Computer Sciences Commons^™

Statistical Modeling Of Harassment Against Reddit Moderators, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Haewoon Kwak

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite the dedication that some volunteer moderators of online communities display when performing their moderation duties, they become targets of hate and harassment by other users. To understand what causes the change in moderator role from heroes to victims, we analyze the responses of 1,818 moderators on Reddit to an online survey about moderation practices and harassment. We built a statistical model and found 6 significant independent variables that affect harassment on moderators, such as the knowledge of community norms, which increases harassment on moderators the most. Our findings imply that vulnerable moderators in toxic communities need countermeasures against harassment.

On The Robustness Of Cascade Diffusion Under Node Attacks, Alvis Logins, Yuchen Li, Panagiotis Karras

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

How can we assess a network's ability to maintain its functionality under attacks? Network robustness has been studied extensively in the case of deterministic networks. However, applications such as online information diffusion and the behavior of networked public raise a question of robustness in probabilistic networks. We propose three novel robustness measures for networks hosting a diffusion under the Independent Cascade (IC) model, susceptible to node attacks. The outcome of such a process depends on the selection of its initiators, or seeds, by the seeder, as well as on two factors outside the seeder's discretion: the attack strategy and the …

Energy-Efficient Distance-Bounding With Residual Charge Computation, Yunhui Zhuang, Anjia Yang, Gerhard Hancke, Duncan S. Wong, Guomin Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Real-time location systems are often required in industrial applications. In addition to securely determining an item's location, these systems also need to accommodate energy-limited tracking tokens. Distance-bounding protocols enable a Verifier to cryptographically determine an upper-bound on the physical distance to a Prover by measuring the round-trip time of specially designed challenge-response messages. This type of protocols serve as countermeasure to three common attacks on location-based systems and have been extensively studied with the goal of achieving optimal security bounds for the respective attacks. In this paper, we propose a new energy-efficient distance-bounding protocol that protects against all three common …

Reinforced Negative Sampling Over Knowledge Graph For Recommendation, Xiang Wang, Yaokun Xu, Xiangnan He, Yixin Cao, Meng Wang, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Properly handling missing data is a fundamental challenge in recommendation. Most present works perform negative sampling from unobserved data to supply the training of recommender models with negative signals. Nevertheless, existing negative sampling strategies, either static or adaptive ones, are insufficient to yield high-quality negative samples — both informative to model training and reflective of user real needs. In this work, we hypothesize that item knowledge graph (KG), which provides rich relations among items and KG entities, could be useful to infer informative and factual negative samples. Towards this end, we develop a new negative sampling model, Knowledge Graph Policy …

Improving Neural Relation Extraction With Implicit Mutual Relations, Jun Kuang, Yixin Cao, Jianbing Zheng, Xiangnan He, Ming Gao, Aoying Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Relation extraction (RE) aims at extracting the relation between two entities from the text corpora. It is a crucial task for Knowledge Graph (KG) construction. Most existing methods predict the relation between an entity pair by learning the relation from the training sentences, which contain the targeted entity pair. In contrast to existing distant supervision approaches that suffer from insufficient training corpora to extract relations, our proposal of mining implicit mutual relation from the massive unlabeled corpora transfers the semantic information of entity pairs into the RE model, which is more expressive and semantically plausible. After constructing an entity proximity …

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Ethics: Ethics Of Ai And Ethical Ai, Keng Siau, Weiyu Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology has achieved many great things, such as facial recognition, medical diagnosis, and self-driving cars. AI promises enormous benefits for economic growth, social development, as well as human well-being and safety improvement. However, the low-level of explainability, data biases, data security, data privacy, and ethical problems of AI-based technology pose significant risks for users, developers, humanity, and societies. As AI advances, one critical issue is how to address the ethical and moral challenges associated with AI. Even though the concept of “machine ethics” was proposed around 2006, AI ethics is still in the infancy stage. AI ethics …

Voicecoach: Interactive Evidence-Based Training For Voice Modulation Skills In Public Speaking, Xingbo Wang, Haipeng Zeng, Yong Wang, Aoyu Wu, Zhida Sun, Xiaojuan Ma, Qu Huamin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The modulation of voice properties, such as pitch, volume, and speed, is crucial for delivering a successful public speech. However, it is challenging to master different voice modulation skills. Though many guidelines are available, they are often not practical enough to be applied in different public speaking situations, especially for novice speakers. We present VoiceCoach, an interactive evidence-based approach to facilitate the effective training of voice modulation skills. Specifically, we have analyzed the voice modulation skills from 2623 high-quality speeches (i.e., TED Talks) and use them as the benchmark dataset. Given a voice input, VoiceCoach automatically recommends good voice modulation …

Dfseer: A Visual Analytics Approach To Facilitate Model Selection For Demand Forecasting, Dong Sun, Zezheng Feng, Yuanzhe Chen, Yong Wang, Jia Zeng, Mingxuan Yuan, Ting-Chuen Pong, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Selecting an appropriate model to forecast product demand is critical to the manufacturing industry. However, due to the data complexity, market uncertainty and users’ demanding requirements for the model, it is challenging for demand analysts to select a proper model. Although existing model selection methods can reduce the manual burden to some extent, they often fail to present model performance details on individual products and reveal the potential risk of the selected model. This paper presents DFSeer, an interactive visualization system to conduct reliable model selection for demand forecasting based on the products with similar historical demand. It supports model …

Activated Carbon Nanofibers From Renewable (Lignin) And Waste Resources (Recycled Pet) And Their Adsorption Capacity Of Refractory Sulfur Compounds From Fossil Fuels, Efstratios Svinterikos

Dissertations

Dementia is a condition in which higher mental functions are disrupted. It currently affects an estimated 57 million people throughout the world. Dementia diagnosis is difficult since neither anatomical indicator nor functional testing are currently sufficiently sensitive or specific. There remains a long list of outstanding issues that must be addressed. First, multimodal diagnosis has yet to be introduced into the early stages of dementia screening. Second, there is no accurate instrument for predicting the progression of pre-dementia. Third, non-invasive testing cannot be used to provide differential diagnoses. By creating ML models of normal and accelerated brain aging, we intend …

The Effects Of Mixed-Initiative Visualization Systems On Exploratory Data Analysis, Adam Kern

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The main purpose of information visualization is to act as a window between a user and data. Historically, this has been accomplished via a single-agent framework: the only decisionmaker in the relationship between visualization system and analyst is the analyst herself. Yet this framework arose not from first principles, but from necessity: prior to this decade, computers were limited in their decision-making capabilities, especially in the face of large, complex datasets and visualization systems. This thesis aims to present the design and evaluation of a mixed-initiative system that aids the user in handling large, complex datasets and dense visualization systems. …

Neural Network Pruning For Ecg Arrhythmia Classification, Isaac E. Labarge

Master's Theses

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are a widely accepted means of solving complex classification and detection problems in imaging and speech. However, problem complexity often leads to considerable increases in computation and parameter storage costs. Many successful attempts have been made in effectively reducing these overheads by pruning and compressing large CNNs with only a slight decline in model accuracy. In this study, two pruning methods are implemented and compared on the CIFAR-10 database and an ECG arrhythmia classification task. Each pruning method employs a pruning phase interleaved with a finetuning phase. It is shown that when performing the scale-factor pruning …

Truck Trailer Classification Using Side-Fire Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) Data, Olcay Sahin

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Classification of vehicles into distinct groups is critical for many applications, including freight and commodity flow modeling, pavement management and design, tolling, air quality monitoring, and intelligent transportation systems. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) developed a standardized 13-category vehicle classification ruleset, which meets the needs of many traffic data user applications. However, some applications need high-resolution data for modeling and analysis. For example, the type of commodity being carried must be known in the freight modeling framework. Unfortunately, this information is not available at the state or metropolitan level, or it is expensive to obtain from current resources.

Nevertheless, using …

Investigating The Feasibility And Stability For Modeling Acoustic Wave Scattering Using A Time-Domain Boundary Integral Equation With Impedance Boundary Condition, Michelle E. Rodio

Mathematics & Statistics Theses & Dissertations

Reducing aircraft noise is a major objective in the field of computational aeroacoustics. When designing next generation quiet and environmentally friendly aircraft, it is important to be able to accurately and efficiently predict the acoustic scattering by an aircraft body from a given noise source. Acoustic liners are an effective tool for aircraft noise reduction and are characterized by a frequency-dependent impedance. Converted into the time-domain using Fourier transforms, an impedance boundary condition can be used to simulate the acoustic wave scattering by geometric bodies treated with acoustic liners

This work considers using either an impedance or an admittance (inverse …

Cross Language Information Transfer Between Modern Standard Arabic And Its Dialects – A Framework For Automatic Speech Recognition System Language Model, Tiba Zaki Abdulhameed

Dissertations

Significant advances have been made with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) applications. Yet, dialectal conversation ASR is still trailing behind due to limited language resources. As is the case in most cultures, the formal Modern Standard Arabic language is not used in daily life. Instead, varieties of regional dialects are spoken, which creates a dire need to address dialect ASR systems. Processing MSA language naturally poses considerable challenges that are passed on to the processing of its derived dialects. In dialects, many words have gradually morphed from MSA pronunciations and at many times have different usages. Also, …

Functional Object-Oriented Network: A Knowledge Representation For Service Robotics, David Andrés Paulius Ramos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we discuss our work behind the development of the functional object-oriented network (abbreviated as FOON), a graphical knowledge representation for robotic manipulation and understanding of its own actions and (potentially) the intentions of humans in the household. Based on the theory of affordance, this representation captures manipulations and their effects on actions through the coupling of object and motion nodes as fundamental learning units known as functional units. The activities currently represented in FOON are cooking related, but this representation can be extended to other activities that involve manipulation of objects which result in observable changes of …

Front Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Automatic Flood Detection In Sentinei-2 Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Pallavi Jain, Bianca Schoen-Phelan, Robert J. Ross

Conference papers

The early and accurate detection of floods from satellite imagery can aid rescue planning and assessment of geophysical damage. Automatic identification of water from satellite images has historically relied on hand-crafted functions, but these often do not provide the accuracy and robustness needed for accurate and early flood detection. To try to overcome these limitations we investigate a tiered methodology combining water index like features with a deep convolutional neural network based solution to flood identification against the MediaEval 2019 flood dataset. Our method builds on existing deep neural network methods, and in particular the VGG16 network. Specifically, we explored …

Workflow Critical Path: A Data-Oriented Path Metric For Holistic Hpc Workflows, Daniel D. Nguyen

Dissertations and Theses

Optimizing scientific application performance in HPC environments is a complicated task which has motivated the development of many performance analysis tools over the past decades. These tools were designed to analyze the performance of a single parallel code using common approaches such as message passing (MPI), multithreading (OpenMP), acceleration (CUDA), or a hybrid approach. However, current trends in HPC such as the push to exascale, convergence with Big Data, and growing complexity of HPC applications and scientific workflows, have created gaps that these performance tools do not cover, particularly involving end-to-end data movement through an end-to-end HPC workflow comprising multiple …

Study Of Deformation Parameters (Β2, Δ) For 18,20,22,24,26,28ne Isotopes In Sdpf Shell, Ahmed H. Ali, Maha Taha Idrees

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

The quadrupole deformation is basic to study the shape transitions; it is possible to predict many important properties of even-even nuclei as a function of the deformation parameter. The deformations of nuclei are important for understanding their shapes prolate or oblate. The quadrupole deformation parameters were calculated by the transition probability B (E2) for ^{18, 20, 22, 24, 26,28}Ne isotopes, were adopted different interactions three. The calculations are performed with the Bohr-Mottelson (B-M) effective charges, which represent the effect of the core-polarizations. Also, the deformation parameters were calculated for different nuclei and adopted two methods of calculation: from reduced …

Investigation Of Glucose Oxidation At Gold Nanoparticles Deposited At Carbon Nanotubes Modified Glassy Carbon Electrode By Theoretical And Experimental Methods., Farhat Saira, Humaira Razzaq, Misbah Mumtaz, Safeer Ahmad, Muhammad Aftab Rafiq, Azra Yaqub, Nabiha Dilshad, Ayesha Ihsan, Muhammad Masood Ul Hasan

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

In the current research work, AuNPs-CNTs nanocomposite was synthesized chemically and decoration of AuNPs on the surface of MWCNTs was confirmed by UV-Vis, SEM and XPS analysis. Synthesized nanocomposite was utilized for its application towards non-enzymatic glucose sensing by modifying glassy carbon electrode with nanocomposite employing electrochemical techniques. In addition, theoretical calculations were performed by Density Functional Theory (DFT), employing B3YLP with basis set 6- 311+G(d,p) in gaseous phase and LANL2DZ basis set. Both theoretical and experimental results predicted Au-CNTs composite as a better candidate for glucose oxidation as compared to CNTs and AuNPs alone, owing to the synergistic effect …

Using Freak Descriptor To Classify Plasma Influence In Mice Sperm, Ekhlas Falih, Alaa Noori Mazhar

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

Numerous classification mechanisms anticipate the class's instances to be carried out as the features' vectors, namely the points in a feature's space. It is oftentimes a chance to make an informative exemplification of an image's feature vector for classification problems in computer vision like utilizing global descriptors for the texture description or shape description. The proposed methodology is to classify the sperm image in mice that has been affected through plasma and this methodology consists of three stages. The points of interest could be elicited from sperm plasma images in the first stage by utilizing Adaptive and Generic Corner detector …

A Parallel Grid Optimization Of Svm Hyperparameter For Big Data Classification Using Spark Radoop, Ahmed Hussein Ali, Mahmood Zaki Abdullah

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

The big data phenomenon is currently a challenge to the process of relevant knowledge extraction using classical machine learning technique. This is due to the need for efficient data reduction and new fast-distributed machine learning algorithms for such process on big data. The extensive application of SVM demands efficient methods of constructing the classifier to be suitable for big data and high classification capability. In reality, the efficiency of SVM relies on the efficient derivation of the optimal feature subset and the algorithmic parameters. The grid search optimization method usually presents global optima and high learning accuracy compared to PSO …

Editorial Board

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

No abstract provided.

Relational Database Design And Multi-Objective Database Queries For Position Navigation And Timing Data, Sean A. Mochocki

Theses and Dissertations

Performing flight tests is a natural part of researching cutting edge sensors and filters for sensor integration. Unfortunately, tests are expensive, and typically take many months of planning. A sensible goal would be to make previously collected data readily available to researchers for future development. The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has hundreds of data logs potentially available to aid in facilitating further research in the area of navigation. A database would provide a common location where older and newer data sets are available. Such a database must be able to store the sensor data, metadata about the sensors, …

Cyber-Physical System Intrusion: A Case Study Of Automobile Identification Vulnerabilities And Automated Approaches For Intrusion Detection, David R. Crow

Theses and Dissertations

Today's vehicle manufacturers do not tend to publish proprietary packet formats for the controller area network (CAN), a network protocol regularly used in automobiles and manufacturing. This is a form of security through obscurity -it makes reverse engineering efforts more difficult for would-be intruders -but obfuscating the CAN data in this way does not adequately hide the vehicle's unique signature, even if these data are unprocessed or limited in scope. To prove this, we train two distinct deep learning models on data from 11 different vehicles. Our results clearly indicate that one can determine which vehicle generated a given sample …

Sliver: Simulation-Based Logic Bomb Identification/Verification For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Jake M. Magness

Theses and Dissertations

This research introduces SLIVer, a Simulation-based Logic Bomb Identification/Verification methodology, for finding logic bombs hidden within Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) autopilot code without having access to the device source code. Effectiveness is demonstrated by executing a series of test missions within a high-fidelity software-in-the-loop (SITL) simulator. In the event that a logic bomb is not detected, this methodology defines safe operating areas for UAVs to ensure to a high degree of confidence the UAV operates normally on the defined flight plan. SLIVer uses preplanned flight paths as the baseline input space, greatly reducing the input space that must be searched …

Honeyhive - A Network Intrusion Detection System Framework Utilizing Distributed Internet Of Things Honeypot Sensors, Zachary D. Madison

Theses and Dissertations

Exploding over the past decade, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected to the Internet jumped from 3.8 billion in 2015 to 17.8 billion in 2018. Because so many IoT devices remain upatched, unmonitored, and left on, they have become a tantalizing target for attackers to gain network access or add another device to their botnet. HoneyHive is a framework that uses distributed IoT honeypots as Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) sensors that beacon back to a centralized Command and Control (C2) server. The tests in this experiment involve four types of scans and four levels of active …

Extracting Range Data From Images Using Focus Error, Erik M. Madden

Theses and Dissertations

Air-to-air refueling (AAR) has become a staple when performing long missions with aircraft. With modern technology, however, people have begun to research how to perform this task autonomously. Automated air-to-air refueling (A3R) is this exact concept. Combining many different systems, the idea is to allow computers on the aircraft to link up via the refueling boom, refuel, and detach before resuming pilot control. This document lays out one of the systems that is needed to perform A3R, namely, the system that extracts range data. While stereo cameras perform such tasks, there is interest in finding other ways of accomplishing the …

Comparison Of Visual Simultaneous Localization And Mapping Methods For Fixed-Wing Aircraft Using Slambench2, Patrick R. Latcham

Theses and Dissertations

Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM) algorithms have evolved rapidly in the last few years, however there has been little research evaluating current algorithm's effectiveness and limitations when applied to tracking the position of a fixed-wing aerial vehicle. This research looks to evaluate current monocular VSLAM algorithms' performance on aerial vehicle datasets using the SLAMBench2 benchmarking suite. The algorithms tested are MonoSLAM, PTAM, OKVIS, LSDSLAM, ORB-SLAM2, and SVO, all of which are built into the SLAMBench2 software. The algorithms' performance is evaluated using simulated datasets generated in the AftrBurner Engine. The datasets were designed to test the quality of each …

A General Methodology To Optimize And Benchmark Edge Devices, Kyle J. Smathers

Theses and Dissertations

The explosion of Internet Of Things (IoT), embedded and “smart” devices has also seen the addition of “general purpose” single board computers also referred to as “edge devices.” Determining if one of these generic devices meets the need of a new given task however can be challenging. Software generically written to be portable or plug and play may be too bloated to work properly without significant modification due to much tighter hardware resources. Previous work in this area has been focused on micro or chip-level benchmarking which is mainly useful for chip designers or low level system integrators. A higher …