Computer Sciences Commons^™

Automated Requirements Traceability: The Study Of Human Analysts, David Cuddeback, Alex Dekhtyar, Jane Huffman Hayes

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The requirements traceability matrix (RTM) supports many software engineering and software verification and validation (V&V) activities such as change impact analysis, reverse engineering, reuse, and regression testing. The generation of RTMs is tedious and error-prone, though, thus RTMs are often not generated or maintained. Automated techniques have been developed to generate candidate RTMs with some success. When using RTMs to support the V&V of mission-or safety-critical systems, however, a human analyst must vet the candidate RTMs. The focus thus becomes the quality of the final RTM. This paper investigate show human analysts perform when vetting candidate RTMs. Specifically, a study …

A Taxonomy-Based Model For Expertise Extrapolation, Delroy H. Cameron, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Ismailcem Budak Arpinar, Sheron L. Decker, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

While many ExpertFinder applications succeed in finding experts, their techniques are not always designed to capture the various levels at which expertise can be expressed. Indeed, expertise can be inferred from relationships between topics and subtopics in a taxonomy. The conventional wisdom is that expertise in subtopics is also indicative of expertise in higher level topics as well. The enrichment of Expertise Profiles for finding experts can therefore be facilitated by taking domain hierarchies into account. We present a novel semantics-based model for finding experts, expertise levels and collaboration levels in a peer review context, such as composing a Program …

Bioinformatics Across The Sciences, Nigel Yarlett

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Faculty Success: Developing A Research And Publication Agenda, Kathleen P. King

Department of Leadership, Policy, and Lifelong Learning

Anyone associated with higher education will acknowledge that tenure track faculty have to perform a fantastic balancing act. Compared to an administrative or line role in an organization, higher education faculty have tremendous autonomy and freedom. However, they face competing demands of many different (and good) opportunities, and for them the stakes are always high. Help is here! This article introduces a powerful strategy for staying on track in the research strand of this competitive journey.

Extreme Data Mining: Inference From Small Datasets, Răzvan Andonie

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Neural networks have been applied successfully in many fields. However, satisfactory results can only be found under large sample conditions. When it comes to small training sets, the performance may not be so good, or the learning task can even not be accomplished. This deficiency limits the applications of neural network severely. The main reason why small datasets cannot provide enough information is that there exist gaps between samples, even the domain of samples cannot be ensured. Several computational intelligence techniques have been proposed to overcome the limits of learning from small datasets.

We have the following goals: i. To …

Php & Mysql Simple Project Management Application, Vedat Shaqiri

Theses and Dissertations

Starting building an application is not that easy at all, especially when people are not experienced enough with the tools needed to cook it. This thesis contains a brief introduction to an PHP & MySQL application. Just as said some lines before, when you get into a thing that you might not be familiar with, difficulties appear, at this time patience and dedication come in to play realizing and making it become true. PHP and MySQL offer a great opportunity building dynamic web sites and application. It is not PHP that makes a web site or an application to become …

Windows Xp Embedded Operating System Design, Bashkim Çerkini

Theses and Dissertations

Windows XP embedded (XPe) është para se gjithash një komplet i veglave që mundëson ndërtimin e një versioni me porosi të Windows XP Professional. Duke zgjedhur vetëm komponentët qe ju nevojitën mund të zhvillohet një sistem operativ (SO) me të gjitha karakteristikat që i kërkon projekti përkatës. Kjo domethënë se programet e zakonshme të Windows-it duke përfshire edhe programet .NET based mund të ekzekutohen në sistemin operativ tuaj përderisa ju i keni përfshirë të gjitha komponentët që programi juaj mbështetët. Për shembull nuk mund të ekzekutoni asnjë aplikacion të rrjetit pa i perfshirë komponentet e rrjetit.Windows XP Embedded është një …

Event Study Method For Validating Agent-Based Trading Simulations, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we introduce how one can validate an event-centric trading simulation platform that is built with multi-agent technology. The issue of validation is extremely important for agent-based simulations, but unfortunately, so far there is no one universal method that would work in all domains. The primary contribution of this paper is a novel combination of event-centric simulation design and event study approach for market dynamics generation and validation. In our event-centric design, the simulation is progressed by announcing news events that affect market prices. Upon receiving these events, event-aware software agents would adjust their views on the market …

Iphone 3gs Forensics: Logical Analysis Using Apple Itunes Backup Utility, Mona Bader, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The iPhone mobile is used worldwide due to its enhanced computing capabilities, increased storage capacity as well as its attractive touch interface. These characteristics made the iPhone a popular smart phone device. The increased use of the iPhone lead it to become a potential source of digital evidence in criminal investigations. Therefore, iPhone forensics turned into an essential practice for forensic and security practitioners today. This research aimed at investigating and examining the logical backup acquisition of the iPhone 3GS mobile device using the Apple iTunes backup utility. It was found that significant data of forensic value such as e-mail …

Investigating Ultrasonic Positioning On Mobile Phones, Viacheslav Filonenko, Charlie Cullen, James Carswell

Conference papers

In this paper we evaluate the innate ability of mobile phone speakers to produce ultrasound and the possible uses of this ability for accurate indoor positioning. The frequencies in question are a range between 20 and 22 KHz, which is high enough to be inaudible but low enough to be generated by standard sound hardware. A range of tones is generated at different volume settings on several popular modern mobile phones with the aim of finding points of failure. Our results indicate that it is possible to generate the given range of frequencies without significant distortions, provided the signal volume …

Ranking Documents Semantically Using Ontological Relationships, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, I. Budak Arpinar, Mustafa V. Nural, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Although arguable success of today’s keyword based search engines in certain information retrieval tasks, ranking search results in a meaningful way remains an open problem. In this work, the goal is to use of semantic relationships for ranking documents without relying on the existence of any specific structure in a document or links between documents. Instead, real-world entities are identified and the relevance of documents is determined using relationships that are known to exist between the entities in a populated ontology. We introduce a measure of relevance that is based on traversal and the semantics of relationships that link entities …

Out Of The Depths: Image Statistics Of Space, Water, And The Minuscule World, Nimit S. Dhulekar

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

In images of natural scenes, a consistent relationship exists between spectral power and spatial frequency. The power spectrum falls off with a form 1/f^p as spatial frequency f increases, with values of p approximately equal to 2. To quantify the extent to which this statistical characteristic is exhibited by other classes of images, we examined astronomical, underwater, and microscale images. It was found that this property holds for all three categories of images, although the value of p varies in the range 1.76 to 2.37. The second statistical characteristic computed was the angular spread of the power spectrum. This metric …

Cloud Computing:Strategies For Cloud Computing Adoption, Faith Shimba

Dissertations

The advent of cloud computing in recent years has sparked an interest from different organisations, institutions and users to take advantage of web applications. This is a result of the new economic model for the Information Technology (IT) department that cloud computing promises. The model promises a shift from an organisation required to invest heavily for limited IT resources that are internally managed, to a model where the organisation can buy or rent resources that are managed by a cloud provider, and pay per use. Cloud computing also promises scalability of resources and on-demand availability of resources.

Although, the adoption …

Grouped Variable Model Selection For Heterogeneous Medical Signals, Jamie Macbeth, Majid Sarrafzadeh

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We explore statistical regression techniques for use in medical monitoring and telehealth applications. Medical embedded systems of the present and future are recording vast sets of data related to medical conditions and physiology. In this paper, distributed time-lag linear models are proposed as a means to help explain relationships between two or more medical and physiological measurements. The issues associated with performing multiple regression with heterogeneous medical data are treated as problems in model selection. An automatic method of model selection is proposed to construct models for high sample rate data by grouping sets of predictor variables.

The grouped predictor …

Quantitative Analysis Of Arterial Spin Labeling Fmri Data Using A General Linear Model, Luis Hernandez-Garcia, Hesamoddin Jahanian, Daniel B. Rowe

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Arterial spin labeling techniques can yield quantitative measures of perfusion by fitting a kinetic model to difference images (tagged-control). Because of the noisy nature of the difference images investigators typically average a large number of tagged versus control difference measurements over long periods of time. This averaging requires that the perfusion signal be at a steady state and not at the transitions between active and baseline states in order to quantitatively estimate activation induced perfusion. This can be an impediment for functional magnetic resonance imaging task experiments. In this work, we introduce a general linear model (GLM) that specifies Blood …

A Methodology For Engineering Collaborative And Ad-Hoc Mobile Applications Using Syd Middleware, Praveen Madiraju, Srilaxmi Malladi, Janaka Balasooriya, Arthi Hariharan, Sushil K. Prasad, Anu Bourgeois

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Today’s web applications are more collaborative and utilize standard and ubiquitous Internet protocols. We have earlier developed System on Mobile Devices (SyD) middleware to rapidly develop and deploy collaborative applications over heterogeneous and possibly mobile devices hosting web objects. In this paper, we present the software engineering methodology for developing SyD-enabled web applications and illustrate it through a case study on two representative applications: (i) a calendar of meeting application, which is a collaborative application and (ii) a travel application which is an ad-hoc collaborative application. SyD-enabled web objects allow us to create a collaborative application rapidly with limited coding …

A Class Of Models For Uncorrelated Random Variables, Nader Ebrahimi, Gholamhossein Hamedani, Ehsan S. Soofi, Hans Volkmer

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

We consider the class of multivariate distributions that gives the distribution of the sum of uncorrelated random variables by the product of their marginal distributions. This class is defined by a representation of the assumption of sub-independence, formulated previously in terms of the characteristic function and convolution, as a weaker assumption than independence for derivation of the distribution of the sum of random variables. The new representation is in terms of stochastic equivalence and the class of distributions is referred to as the summable uncorrelated marginals (SUM) distributions. The SUM distributions can be used as models for the joint distribution …

Processing Induced Voxel Correlation In Sense Fmri Via The Ammust Framework, Daniel B. Rowe, Iain P. Bruce

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Enumeration Refactoring: A Tool For Automatically Converting Java Constants To Enumerated Types, Raffi Khatchadourian, Benjamin Muskalla

Publications and Research

Java 5 introduces several new features that significantly improve older Java technology. We consider the new enum construct, which provides language support for enumerated types. Before Java 5, programmers needed to employ various patterns to compensate for the absence of enumerated types in Java. Unfortunately, these compensation patterns lack several highly desirable properties of the enum construct, notably type-safety. We demonstrate an automated refactoring tool called Convert Constants to Enum for transforming legacy Java code to use the new enumeration construct. An interprocedural type inferencing algorithm that tracks the flow of enumerated values drives the approach, and the tool is …

A New Framework For Rfid Privacy, Robert H. Deng, Yingjiu Li, Moti Yung, Yunlei Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Formal RFID security and privacy frameworks are fundamental to the design and analysis of robust RFID systems. In this paper, we develop a new definitional framework for RFID privacy in a rigorous and precise manner. Our framework is based on a zero-knowledge (ZK) formulation [8,6] and incorporates the notions of adaptive completeness and mutual authentication. We provide meticulous justification of the new framework and contrast it with existing ones in the literature. In particular, we prove that our framework is strictly stronger than the ind-privacy model of [18], which answers an open question posed in [18] for developing stronger RFID …

Engaging Students In Information Storage Management Courses, Vladan Jovanovic, Timur Mirzoev, Lee Toderick, Rick Homkes, Mark Stockman

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

This panel will elaborate on faculty experiences with specific ways used to engage students in the Information Storage and Management, formerly Storage Technology, and the Virtualization coursework. The emphasize of the discussion will be on the mechanisms used in engaging students in learning and on experiences with various activities helpful for varying learning preferences/modes. All invited panelists are experienced faculty involved with subject matter courses via EMC’s Academic Alliance program. The resources made available via this alliance and through exchange among the faculty involved in teaching related subjects in IT and CS programs will be discussed and evaluated. The impact …

Diract: Agent-Based Interactive Storytelling, Yundong Cai, Zhiqi Shen, Chunyan Miao, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A lot of researches haven been done on the interactive storytelling authoring , e.g. by a director agent, or by interactions among a number of character agents. However, it is still difficult to construct the interactive storytelling for novice users, due to a need of various agents development and complex communication among the agents. We propose an agent-based interactive storytelling architecture, namely DIRACT (short of “Direct and Act”). It is composed of numerous atomic DIRACT agents, which are goal oriented and use an unified communication protocol. By removing the difference between the director and character, each DIRACT agent can either …

On Challenges In Evaluating Malware Clustering, Peng Li, Limin Liu, Debin Gao, Michael K Reiter

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Malware clustering and classification are important tools that enable analysts to prioritize their malware analysis efforts. The recent emergence of fully automated methods for malware clustering and classification that report high accuracy suggests that this problem may largely be solved. In this paper, we report the results of our attempt to confirm our conjecture that the method of selecting ground-truth data in prior evaluations biases their results toward high accuracy. To examine this conjecture, we apply clustering algorithms from a different domain (plagiarism detection), first to the dataset used in a prior work's evaluation and then to a wholly new …

Comprehensive Evaluation Of Association Measures For Fault Localization, Lucia Lucia, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang, Aditya Budi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In statistics and data mining communities, there have been many measures proposed to gauge the strength of association between two variables of interest, such as odds ratio, confidence, Yule-Y, Yule-Q, Kappa, and gini index. These association measures have been used in various domains, for example, to evaluate whether a particular medical practice is associated positively to a cure of a disease or whether a particular marketing strategy is associated positively to an increase in revenue, etc. This paper models the problem of locating faults as association between the execution or non-execution of particular program elements with failures. There have been …

Scenario-Based And Value-Based Specification Mining: Better Together, David Lo, Shahar Maoz

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Specification mining takes execution traces as input and extracts likely program invariants, which can be used for comprehension, verification, and evolution related tasks. In this work we integrate scenario-based specification mining, which uses data-mining algorithms to suggest ordering constraints in the form of live sequence charts, an inter-object, visual, modal, scenario-based specification language, with mining of value-based invariants, which detects likely invariants holding at specific program points. The key to the integration is a technique we call scenario-based slicing, running on top of the mining algorithms to distinguish the scenario-specific invariants from the general ones. The resulting suggested specifications are …

Developing Model Checkers Using Pat, Yang Liu, Jun Sun, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

During the last two decades, model checking has emerged as an effective system analysis technique complementary to simulation and testing. Many model checking algorithms and state space reduction techniques have been proposed. Although it is desirable to have dedicated model checkers for every language (or application domain), implementing one with effective reduction techniques is rather challenging. In this work, we present a generic and extensible framework PAT, which facilitates users to build customized model checkers. PAT provides a library of state-of-art model checking algorithms as well as support for customizing language syntax, semantics, state space reduction techniques, graphic user interfaces, …

A Biologically-Inspired Cognitive Agent Model Integrating Declarative Knowledge And Reinforcement Learning, Ah-Hwee Tan, Gee-Wah Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paper proposes a biologically-inspired cognitive agent model, known as FALCON-X, based on an integration of the Adaptive Control of Thought (ACT-R) architecture and a class of self-organizing neural networks called fusion Adaptive Resonance Theory (fusion ART). By replacing the production system of ACT-R by a fusion ART model, FALCON-X integrates high-level deliberative cognitive behaviors and real-time learning abilities, based on biologically plausible neural pathways. We illustrate how FALCON-X, consisting of a core inference area interacting with the associated intentional, declarative, perceptual, motor and critic memory modules, can be used to build virtual robots for battles in a simulated RoboCode …

Context-Aware Query Recommendations, Alexandros Ntoulas, Heasoo Hwang, Lise Getoor, Stelios Paparizos, Hady Wirawan Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Described is a search-related technology in which context information regarding a user's prior search actions is used in making query recommendations for a current user action, such as a query or click. To determine whether each set or subset of context information is relevant to the user action, data obtained from a query log is evaluated. More particularly, a query transition (query-query) graph and a query click (query-URL) graph are extracted from the query log; vectors are computed for the current action and each context/sub-context and evaluated against vectors in the graphs to determine current action-to-context similarity. Also described is …

Embellishing Text Search Queries To Protect User Privacy, Hwee Hwa Pang, Xuhua Ding, Xiaokui Xiao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Users of text search engines are increasingly wary that their activities may disclose confidential information about their business or personal profiles. It would be desirable for a search engine to perform document retrieval for users while protecting their intent. In this paper, we identify the privacy risks arising from semantically related search terms within a query, and from recurring highspecificity query terms in a search session. To counter the risks, we propose a solution for a similarity text retrieval system to offer anonymity and plausible deniability for the query terms, and hence the user intent, without degrading the system’s precision-recall …

Sql Querie Recommendations: A Query Fragment-Based Approach, Jayad Akbarnejad, Magdalini Eirinaki, Suju Koshy, Duc On, Neoklis Polyzotis

Faculty Publications

Relational database systems are becoming increasingly popular in the scientific community to support the interactive exploration of large volumes of data. In this scenario, users employ a query interface (typically, a web-based client) to issue a series of SQL queries that aim to analyze the data and mine it for interesting information. First-time users, however, may not have the necessary knowledge to know where to start their exploration. Other times, users may simply overlook queries that retrieve important information. In this work we describe a framework to assist non-expert users by providing personalized query recommendations. The querying behavior of the …