Computer Sciences Commons^™

Pathway Pioneer: A Web-Based Metabolic Network Layout Extension, Harsh Dosi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The number and complexity of genome-scale metabolic networks have seen a rapid growth in the past 10 years. Today, more than 450 genome-scale metabolic reconstructions of biological systems are characterized and existing models are extended. With the growing influence of these reconstructions on biomedical and biological research, the field has observed a shift from an inward focus on method development to an outward focus on application development.

Static state analysis of metabolic networks in textual format is too cumbersome and time consuming. In addition, visualization and arrangement of these networks to facilitate their analysis is an open research problem. A …

Exploring Computer Science: Coding Can Be Fun, Peter Brown, Travis Dalton, Tori Myers

Arthur Vining Davis High Impact Fellows Projects

The focus of this project is to adopt a course/curriculum that builds interest in computer science and appeals to high school students through a variety of programs and activities. One of our goals is to increase interest in computer science among high school students especially minority and female students. Students will learn how to use programming languages, utilize higher level problem solving and program robots using the skills they acquired. The course, Exploring Computer Science, gives students the opportunity to learn a variety of computer science topics and have fun doing it.

Humanity Hyper-Externalized, Josh Gloe

Honors Capstones

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

Dougan Award's Sponsor Named Recipient, Kim Hill

News and Events (Discontinued Series)

No abstract provided.

Virtual Pedigree: Genealogy Without Borders, Ryan Cheatham, Dr. William A. Barrett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Genealogists across the world face a unique and challenging problem. They attempt to sort through obscure historical data in order to find information about their ancestors, then they have to keep track of all the data they have found in an organized way. In today’s information age, viewing all this data should be simple and intuitive and provide easy access to research opportunities.

First Step Mental Health App, Joshua Martin, James Faraday, Mackenzie Lopez

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The goal of this project is to create a tool that provides students at Minnesota State University, Mankato with mental health information through a freely available smartphone application (App). Our approach uses a software engineering design process that focuses on who our customers are, what resources are available, and how we can best connect the two to improve student lives. We identified the stakeholders involved and worked with campus mental health professionals to help shape our App. While there is a broad range of mental health topics, we have focused on materials related to depression. The first process gives the …

The Security Of Simplified Data Encryption Standard, Brandon Barker

College of Arts and Sciences Presentations

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is the most widely used symmetric key cryptosystem in the commercial world. DES was published in 1975 by the National Bureau of Standards, and since then it and its variants have been commonly used. DES is utilized in many modern industries and products including the Blackberry, electronic financial transactions, and access cards to corporate offices. An efficient but secure cryptosystem is challenging to produce and even after it has been deemed “secure” new attacks and vulnerabilities are often discovered. By investigating the algebraic structure of a simplified version of DES we are able to analyze …

Increasing User Password Strength By Introducing Group Dynamics, Lee J. Hinkle, Arthur Weagle, Spencer Bean

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Password strength is an issue of growing concern.

Network Security: A Practical And Technical Approach, Logan Berg

Senior Seminars

No abstract provided.

Cs 156: Introduction Toartificial Intelligence Textbook Alternatives, Chris Tseng

Textbook Alternatives Project Posters 2014

Poster summarizing cost saving textbook alternatives for CS 156: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.

Cs 160: Software Engineering Textbook Alternatives, Chris Tseng

Textbook Alternatives Project Posters 2014

Poster summarizing cost saving textbook alternatives fo rCS 160: Software Engineering.

New Pod Error Expressions, Error Bounds, And Asymptotic Results For Reduced Order Model Of Parabolic Pdes, John R. Singler

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The derivations of existing error bounds for reduced order models of time varying partialdi erential equations (PDEs) constructed using proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) haverelied on bounding the error between the POD data and various POD projections of that data.Furthermore, the asymptotic behavior of the model reduction error bounds depends on theasymptotic behavior of the POD data approximation error bounds. We consider time varyingdata taking values in two di erent Hilbert spacesHandV, withVH, and prove exactexpressions for the POD data approximation errors considering four di erent POD projectionsand the two di erent Hilbert space error norms. Furthermore, the exact error expressions …

Applications Of Gamification: Overcoming A Digital Disconnect, Adrienne Carroll

Senior Seminars

The universally accepted definition of gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. A non-game context refers to any context with an expected use other than simple entertainment (Giannetto et al., 2013, p.197). Gamification is a relatively new term, coined in the early 2000's, which did not gain popular recognition until 2010. The application of gamification is far-reaching, with the potential to revolutionize traditional corporate and educational strategies. The key goal of gamification is user-engagement, which is a factor that many current approaches overlook. It aims to change not only the involvement of users, but to change …

Cloud Computing Risks And Risk Management, Anthony Hopkins

Senior Seminars

Cloud computing is an emerging technology that is becoming more and more popular every year. With the many benefits that the cloud provides it is hard for corporations not to integrate it into their business operations. With the increase usage in cloud computing substantial risks and concerns are beginning to surface. External data breaches, malicious insiders, outages, vendor lock-in, and insufficient due diligence are a couple of the major risks and concerns that need to be on the minds of the customer and the cloud service provider. The customer and the provider needs to know how to mitigate the risks …

Major Advancements In Personal Computing, Brandon Brooks

Senior Seminars

This research essay expounds on the history and the journey of the Personal Computer. You will read about some of the most important items that the author felt contributed to the advancement of the PC over the years. The dates of the information ranges from the late 1960s up until the last year or so. The author talks about hardware components and software components, but the bulk of the material in this paper explains the history of each major milestone and what contributed to making it better, or more useful than the last. Each sub-topic will bring us closer to …

Attribute Extraction For Web Page Clustering In Web People Searches, Joseph Park, Dr. David Embley

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The disambiguation of person names in web people searches is a long standing problem within the semantic search community. A query such as the name “Henry Eyring” would produce thousands of results with references to more than one entity with that same name. In order to mitigate this problem, person-related attributes such as birth dates are extracted and used to group pages that refer to the same entity. The level of confidence that the pages are correctly grouped together is thus directly dependent upon the level of confidence that the person-related attributes were correctly extracted and properly associated to the …

Sat-Driven Prime Factorization, Chris Dalton, Dr. Dan Ventura

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Prime factorization is the breaking down of a composite number into prime numbers that, when multiplied together, equal the number. There is not a known algorithm that accomplishes this task in sub-exponential time. For my ORCA project, I worked with Dr. Dan Ventura and sought to develop a polynomial-time prime factorization algorithm. The development of such an algorithm would have revolutionized computer security and oered new insight to even more di‑cult problems. I rst approached the task as a boolean constraint satisfaction problem, but after running out of ideas, I tried coming at it from a more number theoretic standpoint. …

Establishing The Theoretical Relationship Between Bayesian Inference And Dynamical Structure Functions For Network Reconstruction, Julius Adebayo, Dr. Sean Warnick

Journal of Undergraduate Research

A system-level understanding of the functioning behavior of a cell requires an accurate representation of the underlying networks of gene and protein interactions. Network reconstruction is an area of systems biology that attempts to reconstruct the network of regulatory interactions from available measurements using a mathematical framework. Developing a theoretical relationship between Bayesian inference methods and dynamical structure functions is an important first step in developing unique qualitative processes that correctly infer network structures [1], [3].

Making Systems Users Accountable Through User Interface Design Features, Lee Wood, Dr. Anthony Vance

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this research was to determine how features of the user interface of an information system could be designed to increase users’ perceptions of accountability within the system, and thereby decrease levels of unauthorized access. One of the most persistent problems of information security is the threat of malicious insiders, or members of an organization who misuse access to information resources. The Verizon 2010 Data Breach Investigations Report disclosed that 48 percent of data breaches were attributable to unauthorized access by organizational insiders (Verizon, 2010). This means that nearly half of data breaches come not from compromised systems, …

Learning Two-Input Linear And Nonlinear Analog Functions With A Simple Chemical System, Peter Banda, Christof Teuscher

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The current biochemical information processing systems behave in a predetermined manner because all features are defined during the design phase. To make such unconventional computing systems reusable and programmable for biomedical applications, adaptation, learning, and self-modification baaed on external stimuli would be highly desirable. However, so far, it haa been too challenging to implement these in real or simulated chemistries. In this paper we extend the chemical perceptron, a model previously proposed by the authors, to function as an analog instead of a binary system. The new analog asymmetric signal perceptron learns through feedback and supports MichaelisMenten kinetics. The results …

Ensemble Methods For Historical Machine-Printed Document Recognition, William B. Lund

Theses and Dissertations

The usefulness of digitized documents is directly related to the quality of the extracted text. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has reached a point where well-formatted and clean machine- printed documents are easily recognizable by current commercial OCR products; however, older or degraded machine-printed documents present problems to OCR engines resulting in word error rates (WER) that severely limit either automated or manual use of the extracted text. Major archives of historical machine-printed documents are being assembled around the globe, requiring an accurate transcription of the text for the automated creation of descriptive metadata, full-text searching, and information extraction. Given document …

The Promises And Challenges Of Innovating Through Big Data And Analytics In Healthcare, Donald E. Wynn, Renée M. E. Pratt

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

In this article, we present the promises and challenges of big data and analytics (BD&A) in healthcare, informed by our observations of and interviews with healthcare providers in the US and European Union (EU). We then provide a set of recommendations for capitalizing on the extraordinary innovation opportunities available through big data.

Emotion Capture: Emotion Mimicry Using Facial Motion Capture, Thomas Emmauel Haley-Hermiz

Open Access Theses

This study explored the application of facial motion capture to Autism Spectrum Disorder therapy. The FaceShift technology was utilized in a behavior change intervention for children with ASD. The intervention focused on using facial expressions to display emotions.

The results of the study exhibit that all students involved achieved a higher percent in both facial expressions attempted and successfully demonstrated in intervention over baseline. However, this increase was not maintained in generalization. Without a successful generalization the intervention would not be recommended in its current framework. Recommendations for further research are provided.

Writing Self-Testing Java Classes With Selftest, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

This document provides a tutorial introduction to Java annotations called SelfTest. The SelfTest annotations allow one to annotate Java classes with test data, and the SelfTest annotation processor generates executable JUnit test classes from annotated Java classes by translating test cases to executable JUnit tests. The SelfTest annotations not only automate unit testing of Java classes significantly but also provides a step toward writing self-testing Java classes by embedding test data in source code for both compile and runtime processing.

[Sabbatical Report], Huanjing Wang

Sabbatical Reports

My sabbatical leave was conducted during Spring semester 2014. The leave was successful because it strengthened my research in data mining and software engineering domains and resulted four full-paper publications in peer-reviewed international conferences and one journal paper (to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal). The purpose of my sabbatical was to complete two main projects: (1) Investigate the stability and defect prediction model performance of feature selection techniques together on real-world software metrics data and (2) Design a novel, robust, and efficient metric selection method for imbalanced data.

Technological, Organizational, And Environmental Factors Affecting The Adoption Of Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (Erp) Systems, John Njenga Kinuthia

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences between organizations that adopted Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (Cloud ERP) systems and organizations that did not adopt Cloud ERP systems based on the Technological, Organizational, and Environmental (TOE) factors. Relevant technological factors were identified as relative advantage of Cloud ERP systems, compatibility of Cloud ERP systems, and security concern of Cloud ERP system environment. Organizational factors included top management support, organizational readiness, size of the organization, centralization, and formalization. External environment factors were identified as competitive pressure and vendor support.

A survey was developed using constructs from existing studies of …

Mapcores 2013-2014 Assessment Report, Kristen Nairn, Pamela L. Bacon, Jim Crumley, Yu Zhang

MapCores Faculty Publications

This is a report showing the assessment results for the MapCores (MAthematics, Physics, COmputer science REsearch Scholars) program at the College of Saint Benedict. Started in 2009, MapCores is a cohort-based program designed to increase women's interest and achievement in mathematics, physics, computer science and engineering. The report was submitted for the National Science Foundation grant number 0965705.

Section Abstracts: Computer Science

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Computer Science Section for the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 13-15, 2014, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia

Pose Detection And Control Of Multiple Unmanned Underwater Vehicles Using Optical Feedback, Firat Eren, Shachak Pe'eri, Yuri Rzhanov, May-Win Thein, Barbaros Celikkol

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

This paper proposes pose detection and control algorithms in order to control the relative pose between two Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) using optical feedback. The leader UUV is configured to have a light source at its crest which acts as a guiding beacon for the follower UUV which has a detector array at its bow. Pose detection algorithms are developed based on a classifier, such as the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), and chosen image parameters. An archive look-up table is constructed for varying combinations of 5-degree-of-freedom (DOF) motion (i.e., translation along all three coordinate axes as well as pitch and …

Rëndesia E Bi Sistemeve Në Institucionet E Kosovës, Elena Hajredini

Theses and Dissertations

Kjo temë ka për qëllim të përshkruaj rëndësinë e BI sistemeve në insitucionet e Kosovës duke marrë në konsideratë të mirat që mund të fitojnë insitucionet kosovare duke shfrytëzuar këtë teknologji për ndërveprim ndërmjet tyre, gjendjen aktuale dhe parashikimet për të ardhmen në bazë të rritjes së trendit të shfrytëzimit të BI sistemeve dhe në bazë të rezultateve ose përfitimeve nga shfyrtëzimi i tyre në të ardhmen. Thelbi i këtij hulumtimi është që të prezantoj përfitimet e insitucioneve nëse e shfrytëzojnë një vegël si Business Intelligence për ndërveprim në mes veti duke u bazuar në informacionet e centralizuara. Po ashtu …