Computer Sciences Commons^™

A Framework For Personalized Dynamic Cross-Selling In E-Commerce Retailing, Arun K. Timalsina

Wayne State University Dissertations

Cross-selling and product bundling are prevalent strategies in the retail sector. Instead of static bundling offers, i.e. giving the same offer to everyone, personalized dynamic cross-selling generates targeted bundle offers and can help maximize revenues and profits. In resolving the two basic problems of dynamic cross-selling, which involves selecting the right complementary products and optimizing the discount, the issue of computational complexity becomes central as the customer base and length of the product list grows. Traditional recommender systems are built upon simple collaborative filtering techniques, which exploit the informational cues gained from users in the form of product ratings and …

Type-Elimination-Based Reasoning For The Description Logic Shiqbs Using Decision Diagrams And Disjunctive Datalog, Sebastian Rudolph, Markus Krotzsch, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We propose a novel, type-elimination-based method for standard reasoning in the description logic SHIQbs extended by DL-safe rules. To this end, we first establish a knowledge compilation method converting the terminological part of an ALCIb knowledge base into an ordered binary decision diagram (OBDD) that represents a canonical model. This OBDD can in turn be transformed into disjunctive Datalog and merged with the assertional part of the knowledge base in order to perform combined reasoning. In order to leverage our technique for full SHIQbs , we provide a stepwise reduction from SHIQbs to ALCIb that preserves satisfiability and entailment of …

Towards Real-Time Mixed Reality Matting In Natural Scenes, Nicholas Beato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Mixed Reality scenarios, background replacement is a common way to immerse a user in a synthetic environment. Properly identifying the background pixels in an image or video is a dif- ficult problem known as matting. Proper alpha mattes usually come from human guidance, special hardware setups, or color dependent algorithms. This is a consequence of the under-constrained nature of the per pixel alpha blending equation. In constant color matting, research identifies and replaces a background that is a single color, known as the chroma key color. Unfortunately, the algorithms force a controlled physical environment and favor constant, uniform lighting. …

A Fitness Function Elimination Theory For Blackbox Optimization And Problem Class Learning, Gautham Anil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The modern view of optimization is that optimization algorithms are not designed in a vacuum, but can make use of information regarding the broad class of objective functions from which a problem instance is drawn. Using this knowledge, we want to design optimization algorithms that execute quickly (efficiency), solve the objective function with minimal samples (performance), and are applicable over a wide range of problems (abstraction). However, we present a new theory for blackbox optimization from which, we conclude that of these three desired characteristics, only two can be maximized by any algorithm. We put forward an alternate view of …

Gradient Based Mrf Learning For Image Restoration And Segmentation, Kegan Samuel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The undirected graphical model or Markov Random Field (MRF) is one of the more popular models used in computer vision and is the type of model with which this work is concerned. Models based on these methods have proven to be particularly useful in low-level vision systems and have led to state-of-the-art results for MRF-based systems. The research presented will describe a new discriminative training algorithm and its implementation. The MRF model will be trained by optimizing its parameters so that the minimum energy solution of the model is as similar as possible to the ground-truth. While previous work has …

Algorithms For Community Identification In Complex Networks, Mahadevan Vasudevan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

First and foremost, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Narsingh Deo, for his excellent guidance and encouragement, and also for introducing me to this wonderful science of complex networks. Without his support this dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the members of my research committee, professors Charles Hughes, Ratan Guha, Mainak Chatterjee and Yue Zhao for their advice and guidance during the entire process. I am indebted to the faculty and the staff of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for providing me the resources and …

Hfs Plus File System Exposition And Forensics, Scott Ware

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Macintosh Hierarchical File System Plus, HFS +, or as it is commonly referred to as the Mac Operating System, OS, Extended, was introduced in 1998 with Mac OS X 8.1. HFS+ is an update to HFS, Mac OS Standard format that offers more efficient use of disk space, implements international friendly file names, future support for named forks, and facilitates booting on non-Mac OS operating systems through different partition schemes. The HFS+ file system is efficient, yet, complex. It makes use of B-trees to implement key data structures for maintaining meta-data about folders, files, and data. The implementation of …

Evolution Through The Search For Novelty, Joel Lehman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I present a new approach to evolutionary search called novelty search, wherein only behavioral novelty is rewarded, thereby abstracting evolution as a search for novel forms. This new approach contrasts with the traditional approach of rewarding progress towards the objective through an objective function. Although they are designed to light a path to the objective, objective functions can instead deceive search into converging to dead ends called local optima. As a significant problem in evolutionary computation, deception has inspired many techniques designed to mitigate it. However, nearly all such methods are still ultimately susceptible to deceptive local optima because they …

Leveraging Help Requests In Pomdp Intelligent Tutors, Jeremiah Folsom-Kovarik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) are computer programs that model individual learners and adapt instruction to help each learner differently. One way ITSs differ from human tutors is that few ITSs give learners a way to ask questions. When learners can ask for help, their questions have the potential to improve learning directly and also act as a new source of model data to help the ITS personalize instruction. Inquiry modeling gives ITSs the ability to answer learner questions and refine their learner models with an inexpensive new input channel. In order to support inquiry modeling, an advanced planning formalism is …

Online Path Planning And Control Solution For A Coordinated Attack Of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles In A Dynamic Environment, Juan Vega-Nevarez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The role of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has significantly expanded in the military sector during the last decades mainly due to their cost effectiveness and their ability to eliminate the human life risk. Current UAV technology supports a variety of missions and extensive research and development is being performed to further expand its capabilities. One particular field of interest is the area of the low cost expendable UAV since its small price tag makes it an attractive solution for target suppression. A swarm of these low cost UAVs can be utilized as guided munitions or kamikaze UAVs to attack …

4d-Ct Lung Registration And Its Application For Lung Radiation Therapy, Yugang Min

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Radiation therapy has been successful in treating lung cancer patients, but its efficacy is limited by the inability to account for the respiratory motion during treatment planning and radiation dose delivery. Physics-based lung deformation models facilitate the motion computation of both tumor and local lung tissue during radiation therapy. In this dissertation, a novel method is discussed to accurately register 3D lungs across the respiratory phases from 4D-CT datasets, which facilitates the estimation of the volumetric lung deformation models. This method uses multi-level and multi-resolution optical flow registration coupled with thin plate splines (TPS), to address registration issue of inconsistent …

Comparing Android Applications To Find Copying, Larry Melling, Bob Zeidman

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Android smartphone operating system includes a Java virtual machine that enables rapid development and deployment of a wide variety of applications. The open nature of the platform means that reverse engineering of applications is relatively easy, and many developers are concerned as applications similar to their own show up in the Android marketplace and want to know if these applications are pirated. Fortunately, the same characteristics that make an Android application easy to reverse engineer and copy also provide opportunities for Android developers to compare downloaded applications to their own. This paper describes the process for comparing a developer’s …

Forensic Evidence Identification And Modeling For Attacks Against A Simulated Online Business Information System, Manghui Tu, Dianxiang Xu, Eugene Butler, Amanda Schwartz

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Forensic readiness of business information systems can support future forensics investigation or auditing on external/internal attacks, internal sabotage and espionage, and business fraud. To establish forensics readiness, it is essential for an organization to identify which fingerprints are relevant and where they can be located, to determine whether they are logged in a forensically sound way and whether all the needed fingerprints are available to reconstruct the events successfully. Also, a fingerprint identification and locating mechanism should be provided to guide potential forensics investigation in the future. Furthermore, mechanisms should be established to automate the security incident tracking and reconstruction …

To License Or Not To License Updated: An Examination Of State Statutes Regarding Private Investigators And Digital Examiners, Thomas Lonardo, Doug White, Alan Rea

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this update to the 2009 year's study, the authors examine statutes that regulate, license, and enforce investigative functions in each US state. After identification and review of Private Investigator licensing requirements, the authors find that very few state statutes explicitly differentiate between Private Investigators and Digital Examiners, but do see a trend of more states making some distinction. The authors contacted all state regulatory agencies where statutory language was not explicit, and as a result, set forth the various state approaches to professional Digital Examiner licensing. As was the case in the previous two iterations of this research, the …

Dns In Computer Forensics, Neil F. Wright

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Domain Name Service (DNS) is a critical core component of the global Internet and integral to the majority of corporate intranets. It provides resolution services between the human-readable name-based system addresses and the machine operable Internet Protocol (IP) based addresses required for creating network level connections. Whilst structured as a globally dispersed resilient tree data structure, from the Global and Country Code Top Level Domains (gTLD/ccTLD) down to the individual site and system leaf nodes, it is highly resilient although vulnerable to various attacks, exploits and systematic failures.

Simulation Visualization Rhetoric And It's Practical Implications, D'An Knowles Ball, Andrew J. Collins

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Modeling and simulation has moved far beyond simple data representation into the world of visual communication over the past 15 years; ultimately, the acceptance of M&S within mainstream science and society will depend on the results that are produced visually. A simulation’s function is of primary importance to its end result, but it cannot be denied that the discipline of M&S now prizes fancy graphics to communicate. Rhetorical methodological decisions have the greatest impact on the end user, and considerations that bring visual rhetoric to modeling and simulation should be examined as a necessity to application. This paper will expose …

Study Of Human Activity In Video Data With An Emphasis On View-Invariance, Nazim Ashraf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The perception and understanding of human motion and action is an important area of research in computer vision that plays a crucial role in various applications such as surveillance, HCI, ergonomics, etc. In this thesis, we focus on the recognition of actions in the case of varying viewpoints and different and unknown camera intrinsic parameters. The challenges to be addressed include perspective distortions, differences in viewpoints, anthropometric variations, and the large degrees of freedom of articulated bodies. In addition, we are interested in methods that require little or no training. The current solutions to action recognition usually assume that there …

Ipad2 Logical Acquisition: Automated Or Manual Examination?, Somaya Ali, Sumaya Alhosani, Farah Alzarooni, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Due to their usage increase worldwide, iPads are on the path of becoming key sources of digital evidence in criminal investigations. This research investigated the logical backup acquisition and examination of the iPad2 device using the Apple iTunes backup utility while manually examining the backup data (manual examination) and automatically parsing the backup data (Lantern software-automated examination).The results indicate that a manual examination of the logical backup structure from iTunes reveals more digital evidence, especially if installed application data is required for an investigation. However, the researchers note that if a quick triage is needed of an iOS device, then …

Optimal Adaptive Control Of Nonlinear Continuous-Time Systems In Strict Feedback Form With Unknown Internal Dynamics, H. Zargarzadeh, T. Dierks, S. Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A novel approach is proposed for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) optimal adaptive control of nonlinear continuous-time systems in strict feedback form with uncertain internal dynamics. First, it is shown that the optimal adaptive tracking problem of strict feedback systems can be reduced to an optimal regulation problem of affine nonlinear continuous-time systems expressed as a function of tracking error by designing a properly chosen adaptive feedforward control input. Then, an optimal adaptive feedback scheme is introduced for the affine system to estimate the solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation online which becomes the optimal feedback control input for the closed-loop system. …

Forecasting Natural Gas Consumption In İstanbul Using Neural Networks And Multivariate Time Series Methods, Ömer Fahretti̇n Demi̇rel, Seli̇m Zai̇m, Ahmet Çalişkan, Pinar Özuyar

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The fast changes and developments in the world's economy have substantially increased energy consumption. Consequently, energy planning has become more critical and important. Forecasting is one of the main tools utilized in energy planning. Recently developed computational techniques such as genetic algorithms have led to easily produced and accurate forecasts. In this paper, a natural gas consumption forecasting methodology is developed and implemented with state-of-the-art techniques. We show that our forecasts are quite close to real consumption values. Accurate forecasting of natural gas consumption is extremely critical as the majority of purchasing agreements made are based on predictions. As a …

Strongly Complete Logics For Coalgebras, Alexander Kurz, Jiří Rosický

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Coalgebras for a functor model different types of transition systems in a uniform way. This paper focuses on a uniform account of finitary logics for set-based coalgebras. In particular, a general construction of a logic from an arbitrary set-functor is given and proven to be strongly complete under additional assumptions. We proceed in three parts.

Part I argues that sifted colimit preserving functors are those functors that preserve universal algebraic structure. Our main theorem here states that a functor preserves sifted colimits if and only if it has a finitary presentation by operations and equations. Moreover, the presentation of the …

The Rock 2012, School Of Engineering And Computer Science

The Rock

No abstract provided.

Applications Of Extenics To 2d-Space And 3d-Space, Florentin Smarandache, Victor Vladareanu

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this article one proposes several numerical examples for applying the extension set to 2D- and 3D-spaces. While rectangular and prism geometrical figures can easily be decomposed from 2D and 3D into 1D linear problems, similarly for the circle and the sphere, it is not possible in general to do the same for other geometrical figures.

A Video Encoder Design Combining Edge-Adaptive Lifting And Scalable Block-Matching With Motion Compensation, Sedat Telçeken, Ömer Nezi̇h Gerek

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This study aimed to achieve video compression by using a novel lifting-based hybrid encoder that also uses motion compensation. The proposed encoder separates video frames into temporal groups, within which certain frames are selected for producing temporal and spatial predictions over the rest of the frames. The predictions utilize spatiotemporal lifting together with motion compensation. The combination of spatial information with temporal changes is inspired from the idea of edge-adaptive lifting, which alters prediction directions in images. A further incorporation of well-known block-matching methods with different levels was observed to improve the performance. To provide the first compression results, unpredicted …

Tunable Srr-Based Substrate For A Microstrip Patch Antenna, Adnan Sondaş, Mustafa Hi̇kmet Bi̇lgehan Uçar, Yunus Emre Erdemli̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a microstrip patch antenna over an artificial substrate composed of split-ring resonator (SRR) elements is introduced. As the SRR-based substrate provides miniaturization for the patch, metallic loadings placed between the rings of the SRR elements offer frequency-tuning capability. Practical switch models are employed in lieu of those loadings to demonstrate dynamic control of the operational frequency. The full-wave analysis and design of the proposed tunable patch were carried out using CST Microwave Studio, and the cross-comparisons were provided via Ansoft HFSS. Preliminary measurements are also presented, demonstrating the prospective performance of the proposed design.

Research On Cutoff Wavelength Of Dominant Mode And Field Patterns In Trapezoidal Microshield Lines, Hai Sun, Yujiang Wu

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The influence of the position of the metallic signal strip on the cutoff characteristic of the dominant mode and the field patterns in 3 types of trapezoidal microshield lines are calculated by the edge-based finite element method. These trapezoidal microshield lines include trapezoidal microshield lines with a single signal line, dual signal lines, and 3 signal lines. The cutoff wavelength of the dominant mode can be adjusted by changing the dimensions of metallic signal strips as well as by adjusting their positions. Field patterns of the dominant mode and the first-higher-order mode for different dimensions and the dielectric constant of …

A New Multipath Channel Transformation Technique, Tuğrul Çavdar

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

A new channel transformation technique is introduced in this paper The technique is employed on the receiver side and has 2 filters. The first filter is the inverse complex conjugate of the estimated channel. The profile of this filter's output is triangular. The taps of the second filter are calculated according to the output of the first filter to produce an exponentially decreasing profile. This technique transforms most channel profiles to exponentially decreasing channel profiles. Thus equalizers adopting the proposed technique may have better bit error rates and lower computational complexity on frequency-selective channels. This paper evaluates the efficiency of …

Effects Of Diacritics On Turkish Information Retrieval, Adi̇l Alpkoçak, Meltem Ceylan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

We investigate the effects of improper use of diacritics in the Turkish alphabet on information retrieval. A diacritic is simply a supplementary sign added to a letter to change the sound value of the letter, and the Turkish alphabet has 5 special letters derived from Latin by adding different diacritics. The statistical analysis performed in this study shows that retrieval performance significantly decreases when documents and queries contain letters with different forms, such that documents consist of letters with diacritics while queries consist of standard Latin letters and vice versa. In order to tackle this challenge, we propose 3 approaches: …

Context Gathering And Management For Centralized Context-Aware Handover In Heterogeneous Mobile Networks, Behrouz Shahgholi Ghahfarokhi, Naser Movahhedinia

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Context-aware handover decision has recently been considered as a candidate for next-generation heterogeneous wireless networks. The context-aware handover methods proposed in the literature differ in some aspects, including the location of the handover decision (distributed or centralized). Depending on the location of the decision point, the appropriate part of the context knowledge should be transferred in those methods. This paper proposes a context gathering mechanism for a policy-based context-aware handover method, which implements mobile-initiated and network assisted handover. The proposed network context gathering mechanism is based on a media-independent handover (MIH) framework and the paper justifies the usability of the …

Observer Path Design By Imitation Of Competing Constraints For Bearing Only Tracking, Ridvan Gürcan, Mesut Kartal

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In the bearing only tracking (BOT) problem the observer tries to estimate the position of the target. The observer maneuver is a requirement to guarantee the uniqueness of the estimation. Determining an observer maneuver for BOT is a difficult problem due to its nonlinear nature. This paper proposes a new method that combines the reference BOT scenarios as a priori knowledge with the incoming bearing measurements to obtain an observer maneuver in a generic optimization framework. The use of a priori knowledge makes the observer maneuver design more realistic. The maneuver recommendation process uses the imitation of competing constraints. In …