Computer Sciences Commons^™

K-Nearest Neighbor Classification Over Semantically Secure Encrypted Relational Data, Bharath K. Samanthula, Yousef Elmehdwi, Wei Jiang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Data Mining has wide applications in many areas such as banking, medicine, scientific research and among government agencies. Classification is one of the commonly used tasks in data mining applications. For the past decade, due to the rise of various privacy issues, many theoretical and practical solutions to the classification problem have been proposed under different security models. However, with the recent popularity of cloud computing, users now have the opportunity to outsource their data, in encrypted form, as well as the data mining tasks to the cloud. Since the data on the cloud is in encrypted form, existing privacy-preserving …

Multi-Party Encryption (Mpe): Secure Communications In Delay Tolerant Networks, Roy Cabaniss, Vimal Kumar, Sanjay Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Mobile ad hoc networks are a subset of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) composed of several mobile devices. These dynamic environments make conventional security algorithms unreliable; nodes located far apart from each other may not have access (available) to each other's public keys or have doubt on the validity of public-keys, making secure message exchange difficult. Furthermore, ad hoc networks are likely to be highly compromised and therefore may be untrusted. Other security methods, such as identity-based encryption and Kerberos, rely on requesting key data from a trusted third party, which can be unavailable or compromised in a DTN like environment. …

Micro-Policies: Formally Verified, Tag-Based Security Monitors, Arthur Azevedo De Amorim, Maxime Denes, Nick Giannarakis, Cătălin Hriţcu, Benjamin C. Pierce, Antal Spector-Zabusky, Andrew Tolmach

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent advances in hardware design have demonstrated mechanisms allowing a wide range of low-level security policies (or micro-policies) to be expressed using rules on metadata tags. We propose a methodology for defining and reasoning about such tag-based reference monitors in terms of a high-level “symbolic machine,” and we use this methodology to define and formally verify micro-policies for dynamic sealing, compartmentalization, control-flow integrity, and memory safety; in addition, we show how to use the tagging mechanism to protect its own integrity. For each micro-policy, we prove by refinement that the symbolic machine instantiated with the policy’s rules embodies a high-level …

Developing A Bilingual, Computer-Tailored, Hpv Vaccination Promotion Intervention Targeting Latino Parents, Angela Chia-Chen Chen, Ashish Amresh

Publications

In this paper we present an innovative, computer-tailored application aimed at increasing Latino parents' intention to vaccinate their adolescent children against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Latinas have the highest age-adjusted incidence rate for HPV-associated cervical cancer compared with their counterparts in other racial/ethnic groups. HPV vaccines offer hope against HPV-associated diseases. Because parental consent is required for children under age 18 to receive t h e HPV vaccination in most U. S. states, parents' attitudes and intention to have their children vaccinated are keys for promoting HPV …

Edukimi I Punonjësve Për Mbrojtje Nga Spyware – Rasti I Studimit Nëkompanitë E Sigurimit, Gentian Qorraj

Theses and Dissertations

Spyware është një softuer i instaluar në një sistem kompjuterik. Programet Spyware tentojnë të instalohen në kompjutëret e punonjësve për të monitoruar veprimet e tyre duke mbledhur informacione private të cilat janë në rëndësi për palen e tretë. Spyware është një kërcënim në rritje duke përfshire kompanitë në përgjithësi poashtu edhe mjedise tjera të punës.Spyware-i është një kategori e gjerë e softuerit me qëllim të keq. Ai është zhvilluar nga individët të cilët kanë krijuar këtë lloj programi me qëllim që të ndërpres ose të marrë kontrollin e pjesshëm të funksionit të kompjuterit në mesin e aktivitetetve tjera të dyshimta …

Analyzing The Social Media Footprint Of Street Gangs, Sanjaya Wijeratne, Derek Doran, Amit P. Sheth, Jack Dustin

Kno.e.sis Publications

Gangs utilize social media as a way to maintain threatening virtual presences, to communicate about their activities, and to intimidate others. Such usage has gained the attention of many justice service agencies that wish to create better crime prevention and judicial services. However, these agencies use analysis methods that are labor intensive and only lead to basic, qualitative data interpretations. This paper presents the architecture of a modern platform to discover the structure, function, and operation of gangs through the lens of social media. Preliminary analysis of social media posts shared in the greater Chicago, IL region demonstrate the platform’s …

The Importance Of A Pictorial Medical History In Assisting Medical Diagnosis Of Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities: A Telemedicine Approach, Grace Bonanno

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

When face-to-face physical medical exams are not possible, virtual physical exams, in the form of a pictorial medical exam/history, can be substituted, and telemedicine can be the means to deliver these virtual exams. The goal of this work was to determine if presence in the form of a visual and/or pictorial medical history can be of benefit to clinicians in the diagnosis of medical conditions of individuals with developmental disabilities (DDs) and/or intellectual disabilities (IDs), in particular those who cannot, because of their cognitive and/or physical disabilities, verbally relate their illness to a clinician. Virtual exams can also be useful …

A Mathematical Model For Two-Layer Networks With One-Way Dependency, Joseph Schulze

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

A mathematical model of dependence between two network layers, a dependent layer and an independent layer, is analyzed for its ability to capture cascading failures from one layer to another. A binary variable that captures whether or not a specific node is active is used to tie the two layers together. This methodology is applied to the interaction of the High Voltage Italian Electrical Transmission (HVIET) network and Italian high bandwidth internet network for research (GARR) network to test its viability and practicality. Vital nodes and node pairs in the HVIET network are identified using the model, and potential strategies …

Self-Organizing Neural Networks Integrating Domain Knowledge And Reinforcement Learning, Teck-Hou Teng, Ah-Hwee Tan, Jacek M. Zurada

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of domain knowledge in learning systems is expected to improve learning efficiency and reduce model complexity. However, due to the incompatibility with knowledge structure of the learning systems and real-time exploratory nature of reinforcement learning (RL), domain knowledge cannot be inserted directly. In this paper, we show how self-organizing neural networks designed for online and incremental adaptation can integrate domain knowledge and RL. Specifically, symbol-based domain knowledge is translated into numeric patterns before inserting into the self-organizing neural networks. To ensure effective use of domain knowledge, we present an analysis of how the inserted knowledge is used by …

Elblocker: Predicting Blocking Bugs With Ensemble Imbalance Learning, Xin Xia, David Lo, Emad Shihab, Xinyu Wang, Xiaohu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Context: Blocking bugs are bugs that prevent other bugs from being fixed. Previous studies show that blocking bugs take approximately two to three times longer to be fixed compared to non-blocking bugs. Objective: Thus, automatically predicting blocking bugs early on so that developers are aware of them, can help reduce the impact of or avoid blocking bugs. However, a major challenge when predicting blocking bugs is that only a small proportion of bugs are blocking bugs, i.e., there is an unequal distribution between blocking and non-blocking bugs. For example, in Eclipse and OpenOffice, only 2.8% and 3.0% bugs are blocking …

Formal Specification And Refinement Of The Navigation Tasks Of Autonomous Robots, Eman Rabiah

Theses

Autonomous robots are hybrid systems whose role in our daily life is becoming increasingly critical. They are tasked with various activities requiring reliability, safety, and correctness of their software-controlled behavior. Formal methods have been proved effective in addressing development issues associated with these software qualities. However, even though autonomous robot navigation is a primordial function, there is no research dealing with enhancing reliability of the navigation algorithms. Thus, our focus is to investigate this type of algorithms, and specifically path planning, a fundamental and critical functionality supporting autonomy. We formally address the issue of enhancing reliability of the widely-used A* …

Uav-Cloud: A Platform For Uav Resources And Services On The Cloud, Sara Yousif Mohamed Mahmoud

Theses

UAVs - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – have gained significant attention recently, due to the increasingly growing range of applications. However, developing collaborative UAV applications using traditional technologies in a tightly coupled design requires a great deal of development effort, time, and budget especially for heterogeneous UAVs. Moreover, monitoring and accessing UAV resources using traditional communication media suffer from several restrictions and limitations. This research aims to simplify the efforts, reduce the time, and lower the costs of developing collaborative applications for distributed heterogeneous UAVs. In addition, the research aims to provide ubiquitous UAV resources access. A platform is proposed for …

Pore Pressure Evolution And Fluid Flow During Visco-Elastic Single-Layer Buckle Folding, Andreas Eckert, X. Liu, P. Connolly

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Pore pressure and fluid flow during the deformational history of geologic structures are directly influenced by tectonic deformation events. In this contribution, 2D plane strain finite element analysis is used to study the influence of different permeability distributions on the pore pressure field and associated flow regimes during the evolution of visco-elastic single-layer buckle folds. The buckling-induced fluid flow regimes indicate that flow directions and, to a lesser degree, their magnitudes vary significantly throughout the deformation and as a function of the stratigraphic permeability distribution. The modelling results suggest that the volumetric strain and the permeability distribution significantly affect the …

Pediapp Finder: Creating A Pediatric Application Database, Sara Pro, Adrianne Leblanc, April Wasjutin, Robert Williams

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

It is estimated that of the 85% of Americans that own cell phones, over half of these cell phone owners use apps on their phone (Fox & Duggan, 2012; Purcell, 2011). According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2013), by 2015, 500 million mobile device users will be using mobile health, or “m-Health” apps. Healthcare professionals are increasingly adopting mobile technology as an innovative, cost-efficient, and timesaving tool that may promote patient wellness and disease prevention (Kumar, 2013; mHealth Bible, 2013). Although mobile technology is a natural fit to the field of occupational therapy, research demonstrates that few resources …

Determining Crustal Structure Beneath Seismic Stations Overlying A Low-Velocity Sedimentary Layer Using Receiver Functions, Youqiang Yu, Jianguo Song, Kelly H. Liu, Stephen S. Gao

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The receiver function (RF) technique has been widely applied to investigate crustal and mantle layered structures using P-to-S converted (Ps) phases from velocity discontinuities. However, the presence of low-velocity (relative to that of the bedrock) sediments can give rise to strong reverberations in the resulting RFs, frequently masking the Ps phases from crustal and mantle boundaries. Such reverberations are caused by P-to-S conversions and their multiples associated with the strong impedance contrast across the bottom of the low-velocity sedimentary layer. Here we propose and test an approach to effectively remove the near-surface reverberations and decipher the Ps phases associated with …

Using Unrestricted Mobile Sensors To Infer Tapped And Traced User Inputs, Trang Duyen Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

As of January 2014, 58% of Americans over the age of 18 own a smart phone. Of these smart phones, Android devices provide some security by requiring that third-party application developers declare to users which components and features their applications will access. However, many of the real-time environmental sensors on devices are exempt from this requirement. We evaluate the possibility of exploiting this freedom to discretely use these sensors and expand on previous work by developing an application that can use the gyroscope and accelerometer to interpret what the user has written, even of trace input is used. Trace input …

Visualization And Analysis Of Wikipedia Data Relating To Louisiana And Its Culture, Morgan Hargrove

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Kinetic Isotope Effect Of The ¹⁶O+³⁶O₂ And ¹⁸O+³²O₂ Isotope Exchange Reactions: Dominant Role Of Reactive Resonances Revealed By An Accurate Time-Dependent Quantum Wavepacket Study, Zhigang Sun, Dequan Yu, Wenbo Xie, Jiayi Hou, Richard Dawes, Hua Guo

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

The O + O₂ isotope exchange reactions play an important role in determining the oxygen isotopic composition of a number of trace gases in the atmosphere, and their temperature dependence and kinetic isotope effects (KIEs) provide important constraints on our understanding of the origin and mechanism of these and other unusual oxygen KIEs important in the atmosphere. This work reports a quantum dynamics study of the title reactions on the newly constructed Dawes-Lolur-Li-Jiang-Guo (DLLJG) potential energy surface (PES). The thermal reaction rate coefficients of both the 18O + 32O₂ and 16O + 36O₂ reactions obtained using the …

Compression Of Video Tracking And Bandwidth Balancing Routing In Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks, Yin Wang, Jianjun Yang, Ju Shen, Bryson Payne, Juan Guo, Kun Hua

Computer Science Faculty Publications

There has been a tremendous growth in multimedia applications over wireless networks. Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks(WMSNs) have become the premier choice in many research communities and industry. Many state-of-art applications, such as surveillance, traffic monitoring, and remote heath care are essentially video tracking and transmission in WMSNs. The transmission speed is constrained by the big file size of video data and fixed bandwidth allocation in constant routing paths. In this paper, we present a CamShift based algorithm to compress the tracking of videos. Then we propose a bandwidth balancing strategy in which each sensor node is able to dynamically select …

Optimal "Big Data" Aggregation Systems - From Theory To Practical Application, William J. Culhane Iv

Open Access Dissertations

The integration of computers into many facets of our lives has made the collection and storage of staggering amounts of data feasible. However, the data on its own is not so useful to us as the analysis and manipulation which allows manageable descriptive information to be extracted. New tools to extract this information from ever growing repositories of data are required.

Some of these analyses can take the form of a two phase problem which is easily distributed to take advantage of available computing power. The first phase involves computing some descriptive partial result from some subset of the original …

Efficient Variations Of The Quality Threshold Clustering Algorithm, Frank Loforte Jr.

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Clustering gene expression data such that the diameters of the clusters formed are no greater than a specified threshold prompted the development of the Quality Threshold Clustering (QTC) algorithm. It iteratively forms clusters of non-increasing size until all points are clustered; the largest cluster is always selected first. The QTC algorithm applies in many other domains that require a similar quality guarantee based on cluster diameter. The worst-case complexity of the original QTC algorithm is (n5). Since practical applications often involve large datasets, researchers called for more efficient versions of the QTC algorithm.

This dissertation aimed to develop …

Investigating Categorization Preferences For Online Dating Sites, Scott Morrissette

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine whether a three-category (3C) system for classifying profiles on online dating sites provides advantages over a two-category (2C) system as decision makers evaluate a long list of profiles. Two groups of single heterosexual or bisexual women ages 20 to 30 reviewed a list of 60 male profiles on simulated online dating sites to choose which profiled man they would most like to learn more about. One group (n = 53) evaluated the profiles using a 2C system; the other group (n = 56) used a 3C system. After making their choice, women …

A Dynamic Behavioral Biometric Approach To Authenticate Users Employing Their Fingers To Interact With Touchscreen Devices, Arturo Ponce

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of mobile devices has extended to all areas of human life and has changed the way people work and socialize. Mobile devices are susceptible to getting lost, stolen, or compromised. Several approaches have been adopted to protect the information stored on these devices. One of these approaches is user authentication. The two most popular methods of user authentication are knowledge based and token based methods but they present different kinds of problems.

Biometric authentication methods have emerged in recent years as a way to deal with these problems. They use an individual’s unique characteristics for identification and have …

An Information Privacy Examination Of The Practices Of Pharmaceutical Companies Regarding Use Of Information Collected Through Their Websites, Shonda Dellena Brown

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Consumers have begun to take a more proactive approach to their healthcare by accessing pharmaceutical companies Websites to obtain health and drug information, support groups, rebates, coupons, as well as free drug trials. In exchange for these benefits, companies require consumers to voluntarily disclose information. However, research has shown that consumers continue to be concerned about how their information is managed, used, and distributed by companies, especially if accessed via the Web. To date, there has been limited empirical research to examine the actual online practices of companies when it comes to privacy, especially those of pharmaceutical companies. Using Delphi …

An Empirical Development Of Critical Value Factors For System Quality And Information Quality In Business Intelligence Systems Implementations, Paul Dooley

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Business intelligence (BI) systems have been widely recognized as a leading technology for many years. However, despite the high priority and importance placed on BI, there has been a significant lack of BI system implementation (BISI) success. BI systems are not considered to be conventional information systems (IS) and often rely on the integration of a complex information infrastructure. Consequently, the degree of information quality (IQ) and system quality (SQ) have not met expectations for BISI success.

This study was designed to determine how an organization may gain benefits in the context of BISI by uncovering the antecedents and critical …

Investigating Roles Of Information Security Strategy, Roger V. Seeholzer

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

A fundamental understanding of the complexities comprising an information security strategy (ISS) in an organization is lacking. Most ISS implementations in government organizations equate anti-virus or installing a firewall to that of an ISS. While use of hardware and software forms a good defense; neither comprises the essence of an ISS. The ISS best integrates with business and information system strategies from the start, forming and shaping the direction of overall strategy synergistically within large government organizations. The researcher used grounded theory and investigated what a large government organization’s choices were with the differing roles an information security professional (ISP) …

Locating Potential Aspect Interference Using Clustering Analysis, Brian Todd Bennett

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Software design continues to evolve from the structured programming paradigm of the 1970s and 1980s and the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s. The functional decomposition design methodology used in these paradigms reduced the prominence of non-functional requirements, which resulted in scattered and tangled code to address non-functional elements. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) allowed the removal of crosscutting concerns scattered throughout class code into single modules known as aspects. Aspectization resulted in increased modularity in class code, but introduced new types of problems that did not exist in OOP. One such problem was aspect interference, in which aspects …

A Foundation For Cyber Experimentation, Evan Lawrence Stoner

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the variety of environments and tools available to computer scientists performing cyber experimentation, the community lacks a single cohesive platform that is capable of unifying these tools across environments and research domains. In pursuit of this unifying platform, we introduce a new framework that is agnostic to the underlying environment, tools, and domain. We show the effectiveness of this framework by (1) demonstrating how an example experiment can be described within the framework and what benefits this offers, (2) presenting a prototype implementation of the framework, and (3) offering a collection of approaches to automated experimentation that the framework …

Enabling Runtime Self-Coordination Of Reconfigurable Embedded Smart Cameras In Distributed Networks, Franck Ulrich Yonga Yonga

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Smart camera networks are real-time distributed embedded systems able to perform computer vision using multiple cameras. This new approach is a confluence of four major disciplines (computer vision, image sensors, embedded computing and sensor networks) and has been subject of intensive work in the past decades. The recent advances in computer vision and network communication, and the rapid growing in the field of high-performance computing, especially using reconfigurable devices, have enabled the design of more robust smart camera systems. Despite these advancements, the effectiveness of current networked vision systems (compared to their operating costs) is still disappointing; the main reason …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …