Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Context In Computer Vision: A Taxonomy, Multi-Stage Integration, And A General Framework, Xuan Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contextual information has been widely used in many computer vision tasks, such as object detection, video action detection, image classification, etc. Recognizing a single object or action out of context could be sometimes very challenging, and context information may help improve the understanding of a scene or an event greatly. However, existing approaches design specific contextual information mechanisms for different detection tasks.

In this research, we first present a comprehensive survey of context understanding in computer vision, with a taxonomy to describe context in different types and levels. Then we proposed MultiCLU, a new multi-stage context learning and utilization framework, …

Deep Learning-Based Human Action Understanding In Videos, Elahe Vahdani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The understanding of human actions in videos holds immense potential for technological advancement and societal betterment. This thesis explores fundamental aspects of this field, including action recognition in trimmed clips and action localization in untrimmed videos. Trimmed videos contain only one action instance, with moments before or after the action excluded from the video. However, the majority of videos captured in unconstrained environments, often referred to as untrimmed videos, are naturally unsegmented. Untrimmed videos are typically lengthy and may encompass multiple action instances, along with the moments preceding or following each action, as well as transitions between actions. In the …

Understanding Data Mining And Its Relation To Information Systems, Malak Alammari

Publications and Research

This research project aims to enrich an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook on Introduction to Information Systems/Technology with a focus on data mining and its relation to hardware and software components of information systems. The study will address the following research questions: (1) What is data mining? and (2) How does data relate to the hardware and software components of information systems? To answer these questions, the researcher will conduct research to ascertain the current state of data mining and its relevance in the field of information systems/technology. The results of the research will be incorporated into an existing OER …

Influence Level Prediction On Social Media Through Multi-Task And Sociolinguistic User Characteristics Modeling, Denys Katerenchuk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Prediction of a user’s influence level on social networks has attracted a lot of attention as human interactions move online. Influential users have the ability to influence others’ behavior to achieve their own agenda. As a result, predicting users’ level of influence online can help to understand social networks, forecast trends, prevent misinformation, etc. The research on user influence in social networks has attracted much attention across multiple disciplines, from social sciences to mathematics, yet it is still not well understood. One of the difficulties is that the definition of influence is specific to a particular problem or a domain, …

Towards Explaining Variation In Entrainment, Andreas Weise

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Entrainment refers to the tendency of human speakers to adapt to their interlocutors to become more similar to them. This affects various dimensions and occurs in many contexts, allowing for rich applications in human-computer interaction. However, it is not exhibited by every speaker in every conversation but varies widely across features, speakers, and contexts, hindering broad application. This variation, whose guiding principles are poorly understood even after decades of entrainment research, is the subject of this thesis. We begin with a comprehensive literature review that serves as the foundation of our own work and provides a reference to guide future …

Finite Gaussian Neurons: Defending Against Adversarial Attacks By Making Neural Networks Say "I Don’T Know", Felix Grezes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this work, I introduce the Finite Gaussian Neuron (FGN), a novel neuron architecture for artificial neural networks aimed at protecting against adversarial attacks.
Since 2014, artificial neural networks have been known to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which can fool the network into producing wrong or nonsensical outputs by making humanly imperceptible alterations to inputs. While defenses against adversarial attacks have been proposed, they usually involve retraining a new neural network from scratch, a costly task.

My works aims to:
- easily convert existing models to Finite Gaussian Neuron architecture,
- while preserving the existing model's behavior on real …

Abm Simulation Model Of A Pandemic For Optimizing Vaccination Strategy, Gibeom Park

Theses and Dissertations

This study presents a process-oriented hybrid model for individuals' immune responses and interactions involving vaccination to describe the trend of contagious disease and estimate the future societal cost. The model considers "recovery" as a non-absorbing state and incorporates various infection stage states including two symptomatic states. To model contagiousness to be consistent with the current pandemic and include that the spread of a disease depends on the mobility of people, we developed an Agent-Based Simulator that fitted to the particular model used in this study and can test various what-if scenarios. We improved the simulator considerably by appying data structures …

Coded Distributed Function Computation, Pedro J. Soto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A ubiquitous problem in computer science research is the optimization of computation on large data sets. Such computations are usually too large to be performed on one machine and therefore the task needs to be distributed amongst a network of machines. However, a common problem within distributed computing is the mitigation of delays caused by faulty machines. This can be performed by the use of coding theory to optimize the amount of redundancy needed to handle such faults. This problem differs from classical coding theory since it is concerned with the dynamic coded computation on data rather than just statically …

The Significance Of Sonic Branding To Strategically Stimulate Consumer Behavior: Content Analysis Of Four Interviews From Jeanna Isham’S “Sound In Marketing” Podcast, Ina Beilina

Student Theses and Dissertations

Purpose:
Sonic branding is not just about composing jingles like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” Sonic branding is an industry that strategically designs a cohesive auditory component of a brand’s corporate identity. This paper examines the psychological impact of music and sound on consumer behavior reviewing studies from the past 40 years and investigates the significance of stimulating auditory perception by infusing sound in consumer experience in the modern 2020s.

Design/methodology/approach:
Qualitative content analysis of audio media was used to test two hypotheses. Four archival oral interview recordings from Jeanna Isham’s podcast “Sound in Marketing” featuring the sonic branding experts …

Mapping The Covid-19 Pandemic In Staten Island, Vincenzo Mezzio

Student Theses

COVID-19 has had diverging effects in New York City. Out of the five boroughs, Staten Island has one of the largest percentages of COVID-19 cases relative to population. This research examines key social and spatial factors that contribute to the increase in COVID-19 cases in Staten Island). It asks: Which parts of Staten Island have higher rates of transmission of COVID-19? Which parts of the borough have higher population who are more vulnerable to COVID-19? What is the relationship between the location of vaccination centers with the rates of COVID-19 cases? Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this research examines the …

Survey On Quantum Circuit Compilation For Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computers: Artificial Intelligence To Heuristics, Janusz Kusyk, Samah Mohamed Saeed, Muharrem Umit Uyar

Publications and Research

Computationally expensive applications, including machine learning, chemical simulations, and financial modeling, are promising candidates for noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) computers. In these problems, one important challenge is mapping a quantum circuit onto NISQ hardware while satisfying physical constraints of an underlying quantum architecture. Quantum circuit compilation (QCC) aims to generate feasible mappings such that a quantum circuit can be executed in a given hardware platform with acceptable confidence in outcomes. Physical constraints of a NISQ computer change frequently, requiring QCC process to be repeated often. When a circuit cannot directly be executed on a quantum hardware due to its …

Distributed Cross-Community Collaboration For The Cloud-Based Energy Management Service, Yu-Wen Chen, J. Morris Chang

Publications and Research

Customers’ participation is a critical factor for inte-grating the distributed energy resources via demand response and demand-side management programs, especially when customers become prosumers. Incentives need to be delivered by the energy management service to attract prosumers to operate their distributed energy resources and electricity loads grid-friendly actively. The cloud-based energy management service enables virtual trading for customers within the same community to minimize cost and smooth the fluctuation. With the potential fast-growing number of service providers and customers, the needs exist for efficiently collaborating across multiple service providers and customers. This paper proposes the distributed cross-community collaboration (XCC) for …

Role Of Influence In Complex Networks, Nur Dean

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Game theory is a wide ranging research area; that has attracted researchers from various fields. Scientists have been using game theory to understand the evolution of cooperation in complex networks. However, there is limited research that considers the structure and connectivity patterns in networks, which create heterogeneity among nodes. For example, due to the complex ways most networks are formed, it is common to have some highly “social” nodes, while others are highly isolated. This heterogeneity is measured through metrics referred to as “centrality” of nodes. Thus, the more “social” nodes tend to also have higher centrality.

In this thesis, …

Set Operators, Xiaojin Ye

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research is centered on set operators. These are universally applicable regardless of the internal structure (numeric or non-numeric) of each individual observed datum. In our research, we have developed the theory of set operators to fill holes and gaps in observed data and eliminate paper shred garbage, thereby changing the observed symbolic data set into one whose pattern is closer to the pattern in the underlying population from which the observed data set was sampled with perturbations.

We describe different set operators including increasing operators, decreasing operators, ex- pansive operators, contractive operators, union preserving operators, intersection preserving op- erators, …

Philosophical Perspectives, Jochen Albrecht

Publications and Research

This entry follows in the footsteps of Anselin’s famous 1989 NCGIA working paper entitled “What is special about spatial?” (a report that is very timely again in an age when non-spatial data scientists are ignorant of the special characteristics of spatial data), where he outlines three unrelated but fundamental characteristics of spatial data. In a similar vein, I am going to discuss some philosophical perspectives that are internally unrelated to each other and could warrant individual entries in this Body of Knowledge. The first one is the notions of space and time and how they have evolved in …

Multimodal Data Integration For Real-Time Indoor Navigation Using A Smartphone, Yaohua Chang

Dissertations and Theses

We propose an integrated solution of indoor navigation using a smartphone, especially for assisting people with special needs, such as the blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals. The system consists of three components: hybrid modeling, real-time navigation, and client-server architecture. In the hybrid modeling component, the hybrid model of a building is created region by region and is organized in a graph structure with nodes as destinations and landmarks, and edges as traversal paths between nodes. A Wi-Fi/cellular-data connectivity map, a beacon signal strength map, a 3D visual model (with destinations and landmarks annotated) are collected while a modeler walks …

Cs+Sociology: Global Inequality Lab 2, Elin Waring, Janet Michello

Open Educational Resources

These materials include background for the instructor and a lab that engages student in an analysis of global inequality while learning and using the R language (a programming language for statistics). Students ultimately write a function to access country level data from the CIA World Factbook.

Cs+Sociology: Global Inequality Lab 1, Elin Waring, Janet Michello

Open Educational Resources

These materials include background for the instructor and a lab that engages student in an analysis of global inequality while learning and using the R language (a programming language for statistics). Students obtain data on the US and two other countries (one more developed and one less developed).

Designing Computational Biology Workflows With Perl - Part 1, Esma Yildirim

Open Educational Resources

This material introduces Linux File System structures and demonstrates how to use commands to communicate with the operating system through a Terminal program. Basic program structures and system() function of Perl are discussed. A brief introduction to gene-sequencing terminology and file formats are given.

Designing Computational Biology Workflows With Perl - Part 1, Esma Yildirim

Open Educational Resources

This material introduces the AWS console interface, describes how to create an instance on AWS with the VMI provided, connect to that machine instance using the SSH protocol. Once connected, it requires the students to write a script to enter the data folder, which includes gene-sequencing input files and print the first five line of each file remotely. The same exercise can be applied if the VMI is installed on a local machine using virtualization software (e.g. Oracle VirtualBox). In this case, the Terminal program of the VMI can be used to do the exercise.

Designing Computational Biology Workflows With Perl - Part 2, Esma Yildirim

Open Educational Resources

This material introduces the AWS console interface, describes how to create an instance on AWS with the VMI provided and connect to that machine instance using the SSH protocol. Once connected, it requires the students to write a script to automate the tasks to create VCF files from two different sample genomes belonging to E.coli microorganisms by using the FASTA and FASTQ files in the input folder of the virtual machine. The same exercise can be applied if the VMI is installed on a local machine using virtualization software (e.g. Oracle VirtualBox). In this case, the Terminal program of the …

Designing Computational Biology Workflows With Perl - Part 2, Esma Yildirim

Open Educational Resources

This material briefly reintroduces the DNA double Helix structure, explains SNP and INDEL mutations in genes and describes FASTA, FASTQ, BAM and VCF file formats. It also explains the index creation, alignment, sorting, marking duplicates and variant calling steps of a simple preprocessing workflow and how to write a Perl script to automate the execution of these steps on a Virtual Machine Image.

A Mobile Cyber-Physical System Framework For Aiding People With Visual Impairment, Martin Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is a challenging problem for researchers and engineers in the assistive technology (AT) community to provide suitable solutions for visually impaired people (VIPs) through AT to meet orientation, navigation and mobility (ONM) needs. Given the spectrum of assistive technologies currently available for the purposes of aiding VIPs with ONM, our literature review and survey have shown that there is a reluctance to adopt these technological solutions in the VIP community.

Motivated by these findings, we think it critical to re-examine and rethink the approaches that have been taken. It is our belief that we need to take a different …

Designing Computational Biology Workflows With Perl - Part 1 & 2, Esma Yildirim

Open Educational Resources

This manual guides the instructor to combine the partial files of the virtual machine image and construct sequencer.ova file. It is accompanied by the partial files of the virtual machine image.

Python Working With Files, Natalia Novak

Open Educational Resources

This is an introduction to work with files in Python.

Prior knowledge of variables, assignments, expressions, input-output, lists, conditionals, and loops is recommended.

For CS0 students. Part of the CUNY CS04All project.

Python Loops, Natalia Novak

Open Educational Resources

The following topics are covered:

• While Loops
• For Loops
• Nested loops
• Break and continue
• Loops else
• enumerate()

Applications: Turtle library with loops and decision procedures.

Prior knowledge of variables, assignments, expressions, input-output, lists, and conditionals is recommended.

For CS0 students. Part of the CUNY CS04All project.

Python Dictionary, Natalia Novak

Open Educational Resources

This is an introduction Python dictionary, using Python 3.

Prior knowledge of input/output in Python, and Python list is recommended.

For CS0 students. Part of the CUNY CS04All project.

Python Functions, Natalia Novak

Open Educational Resources

An introduction to functions in Python.

Prior knowledge of variables, assignments, expressions, input-output, lists, conditionals, and loops is recommended.

For CS0 students. Part of the CUNY CS04All project.

Python If Statements, Natalia Novak

Open Educational Resources

Python If-else branches, equality and relational operators, and some additional topics: Boolean operators and expressions, membership and identity operators.

Prior knowledge of variables, assignments, and expressions is recommended.

For CS0 students. Part of the CUNY CS04All project.

Rationality And Efficient Verifiable Computation, Matteo Campanelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we study protocols for delegating computation in a model where one of the parties is rational. In our model, a delegator outsources the computation of a function f on input x to a worker, who receives a (possibly monetary) reward. Our goal is to design very efficient delegation schemes where a worker is economically incentivized to provide the correct result f(x). In this work we strive for not relying on cryptographic assumptions, in particular our results do not require the existence of one-way functions.

We provide several results within the framework of rational proofs introduced by Azar …