Computer Engineering Commons^™

Electroencephalogram Artifact Removal Using A Wavelet Neural Network, Hoang-Anh T. Nguyen

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A wavelet neural network (WNN) technique rs developed for electroencephalogram (EEG) artifact removal without electrooculographic (EOG) recordings. The algorithm combines the universal approximation characteristics of neural networks and the time/frequency property of wavelet, where the neural network was trained on a simulated dataset with known ground truths. The contribution of this thesis is two-fold. First, many EEG artifact removal algorithms, including regression based methods, require reference EOG signals, which are not always available. To remove EEG ai1ifacts, a WNN tries to learn the characteristics of the artifacts first and does not need reference EOG signals once trained. Second, WNNs are …

Co-Creation And Collaboration In A Virtual World: A 3d Visualization Design Project In Second Life, Keng Siau, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, B. Mennecke, S. Schiller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most successful and useful implementations of 3D virtual worlds is in the area of education and training. This paper discusses the use of virtual worlds in education and describes an innovative 3D visualization design project using one of the most popular virtual worlds, Second Life. This ongoing project is a partnership between IBM and three universities in the United States: the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Iowa State University, and Wright State University. More than 400 MBA students have participated in this project by completing a creative design project that involves co-creation and collaboration in Second Life. The MBA …

Effects Of National Culture On Types Of Knowledge Sharing In Virtual Communities, Keng Siau, J. Erickson, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Organizations are using virtual communities to facilitate knowledge management and to enhance communication among employees, customers, and other interested individuals. Individual users can use virtual communities to engage in knowledge sharing. Professional communicators need to understand and adapt to a globalized and “flat” world, where people across different cultures interact freely and easily with one another in virtual communities. An intriguing question regarding virtual communities relates to whether national culture affects communication and types of knowledge sharing. This study examines the influence of US and Chinese national cultures on types of knowledge-sharing activities in virtual communities. The findings indicate that …

Hijacking User Uploads To Online Persistent Data Repositories For Covert Data Exfiltration, Curtis P. Barnard

Theses and Dissertations

As malware has evolved over the years, it has gone from harmless programs that copy themselves into other executables to modern day botnets that perform bank fraud and identity theft. Modern malware often has a need to communicate back to the author, or other machines that are also infected. Several techniques for transmitting this data covertly have been developed over the years which vary significantly in their level of sophistication. This research creates a new covert channel technique for stealing information from a network by piggybacking on user-generated network traffic. Specifically, steganography drop boxes and passive covert channels are merged …

Reputation-Based Internet Protocol Security: A Multilayer Security Framework For Mobil Ad Hoc Networks, Timothy H. Lacey

Theses and Dissertations

This research effort examines the theory, application, and results for a Reputation-based Internet Protocol Security (RIPSec) framework that provides security for an ad-hoc network operating in a hostile environment. In RIPSec, protection from external threats is provided in the form of encrypted communication links and encryption-wrapped nodes while internal threats are mitigated by behavior grading that assigns reputations to nodes based on their demonstrated participation in the routing process. Network availability is provided by behavior grading and round-robin multipath routing. If a node behaves faithfully, it earns a positive reputation over time. If a node misbehaves (for any number of …

Iphone 3gs Forensics: Logical Analysis Using Apple Itunes Backup Utility, Mona Bader, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The iPhone mobile is used worldwide due to its enhanced computing capabilities, increased storage capacity as well as its attractive touch interface. These characteristics made the iPhone a popular smart phone device. The increased use of the iPhone lead it to become a potential source of digital evidence in criminal investigations. Therefore, iPhone forensics turned into an essential practice for forensic and security practitioners today. This research aimed at investigating and examining the logical backup acquisition of the iPhone 3GS mobile device using the Apple iTunes backup utility. It was found that significant data of forensic value such as e-mail …

Cloud Computing:Strategies For Cloud Computing Adoption, Faith Shimba

Dissertations

The advent of cloud computing in recent years has sparked an interest from different organisations, institutions and users to take advantage of web applications. This is a result of the new economic model for the Information Technology (IT) department that cloud computing promises. The model promises a shift from an organisation required to invest heavily for limited IT resources that are internally managed, to a model where the organisation can buy or rent resources that are managed by a cloud provider, and pay per use. Cloud computing also promises scalability of resources and on-demand availability of resources.

Although, the adoption …

Sql Querie Recommendations: A Query Fragment-Based Approach, Jayad Akbarnejad, Magdalini Eirinaki, Suju Koshy, Duc On, Neoklis Polyzotis

Faculty Publications

Relational database systems are becoming increasingly popular in the scientific community to support the interactive exploration of large volumes of data. In this scenario, users employ a query interface (typically, a web-based client) to issue a series of SQL queries that aim to analyze the data and mine it for interesting information. First-time users, however, may not have the necessary knowledge to know where to start their exploration. Other times, users may simply overlook queries that retrieve important information. In this work we describe a framework to assist non-expert users by providing personalized query recommendations. The querying behavior of the …

Personal Vs. Social, Magdalini Eirinaki

Faculty Publications

The last few years we witnessed an impressive growth in social networks and in applications that add value to their amassed information. At the same time, the continuing expansion of mobile platforms and applications (e.g. iPhone), combined with the overwhelming supply of information and services, makes effective personalization and context-awareness much required features. One may consider "personal" and "social" data management as comprising two distinct directions with conflicting characteristics. However, it can be argued that they complement each other and that in future applications they will ultimately converge. This "personal vs. social" predicament presents a number of interesting topics that …

Architecture And Compiler Support For Leakage Reduction Using Power Gating In Microprocessors, Soumyaroop Roy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Power gating is a technique commonly used for runtime leakage reduction in digital CMOS circuits. In microprocessors, power gating can be implemented by using sleep transistors to selectively deactivate circuit modules when they are idle during program execution. In this dissertation, a framework for power gating arithmetic functional units in embedded microprocessors with architecture and compiler support is proposed. During compile time, program regions are identified where one or more functional units are idle and sleep instructions are inserted into the code so that those units can be put to sleep during program execution. Subsequently, when their need is detected …

Performance Measures In Acousto-Optic Chaotic Signal Encryption System Subject To Parametric Variations And Additive Noise, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Anjan K. Ghosh, Mohammed A. Al-Saedi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Signal encryption and recovery using chaotic optical waves has been a subject of active research in the past 10 years. Since an acousto-optic Bragg cell with zeroth- and first-order feedback exhibits chaotic behavior past the threshold for bistability, such a system was recently examined for possible chaotic encryption using a low-amplitude sinusoidal signal applied via the bias input of the sound cell driver.

Subsequent recovery of the message signal was carried out via a heterodyne strategy employing a locally generated chaotic carrier, with threshold parameters matched to the transmitting Bragg cell. The simulation results, though encouraging, were limited to relatively …

Consideration Of Dispersion And Group Velocity Dispersion In The Determination Of Velocities Of Electromagnetic Propagation, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Partha P. Banerjee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Electromagnetic (EM) propagation velocities play an important role in the determination of power and energy flow in materials and interfaces. It is well known that group and phase velocities need to be in opposition in order to achieve negative refractive index.

Recently, we have shown that considerable differences may exist in phase, group and signal/energy velocities for normal and anomalous dispersion, especially near dielectric resonances. This paper examines the phase and group velocities in the presence of normal and anomalous dispersion, and group velocity dispersion (GVD), which requires introduction of the second order coefficient in the permittivity and permeability models.

Integrating Recommender Information In Social Ecosystems Decisions, Renato A C Capuruco, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The exploration of online social networks whose members share mutual recommendations and interactions is a time-dependent and contextual-based process which aims to predict the social status among members, ultimately improving the network's discoverability to achieve societal gain. To address the difficulties associated with the process, this article presents an integrated recommender model whose statements are time-dependent, interaction-aware, and social context-sensitive. The originality of the proposed model stems from the integration of the predictive recommender, social networks, and interaction components. Each model is developed based on: (1) a time history and decay algorithm to consider the decreasing intensity of recommendations among …

An Empirical Study On The Procedure To Derive Software Quality Estimation Models, Jie Xu, Danny Ho, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades. If factors that influence software quality can be identified, they may provide more insight for better software development management. More precise quality assurance can be achieved by employing resources according to accurate quality estimation at the early stages of a project. In this paper, a general procedure is proposed to derive software quality estimation models and various techniques are presented to accomplish the tasks in respective steps. Several statistical techniques together with machine learning method are utilized to verify the effectiveness of software metrics. Moreover, a neuro-fuzzy approach is …

Simsight: A Virtual Machine Based Dynamic Call Graph Generator, Xueling Chen

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

One problem with using component-based software development approach is that once software modules are reused over generations of products, they form legacy structures that can be challenging to understand, making validating these systems difficult. Therefore, tools and methodologies that enable engineers to see interactions of these software modules will enhance their ability to make these software systems more dependable. To address this need, we propose SimSight, a framework to capture dynamic call graphs in Simics, a widely adopted commercial full-system simulator. Simics is a software system that simulates complete computer systems. Thus, it performs nearly identical tasks to …

Managing Large Data Sets Using Support Vector Machines, Ranjini Srinivas

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Hundreds of Terabytes of CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) data are being accumulated for storage day by day at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is one of the eight US CMS Tier-2 sites. Managing this data includes retaining useful CMS data sets and clearing storage space for newly arriving data by deleting less useful data sets. This is an important task that is currently being done manually and it requires a large amount of time. The overall objective of this study was to develop a methodology to help identify the data sets to be deleted when there is a requirement for …

On The Annotation Of Web Videos By Efficient Near-Duplicate Search, Wan-Lei Zhao, Xiao Wu, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the proliferation of Web 2.0 applications, usersupplied social tags are commonly available in social media as a means to bridge the semantic gap. On the other hand, the explosive expansion of social web makes an overwhelming number of web videos available, among which there exists a large number of near-duplicate videos. In this paper, we investigate techniques which allow effective annotation of web videos from a data-driven perspective. A novel classifier-free video annotation framework is proposed by first retrieving visual duplicates and then suggesting representative tags. The significance of this paper lies in the addressing of two timely issues …

Investigating Perceptions Of A Location-Based Annotation System, Huynh Nhu Hop Quach, Khasfariyati Razikin, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Thi Nhu Quynh Kim, Tan Phat Pham, Yin-Leng Theng, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We introduce MobiTOP, a Web-based system for organizing and retrieving hierarchical location-based annotations. Each annotation contains multimedia content (such as text, images, video) associated with a location, and users are able to annotate existing annotations to an arbitrary depth, in effect creating a hierarchy. An evaluation was conducted on a group of potential users to ascertain their perceptions of the usability of the application. The results were generally positive and the majority of the participants saw MobiTOP as a useful platform to share location-based information. We conclude with implications of our work and opportunities for future research.

Asynchronous Mips Processors: Educational Simulations, Robert L. Webb

Master's Theses

The system clock has been omnipresent in most mainstream chip designs. While simplifying many design problems the clock has caused the problems of clock skew, high power consumption, electromagnetic interference, and worst-case performance. In recent years, as the timing constraints of synchronous designs have been squeezed ever tighter, the efficiencies of asynchronous designs have become more attractive. By removing the clock, these issues can be mitigated. How- ever, asynchronous designs are generally more complex and difficult to debug. In this paper I discuss the advantages of asynchronous processors and the specifics of some asynchronous designs, outline the roadblocks to asynchronous …

Jvm-Based Techniques For Improving Java Observability, Peng Du

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Observability measures the support of computer systems to accurately capture, analyze, and present (collectively observe) the internal information about the systems. Observability frameworks play important roles for program understanding, troubleshooting, performance diagnosis, and optimizations. However, traditional solutions are either expensive or coarse-grained, consequently compromising their utility in accommodating today’s increasingly complex software systems. New solutions are emerging for VM-based languages due to the full control language VMs have over program executions. Existing such solutions, nonetheless, still lack flexibility, have high overhead, or provide limited context information for developing powerful dynamic analyses. In this thesis, we present a VM-based infrastructure, called …

A Framework For Automatically Repairing Gui Test Suites, Si Huang

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Testing is an effective means for assuring the quality of software. In programs with Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), event sequences serve as test cases for executing system tests. To aid in the test generation process, researchers have developed methods that automatically derive graph models from GUIs, which can then be traversed to create sequences for testing. Recent advances using these graph models incorporate combinatorial interaction testing sampling techniques to generate longer GUI test cases, which exercise more event interactions and have been shown to improve fault detection. However, because the models extracted are only approximations of the actual event interactions, …

Hardware Microkernels - A Novel Method For Constructing Operating Systems For Heterogeneous Multi-Core Platforms, Jason M. Agron

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today's standard operating systems (OSes) do not have the proper structure, nor support for executing on heterogeneous multi- and many-core platforms. These deficiencies manifest in symptomatic issues that range from relatively low-level application binary interface (ABI) compatibility problems, to higher-level concerns such as application programmer interface (API) compatibility, synchronization, and caching issues. These issues in turn reflect back up to the programmer through a lack of a standard set of OS services. Non-uniformities in the hardware architecture are also reflected back into the programming model. In total these issues combined break down the most fundamental benefit of modern operating systems; …

Co-Reranking By Mutual Reinforcement For Image Search, Ting Yao, Tao Mei, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Most existing reranking approaches to image search focus solely on mining “visual” cues within the initial search results. However, the visual information cannot always provide enough guidance to the reranking process. For example, different images with similar appearance may not always present the same relevant information to the query. Observing that multi-modality cues carry complementary relevant information, we propose the idea of co-reranking for image search, by jointly exploring the visual and textual information. Co-reranking couples two random walks, while reinforcing the mutual exchange and propagation of information relevancy across different modalities. The mutual reinforcement is iteratively updated to constrain …

On The Sampling Of Web Images For Learning Visual Concept Classifiers, Shiai Zhu, Gang Wang, Chong-Wah Ngo, Yu-Gang Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Visual concept learning often requires a large set of training images. In practice, nevertheless, acquiring noise-free training labels with sufficient positive examples is always expensive. A plausible solution for training data collection is by sampling the largely available user-tagged images from social media websites. With the general belief that the probability of correct tagging is higher than that of incorrect tagging, such a solution often sounds feasible, though is not without challenges. First, user-tags can be subjective and, to certain extent, are ambiguous. For instance, an image tagged with “whales” may be simply a picture about ocean museum. Learning concept …

Coherent Bag-Of Audio Words Model For Efficient Large-Scale Video Copy Detection, Yang Liu, Wan-Lei Zhao, Chong-Wah Ngo, Chang-Sheng Xu, Han-Qing Lu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current content-based video copy detection approaches mostly concentrate on the visual cues and neglect the audio information. In this paper, we attempt to tackle the video copy detection task resorting to audio information, which is equivalently important as well as visual information in multimedia processing. Firstly, inspired by bag-of visual words model, a bag-of audio words (BoA) representation is proposed to characterize each audio frame. Different from naive singlebased modeling audio retrieval approaches, BoA is a highlevel model due to its perceptual and semantical property. Within the BoA model, a coherency vocabulary indexing structure is adopted to achieve more efficient …

Ceg 433/633-01: Operating Systems, Bin Wang

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Cs 480/680: Comparative Programming Languages, Michael L. Raymer

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Cs 205: Introduction To Computers And Office Productivity Software, Terri Bauer

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Focus on learning MS Office software applications including intermediate word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentation graphics using a case study approach where critical thinking and problem solving skills are required. Computer concepts are integrated throughout the course to provide an understanding of the basics of computing, the latest technological advances and how they are used in industry. Ethics and issues encountered in business are discussed to challenge students on societal impact of technology.

Cs 415: Social Implications Of Computing, Leo Finkelstein

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

CS 415 is a communication skills course using as its subject matter current salient issues associated with the social implications of computing. In addition to the course text, you will need to use certain reading materials in the library and elsewhere, and you will be responsible for using concepts and theories provided in class lectures and discussions.

Cs 205: Introduction To Computers And Office Productivity Software, Ann Tirpack

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

Focus on learning MS Office software applications including intermediate word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentation graphics using a case study approach where critical thinking and problem solving skills are required. Computer concepts are added to provide an understanding of the basics of computing, the latest technological advances and how they are used in industry. Ethics and issues encountered in business are discussed to challenge students on societal impact of technology.