Computer Sciences Commons^™

Semi-Automatic Content Extraction From Specifications, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Aaron Berkovich, Dan Z. Sokol

Kno.e.sis Publications

Specifications are critical to companies involved in complex manufacturing. The constant reading, reviewing, and analysis of materials and process specifications is extremely labor-intensive, quality impacting, and time-consuming. A conceptual design for a tool that provides computer-assistance in the interpretation of specification requirements has been created and a strategy for semantic-markup, which is the overlaying of abstract syntax (“the essence”) on the text, has been developed. The solution is based on the techniques for Information Extraction and the XML technology, and it captures the specification content within a semantic ontology. The working prototype of the tool being built will serve as …

Towards Peer-To-Peer Semantic Web: A Distributed Environment For Sharing Semantic Knowledge On The Web, Madhan Arumugam, Amit P. Sheth, I. Budak Arpinar

Kno.e.sis Publications

The real value of Semantic Web vision can be demonstrated if people and applications can create and discover new and interesting knowledge and share this knowledge in a transparent manner similar to the way data is exchanged today. Therefore, we believe that Semantic Web will consist of a distributed environment of shared and interoperable ontologies, which have emerged as common formalisms for knowledge representation. The users will need to discover new ontologies, which are not known to them before and use them to either annotate the content or to formulate their information requests. This requires an environment that supports creating, …

Modeling Quality Of Service For Workflows And Web Service Processes, Jorge Cardoso, John A. Miller, Amit P. Sheth, Jonathan Arnold

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows for e-commerce and Web-services applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying Quality of Service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows, the underlying workflow system must accept the specifications and be able to estimate, …

Asp -Pricing: A Black -Scholes Option Pricing Formulation, Chaitanya Singh

Doctoral Dissertations

The Applications Service Provider (ASP) arrangement has engendered a revolution in the area of corporate information technology (IT) by transforming software from a packaged off-the-shelf product to an on-line virtual service.

The focus of this study is to establish a sound mathematical foundation for evaluating software rental agreements (embedding exit flexibility) by incorporating a real options framework (based upon the Black-Scholes approach) into the traditional capital budgeting technique. The static discounted cash flow or net present value analysis may not adequately serve as a ‘barometer’ of outsourcing value due to its inherent weaknesses. On the other hand, the options approach …

Traffic Simulation Using Arena, Shanti Yelamanchi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Many traffic simulation tools exist for developing traffic simulations; these tools can be divided broadly into two categories — macro simulation tools and micro simulation tools. These two categories of simulation tools are directed at modeling the extremes of traffic systems: very large systems and very small systems. There is a class of intermediate-sized transportation networks for which neither category of simulation tools might perform adequately. Additionally these specialized traffic simulation tools have a high learning curve. For developing medium sized traffic simulations in a short period of time, one might choose to use a familiar general-purpose discrete event simulation …

Process Composition: Quality Of Service Specification, Semantics And Adaptation, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Characterizing Logic Programming Semantics With Level Mappings, Pascal Hitzler, Matthias Wendt

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Declarative semantics in logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning are often defined via fixed points of semantic operators. While many relationships between different semantics known from the literature have been studied, a uniform treatment is still missing. In this paper, we provide uniform operator-free characterizations for some of the most important semantics, more precisely, for the stable, the well-founded, and the Fitting semantics, for the weakly-perfect model semantics, and for the least model semantics for negation-free programs.

The Fixed-Point Theorems Of Priess-Crampe And Ribenboim In Logic Programming, Pascal Hitzler, Anthony K. Seda

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Sibylla Priess-Crampe and Paulo Ribenboim recently established a general fixed-point theorem for multivalued mappings defined on generalized ultrametric spaces, and introduced it to the area of logic programming semantics. We discuss, in this context, the applications which have been made so far of this theorem and of its corollaries. In particular, we will relate these results to Scott-Ershov domains, familiar in programming language semantics, and to the generalized metrics of Khamsi, Kreinovich, and Misane which have been applied, by these latter authors, to logic programming. Amongst other things, we will also show that a unified treatment of the fixed-point theory …

Evaluating Java Applets For Teaching On The Internet, Michael R. Healy '04, Dale E. Berger, Victoria L. Romero '07, Christopher L. Aberson '99, Amanda Saw '11

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

The Web Interface for Statistics Education (http://wise.cgu.edu) is a website built around interactive tutorials designed to teach introductory and advanced statistical concepts. The tutorials use Java applets that dynamically illustrate the statistical concepts being taught. By using Java applets, we teach statistics in a manner not possible in a traditional classroom environment. In this paper, we provide examples of the applets, illustrate how students use them, and we report the outcome of a study that examined tutorial effectiveness as a learning tool.

Managing Semantic Content For The Web, Amit P. Sheth, Clemens Bertram, David Avant, Brian Hammond, Krzysztof Kochut, Yashodhan Warke

Kno.e.sis Publications

By associating meaning with content, the Semantic Web will facilitate search, interoperability, and the composition of complex applications. A recent Scientific American article described the Semantic Web as 'an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.' Not long ago, researchers at a Stanford University symposium predicted that this second phase of the Web would be as revolutionary as the Web itself.

Predicting Oral Reading Miscues, Jack Mostow, Joseph Beck, S. Vanessa Winter, Shaojun Wang

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper explores the problem of predicting specific reading mistakes, called miscues, on a given word. Characterizing likely miscues tells an automated reading tutor what to anticipate, detect, and remediate. As training and test data, we use a database of over 100,000 miscues transcribed by University of Colorado researchers. We explore approaches that exploit different sources of predictive power: the uneven distribution of words in text, and the fact that most miscues are real words. We compare the approaches’ ability to predict miscues of other readers on other text. A simple rote method does best on the most frequent 100 …

Workflow Quality Of Service, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In ecommerce processes, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying quality of service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of service. Management of such QoS directly impacts success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Organizations operating in modern markets require an excellent degree of quality of service management. Products and services must be available to customers with well-defined specifications. A good management of quality …

Ilp Operators For Propositional Connectionist Networks, Miguel Angel Gutierrez-Naranjo, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Towards Nonmonotonic Reasoning On Hierarchical Knowledge, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

W.C. Rounds and G.Q. Zhang have recently proposed to study a form of disjunctive logic programming generalized to algebraic domains [RZ01]. This system allows reasoning with information which is hierarchically structured and forms a (suitable) domain. We extend this framework to include reasoning with negative information, i.e. the implicit or explicit absence of bits of information. These investigations will naturally lead to a form of default reasoning which is strongly related to programming with answer sets to stable models, which has recently created much interest amongst artificial intelligence researchers concerned with knowledge representation and reasoning.

A Proposed Undergraduate Bioinformatics Curriculum For Computer Scientists, Travis E. Doom, Michael L. Raymer, Dan E. Krane, Oscar Garcia

Kno.e.sis Publications

Bioinformatics is a new and rapidly evolving discipline that has emerged from the fields of experimental molecular biology and biochemistry, and from the the artificial intelligence, database, and algorithms disciplines of computer science. Largely because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of bioinformatics research, academia has been slow to respond to strong industry and government demands for trained scientists to develop and apply novel bioinformatics techniques to the rapidly-growing, freely-available repositories of genetic and proteomic data. While some institutions are responding to this demand by establishing graduate programs in bioinformatics, the entrance barriers for these programs are high, largely due to …

Multi-Dimensional Regression Analysis Of Time-Series Data Streams, Yixin Chen, Guozhu Dong, Jiawei Han, Benjamin W. Wah, Jianyong Wang

Kno.e.sis Publications

Real-time production systems and other dynamic environments often generate tremendous (potentially infinite) amount of stream data; the volume of data is too huge to be stored on disks or scanned multiple times. Can we perform on-line, multi-dimensional analysis and data mining of such data to alert people about dramatic changes of situations and to initiate timely, high-quality responses? This is a challenging task.

In this paper, we investigate methods for online, multi-dimensional regression analysis of time-series stream data, with the following contributions: (1) our analysis shows that only a small number of compressed regression measures instead of the complete stream …

My Library At Virginia Commonwealth University: Third Year Evaluation, Jimmy Ghaphery

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

My Library is a personalization tool that allows the library user to consolidate frequently used library resources and services. Since 1998, My Library has been available as a web page to users of the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. An evaluation of My Library use at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) was completed and published in 2000. This article reports on a follow up study that took place between March 2000 and December 2001. The article also discusses the value of My Library as a teaching tool at VCU.

Xml-Based Modeling And Simulation: Web Service Technologies And Their Synergy With Simulation, Senthilanand Chandrasekaran, Gregory S. Silver, John A. Miller, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The World Wide Web has had an huge influence on the computing field in general as well as simulation in particular (e.g., Web-based simulation). A new wave of development based upon XML has started. Two of the most interesting aspects of this development are the Semantic Web and Web services. This paper examines the synergy between Web service technology and simulation. In one direction, Web service processes can be simulated for the purpose of correcting/improving the design. In the other direction, simulation models/components can be built out of Web services. Work on seamlessly using simulation as a part of Web …

Authorization And Access Control Of Application Data In Workflow Systems, Shengli Wu, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller, Zongwei Luo

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow Management Systems (WfMSs) are used to support the modeling and coordinated execution of business processes within an organization or across organizational boundaries. Although some research efforts have addressed requirements for authorization and access control for workflow systems, little attention has been paid to the requirements as they apply to application data accessed or managed by WfMSs. In this paper, we discuss key access control requirements for application data in workflow applications using examples from the healthcare domain, introduce a classification of application data used in workflow systems by analyzing their sources, and then propose a comprehensive data authorization and …

The Latent Maximum Entropy Principle, Shaojun Wang, Ronald Rosenfeld, Yunxin Zhao, Dale Schuurmans

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present an extension of Jaynes' maximum entropy principle to handle latent variables. We use an EM algorithm that incorporates nested iterative scaling to approximately calculate maximum entropy solutions for this principle, and give a proof of its convergence.

The Cyborgian Self: Toward A Critical Social Theory Of Cyberspace, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Contemporary social theory currently remains at a virtual standstill, quivering over the decision to radically leave the past behind or to continue within the historical narrative of the Enlightenment. Postmodern social theorists, advocating the position that we have, in fact, entered a new historical epoch, pose serious challenges to our perception of modernity and cultural identity. As an influential strategy that has infiltrated both the humanities and the social sciences for more than thirty years, postmodernism can no longer be dismissed as merely a fad or trend. In a world where the use of complex, and often mobile, …

Terra Incognita, Leslie Hill

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Peppering Knowledge Sources With Salt: Boosting Conceptual Content For Ontology Generation, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Yihong Ding, David W. Embley, Alan Melby

Faculty Publications

This paper describes work done to explore the common ground between two different ongoing research projects: the standardization of lexical and terminological resources, and the use of conceptual ontologies for information extraction and data integration. Specifically, this paper explores improving the generation of extraction ontologies through use of a comprehensive terminology database that has been represented in a standardized format for easy tool-based implementation. We show how, via the successful integration of these two distinct efforts, it is possible to leverage large-scale terminological and conceptual information having relationship-rich semantic resources in order to reformulate, match, and merge retrieved information of …

Creating A User Friendly Website For The Boys & Girls Clubs Of Black Hawk County, Kimberly M. Carter

Graduate Research Papers

Website design can be overwhelming for many viewers. Many times viewers discontinue using sites, because it.is not easy to navigate through the site. In creating the website for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Black Hawk County, user-friendliness was the focal point of the project. The Chief Professional Officer along with the staff at the Boys & Girls Clubs assisted with the development of a website by providing information that was to be included on the site. To ensure a professional look the designer relied on the four basic principles of design: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. The design simplicity …

Knowledge Discovery In Biological Datasets Using A Hybrid Bayes Classifier/Evolutionary Algorithm, Michael L. Raymer, Leslie A. Kuhn, William F. Punch

Kno.e.sis Publications

A key element of bioinformatics research is the extraction of meaningful information from large experimental data sets. Various approaches, including statistical and graph theoretical methods, data mining, and computational pattern recognition, have been applied to this task with varying degrees of success. We have previously shown that a genetic algorithm coupled with a k-nearest-neighbors classifier performs well in extracting information about protein-water binding from X-ray crystallographic protein structure data. Using a novel classifier based on the Bayes discriminant function, we present a hybrid algorithm that employs feature selection and extraction to isolate salient features from large biological data sets. The …

Profile Combinatorics For Fragment Selection In Comparative Protein Structure Modeling, Deacon Sweeney, Travis E. Doom, Michael L. Raymer

Kno.e.sis Publications

Sequencing of the human genome was a great stride towards modeling cellular complexes, massive systems whose key players are proteins and DNA. A major bottleneck limiting the modeling process is structure and function annotation for the new genes. Contemporary protein structure prediction algorithms represent the sequence of every protein of known structure with a profile to which the profile of a protein sequence of unknown structure is compared for recognition. We propose a novel approach to increase the scope and resolution of protein structure profiles. Our technique locates equivalent regions among the members of a structurally similar fold family, and …

Electronic Library Information System (Elis), Sooi Ping Cheah

Student Works (2000-2009)

Electronic Library Information System (ELIS) is a computer-based (automation) library system for a secondary school. ELIS consists of a number of smaller systems called subsystems. The modules are acquisition, which enable the System Administrator and Librarians to do ordering and receiving operations: cataloging which enable the creation of a bibliographic database; online cataloging (OPAC) which enables information to be retrieved from the database; circulation which manages the borrowing, returning, renewing, reserving, fine for missing of items· bulletin & feedback which enable the patron to input the feedback regarding the service provided by ELIS and to view the most current bulletin …

Online Bayesian Tree-Structured Transformation Of Hmms With Optimal Model Selection For Speaker Adaptation, Shaojun Wang, Yunxin Zhao

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents a new recursive Bayesian learning approach for transformation parameter estimation in speaker adaptation. Our goal is to incrementally transform or adapt a set of hidden Markov model (HMM) parameters for a new speaker and gain large performance improvement from a small amount of adaptation data. By constructing a clustering tree of HMM Gaussian mixture components, the linear regression (LR) or affine transformation parameters for HMM Gaussian mixture components are dynamically searched. An online Bayesian learning technique is proposed for recursive maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of LR and affine transformation parameters. This technique has the advantages of …

A Theoretical Study Of The Interactive Communication Process In Video Game Playing: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach, Nevsal Tiryakioglu

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Video games have become the most popular leisure activity among children and adolescents. The increasing popularity of video games has urged researchers to determine the effects of video game playing on youngsters. Given the fact that most popular video games are violent in nature, much of the research has primarily focused on the correlation between playing video games with violent content and aggressive behavior in children. Most researchers have relied on previous media violence research, assuming similarities between television viewing and video game playing. However, video games are interactive media allowing the player to participate in the game scenario, which …

Real-Time Travel Time Estimation Using Macroscopic Traffic Flow Models, Pushkin Kachroo, Kaan Ozbay, Antoine G. Hobeika

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

This paper presents the estimation of travel time on highways based on macroscopic modelling. The focus is on real-time values as compared to average or static values. The macroscopic models are used for distributed and time/space lumped settings and corresponding travel time estimation functions and algorithms are developed. The implications of these algorithms for the implementation of various incident management and traffic control strategies are also discussed.