Computer Sciences Commons^™

Development And Testing Of An Unmanned Aircraft System For Environmental Science, Jerald James Brady

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

For some environmental science applications, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) are increasingly recognized for their capacity to collect remotely sensed data in a safer, more efficient and effective manner than is permitted with manned aircraft and satellite remote sensing platforms. To date, however, technological, human, and other challenges have constrained adoption of UASs in the environmental sciences. This study developed and tested a new UAS for an archetypical environmental science research group (stakeholder) composed of non-UAS experts. Specifically, this thesis: 1) Assessed the research and operational needs of the stakeholder to determine the optimum UAS platform; 2) Developed an Unmanned Aerial …

A Deadline-Driven Epidemic Data Collection Protocol Suitable For Tracking Interpersonnel Rendezvous, Avranil Tah

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis describes a peer-to-peer wireless data collection algorithm that uses epidemic communication to propagate time-sensitive sequentially sampled data records from sensors toward infrastructure connected upload stations via mobile data mules. These records are labeled with sequence numbers and delivery deadlines, and are transmitted in sequential order. Delivery deadlines enable transmission prioritization and trigger alarms warning of violations.

The sequential ordering of records simplifies the protocols transmission-control and garbage collection mechanisms: only two monotonically increasing scalar sequence indices associated with a particular sensor must be exchanged between peers prior to selecting which records need to be communicated. One of these …

Transfer Learning Techniques For Deep Neural Nets, Steven M. Gutstein

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Inductive learners seek meaningful features within raw input. Their purpose is to accurately categorize, explain or extrapolate from this input. Relevant features for one task are frequently relevant for related tasks. Reuse of previously learned data features to help master new tasks is known as &lsquo transfer learning &rsquo. People use this technique to learn more quickly and easily. However, machine learning tends to occur from scratch.

In this thesis, two machine learning techniques are developed, that use transfer learning to achieve significant accuracy for recognition tasks with extremely small training sets and, occasionally, no task specific training. These methods …

Ontology-Driven Discovery Of Scientific Computational Entities, Pearl W. Brazier

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Many geoscientists use modern computational resources, such as software applications, Web services, scientific workflows and datasets that are readily available on the Internet, to support their research and many common tasks. These resources are often shared via human contact and sometimes stored in data portals; however, they are not necessarily available for metadata annotations that can assist in collaborative research or machine processing. Scientists' knowledge of their resources and processes are at risk of being lost. A scientist-driven discovery environment, which assumes a level of technical expertise generally possessed by a geoscientist, is needed to enable discovery and comparisons of …

Information Sharing Across Private Databases, Swapnil Suresh Samant

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

While the explosion of availability of information has become invaluable in modern society, it has also raised valid concerns about erosion of privacy. More and more, different entities are encouraged to share information in order to discover potential security risks, health pattern, or social behavior trends. However, some of this information is sensitive. Owners of information may be unwilling to share their whole databases with other entities, either to protect the privacy of the records, or because of the proprietary nature of the information.

We consider the following problem. How can we compute the intersection and the equijoin of databases …

Pwisegen: A Genetic Algorithms-Based Framework For Pairwise Test Set Generation, Pedro Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Pairwise testing is a combinatorial testing approach that can be used to reduce the number of test cases dramatically for a software system. It specializes in the type of testing where the outcome of a system depends on the combination of several input parameters. This technique is widely used when there is not enough time to try out all possible combinations of the input parameters involved, because that would be very time consuming. The purpose of pairwise testing technique is to avoid testing all possible value combinations that a system can receive, and to preferably take a representative sample of …

Modeling Geographic Awareness Of Road Networks For Consistency Verification, Ari Kassin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Problems related to transportation and inspection of valuable or sensitive assets such as commercial products and materials, cultural items and works of art, and hazardous materials share similarities and can be modeled by a core set of abstract entities including a payload, a vehicle, a driver, and an inspector. To make the load handling capabilities of security monitoring and inspection systems more scalable, security can be increased by reducing the variability of transportation routes to a finite set of authorized routes between trip origin and destination locations. Then trip anomalies, which are unexpected trip variations, can be used in inspection …

Function Point Analysis In Computer Science Capstone Projects, Evelyn Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Capstone projects at the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at El Paso allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of software engineering. During the capstone project, students work on a project that simulates industry; students have a client and a supervising team. Before a project is implemented, professors must assess the project to ensure consistency with previous projects and a significant experience for the students. Currently, a project is assessed primarily on past experiences. In industry, agreeing to completing and delivering a project without assessing the scope and estimating the project cost is neither acceptable nor profitable. Similarly …

Stochastic Optimization For Learning-Based Super-Resolution: Algorithms And Applications, Jun Zheng

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Human beings get much of their information visually and depend on perception of images for many critical tasks, such as object identification, medical image analysis, photography, etc. In many visual-based applications, higher resolution images are required for perceiving and receiving critical information. A high resolution image can contribute to a better identification of a suspect's face, or a more accurate localization of a tumor in a mammogram, or a more pleasing view in high definition television, and so on. However, it is hard to obtain the high resolution images needed for some applications, for example, the cost of sensors increases …

Test Case Automation For Specification Patterns System And Composite Propositions, Cuauhtemoc Munoz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Specifying software properties is a common activity in the software development process. Software properties are often written in a natural language such as English. However, the ambiguity in natural languages makes validation and verification time-consuming and error-prone. Specifying software properties in formal languages such as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) or Computation Tree Logic (CTL) enables the use of formal verification tools such as model checkers. Nevertheless, formal languages require software developers to have a strong background in mathematics and logic.

The specification Patterns System (SPS) and Composite Propositions (CPs) use a higher-level abstraction to specify software properties formally. The SPS …

Gaze, Turn-Taking And Proxemics In Multiparty Versus Dyadic Conversation Across Cultures, David Alberto Herrera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When people converse with others, they participate in joint interaction behaviors, like proxemics or interpersonal distance, mutual gaze, and turn-taking or pause and overlap, which they may not consciously negotiate. How these behaviors manifest depends on many factors, such as gender, age, personality, culture, and number of participating conversants. Understanding these differences is important for situations where intercultural joint interaction behaviors are necessary for mission success, such as for military personnel in foreign countries. They may also be useful for modeling embodied conversational agents where culture and group vary. Joint interaction behaviors have been extensively studied for American dyads, and …

The Macro-Structure Of Use Of Help, Oscar D. Andrade, David G. Novick, Nathaniel Bean

Departmental Papers (CS)

Users of help systems often complain that they do not find them useful; while they still use help at least occasionally, they resort to other problem-solving strategies. In this paper, we analyze audiovisual recordings of people using a computer application, to identify (1) transition patterns among problem-solving approaches, and (2)the frequency of these transitions. Our analysis indicates that people switch frequently between consulting help and exploring the interface. Switching between problem-solving approaches appears to be an effective way of succeeding in tasks. Applications and their help systems can be better designed to support users who switch between help and non-help …

Real-Time Image-Based Motion Detection Using Color And Structure, Manali Chakraborty

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Motion detection is an important problem in computer vision and has multiple applications in the real world, including surveillance-related activities, gaming, and human-robot interactions. These systems need to be robust enough to handle fluctuations in light intensity and other external factors like noise and compression artifacts. In this thesis a method is proposed for detecting the regions of motion from a video sequence in real time. The main idea of this work is to detect motion based on both structure and color. Structure-based detection is carried out using information from the Census Transform computed on gradient images obtained with Sobel …

New Algorithms For Optimal Portfolio Selection, Tanja Magoc

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Over the past four thousand years, numerous techniques have been developed and used to address problems in Finance. These techniques include simple arithmetic calculations and probabilistic methods as well as intelligent systems techniques such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, multi-agent systems, and support vector machines. The techniques have been developed to accurately and quickly collect, validate, analyze, and integrate data that change dynamically.

The particular problem that we address in this Dissertation is the construction of efficient algorithms for the problem of an optimal portfolio selection, that is, algorithms that would accurately and in real time determine the best distribution …

An Optimization Approach For The Cascade Vulnerability Problem, Christian Servin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In inter-connected systems, where several computers share information with each other, problems may arise when inappropriate information starts to flow through. For example, let us consider a simple scenario of a university composed of three departments: payroll, financial aid, and academic services. We know that the payroll department deals with sensitive information, such as social security numbers, dates of birth, amounts of wages, etc. The financial aid department may use information that payroll owns. Similarly, the academic department communicates with the financial aid department. An intruder can take advantage of this network connectivity and create an inappropriate flow of information …

Improving Throughput Of Simultaneous Multithreaded (Smt) Processors Using Shareable Resource Signatures And Hardware Thread Priorities, Mitesh Ramesh Meswani

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) allows multiple hardware threads to execute concurrently on a processor core, potentially increasing the utilization and throughput of the processor core by a factor of the degree of multithreading. However, such performance gains may not be achieved due to contention for resources shared by the threads. Hardware thread priorities can be used to control the ratio of decode cycles allocated to the hardware threads of a processor core and, therefore, the degree of resource contention among the threads. The IBM POWER5, which has two hardware threads associated with each of its two cores, supports hardware thread priorities. …

Runtime Assertion Checking For Jml On The Eclipse Platform Using Ast Merging, Amritam Sarcar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Java Modeling Language (JML) is a formal behavioral interface specification language for Java. It is used for detailed design documentation of Java program modules such as classes and interfaces. JML has been used extensively by many researchers across various projects and has a large and varied spectrum of tool support. It extends from runtime assertion checking (RAC) to theorem proving.

Amongst these tools, RAC and ESC/Java has been used as a common tool for many research projects. RAC for JML is a tool that checks at runtime for possible violations of any specifications. However, lately there has been a …

Pressure Induced Phase Transformation Of Sno2: An Ab Initio Constant Pressure Study, Daniel Tesfai Yehdego

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The behavior of SnO2 under rapid hydrostatic pressures is studied using constant-pressure ab initio simulations. The rutile-type SnO2 gradually transforms into the CaCl2-type structure at 15 GPa. At a pressure of about 20 GPa, a phase transformation into a cubic fluorite-type structure is observed. The orthorhombic Pnma cotunnite-structured phase is observed above 150 GPa. The mechanisms of these phase transformations at the atomistic level are discussed.

Using Emotion To Gain Rapport In A Spoken Dialog System, Jaime Cesar Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although spoken dialog systems are becoming more widespread, their application is today limited largely to domains involving simple information exchange. To enable future applications, such as persuasion, new capabilities are needed. One barrier to the creation of such applications has been the lack of methods for building rapport between spoken dialog systems and human users, and more generally the inability to model the emotional and interpersonal aspects of dialog. This dissertation focuses on improving this.

A corpus of persuasive dialogs that in which a graduate coordinator informed undergraduate students about the graduate school option was analyzed. Although much of each …

Supporting Novice Application Users In Learning By Trial And Error And Using Help, Oscar Daniel Andrade

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines three related topics in analyzing user preferences for troubleshooting application usability problems and the kinds of issues that influence such preferences. The goal of this thesis is to propose (1) ways in which users can be supported to learn to use applications and (2) a model to rewrite help such that users are able to adapt its contents dynamically.

The consensus of documentation research is that users rarely use help, usually preferring to muddle through. To increase use of help, tutorials for novice users could be changed from guided presentations toward using the application's help system. To …

Appropriate Prosodic Variation Is Valued By Users, Rafael Escalante-Ruiz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Spoken dialog systems today do not vary the prosody of their utterances, although prosody is known to have many useful expressive functions. In a corpus of memory quizzes, I identified eleven dimensions of prosodic variation, each with its own expressive function. I identified the situations in which each was used, and how to detect these situations from the dialog context and the prosody of the interlocutor's previous utterance. I implemented the resulting response rules and had 21 users interact with two versions of the system. Overall they preferred the version in which the prosodic forms of the acknowledgments were chosen …

Identification Of Human Gait Using Genetic Algorithm Tuned Fuzzy Logic, Abdallah Abdel-Rahman Hassan Mahmoud

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Data mining is concerned with the discovery of useful hidden information in large databases. Classification is a data mining task producing rules in which a set of attributes in data predict the value of a class attribute. Classifiers usually produce a large number of rules, most of which are not interesting to the user. Rule interestingness is a decisive factor. However, evaluating rule interestingness is challenging as it involves both objective (data-driven) and subjective (user-driven) aspects.

In this research, a fuzzy genetic algorithm is proposed to discover classification rules that are both accurate and interesting. Continuous attributes are fuzzified so …

Towards More Reliable Extrapolation Algorithms With Applications To Organic Chemistry, Jaime Nava

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

One of the main objectives of science and engineering is to predict the results of different situations. For example, in Newton's mechanics, we want to predict the positions and velocities of different objects (e.g., planets) at future moments of time.

In this Thesis, as a case study, we take the problem of predicting the properties of new chemical substances. One of the main objectives of chemistry is to design new molecules (and, more generally, new chemical compounds) which are useful for various practical tasks. New substances have already resulted in new materials for buildings and for spaceships, new explosives and …

Help-Based Tutorials, David G. Novick, Oscar D. Andrade, Nathaniel Bean, Edith Elizalde

Departmental Papers (CS)

The consensus of the documentation literature is that users rarely use help, usually preferring to muddle through. To increase use of help, tutorials for novice users could be changed from guided presentations toward using the system’s actual help system. To determine whether this approach would increase users’ use of help when they encountered problems with an application, we developed an alternative, help-based tutorial introduction to Microsoft Publisher. We compared the behaviors of users introduced to Publisher with the help-based tutorial with the behaviors of users who learned from a traditional tutorial. A balanced study of 22 novice users of Publisher …

A Distributed Reconstruction Of Ekg Signals, Gabriel Cordova

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this Thesis the parallel computing methodology is applied to an algorithm used in the reconstruction of electrocardiographic (EKG) measurements. The reconstructions are being performed to obtain a better understanding of the source and behavior of the electrical activity that generates the EKG measurements. The contribution of this Thesis is to identify and eliminate inefficiencies present in the current reconstruction algorithm. Additionally, this Thesis reduces the computation times of the EKG reconstruction by applying distributed computing through the use of Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). Lastly, it provides an analysis of the speed-up and efficiency of the distribution implemented using parallel …

Evaluation Of An Image Processing Algorithm For Scene Change Detection, Daniel Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite the efforts to reduce traffic accidents by government entities and automobile manufactures, the numbers of accidents are not considerably reduced. An evaluation of an algorithm based on the fly's eye is done on this research applying its principles to detect scene change on images for printed circuit boards providing initial steps to implement this algorithm on vehicular traffic to keep track of objects moving on the field for collision avoidance purposes. The effectiveness of the algorithm is addressed through a comparison of its performance with that found in experimental data.

Toward A More Accurate View Of When And How People Seek Help With Computer Applications, David Novick, Edith Elizalde, Nathaniel Bean

Selected Works Temporary Series

Based on 40 interviews and 11 on-site workplace observations of people using computer applications at work, we confirm that use of printed and on-line help is very low and find that providing greater detail of categories solution methods can present a more realistic picture of users’ behaviors. Observed study participants encountered a usability problem on average about once every 75 minutes and typically spent about a minute looking for a solution. Participants consumed much more time when they were unaware of a direct way of doing something and instead used less effective methods. Comparison of results from different data-collection methods …

Usability Inspection Methods After 15 Years Of Research And Practice, Tasha Hollingsed, David Novick

Selected Works Temporary Series

Usability inspection methods, such as heuristic evaluation, the cognitive walkthrough, formal usability inspections, and the pluralistic usability walkthrough, were introduced fifteen years ago. Since then, these methods, analyses of their comparative effectiveness, and their use have evolved in different ways. In this paper, we track the fortunes of the methods and analyses, looking at which led to use and to further research, and which led to relative methodological dead ends. Heuristic evaluation and the cognitive walkthrough appear to be the most actively used and researched techniques. The pluralistic walkthrough remains a recognized technique, although not the subject of significant further …

A Computational Model Of Culture-Specific Conversational Behavior, Dusan Jan, David Herrera, Bilyana Martinovski, David Novick, David Traum

Selected Works Temporary Series

This paper presents a model for simulating cultural differences in the conversational behavior of virtual agents. The model provides parameters for differences in proxemics, gaze and overlap in turn taking.We present a review of literature on these factors and show results of a study where native speakers of Nrth American English, Mexican Spanish and Arabic were asked to rate the realism of the simulations generated based on different cultural parameters with respect to their culture.

What Users Say They Want In Documentation, David Novick, Karen Ward

Selected Works Temporary Series

While earlier work provided a partial view of users’ preferences about manuals, for most users in most work contexts the important question remains open: What do users want in documentation? This paper presents the results of a study in which a diverse cross-section of 25 users was interviewed in depth about their needs and preferences with respect to software help systems, whether printed or on-line, that they use at work. The study’s participants indicated that they preferred documentation, whether online or printed, that is easy to navigate, provides explanations at an appropriate level of technical detail, enables finding as well …