Computer Sciences Commons^™

3-D Printing, Kristina Shindyapin

Senior Seminars

The world has seen many technological advances in the last 50 - 100 years. But one of the most interesting and newest ones is 3-dimensional printing. This new technology has been invented and evolved in just the last 30 years. What is 3-D printing? 3-D printing is a special way of printing, using materials such as certain types of plastic and following a 3-D model or 3-D software which tells a printer how to print something in three dimensions. This printer is also different than standard ink printers, in that it is shaped like a box and allows something to …

Improving Gesture Recognition Performance Using The Dynamic Space-Time Warp Algorithm, Danny Allen Hanson

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

The DSTW algorithm was originally used as the fundamental algorithm for a gesture recognition software. When the need arose for implementing gesture recognition on-board a robotic vehicle, the original recognition software needed to undergo several changes in order to meet the requirements of the target platform. The original software was written in Matlab and had to be ported into a native language in order to operate on the new platform. To support experiments needed to select a distance and t function, the new code needed to be designed to support dynamic binding of distance and transition (t) functions. The software …

Learning Equivalent Input Channel Mappings And Generalized Features For Pattern Transfer, Houtan Rahmanian

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

In many real-world modeling applications, it is needed to detect the origin of the patterns of the input data in addition to find the patterns themselves. Having the input data generated by a systematically organized set of input channels is very common in these applications. These input channels might also be of the same type. Therefore, the same pattern might be observed on different sets of input channels of the data, while it is caused by the one source in different localities. Sparse coding is a very powerful method for learning high-level patterns (i.e. high-level features) from raw data input. …

Adaptive Dialogue Systems For Assistive Living Environments, Alexandros Papangelis

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Adaptive Dialogue Systems (ADS) are intelligent systems, able to interact with users via multiple modalities, such as speech, gestures, facial expressions and others. Such systems are able to make conversation with their users, usually on a specific, narrow topic. Assistive Living Environments are environments where the users are by definition not competent with technology, due to various factors, such as mental or physical disabilities, age and others. While technology that helps improve these people's quality of life exists, many times they cannot access it due to inflexible interfaces. ADS, therefore, have the potential to bridge users and technology by acting …

Viewpoint Invariant Gesture Recognition And 3d Hand Pose Estimation Using Rgb-D, Paul Doliotis

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The broad application domain of the work presented in this thesis is pattern classifi-cation with a focus on gesture recognition and 3D hand pose estimation. One of the main contributions of the proposed thesis is a novel method for 3D hand pose estimation using RGB-D. Hand pose estimation is formulated as a database retrieval problem. The proposed method investigates and introduces new similarity measures for similarity search in a database of RGB-D hand images. At the same time, towards making 3D hand pose estimation methods more automatic, a novel hand segmentation method is introduced which also relies on depth data. …

Detection Of Fingers With A Depth Based Hand-Detector In Static Frames, Sanjay Vasudeva Iyer

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis presents a method for a finger detection system. It is assumed that the user taps their fingers on a table, and that the camera is placed on the same table in front of their fingers. This setup is motivated by the application of analyzing the movement of fingers in patients engaging in physical therapy. Fingers are detected in static images, which is a more challenging task than detecting and tracking fingers in videos which are based on motion.The Microsoft Kinect sensor has been used as a source for data, and it provides color and depth images at each …

Hardware And Software Systems For Control Of Assistive Robotic Devices Using Point-Of-Gaze Estimation, Christopher Dale Mcmurrough

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Eye gaze based interaction has many useful applications in human-machine interfaces, assistive technologies, and multimodal systems. Traditional input methods, such as the keyboard and mouse, are not practical in many situations and can be ineffective for some users with physical impairments. Knowledge of the user point of gaze (PoG) can be a powerful data modality in intelligent systems by facilitating intuitive control, perception of user intent, and enhanced interactive experiences.This research aims to advance the use of non-traditional, multimodal interfaces in assistive robotic devices for the benefit of users with severe physical disabilities. The data modalities which are of particular …

Design And Analysis Of Location Centered Large-Scale Opportunistic Networks, Shanshan Lu

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

With the high penetration of mobile devices and their equipments of wireless interfaces in people's lives, the development of the scenario of Opportunistic Networks(OppNets) has become available. OppNets enable transmissions by exploiting temporary wireless links and connections opportunistically arising from mobility nature of nodes. The applications of OppNets have emerged in a wide range of areas.OppNets have attracted a lot of attention from the wireless and mobile network research community, while little has been paid to the OppNets in large-scale scenario. The existing OppNets are not scaled well to large-scale area due to the high uncertainty embedded in transient contacts …

Dovetail: Stronger Anonymity In Next-Generation Internet Routing, Jody Mark Sankey

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Current low-latency anonymity systems use complex overlay networks to conceal a user's IP address, introducing significant latency and network efficiency penalties compared to normal Internet usage. Rather than this obfuscation of network identity through higher level protocols, we recommend a more direct solution: a routing protocol that allows communication without exposing network identity, providing a strong foundation for Internet privacy, while allowing identity to be defined in those higher level protocols where it adds value. We propose Dovetail, a next-generation Internet routing protocol that provides anonymity against an active attacker located at any single point within the network. Key design …

Lilac: Architecture For Anonymous Light Weight Communication, Ankit Upadhyaya

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

We present lilac; a circuit based low latency anonymous light weight instant messaging communication system. This browser based chat platform provides anonymity in context with unlinkability and unobservability for the secured real-time communication. The system uses a relay based anonymization mechanism where circuits are built and routed over a set of trusted nodes in the network. Unlike other typical instant messaging systems, Lilac uses user pseudonymity and ephemeral message exchange, which eliminates conventional user registration and storing the messages for the future retrieval; this leaves no footprints behind in the system in terms of user information, who talks to whom …

Modeling An Intelligent Intruder In A Region Monitored By A Wireless Sensor Network, Sriram Srinivasan

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Monitoring to detect unauthorized border crossing is very important for protecting national security. To accomplish this by continuous physical monitoring by border patrol agents is impractical. Networks of low-cost wireless sensors have been identified as a useful tool in monitoring with minimal human intervention. However, ensuring the effectiveness of unattended monitoring against an intelligent intruder is difficult, since the intruder can probe the system for weaknesses. To better understand the capabilities of such an intruder, we propose a model for an intelligent intruder whose purpose is to find a detection-free path across the border by which he could cross back …

Effective Collaboration In Opportunitic Networks, Umair Sadiq

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Opportunistic networks formed by users' mobile devices have the potential to exploit a rich set of distributed service components that can be composed to provide each user with a multitude of application level services. In opportunistic networks, tasks such as content sharing and service execution among remote devices are facilitated by intermediate devices capable of short–range wireless connectivity, also called relays that receive, move around, and forward the data.To enable effective collaboration in such an environment, we make three novel contributions: (i) an adaptive forwarding scheme, ProxiMol, to select suitable relays for data transfer; (ii) a distributed mechanism to select …

Sign Gesture Spotting In American Sign Language Using Dynamic Space Time Warping, Srujana Gattupalli

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

American Sign Language (ASL) is the primary sign language used by approximately 500,000 deaf and hearing-impaired people in the United States and Canada. ASL is a visually perceived, gesture-based language that employs signs made by moving the hands combined with facial expressions and postures of the body. There are several software tools available online to learn signs for a given word but there is no software that gives the meaning of any sign video. If we need to search or look up documents containing any word we can just type it in search engines like Google, Bing etc. but if …

Development And Simulation Of Focus Of Attention Using Reinforcement Learning And Function Approximation, Stephen Ratz

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

Without short-term memory, people would have little hope to learn and accomplish tasks. The same can be said for artificially intelligent agents. Often referred as Miller's Law, the number of working objects that a human can hold in working memory is around seven. For an AI agent, the cost of keeping additional memory blocks is exponential. Other issues to consider are what to keep in memory and for how long. Only a few of many of an agent's previous steps may be important to hold on to. This thesis project attempts to train an intelligent agent to learn what to …

Novel Methods For Entity-Centric Information Exploration, Ning Yan

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

We witness an unprecedented proliferation of entity graphs that capture entities (e.g., persons, products, organizations) and their relationships. Such entity data gradually evolves into the most comprehensive knowledge graph ever built by human beings. The flourish of entity data also boosts a growing demand for entity-centric information exploration tasks. Different from traditional information retrieval tasks that are based on statistics of text terms, entity-centric information exploration tasks are usually based on metrics over entities, their relationships, or graph structures. In this work, we identified two essential tasks in entity-centric information exploration: 1) how to do faceted navigation over a set …

Casat-Hoomt: Computer Aided Software Analysis Tool Based On High Order Object-Oriented Modeling Technique, Fan Zhang, Jinwu Wang, Xiaoqing Frank Liu, Buqing Cao, Mingdong Tang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the first computer aided software analysis tool based on HOOMT (High Order Object-oriented Modeling Technique), which provides facilities for structured object-oriented analysis by integrating structured analysis and object-oriented analysis. It contains a graphical user interface for HOOMT-based modeling, supports modeling information management, and provides functionalities for developing three component sub-models in HOOMT: High Order Object Model (HOOM), Hierarchical Object Information Flow Model (HOIFM), and Hierarchical State Transition Model (HSTM). It supports structured decomposition of high-order objects, processes, and states. We describe its system architecture and implementation in this paper. © 2013 IEEE.

Argumentation Theory In Health Care, Luca Longo, Bridget Kane, Lucy Hederman

Books/Book Chapters

Argumentation theory (AT) has been gaining momentum in the health care arena thanks to its intuitive and modular way of aggregating clinical evidence and taking rational decisions. The basic principles of argumentation theory are described and demonstrated in the breast cancer recurrence problem. It is shown how to represent available clinical evidence in arguments, how to define defeat relations among them and how to create a formal argumentation framework. Argumentation semantics are then applied over the built framework to compute arguments justification status. It is demonstrated how this process can enhance the clinician decision-making process. A encouraging predictive capacity is …

Siguria E Internet Protokol Ipv4 Vs Ipv6, Imran Junuzi

Theses and Dissertations

Me zhvillimin e shpejtë të teknologjisë dhe përhapëjen e shpejtë të internetit, Internet Protocol versionin 4 ishte teknologji themelore që e bën të mundur që të lidhen paisjet tona në internet. Kurdo që një pajisje të hyn në internet, dhe dergon të dhëna nga një kompjuter në tjetrin me anë të internetit, një pako të dhënave duhet të transferohen në të gjithë rrjetin që përmban adresat IP të dyja pajisjet. Pa IP adres kompjuterët nuk do të jenë në gjendje të komunikojnë dhe të dërgojm të dhëna me njëri-tjetrin. IPv6 është rishikimi i gjashtë për Internet Protocol dhe pasardhës i …

Advanced Combinatorial Testing Algorithms And Applications, Linbin Yu

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Combinatorial testing (CT) has been shown to be a very effective testing strategy. Given a system with n parameters, t-way combinatorial testing, where t is typically much smaller than n, requires that all t-way combinations, i.e., all combinations involving any t parameter values, be covered by at least one test. This dissertation focuses on two important problems in combinatorial testing, including constrained test generation and combinatorial sequence testing.For the first problem, we focus on constraint handling during combinatorial test generation. Constraints over input parameters are restrictions that must be satisfied in order for a test to be valid. Constraints can …

Exploring Run-Time Reduction In Programming Codes Via Query Optimization And Caching, Venkata Krishna Suhas Nerella

Doctoral Dissertations

"Object oriented programming languages raised the level of abstraction by supporting the explicit first class query constructs in the programming codes. These query constructs allow programmers to express operations on collections more abstractly than relying on their realization in loops or through provided libraries. Join optimization techniques from the field of database technology support efficient realizations of such language constructs. However, the problem associated with the existing techniques such as query optimization in Java Query Language (JQL) incurs run time overhead. Besides the programming languages supporting first-class query constructs, the usage of annotations has also increased in the software engineering …

Fuel Efficient Computation In Passive Self-Assembly, Robert Schweller, Michael Sherman

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this paper we show that passive self-assembly in the context of the tile self-assembly model is capable of performing fuel efficient, universal computation. The tile self-assembly model is a premiere model of self-assembly in which particles are modeled by four-sided squares with glue types assigned to each tile edge. The assembly process is driven by positive and negative force interactions between glue types, allowing for tile assemblies floating in the plane to combine and break apart over time. We refer to this type of assembly model as passive in that the constituent parts remain unchanged throughout the assembly process …

Pcv: Predicting Contact Volume For Reliable And Efficient Data Transfers In Opportunistic Networks, Shiraz Qayyum, Mehrab Shahriar, Mohan Kumar, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Exploiting opportunistic contacts between mobile devices to enable deployment of real applications through reliable and efficient data transfers poses a significant research challenge. Indeed, accurate prediction of contact volume, defined as the maximum amount of data transferable during a contact, can improve performance of deployments. However, existing schemes for estimating contact volume that make use of preconceived patterns or contact time distributions may not be applicable in uncertain environments. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme called PCV that predicts contact volume in soft real-time to enable efficient and reliable data transfers in opportunistic networks. An Android Application that …

Improving Adaptation Rules Quality Using Genetic Programming, Makram Soui, Asma Abdelbaki, Marouane Kessentini, Khaled Ghedira

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Personalized Information System (PIS) aims to provide tailored services to users in various contexts. The aim of such system is to help users find relevant content easier and faster. To achieve such behavior, the system needs a user model providing information about users, e.g., about their interests, skills, background and custom information while ensuring their adaptation to the needs and preferences of each user. This system is able to learn about the preferences of individual users and to tailor the content, interface, and behavior to the user preferences. In fact, the diversity of contexts and the proliferation of profiles make …

Using Power-Law Properties Of Social Groups For Cloud Defense And Community Detection, Justin L. Rice

Doctoral Dissertations

The power-law distribution can be used to describe various aspects of social group behavior. For mussels, sociobiological research has shown that the Lévy walk best describes their self-organizing movement strategy. A mussel's step length is drawn from a power-law distribution, and its direction is drawn from a uniform distribution. In the area of social networks, theories such as preferential attachment seek to explain why the degree distribution tends to be scale-free. The aim of this dissertation is to glean insight from these works to help solve problems in two domains: cloud computing systems and community detection.

Privacy and security are …

‘What’S In The Niddk Cdr?’—Public Query Tools For The Niddk Central Data Repository, Huaqin Pan, Mary-Anne Ardini, Vesselina Bakalov, Michael Delatte, Paul Eggers, Laxminarayana Ganapathi, Craig R. Hollingsworth, Joshua Levy, Sheping Li, Joseph Pratt, Norma Pugh, Ying Qin, Rebekah Rasooly, Helen Ray, Jean E. Richardson, Amanda Flynn Riley, Susan M. Rogers, Sylvia Tan, Charles F. Turner, Stacie White, Philip C. Cooley

Publications and Research

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Disease (NIDDK) Central Data Repository (CDR) is a web-enabled resource available to researchers and the general public. The CDR warehouses clinical data and study documentation from NIDDK funded research, including such landmark studies as The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT, 1983–93) and the Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications (EDIC, 1994–present) follow-up study which has been ongoing for more than 20 years. The CDR also houses data from over 7 million biospecimens representing 2 million subjects. To help users explore the vast amount of data stored in the NIDDK CDR, we developed …

Consequence Based Procedure For Description Logics With Self Restriction, Cong Wang, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a consequence based classification procedure for the description logics with self restriction constructor. Due to the difficulty of constructing a concept inclusion model for self restriction, we use a different proof by showing that all the completion rules can simulate all the corresponding ordered resolution inferences.

Assessing The Role Of User Computer Self-Efficacy, Cybersecurity Countermeasures Awareness, And Cybersecurity Skills Toward Computer Misuse Intention At Government Agencies, Min Suk Choi

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities are causing substantial financial losses for governments and organizations all over the world. Cybersecurity criminals are stealing more than one billion dollars from banks every year by exploiting vulnerabilities caused by bank users' computer misuse. Cybersecurity breaches are threatening the common welfare of citizens since more and more terrorists are using cyberterrorism to target critical infrastructures (e.g., transportation, telecommunications, power, nuclear plants, water supply, banking) to coerce the targeted government and its people to accomplish their political objectives. Cyberwar is another major concern that nations around the world are struggling to get ready to fight. It …

The Effectiveness Of Virtual Learning Tools For Millennial Generation Students In A Community College Criminal Justice Degree Program, Lawrence Snyder

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement and multiyear analysis of pretest/posttest scores in introductory criminal justice courses revealed there was a systemic decline in student engagement and achievement. Because of this analysis, a commercial virtual learning tool (CJI) that purported great success in improving student engagement and performance was identified and implemented on the college's course management application in the spring of 2010. CJI, a comprehensive learning tool that incorporated Web 2.0 activities, such as video, simulations, and study aids, was designed to improve student engagement and performance. The inclusion of Web 2.0 activities …

Online Deception Detection Using Bdi Agents, Richard Alan Merritts

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This research has two facets within separate research areas. The research area of Belief, Desire and Intention (BDI) agent capability development was extended. Deception detection research has been advanced with the development of automation using BDI agents. BDI agents performed tasks automatically and autonomously. This study used these characteristics to automate deception detection with limited intervention of human users. This was a useful research area resulting in a capability general enough to have practical application by private individuals, investigators, organizations and others. The need for this research is grounded in the fact that humans are not very effective at detecting …

On The Nonsymmetric Longer Queue Model: Joint Distribution, Asymptotic Properties, And Heavy Traffic Limits, Charles Knessl, Haishen Yao

Publications and Research

We consider two parallel queues, each with independent Poisson arrival rates, that are tended by a single server. The exponential server devotes all of its capacity to the longer of the queues. If both queues are of equal length, the server devotes of its capacity to the first queue and the remaining to the second. We obtain exact integral representations for the joint probability distribution of the number of customers in this two-node network. Then we evaluate this distribution in various asymptotic limits, such as large numbers of customers in either/both of the queues, light traffic where arrivals are infrequent, …