Computer Sciences Commons^™

Multi-Hop Knowledge Base Question Answering With An Iterative Sequence Matching Model, Yunshi Lan, Shuohang Wang, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Knowledge Base Question Answering (KBQA) has attracted much attention and recently there has been more interest in multi-hop KBQA. In this paper, we propose a novel iterative sequence matching model to address several limitations of previous methods for multi-hop KBQA. Our method iteratively grows the candidate relation paths that may lead to answer entities. The method prunes away less relevant branches and incrementally assigns matching scores to the paths. Empirical results demonstrate that our method can significantly outperform existing methods on three different benchmark datasets.

Scompile: Critical Path Identification And Analysis For Smart Contracts, Jialiang Chang, Bo Gao, Hao Xiao, Jun Sun, Yan Cai, Zijiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Ethereum smart contracts are an innovation built on top of the blockchain technology, which provides a platform for automatically executing contracts in an anonymous, distributed, and trusted way. The problem is magnified by the fact that smart contracts, unlike ordinary programs, cannot be patched easily once deployed. It is important for smart contracts to be checked against potential vulnerabilities. In this work, we propose an alternative approach to automatically identify critical program paths (with multiple function calls including inter-contract function calls) in a smart contract, rank the paths according to their criticalness, discard them if they are infeasible or otherwise …

The Experiences Of African American Male Computer Science Majors In Two Year Colleges, Simone Brookins Jenkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the field of computer science grows and the computing science workforce demands more qualified workers, the United States workforce will require underrepresented minorities to help meet these demands. African American males are a demographic that can help meet this need but there are few of them pursuing computer science careers and successfully graduating with computer science degrees. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experiences of African American male two-year college students who are in pursuit of a degree in computer science. My findings indicated that the study participants’ experiences such as positive interactions with faculty …

Establishing Computational Approaches Towards Identifying Malarial Allosteric Modulators: A Case Study Of Plasmodium Falciparum Hsp70s, Arnold Amusengeri, Lindy Astl, Kevin Lobb, Gennady M. Verkhivker, Özlem Tastan Bishop

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Combating malaria is almost a never-ending battle, as Plasmodium parasites develop resistance to the drugs used against them, as observed recently in artemisinin-based combination therapies. The main concern now is if the resistant parasite strains spread from Southeast Asia to Africa, the continent hosting most malaria cases. To prevent catastrophic results, we need to find non-conventional approaches. Allosteric drug targeting sites and modulators might be a new hope for malarial treatments. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are potential malarial drug targets and have complex allosteric control mechanisms. Yet, studies on designing allosteric modulators against them are limited. Here, we identified allosteric …

Recommendation-Based Team Formation For On-Demand Taxi-Calling Platforms, Lingyu Zhang, Tianshu Song, Yongxin Tong, Zimu Zhou, Dan Li, Wei Ai, Lulu Zhang, Guobin Wu, Yan Liu, Jieping Ye

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On-demand taxi-calling platforms often ignore the social engagement of individual drivers. The lack of social incentives impairs the work enthusiasms of drivers and will affect the quality of service. In this paper, we propose to form teams among drivers to promote participation. A team consists of a leader and multiple members, which acts as the basis for various group-based incentives such as competition. We define the Recommendation-based Team Formation (RTF) problem to form as many teams as possible while accounting for the choices of drivers. The RTF problem is challenging. It needs both accurate recommendation and coordination among recommendations, since …

Using Customer Service Dialogues For Satisfaction Analysis With Context-Assisted Multiple Instance Learning, Kaisong Song, Lidong Bing, Wei Gao, Jun Lin, Lujun Zhao, Jiancheng Wang, Changlong Sun, Xiaozhong Liu, Qiong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Customers ask questions and customer service staffs answer their questions, which is the basic service model via multi-turn customer service (CS) dialogues on E-commerce platforms. Existing studies fail to provide comprehensive service satisfaction analysis, namely satisfaction polarity classification (e.g., well satisfied, met and unsatisfied) and sentimental utterance identification (e.g., positive, neutral and negative). In this paper, we conduct a pilot study on the task of service satisfaction analysis (SSA) based on multi-turn CS dialogues. We propose an extensible Context-Assisted Multiple Instance Learning (CAMIL) model to predict the sentiments of all the customer utterances and then aggregate those sentiments into service …

Redundancy Effect Of Vehicular Cloud’S Environment Using Location Estimate (Revise), Mohamed El-Tawab, Samy El-Tawab, M. Hossain Heydari

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

The rapid growth of modern wireless technology increases the invention of new applications using the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). Vehicular Cloud, which is a concept introduced recently to use the vehicles sitting idle for hours as a processing devices, has been a hot topic. This subject became more popular after the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) announcement of mandatory wireless capabilities of each vehicle since 2015. We investigate the idea of benefiting from the unused processing power of vehicles sitting in parking lots for a long period of time (e.g. an airport, or train station). Moreover, researchers propose the …

Virtual Wrap-Up Presentation: Digital Libraries, Intelligent Data Analytics, And Augmented Description, Elizabeth Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh, Yi Liu, Chulwoo Pack

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Includes framing, overview, and discussion of the explorations pursued as part of the Digital Libraries, Intelligent Data Analytics, and Augmented Description demonstration project, pursued by members of the Aida digital libraries research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln through a research services contract with the Library of Congress. This presentation covered: Aida research team and background for the demonstration project; broad outlines of “Digital Libraries, Intelligent Data Analytics, and Augmented Description”; what changed for us as a research team over the collaboration and why; deliverables of our work; thoughts toward “What next”; and deep-dives into the explorations. The machine learning …

Evaluating Conversation Agent Impact On Student Experience In A Distance Education Course, Grover Walters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We explore the efficacy of conversation agents operating as an instructional aid in a distance education course. Two aspects of efficacy are considered—conversation agent impact on student perceptions of the experience, and how different design features of the agent affect student perceptions of engagement. Evaluation of the agent is accomplished by collecting data from 24 undergraduate participants separated into random groups. We conduct two rounds of mixedmethod evaluation. Between the two rounds, a modification to the agent occurs based on the outcome of the first evaluation. Findings include limitations related to phrasing and data persistence features of the design that …

Rating Mechanisms For Sustainability Of Crowdsourcing Platforms, Chenxi Qiu, Anna Squicciarini, Sarah Rajtmajer

College of Science & Mathematics Departmental Research

Crowdsourcing leverages the diverse skill sets of large collections of individual contributors to solve problems and execute projects, where contributors may vary significantly in experience, expertise, and interest in completing tasks. Hence, to ensure the satisfaction of its task requesters, most existing crowdsourcing platforms focus primarily on supervising contributors' behavior. This lopsided approach to supervision negatively impacts contributor engagement and platform sustainability.

Social And Geographical Disparities In Twitter Use During Hurricane Harvey, Lei Zou, Nina S.N. Lam, Shayan Shams, Heng Cai, Michelle A. Meyer, Seungwon Yang, Kisung Lee, Seung Jong Park, Margaret A. Reams

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Social media such as Twitter is increasingly being used as an effective platform to observe human behaviors in disastrous events. However, uneven social media use among different groups of population in different regions could lead to biased consequences and affect disaster resilience. This paper studies the Twitter use during 2017 Hurricane Harvey in 76 counties in Texas and Louisiana. We seek to answer a fundamental question: did social-geographical disparities of Twitter use exist during the three phases of emergency management (preparedness, response, recovery)? We employed a Twitter data mining framework to process the data and calculate two indexes: Ratio and …

A Co-Optimal Coverage Path Planning Method For Aerial Scanning Of Complex Structures, Zhexiong Shang, Justin Bradley, Zhigang Shen

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Faculty Publications

The utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in survey and inspection of civil infrastructure has been growing rapidly. However, computationally efficient solvers that find optimal flight paths while ensuring high-quality data acquisition of the complete 3D structure remains a difficult problem. Existing solvers typically prioritize efficient flight paths, or coverage, or reducing computational complexity of the algorithm – but these objectives are not co-optimized holistically. In this work we introduce a co-optimal coverage path planning (CCPP) method that simultaneously co-optimizes the UAV path, the quality of the captured images, and reducing computational complexity of the solver all while adhering to …

Twitter And The Magic Pony, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

London-based Magic Pony went from A.I. startup to a multimillion dollar cash-out in 18 months. Was selling to Twitter the right exit strategy?

Automatic Recall Of Software Lessons Learned For Software Project Managers, Tamer Mohamed Abdellatif Mohamed, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Danny Ho

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Context: Lessons learned (LL) records constitute the software organization memory of successes and failures. LL are recorded within the organization repository for future reference to optimize planning, gain experience, and elevate market competitiveness. However, manually searching this repository is a daunting task, so it is often disregarded. This can lead to the repetition of previous mistakes or even missing potential opportunities. This, in turn, can negatively affect the organization’s profitability and competitiveness.

Objective: We aim to present a novel solution that provides an automatic process to recall relevant LL and to push those LL to project managers. This will dramatically …

Can We Rely On Smartphone Applications?, Sonia Meskini, Ali Bou Nassif, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Smartphones are becoming necessary tools in the daily lives of millions of users who rely on these devices and their applications. There are thousands of applications for smartphone devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android, thus their reliability has become paramount for their users. This work aims to answer two related questions: (1) Can we assess the reliability of mobile applications by using the traditional reliability models? (2) Can we model adequately the failure data collected from many users? Firstly, it has been proved that the three most used software reliability models have fallen short of the mark when …

Auditor: An R Package For Model-Agnostic Visual Validation And Diagnostics, Alicja Gosiewska, Przemysław Biecek

The R Journal

Machine learning models have successfully been applied to challenges in applied in biology, medicine, finance, physics, and other fields. With modern software it is easy to train even a complex model that fits the training data and results in high accuracy on test set. However, problems often arise when models are confronted with the real-world data. This paper describes methodology and tools for model-agnostic auditing. It provides functinos for assessing and comparing the goodness of fit and performance of models. In addition, the package may be used for analysis of the similarity of residuals and for identification of outliers and …

Light-Field Style Transfer, David Marvin Hart

Theses and Dissertations

For many years, light fields have been a unique way of capturing a scene. By using a particular set of optics, a light field camera is able to, in a single moment, take images of the same scene from multiple perspectives. These perspectives can be used to calculate the scene geometry and allow for effects not possible with standard photographs, such as refocus and the creation of novel views.Neural style transfer is the process of training a neural network to render photographs in the style of a particular painting or piece of art. This is a simple process for a …

Projektimi I Një Iot Moduli Për Monitorimin E Cilësisë Së Ujit Në Kohë Reale, Ramiz Krasniqi

Theses and Dissertations

Fillimisht falenderoj Zotin i cili më mundësoj të arrijë të mbrojë temën e diplomës së nivelit Master pranë profesorëve të nderuar të cilët gjithashtu i falendëroj për përkushtimin dhe angazhimin e tyre. Gjithsesi këtyre arritjeve të mia i bashkangjiten edhe shumë njerëz të cilët qëndrojnë prapa sukseseve të mia e për të cilët kam falendërim të veçantë. Falenderoj prindërit për përkujdesjen dhe motivimin që gjithmonë më kanë japur. Gjithë kjo punë e imja nuk do të ishte realizuar në radhë të parë pa ndihmën e mentorit tim, Dr.Zhilbert Tafës i cili ishte i gatshëm të më ofrojë ndihmën e tij …

Algortimet Kriptografike Dhe Siguria, Agnesa Krasniqi

Theses and Dissertations

Rritja e përdorimit të Internetit ka ndikuar ndjeshëm në natyrën e aplikacioneve dhe në mënyrën sesi ne komunikojmë. Siguria e të dhënave dikton përdorimin e teknikave të ndryshme kriptografike. Për këtë arsye analizojmë në detaje teknikat e ndryshme të shifrimit duke vlerësuar performancën dhe efikasitetin e tyre. Për të kuptuar rëndësinë e aplikimit të teknikave kriptografike mjafton të njohim panoramën e gjerë të aplikacioneve dhe shërbimeve ku kemi të dhëna sensitive. Ruajtja e të dhënave është një ndër kërkesat bazë vetjake por edhe operacionale në garantimin e sigurisë së suksesit në një iniciativë biznesi si bankat apo kompanitë e ndryshme. …

Siguria Dhe Privatësia Në Sektorin Bankar Që Përdorin Shërbime Të Bazuara Në Cloud: Sfidat Dhe Kontrollet, Driton Emërllahu

Theses and Dissertations

Kjo tezë e masterit diskuton çështjet e sigurisë dhe privatësisë të sektorit bankar që përdorin shërbime të bazuara në cloud, si dhe përshkruan implikimet e tij në sigurinë privatësinë e të dhënave personale, dhe implikimet në konfidencialitetin e bizneseve, ndërmarrjeve apo entitete të ndryshme. Me anë të këtij hulumtimi gjejmë se shpërndarja (sharing) e informacionit për disa informacione ose edhe për disa përdorues mund të jetë e kufizuar në disa mënyra ose dhe mund të ndikojë në statutin ose mbrojtjen e informacionit të përbashkët, dhe bankat kanë qenë tradicionalisht një industri konservatore në lidhje me adoptimin e teknologjive më të …

Application Of Intelligent Data Analysis In Medicine, Diellëza Xhokli

Theses and Dissertations

Përmes këtij punimi të temës së diplomës është paraqitur një punë e cila ka të bëjë me Aplikimin e analizes intelegjente të të dhënave në mjekësi ku do të diskutohet në vazhdim, kjo temë do të trajtojë sasinë e të dhënave të mëdha, ruajtjen e atyre të dhënave në bazën e të dhënave mjekësore e cila kërkon zhvillimin e mjeteve të specializuara për ruajtjen në këto të dhëna. Ky punim ka për qëllim kryesor hulumtimet online të cilat bazohen në njohjen e zhvillimit të intelegjencës së të dhënave aktuale si dhe nevojën për analizen intelegjente të të dhënave në mjekësi …

Krahasimi I Teknikave Të Multipleksimit (Fdma, Tdma, Dhe Cdma), Bardhyl Sopjani

Theses and Dissertations

Kërkesa për lloje të ndryshme të komunikimeve të tilla si zëri, imazhet, videot dhe të dhënat tjera, rrisin kërkesën për shpejtësi më të mëdha të transmetimit. Nevoja për kapacitete më të mëdha, ka shtyrë më tutje zhvillimin e teknologjisë, e ku multipleksimi gjen zbatim të rëndësishëm në këtë drejtim.

Multipleksimi ka evoluar me kalimin e viteve. Kjo është filluar me metodën e Emile Baudot për të transmetuar gjashtë sinjale telegrafi njëkohësisht përmes një kablli në sistemet e komunikimit me sinjal të përzier me shpejtësi të lartë, që tani janë të zakonshme. Evolucioni filloi me burime identike të shumëfishta informacioni, siç …

Search Engines Arkitektura Dhe Krahasimi I Platformave Ekzistuese, Valbonë Hajrizi

Theses and Dissertations

Në këtë punim të diplomës master, është shtjelluar puna dhe funksionaliteti i makinave të kërkimit (ang. Search Engine) në ueb, dhe arkitektura dhe krahasimi i platformave aktuale, duke bërë krahasimin e tyre si për nga aspekti i vetive, dizajnit, funksionalitetit, shpejtësisë në gjetjen dhe kthimin e informacioneve të kërkuara, saktësisë në gjetjen e informacioneve të duhura, si dhe përdorimit të tyre nga shfrytëzuesit.

Sot, të hapësh një shfletues në Internet dhe mos hapësh një makinë kërkuese në ueb, është pothuajse e pamundur, kjo për arsye se tani Interneti është një grumbull shumë i madh i të dhënave, sa që, për …

Krahasimi I Algoritmeve Për Kërkimin E Paternës Brenda Dokumentit, Vionë Hasani

Theses and Dissertations

Problemet në kohë reale në botë kanë nevojë për algoritëm të shpejtë dhe me gabim minimal. Në ditët e sotme ka shumë aplikacione që janë përdorur për të kërkuar rezultate në internet. Ka shumë algoritme të cilat përdoren për kërkimin e rezultateve. Metoda e përputhjes së paternës është njëra prej tyre. Në aplikacionin në internet njerëzit merren me llojet e ndryshme të të dhënave, për shembull kërkimi i tekstit, kërkimi i figurave, kërkimi audio dhe kërkimi i videos. Çdo search engine përdorë algoritme të ndryshme të kërkimit për trajtimin e tipeve të ndryshme të të dhënave.

Pasi që ekzistojnë algoritme …

Menaxhimi I Mikroserviseve Me Anë Të Kubernetes, Ilir Koci

Theses and Dissertations

Ky punim diplome analizon menaxhimin e një aplikacioni të ndarë në mikroservise me anë të Kubernetes si orchestration platformë dhe Docker si containerization platformë. Pasi që Cloud po shkon drejt mikroserviseve atëherë do të ishte ide e mirë qe kjo temë të mirrej me këtë problem. Pasi që aplikacionet monolithic janë vështirë të menaxhueshme dhe kanë vështirësi të shkallëzohen kur ka kërkesë të madhe për atë aplikacion atëherë ndarja e tij në mikroservise dhe orkestrimi i tij me anë të Kubernetes e lehtëson punën për System Admin (DevOps Engineer).

Në këtë temë ceken se si funksionojnë platformat e containerization si …

Resource Characterisation Of Personal-Scale Sensing Models On Edge Accelerators, Mattia Antonini, Tran Huy Vu, Chulhong Min, Alessandro Montanari, Akhil Mathur, Fahim Kawsar

Student Publications

Edge accelerator is a class of brand-new purpose-built System On a Chip (SoC) for running deep learning models efficiently on edge devices. These accelerators offer various benefits such as ultra-low latency, sensitive data protection, and high availability due to their locality and are opening up interminable opportunities for building sensory systems in the real world. Naturally, in the context of sensory awareness systems, e.g., IoT, wearables, and other sensory devices, the emergence of edge accelerators is pushing us to rethink how we design these systems at a personal-scale. To this end, in this paper we take a closer look at …

Design And Modeling Of A New Biomimetic Soft Robotic Jellyfish Using Ipmc-Based Electroactive Polymers, Zakai J. Olsen, Kwang J. Kim

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

Smart materials and soft robotics have been seen to be particularly well-suited for developing biomimetic devices and are active fields of research. In this study, the design and modeling of a new biomimetic soft robot is described. Initial work was made in the modeling of a biomimetic robot based on the locomotion and kinematics of jellyfish. Modifications were made to the governing equations for jellyfish locomotion that accounted for geometric differences between biology and the robotic design. In particular, the capability of the model to account for the mass and geometry of the robot design has been added for better …

Innovative Business Model For Smart Healthcare Insurance, Maryam Hasan Al Thawadi

Information Security Theses

Information revolution and technology growth have made a considerable contribution to restraining the cost expansion and empowering the customer. They disrupted most business models in different industries. The customer-centric business model has pervaded the different sectors. Smart healthcare has made an enormous shift in patient life and raised their expectations of healthcare services quality. Healthcare insurance is an essential business in the healthcare sector; patients expect a new business model to meet their needs and enhance their wellness. This research develops a holistic smart healthcare architecture based on the recent development of information and communications technology. Then develops a disruptive …

Deformable Part Models For Automatically Georeferencing Historical Map Images, Nicholas Howe, Jerod Weinman, John Gouwar, Aabid Shamji

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Libraries are digitizing their collections of maps from all eras, generating increasingly large online collections of historical cartographic resources. Aligning such maps to a modern geographic coordinate system greatly increases their utility. This work presents a method for such automatic georeferencing, matching raster image content to GIS vector coordinate data. Given an approximate initial alignment that has already been projected from a spherical geographic coordinate system to a Cartesian map coordinate system, a probabilistic shape-matching scheme determines an optimized match between the GIS contours and ink in the binarized map image. Using an evaluation set of 20 historical maps from …

Characterizing And Predicting Repeat Food Consumption Behavior For Just-In-Time Interventions, Yue Liu, Helena Huey Chong Lee, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee-Peng Lim, Tzu-Ling Cheng, Shou-De Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Human beings are creatures of habit. In their daily life, people tend to repeatedly consume similar types of food items over several days and occasionally switch to consuming different types of items when the consumptions become overly monotonous. However, the novel and repeat consumption behaviors have not been studied in food recommendation research. More importantly, the ability to predict daily eating habits of individuals is crucial to improve the effectiveness of food recommender systems in facilitating healthy lifestyle change. In this study, we analyze the patterns of repeat food consumptions using large-scale consumption data from a popular online fitness community …