Computer Sciences Commons^™

Situate: An Agent-Based System For Situation Recognition, Max Henry Quinn

Dissertations and Theses

Computer vision and machine learning systems have improved significantly in recent years, largely based on the development of deep learning systems, leading to impressive performance on object detection tasks. Understanding the content of images is considerably more difficult. Even simple situations, such as "a handshake", "walking the dog", "a game of ping-pong", or "people waiting for a bus", present significant challenges. Each consists of common objects, but are not reliably detectable as a single entity nor through the simple co-occurrence of their parts.

In this dissertation, toward the goal of developing machine learning systems that demonstrate properties associated with understanding, …

From Mdp To Alphazero, David Robert Sewell

Dissertations and Theses

In this paper I will explain the AlphaGo family of algorithms starting from first principles and requiring little previous knowledge from the reader. The focus will be upon one of the more recent versions AlphaZero but I hope to explain the core principles that allowed these algorithms to be so successful. I will generally refer to AlphaZero as theses [sic] core set of principles and will make it clear when I am referring to a specific algorithm of the AlphaGo family. AlphaZero in short combines Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) with Deep learning and self-play. We will see how these …

Validation Of A Spatial Agent-Based Model For Taenia Solium Transmission (“Cystiagent”) Against A Large Prospective Trial Of Control Strategies In Northern Peru, Ian W. Pray, Francesco Pizzitutti, Gabrielle Bonnet, Eloy Gonzalez-Gustavson, Wayne Wakeland, William K. Pan, William E. Lambert, Armando E. Gonzalez, Hector H. Garcia, Seth E. O’Neal

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: The pork tapeworm (Taenia solium) is a parasitic helminth that imposes a major health and economic burden on poor rural populations around the world. As recognized by the World Health Organization, a key barrier for achieving control of T. solium is the lack of an accurate and validated simulation model with which to study transmission and evaluate available control and elimination strategies. CystiAgent is a spatially-explicit agent based model for T. solium that is unique among T. solium models in its ability to represent key spatial and environmental features of transmission and simulate spatially targeted interventions, such as ring …

Predicting Human–Pathogen Protein–Protein Interactions Using Natural Language Processing Methods, Nikhil Mathews, Tuan Tran, Banafsheh Rekabdar, Chinwe Ekenna

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we predict the interaction of proteins between Humans and Yersinia pestis via amino acid sequences. We utilize multiple Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods available in deep learning in a unique format and produce promising results. Our developed model gives a cross-validation AUC score of 0.92 and is comparable with other work that utilizes extensive biochemical properties i.e, network and sequence in conjunction. We achieve this by combining advanced tools in neural machine translation into an integrated end-to-end deep learning framework as well as methods of preprocessing that are novel to the field of bioinformatics. We show that …

Expanding Temperature Sensing For The Orion Bms 2, Samuel J. Parker

University Honors Theses

Formula SAE (FSAE) is an annual collegiate design competition that takes place across the globe. Portland State University’s team, Viking Motorsports, was committed to designing an Electric Vehicle (EV) for the 2021 FSAE competition. The team designed a completely custom lithium-ion cell battery that is managed by an Orion BMS 2 battery management system. The FSAE rulebook requires a robust temperature monitoring system for any EV power supply. The Orion BMS 2 can only directly collect data from eight temperature sensors, which is not enough to meet FSAE regulation. However, the BMS can be configured to monitor many more sensors …

Efficient Neuromorphic Algorithms For Gamma-Ray Spectrum Denoising And Radionuclide Identification, Merlin Phillip Carson

Dissertations and Theses

Radionuclide detection and identification are important tasks for deterring a potentially catastrophic nuclear event. Due to high levels of background radiation from both terrestrial and extraterrestrial sources, some form of noise reduction pre-processing is required for a gamma-ray spectrum prior to being analyzed by an identification algorithm so as to determine the identity of anomalous sources. This research focuses on the use of neuromorphic algorithms for the purpose of developing low power, accurate radionuclide identification devices that can filter out non-anomalous background radiation and other artifacts created by gamma-ray detector measurement equipment, along with identifying clandestine, radioactive material.

A sparse …

Rotten Green Tests In Java, Pharo And Python, Vincent Aranega, Julien Delplanque, Matias Martinez, Andrew P. Black, Stéphane Ducasse, Anne Etien, Christopher Fuhrman, Guillermo Polito

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rotten Green Tests are tests that pass, but not because the assertions they contain are true: a rotten test passes because some or all of its assertions are not actually executed. The presence of a rotten green test is a test smell, and a bad one, because the existence of a test gives us false confidence that the code under test is valid, when in fact that code may not have been tested at all. This article reports on an empirical evaluation of the tests in a corpus of projects found in the wild. We selected approximately one hundred mature …

Forest Park Trail Monitoring, Adan Robles, Colton S. Maybee, Erin Dougherty

REU Final Reports

Forest Park, one of the largest public parks in the United States with over 40 trails to pick from when planning a hiking trip. One of the main problems this park has is that there are too many trails, and a lot of the trails extend over 3 miles. Due to these circumstances’ trails are not checked frequently and hikers are forced to hike trails in the area with no warnings of potential hazards they can encounter. In this paper I researched how Forest Park currently monitors its trails and then set up a goal to solve the problem. We …

Digitally Reporting Trail Obstructions In Forest Park, Colton S. Maybee

REU Final Reports

The inclusion of technology on the trail can lead to better experiences for everyone involved in the hobby. Hikers can play a more prominent role in the maintenance of the trails by being able to provide better reports of obstructions while directly on the trail. This paper goes into the project of revamping the obstruction report system applied at Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. Most of my contributions to the project focus on mobile app development with some research into path planning algorithms related to the continuations of this project.

Client Access Feature Engineering For The Homeless Community Of The City Of Portland, Oswaldo Ceballos Jr

altREU Projects

Given the severity of homeless in many cities across the country, the project at hand attempts to assist a service provider organization called Central City Concern (CCC) with their mission of providing services to the community of Portland. These services include housing, recovery, health care, and jobs. With many different types of services available through the works of CCC, there exists an abundance of information and data pertaining to the individuals that interact with the CCC service system. The goal of this project is to perform an exploratory analysis and feature engineer the existing datasets CCC has collected over the …

Automated Statistical Structural Testing Techniques And Applications, Yang Shi

Dissertations and Theses

Statistical structural testing(SST) is an effective testing technique that produces random test inputs from probability distributions. SST shows superiority in fault-revealing power over random testing and deterministic approaches since it heritages the merits from both of them. SST ensures testing thoroughness by setting up a probability lower-bound criterion for each structural cover element and test inputs that exercise a structural cover element sampled from the probability distribution, ensuring testing randomness. Despite the advantages, SST is not a widely used approach in practice. There are two major limitations. First, to construct probability distributions, a tester must understand the underlying software's structure, …

Quantum Grover's Oracles With Symmetry Boolean Functions, Peng Gao

Dissertations and Theses

Quantum computing has become an important research field of computer science and engineering. Among many quantum algorithms, Grover's algorithm is one of the most famous ones. Designing an effective quantum oracle poses a challenging conundrum in circuit and system-level design for practical application realization of Grover's algorithm.

In this dissertation, we present a new method to build quantum oracles for Grover's algorithm to solve graph theory problems. We explore generalized Boolean symmetric functions with lattice diagrams to develop a low quantum cost and area efficient quantum oracle. We study two graph theory problems: cycle detection of undirected graphs and generalized …

Proximal Policy Optimization For Radiation Source Search, Philippe Erol Proctor

Dissertations and Theses

Rapid localization and search for lost nuclear sources in a given area of interest is an important task for the safety of society and the reduction of human harm. Detection, localization and identification are based upon the measured gamma radiation spectrum from a radiation detector. The nonlinear relationship of electromagnetic wave propagation paired with the probabilistic nature of gamma ray emission and background radiation from the environment leads to ambiguity in the estimation of a source's location. In the case of a single mobile detector, there are numerous challenges to overcome such as weak source activity, multiple sources, or the …

Information Security Maturity Model For Healthcare Organizations In The United States, Bridget Joan Barnes Page

Dissertations and Theses

This research provides a maturity model for information security for healthcare organizations in the United States. Healthcare organizations are faced with increasing threats to the security of their information systems. The maturity model identifies specific performance metrics, with relative importance measures, that can be used to enhance information security at healthcare organizations allowing them to focus scarce resources on mitigating the most important information security threat vectors. This generalizable, hierarchical decision model uses both qualitative and quantitative metrics based on objective goals. This model may be used as a baseline by which to measure individual organizational performance, to measure performance …

Graphical Models In Reconstructability Analysis And Bayesian Networks, Marcus Harris, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reconstructability Analysis (RA) and Bayesian Networks (BN) are both probabilistic graphical modeling methodologies used in machine learning and artificial intelligence. There are RA models that are statistically equivalent to BN models and there are also models unique to RA and models unique to BN. The primary goal of this paper is to unify these two methodologies via a lattice of structures that offers an expanded set of models to represent complex systems more accurately or more simply. The conceptualization of this lattice also offers a framework for additional innovations beyond what is presented here. Specifically, this paper integrates RA and …

Universal Biological Motions For Educational Robot Theatre And Games, Rajesh Venkatachalapathy, Martin Zwick, Adam Slowik, Kai Brooks, Mikhail Mayers, Roman Minko, Tyler Hull, Bliss Brass, Marek Perkowski

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Paper presents a concept that is new to robotics education and social robotics. It is based on theatrical games, in motions for social robots and animatronic robots. Presented here motion model is based on Drift Differential Model from biology and Fokker-Planck equations. This model is used in various areas of science to describe many types of motion. The model was successfully verified on various simulated mobile robots and a motion game of three robots called "Mouse and Cheese."

Functional Role Of The N-Terminal Domain In Connexin 46/50 By In Silico Mutagenesis And Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Umair Khan

University Honors Theses

Connexins form intercellular channels known as gap junctions that facilitate diverse physiological roles, from long-range electrical and chemical coupling to nutrient exchange. Recent structural studies on Cx46 and Cx50 have defined a novel and stable open state and implicated the amino-terminal (NT) domain as a major contributor to functional differences between connexin isoforms. This thesis presents two studies which use molecular dynamics simulations with these new structures to provide mechanistic insight into the function and behavior of the NTH in Cx46 and Cx50. In the first, residues in the NTH that differ between Cx46 and Cx50 are swapped between the …

Case Study Of Scrum Methodology As Used By A Capstone Team, Lilly I. Yeaton

University Honors Theses

Scrum is widely used in the software industry to manage all kinds of projects. This case study examines the way in which a capstone team used the methodology and models the specific project management processes they used over the course of their project. These models and the process modifications therein are then compared to the team’s velocity at different points in the project. The results of this analysis suggest a correlation between asynchronous daily meetings and sprint reviews and improved velocity.

Automated Decision Making And Machine Learning: Regulatory Alternatives For Autonomous Settings, Alyssa Heminger

University Honors Theses

Given growing investment capital in research and development, accompanied by extensive literature on the subject by researchers in nearly every domain from civil engineering to legal studies, automated decision-support systems (ADM) are likely to see a place in the foreseeable future. Artificial intelligence (AI), as an automated system, can be defined as a broad range of computerized tasks designed to replicate human neural networks, store and organize large quantities of information, detect patterns, and make predictions with increasing accuracy and reliability. By itself, artificial intelligence is not quite science-fiction tropes (i.e. an uncontrollable existential threat to humanity) yet not without …

Understanding Ransomware Trajectory To Create An Informed Prediction, J. D. Klusnick

University Honors Theses

Ransomware is a form of extortion in which digital files are rendered inaccessible until a ransom payment is made. Modern ransomware emerged in 2006 and its destructive influence has been expanding ever since. In recent years cybercriminals have evolved who they target, what computer systems they target, and how they infect those systems. Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts have modelled ransomware methods allowing them to innovate their defense techniques across three paradigms: recovery, detection, and prevention. Ultimately either ransomware attackers or ransomware defenders will dominate this ongoing conflict. A review of the literature indicates that the ransomware crime wave will likely be …

A Method For Comparative Analysis Of Trusted Execution Environments, Stephano Cetola

Dissertations and Theses

The problem of secure remote computation has become a serious concern of hardware manufacturers and software developers alike. Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are a solution to the problem of secure remote computation in applications ranging from "chip and pin" financial transactions to intellectual property protection in modern gaming systems. While extensive literature has been published about many of these technologies, there exists no current model for comparing TEEs. This thesis provides hardware architects and designers with a set of tools for comparing TEEs. I do so by examining several properties of a TEE and comparing their implementations in several technologies. …

Storing Intermediate Results In Space And Time: Sql Graphs And Block Referencing, Basem Ibrahim Elazzabi

Dissertations and Theses

With the advancement of data-collection technology and with more data being available for data analysts for data-intensive decision making, many data analysts use client-based data-analysis environments to analyze that data. Client-based environments where only a personal computer or a laptop is used to perform data analysis tasks are common. In such client-based environments, multiple tools and systems are typically needed to accomplish data-analysis tasks. Stand-alone systems such as spreadsheets, R, Matlab, and Tableau are usually easy to use, and they are designed for the typical, non-technical data analyst. However, these systems are limited in their data-analysis capabilities. More complex data …

A Golden Age For Computing Frontiers, A Dark Age For Computing Education?, Christof Teuscher

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is no doubt that the body of knowledge spanned by the computing disciplines has gone through an unprecedented expansion, both in depth and breadth, over the last century. In this position paper, we argue that this expansion has led to a crisis in computing education: quite literally the vast majority of the topics of interest of this conference are not taught at the undergraduate level and most graduate courses will only scratch the surface of a few selected topics. But alas, industry is increasingly expecting students to be familiar with emerging topics, such as neuromorphic, probabilistic, and quantum computing, …

Using Information Theory To Extract Patterns From Categorical Raster Data, David Percy

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Information theory -- Reconstructability Analysis (RA) implemented in the Occam software -- was used to extract patterns from National Land Cover Data. The aim was to predict temporal change in evergreen forests from time-lagged and spatially adjacent states. The NLCD satellite data were preprocessed with Python and submitted to Occam for analysis, and Occam output was also explored with R-studio. The effectiveness of RA methodology for the analysis of this type of categorical space-time grid data was demonstrated.

Learned Dual-View Reflection Removal, Simon Niklaus, Xuaner Cecilia Zhang, Jonathan T. Barron, Neal Wadhwa, Rahul Garg, Feng Liu, Tianfan Xue

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Traditional reflection removal algorithms either use a single image as input, which suffers from intrinsic ambiguities, or use multiple images from a moving camera, which is inconvenient for users. We instead propose a learning-based dereflection algorithm that uses stereo images as input. This is an effective trade-off between the two extremes: the parallax between two views provides cues to remove reflections, and two views are easy to capture due to the adoption of stereo cameras in smartphones. Our model consists of a learning-based reflection-invariant flow model for dual-view registration, and a learned synthesis model for combining aligned image pairs. Because …

Polymorphism And Polysemy In Images Of The Sefirot, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

The resurgence of interest in Kabbalistic diagrams (Segol, Busi, Chajes) raises the question of how diagrams function in religious symbolism. This question can be approached via methods used in the graphical modeling of data. Specifically, graph theory lets one define a repertoire of candidate structures that can be applied not only to quantitative data, but also to symbols consisting of qualitative components. A graph is a set of nodes and links between nodes. What nodes and links are is unspecified in this definition. The Kabbalistic Ilan is – partially – a graph. The Sefirot are its nodes; the paths connecting …

Group Theory Visualized Through The Rubik's Cube, Ashlyn Okamoto

University Honors Theses

In my thesis, I describe the work done to implement several Group Theory concepts in the context of the Rubik’s cube. A simulation of the cube was constructed using Processing-Java and with help from a YouTube series done by TheCodingTrain. I reflect on the struggles and difficulties that came with creating this program along with the inspiration behind the project. The concepts that are currently implemented at this time are: Identity, Associativity, Order, and Inverses. The functionality of the cube is described as it moves like a regular cube but has extra keypresses that demonstrate the concepts listed. Each concept …

Forecasting Optimal Parameters Of The Broken Wing Butterfly Option Strategy Using Differential Evolution, David Munoz Constantine

Dissertations and Theses

Obtaining an edge in financial markets has been the objective of many hedge funds, investors, and market participants. Even with today's abundance of data and computing power, few individuals achieve a consistent edge over an extended time. To obtain this edge, investors usually use options strategies. The Broken Wing Butterfly (BWB) is an options strategy that has increased in popularity among traders. Profit is generated primarily by exploiting option value time decay. In this thesis, the selection of entry and exit BWB parameters, such as profit and loss targets, are optimized for an in-sample period. Afterward, they are used to …

Automated Test Generation For Validating Systemc Designs, Bin Lin

Dissertations and Theses

Modern system design involves integration of all components of a system on a single chip, namely System-on-a-Chip (SoC). The ever-increasing complexity of SoCs and rapidly decreasing time-to-market have pushed the design abstraction to the electronic system level (ESL), in order to increase design productivity. SystemC is a widely used ESL modeling language that plays a central role in modern SoCs design process. ESL SystemC designs usually serve as executable specifications for the subsequent SoCs design flow. Therefore, undetected bugs in ESL SystemC designs may propagate to low-level implementations or even final silicon products. In addition, modern SoCs design often involves …

View Synthesis Of Dynamic Scenes Based On Deep 3d Mask Volume, Kai-En Lin, Guowei Yang, Lei Xiao, Feng Liu, Ravi Ramamoorthi

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Image view synthesis has seen great success in reconstructing photorealistic visuals, thanks to deep learning and various novel representations. The next key step in immersive virtual experiences is view synthesis of dynamic scenes. However, several challenges exist due to the lack of high-quality training datasets, and the additional time dimension for videos of dynamic scenes. To address this issue, we introduce a multi-view video dataset, captured with a custom 10-camera rig in 120FPS. The dataset contains 96 high-quality scenes showing various visual effects and human interactions in outdoor scenes. We develop a new algorithm, Deep 3D Mask Volume, which enables …