Computer Sciences Commons^™

Does The Android Permission System Provide Adequate Information Privacy Protection For End-Users Of Mobile Apps?, Michael Lane

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper investigates the Android permission system and its adequacy in alerting end-users of potential information privacy risks in an app. When an end-user seeks to install an app, they are presented with the required permissions and make a supposedly informed decision as to whether to install that app based on the permissions presented. The results from an analysis of ten popular apps indicate a number of permissions that pose potential information privacy risks of which most end-users are likely to be unaware. The Android permission system is complex and difficult for end-users to comprehend and effectively evaluate the potential …

The Mobile Execution Environment: A Secure And Non-Intrusive Approach To Implement A Bring You Own Device Policy For Laptops, Peter James, Don Griffiths

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has become an established business practice, however the practice can increase an organisation’s information security risks. The implementation of a BYOD policy for laptops must consider how the information security risks can be mitigated or managed. The selection of an appropriate secure laptop software configuration is an important part of the information security risk mitigation/management strategy. This paper considers how a secure laptop software configuration, the Mobile Execution Environment (MEE) can be used to minimise risks when a BYOD policy for laptops is implemented. In this paper the security and business risks associated with the …

Territorial Behavior And The Economics Of Botnets, Craig S. Wright

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper looks at the economics associated with botnets. This research can be used to calculate territorial sizes for online criminal networks. Looking at the types of systems we can compare the time required to maintain the botnet against the benefits received. In doing this it will be possible to formulate economic defence strategies that reduce the benefits received through the control of the botnet. We look at the decision to be territorial or not from the perspective of the criminal bot-herder. This is extended to an analysis of territorial size. The criminal running a botnet seeks to maximize profit. …

Protective Emblems In Cyber Warfare, Iain Sutherland, Konstantinos Xynos, Andrew Jones, Andrew Blyth

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

The Tallinn Manual will be released in February 2013 and makes a significant step towards defining the concepts of cyber warfare. The early draft of the manual is available and the expert working party have interpreted the existing international agreements, instruments and conventions and applied them to the field of cyber warfare. The manual makes a number of interpretations on the legal position of civilians and other parties. The manual makes it clear that the existing conventions are applicable and that civilian / religious and medical systems should be viewed as non-combatants in a cyber conflict. In the kinetic warfare …

Dependently Typed Programming With Singletons, Richard A. Eisenberg, Stephanie Weirich

Computer Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

Haskell programmers have been experimenting with dependent types for at least a decade, using clever encodings that push the limits of the Haskell type system. However, the cleverness of these encodings is also their main drawback. Although the ideas are in- spired by dependently typed programs, the code looks significantly different. As a result, GHC implementors have responded with ex- tensions to Haskell’s type system, such as GADTs, type families, and datatype promotion. However, there remains a significant dif- ference between programming in Haskell and in full-spectrum de- pendently typed languages. Haskell enforces a phase separation be- tween runtime values …

A Pointwise Estimate For The Fourier Transform And The Number Of Maxima Of A Function, Ryan Berndt

Mathematics Faculty Scholarship

We show a pointwise estimate for the Fourier transform on the line involving the number of times the function changes monotonicity. The contrapositive of the theorem may be used to find a lower bound to the number of local maxima of a function. We also show two applications of the theorem. The first is the two weight problem for the Fourier transform, and the second is estimating the number of roots of the derivative of a function.

Web Based Virtual Environment For Education - S'Cape, Atul Thapliyal

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

Simulations provide an environment to experiment safely, openly, and repeatedly for learning mastery. However, many simulation environments experienced within a classroom fail to include automated assessment components or automated data collection. Even when assessments are included, often they fail to account for the unpredictable nature of decision-making within a complex, 3D, open-ended simulation environment. Embedding assessments within a virtual simulation environment poses several challenges. First, the program must provide assessments aligned with educational requirements that will not take the learner cognitively “away” from their activities. Second, the program must not detract from the game-like experience that learners find engaging. Third, …

Metrological Self-Assurance Of Data Processing Software, Vladik Kreinovich, Leonid Reznik, Konstantin K. Semenov, Gennady N. Solopchenko

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The metrological self-assurance for data processing software is discussed. The way to achieve this property for software is presented.

F-Transform In View Of Trend Extraction, Irina Perfilieva, Vladik Kreinovich, Vilém Novák

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the analysis of time series, it is important to decompose the original values into trend, cycle, seasonal component, and noise. In this paper, we provide a theoretical justification of the fact that the F-transform can be used for this purpose. We formulate "natural" requirements on the trend extraction procedure and then show that the inverse F-transform fulfils all of them.

Search-Based Detection Of High-Level Model Changes, Ameni Ben Fadhel, Marouane Kessentini, Philip Langer, Manuel Wimmer

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Software models are iteratively refined, restructured and evolved. the detection and analysis of changes applied between two versions of a model are one of the most important tasks during evolution and maintenance activities. in this paper, we propose an approach to detect high-level model changes in terms of refactoring. Our approach takes as input an exhaustive list of possible refactoring, the initial model and revised model, and generates as output a list of detected changes representing a sequence of refactoring. a solution is defined as a combination of refactoring that should maximize as much as possible the similarity between the …

A Flexible Consent Management System For Master Person Indices, Aditya Pakalapati

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

In healthcare, a Master Person Index (MPI) is a system that integrates information of individual from multiple data sources. To ensure confidentiality, such systems, particularly in healthcare, need to respect individual and organizational constraints on the sharing of data. This report describes a reusable consent management system that enforces such constraints and how it has been tested in the context of the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) MPI for public health.

Effective Use Of Interactive Learning Modules In Classroom Study For Computer Science Education, Goldee Jamwal

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

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is spending substantial resources to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the United States. The ultimate goal of these programs is to produce students with a better knowledge of math and science and who are more likely to pursue careers in STEM fields. Interactive learning modules can be used in the classroom environment for effective learning.

This study examines the learning preferences of Logan High School (located in Logan, Utah) students and evaluates the impacts of using interactive learning modules with classroom lectures compared to other traditional methods of teaching.

Secondary Structure, A Missing Component Of Sequence- Based Minimotif Definitions, David P. Sargeant, Michael R. Gryk, Mark W. Maciejewsk, Vishal Thapar, Vamsi Kundeti, Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, Pedro Romero, Keith Dunker, Shun-Cheng Li, Tomonori Kaneko, Martin Schiller

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Minimotifs are short contiguous segments of proteins that have a known biological function. The hundreds of thousands of minimotifs discovered thus far are an important part of the theoretical understanding of the specificity of protein-protein interactions, posttranslational modifications, and signal transduction that occur in cells. However, a longstanding problem is that the different abstractions of the sequence definitions do not accurately capture the specificity, despite decades of effort by many labs. We present evidence that structure is an essential component of minimotif specificity, yet is not used in minimotif definitions. Our analysis of several known minimotifs as case studies, analysis …

Contour Extraction Of Drosophila Embryos Using Active Contours In Scale Space, Soujanya Siddavaram Ananta

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Contour extraction of Drosophila embryos is an important step to build a computational system for pattern matching of embryonic images which aids in the discovery of genes. Automatic contour extraction of embryos is challenging due to several image variations such as size, shape, orientation and neigh- boring embryos such as touching and non-touching embryos. In this thesis, we introduce a framework for contour extraction based on the connected components in the gaussian scale space of an embryonic image. The active contour model is applied on the images to refine embryo contours. Data cleaning methods are applied to smooth the jaggy …

Required Features Of A Virtual Classroom Tool For Use In Higher Education, Arnold Hensman

Articles

The integration of virtual-classroom systems into the arsenal of e-learning tools represents a major evolution in the landscape of modern distance education. For many courses, standard virtual learning environments (VLEs) provide only a foundation upon which to base a distance learning programme. However, synchronous live online-teaching software such as Microsoft Office Communicator and Adobe Connect allow educators to simulate a real-time classroom environment over the internet like never before. Since these tools are being used more and more within higher education, questions must be asked about how effective they ultimately can be in meeting student learning requirements. More importantly, what …

A Service Oriented Architecture For Spatial And Business Data Applications: An Ecampus Case Study, James Carswell, Thanh Thoa Pham Thi, Linh Truong- Hong, Junjun Yin

Conference papers

Location-dependent queries of geospatial data are indispensable for users in today's era of "Smart" environments. At general scales, Google Maps and Google Earth with satellite and street views have provided some utilities for users to query specific locations. However, at local scales, where detailed 3D geometries and linked business data are needed, there is a general lack of related information for in depth exploration of an area. For instance, the following kinds of questions cannot be answered when interacting with Google Maps/Earth on a typical university campus: what classes are scheduled in that room over there? Whose office window is …

An Evaluation Of Fairness Among Heterogeneous Tcp Variants Over 10gbps High-Speed Networks, Lin Xue, Suman Kumary, Cheng Cui, Seung Jong Park

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Several high-speed TCP variants are adopted by end users and therefore, heterogeneous congestion control has become the characteristic of newly emerging high-speed networks. In contrast to homogeneous TCP flows, fairness among heterogeneous TCP flows now depends on router parameters such as queue management scheme, buffer size, etc. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of fairness among heterogeneous TCP variants over 10Gbps high-speed networks. Our evaluation scenarios for heterogeneous TCP flows consist of TCP variants with substantial presence in current Internet; therefore, TCP-SACK, CUBIC and HSTCP compete for bottleneck bandwidth. Experimental results for fairness are presented …

Structural And Message Based Private Friend Recommendation, Bharath K. Samanthula, Wei Jiang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The emerging growth of online social networks have opened new doors for various business applications such as promoting a new product across its customers. Besides this, friend recommendation is an important tool for recommending potential candidates as friends to users in order to enhance the development of the entire network structure. Existing friend recommendation methods utilize social network structure and/or user profile information. However, these techniques can no longer be applicable if the privacy of users is taken into consideration. in this paper, we propose a two-phase private friend recommendation protocol for recommending friends to a given target user based …

Query Plan Execution In A Heterogeneous Stream Management System For Situational Awareness, Indrakshi Ray, Sanjay K. Madria, Mark Linderman

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Battlefield monitoring involves collecting streaming data from different sources, transmitting the data over a heterogeneous network, and processing queries in real-time in order to respond to events in a timely manner. Nodes in these networks differ with respect to their processing, storage and communication capabilities. Links in the network differ with respect to their communication bandwidth. the topology of the network itself is subject to change, as the nodes and links may become unavailable. Continuous queries executed in such environments must also meet some quality of service (QoS) requirements, such as, response time, throughput, and memory usage. We propose that …

Exploring Compile Time Caching Of Explicit Queries In Programming Codes, Venkata Krishna Suhas Nerella, Sanjay Madria, Thomas Weigert

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Object oriented programming languages raised the level of abstraction by incorporating first class query constructs explicitly in the program codes. These query constructs allow programmers to express operations over collections as object queries and also provide optimal query execution utilizing query optimization strategies from domain of databases. However, when a query is repeated in the program, it is executed afresh. This paper presents an approach to reduce the run time execution of programs involving explicit queries by caching the results of repeated queries and incrementally maintaining the cached results. We propose determination of cache entries at compile time by performing …

The Design And Implementation Of A Mobile Game Engine For The Android Platform, Jon Hammer

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, a two-dimensional game engine is proposed for the Android mobile platform that facilitates rapid development of those games by individual developers or hobbyists. The essential elements of game design are presented so as to introduce the reader to the concepts that are crucial for comprehension of the paper. A brief overview of the Android Operating System is also included for those unfamiliar with it. Three primary design goals are identified, and a prototype solution is described in detail. The prototype is then evaluated against those design goals to see how well it accomplishes each task. The results …

User Taglines: Alternative Presentations Of Expertise And Interest In Social Media, Hemant Purohit, Alex Dow, Omar Alonso, Lei Duan, Kevin Haas

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web applications are increasingly showing recommended users from social media along with some descriptions, an attempt to show relevancy - why they are being shown. For example, Twitter search for a topical keyword shows expert twitterers on the side for 'whom to follow'. Google+ and Facebook also recommend users to follow or add to friend circle. Popular Internet newspaper- The Huffington Post shows Twitter influencers/ experts on the side of an article for authoritative relevant tweets. The state of the art shows user profile bios as summary for Twitter experts, but it has issues with length constraint imposed by user …

Integrating Expert System And Geographic Information System For Spatial Decision Making, Sriharsha Shesham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Spatial decision making is a process of providing an effective solution for a problem that encompasses semi-structured spatial data. It is a challenging task which involves various factors to consider. For example, in order to build a new industry, an appropriate site must be selected for which several factors have to be taken into consideration. Some of the factors, which can affect the decision in this particular case, are air pollution, noise pollution, and distance from living areas, which makes the decision difficult. The geographic information systems (GIS) and the expert systems (ES) have many advantages in solving problems in …

Fuzzy-Excom Software Project Risk Assessment, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ekananta Manalif, Ali Bou Nassif, Danny Ho

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

A software development project can be considered to be risky project due to the uncertainty of the information (customer requirements), the complexity of the process, and the intangible nature of the product. Under these conditions, risk management in software development projects is mandatory, but often it is difficult and expensive to implement.

Expert COCOMO is an efficient approach to software project risk management, which leverages existing knowledge and expertise from previous effort estimation activities to assess the risk in a new software project. However, the original method has a limitation because it cannot effectively deal with imprecise and uncertain inputs …

A Treeboost Model For Software Effort Estimation Based On Use Case Points, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ali Bou Nassif

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Software effort prediction is an important task in the software development life cycle. Many models including regression models, machine learning models, algorithmic models, expert judgment and estimation by analogy have been widely used to estimate software effort and cost. In this work, a Treeboost (Stochastic Gradient Boosting) model is put forward to predict software effort based on the Use Case Point method. The inputs of the model include software size in use case points, productivity and complexity. A multiple linear regression model was created and the Treeboost model was evaluated against the multiple linear regression model, as well as the …

Estimating Software Effort Using An Ann Model Based On Use Case Points, Ali Bou Nassif, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Danny Ho

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In this paper, we propose a novel Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict software effort from use case diagrams based on the Use Case Point (UCP) model. The inputs of this model are software size, productivity and complexity, while the output is the predicted software effort. A multiple linear regression model with three independent variables (same inputs of the ANN) and one dependent variable (effort) is also introduced. Our data repository contains 240 data points in which, 214 are industrial and 26 are educational projects. Both the regression and ANN models were trained using 168 data points and tested using …

Object Oriented Implementation Of The Parallel Toolkit Library, Sandhya Vinnakota

Computer Science Graduate Projects and Theses

With manufacturing efficiencies and technological innovation the computing power of commodity machines has been increasing accompanied by decreasing costs. With the very favorable price/performance ratio the computing community has shifted from monolithic machines to networked machines.

This has created the need for software to manage the parallelism of the network. One such work has been the Parallel Toolkit Library. The Parallel Toolkit Library provides support for common design functionalities used throughout parallel programs.

This work extends the PTK C library for C++ parallel programs. The motivation for the current project stems from the need to let parallel programs reap the …

The R Journal (December 2012) 4(2): Complete Issue, The R Foundation

The R Journal

Contributing Articles

What's in a Name? Paul Murrell

It's Not What You Draw, It's What You Don't Draw, Paul Murrell

Debugging grid Graphics, Paul Murrell and Velvet Ly

frailtyHL: A Package for Fitting Frailty Models with H-likelihood, Il Do Ha, Maengseok Noh, and Youngjo Lee

influence.ME: Tools for Detecting Influential Data in Mixed Effects Models, Rense Nieuwenhuis, Manfred te Grotenhuis and Ben Pelzer

The crs Package: Nonparametric Regression Splines for Continuous and Categorical Predictors, Zhenghua Nie and Jeffrey S. Racine

Rfit: Rank-based Estimation for Linear Models, John D. Kloke and Joseph W. McKean

Graphical Markov Models with Mixed Graphs in …

Automatic Social Group Organization And Privacy Management, Anna Squicciarini, Dan Lin, Sushama Karumanchi, Nicole Desisto

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

With the dramatic increase of users on social network websites, the needs to assist users to manage their large number of contacts as well as providing privacy protection become more and more evident. Unfortunately, limited tools are available to address such needs and reduce users' workload on managing their social relationships. to tackle this issue, we propose an approach to facilitate online social network users to group their contacts into social circles with common interests. Further, we leverage the social group practice to automate the privacy setting process for users who add new contacts or upload new data items. We …

Search-Based Refactoring: Towards Semantics Preservation, Ali Ouni, Marouane Kessentini, Houari Sahraoui, Mohamed Salah Hamdi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Refactoring restructures a program to improve its structure without altering its behavior. However, it is challenging to preserve the domain semantics of a program when refactoring is decided/implemented automatically. Indeed, a program could be syntactically correct, have the right behavior, but model incorrectly the domain semantics. in this paper, we propose a multi-objective optimization approach to find the best sequence of refactorings that maximizes quality improvements (program structure) and minimizes semantic errors. to this end, we use the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) to find the best compromise between these two conflicting objectives. We report the results of our experiments …