Computer Sciences Commons^™

Prediction Of Sudden Cardiac Death Using Ensemble Classifiers, Ayman Momtaz El-Geneidy

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) is a medical problem that is responsible for over 300,000 deaths per year in the United States and millions worldwide. SCD is defined as death occurring from within one hour of the onset of acute symptoms, an unwitnessed death in the absence of pre-existing progressive circulatory failures or other causes of deaths, or death during attempted resuscitation. Sudden death due to cardiac reasons is a leading cause of death among Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) patients. The use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems has made a wealth of medical data available for research and analysis. Supervised …

Adaptive Batch Size Selection In Active Learning For Regression, Anthony L. Faulds

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Training supervised machine learning models requires labeled examples. A judicious choice of examples is helpful when there is a significant cost associated with assigning labels. This dissertation aims to improve upon a promising extant method - Batch-mode Expected Model Change Maximization (B-EMCM) method - for selecting examples to be labeled for regression problems. Specifically, it aims to develop and evaluate alternate strategies for adaptively selecting batch size in B-EMCM, named adaptive B-EMCM (AB-EMCM).

By determining the cumulative error that occurs from the estimation of the stochastic gradient descent, a stop criteria for each iteration of the batch can be specified …

The Influence Of Cognitive Factors And Personality Traits On Mobile Device User's Information Security Behavior, Nils Lau

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

As individuals have become more dependent on mobile devices to communicate, to seek information, and to conduct business, their susceptibility to various threats to information security has also increased. Research has consistently shown that a user’s intention is a significant antecedent of information security behavior. Although research on user’s intention has expanded in the last few years, not enough is known about how cognitive factors and personality traits impact the adoption and use of mobile device security technologies.

The purpose of this research was to empirically investigate the influence of cognitive factors and personality traits on mobile device user’s intention …

A Pcnn Framework For Blood Cell Image Segmentation, Carol D. Lenihan

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This research presents novel methods for segmenting digital blood cell images under a Pulse Coupled Neural Network (PCNN) framework. A blood cell image contains different types of blood cells found in the peripheral blood stream such as red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs), and platelets. WBCs can be classified into five normal types – neutrophil, monocyte, lymphocyte, eosinophil, and basophil – as well as abnormal types such as lymphoblasts and others. The focus of this research is on identifying and counting RBCs, normal types of WBCs, and lymphoblasts. The total number of RBCs and WBCs, along with classification …

Classifying Relations Using Recurrent Neural Network With Ontological-Concept Embedding, Mario J. Lorenzo

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Relation extraction and classification represents a fundamental and challenging aspect of Natural Language Processing (NLP) research which depends on other tasks such as entity detection and word sense disambiguation. Traditional relation extraction methods based on pattern-matching using regular expressions grammars and lexico-syntactic pattern rules suffer from several drawbacks including the labor involved in handcrafting and maintaining large number of rules that are difficult to reuse. Current research has focused on using Neural Networks to help improve the accuracy of relation extraction tasks using a specific type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). A promising approach for relation classification uses an RNN …

Usability Of Portable Eeg For Monitoring Students’ Attention In Online Learning, Arisaphat Suttidee

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Current research demonstrates that distractions while participating in online courses affect students’ performance in online tasks. Electroencephalography (EEG) devices are currently being used in education to help students maintain attention when engaged in online classes. Previous studies have focused predominantly on comparing EEG devices, EEG signal quality, and EEG effectiveness. However, there is no comprehensive study examining the usability of the portable EEG headset to monitor students' attention in online courses.

This study aimed to examine the usability of EEG devices while monitoring student attention levels during online educational tasks. Specifically, twenty (20) participants who intend to enroll in online …

A Psychosocial Behavioral Attribution Model: Examining The Relationship Between The “Dark Triad” And Cyber-Criminal Behaviors Impacting Social Networking Sites, Kim Withers

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This study proposes that individual personality characteristics and behavioral triggering effects come together to motivate online victimization. It draws from psychology’s current understanding of personality traits, attribution theory, and criminological research. This study combines the current computer deviancy and hacker taxonomies with that of the Dark Triad model of personality mapping. Each computer deviant behavior is identified by its distinct dimensions of cyber-criminal behavior (e.g., unethical hacking, cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and identity theft) and analyzed against the Dark Triad personality factors (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). The goal of this study is to explore whether there are significant relationships among the …

Adaptable Privacy-Preserving Model, Emily Elizabeth Brown

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Current data privacy-preservation models lack the ability to aid data decision makers in processing datasets for publication. The proposed algorithm allows data processors to simply provide a dataset and state their criteria to recommend an xk-anonymity approach. Additionally, the algorithm can be tailored to a preference and gives the precision range and maximum data loss associated with the recommended approach. This dissertation report outlined the research’s goal, what barriers were overcome, and the limitations of the work’s scope. It highlighted the results from each experiment conducted and how it influenced the creation of the end adaptable algorithm. The xk-anonymity model …

A Comprehensive Cybersecurity Defense Framework For Large Organizations, Willarvis Smith

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing need to understand and identify overarching organizational requirements for cybersecurity defense in large organizations. Applying proper cybersecurity defense will ensure that the right capabilities are fielded at the right locations to safeguard critical assets while minimizing duplication of effort and taking advantage of efficiencies. Exercising cybersecurity defense without an understanding of comprehensive foundational requirements instills an ad hoc and in many cases conservative approach to network security. Organizations must be synchronized across federal and civil agencies to achieve adequate cybersecurity defense. Understanding what constitutes comprehensive cybersecurity defense will ensure organizations are better protected and more efficient. …

Adaptive Strategies Of Multi-Objective Optimization For Greener Networks, Hatem Yazbek

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Increasing energy costs and environmental issues related to the Internet and wired networks continue to be a major concern. Energy-efficient or power-aware networks continue to gain interest in the research community. Existing energy reduction approaches do not fully address all aspects of the problem. We consider the problem of reducing energy by turning off network links, while achieving acceptable load balance, by adjusting link weights. Changing link weights frequently can cause network oscillation or instability in measuring the resulting traffic load, which is a situation to be avoided. In this research, we optimize two objectives, which are minimizing network power …

The Evolution Of Technology In Call Centers, Julieo Stephen Thompson

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Historical research was conducted through literature. The report traces the evolution of technology in call centers (CCs) from their early inception to 2018. CCs are integrated into many facets of multidisciplinary areas of business, industry, and public and private institutions of higher education. Three research questions were addressed:

1. What technologies enabled the start of CCs? How did the communications between customers and CSRs take place? What was the content of the earlier communications?
2. How did services and communications evolve as technology matured?
3. What are the current state-of-the-art technologies that exist in CCs? Which industries appear to have the best solutions? …

Instructional Designers As Project Managers: A Phenomenology, La Keshia Lynn Nall

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The ability to effectively manage learning design projects, consult with stakeholders (such as sponsors, subject matter experts, and learners), and direct projects to completion is a vital part of an instructional designer’s role. Although the need for project management education and experience is reiterated in the literature and in cross-industry instructional designer (ID) job postings, it was unclear how these professionals acquired and used project management skills and tools in their profession because project management is not a focus in many higher education programs intended to prepare instructional designers.

The goal of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived …

An Investigation Into The Impact Of Social Networking On Knowledge Sharing, James Harold Gorham

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Today we are experiencing a rapidly increasing trend to use social networking in ways that dramatically affect both our personal and our public lives. This is a global phenomenon being experienced around the world. Exactly how this technology is being used and by whom is of great interest. The problem is that not a lot of research has been conducted to investigate the role social networking sites play to influence a person’s attitude toward sharing knowledge at work. In light of the marked increase in the use of social networking sites and how it is changing the way we live, …

An Investigation Of Electronic Protected Health Information (E-Phi) Privacy Policy Legislation In California For Seniors Using In-Home Health Monitoring Systems, Robert Lee Saganich

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This study examined privacy legislation in California to identify those electronic Protected Health Information (e-PHI) privacy policies that are suited to seniors using in-home health monitoring systems. Personal freedom and independence are essential to a person's physical and mental health, and mobile technology applications provide a convenient and economical method for monitoring personal health. Many of these apps are written by third parties, however, which poses serious risks to patient privacy. Current federal regulations only cover applications and systems developed for use by covered entities and their business partners. As a result, the responsibility for protecting the privacy of the …

A Hybrid (Active-Passive) Vanet Clustering Technique, Garrett Lee Moore

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Clustering serves a vital role in the operation of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) by continually grouping highly mobile vehicles into logical hierarchical structures. These moving clusters support Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) applications and message routing by establishing a more stable global topology. Clustering increases scalability of the VANET by eliminating broadcast storms caused by packet flooding and facilitate multi-channel operation. Clustering techniques are partitioned in research into two categories: active and passive. Active techniques rely on periodic beacon messages from all vehicles containing location, velocity, and direction information. However, in areas of high vehicle density, congestion may occur on …

Empirical Assessment Of Mobile Device Users’ Information Security Behavior Towards Data Breach: Leveraging Protection Motivation Theory, Anthony Duke Giwah

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

User information security behavior has been an area of growing demand in information systems (IS) research. Unfortunately, most of the previous research done in user information security behavior have been in broad contexts, therefore creating a gap in the literature of similar research that focuses on specific emerging technologies and trends. With the growing reliance on mobile devices to increase the flexibility, speed and efficiency in how we work, communicate, shop, seek information and entertain ourselves, it is obvious that these devices have become data warehouses and platform for data in transit.

This study was an empirical and quantitative study …

Gene Ontology-Guided Force-Directed Visualization Of Protein Interaction Networks, James Lowell King

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Protein interaction data is being generated at unprecedented rates thanks to advancements made in high throughput techniques such as mass spectrometry and DNA microarrays. Biomedical researchers, operating under budgetary constraints, have found it difficult to scale their efforts to keep up with the ever-increasing amount of available data. They often lack the resources and manpower required to analyze the data using existing methodologies. These research deficiencies impede our ability to understand diseases, delay the advancement of clinical therapeutics, and ultimately costs lives.

One of the most commonly used techniques to analyze protein interaction data is the construction and visualization of …

Lstm Networks For Detection And Classification Of Anomalies In Raw Sensor Data, Alexander Verner

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

In order to ensure the validity of sensor data, it must be thoroughly analyzed for various types of anomalies. Traditional machine learning methods of anomaly detections in sensor data are based on domain-specific feature engineering. A typical approach is to use domain knowledge to analyze sensor data and manually create statistics-based features, which are then used to train the machine learning models to detect and classify the anomalies. Although this methodology is used in practice, it has a significant drawback due to the fact that feature extraction is usually labor intensive and requires considerable effort from domain experts.

An alternative …

Diversification And Intensification In Hybrid Metaheuristics For Constraint Satisfaction Problems, John M. Lynden

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Metaheuristics are used to find feasible solutions to hard Combinatorial Optimization Problems (COPs). Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) may be formulated as COPs, where the objective is to reduce the number of violated constraints to zero. The popular puzzle Sudoku is an NP-complete problem that has been used to study the effectiveness of metaheuristics in solving CSPs. Applying the Simulated Annealing (SA) metaheuristic to Sudoku has been shown to be a successful method to solve CSPs. However, the ‘easy-hard-easy’ phase-transition behavior frequently attributed to a certain class of CSPs makes finding a solution extremely difficult in the hard phase because of …

Orlease: Optimistically Replicated Lease Using Lease Version Vector For Higher Replica Consistency In Optimistic Replication Systems, Diaa Fathalla

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

There is a tradeoff between the availability and consistency properties of any distributed replication system. Optimistic replication favors high availability over strong consistency so that the replication system can support disconnected replicas as well as high network latency between replicas. Optimistic replication improves the availability of these systems by allowing data updates to be committed at their originating replicas first before they are asynchronously replicated out and committed later at the rest of the replicas. This leads the whole system to suffer from a relaxed data consistency. This is due to the lack of any locking mechanism to synchronize access …

Gamespect: A Composition Framework And Meta-Level Domain Specific Aspect Language For Unreal Engine 4, Benjamin Jay Geisler

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Game engine programming involves a great number of software components, many of which perform similar tasks; for example, memory allocation must take place in the renderer as well as in the creation routines while other tasks such as error logging must take place everywhere. One area of all games which is critical to the success of the game is that of game balance and tuning. These balancing initiatives cut across all areas of code from the player and AI to the mission manager. In computer science, we’ve come to call these types of concerns “cross cutting”. Aspect oriented programming was …

Citationally Enhanced Semantic Literature Based Discovery, John David Fleig

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

We are living within the age of information. The ever increasing flow of data and publications poses a monumental bottleneck to scientific progress as despite the amazing abilities of the human mind, it is woefully inadequate in processing such a vast quantity of multidimensional information. The small bits of flotsam and jetsam that we leverage belies the amount of useful information beneath the surface. It is imperative that automated tools exist to better search, retrieve, and summarize this content. Combinations of document indexing and search engines can quickly find you a document whose content best matches your query - if …

Examining The Impact Of Learning Management Systems In Computer Programming Courses, Mohammed Naif Alatawi

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The development of software and communication technologies in education has led the majority of universities worldwide to integrate the functions of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) into their learning environments. LMSs offers several features that encourage their use by universities and other educational institutions, such as unlimited access to course content, easy tracking of learners’ progress and performance, and reduced costs in terms of both money and time. Most existing LMS studies have been focused on experienced LMS users who are familiar with its functions, with little consideration given to new users. Furthermore, although previous researchers have identified various means of …

An Instructional Designer Competency Framework For Complex Learning Designs, David Alan Schubert

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Learning design competency frameworks published by professional organizations, exist for typical instructional design efforts. However, a review of literature revealed a lack of frameworks available for the creation of complex learning designs (CLDs). The goal of this research was to develop a competency framework for the creation of CLDs. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in the four phases of the design and development research approach In phase one, a survey based on the Educational Technology Multimedia Competency Survey (ETMCS) was sent to instructional designers who self-reported as having experience creating CLDs. The purpose of phase one was to identify …

Assessing The Effects Of Communication Media Affordances And The Awareness Of Media Security On Knowledge Sharing Behavior, Linda C. Greene

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Global Software Development (GSD) team members engage in intellectual activities that involve sharing business domain knowledge and technical knowledge across geographical areas, which is crucial to the successful development of software. In global software development, media choice may influence how virtual teams create and share knowledge. As digital technology advances and organizations become more digitally transformed, current communication theories for media selection lack the explanation to the complicated phenomena with the use of advanced media technologies. There have been many studies focused on the effectiveness of media, but they did not include user’s understanding of system security and its influence …

A Newborn Screening Disorders Online Portal For Primary Care Providers And Parents, Jean Becky Whittemore

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Parents do not always receive accurate, timely and comprehensive information regarding a positive newborn screening from their infants’ primary care providers. The dissertation outlines the investigation of this problem. The methodology of the study is discussed including the survey of parents and primary care providers using the past system, the development of a web portal with a focus on plain language and action focused handouts. Without a simple to understand parent handout the newborn screening process is more stressful to families. Review of the literature is detailed including newborn screening, patient education, health literacy, Internet usage, online health education, design …

Examining Shared Understanding And Team Performance In Global Virtual Teams, Alva Bullard

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. These competitive demands have forced many organizations to increase levels of flexibility and adaptability through the use of virtual environments, and global teams are prevalent in business organizations. Although significant research has been conducted on virtual teams, the development of shared understanding among the members of these teams has not been studied adequately. Time/space barriers, communication complexities, and team diversity hinder the development of shared understanding in these teams.

Based on the Media Synchronicity Theory (MST), a new theoretical model was created that used the …

Comprehending The Safety Paradox And Privacy Concerns With Medical Device Remote Patient Monitoring, Marc Doyle

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Medical literature identifies a number of technology-driven improvements in disease management such as implantable medical devices (IMDs) that are a standard treatment for candidates with specific diseases. Among patients using implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICD), for example, problems and issues are being discovered faster compared to patients without monitoring, improving safety. What is not known is why patients report not feeling safer, creating a safety paradox, and why patients identify privacy concerns in ICD monitoring.

There is a major gap in the literature regarding the factors that contribute to perceived safety and privacy in remote patient monitoring (RPM). To address this …

Feature Set Selection For Improved Classification Of Static Analysis Alerts, Kathleen Goeschel

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

With the extreme growth in third party cloud applications, increased exposure of applications to the internet, and the impact of successful breaches, improving the security of software being produced is imperative. Static analysis tools can alert to quality and security vulnerabilities of an application; however, they present developers and analysts with a high rate of false positives and unactionable alerts. This problem may lead to the loss of confidence in the scanning tools, possibly resulting in the tools not being used. The discontinued use of these tools may increase the likelihood of insecure software being released into production. Insecure software …

Examining Task Conflict And Team Atmosphere In Virtual Teams Engaged In Outsourced Project Work, Harold Carr Osborn

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Global teams have become commonplace. As teams have become more dispersed, leveraging outsourced resources has gained popularity. Outsourcing can be a prudent move financially; however, when it is inappropriately applied, the damage it produces can easily overshadow any financial gains. Such ill effects can include impaired employee performance and morale caused by decreased job security. Moreover, it can lead to a less favorable team atmosphere and increased task conflict.

This study examined the effects of team virtuality along with the strategic alignment of outsourcing on team performance. The research utilized the intervening processes theory (IPT). The IPT posits that the …