Computer Sciences Commons^™

Formal Specification Driven Development, Titus Fofung

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

This paper researches a quantitative metric of investigating Formal Specification-Driven Development (FSDD). Formal specification is needed at the beginning of the development process to prevent ambiguity and to improve the quality through corrections of errors found in the late phases of a traditional design process, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The research is conducted with capstone students using both the FSDD and the SDLC (traditional) models and a quantitative analysis is presented to evaluate the internal quality of the software. The tool used to measure the internal quality is the .NET 2013 analysis tool. Formal Specification-Driven Development (FSDD) is a …

Improving The Scalability And Usability Of The Public Information Officer Monitoring Application, Rohan D. Shah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis work addresses the limitations of a web application called the Public Information Officer Monitoring Application (PMA). This application helps Public Information Officers (PIOs) to gather, monitor, sort, store, and report social media data during a crisis event. Before this work, PMA was unable to handle large data sets and as a result, it had not been adequately tested with potential users of the application.

This thesis describes changes made to PMA to improve its ability to handle large data sets. After these changes were made, the application was then tested with target users. All test participants found the …

Detecting Experts On Quora: By Their Activity, Quality Of Answers, Linguistic Characteristics And Temporal Behaviors, Sumanth Kumar Reddy Nagarur Patil

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Question and answering sites are useful in sharing the knowledge by answering questions. It is a medium of sharing knowledge. Quora is the fastest emerging effective Q&A site, which is the best source of knowledge. Here you can ask a question, and get help in getting answers from people with firsthand experience, and blog about what you know. In this paper, we are investigating and identifying potential experts who are providing the best solutions to the questioner needs. We have considered several techniques in identifying user as an expert or non-expert. We have targeted the most followed topics in Quora …

Teaching Big Data By Three Levels Of Projects, Jianjun Yang, Ju Shen

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Big Data is a new topic and it is very hot nowadays. However, it is difficult to teach Big Data effectively by regular lecture. In this paper, we present a unique way to teach students Big Data by developing three levels of projects from easy to difficult. The three levels projects are initializing project, designing project, and comprehensive projects. They are developed to involve students in Big Data, train students' skills to analyze concrete problems of Big Data, and develop students' creative abilities and their abilities to solve real setting problems.

An Indistinguishability Model For Evaluating Diverse Classes Of Phishing Attacks And Quantifying Attack Efficacy, Narasimha Shashidhar, Lei Chen

Information Technology: Faculty Publications

Phishing is a growing threat to Internet users and causes billions of dollars in damage every year. While there are a number of research articles that study the tactics, techniques and procedures employed by phishers in the literature, in this paper, we present a theoretical yet practical model to study this menacing threat in a formal manner. While it is common folklore knowledge that a successful phishing attack entails creating messages that are indistinguishable from the natural, expected messages by the intended victim, this concept has not been formalized. Our model attempts to capture a phishing attack in terms of …

Discovery Over Application: A Case Study Of Misaligned Incentives In Software Engineering, Eric F. Rizzi

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we present evidence that there is an under-emphasis on the application of software systems in Software Engineering research, affecting the advancement of the field as a whole. Specifically, we perform a case-study on KLEE, a tool with over 1000 citations. We made improvements that consisted of fixing performance bugs and implementing optimizations that have become common practice, increasing KLEE's performance by 2-11X. To understand how techniques proposed in the literature would be affected by these improvements, we analyzed 100 papers that cited the original KLEE paper. From this analysis we found two things. First, it is clear …

Topic Modeling With Document Relative Similarities, Jianguang Du, Jing Jiang, Dandan Song, Lejian Liao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Topic modeling has been widely used in text mining. Previous topic models such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) are successful in learning hidden topics but they do not take into account metadata of documents. To tackle this problem, many augmented topic models have been proposed to jointly model text and metadata. But most existing models handle only categorical and numerical types of metadata. We identify another type of metadata that can be more natural to obtain in some scenarios. These are relative similarities among documents. In this paper, we propose a general model that links LDA with constraints derived from …

Distributed Caching Using The Htcondor Cached, Derek J. Weitzel, Brian Bockelman, David Swanson

Holland Computing Center: Faculty Publications

A batch processing job in a distributed system has three clear steps, stage-in, execution, and stage-out. As data sizes have increased, the stage-in time has also increased. In order to optimize stage-in time for shared inputs, we propose the CacheD, a caching mechanism for high throughput computing. Along with caching on worker nodes for rapid transfers, we also introduce a novel transfer method to distribute shared caches to multiple worker nodes utilizing BitTorrent. We show that our caching method significantly improves workflow completion times by minimizing stage-in time while being non-intrusive to the computational resources, allowing for opportunistic resources to …

To "Sketch-A-Scratch", A. Del Piccolo, S. Delle Monache, D. Rocchesso, S. Papetti, Davide Andrea Mauro

Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Faculty Research

A surface can be harsh and raspy, or smooth and silky, and everything in between. We are used to sense these features with our fingertips as well as with our eyes and ears: the exploration of a surface is a multisensory experience. Tools, too, are often employed in the interaction with surfaces, since they augment our manipulation capabilities. “Sketch-a-Scratch” is a tool for the multisensory exploration and sketching of surface textures. The user’s actions drive a physical sound model of real materials’ response to interactions such as scraping, rubbing or rolling. Moreover, different input signals can be converted into 2D …

Classifying Political Similarity Of Twitter Users, William K. Paustian

Computer Science Summer Fellows

The emergence of large scale social networks has led to research in approaches to classify similar users on a network. While many such approaches use data mining techniques, recent efforts have focused on measuring the similarity of users using structural properties of the underlying graph representing the network. In this paper, we identify the Twitter followers of the 2016 presidential candidates and classify them as Democrat, Republican or Bipartisan. We did this by designing a new approach to measuring structural similarity, PolRANK. PolRANK computes the similarity of a pair of users by accounting for both the number of candidates they …

Enabling Distributed Scientific Computing On The Campus, Derek J. Weitzel

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Campus research computing has evolved from many small decentralized resources, such as individual desktops, to fewer, larger centralized resources, such as clusters. This change has been necessitated by the increasing size of researcher's workloads, but this change has harmed the researcher's user experience. We propose to improve the user experience on the computational resources by creating an overlay cluster they are able to control. This overlay should transparently scale to national cyberinfrastructure as the user's demands increase.

We explore methods for improving the user experience when submitting jobs on a campus grid. To this end, we created a remote submission …

Novel Cryptographic Primitives And Protocols For Censorship Resistance, Kevin Patrick Dyer

Dissertations and Theses

Internet users rely on the availability of websites and digital services to engage in political discussions, report on newsworthy events in real-time, watch videos, etc. However, sometimes those who control networks, such as governments, censor certain websites, block specific applications or throttle encrypted traffic. Understandably, when users are faced with egregious censorship, where certain websites or applications are banned, they seek reliable and efficient means to circumvent such blocks. This tension is evident in countries such as a Iran and China, where the Internet censorship infrastructure is pervasive and continues to increase in scope and effectiveness.

An arms race is …

Compiling Collapsing Rules In Certain Constructor Systems, Sergio Antoy, Andy Jost

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The implementation of functional logic languages by means of graph rewriting requires a special handling of collapsing rules. Recent advances about the notion of a needed step in some constructor systems offer a new approach to this problem. We present two results: a transformation of a certain class of constructor-based rewrite systems that eliminates collapsing rules, and a rewrite-like relation that takes advantage of the absence of collapsing rules. We formally state and prove the correctness of these results. When used together, these results simplify without any loss of efficiency an implementation of graph rewriting and consequently of functional logic …

Automatic Fault Injection For Driver Robustness Testing, Kai Cong, Li Lei, Zhenkun Yang, Fei Xie

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Robustness testing is a crucial stage in the device driver development cycle. To accelerate driver robustness testing, effective fault scenarios need to be generated and injected without requiring much time and human effort. In this pa- per, we present a practical approach to automatic runtime generation and injection of fault scenarios for driver robust- ness testing. We identify target functions that can fail from runtime execution traces, generate effective fault scenarios on these target functions using a bounded trace-based it- erative strategy, and inject the generated fault scenarios at runtime to test driver robustness using a permutation-based injection mechanism. We …

Detection And Classification Of Malicious Javascript Via Attack Behavior Modelling, Yinxing Xue, Junjie Wang, Yang Liu, Hao Xiao, Jun Sun, Mahinthan Chandramohan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing malicious JavaScript (JS) detection tools and commercial anti-virus tools mostly use feature-based or signature-based approaches to detect JS malware. These tools are weak in resistance to obfuscation and JS malware variants, not mentioning about providing detailed information of attack behaviors. Such limitations root in the incapability of capturing attack behaviors in these approches. In this paper, we propose to use Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) to abstract and summarize common behaviors of malicious JS of the same attack type. We propose an automatic behavior learning framework, named JS∗ , to learn DFA from dynamic execution traces of JS malware, where …

Growing The Practice Of Vocal Sketching, S. Delle Monache, D. Rocchesso, S. Baldan, Davide Andrea Mauro Phd

Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Faculty Research

Sketch-thinking in the design domain is a complex representational activity, emerging from the reflective conversation with the sketch. A recent line of research on computational support for sound design has been focusing on the exploitation of voice, and especially vocal imitations, as effective representation strategy for the early stage of the design process. A set of introductory exercises on vocal sketching, to probe the communication effectiveness of vocal imitations for design purposes, are presented and discussed, in the scope of the research-through-design workshop activities of the EU project SkAT-VG.

Inferring Interaction Type In Gene Regulatory Networks Using Co-Expression Data, Pegah Khosravi, Vahid H. Gazestani, Leila Pirhaji, Brian Law, Mehdi Sadeghi, Bahram Goliaei, Gary D. Bader

Publications and Research

Background

Knowledge of interaction types in biological networks is important for understanding the functional organization of the cell. Currently information-based approaches are widely used for inferring gene regulatory interactions from genomics data, such as gene expression profiles; however, these approaches do not provide evidence about the regulation type (positive or negative sign) of the interaction.

Results

This paper describes a novel algorithm, “Signing of Regulatory Networks” (SIREN), which can infer the regulatory type of interactions in a known gene regulatory network (GRN) given corresponding genome-wide gene expression data. To assess our new approach, we applied it to three different benchmark …

On Multipath Link Characterization And Adaptation For Device-Free Human Detection, Zimu Zhou, Zheng Yang, Chenshu Wu, Yunhao Liu, Lionel M. Ni

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Business Intelligence, Data And Analytics, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Data can be used to predict outcomes but quality data is essential

Analytics For Business, Consumers And Social Insights, Bhavish Sood

Library Events

The speaker shared with us on best practice, future outlook and opportunities of analytical applications. The speaker has a strong research interest on how business applications and business intelligence software are being consumed on smartphones and media tablets.

Why Linear (And Piecewise Linear) Models Often Successfully Describe Complex Non-Linear Economic And Financial Phenomena: A Fuzzy-Based Explanation, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva, Songsak Sriboonchitta

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Economic and financial phenomena are highly complex and non-linear. However, surprisingly, in many cases, these phenomena are accurately described by linear models -- or, sometimes, by piecewise linear ones. In this paper, we show that fuzzy techniques can explain the unexpected efficiency of linear and piecewise linear models: namely, we show that a natural fuzzy-based precisiation of imprecise ("fuzzy") expert knowledge often leads to linear and piecewise linear models.

We also discuss which expert-motivated nonlinear models should be used to get a more accurate description of economic and financial phenomena.

Scalable Euclidean Embedding For Big Data, Zohreh S. Alavi, Sagar Sharma, Lu Zhou, Keke Chen

Kno.e.sis Publications

Euclidean embedding algorithms transform data defined in an arbitrary metric space to the Euclidean space, which is critical to many visualization techniques. At big-data scale, these algorithms need to be scalable to massive dataparallel infrastructures. Designing such scalable algorithms and understanding the factors affecting the algorithms are important research problems for visually analyzing big data. We propose a framework that extends the existing Euclidean embedding algorithms to scalable ones. Specifically, it decomposes an existing algorithm into naturally parallel components and non-parallelizable components. Then, data parallel implementations such as MapReduce and data reduction techniques are applied to the two categories of …

Informing And Performing: A Study Comparingadaptive Learning To Traditional Learning, Meg Coffin Murray, Jorge Perez

Faculty Articles

Technology has transformed education, perhaps most evidently in course delivery options. However, compelling questions remain about how technology impacts learning. Adaptive learning tools are technology-based artifacts that interact with learners and vary presentation based upon that interaction. This study examines completion rates and exercise scores for students assigned adaptive learning exercises and compares them to completion rates and quiz scores for students assigned objective-type quizzes in a university digital literacy course. Current research explores the hypothesis that adapting instruction to an individual’s learning style results in better learning outcomes. Computer technology has long been seen as an answer to the …

An Apache Hadoop Framework For Large-Scale Peptide Identification, Harinivesh Donepudi

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Peptide identification is an essential step in protein identification, and Peptide Spectrum Match (PSM) data set is huge, which is a time consuming process to work on a single machine. In a typical run of the peptide identification method, PSMs are positioned by a cross correlation, a statistical score, or a likelihood that the match between the trial and hypothetical is correct and unique. This process takes a long time to execute, and there is a demand for an increase in performance to handle large peptide data sets. Development of distributed frameworks are needed to reduce the processing time, but …

Interdisciplinary Modeling For Water-Related Issues Graduate Course, Laurel Saito, Alexander Fernald, Timothy Link

All ECSTATIC Materials

The science and management of aquatic ecosystems is inherently interdisciplinary, with issues associated with hydrology, atmospheric science, water quality, geochemistry, sociology, economics, environmental science, and ecology. Addressing water resources issues in any one discipline invariably involves effects that concern other disciplines, and attempts to address one issue often have consequences that exacerbate existing issues or concerns, or create new ones (Jørgensen et al. 1992; Lackey et al. 1975; Straskraba 1994) due to the strongly interactive nature of key processes (Christensen et al. 1996). Thus, research and management of aquatic ecosystems must be interdisciplinary to be most effective, but such truly …

Evaluating A Potential Commercial Tool For Healthcare Application For People With Dementia, Tanvi Banerjee, Pramod Anantharam, William L. Romine, Larry Wayne Lawhorne

Kno.e.sis Publications

The widespread use of smartphones and sensors has made physiology, environment, and public health notifications amenable to continuous monitoring. Personalized digital health and patient empowerment can become a reality only if the complex multisensory and multimodal data is processed within the patient context, converting relevant medical knowledge into actionable information for better and timely decisions. We apply these principles in the healthcare domain of dementia. Specifically, in this study we validate one of our sensor platforms to ascertain whether it will be suitable for detecting physiological changes that may help us detect changes in people with dementia. This study shows …

Implementimi I Sherbimeve Te Kualitetit (Qos) Ne Ndermarrjet E Vogla Dhe Te Mesme, Kushtrim Berisha

Theses and Dissertations

Në ndërmarrjet e vogla apo të mesme shpesh bie nevoja që kualiteti i shërbimeve të jetë pikë kritike për shumë arsye si p.sh. Ofrimi i shërbimeve online për konsumatorin në kohë reale dhe efikasitet të lartë, si dhe parandalime të vonesave të mundshme në rrjetë për arsye të kapacitetit të bandwidth-it apo resurseve teknike.

Si fillim nevoja për shërbime të kualitetit është shfaqur në voice (telephony) në vitin 1994 nga organizata për standardizime të teknologjisë informative ITU [1]. Më vonë shërbimet e kualiteti u bënë të nevojshme edhe në shërbime dhe servise të tjera siç janë: response time, loss, crosstalk …

Intrusion Detection System Of Industrial Control Networks Using Network Telemetry, Stanislav Ponomarev

Doctoral Dissertations

Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are designed, implemented, and deployed in most major spheres of production, business, and entertainment. ICSs are commonly split into two subsystems - Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems - to achieve high safety, allow engineers to observe states of an ICS, and perform various configuration updates. Before wide adoption of the Internet, ICSs used "air-gap" security measures, where the ICS network was isolated from other networks, including the Internet, by a physical disconnect [1]. This level of security allowed ICS protocol designers to concentrate on the availability and safety of …

Mwp-Bert: Numeracy-Augmented Pre-Training For Math Word Problem Solving, Zhenwen Liang, Jipeng Zhang, Lei Wang, Wei Qin, Yunshi Lan, Jie Shao, Xiangliang Zhang

Student Publications

Math word problem (MWP) solving faces a dilemma in number representation learning. In order to avoid the number representation issue and reduce the search space of feasible solutions, existing works striving for MWP solving usually replace real numbers with symbolic placeholders to focus on logic reasoning. However, different from common symbolic reasoning tasks like program synthesis and knowledge graph reasoning, MWP solving has extra requirements in numerical reasoning. In other words, instead of the number value itself, it is the reusable numerical property that matters more in numerical reasoning. Therefore, we argue that injecting numerical properties into symbolic placeholders with …

Tourism Portal, Venkata Rao Daggubati, Yu-Chuan Wang, Lokesh Koneru

All Capstone Projects

In the flexibility of the uses the interface has been developed a graphics concept in mind, associated through a browses interface. The GUI’S at the top level have been categorized as 1. Administrative user interface 2. The operational or generic user interface.

The administrative user interface concentrates on the consistent information that is practically, part of the organizational activities and which needs proper authentication for the data collection. The interfaces help the administrations with all the transactional states like Data insertion, Data deletion and Date updation along with the extensive data search capabilities. The operational or generic user interface helps …