Computer Sciences Commons^™

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 …

Network Simplification Through Oracle Learning, Tony R. Martinez, Joshua Menke, Adam Peterson, Michael E. Rimer

Faculty Publications

Often the best artificial neural network to solve a real world problem is relatively complex. However, with the growing popularity of smaller computing devices (handheld computers, cellular telephones, automobile interfaces, etc.), there is a need for simpler models with comparable accuracy. The following research presents evidence that using a larger model as an oracle to train a smaller model on unlabeled data results in 1) a simpler acceptable model and 2) improved results over standard training methods on a similarly sized smaller model. On automated spoken digit recognition, oracle learning resulted in an artificial neural network of half the size …

Optimization By Varied Beam Search In Hopfield Networks, Tony R. Martinez, Xinchuan Zeng

Faculty Publications

This paper shows that the performance of the Hopfield network for solving optimization problems can be improved by a varied beam search algorithm. The algorithm varies the beam search size and beam intensity during the network relaxation process. It consists of two stages: increasing the beam search parameters in the flrst stage and then decreasing them in the second stage. The purpose of using such a scheme is to provide the network with a better chance to find more and better solutions. A large number of simulation results based on 200 randomly generated city distributions of the 10-city traveling salesman …

Improving Speech Recognition Learning Through Lazy Training, Tony R. Martinez, Michael E. Rimer, D. Randall Wilson

Faculty Publications

Multi-layer backpropagation, like most learning algorithms that can create complex decision surfaces, is prone to overfitting. We present a novel approach, called lazy training, for reducing the overfit in multiple-layer networks. Lazy training consistently reduces generalization error of optimized neural networks by more than half on a large OCR dataset and on several real world problems from the UCI machine learning database repository. Here, lazy training is shown to be effective in a multi-layered adaptive learning system, reducing the error of an optimized backpropagation network in a speech recognition system by 50.0% on the TIDIGITS corpus.

Development Of A Systems Engineering Model Of The Chemical Separations Process: Quarterly Progress Report 2/16/02- 5/15/02, Yitung Chen, Randy Clarksean, Darrell Pepper

Separations Campaign (TRP)

Two activities are proposed in this Phase I task: the development of systems engineering model and the refinement of the Argonne code AMUSE (Argonne Model for Universal Solvent Extraction). The detailed systems engineering model is the start of an integrated approach to the analysis of the materials separations associated with the AAA Program. A second portion of the project is to streamline and improve an integral part of the overall systems model, which is the software package AMUSE. AMUSE analyzes the UREX process and other related solvent extraction processes and defines many of the process streams that are integral to …

Towards Peer-To-Peer Semantic Web: A Distributed Environment For Sharing Semantic Knowledge On The Web, Madhan Arumugam, Amit P. Sheth, I. Budak Arpinar

Kno.e.sis Publications

The real value of Semantic Web vision can be demonstrated if people and applications can create and discover new and interesting knowledge and share this knowledge in a transparent manner similar to the way data is exchanged today. Therefore, we believe that Semantic Web will consist of a distributed environment of shared and interoperable ontologies, which have emerged as common formalisms for knowledge representation. The users will need to discover new ontologies, which are not known to them before and use them to either annotate the content or to formulate their information requests. This requires an environment that supports creating, …

Nonorthogonal Polyhedra Built From Rectangles, Melody Donoso, Joseph O'Rourke

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We prove that any polyhedron of genus zero or genus one built out of rectangular faces must be an orthogonal polyhedron, but that there are nonorthogonal polyhedra of genus seven all of whose faces are rectangles. This leads to a resolution of a question posed by Biedl, Lubiw, and Sun [BLS99].

Communicator-In-Chief: Presidential Use Of Television Past, Present, And Future, Jenna Wasson

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to determine how television has changed as a communication medium for presidents over the past half century. An evaluation of the evolving ways presidents use television to communicate with and to build support from the American people has been conducted. Presidential communication strategies have been identified by drawing primarily from primary sources written by presidents and White House staff. Television technology and the television audience have changed over the years. Presidents have taken a more pro-active, aggressive role in their efforts to harness television for their own purposes. Why have these changes occurred? What impact have these …

Comparison Of Inheritance Evaluation Algorithms For Express Edition 3., Judy Dawn Greer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Information exchanged between computer applications is difficult, thus the need for data exchange standards. The ISO STEP project defines data exchange standards using the EXPRESS language, which supports inheritance. Currently there are two algorithms used to evaluate an inheritance hierarchy: the Test and Generate algorithms. In this thesis, enhancements are made to both algorithms to support the Total Over Constraint, which is proposed for the third edition of EXPRESS. A formal algorithm is derived for the Test algorithm. The two enhanced algorithms are compared and shown to be result equivalent. However, it is shown that the Test algorithm is the …

Modeling Quality Of Service For Workflows And Web Service Processes, Jorge Cardoso, John A. Miller, Amit P. Sheth, Jonathan Arnold

Kno.e.sis Publications

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows for e-commerce and Web-services applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying Quality of Service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows, the underlying workflow system must accept the specifications and be able to estimate, …

Analysis Of Protein Sequences Using Time Frequency And Kolmogorov-Smirnov Methods, Kobby Essien

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The plethora of genomic data currently available has resulted in a search for new algorithms and analysis techniques to interpret genomic data. In this two-fold study we explore techniques for locating critical amino acid residues in protein sequences and for estimating the similarity between proteins. We demonstrate the use of the Short-Time Fourier Transform and the Continuous Wavelet Transform together with amino acid hydrophobicity in locating important amino acid domains in proteins and also show that the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic can be used as a metric of protein similarity.

Conditionalization For Interval Probabilities, Alex Dekhtyar, Judy Goldsmith

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Conditionalization, i.e., computation of a conditional probability distribution given a joint probability distribution of two or more random variables is an important operation in some probabilistic database models. While the computation of the conditional probability distribution is straightforward when the exact point probabilities are involved, it is often the case that such exact point probability distributions of random variables are not known, but are known to lie in a particular interval.

This paper investigates the conditionalization operation for interval probability distribution functions under a possible world semantics. In particular, given a joint probability distribution of two or more random variables, …

Provisioning On-Line Games: A Traffic Analysis Of A Busy Counter-Strike Server, Wu-Chang Feng, Francis Chang, Wu-Chi Feng, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes the results of a 500 million packet trace of a popular on-line, multi-player, game server. The results show that the traffic behavior of this heavily loaded game server is highly predictable and can be attributed to the fact that current game designs target the saturation of the narrowest, last-mile link. Specifically, in order to maximize the interactivity of the game itself and to provide relatively uniform experiences between players playing over different network speeds, on-line games typically fix their usage requirements in such a way as to saturate the network link of their lowest speed players. While …

Supporting Low-Latency Tcp-Based Media Streams, Ashvin Goel, Charles Krasic, Kang Li, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The dominance of the TCP protocol on the Internet and its success in maintaining Internet stability has led to several TCP-based stored media-streaming approaches. The success of these approaches raises the question whether TCP can be used for low-latency streaming. Low latency streaming allows responsive control operations for media streaming and can make interactive applications feasible. We examined adapting the TCP send buffer size based on TCP's congestion window to reduce application perceived network latency. Our results show that this simple idea significantly improves the number of packets that can be delivered within 200 ms and 500 ms thresholds.

Mining Relationship Graphs For Effective Business Objectives, Kok-Leong Ong, Ee Peng Lim, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Modern organization has two types of customer profiles: active and passive. Active customers contribute to the business goals of an organization, while passive customers are potential candidates that can be converted to active ones. Existing KDD techniques focused mainly on past data generated by active customers. The insights discovered apply well to active ones but may scale poorly with passive customers. This is because there is no attempt to generate know-how to convert passive customers into active ones. We propose an algorithm to discover relationship graphs using both types of profile. Using relationship graphs, an organization can be more effective …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 18, Number 8, May 2002, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

An eight page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

A Unique Examination Of The Buffer Overflow Condition, Terry Bruce Gillette

Theses and Dissertations

Buffer overflows have been the most common form of security vulnerability for the last ten years. More over, buffer overflow vulnerabilities enable the type of exploits that dominate remote network penetration. As our reliance on commercial third party software is critical in the current computing environment one must consider the question of how these vulnerabilities are discovered in released proprietary software. This thesis presents research focused on the fundamental issues surrounding the buffer overflow vulnerability. The objective is to analyze and understand the technical nature of this type of vulnerability and, on the basis of this, develop an efficient generic …

Poster: Provisioning On-Line Games: A Traffic Analysis Of A Busy Counter-Strike Server, Francis Chang, Wu-Chang Feng, Wu-Chi Feng, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A poster that illustrates the client/server model employed by an multiplayer online game, focusing on bandwidth usage.

A Stream Database Server For Sensor Applications, Moustafa A. Hammad, Walid G. Aref, Ann C. Catlin, Mohamed G. Elfeky, Ahmed K. Elmagarmid

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Joining Multiple Data Streams With Window Constraints, Moustafa A. Hammad, Walid G. Aref, Ahmed K. Elmagarmid

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

A Bdi Agent Software Development Process, Jeffrey M. Einhorn

Theses and Dissertations

As computer software continues to grow increasingly complex with each passing year, researchers continue to try and develop means to simplify software development. In this thesis, we propose a BDI agent software development process as the next evolution in software development. The goal of this research is to develop a process, which can be used to enable the creation of agent-based systems.

This thesis strives to present a practical software development process, which is useful to today's software engineer, by building upon current agent research and proven software engineering practices. Our BDI agent software development process is a systematic process, …

An Iterative Initial-Points Refinement Algorithm For Categorical Data Clustering, Ying Sun, Qiuming Zhu, Zhengxin Chen

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The original k-means clustering algorithm is designed to work primarily on numeric data sets. This prohibits the algorithm from being directly applied to categorical data clustering in many data mining applications. The k-modes algorithm [Z. Huang, Clustering large data sets with mixed numeric and categorical value, in: Proceedings of the First Pacific Asia Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Conference. World Scientific, Singapore, 1997, pp. 21–34] extended the k-means paradigm to cluster categorical data by using a frequency-based method to update the cluster modes versus the k-means fashion of minimizing a numerically valued cost. However, as is …

Personalized Information Management For Web Intelligence, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web intelligence can be defined as the process of scanning and tracking information on the World Wide Web so as to gain competitive advantages. This paper describes a system known as Flexible Organizer for Competitive Intelligence (FOCI) that transforms raw URLs returned by internet search engines into personalized information portfolios. FOCI builds information portfolios by gathering and organizing online information according to a user's needs and preferences. Through a novel method called User-Configurable Clustering, a user can personalize his/her portfolios in terms of the content as well as the information structure. The personalized portfolios can then be used to track …

Product Schema Integration For Electronic Commerce: A Synonym Comparison Approach, Guanghao Yan, Wee-Keong Ng, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In any electronic commerce system, the heterogeneity of product descriptions is a critical impediment to efficient business information exchange. In the ABECOS electronic commerce system, buyer agents, seller agents, and directory agents liaise with one another in e-commerce activities. Only when agents have a common ontology of product descriptions (also called product schemas) are they able to interact seamlessly in e-commerce activities. This gives rise to the product schema integration problem (PSI); the problem of integrating heterogeneous schemas of a certain product into one globally compatible schema. We adopt an integration approach based on product attribute synonyms. We give a …

A Case For Analytical Customer Relationship Management, Jaideep Srivastava, Jau-Hwang Wang, Ee Peng Lim, San-Yih Hwang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes how data analytics can be used to make various CRM functions like customer segmentation, communication targeting, retention, and loyalty much more effective. Also briefly describe the key technologies needed to implement analytical CRM, and are the organizational issues that must be carefully handled to make CRM a reality.

Proteome Database Of Hepatocellular Carcinoma., Cynthia Liang, Jason Neo, Siaw Ling Lo, Gek San Tan, Teck Keong Seow, Maxey Chung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC or hepatoma) is the most common primary cancer of the liver. Persistent viral infection by the hepatic B or C virus is probably the most important cause of HCC worldwide. It is responsible for approximately one million deaths each year, predominantly in the underdeveloped and developing countries, but its incidence is also on the rise in the developed countries. For most patients suffering from HCC, long-term survival is rare, as they are presented late and are often unsuitable for curative treatment. Thus there is great interest to identify novel HCC diagnostic markers for early detection of the …

Factors Influencing Adoption Of Mobile Computing, Wenli Zhu, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Fan Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The emergence of mobile computing combined with the increased popularity of the Internet is changing our daily lives. The increasing use of small portable computers, wireless networks and satellites un folds the new technology of mobile computing, which allows transmis sion of data to computers that are not physically linked to a network. As a result, people can communicate on the move. Mobile devices with new input and output methods and form factors are dramatically different from traditional desktop computers (Rodden et al., 1998). These technological changes make increasing demands on both the quality of user interface and the functionality …

Mobile Commerce Applications In Supply Chain Management, Keng Siau, Zixing Shen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As wireless technologies evolve, the coming mobile revolution will bring dramatic and fundamental changes to supply chain management. When complete, the revolution will impact numerous facets of organizational life. It will provide important data in real time to assist decision makers, exert great influence on the ways businesses communicate and develop relationships with consumers and suppliers, and ultimately transform the way we manage the supply chain. This paper examines issues in integrating mobile commerce and supply chain management. The paper discusses issues such as the absence of killer applications, mobile device limitations, networking problems, infrastructure constraints, security concerns, and user …

Probabilistic Connections In Relaxation Networks, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

This paper reports results from studying the behavior of Hopfield-type networks with probabilistic connections. As the probabilities decrease, network performance degrades. In order to compensate, two network modifications - input persistence and a new activation function - are suggested, and empirical results indicate that the modifications significantly improve network performance.

Fuzzy Product -Limit Estimators: Soft Computing In The Presence Of Very Small And Highly Censored Data Sets, Kian Lawrence Pokorny

Doctoral Dissertations

When very few data are available and a high proportion of the data is censored, accurate estimates of reliability are problematic. Standard statistical methods require a more complete data set, and with any fewer data, expert knowledge or heuristic methods are required. In the current research a computational system is developed that obtains a survival curve, point estimate, and confidence interval about the point estimate.

The system uses numerical methods to define fuzzy membership functions about each data point that quantify uncertainty due to censoring. The “fuzzy” data are then used to estimate a survival curve, and the mean survival …