Computer Sciences Commons^™

Continuous Blooming Of Convex Polyhedra, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Vi Hart, Joan Iacono, Stefan Langerman, Joseph O'Rourke

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We construct the first two continuous bloomings of all convex polyhedra. First, the source unfolding can be continuously bloomed. Second, any unfolding of a convex polyhedron can be refined (further cut, by a linear number of cuts) to have a continuous blooming.

Narrative Analysis And Computational Model To Predict Interestingness Of Narratives, Laxman Thapa

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In this research, I present results demonstrating the classification of the specially generated narratives by a machine agent by listening to human subject describing the same sets of the events. These classifications are based on human ratings of interestingness for many different recountings of the same stories. The classification is performed on various features selected after analyzing the different possible feature that affect on the interestingness of narratives. The features were extracted from the surface text as well as from annotations of how each narration relates to the content of the known story. I present the annotation process and resulting …

Partition A 3-Colorable Graph Into A Small Bipartite Subgraph And A Large Independent Set, Qing Wang

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Exact algorithms have made a little progress for the 3-coloring problem: improved from to since 1976. The best exact algorithm for the 3-coloring problem is by Beigel and Eppstein, and its analysis is very complicated. We study the parameterized 3-coloring problem: partitioning a 3-colorable graph into a bipartite subgraph and an independent set. Taking the size of the bipartite subgraph as the parameter k, we propose the first parameter algorithm of complexity . Our algorithm can solve the 3-coloring problem faster than the best exact algorithm for graphs with k ≤ 0.527n where n is the graph size. Our study …

Distributed Semantic Web Data Management In Hbase And Mysql Cluster, Craig M. Franke

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Various computing and data resources on the Web are being enhanced with machine-interpretable semantic descriptions to facilitate better search, discovery and integration. This interconnected metadata constitutes the Semantic Web, whose volume can potentially grow the scale of the Web. Efficient management of Semantic Web data, expressed using the W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF), is crucial for supporting new data-intensive, semantics-enabled applications. In this work, we study and compare two approaches to distributed RDF data management based on emerging cloud computing technologies and traditional relational database clustering technologies. In particular, we design distributed RDF data storage and querying schemes for HBase …

A Methodology To Develop A Communication Protocol For Visualizing Simulations In A Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment, Lacey Suzanne Duckworth

Dissertations

In the technology field, simulations and collaborative virtual reality environments (CVREs) are not generally combined because it is complicated to develop large scale simulations within CVREs. The complexity of combining these two technologies in order to form a better form of visualization stems from the lack of a methodology to help derive these scalable simulations. Simulations require very complex calculations that the CVRE cannot perform as it is overloaded in calculations for the maintenance and stability of the environment itself. Since the simulation cannot be held within the CVRE, the solution is to move the simulation external to the CVRE …

How Do Programmers Ask And Answer Questions On The Web? (Nier Track), Christoph Treude, Ohad Barzilay, Margaret-Anne Storey

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Question and Answer (Q&A) websites, such as Stack Overflow, use social media to facilitate knowledge exchange between programmers and fill archives with millions of entries that contribute to the body of knowledge in software development. Understanding the role of Q&A websites in the documentation landscape will enable us to make recommendations on how individuals and companies can leverage this knowledge effectively. In this paper, we analyze data from Stack Overflow to categorize the kinds of questions that are asked, and to explore which questions are answered well and which ones remain unanswered. Our preliminary findings indicate that Q&A websites are …

Stereoscopic Simulation For Animation And Special Effects, Daniel Morella

All Theses

Stereoscopic content, when presented well, provides an exciting and entertaining experience for viewers. The advent of new techniques and technologies is helping stereoscopy to become more commonplace, with 3D movies becoming a staple at theaters around the world. Further, 3D televisions and content are poised to experience tremendous growth in the coming years. Even video games are exploring 3D content, with recent releases like Toy Story Mania as seen on the Disney website [Disn11].
The biggest problems with stereoscopic content are that it usually requires expensive hardware to view, and extensive time and technical prowess to create. These issues limit …

Second International Workshop On Web 2.0 For Software Engineering (Web2se 2011), Christoph Treude, Margaret-Anne Storey, Arie Van Deursen, Andrew Begel, Sue Black

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social software is built around an "architecture of participation" where user data is aggregated as a side-effect of using Web 2.0 applications. Web 2.0 implies that processes and tools are socially open, and that content can be used in several different contexts. Web 2.0 tools and technologies support interactive information sharing, data interoperability and user centered design. For instance, wikis, blogs, tags and feeds help us organize, manage and categorize content in an informal and collaborative way. Some of these technologies have made their way into collaborative software development processes and development platforms. These processes and environments are just scratching …

Metadata Management System For Healthcare Information Systems, Ketan Shripat Patil

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) uses multiple and diverse healthcare information systems for managing, maintaining, and sharing the health information. To keep track of the important details about these information systems such as the operational details, data semantics, data exchange standards, and personnel responsible for maintaining and managing it is a monumental task, with several limitations. This report describes the design and implementation of the Metadata Management System (MDM) that addresses the problem of documenting multiple information systems and exchange of data between them. The purpose of the MDM is to provide efficient and usable means of storing, accessing, …

Log-Data Visualization Tool For Analyzing And Improving Performance Of Data De-Duplication Tool In Charm-Ii, Daniel Erickson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

A de-duplication tool used in CHARM-II, called the CHARM Matcher, produces log files that record why it decides two records are or are not a match. This data, if properly analyzed, could help CHARM developers improve the Matcher over time by tuning its configuration. However, the log data is complex and recorded chronologically in the log files instead of in a way that would aid analysis. Further, visually studying the raw log data is a laborious and difficult task. This report describes a tool that parses and organizes the raw log data, and then produces graphical reports that summarize key …

Pond-Hindsight: Applying Hindsight Optimization To Partially-Observable Markov Decision Processes, Alan Olsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are especially good at modeling real-world problems because they allow for sensor and effector uncertainty. Unfortunately, such uncertainty makes solving a POMDP computationally challenging. Traditional approaches, which are based on value iteration, can be slow because they find optimal actions for every possible situation. With the help of the Fast Forward (FF) planner, FF- Replan and FF-Hindsight have shown success in quickly solving fully-observable Markov decision processes (MDPs) by solving classical planning translations of the problem. This thesis extends the concept of problem determination to POMDPs by sampling action observations (similar to how FF-Replan samples …

Sharp Feature Identification In A Polygon, Joseph P. Scanlan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents an efficient algorithm for recognizing and extracting sharp-features from polygonal shapes. As used here, a sharp-feature is a distinct portion of a polygon that is long and skinny. The algorithm executes in O(n^2) time, where n is the number of vertices in the polygon. Experimental results from a Java implementation of the algorithm are also presented.

Finding Acronyms And Their Definitions Using Hmm, Lakshmi Vyas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we report on design and implementation of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to extract acronyms and their expansions. We also report on the training of this HMM with Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) algorithm using a set of examples.

Finally, we report on our testing using standard recall and precision. The HMM achieves a recall and precision of 98% and 92% respectively.

Implementation Of Numerically Stable Hidden Markov Model, Usha Ramya Tatavarty

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A Hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states. HMM is an extremely flexible tool and has been successfully applied to a wide variety of stochastic modeling tasks. One of the first applications of HMM is speech recognition. Later they came to be known for their applicability in handwriting recognition, part-of-speech tagging and bio-informatics.

In this thesis, we will explain the mathematics involved in HMMs and how to efficiently perform HMM computations using dynamic programming (DP) which makes it easy to implement …

Information Extraction In An Optical Character Recognition Context, Ramon Pereda

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this dissertation, we investigate the effectiveness of information extraction in the presence of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). It is well known that the OCR errors have no effects on general retrieval tasks. This is mainly due to the redundancy of information in textual documents. Our work shows that information extraction task is significantly influenced by OCR errors. Intuitively, this is due to the fact that extraction algorithms rely on a small window of text surrounding the objects to be extracted.

We show that extraction methodologies based on the Hidden Markov Models are not robust enough to deal with extraction …

Methods For Multilevel Parallelism On Gpu Clusters: Application To A Multigrid Accelerated Navier-Stokes Solver, Dana A. Jacobsen

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is an important field in high performance computing with numerous applications. Solving problems in thermal and fluid sciences demands enormous computing resources and has been one of the primary applications used on supercomputers and large clusters. Modern graphics processing units (GPUs) with many-core architectures have emerged as general-purpose parallel computing platforms that can accelerate simulation science applications substantially. While significant speedups have been obtained with single and multiple GPUs on a single workstation, large problems require more resources. Conventional clusters of central processing units (CPUs) are now being augmented with GPUs in each compute-node to tackle …

Open Source Rigging In Blender: A Modular Approach, Ryan Cushman

All Theses

Character rigs control characters in the traditional CG pipeline. This thesis examines the rig creation process and discusses several problems inherant in the traditional workflow--excessive time spent and a lack of uniformity, and proposes a software plugin which solves these issues. This thesis describes the creation of a tool for Blender 3D which automates the rigging process yet keeps the creativity and control in the hands of the user. A character rig designed by this tool will be fully functional--yet capable of being split into its component parts and reconstructed as the user determines. These body parts are individually scripted …

Automated, Parallel Optimization Algorithms For Stochastic Functions, Dheeraj Chahal

All Dissertations

The optimization algorithms for stochastic functions are desired specifically for real-world and simulation applications where results are obtained from sampling, and contain experimental error or random noise. We have developed a series of stochastic optimization algorithms based on the well-known classical down hill simplex algorithm. Our parallel implementation of these optimization algorithms, using a framework called MW, is based on a master-worker architecture where each worker runs a massively parallel program. This parallel implementation allows the sampling to proceed independently on many processors as demonstrated by scaling up to more than 100 vertices and 300 cores.
This framework is highly …

Configuring Global Software Teams: A Multi-Company Analysis Of Productivity, Quality, And Profits, Narayanasamy Ramasubbu, Marcelo Cataldo, Rajesh Krishna Balan, James Herbsleb

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we examined the impact of project-level configurational choices of globally distributed software teams on project productivity, quality, and profits. Our analysis used data from 362 projects of four different firms. These projects spanned a wide range of programming languages, application domain, process choices, and development sites spread over 15 countries and 5 continents. Our analysis revealed fundamental tradeoffs in choosing configurational choices that are optimized for productivity, quality, and/or profits. In particular, achieving higher levels of productivity and quality require diametrically opposed configurational choices. In addition, creating imbalances in the expertise and personnel distribution of project teams …

Decentralized Decision Support For An Agent Population In Dynamic And Uncertain Domains, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Shih-Fen Cheng, Thi Duong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research is motivated by problems in urban transportation and labor mobility, where the agent flow is dynamic, non-deterministic and on a large scale. In such domains, even though the individual agents do not have an identity of their own and do not explicitly impact other agents, they have implicit interactions with other agents. While there has been much research in handling such implicit effects, it has primarily assumed controlled movements of agents in static environments. We address the issue of decision support for individual agents having involuntary movements in dynamic environments . For instance, in a taxi fleet serving …

Sandcanvas: A Multi-Touch Art Medium Inspired By Sand Animation, Rubaiat Habib Kazi, Kien-Chuan Chua, Shengdong Zhao, Richard Christopher Davis, Kok-Lim Low

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sand animation is a performance art technique in which an artist tells stories by creating animated images with sand. Inspired by this medium, we have developed a new multitouch digital artistic medium named SandCanvas that simplifies the creation of sand animations. SandCanvas also goes beyond traditional sand animation with tools for mixing sand animation with video and replicating recorded free-form hand gestures. In this paper, we analyze common sand animation hand gestures, present SandCanvas’s intuitive UI, and describe implementation challenges we encountered. We also present an evaluation with professional and novice artists that shows the importance and unique affordances of …

Sandcanvas: New Possibilities In Sand Animation, Rubaiat Habib Kazi, Kien-Chuan Chua, Shengdong Zhao, Richard Christopher Davis, Kok-Lim Low

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sand animation is a performance art technique in which an artist tells stories by creating animated images with sand. This video demonstrates the creative possibilities of SandCanvas, a new multi-touch digital artistic medium inspired by sand animation that simplifies the creation of sand animations. SandCanvas’s color and texture features enable faster, more dramatic transitions, while its mixed media and gesture recording features make it possible to create entirely new experiences. Session recording and frame capture complement these capabilities by simplifying postproduction of sand animation performances.

Double Updating Online Learning, Peilin Zhao, Steven C. H. Hoi, Rong Jin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In most kernel based online learning algorithms, when an incoming instance is misclassified, it will be added into the pool of support vectors and assigned with a weight, which often remains unchanged during the rest of the learning process. This is clearly insufficient since when a new support vector is added, we generally expect the weights of the other existing support vectors to be updated in order to reflect the influence of the added support vector. In this paper, we propose a new online learning method, termed Double Updating Online Learning, or DUOL for short, that explicitly addresses this problem. …

Wopr In Search Of Better Strategies For Board Games, Ben Horner

Student Work

Board games have been challenging intellects and capturing imaginations for more than five thousand years. Researchers have been producing artificially intelligent players for more than fifty. Common artificial intelligence techniques applied to board games use alpha-beta pruning tree search techniques. This paper supplies a frame- work that accommodates many of the diverse aspects of board games, as well as exploring several alternatives for searching out ever better strategies. Techniques examined include optimizing artificial neural networks using genetic algorithms and backpropagation.

A Simple Curious Agent To Help People Be Curious, Han Yu, Zhiqi Shen, Chunyan Miao, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Curiosity is an innately rewarding state of mind that, over the millennia, has driven the human race to explore and discover. Many researches in pedagogical science have confirmed the importance of being curious to the students' cognitive development. However, in the newly popular virtual world-based learning environments (VLEs), there is currently a lack of attention being paid to enhancing the learning experience by stimulating the learners' curiosity. In this paper, we propose a simple model for curious agents (CAs) which can be used to stimulate learners' curiosity in VLEs. Potential future research directions will be discussed.

Leveraging Complex Event Processing For Smart Hospitals Using Rfid, Wen Yao, Chao-Hsien Chu, Zang Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

RFID technology has been examined in healthcare to support a variety of applications such as patient identification and monitoring, asset tracking, and patient–drug compliance. However, managing the large volume of RFID data and understanding them in the medical context present new challenges. One effective solution for dealing with these challenges is complex event processing (CEP), which can extract meaningful events for context-aware applications. In this paper, we propose a CEP framework to model surgical events and critical situations in an RFID-enabled hospital. We have implemented a prototype system with the proposed approach for surgical management and conducted performance evaluations to …

Ontology For Psychophysiological Dysregulation Of Anger/Aggression, Swathi Vasanthapuram

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The advancement of Information Technology in the last four decades led to the use of computers in medicine. A new area called Medical Informatics has emerged. This area comprises the application of IT to healthcare with the aim of creating tools that help healthcare personnel diagnose and treat patients more accurately and efficiently. IT not only provides tools for storing, integrating, and updating patient information base but also for processing information efficiently. One of such tools is a Clinical Decision Support System. Ontologies are an integral part of clinical decision support systems because they help formalize and integrate domain knowledge. …

Exploiting Program And Property Structure For Efficient Runtime Monitoring, Rahul Purandare

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Modern software systems are complex and often built using components that are provided with their application programming interface (API) to assist a user. However, this API is informal and if used incorrectly, may lead to bugs that are hard to detect. In order to address the problem of API conformance checking, researchers have proposed various analysis techniques including static and dynamic typestate analysis. However, it is extremely challenging to develop a static analysis that is both precise and scalable. On the other hand, dynamic analysis or runtime monitoring of programs may incur heavy overhead, thereby limiting its application only to …

Beyond Cise And Back To The Future, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Organizing a special issue on novel architectures for Computing Now offered lessons in what online readers want, as well as a glimpse into what's possible for CiSE.

Determining The Effects Of Technology On Children, Kristina E. Hatch

Senior Honors Projects

Determining the Effects of Technology on Children

Kristina Hatch

Faculty Sponser: Timothy Henry, Computer Science and Statistics

Technology has become an essential part of Americans’ daily lives, affecting our communications, mail, relationships, the management of our bills and finances. As we have become more immersed in the benefits and capabilities of these constantly developing technologies, children as well as adults have become avid users. Laptops and cell phones are specially developed for preteens. Software and game companies have been targeting children in their game development. Video games have become common entertainment for children as young as four. Children today can …