Other Computer Sciences Commons^™

Pox And The City, Elizabeth S. Goins

Journal of Interactive Humanities

Pox in the City is a prototype of a social history game that focuses on the medical profession circa 1800 in Edinburgh. The prototype was research, designed and developed on a small budget (about $17,000) and in a short time frame (20 weeks). The experimental design goal was to create a narrative driven educational game that was engaging and delivered some basic educational goals to be used in the high school and college level classrooms. To experiment with writing historic game narrative and to stay within budget, the design was built around a point and click adventure framework. Narrative was …

Embodied Tuning: Interfacing Danish Radio Heritage, Christian Hviid Mortensen, Vitus Vestergaard

Journal of Interactive Humanities

Most museum exhibitions favor vision, not hearing. When there is audio in exhibitions, it tends to take on a secondary role as a soundtrack or commentary. In some cases, however, audio should be the primary object of interest. Radio heritage is such a case. The traditional way of showcasing audio is through webaccessible archives or through listening kiosks in the exhibition. Neither one takes advantage of the unique affordances of the spatiality and physicality of an exhibition. We therefore propose an alternative way of exhibiting radio heritage in a listening exhibition where users move around and explore the physical gallery …

Modding The Humanities: Experiments In Historic Narratives, Elizabeth S. Goins, Christopher Egert, Andrew Phelps, Chandra Reedy, Joel Kincaid

Journal of Interactive Humanities

While the ludology versus narratology debate raged within game studies circles [1], game designers continued building games and developing methods to improve player experience. Today however, while designers may have their personal preferences, there is no longer any doubt that both mechanics and story can have an important role to play in a game [2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

You Have Died Of Dysentery: A First Attempt At Navigating A Course In Educational Games, Adrienne Decker, David Simkins

Journal of Interactive Humanities

This paper describes our experiences developing and piloting a course in educational games. We discuss the structure of the course, the topics we included in the course, as well as the final projects the students created for the course. Of particular interest to non-technical educators interested in exploring games in their courses is the fact that our course incorporated many critical thinking skills as part of the coursework. We felt that an important part of the student’s immersion in this material was not just the production of the game, but also a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding education and …

Evaluating The Presence Of A Victim Cache On An Arm Processor, Lakshmi Vidya Peri

Computer Science Graduate Projects and Theses

Mobile processor is a CPU designed to save power. It is found in mobile computers and cell phones. A CPU chip, designed for portable computers, is typically housed in a smaller chip package, but more importantly, in order to run cooler, it uses lower voltages than its desktop counterpart and has more "sleep mode" capability. A mobile processor can be throttled down to different power levels and/or sections of the chip can be turned off entirely when not in use. ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA). The relative simplicity of ARM processors makes …

A Robust Rgbd Slam System For 3d Environment With Planar Surfaces, Po-Chang Su, Ju Shen, Sen-Ching S. Cheung

Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the increasing popularity of RGB-depth (RGB-D) sensors such as the Microsoft Kinect, there have been much research on capturing and reconstructing 3D environments using a movable RGB-D sensor. The key process behind these kinds of simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) systems is the iterative closest point or ICP algorithm, which is an iterative algorithm that can estimate the rigid movement of the camera based on the captured 3D point clouds. While ICP is a well-studied algorithm, it is problematic when it is used in scanning large planar regions such as wall surfaces in a room. The lack of depth …

Tourguide: Augmented Reality Based On Structure Recognition, Michael Jipping

Faculty Presentations

TourGuide is software for Android phones and tablets that allows users to use augmented reality to see the world. TourGuide uses realtime video to search for images that match those in its database. When these images are found, TourGuide overlays the image with a number of options – from URLs/Web to video viewing – that are used to access more information about the image by touching the screen.

The software is designed so that configuring it is easy. In addition to the viewer, there is also a TourGuide Editor that allows configuration on a tablet or phone.

Forensic Analysis Of Whatsapp On Android Smartphones, Neha S. Thakur

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Android forensics has evolved over time offering significant opportunities and exciting challenges. On one hand, being an open source platform Android is giving developers the freedom to contribute to the rapid growth of the Android market whereas on the other hand Android users may not be aware of the security and privacy implications of installing these applications on their phones. Users may assume that a password-locked device protects their personal information, but applications may retain private information on devices, in ways that users might not anticipate. In this thesis we will be concentrating on one such application called 'WhatsApp', a …

Verifying R Code And Visualizing Power Grid Data: Signature Quality Metrics And Gui Development, Emmanuel C. Herrera, Brett Amidan

STAR Program Research Presentations

Verifying R code and visualizing Power Grid data:

Signature Quality Metrics and GUI development

Author: Emmanuel Herrera

Mentors: Brett Amidan and Landon Sego

There are many bioforensic signatures produced by analytical instruments that are expensive to produce and maintain accuracy. SQM is an R package which will provide subject matter experts with tools that will help them assess the specific quality of signatures and determine their accuracy, utility and cost by simple function calls. Many published academic papers were surveyed on the kinds of metrics already being implemented. Once understood how some metrics measured accuracy, the SQM package was duplicated …

Towards Decrypting Attractiveness Via Multi-Modality Cue, Tam Nguyen, Si Liu, Bingbing Ni, Jun Tan, Yong Rui, Shuicheng Yan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Decrypting the secret of beauty or attractiveness has been the pursuit of artists and philosophers for centuries. To date, the computational model for attractiveness estimation has been actively explored in the computer vision and multimedia community, yet with the focus mainly on facial features. In this article, we conduct a comprehensive study on female attractiveness conveyed by single/multiple modalities of cues, that is, face, dressing and/or voice; the aim is to discover how different modalities individually and collectively affect the human sense of beauty.

To extensively investigate the problem, we collect the Multi-Modality Beauty (M²B) dataset, which is …

Segmenting Tables Via Indexing Of Value Cells By Table Headers, Sharad C. Seth, George Nagy

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Correct segmentation of a web table into its component regions is the essential first step to understanding tabular data. Our algorithmic solution to the segmentation problem relies on the property that strings defining row and column header paths uniquely index each data cell in the table. We segment the table using only “logical layout analysis” without resorting to any appearance features or natural language understanding. We start with a CSV table that preserves the 2- dimensional structure and contents of the original source table (e.g., an HTML table) but not font size, font weight, and color. The indexing property of …

Overview: The Role Of Information Policy In Resolving Global Challenges, Sharon A. Weiner

Purdue Policy Research Institute (PPRI) Policy Briefs

Governments in many countries recognize the importance of knowledge-based societies whose citizens are adaptable and have the means to engage in continuous learning. Information societies can address global challenges far more readily than those that do not adopt its characteristics of ICTs (information and communication technologies) and connectivity; usable content; infrastructure and deliverability; and human intellectual capability.

“You Know You’Re Going To Fail, Right?”: Learning From Design Flaws In Just Press Play At Rit, Elizabeth L. Lawley, Andrew Phelps

Presentations and other scholarship

Abstract: In the fall of 2010, faculty in the School of Interactive Games & Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology began the initial planning for an achievement system meant to recognize and reward student engagement in non-curricular activities—specifically activities that successful graduates of the program regularly cited as significant factors in their undergraduate experience. This paper describes the design process used to create the initial version of the Just Press Play system, the results of the implementation during the 2011-12 academic year, and the significant redesign of the system that took place based on assessment of the first year …

Equivalence Checking For High-Assurance Behavioral Synthesis, Kecheng Hao

Dissertations and Theses

The rapidly increasing complexities of hardware designs are forcing design methodologies and tools to move to the Electronic System Level (ESL), a higher abstraction level with better productivity than the state-of-the-art Register Transfer Level (RTL). Behavioral synthesis, which automatically synthesizes ESL behavioral specifications to RTL implementations, plays a central role in this transition. However, since behavioral synthesis is a complex and error-prone translation process, the lack of designers' confidence in its correctness becomes a major barrier to its wide adoption. Therefore, techniques for establishing equivalence between an ESL specification and its synthesized RTL implementation are critical to bring behavioral synthesis …

Channels: Easy Video Content Consumption, Alexander R. Ledwith

Computer Engineering

The idea for this project is to take a user’s digital movie and television show library, and organize the individual videos into lists that will continuously and concurrently play like cable TV channels. This means that when a list of channels is switched to, video content will automatically start playing, possibly in the middle, based on a schedule. It should serve the needs of the user by allowing the user to quickly watch any of their existing channels, easily add a new channel based on chosen criteria or manual selection, and easily add new video content. In addition, the product …

Misheard Me Oronyminator: Using Oronyms To Validate The Correctness Of Frequency Dictionaries, Jennifer G. Hughes

Master's Theses

In the field of speech recognition, an algorithm must learn to tell the difference between "a nice rock" and "a gneiss rock". These identical-sounding phrases are called oronyms. Word frequency dictionaries are often used by speech recognition systems to help resolve phonetic sequences with more than one possible orthographic phrase interpretation, by looking up which oronym of the root phonetic sequence contains the most-common words.

Our paper demonstrates a technique used to validate word frequency dictionary values. We chose to use frequency values from the UNISYN dictionary, which tallies each word on a per-occurance basis, using a proprietary text corpus, …

Mantis: A Predictive Driving Directions Recommendation System, Christopher Hoover

Master's Theses

This thesis presents Mantis, a system designed to evaluate possible driving routes and recommend the optimal route based on current and predicted travel conditions. The system uses the Bing Maps REST service to obtain a set of routes. Traffic data from the California Department of Transportation’s Performance Measurement System (PeMS) is then used to estimate travel times for these routes. In addition to simple travel time estimation based on instantaneous traffic conditions, Mantis can use historic data to predict traffic speeds at future times. This allows Mantis to more effectively account for regularly repeating traffic patterns such as rush hour, …

Automated Timeline Anomaly Detection, Joshua M. Barone

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Digital forensics is the practice of trained investigators gathering and analyzing evidence from digital devices such as computers and smart phones. On these digital devices, it is possible to change the time on the device for a purpose other than what is intended. Currently there are no documented techniques to determine when this occurs. This research seeks to prove out a technique for determining when the time has been changed on forensic disk image by analyzing the log files found on the image. Out of this research a tool is created to perform this analysis in automated fashion. This tool …

Extending Technology Roadmap Through Fuzzy Cognitive Map-Based Scenarios: The Case Of The Wind Energy Sector Of Pakistan, Muhammad Amer

Dissertations and Theses

In this modern era, energy is a key element required for sustainable development and prosperity of a society. Pakistan is an energy deficient country facing problems due to the shortage of over 4000 MW of electricity. The national energy sector is heavily dependent on imported fossil-fuel resources. The energy crisis is negatively affecting all economic and business activities, and it is widely recognized as a severe obstacle to growth and poverty reduction in the country. Establishment of wind farms can help to overcome the energy crisis.

In this research, a national level wind energy roadmap is developed through scenario planning. …

Applying Effective Web Design Techniques To The Upper Midwest Regional Honors Council Website: A Review, Kent Bartels

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

An Exploratory System For Collaborative Decision-Making In Community Planning, Aaron Dale Wells

Computer Science Graduate Projects and Theses

Community planning problems differ from those of science, technology, and mathematics as they are not solvable with logical-empiricism. Their solutions are influenced by technology, politics, style, economics, as well as the personalities and experience of those individuals collaborating on the solution. Obtaining cooperation of the stakeholders to implement community planning solutions can be cumbersome or simply cause failure in the implementation of plans. Yet, if the stakeholders had a real handle on the cost and benefits the literature suggests that cooperation can evolve.

In this project, we explore building a reliable cost and benefit model for a set of input …

Mebook: A Novel Device Using Video Self-Modeling To Enhance Literacy Among Children With Asd, Nchuaobah Ukaobah, Ju Shen, Sen-Ching S. Cheung

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The aim is to build a video application, MEBOOK, to overlay features of the protagonist on the face of the reader and replace the scene background with animated video pertinent to the story.

Gesture Based Home Automation For The Physically Disabled, Alexander Hugh Nelson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Paralysis and motor-impairments can greatly reduce the autonomy and quality of life of a patient while presenting a major recurring cost in home-healthcare. Augmented with a non-invasive wearable sensor system and home-automation equipment, the patient can regain a level of autonomy at a fraction of the cost of home nurses. A system which utilizes sensor fusion, low-power digital components, and smartphone cellular capabilities can extend the usefulness of such a system to allow greater adaptivity for patients with various needs. This thesis develops such a system as a Bluetooth enabled glove device which communicates with a remote web server to …

Audience Response Clicker Project, Joseph Meyer

Honors Theses

This report will address the feasibility of a software-based audience response system to be implemented, to be known as the Clicker Project. The project seeks to address the growing need for active learning environments at the University level. The primary goal of the project is to construct a web-based system that allows presenters to gather responses from a viewing audience. To this end, presenters can collect and store data dynamically form whomever is in attendance. The following sections will discuss the project in greater detail.

Hybrid Spread-Spectrum Tcp For Combating Fraudulent Cyber Activities Against Reconnaissance Attacks, Simon Enoch Yusuf, Olumide Longe

The African Journal of Information Systems

The inefficiencies of current intrusion detection system against fraudulent cyber activities attracts the attention of computer gurus, also known as “hackers” to exploit known weakness on a particular host or network. These hackers are expert programmers who mainly focus on how the Internet works, and they interact with each other to know its strengths and weaknesses. Then they develop advanced tools which an average attacker with little background can use to know the liveness, reachability and running service on the network. Once an attacker identifies these details, he can accurately launch an effective attack and get maximum benefit out of …

Project Writeup On Amethyst: A 3d Adventure Game For Tablets, Adam Hintz

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Amethyst is a point-and-click science fiction adventure game for tablets, developed over two quarters to demonstrate applied principles of computer graphics and software engineering discipline. Using a novel interaction system, players can engage in environmental puzzles. Development of Amethyst required non-trivial quality assurance measures and workflow enhancements. The end result is a functional technical demo showcasing a single level, with the ability to rapidly produce more content.

Integrating Strategic And Tactical Rolling Stock Models With Cyclical Demand, Michael F. Gorman

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

In the transportation industry, companies position rolling stock where it is likely to be needed in the face of a pronounced weekly cyclical demand pattern in orders.

Strategic policies based on assumptions of repetition of cyclical weekly patterns set rolling stock targets; during tactical execution, a myriad dynamic influences cause deviations from strategically set targets. We find that optimal strategic plans do not agree with results of tactical modeling; strategic results are in fact suboptimal in many tactical situations. We discuss managerial implications of this finding and how the two modeling paradigms can be reconciled.

Energy-Efficient Failure Recovery In Hadoop Cluster, Weiyue Xu

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s estimation, only in U.S., billions of dollars are spent on the electricity cost of data centers each year, and the cost is continually increasing very quickly. Energy efficiency is now used as an important metric for evaluating a computing system. However, saving energy is a big challenge due to many constraints. For example, in one of the most popular distributed processing frameworks, Hadoop, three replicas of each data block are randomly distributed in order to improve performance and fault tolerance, but such a mechanism limits the largest number of machine that can be turned …

Stochastic Modeling And Time-To-Event Analysis Of Voip Traffic, Imad Al Ajarmeh

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Voice over IP (VoIP) systems are gaining increased popularity due to the cost effectiveness, ease of management, and enhanced features and capabilities. Both enterprises and carriers are deploying VoIP systems to replace their TDM-based legacy voice networks. However, the lack of engineering models for VoIP systems has been realized by many researchers, especially for large-scale networks. The purpose of traffic engineering is to minimize call blocking probability and maximize resource utilization. The current traffic engineering models are inherited from the legacy PSTN world, and these models fall short from capturing the characteristics of new traffic patterns. The objective of this …

Broad Vision: The Art & Science Of Looking, Heather Barnett, John R. A. Smith

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Undergraduate students and academic staff from diverse disciplines in the arts and sciences investigated questions of mediated vision through a year-long interdisciplinary research project at the University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. The Broad Vision project explored the perception and interpretation of microscopic worlds, and investigated the benefits and challenges of working across disciplinary divides in a university setting. This article describes the three-phase model for interdisciplinary learning and research developed through the project, providing a valuable case study for inquiry based art/science education.