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Articles 271 - 300 of 823

Full-Text Articles in Computer Sciences

An Undergraduate Mentoring Environment For Empirical Software Engineering Research, Dr. Charles Knutson Apr 2013

An Undergraduate Mentoring Environment For Empirical Software Engineering Research, Dr. Charles Knutson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 2008 I was awarded a MEG entitled “An Undergraduate Mentoring Environment for Empirical Software Engineering Research.” In the several years that followed that award I was able to provide financial support to six undergraduate students. The results have been incredibly successful and gratifying. Of those students who received support from that MEG award, three continued research as graduate students in the SEQuOIA Lab— two are currently PhD candidates and the third is completing an MS degree. The other three students completed BS degrees and are currently employed as software engineers at Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. These six mentored undergraduate …


Down Syndrome Pathway Analysis, Dr. Mark Clement Apr 2013

Down Syndrome Pathway Analysis, Dr. Mark Clement

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many of the most serious medical problems that plague humanity are caused by problems in the genetic regulatory network. Heart disease, cancer and many other maladies could be cured if we understood how genes interact with each other in order to produce different symptoms. Many of these problems are hard to deal with because all of the 20,000 or so genes in the human genome may be responsible for part of the problem. Down Syndrome is caused by three copies of chromosome 21 and results in heart defects, decreased brain function and abnormal jaw and finger proportions. Because the problem …


Warping-Based Approach To Offline Handwriting Recognition, Douglas J. Kennard Apr 2013

Warping-Based Approach To Offline Handwriting Recognition, Douglas J. Kennard

Theses and Dissertations

An enormous amount of the historical record is currently trapped in non-indexed handwritten format. Even after being scanned into images, only a minute fraction of the existing records can be manually transcribed / indexed with reasonable amounts of time and cost. Although progress continues to be made with automatic handwriting recognition (HR), it is not yet good enough to replace manual transcription or indexing. Much of the recent HR work has focused on incremental improvements to methods based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and other similar probabilistic approaches. In this dissertation we present a fundamentally new approach to HR based …


Automatic Verification Of Deadlock Using Guided Test, Dr. Eric Mercer Mar 2013

Automatic Verification Of Deadlock Using Guided Test, Dr. Eric Mercer

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The proposed academic objectives are included below for convenience. Each objective was met under the guidance of a senior researcher, Neha Rungta, who has since graduated with a Ph.D. and joined NASA Ames where she continues to work with students in the SMC-lab. Neha actively mentored the students on the project. These students participated by: writing models to test, reading and reviewing publications, writing code to support the algorithms, and putting together a complete demo-application illustrating how the guided search algorithm behaves. A total of four undergraduate students participated in the research.


Assistive Robotics For Children With Learning Disabilities, Dr. Michael Goodrich, Dr. Mark Colton, Dr. Bonnie Brinton, Dr. Martin Fujiki Mar 2013

Assistive Robotics For Children With Learning Disabilities, Dr. Michael Goodrich, Dr. Mark Colton, Dr. Bonnie Brinton, Dr. Martin Fujiki

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The primary goal of the research was to produce robotic tools that can help children with learning disabilities become higher functioning. We accomplished this goal by creating two humanoid robots and a user interface for programming and controlling the robots. We went beyond this goal, with assistance from a Honda Initiation Grant, and developed therapy plans for using the robots to help children with autism, and completed a pilot study with two children with autism during Winter 2010.


Face Tracking User Interfaces Using Vision-Based Consumer Devices, Norman Villaroman Mar 2013

Face Tracking User Interfaces Using Vision-Based Consumer Devices, Norman Villaroman

Theses and Dissertations

Some individuals have difficulty using standard hand-manipulated input devices such as a mouse and a keyboard effectively. For such users who at the same time have sufficient control over face and head movement, a robust perceptual or vision-based user interface that can track face movement can significantly help them. Using vision-based consumer devices makes such a user interface readily available and allows its use to be non-intrusive. Designing this type of user interface presents some significant challenges particularly with accuracy and usability. This research investigates such problems and proposes solutions to create a usable and robust face tracking user interface …


Online Survey System For Image-Based Clinical Guideline Studies Using The Delphi Method, Todd Martin Harper Mar 2013

Online Survey System For Image-Based Clinical Guideline Studies Using The Delphi Method, Todd Martin Harper

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing use of health information technology (HIT) is due to a rising interest in improving the quality of health care. HIT has the potential to reduce cost and transform services. Proper clinical support systems will contribute to the meaningful use of HIT systems by providing a wide array of data to clinicians for the diagnosis and treatments. Clinical guidelines, created by a consensus of experts, can be put in place to assist physicians in making clinical decisions. Delphi methods are commonly used to create consensus from surveys completed by a team of experts. Image-based studies could create guidelines that …


Finding Plagiarizing And Undesirable Web Documents By Utilizing Word Similarity In The Fuzzy Set Information Retrieval Model, Dr. Yiu-Kai Dennis Ng Mar 2013

Finding Plagiarizing And Undesirable Web Documents By Utilizing Word Similarity In The Fuzzy Set Information Retrieval Model, Dr. Yiu-Kai Dennis Ng

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the 2007 MEG proposal, I specified the following Internet problems to be solved using a Fuzzy set information retrieval (IR) model: (i) detecting plagiarism, which is the act of using another’s words or ideas as one’s own, (ii) filtering junk emails, which are undesirable because junk emails waste valuable resources and time and include offensive content in addition to the monetary cost that reaches billions of dollars per year, the bill that is paid by public users, and (iii) identifying spam Web pages that include contents that are useless to the Web users. We have successfully found the solution …


A Hierarchical Multi-Output Nearest Neighbor Model For Multi-Output Dependence Learning, Richard Glenn Morris Mar 2013

A Hierarchical Multi-Output Nearest Neighbor Model For Multi-Output Dependence Learning, Richard Glenn Morris

Theses and Dissertations

Multi-Output Dependence (MOD) learning is a generalization of standard classification problems that allows for multiple outputs that are dependent on each other. A primary issue that arises in the context of MOD learning is that for any given input pattern there can be multiple correct output patterns. This changes the learning task from function approximation to relation approximation. Previous algorithms do not consider this problem, and thus cannot be readily applied to MOD problems. To perform MOD learning, we introduce the Hierarchical Multi-Output Nearest Neighbor model (HMONN) that employs a basic learning model for each output and a modified nearest …


Toward Scalable Human Interaction With Bio-Inspired Robot Teams, Daniel Sundquist Brown Mar 2013

Toward Scalable Human Interaction With Bio-Inspired Robot Teams, Daniel Sundquist Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Bio-inspired swarming behaviors provide an effective decentralized way of coordinating robot teams. However, as robot swarms increase in size, bandwidth and time constraints limit the number of agents a human can communicate with and control. To facilitate scalable human interaction with large robot swarms it is desirable to monitor and influence the collective behavior of the entire swarm through limited interactions with a small subset of agents. However, it is also desirable to avoid situations where a small number of agent failures can adversely affect the collective behavior of the swarm. We present a bio-inspired model of swarming that exhibits …


Cliff Walls: Threats To Validity In Empirical Studies Of Open Source Forges, Landon James Pratt Feb 2013

Cliff Walls: Threats To Validity In Empirical Studies Of Open Source Forges, Landon James Pratt

Theses and Dissertations

Artifact-based research provides a mechanism whereby researchers may study the creation of software yet avoid many of the difficulties of direct observation and experimentation. Open source software forges are of great value to the software researcher, because they expose many of the artifacts of software development. However, many challenges affect the quality of artifact-based studies, especially those studies examining software evolution. This thesis addresses one of these threats: the presence of very large commits, which we refer to as "Cliff Walls." Cliff walls are a threat to studies of software evolution because they do not appear to represent incremental development. …


Optimized Simulation Of Granular Materials, Seth R. Holladay Feb 2013

Optimized Simulation Of Granular Materials, Seth R. Holladay

Theses and Dissertations

Visual effects for film and animation often require simulated granular materials, such as sand, wheat, or dirt, to meet a director's needs. Simulating granular materials can be time consuming, in both computation and labor, as these particulate materials have complex behavior and an enormous amount of small-scale detail. Furthermore, a single cubic meter of granular material, where each grain is a cubic millimeter, would contain a billion granules, and simulating all such interacting granules would take an impractical amount of time for productions. This calls for a simplified model for granular materials that retains high surface detail and granular behavior …


An Optimized R5rs Macro Expander, Sean P. Reque Feb 2013

An Optimized R5rs Macro Expander, Sean P. Reque

Theses and Dissertations

Macro systems allow programmers abstractions over the syntax of a programming language. This gives the programmer some of the same power posessed by a programming language designer, namely, the ability to extend the programming language to meet the needs of the programmer. The value of such systems has been demonstrated by their continued adoption in more languages and platforms. However, several barriers to widespread adoption of macro systems still exist. The language Racket defines a small core of primitive language constructs, including a powerful macro system, upon which all other features are built. Because of this design, many features of …


Animating Non-Rigid Bodies Using Motion Capture, Jie Long Jan 2013

Animating Non-Rigid Bodies Using Motion Capture, Jie Long

Theses and Dissertations

Simulating the motion of a non-rigid body under external forces is a difficult problem because of the complexity and flexibility of the non-rigid geometry and its associated dynamics. Physically based animation of objects moving in the wind is computationally expensive, so simulation-based approaches oversimplify the model by ignoring important effects, such as tree's sheltering. Motion capture records actual responses of a non-rigid body to external forces and helps solve these problems. Mainly focusing on natural trees and ropes as instances of non-rigid bodies, we present a new approach to building motion for objects in wind using incomplete motion capture data …


Website Adaptive Navigation Effects On User Experiences, James C. Speirs Dec 2012

Website Adaptive Navigation Effects On User Experiences, James C. Speirs

Theses and Dissertations

The information search process within a website can often be frustrating and confusing for website visitors. Navigational structures are often complex and multitiered, hiding links with several layers of navigation that user's might be interested in. Poor navigation causes user frustration. Adaptive navigation can be used to improve the user's navigational experience by flattening the navigational structure and reducing the number of accessible links to only those that the user would be interested in. This examines the effects on a user's navigational experience, of using adaptive navigation as the main navigational structure on a website. This study measured these effects …


Necessary And Sufficient Informativity Conditions For Robust Network Reconstruction Using Dynamical Structure Functions, Vasu Nephi Chetty Dec 2012

Necessary And Sufficient Informativity Conditions For Robust Network Reconstruction Using Dynamical Structure Functions, Vasu Nephi Chetty

Theses and Dissertations

Dynamical structure functions were developed as a partial structure representation of linear time-invariant systems to be used in the reconstruction of biological networks. Dynamical structure functions contain more information about structure than a system's transfer function, while requiring less a priori information for reconstruction than the complete computational structure associated with the state space realization. Early sufficient conditions for network reconstruction with dynamical structure functions severely restricted the possible applications of the reconstruction process to networks where each input independently controls a measured state. The first contribution of this thesis is to extend the previously established sufficient conditions to incorporate …


Data Acquisition From Cemetery Headstones, Cameron Smith Christiansen Nov 2012

Data Acquisition From Cemetery Headstones, Cameron Smith Christiansen

Theses and Dissertations

Data extraction from engraved text is discussed rarely, and nothing in the open literature discusses data extraction from cemetery headstones. Headstone images present unique challenges such as engraved or embossed characters (causing inner-character shadows), low contrast with the background, and significant noise due to inconsistent stone texture and weathering. Current systems for extracting text from outdoor environments (billboards, signs, etc.) make assumptions (i.e. clean and/or consistently-textured background and text) that fail when applied to the domain of engraved text. Additionally, the ability to extract the data found on headstones is of great historical value. This thesis describes a novel and …


A Cps-Like Transformation Of Continuation Marks, Kimball Richard Germane Nov 2012

A Cps-Like Transformation Of Continuation Marks, Kimball Richard Germane

Theses and Dissertations

Continuation marks are a programming language feature which generalize stack inspection. Despite its usefulness, this feature has not been adopted by languages which rely on stack inspection, e.g., for dynamic security checks. One reason for this neglect may be that continuation marks do not yet enjoy a transformation to the plain λ-calculus which would allow higher-order languages to provide continuation marks at little cost. We present a CPS-like transformation from the call-by-value λ-calculus augmented with continuation marks to the pure call-by-value λ-calculus. We discuss how this transformation simplifies the construction of compilers which treat continuation marks correctly. We document an …


Algorithmically Flexible Style Composition Through Multi-Objective Fitness Functions, Skyler James Murray Nov 2012

Algorithmically Flexible Style Composition Through Multi-Objective Fitness Functions, Skyler James Murray

Theses and Dissertations

Creating a fitness function for music is largely subjective and dependent on a programmer's personal tastes or goals. Previous attempts to create musical fitness functions for use in genetic algorithms lack scope or are prejudiced to a certain genre of music. They also suffer the limitation of producing music only in the strict style determined by the programmer. We show in this paper that musical feature extractors that avoid the challenges of qualitative judgment enable creation of a multi-objective function for direct music production. Multi-objective fitness functions enable creation of music with varying identifiable styles. With this system we produced …


Bayesian Test Analytics For Document Collections, Daniel David Walker Nov 2012

Bayesian Test Analytics For Document Collections, Daniel David Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Modern document collections are too large to annotate and curate manually. As increasingly large amounts of data become available, historians, librarians and other scholars increasingly need to rely on automated systems to efficiently and accurately analyze the contents of their collections and to find new and interesting patterns therein. Modern techniques in Bayesian text analytics are becoming wide spread and have the potential to revolutionize the way that research is conducted. Much work has been done in the document modeling community towards this end,though most of it is focused on modern, relatively clean text data. We present research for improved …


Javalite - An Operational Semantics For Modeling Java Programs, Saint Oming'o Wesonga Nov 2012

Javalite - An Operational Semantics For Modeling Java Programs, Saint Oming'o Wesonga

Theses and Dissertations

Java is currently a widely used programming language. However, there is no formal definition of Java's semantics. Consequently, Java code does not have a universal meaning. This work discusses recent attempts to formalize Java and presents a new formalism of Java called Javalite. In contrast to common approaches to formalization, Javalite is purely syntactic in its definition. Syntactic operational semantics use the structure of the language to define its behavior. Javalite models most Java features with notable exceptions being threads, reflection, and interfaces. This work presents an executable semi-formal model of Javalite in PLT Redex. Being executable means that Javalite …


Motion Capture Of Character Interactions With A Rope, Bryce Zachary Porter Oct 2012

Motion Capture Of Character Interactions With A Rope, Bryce Zachary Porter

Theses and Dissertations

We present a solution to animating interactions between characters and thin, non-rigid bodies using a passive optical motion capture system. Prior work in human body motion capture can accurately recreate human motion but this work is not adequate because it does not allow for interactions with a non-rigid body. Prior work in face and cloth motion capture handles non-rigid planes but rope is better handled with a curved spline rather than a curved plane. The segmented motion is in the form of un-indexed motion capture data. After segmenting the motion of the thin, non-rigid body and the human character the …


Secure Browser-Based Instant Messaging, Christopher Douglas Robison Sep 2012

Secure Browser-Based Instant Messaging, Christopher Douglas Robison

Theses and Dissertations

Instant messaging is a popular form of communication over the Internet. Statistics show that instant messaging has overtaken email in popularity. Traditionally, instant messaging has consisted of a desktop client communicating with other clients via an instant messaging service provider. However, instant messaging solutions are starting to become available in the web browser–services like Google Talk, Live Messenger and Facebook. Despite the work done by researchers to secure instant messaging networks, little work has been done to secure instant messaging in the browser. We present secure browser-based instant messaging overlays as a means to enable convenient, secure communication in existing …


Automatic Content-Based Temporal Alignment Of Image Sequences With Varying Spatio-Temporal Resolution, Samuel R. Ogden Sep 2012

Automatic Content-Based Temporal Alignment Of Image Sequences With Varying Spatio-Temporal Resolution, Samuel R. Ogden

Theses and Dissertations

Many applications use multiple cameras to simultaneously capture imagery of a scene from different vantage points on a rigid, moving camera system over time. Multiple cameras often provide unique viewing angles but also additional levels of detail of a scene at different spatio-temporal resolutions. However, in order to benefit from this added information the sources must be temporally aligned. As a result of cost and physical limitations it is often impractical to synchronize these sources via an external clock device. Most methods attempt synchronization through the recovery of a constant scale factor and offset with respect to time. This limits …


Automatic Generation Of Music For Inducing Emotive And Physiological Responses, Kristine Perry Monteith Aug 2012

Automatic Generation Of Music For Inducing Emotive And Physiological Responses, Kristine Perry Monteith

Theses and Dissertations

Music and emotion are two realms traditionally considered to be unique to human intelligence. This dissertation focuses on furthering artificial intelligence research, specifically in the area of computational creativity, by investigating methods of composing music that elicits desired emotional and physiological responses. It includes the following: an algorithm for generating original musical selections that effectively elicit targeted emotional and physiological responses; a description of some of the musical features that contribute to the conveyance of a given emotion or the elicitation of a given physiological response; and an account of how this algorithm can be used effectively in two different …


A Confidence-Prioritization Approach To Data Processing In Noisy Data Sets And Resulting Estimation Models For Predicting Streamflow Diel Signals In The Pacific Northwest, Nathaniel Lee Gustafson Aug 2012

A Confidence-Prioritization Approach To Data Processing In Noisy Data Sets And Resulting Estimation Models For Predicting Streamflow Diel Signals In The Pacific Northwest, Nathaniel Lee Gustafson

Theses and Dissertations

Streams in small watersheds are often known to exhibit diel fluctuations, in which streamflow oscillates on a 24-hour cycle. Streamflow diel fluctuations, which we investigate in this study, are an informative indicator of environmental processes. However, in Environmental Data sets, as well as many others, there is a range of noise associated with individual data points. Some points are extracted under relatively clear and defined conditions, while others may include a range of known or unknown confounding factors, which may decrease those points' validity. These points may or may not remain useful for training, depending on how much uncertainty they …


A General Framework For Interactive Television News, Benjamin Bart Sellers Jul 2012

A General Framework For Interactive Television News, Benjamin Bart Sellers

Theses and Dissertations

We design a complete interactive television news system. We develop a news production system that allows for the creation of flexible, content-rich interactive news. This system embraces a general creation process to interactive news that is built on top of a newscast model that evolves from and conforms with the current production newscast model. It allows for content sharing and content reuse. We also create an interactive news viewing system that adapts well to a living room environment. It contains several interactive features designed to give the viewer control and allow them to watch the news when, where, and how …


Detection Likelihood Maps For Wilderness Search And Rescue: Assisting Search By Utilizing Searcher Gps Track Logs, Michael Thomas Roscheck Jul 2012

Detection Likelihood Maps For Wilderness Search And Rescue: Assisting Search By Utilizing Searcher Gps Track Logs, Michael Thomas Roscheck

Theses and Dissertations

Every year there are numerous cases of individuals becoming lost in remote wilderness environments. Principles of search theory have become a foundation for developing more efficient and successful search and rescue methods. Measurements can be taken that describe how easily a search object is to detect. These estimates allow the calculation of the probability of detection—the probability that an object would have been detected if in the area. This value only provides information about the search area as a whole; it does not provide details about which portions were searched more thoroughly than others. Ground searchers often carry portable …


Technique And Cue Selection For Graphical Presentation Of Generic Hyperdimensional Data, Lee Mont Howard Jun 2012

Technique And Cue Selection For Graphical Presentation Of Generic Hyperdimensional Data, Lee Mont Howard

Theses and Dissertations

The process of visualizing n-D data presents the user with four problems: finding a hyperdimensional graphics package capable of rendering n-D data, finding a suitable presentation technique supported by the package that allows insight to be gained, using the provided user interface to interact with the presentation technique to explore the information in the data, and finding a way to share the information gained with others. Many graphics packages have been written to solve the first problem. However, existing packages do not sufficiently solve the other three problems. A hyperdimensional graphics package that sufficiently solves all these problems simplifies the …


Analysis And Design Tools For Structured Feedback Systems, Anurag Rai Jun 2012

Analysis And Design Tools For Structured Feedback Systems, Anurag Rai

Theses and Dissertations

As we begin to analyze and construct extremely complex systems, a theory for understanding and designing the underlying architecture becomes very important. To move in the direction of a precise theory of architecture, this thesis will provide some concrete tools to analyze and design complex systems with a given network structure. The first main result of this thesis analyzes the vulnerability of a system and shows that a system's vulnerability depends on its network structure. We will consider destabilization attacks acting on a single link in a system's logical interconnection structure. The concept of a vulnerable link is characterized and …