Computer Sciences Commons^™

An Automata-Based Automatic Verification Environment, Yi Meng

Dissertations

With the continuing growth of computer systems including safety-critical computer control systems, the need for reliable tools to help construct, analyze, and verify such systems also continues to grow. The basic motivation of this work is to build such a formal verification environment for computer-based systems.

An example of such a tool is the Design Oriented Verification and Evaluation (DOVE) created by Australian Defense Science and Technology Organization. One of the advantages of DOVE is that it combines ease of use provided by a graphical user interface for describing specifications in the form of extended state machines with the rigor …

Supporting Individual Time Management Through The Capture And Display Of Temporal Structures, Dezhi Wu

Dissertations

This thesis work examines the time management strategies of individuals in an academic institution and gathers information on the complex temporal structures they experience and manage. Its focus is on understanding the relationship between the quality of individual time management and an individual's understanding and use of temporal structures. This work consists of an exploratory field study to gather data on how people use temporal structures with electronic tools. It is followed by a survey that is given to a larger group of respondents in the same subject population examined with the field study. The survey examines the hypotheses developed …

Rna Structure Analysis : Algorithms And Applications, Jianghui Liu

Dissertations

In this doctoral thesis, efficient algorithms for aligning RNA secondary structures and mining unknown RNA motifs are presented. As the major contribution, a structure alignment algorithm, which combines both primary and secondary structure information, can find the optimal alignment between two given structures where one of them could be either a pattern structure of a known motif or a real query structure and the other be a subject structure.

Motivated by widely used algorithms for RNA folding, the proposed algorithm decomposes an RNA secondary structure into a set of atomic structural components that can be further organized in a tree …

Electronic Capture And Analysis Of Fraudulent Behavioral Patterns : An Application To Identity Fraud, Benjamin Ngugi

Dissertations

The objective of this research was to find a transparent and secure solution for mitigating identity fraud and to find the critical factors that determine the solution's acceptance. Identity fraud is identified as a key problem with total losses exceeding fifty two billion dollars (Javelin Strategy and Research 2005). A common denominator in most identity-fraud-prone transactions is the use of a keypad; hence this research focuses on keypad data entry and proposes a biometric solution. Three studies develop, evaluate and investigate the feasibility of this solution.

The first study was done in three stages. Stage one investigated the technical feasibility …

Snp Auto-Calling Using Artificial Neural Networks, Damien Spivak

Theses

In recent years feedforward artificial neural networks (ANN) and their training algorithms have become an effective methodology for the construction of nonlinear systems that solve the statistical problem of classification. The ability of ANNs to solve this problem is highly germane to making progress in the refinement of DNA microarray analysis and techniques regarding this issue. This study attempts to deal with the classification of microarray data and the comparison and validation of simple feedforward ANNs in partitioning high dimensional data. In doing this the efficacy of using ANNs as a genotyping tool will be proven. Furthermore, it has been …

The Effects Of Digital Audio On Social Presence, Motivation And Perceived Learning In Asynchronous Learning Networks, Eunhee Kim

Dissertations

This study explores the possibilities of applying digital audio to the ALN environment, so that students can speak and listen rather than type and read. Two sets of 1x2 field experiments (text vs. digital audio) were conducted with two formats of digital audio -recorded voice messages and narrated Microsoft PowerPoint presentation - used in several NJIT courses conducted via ALN. The perceptions of communication media were measured from two different user perspectives: active use when the subjects created their assignments using prescribed communication media (audio or text) and passive use when the subjects viewed/listened to other students' work.

The perceptions …

Some Topics On Deterministic Scheduling Problems, Yumei Huo

Dissertations

Sequencing and scheduling problems are motivated by allocation of limited resources over time. The goal is to find an optimal allocation where optimality is defined by some problem specific objectives.

This dissertation considers the scheduling of a set of ri tasks, with precedence constraints, on m >= 1 identical and parallel processors so as to minimize the makespan. Specifically, it considers the situation where tasks, along with their precedence constraints, are released at different times, and the scheduler has to make scheduling decisions without knowledge of future releases. Both preemptive and nonpreemptive schedules are considered. This dissertation shows that optimal …

Scheduling Policies For Disks And Disk Arrays, Chang Liu

Dissertations

Recent rapid advances of magnetic recording technology have enabled substantial increases in disk capacity. There has been less than 10% improvement annually in the random access time to small data blocks on the disk. Such accesses are very common in OLTP applications, which tend to have stringent response time requirements. Scheduling of disk requests is intended to improve their response time, reduce disk service time, and increase disk access bandwidth with respect to the default FCFS scheduling policy.

Shortest Access Time First policy has been shown to outperform other classical disk scheduling policies in numerous studies. Before verifying this conclusion, …

Image Watermarking, Steganography, And Morphological Processing, Yi-Ta Wu

Dissertations

With the fast development of computer technology, research in the fields of multimedia security, image processing, and robot vision have recently become popular. Image watermarking, steganogrphic system, morphological processing and shortest path planning are important subjects among them. In this dissertation, the fundamental techniques are reviewed first followed by the presentation of novel algorithms and theorems for these three subjects.

The research on multimedia security consists of two parts, image watermarking and steganographic system. In image watermarking, several algorithms are developed to achieve different goals as shown below. In order to embed more watermarks and to minimize distortion of watermarked …

Collaborative Examinations In Asyncronous Learning Networks : Field Experiments On Collaborative Learning Through Online Assessments, Jia Shen

Dissertations

With the proliferation of computer networks and the emergence of virtual teams, learning and knowledge sharing in the online environment has become an increasingly important topic. Applying constructivism and collaborative learning theories to assessment, the collaborative online exam is designed featuring students' active participation in various phases of the exam process through small group activities online. A participatory online exam process is designed featuring similar procedures except that students' involvement in each phase of the exam is individual. The collaborative online exam and the participatory online exam are investigated regarding student exam study strategies, group process, exam outcomes, faculty satisfaction, …

Algorithms And Complexity Analyses For Some Combinational Optimization Problems, Hairong Zhao

Dissertations

The main focus of this dissertation is on classical combinatorial optimization problems in two important areas: scheduling and network design.

In the area of scheduling, the main interest is in problems in the master-slave model. In this model, each machine is either a master machine or a slave machine. Each job is associated with a preprocessing task, a slave task and a postprocessing task that must be executed in this order. Each slave task has a dedicated slave machine. All the preprocessing and postprocessing tasks share a single master machine or the same set of master machines. A job may …

Just-In-Time Hypermedia, Li Zhang

Dissertations

Many analytical applications, especially legacy systems, create documents and display screens in response to user queries "dynamically" or in real time . These documents and displays do not exist in advance, and thus hypermedia must be generated 'just in time" -automatically and dynamically.

This dissertation details the idea of 'just-in-time" hypermedia and discusses challenges encountered in this research area. A fully detailed literature review about the research issues and related research work is given. A framework for the 'just-in-time" hypermedia compares virtual documents with static documents, as well as dynamic with static hypermedia functionality. Conceptual 'just-in-time" hypermedia architecture is proposed …

High-Dimensional Indexing Methods Utilizing Clustering And Dimensionality Reduction, Lijuan Zhang

Dissertations

The emergence of novel database applications has resulted in the prevalence of a new paradigm for similarity search. These applications include multimedia databases, medical imaging databases, time series databases, DNA and protein sequence databases, and many others. Features of data objects are extracted and transformed into high-dimensional data points. Searching for objects becomes a search on points in the high-dimensional feature space. The dissimilarity between two objects is determined by the distance between two feature vectors. Similarity search is usually implemented as nearest neighbor search in feature vector spaces. The cost of processing k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) queries via a sequential …

Improving Document Representation By Accumulating Relevance Feedback : The Relevance Feedback Accumulation (Rfa) Algorithm, Razvan Stefan Bot

Dissertations

Document representation (indexing) techniques are dominated by variants of the term-frequency analysis approach, based on the assumption that the more occurrences a term has throughout a document the more important the term is in that document. Inherent drawbacks associated with this approach include: poor index quality, high document representation size and the word mismatch problem. To tackle these drawbacks, a document representation improvement method called the Relevance Feedback Accumulation (RFA) algorithm is presented. The algorithm provides a mechanism to continuously accumulate relevance assessments over time and across users. It also provides a document representation modification function, or document representation learning …

Order Scheduling In Dedicated And Flexible Machine Environments, Haibing Li

Dissertations

Order scheduling models are relatively new in the field of scheduling. Consider a facility with m parallel machines that can process k different products (job types). Each machine can process a given subset of different product types. There are n orders from n different clients. Each order requests specific quantities of the various different products that can be produced concurrently on their given subsets of machines; it may have a release date, a weight and a due date. Preemptions may be allowed. An order can not be shipped until the processing of all the products for the order has been …

Approximation Algorithms For Variants Of The Traveling Salesman Problem, Ankur Gupta

Theses

The traveling salesman problem, hereafter abbreviated and referred to as TSP, is a very well known NP-optimization problem and is one of the most widely researched problems in computer science. Classical TSP is one of the original NP - hard problems [1]. It is also known to be NP - hard to approximate within any factor and thus there is no approximation algorithm for TSP for general graphs, unless P = NP. However, given the added constraint that edges of the graph observe triangle inequality, it has been shown that it is possible achieve a good approximation to the optimal …

Rebuild Performance Enhancement Using Onboard Caching And Delayed Vacation Termination In Clustered Raid 5, Akheel Ahmed

Theses

The Clustered Raid 5 (CRAID5) architecture with a parity group size(G) smaller than the number of disks(N) increases the load by the declustering ratio denoted by α = (G -1)/(N -1), which can be lesser than that in Raid 5 while switching to, and subsequently operating in rebuild mode. The Nearly Random Permutation (NRP) layout provides the flexibility to vary the declustering ratio (α) for a given N, and the Vacationing Server Model (VSM) of processing the rebuild requests provides acceptable rebuild and user response times.

The rebuild performance and the user response time can be improved by introducing an …

Sharing The Big Apple : A Survey Study Of People, Place And Locatability, Samer Nadim Karam

Theses

Over the past half century social trends and new technologies have weakened local social ties and thus, the fabric of civil society itself. Mobile location-aware community systems offer one path to redress these problems by enhancing community cohesion and the formation of social capital by helping people to meet each other and coordinate their actions. However, little is known about the general population's desire and attitude towards these systems.

The design space described by the People-to-People-to-Geographical-Places Framework (P3-Framework), was used to guide a survey study of the impact of 'place' on people's social information needs and their willingness to share …

Structure And Dynamics Of Soluble Guanylyl Cyclase, Kentaro Sugino

Theses

Soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) is one of the key enzymes involved in many fundamental biological processes including vasodilatation. It can be allosterically activated by synthetic compound such as YC-l. Recently, the 3D structure of adenylyl cyclase (AC), which is a homologue of sGC, was determined. Using AC as template and homology modeling, the 3D structure of sGC is predicted. Prior experimental work has suggested two binding modes of YC- 1. In the current investigation, molecular dynamics simulations (MD) were conducted to seek more detail of molecular mechanism of sGC activation.

From these MD simulations, a tentative mechanism of sGC activation …

Negotiation Of Software Requirements In An Asynchronous Collaborative Environment, Catherine Lowry Campbell

Dissertations

The effect of task structure and negotiation sequence on collaborative software requirements negotiation is investigated. This work began with an extensive literature review that focused on current research in collaborative software engineering and, in particular, on the negotiation of software requirements and the requisite collaboration for the development of such requirements. A formal detailed experiment was then conducted to evaluate the effects of negotiation sequence and task structure in an asynchronous group meeting environment. The experiment tested the impact of these structures on groups negotiating the requirements for an emergency response information system. The results reported here show that these …

Characterizing The Evolution Of Operating Systems, Yi Peng

Dissertations

Examining the development and trends in software engineering technology is a huge undertaking. It is constantly evolving and affected by a large number of factors, which are themselves driven by a wide range of sub-factors. This dissertation is part of a long term project intended to analyze software engineering technology trends and how they evolve. This project is intended to analyze operating system trends and what are the factors that drive how they evolve. Basically, the following questions will be answered: "How to watch, predict, adapt to, and affect operating system's evolution trends?"

In previous research, YF Chen used statistical …

Live, Virtual, And Constructive Environments For Performance Support, John Michael Lacontora

Dissertations

As military systems become more complex, the operation and support of these systems becomes intrinsically more difficult. The U.S. Army's current procurement process relies on industry to provide embedded training and performance support tools for the systems they produce. These tools are relatively new and in the early stages of development. As yet, they have failed to meet the needs of the technicians that are required to support these complex systems. Current efforts to provide enabling technologies that enhance the capabilities of automotive maintenance technicians are concentrated in three professional communities. First is the Performance Improvement community where work is …

Pattern Discovery In Structural Databases With Applications To Bioinformatics, Sen Zhang

Dissertations

Frequent structure mining (FSM) aims to discover and extract patterns frequently occurring in structural data such as trees and graphs. FSM finds many applications in bioinformatics, XML processing, Web log analysis, and so on. In this thesis, two new FSM techniques are proposed for finding patterns in unordered labeled trees. Such trees can be used to model evolutionary histories of different species, among others.

The first FSM technique finds cousin pairs in the trees. A cousin pair is a pair of nodes sharing the same parent, the same grandparent, or the same great-grandparent, etc. Given a tree T, our …

Performance Evaluation Of Various Allocation Methods In A Heterogeneous Disk Array Architecture, Bogdan Alexandru Branzoi

Theses

Dataset attributes, such as data availability levels and access patterns, make their mapping to certain RAID levels more desirable than others. On the other hand, it is not economically viable for an installation to acquire multiple disk arrays to satisfy diverse data storage requirements. A Heterogeneous Disk Array (HDA) architecture is proposed, which allows device heterogeneity as well as RAID level heterogeneity. In other words, various disks of different types can be incorporated in a single HDA and multiple RAID schemes can coexist in the same array. The goal of this architecture is to utilize the resources of all its …

Digital Libraries And Middleware Technology, Muhammad Umar Qasim

Theses

Digital libraries deliver personalized knowledge directly to their users, without being restricted to the contents of a physical library. In a digital library information from any online source can be managed and shared, making more knowledge available to users than before. The information sharing is achieved by integrating many autonomous heterogeneous systems available. The challenge is to provide users with the ability to transparently access digital library contents in spite of the heterogeneity among the information sources.

Research communities have proposed several approaches to accomplish the system integration in digital libraries. In this thesis, the working of currently employed approaches …

Data Feed Management Automation : An Empirical Approach, Dibyendu Majumder

Theses

This thesis proposes a framework for automation of data feed management and control. The framework can be classified into two broad areas i) building an ontology for a feed system and ii) developing a test suite, that is, a set of statistical models to analyze and diagnose feeds and formalize the results to feedback into the ontology. This thesis concentrates more on the latter and will only outline the course of action required for the former. Detailed descriptions of the statistical models that are part of the test suite are given and their strengths and weaknesses discussed. Practical results of …

Next Generation Satellite Orbital Control System, Thomas Gerard Nowak

Theses

Selection of the correct software architecture is vital for building successful software-intensive systems. Its realization requires important decisions about the organization of the system and by and large permits or prevents a system's acceptance and quality attributes such as performance and reliability. The correct architecture is essential for program success while the wrong one is a formula for disaster.

In this investigation, potential software architectures for the Next Generation Satellite Orbital Control System (NG-SOCS) are developed from compiled system specifications and a review of existing technologies. From the developed architectures, the recommended architecture is selected based on real-world considerations that …

2d Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship Modeling Of Methylphenidate Analogues Using Algorithm And Partial Least Square Regression, Noureen Wadhwaniya

Theses

Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) analysis attempts to develop a predictive model of biological activity based on molecular descriptors. 2D QSAR uses descriptors, such as topological indices, that are independent of molecular conformation. A genetic algorithm - partial least squares (GA-PLS) approach was used to identify the molecular descriptors that correlate to the biological activity (binding affinity) of a set of 80 methylphenidate analogues and to construct a predictive model. The GA code was implemented using the fitness function (1-(n-1)(1-q²)/ (n - c)), where n is the number of compounds, c is the optimal number of components, and q …

Analysis Of Relationship Between Software Metrics And Process Models, Sadia Munir

Theses

This thesis studies the correlation between software process models and software metrics. To support our studies we have defined a Process - Metric Evaluation Framework and derived an evaluation template from it. The template served as a basic tool in studding the relationships between various process models, artifacts and software metrics.

We have evaluated a number of process models according to our template and have identified suitable software metrics. We have also recommended a root cause analysis approach at various points of the process models.

The suggested software metrics can be derived from various product and process artifacts. They can …

Modeling Usage Of An Online Research Community, Yi Zhang

Dissertations

Although online communities have been thought of as a new way for collaboration across geographic boundaries in the scientific world, they have a problem attracting people to keep visiting. The main purpose of this study is to understand how people behave in such communities, and to build and evaluate tools to stimulate engagement in a research community. These tools were designed based on a research framework of factors that influence online participation and relationship development.

There are two main objectives for people to join an online community, information sharing and interpersonal relationship development, such as friends or colleagues. The tools …