Computer Sciences Commons^™

Privacy-Preserving Updates To Anonymous And Confidential Databases, Alberto Trombetta, Wei Jiang, Elisa Bertino, Lorenzo Bossi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Suppose Alice owns a k-anonymous database and needs to determine whether her database, when inserted with a tuple owned by Bob, is still k-anonymous. Also, suppose that access to the database is strictly controlled, because for example data are used for certain experiments that need to be maintained confidential. Clearly, allowing Alice to directly read the contents of the tuple breaks the privacy of Bob (e.g., a patient's medical record); on the other hand, the confidentiality of the database managed by Alice is violated once Bob has access to the contents of the database. Thus, the problem is to check …

A Moving-Object Index For Efficient Query Processing With Peer-Wise Location Privacy, Dan Lin, Christian S. Jensen, Rui Zhang, Lu Xiao, Jiaheng Lu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

With the growing use of location-Based services, location privacy attracts increasing attention from users, industry, and the research community. While considerable effort has been devoted to inventing techniques that prevent service providers from knowing a user's exact location, relatively little attention has been paid to enabling so-called peer-wise privacy-the protection of a user's location from unauthorized peer users. This paper identifies an important efficiency problem in existing peer-privacy approaches that simply apply a filtering step to identify users that are located in a query range, but that do not want to disclose their location to the querying peer. to solve …

An Effective Web Service Recommendation Method Based On Personalized Collaborative Filtering, Yechun Jiang, Jianxun Liu, Mingdong Tang, Xiaoqing Liu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Collaborative filtering is one of widely used Web service recommendation techniques. There have been several methods of Web service selection and recommendation based on collaborative filtering, but seldom have they considered personalized influence of users and services. in this paper, we present an effective personalized collaborative filtering method for Web service recommendation. a key component of Web service recommendation techniques is computation of similarity measurement of Web services. Different from the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) similarity measurement, we take into account the personalized influence of services when computing similarity measurement between users and personalized influence of services. based on the …

Clustering Web Video Search Results Based On Integration Of Multiple Features, Alex Hindle, Jie Shao, Dan Lin, Jiaheng Lu, Rui Zhang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The usage of Web video search engines has been growing at an explosive rate. Due to the ambiguity of query terms and duplicate results, a good clustering of video search results is essential to enhance user experience as well as improve retrieval performance. Existing systems that cluster videos only consider the video content itself. This paper presents the first system that clusters Web video search results by fusing the evidence from a variety of information sources besides the video content such as title, tags and description. We propose a novel framework that can integrate multiple features and enable us to …

Pervasive Innovation: Taking Innovation Throughout The Organization, Bonnie Bachman, Stephen O. Bozzone

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

One of the fundamental tenets of management is that human capital can provide an essential competitive advantage for a business. Pervasive innovation (PI) is a process that blends strategy, structure, process, and culture to elevate product development to new heights and can provide a critical advantage. PI also encompasses new paradigms, practices, methods, and applications that support an environment of creativity and innovation that cuts across organization boundaries, both internal and external boundaries. Pervasive innovation guides the team through the ideation stage to implementation by leveraging the greater collective knowledge of the entire organization. This collaborative approach ensures that the …

Cross-Layer Design For Network Performance Optimization In Wireless Networks, Xuan Gong

Doctoral Dissertations

"In this dissertation, I use mathematical optimization approach to solve the complex network problems. Paper l and paper 2 first show that ignoring the bandwidth constraint can lead to infeasible routing solutions. A sufficient condition on link bandwidth is proposed that makes a routing solution feasible, and then a mathematical optimization model based on this sufficient condition is provided. Simulation results show that joint optimization models can provide more feasible routing solutions and provide significant improvement on throughput and lifetime. In paper 3 and paper 4, an interference model is proposed and a transmission scheduling scheme is presented to minimize …

Web Service Selection For Resolving Conflicting Service Requests, Guosheng Kang, Jianxun Liu, Mingdong Tang, Xiaoqing Liu, Kenneth K. Fletcher

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Web service selection based on quality of service (QoS) has been a research focus in an environment where many similar web services exist. Current methods of service selection usually focus on a single service request at a time and the selection of a service with the best QoS at the user's own discretion. the selection does not consider multiple requests for the same functional web services. Usually, there are multiple service requests for the same functional web service in practice. in such situations, conflicts occur when too many requesters select the same best web service. This paper aims at solving …

A Unified Model-Based Fault Diagnosis Scheme For Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems With Additive And Multiplicative Faults, Hasan Ferdowsi, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a novel model-Based fault diagnosis scheme is proposed for a class of uncertain nonlinear discrete-time systems which can be subjected to both additive and multiplicative faults. Faults are detected by using a novel (FD) observer consisting of two online approximators in discrete-time (OLAD) and a robust adaptive term. Upon detection, a fault diagnosis scheme is introduced to determine the fault type by monitoring the input residual generated via the first OLAD output. Then the appropriate OLAD is included in the observer while the other OLAD is switched off. Next, by using both the parameter update law of …

Stochastic Optimal Control Design For Nonlinear Networked Control System Via Neuro Dynamic Programming Using Input-Output Measurements, Hao Xu, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Neuro dynamic programming (NDP) techniques for optimal control of nonlinear network control system (NNCS) are not addressed in the literature. Therefore, in this paper, a novel NNCS representation incorporating the unknown system uncertainties and network imperfections is introduced first by using input and output measurements. Then, an online neural network (NN) identifier is introduced to estimate the control coefficient matrix. Subsequently, the critic NN and action NN are employed along with the NN identifier to determine the forward-in-time, time-Based stochastic optimal control of NNCS without using value and policy iterations. Instead, value function and control inputs are updated at every …

Robust Integral Of Neural Network And Sign Of Tracking Error Control Of Uncertain Nonlinear Affine Systems Using State And Output Feedback, Qinmin Yang, Sarangapani Jagannathan, Youxian Sun

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a novel state and output feedback control law for the tracking control of a class of multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) continuous time nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics and disturbance input. First the state feedback-based control law is designed which consists of the robust integral of a neural network (NN) output plus the sign of the tracking error signal multiplied with an adaptive gain. the two-layer NN learns the system dynamics in an online manner while the NN residual reconstruction errors and the bounded system disturbances are overcome by the error sign signal. Both of the NN output and error …

Energy Auditing Proposal, Paul Parham, Bonnie Bachman

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Executive Summary 1.1 Objectives Develop a business case for an energy audit software application that can be used on portable devices such as the iPad and reduce the time needed to complete an audit report by 50%.

Conference Marketing Research For Rolla, Missouri Chamber Of Commerce, Rebecca Mcnally, Bonnie Bachman

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper is used to give recommendations to the Chamber of Commerce in Rolla, Missouri to help them to better attract conferences and events. A survey given to event planners was the main method used for analyzing what Rolla needs to change to gain more of a name as a conference destination. Although this paper is specific to Rolla, Missouri, the methods used can be imitated for any rural town wishing to attract more conferences.

Neural Network-Based Optimal Control For Trajectory Tracking Of A Helicopter Uav, David Nodland, H. Zargarzadeh, S. Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Helicopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may be widely used for both military and civilian operations. Because these helicopters are underactuated nonlinear mechanical systems, high-performance controller design for them presents a challenge. This paper presents an optimal controller design for trajectory tracking of a helicopter UAV using a neural network (NN). the state-feedback control system utilizes the backstepping methodology, employing kinematic and dynamic controllers. the online approximator-Based dynamic controller learns the infinite-horizon Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation in continuous time and calculates the corresponding optimal control input to minimize the HJB equation forward-in-time. Optimal tracking is accomplished with a single NN utilized for …

Scholarship In International Technical Communication, 1950-1989: A Historical Study, Xiaoyan Huang

Masters Theses

"This thesis is a study of the published scholarship in international technical communication from 1950 to 1989. It provides insight into the four decades' worth of scholarship as well as a resource for the development of present and future scholarship in international technical communication. It attempts to answer the following research questions: What did scholars of international technical communication study in each decade? What are the similarities and differences among the four decades in terms of scholarship in international technical communication? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the relevant scholarship in the four decades? What can we learn from …

A Framework For Transparent Depression Classification In College Settings Via Mining Internet Usage Patterns, Raghavendra Kotikalapudi

Masters Theses

Depression is a serious mental health problem affecting the mind and body of people in our society. As of today, depression affects about 5 to 7% of the American population, which roughly translates to 14 million people! A particularly worrying concern these days is the increasing incidence of depression among college students. The problem is so severe that many US campuses have dedicated centers with mental health professionals catering to students needs. Although there are very effective treatments for depression, studies report that ~80% of depressed students do not seek any help due to the lack of perception of the …

The History Of Technical Communication Instruction At Missouri University Of Science And Technology: The Evolution Of A Curriculum, Elizabeth Marie Roberson

Masters Theses

"This thesis provides a written record of the history of technical communication instruction at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). Beginning with the school's inception in 1871 as the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (MSM) through to the year 2005, I have examined course catalogs and department files and conducted interviews to provide an overview of the evolution of technical communication instruction at this institution. To better understand this evolution, I have also provided a framework for the development of the English department from a single course in 1871 to the current Department of English and Technical …

Social Network Analysis Of The Video Bloggers' Community In Youtube, Anusha Mogallapu

Masters Theses

"This research studied the structure of the social network of the video blogger community on YouTube. It analyzed the social network structure of friends and subscribers of the 187 video bloggers on YouTube and calculated the social network measures. This thesis compares the results to the structure described by Warmbrodt et al. in 2007 and explains the reasons for the distinctions. The number of video bloggers has increased enormously, and the form of their interactions has changed. As a result, the video blogger social network has evolved from a core/periphery structure to one that is centralized. This indicates that the …

An Incentive Based Approach To Detect Selfish Nodes In Mobile P2p Network, Hemanth Meka

Masters Theses

"The growth of mobile devices led to the wide use of Mobile P2P networks. These networks are used in a wide variety of areas and hence there is lot of research in the field of mobile networks. Detecting selfish nodes is one of the research topics triggered due to the popularity of mobile P2P networks. It is necessary to detect selfish nodes in such networks to improve the efficiency of the network. In this thesis, an incentive based approach to detect selfish nodes is designed and evaluated. This approach differs from the existing work as it (i) can be used …

Longitudinal Evaluation Of A Learning System For Teaching Geographical Information System Within The Context Of A Geotechnical Problem, Aparna Sukhavasi

Masters Theses

"A learning system, to train civil engineering students to apply Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in geotechnical problems, was evaluated over a period of 5 years, hence longitudinal. The system was tested with a series of iterations consisting of usability tests and subsequent modification, which were followed by a series of applied evaluations within the context of class lab sessions. The principal goals of this evaluation were to determine the overall effectiveness of the system and the factors that affected student learning. The first evaluation was conducted in 2004; and included a control group that played a "game" related to the …

Applying Text Timing In Corporate Spin-Off Disclosure Statement Analysis: Understanding The Main Concerns And Recommendation Of Appropriate Term Weights, Aravindh Sekar

Masters Theses

"Text mining helps in extracting knowledge and useful information from unstructured data. It detects and extracts information from mountains of documents and allowing in selecting data related to a particular data.

In this study, text mining is applied to the 10-12b filings done by the companies during Corporate Spin-off. The main purposes are (1) To investigate potential and/or major concerns found from these financial statements filed for corporate spin-off and (2) To identify appropriate methods in text mining which can be used to reveal these major concerns.

10-12b filings from thirty-four companies were taken and only the "Risk Factors" category …

Adaptive Rule-Based Malware Detection Employing Learning Classifier Systems, Jonathan Joseph Blount

Masters Theses

"Efficient and accurate malware detection is increasingly becoming a necessity for society to operate. Existing malware detection systems have excellent performance in identifying known malware for which signatures are available, but poor performance in anomaly detection for zero day exploits for which signatures have not yet been made available or targeted attacks against a specific entity. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide evidence for the potential of learning classier systems to improve the accuracy of malware detection.

A customized system based on a state-of-the-art learning classier system is presented for adaptive rule-based malware detection, which combines a …

Optimization Of Textual Affect Entity Relation Models, Ajith Cherukad Jose

Masters Theses

"Affective computing is a recent research area in computer science which deals with the design and development of systems that can recognize, interpret and process human affects/emotions. Various research projects in the past have focused on affect sensing and processing raw textual data. One such research effort conducted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has introduced an affect propagation algorithm which can generate affective relationships between entities contained in a given textual document. The algorithm depends upon a set of real-valued numeric parameters for which the best possible values are unknown. This thesis describes three different contributions to ORNL's …

Meloc - Memory And Location Optimized Caching For Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Lekshmi Manian Chidambaram

Masters Theses

"The advancement of Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) is tremendous in the field of social and military applications. Caching and Replication are the two common techniques used to improve data access efficiency in Mobile Ad hoc networks. Caching favors data access efficiency by bringing data closer to the source. Existing caching approaches are deficient in reducing the number of cache locations, thus reducing the number of copies, which is needed for many mission critical applications considering safety and security. Conversely, reducing the number of caches should not affect the efficiency of data access. We design an efficient broker based caching …

Location Privacy Policy Management System, Arej Awodha Muhammed

Masters Theses

"The advance in wireless communication and positioning systems has permitted development of a large variety of location-based services that, for example, can help people easily locate family members or find nearest gas station or restaurant. As location-based services become more and more popular, concerns are growing about the misuse of location information by malicious parties. In order to preserve location privacy, many efforts have been devoted to preventing service providers from determining users' exact locations. Few works have sought to help users manage their privacy preferences; however management of privacy is an important issue in real applications. This work developed …

Eyes Don't Lie: Understanding Users' First Impressions On Website Design Using Eye Tracking, Sirjana Dahal

Masters Theses

"Websites are becoming more prevalent these days. They need to create a favorable first impression on the users during initial exposure. After allocating their attention to stimuli, users form a cognitive representation of the visual information leading to first impression. Hence, first impression is important to evaluate the effectiveness of a website. This research tries to examine the amount of exposure time needed to form first impression; identify the web design factors that influence the formation of users' first impression; study the emotional responses of users on website design; and finally understand the relationship between first impression and eye movement. …

Effect Of Web Atmospheric Cues On Users' Emotional Responses In Ecommerce, Tanvi Joginapelly

Masters Theses

"The internet has revolutionized the shopping experience. As consumers' emotional responses play an important role in predicting behavioral intentions and satisfaction, it is imperative to study e-commerce from an affective perspective and identify the website design features that influence consumers' emotional responses. This research adopted the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to examine the effects of web atmospheric cues. mainly vividness and interactivity, on users' emotional responses in e-commerce, and their influence on users' purchasing intentions.

The study had three stages: First, experts in human computer interaction (HCI) were recruited and asked to evaluate and rate 25 different e-commerce websites on interactivity …

Assess Commercialization Feasibility Of Algae-Based Bio-Fuel With Dashboard And Scorecard Technologies, Madhur Chopra

Masters Theses

"The growing energy depleting energy supplies and increasing environmental pollution has motivated researchers across the globe to look for alternative energy sources. Various energy sources have been identified but none of them have the capability of realistically replacing the fossil fuels and meeting the current demand. Algae based bio-fuels give some hope but producing them at large scale is a challenge which needs to be overcome.

The underlying objective of this research project is two folds. Firstly, the project aims to assist with the commercialization of algae based bio-fuels by developing Dashboard based and Balanced Scorecard based monitoring prototypes. The …

Exploring Join Caching In Programming Codes To Reduce Runtime Execution, Swetha Surapaneni

Masters Theses

"This thesis describes an approach to reduce the runtime of a large program by exploring object querying and query caching in programming codes. Some object-oriented languages allow the programmers to express queries explicitly in the code, which are optimized using the query optimization techniques from the database domain. In this regard, Java Query Language (JQL) has been developed that allows object querying and performs the query optimization and query caching at runtime. The problem that has been addressed in this thesis is how to reduce the runtime of a large program during the single execution by employing an efficient cache …

Improving Student Learning Outcomes Through Personal Response Systems (Clickers), Ran Cai

Masters Theses

"The main purpose of this research was to examine the impact of Personal Response Systems (PRS) or clickers, (as they are commonly called), on student learning outcome. Student learning outcomes as measured by course grades were compared between traditional lecture format and clicker use lecture format. Student perceptions on clicker use were observed in the mean time. Statistical analysis indicated that although student conveyed positive attitude on clicker adoption, there were no significant differences in course scores between students who used clickers and students who did not.

This study also considered the influence of other factors, such as gender, student …

Comprehensive Evaluation Of A Computer Based Learning System, Arun Sharma Chintalapati

Masters Theses

"This thesis presents the results of a comprehensive multi-method evaluation that was conducted on the Rapid Development System (RDS), a computer-based learning environment. The development of the project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Prior to this evaluation, the RDS had gone through two iterations.

A pre/post evaluation was conducted using questionnaires and eye tracking. Multi-method evaluation was employed to help triangulate the results and to provide additional insights. Data from the eye tracking was used to study the influence of the RDS interface on the attention and the cognitive workload of students with respect to the learning …