Computer Sciences Commons^™

Audubon Data Project Final Report, Askhat Beygenov, Valinur Kutlambetov, Shrikant Patel, Phoebe Roberts, Ulfat Sayyed, Shriram Sivaraman

School of Professional Studies

The Audubon Data Project was initiated as a Clark University Capstone project. The project’s client, Mass Audubon’s Shaping the Future of Your Community program, had identified a need to improve their data management methods and make better use of their data. The Capstone team, composed of Clark University graduate students, met with the client regularly to review the current state of the data and potential improvements to be made. The process began with a data review. During the review we worked with the client to explicitly define the purposes and requirements of the data, the current process for updating and …

Motivations, Team Dynamics, Development Practices And How They Impact The Success Of Open Source Software: A Study Of Projects Of Code For America Brigades, Le Chang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Open data movement has nurtured the growth of civic open source software (OSS) in the recent decade. This emerging phenomenon has demonstrated a way that a community can collectively utilize technology to solve its problems.

This study is based on software projects in brigades of Code for America, which is a network of organizations that group volunteers to create digital solutions to community problems. In this study, we analyze the software engineering practices of current civic open source software development, participants' motivations and perceptions of the projects, and provide insights on the antecedents of success of the application development.

A …

Smartphone-Based Self Rescue System For Disaster Rescue, Xitong Zhou

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Recent ubiquitous earthquakes have been leading to mass destruction of electrical power and cellular infrastructures, and deprive the innocent lives across the world. Due to the wide-area earthquake disaster, unavailable power and communication infrastructure, limited man-power and resources, traditional rescue operations and equipment are inefficient and time-consuming, leading to the golden hours missed. With the increasing proliferation of powerful wireless devices, like smartphones, they can be assumed to be abundantly available among the disaster victims and can act as valuable resources to coordinate disaster rescue operations. In this paper, we propose a smartphone-based self-rescue system, also referred to as RescueMe, …

Metrics For Evaluating Quality Of Embeddings For Ontological Concepts, Faisal Alshargi, Saeedeh Shekarpour, Tommaso Soru, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Although there is an emerging trend towards generating embeddings for primarily unstructured data and, recently, for structured data, no systematic suite for measuring the quality of embeddings has been proposed yet. This deficiency is further sensed with respect to embeddings generated for structured data because there are no concrete evaluation metrics measuring the quality of the encoded structure as well as semantic patterns in the embedding space. In this paper, we introduce a framework containing three distinct tasks concerned with the individual aspects of ontological concepts: (i) the categorization aspect, (ii) the hierarchical aspect, and (iii) the relational aspect. Then, …

Detecting Fake News In Social Media Networks, Monther Aldwairi, Ali Alwahedi

All Works

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Fake news and hoaxes have been there since before the advent of the Internet. The widely accepted definition of Internet fake news is: fictitious articles deliberately fabricated to deceive readers'. Social media and news outlets publish fake news to increase readership or as part of psychological warfare. Ingeneral, the goal is profiting through clickbaits. Clickbaits lure users and entice curiosity with flashy headlines or designs to click links to increase advertisements revenues. This exposition analyzes the prevalence of fake news in light of the advances in communication made possible by the emergence …

Social Collaborative Media In Software Development, Didi Surian, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this entry, we discuss various collaborative media which are commonly used among software developers. We start by discussing common communication channels developers used. These communication channels are discussed in two groups: public and enterprise-wide media. We then elaborate project management media in coordinating and managing project activities. Finally, we discuss a number of online knowledge resources, i.e., collaborative/individual knowledge resources and social networks.

Exploring Generational Differences In Text Messaging Usage And Habits, Daniel Wayne Long

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Members of society today embrace multiple communication media for various purposes and intents. Text messaging has been identified as the medium of choice for continual relationship maintenance and text messaging from mobile devices overshadows all other media forms for the support of social connections. Text messaging is changing everything from how operators market their plans to how advertisers and service providers reach consumers. But just as technology usage of social media and internet access are different across generational boundaries, text messaging usage and habits may also be different for various generational groups. The majority of peer-reviewed research regarding text messaging …

"What's Ur Type?" Contextualized Classification Of User Types In Marijuana-Related Communications Using Compositional Multiview Embedding, Ugur Kursuncu, Manas Gaur, Usha Lokala, Anurag Illendula, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Raminta Daniulaityte, Amit P. Sheth, Budak Arpinar

Kno.e.sis Publications

With 93% of pro-marijuana population in US favoring legalization of medical marijuana, high expectations of a greater return for Marijuana stocks, and public actively sharing information about medical, recreational and business aspects related to marijuana, it is no surprise that marijuana culture is thriving on Twitter. After the legalization of marijuana for recreational and medical purposes in 29 states, there has been a dramatic increase in the volume of drug-related communication on Twitter. Specifically, Twitter accounts have been established for promotional and informational purposes, some prominent among them being American Ganja, Medical Marijuana Exchange, and Cannabis Now. Identification and characterization …

Personalized Prediction Of Suicide Risk For Web-Based Intervention, Amanuel Alambo, Manas Gaur, Ugur Kursuncu, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Jeremiah Schumm, Jyotishman Pathak, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Across the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged between 15 and 34, and younger people are more prone to mental health problems, suicidal thoughts, and behaviors. For instance, 80% of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder have suicide-related behaviors, and between 4-9% of them commit suicide. Moreover, the social stigma associated with mental health issues and suicide deter patients from sharing their experiences directly with others. In such a situation, social media that provides a free and open forum for voluntary expression can provide insights into suicide ideation and self-destructive behavior.

Reddit is a …

Feasibility Of Recording Sleep Quality And Sleep Duration Using Fitbit In Children With Asthma, Amit Sheth, Hong Y. Yip, Utkarshani Jaimini, Dipesh Kadariya, Vaikunth Sridharan, Revathy Venkataramanan, Tanvi Banerjee, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Maninder Kalra

Kno.e.sis Publications

Sleep disorders are common in children with asthma and are increasingly implicated in poor asthma control. Smart wearables such as the Fitbit wristband allow monitoring of users’ sleep duration and quality in their natural surroundings. However, the utility and efficacy of using such wearable devices to monitor sleep in pediatric patients with asthma have not been well-established. Thus, the objective of this study is to demonstrate the feasibility of recording sleep quality and sleep duration using Fitbit in children with asthma.

Khealth Digital Personalized Healthcare Technology For Pediatric Asthma, Utkarshani Jaimini, Hong Y. Yip, Revathy Venkataramanan, Dipesh Kadariya, Vaikunth Sridharan, Tanvi Banerjee, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Maninder Kalra, Amit Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Episodic:Traditional Clinician Centric Healthcare

Questions to be answered:

1.Can we reduce the number of asthma attacks through continuous monitoring of the patient's health condition?

2.Can we predict the asthma attack based on the data collected from the patient?

3.Can we predict the asthma vulnerability score for a patient?

4.Can we predict the asthma severity level of a patient?

5.Can we understand the casual relationship between the asthma symptom and the possible factors responsible for it?

Personalized Health Knowledge Graph, Amelia Gyrard, Manas Gaur, Saeedeh Shekarpour, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Our current health applications do not adequately take into account contextual and personalized knowledge about patients. In order to design “Personalized Coach for Healthcare” applications to manage chronic diseases, there is a need to create a Personalized Healthcare Knowledge Graph (PHKG) that takes into consideration a patient’s health condition (personalized knowledge) and enriches that with contextualized knowledge from environmental sensors and Web of Data (e.g., symptoms and treatments for diseases). To develop PHKG, aggregating knowledge from various heterogeneous sources such as the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, clinical notes, and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is necessary. In this paper, we …

Virtual Collaboration With Mobile Social Media In Multiple-Organization Projects, Zhaojun Yang, Jun Sun, Yali Zhang, Ying Wang

Information Systems Faculty Publications

This study investigates the use of mobile social media as emerging collaboration tools by virtual teams. Based on the construal level theory, it develops a research model hypothesizes that collaboration tool effectiveness influence contextual performance and task performance through the mediation of procedure agreeability. In addition, geographic dispersion, team size and project duration serve as moderators as they reflect virtual collaboration complexity. Empirical findings support most hypothesized relationships. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Smart-Teleprompter: An Online Teleprompter With Text Editing, Mikyla Wilfred

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Mikyla Wilfred

Major: Computer Science

Project Sponsor: Dr. Collard

Number of Project Credits: 3

Smart-Teleprompter

The smart-teleprompter is a website that allows a logged in user to edit text files as well as teleprompt them straight to the screen. A teleprompter is used by newscasters and other media professionals to read scripts while still looking at or near the camera. My project uses this concept creating a page that defaults to white font on a black background that can scroll through the script. The website allows the logged in user to save defaults of font color, background color, font style …

My.Eskwela: Designing An Enterprise Learning Management System To Increase Social Network And Reduce Cognitive Load, Ma. Regina Justina E. Estuar, Orven E. Llantos

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

A typical learning management system (LMS) provides a tool for teachers to upload and create links to resources, create online assessments and provide immediate evaluation to students. As much as it tries to be student centered, most LMS remains a tool for instruction rather than learning. In a learning generation that is bound by very high online social capital, connectedness to the family weakens. my.Eskwela (My School) redefines LMS to include a parent component to address the need for inclusive participation of parents in the teaching-learning process. Basis for re-design came from the low user acceptance of teachers in using …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 4.0: The Interactive Course, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Julie Cassidy, Kathleen Offenholley, Maura A. Smale, Carolyn Stallard, Deborah Sturm, Anders A. Wallace, Cuny Games Network

Publications and Research

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference, held from January 22-23, 2018, at the CUNY Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Critical Play with History (Panel) - Composition & Storytelling - Health & Cognitive Sciences - Gaming Anthropology: Teaching Culture and Power Through Games and Design (Panel) - Twine & Writing Games - Easy Ideas II - STEM Games - Global Games for Change Catalog (Panel) - Comics & Active Learning - Fact Checking & Research - Computer Science & Game Design - SimGlobal: Building a Serious Roleplay Course for the Social Sciences (Panel) - Role Playing Games, Narrative, …

Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks

Theses and Dissertations

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D …

Anatomy Of Online Hate: Developing A Taxonomy And Machine Learning Models For Identifying And Classifying Hate In Online News Media, Joni Salminen, Hind Almerekhi, Milica Milenkovic, Soon-Gyu Jung, Haewoon Kwak, Haewoon Kwak, Bernard J. Jansen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online social media platforms generally attempt to mitigate hateful expressions, as these comments can be detrimental to the health of the community. However, automatically identifying hateful comments can be challenging. We manually label 5,143 hateful expressions posted to YouTube and Facebook videos among a dataset of 137,098 comments from an online news media. We then create a granular taxonomy of different types and targets of online hate and train machine learning models to automatically detect and classify the hateful comments in the full dataset. Our contribution is twofold: 1) creating a granular taxonomy for hateful online comments that includes both …

Canines For Disabled Kids, Erin Jerrett, Margarita Mnatsakanyan, Colleen Reynolds, Yin Wang

School of Professional Studies

Canines for Disabled Kids have been working on behalf of children and their families to educate communities and promote service dog partnerships for almost twenty years. Their advocacy with local legislatures, business owners, and community leaders highlighted the difficulties encountered when differentiating service dogs from emotional support/comfort dogs. Service dogs are entitled to access by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), while emotional support/comfort dogs are not protected under the federal statute or to the same rights. Canines for Disabled Kids proposed a study to obtain a current count of licensed service dogs in the Commonwealth and investigate the feasibility …

Multilingual Sentiment Analysis : From Formal To Informal And Scarce Resource Languages, Siaw Ling Lo, Erik Cambria, Raymond Chiong, David Cornforth

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The ability to analyse online user-generated content related to sentiments (e.g., thoughts and opinions) on products or policies has become a de-facto skillset for many companies and organisations. Besides the challenge of understanding formal textual content, it is also necessary to take into consideration the informal and mixed linguistic nature of online social media languages, which are often coupled with localised slang as a way to express ‘true’ feelings. Due to the multilingual nature of social media data, analysis based on a single official language may carry the risk of not capturing the overall sentiment of online content. While efforts …

Inferring Social Media Users’ Demographics From Profile Pictures: A Face++ Analysis On Twitter Users, Soon-Gyo Jung, Jisun An, Haewoon Kwak, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this research, we evaluate the applicability of using facial recognition of social media account profile pictures to infer the demographic attributes of gender, race, and age of the account owners leveraging a commercial and well-known image service, specifically Face++. Our goal is to determine the feasibility of this approach for actual system implementation. Using a dataset of approximately 10,000 Twitter profile pictures, we use Face++ to classify this set of images for gender, race, and age. We determine that about 30% of these profile pictures contain identifiable images of people using the current state-of-the-art automated means. We then employ …

Tweet Geolocation: Leveraging Location, User And Peer Signals, Wen-Haw Chong, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Which venue is a tweet posted from? We referred this as fine-grained geolocation. To solve this problem effectively, we develop novel techniques to exploit each posting user's content history. This is motivated by our finding that most users do not share their visitation history, but have ample content history from tweet posts. We formulate fine-grained geolocation as a ranking problem whereby given a test tweet, we rank candidate venues. We propose several models that leverage on three types of signals from locations, users and peers. Firstly, the location signals are words that are indicative of venues. We propose a location-indicative …

Interactive Social Recommendation, Xin Wang, Steven C. H. Hoi, Chenghao Liu, Martin Ester

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social recommendation has been an active research topic over the last decade, based on the assumption that social information from friendship networks is beneficial for improving recommendation accuracy, especially when dealing with cold-start users who lack sufficient past behavior information for accurate recommendation. However, it is nontrivial to use such information, since some of a person's friends may share similar preferences in certain aspects, but others may be totally irrelevant for recommendations. Thus one challenge is to explore and exploit the extend to which a user trusts his/her friends when utilizing social information to improve recommendations. On the other hand, …

Critical Digital Literacies Across Scales And Beneath The Screen, Noah Asher Golden

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Digital technologies and education scholarship tend to focus on either individual creative design or analysis of the political economy. To better understand how ideologies travel across networks, critical digital literacies must focus on enactments beneath the screen, as the linguistic constructs known as software can enact interests across scales of activity to “disembed” local actions and meaning. Investigations of these mobilities and disembedding effects challenge popular notions of digital technologies as neutral, rendering overt the ways that algorithms can naturalize manifestations of power and social arrangements. Such a framework allows for descriptive analyses of the ways hegemonic discourses are enacted …

Using Tablet Technologies To Engage And Motivate Urban High School Students, Nicol R. Howard, Keith Howard

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this two-year study, researchers examined the impact of using tablet technologies across content areas in an urban high school setting. Class observations provided notable examples of how student motivation and learning appeared to be enhanced by use of the iPads in conjunction with opportunities to collaborate and be creative in the context of their learning. Interviews from a set of teachers with a range of classroom teaching experience provided multiple perspectives of the program’s impact. The opportunity for teachers and students to have the flexibility to select the apps they believe achieve curricular and/or learning goals supports the shift …

A Framework For Recommendation Of Highly Popular News Lacking Social Feedback, Nuno Moniz, Luís Torgo, Magdalini Eirinaki, Paula Branco

Faculty Publications

Social media is rapidly becoming the main source of news consumption for users, raising significant challenges to news aggregation and recommendation tasks. One of these challenges concerns the recommendation of very recent news. To tackle this problem, approaches to the prediction of news popularity have been proposed. In this paper, we study the task of predicting news popularity upon their publication, when social feedback is unavailable or scarce, and to use such predictions to produce news rankings. Unlike previous work, we focus on accurately predicting highly popular news. Such cases are rare, causing known issues for standard prediction models and …

Systematic Analysis Of Enterprise Perception Towards Cloud Adoption In The African States: The Nigerian Perspective, George A. Oguntala, Prof. Raed A. Abd-Alhameed, Dr. Janet O. Odeyemi

The African Journal of Information Systems

The desirous benefits of cloud computing such as high return on investment through efficient resource management, high application throughput and on-demand capabilities have resulted in the unprecedented global acceptance of the computing paradigm. However, research on cloud adoption indicates that fewer organisations in the African states are adopting cloud services. Thus, the purview of the paper is to examine the factors responsible for the poor adoption of cloud computing in most African enterprises using Nigeria as a case study. The study focus on the perception of IT and non-IT employees towards cloud computing. Moreover, the paper reviews the literature on …

Inferring Spread Of Readers’ Emotion Affected By Online News, Agus Sulistya, Ferdian Thung, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Depending on the reader, A news article may be viewed from many different perspectives, thus triggering different (and possibly contradicting) emotions. In this paper, we formulate a problem of predicting readers’ emotion distribution affected by a news article. Our approach analyzes affective annotations provided by readers of news articles taken from a non-English online news site. We create a new corpus from the annotated articles, and build a domain-specific emotion lexicon and word embedding features. We finally construct a multi-target regression model from a set of features extracted from online news articles. Our experiments show that by combining lexicon and …

Unobtrusive Monitoring To Detect Depression For Elderly With Chronic Illnesses, Jung-Yoon Kim, Na Liu, Hwee Xian Tan, Chao-Hsien Chu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mental health related disorders are common diseases, especially among the elder. Among the various mental health diseases, one potential threat to ageing-in-place is the risk of depression. In this paper, we propose a simple unobtrusive sensing system using passive infra-red motion sensors to monitor the activities of daily living of elderly, who are living alone. A feature extraction module comprising of three layers-states, events, and activities, and the corresponding algorithms are proposed to extract features. Four popular classification models-neural network, C4.5 decision tree, Bayesian network, and support vector machine are then applied to detect the severity of depression. We implement …

Ua8 It Security Bulletin, Wku Information Technology

WKU Administration Documents

WKU Information Technology security bulletin issued to faculty & staff via email.

• Ciampa, Mark. Ransomware
• Securing the Human
• New to WKU?
• Phone Scams
• Phishing
• SMiShing
• Handling Sensitive Data
• University Policy