Computer Sciences Commons^™

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Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

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Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

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Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

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Conflict-Aware Real-Time Routing For Industrial Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks, Chengjie Wu, Dolvara Gunatilaka, Mo Sha, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Process industries are adopting wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSANs) as the communication infrastructure. WirelessHART is an open industrial standard for WSANs that have seen world-wide deployments. Real-time scheduling and delay analysis have been studied for WSAN extensively. End-to-end delay in WSANs highly depends on routing, which is still open problem. This paper presents the first real-time routing design for WSAN. We first discuss end-to-end delays of WSANs, then present our real-time routing design. We have implemented and experimented our routing designs on a wireless testbed of 69 nodes. Both experimental results and simulations show that our routing design can improve the …

Maximizing Network Lifetime Of Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks Under Graph Routing, Chengjie Wu, Dolvara Gunatilaka, Abusayeed Saifullah, Mo Sha, Paras Tiwari, Chenyang Lu, Yixin Chen

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Process industries are adopting wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSANs) as the communication infrastructure. The dynamics of industrial environments and stringent reliability requirements necessitate high degrees of fault tolerance in routing. WirelessHART is an open industrial standard for WSANs that have seen world-wide deployments. WirelessHART employs graph routing schemes to achieve network reliability through multiple paths. Since many industrial devices operate on batteries in harsh environments where changing batteries are prohibitively labor-intensive, WSANs need to achieve long network lifetime. To meet industrial demand for long-term reliable communication, this paper studies the problem of maximizing network lifetime for WSANs under graph routing. We …

A Context-Aware Model To Improve Usability Of Information Display On Smartphone Apps For Emerging Users, Felix F. Ntawanga, Andre P. Calitz, Lynette Barnard

The African Journal of Information Systems

Smartphones have become a reliable technology for accessing information and services in rural communities. Mobile applications, such as social media and news apps running on smartphones, are no longer exclusively utilised by users in developed communities. Mobile applications are accessed in highly contextualised environments. This paper discusses a context-aware model that was implemented to improve the usability of information presented on smartphone applications for emerging users. User evaluation was conducted within a remote area in South Africa with a sample of users, most of whom did not have prior experience in using computer applications. The results of the evaluation present …

Reformulation Strategies Of Repeated References In The Context Of Robot Perception Errors In Situated Dialogue, Niels Schütte, John D. Kelleher, Brian Mac Namee

Conference papers

We performed an experiment in which human participants interacted through a natural language dialogue interface with a simulated robot to fulfil a series of object manipulation tasks. We introduced errors into the robot’s perception, and observed the resulting problems in the dialogues and their resolutions. We then introduced different methods for the user to request information about the robot’s understanding of the environment. In this work, we describe the effects that the robot’s perceptual errors and the information request options available to the participant had on the reformulation of the referring expressions the participants used when resolving a unsuccessful reference.

Performance Tuning In Answer Set Programming, Matt Buddenhagen, Yuliya Lierler

Computer Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Performance analysis and tuning are well established software engineering processes in the realm of imperative programming. This work is a step towards establishing the standards of performance analysis in the realm of answer set programming -- a prominent constraint programming paradigm. We present and study the roles of human tuning and automatic configuration tools in this process. The case study takes place in the realm of a real-world answer set programming application that required several hundred lines of code. Experimental results suggest that human-tuning of the logic programming encoding and automatic tuning of the answer set solver are orthogonal (complementary) …

Differential Effects Of Munc18s On Multiple Degranulation-Relevant Trans-Snare Complexes, Hao Xu, Matthew Grant Arnold, Sushmitha Vijay Kumar

Faculty Publications

Mast cell exocytosis, which includes compound degranulation and vesicle-associated piecemeal degranulation, requires multiple Q- and R- SNAREs. It is not clear how these SNAREs pair to form functional trans-SNARE complexes and how these trans-SNARE complexes are selectively regulated for fusion. Here we undertake a comprehensive examination of the capacity of two Q-SNARE subcomplexes (syntaxin3/SNAP-23 and syntaxin4/SNAP-23) to form fusogenic trans-SNARE complexes with each of the four granule-borne R-SNAREs (VAMP2, 3, 7, 8). We report the identification of at least six distinct trans-SNARE complexes under enhanced tethering conditions: i) VAMP2/syntaxin3/SNAP-23, ii) VAMP2/syntaxin4/SNAP-23, iii) VAMP3/syntaxin3/SNAP-23, iv) VAMP3/syntaxin4/SNAP-23, v) VAMP8/syntaxin3/SNAP-23, and vi) VAMP8/syntaxin4/SNAP-23. …

Adaptive Automation Design And Implementation, Jason M. Bindewald

Theses and Dissertations

Automations allow us to reduce the need for humans in certain environments, such as auto-pilot features on unmanned aerial vehicles. However, some situations still require human intervention. Adaptive automation is a research field that enables computer systems to adjust the amount of automation by taking over tasks from or giving tasks back to the user. This research develops processes and insights for adaptive automation designers to take theoretical adaptive automation ideas and develop them into real-world adaptive automation system. These allow developers to design better automation systems that recognize the limits of computers systems, enabling better designs for systems in …

A System-Level Throughput Model For Quantum Key Distribution, Robert C. Cernera

Theses and Dissertations

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is an innovative technology which exploits the laws of quantum mechanics to generate and distribute shared secret keying material. QKD systems generate and distribute key by progressing through a number of distinct phases, typically in a serial manner. The purpose of this research is to identify these phases, their relationships to each other, as well as their relationship to time, memory space, computational requirements, and hardware resources. A mathematical model is developed which enables the study of critical system parameters, identifies and demonstrates potential bottlenecks that affect the overall key generation rate of serial implementations, and …

How To Make Business Processes "Socialize"?, Zakaria Maamar, Noura Faci, Ejub Kajan, Sherif Sakr, Mohamed Boukhebouze, Ahmed Barnawi

All Works

This paper presents an approach that builds upon social computing principles to make business processes; "socialize". First the approach identifies the main components of a business process that are task, person, and; machine. A task is a work unit that forms with other tasks a business process and that a person and/ormachine; execute. Afterwards the approach enriches a business process with details captured from the (execution; and social) relations that connect tasks together, persons together, and machines together. While execution; relations are widely reported in the literature, there is a growing interest in studying the role of social; relations in …

An Analysis Of Conus Based Deployment Of Pseudolites For Positioning, Navigation And Timing (Pnt) Systems, Justin H. Deifel, Albert J. Pena

Theses and Dissertations

The Global Positioning System (GPS) developed and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) provides a way for users to determine position, navigation and timing (PNT). GPS provides an extraordinary capability that has become instrumental in all aspects of our day to day lives. As new technologies such as automated vehicles and unmanned aircraft continue to be developed, a reliable back up to GPS is required to ensure the PNT data generated in these systems is accurate. This research studies a potential architecture for deploying a nationwide network of ground based pseudolites that would act to supplement and backup …

Authentication Via Multiple Associated Devices, Jean-Baptiste Subils

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a practical method of authentication utilizing multiple devices. The factors contributing to the practicality of the method are: the utilization of devices already commonly possessed by users and the amenability to being implemented on a wide variety of devices. The term “device” refers to anything able to perform cryptographic operations, store data, and communicate with another such device.

In the method presented herein, multiple devices need to be associated with a single user to provide this user an identity in the system. A public key infrastructure is used to provide this identity. Each of the devices associated …

Information Technology & Sustainability: An Empirical Study Of The Value Of The Building Automation System, Daphne Marie Simmonds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the environmental and economic effects of green information technology (IT). Green IT describes two sets of IT innovations: one set includes innovations that are implemented to reduce the environmental impact of IT services in organizations; and the other IT to reduce the environmental impact of other organizational processes. The two sets respond to the call for more environmentally friendly or “greener” organizational processes.

I developed and tested a preliminary model. The model applied the resource based view (RBV) of the firm (Wernerfelt 1984) the stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984) and included four constructs: (1) BAS implementation; environmental …

Spatiotemporal Sensing And Informatics For Complex Systems Monitoring, Fault Identification And Root Cause Diagnostics, Gang Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to cope with system complexity and dynamic environments, modern industries are investing in a variety of sensor networks and data acquisition systems to increase information visibility. Multi-sensor systems bring the proliferation of high-dimensional functional Big Data that capture rich information on the evolving dynamics of natural and engineered processes. With spatially and temporally dense data readily available, there is an urgent need to develop advanced methodologies and associated tools that will enable and assist (i) the handling of the big data communicated by the contemporary complex systems, (ii) the extraction and identification of pertinent knowledge about the environmental …

Study Of Bandwidth And Cpu Utilization Of Video Streaming In Named Data Network Over Wi-Fi Direct, Samiuddin Mohammed

Theses and Dissertations

This study is a comparison of resource utilization of video streaming between IP based and NDN based architectures. Named Data Network (NDN) is future Internet architecture which aims to replace today's host-centric IP network with data as first class entity. This simple shift has far-reaching implications for how we develop and use networks and applications. Content distribution applications consume a large amount of bandwidth of today's Internet. NDN supports content distribution intrinsically with its caching functionality. In this study, we develop a testbed using Wi-Fi Direct and measure the bandwidth usage and CPU utilization of NDN-based video streaming application and …

A Comparison Of A Multistate Inpatient Ehr Database To The Hcup Nationwide Inpatient Sample., Jonathan P Deshazo, Mark A Hoffman

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

BACKGROUND: The growing availability of electronic health records (EHRs) in the US could provide researchers with a more detailed and clinically relevant alternative to using claims-based data.

METHODS: In this study we compared a very large EHR database (Health Facts©) to a well-established population estimate (Nationwide Inpatient Sample). Weighted comparisons were made using t-value and relative difference over diagnoses and procedures for the year 2010.

RESULTS: The two databases have a similar distribution pattern across all data elements, with 24 of 50 data elements being statistically similar between the two data sources. In general, differences that were found are consistent …

On The Feasibility Of Leveraging Smartphone Accelerometers To Detect Explosion Events, Srinivas Chakravarthi Thandu, Pratool Bharti, Levi Malott, Sriram Chellappan

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of leveraging the accelerometer in modern smartphones to detect the triggering of explosion events. By emplacing a static smartphone and a state-of-the-art seismometer in the vicinity of real explosion blasts (conducted at an Explosives Research Lab in a university setting), and comparing their detected event readings, we make several insightful contributions. We find that readings from events in the smartphone and the seismometer are highly correlated in the temporal and frequency domain. We then demonstrate the feasibility of designing an algorithm in the smartphone (executing as an app) to detect the triggering of …

Information Diffusion, Facebook Clusters, And The Simplicial Model Of Social Aggregation: A Computational Simulation Of Simplicial Diffusers For Community Health Interventions, Kerk Kee, Lisa Sparks, Daniele C. Struppa, Mirco A. Manucci, Alberto Damiano

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

By integrating the simplicial model of social aggregation with existing research on opinion leadership and diffusion networks, this article introduces the constructs of simplicial diffusers (mathematically defined as nodes embedded in simplexes; a simplex is a socially bonded cluster) and simplicial diffusing sets (mathematically defined as minimal covers of a simplicial complex; a simplicial complex is a social aggregation in which socially bonded clusters are embedded) to propose a strategic approach for information diffusion of cancer screenings as a health intervention on Facebook for community cancer prevention and control. This approach is novel in its incorporation of interpersonally bonded clusters, …

A Risk Assessment Framework For Wireless Sensor Networks In A Sensor Cloud, Amartya Sen, Sanjay Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Sensor cloud framework is composed of various heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (WSNs) integrated with the cloud platform. Integration with the cloud platform, in addition to the inherent resource and power constrained nature of the sensor nodes makes these WSNs belonging to a sensor cloud susceptible to security attacks. As such there is a need to formulate effective and efficient security measures for such an environment. But in doing so, requires an understanding of the likelihood and impact of different attacks feasible on the WSNs. In this paper, we propose a risk assessment framework for the WSNs belonging to a …

Enhancing Wifi-Based Localization With Visual Clues, Han Xu, Zheng Yang, Zimu Zhou, Longfei Shangguan, Yunhao Liu, Ke Yi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Indoor localization is of great importance to a wide range of applications in the era of mobile computing. Current mainstream solutions rely on Received Signal Strength (RSS) of wireless signals as fingerprints to distinguish and infer locations. However, those methods suffer from fingerprint ambiguity that roots in multipath fading and temporal dynamics of wireless signals. Though pioneer efforts have resorted to motion-assisted or peer-assisted localization, they neither work in real time nor work without the help of peer users, which introduces extra costs and constraints, and thus degrades their practicality. To get over these limitations, we propose Argus, an image-assisted …

Network Coding And Coding-Aware Scheduling For Multicast In Wireless Networks, Maggie Xiaoyan Cheng, Quanmin Ye, Xiaochun Cheng, Robert F. Erbacher

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Network coding is a network layer technique to 06mprove transmission efficiency. Coding packets is especially ben07ficial in a wireless environment where the dem08nd for radio spectrum is high. However, to fully rea09ize the benefits of network coding two challenging iss10es that must be addressed are: (1) Guaranteeing sep11ration of coded packets at the destination, and (2) Mit12gating the extra coding/decoding delay. If the destination has13all the needed packets to decode a coded pac14et, then separation failure can be averted. If the sch15duling algorithm considers the arrival time of coding pai16s, then the extra delay can be mitigated. In this paper, …

Dynamics Of Thermally Induced Ice Streams Simulated With A Higher-Order Flow Model, Douglas Brinkerhoff, Jesse Johnson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We use a new discretization technique to solve the higher-order thermomechanically coupled equations of glacier evolution. We find that under radially symmetric continuum equations, small perturbations in symmetry due to the discretization are sufficient to produce the initiation of non-symmetric thermomechanical instabilities which we interpret as ice streams, in good agreement with previous studies which have indicated a similar instability. We find that the inclusion of membrane stresses regularizes the size of predicted streams, eliminating the ill-posedness evident in previous investigations of ice stream generation through thermomechanical instability. Ice streams exhibit strongly irregular periodicity which is influenced by neighboring ice …

Sinr-Based Connectivity Enhancement In Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Maggie Xiaoyan Cheng, Yi Ling, Brian M. Sadler

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We address the issue of wireless ad hoc network connectivity by using a tail model that is derived from the signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR). The SINR model more accurately describes link connectivity than the traditionally used disk model in the real-world. We first assess the network connectivity by measuring the conductance of the network and find the bottleneck location of the network, and then deploy a relay node to improve the connectivity at the bottleneck. A partition algorithm is proposed to address the first problem, and an optimization problem is proposed to address the relay node deployment …

Are We Making A Better World With Information And Communication Technology For Development (Ict4d) Research? Findings From The Field And Theory Building, Sajda Qureshi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Publications

As Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) continue to penetrate people’s lives the world over, there is a sense that understanding the role of ICTs in the context of development needs to be conceptualized theoretically while making empirical contributions that add to what we know (Avgerou, 2008; Davison, 2012; Sein and Harindranath, 2004; Sahay and Walsham, 1995). Other scholars have pointed to the importance of this research for the field of Information Systems (ISs) in offering broader contributions. Avgerou (2008) suggests that in the era of globalization such research offers contributions in ISs beyond “organizational organizational and national boundaries and support …

Optimization Of Communication For Distributed Graph-Parallel Computing Systems, Yue Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

A number of distributed graph-parallel computing systems have been proposed to address the needs of solving complex and large-scale graph algorithms. Distributed Graphlab and PowerGraph are two such frameworks, which demonstrate excellent performance with high scalability and fault tolerance. However, unnecessary and excessive communications among computing nodes in these frameworks not only reduce the network efficiency but may also cause a decrease in runtime performance. In this work, we first conduct an evaluation work for representative distributed graph-parallel processing. Secondly, we propose a mechanism to identify and eliminate excessive communications for PageRank-like algorithms during synchronization phase of the distributed graph-parallel …

Three Tier Mapreduce, Harshit Gupta

Student Theses and Dissertations

MapReduce is a programming model that is widely espoused in the industry and viewed as one of the best options for data-intensive operations. Map and Reduce functions are two core building blocks of the model. MapReduce libraries execute these functions in parallel and distributed mode on massive clusters to achieve high throughput. This thesis extends the same methodology by leveraging Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) powered nodes in the cluster to enhance the performance to next level. The system works at three different levels i.e. Cluster, CPU and GPU and aims to exploit all the available resources. The main focus of …

A Cloud Storage System Based On Parallelized Cp-Abe, Shuwen Liang

Student Theses and Dissertations

As Cloud computing has been rapidly adopted in recent years, more and more industrial companies and individuals share their sensitive data in Clouds. To ensure the data confidentiality, the best way is to store encrypted data in Clouds only. Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) is one of the public key cryptography systems that works based on users’ attributes. Only the person whose attributes can satisfy the access policy can access the data. In this thesis, we first discuss and summarize features of different ABE schemes from mainstream papers. Then, we analyze the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) toolkits and its performance. In order …

Secure And Verifiable Data Storage And Utilization In Cloud Computing, Jiawei Yuan

Theses and Dissertations

The continuous development of cloud computing is increasingly attracting individuals and organizations to outsource their data to public cloud platforms. While enjoying advantages brought by cloud computing, cloud users also raise their concerns on data security with cloud computing in terms of integrity and privacy. This is because cloud users lose physical control of data and services after outsourcing them to cloud. In this dissertation, we identify security challenges with data services in cloud computing, and present a set of novel solutions that address security issues with data services outsourced to cloud. Specifically, we focus on ensuring the integrity and …