Computer Sciences Commons^™

Littlebee: User's Online Interactive Design Of Baby's Wear, Yan Hai

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to develop a web-based application called Littlebee that allows customers to do online design of babies' wear. The online designing options include combining appliques with clothing styles and changing fabric colors; it utilizes images pre-stored in the database.

Website Developer: Web Application, Venkata Krishna Reddy Tummeti

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of the project is to use Java Server Page (JSP) technology to create a web application that could be used by any person who has the basic knowledge of browsing through the Web. There are many programs on the market that aid users in creating web pages, but the process involved in creating web pages using the available software and hosting their website is fairly complex for general people.

Research Strategy And Scoping Survey On Spreadsheet Practices, Thomas A. Grossman Jr., O Ozluk

Business Analytics and Information Systems

We propose a research strategy for creating and deploying prescriptive recommendations for spreadsheet practice. Empirical data on usage can be used to create a taxonomy of spreadsheet classes. Within each class, existing practices and ideal practices can he combined into proposed best practices for deployment. As a first step we propose a scoping survey to gather non-anecdotal data on spreadsheet usage. The scoping survey will interview people who develop spreadsheets. We will investigate the determinants of spreadsheet importance, identify current industry practices, and document existing standards for creation and use of spreadsheets. The survey will provide insight into user attributes, …

Accuracy In Spreadsheet Modelling Systems, Thomas A. Grossman Jr.

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Accuracy in spreadsheet modelling systems can be reduced due to difficulties with the inputs, the model itself, or the spreadsheet implementation of the model. When the "true" outputs from the system are unknowable, accuracy is evaluated subjectively. Less than perfect accuracy can be acceptable depending on the purpose of the model, problems with inputs, or resource constraints. Users build modelling systems iteratively, and choose to allocate limited resources to the inputs, the model, the spreadsheet implementation, and to employing the system for business analysis. When making these choices, users can suffer from expectation bias and diagnosis bias. Existing research results …

Thesis Digest: Mathematical Interpretation Of Political Power And The Arkansas State Government, Andrew King

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

On the whole, political power can he very difficult to quantify. A person may be powerful due to his or her personal charm, wealth, fame, credibility, or influential connections. Political bodies do not account for these qualities when creating voting procedures; they only assign voting rules to specific positions. For example, most would say that in the United States government that a Senator is more powerful than a Representative, but less powerful than the President, without knowing any way to quantify or verify those differences. Since the 1950's, mathematicians and political scientists have attempted to create mathematical models that partially …

A Deception Based Framework For The Application Of Deceptive Countermeasures In 802.11b Wireless Networks, Suen Yek

Theses : Honours

The advance of 802.11 b wireless networking has been beset by inherent and in-built security problems. Network security tools that are freely available may intercept network transmissions readily and stealthily, making organisations highly vulnerable to attack. Therefore, it is incumbent upon defending organisations to take initiative and implement proactive defences against common network attacks. Deception is an essential element of effective security that has been widely used in networks to understand attack methods and intrusions. However, little thought has been given to the type and the effectiveness of the deception. Deceptions deployed in nature, the military and in cyberspace were …

Jade Software: Getting Ready To Tackle America, Sir Gilbert Simpson, Laurence Weinstein

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Interview by Laurence Weinstein of Sir Gilbert Simpson, founder and CEO of Jade Software in New Zealand.

Sir Gil Simpson is one of New Zealand’s pioneers in software development, having started in the field in 1967. He holds steadfast to his dream that one day his approach to software programming will take hold around the world. Simpson has just opened up the company’s first office in the United States; he expects his first significant foray into this country will be a successful one.

Developing A Catalogue Of Errors And Evaluating Its Impact On Software Development, Indrit Troshani

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The development of quality software is of paramount importance, yet this has been and continues to be an elusive goal for software engineers. Delivered software often fails due to errors that are injected during its development. Correcting these errors early in the development or preventing them altogether can, therefore, be considered as one way to improve software quality. In this thesis, the development of a Catalogue of Errors is described. Field studies with senior software engineering students are used to confirm that developers using the Catalogue of Errors commit fewer errors in their development artifacts. The impact of the Catalogue …

Measuring Software Size For Continuous Process Improvement, Claire O'Sullivan

Theses

This thesis looks at how the size of a software product can be measured. It looks at current software sizing methods (LOC and FPA) and shows that they are not sufficient in today’s rapidly changing environment. The COSMIC-FFP method is introduced and an overview of how it works is given. The hypothesis to be tested in this thesis is whether COSMIC-FFP is an accurate, repeatable sizing method that when applied to any type of software project produces a size measure that can be used to predict the effort required to complete the project.

This thesis investigates the use of the …

The Staging Transformation Approach To Mixing Initiative, Robert Capra, Michael Narayan, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Mixed-initiative interaction is an important facet of many conversational interfaces, flexible planning architectures, intelligent tutoring systems, and interactive information retrieval systems. Software systems for mixed-initiative interaction must enable us to both operationalize the mixing of initiative (i.e., support the creation of practical dialogs) and to reason in real-time about how a flexible mode of interaction can be supported (e.g., from a meta-dialog standpoint). In this paper, we present the staging transformation approach to mixing initiative, where a dialog script captures the structure of the dialog and dialog control processes are realized through generous use of program transformation techniques (e.g., partial …

Personalizing Interactions With Information Systems, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialog-based applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles …

Crafting A Research Paper, Ronan Fitzpatrick, Kevin O'Donnell

Conference papers

Writing research papers presents numerous different challenges, which vary from how to layout the various pages and format the text to what to include in the different sections that make up the paper. In order to clarify these issues this paper sets out guidelines and best practice approaches and demonstrates their use in the style of this paper.

Jsb Composability And Web Services Interoperability Via Extensible Modeling & Simulation Framework (Xmsf), Model Driven Architecture (Mda), Component Repositories, And Web-Based Visualization, Don Brutzman, Andreas Tolk

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

"Study Report prepared for the U. S. Air Force, Joint Synthetic Battlespace Analysis of Technical Approaches (ATA) Studies & Prototyping"

Overview: This paper summarizes research work conducted by organizations concerned with interoperable distributed information technology (IT) applications, in particular the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and Old Dominion University (ODU). Although the application focus is distributed modeling & simulation (M&S) the results and findings are in general easily applicable to other distributed concepts as well, in particular the support of operations by M&S applications, such as distributed mission operations. The core idea of this work is to show the necessity of …

A Multi-Platform Application Suite For Enhancing South Asian Language Pedagogy, Tao Bai, Christopher K. Chung, Konstantin Läufer, Daisy Rockwell, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This interdisciplinary project explores the potential for handheld/wireless (H/W) technology in the context of language education within and beyond the classroom. Specifically, we have designed and implemented a suite of multi-platform (desktop/laptop, handheld, and browser) applications to enhance the teaching of South Asian languages such as Hindi-Urdu. Such languages are very difficult to learn, let alone write, and H/W devices (with their handwriting/drawing capabilities) can play a significant role in overcoming the learning curve. The initial application suite includes a character/word tracer, a word splitter/joiner, a smart flashcard with audio, contextual augmented stories for reading comprehension, and a poetic metronome. …

The Extreme Software Development Series: An Open Curricular Framework For Applied Capstone Courses, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

We describe an open, flexible curricular framework for offering a collection of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in software development. The courses offered within this framework are further unified by combining solid foundations with current technology and play the role of capstone courses in a modern software development track. Our initiative has been very successful with all stakeholders involved.

Implications Of Mbti In Software Engineering Education, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

A number of approaches exist to aid the understanding of individual differences and their effects on teaching and learning. Educators have been using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to understand differences in learning styles and to develop teaching methods that cater for the various personality styles. Inspired by the MBTI, we developed a range of practices for effective teaching and learning in a software engineering course. Our aim is to reach every student, but in different ways, by devising various teaching approaches.

Development Of A Systems Engineering Model Of The Chemical Separations Process: Quarterly Progress Report 8/16/02- 11/15/02, Yitung Chen, Randy Clarksean, Darrell Pepper

Separations Campaign (TRP)

Two activities are proposed in this Phase I task: the development of a systems engineering model and the refinement of the Argonne code AMUSE (Argonne Model for Universal Solvent Extraction). The detailed systems engineering model is the start of an integrated approach to the analysis of the materials separations associated with the AAA Program. A second portion of the project is to streamline and improve an integral part of the overall systems model, which is the software package AMUSE. AMUSE analyzes the UREX process and other related solvent extraction processes and defines many of the process streams that are integral …

The Capacity Of Multi-Hop Wireless Networks With Tcp Regulated Traffic, Sorav Bansal, Rajeev Shorey, Shobhit Chugh, Anurag Goel, Kapil Kumar, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We study the dependence of the capacity of multi-hop wireless networks on the transmission range of nodes in the network with TCP regulated traffic. Specifically, we examine the sensitivity of the capacity to the speed of the nodes and the number of TCP connections in an ad hoc network. By incorporating the notion of a minimal acceptable QoS metric (loss) for an individual session, we argue that the QoS-aware capacity is a more accurate model of the TCP-centric capacity of an ad-hoc network. We study the dependence of capacity on the source application (Telnet or FTP) and on the choice …

Predicting Bottleneck Bandwidth Sharing By Generalized Tcp Flows, Archan Misra, Teunis Ott, John Baras

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paper presents a technique for computing the individual throughputs and the average queue occupancy when multiple TCP connections share a single bottleneck buffer. The bottleneck buffer is assumed to perform congestion feedback via randomized packet marking or drops. We first present a fixed point-based analytical technique to compute the mean congestion window sizes, the mean queue occupancy and the individual throughputs when the TCP flows perform idealized congestion avoidance. We subsequently extend the technique to analyze the case where TCP flows perform generalized congestion avoidance and demonstrate the use of this technique under the Assured Service model, where each …

Development Of A Systems Engineering Model Of The Chemical Separations Process, Yitung Chen, Randy Clarksean, Darrell Pepper

Separations Campaign (TRP)

The AAA program is developing technology for the transmutation of nuclear waste to address many of the long-term disposal issues. An integral part of this program is the proposed chemical separations scheme. This process, as envisioned by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) researchers, will be outlined later in this report.

Nearly all issues related to risks to future generations arising from long-term disposal of such spent nuclear fuel is attributable to ~1% of its content. This 1% is made up primarily of plutonium, neptunium, americium, and curium (the transuranic elements) and long-lived isotopes of iodine and technetium created as products from …

The Tegrid Semantic Web Application, Steven Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Over the past several years there has been an increasing recognition of the shortcomings of message-passing data-processing systems that compute data without understanding, and the vastly superior potential capabilities of information-centric systems that incorporate an internal information model with sufficient context to support a useful level of automatic reasoning.

The key difference between a data-processing and an information-centric environment is the ability to embed in the information-centric software some understanding of the information being processed. The term information-centric refers to the representation of information in the computer, not to the way it is actually stored in a digital machine. This …

The Role Of Discovery In Context-Building Decision-Support Systems, Steven J. Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

There are many sources of on-line information available to those responsible for making decisions in complex situations. However, most of that information is either intended for human use or is available only in custom or proprietary formats. Both of these conditions reduce the ability of computer software to perform automatic reasoning about this information. As a result, the usefulness of on-line information in intelligent decision-support systems is currently limited to the few sources that are implemented specifically for those systems. The vast mass of sources that do not fit that description are virtually invisible.

Current practices for integrating multiple information …

Data, Information, And Knowledge In The Context Of Sils, Michael A. Zang, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Data, information, and knowledge are becoming increasingly common terms in the literature of the software industry. This terminology originated some time ago in the disciplines of cognitive science and artificial intelligence to reference three closely related but distinct concepts. Traditionally, mainstream software engineering has lumped all three concepts together as data and has only recently begun to distinguish between them. Unfortunately, the popular desire to distinguish between data, information, and knowledge within the mainstream has blurred the individual meanings of the words to the point where there is no longer a clear-cut distinction between them for most people. This problem …

Proceedings Of The 2002 Onr Decision-Support Workshop Series: Transformation..., Collaborative Agent Design Research Center

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

In August of 1998 the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) of the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), approached Dr. Phillip Abraham of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with the proposal for an annual workshop focusing on emerging concepts in decision-support systems for military applications. The proposal was considered timely by the ONR Logistics Program Office for at least two reasons. First, rapid advances in information systems technology over the past decade had produced distributed, collaborative computer-assistance capabilities with profound potential for providing meaningful support to military decision makers. Indeed, some systems based on …

Safe Robot Driving, Chuck Thorpe, Romuald Aufrere, Justin David Carlson, David Duggins, Terrence W. Fong, Jay Gowdy, John Kozar, Robert Maclachlan, Colin Mccabe, Christoph Mertz, Arne Suppe, Chieh Chih Wang, Teruko Yata

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Navlab group at Carnegie Mellon University has a long history of development of automated vehicles and intelligent systems for driver assistance. The earlier work of the group concentrated on road following, cross-country driving, and obstacle detection. The new focus is on short-range sensing, to look all around the vehicle for safe driving. The current system uses video sensing, laser rangefinders, a novel light-stripe rangefinder, software to process each sensor individually, and a map-based fusion system. The complete system has been demonstrated on the Navlab 11 vehicle for monitoring the environment of a vehicle driving through a cluttered urban environment, …

A Label-Switching Packet Forwarding Architecture For Multi-Hop Wireless Lans, Arup Acharya, Archan Misra, Sorav Bansal

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A router in wired network typically requires multiple network interfaces to act as a router or a forwarding node. In an ad-hoc multi-hop wireless network on the other hand, any node with a wireless network interface card can operate as a router or a forwarding node, since it can receive a packet from a neighboring node, do a route lookup based on the packet's destination IP address, and then transmit the packet to another neighboring node using the same wireless interface. This paper investigates a combined medium access and next-hop address lookup based on fixed length labels (instead of IP …

Development Of A Systems Engineering Model Of The Chemical Separations Process: Quarterly Progress Report 5/16/02- 8/15/02, Yitung Chen, Randy Clarksean, Darrell Pepper

Separations Campaign (TRP)

Two activities are proposed in this Phase I task: the development of systems engineering model and the refinement of the Argonne code AMUSE (Argonne Model for Universal Solvent Extraction). The detailed systems engineering model is the start of an integrated approach to the analysis of the materials separations associated with the AAA Program. A second portion of the project is to streamline and improve an integral part of the overall systems model, which is the software package AMUSE. AMUSE analyzes the UREX process and other related solvent extraction processes and defines many of the process streams that are integral to …

Visual Execution Analysis For Multiagent Systems, Chong Kil

Theses and Dissertations

Multiagent systems have become increasingly important in developing complex software systems. Multiagent systems introduce collective intelligence and provide benefits such as flexibility, scalability, decentralization, and increased reliability. A software agent is a high-level software abstraction that is capable of performing given tasks in an environment without human intervention. Although multiagent systems provide a convenient and powerful way to organize complex software systems, developing such system is very complicated. To help manage this complexity this research develops a methodology and technique for analyzing, monitoring and troubleshooting multiagent systems execution. This is accomplished by visualizing a multiagent system at multiple levels of …

Context Building Information-Centric Decision-Support Systems, Steven J. Gollery, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

As the volume of data and human-centered information available to decision-makers continues to increase at an ever-accelerating rate, the need to represent information in software-processable formats becomes more apparent. At the same time, the availability of information from diverse sources through the World Wide Web provides the opportunity to widen the scope of input to decision-support systems, if this information can be made accessible through automated means. Past approaches to information-centric interoperability have been based on the use of a shared static object model, but this becomes impractical when we consider the loosely-coupled decentralized nature of the Web.

This paper …

Some Thoughts On Human Nature: A Discussion Of Human Strenghts And Weaknesses, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

This paper attempts to explore the behavioral characteristics of human beings from a point of view that is not based on inter-human comparisons, but on an examination of the intrinsic physical, biological, intellectual, emotional, and social characteristics of this species. It is argued that the experience-based nature of the human cognitive system greatly reduces our ability to adapt to changes in our environment, exploit opportunities, and create new knowledge. A fundamental biological survival instinct drives the human being to seek a level of certainty and security that is irreconcilable with a continuously changing and largely unpredictable environment. The symptoms of …