Computer Sciences Commons^™

Applying Emotional Analysis For Automated Content Moderation, John Shelnutt

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this project is to explore the effectiveness of emotional analysis as a means to automatically moderate content or flag content for manual moderation in order to reduce the workload of human moderators in moderating toxic content online. In this context, toxic content is defined as content that features excessive negativity, rudeness, or malice. This often features offensive language or slurs. The work involved in this project included creating a simple website that imitates a social media or forum with a feed of user submitted text posts, implementing an emotional analysis algorithm from a word emotions dataset, designing …

Why Too Much Interaction Between Different Parts Of The Brain Leads To Unhappiness, Ricardo Alvarez, Yamel Hernandez, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Reasonably recent experiments show that unhappiness is strongly correlated with the excessive interaction between two parts of the brain -- amygdala and hippocampus. At first glance, in situations when outside signals are positive, additional interaction between two parts of the brain that get signals from different sensors should only reinforce the positive feeling. In this paper, we provide a simple explanation of why, instead of the expected reinforcement, we observe unhappiness.

The Generalized Riemann Hypothesis And Applications To Primality Testing, Peter Hall

University Scholar Projects

The Riemann Hypothesis, posed in 1859 by Bernhard Riemann, is about zeros
of the Riemann zeta-function in the complex plane. The zeta-function can be repre-
sented as a sum over positive integers n of terms 1/ns when s is a complex number
with real part greater than 1. It may also be represented in this region as a prod-
uct over the primes called an Euler product. These definitions of the zeta-function
allow us to find other representations that are valid in more of the complex plane,
including a product representation over its zeros. The Riemann Hypothesis says that
all …

Randomized Tax Deadlines Can Help Economy, Julio C. Urenda, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Purpose: While the main purpose of reporting -- e.g., reporting for taxes -- is to gauge the economic state of a company, the fact that reporting is done at pre-determined dates distorts the reporting results. For example, to create a larger impression of their productivity, companies fire temporary workers before the reporting date and re-hire then right away. The purpose of this study is to decide how to avoid such distortion.

Design/methodology/approach: We want to make our solution applicable for all possible reasonable optimality criteria. Thus, we use a general formalism for describing and analyzing all such criteria.

Findings: We …

Godel's Proof Of Existence Of God Revisited, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In his unpublished paper, the famous logician Kurt Godel provided arguments in favor of the existence of God. These arguments are presented in a very formal way, which makes them difficult to understand to many interested readers. In this paper, we describe a simplifying modification of Godel's proof which will hopefully make it easier to understand. We also describe, in clear terms, why Godel's arguments are just that -- arguments -- and not a convincing proof.

Five Revolutionary Ideas In The 1950s-70s Science: 90th Birthday Of Revolt Pimenov, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

This year, Revolt Pimenov, a philosophical thinker whose main ideas were in geometry of space-time, would have turned 90. In this essay, we explain how in the 1950s-70s, when he was most productive, his were two of the five natural and important revolutionary scientific ideas -- along with fuzzy logic, constructive mathematics, and scalar-tensor theory of gravitation, ideas that, in our opinions, still have potential to change the world.

How To Teach Advanced Highly Motivated Students: Teaching Strategy Of Iosif Yakovlevich Verebeichik, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The paper describes and explains the teaching strategy of Iosif Yakovlevich Verebeichik, a successful mathematics teacher at special mathematical high schools -- schools for students interested in and skilled in mathematics. The resulting strategy seems counterintuitive and contrary to all the pedagogical advice. Our explanation is not complete: it worked well for this teacher, but others who tried to follow seemingly the same strategy did not succeed. How he made it work, how can others make it work -- this is still not clear. In the words of Verebeichik himself, while mathematics itself is a science, teaching mathematics is an …

Visual Analysis Of Historical Lessons Learned During Exercises For The United States Air Force Europe (Usafe), Samantha O'Rourke

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Within the United States Air Force, there are repeated patterns of differences observed during exercises. After an exercise is completed, forms are filled out detailing observations, successes, and recommendations seen throughout the exercise. At the most, no two reports are identical and must be analyzed by personnel and then categorized based on common themes observed. Developing a computer application will greatly reduce the time and resources used to analyze each After Action Report. This application can visually represent these observations and optimize the effectiveness of these exercises. The visualization is done through graphs displaying the frequency of observations and recommendations. …

Defect Detection In Atomic Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy Images Using Machine Learning, Philip Cho, Aihua W. Wood, Krishnamurthy Mahalingam, Kurt Eyink

Faculty Publications

Point defects play a fundamental role in the discovery of new materials due to their strong influence on material properties and behavior. At present, imaging techniques based on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are widely employed for characterizing point defects in materials. However, current methods for defect detection predominantly involve visual inspection of TEM images, which is laborious and poses difficulties in materials where defect related contrast is weak or ambiguous. Recent efforts to develop machine learning methods for the detection of point defects in TEM images have focused on supervised methods that require labeled training data that is generated via …

Lecture 08: Partial Eigen Decomposition Of Large Symmetric Matrices Via Thick-Restart Lanczos With Explicit External Deflation And Its Communication-Avoiding Variant, Zhaojun Bai

Mathematical Sciences Spring Lecture Series

There are continual and compelling needs for computing many eigenpairs of very large Hermitian matrix in physical simulations and data analysis. Though the Lanczos method is effective for computing a few eigenvalues, it can be expensive for computing a large number of eigenvalues. To improve the performance of the Lanczos method, in this talk, we will present a combination of explicit external deflation (EED) with an s-step variant of thick-restart Lanczos (s-step TRLan). The s-step Lanczos method can achieve an order of s reduction in data movement while the EED enables to compute eigenpairs in batches along with a number …

Lecture 00: Opening Remarks: 46th Spring Lecture Series, Tulin Kaman

Mathematical Sciences Spring Lecture Series

Opening remarks for the 46th Annual Mathematical Sciences Spring Lecture Series at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Why Decimal System? Why Communities With More Than 150 Folks Tend To Split? New Consequences Of The Seven Plus Minus Two Law, Leobardo Orea Amador, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Why are we using the decimal system to describe numbers? Why all over the world, communities with more than 150 folks tend to split? In this paper, we show that both phenomena -- as well as some other phenomena -- can be explained if we take into account the seven plus minus two law, according to which a person can keep in immediate memory from 5 to 9 items.

Why, In Deep Learning, Non-Smooth Activation Function Works Better Than Smooth Ones, Daniel Cruz, Richard Godoy, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Since in the physical world, most dependencies are smooth (differentiable), traditionally, smooth functions were used to approximate these dependencies. In particular, neural networks used smooth activation functions such as the sigmoid function. However, the successes of deep learning showed that in many cases, non-smooth activation functions like max(0,z) work much better. In this paper, we explain why in many cases, non-smooth approximating functions often work better -- even when the approximated dependence is smooth.

Why Semi-Supervised Learning Makes Sense: A Pedagogical Note, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The main idea behind semi-supervised learning is that when we do not enough human-generated labels, we train a machine learning system based on what we have, and we add the resulting labels (called pseudo-labels) to the training sample. Interesting, this idea works well, but why is somewhat a mystery: we did not add any new information so why is this working? There exist explanations for this empirical phenomenon, but most these explanations are based on complicated math. In this paper, we provide a simple intuitive explanation.

Why ∞ Is A Reasonable Symbol For Infinity, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The fact that ∞ is actively used as a symbol for infinity shows that this symbol is probably reasonable in this role, but why? In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for why this is indeed a reasonable symbol for infinity.

Lev Landau's Marital Advice Explained, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Nobelist physicist Lev Landau was known for applying mathematical and physical reasoning to human relations. His advices may have been somewhat controversial, but they were usually well motivated. However, there was one advice for which no explanation remains -- that a person should not marry his/her first and second true loves, and only start thinking about marriage starting with the third true love. In this paper, we provide a possible Landau-style motivation for this advice.

Limit Theorems As Blessing Of Dimensionality: Neural-Oriented Overview, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

As a system becomes more complex, at first, its description and analysis becomes more complicated. However, a further increase in the system's complexity often makes this analysis simpler. A classical example is Central Limit Theorem: when we have a few independent sources of uncertainty, the resulting uncertainty is very difficult to describe, but as the number of such sources increases, the resulting distribution get close to an easy-to-analyze normal one -- and indeed, normal distributions are ubiquitous. We show that such limit theorems often make analysis of complex systems easier -- i.e., lead to blessing of dimensionality phenomenon -- for …

What Is 1/0 From The Practical Viewpoint: A Pedagogical Note, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

What is 1/0? Students are first taught -- in elementary school -- that it is undefined, then -- in calculus -- then it is infinity. In both cases, the answer is usually provided based on abstract reasoning. But what about the practical meaning? In this paper, we show that, depending on the specific practical problem, we can have different answers to this question: in some practical problems, the correct answer is that 1/0 is undefined, in others, the correct answer is that 1/0 =0 -- and there are probably other practical problems where we can have different answers. Bottom line: …

Mathematical Modeling Of The Candida Albicans Yeast To Hyphal Transition Reveals Novel Control Strategies, David J. Wooten, Jorge Gómez Tejeda Zañudo, David Murrugarra, Austin M. Perry, Anna Dongari-Bagtzoglou, Reinhard Laubenbacher, Clarissa J. Nobile, Réka Albert

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Candida albicans, an opportunistic fungal pathogen, is a significant cause of human infections, particularly in immunocompromised individuals. Phenotypic plasticity between two morphological phenotypes, yeast and hyphae, is a key mechanism by which C. albicans can thrive in many microenvironments and cause disease in the host. Understanding the decision points and key driver genes controlling this important transition and how these genes respond to different environmental signals is critical to understanding how C. albicans causes infections in the host. Here we build and analyze a Boolean dynamical model of the C. albicans yeast to hyphal transition, integrating …

Optimizing Networking Topologies With Shortest Path Algorithms, Jordan Sahs

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Communication networks tend to contain redundant devices and mediums of transmission, thus the need to locate, document, and optimize networks is increasingly becoming necessary. However, many people do not know where to start the optimization progress. What is network topology? What is this “Shortest Path Problem”, and how can it be used to better my network? These questions are presented, taught, and answered within this paper. To supplement the reader’s understanding there are thirty-eight figures in the paper that are used to help convey and compartmentalize the learning process needed to grasp the materials presented in the ending sections.

In …

Using A Hybrid Agent-Based And Equation Based Model To Test School Closure Policies During A Measles Outbreak, Elizabeth Hunter, John D. Kelleher

Articles

Background

In order to be prepared for an infectious disease outbreak it is important to know what interventions will or will not have an impact on reducing the outbreak. While some interventions might have a greater effect in mitigating an outbreak, others might only have a minor effect but all interventions will have a cost in implementation. Estimating the effectiveness of an intervention can be done using computational modelling. In particular, comparing the results of model runs with an intervention in place to control runs where no interventions were used can help to determine what interventions will have the greatest …

An Efficient Algorithm To Test Potential Bipartiteness Of Graphical Degree Sequences, Kai Wang

Theory & Applications of Graphs

As a partial answer to a question of Rao, a deterministic and customizable efficient algorithm is presented to test whether an arbitrary graphical degree sequence has a bipartite realization. The algorithm can be configured to run in polynomial time, at the expense of possibly producing an erroneous output on some ``yes'' instances but with very low error rate.

Baudelaire's Ideas Of Vagueness And Uniqueness In Art: Algorithm-Based Explanations, Luc Longpre, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

According to the analysis by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous French poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire described (and followed) two main -- somewhat unusual -- ideas about art: that art should be vague, and that to create an object of art, one needs to aim for uniqueness. In this paper, we provide an algorithm-based explanation for these seemingly counter-intuitive ideas, explanation related to Kolmogorov complexity-based formalization of Garrett Birkhoff's theory of beauty.

How Void Ratio Depends On Grain Size In Soil Mechanics: Theoretical Explanation, Edgar Daniel Rodriguez Velasquez, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

When designing a road, it is important to know how many voids are in the underlying soil -- since these voids will affect the road stiffness. It is difficult to measure the voids ratio directly, so instead, we need to estimate it based on easier-to-measure characteristics such as grain size. There are empirical formulas for such estimation. In this paper, we provide a possible theoretical explanation for these empirical formulas.

Why Base-20, Base-40, And Base-60 Number Systems?, Sean R. Aguilar, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Historically, to describe numbers, some cultures used bases much larger than our usual base 10, namely, bases 20, 40, and 60. There are explanations for base 60, there is some explanation for base 20, but base 40 -- used in medieval Russia -- remains largely a mystery. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for all these three bases, an explanation based on the natural need to manage large groups of people. We also speculate why different cultures used different bases.

Dimension Compactification Naturally Follows From First Principles, Julio C. Urenda, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

According to modern physics, space-time originally was of dimension 11 or higher, but then additional dimensions became compactified, i.e., size in these directions remains small and thus, not observable. As a result, at present, we only observed 4 dimensions of space-time. There are mechanisms that explain how compactification may have occurred, but the remaining question is why it occurred. In this paper, we provide two first-principles-based explanations for space-time compactification: based on Second Law of Thermodynamics and based on geometry and symmetries.

Additional Spatial Dimensions Can Help Speed Up Computations, Luc Longpre, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While we currently only observe 3 spatial dimensions, according to modern physics, our space is actually at least 10-dimensional. In this paper, on different versions of the multi-D spatial models, we analyze how the existence of the additional spatial dimensions can help computations. It turns out that in all the versions, there is some speed up -- moderate when the extra dimensions are actually compactified, and drastic if extra dimensions are separated by a potential barrier.

What Is The True Formula For Soil Permeability? Not Clear, Edgar Daniel Rodriguez Velasquez, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To design and maintain pavements, it is important to know how fast water will penetrate the underlying soil. The speed of this penetration is determined by a quantity called permeability. There are several seemingly very different empirical and semi-empirical formulas that predict permeability. A recent attempt to select the formula that best fits the experimental data ended up in an unexpected conclusion that all three formula provide a good fit for the data. But these formulas are very different, how come that all three of them fit the same data? In this paper, we explain this somewhat paradoxical result.

Low-Complexity Zonotopes Can Enhance Uncertainty Quantification (Uq), Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, the only information that we know about the measurement error is the upper bound D on its absolute value. In this case, once we know the measurement result X, the only information that we have about the actual value x of the corresponding quantity is that this value belongs to the interval [X − D, X + D]. How can we estimate the accuracy of the result of data processing under this interval uncertainty? In general, computing this accuracy is NP-hard, but in the usual case when measurement errors are relatively small, we can linearize the …

Group Theory Visualized Through The Rubik's Cube, Ashlyn Okamoto

University Honors Theses

In my thesis, I describe the work done to implement several Group Theory concepts in the context of the Rubik’s cube. A simulation of the cube was constructed using Processing-Java and with help from a YouTube series done by TheCodingTrain. I reflect on the struggles and difficulties that came with creating this program along with the inspiration behind the project. The concepts that are currently implemented at this time are: Identity, Associativity, Order, and Inverses. The functionality of the cube is described as it moves like a regular cube but has extra keypresses that demonstrate the concepts listed. Each concept …