Computer Sciences Commons^™

Unifying Framework For Building Social Computing Applications, Renato Costa, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

There have been a number of frameworks and models developed to

support different aspects of social computing. Some were developed to deal

with online interaction through the application of computer-mediated communications

tools, whereas others such as social network analyses and reputation

systems were more specific in their focus. While these methodologies are interrelated,

current social computing research has dealt with them as separate aspects.

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for social computing

that aims at integrating all these three aspects into a unified model so that discovery

and exploration of community members are not only made possible, but

also …

Rejuvenate Pointcut: A Tool For Pointcut Expression Recovery In Evolving Aspect-Oriented Software, Raffi Khatchadourian, Awais Rashid

Publications and Research

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) strives to localize the scattered and tangled implementations of crosscutting concerns (CCCs) by allowing developers to declare that certain actions (advice) should be taken at specific points (join points) during the execution of software where a CCC (an aspect) is applicable. However, it is non-trivial to construct optimal pointcut expressions (a collection of join points) that capture the true intentions of the programmer and, upon evolution, maintain these intentions. We demonstrate an AspectJ source-level inferencing tool called rejuvenate pointcut which helps developers maintain pointcut expressions over the lifetime of a software product. A key insight into the …

Streaming Estimation Of Information-Theoretic Metrics For Anomaly Detection (Extended Abstract), Sergey Bratus, Joshua Brody, David Kotz, Anna Shubina

Dartmouth Scholarship

Information-theoretic metrics hold great promise for modeling traffic and detecting anomalies if only they could be computed in an efficient, scalable ways. Recent advances in streaming estimation algorithms give hope that such computations can be made practical. We describe our work in progress that aims to use streaming algorithms on 802.11a/b/g link layer (and above) features and feature pairs to detect anomalies.

Semantics Enhanced Services: Meteor-S, Sawsdl And Sa-Rest, Amit P. Sheth, Karthik Gomadam, Ajith Harshana Ranabahu

Kno.e.sis Publications

Services Research Lab at the Knoesis center and the LSDIS lab at University of Georgia have played a significant role in advancing the state of research in the areas of workflow management, semantic Web services and service oriented computing. Starting with the METEOR workflow management system in the 90's, researchers have addressed key issues in the area of semantic Web services and more recently, in the domain of RESTful services and Web 2.0. In this article, we present a brief discussion on the various contributions of METEOR-S including SAWSDL, publication and discovery of semantic Web services, data mediation, dynamic configuration …

Collecting Open Source Intelligence Via Tailored Information Delivery Systems, William Sousan, Qiuming Zhu, Ryan Nickell, William Mahoney, Peter Hospodka

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The Internet offers a plethora of freely available information for possible use in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) operations. However, along with this information come challenges in finding relevant information and overcoming information overload. This paper presents the results of an ongoing research in a Tailored Information Delivery Services (TIDS) system that aids users in retrieving relevant information through various open intelligence sources. The TIDS provides a semantics-based query constructor that operates in a “What You Get is What You Need (WYGIWYN^TM)” fashion and builds ontology based information tagging, theme extractor, and contextual model.

Optimal Energy-Delay Routing Protocol With Trust Levels For Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Eyad Taqieddin, Ann K. Miller, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the Trust Level Routing (TLR) pro- tocol, an extension of the optimized energy-delay rout- ing (OEDR) protocol, focusing on the integrity, reliability and survivability of the wireless network. TLR is similar to OEDR in that they both are link state routing proto- cols that run in a proactive mode and adopt the concept of multi-point relay (MPR) nodes. However, TLR aims at incorporating trust levels into routing by frequently changing the MPR nodes as well as authenticating the source node and contents of control packets. TLR calcu- lates the link costs based on a composite metric (delay …

Generating Robust Schedules Subject To Resource And Duration Uncertainties, Na Fu, Hoong Chuin Lau, Fei Xiao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with minimal and maximal time lags under resource and duration uncertainties. To manage resource uncertainties, we build upon the work of Lambrechts et al 2007 and develop a method to analyze the effect of resource breakdowns on activity durations. We then extend the robust local search framework of Lau et al 2007 with additional considerations on the impact of unexpected resource breakdowns to the project makespan, so that partial order schedules (POS) can absorb both resource and duration uncertainties. Experiments show that our proposed model is capable of addressing the uncertainty of resources, …

Cluster Analysis Of Simulated Gravitationalwave Triggers Using S-Means And Constrained Validation Clustering, Lappoon R. Tang, Hansheng Lei, Soma Mukherjee, Soumya Mohanty

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The fifth Science run of LIGO (S5) has been concluded recently. The data collected over two years of the run calls for a thorough analysis of the glitches seen in the gravitational wave channels, as well as in the auxiliary and environmental channels. The study presents two new techniques for cluster analysis of gravitational wave burst triggers. Traditional approaches to clustering treats the problem as an optimization problem in an “open” search space of clustering models. However, this can lead to problems with producing models that over-fit or under-fit the data as the search is stuck on local minima. The …

S-Means: Similarity Driven Clustering And Its Application In Gravitational-Wave Astronomy Data Mining, Hansheng Lei, Lappoon R. Tang, Juan R. Iglesias, Soma Mukherjee, Soumya Mohanty

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Clustering is to classify unlabeled data into groups. It has been well researched for decades in many disciplines. Clustering in massive amount of astronomical data generated by multi-sensor networks has become an emerging new challenge; assumptions in many existing clustering algorithms are often violated in these domains. For example, K means implicitly assumes that underlying distribution of data is Gaussian. Such an assumption is not necessarily observed in astronomical data. Another problem is the determination of K, which is hard to decide when prior knowledge is lacking. While there has been work done on discovering the proper value for K …

Special Issue Introduction: Hci Studies In Mis, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Xiaowen Fang, Traci Hess, Weiyin Hong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We are grateful to the editors-in-chief for this opportunity and their strong support of the second AIS SIGHCI-sponsored special issue on HCI studies in MIS. We also thank the following reviewers who have played an important role in the development of the manuscripts included in this special issue: Steven Bellman, Damon Campbell, Jinwei Cao, Jane Carey, Andrea Everard, Mark Fuller, Matt Germonprez, Maggie Guo, Susanna Ho, De Liu, Hong Sheng, Chuan Hoo Tan, Horst Treiblmaier, June Wei, and Yunjie Calvin Xu.

Tuning Into The Digital Channel: Evaluating Business Model Fit For Internet Firm Survival, Robert J. Kauffman, Bin Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

More than 5,000 Internet firms have failed since the beginning of 2000. One common perception is that the downturn in the economy drove many firms out of business. But then, why have some firms survived? In this research, we provide an empirical analysis by examining how the business model characteristics of an Internet firm affect its survival. We analyze a panel data set of 130 public Internet firms using two different techniques: non-parametric survival analysis, and the semiparametric Cox proportional hazards model. We characterize the survival rates throughout the lifetimes of the public Internet firms in our sample. Our results …

Software Nightmares, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To err is human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer. So states the remarkably insightful Murphy’s Law. And nowhere else does this ring truer than in our financial workplace. After all, it is the financial sector that drove the rapid progress in the computing industry – which is why the first computing giant had the word “business” in its name. The financial industry keeps up with the developments in the computer industry for one simple reason. Stronger computers and smarter programs mean more money — a concept we readily grasp. As we use the latest and …

Cascade Rsvm In Peer-To-Peer Network, Hock Hee Ang, Vivekanand Gopalkrishnan, Steven C. H. Hoi, Wee Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The goal of distributed learning in P2P networks is to achieve results as close as possible to those from centralized approaches. Learning models of classification in a P2P network faces several challenges like scalability, peer dynamism, asynchronism and data privacy preservation. In this paper, we study the feasibility of building SVM classifiers in a P2P network. We show how cascading SVM can be mapped to a P2P network of data propagation. Our proposed P2P SVM provides a method for constructing classifiers in P2P networks with classification accuracy comparable to centralized classifiers and better than other distributed classifiers. The proposed algorithm …

Relative Importance, Specific Investment And Ownership In Interorganizational Systems., Kunsoo Han, Robert J. Kauffman, Barrie R. Nault

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Implementation and maintenance of interorganizational systems (IOS) require investments by all the participating firms. Compared with intraorganizational systems, however, there are additional uncertainties and risks. This is because the benefits of IOS investment depend not only on a firm's own decisions, but also on those of its business partners. Without appropriate levels of investment by all the firms participating in an IOS, they cannot reap the full benefits. Drawing upon the literature in institutional economics, we examine IOS ownership as a means to induce value-maximizing noncontractible investments. We model the impact of two factors derived from the theory of incomplete …

Tagnsearch: Searching And Navigating Geo-Referenced Collections Of Photographs, Quang Minh Nguyen, Thi Nhu Quynh Kim, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Ee Peng Lim, Aixin Sun, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

TagNSearch is a map-based tool for searching and browsing geo-tagged photographs based on their associated tags. Using Flickr as the dataset, TagNSearch returns, for a given query, photographs clustered by locations, and summarizes each cluster of photographs by cluster-specific tags. A map-based interface is also provided to help users better search, navigate and browse photographs and their clusters. A qualitative evaluation comparing TagNSearch and an existing tag search support in Flickr was also conducted. The task involved finding locations associated with a set of photographs. Participants were found to perform this task better using TagNSearch than Flickr.

Distinguishing Between Fe And Ddos Using Randomness Check, Hyundo Park, Peng Li, Debin Gao, Heejo Lee, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Threads posed by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are becoming more serious day by day. Accurately detecting DDoS becomes an important and necessary step in securing a computer network. However, Flash Event (FE), which is created by legitimate requests, shares very similar characteristics with DDoS in many aspects and makes it hard to be distinguished from DDoS attacks. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective mechanism called FDD (FE and DDoS Distinguisher) to distinguish FE and DDoS. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effective and practical mechanism that distinguishes FE and DDoS attacks. …

An Efficient Pir Construction Using Trusted Hardware, Yanjiang Yang, Xuhua Ding, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

For a private information retrieval (PIR) scheme to be deployed in practice, low communication complexity and low computation complexity are two fundamental requirements it must meet. Most existing PIR schemes only focus on the communication complexity. The reduction on the computational complexity did not receive the due treatment mainly because of its O(n) lower bound. By using the trusted hardware based model, we design a novel scheme which breaks this barrier. With constant storage, the computation complexity of our scheme, including offline computation, is linear to the number of queries and is bounded by after optimization.

A Heuristic Method For Job-Shop Scheduling With An Infinite Wait Buffer: From One-Machine To Multi-Machine Problems, Z. J. Zhao, J. Kim, M. Luo, Hoong Chuin Lau, S. S. Ge

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Through empirical comparison of classical job shop problems (JSP) with multi-machine consideration, we find that the objective to minimize the sum of weighted tardiness has a better wait property compared with the objective to minimize the makespan. Further, we test the proposed Iterative Minimization Micro-model (IMM) heuristic method with the mixed integer programming (MIP) solution by CPLEX. For multi-machine problems, the IMM heuristic method is faster and achieves a better solution. Finally, for a large problem instance with 409 jobs and 30 types of machines, IMM-heuristic method is compared with ProModel and we find that the heuristic method is slightly …

Do Online Reviews Affect Product Sales? The Role Of Reviewer Characteristics And Temporal Effects, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Jennifer Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online product reviews provided by consumers who previously purchased products have become a major information source for consumers and marketers regarding product quality. This study extends previous research by conducting a more compelling test of the effect of online reviews on sales. In particular, we consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of online reviews, such as reviewer quality, reviewer exposure, product coverage, and temporal effects. Using transaction cost economics and uncertainty reduction theories, this study adopts a portfolio approach to assess the effectiveness of the online review market. We show that consumers understand the value difference between favorable news and …

Nmflux: Improving Degradation Behavior Of Server Applications Through Dynamic Nursery Resizing, Witawas Srisaan, Cheng Huan Jia

School of Computing: Technical Reports

Currently, most generational collectors are tuned to either deliver peak performance when the heap is plentiful, but yield unacceptable performance when the heap is tight or maintain good degradation behavior when the heap is tight, but deliver sub-optimal performance when the heap is plentiful. In this paper, we present NMFLUX (continuously varying the Nursery/Mature ratio), a framework that switches between using a fixed-nursery generational collector and a variable-nursery collector to achieve the best of both worlds; i.e. our framework delivers optimal performance under normal workload, and graceful performance degradation under heavy workload. We use this framework to create two generational …

Developing A Virtual City For Emergency Preparedness Planning And Training, Jon K. Morgan

Theses

Existing techniques for emergency preparedness planning and training fail or lack the ability to convey training on a broad scale and timely fashion. Skill sets that are required for planning, mitigation, response and recovery issues are lost through information overload or failure to identify other channels in which to convey the information. In order to resolve some of the issues with currently existing methods such as tabletop training exercises (TTX), instructional video learning and full-scale exercises we can turn to virtual environments.

In a virtual environment teams can interact with their surroundings from the comfort of the office without having …

Challenges Of Creating A Knowledge-Based Society: Education & Research For India & Gujarat, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Enhancing The Development Process With Wikified Widgets, Gary Gotchel

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Wikis are now merging with other applications. Structured wikis, also known as application wikis, have evolved in recent years. This second generation has embedded applications into the wiki, which are used to structure access to the wiki repository's otherwise unstructured content. This paper investigates the other possible approach to merging wikis with applications. It researches the utility of embedding wiki functionality into common applications. Utility will be measured by the benefits to the software development process offered by this approach. I introduce a new term, wikified widget, to describe a GUI component that provides structured access to a wiki repository …

Development Of A Physician Profiling Data Mart, Connie Chambers

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Hospitals and medical centers participate in a physician profiling process. This process is important to ensure that physicians are providing safe care and to comply with regulations. One medical center was struggling with the ongoing generation of physician performance reports that were an important part of the profiling process. A design research project was undertaken to demonstrate that an Access-based data mart could successfully streamline this report generating process. The research also demonstrated the need to eliminate excessive detail and deliver highly summarized reports. In addition, the research provided thorough documentation of the entire data mart development approach. This documentation …

Implementation Of The Metadata Elements Of The Inspire Directive, Fiona Lawlor

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The INSPIRE Directive entered into force in 2007. The INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) initiative seeks to set in place mechanisms for sharing spatial data across Europe. Metadata is one of these mechanisms: to enable discovery and to act as an information source about spatial data resources. This project examines the implementation of spatial data metadata in Ireland. Using an Irish public service organisation as a case study, the project examines how metadata creation and presentation could be optimised to provide the best value for the end user. This project also examines database tools that can be leveraged …

A Secure Group Communication Architecture For Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Adrian N. Phillips, Barry E. Mullins, Richard Raines, Rusty O. Baldwin

Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the application of a secure group communication architecture to a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A multicast secure group communication architecture for the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite environment is evaluated to determine if it can be effectively adapted to a swarm of UAVs and provide secure, scalable, and efficient communications. The performance of the proposed security architecture is evaluated with two other commonly used architectures using a discrete event computer simulation developed using MATLAB. Performance is evaluated in terms of the scalability and efficiency of the group key distribution and management scheme when the …

Improving Live Sequence Chart To Automata Transformation For Verification, Rahul Kumar, Eric G. Mercer

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a Live Sequence Chart (LSC) to automata transformation algorithm that enables the verification of communication protocol implementations. Using this LSC to automata transformation a communication protocol implementation can be verified using a single verification run as opposed to previous techniques that rely on a three stage verification approach. The novelty and simplicity of the transformation algorithm lies in its placement of accept states in the automata generated from the LSC. We present in detail an example of the transformation as well as the transformation algorithm. Further, we present a detailed analysis and an empirical study comparing the …

Benchmark Experiments For Higher-Order And Full-Stokes Ice Sheet Models (Ismip-Hom), F. Pattyn, L. Perichon, A. Aschwanden, B. Breuer, B. De Smedt, O. Gagliardini, G. H. Gudmundsson, R. C. A. Hindmarsh, A. Hubbard, Jesse V. Johnson, T. Kleiner, Y. Konovalov, C. Martin, A. J. Payne, D. Pollard, S. Price, M. Rückamp, F. Saito, O. Soucek, S. Sugiyama, T. Zwinger

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present the results of the first ice sheet model inter comparison project for higher-order and full-Stokes ice sheet models. These models are compared and verified in a series of six experiments of which one has an analytical solution obtained from a perturbation analysis. The experiments are applied to both 2-D and 3-D geometries; five experiments are steady-state diagnostic, and one has a time dependent prognostic solution. All participating models give results that are in close agreement. A clear distinction can be made between higher-order models and those that solve the full system of equations. The full-Stokes models show a …

A Generic Approach And Framework For Managing Complex Information, Essam Mansour

Doctoral

Several application domains, such as healthcare, incorporate domain knowledge into their day-to-day activities to standardise and enhance their performance. Such incorporation produces complex information, which contains two main clusters (active and passive) of information that have internal connections between them. The active cluster determines the recommended procedure that should be taken as a reaction to specific situations. The passive cluster determines the information that describes these situations and other descriptive information plus the execution history of the complex information. In the healthcare domain, a medical patient plan is an example for complex information produced during the disease management activity from …

Biologically Relevant Multiple Sequence Alignment, Hyrum D. Carroll

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers use multiple sequence alignment algorithms to detect conserved regions in genetic sequences and to identify drug docking sites for drug development. In this dissertation, a novel algorithm is presented for using physicochemical properties to increase the accuracy of multiple sequence alignments. Secondary structures are also incorporated in the evaluation function. Additionally, the location of the secondary structures is assimilated into the function. Multiple properties are combined with weights, determined from prediction accuracies of protein secondary structures using artificial neural networks. A new metric, the PPD Score is developed, that captures the average change in physicochemical properties. Using the physicochemical …