Software Engineering Commons^™

Overcoming Open Source Project Entry Barriers With A Portal For Newcomers, Igor Steinmacher, Tayana U. Conte, Christoph Treude, Marco Aurélio Gerosa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Community-based Open Source Software (OSS) projects are usually self-organized and dynamic, receiving contributions from distributed volunteers. Newcomer are important to the survival, long-term success, and continuity of these communities. However, newcomers face many barriers when making their first contribution to an OSS project, leading in many cases to dropouts. Therefore, a major challenge for OSS projects is to provide ways to support newcomers during their first contribution. In this paper, we propose and evaluate FLOSScoach, a portal created to support newcomers to OSS projects. FLOSScoach was designed based on a conceptual model of barriers created in our previous work. To …

Graph-Aided Directed Testing Of Android Applications For Checking Runtime Privacy Behaviours, Joseph Joo Keng Chan, Lingxiao Jiang, Kiat Wee Tan, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While automated testing of mobile applications is very useful for checking run-time behaviours and specifications, its capability in discovering issues in apps is often limited in practice due to long testing time. A common practice is to randomly and exhaustively explore the whole app test space, which takes a lot of time and resource to achieve good coverage and reach targeted parts of the apps. In this paper, we present MAMBA, a directed testing system for checking privacy in Android apps. MAMBA performs path searches of user events in control-flow graphs of callbacks generated from static analysis of app bytecode. …

Audio Software (Vst Plugin) Development With Practical Application, Zachary Hummel

Honors Theses

Audio engineers around the world routinely utilize small pieces of software, known as “plugins,” to help shape the sound of the media they are working with. These plugins are inserted into a digital audio workstation (DAW) and contain digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms that can affect audio in a number of ways limited only by the creativity of the software developer. Common implementations of plugins include equalizers, compressors and limiters, gain, phase rotation or polarity inversion algorithms, reverb and delay, and emulation of the non-linearities of analog audio equipment. The intent of this thesis project is to design and produce …

A Roadmap To Safe And Reliable Engineered Biological Nano-Communication Networks, Justin W. Firestone

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Synthetic biology has the potential to benefit society with novel applications that can improve soil quality, produce biofuels, grow customized biological tissue, and perform intelligent drug delivery, among many other possibilities. Engineers are creating techniques to program living cells, inserting new logic, and leveraging cell-to-cell communication, which result in changes to a cell's core functionality. Using these techniques, we can now create synthetic biological organisms (SBOs) with entirely new (potentially unseen) behaviors, which, similar to silicon devices, can sense, actuate, perform computation, and interconnect with other networks at the nanoscale level. SBOs are programmable evolving entities, and can be likened …

Software Improvements To Parint, A Parallel Integration Software Package, Lawrence Cuneaz

Honors Theses

The best software is easy to configure and compile, is expandable and is well tested. Development of the ParInt software package for parallel integration stopped a number of years ago. When handed the software, parts of the package no longer configured or compiled consistently. Furthermore it relied on one random number generator and had no functional testing. The team tuned the auto configuration so that the program would configure and build on current systems, created expandable functionality to add new random number generators and created two functional test packs. Now ParInt can be developed with confidence knowing that it compiles …

Chipathlon: A Competitive Assessment For Gene Regulation Tools, Avi Knecht, Adam Caprez, Istvan Ladunga

UCARE: Research Products

When gene regulation of the cell cycle malfunctions, it frequently causes cancer.

Adult, differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to induced pluripotent stem cell; which can then be reprogrammed to heart muscle, skin, etc, to repair damaged tissue (to limited extent in clinical practice).

ChIPathlon: Evaluate the performance of all transcription factor mapping (peak calling) methods. To this end, we will develop a scalable and easy to use super computing pipeline to stage data, compare many different peak calling and differential binding site tools, and store all results into a single database.

A Graph-Based Semantics Workbench For Concurrent Asynchronous Programs, Claudio Corrodi, Alexander Heußner, Christopher M. Poskitt

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A number of novel programming languages and libraries have been proposed that offer simpler-to-use models of concurrency than threads. It is challenging, however, to devise execution models that successfully realise their abstractions without forfeiting performance or introducing unintended behaviours. This is exemplified by Scoop—a concurrent object-oriented message-passing language—which has seen multiple semantics proposed and implemented over its evolution. We propose a “semantics workbench” with fully and semi-automatic tools for Scoop, that can be used to analyse and compare programs with respect to different execution models. We demonstrate its use in checking the consistency of semantics by applying it to a …

Better Together

DePaul Magazine

Faculty have taken full advantage of the university's innovative intercollegiate grant program, and the resulting research is as interesting and diverse as the collaborators themselves. What is resulting is research on "Patient and Primary Care Provider Perspectives on Recreational and Therapeutic Cannabis Use Within a Changing Socioculltural and Political Context;" a new minor in climate change science and policy; a new class, Communication, Coding and Entrepreneurship; brain inflammation research; and the project "Cosmology Meets Continental Philosophy: Natural Laws and Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing"

Development Of A Wireless Mobile Computing Platform For Fall Risk Prediction, Akm Jahangir Alam Majumder

Dissertations (1934 -)

Falls are a major health risk with which the elderly and disabled must contend. Scientific research on smartphone-based gait detection systems using the Internet of Things (IoT) has recently become an important component in monitoring injuries due to these falls. Analysis of human gait for detecting falls is the subject of many research projects. Progress in these systems, the capabilities of smartphones, and the IoT are enabling the advancement of sophisticated mobile computing applications that detect falls after they have occurred. This detection has been the focus of most fall-related research; however, ensuring preventive measures that predict a fall is …

Defect Tracking System, Aslam Mohammad, Irfan Mohammed, Ishaq Mohammed, Mohammed Javed Shaik

All Capstone Projects

The main purpose of this project is it is an online Bug Hawker system and which is used for providing the solutions to correct the errors. This application is a totally web based tool and any user can access this tool by registering into the software. This software works once we login into the software and we can choose the error what kind of error it is etc. from the dropdown list. This software also has the extra facilities like email notifications, generating the reports, user access control etc.

Watch Dog For A Plant House, Vamshider Reddy Dasari, Yashwanth Kumar Kalwa, Vinay Keerthipati, Ranjith Kiran Motru

All Capstone Projects

The determination in selecting this project is to reduce the effects by the attributes of the nature on the plants. The proposed project we will help the user to check and maintain all the essential things like temperature, moisture in air, water content in soil and salinity in the soil required for an optimal growth of a plant. The Plant House maintenance by the user in a dynamical process is the goal of our project.

In the existing system there should be a person in-charge in the room where the trees are planted and grown, to check the temperature and …

Incorporating Energy Related Concepts Into Ee And Cs Laboratory Work And Coursework, Jack Adams, Christopher S. Stuetzle

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

During the course of this interdisciplinary effort, members of the Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Science (CS) departments collaborated on energy related curricular efforts. Initially work was carried out to develop and utilize an inexpensive, open-source system for measuring, storing, and displaying energy related data from across campus. Hardware and software components chosen were open source or free for educational use. A low power Linux server was utilized. The LAN-enabled Arduinos included sensors to measure energy related quantities such as power and temperature. EE and CS students were engaged in various aspects of the project – EE students focused on …

Development And Use Of A Tablet-Based Resuscitation Sheet For Improving Outcomes During Intensive Patient Care, Wasif Bokahri, Vimla L. Patel, Ashish Amresh, Ayan Sen

Publications

Data documentation from resuscitation events in hospitals, termed "code blue" events, utilizes a paper form, which is institution-specific. Problems with data capture and transcription exists, due to the challenges of dynamic documentation of patient, event and outcome variables as the code blue event unfolds. We hypothesize that an electronic version of code blue real-time data capture would lead to improved resuscitation data transcription, and enable clinicians to address deficiencies in quality of care. To this effect, we present the design of a tablet-based application and its use by 20 nurses at the Mayo Clinic hospital. The results showed that the …

An Android Application For Remote Ringer, Ugendra Bhuvan Bobba, Mallikharjuna Rao Kurapati, Ramakrishna Pamarthi

All Capstone Projects

At the time we set our mobile phones in silent mode, we may misplace it somewhere nearby and cannot find the mobile phone by ringing to it. It has happened to all of us. To solve this real world problem, we develop an application called Remote Ringer. Remote Ringer helps us to change mobile phone mode from silent to ringing mode . Once your phone is in ringing mode, you can ring it from any other mobile phones.

Remote Ringer needs to be configured before it can be used, The configuration allows maximum of five numbers that can be used …

World Of Quotes, Pavan Kumar Gangavarupu, Nikith Reddy Kalva, Anil Kumar Paudala, Shivaprasad Reddy Sangireddy

All Capstone Projects

Present day hand held gadgets, for example, advanced mobile phones and tablets are multiplying in business sector which are having additional elements incorporated into these gadgets have opened ways to an extensive variety of potential outcomes. Specifically, most mobile phones routinely incorporate cameras, preparing similar to PCs from just a couple of years back, and web access. Nonetheless, even with these additional capacities, there ought to be couple of uses that ought to permit a client to make as he wish like setting his own experience pictures that we have in our PC furthermore with a few elements such as …

Developing A Framework For Creating Mhealth Surveys, Veli Melih Bilen

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Various issues in the design of surveys for mobile health (mHealth) research projects yet exist. As mHealth solutions become more popular, new issues are brought into consideration. Researchers need to collect some critical information from participants in these mHealth studies. These mHealth studies require a specialized framework to create surveys, track progress and analyze user data. In these procedures, mHealth’s needs differ from other studies. Therefore, there has to be a new framework that satisfies needs of mHealth research studies. Although there are studies for creating efficient, robust and user-friendly surveys, there is no solution or study, which is specialized …

Social-Context Middleware For At-Risk Veterans, Nadiyah Frances Johnson

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Many veterans undergo challenges when reintegrating into civilian society. These challenges include readapting to their communities and families. During the reintegration process veterans have difficulties finding employment, education or resources that aid veteran health. Research suggests that these challenges often result in veterans encountering serious mental illness. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a common mental disease that veterans often develop. This disease impacts between 15-20% of veterans. PTSD increases the likelihood of veterans engaging in high risk behaviors which may consist of impulsivity, substance abuse, and angry outbursts. These behaviors raise the veterans’ risk of becoming violent and lashing out …

Mcat: Development Of A Generic Mhealth Tool For Continuous Assessment, Automatic Intervention, And Analysis, A B M Kowser Patwary

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Use of mobile health (mHealth) technology for behavioral and psychological studies through continuous assessment and intervention is found to be effective. Also, the use of smartphone has increased rapidly last few years, as well as its uses for health support. mHealth research is applied for smoking cessation, motivating cancer survivors and mentoring peers for social engagement. While in most settings researchers are developing their own intervention and assessment tool for each different research. In this study mHealth research is applied and generalized across a range of applications, including smoking cessation, motivating cancer survivors and mentoring peers to improve social engagement. …

Least-Squares Mapping From Kinematic Data To Acoustic Synthesis Parameters For Rehabilitative Acoustic Learning, Xiangyu Zhou

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Thousands of people suffer from dysarthria resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor-speech system, and need to rely on alternative methods to communicate in daily life, such as body language or text-to-speech [1] . However, there are currently very few effective rehabilitative therapies for helping these patients improve their speech. Because of this, research is needed to develop better rehabilitative therapies. One such area of research is the use of involuntary acoustic learning. The Speech and Swallowing lab at Marquette University has an Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) system to collect kinematic data and a software system called …

Smokey: Ubiquitous Smoking Detection With Commercial Wifi Infrastructures, Xiaolong Zheng, Jiliang Wang, Longfei Shangguan, Zimu Zhou, Yunhao Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Even though indoor smoking ban is being put into practice in civilized countries, existing vision or sensor-based smoking detection methods cannot provide ubiquitous smoking detection. In this paper, we take the first attempt to build a ubiquitous passive smoking detection system, which leverages the patterns smoking leaves on WiFi signals to identify the smoking activity even in the non-line-of-sight and through-wall environments. We study the behaviors of smokers and leverage the common features to recognize the series of motions during smoking, avoiding the target-dependent training set to achieve the high accuracy. We design a foreground detection based motion acquisition method …

Lightsense: Exploiting Smart Bulbs For Practical Multimodal Localization, Huynh Nguyen, Archan Misra, Youngki Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Visible Light Positioning (VLP) is an exciting new approach but has to overcome considerable challenges before it becomes practical. In particular, the line-of-sight requirement which imports the constraint on the working condition of VLP and can not be solved by the VLP itself. This paper develops techniques to allow VLP to be augmented with traditional WI-FI approach by leveraging the WI-FI enabled smart bulbs which are now widely available. Those Smart bulbs offer several intriguing properties: a very dense deployment (roughly every 2 meters apart), ability to act as sensors that continually provide Wi-Fi signal strength measurements. We utilize these …

Where Am I? Characterizing And Improving The Localization Performance Of Off-The-Shelf Mobile Devices Through Cooperation, Huiguang Liang, Hyong S. Kim, Hwee-Pink Tan, Wai-Leong Yeow

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We are increasingly reliant on cellular data services for many types of day-to-day activities, from hailing a cab, to searching for nearby restaurants. Geo-location has become a ubiquitous feature that underpins the functionality of such applications. Network operators can also benefit from accurate mobile terminal localization in order to quickly detect and identify location-related network performance issues, such as coverage holes and congestion, based on mobile measurements. Current implementations of mobile localization on the wildly-popular Android platform depend on either the Global Positioning System (GPS), Android's Network Location Provider (NLP), or a combination of both. In this paper, we extensively …

Rate Distortion Balanced Data Compression In Wireless Sensor Networks, Mohammad Abu Alsheikh, Shaowei Lin, Dusit Niyato, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a data compression algorithm with error bound guarantee for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) using compressing neural networks. The proposed algorithm minimizes data congestion and reduces energy consumption by exploring spatio-temporal correlations among data samples. The adaptive rate-distortion feature balances the compressed data size (data rate) with the required error bound guarantee (distortion level). This compression relieves the strain on energy and bandwidth resources while collecting WSN data within tolerable error margins, thereby increasing the scale of WSNs. The algorithm is evaluated using real-world data sets and compared with conventional methods for temporal and spatial data compression. The …

Crowdsourcing: A Building Block For Smart Cities, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This talk will present a vision, and real-world examples, of the use of mobile crowdsourcing for building a variety of smart-city applications and services. I will first describe the paradigm of centrally-coordinated crowdsourcing, where the crowdsourcing platform intelligently recommends different tasks to different candidate workers, and contrast it with today's prevalent paradigm, where workers select and perform tasks in an uncoordinated, opportunistic fashion. I will then describe real-world examples of such crowdsourcing (and participatory sensing) for two applications: (a) smart campus monitoring and (b) last-mile urban logistics (package pickup and delivery). The talk will also describe the opportunities and open …

Quality And Context-Aware Smart Health Care: Evaluating The Cost-Quality Dynamics, Nirmalya Roy, Christine Julien, Archan Misra, Sajal Das

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Many emerging pervasive health-care applications require the determination of a variety of context attributes of an individual's activities and medical parameters and her surrounding environment. Context is a high-level representation of an entity's state, which captures activities, relationships, capabilities, etc. In practice, high-level context measures are often difficult to sense from a single data source and must instead be inferred using multiple sensors embedded in the environment. A key challenge in deploying context-driven health-care applications involves energy-efficient determination or inference of high-level context information from low-level sensor data streams. Because this abstraction has the potential to reduce the quality of …

Predicting Changes To Source Code, Justin James Roll

Master's Theses

Organizations typically use issue tracking systems (ITS) such as Jira to plan software releases and assign requirements to developers. Organizations typically also use source control management (SCM) repositories such as Git to track historical changes to a code-base. These ITS and SCM repositories contain valuable data that remains largely untapped. As developers churn through an organization, it becomes expensive for developers to spend time determining which software artifact must be modified to implement a requirement. In this work we created, developed, tested and evaluated a tool called Class Change Predictor, otherwise known as CCP, for predicting which class will implement …

Introduction To Atomic Requirements, William L. Honig

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

An introduction to requirements and the importance of making single atomic requirements statements. Atomic requirements have advantages and improve the requirements process, support requirement verification and validation, enable traceability, support testability of systems, and provide management advantages.

Why has there been so little emphasis on atomic requirements?

Ontology-Aided Feature Correlation For Multi-Modal Urban Sensing, Archan Misra, Zaman Lantra, Kasthuri Jayarajah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paper explores the use of correlation across features extracted from different sensing channels to help in urban situational understanding. We use real-world datasets to show how such correlation can improve the accuracy of detection of city-wide events by combining metadata analysis with image analysis of Instagram content. We demonstrate this through a case study on the Singapore Haze. We show that simple ontological relationships and reasoning can significantly help in automating such correlation-based understanding of transient urban events.

Tuning By Turning: Enabling Phased Array Signal Processing For Wifi With Inertial Sensors, Kun Qian, Chenshu Wu, Zheng Yang, Zimu Zhou, Xu Wang, Yunhao Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Modern mobile devices are equipped with multiple antennas, which brings various wireless sensing applications such as accurate localization, contactless human detection and wireless human-device interaction. A key enabler for these applications is phased array signal processing, especially Angle of Arrival (AoA) estimation. However, accurate AoA estimation on commodity devices is non-trivial due to limited number of antennas and uncertain phase offsets. Previous works either rely on elaborate calibration or involve contrived human interactions. In this paper, we aim to enable practical AoA measurements on commodity off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile devices. The key insight is to involve users’ natural rotation to formulate …

Not You Too? Distilling Local Contexts Of Poor Cellular Network Performance Through Participatory Sensing, Huiguang Liang, Ido Nevat, Hyong S. Kim, Hwee-Pink Tan, Wai-Leong Yeow

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cellular service subscribers are increasingly reliant on cellular data services for all kinds of mobile applications. Oftentimes, when subscribers experience frustratingly high network delays and timeouts, they like to know whether their experiences are shared by other users nearby. The question that is often asked is essentially this: “is it just me, or do others around me face the same problem?” In this paper, we describe how we use Tattle, a distributed real-time participatory sensing and monitoring framework, to glean network performance information from users nearby. Tattle relies on recent advances in peer-to-peer device networking, such as Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth …