Computer Sciences Commons^™

Improving Law Enforcement Daily Deployment Through Machine Learning-Informed Optimization Under Uncertainty, Jonathan David Chase, Duc Thien Nguyen, Haiyang Sun, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Urban law enforcement agencies are under great pressure to respond to emergency incidents effectively while operating within restricted budgets. Minutes saved on emergency response times can save lives and catch criminals, and a responsive police force can deter crime and bring peace of mind to citizens. To efficiently minimize the response times of a law enforcement agency operating in a dense urban environment with limited manpower, we consider in this paper the problem of optimizing the spatial and temporal deployment of law enforcement agents to predefined patrol regions in a real-world scenario informed by machine learning. To this end, we …

Data-Driven Decision-Support For Process Improvement Through Predictions Of Bed Occupancy Rates, Kar Way Tan, Qi You Ng, Francis Ngoc Hoang Long Nguyen, Sean Shao Wei Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Managing bed utilization and ensuring the supply keeps up with the demand is not an easy task in a large public hospital with many medical disciplines. The bed managers who makes decisions on reserving and allocating beds centrally require high-dimensional data from several hospital information systems supporting emergency room, specialized clinics and bed management processes. In this work, we put together an automated process for cleaning, consolidating and integrating data from several hospital information systems to several reports required by the bed managers to analyse the bed occupancy situations across more than thirty medical disciplines. To prevent bed crunch situations …

Learning Multiple Maps From Conditional Ordinal Triplets, Duy Dung Le, Hady Wirawan Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Ordinal embedding seeks a low-dimensional representation of objects based on relative comparisons of their similarities. This low-dimensional representation lends itself to visualization on a Euclidean map. Classical assumptions admit only one valid aspect of similarity. However, there are increasing scenarios involving ordinal comparisons that inherently reflect multiple aspects of similarity, which would be better represented by multiple maps. We formulate this problem as conditional ordinal embedding, which learns a distinct low-dimensional representation conditioned on each aspect, yet allows collaboration across aspects via a shared representation. Our geometric approach is novel in its use of a shared spherical representation and multiple …

Sar: Learning Cross-Language Api Mappings With Little Knowledge, Duy Quoc Nghi Bui, Yijun Yu, Lingxiao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To save effort, developers often translate programs from one programming language to another, instead of implementing it from scratch. Translating application program interfaces (APIs) used in one language to functionally equivalent ones available in another language is an important aspect of program translation. Existing approaches facilitate the translation by automatically identifying the API mappings across programming languages. However, these approaches still require large amount of parallel corpora, ranging from pairs of APIs or code fragments that are functionally equivalent, to similar code comments. To minimize the need of parallel corpora, this paper aims at an automated approach that can map …

Language And Robotics: Complex Sentence Understanding, Seng-Beng Ho, Zhaoxia Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing robotic systems can take actions based on natural language commands but they tend to be only simple commands. On the other hand, in the domain of Natural Language Processing (NLP), complex sentences are processed, but this NLP domain does not make close contact with robotics. The beginning of computer processing of natural language, when traced back to a system such as Winograd’s SHRUDLU, conceived in 1973, actually aimed to address the issues of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) of relatively complex sentences by a robotic system which in turn takes actions accordingly based on the natural language input. NLU, in …

Improving Urban Crowd Flow Prediction On Flexible Region Partition, Xu Wang, Zimu Zhou, Yi Zhao, Xinglin Zhang, Kai Xing, Fu Xiao, Zheng Yang, Yunhao Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accurate forecast of citywide crowd flows on flexible region partition benefits urban planning, traffic management, and public safety. Previous research either fails to capture the complex spatiotemporal dependencies of crowd flows or is restricted on grid region partition that loses semantic context. In this paper, we propose DeepFlowFlex, a graph-based model to jointly predict inflows and outflows for each region of arbitrary shape and size in a city. Analysis on cellular datasets covering 2.4 million users in China reveals dependencies and distinctive patterns of crowd flows in not only the conventional space and time domains, but also the speed domain, …

Simulated Annealing For The Multi-Vehicle Cyclic Inventory Routing Problem, Aldy Gunawan, Vincent F. Yu, Audrey Tedja Widjaja, Pieter Vansteenwegen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper studies the Multi-Vehicle Cyclic Inventory Routing Problem (MV-CIRP) as the extension of the Single-Vehicle CIRP (SV-CIRP). The objective is to minimize both distribution and inventory costs at the customers and to maximize the collected rewards simultaneously. The problem is treated as a single objective optimization problem. A subset of customers is selected for each vehicle including the quantity to be delivered to each customer. For each vehicle, a cyclic distribution plan is developed. We construct a mathematical programming model and propose a simulated annealing (SA) metaheuristic for solving both SV-CIRP and MV-CIRP. For SV-CIRP, experimental results on benchmark …

Definitions And Mathematical Models Of Single Vehicle Routing Problems With Profits, Pieter Vansteenwegen, Aldy Gunawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this chapter, single vehicle routing problems with profits are introduced anddefined. Three variants are considered: the profitable tour problem, the prizecollecting traveling salesperson problem, and the orienteering problem. The difference between these variants is the way in which the profit and the travel cost, mostlydistance or time, are modeled. Profit and travel cost can be modeled as (part of) theobjective or as a constraint. All three problems differ from the well-known travelingsalesperson problem, for which the only objective is to find the shortest route to visitall customers in a given set. In vehicle routing problems with profits, some customerswill …

Topic Enhanced Word Embedding For Toxic Content Detection In Q&A Sites, Do Yeon Kim, Xiaohang Li, Sheng Wang, Yunying Zhuo, Ka Wei, Roy Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Increasingly, users are adopting community question-and-answer (Q&A) sites to exchange information. Detecting and eliminating toxic and divisive content in these Q&A sites are paramount tasks to ensure a safe and constructive environment for the users. Insincere question, which is founded upon false premises, is one type of toxic content in Q&A sites. In this paper, we proposed a novel deep learning framework enhanced pre-trained word embeddings with topical information for insincere question classification. We evaluated our proposed framework on a large real-world dataset from Quora Q&A site and showed that the topically enhanced word embedding is able to achieve better …

Applications Of The Op, Pieter Vansteenwegen, Aldy Gunawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, we observe from literature that the VRP and OP, including their variants, have been used to model many different planning and scheduling problems from practice, such as the routing of technicians, athlete recruitment, or military applications. Recently, other practical applications, such as the tourist trip design problem, the mobile crowdsourcing problem, the smuggler search problem, the wildfire routing problem, and the integration of vehicle routing, inventory management, and customer selection problems, have been studied and use the OP as a basic model. In this chapter, various practical applications will be discussed in more detail. We will describe …

Towards Robust Resnet: A Small Step But A Giant Leap, Jingfeng Zhang, Bo Han, Laura Wynter, Bryan Kian Hsiang Low, Mohan Kankanhalli

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a simple yet principled approach to boosting the robustness of the residual network (ResNet) that is motivated by a dynamical systems perspective. Namely, a deep neural network can be interpreted using a partial differential equation, which naturally inspires us to characterize ResNet based on an explicit Euler method. This consequently allows us to exploit the step factor h in the Euler method to control the robustness of ResNet in both its training and generalization. In particular, we prove that a small step factor h can benefit its training and generalization robustness during backpropagation and forward propagation, respectively. …

Locating Vulnerabilities In Binaries Via Memory Layout Recovering, Haijun Wang, Xiaofei Xie, Shang-Wei Lin, Yun Lin, Yuekang Li, Shengchao Qin, Yang Liu, Ting Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Locating vulnerabilities is an important task for security auditing, exploit writing, and code hardening. However, it is challenging to locate vulnerabilities in binary code, because most program semantics (e.g., boundaries of an array) is missing after compilation. Without program semantics, it is difficult to determine whether a memory access exceeds its valid boundaries in binary code. In this work, we propose an approach to locate vulnerabilities based on memory layout recovery. First, we collect a set of passed executions and one failed execution. Then, for passed and failed executions, we restore their program semantics by recovering fine-grained memory layouts based …

Let Me In: Guidelines For The Successful Onboarding Of Newcomers To Open Source Projects, Igor Steinmacher, Christoph Treude, Marco Aurélio Gerosa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Many community-based open source software (OSS) projects depend on a continuous influx of newcomers for their survival and continuity, yet newcomers face many barriers to contributing to a project. We provide guidelines based on our previous work for both OSS communities and newcomers to OSS projects.

Bidding Mechanisms In Graph Games, Guy Avni, Thomas A. Henzinger, Dorde Zikelic

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In two-player games on graphs, the players move a token through a graph to produce a finite or infinite path, which determines the qualitative winner or quantitative payoff of the game. We study bidding games in which the players bid for the right to move the token. Several bidding rules were studied previously. In Richman bidding, in each round, the players simultaneously submit bids, and the higher bidder moves the token and pays the other player. Poorman bidding is similar except that the winner of the bidding pays the “bank” rather than the other player. Taxman bidding spans the spectrum …

Who Should Pay The Cost: A Game-Theoretic Model For Government Subsidized Investments To Improve National Cybersecurity, Xinrun Wang, Bo An, Hau Chan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Due to the recent cyber attacks, cybersecurity is becoming more critical in modern society. A single attack (e.g., WannaCry ransomware attack) can cause as much as $4 billion in damage. However, the cybersecurity investment by companies is far from satisfactory. Therefore, governments (e.g., in the UK) launch grants and subsidies to help companies to boost their cybersecurity to create a safer national cyber environment. The allocation problem is hard due to limited subsidies and the interdependence between self-interested companies and the presence of a strategic cyber attacker. To tackle the government's allocation problem, we introduce a Stackelberg game-theoretic model where …

Higher Education In The Ai Age, Yizhi Ma, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A perfect storm is hitting higher education. Decrease funding from traditional funding sources such as State Governments and transformative changes caused by artificial intelligence (AI) will revolutionize higher education (Siau 2018). Higher education needs to change and evolve quickly and continuously to prepare students for the upheavals in the job market caused by AI, machine learning, and automation. Further, continuous organizational and curriculum changes will be necessary for a higher education institution to stay relevant and to stay afloat. This qualitative research looks at higher education in the AI age. Stakeholders (i.e., administrators, faculty, students, industry recruiters) in higher education …

Industry 4.0: Challenges And Opportunities In Different Countries, Keng Siau, Yingrui Xi, Cui Zou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Along with the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), cyber-physical systems (CPSs), big data analytics, and cloud computing, Industry 4.0 — a subset of the fourth Industrial Revolution — has started to emerge and take root in many countries. Many expect that Industry 4.0 will be transformative and revolutionary for multiple industries and countries. Its impact will be much more significant than those of Industry 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Most studies and papers on Industry 4.0 have examined its impact on various industries, jobs, and organizations. In this article, we investigate the impact of Industry 4.0 on countries and groups …

Shared Dynamic Data Audit Supporting Anonymous User Revocation In Cloud Storage, Yinghui Zhang, Chen Chen, Dong Zheng, Rui Guo, Shengmin Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Collusion between revoked users and cloud service providers can pose a threat to the security of cloud storage data. If the original legitimate users cannot be revoked securely, it will lead to the leakage of shared data, thus affecting the security of cloud storage. In this paper, we combine vector commitment and anonymous revocation of group signature to propose an integrity audit scheme for cloud storage data that can support data modification. The anonymity of the group signature ensures that users’ privacy information will not be snooped by the server. The proposed scheme supports the dynamic operation of stored data …

Trustworthy Wireless Personal Area Networks, Travis W. Peters

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

In the Internet of Things (IoT), everyday objects are equipped with the ability to compute and communicate. These smart things have invaded the lives of everyday people, being constantly carried or worn on our bodies, and entering into our homes, our healthcare, and beyond. This has given rise to wireless networks of smart, connected, always-on, personal things that are constantly around us, and have unfettered access to our most personal data as well as all of the other devices that we own and encounter throughout our day. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that our personal devices and data …

Improving Optimization Of Convolutional Neural Networks Through Parameter Fine-Tuning, Nicholas C. Becherer, John M. Pecarina, Scott L. Nykl, Kenneth M. Hopkinson

Faculty Publications

In recent years, convolutional neural networks have achieved state-of-the-art performance in a number of computer vision problems such as image classification. Prior research has shown that a transfer learning technique known as parameter fine-tuning wherein a network is pre-trained on a different dataset can boost the performance of these networks. However, the topic of identifying the best source dataset and learning strategy for a given target domain is largely unexplored. Thus, this research presents and evaluates various transfer learning methods for fine-grained image classification as well as the effect on ensemble networks. The results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of parameter …

Managing Iot Data On Hyperledger Blockchain, Akhil David

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Blockchain is a rapidly evolving technology known for its security, immutability and decentralized nature. At its heart, it’s used for storing various kinds of data like transactions. But it is not limited to just the transactions or the cryptocurrency. It can also be used to store many other things like assets, IoT data or even multimedia data like songs, pictures, and videos.

The number of IoT devices being connected to the internet is increasing day by day. In fact, Garter (Analyst Firm) predicts there will be 20.4 Billion IoT devices by the end of 2020 [IOTb]. With the increase in …

Processj: The Jvmcsp Code Generator, Oswaldo Benjamin Cisneros Merino

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We as a society have achieved greatness because we work together. There is power in numbers. However, when it comes to programming we have not been able to achieve the same level of symbiosis. This is because concurrent programming has been stigmatized as an advance and ab- stract subject allegedly harder than sequential programming. Additionally, traditional approaches to solving concurrent problems using sequential programming become unnecessarily difficult be- cause most of what newcomers are taught when it comes to concurrent programming (e.g., message passing and threads), while being technically correct, is completely irrelevant to the problems at hand. Rather than …

Coarse-Grained, Fine-Grained, And Lock-Free Concurrency Approaches For Self-Balancing B-Tree, Edward R. Jorgensen Ii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines the concurrency approaches for a standard, unmodified B-Tree which is one of the more complex data structures. This includes the coarse grained, fine-grained locking, and the lock-free approaches. The basic industry standard coarse-grained approach is used as a base-line for comparison to the more advanced fine-grained and lock-free approaches. The fine-grained approach is explored and algorithms are presented for the fine-grained B-Tree insertion and deletion. The lock-free approach is addressed and an algorithm for a lock-free B- Tree insertion is provided. The issues associated with a lock-free deletion are discussed. Comparison trade-offs are presented and discussed. As …

Performance Comparison Of Message Queue Methods, Sanika Raje

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Message queues are queues of messages that facilitate communication between applications. A queue is a line of messages or events waiting to be handled in a sequential manner. A message queue is a queue of messages sent between applications. It includes a sequence of work objects that are waiting to be processed. For a distributed system to work, it needs to pass information between various machines. No single machine is responsible for the entire system, but all information is interrelated. Hence a major concern of distributed systems is this transfer of data. Which also proves to be one of the …

Investigating The Effects Of Social And Temporal Dynamics In Fitness Games On Children's Physical Activity, Ankita Samariya

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Obesity in children has more than doubled in the last four decades. A variety of fitness technologies such as activity trackers, exergames, and mobile applications are available to promote physical activity, but few are designed adequately to meet children's specific needs. In my initial research, I found that children prefer having social interaction, a narrative, and flexibility while interacting with such technologies. Other research has shown that persuasive displays encouraged adults towards physical activity. As a part of this work, a collection of mobile applications, collectively known as KidFit Suite were developed. These applications encourage children to be physically active …

Energy-Based Modelling For Dialogue State Tracking, Anh Duong Trinh, Robert J. Ross, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

The uncertainties of language and the complexity of dialogue contexts make accurate dialogue state tracking one of the more challenging aspects of dialogue processing. To improve state tracking quality, we argue that relationships between different aspects of dialogue state must be taken into account as they can often guide a more accurate interpretation process. To this end, we present an energy-based approach to dialogue state tracking as a structured classification task. The novelty of our approach lies in the use of an energy network on top of a deep learning architecture to explore more signal correlations between network variables including …

Estimating Error And Bias Of Offline Recommender System Evaluation Results, Mucun Tian

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Recommender systems are software applications deployed on the Internet to help people find useful items (e.g. movies, books, music, products) by providing recommendation lists. Before deploying recommender systems online, researchers and practitioners generally conduct offline evaluations to compare the accuracy of top- recommendation lists among candidate algorithms using users’ history consumption data. These offline evaluations typically use metrics and methodologies borrowed from machine learning and information retrieval and have several well-known biases that affect the validity of their results, including popularity bias and other biases arising from the missing-not-at-random nature of the data used. The existence of these biases is …

Suitability Of Finite State Automata To Model String Constraints In Probablistic Symbolic Execution, Andrew Harris

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Probabilistic Symbolic Execution (PSE) extends Symbolic Execution (SE), a path-sensitive static program analysis technique, by calculating the probabilities with which program paths are executed. PSE relies on the ability of the underlying symbolic models to accurately represent the execution paths of the program as the collection of input values following these paths. While researchers established PSE for numerical data types, PSE for complex data types such as strings is a novel area of research.

For string data types SE tools commonly utilize finite state automata to represent a symbolic string model. Thus, PSE inherits from SE automata-based symbolic string models …

Predicting The Complexity Of Locality Patterns In Loop Nests In C Scientific Programs, Nasser M. Alsaedi

Dissertations

On modern computer systems, the performance of an application depends on its locality. Most existing locality measurements performed by compiler static analysis mainly target analyzing regular array references in loop nests. Measurements based on compiler static analysis have limited applicability when the loop bounds are unknown at compile time, when the control flow is dynamic, or when index arrays or pointer operations are used. In addition, compiler static analysis cannot adapt to input change.

Training-based locality analysis predicts the data reuse change across program inputs to provide run-time information. This analysis quantifies the number of unique memory locations accessed between …

Static Malware Detection Using Deep Neural Networks On Portable Executables, Piyush Aniruddha Puranik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There are two main components of malware analysis. One is static malware analysis and the other is dynamic malware analysis. Static malware analysis involves examining the basic structure of the malware executable without executing it, while dynamic malware analysis relies on examining malware behavior after executing it in a controlled environment. Static malware analysis is typically done by modern anti-malware software by using signature-based analysis or heuristic-based analysis.

This thesis proposes the use of deep neural networks to learn features from a malware’s portable executable (PE) to minimize the occurrences of false positives when recognizing new malware. We use the …