Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Entropyexplorer: An R Package For Computing And Comparing Differential Shannon Entropy, Kai Wang, Charles A. Philips, Arnold M. Saxton, Michael A. Langston

Department of Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Differential Shannon entropy (DSE) and differential coefficient of variation (DCV) are effective metrics for the study of gene expression data. They can serve to augment differential expression (DE), and be applied in numerous settings whenever one seeks to measure differences in variability rather than mere differences in magnitude. A general purpose, easily accessible tool for DSE and DCV would help make these two metrics available to data scientists. Automated p value computations would additionally be useful, and are often easier to interpret than raw test statistic values alone.

Results: EntropyExplorer is an R package for calculating DSE, DCV and …

Advanced Techniques For Computational And Information Sciences, William Guo, Chih-Cheng Hung, Paul Scheunders, Bor-Chen Kuo

Faculty and Research Publications

New techniques in computational and information sciences have played an important role in keeping advancing the so called knowledge economy. Advanced techniques have been introduced to or emerging in almost every field of the scientific world for hundreds of years, which has been accelerated since the late 1970s when the advancement in computers and digital technologies brought the world into the Information Era. In addition to the rapid development of computational intelligence and new data fusion techniques in the past thirty years [1–4], mobile and cloud computing, grid computing driven numeric computation models, big data intelligence, and other emerging technologies …

Evaluating Different Distributed-Cyber-Infrastructure For Data And Compute Intensive Scientific Application, Arghya Kusum Das, Seung Jong Park, Jaeki Hong, Wooseok Chang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Scientists are increasingly using the current state of the art big data analytic software (e.g., Hadoop, Giraph, etc.) for their data-intensive applications over HPC environment. However, understanding and designing the hardware environment that these data- and compute-intensive applications require for good performance is challenging. With this motivation, we evaluated the performance of big data software over three different distributed-cyber-infrastructures, including a traditional HPC-cluster called SuperMikeII, a regular datacenter called SwatIII, and a novel MicroBrick-based hyperscale system called CeresII, using our own benchmark Parallel Genome Assembler (PGA). PGA is developed atop Hadoop and Giraph and serves as a good real-world example …

Reliability And Validity Of Neurobehavioral Function On The Psychology Experimental Building Language Test Battery In Young Adults, Brian J. Piper, Shane Mueller, Alexander R. Geerken, Kyle L. Dixon, Gregory Kroliczak, Reid H. Olsen, Jeremy K. Miller

Michigan Tech Publications

Background. The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software consists of over one-hundred computerized tests based on classic and novel cognitive neuropsychology and behavioral neurology measures. Although the PEBL tests are becoming more widely utilized, there is currently very limited information about the psychometric properties of these measures.

Methods. Study I examined inter-relationships among nine PEBL tests including indices of motor-function (Pursuit Rotor and Dexterity), attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance and Time-Wall), working memory (Digit Span Forward), and executive-function (PEBL Trail Making Test, Berg/Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Iowa Gambling Test, and Mental Rotation) in a normative sample (N = 189, …

Sensor Resource Management: Intelligent Multi-Objective Modularized Optimization Methodology And Models, Boris Kovalerchuk, Leonid Perlovsky

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

The importance of the optimal Sensor Resource Management (SRM) problem is growing. The number of Radar, EO/IR, Overhead Persistent InfraRed (OPIR), and other sensors with best capabilities, is limited in the stressing tasking environment relative to sensing needs. Sensor assets differ significantly in number, location, and capability over time. To determine on which object a sensor should collect measurements during the next observation period k, the known algorithms favor the object with the expected measurements that would result in the largest gain in relative information. We propose a new tasking paradigm OPTIMA for sensors that goes beyond information gain. It …

Autonomous Pipeline Monitoring And Maintenance System: A Rfid-Based Approach, Jong-Hoon Kim, Gokarna Sharma, Noureddine Boudriga, S.S. Iyengar, Nagarajan Prabakar

School of Computing and Information Sciences

Pipeline networks are one of the key infrastructures of our modern life. Proactive monitoring and frequent inspection of pipeline networks are very important for sustaining their safe and efficient functionalities. Existing monitoring and maintenance approaches are costly and inefficient because pipelines can be installed in large scale and in an inaccessible and hazardous environment. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID)-based Autonomous Maintenance system for Pipelines, called RAMP, which combines robotic, sensing, and RFID technologies for efficient and accurate inspection, corrective reparation, and precise geo-location information. RAMP can provide not only economical and scalable remedy …

Practical Teaching Method Based On Matlab In Ac Speed Regulating System Course, Qian Yang, Jinzhu Gao

All Faculty Presentations - School of Engineering and Computer Science

Because an AC speed regulating system is abstract and complex, the study on practical teaching method based on MATLAB software is quite necessary in the AC speed regulating system course at our university. The permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) vector control system is taken as an example to explain in details the practical teaching method based on MATLAB. The course content is divided into several knowledge modules based on speed regulation methods. The concept of subsystem in Simulink is introduced. Each type of speed regulating systems can be divided into several subsystems according to its functions. The control principle, system …

From Boolean Equalities To Constraints, Sergio Antoy, Michael Hanus

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although functional as well as logic languages use equality to discriminate between logically different cases, the operational meaning of equality is different in such languages. Functional languages reduce equational expressions to their Boolean values, True or False, logic languages use unification to check the validity only and fail otherwise. Consequently, the language Curry, which amalgamates functional and logic programming features, offers two kinds of equational expressions so that the programmer has to distinguish between these uses. We show that this distinction can be avoided by providing an analysis and transformation method that automatically selects the appropriate operation. Without this distinction …

All Your Sessions Are Belong To Us: Investigating Authenticator Leakage Through Backup Channels On Android, Guangdong Bai, Jun Sun, Jianliang Wu, Quanqi Ye, Li Li, Jin Song Dong, Shanqing Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Security of authentication protocols heavily relies on the confidentiality of credentials (or authenticators) like passwords and session IDs. However, unlike browser-based web applications for which highly evolved browsers manage the authenticators, Android apps have to construct their own management. We find that most apps simply locate their authenticators into the persistent storage and entrust underlying Android OS for mediation. Consequently, these authenticators can be leaked through compromised backup channels. In this work, we conduct the first systematic investigation on this previously overlooked attack vector. We find that nearly all backup apps on Google Play inadvertently expose backup data to any …

Gpu Accelerated On-The-Fly Reachability Checking, Zhimin Wu, Yang Liu, Jun Sun, Jianqi Shi, Shengchao Qin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Model checking suffers from the infamous state space explosion problem. In this paper, we propose an approach, named GPURC, to utilize the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to speed up the reachability verification. The key idea is to achieve a dynamic load balancing so that the many cores in GPUs are fully utilized during the state space exploration.To this end, we firstly construct a compact data encoding of the input transition systems to reduce the memory cost and fit the calculation in GPUs. To support a large number of concurrent components, we propose a multi-integer encoding with conflict-release accessing approach. We …

Predicting Energy Demand Peak Using M5 Model Trees, Sara S. Abdelkader, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam Am Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Predicting energy demand peak is a key factor for reducing energy demand and electricity bills for commercial customers. Features influencing energy demand are many and complex, such as occupant behaviours and temperature. Feature selection can decrease prediction model complexity without sacrificing performance. In this paper, features were selected based on their multiple linear regression correlation coefficients. This paper discusses the capabilities of M5 model trees in energy demand prediction for commercial buildings. M5 model trees are similar to regression trees; however they are more suitable for continuous prediction problems. The M5 model tree prediction was developed based on a selected …

Web Based Cyber Forensics Training For Law Enforcement, Nick Sturgeon

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Training and education are two of the most important aspects within cyber forensics. These topics have been of concern since the inception of the field. Training law enforcement is particularly important to ensure proper execution of the digital forensics process. It is also important because the proliferation of technology in to society continues to grow at an exponential rate. Just as technology is used for good there are those that will choose to use it for criminal gains. It is critical that Law Enforcement have the tools and training in cyber forensics. This research looked to determine if web based …

Hypercube Unfoldings That Tile R3 And R2, Giovanna Diaz, Joseph O'Rourke

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We show that the hypercube has a face-unfolding that tiles space, and that unfolding has an edge-unfolding that tiles the plane. So the hypercube is a "dimension-descending tiler." We also show that the hypercube cross unfolding made famous by Dali tiles space, but we leave open the question of whether or not it has an edge-unfolding that tiles the plane.

Dynamic Data Management In A Data Grid Environment, Björn Barrefors

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A data grid is a geographically distributed set of resources providing a facility for computationally intensive analysis of large datasets to a large number of geographically distributed users. In the scientific community, data grids have become increasingly popular as scientific research is driven by large datasets. Until recently, developments in data management for data grids have focused on management of data at lower layers in the data grid architecture. With dataset sizes expected to approach exabyte scale in coming years, data management in data grids are facing a new set of challenges. In particularly, the problem of automatically placing and …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2015, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

When Disclosure Is Involuntary: Empowering Users With Control To Reduce Concerns, David W. Wilson, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Bradley Dorn, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Modern organizations must carefully balance the practice of gathering large amounts of valuable data from individuals with the associated ethical considerations and potential negative public image inherent in breaches of privacy. As it becomes increasingly commonplace for many types of information to be collected without individuals' knowledge or consent, managers and researchers alike can benefit from understanding how individuals react to such involuntary disclosures, and how these reactions can impact evaluations of the data-collecting organizations. This research develops and empirically tests a theoretical model that shows how empowering individuals with a sense of control over their personal information can help …

Information Technology For Development In Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises, Jie Xiong, Sajda Qureshi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Development is a concept that is often used to describe growth in organizations and the regions in which they reside. While research in Information Systems (IS) recognizes the importance of Information Technology (IT) in improving the organizational performance, a great deal of emphasis is given towards understanding large organizations. While social-economic development and transformation relies on new technological infrastructures and organizational changes, there is still a weak link between the organization studies with Information Technology (IT) as it relates to the growth of organizations. It appears that a greater research focus is needed in understanding the use of IT in …

Randomized Algorithms For Approximating A Connected Dominating Set In Wireless Sensor Networks, Akshaye Dhawan, Michelle Tanco, Aaron Yeiser

Mathematics and Computer Science Faculty Publications

A Connected Dominating Set (CDS) of a graph representing a Wireless Sensor Network can be used as a virtual backbone for routing through the network. Since the sensors in the network are constrained by limited battery life, we desire a minimal CDS for the network, a known NP-hard problem. In this paper we present three randomized algorithms for constructing a CDS. We evaluate our algorithms using simulations and compare them to the two-hop K2 algorithm and two other greedy algorithms from the literature. After pruning, the randomized algorithms construct a CDS that are generally equivalent in size to those constructed …

Positive Influence Dominating Set Generation In Social Networks, Akshaye Dhawan, Matthew Rink

Mathematics and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Current algorithms in the Positive Influence Dominating Set (PIDS) problem domain are focused on a specific type of PIDS, the Total Positive Influence Dominating Set (TPIDS). We have developed an algorithm specifically targeted towards the non-total type of PIDS. In addition to our new algorithm, we adapted two existing TPIDS algorithms to generate PIDS. We ran simulations for all three algorithms, and our new algorithm consistently generates smaller PIDS than both existing algorithms, with our algorithm generating PIDS approximately 5% smaller than the better of the two existing algorithms.

Energy Forecasting For Event Venues: Big Data And Prediction Accuracy, Katarina Grolinger, Alexandra L'Heureux, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Advances in sensor technologies and the proliferation of smart meters have resulted in an explosion of energy-related data sets. These Big Data have created opportunities for development of new energy services and a promise of better energy management and conservation. Sensor-based energy forecasting has been researched in the context of office buildings, schools, and residential buildings. This paper investigates sensor-based forecasting in the context of event-organizing venues, which present an especially difficult scenario due to large variations in consumption caused by the hosted events. Moreover, the significance of the data set size, specifically the impact of temporal granularity, on energy …

Management's Perspective On Critical Success Factors Affecting Mobile Learning In Higher Education Institutions - An Empirical Study, Muasaad Alrasheedi, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Arif Raza

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Mobile learning (m-Learning) is considered to be one of the fastest growing learning platforms. The immense interest in m-Learning is attributed to the incredible rate of growth of mobile technology and its proliferation into every aspect of modern life. Despite this, m-Learning has not experienced a similar adoption rate in the education sector, chiefly higher education. Researchers have attempted to explain this anomaly by conducting several studies in the area. However, mostly the research in m-Learning is examined from the perspective of the students and educators. In this research, it is contended that there is a third important stakeholder group …

Students' Perspectives Of Mobile Learning Platforms: An Empirical Study, Muasaad Alrasheedi, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Arif Raza

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Educational institutions are becoming involved in adopting technological innovations like th e mobile learning (m-Learning) platform for education. Mobile technologies are the next frontier as infrast ructure for m-Learning because they can provide high-quality learning capab ilities to satisfy the rising student demand for mobility and flexibility due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile tec hnology (smartphones) and the va st opportunities it offers, there ar e indications that smartphones could lead the next generation for learning platforms. Researchers have examin ed the idea from several angles and produced a copious amount of literature devoted to explaining the interrelationships of …

Grouping Digits As A Method For Increasing Computation Speed Of Galois Field Arithmetic For Erasure Coding Applications, John Andrew Burnum

Haslam Scholars Projects

The performance of multiplications in Galois Field arithmetic using the GROUP method is measured, described, and analyzed using the GF Complete open-source library. Galois Field arithmetic is vital for many erasure coding methods, including Reed-Solomon coding, and the GROUP method is a simple and modular technique for increasing computation speed.

A Systematic Derivation Of Loop Specifications Using Patterns, Aditi Barua, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Any non-trivial program contains loop control structures such as while, for and do statements. A formal correctness proof of code containing loop control structures is typically performed using an induction-based technique, and oftentimes the most challenging step of an inductive proof is formulating a correct induction hypothesis. An incorrectly-formulated induction hypothesis will surely lead to a failure of the proof. In this paper we propose a systematic approach for formulating and driving specifications of loop control structures for formal analysis and verification of programs. We explain our approach using while loops and a functional program verification technique in which a …

Toward Unification Of Explicit And Implicit Invocation-Style Programming, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Subprograms like procedures and methods can be invoked explicitly or implicitly; in implicit invocation, an event implicitly causes the invocation of subprograms that are registered an interest in the event. Mixing these two styles is common in programming and often unavoidable in developing such software as GUI applications and event-based control systems. However, it isn't also uncommon for the mixed use to complicate programming logic and thus produce unclean code, code that is hard to read and understand. We show, through a small but realistic example, that the problem is not much on mixing two different styles itself but more …

On The Discovery Of Social Roles In Large Scale Social Systems, Derek Doran

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The social role of a participant in a social system is a label conceptualizing the circumstances under which she interacts within it. They may be used as a theoretical tool that explains why and how users participate in an online social system. Social role analysis also serves practical purposes, such as reducing the structure of complex systems to relationships among roles rather than alters, and enabling a comparison of social systems that emerge in similar contexts. This article presents a data-driven approach for the discovery of social roles in large scale social systems. Motivated by an analysis of the present …

An Immersive Telepresence System Using Rgb-D Sensors And Head-Mounted Display, Xinzhong Lu, Ju Shen, Saverio Perugini, Jianjun Yang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instructor to effectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The …

Salad: A Multimodal Approach For Contextual Video Advertising, Chen Xiang, Tam Nguyen, Mohan Kankanhalli

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The explosive growth of multimedia data on Internet has created huge opportunities for online video advertising. In this paper, we propose a novel advertising technique called SalAd, which utilizes textual information, visual content and the webpage saliency, to automatically associate the most suitable companion ads with online videos. Unlike most existing approaches that only focus on selecting the most relevant ads, SalAd further considers the saliency of selected ads to reduce intentional ignorance. SalAd consists of three basic steps. Given an online video and a set of advertisements, we first roughly identify a set of relevant ads based on the …

Aesthetic Experience And Acceptance Of Human Computation Games, Xiaohui Wang, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Ee-Peng Lim, Adrian Wei Liang Vu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Human computation games (HCGs) are applications that leverage games to solve computational problems that are out reach of the capacity of computers. Game aesthetics are critical for HCG acceptance, and the game elements should motivate users to contribute time and effort. In this paper, we examine the effect of aesthetic experience on intention to use HCGs. A between-subjects experiment was conducted to compare a HCG and a human computation system (HCS). Results demonstrated that HCGs provided a greater sense of aesthetic experience and attracted more intentional usage than HCSs. Implications of this study are discussed.

Fast Reinforcement Learning Under Uncertainties With Self-Organizing Neural Networks, Teck-Hou Teng, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Using feedback signals from the environment, a reinforcement learning (RL) system typically discovers action policies that recommend actions effective to the states based on a Q-value function. However, uncertainties over the estimation of the Q-values can delay the convergence of RL. For fast RL convergence by accounting for such uncertainties, this paper proposes several enhancements to the estimation and learning of the Q-value using a self-organizing neural network. Specifically, a temporal difference method known as Q-learning is complemented by a Q-value Polarization procedure, which contrasts the Q-values using feedback signals on the effect of the recommended actions. The polarized Q-values …