Computer Sciences Commons^™

An Enhanced Self-Adaptive Mapreduce Scheduling Algorithm, Xiaoyu Sun

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

MapReduce is a framework for processing huge amounts of data in a distributed environment and Hadoop is Apache’s open source implementation of MapReduce, which is widely used. However, Hadoop’s performance is currently limited by its default task scheduler, which assumes that cluster nodes are homogeneous when estimating the task progress and choosing slow tasks for re-execution. In practice, the homogeneity assumption does not always hold. Longest Approximate Time to End (LATE) is a scheduling algorithm that takes heterogeneity into account. It, however, still depends on a static method to estimate the task execution time. As a result, neither Hadoop default …

On The Design Of Socially-Aware Distributed Systems, Nicolas Kourtellis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media services and applications enable billions of users to share an unprecedented amount of social information, which is further augmented by location and collocation information from mobile phones, and can be aggregated to provide an accurate digital representation of the social world. This dissertation argues that extracted social knowledge from this wealth of information can be embedded in the design of novel distributed, socially-aware applications and services, consequently improving system response time, availability and resilience to attacks, and reducing system overhead. To support this thesis, two research avenues are explored.

First, this dissertation presents Prometheus, a socially-aware peer-to-peer service …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2012, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Senior Design Experience

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the Senior Design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. Working in teams, the senior design project encourages students to use everything learned in the engineering and computer design programs to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

Beyond the classroom...

Because of the requirement to work in teams, students also build good communication skills, presentation skills and even business writing skills. They also have to source …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2018, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Red Lake Dnr Website, Stefanie Brenden

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Towards An Incentive Compatible Framework Of Secure Cloud Computing, Yulong Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Cloud computing has changed how services are provided and supported through the computing infrastructure. It has the advantages such as flexibility , scalability , compatibility and availability . However, the current architecture design also brings in some troublesome problems, like the balance of cooperation benefits and privacy concerns between the cloud provider and the cloud users, and the balance of cooperation benefits and free-rider concerns between different cloud users. Theses two problems together form the incentive problem in cloud environment. The first conflict lies between the reliance of services and the concerns of secrets of cloud users. To solve it, …

Web 2.0 Interdisciplinary Informatics Institute (Webiii) – Are You Connected Project, Christopher John Godfrey Phd, Hillary J. Knepper Phd

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Estimating Correlation Under Interval And Fuzzy Uncertainty: Case Of Hierarchical Estimation, Ali Jalal-Kamali

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many situations, we are interested in finding the correlation ρ between different quantities x and y based on the values x_i and y_i of these quantities measured in different situations i. The correlation is easy to compute when we know the exact sample values x_i and y_i. In practice, the sample values come from measurements or from expert estimates; in both cases, the values are not exact. Sometimes, we know the probabilities of different values of measurement errors, but in many cases, we only know the upper bounds Δ_xi and Δ_yi on …

Semi-Heuristic Target-Based Fuzzy Decision Procedures: Towards A New Interval Justification, Christian Servin, Van-Nam Huynh, Yoshiteru Nakamori

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To more adequately describe human decision making, V.-N. Nuynh, Y. Nakamori, and others proposed a special semi-heuristic target-based fuzzy decision procedure. A usual justification for this procedure is based on the selection of the simplest possible membership functions and "and"- and "or"-operations; if we use more complex membership functions and "and"- and "or"-operations, we get different results. Interestingly, in practical applications, the procedure based on the simplest choices most adequately describes human preferences. It is therefore desirable to come up with a justification that explains this empirical fact. Such a justification is proposed in this paper

A Modular Framework For Home Healthcare Monitoring, Blake Puryear

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many patients with chronic health problems have multiple ailments but different patients may have different such ailments. Home monitoring systems for individual ailments exist but a patient may have multiple of these, all designed independently. There are no standard architectures so this leads to unmanageable diversity which causes problems for patients in having to learn to use a variety of monitors and for physicians in trying to monitor many patients. The purpose of this project was to design and prototype a next generation modular remote healthcare monitoring system capable of monitoring multiple ailments and extensible to new ailments in order …

Wi-Fi Sensing Algorithms Utilizing Zigbee Rf Reciever For Use In Emergency Communications Mesh, Alexander Nelson

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis introduces the idea of a low-power Wi-Fi sensing wake-up controller for an emergency communications mesh network, progressively developing a prototype system which could be used in a live environment. Wireless network protocols are reviewed, as well as a limited view of cluster analysis, in order to introduce relevant concepts crucial to understanding this thesis. Algorithms for system implementation are developed, and pseudocode, designed to be configurable and platform independent, is given for each. Design goals for the system are identified with potential approaches are defined in order to optimize for each. An example hardware configuration is given, in …

Anyone Can Sketch Vignettes!, Rubaiat Habib Kazi, Takeo Igarashi, Shengdong Zhao, Richard Christopher Davis, Toni-Jan Keith Monserrat

Research Collection School of Computing and Information Systems

Vignette is an interactive system that facilitates texture creation in pen-and-ink illustrations. Unlike existing systems, Vignette preserves illustrators’ workflow and style: users draw a fraction of a texture and use gestures to automatically fill regions with the texture. Our exploration of natural work-flow and gesture-based interaction was inspired by traditional way of creating illustrations. We currently support both 1D and 2D synthesis with stitching. Our system also has interactive refinement and editing capabilities to provide a higher level texture control, which helps artists achieve their desired vision. Vignette makes the process of illustration more enjoyable and that first time users …

Sensor-Based System For Verifying Blood-Pressure Measurement Position, Emma N. Smithayer

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Mobile maternal-health programs send workers door to door to visit pregnant women in rural India and collect data such as blood pressure or weight, then send that data to doctors for review. Since the doctors do not see the data collection, ensuring correct collection methods is crucial to allow them to make good treatment decisions. However, blood-pressure measurements are sometimes taken with the patient’s arm in the wrong position, which can cause inaccurate readings. This paper describes a system consisting of an automatic blood pressure cuff with an accelerometer and force sensors attached to determine whether the arm is at …

Extending Description Logic Rules, David Carral Martinez, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Description Logics – the logics underpinning the Web Ontology Language OWL – and rules are currently the most prominent paradigms used for modeling knowledge for the Semantic Web. While both of these approaches are based on classical logic, the paradigms also differ significantly, so that naive combinations result in undesirable properties such as undecidability. Recent work has shown that many rules can in fact be expressed in OWL. In this paper we extend this work to include some types of rules previously excluded. We formally define a set of first order logic rules, C-Rules, which can be expressed within OWL …

Dynamic Data Extraction And Data Visualization With Application To The Kentucky Mesonet, Anoop Rao Paidipally

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

There is a need to integrate large-scale database, high-performance computing engines and geographical information system technologies into a user-friendly web interface as a platform for data visualization and customized statistical analysis. We present some concepts and design ideas regarding dynamic data storage and extraction by making use of open-source computing and mapping technologies. We implemented our methods to the Kentucky Mesonet automated weather mapping workflow. The main components of the work flow includes a web based interface, a robust database and computing infrastructure designed for both general users and power users such as modelers and researchers.

Ensemble Of Feature Selection Techniques For High Dimensional Data, Sri Harsha Vege

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Data mining involves the use of data analysis tools to discover previously unknown, valid patterns and relationships from large amounts of data stored in databases, data warehouses, or other information repositories. Feature selection is an important preprocessing step of data mining that helps increase the predictive performance of a model. The main aim of feature selection is to choose a subset of features with high predictive information and eliminate irrelevant features with little or no predictive information. Using a single feature selection technique may generate local optima.

In this thesis we propose an ensemble approach for feature selection, where multiple …

Inauguration Of Smu-Tcs Icity Laboratory, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

The Singapore Management University (SMU) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT services, business solutions and consulting firm, inaugurated the SMU-TCS Intelligent City Laboratory (“iCity Lab”) on 9 May 2012 (Wednesday). The inauguration ceremony was held at the iCity Lab Experience Centre located at the SMU School of Information Systems (SIS). Equipped with interactive technology, this Experience Centre will serve as a venue for city managers and urban planners to experience the new ideas and technologies which the Lab will be developing. This collaboration initiative was announced on 5 August 2011, which aimed to develop, as well as establish …

Simple Touch-Based Gaming: Project Pond, Taylor Yust

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mainstream success of smartphone technology has prompted the video game industry to invest resources into new types of mobile games. While seemingly successful on the surface, there are unseen issues and risks that may potentially harm the long-term sustainability of the market. In response, I’ve developed my own smartphone gaming app that addresses what I find to be some of the largest problems in the market. My intent is to test my design theories while also challenging the status quo in mobile game design. The fruit of my labor is Pond, a smartphone gaming app for Windows Phone 7. …

Virtual "University Of Arkansas" Campus, Seth Williams

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The aim of the Virtual Campus project is to develop a way to automate building 3D virtual worlds using map and other data from the real world. A demonstration presented in this BS honors thesis uses automated tools to build the University of Arkansas campus from data supplied by the UA Center for Advanced Spatial Technology (CAST). At present, in virtual worlds like Second Life and Unity, terraforming of terrain is a manual process, and it can take days to weeks to build a landscape. But by using existing map data, we are now able to automate that process. Working …

Usage Of Videomosaic For Computer Aided Analysis Of North Sea Hard Bottom Underwater Video For Baseline Study Of Offshore Windmill Park, Aleksej Shashkov, Thomas Dahlgren, Marie-Lise Schlappy, Yuri Rzhanov

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

Windmill park on the open North Sea coast at Hävsul area in Norway is one of the first in the world to be build on such extreme high-energy coast. To determine possible environmental impact of this project, baseline study was performed in 2010-2011. Two areas, impacted (area where windmill park is planned to be build) and reference were chosen. For hard bottoms work class ROV was used to take underwater video, as no traditional sampling methods are suitable for such environment and depths. The system was equipped with powerful (400 Watt) xenon lights, USBL navigation and HDTV color camera. For …

Efficient Algorithm To Construct Phi Function In Vector Space Secret Sharing Scheme And Application Of Secret Sharing Scheme In Visual Cryptography, Sunny Potay

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Secret Sharing refers to a method through which a secret key K can be shared among a group of authorized participants, such that when they come together later, they can figure out the secret key K to decrypt the encrypted message. Any group which is not authorized cannot determine the secret key K. Some of the important secret schemes are Shamir Threshold Scheme, Monotone Circuit Scheme, and Brickell Vector Space Scheme. Brikell’s vector space secret sharing construction requires the existence of a function from a set of participant P in to vector space Zdp, where p is a …

Organizational Search In Email Systems, Sruthi Bhushan Pitla

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The storage space for emails has been increasing at a rapid pace day by day. Email systems still serve as very important data repositories for many users to store different kinds of information which they use in their daily activities. Due to the rapidly increasing volume of email data, there is a need to maintain the data in a most efficient way. It is also very important to provide intuitive and flexible search utilities to provide better access to the information in the email repositories, especially in an enterprise or organizational setting. In order to implement the functionality, we are …

Manipulation Of 3d Knotted Polygons, Sairaj Rachamadugu

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis discusses the development of software architecture to support the computational investigation of random polygons in 3 space. The random polygons themselves are a simple model of long polymer chains. (A DNA molecule is one example of a polymer.)

This software architecture includes "building blocks" which specify the actual manipulations and computations to be performed, and a structural framework which allows the user to specify which manipulations/computations to perform, in which order and with how many repetitions. The overall framework is designed in such a way that new building blocks can easily be added in the future. The development …

A Normal Truncated Skewed-Laplace Model In Stochastic Frontier Analysis, Junyi Wang

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Stochastic frontier analysis is an exciting method of economic production modeling that is relevant to hospitals, stock markets, manufacturing factories, and services. In this paper, we create a new model using the normal distribution and truncated skew-Laplace distribution, namely the normal-truncated skew-Laplace model. This is a generalized model of the normal-exponential case. Furthermore, we compute the true technical efficiency and estimated technical efficiency of the normal-truncated skewed-Laplace model. Also, we compare the technical efficiencies of normal-truncated skewed-Laplace model and normal-exponential model.

Incorporating The Nsf/Tcpp Curriculum Recommendations In A Liberal Arts Setting, Akshaye Dhawan

Mathematics, Computer Science & Statistics Faculty Publications

This paper examines the integration of the NSF/TCPP Core Curriculum Recommendations in a liberal arts undergraduate setting. We examine how parallel and distributed computing concepts can be incorporated across the breadth of the undergraduate curriculum. As a model of such an integration, changes are proposed to Data Structures and Design and Analysis of Algorithms. These changes were implemented in Design and Analysis of Algorithms and the results were compared to previous iterations of that course taught by the same instructor. The student feedback received shows that the introduction of these topics made the course more engaging and conveyed an adequate …

Effects Of Immersion On Spatial Updating In Virtual Panoramas, Phillip Napieralski

All Theses

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of immersion on a common spatial knowledge acquisition task in a virtual panoramic environment. A virtual panorama, such as Google Streetview, is an environment that is comprised of 3D (spherical) images taken at regular intervals in a real world setting. Participants navigated the National Mall area of Washington DC in Google Streetview panoramas using either a keyboard and mouse or a head-mounted display (HMD) with a head orientation tracker. In an exploration phase, participants were asked to navigate and observe landmarks. Then, in a testing phase, participants were asked to look in …

A Multi-Modal Sensing And Communication Platform For Continental-Scale Migratory Bird Tracking, David J. Anthony

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis presents a novel platform for tracking migratory birds on a continental scale. Cellular technology is used to augment the short-range radios that have traditionally been used in wireless sensor networks. The platform utilizes multiple sensors, including a GPS and solid state compass. By using these sensors, the platform is capable of not only tracking a bird’s migration path, but also provides information on a bird’s behavior during its life-cycle. Testing methodology utilizing simulations and aspect-oriented programming is used to reveal faults in the platform prior to deployment on wild animals. In collaboration with the International Crane Foundation, and …

K-Nearest Keyword Search In Rdf Graphs, Eugenio De Hoyos

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

We formulate and tackle a flexible and useful query, namely k-nearest keyword (k-NK) query, which can identify the relationship between vertices (or keywords) in an RDF graph, where users are only required to specify two query keywords q and w (without knowing the domain knowledge). In particular, a k-NK query returns k closest pairs of vertices (ui; vi) in the RDF graph such that vertices ui and vi contain keywords q and w, respectively, and vi has the smallest (shortest path) distance to ui (i.e., vi is the nearest neighbor of ui). In order to efficiently answer k-NK queries, in …

Segmented Height Field And Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics In Erosion Simulation, Christopher S. Stuetzle, Zhongxian Chen, Katrina Perez, Jared Gross, Barbara Cutler, W. Randolph Franklin, Thomas F. Zimmie

Computer and Data Science Faculty Publications

The New Orleans area levee failures during Hurricane Katrina drew media attention to an important prob-lem in Civil Engineering. The emphasis of our work is on earthen levees, dams, and embankments. A ma-jor cause of failures of such structures is overtopping, which causes erosion to the point of breaching the crest. Our research focuses on simulating the initial small-scale features of erosion – the formation of rills and gullies on the embankment. We wish to study and eventually be able to simulate the way earthen embankments erode, with respect to the formation of these rills and gullies. Validation of computer …

Computer Simulations And Physical Modelling Of Erosion, Christopher S. Stuetzle, Zhongxian Chen, Barbara Cutler, W. Randolph Franklin, Jared Gross, Katrina Perez, Thomas F. Zimmie

Computer and Data Science Faculty Publications

Research is being done to study the details and progress of soil erosion on levees and dams, including the formation and progression of rills and gullies on the slopes, and eventually to final breaching. These detailed observations of erosion differ from the typical predictions of only the maximum erosion or scour depths, for example around submerged bridge piers. Computer simulations and geotechnical centrifuge modelling will, in the future, be validated using these observations. For testing, single layer sand models were utilized, and will be followed by clayey and mixed soils, and increased number of layers. The computer simulations will incorporate …