Computer Sciences Commons^™

Intramural, Collaborative Learning Systems, Robert S. Friedman

Theses

This thesis focuses on three related concepts: problem-based collaborative learning; the use of multimedia tools in learning systems; and participatory design as a software engineering methodology to create multimedia tools to be used in learning systems. A literature review of the three areas is followed by an overview of the pedagogical, technological, and business trends that affect the direction of innovation in education, including problem-based learning. A discussion of a software engineering project to develop a multimedia application that enhances the learning of geography skills and puts the programming, interface design and multimedia systems capabilities of college students into action …

An Evolving Approach To Learning In Problem Solving And Program Development : The Distributed Learning Model, Idania Espinosa

Theses

Technological advances are paving the way for improvements in many sectors of society. The US education system needs to undergo a transformation of existing pedagogical methods to maximize utilization of new technologies. Traditional education has primarily been teacher driven, lectured-based in one location. Advances in technology are challenging existing paradigms by developing tools and educational environments that reach diverse learning styles and surpass the boundaries of current teaching methods.

Distributed learning is an emerging paradigm today that has promise to contribute significantly to learning and improve overall academic success. This research first explores various systems that provide different modes of …

Comparative Molecular Field Analysis (Comfa) Of Protonated Methylphenidate Phenyl-Substituted Analogs, Kathleen Mary Gilbert

Theses

Protonated methylphenidate (pMP) and several phenyl-substituted pMP analogs were analyzed using Comparative Molecular Field Analysis (CoMFA) to develop a pharmacophore for dopamine transporter (DAT) binding. This research is a part of an interdisciplinary study on using methylphenidate (MP) analogs to block the binding of cocaine to the DAT as a treatment for addiction.

A random search conformational analysis using key pMP torsional angles was performed to create conformer families representing possible bioactive conformations. The lowest energy pMP conformer of each family was used as a template to create phenyl-substituted pMP analogs.

Partial least squares analysis was used to determine the …

Simulation And Close-To-Optimal Algorithm For The Static Load Balancing Of A Network Of Heterogeneous Processors, Mark G. Steiner

Theses

A close-to-optimal linear programming-based algorithm for the static load balancing of a network of heterogeneous processors is described and implemented. Experimental results suggest that the amount of time required by the implementation of the algorithm to balance the loads of the servers as a function of the number of servers has polynomial complexity.

A Review And Assessment Of Novice Learning Tools For Problem Solving And Program Development, Christopher John Bladek

Theses

There is a great demand for the development of novice learning tools to supplement classroom instruction in the areas of problem solving and program development. Research in the area of pedagogy, the psychology of programming, human-computer interaction, and cognition have provided valuable input to the development of new methodologies, paradigms, programming languages, and novice learning tools to answer this demand.

Based on the cognitive needs of novices, it is possible to postulate a set of characteristics that should comprise the components an effective novice-learning tool. This thesis will discover these characteristics and provide recommendations for the development of new learning …

A Tool For Phylogenetic Data Cleaning And Searching, Viswanath Neelavalli

Theses

Data collection and cleaning is a very important part of an elaborate Data Mining System. 'TreeBASE' is a relational database of phylogenetic information at the Harvard University with a keyword based searching interface. 'TreeSearch' is a Structure based search engine implemented at NJIT that can be used for searching phylogenetic data. Phylogenetic trees are extracted from the flat-file database at Harvard University, available at {ftp://herbaria.harvard.edu/pub/piel/Data/files/}. There is huge amount of information present in the files about the trees and the data matrices from which the trees are generated. The search tool implemented at NJIT is interested in using the string …

An Investigation Into The Concepts And Applicability Of Agent Technologies, Anne White

Theses

The software world is one of great richness and diversity

Even though the concept of software agents date back to the days of AI (Artificial Intelligence) work (1970’s) the word “Agent” is currently in vogue in the computing press and computer science communities.

This thesis presents a review of the ongoing evolution of software agents, places agents in context within today’s software domain, and takes a closer look at the ongoing debate of what really constitutes an '"Agenf\ The numerous dimensions of classification are studied and an opinion of the attributes that an agent should encompass is put forward. Leading …

Design And Analysis Of Radio Frequency Deployment Algorithms For Gsm, Mónica Pérez-Carbonell

Theses

Due to the growth of the subscriber base and the introduction of new services, mobile communications networks’ demand for wireless resources is increasing. This has resulted in an increasing need to change the frequency allocation of a network in order to adapt the cellular network to new frequency demands.

Currently, a planning tool generates a new frequency plan, which is. then deployed to cell sites. The deployment should ideally be carried out with minimum disruption to network operation, which makes this deployment process a critical undertaking as any errors during or after the deployment can leave the network with poor …

The Evolution Of Cell Colonies In Volvocacean Algae : Investigation By Theoretical Analysis And Computer Simulation., Frank Noe

Theses

This thesis presents a mathematical analysis and computational simulation which is used to investigate the evolution of cell colonies. The evolutionary transition from unicellular to cell colony form is a prerequesite for multicellular life as it exists abundantly on earth. This transition has occured numerous times independently so that we expect a high selective advantage to be associated with it. The photosynthetic green algae order Volvocaceae is an appropriate set of model organisms for the study of the evolution of cell colonies since it comprises living unicellular organisms, cell colonies, and multicellular organisms of different shapes, sizes and levels of …

Computationally Efficient Search For Large Primes, Wieslawa E. Amber

Theses

To satisfy the speed of communication and to meet the demand for the continuously larger prime numbers, the primality testing and prime numbers generating algorithms require continuous advancement. To find the most efficient algorithm, a need for a survey of methods arises. Concurrently, an urge for the analysis of algorithms' performances emanates. The critical criteria in the analysis of the prime numbers generation are the number of probes, number of generated primes, and an average time required in producing one prime. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to indicate the best performing algorithm. The survey the methods, establishment of …

Decision Making Based On Quantitative And Qualitative Evaluations, Rohan A. Pandit

Theses

This study emphasizes mainly on the influence of evaluations, both qualitative and quantitative, on decision making for many occasions that occur in business and technically oriented settings. Decisions made with a certain fuzzy as wen as technical behavior are structured by means of computer-assisted decision-making tools. Decision support tools assist decision makers in making crucial decisions. For instance the tool that has been designed for the purpose of this research will be used for selecting capital-intensive products. It is also intended to prove that with the help of decision support systems decision makers could make decisions by reducing fuzzy decision …

Data Mining Using Neural Networks For Large Credit Card Record Sites, Wei Wei

Theses

Data mining using neural networks has been applied in various financial fields such as risk mitigation, missing data filling, fraud detection, and customer profile classification etc. This master thesis work aims to develop methodologies to mine large sets of records and in particular to fill missing data in these records. The steps include data cleansing, data selection, data preprocessing, data representation, data clustering and finally the missing data filling. Furthermore, this work designs algorithms to evaluate the supervised neural networks' performance, which is helpful for the future research on data prediction and classification. A case study based on a large …

Visualization Techniques For Routing Protocols And Router Configurations, Vandana Pursnani

Theses

An autonomous system (AS) is a group of routers managed by a particular organization. Exterior gateway protocols (EGP) are used between AS's Internal Gateway Protocols (IGP) is used within an AS. The most common protocols used with TCP/IP are RIP, OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), IGRP / Enhanced IGRP.

The thesis revolves around OSPF protocol OSPF uses flooding to exchange link-state updates between routers. Any change in routing information is flooded to all routers in the network. Areas are introduced to put a boundary on the explosion of link-state updates. Flooding and calculation of the Dijkstra algorithm on a router …

Towards Hypermedia Support In Database Systems, Anirban Bhaumik

Theses

The general goal of our research is to automatically generate links and other hypermedia related services to analytical applications. Using a dynamic hypermedia engine (DHE), the following features have been automated for database systems. Based on the database's relational (physical) schema and its original (non-normalized) entity-relationship specification links are generated, database application developers may also specify the relationship between different classes of database elements. These elements can be controlled by the same or different database application, or even by another software system. A DHE prototype has been developed and illustrates the above for a relational database management system.

The DHE …

Managing Toxic And Hazardous Substances Of Concern In Manufacturing, Craig Jancerak

Theses

This thesis examined data management from an object relational database perspective. The database used was a product from Cornell University called PREDATOR. The context of the evaluation is the life-cycle of a manufactured product. The manufacturing life-cycle was chosen to correspond to an environmental life-cycle being done at NJIT. However, the goal was to use a generic model that could be applied to many situations.

The first phase developed the conceptual life-cycle model. At a high level, the model was not designed with a programming language in mind. Several questions needed to be answered and the a [sic] model answers …

Tackling The Deficit - It Solutions For Art Appreciation - Needs Study And Provision Project At Primary School Level., Séan Ó Hargáin

Theses

This project looks at the changing environment in terms of the approach to the Visual Arts curriculum at Primary School level. It aims to provide an innovative solution to the art appreciation area, which is being given equal status with the art creation area, which traditionally has been the main focus of the curriculum.

The Project includes a review of the curricular climate, both at home and abroad. In this context it focusses particularly on the role of Information Technology in addressing access problems from those living remote from major population, and therefore major artistic centres.

Primary Research included involved …

An Approach To Networking In Irish Primary Schools, Donal A. O'Connor

Theses

In this Thesis, I hope to develop an approach to networking in the Irish Primary school which will provide practical as well as theoretical advice to Primary Teachers. In the pages that follow, I will detail a general outline of the principles of computer networking and detail models appropriate to the primary school.

At the outset, I wish to acknowledge that there are as many solutions to the primary school’s networking requirements as there are individual schools. This document is intended as a general set of guidelines for the average Primary school in this country. By this, I mean schools …

Development Of A Networked Interactive Information Environment Within A National Park, John Clifton

Theses

For the most part, the Killarney National Park (KNP) currently disseminates information to visitors in paper format and by word of mouth in a non-coherent fashion. Society as a whole is moving towards an Information Age delivered through an electronic medium. This project aims to facilitate the KNP in delivering a new electronically presented information experience to its global visitors.

Electronic media facilitate the delivery of in-depth multimedia as well as multilingual information. This information will be made available on demand to visitors and delivered through a variety of media including information points and handheld devices to facilitate the various …

A Fresh Look At The Provision Of Bandwidth To A Health Agency, James G. Leahy

Theses

This thesis describes development of a networking infrastructure to support a Regional Health Service in Ireland. It covers:-

• The design, building, commissioning and delivery of a Forward Emergency Control Vehicle to provide the video, voice and data communications needed to enhance delivery of patient care in Disaster Situations. The main focus here is on the integration of satellite and terrestrial communications.

• By studying the history of telecommunications provision over copper, the best use is made of the legacy copper cabling in and between existing buildings on a campus to provide both voice and data services.

• A financial …

Using Computers In The Administration Of Primary Schools, Donncha Ó Fiannachta

Theses

This project investigates the use of computers in the administration of primary schools. A survey has been undertaken to determine current usage and future needs of schools such as training requirements.

It contains an overview of international thinking in this area and looks at aspects such as the legal issues involved in the keeping of electronic data on individuals in schools. Reference is made to the Freedom of Information Act, Data Protection Act and the Education Act.

The author has determined the type of data that is most commonly needed by primary schools in Ireland. Some of this information must …

Design And Implementation Of An Intranet-Solution Especially With Workflow Aspects, Robert Loew

Theses

An Intranet support a new or simply an easier information system for all the workers within a company using internet technology. On the one hand, employees can use Web technology and very simple tools to provide and navigate information. On the other hand, the costly and time-consuming business of installing and maintaining software on local PCs can be avoided by using Browser-based Intranet applications. Ideally, it would be possible to access all forms of information processing using one and the same Web browser. This is the aim of the Intranet Project upon which this thesis is based.

Various technologies for …

Development And Characterization Of Techniques For Neuro-Imaging Registration, Carlo Ciulla

Theses

Three automated techniques were developed for the alignment of Neuro-Images acquired during distinct scanning periods and their performance were characterized. The techniques are based on the assumption that the human brain is a rigid body and will assume different positions during different scanning periods. One technique uses three fiducial markers, while the other two uses eigenvectors of the inertia matrix of the Neuro-Image, to compute the three angles (pitch, yaw and roll) needed to register the test Neuro-Image to the reference Neuro-Image. A rigid body transformation is computed and applied to the test Neuro-Image such that it results aligned to …

Universal Access In Digital Libraries, Igg Adiwijaya

Theses

Digital libraries are concerned with the creation and management of information sources, the movement of information across global networks and the effective use of this information by a wide range of users. A digital library is a vast collection of obj ects that are of multimedia nature, e.g., text, video, images, and audio. Users wishing to access the digital library objects may possess varying capabilities, preferences, domain expertise, and may use different information appliances. With the phenomenal growth of the Internet, the number of different information appliances will, if not already, increase substantially in the near future. Facilitating access to …

Integration Of Multi Lifecycle Assessment And Design For Environment Database Using Relational Moddel Concepts, Bhagyashree Suratran

Theses

Multi-lifecycle Assessment (MLCA) systematically considers and quantifies the consumption of resources and the environmental impact associated with a product or process. Design challenges posed by a multi-lifecycle strategy are significantly more complex than traditional product design. The designer must look forward in time to maximize the product's end-of-life yield of assemblies, parts and materials while looking backward to the world of existing products for feedstock sources for the current design. As MLCA and DEE share some common data items, such as, part geometry, material and manufacturing process, it is advantageous to integrate the database for MLCA and DEE. The integration …

A Visualization System For Information Retrieval And Mining In High Dimensional Databases, Xinhuan Zheng

Theses

In this thesis, we present a search engine capable of giving good heuristic answers to the queries on a structural database. A structural database holds structural objects, e.g., protein secondary and tertiary structures, 3D molecules, phylogenetic trees, neuroanatomical networks, parse trees, CAD/CAM parts, and XML documents. Answering queries on such databases often requires solving variants of the graph isomorphism or subisomorphism problems. We also describe a graphic user interface which interacts with users to facilitate visualizing query results. We use 3D molecules (graphs) as illustrating examples, though our prototype is able to handle many other different types of structural data.

Automatic Categorization Of Abstracts Through Bayesian Networks, William Ramirez

Theses

This thesis presents a method for assigning abstracts of Artificial Intelligence papers to their area of the field. The technique is implemented by the use of a Bayesian network where relevant keywords extracted from the abstract being categorized, are entered as evidence and inferencing is made to determine potential subject areas. The structure of the Bayesian network represents the causal relationship between Artificial Intelligence keywords and subject areas. Keyword components of the network are selected from precategorized abstracts. The work reported here is part of a larger project to automatically assign papers to reviewers for Artificial Intelligence conferences. The process …

Analysis Of Clustering Algorithms For Spike Sorting Of Multiunit Extracellular Recordings, Jayesh Rege

Theses

Various techniques have been considered in the past to identify distinct spike shapes from mulitunit extracellular recording. These techniques involve adaptive filtering techniques or template matching techniques or hierarchical clustering techniques. In this investigation, we have used Principal Component Analysis followed by various clustering techniques to identify distinct spike shapes. The amplitude filter is used to separate spikes from background neuronal activity. The correlation matrix of the spike data is used to compute principal component wave forms. Each spike is thus represented by the coefficients of principal components. Then, We have used agglomorative hierarchical clustering algorithm to perform the initial …

Security In Distributed Systems - A Framework For Different Application Types, Ingo Stengel

Theses

Security is a factor which decides upon the applicability of distributed applications. Therefore this thesis deals with security in distributed systems. The complexity of the existing distributed technologies makes it necessary to reduce the number of distributed technologies considered in this thesis, i.e. concentrating on: Java, Mobile Agents and CORBA, where only Java-based mobile agents will be considered.

After a short review of basic security principles including firewalls, existing security problems in the above mentioned distributed technologies are analysed. Additional generic problems in distributed systems are outlined.

Solutions are referring to two different areas: those regarding security problems with firewalls …

Teaching Operating System Concepts Using Multimedia And Internet, Amit Narielwala

Theses

The prime objective of the thesis is to research and demonstrate the benefits and advantages of using Internet and multimedia tools for an interactive educational leaning experience. As we speak Internet is developing as a mainstream communication medium via personal computer as a tool at a breathtaking speed. The information technology field is a prime reason behind such phenomenon as it continues to mature and expand. In what is described as the "information age", the students of information technology need to master and devour new complex technological concepts and ideas at faster rate than ever before. The traditional approach using …

Agents : Concept, Technologies & Applications And Search Engine To Compile Urls Containing Documents Related To Environment Science For Njpies, Dhaval P. Shah

Theses

Agents are emerging technology that is making computer systems easier to use by allowing people (computer users) to delegate work back to the computer. They act on user's behalf and achieve user's goals. The advent of these software agents gave rise to much discussion of just what such an agent is, and of how they differ from programs in general. Agents are in research area for a long time. Earlier they were considered a part of just Artificial Intelligence. Nowadays they are just not in research area anymore. Commercial agent based applications are existing in the market because of the …