Computer Sciences Commons^™

Teacher Candidates’ Conceptions And Practices Of Computational Thinking For Equity, Heather F. Clark, Symone A. Gyles, Imelda Nava-Landeros

Journal of Computer Science Integration

This study documents novice science and math teachers’ developing pedagogical approaches to integrating computational thinking (CT) and data into their courses to support educational equity and social justice. The 10 novice teacher candidates (TCs) studied were part of an urban teacher residency program that empowered them with an asset-based pedagogy we describe as “CT for Equity.” Drawing on coursework and interviews as data, we asked three questions: What are teachers’ conceptions of CT? What are their CT instructional practices? And how did their students respond to those practices? To explore conceptions of CT, we used Kafai et al.’s (2020) articulation …

On The Computability Of Primitive Recursive Functions By Feedforward Artificial Neural Networks, Vladimir A. Kulyukin

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

We show that, for a primitive recursive function h(x, t), where x is a n-tuple of natural numbers and t is a natural number, there exists a feedforward artificial neural network 𝔑(x, t), such that for any n-tuple of natural numbers z and a positive natural number m, the first m + 1 terms of the sequence {h(z, t)} are the same as the terms of the tuple (𝔑(z, 0), ... ,𝔑(z, m)).

Artificial Intelligence And Human Hope, Michael Paulus

SPU Works

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Investigating Continual Learning Strategies In Neural Networks, Christopher Tam, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

This paper explores the role of continual learning strategies when neural networks are confronted with learning tasks sequentially. We analyze the stability-plasticity dilemma with three factors in mind: the type of network architecture used, the continual learning scenario defined and the continual learning strategy implemented. Our results show that complementary learning systems and neural volume significantly contribute towards memory retrieval and consolidation in neural networks. Finally, we demonstrate how regularization strategies such as elastic weight consolidation are more well-suited for larger neural networks whereas rehearsal strategies such as gradient episodic memory are better suited for smaller neural networks.

An Interdisciplinary Approach To Experiential Learning In Cyberbiosecurity And Agriculture Through Workforce Development, Kellie Johnson, Tiffany Drape, Joseph Oakes, Joseph Simpson, Ann Brown, Donna M. Westfall-Rudd, Susan Duncan

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cyberbiosecurity and workforce development in agriculture and the life sciences (ALS) is a growing area of need in the curriculum in higher education. Students that pursue majors related to ALS often do not include training in cyber-related concepts or expose the ‘hidden curriculum’ of seeking internships and jobs. Exposing students through workforce development training and hands-on engagement with industry professionals can provide learning opportunities to bridge the two and is an area of growth and demand as the workforce evolves. The objectives of this work were 1) to learn key concepts in cybersecurity, including data security, visualization, and analysis, to …

Infrastructure As Code For Cybersecurity Training, Rui Pinto, Rolando Martins, Carlos Novo

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

An organization's infrastructure rests upon the premise that cybersecurity professionals have specific knowledge in administrating and protecting it against outside threats. Without this expertise, sensitive information could be leaked to malicious actors and cause damage to critical systems. These attacks tend to become increasingly specialized, meaning cybersecurity professionals must ensure proficiency in specific areas. Naturally, recommendations include creating advanced practical training scenarios considering realistic situations to help trainees gain detailed knowledge. However, the caveats of high-cost infrastructure and difficulties in the deployment process of this kind of system, primarily due to the manual process of pre-configuring software needed for the …

Building The Operational Technology (Ot) Cybersecurity Workforce: What Are Employers Looking For?, Christopher A. Ramezan, Paul M. Coffy, Jared Lemons

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

A trained workforce is needed to protect operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) within national critical infrastructure and critical industries. However, what knowledge, skills, and credentials are employers looking for in OT cybersecurity professionals? To best train the next generation of OT cybersecurity professionals, an understanding of current OT cybersecurity position requirements is needed. Thus, this work analyzes 100 OT cybersecurity positions to provide insights on key prerequisite requirements such as prior professional experience, education, industry certifications, security clearances, programming expertise, soft verbal and written communication skills, knowledge of OT frameworks, standards, and network communication protocols, and position …

Aroutcrop: An Augmented Reality Mobile Application For Enhancing Geoscience Learning And Comprehension In The Field And Classroom, Benjamin S. Wilkerson, Zachary Wilkerson, M. Scott Wilkerson

Student Research

Most geologists have long recognized the educational value of immersive opportunities and hands-on experiences that teaching geology in the field and using natural rock samples in the classroom offer students. However, these instructional approaches also give rise to distinct logistical and pedagogical challenges. For example, in the field, students sometimes struggle to fully connect concepts, models, and interpretations from classroom lectures with seemingly amorphous masses of rock that they encounter. Or, in the classroom, students may only have limited time for analysis when passing individual hand specimens person-to-person, and may not have access to valuable or fragile samples outside of …

Evocative And Provocative Image-Making In The Age Of Generative Ai, Julian Kilker

Tradition Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education

Editorial for inaugural AI-focused special issue of Tradition-Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education, published under the auspices of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru). Discusses three articles by five authors in this issue: (1) Choreographing Shadows: Interdisciplinary collaboration to orchestrate ethical image-making by Mark Burchick and Diana Pasulka; (2) Giving Up Control: Hybrid AI-augmented workflows for image-making by Joshua Vermillion; and (3) Hands are Hard: Unlearning how we talk about machine learning in the arts by Adam Hyland and Oscar Keyes.

Editing this special issue explored several key questions: What does “innovation” mean when …

Poster: No Fly-Zone: Drone Policies For Ensuring Safe Operations In Restricted Areas, Arturo Gonzalez, Amani Davidson, Carlos Rubio-Medrano

Computer Science Faculty Publications

As the use of drones continues to proliferate across various industries, ensuring their safe and secure operation becomes increasingly important. This abstract explores the techniques and strategies employed for drone identification and communication, aiming to enhance safety, security, and compliance. The paper highlights the significance of reliable drone recognition methods and effective communication protocols between drones and relevant parties. Specifically, it emphasizes the need for drones to adapt to restrictions, follow protocols, and communicate information in designated zones. Furthermore, the abstract emphasizes the importance of strict adherence to no-fly rules, precise identification of restricted airspace, and the establishment of robust …

Leading K-12 Community Responsiveness To Cyber Threats Via Education Of School Community, Michele Kielty, A. Renee Staton

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cyber threats have escalated in recent years. Many of these threats have been direct and vicious attacks on K-12 systems. Educators are rarely trained on how to address cyber threats from a systemic and educational perspective when such challenges arise in their school buildings. This article explains the cyber threats that are looming large for K-12 systems and provides concrete tools for school leaders to employ in order to provide preventive education to their school communities.

Fortifying Iot Against Crimpling Cyber-Attacks: A Systematic Review, Usman Tariq, Irfan Ahmed, Muhammad Attique Khan, Ali Kashif Bashir

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

The rapid growth and increasing demand for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in our everyday lives create exciting opportunities for human involvement, data integration, and seamless automation. This fully interconnected ecosystem considerably impacts crucial aspects of our lives, such as transportation, healthcare, energy management, and urban infrastructure. However, alongside the immense benefits, the widespread adoption of IoT also brings a complex web of security threats that can influence society, policy, and infrastructure conditions. IoT devices are particularly vulnerable to security violations, and industrial routines face potentially damaging vulnerabilities. To ensure a trustworthy and robust security framework, it is crucial to …

Smart Service Function Chain System For Dynamic Traffic Steering Using Reinforcement Learning (Chrl), Ahmed Nadhum, Ahmed Al-Saadi

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

The rapid development of the Internet and network services coupled with the growth of communication infrastructure necessitates the employment of intelligent systems. The complexity of the network is heightened by these systems, as they offer diverse services contingent on traffic type, user needs, and security considerations. In this context, a service function chain offers a toolkit to facilitate the management of intricate network systems. However, various traffic types require dynamic adaptation in the sets of function chains. The problem of optimizing the order of service functions in the chain must be solved using the proposed approach, along with balancing the …

New Quantum Genetic Algorithm Based On Constrained Quantum Optimization, Mohammed R. Almasaoodi, Abdulbasit M. A. Sabaawi, Sara El Gaily, Sándor Imre

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

In the past decades, many quantum algorithms have been developed. The main obstacle that prevents the widespread implementation of these algorithms is the small size of the available quantum computer in terms of qubits. Blind Quantum Computation (BQC) holds the promise of handling this issue by delegating computation to quantum remote devices. Here, we introduce a novel Constrained Quantum Genetic Algorithm (CQGA) that selects the optimum extreme (minimum or maximum) value of a constrained goal function (or a vast unsorted database) with very low computational complexity. Since the convergence speed to the optimal solution for the Constrained Classical Genetic Algorithm …

Hprop: Hierarchical Privacy-Preserving Route Planning For Smart Cities, Francis Tiausas, Keiichi Yasumoto, Jose Paolo Talusan, Hayato Yamana, Hirozumi Yamaguchi, Shameek Bhattacharjee, Abhishek Dubey, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Route Planning Systems (RPS) are a core component of autonomous personal transport systems essential for safe and efficient navigation of dynamic urban environments with the support of edge-based smart city infrastructure, but they also raise concerns about user route privacy in the context of both privately owned and commercial vehicles. Numerous high-profile data breaches in recent years have fortunately motivated research on privacy preserving RPS, but most of them are rendered impractical by greatly increased communication and processing overhead. We address this by proposing an approach called Hierarchical Privacy-Preserving Route Planning (HPRoP), which divides and distributes the route-planning task across …

Sublinear Time Motif Discovery From Multiple Sequences, Bin Fu, Yunhui Fu, Yuan Xue

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this paper, a natural probabilistic model for motif discovery has been used to experimentally test the quality of motif discovery programs. In this model, there are k background sequences, and each character in a background sequence is a random character from an alphabet, Σ. A motif G = g1g2 . . . gm is a string of m characters. In each background sequence is implanted a probabilistically-generated approximate copy of G. For a probabilistically-generated approximate copy b1b2 . . . bm of G, every character, bi , is probabilistically generated, such that the probability for bi 6= gi is …

“After She Fell Asleep, It Went To My Next Podcast, Which Was About A Serial Killer”: Unveiling Needs And Expectations Regarding Parental Control Within Digital Assistant, Prakriti Dumaru, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Student Research

Voice-based digital assistants (for brevity, we term them as ‘digital assistants’ in this paper, unless otherwise specified) are getting increasingly popular in the household to automate digital routines. Hence, with communal usage of digital assistants in the household, children can gain access to content through digital assistants that are intended for adult audiences and parents are concerned about such risks. To this end, we created a low-fidelity prototype with designs of existing Google’s parental control for Google Assistant (termed as baseline), along with our features deriving from prior literature (termed as treatment). Then, we …

Understanding The Challenges In Academia To Prepare Nursing Students For Digital Technology Use At Workplace, Ankit Shrestha, Prakriti Dumaru, Rizu Paudel, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Student Research

Digital technology has transformed workplaces in recent years. The technology adoption in medical institutions has challenged nurses to evolve in using complex digital systems. However, academic institutions often fail to keep up with the rapid changes in professional practice in preparing their students. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with five nursing faculties in the USA. In our study, we examined the current status of digital technology and privacy education, and identified the challenges in adequately preparing nursing students to embrace and adapt to the changes in digital technology use at healthcare organizations. Overall, our findings provide valuable insights …

"It Doesn't Just Feel Like Something A Lawyer Slapped Together." Mental-Model-Based Privacy Policy For Third-Party Applications On Facebook, Rizu Paudel, Ankit Shrestha, Prakriti Dumaru, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen

Computer Science Student Research

Users are often unaware of the information that applications collect and are surprised by unexpected data collection and sharing practices. With numerous third-party applications on Facebook potentially accessing the personal information of billions of users, it is essential to understand users’ mental models of data sharing to help them make informed decisions. To achieve this, we conducted semi-structured interviews using drawings and think-aloud protocol with 32 participants. Our participants had misconceptions regarding third-party applications’ data sharing practices with varied mental models. Based on these findings, we created mental model-based privacy policy design that prompts users to consider a specific scenario …

Ai In The College Classroom: From Communication To Animation, Stefanie Powers, Erika Grodzki, Gary Carlin, Hung Chum Kao

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

Dtitd: An Intelligent Insider Threat Detection Framework Based On Digital Twin And Self-Attention Based Deep Learning Models, Zhi Qiang Wang, Abdulmotaleb El Saddik

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

Recent statistics and studies show that the loss generated by insider threats is much higher than that generated by external attacks. More and more organizations are investing in or purchasing insider threat detection systems to prevent insider risks. However, the accurate and timely detection of insider threats faces significant challenges. In this study, we proposed an intelligent insider threat detection framework based on Digital Twins and self-attentions based deep learning models. First, this paper introduces insider threats and the challenges in detecting them. Then this paper presents recent related works on solving insider threat detection problems and their limitations. Next, …

Interval-Valued Fermatean Neutrosophic Shortest Path Problem Via Score Function, Said Broumi, S. Krishna Prabha, Vakkas Uluçay

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

Contemporary mathematical techniques have been crafted to address the uncertainty of numerous real-world settings, including Fermatean neutrosophic fuzzy set theory. Fermatean neutrosophic fuzzy set is an extension of combining Fermatean and neutrosophic sets. A Fermatean neutrosophic set was developed to enable the analytical management of ambiguous data from relatively typical real-world decision-making scenarios. Decision-makers find it challenging to determine the degree of membership (MG) and non-membership (NG) with sharp values due to the insufficient data provided. Intervals MG and NG are suitable options in these circumstances. In this article, the shortest route issue is formulated using an interval set of …

Deep Learning For Plant Bioinformatics: An Explainable Gradient-Based Approach For Disease Detection, Muhammad Shoaib, Babar Shah, Nasir Sayed, Farman Ali, Rafi Ullah, Irfan Hussain

All Works

Emerging in the realm of bioinformatics, plant bioinformatics integrates computational and statistical methods to study plant genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes. With the introduction of high-throughput sequencing technologies and other omics data, the demand for automated methods to analyze and interpret these data has increased. We propose a novel explainable gradient-based approach EG-CNN model for both omics data and hyperspectral images to predict the type of attack on plants in this study. We gathered gene expression, metabolite, and hyperspectral image data from plants afflicted with four prevalent diseases: powdery mildew, rust, leaf spot, and blight. Our proposed EG-CNN model employs a …

Interval-Valued Fermatean Neutrosophic Shortest Path Problem Via Score Function, Said Broumi, S. Krishna Prabha, Vakkas Uluçay

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

Contemporary mathematical techniques have been crafted to address the uncertainty of numerous real-world settings, including Fermatean neutrosophic fuzzy set theory. Fermatean neutrosophic fuzzy set is an extension of combining Fermatean and neutrosophic sets. A Fermatean neutrosophic set was developed to enable the analytical management of ambiguous data from relatively typical real-world decision-making scenarios. Decision-makers find it challenging to determine the degree of membership (MG) and non-membership (NG) with sharp values due to the insufficient data provided. Intervals MG and NG are suitable options in these circumstances. In this article, the shortest route issue is formulated using an interval set of …

A Mixed-Method Study Exploring Cyber Ranges And Educator Motivation, Cheryl Beauchamp, Holly M. Matusovich

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

A growing number of academic institutions have invested resources to integrate cyber ranges for applying and developing cybersecurity-related knowledge and skills. Cyber range developers and administrators provided much of what is known about cyber range resources and possible educational applications; however, the educator provides valuable understanding of the cyber range resources they use, how they use them, what they value, and what they do not value. This study provides the cyber range user perspective of cyber ranges in cybersecurity education by describing how K-12 educators are motivated using cyber ranges. Using mixed methods, this study explored educator motivation associated with …

Like Treating The Symptom Rather Than The Cause - The Omission Of Courses Over Terrorism In Nsa Designated Institutions, Ida L. Oesteraas

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The National Security Agency (NSA) awards Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) designations to institutions that commit to producing cybersecurity professionals who will work in careers that reduce vulnerabilities in our national infrastructure. A review of the curricula in the 327 institutions and their degree programs reveal that only two programs offer a required course about terrorism. Given the fluid nature of terrorism and its threat to national infrastructure, the omission is concerning. It is recommended that NSA-certified cybersecurity programs begin implementing educational content that aim to teach about this emerging crime and justice issue. One suggestion is to embrace the …

Integrating Certifications Into The Cybersecurity College Curriculum: The Efficacy Of Education With Certifications To Increase The Cybersecurity Workforce, Binh Tran, Karen C. Benson, Lorraine Jonassen

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

One only needs to listen to the news reports to recognize that the gap between securing the enterprise and cybersecurity threats, breaches, and vulnerabilities appears to be widening at an alarming rate. An un-tapped resource to combat these attacks lies in the students of the secondary educational system. Necessary in the cybersecurity education is a 3-tiered approach to quickly escalate the student into a workplace-ready graduate. The analogy used is a three-legged-stool, where curriculum content, hands-on skills, and certifications are equal instruments in the edification of the cybersecurity student. This paper endeavors to delve into the 3^rd leg of …

Cybersecurity Challenges And Awareness Of The Multi-Generational Learners In Nepal, Raj Kumar Dhungana, Lina Gurung Dr, Hem Poudyal

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Increased exposure to technologies has lately emerged as one of the everyday realities of digital natives, especially K-12 students, and teachers, the digital immigrants. Protection from cybersecurity risks in digital learning spaces is a human right, but students are increasingly exposed to high-risk cyberspace without time to cope with cybersecurity risks. This study, using a survey (N-891 students and 157 teachers) and in-depth interviews (27 students and 14 teachers), described the students' cybersecurity-related experiences and challenges in Nepal. This study revealed that the school’s cybersecurity support system is poor and teachers has very low awareness and competencies to protect students …

Exploring Network Security Educator Knowledge, Jennifer B. Chauvot, Deniz Gurkan, Cathy Horn

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

It is critical for nations to have trained professionals in network security who can safeguard hardware, information systems, and electronic data. Network security education is a key knowledge unit of the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity and various information systems security curricula at the master's and bachelor's levels in higher education. Network security units are components of computer science curricula in high school contexts as well. Educators who teach these concepts play a significant role in developing a skilled workforce of network security experts for both governmental and non-governmental organizations. Understanding the necessary knowledge and skills of network …

Editorial, Michael E. Whitman, Herbert J. Mattord

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Editorial for Volume 2023, Issue 2