultaneous Superresolution And Detector Nonunifomity Correct, Russell C. Hardie, Douglas R. Droege

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

During digital video acquisition, imagery may be degraded by a number of phenomena including undersampling, blur, and noise. Many systems, particularly those containing infrared focal plane array (FPA) sensors, are also subject to detector nonuniformity. Nonuniformity, or fixed pattern noise, results from nonuniform responsivity of the photodetectors that make up the FPA. Here we propose a maximuma posteriori (MAP) estimation framework for simultaneously addressing undersampling, linear blur, additive noise, and bias nonuniformity. In particular, we jointly estimate a superresolution (SR) image and detector bias nonuniformity parameters from a sequence of observed frames. This algorithm can be applied to video in …