Computer Sciences Commons^™

Scheduling Jobs On Two Uniform Parallel Machines To Minimize The Makespan, Sandhya Kodimala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The problem of scheduling n independent jobs on m uniform parallel machines such that the total completion time is minimized is a NP-Hard problem. We propose several heuristic-based online algorithms for machines with different speeds called Q₂||C_max. To show the efficiency of the proposed online algorithms, we compute the optimal solution for Q₂||C_max using pseudo-polynomial algorithms based on dynamic programming method. The pseudo-polynomial algorithm has time complexity O (n T²) and can be run on reasonable time for small number of jobs and small processing times. This optimal offline algorithm is …

Communication Artifacts And Interaction Evaluation For Requirements Engineering, Miloslava Plachkinova

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This paper aims to answer an important question regarding the development of new information systems (IS): "What is the predominant factor for the selection of communication artifacts for requirements engineering (RE)?". Many researchers have focused on the RE and communication as separate disciplines, but little or no research addressed the RE communication issues. These problems are important because they often lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the gathered requirements. We develop expectations about the RE communication process based on prior literature from both disciplines and we test them through several case studies. Our methodology consists of analysis of six case …

A Semantic Situation Awareness Framework For Indoor Cyber-Physical Systems, Pratikkumar Desai

Kno.e.sis Publications

Recently, the domain of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) has emerged as a successor to the traditional embedded systems and the wireless sensor networks. The relatively new cyber-physical domain offers tight integration of control, communication and computation components to develop advanced web based application in various heterogeneous domains such as health care, disaster management, automation and environment monitoring. The applications of indoor CPSs include remote patient monitoring, smart home, etc. with focus on situation awareness via event identification from context information. The principal challenges associated with the development of situation awareness applications include uncertainty in contextual data, incomplete domain knowledge, interoperability between …

Exploiting Rogue Signals To Attack Trust-Based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing In Cognitive Radio Networks, David Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive radios are currently presented as the solution to the ever-increasing spectrum shortage problem. However, their increased capabilities over traditional radios introduce a new dimension of security threats. Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) has been proposed as a means to protect cognitive radio networks from the well known security threats: Primary User Emulation (PUE) and Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification (SSDF). I demonstrate a new threat to trust-based CSS protocols, called the Rogue Signal Framing (RSF) intrusion. Rogue signals can be exploited to create the illusion of malicious sensors which leads to the framing of innocent sensors and consequently, their removal from …

Script-Based Story Matching For Cyberbullying Prevention, Jamie Macbeth, Hanna Adeyema, Henry Lieberman, Christopher Fry

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

While the Internet and social media help keep today’s youth better connected to their friends, family, and community, the same media are also the form of expression for an array of harmful social behaviors, such as cyberbullying and cyber-harassment. In this paper we present work in progress to develop intelligent interfaces to social media that use commonsense knowledge bases and automated narrative analyses of text communications between users to trigger selective interventions and prevent negative outcomes. While other approaches seek merely to classify the overall topic of the text, we try to match stories to finer-grained “scripts” that represent stereotypical …

Development Of A Comprehensive Database System For A Highway Safety Engineering And Management, Naveen Veeramisti, Justin Baker, Indira Khanal, Kenny Moupita, Alexander Paz

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

In simple words, the objective of this study is to develop a comprehensive database system to provide a data for highway safety engineering and management.

Calibration Of Traffic Flow Models, Victor Molano

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

This study proposes a methodology to calibrate microscopic traffic flow simulation models. A Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA) algorithm searches for the set of model parameters that minimizes the difference between actual and simulated values

Development Of A Smart Application For Police Crash Reports, Sebastien Bonnet, Victor Molano, Alexander Paz

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

• Gaining a significant amount of time to help police work
• Developing a User Friendly Interface
• Optimizing the GPS Gaining a significant amount of time to help police work
• Developing a User Friendly Interface
• Optimizing the bar code scan technology
• Application for MC 75 mobile technology

Modeling And Architectural Simulations Of The Statistical Static Timing Analysis Of The Variation Sources For Vlsi Circuits, Abu M. Baker

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

As CMOS technology scales down, process variation introduces significant uncertainty in power and performance to VLSI circuits and significantly affects their reliability. Although Static-Timing Analysis (STA) remains an excellent tool, current trends in process scaling have imposed significant difficulties to STA. As one of the promising solutions, Statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) has become the frontier research topic in recent years in combating such variation effects. This poster will be focusing on two aspects of SSTA and its applications in VLSI designs: (1) Statistical timing modeling and analysis; and (2) Architectural implementations of the atomic operations (max and add) using …

Fast Sobel Edge Detection Using Parallel Pipeline-Based Architecture On Fpga, Mohammad Shokrolah Shirazi, Brendan Morris

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

Implementing image processing algorithms on FPGA has recently become more popular since it provides high speed in comparison with software-based approaches. In this paper, we have presented fast pipeline-based architecture for one of the most popular edge detection algorithms called Sobel edge detection. The objective of our work is to present two fast pipeline-based architectures for Sobel edge detection on FPGA benefiting one and two way parallelism. We used Verilog language to implement our designs and we synthesized each one for Cyclone IV FPGA. Experimental results show that our pipeline-based architectures perform edge detection process more than 379 and 751 …

On High-Performance Parallel Decimal Fixed-Point Multiplier Designs, Ming Zhu

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

Decimal computations are required in finance, and etc.

• Precise representation for decimals (E.g. 0.2, 0.7… )
• Performance Requirements (Software simulations are very slow)

Image Processing Algorithms For Improving Planetary Exploration And Understanding, Ali Pouryazdanpanah

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

• To design a fully automated tool-set that allows to detect and extract the sky region in planetary images.

• To develop the new method for rock segmentation in planetary stereo images.
• To develop the new method for shadow detection in planetary images

A Visualization Tool For A Highway Safety Management System, Indira Khanal, Naveen Veeramisti, Justin Baker, Alexander Paz

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

• With lot of research, Federal Highway Administration
  has released a highway Safety management System
  software called as SafetyAnalyst (SA)
• SA has a suite of analytical tools to identify and
  manage system-wide safety improvements:
  Network Screening
  Diagnosis and Countermeasure Selection
  Economic Analyses and priority Ranking
  Countermeasure Evaluation
• SA provides a very rudimentary approach to display
  results just in tabular and textual format
• This study proposes a visualization tool that expands
  the output capabilities provided by SafetyAnalyst

Mono-Sized Sphere Packing Algorithm Development Using Optimized Monte Carlo Technique, Karn Soontrapa, Yitung Chen

College of Engineering: Graduate Celebration Programs

In this research, fuel cell catalyst layer was developed using the optimized sphere packing algorithm. An optimization technique named adaptive random search technique (ARSET) was employed in this packing algorithm. The ARSET algorithm will generate the initial location of spheres and allow them to move in the random direction with the variable moving distance, randomly selected from the sampling range (a), based on the Lennard–Jones potential and Morse potential of the current and new configuration. The solid fraction values obtained from this developed algorithm are in the range of 0.610–0.624 while the actual processing time can significantly be reduced by …

Operating System Scheduling: Linux Preemptive Scheduling Algorithms, Andrew Brand

Honors Capstones

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

Actual Entities: A Control Method For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Erica Absetz

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this thesis is on Actual Entities, a concept created by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and how the concept can be applied to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as a behavioral control method. Actual Entities are vector based, atomic units that use a method called prehension to observe their environment and react with various actions. When combining multiple Actual Entities a Colony of Prehending Entities is created; when observing their prehensions an intelligent behavior emerges. By applying the characteristics of Actual Entities to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, specifically in a situation where they are searching for targets, this emergent, intelligent …

Sorting Permutations With Finite-Depth Stacks, Timothy Goodrich, Will Olson, Ruyue Yuan

Symposium on Research and Creative Expression (SORCE)

Sorting organizes information for optimal usage, and our work examines the mathematics behind sorting with stacks. In 1968, Donald Knuth showed that a permutation is sortable in an infinite-depth stack if and only if it avoids the pattern 231; Knuth also enumerated these permutations. Twenty-five years later, Julian West extended these ideas to permutations sortable with 2 consecutive stacks. We continue this work by limiting the stack(s) to a finite depth. In particular, we completely characterize permutations sortable through a single finite-depth stack and derive a handy enumeration formula. We also apply our pattern characterization and enumeration techniques to permutations …

Simulation Modeling And Analysis Of Coal Shipping Operations, Raymond Finzel, Timothy Goodrich, Graeme Roberts

Symposium on Research and Creative Expression (SORCE)

Computer simulations are increasingly powerful and realistic models for complex real-world scenarios, and our project applies this technology to model a coal transportation case study. Given a baseline scenario of fourteen carriers transporting coal from three U.S. locations to four international locations, we optimize operations in terms of product flow, time required for shipments, and total operation costs. Implementing the case study's factors into modular code, we introduce several potential changes to current operations and develop specific scenarios. Further, in analyzing these scenarios we test for robustness and sensitivity, by changing values such as demand and bad weather occurrences, and …

Optimizing The Allocation Of Vaccines In The Presence Of Multiple Strains Of The Influenza Virus, Abby Kenyon, Ana Eveler, Tayler Grashel, Jessica Richardson

Symposium on Research and Creative Expression (SORCE)

During the annual flu season, multiple strains of the influenza virus are often present within a population. It is a significant challenge for health care administrators to determine the most effective allocation of two different vaccines to combat the various strains when treating the public. We employ a mathematical model, a system of differential equations, to find a strategy for vaccinating a population in order to minimize the number of infected individuals. We consider various strengths of transmission of the disease, availability of vaccine doses, vaccination rates, and other model parameters. This research may lead to more effective health care …

Prevalence Of Reflexivity And Its Impact On Success In Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Study, Brandon D. Foushee

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional wisdom, inspired in part by Eric Raymond, suggests that open source developers primarily develop software for developers like themselves. In our studies we distinguish between reflexive software (software written primarily for other developers) and irreflexive software (software written primarily for passive users). In the first study, we present four criteria which we then use to assess project reflexivity in SourceForge. These criteria are based on three specific indicators: intended audience, relevant topics, and supported operating systems. Based on our criteria, we find that 68% of SourceForge projects are reflexive (in the sense described by Raymond). In the second study, …

Improving Crowd Simulation With Optimal Acceleration Angles, Movement On 3d Surfaces, And Social Dynamics, Brian C. Ricks

Theses and Dissertations

Crowd simulation plays a critical role in modern films, games, and architectural design. However, despite decades of algorithmic improvements, crowds use sub-optimal heuristics, are primarily constrained to 2D surfaces, and show few if any social dynamics. This dissertation proposes that a solution to these problems lies in altering how each agent perceives its environment as opposed to new obstacle avoidance algorithms. First, this dissertation presents a theoretical look at optimal agent movement. Next, in order to place crowds on arbitrary 3D manifolds, algorithms are proposed that change how each agent perceives its environment. The resulting crowds move naturally across a …

Reliable Peak Selection For Multisample Analysis With Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Chromatography, Stephen E. Reichenbach, Xue Tian, Akwasi A. Boateng, Charles A. Mullen, Chiara Cordero, Qingping Tao

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Comprehensive two-dimensional chromatography is a powerful technology for analyzing the patterns of constituent compounds in complex samples, but matching chromatographic features for comparative analysis across large sample sets is difficult. Various methods have been described for pairwise peak matching between two chromatograms, but the peaks indicated by these pairwise matches commonly are incomplete or inconsistent across many chromatograms. This paper describes a new, automated method for postprocessing the results of pairwise peak matching to address incomplete and inconsistent peak matches and thereby select chromatographic peaks that reliably correspond across many chromatograms. Reliably corresponding peaks can be used both for directly …

Probabilistic Explicit Topic Modeling, Joshua Aaron Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is widely used for automatic discovery of latent topics in document corpora. However, output from analysis using an LDA topic model suffers from a lack of identifiability between topics not only across corpora, but across runs of the algorithm. The output is also isolated from enriching information from knowledge sources such as Wikipedia and is difficult for humans to interpret due to a lack of meaningful topic labels. This thesis introduces two methods for probabilistic explicit topic modeling that address these issues: Latent Dirichlet Allocation with Static Topic-Word Distributions (LDA-STWD), and Explicit Dirichlet Allocation (EDA). LDA-STWD …

Elitist Schema Overlays: A Multi-Parent Genetic Operator, Nick Nichols, Mark Liffiton, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Genetic Algorithms are programs inspired by natural evolution used to solve difficult problems in Mathematics and Computer Science. The theoretical foundations of Genetic Algorithms, the schema theorem and the building-block hypothesis, state that the success of Genetic Algorithms stems from the propagation of fit genetic subsequences. Multi-parent operators were shown to increase the performance of Genetic Algorithms by increasing the disruptivity of genetic operations. Disruptive genetic operators help prevent suboptimal genetic sequences from propagating into future generations, which leads to an improved fitness for the population over time. In this paper we explore the use of a novel multi-parent genetic …

A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Catherine Putonti, George K. Thiruvathukal, Konstantin Läufer

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

RNA-interference has potential therapeutic use against HIV-1 by targeting highly-functional mRNA sequences that contribute to the virulence of the virus. Empirical work has shown that within cell lines, all of the HIV-1 genes are affected by RNAi-induced gene silencing. While promising, inherent in this treatment is the fact that RNAi sequences must be highly specific. HIV, however, mutates rapidly, leading to the evolution of viral escape mutants. In fact, such strains are under strong selection to include mutations within the targeted region, evading the RNAi therapy and thus increasing the virus’ fitness in the host. Taking a phylogenetic approach, we …

Vsfs: A Versatile Searchable File System For Hpc Analytics, Lei Xu, Ziling Huang, Hong Jiang, Lei Tian, David Swanson

School of Computing: Technical Reports

Big-data/HPC analytics applications have urgent needs for file-search services to drastically reduce the scale of the input data to accelerate analytics. Unfortunately, the existing solutions either are poorly scalable for large-scale systems, or lack well-integrated interface to allow applications to easily use them. We propose a distributed searchable file system, VSFS, which provide a novel and flexible POSIX-compatible searchable file system namespace that can be seamlessly integrate with any legacy code without modification. Additionally, to provide real-time indexing and searching performance, VSFS uses DRAM-based distributed consistent hashing ring to manages all file-index. The results of our evaluation show that VSFS …

Simulating Inflation, Ryan M. Heathcote

Senior Honors Theses

Inflation is a common problem in modern economics, and it seems to persist, requiring government financial policy intervention on a regular basis in order to properly manage. The mechanics of inflation are difficult to understand, since the best metric modern society has for inflation involves taking samples of prices across the country. A simulation can give deeper insight into more than the mere fact that prices rise over time: a simulation can help to answer the “why” question. The problem with this statement is that developing a simulation is not as simple as writing some code. A simulation is developed …

Multiple-Instance And One-Class Rule-Based Algorithms, Dat Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

In this work we developed rule-based algorithms for multiple-instance learning and one-class learning problems, namely, the mi-DS and OneClass-DS algorithms. Multiple-Instance Learning (MIL) is a variation of classical supervised learning where there is a need to classify bags (collection) of instances instead of single instances. The bag is labeled positive if at least one of its instances is positive, otherwise it is negative. One-class learning problem is also known as outlier or novelty detection problem. One-class classifiers are trained on data describing only one class and are used in situations where data from other classes are not available, and also …

Probability Of Belonging To A Language, Kevin Michael Brooks Cook

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional language models estimate the probability that a word sequence within a chosen language will occur. By contrast, the purpose of our work is to estimate the probability that the word sequence belongs to the chosen language. The language of interest in our research is comprehensible well-formed English. We explain how conventional language models assume what we refer to as a degree of generalization, the extent to which a model generalizes from a given sequence. We explain why such an assumption may hinder estimation of the probability that a sequence belongs. We show that the probability that a word sequence …

Audience Response Clicker Project, Joseph Meyer

Honors Theses

This report will address the feasibility of a software-based audience response system to be implemented, to be known as the Clicker Project. The project seeks to address the growing need for active learning environments at the University level. The primary goal of the project is to construct a web-based system that allows presenters to gather responses from a viewing audience. To this end, presenters can collect and store data dynamically form whomever is in attendance. The following sections will discuss the project in greater detail.