Computer Sciences Commons^™

Clustering Models For Topic Analysis In Graduate Discussion Forums, Mallika Gokarn Nitin, Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Discussion forums provide the base content for creating a knowledge repository. It contains discussion threads related to key course topics that are debated by the students. In order to better understand the student learning experience, the instructor needs to analyse these discussion threads. This paper proposes the use of clustering models and interactive visualizations to conduct a qualitative analysis of graduate discussion forums. Our goal is to identify the sub-topics and topic evolutions in the discussion forums by applying text mining techniques. Our approach generates insights into the topic analysis in the forums and discovers the students’ cognitive understanding within …

Digitalization In Practice: The Fifth Discipline Advantage, Siu Loon Hoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide advice to organizations on how to become successful in the digital age. The paper revisits Peter Senge's (1990) notion of the learning organization and discusses the relevance of systems thinking and the other four disciplines, namely, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning in the context of the current digitalization megatrend. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on content analysis of essays from international organizations, strategy experts and management scholars, and insights gained from the author's consulting experience. A comparative case study from the health and social sector is also …

The Dynamic Impacts Of Online Healthcare Community On Physician Altruism: A Hidden Markov Model, Kai Luo, Qiu-Hong Wang, Hock Hai Teo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Physician altruism is not only a key foundation of modern medical professionalism, but also a critical component in the theoretical health economics study. There is considerable interest in understanding the impacts of contemporary healthcare technology on physician altruism. In this paper, we investigate the dynamic influence of multiple incentive mechanisms developed by an online healthcare community (OHC) on physician altruism. We model physician altruism as the degree of tendency to benefit the patients at the cost of oneself and focus on the incentive mechanisms that give physicians social and economic returns. The dynamics of physician altruism is characterized via a …

Examining The Theoretical Mechanisms Underlying Health Information Exchange Impact On Healthcare Outcomes: A Physician Agency Perspective, Fang Zhou, Qiu-Hong Wang, Hock Hai Teo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Health information exchange (HIE) is presumed to reduce medical costs by facilitating information sharing across healthcare providers. Existing studies focused on different medical costs or one set of costs, and resulted in mixed findings. We examine the effects of patient access to HIE on two of the most important medical costs of a hospitalization episode - test costs and medication costs - through a natural experiment and the discharge data of a hospital. Besides the negative direct effect of access to HIT on tests costs, we also find its positive spillover effect on medication costs, such that more patients having …

Appmod: Helping Older Adults Manage Mobile Security With Online Social Help, Zhiyuan Wan, Lingfeng Bao, Debin Gao, Eran Toch, Xin Xia, Tamir Mendel, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The rapid adoption of Smartphone devices has caused increasing security and privacy risks and breaches. Catching up with ever-evolving contemporary smartphone technology challenges leads older adults (aged 50+) to reduce or to abandon their use of mobile technology. To tackle this problem, we present AppMoD, a community-based approach that allows delegation of security and privacy decisions a trusted social connection, such as a family member or a close friend. The trusted social connection can assist in the appropriate decision or make it on behalf of the user. We implement the approach as an Android app and describe the results of …

Smu Teaching Bank: Case Study Of A Multiyear Development Project Utilizing Student Resources, Alan Megargel, Terence P. C. Fan, Venky Shankararaman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A domain refers to a business sector such as banking, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing etc. For an IS student, it is imperative that the domain knowledge includes a comprehension and understanding of business processes, technology and data related to the chosen domain. For example, when learning the retail banking domain, an IS student must have an understanding of the transactions concerned with retail banking such as fund transfers and loan repayments. The student must also gain a strong foothold in transaction fulfilment processes, the various application services that are used, the data that is transferred, etc. Teaching domain knowledge is very …

Harmony Search Algorithm For Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows, Yun-Chia Liang, Vanny Minanda, Aldy Gunawan, Angela Hsiang-Ling Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a combinatorial problem where a certain set of nodes must be visited within a certain amount of time as well as the vehicle’s capacity. There are numerous variants of VRP such as VRP with time windows, where each node has opening and closing time, therefore, the visiting time must be during that interval. Another variant takes time-dependent constraint into account. This variant fits real-world scenarios, where at different period of time, the speed on the road varies depending on the traffic congestion. In this study, three objectives – total traveling time, total traveling distance, and …

Compositional Verification Of Heap-Manipulating Programs Through Property-Guided Learning, Long H. Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Analyzing and verifying heap-manipulating programs automatically is challenging. A key for fighting the complexity is to develop compositional methods. For instance, many existing verifiers for heap-manipulating programs require user-provided specification for each function in the program in order to decompose the verification problem. The requirement, however, often hinders the users from applying such tools. To overcome the issue, we propose to automatically learn heap-related program invariants in a property-guided way for each function call. The invariants are learned based on the memory graphs observed during test execution and improved through memory graph mutation. We implemented a prototype of our approach …

Tracking Political Events In Social Media: A Case Study Of Hong Kong Protests, Haodi Qi, Hanyu Jiang, Wende Bu, Chengzi Zhang, Kyong Jin Shim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this study, we analyze social conversations about Hong Kong Protests, a series of events that were widely seen and debated in social media in 2019. Our system collects data from Twitter and Reddit using their APIs. It performs sentiment analysis, and the analysis results show changes in public sentiment around major events. Social network analysis reveals influencers - users that are in the center of social conversations. Our interactive Tableau dashboard allows the user to easily monitor live social conversations about Hong Kong protests.

A Mathematical Programming Model For The Green Mixed Fleet Vehicle Routing Problem With Realistic Energy Consumption And Partial Recharges, Vincent F. Yu, Panca Jodiwan, Aldy Gunawan, Audrey Tedja Widjaja

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A green mixed fleet vehicle routing with realistic energy consumption and partial recharges problem (GMFVRP-REC-PR) is addressed in this paper. This problem involves a fixed number of electric vehicles and internal combustion vehicles to serve a set of customers. The realistic energy consumption which depends on several variables is utilized to calculate the electricity consumption of an electric vehicle and fuel consumption of an internal combustion vehicle. Partial recharging policy is included into the problem to represent the real life scenario. The objective of this problem is to minimize the total travelled distance and the total emission produced by internal …

Improved Generalisation Bounds For Deep Learning Through L∞ Covering Numbers, Antoine Ledent, Yunwen Lei, Marius Kloft

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Using proof techniques involving L∞ covering numbers, we show generalisation error bounds for deep learning with two main improvements over the state of the art. First, our bounds have no explicit dependence on the number of classes except for logarithmic factors. This holds even when formulating the bounds in terms of the L 2 norm of the weight matrices, while previous bounds exhibit at least a square-root dependence on the number of classes in this case. Second, we adapt the Rademacher analysis of DNNs to incorporate weight sharing—a task of fundamental theoretical importance which was previously attempted only under very …

Strongly Leakage Resilient Authenticated Key Exchange, Revisited, Guomin Yang, Rongmao Chen, Yi Mu, Willy Susilo, Guo Fuchun, Jie Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE) protocols allow two (or multiple) parties to authenticate each other and agree on a common secret key, which is essential for establishing a secure communication channel over a public network. AKE protocols form a central component in many network security standards such as IPSec, TLS/SSL, and SSH. However, it has been demonstrated that many standardized AKE protocols are vulnerable to side-channel and key leakage attacks. In order to defend against such attacks, leakage resilient (LR-) AKE protocols have been proposed in the literature. Nevertheless, most of the existing LR-AKE protocols only focused on the resistance to …

A Unified Variance-Reduced Accelerated Gradient Method For Convex Optimization, Guanghui Lan, Zhize Li, Yi Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a novel randomized incremental gradient algorithm, namely, VAriance-Reduced Accelerated Gradient (Varag), for finite-sum optimization. Equipped with a unified step-size policy that adjusts itself to the value of the conditional number, Varag exhibits the unified optimal rates of convergence for solving smooth convex finite-sum problems directly regardless of their strong convexity. Moreover, Varag is the first accelerated randomized incremental gradient method that benefits from the strong convexity of the data-fidelity term to achieve the optimal linear convergence. It also establishes an optimal linear rate of convergence for solving a wide class of problems only satisfying a certain error bound …

Epa Bus Tour Showcases Hampton Roads Region Is A Living Laboratory For Coastal Resilience, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Data Set For An Empirical Analysis Of Search Engines’ Response To Web Search Queries Associated With The Classroom Setting, Oghenemaro Anuyah, Ashlee Milton, Michael Green, Maria Soledad Pera

Computer Science Faculty Scripts and Data

This archive contains queries that capture information in different search contexts. The first file includes those written by children between the 3rd - 6th grade levels, while performing search tasks. We collected and archived this data between the April 2017 -- December 2018, based on Boise State University's IRB approval. We also include simulated queries we extracted from children's reviews. Additional columns in this dataset are children's grade levels, the query source, and the query type (i.e., if it is a keyword, phrase, or question query). The other files are comprised of queries that are meant to lead to the …

Improving Medication Information Presentation Through Interactive Visualization In Mobile Apps: Human Factors Design, Don Roosan, Yan Li, Anandi Law, Huy Truong, Mazharul Karim, Jay Chok, Moom Roosan

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Background: Despite the detailed patient package inserts (PPIs) with prescription drugs that communicate crucial information about safety, there is a critical gap between patient understanding and the knowledge presented. As a result, patients may suffer from adverse events. We propose using human factors design methodologies such as hierarchical task analysis (HTA) and interactive visualization to bridge this gap. We hypothesize that an innovative mobile app employing human factors design with an interactive visualization can deliver PPI information aligned with patients’ information processing heuristics. Such an app may help patients gain an improved overall knowledge of medications.

Objective: The …

3d-Printing And Machine Learning Control Of Soft Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite Actuators, James D. Carrico, Tucker Hermans, Kwang J. Kim, Kam K. Leang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

This paper presents a new manufacturing and control paradigm for developing soft ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuators for soft robotics applications. First, an additive manufacturing method that exploits the fused-filament (3D printing) process is described to overcome challenges with existing methods of creating custom-shaped IPMC actuators. By working with ionomeric precursor material, the 3D-printing process enables the creation of 3D monolithic IPMC devices where ultimately integrated sensors and actuators can be achieved. Second, Bayesian optimization is used as a learning-based control approach to help mitigate complex time-varying dynamic effects in 3D-printed actuators. This approach overcomes the challenges with existing methods …

Augmenting Education: Ethical Considerations For Incorporating Artificial Intelligence In Education, Dana Remian

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

Artificial intelligence (AI) has existed in theory and practice for decades, but applications have been relatively limited in most domains. Recent developments in AI and computing have placed AI-enhanced applications in various industries and a growing number of consumer products. AI platforms and services aimed at enhancing educational outcomes and taking over administrative tasks are becoming more prevalent and appearing in more and more classrooms and offices. Conversations about the disruption and ethical concerns created by AI are occurring in many fields. The development of the technology threatens to outpace academic discussion of its utility and pitfalls in education, however. …

“Where’S The I-O?” Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning In Talent Management Systems, Manuel F. Gonzalez, John F. Capman, Frederick L. Oswald, Evan R. Theys, David L. Tomczak

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have seen widespread adoption by organizations seeking to identify and hire high-quality job applicants. Yet the volume, variety, and velocity of professional involvement among I-O psychologists remains relatively limited when it comes to developing and evaluating AI/ML applications for talent assessment and selection. Furthermore, there is a paucity of empirical research that investigates the reliability, validity, and fairness of AI/ML tools in organizational contexts. To stimulate future involvement and research, we share our review and perspective on the current state of AI/ML in talent assessment as well as its benefits and potential pitfalls; …

@Houstonpolice: An Exploratory Case Of Twitter During Hurricane Harvey, Seungwon Yang, Brenton Stewart

Faculty Publications

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Houston Police Department (HPD)’s public engagement efforts using Twitter during Hurricane Harvey, which was a large-scale urban crisis event.

Design/methodology/approach

This study harvested a corpus of over 13,000 tweets using Twitter’s streaming API, across three phases of the Hurricane Harvey event: preparedness, response and recovery. Both text and social network analysis (SNA) techniques were employed including word clouds, n-gram analysis and eigenvector centrality to analyze data.

Findings

Findings indicate that departmental tweets coalesced around topics of protocol, reassurance and community resilience. Twitter accounts of governmental agencies, such as …

Robot Simulation Analysis, Jacob Miller, Jeremy Evert

Student Research

• Simulate virtual robot for test and analysis

• Analyze SLAM solutions using ROS

• Assemble a functional Turtlebot

• Emphasize projects related to current research trajectories for NASA, and general robotics applications

An Investigation Into Weather's Effect On Aerosol Particles Using Wrf And Mapss, Hayden Webb, Devin Smoot

Student Research

Aerosols are solid or liquid particles suspended in air or gas. Many processes contribute to increased aerosol particles in the atmosphere, such as winds, ocean waves, and industrial exhaust. Once suspended, particles can be carried thousands of miles before being returned to the ground by gravity or rain. Some particles can be suspended for several years and travel all around the world, these particles have the greatest impact on climate and weather.

Building An Alternative Web Scraper For Big Data Analytics, Kurtis Clark, Amanda Evert

Student Research

Over the summer, I was given access to WebScraper3000 and asked to web scrape, collect internet data, from ratemyprofessors.com. I spent several months working with the program to accomplish this. It only ever seemed to work properly on websites where it has tutorials about scraping them. Even then, the program would only scrape the most rudimentary data in small amounts. If either of these two conditions were missing, the software would lose large quantities of data or just simply crash along the way. After collecting enough data to act as a sample for the research, I decided to abandon the …

Robust And Self-Synchronous Steganography For Voice-Over-Ip Based On Ldpc Codes, Zhanzhan Gao, Guangming Tang, Haitao Song

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: VoIP (Voice over IP) is a kind of voice communication technology based on UDP/IP protocols, so packet loss will inevitably happen when the channel environment deteriorates. Besides that, stego VoIP data flows are real-time and have no head or tail, which pose more challenges to accurately extract the secret messages. This paper proposes a robust and self-synchronous VoIP steganography method, which solves the above two problems under the premise of maintaining good imperceptibility. In this method, low density parity check (LDPC) codes are introduced to preprocess the secret data, and the encoded data are embedded into voice …

No-Collision Curling Trajectory Simulation System, Tian Yu, Xu Ming

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In just a few decades, China’s curling accomplished splendid work. But it’s scientific research falling behind a lot. Applying computer simulation technology in sports training can effectively help the athletes to understand the problems that exist in the training. When curling stone slides on the ice, it can be regarded as two-dimensional motion of rigid body, which can be decomposed into two parts: translation of the center of mass and rotation of a fixed axis around the center of mass. Using computer simulation technology to simulate the curling trajectory, and with the help of this system, the athletes can …

Ground Coverage Stitching Simulation Algorithm For Remote Sensing Satellite, Shuhao Liu, Wang Tong, Zhang Yue

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Ground coverage stitching is the base of remote sensing satellite mission simulation. A coverage stitching simulation algorithm is proposed, considering big time step and attitude maneuver simulation. Transient coverage region is computed by light of view intersection and tangent searching methods. Transient coverage boundaries of different simulation times are stitched by two-dimension convex hull algorithm. Between points of the stitched region polygon edges, new vertexes are interpolated. With the method proposed, limb coverage problem and coverage fusion when time step is large can be solved. Computer simulation results show that the algorithm achieves a fine accuracy and …

Locally Weighted Learning Control For Dynamic Restricted Manipulators, Wang Gang, Tairen Sun, Shengpei Ding

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: This paper proposes a locally weighted learning control law for a manipulator with state and input constraints and modeling uncertainties. By visualizing the control input as an extended state, the control problem is converted into control design for a state-constraint uncertain nonlinear system. Barrier Lyapunov functions are introduced into a backstepping procedure and a locally weighted learning control is designed, which ensures the exponential convergence of the barrier functions to a small neighborhood of zero and then guarantees satisfaction of system constraints and the tracking error convergence. The control feasibility and effectiveness is validated by theoretical analysis and …

Simulation Analysis Of Vehicle Electromagnetic Environment Under Excitation Of Vhf Antenna, Xiaoying Sun, Hanqing Wang, Jinpeng Yang, Zhao Yu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Aiming at the issue of distribution regularity of field strength in vehicle cab under excitation of vehicle-borne high-power VHF antenna, a method of numerical simulation combining with extreme value theory to predict maximum field strength is proposed, which minimizes sample collecting difficulty and fitting deviation. CST simulation software is applied to get field strength sample in vehicle cab, and generalized extreme value (GEV) is used to fitting entire field strength distribution. peak over threshold (POT) model based on Generalized Pareto distribution is used to research high field strength value sample statistical characteristics. Resultsshow that under antenna excitation of 92.5 …

Ti-A* Based Multi-Robot Dynamic Planning And Coordination Method, Zhao Ping, Xinyu Lei, Bozhi Chen, Jiaoyun Yang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Multiple robots path planning problem in dynamic environment is one of the significant and basic problems of cluster robot perception and coordination. The planning problem is decomposed into two modules: the path planning and the conflict coordination. By introducing time-cost function, the Time Integrated A* algorithm (TI-A*) is introduced. Variable speed is employed simultaneously to coordinate the motion and hereby to avoid the deadlock and conflict. By adjusting the timing when the coordination phase is involved, two different coordination TI-A* algorithms are presented, including the speed-changing algorithm and path-changing algorithm. The two algorithms are compared and the respective …

Travel Time Reliability Of Inside Area Of Roundabouts, Yuzhou Duan, Tingting Chai, Jian Jie

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Based on the travel time reliability, this paper analyzes the traffic states in the inside area of the roundabout. The travel time reliability model is established from three aspects: route path, entrance and system, and the practicability of the model is verified by the VISSIM simulation. On this basis, the correlation analysis is made on between the adjacent paths of the same entrance and adjacent paths of the adjacent entrances, and the fitting equations are obtained. Taking the number of lanes, traffic volumes, proportion of left-turns and the rate of heavy vehicles as variables, a sensitivity analysis …