Computer Sciences Commons^™

Accurate Local Estimation Of Geo-Coordinates For Social Media Posts, Derek Doran, Swapna S. Gokhale, Aldo Dagnino

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Associating geo-coordinates with the content of social media posts can enhance many existing applications and services and enable a host of new ones. Unfortunately, a majority of social media posts are not tagged with geo-coordinates. Even when location data is available, it may be inaccurate, very broad or sometimes fictitious. Contemporary location estimation approaches based on analyzing the content of these posts can identify only broad areas such as a city, which limits their usefulness. To address these shortcomings, this paper proposes a methodology to narrowly estimate the geo-coordinates of social media posts with high accuracy. The methodology relies solely …

Structure Preserving Large Imagery Reconstruction, Ju Shen, Jianjun Yang, Sami Taha Abu Sneineh, Bryson Payne, Markus Hitz

Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as image clustering, 3D scene reconstruction, and other big data applications. However, such tasks are not easy due to the fact the retrieved photos can have large variations in their view perspectives, resolutions, lighting, noises, and distortions. Furthermore, with the occlusion of unexpected objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image …

Theoretical And Experimental Investigation Of (E, 2e) Ionization Of Argon 3p In Asymmetric Kinematics At Intermediate Energy, Sadek Amami, Melike Ulu, Zehra Nur Ozer, Murat Yavuz, Suay Kazgoz, Mevlut Dogan, Oleg Zatsarinny, Klaus Bartschat, Don H. Madison

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The field of electron-impact ionization of atoms, or (e, 2e), has provided significant detailed information about the physics of collisions. For ionization of hydrogen and helium, essentially exact numerical methods have been developed which can correctly predict what will happen. For larger atoms, we do not have theories of comparable accuracy. Considerable attention has been given to ionization of inert gases and, of the inert gases, argon seems to be the most difficult target for theory. There have been several studies comparing experiment and perturbative theoretical approaches over the last few decades, and generally qualitative but not quantitative agreement is …

Using The Microsoft Kinect To Assess Human Bimanual Coordination, Joshua James Liddy

Open Access Theses

Optical marker-based systems are the gold-standard for capturing three-dimensional (3D) human kinematics. However, these systems have various drawbacks including time consuming marker placement, soft tissue movement artifact, and are prohibitively expensive and non-portable. The Microsoft Kinect is an inexpensive, portable, depth camera that can be used to capture 3D human movement kinematics. Numerous investigations have assessed the Kinect's ability to capture postural control and gait, but to date, no study has evaluated it's capabilities for measuring spatiotemporal coordination. In order to investigate human coordination and coordination stability with the Kinect, a well-studied bimanual coordination paradigm (Kelso, 1984, Kelso; Scholz, & …

Paxos Based Directory Updates For Geo-Replicated Cloud Storage, Srivathsava Rangarajan

Open Access Theses

Modern cloud data stores (e.g., Spanner, Cassandra) replicate data across geographically distributed data centers for availability, redundancy and optimized latencies.^ An important class of cloud data stores involves the use of directories to track the location of individual data objects. Directory-based datastores allow flexible data placement, and the ability to adapt placement in response to changing workload dynamics. However, a key challenge is maintaining and updating the directory state when replica placement changes.^ In this thesis, we present the design and implementation of a system to address the problem of correctly updating these directories. Our system is built around JPaxos, …

Tracking Dynamic Construction Objects ---A Key Node Modeling Approach Using Color-Depth Cameras, Chenxi Yuan

Open Access Theses

A construction site presents a dynamic scenario. Locations of multiple objects are continuously changing and a lot of objects enter and exit the site in high frequencies. Meanwhile a construction activity consists of a large amount of stochastic operations, many uncertainties occur when making decisions. Believing that detecting, locating and tracking dynamic construction objects in real time improve construction productivity and enhance construction safety, a large number of studies have applied a variety of sensing technologies to construction sites. Hybrid image-point cloud sensing technologies, such as color-depth cameras, have a great potential in achieving real time object recognition and tracking …

The Optimization Of Emergency Call Systems Using Simulation Modeling, Evar C. Jones

Open Access Theses

Using computer simulation modeling, this research assessed the effectiveness and response times when using a mobile safety system versus an emergency call box when reporting an emergency at Purdue University, West Lafayette's Engineering Mall area, attempting to answer the first question "What emergency call system is more effective: a mobile safety system or an emergency call box?" The second question asks "What emergency call system has a faster response time: a mobile safety system or an emergency call box?" A discrete event simulation model of the emergency call service is used. The outcome of the study was that the mobile …

Systems For Delivering Electric Vehicle Data Analytics, Vamshi Krishna Bolly

Open Access Theses

n the recent times, advances in scientific research related to electric vehicles led to generation of large amounts of data. This data is majorly logger data collected from various sensors in the vehicle. It is predominantly unstructured and non-relational in nature, also called Big Data. Analysis of such data needs a high performance information technology infrastructure that provides superior computational efficiency and storage capacity. It should be scalable to accommodate the growing data and ensure its security over a network. This research proposes an architecture built over Hadoop to effectively support distributed data management over a network for real-time data …

A Model-Based Approach To System-Of-Systems Engineering Via The Systems Modeling Language, Kevin Hughes Bonanne

Open Access Theses

In the field of Systems Engineering, a movement is underway to capture the aspects of a system in a centralized model format instead of various documents. This is the basis of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). In order to better formalize this change, the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) was developed to characterize an ontology for MBSE. Despite the growth of both MBSE practices and SysML tools, they have yet to be rigorously analyzed as to their applicability to the field of System-of-Systems (SoS). This thesis applies SysML to a methodology for System-of-Systems Engineering (SoSE) known as the Wave Model, which …

The Use Of Business Intelligence Techniques In Supply Chain Performance, Jue Gu

Open Access Theses

Who likes data? Businesses are always loyal data followers. Companies analyze various forms of data to maintain businesses and identify their current performance in different areas so they can find business opportunities to improve and obtain more market share in advance (Qrunfleh & Tarafdar, 2012). When Big Data comes to businesses, companies who can take advantage of data the best tend to regularly get more business and customers (Waller & Fawcett, 2013). Collecting, analyzing, and demonstrating data could be essential to a single business, a company's supply chain performance and its sustainability. As an intelligent data processing product in terms …

A Quantitative Framework Of Skill Evaluation Of It Workforce, O Hyun Hwang

Open Access Theses

Every employee has different abilities as well as experience, leading to different results in terms of skills and job performance. In order to improve employee IT skills, organizations should evaluate their employees' skills to understand the current levels of skills and knowledge and to figure out areas where skills are currently lacking.

This study used a different approach than other existing methods to evaluate the IT skills of employees. The research used quantitative empirical data that represents the work experience of employees based on their task history and job positions. The suggested method defines the relationship between IT skills and …

Automated Performance Attack Discovery In Distributed System Implementations, Hyojeong Lee

Open Access Dissertations

Security and performance are critical goals for distributed systems. The increased complexity in design, incomplete expertise of developers, and limited functionality of existing testing tools often result in implementations with vulnerabilities and make the debugging process difficult and costly. The deployed vulnerabilities are often exploited by adversaries preventing the system from achieving its design goals. We refer to attacks that slow down the performance of a system as performance attacks. In the past, finding performance attacks has been a painstaking manual process that involved an expert of the target implementation. Given the cost associated with each vulnerability that occurs in …

Reliable Data Processing Enabled By Program Analysis, Tao Bao

Open Access Dissertations

Errors pose a serious threat to the output validity of modern data processing, which is often performed by computer programs. In scientific computation, data are collected through instruments or sensors that may be exposed to rough environmental conditions, leading to errors. Furthermore, during the computation process data may not be precisely represented due to the limited precision of the underlying machine, leading to representation errors. Computational processing of these data may hence produce unreliable output results or even faulty conclusions. We call them reliability problems. ^ We consider the reliability problems that are caused by two kinds of errors. The …

El-Ifying Ontologies, David Carral, Cristina Feier, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Pascal Hitzler, Ian Horrocks

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The OWL 2 profiles are fragments of the ontology language OWL 2 for which standard reasoning tasks are feasible in polynomial time. Many OWL ontologies, however, contain a typically small number of out-of-profile axioms, which may have little or no influence on reasoning outcomes. We investigate techniques for rewriting axioms into the EL and RL profiles of OWL 2. We have tested our techniques on both classification and data reasoning tasks with encouraging results.

Yar Consulting Marketing Website And Extranet Site, John Suarez

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

This is a hybrid project. As a new Information Systems consultancy the need for a website to market to potential clients was evident. The decision to add an extranet site was made after specific needs for Ace Hardware were made evident to Yar’s founders. Ace Hardware Corporation is a cooperative with over 4,400 members in over 100 nations worldwide. Ace corporate rolled out a B2B pilot program in the fall of 2013 to help Ace independently owned retail stores learn how to sell to other businesses. One of YAR’s founders is currently working with Ace corporate as a program consultant …

Evaluation Of Ct Images Created Using A New Metal Artifact Reduction Reconstruction Algorithm For Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning, John Niemkiewicz, Andrew G. Palmiotti, Marc S. Miner, Lee E. Stunja, Jenelle Bergene

Department of Radiation Oncology

No abstract provided.

Unraveling The Digital Literacy Paradox: How Higher Education Fails At The Fourth Literacy., Meg Coffin Murray, Jorge Perez

Faculty Articles

Governments around the globe are recognizing the economic ramifications of a digitally literate citizenry and implementing systemic strategies to advance digital literacy. Awareness of the growing importance of digital literacy in today’s workplace coexists paradoxically with apparent foot-dragging on the part of many universities in assessment and amplification of these important competencies. This paper makes a case for digital literacy, presents models of the complex construct, and presents the results of a digital literacy assessment administered to students enrolled in a senior seminar course at a regional university in the United States. Reflection on the study results evoked our mantra …

Better Physical Activity Classification Using Smartphone Acceleration Sensor, Muhammad Arif, Mohsin Bilal, Ahmed Kattan, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Obesity is becoming one of the serious problems for the health of worldwide population. Social interactions on mobile phones and computers via internet through social e-networks are one of the major causes of lack of physical activities. For the health specialist, it is important to track the record of physical activities of the obese or overweight patients to supervise weight loss control. In this study, acceleration sensor present in the smartphone is used to monitor the physical activity of the user. Physical activities including Walking, Jogging, Sitting, Standing, Walking upstairs and Walking downstairs are classified. Time domain features are extracted …

Slice—N—Dice Algorithm Implementation In Jpf, Eric S. Noonan

Theses and Dissertations

This work deals with evaluating the effectiveness of a new verification algorithm called slice--n--dice. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of slice--n--dice, a vector clock POR was implemented to compare it against. The first paper contained in this work was published in ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes and discusses the implementation of the vector clock POR. The results of this paper show the vector clock POR performing better than the POR in Java Pathfinder by at least a factor of two. The second paper discusses the implementation of slice--n--dice and compares it against other verification techniques. The results show that …

Assessing The Fit Between Child Welfare Information Systems And Frontline Workers: Development Of A Task-Technology Fit Instrument, Kurt William Heisler

Health Services Research Dissertations

States and the federal government continue to invest heavily in child welfare information systems (CWIS) to improve caseworkers' performance, but the extent to which these systems meet caseworkers' needs is unclear. In the field of child welfare there are no reliable user-evaluation measures states can use to assess the degree to which a CWIS meets caseworkers' needs, and identify which specific features of the CWIS most need improvement. The study developed such a measure based on the task-technology fit (TTF) framework, which posits that users will evaluate the usefulness of a technology based on how well it meets their tasks …

A Framework For Web Object Self-Preservation, Charles L. Cartledge

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

We propose and develop a framework based on emergent behavior principles for the long-term preservation of digital data using the web infrastructure. We present the development of the framework called unsupervised small-world (USW) which is at the nexus of emergent behavior, graph theory, and digital preservation. The USW algorithm creates graph based structures on the Web used for preservation of web objects (WOs). Emergent behavior activities, based on Craig Reynolds’ “boids” concept, are used to preserve WOs without the need for a central archiving authority. Graph theory is extended by developing an algorithm that incrementally creates small-world graphs. Graph theory …

Computer Vision Aided Lip Movement Correction To Improve English Pronunciation, Shuang Wei

Open Access Theses

This paper explored the possibility of improving the pronunciation of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners by correcting their mouth-lip movement through visual feedback methods. As an EFL learner, I noticed that while learning pronunciation, for some words, the mouth-lip movement (e.g., opening size and duration) will affect the final pronunciation. A prototype system was developed to compare the standard pronunciation mouth shape movement with a user's pronunciation mouth shape movement and give visual feedback to users. Using computer vision technology, the mouth shape movement of standard pronunciation is extracted into moving contours. The user's mouth movement is video …

Exploring The Possibilities Of A Cellular Automata In Minecraft, Stephen Saunders

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Complex systems are not always generated by complex individuals. Simple, cell-like individuals can produce sophisticated outcomes. Structures implementing this nature are called cellular automaton. In this paper, we discuss the difficulties associated with the creation of one such automaton in a pre-existing environment, in this case the game MineCraft. A subsequent study of the behavior of this automaton is presented, using an objective information measure called set complexity.

Synchronicity: Pushing The Envelope Of Fine-Grained Localization With Distributed Mimo, Jie Xiong, Kyle Jamieson, Karthikeyan Sundaresan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Indoor localization of mobile devices and tags has received much attention recently, with encouraging fine-grained localization results available with enough line-of-sight coverage and enough hardware infrastructure. Synchronicity is a location system that aims to push the envelope of highly-accurate localization systems further in both dimensions, requiring less line-of-sight and less infrastructure. With Distributed MIMO network of wireless LAN access points (APs) as a starting point, we leverage the time synchronization that such a network affords to localize with time-difference-of-arrival information at the APs. We contribute novel super-resolution signal processing algorithms and reflection path elimination schemes, yielding superior results even in …

Ultimate Codes: Near-Optimal Mds Array Codes For Raid-6, Zhijie Huang, Hong Jiang, Chong Wang, Ke Zhou, Yuhong Zhao

School of Computing: Technical Reports

As modern storage systems have grown in size and complexity, RAID-6 is poised to replace RAID-5 as the dominant form of RAID architectures due to its ability to protect against double disk failures. Many excellent erasure codes specially designed for RAID-6 have emerged in recent years. However, all of them have limitations. In this paper, we present a class of near perfect erasure codes for RAID-6, called the Ultimate codes. These codes encode, update and decode either optimally or nearly optimally, regardless of what the code length is. This implies that utilizing these codes we can build highly efficient and …

S-Code: Lowest Density Mds Array Codes For Raid-6, Zhijie Huang, Hong Jiang, Ke Zhou, Yuhong Zhao, Chong Wang

School of Computing: Technical Reports

RAID, a storage architecture designed to exploit I/O parallelism and provide data reliability, has been deployed widely in computing systems as a storage building block. In large scale storage systems, in particular, RAID-6 is gradually replacing RAID-5 as the dominant form of disk arrays due to its capability of tolerating concurrent failures of any two disks. MDS (maximum distance separable) array codes are the most popular erasure codes that can be used for implementing RAID-6, since they enable optimal storage efficiency and efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, we propose a new class of MDS array codes called …

Verifying Monadic Second-Order Properties Of Graph Programs, Christopher M. Poskitt, Detlef Plump

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The core challenge in a Hoare- or Dijkstra-style proof system for graph programs is in defining a weakest liberal precondition construction with respect to a rule and a postcondition. Previous work addressing this has focused on assertion languages for first-order properties, which are unable to express important global properties of graphs such as acyclicity, connectedness, or existence of paths. In this paper, we extend the nested graph conditions of Habel, Pennemann, and Rensink to make them equivalently expressive to monadic second-order logic on graphs. We present a weakest liberal precondition construction for these assertions, and demonstrate its use in verifying …

User Daily Activity Pattern Learning: A Multi-Memory Modeling Approach, Shan Gao, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a multi-memory model, ADLART model, to discover the daily activity pattern of a sensor monitored user from his/her activities of daily living (ADL). The proposed model mimics the human multiple memory system which comprises a working memory, an episodic memory, and a semantic memory. Through encoding user's daily activities patterns in episodic memory and extracting the regularities of activity routines in semantic memory, the ADLART system is able to learn, recognize, compare, and retrieve daily ADL patterns of the user. Experiments are presented to show the performance of the ADLART model using different parameter settings …

Mobile Humanoid Agent With Mood Awareness For Elderly Care, Di Wang, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Human, especially elderly, require frequent attention, continuous companionship, and deep understanding from the others. To provide more specific and appropriate tender care to the elderly, knowing their affective states is a great advantage. Recent work on human emotion recognition shows promising results that the expressive emotion can be successfully captured through visual, audio, and keyboard or touchpad stroke pattern signals. Furthermore, human activities are shown to be accurately recognizable with context by nonintrusive sensors within or connected to the smartphones. In this paper, we propose a computational model to characterize the affective states of the elderly based on the recognizable …

Influences Of Influential Users: An Empirical Study Of Music Social Network, Jing Ren, Zhiyong Cheng, Jialie Shen, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Influential user can play a crucial role in online social networks. This paper documents an empirical study aiming at exploring the effects of influential users in the context of music social network. To achieve this goal, music diffusion graph is developed to model how information propagates over network. We also propose a heuristic method to measure users' influences. Using the real data from Last. fm, our empirical test demonstrates key effects of influential users and reveals limitations of existing influence identification/characterization schemes.