Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Semantic Hierarchies For Extracting, Modeling, And Connecting Compliance Requirements In Information Security Control Standards, Matthew L. Hale, Rose F. Gamble

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Companies and government organizations are increasingly compelled, if not required by law, to ensure that their information systems will comply with various federal and industry regulatory standards, such as the NIST Special Publication on Security Controls for Federal Information Systems (NIST SP-800-53), or the Common Criteria (ISO 15408-2). Such organizations operate business or mission critical systems where a lack of or lapse in security protections translates to serious confidentiality, integrity, and availability risks that, if exploited, could result in information disclosure, loss of money, or, at worst, loss of life. To mitigate these risks and ensure that their information systems …

Severity Of Acute Infectious Mononucleosis Correlates With Cross- Reactive Influenza Cd8 T-Cell Receptor Repertoires, Nuray Aslan, Levi B. Watkin, Anna Gil, Rabinarayan Mishra, Fransenio G. Clark, Raymond M. Welsh, Dario Ghersi, Katherine Luzuriaga, Liisa K. Selin

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Fifty years after the discovery of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), it remains unclear how primary infection with this virus leads to massive CD8 T-cell expansion and acute infectious mononucleosis (AIM) in young adults. AIM can vary greatly in severity, from a mild transient influenza-like illness to a prolonged severe syndrome. We questioned whether expansion of a unique HLA-A2.01-restricted, cross-reactive CD8 T-cell response between influenza virus A-M158 (IAV-M1) and EBV BMLF1280 (EBV-BM) could modulate the immune response to EBV and play a role in determining the severity of AIM in 32 college students. Only ex vivo total IAV-M1 and IAV-M1+EBV-BM cross-reactive tetramer+ …

A Complete Coverage Algorithm For 3d Structural Inspection Using An Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Venkat Ramana Reddy Garlapati

Student Work

This thesis presents a novel algorithm for complete coverage of three-dimensional structures to address the problem of autonomous structural inspection using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The proposed approach uses a technique of cellular decomposition based on Morse decomposition to decompose the 3D target structure into 2D coverable faces that are subsequently connected using a graph-based representation. We then use graph traversal techniques such as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) to generate a flight coverage path through the decomposed faces for a UAV to completely cover the target structure, while reducing the coverage time and distance. To test the validity …

Altering The Expression Of Artemisinin Through Osmotic Manipulation, Tyler Friesen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Artemisinin is an anti-malarial drug used in combination therapy to treat all malarial parasites in the blood stage. The expression of artemisinin within the plant Artemisia annua is only 1% of the dry weight. Methods for increasing the level of artemisinin within the plant were proposed. This paper looks into finding homologous enzymes across multiple species in order to find species where genetic manipulations will be useful. The second part of this paper looks at the use of osmotic stress to increase the reactive oxygen species in order to increase the amount of artemisinin within the plant. The database portion …

Switching From A Semi-Computerized To An Online Employment Application System: A Case Study, Deanna House

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

This case explores the switch from semi-computerized to an online employment application system. This case documents the struggles experienced with user expectations related to requirements and how customization of a third-party product derailed the project’s success. The project was eventually implemented, but not without a significant development effort to customize. The end project was over budget, over time, and did not have all of the functionality that the users were expecting. Key factors leading to the project failure were: lack of user involvement and participation throughout the project including documentation of requirements for the target system, lack of a dedicated …

Contemporary Issues Of Open Data In Information Systems Research: Considerations And Recommendations, Georg J.P. Link, Kevin Lumbard, Kieran Conboy, Michael Feldman, Joseph Feller, Jordana George, Matt Germonprez, Sean Goggins, Debora Jeske, Gaye Kiely, Kristen Schuster, Matt Willis

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

Researchers, governments, and funding agencies are calling on research disciplines to embrace open data - data that is publicly accessible and usable beyond the original authors. The premise is that research efforts can draw and generate several benefits from open data, as such data might provide further insight, enabling the replication and extension of current knowledge in different contexts. These potential benefits, coupled with a global push towards open data policies, brings open data into the agenda of research disciplines – including Information Systems (IS). This paper responds to these developments as follows. We outline themes in the ongoing discussion …

Program Inspection And Testing Techniques For Code Clones And Refactorings In Evolving Software, Zhiyuan Chen

Student Work

Developers often perform copy-and-paste activities. This practice causes the similar code fragment (aka code clones) to be scattered throughout a code base. Refactoring for clone removal is beneficial, preventing clones from having negative effects on software quality, such as hidden bug propagation and unintentional inconsistent changes. However, recent research has provided evidence that factoring out clones does not always reduce the risk of introducing defects, and it is often difficult or impossible to remove clones using standard refactoring techniques. To investigate which or how clones can be refactored, developers typically spend a significant amount of their time managing individual clone …

Am I Who I Say I Am? Unobtrusive Selfrepresentation And Personality Recognition On Facebook, Margeret A. Hall, Simon Caton

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Across social media platforms users (sub)consciously represent themselves in a way which is appropriate for their intended audience. This has unknown impacts on studies with unobtrusive designs based on digital (social) platforms, and studies of contemporary social phenomena in online settings. A lack of appropriate methods to identify, control for, and mitigate the effects of self-representation, the propensity to express socially responding characteristics or self-censorship in digital settings, hinders the ability of researchers to confidently interpret and generalize their findings. This article proposes applying boosted regression modelling to fill this research gap. A case study of paid Amazon Mechanical Turk …

Enhancing Security Incident Response Follow-Up Efforts With Lightweight Agile Retrospectives, George Grispos, William Bradley Glisson, Tim Storer

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Security incidents detected by organizations are escalating in both scale and complexity. As a result, security incident response has become a critical mechanism for organizations in an effort to minimize the damage from security incidents. The final phase within many security incident response approaches is the feedback/follow-up phase. It is within this phase that an organization is expected to use information collected during an investigation in order to learn from an incident, improve its security incident response process and positively impact the wider security environment. However, recent research and security incident reports argue that organizations find it difficult to learn …

Systematic Adaptation Of Dynamically Generated Source Code Via Domain-Specific Examples, Myoungkyu Song, Eli Tilevich

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In modern web-based applications, an increasing amount of source code is generated dynamically at runtime. Web applications commonly execute dynamically generated code (DGC) emitted by third-party, black-box generators, run at remote sites. Web developers often need to adapt DGC before it can be executed: embedded HTML can be vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks; an API may be incompatible with some browsers; and the program's state created by DGC may not be persisting. Lacking any systematic approaches for adapting DGC, web developers resort to ad-hoc techniques that are unsafe and error-prone. This study presents an approach for adapting DGC systematically that …

Dual Modality Code Explanations For Novices: Unexpected Results, Briana B. Morrison

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The research in both cognitive load theory and multimedia principles for learning indicates presenting information using both diagrams and accompanying audio explanations yields better learning performance than using diagrams with text explanations. While this is a common practice in introductory programming courses, often called "live coding," it has yet to be empirically tested. This paper reports on an experiment to determine if auditory explanations of code result in improved learning performance over written explanations. Students were shown videos explaining short code segments one of three ways: text only explanations, auditory only explanations, or both text and auditory explanations, thus replicating …

Implementing An Environmental Citizen Science Project: Strategies And Concerns From Educators’ Perspectives, Yurong He, Andrea Wiggins

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

Citizen science seems to have a natural alignment with environmental and science education, but incorporating citizen science projects into education practices is still a challenge for educators from different education contexts. Based on participant observation and interview data, this paper describes the strategies educators identified for implementing an environmental citizen science project in different education contexts (i.e., classroom teaching, aquarium exhibits, and summer camp) and discusses the practical concerns influencing independent implementation by educators. The results revealed different implementation strategies that are shaped by four categories of constraints: 1) organizational and institutional policies, 2) educators’ time and material resources, 3) …

Tool Support For Capturing The Essence Of A Concern In Source Code, Chuntao Fu

Student Work

Software evolves constantly to adapt to changing user needs. As it evolves, it becomes progressively harder to understand due to accumulation of code changes, increasing code size, and the introduction of complex code dependencies. As a result, it becomes harder to maintain, exposing the software to potential bugs and degradation of code quality. High maintenance costs and diminished opportunities for software reusability and portability lead to reduced return on investment, increasing the likelihood of the software product being discarded or replaced. Nevertheless, we believe that there is value in legacy software due to the amount of intellectual efforts that have …

Detection Of Comparability Subgraphs From Large Networks, Muthunagai Balakrishnamoorthy

Student Work

Real world large scale networks can be represented as graphs. This approach plays a key role in analysis in the domains of social networks [1] and bioinformatics [2], among others. Analyzing these networks is computationally complex and expensive, especially in terms of memory and time complexity. A popular technique subverting time and computation expense for analyzing networks is extracting substructures, which preserves more important information and less noise [12]. In this work, we use special a special substructure called comparability, which preserves transitive orientation. Our motive is to extract a maximal comparability subgraph since no algorithm exists. Our algorithm is …

Obesity-Induces Organ And Tissue Specific Tight Junction Restructuring And Barrier Deregulation By Claudin Switching, Rizwan Ahmad, Bilal Rah, Dhundy Bastola, Punita Dhawan, Amar B. Singh

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Obesity increases susceptibility to multiple organ disorders, however, underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The subclinical inflammation assisted by obesity-induced gut permeability may underlie obesity-associated co-morbidities. Despite eminent clinical significance of the obesity led gut barrier abnormalities, its precise molecular regulation remains unclear. It is also unknown whether barrier deregulations, similar to the gut, characterize other vital organs in obese individuals. The claudin family of proteins is integral to the tight junction (TJ), the apical cell-cell adhesion and a key regulator of the epithelial barrier. Using comprehensive physiological and biochemical analysis of intestinal and renal tissues from high-fat diet fed mice, critical …

Privacy Issues And Solutions For Consumer Wearables, Alfredo J. Perez, Sherali Zeadally

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Consumer wearables have emerged as disrupting devices that benefit citizens in areas such as mobile health, fitness, security, and entertainment. The mass adoption of these devices not only generates high revenues but also exposes important privacy issues. The authors identify some of the major privacy issues associated with consumer wearables and explore possible solutions to address privacy concerns.

Bystanders' Privacy, Alfredo J. Perez, Sherali Zeadally, Scott Griffith

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The growing adoption of Internet-connected devices has given rise to significant privacy issues not only for users but also for bystanders. The authors explore privacy concerns related to bystanders' privacy and present a taxonomy of the solutions found in the literature to handle this issue. They also explore open issues that must be addressed in the future.

Towards Student Engagement Analytics: Applying Machine Learning To Student Posts In Online Lecture Videos, Nicholas R. Stepanek

Student Work

The use of online learning environments in higher education is becoming ever more prevalent with the inception of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and the increase in online and flipped courses at universities. Although the online systems used to deliver course content make education more accessible, students often express frustration with the lack of assistance during online lecture videos. Instructors express concern that students are not engaging with the course material in online environments, and rely on affordances within these systems to figure out what students are doing. With many online learning environments storing log data about students usage of …

Applications Of Graph Embedding In Mesh Untangling, Jake Quinn

Student Work

The subject of this thesis is mesh untangling through graph embedding, a method of laying out graphs on a planar surface, using an algorithm based on the work of Fruchterman and Reingold[1]. Meshes are a variety of graph used to represent surfaces with a wide number of applications, particularly in simulation and modelling. In the process of simulation, simulated forces can tangle the mesh through deformation and stress. The goal of this thesis was to create a tool to untangle structured meshes of complicated shapes and surfaces, including meshes with holes or concave sides. The goals of graph embedding, such …

Improving Software Quality By Synergizing Effective Code Inspection And Regression Testing, Bo Guo

Student Work

Software quality assurance is an essential practice in software development and maintenance. Evolving software systems consistently and safely is challenging. All changes to a system must be comprehensively tested and inspected to gain confidence that the modified system behaves as intended. To detect software defects, developers often conduct quality assurance activities, such as regression testing and code review, after implementing or changing required functionalities. They commonly evaluate a program based on two complementary techniques: dynamic program analysis and static program analysis. Using an automated testing framework, developers typically discover program faults by observing program execution with test cases that encode …

Algorithms For Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robots: Decision Making, Planning, And Learning, Ayan Dutta

Student Work

Modular self-reconfigurable robots (MSRs) are composed of multiple robotic modules which can change their connections with each other to take different shapes, commonly known as configurations. Forming different configurations helps the MSR to accomplish different types of tasks in different environments. In this dissertation, we study three different problems in MSRs: partitioning of modules, configuration formation planning and locomotion learning, and we propose algorithmic solutions to solve these problems.

Partitioning of modules is a decision-making problem for MSRs where each module decides which partition or team of modules it should be in. To find the best set of partitions is …

Designing Novel Nanostructured Permanent Magnets, Ali Al Kadhim

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Rare earth element based alloys have been the source of high performance magnetic alloys, and have played a paramount role in the development of various technologies, including: memory devices (such as credit cards, random-access memory), sensors, and various biomedical applications. However, there is a tremendous need to replace rare earth metals with material with powerful magnetic properties. Our group recently found CrTe-based materials that show very promising magnetic properties in nanostructured form. The magnetic modeling of such material in nanostructured form prior to their fabrication demonstrates their magnetic properties in bulk form. In this project, we investigate the behavior of …

Vision-Based Mobile Robotic Platform For Autonomous Landing Of Quadcopters, Timothy R. Joe

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This project deals with the development of a vision-based control algorithm to assist quadcopters in the landing process. For demonstration purposes, the approach has been implemented in a mobile robotic platform (turtlebot). In this project, the objective is to use the mobile robot as a landing platform. The camera on-board the mobile robot detects the quadcopter (AprilTag attached to the flying robot) and keeps track of it. Based on this idea, the proposed approach estimates in real-time the landing zone. Once this zone is calculated, the mobile robot moves towards this area, stops under the quadcopter, and acts as a …

Passive Chemical Detection System For Uavs, John Hare 2185222

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

In this project we address the problem of autonomously detecting airborne gas particles using gas sensors that are mobilized using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The main hypothesis we investigate is whether a commercially available, off-the-shelf gas sensor can be suitably integrated on a UAV platform to detect ambient gas particles. The main challenges in this problem include addressing the weight constraints of the UAV’s payload and registering a consistent reading on the gas sensor in the presence of the turbulence in the air caused by the UAV’s rotors. To verify our hypothesis, we designed a passive funneling mechanism for airborne …

Optimizing Campus Mobility With A Focus On Sustainability: A Graph Theory Approach To Intra-Campus Transportation Networks, Quinn M. Nelson

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The idea of public transportation is supported by most in theory but often heavily criticized by users when put into application. There are common tensions that are related to public transportation, as described by frequent users: unreliable, too crowded, and slow. The University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO) is a growing metropolitan institution that uses a shuttle system to transport students among their three campuses daily. As of 2015, the current total student enrollment is approximately 16,000; UNO plans to enroll 20,000 students by 2020. The expected student growth is also reflected by the current construction of new buildings and expansion of …

A Modular Robotic System For Assessment And Exercise Of Human Movement, Mohan Sai Ambati

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This project targets the problem of developing a wearable modular robotic system, for assessing human movement and providing different types of exercises for the user. The system attempts to provide not only a variety of exercises (concentric, eccentric, assisted and resisted), but also to assess the change in variability of the movement as the subject shows functional improvement. The system will not only be useful for patients with sensorimotor problem such as stroke, Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy, but also for special populations such as astronauts who spend long periods of time in space and experience muscle atrophy. In this work, a …

Phishing Suspiciousness In Older And Younger Adults: The Role Of Executive Functioning, Brandon E. Gavett, Rui Zhao, Samantha E. John, Cara A. Bussell, Jennifer R. Roberts, Chuan Yue

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Phishing is the spoofing of Internet websites or emails aimed at tricking users into entering sensitive information, with such goals as financial or identity theft. The current study sought to determine whether age is associated with increased susceptibility to phishing and whether tests of executive functioning can predict phishing susceptibility. A total of 193 cognitively intact participants, 91 younger adults and 102 older adults, were primarily recruited through a Psychology department undergraduate subject pool and a gerontology research registry, respectively. The Executive Functions Module from the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery and the Iowa Gambling Task were the primary cognitive predictors of …

Knowledge Activation For Patient Centered Care: Bridging The Health Information Technology Divide, Sajda Qureshi, Cherie Notebloom

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The provision of healthcare is a collaborative process. It follows evidence based treatments which are becoming increasingly data driven and focusing on the best clinical outcomes. Patient centered care requires participation of patients in the decision making of the best treatment options. Healthcare provision requires both evidence based and patient centered care. In practice, these two perspectives conflict with each other due to the use of an information technology designed primarily for billing purposes. Using the knowledge activation framework developed by Qureshi and Keen [25], we analyze data from two hospitals in the Midwest that aim to achieve quality of …

Understanding The Role Of Information Technology In The Development Of Micro-Enterprises: Concepts To Study In Making A Better World, Sajda Qureshi, Jason Jie Xiong

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The concept of Development has alluded scholars and practitioners when information technology becomes prevalent. The majority of research in the Information Technology for Development (ICT4D) field is considered to be practice intended to make the world better with Information and Communications technologies (ICTs). In addition, a majority of wellintentioned ICT4D projects tend to fail, often due to unrealistic expectation set by development agencies responding to their political objectives. At the same time, Information Systems (IS) research is ripe with well-studied concepts that do little to make a better world. This paper investigates ICT interventions in three case studies of micro-enterprises …

Towards An Understanding Of The Mental Model Process While Writing Sql Queries, Zahra Hatami

Student Work

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standard language to communicate with a relational database system. SQL is a core competency for people in the data management field and is, therefore, a foundational skill taught to users in information systems. This research analyzes users’ mental models while they formulate SQL queries. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the strategies users use. These strategies both reflect and help develop the users’ mental models. This research attempts to discover users' mental models while learning SQL for the purpose of finding better ways to teach SQL skills. This research analyzes data from …