Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Recommender Systems Research: A Connection-Centric Survey, Saverio Perugini, Marcos André Gonçalves, Edward A. Fox

Saverio Perugini

Recommender systems attempt to reduce information overload and retain customers by selecting a subset of items from a universal set based on user preferences. While research in recommender systems grew out of information retrieval and filtering, the topic has steadily advanced into a legitimate and challenging research area of its own. Recommender systems have traditionally been studied from a content-based filtering vs. collaborative design perspective. Recommendations, however, are not delivered within a vacuum, but rather cast within an informal community of users and social context. Therefore, ultimately all recommender systems make connections among people and thus should be surveyed from …

Automatically Generating Interfaces For Personalized Interaction With Digital Libraries, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Edward A. Fox

Saverio Perugini

We present an approach to automatically generate interfaces supporting personalized interaction with digital libraries; these interfaces augment the user-DL dialog by empowering the user to (optionally) supply out-of-turn information during an interaction, flatten or restructure the dialog, and inquire about dialog options. Interfaces generated using this approach for CITIDEL are described.

Symbolic Links In The Open Directory Project, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

We present a study to develop an improved understanding of symbolic links in web directories. A symbolic link is a hyperlink that makes a directed connection from a web page along one path through a directory to a page along another path. While symbolic links are ubiquitous in web directories such as Yahoo!, they are under-studied, and as a result, their uses are poorly understood. A cursory analysis of symbolic links reveals multiple uses: to provide navigational shortcuts deeper into a directory, backlinks to more general categories, and multiclassification. We investigated these uses in the Open Directory Project (ODP), the …

Interacting With Web Hierarchies, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Web site interfaces are a particularly good fit for hierarchies in the broadest sense of that idea, i.e. a classification with multiple attributes, not necessarily a tree structure. Several adaptive interface designs are emerging that support flexible navigation orders, exposing and exploring dependencies, and procedural information-seeking tasks. This paper provides a context and vocabulary for thinking about hierarchical Web sites and their design. The paper identifies three features that interface to information hierarchies. These are flexible navigation orders, the ability to expose and explore dependencies, and support for procedural tasks. A few examples of these features are also provided

The Partial Evaluation Approach To Information Personalization, Naren Ramakrishnan, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

Information personalization refers to the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to an individual user. By reducing information overload and customizing information access, personalization systems have emerged as an important segment of the Internet economy. This paper presents a systematic modeling methodology— PIPE (‘Personalization is Partial Evaluation’) — for personalization. Personalization systems are designed and implemented in PIPE by modeling an information-seeking interaction in a programmatic representation. The representation supports the description of information-seeking activities as partial information and their subsequent realization by partial evaluation, a technique for specializing programs. We describe the modeling methodology at a …

The Staging Transformation Approach To Mixing Initiative, Robert Capra, Michael Narayan, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones

Saverio Perugini

Mixed-initiative interaction is an important facet of many conversational interfaces, flexible planning architectures, intelligent tutoring systems, and interactive information retrieval systems. Software systems for mixed-initiative interaction must enable us to both operationalize the mixing of initiative (i.e., support the creation of practical dialogs) and to reason in real-time about how a flexible mode of interaction can be supported (e.g., from a meta-dialog standpoint). In this paper, we present the staging transformation approach to mixing initiative, where a dialog script captures the structure of the dialog and dialog control processes are realized through generous use of program transformation techniques (e.g., partial …

A Study Of Out-Of-Turn Interaction In Menu-Based, Ivr, Voicemail Systems, Saverio Perugini, Taylor J. Anderson, William F. Moroney

Saverio Perugini

We present the first user study of out-of-turn interaction in menu-based, interactive voice-response systems. Out-ofturn interaction is a technique which empowers the user (unable to respond to the current prompt) to take the conversational initiative by supplying information that is currently unsolicited, but expected later in the dialog. The technique permits the user to circumvent any flows of navigation hardwired into the design and navigate the menus in a manner which reflects their model of the task. We conducted a laboratory experiment to measure the effect of the use of outof- turn interaction on user performance and preference in a …

Exploring Out-Of-Turn Interactions With Websites, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones, Mary E. Pinney, Mary Beth Rosson

Saverio Perugini

Hierarchies are ubiquitous on the web for structuring online catalogs and indexing multidimensional attributed data sets. They are a natural metaphor for information seeking if their levelwise structure mirrors the user's conception of the underlying domain. In other cases, they can be frustrating, especially if multiple drill‐downs are necessary to arrive at information of interest. To support a broad range of users, site designers often expose multiple faceted classifications or provide within‐page pruning mechanisms. We present a new technique, called out-of-turn interaction, that increases the richness of user interaction at hierarchical sites, without enumerating all possible completion paths in the …

Pointing Devices For Wearable Computers, Saverio Perugini, Andres A. Calvo

Saverio Perugini

We present a survey of pointing devices for wearable computers, which are body-mounted devices that users can access at any time. Since traditional pointing devices (i.e., mouse, touchpad, and trackpoint) were designed to be used on a steady and flat surface, they are inappropriate for wearable computers. Just as the advent of laptops resulted in the development of the touchpad and trackpoint, the emergence of wearable computers is leading to the development of pointing devices designed for them. However, unlike laptops, since wearable computers are operated from different body positions under different environmental conditions for different uses, researchers have developed …

Personalizing The Gams Cross-Index, Saverio Perugini, Priya Lakshminarayanan, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

The NIST Guide to Available Mathematical Software (GAMS) system at http://gams.nist .gov serves as the gateway to thousands of scientific codes and modules for numerical computation. We describe the PIPE personalization facility for GAMS, whereby content from the cross-index is specialized for a user desiring software recommendations for a specific problem instance. The key idea is to (i) mine structure, and (ii) exploit it in a programmatic manner to generate personalized web pages. Our approach supports both content-based and collaborative personalization and enables information integration from multiple (and complementary) web resources. We present case studies for the domain of linear, …

Information Assurance Through Binary Vulnerability Auditing, William B. Kimball, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

The goal of this research is to develop improved methods of discovering vulnerabilities in software. A large volume of software, from the most frequently used programs on a desktop computer, such as web browsers, e-mail programs, and word processing applications, to mission-critical services for the space shuttle, is unintentionally vulnerable to attacks and thus insecure. By seeking to improve the identification of vulnerabilities in software, the security community can save the time and money necessary to restore compromised computer systems. In addition, this research is imperative to activities of national security such as counterterrorism. The current approach involves a systematic …

Personalizing Interactions With Information Systems, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialog-based applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles …

Mining Web-Functional Dependencies For Flexible Information Access, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

We present an approach to enhancing information access through Web structure mining in contrast to traditional approaches involving usage mining. Specifically, we mine the hardwired hierarchical hyperlink structure of Web sites to identify patterns of term-term co-occurrences we call Web functional dependencies (FDs). Intuitively, a Web FD ‘x y’ declares that all paths through a site involving a hyperlink labeled x also contain a hyperlink labeled y. The complete set of FDs satisfied by a site help characterize (flexible and expressive) interaction paradigms supported by a site, where a paradigm is the set of explorable sequences therein. …

Supporting Multiple Paths To Objects In Information Hierarchies: Faceted Classification, Faceted Search, And Symbolic Links, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

We present three fundamental, interrelated approaches to support multiple access paths to each terminal object in information hierarchies: faceted classification, faceted search, and web directories with embedded symbolic links. This survey aims to demonstrate how each approach supports users who seek information from multiple perspectives. We achieve this by exploring each approach, the relationships between these approaches, including tradeoffs, and how they can be used in concert, while focusing on a core set of hypermedia elements common to all. This approach provides a foundation from which to study, understand, and synthesize applications which employ these techniques. This survey does not …

The Design, Implementation, And Evaluation Of A Pointing Device For A Wearable Computer, Andres Calvo, Gregory Burnett, Victor Finomore, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

U.S. Air Force special tactics operators at times use small wearable computers (SWCs) for mission objectives. The primary pointing device of a SWC is either a touchpad or trackpoint, embedded into the chassis of the SWC. In situations where the user cannot directly interact with these pointing devices, the utility of the SWC is decreased. We developed a pointing device called the G3 that can be used for SWCs used by operators. The device utilizes gyroscopic sensors attached to the user’s index finger to move the computer cursor according to the angular velocity of his finger. We showed that, as …

Recommender Systems Research, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

We outline the history of recommender systems from their roots in information retrieval and filtering to their role in today’s Internet economy. Recommender systems attempt to reduce information overload and retain customers by selecting a subset of items from a universal set based on user preferences. Research in recommender systems lies at the intersection of several areas of computer science, such as artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, and has progressed to an important research area of its own. It is important to note that recommendations are not delivered within a vacuum, but rather cast within an informal community of users …

Program Transformations For Information Personalization, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation. The central thesis of this dissertation is that modeling interaction explicitly in a representation, and studying how partial information can be harnessed in it by program transformations to direct the flow of the interaction, can provide insight into, reveal opportunities for, and define a model for personalized interaction. To evaluate this thesis, a formal modeling methodology is developed for personalizing interactions with information systems, especially hierarchical hypermedia, based on program transformations. The …

A Generative Programming Approach To Interactive Information Retrieval: Insights And Experiences, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

We describe the application of generative programming to a problem in interactive information retrieval. The particular interactive information retrieval problem we study is the support for "out-of-turn interaction" with a website – how a user can communicate input to a website when the site is not soliciting such information on the current page, but will do so on a subsequent page. Our solution approach makes generous use of program transformations (partial evaluation, currying, and slicing) to delay the site’s current solicitation for input until after the user’s out-of-turn input is processed. We illustrate how studying out-of-turn interaction through a generative …

Realtime Query Expansion And Procedural Interfaces For Information Hierarchies, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

We demonstrate the use of two user interfaces for interacting with web hierarchies. One uses the dependencies underlying a hierarchy to perform real-time query expansion and, in this way, acts as an in situ feedback mechanism. The other enables the user to cascade the output from one interaction to the input of another, and so on, and, in this way, supports procedural information-seeking tasks without disrupting the flow of interaction.

Personalization By Program Slicing, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Personalization involves customizing information access to the end-user. As any new area of computer science research it lacks formal models to guide the design of systems. In this paper, we present a modeling methodology, based on generative programming, for personalizing interactions with hierarchical websites. The methodology entails modeling a user’s interaction with a site in a program and applying program slicing to personalize the interaction. While preserving interactivity, this approach does not require the designer to anticipate all possible user interactions a priori and provide interfaces for each. Moreover, it provides a theoretical, systematic, and implementation-neutral way to design systems …

The Good, Bad And The Indifferent: Explorations In Recommender System Health, Benjamin J. Keller, Sun-Mi Kim, N. Srinivas Vemuri, Naren Ramakrishnan, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

Our work is based on the premise that analysis of the connections exploited by a recommender algorithm can provide insight into the algorithm that could be useful to predict its performance in a fielded system. We use the jumping connections model defined by Mirza et al. [6], which describes the recommendation process in terms of graphs. Here we discuss our work that has come out of trying to understand algorithm behavior in terms of these graphs. We start by describing a natural extension of the jumping connections model of Mirza et al., and then discuss observations that have come from …

Personalization By Website Transformation: Theory And Practice, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

We present an analysis of a progressive series of out-of-turn transformations on a hierarchical website to personalize a user’s interaction with the site. We formalize the transformation in graph-theoretic terms and describe a toolkit we built that enumerates all of the traversals enabled by every possible complete series of these transformations in any site and computes a variety of metrics while simulating each traversal therein to qualify the relationship between a site’s structure and the cumulative effect of support for the transformation in a site. We employed this toolkit in two websites. The results indicate that the transformation enables users …

Staging Transformations For Multimodal Web Interaction Management, Michael Narayan, Christopher Williams, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. In addition to improving access and delivery capabilities, such interfaces enable flexible and personalized dialogs with websites, much like a conversation between humans. In this paper, we present a software framework for multimodal web interaction management that supports mixed-initiative dialogs between users and websites. A mixed-initiative dialog is one where the user and the website take turns changing the flow of interaction. The framework supports the functional specification and realization of such dialogs using staging transformations – …

An Abstract View On Modularity In Knowledge Representation, Yuliya Lierler, Miroslaw Truszczyński

Yuliya Lierler

Modularity is an essential aspect of knowledge representation and reasoning theory and practice. It has received substantial attention. We introduce model-based modular systems, an abstract framework for modular knowledge representation formalisms, similar in scope to multi-context systems but employing a simpler information-flow mechanism. We establish the precise relationship between the two frameworks, showing that they can simulate each other. We demonstrate that recently introduced modular knowledge representation formalisms integrating logic programming with satisfiability and, more generally, with constraint satisfaction can be cast as modular systems in our sense. These results show that our formalism offers a simple unifying framework for …

In Service For Sharing: Leadership And Leader - Follower Relationship Factors As Influencers Of Tacit Knowledge Sharing In The It Industry, Billy Whisnant, Odai Khasawneh

Odai Khasawneh

Aspccgtk: Towards Syntactic Parsing With Semantic Disambiguation, Yuliya Lierler, Peter Schueller

Yuliya Lierler

Integration Of Ethics Across The Curriculum: From First Year Through Senior Seminar, Gail E. Gasparich, Larry Wimmers

Gail Gasparich

An Approach To Identity Management In Clouds Without Trusted Third Parties, Akram Y. Sarhan, Leszek T. Lilien

Akram YM Sarhan

The management of sensitive data, including identity management (IDM), is an important problem in cloud computing, fundamental for authentication and fine-grained service access control. Our goal is creating an efficient and robust IDM solution that addresses critical issues in cloud computing. The proposed IDM scheme does not rely on trusted third parties (TTPs) or trusted dealers. The scheme is a multiparty interactive solution that combines RSA distributed key generation and attribute-based encryption. We believe that it will be a robust IDM privacy-preserving solution in cloud computing, because it has the following features: (i) protects sensitive data on untrusted hosts using …

Exploring The Dimensions Of Nomophobia: Developing And Validating A Questionnaire Using Mixed Methods Research, Caglar Yildirim

Caglar Yildirim

Nomophobia is defined as the fear of being out of mobile phone contact and is considered a modern age phobia introduced to our lives as a byproduct of the interaction between people and mobile information and communication technologies, especially smartphones. This research study sought to contribute to the nomophobia research literature by identifying and describing the dimensions of nomophobia and developing a questionnaire to measure nomophobia. Consequently, this study adopted a two-phase, exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The first phase was a qualitative exploration of nomophobia through semi-structured interviews conducted with nine undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university in …

The Assignment Problem And A Suboptimal Solution Technique, William Barry Gregory

William A. Gregory

"A technique is presented which finds a fast suboptimal solution to the assignment problem. This same technique is then applied to two large dynamic programming problems for which the optimal solution is not known. These examples illustrate how easily this technique can be applied and that it is better than most optimizing techniques because it is fast, cheap and only minor hand calculations are needed. The effect of different initial solutions and their value are compared and it is found that the initial solution is not as significant in a suboptimal technique as in an optimizing technique. The initial solution …