Computer Sciences Commons^™

Teaching Object-Oriented Software Engineering Through Problem-Based Learning In The Context Of Game Design, Jungwoo Ryoo, Frederico Fonesca, David S. Janzen

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Although Object Orientation is emphasized in software engineering education, few have attempted to alleviate the initial learning curve associated with an inexperienced audience in non-computer science disciplines. The authors propose a Problem-Based Learning curriculum centered on game development to deliver basic Object-Oriented programming concepts in an interactive and engaging manner. Class activities occur within the context of the Object-Oriented Rational Unified Process. One of the most significant contributions of this paper lies in the design of class modules containing tasks intended to educate students on Object-Oriented Software Engineering in an incremental and self-actuated way.

Rdb2rdf: Incorporating Domain Semantics In Structured Data, Satya S. Sahoo

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Ppaa: Peer-To-Peer Anonymous Authentication (Extended Version), Patrick P. Tsang, Sean W. Smith

Computer Science Technical Reports

In the pursuit of authentication schemes that balance user privacy and accountability, numerous anonymous credential systems have been constructed. However, existing systems assume a client-server architecture in which only the clients, but not the servers, care about their privacy. In peer-to-peer (P2P) systems where both clients and servers are peer users with privacy concerns, no existing system correctly strikes that balance between privacy and accountability. In this paper, we provide this missing piece: a credential system in which peers are {\em pseudonymous} to one another (that is, two who interact more than once can recognize each other via pseudonyms) but …

Improving Spreadsheets For Complex Problems, Brian C. Whitmer

Theses and Dissertations

Spreadsheets are one of the most frequently used applications. They are used because they are easy to understand and values can be updated easily. However, many people try to use spreadsheets for problems beyond their intended scope and end up with errors and miscalculations. We present a new spreadsheet system which uses complex-values and equation code reuse to overcome the limitations of spreadsheets for complex problems. We also discuss the features necessary in order to make these enhancements useful and effective.

Cauchy’S Arm Lemma On A Growing Sphere, Zachary Abel, David Charlton, Sébastien Collette, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Stefan Langerman, Joseph O'Rourke, Val Pinciu, Godfried Toussaint

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We propose a variant of Cauchy's Lemma, proving that when a convex chain on one sphere is redrawn (with the same lengths and angles) on a larger sphere, the distance between its endpoints increases. The main focus of this work is a comparison of three alternate proofs, to show the links between Toponogov's Comparison Theorem, Legendre's Theorem and Cauchy's Arm Lemma.

The Homework Server, John Beckett

Faculty Works

The Homework Server is a true Web hosting platform which provides the student a realistic Web environment for project testing and turn-in while preventing other students from stealing their code. The Homework Server is a comprehensive environment based on freely available software. It is scripted in PHP/XHTML, integrates easily with university systems using IMAP authentication, and requires very little maintenance since most routine tasks are automated. The server described supports student applications that use XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP5, and MySQL.

Generalized Constrained Interpolation, Jacob Porter Merrell

Theses and Dissertations

Interpolation is essential in digital image processing, especially magnification. Many different approaches to interpolation specific to magnification have been developed in an effort to overcome the shortcomings of bilinear and bicubic interpolation. One of these approaches, Constraint-Based Interpolation, produces an image that is free of jaggies and has less blurring than bilinear or bicubic interpolation. Although Constraint-Based Interpolation produces a visually pleasing image, there are user-chosen parameters that make the algorithm difficult to use. In this thesis we propose a method for automatic selection of those parameters and an extension of Constraint-Based Interpolation to other forms of image manipulation, such …

A Scalable Approach To Multi-Style Architectural Modeling And Verification, Stephen Wong, Jing Sun, Ian Warren, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software Architecture represents the high level description of a system in terms of components, external properties and communication. Despite its importance in the software engineering process, the lack of formal description and verification support limits the value of developing architectural models. Automated formal engineering methods can provide an effective means to precisely describe and rigorously verify intended structures and behaviors of software systems. In this paper, we present an approach to support the design and verification of software architectural models using the Alloy analyzer. Based on our earlier work, we propose a fundamental library for specifying system structures in terms …

A Formal Model Of Semantic Web Service Ontology (Wsmo) Execution, Hai H. Wang, Nick Gibbins, Terry R. Payne, Ahmed Saleh, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Semantic Web services have been one of the most significant research areas within the semantic Web vision, and have been recognized as a promising technology that exhibits huge commercial potential. Current semantic Web service research focuses on defining models and languages for the semantic markup of all relevant aspects of services, which are accessible through a Web service interface. The Web service modelling ontology (WSMO) is one of the most significant semantic Web service framework proposed to date. To support the standardization and tool support of WSMO, a formal semantics of the language is highly desirable. As there are a …

Updated Data Dissemination For Applications With Time Constraints In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Takahiro Hara, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In our previous work, we proposed few updated data dissemination methods to refresh old replicas efficiently in mobile ad hoc networks. These methods disseminate updated data items every time when owners of original data items update the items or every time two mobile hosts are newly connected with each other and this causes heavy traffic in the entire network. In this paper, we assume applications that periodically execute read operations with strict deadlines to data items and propose few alternative updated data dissemination methods. These methods reduces the traffic for data dissemination while keeping a high success ratio for read …

Increasing Dogma Scaling Through Clustering, Nathan Hyrum Ekstrom

Theses and Dissertations

DOGMA is a distributed computing architecture developed at Brigham Young University. It makes use of idle computers to provide additional computing resources to applications, similar to Seti@home. DOGMA's ability to scale to large numbers of computers is hindered by its strict client-server architecture. Recent research with DOGMA has shown that introducing localized peer-to-peer downloading abilities enhances DOGMA's performance while reducing the amount of network and server usage. This thesis proposes to further extend the peer-to-peer abilities of DOGMA to include peering client server communication by creating dynamic clusters of clients. The client clusters aggregate their communication with only one client …

Getting Started With Prpl, Qingfeng Guan

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

pRPL is an open-source1 general-purpose parallel Raster Processing programming Library developed by Qingfeng Guan, in the Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara. pRPL encapsulates complex parallel computing utilities and routines specifically for raster processing (e.g., raster data decomposition, distribution and gathering among multiple processors, inter-processor communication and data exchange), and provides an easy-to-use interface for users to parallelize almost any raster processing algorithm with any arbitrary neighborhood (or moving window) configuration. pRPL enables the implementation of parallel raster-processing algorithms without requiring a deep understanding of parallel computing and programming, thus it greatly reduces the development complexity. Moreover, even …

Mobile Communication And Data Gathering Software For Autistic Children And Their Caregivers, Gondy Leroy, Gianluca De Leo

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Positive design leads to positive change in our society. In most cases, discussions focus on those who receive the design. However, positive design may also have a positive, but often over-looked, effect on the designers themselves. Learning about difficulties others face and developing solutions is a benefit that can contribute to individual designers’ education and general sense of well-being. Having a broader understanding of alternative views and lifestyles makes one a better person. In addition, positive design may benefit the entire field of information science by improving its ability to renew itself and attract new, young talent.

Selfish Wavelength Assignment In Multifiber Optical Networks, Evangelos Bampas, Aris Pagourtzis, George Pierrakos, Katerina Potika

Faculty Publications, Computer Science

No abstract provided.

A Complete And Scalable Strategy For Coordinating Multiple Robots Within Roadmaps, Mike Peasgood, Christopher M. Clark, John Mcphee

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper addresses the challenging problem of finding collision-free trajectories for many robots moving toward individual goals within a common environment. Most popular algorithms for multirobot planning manage the complexity of the problem by planning trajectories for robots individually; such decoupled methods are not guaranteed to find a solution if one exists. In contrast, this paper describes a multiphase approach to the planning problem that uses a graph and spanning tree representation to create and maintain obstacle-free paths through the environment for each robot to reach its goal. The resulting algorithm guarantees a solution for a well-defined number of robots …

Failure Analysis And Reliability -Aware Resource Allocation Of Parallel Applications In High Performance Computing Systems, Narasimha Raju Gottumukkala

Doctoral Dissertations

The demand for more computational power to solve complex scientific problems has been driving the physical size of High Performance Computing (HPC) systems to hundreds and thousands of nodes. Uninterrupted execution of large scale parallel applications naturally becomes a major challenge because a single node failure interrupts the entire application, and the reliability of a job completion decreases with increasing the number of nodes. Accurate reliability knowledge of a HPC system enables runtime systems such as resource management and applications to minimize performance loss due to random failures while also providing better Quality Of Service (QOS) for computational users.

This …

Capacity Planning Of A Commodity Cluster In An Academic Environment: A Case Study, Linh B. Ngo, Amy W. Apon, Baochuan Lu, Hung Bui, Nathan Hamm, Larry Dowdy, Doug Hoffman, Denny Brewer

Publications

In this paper, the design of a simulation model for evaluating two alternative supercomputer configurations in an academic environment is presented. The workload is analyzed and modeled, and its effect on the relative performance of both systems is studied. The Integrated Capacity Planning Environment (ICPE) toolkit, developed for commodity cluster capacity planning, is successfully applied to the target environment. The ICPE is a tool for workload modeling, simulation modeling, and what-if analysis. A new characterization strategy is applied to the workload to more accurately model commodity cluster work- loads. Through "what-if" analysis, the sensitivity of the baseline system performance to …

Cots-Based Software Product Line Development, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed, Shereef Al-Maati, Zaher Alaghbari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Software Product Line (SPL) is at the forefront among the techniques for reducing costs, decreasing schedule time, and ensuring commonality of features across a family of products - as components off-the-shelf (COTS) are reused in multiple products. A disciplined process for software product line development is still needed. We propose the Y-model for COTS-based software product line development. The model put forward identifies and elaborates the essential phases and activities of software product line development from COTS-based repository. The Y-model provides an efficient way of integrating the approaches of software product line and COTS-based development as a cohesive software development …

Resource Sharing Via Planed Relay For Hwn, Chong Shen, Susan Rea, Dirk Pesch

NIMBUS Articles

We present an improved version of adaptive distributed cross-layer routing algorithm (ADCR) for hybrid wireless network with dedicated relay stations () in this paper. A mobile terminal (MT) may borrow radio resources that are available thousands mile away via secure multihop RNs, where RNs are placed at pre-engineered locations in the network. In rural places such as mountain areas, an MT may also communicate with the core network, when intermediate MTs act as relay node with mobility. To address cross-layer network layers routing issues, the cascaded ADCR establishes routing paths across MTs, RNs, and cellular base stations (BSs) and provides …

Artist Ranking Through Analysis Of On-Line Community Comments, Julia Grace, Daniel Gruhl, Kevin Haas, Meenakshi Nagarajan, Christine Robson, Nachiketa Sahoo

Kno.e.sis Publications

We describe an approach to measure the popularity of music tracks, albums and artists by analyzing the comments of music listeners in social networking online communities such as MySpace. This measure of popularity appears to be more accurate than the traditional measure based on album sales figures, as demonstrated by our focus group study. We faced many challenges in our attempt to generate a popularity ranking from the user comments on social networking sites, e.g., broken English sentences, comment spam, etc. We discuss the steps we took to overcome these challenges and describe an end to end system for generating …

Economic-Based Incentive Schemes For Dynamic Data Management In Mobile P2p Computing, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Anirban Mondal

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Data management in mobile peer to peer (M-P2P) systems needs dynamic data management due to mobility and fragile wireless connection connecting resource constraint devices. Traditional methods of data management and services in mobile P2P environment generally assume all peers to cooperate. Since peer activities in M-P2P are not generally monitored, users assume that they are free to use the resources anyway they like. Under this feeling of freedom, a subset of users (free riders) begins to consume much more resources available on M-P2P than they wish to contribute. In addition, due to the dynamic nature of moving hosts, topology changes …

Wireless Sensor Network Modeling Using Modified Recurrent Neural Network: Application To Fault Detection, Azzam Issam Moustapha

Doctoral Dissertations

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of sensors, which in turn have their own dynamics. They interact with each other and the base station, which controls the network. In multi-hop wireless sensor networks, information hops from one node to another and finally to the network gateway or base station. Dynamic Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) consist of a set of dynamic nodes that provide internal feedback to their own inputs. They can be used to simulate and model dynamic systems such as a network of sensors.

In this dissertation, a dynamic model of wireless sensor networks and its …

K-Means+Id3 And Dependence Tree Methods For Supervised Anomaly Detection, Kiran S. Balagani

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, we present two novel methods for supervised anomaly detection. The first method "K-Means+ID3" performs supervised anomaly detection by partitioning the training data instances into k clusters using Euclidean distance similarity. Then, on each cluster representing a density region of normal or anomaly instances, an ID3 decision tree is built. The ID3 decision tree on each cluster refines the decision boundaries by learning the subgroups within a cluster. To obtain a final decision on detection, the k-Means and ID3 decision trees are combined using two rules: (1) the nearest neighbor rule; and (2) the nearest consensus rule. The …

After The System Upgrade Or Migration: A Cataloging Checklist, Sheryl Stump, Rick Torgerson

The Southeastern Librarian

At present. integrated library system (ILS) upgrades and migrations seem to be coming faster and more frequently. The reasons for this trend are many. among them being: 1) hardware upgrades are common due to the need for more memory to run the software; 2) software upgrades and migrations are desired because of the promise of new or improved features; 3) changes in system vendor ownership can affect changes in their software; 4) software and hardware upgrades are needed due to the advanced age of either or both; and 5) system upgrades on a yearly basis may be necessary to prevent …

Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Using Automatic Task Decomposition And Exploration Shaping, Predrag Djurdjevic

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Reinforcement learning agents situated in real world environments have to be able to address a number of challenges in order to succeed at accomplishing a wide range of tasks over their lifetime. Among these, such systems have to be able to extract control knowledge from already learned tasks and apply them to subsequent ones in order to allow the agent to accomplish the new task faster and to accelerate the learning of an optimal policy. To address skill reuse and skill transfer, a number of approaches using hierarchical state and action spaces have been introduced recently which build on the …

Texture Measurement And Skid Number Prediction Using Laser Data Acquisition, Digital Signal Processing, And Neural Networks, John Michael Kebrle

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Real-time estimation of the skid number of pavement is difficult. Traditional methods of volumetric measurement are cumbersome and time consuming. It is desired to enable prediction of the skid number of pavement using non-contact means, and to doso using a method which provides a reasonable estimate of the pavements skid number. This research used laser data acquisition of macro-texture, Digital Signal Processing and Neural Networks to estimate the skid number of pavement to a reasonable degree. The research used Digital Signal Processing to identify potentially bad data sets, and a Neural Network model for predicting skid number on the refined …

Risk Analysis In Extended Enterprise Environments: Identification Of Critical Risk Factors In B2b E-Commerce Relationships, Steve G. Sutton, Clark Hampton, Deepak Khazanchi, Vicky Arnold

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

The focus of this study is to identify the critical risk factors that can be used to assess the impact of B2B e-commerce on overall enterprise risk. We apply the Khazanchi and Sutton (2001) framework for B2B e-commerce assurance is applied as the organizing conceptual model for the study. The framework focuses on three primary risk components: (1) technical risks, (2) application-user risks, and (3) business risks. To identify a critical set of B2B risk factors, structured focus groups applying a nominal group technique were conducted with three internal constituency groups (corporate groups consisting of IS security, internal IT audit, …

Missouri S&T Mote-Based Demonstration Of Energy Monitoring Solution For Network Enabled Manufacturing Using Wireless Sensor Networks (Wsn), James W. Fonda, Maciej Jan Zawodniok, Al Salour, Jagannathan Sarangapani, Donald Miller

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this work, an inexpensive electric utilities monitoring solution using wireless sensor networks is demonstrated that can easily be installed, deployed, maintained and eliminate unnecessary energy costs and effort. The monitoring solution is designed to support network enabled manufacturing (NEM) program using Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST), formerly the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR), motes.

Numerical Simulations Of A Nonlinear Transmission Line, Stuart Rogers

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis investigates wave propagation along a nonlinear transmission line having a voltage-dependent capacitance. The telegrapher's equations that model wave propagation along such a transmission line are derived and shown to represent a nonlinear hyperbolic system of balance laws. The Lax-Friedrichs, Lax-Wendroff, and hybrid numerical schemes for obtaining approximate solutions to nonlinear hyperbolic systems of balance laws are presented, analyzed, and applied to the nonlinear telegrapher's equations. The Lax-Wendroff and hybrid schemes are invoked to numerically simulate wave propagation along a nonlinear transmission line. Simulations obtained via the hybrid scheme are used to briefly study the potential application of a …

A Weighted Modular Principal Component Analysis Approach For Face Authentication, Chandrika Tummala

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A weighted modular approach for face authentication based on the priorities of different facial regions that change with varying poses, expressions and occlusions is presented in this thesis. This helps in verifying the identity of an individual who claims to be a subject in the database and is unaware of the presence of the face authentication system. A sequence of face images is selected from a video in a particular predefined interval and is used for verification. The face images are divided into different horizontal modules based on the regions representing facial features. A principal component analysis on these modules …