Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons^™

Visual Learning Styles Among Digital Natives, Eric Palmer

Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

This study explored the concept of digital nativity and its educational implications, including application of the learning styles hypothesis. The concept of digital natives, first put forth by Marc Prensky, introduced the notion that individuals raised in a technological environment have developed in such a way as to utilize information differently than the non-native generations before them. This study examined the possibility that these differences may include an increased efficiency in the utilization of narrative imagery versus textual information. The potential benefit of utilizing narrative imagery as an instructional tool is discussed. An experimental test application was developed for the …

3d Face Reconstruction From Limited Images Based On Differential Evolution, Qun Wang, Jiang Li, Vijayan K. Asari, Mohammad A. Karim, Andrew G. Tescher (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

3D face modeling has been one of the greatest challenges for researchers in computer graphics for many years. Various methods have been used to model the shape and texture of faces under varying illumination and pose conditions from a single given image. In this paper, we propose a novel method for the 3D face synthesis and reconstruction by using a simple and efficient global optimizer. A 3D-2D matching algorithm which employs the integration of the 3D morphable model (3DMM) and the differential evolution (DE) algorithm is addressed. In 3DMM, the estimation process of fitting shape and texture information into 2D …

Enhancement Technique For Aerial Images, Sertan Erkanli, Ahmet Gungor Pakfiliz, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Recently, we proposed an enhancement technique for uniformly and non-uniformly illuminated dark images that provides high color accuracy and better balance between the luminance and the contrast in images to improve the visual representations of digital images. In this paper we define an improved version of the proposed algorithm to enhance aerial images in order to reduce the gap between direct observation of a scene and its recorded image.

Designing For The User: Exploring The Interface Design Of Web Services, Katelyn Anne Haw

Honors Program Theses

My thesis investigated the ideas of usability and the design process to create software that is considered usable. I developed a web interface for a Plan of Study Application that would help students make the educated decisions about their studies at UNI. Throughout the development of this application I addressed the following questions: "What makes an interface usable?" and "How does the design process affect a system's usability?" User interface design is an interdisciplinary process and it often involves computer programmers and graphic designers working together. Without clear communication and vision between the groups, the software being developed has little …

Mining Event Structures From Web Videos, Xiao Wu, Yi-Jie Lu, Qiang Peng, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The article is discussing the issues of mining event structures from Web video search results using text analysis, burst detection, and clustering as with the proliferation of social media, the volume of Web videos have grown exponentially.

Concept-Driven Multi-Modality Fusion For Video Search, Xiao-Yong Wei, Yu-Gang Jiang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As it is true for human perception that we gather information from different sources in natural and multi-modality forms, learning from multi-modalities has become an effective scheme for various information retrieval problems. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-modality fusion approach for video search, where the search modalities are derived from a diverse set of knowledge sources, such as text transcript from speech recognition, low-level visual features from video frames, and high-level semantic visual concepts from supervised learning. Since the effectiveness of each search modality greatly depends on specific user queries, prompt determination of the importance of a modality …

Trends And Controversies: Ai, Virtual Worlds, And Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Hsinchun Chen, Yulei Zhang, W. S. Bainbridge, Kyong Jin Shim, N. Pathak, M. A. Ahmad, C. Delong, Z. Borbora, A. Mahapatra, J. Srivastava

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The rich social media data generated in virtual worlds has important implications for business, education, social science, and society at large. Similarly, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have become increasingly popular and have online communities comprising tens of millions of players. They serve as unprecedented tools for theorizing about and empirically modeling the social and behavioral dynamics of individuals, groups, and networks within large communities. Some technologists consider virtual worlds and MMOGs to be likely candidates to become the Web 3.0. AI can play a significant role, from multiagent avatar research and immersive virtual interface design to virtual world and …

P300-Based Bci Performance Prediction Through Examination Of Paradigm Manipulations And Principal Components Analysis., Nicholas Edward Schwartz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Severe neuromuscular disorders can produce locked-in syndrome (LIS), a loss of nearly all voluntary muscle control. A brain-computer interface (BCI) using the P300 event-related potential provides communication that does not depend on neuromuscular activity and can be useful for those with LIS. Currently, there is no way of determining the effectiveness of P300-based BCIs without testing a person's performance multiple times. Additionally, P300 responses in BCI tasks may not resemble the typical P300 response. I sought to clarify the relationship between the P300 response and BCI task parameters and examine the possibility of a predictive relationship between traditional oddball tasks …

Web-Based Ide To Create Model And Controller Components For Mvc-Based Web Applications On Cakephp, Sugiharto Widjaja

Master's Projects

A Web-based IDE that allows users to easily manage Model and Controller components of a CakePHP web application was developed. With this IDE, users are able to manage the model and controller components without having to write very much PHP code. They are able to create new model components without having to worry about creating the database tables for the models as the IDE creates them automatically. The IDE offers a simple interface for users to edit the schema of their models. Users can add or delete data from their models without dealing with the SQL insert/delete statements. The IDE …

Terrain Impostors, William Hamilton Hess

Master's Theses

Interactive software applications which need to render large terrain meshes can suffer from slow frame rates if the geometry of the terrain is sufficiently dense. However, the viewing angle to many distant features of the terrain does not change rapidly with respect to time. If the movement of the viewing position is limited to continuous motion and restrained to a known speed, many terrain features may be rendered once in high detail and reused for several frames.

This thesis proposes a method to increase the rendering speed of large complex terrains by splitting the terrain into contiguous chunks. If a …

Functional Reactive Musical Performers, Justin M. Phillips

Master's Theses

Computers have been assisting in recording, sound synthesis and other fields of music production for quite some time. The actual performance of music continues to be an area in which human players are chosen over computer performers. Musical performance is an area in which personalization is more important than consistency. Human players play with each other, reacting to phrases and ideas created by the players that they are playing with. Computer performers lack the ability to react to the changes in the performance that humans perceive naturally, giving the human players an advantage over the computer performers.

This thesis creates …

Mobile Visibility Querying For Lbs, James Carswell, Keith Gardiner, Junjun Jin

Articles

This article describes research carried out in the area of mobile spatial interaction (MSI) and the development of a 3D mobile version of a 2D web-based directional query processor. The TellMe application integrates location (from GPS, GSM, WiFi) and orientation (from magnetometer/accelerometer) sensor technologies into an enhanced spatial query processing module capable of exploiting a mobile device’s position and orientation for querying real-world spatial datasets. This article outlines our technique for combining these technologies and the architecture needed to deploy them on a sensor enabled smartphone (i.e. Nokia Navigator 6210). With all these sensor technologies now available on off-the-shelf devices, …

View Component Of Web-Based Ide To Develop Web Applications In Cakephp, Swathi Vegesna

Master's Projects

The aim of the project is to build a Web-based IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that enables users to create a Web application in PHP on the CakePHP framework. The view component of the IDE allows the users to build the CakePHP view templates, which include the HTML tags which can be properly linked with the controller functions. Users will be able to create the HTML form elements only by performing certain drags, drops and clicks. This project will create dynamic view elements, which is achieved by connecting them to the Controllers components. This IDE helps the users to create dynamic …

Exploiting Intensity Inhomogeneity To Extract Textured Objects From Natural Scenes, Jundi Ding, Jialie Shen, Hwee Hwa Pang, Songcan Chen, Jingyu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Extracting textured objects from natural scenes is a challenging task in computer vision. The main difficulties arise from the intrinsic randomness of natural textures and the high-semblance between the objects and the background. In this paper, we approach the extraction problem with a seeded region-growing framework that purely exploits the statistical properties of intensity inhomogeneity. The pixels in the interior of potential textured regions are first found as texture seeds in an unsupervised manner. The labels of the texture seeds are then propagated through their respective inhomogeneous neighborhoods, to eventually cover the different texture regions in the image. Extensive experiments …

Enhancing Brand Equity Through Flow: Comparison Of 2d Versus 3d Virtual World, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Brenda Eschenbrenner, David Dewester

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research uses the theory of flow to examine the effect of 2D versus 3D virtual world environments on brand equity and use intention. The results suggest that a 3D virtual world environment has both positive (indirect) and negative (direct) effects on brand equity. The positive, indirect effect of the 3D virtual world environment occurs through feelings of telepresence and enjoyment, both of which contribute positively to brand equity and, in turn, induces a higher behavioral intention. The negative, direct effect can be explained using distraction-conflict theory, where attentional conflict is faced by users of a highly interactive and rich …

3-D Virtual World Education: An Empirical Comparison With Face-To-Face Classroom, Xiaofeng Chen, Keng Siau, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

3-D virtual worlds are increasing in popularity as a means of pedagogical delivery in higher education. In this research, we assess the relative effectiveness of a 3-D virtual world learning environment, Second Life, and traditional face-to-face learning environment. We also assess the efficacy of instructional strategies in these two learning environments and their effects on interactivity, perceived learning, and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that there is an interaction effect of learning environment and instructional strategy. Pair-wise comparisons indicate that when interactive instructional strategy is used, there is no significant difference for perceived learning and satisfaction between 3-D virtual world and …

Understanding Gender Differences In Media Perceptions: A Comparison Of 2d Versus 3d Media, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, David Dewester, Brenda Eschenbrenner

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We examine gender differences in 2D versus 3D media perceptions. Using the Hunter-Gatherer Theory of Spatial Gender Differences and Jung’s Theory of Psychological Types, we hypothesize differences in men’s and women’s perceptions of skill, challenge, telepresence, and satisfaction with online experiences in 2D versus 3D media interaction. The findings suggest that even though women perceive lower skill levels and greater challenges in using 2D and 3D media than men, women’s sense of telepresence is higher than men in both 2D and 3D media. Women are also more satisfied with their interaction in 2D and 3D media than men.

One Social, Sowmya Sampath

Master's Projects

Facebook streams and Twitter tweets represent user content in two common social media systems. Users often have accounts on both these systems and to keep their content current for both of them they must update each separately. It is thus difficult to manage and maintain both of these social networks together. The goal of this project is to build a social website called One Social, where users can view their Facebook streams and Twitter tweets in one single view and thereby easily organize and maintain their updates. In One Social, users can enter a status message and can share it …

Web-Based Ide For Interfacing View Controller, Tejasvi Palvai

Master's Projects

The main idea of this project is to develop a web-based IDE, which helps users to avoid installing or configuring the Desktop IDE. It also enables users to create XHTML pages using the drag and drop mechanism in Struts. Struts extends the Java Servlet API to encourage developers to adopt the MVC (Model-View- Controller) architecture. In this project, a web application for interfacing the view and controller parts of the MVC architecture was developed. This web-based IDE connects the View and Controller components when the user drags and drops HTML elements in the UI of the IDE. With this project, …

Semi-Autonomous Virtual Valet Parking, Arne Suppe, Luis Navarro-Serment, Aaron Steinfeld

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite regulations specifying parking spots that support wheelchair vans, it is not uncommon for end users to encounter problems with clearance for van ramps. Even if a driver elects to park in the far reaches of a parking lot as a precautionary measure, there is no guarantee that the spot next to their van will be empty when they return. Likewise, the prevalence of older drivers who experience significant difficulty with ingress and egress from vehicles is nontrivial and the ability to fully open a car door is important. This work describes a method and user interaction for low cost, …

Efficient Mining Of Multiple Partial Near-Duplicate Alignments By Temporal Network, Hung-Khoon Tan, Chong-Wah Ngo, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper considers the mining and localization of near-duplicate segments at arbitrary positions of partial near-duplicate videos in a corpus. Temporal network is proposed to model the visual-temporal consistency between video sequence by embedding temporal constraints as directed edges in the network. Partial alignment is then achieved through network flow programming. To handle multiple alignments, we consider two properties of network structure: conciseness and divisibility, to ensure that the mining is efficient and effective. Frame-level matching is further integrated in the temporal network for alignment verification. This results in an iterative alignment-verification procedure to fine tune the localization of near-duplicate …

Vireo At Trecvid 2010: Semantic Indexing, Known-Item Search, And Content-Based Copy Detection, Chong-Wah Ngo, Shi-Ai Zhu, Hung-Khoon Tan, Wan-Lei Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents our approaches and the comparative analysis of our results for the three TRECVID 2010 tasks that we participated in: semantic indexing, known-item search and content-based copy detection.

Program Transformations For Information Personalization, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms necessary to automatically customize information content, structure, and presentation to the end user to reduce information overload. Unlike traditional approaches to personalization, the central theme of our approach is to model a website as a program and conduct website transformation for personalization by program transformation (e.g., partial evaluation, program slicing). The goal of this paper is study personalization through a program transformation lens and develop a formal model, based on program transformations, for personalized interaction with hierarchical hypermedia. The specific research issues addressed involve identifying and developing program representations and transformations suitable for classes of hierarchical …

Trajectory-Based Visualization Of Web Video Topics, Juan Cao, Chong-Wah Ngo, Yong-Dong Zhang, Dong-Ming Zhang, Liang Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While there have been research efforts in organizing largescale web videos into topics, efficient browsing of web video topics remains a challenging problem not yet addressed. The related issues include how to efficiently browse and track the evolution of topics and eventually locate the videos of interest. In this paper, we introduce a novel interface for visualizing video topics as evolution trajectories. The trajectory visualization is capable of highlighting milestone events and depicting the topical hotness over time. The interface also allows multi-level browsing from topics to events and to videos, resulting in search exploration could be more efficiently conducted …

Cast2face: Character Identification In Movie With Actor-Character Correspondence, Mengdi Xu, Xiaotong Yuan, Jialie Shen, Shuicheng Yan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We investigate the problem of automatically identifying characters in a movie with the supervision of actor-character name correspondence provided by the movie cast. Our proposed framework, namely Cast2Face, is featured by: (i) we restrict the names to assign within the set of character names in the cast; (ii) for each character, by using the corresponding actor's name as a key word, we retrieve from Google image search a group of face images to form the gallery set; and (iii) the probe face tracks in the movie are then identified as one of the actors by robust multi-task joint sparse representation …

Statistical Image Recovery From Laser Speckle Patterns With Polarization Diversity, Donald B. Dixon

Theses and Dissertations

This research extends the theory and understanding of the laser speckle imaging technique. This non-traditional imaging technique may be employed to improve space situational awareness and image deep space objects from a ground-based sensor system. The use of this technique is motivated by the ability to overcome aperture size limitations and the distortion effects from Earth’s atmosphere. Laser speckle imaging is a lensless, coherent method for forming two-dimensional images from their autocorrelation functions. Phase retrieval from autocorrelation data is an ill-posed problem where multiple solutions exist. This research introduces polarization diversity as a method for obtaining additional information so the …

Accelerating Malware Detection Via A Graphics Processing Unit, Nicholas S. Kovach

Theses and Dissertations

Real-time malware analysis requires processing large amounts of data storage to look for suspicious files. This is a time consuming process that (requires a large amount of processing power) often affecting other applications running on a personal computer. This research investigates the viability of using Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), present in many personal computers, to distribute the workload normally processed by the standard Central Processing Unit (CPU). Three experiments are conducted using an industry standard GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT card. The goal of the first experiment is to find the optimal number of threads per block for calculating …

3dq: Threat Dome Visibility Querying On Mobile Devices, James Carswell, Keith Gardiner, Junjun Yin

Articles

3DQ (Three Dimensional Query) is our mobile spatial interaction (MSI) prototype for location and orientation aware mobile devices (i.e. today's sensor enabled smartphones). The prototype tailors a military style threat dome query calculation using MSI with hidden query removal functionality for reducing “information overload” on these off-the-shelf devices. The effect gives a more accurate and expected query result for Location-Based Services (LBS) applications by returning information on only those objects visible within a user’s 3D field-of-view. Our standardised XML based request/response design enables any mobile device, regardless of operating system and/or programming language, to access the 3DQ web-service interfaces.

Visual Occam: High Level Visualization And Design Of Process Networks, Mikolaj M. Slomka

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

With networks, multiprocessors, and multi-threaded systems becoming more common in our world it is increasingly evident that concurrent programming is not something to be ignored or marginalized even though many takes on concurrency (mainly by means of monitors or shared resources) have proven to be difficult to deal with on large scales. Thankfully, a good deal of work has already been done to combat this, through CSP, occam, and other such derivatives, to produce a scalable process oriented paradigm. Still, it is cumbersome to attempt to deal with the intricacies of such communicating networks down to every minutia; if, instead, …

On The Annotation Of Web Videos By Efficient Near-Duplicate Search, Wan-Lei Zhao, Xiao Wu, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the proliferation of Web 2.0 applications, usersupplied social tags are commonly available in social media as a means to bridge the semantic gap. On the other hand, the explosive expansion of social web makes an overwhelming number of web videos available, among which there exists a large number of near-duplicate videos. In this paper, we investigate techniques which allow effective annotation of web videos from a data-driven perspective. A novel classifier-free video annotation framework is proposed by first retrieving visual duplicates and then suggesting representative tags. The significance of this paper lies in the addressing of two timely issues …