Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Runtime Optimization And Load Shedding In Mavstream: Design And Implementation, Balakumar Kendai

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

In data stream processing systems Quality of Service (or QoS) is extremely important. The system should try its best to meet the QoS requirements specified by a user. On account of this difference, unlike in a database management system, a query cannot be optimized once and executed. It has been shown that different scheduling strategies are useful in trading tuple latency requirements with memory and throughput requirements. In addition, data stream processing systems may experience significant fluctuations in input rates. In order to meet the QoS requirements of data stream processing, a runtime optimizer equipped with several scheduling and load …

Compensation Of Photobleached Images For A Cell Dynamics System, Sowmya Gopinath

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Progress in the field of medicine attributes to the discoveries in biology that require an extensive knowledge of cell dynamics. Intracellular Cell Dynamics Analysis System (ICellDAS) is a web based tool aimed at automating sub cellular particle motion estimation, tracking and mobility analysis. The purpose of this tool is to develop a better understanding of specific biology problems by visualizing biological data. For reliable analysis as well as visualization of cell dynamics, it is essential that the acquired images reflect the exact information of the specimen. The goal of the thesis is to design an interface for the ICellDAS project …

Analyzing Differences In Color Variation Sensitivity Between Experts And Novices To Find A Differentiating Process In Pigmented Skin Lesion Diagnosis, Yu-Chin Chai

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Fatal skin lesions such as melanomas appear as having high color variation to experts but often as having low variation to novices. This thesis investigated if it is possible to find a function representing an expert's color variation sensitivity to skin lesions without explicitly requiring them to provide a diagnosis. Various pigmented skin images with either normal pigmentation or with diseased lesions were evaluated by experts and novices. To determine the best color space for lesion differentiation, an optimization process based on parametric color dimensions in a RGB color space was used to find the parameters of a color transformation …

Using Part Of Speech Structure Of Text In The Prediction Of Its Readability, Jagadeesh Kondru

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Readability formulas predict the reading difficulty associated with text. They typically output a U.S. school grade level that indicates the reading ability required of a person in order for him to comprehend that text. Ability to predict text readability is useful because it helps educators select appropriate texts for students and authors write texts accessible to the audience they target. Existing readability formulas are based on countable aspects of the text such as average sentence length and average word length. We propose a new readability formula, the Readability Index, which is based on the part-of-speech structure of sentences in a …

Complementing Current Active Queue Management Schemes With Rechoke And Receiver-Window Modification (Rwm), Visvasuresh Govindaswamy

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) and Active Queue Management (AQM) schemes have been proposed for present-day TCP/IP networks to better manage network congestion. ECN enabled AQMs were shown to have a promising advantage over existing drop-tail queues. However, when implemented, they were susceptible to the following problems: 1) the timeout mechanism or the duration of the reception of three duplicate acknowledgements (ACKs), due to early-dropped packets by these AQMs, delays the response time of TCP (in reducing the offered rate) 2) using ECN with these AQMs has its downsides: i) its messages may get delayed or dropped due to congestion in …

Ca-Ole- A Collaborative And Adaptive Online Learning Environment, Paola Gomez

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Demand for online learning environments has grown in the past few years, and schools have been offering more distance courses to their students. Designing adequate online learning environments is considerably more challenging than conventional Face-To-Face courses; therefore traditional methods can not be used. This thesis proposes the creation of a Collaborative and Adaptive Online Learning Environment (CA-OLE) that provides a structure where instructors can combine their lesson materials with an adaptive system and collaborative tools. CA-OLE innovative approach consists of an adaptive framework that changes the way the learning materials prepared by instructors are presented to the students depending on …

Personalizing (Re-Ranking) Web Search Results Using Information Present On A Social Network, Sushruth Puttaswamy

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

We describe a social search engine paradigm which can be built on top of a classic search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo, etc.) and a social information network (such as FriendSter). In this thesis, the objective was to design algorithms and develop methods to efficiently combine information available in the underlying systems (Search Engine & Social Information Network) to better satisfy the search needs of a user. We are interested on how to efficiently employ social information to re-order a list of URLs retrieved by querying a search engine. The objective was to re-order the list of URLs in a way …

Adaptive Load Balancing And Change Visualization For Webvigil, Subramanian Chelladurai Hari Hara

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

There is a need for selective monitoring, the contents of web pages. Periodical visit for understanding changes to a web page is both inefficient and time consuming. WebVigiL is a system developed for automating the change detection and timely notification of HTML/XML pages based on user specified changes of interest. User interest, specified as a sentinel/profile, is automatically monitored by the system using a combination of learning-based and event-driven techniques. The first prototype concentrated on the functionality of the WebVigiL system. This thesis extends the WebVigiL system in a number of ways. The primary focus of this thesis is the …

Efficient Main Memory Algorithms For Significant Interval And Frequent Episode Discovery, Sagar Hasmukh Savla

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

There is a considerable research on sequential mining of time-series data. Sensor-based applications such as MavHome require prediction of events for automating the environment using time-series data collected over a period of time. In these applications, it is important to predict tight and accurate intervals of interest to effectively automate the application. Also, detection of frequent patterns is needed for the automation of sequence of happenings. Although, there is a considerable body of work on sequential mining of transactional data, most of them deal with time point data and make several iterations over the entire data set for discovering frequently …

Automated Software Testing Using Covering Arrays, Chinmay P. Jayaswal

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Modern society is increasingly dependent on the quality of software systems. Software testing is a widely used approach to ensure software quality. Since exhaustive testing is impractical due to resource constraints, it is necessary to strike a balance between test efforts and quality assurance. Interaction testing is one approach to marrying these two qualities. It characterizes the system under test by a set of parameters and the respective test values (domain size) for each parameter. Instead of testing all possible combinations of values for all the parameters, interaction testing constructs a covering array as a test set to cover all …

End-To-End Optimal Algorithms For Traffic Engineering, Failure Detection And Recovery In Connectionless Networks, Sukruth Srikantha

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

In this thesis we propose a novel scheme to achieve intra-domain Traffic Engineering (TE), Failure Detection and Recovery (FR) in connectionless networks. This scheme addresses rate adaptation, load balancing and stability issues of the OSPF protocol namely, network convergence times and route flapping. With the current default settings of the OSPF parameters, the network takes several tens of seconds to recover from a failure. The main component in this delay is the time required to detect the failure using the Hello protocol. Route flap is another undesirable phenomenon and needs to be eliminated to achieve greater stability and robustness in …

Evading Existing Stepping Stone Detection Methods Using Buffering, Madhu Venkateshaiah

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

To gain anonymity and complicate their apprehension, attackers launch attacks not from their own systems but from previously compromised systems called stepping stones. An effective way to detect stepping stones is by comparing of incoming and outgoing connections in a network to find correlations. For the sake of simplicity, earlier approaches ignore that an attacker can add chaff to a traffic stream. But in reality, the attacker may be able to modify applications to use cover traffic. We loosen some assumptions made by earlier researchers and propose a simple buffering technique that could be used by an attacker to evade …

A Distributed Sensor Data Management Infrastructure Based On 802.15.4/Zigbee Networks, Tianqiang Li

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Wireless sensor networks consist of a certain number of autonomous devices with sensor, every device has certain detection functionality like light, temperature pressure etc. Communication by using the radio frequency make these spatially distributed devices feasible to oversee the activities in a large scale of area/space. 802.15.4/ZigBee networks are slated to run in the unlicensed frequencies. It is a packet-based radio protocol aimed at very low-cost, battery-operated widgets and sensors that can intercommunicate and send low-bandwidth data to each other. This thesis covers the content of a software solution of data management for an 802.15.4 networks. Its main contribution lies …

The Formation And Obduction Of Ophiolites Since The Late Precambrian, Stacey Metzler

Earth & Environmental Sciences Theses - Archive

Ophiolite formation and emplacement has been episodic since the Late Precambrian. This research study examines ophiolites that formed during the Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic and Late Precambrian. The ophiolites were plotted on paleogeographic reconstructions using PALEOMAP Project maps, and the ophiolite localities were analyzed by their temporal distribution in relation to the tectonic framework in which they were emplaced. The ophiolites appear to show episodic events linked to global plate reorganization. These episodes coincide with collisional events from the supercontinents of Gondwana and Pangea. The primary mechanisms of formation and emplacement proved to be mid-ocean ridge systems and back arc basins …

Issues During The Inversion Of Crosshole Radar Data: Can We Have Confidence In The Outcome?, William P. Clement

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

One method of assessing the confidence in modeled features is to compare the results from different inversion schemes. I use synthetic traveltimes calculated from a model of an unconfined aquifer to determine the reliability of crosshole tomography. I compare the inverted models from straight and curved ray approximations to wave propagation. I investigate the effects of added random noise, regularization, the starting model, and the reference model on the curved ray inversion method. I also investigate the effects of different grid sizes for the forward model and of limited ray coverage through the earth model. Understanding the effects of these …

Implicit Online Learning With Kernels, Li Cheng, S. V. N. Vishwanathan, Dale Schuurmans, Shaojun Wang, Terry Caelli

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present two new algorithms for online learning in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Our first algorithm, ILK (implicit online learning with kernels), employs a new, implicit update technique that can be applied to a wide variety of convex loss functions. We then introduce a bounded memory version, SILK (sparse ILK), that maintains a compact representation of the predictor without compromising solution quality, even in non-stationary environments. We prove loss bounds and analyze the convergence rate of both. Experimental evidence shows that our proposed algorithms outperform current methods on synthetic and real data.

Generating Paraphrases With Greater Variation Using Syntactic Phrases, Rebecca Diane Madsen

Theses and Dissertations

Given a sentence, a paraphrase generation system produces a sentence that says the same thing but usually in a different way. The paraphrase generation problem can be formulated in the machine translation paradigm; instead of translation of English to a foreign language, the system translates an English sentence (for example) to another English sentence. Quirk et al. (2004) demonstrated this approach to generate almost 90% acceptable paraphrases. However, most of the sentences had little variation from the original input sentence. Leveraging syntactic information, this thesis project presents an approach that successfully generated more varied paraphrase sentences than the approach of …

A Fuzzy Logic Controller For Autonomous Wheeled Vehicles, Mohamed Trabia, Linda Z. Shi, Neil Eugene Hodge

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

Autonomous vehicles have potential applications in many fields, such as replacing humans in hazardous environments, conducting military missions, and performing routine tasks for industry. Driving ground vehicles is an area where human performance has proven to be reliable. Drivers typically respond quickly to sudden changes in their environment. While other control techniques may be used to control a vehicle, fuzzy logic has certain advantages in this area; one of them is its ability to incorporate human knowledge and experience, via language, into relationships among the given quantities. Fuzzy logic controllers for autonomous vehicles have been successfully applied to address various …

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Cate Weeks, Shane Bevell, Mamie Peers, Lori Bachand

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Use Of Remote Sensing Applications And Its Implications To The Society, Stefan Robila

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Remote sensing, i.e. the technology that allows measuring object's properties from a distance, is currently undergoing tremendous advances in both precision and areas of applicability. Our study provides an overview of the recent developments in RS applications and their implications to the society. This was approached from three distinct directions, all with significant influence on the human's perception of the technology. First, we discuss how disaster prevention, reaction, and recovery can be supported by remote sensing. Next, we look at the popular view of remote sensing, as illustrated by media and commercial applications. Finally, we discuss legal implication of sensing …

Spin-Lattice Relaxation Of Heavy Spin-1/2 Nuclei In Diamagnetic Solids: A Raman Process Mediated By Spin-Rotation Interaction, Alexander J. Vega, Peter A. Beckmann, Shi Bai, Cecil Dybowski

Physics Faculty Research and Scholarship

We present a theory for the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation of heavy spin-1/2 nuclei in solids, which explains within an order of magnitude the unexpectedly effective lead and thallium nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rates observed in the ionic solids lead molybdate, lead chloride, lead nitrate, thallium nitrate, thallium nitrite, and thallium perchlorate. The observed rates are proportional to the square of the temperature and are independent of magnetic field. This rules out all known mechanisms usually employed to model nuclear spin relaxation in lighter spin-1/2 nuclei. The relaxation is caused by a Raman process involving the interactions between nuclear spins and lattice …

(207)Pb Spin-Lattice Relaxation In Solid Pbmoo(4) And Pbcl(2), Peter A. Beckmann, Shi Bai, Alexander J. Vega, Cecil Dybowski

Physics Faculty Research and Scholarship

We have measured the (207)Pb nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate R as a function of temperature T at two nuclear magnetic resonance frequencies omega(0) in the ionic solids lead molybdate (PbMoO(4)) and lead chloride (PbCl(2)). R is unexpectedly large, proportional to T(2), and independent of omega(0). Taken together with previous work in lead nitrate [Pb(NO(3))(2)], these results show that the relaxation does not depend on the nature or rotational motion of the counterion, particularly since the counterion in lead chloride is a single chlorine atom. The theory that explains the observed relaxation rate is reviewed. A second-order Raman process dominates the …

Explicit Symmetries Of Strict Feedforward Control Systems, Issa Amadou Tall, Witold Respondek

Miscellaneous (presentations, translations, interviews, etc)

We show that any symmetry of a smooth strict feedforward system is conjugated to a scaling translation and any 1-parameter family of symmetries to a family of scaling translations along the first variable. We compute explicitly those symmetries by finding the conjugating diffeomorphism. We deduce, in accordance with our previous work, that a smooth system is feedback equivalent to a strict feedforward form if and only if it gives rise to a sequence of systems, such that each element of the sequence, firstly, possesses an infinitesimal symmetry whose flow is conjugated to a 1- parameter families of scaling translations and, …

A Linear Modulation Osl Study Of The Unstable Ultrafast Component In Samples From Glacial Lake Hitchcock, Massachusetts, Usa, R. J. Goble, Tammy M. Rittenour

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Optical ages were determined for samples from delta and sand dune deposits associated with Glacial Lake Hitchcock near Amherst, Massachusetts using the single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) technique. However, a strong unstable ultrafast component caused initial rejection of data from a large proportion of aliquots. A linearly modulated blue OSL (LM-OSL) study was undertaken on the sample with the strongest ultrafast component, with the data modelled using the equation of Bulur et al. (2000) as 5 fast, medium and slow components, and 1 ultrafast component.

The ultrafast component dominates the LM–OSL, almost completely obscuring the fast component. …

New Tests Of Univariate Symmetry Based On The Gini Mean Difference, Hend Ouda

Dissertations

Gini mean difference (GMD) was proposed as a measure of income inequality by Corrado Gini in 1912. Since then it has been widely applied - mostly in theeconomics, but also in statistical and social science research.

Four statistical tests of univariate symmetry are being proposed---all based on the comparison of variation below and above the median (known or estimated) measured by the GMD. These tests are applicable to the data from populations with median known and unknown, and each of them has its rank-basedcounterpart, so they can also be used for ordinal data.

A Monte Carlo simulation study was performed …

A Handheld Neutron-Detection Sensor System Utilizing A New Class Of Boron Carbide Diode, Kevin Osberg, Nathan Schemm, M. Susan Hallbeck, Sina Balkir, Peter A. Dowben, Jennifer I. Brand, Michael W. Hoffman

Peter Dowben Publications

A handheld neutron-detection sensor application is described in this paper. The sensor system utilizes a new class of boron carbide diode that interacts with incoming neutrons. To interface with the boron carbide diode, an integrated front end is designed in a 1.5-μm standard CMOS technology. With the diode and front-end microchip, a handheld neutron-detection system was realized with an embedded microcontroller for real-time processing. The handheld detector operation was then tested with a plutonium–beryllium neutron source. Test and measurement results confirm the validity of the approach and the functionality of the design.

Theory Of Cavity-Polariton Self-Trapping And Optical Strain In Polymer Chains, M. V. Katkov, Yuriy V. Pershin Dr, C. Piermarocchi

Faculty Publications

We consider a semiconductor polymer chain coupled to a single electromagnetic mode in a cavity. The excitations of the chain have a mixed exciton-photon character and are described as polaritons. Polaritons are coupled to the lattice by the deformation potential interaction and can propagate in the chain. We find that the presence of optical excitation in the polymer induces strain on the lattice. We use a BCS variational wave function to calculate the chemical potential of the polaritons as a function of their density. We analyze first the case of a short chain with only two unit cells in order …

Sexual Interactions: Why We Should Talk About Sex In Hci, Johanna Brewer, Joseph Jofish Kaye, Amanda Williams, Susan Wyche

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Within the CHI community there is growing interest in moving beyond cognition and expanding into the social, emotional, and bodily aspects of the human-computer experience. Sex lies at the intersection of these concerns, and indeed outside of HCI, has become a central topic for anthropology, behavioral sciences, and other areas of intellectual inquiry. Examining sex and themes related to it has benefited these disciplines and we intend to understand how it can contribute to HCI. There is a tendency to desexualize technology, despite the presence of sex and sexuality in a variety of interactions, including the use of the internet …

Clique Percolation For Finding Naturally Cohesive And Overlapping Document Clusters, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong, Yunqing Xia, Ruifeng Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Techniques for find document clusters mostly depend on models that impose strong explicit and/or implicit priori assumptions. As a consequence, the clustering effects tend to be unnatural and stray away from the intrinsic grouping natures of a document collection. We apply a novel graph-theoretic technique called Clique Percolation Method (CPM) for document clustering. In this method, a process of enumerating highly cohesive maximal document cliques is performed in a random graph, where those strongly adjacent cliques are mingled to form naturally overlapping clusters. Our clustering results can unveil the inherent structural connections of the underlying data. Experiments show that CPM …

Towards Effective Content-Based Music Retrieval With Multiple Acoustic Feature Combination, Jialie Shen, John Shepherd, Ann H. H. Ngu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a new approach to constructing music descriptors to support efficient content-based music retrieval and classification. The system applies multiple musical properties combined with a hybrid architecture based on principal component analysis (PCA) and a multilayer perceptron neural network. This architecture enables straightforward incorporation of multiple musical feature vectors, based on properties such as timbral texture, pitch, and rhythm structure, into a single low-dimensioned vector that is more effective for classification than the larger individual feature vectors. The use of supervised training enables incorporation of human musical perception that further enhances the classification process. We compare …