Computer Engineering Commons^™

Dcms: A Data Analytics And Management System For Molecular Simulation, Meryem Berrada

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the fact that Molecular Simulation systems represent a major research tool in multiple scientific and engineering fields, there is still a lack of systems for effective data management and fast data retrieval and processing. This is mainly due to the nature of MS which generate a very large amount of data - a system usually encompass millions of data information, and one query usually runs for tens of thousands of time frames. For this purpose, we designed and developed a new application, DCMS (A data Analytics and Management System for molecular Simulation), that intends to speed up the process …

Embedded System Design For Real-Time Monitoring Of Solitary Embedded System Design For Real-Time Monitoring Of Solitary, Robert Philip O'Brien

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia cause cognitive disabilities in the afflicted person. As a result, the person with dementia often requires assistance from a primary caregiver. However, while the caregiver is away from the home they are unaware of the person's status and may not be able to find out without returning to the home due to dementia's effects on cognition.

In this thesis work, a system of embedded devices is presented which tracks a solitary dementia patient in the home in real-time. The system is composed of three main hardware components. Multiple passive and active sensors are …

Investigating Correlation Between Availability Of Free Time Facilities For Pupils And Their Educational Achievements While Exploiting Linked Data And Volunteered Geographic Information, Peter Kovar

Dissertations

The advent of Semantic Web as an extension of the current World Wide Web (Web) brings methods and technologies to structure the data, interlink it with other related data and capture its semantics. This holds for new data to be published as well as for the data already on the Web. The interlinking of data led to definition of a linked data paradigm and the Semantic Web allows for creating a Global Linked Data Space. The linked data sets can combine data coming from heterogeneous sources. Using ontologies the meaning in data from different areas of interest can be compared …

Exploring The Impact That Organisational Culture And Structures Have On Knowledge Management Initiatives, Gavin Digan

Dissertations

The project builds on research in the domain of knowledge management, with a literature review covering several aspects of the domain. There is particular emphasis on knowledge management implementations within organisations. Several researchers in the area offer methodologies or strategies for organisations to adopt, when implementing knowledge management initiatives. These options are covered at length in the literature review along with real world case studies on organisations that have implemented knowledge initiatives with varying degrees of success. A key aspect of the research is assessing the impact of organisational culture on knowledge management initiatives. The literature review contains an extensive …

The Effect Of Stress-­ Relaxation Cycles On The Capacitance Of Dielectric Electro Active Polymers, Cody Rieger, Boon-Chai Ng

Posters, Presentations, and Papers

Dielectric Electro Active Polymers (DEAP) has the potential of converting mechanical energy into useful electrical energy. This material consists of a silicone dielectric film material with a special corrugated surface and a very thin layer of metallic electrodes on both sides of the surface. As these materials allow large mechanical deformations with low operating forces, potential applications include using this material to convert the energy from the ocean waves, and wind. This work examined the capacitance to provide useful information in optimizing the electrical properties for specific applications, and to investigate how the electrical properties are affected by electrical and/or …

Can Passive Mobile Application Traffic Be Identified Using Machine Learning Techniques, Peter Holland

Dissertations

Mobile phone applications (apps) can generate background traffic when the end-user is not actively using the app. If this background traffic could be accurately identified, network operators could de-prioritise this traffic and free up network bandwidth for priority network traffic. The background app traffic should have IP packet features that could be utilised by a machine learning algorithm to identify app-generated (passive) traffic as opposed to user-generated (active) traffic. Previous research in the area of IP traffic classification focused on classifying high level network traffic types originating on a PC device. This research was concerned with classifying low level app …

Can Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics Be Used To Verify A Technical Indicator? An Exploration Into The Correlation Between Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics And The Coppock Technical Indicator., Cormac O'Connor

Dissertations

Recent studies have shown that, through the quantification of Wikipedia Usage Patterns as a result of information gathering, stock market moves can be predicted (Moat et al 2013). There was also research performed to determine the predictive nature of Wikipedia Data to predict movie box office success (Mestyan et al. 2013). The goal of any investor, in order to maximize the return of their investments, is to have an edge over other participants in the markets. Several tools and techniques have been used over the years to fulfil this, some proving to generate a consistent stream of income (Gillen 2012). …

An Open Source Implementation And Evaluation Of A Federated Searching Service Based On File Based Index And Relational Database Index, Alan Liu

Dissertations

One of the greatest challenges in the modern information world is the storage of data and the ability to extract usable knowledge from it, to enable enterprises to gain insight that can be leverage to succeed in the competitive environment. Data is constantly being generated and collected at a rapid pace from users and customers via many sources such as intranet, internet and other smart devices. To effectively use the collected data, knowledge must be extracted from it to allow effective and efficient business planning. While the core challenge of data analytics is to extract hidden non-trivial information form large …

Low Power Real-Time Video And Audio Embedded System Design For Naturalistic Bicycle Study, Janardhan Bhima Reddy Karri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According to NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts [9], bicyclist deaths and injuries in 2013 are recorded as 732 and 48,000, respectively. In the State of Florida the safety of bicyclists is of particular concern as the bicycle fatality rates are nearly triple the national average. Further Florida ranks #1 on bicycle fatality rate in the nation for several years. To determine the cause of near-misses and crashes, a detailed study of bicyclist behavior and environmental conditions is needed. In a Florida Department of Transport (FDOT) funded project, USF CUTR has proposed naturalistic bicycle study based on ride data collected from 100 …

Magnetic Response Of Aperiodic Wire Networks Based On Fibonacci Distortions Of Square Antidot Lattices, Barry Farmer, Vinayak Bhat, J. Sklenar, Eric Teipel, Justin Woods, J. B. Ketterson, J. Todd Hastings, Lance Delong

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The static and dynamic magnetic responses of patterned ferromagnetic thin films are uniquely altered in the case of aperiodic patterns that retain long-range order (e.g., quasicrystals). We have fabricated permalloy wire networks based on periodic square antidot lattices (ADLs) distorted according to an aperiodic Fibonacci sequence applied to two lattice translations, d₁  = 1618 nm and d₂  = 1000 nm. The wire segment thickness is fixed at t = 25 nm, and the width W varies from 80 to 510 nm. We measured the DC magnetization between room temperature and 5 K. Room-temperature, narrow-band (9.7 GHz) ferromagnetic resonance …

Dense Point-Cloud Representation Of A Scene Using Monocular Vision, Yakov Diskin, Vijayan K. Asari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction system designed to support various autonomous navigation applications. The system presented focuses on the 3-D reconstruction of a scene using only a single moving camera. Utilizing video frames captured at different points in time allows us to determine the depths of a scene. In this way, the system can be used to construct a point-cloud model of its unknown surroundings.

We present the step-by-step methodology and analysis used in developing the 3-D reconstruction technique.

We present a reconstruction framework that generates a primitive point cloud, which is computed based on feature matching and depth …

Investigation Of Electromagnetic Velocities And Negative Refraction In A Chiral Metamaterial With Second-Order Material Dispersion Using Spectral Analyses And Dispersive Models, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Tarig A. Algadey

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In recent years, considerable research has been carried out relative to the electromagnetic (EM) propagation and refraction characteristics in metamaterials with emphasis on the origins of negative refractive index.

Negative refractive index may be introduced in metamaterials via different methods; one such is the condition whereby the Poynting vector of the EM wave is in opposition to the group velocity in the material. Alternatively, negative refractive index also occurs when the group and phase velocities in the medium are in opposition. The latter phenomenon has been extensively investigated in the literature, including recent work involving chiral metamaterials with material dispersion …

Coming Up With A Good Question Is Not Easy: A Proof, Joe Lorkowski, Luc Longpre, Olga Kosheleva, Salem Benferhat

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Ability to ask good questions is an important part of learning skills. Coming up with a good question, a question that can really improve one's understanding of the topic, is not easy. In this paper, we prove -- on the example of probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainty -- that the problem of selecting of a good question is indeed hard.

From 1-D To 2-D Fuzzy: A Proof That Interval-Valued And Complex-Valued Are The Only Distributive Options, Christian Servin, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While the usual 1-D fuzzy logic has many successful applications, in some practical cases, it is desirable to come up with a more subtle way of representing expert uncertainty. A natural idea is to add additional information, i.e., to go from 1-D to 2-D (and multi-D) fuzzy logic. At present, there are two main approaches to 2-D fuzzy logic: interval-valued and complex-valued. At first glance, it may seem that many other options are potentially possible. We show, however, that, under certain reasonable conditions, interval-valued and complex-valued are the only two possible options.

Adding Possibilistic Knowledge To Probabilities Makes Many Problems Algorithmically Decidable, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many physical theories accurately predict which events are possible and which are not, or -- in situations where probabilistic (e.g., quantum) effects are important -- predict the probabilities of different possible outcomes. At first glance, it may seem that this probabilistic information is all we need. We show, however, that to adequately describe physicists' reasoning, it is important to also take into account additional knowledge -- about what is possible and what is not. We show that this knowledge can be described in terms of possibility theory, and that the presence of this knowledge makes many problems algorithmically decidable.

Why It Is Important To Precisiate Goals, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Hung T. Nguyen

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

After Zadeh and Bellman explained how to optimize a function under fuzzy constraints, there have been many successful applications of this optimization. However, in many practical situations, it turns out to be more efficient to precisiate the objective function before performing optimization. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for this empirical fact.

Simple Linear Interpolation Explains All Usual Choices In Fuzzy Techniques: Membership Functions, T-Norms, T-Conorms, And Defuzzification, Vladik Kreinovich, Jonathan Quijas, Esthela Gallardo, Caio De Sa Lopes, Olga Kosheleva, Shahnaz Shahbazova

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Most applications of fuzzy techniques use piece-wise linear (triangular or trapezoid) membership functions, min or product t-norms, max or algebraic sum t-conorms, and centroid defuzzification. Similarly, most applications of interval-valued fuzzy techniques use piecewise-linear lower and upper membership functions. In this paper, we show that all these choices can be explained as applications of simple linear interpolation.

Setting Up A Highly Configurable, Scalable Nimbus Cloud Test Bed Running On A Manet, Joshua Mckee

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

No abstract provided.

Fail-Safe Test Generation Of Safety Critical Systems, Salwa Elakeili

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation introduces a technique for testing proper failure mitigation in safety critical systems. Unlike other approaches which integrate behavioral and failure models, and then generate tests from the integrated model, we build safety mitigation tests from an existing behavioral test suite, using an explicit mitigation model for which we generate mitigation paths which are then woven at selected failure points into the original test suite to create failure-mitigation tests (safety mitigation test).

Grit Mobile: Data Collection App For The Grit Research Project, Ryan Chang

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This project consists of one part of a larger University research project aimed at determining if active learning builds the character trait of grit in students while they learn in the domain of mechanical engineering. The research project has three goals: the development of a mobile app to measure the quantity and quality of active learning, a model of student success using the quantity and quality of active learning, and a characterization of the relationship between active learning and grit growth. This senior project focuses on the mobile app as part of the larger research project. The mobile app will …

Smart Solar Oven, Aaron Gragg

Computer Engineering

Though solar oven technology provides a green and cost effective means of cooking, it is often not adopted because it fails to meet the demands of speed and reliability that are commonplace in our society. This project explores the modification of a traditional box solar to meet these demands by allowing the oven to report temperature to a user’s phone as well as orient itself towards the sun throughout the day.

Music Dynamic Animations, Thuy-Vy Do

Computer Engineering

Audio visualization gives a graphical representation to beats, intensity, and the fluctuating sounds heard in music. Music dynamic animation, deriving from this concept of audio visualizers, implements a hard coded range styled beat detection. This algorithm prioritizes graphical representations of classical and instrumental music. These graphical representations are intended to provide a sense of imagery.

Cybersecurity In The Information Age

DePaul Magazine

According to the Identify Theft Resource Center, more than 750 breaches occurred in 2014, exposing more than 83 million records. Breaches occur because people have discovered that there’s money to be made from stealing corporate and customer information. Faced with this reality, consumers and companies may wonder if it’s possible to protect their personal and financial data. DePaul's College of Computing and Digital Media is training the next generation of cybersecurity experts to thwart cybersecurity attacks. In addition, DePaul faculty and alumni in data security offer advice to consumers on securing their financial and personal information.

Click-Boosting Multi-Modality Graph-Based Reranking For Image Search, Xiaopeng Yang, Yongdong Zhang, Ting Yao, Chong-Wah Ngo, Tao Mei

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Image reranking is an effective way for improving the retrieval performance of keyword-based image search engines. A fundamental issue underlying the success of existing image reranking approaches is the ability in identifying potentially useful recurrent patterns from the initial search results. Ideally, these patterns can be leveraged to upgrade the ranks of visually similar images, which are also likely to be relevant. The challenge, nevertheless, originates from the fact that keyword-based queries are used to be ambiguous, resulting in difficulty in predicting the search intention. Mining useful patterns without understanding query is risky, and may lead to incorrect judgment in …

Density Based Data Clustering, Rayan Albarakati

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Data clustering is a data analysis technique that groups data based on a measure of similarity. When data is well clustered the similarities between the objects in the same group are high, while the similarities between objects in different groups are low. The data clustering technique is widely applied in a variety of areas such as bioinformatics, image segmentation and market research.

This project conducted an in-depth study on data clustering with focus on density-based clustering methods. The latest density-based (CFSFDP) algorithm is based on the idea that cluster centers are characterized by a higher density than their neighbors and …

Comparing The Effect Of Smoothing And N-Gram Order : Finding The Best Way To Combine The Smoothing And Order Of N-Gram, Wenyang Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

The SRILM is a toolkit for building and applying statistical language models (LMs), designed and developed primarily for use in speech recognition, statistical tagging and segmentation, and machine translation. It has been under development in the SRI Speech Technology and Research Laboratory since 1995. The toolkit has also greatly benefited from its use and enhancements during the Johns Hopkins University/CLSP summer workshops in 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2002. In this thesis, the effect of smoothing and order of N-gram for language model we build by srilm toolkit is studied. My primary method is to use comparison. Firstly, training corpus and …

A Proposed Model For The Approach To Augmented Reality Deployment In Marketing Communications, Stephen O'Mahony

Dept. of Marketing & International Business Conference Material

In the contemporary landscape, human interaction is characterized by the pervasive mediation of intelligent agents. Owing to advances in computer science and engineering, phenomena once limited to fixed locations are metamorphosing from extraneous entities to implicit components of the everyday. Computing power has simultaneously enhanced and miniaturized to the extent that contemporary consumer devices demonstrate power equivalent to or greater than that of personal computers of recent memory. At the same time, network connectivity has proliferated to ubiquitous levels, reflected in the fact that the amount of inanimate objects connected to the Internet has recently surpassed the human population of …

Using Cross-Linked Su-8 To Flip-Chip Bond, Assemble, And Package Mems Devices, Robert A. Lake, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This paper investigates using an SU-8 photoresist as an adhesive material for flip-chip bonding, assembling, and packaging microelectromechanical systems devices. An important factor, when using SU-8 as an adhesive material is to control ultraviolet (UV) exposure during fabrication to maximize bond strength due to material cross linking. This approach is much improved over previous efforts where SU-8 bake times and temperatures where changed to alter material cross-linking. In this paper, bake times and temperatures were maintained constant and total UV exposure energy was varied. Once fabricated, bond strength was systematically tested to determine the tensile loads needed to separate bonded …

A Natural Simple Model Of Scientists' Strength Leads To Skew-Normal Distribution, Komsan Suriya, Tatcha Sudtasan, Tonghui Wang, Octavio Lerma, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we have probability distributions which are close to normal but skewed. Several families of distributions were proposed to describe such phenomena. The most widely used is skew-normal distribution, whose probability density (pdf) is equal to the product of the pdf of a normal distribution and a cumulative distribution function (cdf) of another normal distribution. Out of other possible generalizations of normal distributions, the skew-normal ones were selected because of their computational efficiency, and not because they represent any real-life phenomena. Interestingly, it turns out that these distributions do represent a real-life phenomena: namely, in a natural …

Our Reasoning Is Clearly Fuzzy, So Why Is Crisp Logic So Often Adequate?, Hung T. Nguyen, Berlin Wu, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Our reasoning is clearly fuzzy, so why is crisp logic so often adequate? We explain this phenomenon by showing that in the presence of noise, an arbitrary continuous (e.g., fuzzy) system can be well described by its discrete analog. However, as the description gets more accurate, the continuous description becomes necessary.