Computer Sciences Commons^™

Theoretical And Experimental Application Of Neural Networks In Spaceflight Control Systems, Pavel Galchenko

Doctoral Dissertations

“Spaceflight systems can enable advanced mission concepts that can help expand our understanding of the universe. To achieve the objectives of these missions, spaceflight systems typically leverage guidance and control systems to maintain some desired path and/or orientation of their scientific instrumentation. A deep understanding of the natural dynamics of the environment in which these spaceflight systems operate is required to design control systems capable of achieving the desired scientific objectives. However, mitigating strategies are critically important when these dynamics are unknown or poorly understood and/or modelled. This research introduces two neural network methodologies to control the translation and rotation …

Cats Are Fuzzy Pets: A Corpus And Analysis Of Potentially Euphemistic Terms, Martha Gavidia, Patrick Lee, Anna Feldman, Jing Peng

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Euphemisms have not received much attention in natural language processing, despite being an important element of polite and figurative language. Euphemisms prove to be a difficult topic, not only because they are subject to language change, but also because humans may not agree on what is a euphemism and what is not. Nonetheless, the first step to tackling the issue is to collect and analyze examples of euphemisms. We present a corpus of potentially euphemistic terms (PETs) along with example texts from the GloWbE corpus. Additionally, we present a subcorpus of texts where these PETs are not being used euphemistically, …

Security Strategies Of Electronic Health Record Systems, Benjamin Gerke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Users of electronic health record (EHR) systems lack data security mechanisms and are at risk of patient data breaches. Grounded in routine activities theory, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore strategies information technology security managers in the health care industry use to minimize electronic health record data breaches. The participants were nine information security managers of large, medium, and small health care organizations in the Midwest United States. Data collection included semistructured interviews and organizational documents. Through methodological triangulation, three themes emerged: (a) requirements based on government and organizational regulations, (b) implementation of best practice industry-standard …

Administrative Leaders’ Experiences With Information Communication Technology Platforms And Best Practices In Smart Schools, Byron B. Jackson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Administrative leaders in traditional schools have failed to manage resources, implement best practices, and successfully integrate information communication technology (ICT) platforms into K-12 programs. The purpose of this qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study was to explore and discover the lived experiences of administrative leaders who have been successful in their integration of ICT platforms and best practices in K-12 smart schools. This study was framed by two concepts: (a) building digital capacity in smart schools and (b) ICT platforms integration in smart schools. Both concepts were theoretically grounded in social cognitive theory and system theory. Data were collected in semi structured …

Strategies Using Threat Intelligence To Detect Advanced Persistent Threats: A Qualitative Case Study, Melisa A. Joyner

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) targeting critical infrastructures can adversely impact human lives. Cyber security analysts are concerned with APT attacks because they make it challenging to defend critical infrastructures. Grounded in routines activity theory (RAT), the purpose of this qualitative exploratory multiple case study was to explore strategies cybersecurity analysts use to defend critical infrastructures from APT attacks. Data were collected through interviews with 8 participants and documents from two organizations. Participants were required to have experience analyzing network traffic on a critical infrastructure network, one year of cyber threat hunting experience, prior or current knowledge of cyber threat intelligence …

Challenges Of Digital Privacy In Banking Organizations, Okechukwu Innocent Ogudebe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As the information and technology age becomes more advanced, digital privacy flaws have become more challenging. Information technology (IT) security managers, chief information security officers, and other stakeholders in banks are concerned with identity-based authentication attacks because identity-theft attacks cause data breaches. Grounded in the protection motivation theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic study was to examine strategies IT security professionals working on internet banking platforms use to mitigate identity-based authentication attacks. The study participants comprised five IT security professionals currently working in the online banking industry from the northeastern United States with at least 5 years of experience …

Delta Debugging Microservice Systems With Parallel Optimization, Xiang Zhou, Xin Peng, Tao Xie, Jun Sun, Chao Ji, Wenha Li, Dan Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Microservice systems are complicated due to their runtime environments and service communications. Debugging a failure involves the deployment and manipulation of microservice systems on a containerized environment and faces unique challenges due to the high complexity and dynamism of microservices. To address these challenges, we propose a debugging approach for microservice systems based on the delta debugging algorithm, which is to minimize failure-inducing deltas of circumstances (e.g., deployment, environmental configurations). Our approach includes novel techniques for defining, deploying/manipulating, and executing deltas during delta debugging. In particular, to construct a (failing) circumstance space for delta debugging to minimize, our approach defines …

Blockchain And Distributed Ledger Technologies For Iot Security: A Survey Paper, Suleiman Abdulrahman, Maroning Useng

Mesopotamian Journal of Computer Science

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow, the security concerns associated with this technology become increasingly important. Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) are emerging as potential solutions for IoT security due to their decentralized and immutable nature. In this survey paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art research in the use of blockchain and DLTs for IoT security. We begin by introducing the basic concepts of blockchain and DLTs, followed by a discussion of their potential applications in IoT security. We then review the existing literature on the topic, including both academic and industrial research. …

Using Feature Selection With Machine Learning For Generation Of Insurance Insights, Ayman Taha, Bernard Cosgrave, Susan Mckeever

Articles

Insurance is a data-rich sector, hosting large volumes of customer data that is analysed to evaluate risk. Machine learning techniques are increasingly used in the effective management of insurance risk. Insurance datasets by their nature, however, are often of poor quality with noisy subsets of data (or features). Choosing the right features of data is a significant pre-processing step in the creation of machine learning models. The inclusion of irrelevant and redundant features has been demonstrated to affect the performance of learning models. In this article, we propose a framework for improving predictive machine learning techniques in the insurance sector …

The Dynamic Impact Of Biomass And Natural Resources On Ecological Footprint In Brics Economies: A Quantile Regression Evidence, Abraham Ayobamiji Awosusi, Tomiwa Sunday Adebayo, Mehmet Altuntaş, Ephraim Bonah Agyekum, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

Articles

Many emerging economies, including the BRICS economies, are having difficulty meeting the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) objectives. Consequently, this research discusses the creation of an SDG framework for the BRICS economies, which can be utilized as a model for other blocs. To achieve this purpose, this research probes into the effect of biomass energy usage on ecological footprint in the BRICS economies between 1992 and 2018, considering the roles of gross capital formation, natural resources, and globalization. The novel Methods of Moments-Quantile-Regression (MMQR) approach with fixed effects is used, the outcomes of which reveal that in all quantiles (10th to …

An Improved Wild Horse Optimization Algorithm For Reliability Based Optimal Dg Planning Of Radial Distribution Networks, Mohammed Hamouda Ali, Salah Kamel, Mohamed H. Hassan, Marcos Tostado-Véliz, Hossam Zawbaa

Articles

This paper introduces a novel technique for optimal distribution system (DS) planning with distributed generation (DG) systems. It is being done to see how active and reactive power injections affect the system’s voltage profile and energy losses. DG penetration in the power systems is one approach that has several advantages such as peak savings, loss lessening, voltage profile amelioration. It also intends to increase system reliability, stability, and security. The main goal of optimal distributed generation (ODG) is a guarantee to achieve the benefits mentioned previously to increase the overall system efficiency. For extremely vast and complicated systems, analytical approaches …

An Audio Processing Pipeline For Acquiring Diagnostic Quality Heart Sounds Via Mobile Phone, Davoud Shariat Panah, Andrew Hines, Joseph Mckeever, Susan Mckeever

Articles

Recently, heart sound signals captured using mobile phones have been employed to develop data-driven heart disease detection systems. Such signals are generally captured in person by trained clinicians who can determine if the recorded heart sounds are of diagnosable quality. However, mobile phones have the potential to support heart health diagnostics, even where access to trained medical professionals is limited. To adopt mobile phones as self-diagnostic tools for the masses, we would need to have a mechanism to automatically establish that heart sounds recorded by non-expert users in uncontrolled conditions have the required quality for diagnostic purposes. This paper proposes …

Automatic Cephalometric Landmark Detection On X-Ray Images Using Object Detection, Cheng-Ho King, Yin-Lin Wang, Chia-Ling Tsai

Publications and Research

We propose a new deep convolutional cephalometric landmark detection framework for orthodontic treatment. Our proposed method consists of two major steps: landmark detection using a deep neural network for object detection, and landmark repair to ensure one instance per landmark class. For landmark detection, we modify the loss function of the backbone network YOLOv3 to eliminate the constrains on the bounding box and incorporate attention mechanism to improve the detection accuracy. For landmark repair, a triangle mesh is generated from the average face to eliminate superfluous instances, followed by estimation of missing landmarks from the detected ones using Laplacian Mesh. …

Sentiment Without Sentiment Analysis: Using The Recommendation Outcome Of Steam Game Reviews As Sentiment Predictor, Anqi Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents and explores a novel way to determine the sentiment of a Steam game review based on the predicted recommendation of the review, testing different regression models on a combination of Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) features. A dataset of Steam game reviews extracted from the Programming games genre consisting of 21 games along with other significant features such as the number of helpful likes on the recommendation, number of hours played, and others. Based on the features, they are grouped into three datasets: 1) either having keyword features only, 2) keyword features …

Analyzing Secure Access Strategies To Protect Clinical-Information Systems In The Healthcare Industry, Manjit S. Kang

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Securing patient health records within cloud-based health records is a critical security challenge for hospitals and healthcare organizations. Some information technology (IT) leaders working in the U.S. healthcare industry or hospitals are concerned with their patient cloud-based health records due to data breaches in their healthcare systems. Grounded in the task technology fit theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry study was to explore strategies healthcare information leaders use to implement security procedures to protect patient health records on private cloud-based clinical information systems (CIS). The participants were six IT managers in metropolitan San Francisco Bay healthcare facilities. The …

Use Of Human–Computer Interaction Devices And Web 3.0 Skills Among Engineers, Dr. Robbie L. Walker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite massive company investments in human–computer interaction devices and software, such as Web 3.0 technologies, engineers are not demonstrating measurable performance and productivity increases. There is a lack of knowledge and understanding related to the motivation of engineers to use Web 3.0 technologies including the semantic web and cloud applications for increased performance. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to investigate whether the use of human–computer interaction devices predict Web 3.0 skills among engineers. Solow’s information technology productivity paradox was the theoretical foundation for this study. Convenience sampling was used for a sample of 214 participants from metropolitan …

An Exploration On Apts In Biocybersecurity And Cyberbiosecurity, Xavier-Lewis Palmer, Lucas Potter, Saltuk Karahan

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

Novel and complex digital threats that are increasingly interwoven with means and products of biology that can affect society. Much work in Biocybersecurity/Cyberbiosecurity (BCS/CBS) discuss vulnerabilities, but few deeply address malicious actor varieties as attacks at this intersection are new. The path to those attacks remains mostly theoretical, presenting considerable difficulty to accomplish in practical scenarios. In terms of advanced persistent threats (APTs) this of course needs to change as biomanufacturing facilities are at risk, considering Covid-19 and other potential pandemics. Further attacks are not out of reach and thus we must start to imagine how BCS APTs may appear. …

A Divide & Concur Approach To Collaborative Goal Modeling With Merge In Early-Re: Supplemental Material, Kathleen R. Hablutzel, Anisha Jain, Alicia M. Grubb

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Supplemental material for the paper:
"A Divide & Concur Approach to Collaborative Goal Modeling with Merge in Early-RE"
This paper proposes a formal approach to the problem of merging the attributes of intentions and actors, once these elements have been matched.

Comparison Of Caregiver- And Child-Reported Quality Of Life In Children With Sleep-Disordered Breathing, Phoebe Kuo Yu, Kaitlyn Cook, Jiayan Liu, Raouf S. Amin, Craig Derkay, Lisa M. Elden, Susan L. Garetz, Alisha S. George, Sally Ibrahim, Stacey L. Ishman, Erin M. Kirkham, S. Kamal Naqvi, Jerilynn Radcliffe, Kristie R. Ross, Gopi B. Shah, Ignacio E. Tapia, H. Gerry Taylor, David A. Zopf, Susan Redline, Cristina M. Baldassari

Statistical and Data Sciences: Faculty Publications

Objective. Caregivers frequently report poor quality of life(QOL) in children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB).Our objective is to assess the correlation between care-giver- and child-reported QOL in children with mild SDBand identify factors associated with differences between caregiver and child report.

Study Design. Analysis of baseline data from a multi-institutional randomized trialSetting. Pediatric Adenotonsillectomy Trial for Snoring, where children with mild SDB (obstructive apnea-hypopnea index\3) were randomized to observation or adenotonsillectomy.

Methods. The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (Peds QL)assessed baseline global QOL in participating children 5 to12 years old and their caregivers. Caregiver and child scores were compared. Multivariable regression …

Measuring Semantic Similarity Of Documents By Using Named Entity Recognition Methods, David Efraín Muñoz Morales

Masters

The work presented in this thesis was born from the desire to map documents with similar semantic concepts between them. We decided to address this problem as a named entity recognition task, where we have identified key concepts in the texts we use, and we have categorized them. So, we can apply named entity recognition techniques and automatically recognize these key concepts inside other documents. However, we propose the use of a classification method based on the recognition of named entities or key phrases, where the method can detect similarities between key concepts of the texts to be analyzed, and …

Trust In Human-Robot Interaction Within Healthcare Services: A Review Study, Dedra Townsend, Amirhossein Majidirad

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

There has always been a dilemma of the extent to which human can rely on machines in different activities of daily living. Ranging from riding on a self-driving car to having an iRobot vacuum clean the living room. However, when it comes to healthcare settings where robots are intended to work next to human, making decision gets difficult because repercussions may jeopardize people’s life. That has led scientists and engineers to take one step back and think out of the box. Having concept of trust under scrutiny, this study helps deciphering complex human-robot interaction (HRI) attributes. Screening essential constituents of …

Ascp-Iomt: Ai-Enabled Lightweight Secure Communication Protocol For Internet Of Medical Things, Mohammad Wazid, Jaskaran Singh, Ashok Kumar Das, Sachin Shetty, Muhammad Khurram Khan, Joel J.P.C. Rodrigues

VMASC Publications

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a unification of smart healthcare devices, tools, and software, which connect various patients and other users to the healthcare information system through the networking technology. It further reduces unnecessary hospital visits and the burden on healthcare systems by connecting the patients to their healthcare experts (i.e., doctors) and allows secure transmission of healthcare data over an insecure channel (e.g., the Internet). Since Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a great impact on the performance and usability of an information system, it is important to include its modules in a healthcare information system, which will be …

Post-Quantum Secure Identity-Based Encryption Scheme Using Random Integer Lattices For Iot-Enabled Ai Applications, Dharminder Dharminder, Ashok Kumar Das, Sourav Saha, Basudeb Bera, Athanasios V. Vasilakos

VMASC Publications

Identity-based encryption is an important cryptographic system that is employed to ensure confidentiality of a message in communication. This article presents a provably secure identity based encryption based on post quantum security assumption. The security of the proposed encryption is based on the hard problem, namely Learning with Errors on integer lattices. This construction is anonymous and produces pseudo random ciphers. Both public-key size and ciphertext-size have been reduced in the proposed encryption as compared to those for other relevant schemes without compromising the security. Next, we incorporate the constructed identity based encryption (IBE) for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, …

Human Ergonomic Simulation To Support The Design Of An Exoskeleton For Lashing/De-Lashing Operations Of Containers Cargo, Francesco Longo, Antonio Padovano, Vittorio Solina, Virginia D' Augusta, Stefan Venzl, Roberto Calbi, Michele Bartuni, Ornella Anastasi, Rafael Diaz

VMASC Publications

Lashing and de-lashing operations of containers cargo on board containerships are considered as quite strenuous activities in which operators are required to work continuously over a 6 or 8 hours shift with very limited break. This is mostly because containerships need to leave the port as soon as possible and containers loading and unloading operations must be executed with very high productivity (stay moored in a port is a totally unproductive time for a ship and a loss-making business for a shipping company). Operators performing lashing and de-lashing operations are subjected to intense ergonomic stress and uncomfortable working postures. To …

Core Point Pixel-Level Localization By Fingerprint Features In Spatial Domain, Xueyi Ye, Yuzhong Shen, Maosheng Zeng, Yirui Liu, Huahua Chen, Zhijing Zhao

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

Singular point detection is a primary step in fingerprint recognition, especially for fingerprint alignment and classification. But in present there are still some problems and challenges such as more false-positive singular points or inaccurate reference point localization. This paper proposes an accurate core point localization method based on spatial domain features of fingerprint images from a completely different viewpoint to improve the fingerprint core point displacement problem of singular point detection. The method first defines new fingerprint features, called furcation and confluence, to represent specific ridge/valley distribution in a core point area, and uses them to extract the innermost Curve …

Attitudes About Cybersecurity Articulation Agreements And Transfer Students: A Statewide Survey Of Faculty Members And Advisors, Brian K. Payne, Tracy Vandecar-Burdin, Daniela Cigularova

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In this study, cybersecurity faculty and academic advisors from community colleges and 4-year universities in the southeast region of the United States completed a survey assessing attitudes about and support for articulation agreements and related transfer policies. Hypothesizing that professional structures shape attitudes and experiences, the researchers conducted an exploratory quantitative study with primarily descriptive analyses. The results reveal differences in attitudes between community college and 4-year stakeholders and between faculty and academic advisors. The results of this study are discussed in relation to faculty and advisor training and communication.

Civiic: Cybercrime In Virginia: Impacts On Industry And Citizens Final Report, Randy Gainey, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin, Jay Albanese, Thomas Dearden, James Hawdon, Katalin Parti

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

[First paragraph] Victimization from cybercrime is a major concern in Virginia, the US, and the world. As individuals and businesses spend more time online, it becomes increasingly important to understand cybercrime and how to protect against it. Such an understanding is dependent on valid and reliable baseline data that identifies the specific nature, extent, and outcomes of cybercrime activity. A better understanding of cybercrime activity is needed to target and prevent it more effectively, minimize its consequences, and provide support for both individual and corporate victims. Before that can occur, however, better baseline data are required, and this project was …

Precursors Of Email Response To Cybersecurity Scenarios: Factor Exploration And Scale Development, Miguel A. Toro-Jarrin, Pilar Pazos-Lago, Miguel Padilla

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the last decade, information security research has further expanded to include human factors as key elements of the organization's cybersecurity infrastructure. Numerous factors from several theories have been explored to explain and predict the multitude of information security-related behaviors in organizations. Lately, there has been a call for the study of specific cybersecurity behaviors in contextualized scenarios that reflect specific and realistic situations of a potential cyber-attack. This paper focuses on precursors of email response in situations that can be the origin of cybersecurity incidents in organizations (i.e., phishing attacks, ransomware, etc.). This study explores participants' intentions to follow …

Marine Fishery Management Agent-Based Modeling, Hiroki Sato

Honors Program Theses

Fisheries in the United States not only provide seafood for us to enjoy and contribute significantly to the American economy, they also help us to sustain ecological balance and protect our ocean resources. Fishery management agencies in the United States conduct stock assessments to discover the changes in the abundance of fishery stocks in response to changes in the environment and effects of commercial and recreational fishing. Efficient stock assessment enables maintenance of healthy fisheries without permanently damaging the marine ecosystem. In order to forecast the future trend of fisheries, predicting fish migration patterns in response to the environmental factors …

Rankings Of Mma Fighters, Michael Schaefer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Ranking is an essential process that allows sporting authorities to determine the relative performance of athletes. While ranking is straightforward in some sports, it is more complicated in MMA (mixed martial arts), where competition is often fragmented. This paper describes the mathematics behind four existing ranking algorithms: Elo’s System, Massey’s Method, Colley’s Method, and Google’s PageRank, and shows how to adapt them to rank MMA fighters in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). We also provide a performance analysis for each ranking method.