Computer Sciences Commons^™

Countermeasures And Eye Tracking Deception Detection, Ryan M. Schuetzler

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

A new development in the field of deception detection is been the development of rapid, noncontact tools for automated detection. This research in progress paper describes a method for assessing the robustness of eye tracker-based deception detection to countermeasures employed by knowledgeable participants.

On The Design Of Advanced Filters For Biological Networks Using Graph Theoretic Properties, Kathryn Dempsey Cooper, Tzu-Yi Chen, Sanjukta Bhowmick, Hesham Ali

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Network modeling of biological systems is a powerful tool for analysis of high-throughput datasets by computational systems biologists. Integration of networks to form a heterogeneous model requires that each network be as noise-free as possible while still containing relevant biological information. In earlier work, we have shown that the graph theoretic properties of gene correlation networks can be used to highlight and maintain important structures such as high degree nodes, clusters, and critical links between sparse network branches while reducing noise. In this paper, we propose the design of advanced network filters using structurally related graph theoretic properties. While spanning …

Correct Reasoning: Essays On Logic-Based Ai In Honour Of Vladimir Lifschitz, Esta Erdem, Joohyung Lee, Yuliya Lierler, David Pearce

Faculty Books and Monographs

Co-edited by Yuliya Lierler, UNO faculty member.

Essay, Parsing Combinatory Categorial Grammar via Planning in Answer Set Programming, co-authored by Yuliya Lierler, UNO faculty member.

This Festschrift published in honor of Vladimir Lifschitz on the occasion of his 65th birthday presents 39 articles by colleagues from all over the world with whom Vladimir Lifschitz had cooperation in various respects. The 39 contributions reflect the breadth and the depth of the work of Vladimir Lifschitz in logic programming, circumscription, default logic, action theory, causal reasoning and answer set programming.

Factors Affecting Information And Communications Technology Adoption Of Small Businesses: Studies In China And United States, Jie Xiong, Sajda Qureshi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Small businesses in China and United States generate the largest share of economic activity and employment. As the driving force behind the economic growth of both countries, Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) has fundamentally shaped the two countries. This research-in-progress paper reports the research model we conduct to analyze the factors that will affect ICTs adoption of small businesses in both countries. The purpose of the paper is to (1) report proposals of the current status of the research project (2) build an understanding of ICTs adoption in both countries (3) build the framework to explore the relationship between ICTs …

A Systematic Method For Discovering Effective Patterns Of Virtual Project Management, Deepak Khazanchi, Ilze Zigurs

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

The effective management of virtual projects within global organizations is an inherently collaborative activity as well as an increasingly critical issue. The concept of patterns provides a useful theoretical framework by which we can study the design of effective practices for the management of virtual projects. However, a number of significant gaps exist in our knowledge of this area and one of the most important is the need for a systematic method for discovering effective patterns. We propose such a systematic method and provide a detailed example of the use of our proposed pattern discovery method.

Practical And Methodological Aspects Of The Use Of Cutting-Edge Asp Tools, Marcello Balduccini, Yuliya Lierler

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

In the development of practical applications of answer set programming (ASP), encodings that use well-established solvers such as CLASP and DLV are sometimes affected by scalability issues. In those situations, one can resort to more sophisticated ASP tools exploiting, for instance, incremental and constraint ASP. However, today there is no specific methodology for the selection or use of such tools. In this paper we describe how we used such cutting-edge ASP tools on challenging problems from the Third Answer Set Programming Competition. We view this paper as a first step in the development of a general methodology for the use …

Loss Of Dnmt3b Function Upregulates The Tumor Modifier Ment And Accelerates Mouse Lymphomagenesis, Ryan A. Hlady, Slavomira Novakova, Jana Opavska, David Klinkebiel, Staci L. Peters, Juraj Bies, Jay Hannah, Javeed Iqbal, Kristi M. Anderson, Hollie M. Siebler, Lynette M. Smith, Timothy C. Greiner, Dhundy Bastola, Shantaram Joshi, Oksana Lockridge, Melanie A. Simpson, Dean W. Felsher, Kay-Uwe Wagner, Wing C. Chan, Judith K. Christman, Rene Opavsky

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

DNA methyltransferase 3B (Dnmt3b) belongs to a family of enzymes responsible for methylation of cytosine residues in mammals. DNA methylation contributes to the epigenetic control of gene transcription and is deregulated in virtually all human tumors. To better understand the generation of cancer-specific methylation patterns, we genetically inactivated Dnmt3b in a mouse model of MYC-induced lymphomagenesis. Ablation of Dnmt3b function using a conditional knockout in T cells accelerated lymphomagenesis by increasing cellular proliferation, which suggests that Dnmt3b functions as a tumor suppressor. Global methylation profiling revealed numerous gene promoters as potential targets of Dnmt3b activity, the majority of which were …

Analysis Of Information And Communications Technology Adoption Between Small Businesses In China And The United States, Jie Xiong, Sajda Qureshi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

This paper reports on two case studies, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) adoption among small businesses conducted in both United States and China. One small business from Nebraska (United States of America) and one small business from Sichuan (China) were chosen for comparison. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative case study based on the ICT adoption among small businesses in China and the United States. This paper will: (i) build an understanding of small business ICT in both areas, (ii) explore the relationship between the ICT development in less cutting-edge areas of China and the …

Parsing Combinatory Categorial Grammar Via Planning In Answer Set Programming, Yuliya Lierler, Peter Schueller

Computer Science Faculty Books and Monographs

Essay, Parsing Combinatory Categorial Grammar via Planning in Answer Set Programming, from Correct reasoning: essays on logic-based AI in honour of Vladimir Lifschitz, co-authored by Yuliya Lierler, UNO faculty member. Combinatory categorial grammar (CCG) is a grammar formalism used for natural language parsing. CCG assigns structured lexical categories to words and uses a small set of combinatory rules to combine these categories to parse a sentence. In this work we propose and implement a new approach to CCG parsing that relies on a prominent knowledge representation formalism, answer set programming (ASP) - a declarative programming paradigm. We formulate the …

Using Non-Additive Measure For Optimization-Based Nonlinear Classification, Nian Yan, Zhengxin Chen, Yong Shi, Zhenyuan Wang, Guimin Huang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Over the past few decades, numerous optimization-based methods have been proposed for solving the classification problem in data mining. Classic optimization-based methods do not consider attribute interactions toward classification. Thus, a novel learning machine is needed to provide a better understanding on the nature of classification when the interaction among contributions from various attributes cannot be ignored. The interactions can be described by a non-additive measure while the Choquet integral can serve as the mathematical tool to aggregate the values of attributes and the corresponding values of a non-additive measure. As a main part of this research, a new nonlinear …

A Tarskian Informal Semantics For Answer Set Programming, Marc Denecker, Yuliya Lierler, Miroslaw Truszczyński, Joost Vennekens

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

In their seminal papers on stable model semantics, Gelfond and Lifschitz introduced ASP by casting programs as epistemic theories, in which rules represent statements about the knowledge of a rational agent. To the best of our knowledge, theirs is still the only published systematic account of the intuitive meaning of rules and programs under the stable semantics. In current ASP practice, however, we find numerous applications in which rational agents no longer seem to play any role. Therefore, we propose here an alternative explanation of the intuitive meaning of ASP programs, in which they are not viewed as statements about …

On The Relation Of Constraint Answer Set Programming Languages And Algorithms, Yuliya Lierler

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Recently a logic programming language AC was proposed by Mellarkod et al. (2008) to integrate answer set programming (ASP) and constraint logic programming. Similarly, Gebser et al. (2009) proposed a CLINGCON language integrating ASP and finite domain constraints. These languages allow new efficient inference algorithms that combine traditional ASP procedures and other methods in constraint programming. In this paper we show that a transition system introduced by Nieuwenhuis et al. (2006) to model SAT solvers can be extended to model the “hybrid” ACSOLVER algorithm by Mellarkod et al. developed for simple AC programs and the CLINGCON algorithm by Gebser et …

Surviving Solver Sensitivity: An Asp Practitioner’S Guide, Bryan Silverthorn, Yuliya Lierler, Marius Schneider

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Answer set programming (ASP) is a declarative programming formalism that allows a practitioner to specify a problem without describing an algorithm for solving it. In ASP, the tools for processing problem specifications are called answer set solvers. Because specified problems are often NP complete, these systems often require significant computational effort to succeed. Furthermore, they offer different heuristics, expose numerous parameters, and their running time is sensitive to the configuration used. Portfolio solvers and automatic algorithm configuration systems are recent attempts to automate the problem of manual parameter tuning, and to mitigate the burden of identifying the right solver configuration. …

The Development Of Parallel Adaptive Sampling Algorithms For Analyzing Biological Networks, Kathryn Dempsey Cooper, Kanimathi Duraisamy, Sanjukta Bhowmick, Hesham Ali

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The availability of biological data in massive scales continues to represent unlimited opportunities as well as great challenges in bioinformatics research. Developing innovative data mining techniques and efficient parallel computational methods to implement them will be crucial in extracting useful knowledge from this raw unprocessed data, such as in discovering significant cellular subsystems from gene correlation networks. In this paper, we present a scalable combinatorial sampling technique, based on identifying maximum chordal subgraphs, that reduces noise from biological correlation networks, thereby making it possible to find biologically relevant clusters from the filtered network. We show how selecting the appropriate filter …

A Novel Multithreaded Algorithm For Extracting Maximal Chordal Subgraphs, Mahantesh Halappanavar, John Feo, Kathryn Dempsey Cooper, Hesham Ali, Sanjukta Bhowmick

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Chordal graphs are triangulated graphs where any cycle larger than three is bisected by a chord. Many combinatorial optimization problems such as computing the size of the maximum clique and the chromatic number are NP-hard on general graphs but have polynomial time solutions on chordal graphs. In this paper, we present a novel multithreaded algorithm to extract a maximal chordal sub graph from a general graph. We develop an iterative approach where each thread can asynchronously update a subset of edges that are dynamically assigned to it per iteration and implement our algorithm on two different multithreaded architectures - Cray …

Calm Before The Storm: The Challenges Of Cloud Computing In Digital Forensics, George Grispos, Tim Storer, William Bradley Glisson

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving information technology (IT) phenomenon. Rather than procure, deploy and manage a physical IT infrastructure to host their software applications, organizations are increasingly deploying their infrastructure into remote, virtualized environments, often hosted and managed by third parties. This development has significant implications for digital forensic investigators, equipment vendors, law enforcement, as well as corporate compliance and audit departments (among others). Much of digital forensic practice assumes careful control and management of IT assets (particularly data storage) during the conduct of an investigation. This paper summarises the key aspects of cloud computing and analyses how established …

Can Information And Communication Technologies Lead To Community Capital? An Analysis Of Development, Dave Kocsis, Sajda Qureshi, Jie Xiong

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

While it is widely accepted that the increasing interconnectedness of the world economy has been fueled by the innovative uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), little attention has been paid to the increasing inequalities within developed and developing countries. These inequalities manifest themselves in the form of communities in which incomes are considerably below the rest of the country and there is a rise in poverty. This paper investigates this trend by taking a community capital perspective to investigate how ICTs may or may not enable businesses to grow. As micro-enterprises are seen to contribute to the growth of …

Public Participation In Scientific Research: A Framework For Deliberate Design, Jennifer L. Shirk, Heidi L. Ballard, Candie C. Wilderman, Tina Phillips, Andrea Wiggins, Rebecca Jordan, Ellen Mccallie, Matthew Minarchek, Bruce V. Lewenstein, Marianne E. Krasny, Rick Bonney

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

Members of the public participate in scientific research in many different contexts, stemming from traditions as varied as participatory action research and citizen science. Particularly in conservation and natural resource management contexts, where research often addresses complex social–ecological questions, the emphasis on and nature of this participation can significantly affect both the way that projects are designed and the outcomes that projects achieve. We review and integrate recent work in these and other fields, which has converged such that we propose the term public participation in scientific research (PPSR) to discuss initiatives from diverse fields and traditions. We describe three …

Performance And Use Evaluation Of An Electronic Book For Introductory Python Programming, Christine Alvarado, Briana B. Morrison, Barbara Ericson, Mark Guzdial, Brad Miller, David L. Ranum

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Electronic books (ebooks) provide the opportunity to go beyond the limitations of a physical page. These opportunities are particularly important for computing education, where dynamic information is a key characteristic of our domain. An electronic book can provide opportunities to program or conduct analyses that are impossible on the physical page, integrating instructional information with creative exploration. However, just because ebooks provide these opportunities does not mean that we know how students will actually use ebooks in the context of a class. Miller and Ranum have produced an electronic book for teaching introductory computing in Python. We explored how students …

Alignment-Free Methods And Its Applications, Ramez Mina

Student Work

Comparing biological sequences remains one of the most vital activities in Bioinformatics. Comparing biological sequences would address the relatedness between species, and find similar structures that might lead to similar functions.

Sequence alignment is the default method, and has been used in the domain for over four decades. It gained a lot of trust, but limitations and even failure has been reported, especially with the new generated genomes. These new generated genomes have bigger size, and to some extent suffer errors. Such errors come mainly as a result from the sequencing machine. These sequencing errors should be considered when submitting …

Application Oriented Analysis Of Large Scale Datasets, Prashant Shivaji Paymal

Student Work

Diverse application areas, such as social network, epidemiology, and software engineering consist of systems of objects and their relationships. Such systems are generally modeled as graphs. Graphs consist of vertices that represent the objects, and edges that represent the relationships between them. These systems are data intensive and it is important to correctly analyze the data to obtain meaningful information. Combinatorial metrics can provide useful insights for analyzing these systems. In this thesis, we use the graph based metrics such as betweenness centrality, clustering coefficient, articulation points, etc. for analyzing instances of large change in evolving networks (Software Engineering), and …

On-Line Banking Systems: Are They Sustainable?, Satish Mahadevan Srinivasan, Sachin Pawaskar, Abhishek Tripathi, Lotfollah Najjar

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Although the trend for on-line banking has increased in recent years, the customers have not shown enthusiastic participation in the past and in present. Since the sustainability of a bank supporting on-line-banking service depends on what capacity it can attract new customers, retain already existing customers and how well can it extend its services to the current and future customer base. This investigation is focused on examining if there is any significant difference among the factors namely the transactional security, information design, navigational design, visual design, web site trust, web site satisfaction and e-loyalty over sustainability of on-line banking for …

On Elementary Loops Of Logic Programs, Martin Gerber, Joohyung Lee, Yuliya Lierler

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Using the notion of an elementary loop, Gebser and Schaub (2005. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (LPNMR'05), 53–65) refined the theorem on loop formulas attributable to Lin and Zhao (2004) by considering loop formulas of elementary loops only. In this paper, we reformulate the definition of an elementary loop, extend it to disjunctive programs, and study several properties of elementary loops, including how maximal elementary loops are related to minimal unfounded sets. The results provide useful insights into the stable model semantics in terms of elementary loops. For a nondisjunctive program, …

The Global Geek: Language Training For It Students’ Study Abroad In Austria And Germany, Gwyneth E. Cliver, Deepak Khazanchi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

The Modern Language Association’s (MLA) urgent appeal for the restructuring of the undergraduate language curriculum, “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,” emphasizes a need for language departments to enrich their upper-division course offerings beyond the traditional literary studies model in order to attract and retain broader interest in language learning among students with diverse academic interests and needs. Citing the National Science Foundation’s 2003 Survey of College Graduates, it stresses that only 6.1% of undergraduates whose primary major is a foreign language later achieve doctorate degrees and concludes that departments should provide upper-division language courses …

Using Semantic Templates To Study Vulnerabilities Recorded In Large Software Repositories, Yan Wu

Student Work

Software vulnerabilities allow an attacker to reduce a system's Confidentiality, Availability, and Integrity by exposing information, executing malicious code, and undermine system functionalities that contribute to the overall system purpose and need. With new vulnerabilities discovered everyday in a variety of applications and user environments, a systematic study of their characteristics is a subject of immediate need for the following reasons:

• The high rate in which information about past and new vulnerabilities are accumulated makes it difficult to absorb and comprehend.
• Rather than learning from past mistakes, similar types of vulnerabilities are observed repeatedly.
• As the scale and complexity of …

Creating An International Joint Certificate In It Administration, Peter Wolcott

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and the University of Agder (UiA), Norway, are collaborating on the creation of an undergraduate certificate in Information Technology Administration. The certificate is designed for students who are interested in managing the complex technical infrastructure of today's organizations. The certificate will consist of approximately 15 credit hours of hands-on courses, covering such areas as systems administration, network administration, database administration, security administration, and distributed systems. All courses will be offered online, using a variety of collaboration tools and teaching techniques that reflect the best of current practice. Students will take courses taught by …

Collaborative Learning In Software Development Teams, Matthew Hale, Rose Gamble, Kimberly Wilson, Anupama Narayan

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Recently Web 2.0 has emerged as a framework to study collaborative learning. Assessing learning in team projects is one mechanism used to improve teaching methodologies and tool support. Web 2.0 technologies enable automated assessment capabilities, leading to both rapid and incremental feedback. Such feedback can catch problems in time for pedagogic adjustment, to better guide students toward reaching learning objectives. Our courseware, SEREBRO, couples a social, tagging enabled, idea network with a range of modular toolkits, such as wikis, feeds and project management tools into a Web 2.0 environment for collaborating teams. In this paper, we first refine a set …

Augmenting Online Learning With Real-Time Conferencing: Experiences From An International Course, Bjørn Erik Munkvold, Ilze Zigurs, Deepak Khazanchi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

This paper reports experiences from the use of real-time conferencing to support synchronous class interaction in an international online course. Through combination of video, audio, application sharing and chat, the students and instructors engaged in weekly interactions in a virtual classroom. This created an environment for rich interaction, augmenting the traditional use of course repositories. Further, this gave the students hands-on experience with real-time conferencing tools which are increasingly common in the workplace. The paper also discusses experienced challenges related to combining the use of multiple synchronous communication channels and presents implications for further use of real-time conferencing in online …

Centinela: A Human Activity Recognition System Based On Acceleration And Vital Sign Data, Óscar D. Lara, Alfredo J. Perez, Miguel A. Labrador, José D. Posada

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper presents Centinela, a system that combines acceleration data with vital signs to achieve highly accurate activity recognition. Centinela recognizes five activities: walking, running, sitting, ascending, and descending. The system includes a portable and unobtrusive real-time data collection platform, which only requires a single sensing device and a mobile phone. To extract features, both statistical and structural detectors are applied, and two new features are proposed to discriminate among activities during periods of vital sign stabilization. After evaluating eight different classifiers and three different time window sizes, our results show that Centinela achieves up to 95.7% overall accuracy, which …

Transition Systems For Model Generators — A Unifying Approach, Yuliya Lierler, Miroslaw Truszczyński

Computer Science Faculty Publications

A fundamental task for propositional logic is to compute models of propositional formulas. Programs developed for this task are called satisfiability solvers. We show that transition systems introduced by Nieuwenhuis, Oliveras, and Tinelli to model and analyze satisfiability solvers can be adapted for solvers developed for two other propositional formalisms: logic programming under the answerset semantics, and the logic PC(ID). We show that in each case the task of computing models can be seen as “satisfiability modulo answer-set programming,” where the goal is to find a model of a theory that also is an answer set of a certain program. …