Computer Sciences Commons^™

A Framework For Analyzing And Mitigating The Vulnerabilities Of Complex Systems Via Attack And Protection Trees, Kenneth S. Edge

Theses and Dissertations

Attack trees have been developed to describe processes by which malicious users attempt to exploit or break complex systems. Attack trees offer a method of decomposing, visualizing, and determining the cost or likelihood of attacks. Attack trees by themselves do not provide enough decision support to system defenders. This research develops the concept of using protection trees to offer a detailed risk analysis of a system. In addition to developing protection trees, this research improves the existing concept of attack trees and develops rule sets for the manipulation of metrics used in the security of complex systems. This research specifically …

A Trend Pattern Assessment Approach To Microarray Gene Expression Profiling Data Analysis, Kahai Cao, Qiuming Zhu, Javeed Iqbal, John W.C. Chan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We study the problem of how to assess the reliability of a statistical measurement on data set containing unknown quantity of noises, inconsistencies, and outliers. A practical approach that analyzes the dynamical patterns (trends) of the statistical measurements through a sequential extreme-boundary-points (EBP) weed-out process is explored. We categorize the weed-out trend patterns (WOTP) and examine their relation to the reliability of the measurement. The approach is applied to the processes of extracting genes that are predictive to BCL2 translocations and to clinical survival outcomes of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) from DNA Microarray gene expression profiling data sets. Fisher’s …

A Three-Tier Knowledge Management Scheme For Software Engineering Support And Innovation, Richard Corbin, Christopher B. Dunbar, Qiuming Zhu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

To ensure smooth and successful transition of software innovations to enterprise systems, it is critical to maintain proper levels of knowledge about the system configuration, the operational environment, and the technology in both existing and new systems. We present a three-tier knowledge management scheme through a systematic planning of actions spanning the transition processes in levels from conceptual exploration to prototype development, experimentation, and product evaluation. The three-tier scheme is an integrated effort for bridging the development and operation communities, maintaining stability to the operational performance, and adapting swiftly to software technology innovations. The scheme combines experiences of academic researches …

Practical Elimination Of Near-Duplicates From Web Video Search, Xiao Wu, Alexander G. Hauptmann, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current web video search results rely exclusively on text keywords or user-supplied tags. A search on typical popular video often returns many duplicate and near-duplicate videos in the top results. This paper outlines ways to cluster and filter out the nearduplicate video using a hierarchical approach. Initial triage is performed using fast signatures derived from color histograms. Only when a video cannot be clearly classified as novel or nearduplicate using global signatures, we apply a more expensive local feature based near-duplicate detection which provides very accurate duplicate analysis through more costly computation. The results of 24 queries in a data …

A Classroom Outsourcing Experience For Software Engineering Learning, William L. Honig, Tejasvini Prasad

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Outsourcing of software development is a key part of globalization, oft misunderstood by computer science students, and possibly a cause of declining enrollments in the field. The authors developed and implemented an outsourcing experience for students in an advanced software engineering course. Student teams at two universities developed game playing programs and outsourced key parts of their systems to the other university. Results show students improved their understanding of outsourcing, developed better appreciation for the importance of software engineering techniques, and created ad hoc communication protocols between teams. The paper concludes with recommendations for expanding the approach used to other …

Image-Based Color Schemes, Bryan S. Morse, Daniel Thornton, Qing Xia, John Uibel

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a novel method for generating color schemes based on images intended to anchor color designs. This has wide applicability for web pages, printed materials, or other applications where images are used as a key part of the overall design. Unlike methods that are variants of color quantization and try to pixel-wise approximate the image, this method draws on graphic-design principles by emphasizing hue selection first, weighting effects of color by saturation, and considering the local spatial coherency in order to determine the overall visual impact of a color. Results demonstrate that the method generalizes to a wide …

Difference Computation Of Large Models, Christoph Treude, Stefan Berlik, Sven Wenzel, Udo Kelter

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Modern software engineering practices lead to large models which exist in many versions. Version management systems should offer a service to compare, and possibly merge, these models. The computation of a difference between large models is a big challenge; current algorithms are too inefficient here. We present a new technique for computing differences between models. In practical tests, this technique has been an order of magnitude faster than currently known algorithms. The main idea is to use a high-dimensional search tree for efficiently finding similar model elements. Individual elements are mapped onto a vector of numerical values using a collection …

Anonymous And Authenticated Key Exchange For Roaming Networks, Guomin Yang, Duncan S. Wong, Xiaotie Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

User privacy is a notable security issue in wireless communications. It concerns about user identities from being exposed and user movements and whereabouts from being tracked. The concern of user privacy is particularly signified in systems which support roaming when users are able to hop across networks administered by different operators. In this paper, we propose a novel construction approach of anonymous and authenticated key exchange protocols for a roaming user and a visiting server to establish a random session key in such a way that the visiting server authenticates the user's home server without knowing exactly who the user …

Evolutionary Combinatorial Optimization For Recursive Supervised Learning With Clustering, Kiruthika Ramanathan, Sheng Uei Guan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The idea of using a team of weak learners to learn a dataset is a successful one in literature. In this paper, we explore a recursive incremental approach to ensemble learning. In this paper, patterns are clustered according to the output space of the problem, i.e., natural clusters are formed based on patterns belonging to each class. A combinatorial optimization problem is therefore formed, which is solved using evolutionary algorithms. The evolutionary algorithms identify the "easy" and the "difficult" clusters in the system. The removal of the easy patterns then gives way to the focused learning of the more complicated …

Evaluating Bag-Of-Visual-Words Representations In Scene Classification, Jun Yang, Yu-Gang Jiang, Alexander G. Hauptmann, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Based on keypoints extracted as salient image patches, an image can be described as a “bag of visual words” and this representation has been used in scene classification. The choice of dimension, selection, and weighting of visual words in this representation is crucial to the classification performance but has not been thoroughly studied in previous work. Given the analogy between this representation and the bag-of-words representation of text documents, we apply techniques used in text categorization, including term weighting, stop word removal, feature selection, to generate image representations that differ in the dimension, selection, and weighting of visual words. The …

Ontology-Enriched Semantic Space For Video Search, Xiao-Yong Wei, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multimedia-based ontology construction and reasoning have recently been recognized as two important issues in video search, particularly for bridging semantic gap. The lack of coincidence between low-level features and user expectation makes concept-based ontology reasoning an attractive midlevel framework for interpreting high-level semantics. In this paper, we propose a novel model, namely ontology-enriched semantic space (OSS), to provide a computable platform for modeling and reasoning concepts in a linear space. OSS enlightens the possibility of answering conceptual questions such as a high coverage of semantic space with minimal set of concepts, and the set of concepts to be developed for …

The Future Of Information Systems Engineering, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Overview Of The Imageclef 2007 Object Retrieval Task, Thomas Deselaers, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We describe the object retrieval task of ImageCLEF 2007, give an overview of the methods of the participating groups, and present and discuss the results. The task was based on the widely used PASCAL object recognition data to train object recognition methods and on the IAPR TC-12 benchmark dataset from which images of objects of the ten different classes bicycles, buses, cars, motorbikes, cats, cows, dogs, horses, sheep, and persons had to be retrieved. Seven international groups participated using a wide variety of methods. The results of the evaluation show that the task was very challenging and that different methods …

Ntu: Solution For The Object Retrieval Task Of The Imageclef2007, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Object retrieval is an interdisciplinary research problem between object recognition and content-based image retrieval (CBIR). It is commonly expected that object retrieval can be solved more effectively with the joint maximization of CBIR and object recognition techniques. We study a typical CBIR solution with application to the object retrieval tasks [26,27]. We expect that the empirical study in this work will serve as a baseline for future research when using CBIR techniques for object recognition.

Robust Local Search And Its Application To Generating Robust Schedules, Hoong Chuin Lau, Fei Xiao, Thomas Ou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose an extended local search framework to solve combinatorial optimization problems with data uncertainty. Our approach represents a major departure from scenario-based or stochastic programming approaches often used to tackle uncertainty. Given a value 0 < ? 1, we are interested to know what the robust objective value is, i.e. the optimal value if we allow an chance of not meeting it, assuming that certain data values are defined on bounded random variables. We show how a standard local search or metaheuristic routine can be extended to efficiently construct a decision rule with such guarantee, albeit heuristically. We demonstrate its practical applicability on the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with minimal and maximal time lags (RCPSP/max) taking into consideration activity duration uncertainty. Experiments show that, partial order schedules can be constructed that are robust in our sense without the need for a large planned horizon (due date), which improves upon the work proposed by Policella et al. 2004.

Taking Stock Of The Creative Commons Experiment: Monitoring The Use Of Creative Commons Licenses And Evaluating Its Implications For The Future Of Creative Commons And For Copyright Law, Giorgos Cheliotis, Kam Wai, Warren Bartholomew Chik, Ankit Guglani, Giri Kumar Tayi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We provide an analysis of the use of Creative Commons (CC) licenses, an approach to licensing creative works which has become very popular among authors who wish to promote more liberal sharing and use of their work. We provide data demonstrating the popularity of CC, examine which specific license types within the CC framework are most popular, and then identify contributing factors for the relative popularity of some of the license types.

Cross-Language And Cross-Media Image Retrieval: An Empirical Study At Imageclef2007, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper summarizes our empirical study of cross-language and cross-media image retrieval at the CLEF image retrieval track (ImageCLEF2007). In this year, we participated in the ImageCLEF photo retrieval task, in which the goal of the retrieval task is to search natural photos by some query with both textual and visual information. In this paper, we study the empirical evaluations of our solutions for the image retrieval tasks in three aspects. First of all, we study the application of language models and smoothing strategies for text-based image retrieval, particularly addressing the short text query issue. Secondly, we study the cross-media …

Novelty Detection For Cross-Lingual News Stories With Visual Duplicates And Speech Transcripts, Xiao Wu, Alexander G. Hauptmann, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An overwhelming volume of news videos from different channels and languages is available today, which demands automatic management of this abundant information. To effectively search, retrieve, browse and track cross-lingual news stories, a news story similarity measure plays a critical role in assessing the novelty and redundancy among them. In this paper, we explore the novelty and redundancy detection with visual duplicates and speech transcripts for cross-lingual news stories. News stories are represented by a sequence of keyframes in the visual track and a set of words extracted from speech transcript in the audio track. A major difference to pure …

Context-Based Detection Of Clone-Related Bugs, Lingxiao Jiang, Zhendong Su, Edwin Chiu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Studies show that programs contain much similar code, commonly known as clones. One of the main reasons for introducing clones is programmers' tendency to copy and paste code to quickly duplicate functionality. We commonly believe that clones can make programs difficult to maintain and introduce subtle bugs. Although much research has proposed techniques for detecting and removing clones to improve software maintainability, little has considered how to detect latent bugs introduced by clones. In this paper, we introduce a general notion of context-based inconsistencies among clones and develop an efficient algorithm to detect such inconsistencies for locating bugs. We have …

Deception In Cyberspace: A Comparison Of Text-Only Vs. Avatar-Supported Medium, Holtjona Galanxhi, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of anthropomorphic avatars provides Internet users the opportunity and freedom to manipulate their identity. As cyberspace becomes a haven for deceptive behavior, human–computer interaction research will need to be carried out to study and understand these deceptive behaviors. The objective of this research is to investigate the behavior of deceivers and non-deceivers (or truth-tellers) in the cyberspace environment. We examine if the intention to deceive others influences one's choice of avatars in the online chat environment. We also investigate if communication medium (text-only vs. avatar-supported chat) influences one's perception of trustworthiness of the communication partner. A lab experiment …

Column Heterogeneity As A Measure Of Data Quality, Bing Tian Dai, Nick Koudas, Beng Chin Ooi, Divesh Srivastava, Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Data quality is a serious concern in every data management application, and a variety of quality measures have been proposed, including accuracy, freshness and completeness, to capture the common sources of data quality degradation. We identify and focus attention on a novel measure, column heterogeneity, that seeks to quantify the data quality problems that can arise when merging data from different sources. We identify desiderata that a column heterogeneity measure should intuitively satisfy, and discuss a promising direction of research to quantify database column heterogeneity based on using a novel combination of cluster entropy and soft clustering. Finally, we present …

Hardness For Explicit State Software Model Checking Benchmarks, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta

Faculty Publications

Directed model checking algorithms focus computation resources in the error-prone areas of concurrent systems. The algorithms depend on some empirical analysis to report their performance gains. Recent work characterizes the hardness of models used in the analysis as an estimated number of paths in the model that contain an error. This hardness metric is computed using a stateless random walk. We show that this is not a good hardness metric because models labeled hard with a stateless random walk metric have easily discoverable errors with a stateful randomized search. We present an analysis which shows that a hardness metric based …

Poisson Disk Point Sets By Hierarchical Dart Throwing, David Cline, Parris K. Egbert, Kenric B. White

Faculty Publications

Poisson disk point sets are “ideally” generated through a process of dart throwing. The naive dart throwing algorithm is extremely expensive if a maximal set is desired, however. In this paper we present a hierarchical dart throwing procedure which produces point sets that are equivalent to naive dart throwing, but is very fast. The procedure works by intelligently excluding areas known to be fully covered by existing samples. By excluding covered regions, the probability of accepting a thrown dart is greatly increased. Our algorithm is conceptually simple, performs dart throwing in O(N) time and memory, and produces a maximal point …

Using Author Topic To Detect Insider Threats From Email Traffic, James S. Okolica, Gilbert L. Peterson, Robert F. Mills

Faculty Publications

One means of preventing insider theft is by stopping potential insiders from becoming actual thieves. This article discusses an approach to assist managers in identifying potential insider threats. By using the Author Topic [Rosen-Zvi Michal, Griffiths Thomas, Steyvers Mark, Smyth Padhraic. The author-topic model for authors and documents. In: Proceedings of the 20th conference on uncertainty in artificial intelligence; 2004. p. 487–94.] clustering algorithm, we discern employees' interests from their daily emails. These interests then provide a means to create an implicit and an explicit social network graph. This approach locates potential insiders by finding individuals who either (1) feel …

Mobile Information Communication Technology For Crisis Management : Understanding User Behavior, Response And Training, Elizabeth Avery Gomez

Dissertations

SMS text-messaging is an interoperable communication vehicle known to be dependable for mass media alert notifications in crisis management. SMS text-messaging also offers potential as one viable two-way communication alternative for field responders in crisis response. Both continuously changing mobile information communication technologies and the importance of precise information exchange constitute a need for communication protocol training and practice. This study introduces a technology-mediated training technique based on speech act and communicative action theories. These theories are used to inform the design of a baseline measure for task performance improvement and to suggest a model to predict communication readiness. Because …

Designing Multimodal Interaction For The Visually Impaired, Xiaoyu Chen

Dissertations

Although multimodal computer input is believed to have advantages over unimodal input, little has been done to understand how to design a multimodal input mechanism to facilitate visually impaired users' information access.

This research investigates sighted and visually impaired users' multimodal interaction choices when given an interaction grammar that supports speech and touch input modalities. It investigates whether task type, working memory load, or prevalence of errors in a given modality impact a user's choice. Theories in human memory and attention are used to explain the users' speech and touch input coordination.

Among the abundant findings from this research, the …

Design And Implementation Of Split Tcp In The Linux Kernel, Rahul Jain

Dissertations

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was designed for reliable communication between computers over networks of unpredictable quality. It has admirably succeeded in satisfying the needs of the growing internet. Yet, there are combinations of network problems too bad even for TCP. In particular, in the situation of simultaneously very high delay (e.g. a satellite link) and high loss or even fading (a low quality earthlink or wireless link) on the same connection TCP can break down.

A known solution is “Split TCP” where one or more proxies (called Helper Boxes) are introduced to break the end-to-end connection into few (almost) …

Solar Activity Detection And Prediction Using Image Processing And Machine Learning Techniques, Gang Fu

Dissertations

The objective of the research in this dissertation is to develop the methods for automatic detection and prediction of solar activities, including prominence eruptions, emerging flux regions and solar flares. Image processing and machine learning techniques are applied in this study. These methods can be used for automatic observation of solar activities and prediction of space weather that may have great influence on the near earth environment.

The research presented in this dissertation covers the following topics: i) automatic detection of prominence eruptions (PBs), ii) automatic detection of emerging flux regions (EFRs), and iii) automatic prediction of solar flares.

In …

Distributing Real Time Data From A Multi-Node Large Scale Contact Center Using Corba, Joe Goggins

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This thesis researches and evaluates the current technologies available for developing a system for propagation of Real-Time Data from a large scale Enterprise Server to large numbers of registered clients on the network. The large scale Enterprise Server being implemented is a Contact Centre Server, which can be a standalone system or part of a multi-nodal system. This paper makes three contributions to the study of scalable real-time notification services. Firstly, it defines the research of the different technologies and their implementation for distributed objects in today's world of computing. Secondly, the paper explains how we have addressed key design …

Proceedings Of The 18th Irish Conference On Artificial Intelligence And Cognitive Science, Sarah Jane Delany, Michael Madden

Books/Book Chapters

These proceedings contain the papers that were accepted for publication at AICS-2007, the 18th Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, which was held in the Technological University Dublin; Dublin, Ireland; on the 29th to the 31st August 2007. AICS is the annual conference of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland (AIAI).