Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Towards A Science Of Security Games, Thanh Hong Nguyen, Debarun Kar, Matthew Brown, Arunesh Sinha, Albert Xin Jiang, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Security is a critical concern around the world. In many domains from counter-terrorism to sustainability, limited security resources prevent full security coverage at all times; instead, these limited resources must be scheduled, while simultaneously taking into account different target priorities, the responses of the adversaries to the security posture and potential uncertainty over adversary types.Computational game theory can help design such security schedules. Indeed, casting the problem as a Bayesian Stackelberg game, we have developed new algorithms that are now deployed over multiple years in multiple applications for security scheduling. These applications are leading to real-world use-inspired research in the …

Smart Ambient Sound Analysis Via Structured Statistical Modeling, Jialie Shen, Liqiang Nie, Tat Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we introduce a novel framework called SASA (Smart Ambient Sound Analyser) to support different ambient audio mining tasks (e.g., audio classification and location estimation). To gain comprehensive ambient sound modelling, SASA extracts a variety of acoustic features from different sound components (e.g., music, voice and background), and translates them into structured information. This significantly enhances quality of audio content representation. Further, distinguished from existing approaches, SASA’s multilayered architecture seamlessly integrates mixture models and aPEGASOS (adaptive PEGASOS) SVM algorithm into a unified classification framework. The approach can leverage complimentary strengths of both models. Experimental results based on three …

Iot+Small Data: Transforming In-Store Shopping Analytics And Services, Meera Radhakrishnan, Sougata Sen, Vigneshwaran Subbaraju, Archan Misra, Rajesh Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We espouse a vision of small data-based immersive retail analytics, where a combination of sensor data, from personal wearable-devices and store-deployed sensors & IoT devices, is used to create real-time, individualized services for in-store shoppers. Key challenges include (a) appropriate joint mining of sensor & wearable data to capture a shopper’s product level interactions, and (b) judicious triggering of power-hungry wearable sensors (e.g., camera) to capture only relevant portions of a shopper’s in-store activities. To explore the feasibility of our vision, we conducted experiments with 5 smartwatch-wearing users who interacted with objects placed on cupboard racks in our lab (to …

Investigating The Influence Of Offline Friendship On Twitter Networking Behaviors, Young Soo Kim, Felicia Natali, Feida Zhu, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We investigate the influence of offline friendship in three specific areas of Twitter networking behaviors: (a) network structure, (b) Twitter content and (c) interaction on Twitter. We observe some interesting findings through the empirical analysis of 2193 pairs of users who are online friends. When these pairs of users know each other offline, they are more likely to (1) respond to the online gesture of friendship from their friend, (2) share mutual online friends, (3) distribute and gather information in their friend’s Twitter network, (4) pay attention to their friend’s tweets, (5) post tweets that might be of interest to …

A Tool-Free Calibration Method For Turntable-Based 3d Scanning Systems, Xufang Pang, Rynson W.H. Lau, Zhan Song, Shengfeng He, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Turntable-based 3D scanners are popular but require calibration of the turntable axis. Existing methods for turntable calibration typically make use of specially designed tools, such as a chessboard or criterion sphere, which users must manually install and dismount. In this article, the authors propose an automatic method to calibrate the turntable axis without any calibration tools. Given a scan sequence of the input object, they first recover the initial rotation axis from an automatic registration step. Then they apply an iterative procedure to obtain the optimized turntable axis. This iterative procedure alternates between two steps: refining the initial pose of …

Posting Topics ≠ Reading Topics: On Discovering Posting And Reading Topics In Social Media, Wei Gong, Ee-Peng Lim, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social media users make decisions about what content to post and read. As posted content is often visible to others, users are likely to impose self-censorship when deciding what content to post. On the other hand, such a concern may not apply to reading social media content. As a result, the topics of content that a user posted and read can be different and this has major implications to the applications that require personalization. To better determine and profile social media users’ topic interests, we conduct a user survey in Twitter. In this survey, participants chose the topics they like …

Privacy-Preserving And Verifiable Data Aggregation, Ngoc Hieu Tran, Robert H. Deng, Hwee Hwa Pang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There are several recent research studies on privacy-preserving aggregation of time series data, where an aggregator computes an aggregation of multiple users' data without learning each individual's private input value. However, none of the existing schemes allows the aggregation result to be verified for integrity. In this paper, we present a new data aggregation scheme that protects user privacy as well as integrity of the aggregation. Towards this end, we first propose an aggregate signature scheme in a multi-user setting without using bilinear maps. We then extend the aggregate signature scheme into a solution for privacy-preserving and verifiable data aggregation. …

A Study On Singapore Haze, Bingtian Dai, Kasthuri Jayarajah, Ee-Peng Lim, Archan Misra, Shriguru Nayak

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In 2015, Singaporean have experienced one of the worse air pollution crises in history. With datasets from a well-known photo sharing social network, we analyze how this haze affects Singaporean's daily life. We will share our preliminary results in this paper.

Providing Hands-On Training With Bioinformatics Databases: A Collaboration Between Vcu Libraries & Wright Center For Clinical And Translational Research, Karen H. Gau, Julie A. Arendt, Amy Olex, Aaron R. Wolen

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Background
With the goal of increasing specialized services for researchers, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Libraries sent its basic science librarians to an intensive training on bioinformatics databases, “A Librarian’s Guide to NCBI.” VCU’s Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research (Wright CCTR) was expanding the educational component of its bioinformatics support around the same time. This year, the librarians partnered with the Wright CCTR to offer an introductory bioinformatics database workshop introducing researchers to genetic/genomic databases.

Methods
For one week in June, sessions were conducted introducing up to 30 faculty and staff to The Cancer Genome Atlas and NCBI’s Gene, …

Web Based Attendance Management System (Project Source Code In Php And Mysql), Dr. Muhammad Zubair Asghar

Dr. Muhammad Zubair Asghar

This source code deals with the development of web based attendance management system using PHP and MYSQL. It is developed by one my BSCS student, namely sahar hassan under my supervision.

Advanced Techniques For Computational And Information Sciences, William Guo, Chih-Cheng Hung, Paul Scheunders, Bor-Chen Kuo

Faculty Articles

New techniques in computational and information sciences have played an important role in keeping advancing the so called knowledge economy. Advanced techniques have been introduced to or emerging in almost every field of the scientific world for hundreds of years, which has been accelerated since the late 1970s when the advancement in computers and digital technologies brought the world into the Information Era. In addition to the rapid development of computational intelligence and new data fusion techniques in the past thirty years [1–4], mobile and cloud computing, grid computing driven numeric computation models, big data intelligence, and other emerging technologies …

Spatial 2015, Werner Kuhn, Matt Duckham, Marcia Castro

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This report summarizes the first in a new series of interdisciplinary unconferences, called SPATIAL. SPATIAL 2015 was focused on applying spatial information to human health, and was held at the Center for Spatial Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 9-11 December 2015.

Spatial Refinement As Collection Order Relations, Zhong Zhao

Journal of Spatial Information Science

An abstract examination of refinement (and conversely, coarsening) with respect to the involved spatial relations gives rise to formulated order relations between spatial coverings, which are defined as complete-coverage representations composed of regional granules. Coverings, which generalize partitions by allowing granules to overlap, enhance hierarchical geocomputations in several ways. Refinement between spatial coverings has underlying patterns with respect to inclusion—formalized as binary topological relations—between their granules. The patterns are captured by collection relations of inclusion, which are obtained by constraining relevant topological relations with cardinality properties such as uniqueness and totality. Conjoining relevant collection relations of equality and proper inclusion …

Routes Visualization: Automated Placement Of Multiple Route Symbols Along A Physical Network Infrastructure, Jules Teulade-Denantes, Adrien Maudet, Cécile Duchêne

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This paper tackles the representation of routes carried by a physical network infrastructure on a map. In particular, the paper examines the case where each route is represented by a separate colored linear symbol offset from the physical network segments and from other routes---as on public transit maps with bus routes offset from roads. In this study, the objective is to automate the placement of such route symbols while maximizing their legibility, especially at junctions. The problem is modeled as a constraint optimization problem. Legibility criteria are identified and formalized as constraints to optimize, while focusing on the case of …

Invariant Spatial Information In Sketch Maps — A Study Of Survey Sketch Maps Of Urban Areas, Jia Wang, Angela Schwering

Journal of Spatial Information Science

It is commonly recognized that free-hand sketch maps are influenced by cognitive impacts and therefore sketch maps are incomplete, distorted, and schematized. This makes it difficult to achieve a one-to-one alignment between a sketch map and its corresponding geo-referenced metric map. Nevertheless, sketch maps are still useful to communicate spatial knowledge, indicating that sketch maps contain certain spatial information that is robust to cognitive impacts. In existing studies, sketch maps are used frequently to measure cognitive maps. However, little work has been done on invariant spatial information in sketch maps, which is the information of spatial configurations representing correctly the …

Development And Evaluation Of A Geographic Information Retrieval System Using Fine Grained Toponyms, Damien Palacio, Curdin Derungs, Ross S. Purves

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Geographic information retrieval (GIR) is concerned with returning information in response to an information need, typically expressed in terms of a thematic and spatial component linked by a spatial relationship. However, evaluation initiatives have often failed to show significant differences between simple text baselines and more complex spatially enabled GIR approaches. We explore the effectiveness of three systems (a text baseline, spatial query expansion, and a full GIR system utilizing both text and spatial indexes) at retrieving documents from a corpus describing mountaineering expeditions, centred around fine grained toponyms. To allow evaluation, we use user generated content (UGC) in the …

Email Similarity Matching And Automatic Reply Generation Using Statistical Topic Modeling And Machine Learning, Zachery L. Schiller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Responding to email is a time-consuming task that is a requirement for most professions. Many people find themselves answering the same questions over and over, repeatedly replying with answers they have written previously either in whole or in part. In this thesis, the Automatic Mail Reply (AMR) system is implemented to help with repeated email response creation. The system uses past email interactions and, through unsupervised statistical learning, attempts to recover relevant information to give to the user to assist in writing their reply.

Three statistical learning models, term frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), and Latent Dirichlet …

Data To Decisions For Cyberspace Operations, Steve Stone

Military Cyber Affairs

In 2011, the United States (U.S.) Department of Defense (DOD) named cyberspace a new operational domain. The U.S. Cyber Command and the Military Services are working to make the cyberspace environment a suitable place for achieving national objectives and enabling military command and control (C2). To effectively conduct cyberspace operations, DOD requires data and analysis of the Mission, Network, and Adversary. However, the DOD’s current data processing and analysis capabilities do not meet mission needs within critical operational timelines. This paper presents a summary of the data processing and analytics necessary to effectively conduct cyberspace operations.

Is It The Typeset Or The Type Of Statistics? Disfluent Font And Self-Disclosure, Rebecca Balebako, Eyal Peer, Laura Brandimarte, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Alessandro Acquisti

Lorrie F Cranor

Background. The security and privacy communities have become increasingly interested in results from behavioral economics and psychology to help frame decisions so that users can make better privacy and security choices. One such result in the literature suggests that cognitive disfluency (presenting questions in a hard-to-read font) reduces self-disclosure. (A. L. Alter and D. M. Oppenheimer. Suppressing secrecy through metacognitive ease cognitive fluency encourages self-disclosure. Psychological science, 20(11):1414-1420, 2009) Aim. To examine the replicability and reliability of the effect of disfluency on self-disclosure, in order to test whether such approaches might be used to promote safer security and privacy behaviors. …

A Field Trial Of Privacy Nudges For Facebook, Yang Wang, Pedro Giovanni Leon, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Alain Forget, Norman Sadeh

Lorrie F Cranor

Anecdotal evidence and scholarly research have shown that Internet users may regret some of their online disclosures. To help individuals avoid such regrets, we designed two modifications to the Facebook web interface that nudge users to consider the content and audience of their online disclosures more carefully. We implemented and evaluated these two nudges in a 6-week field trial with 28 Facebook users. We analyzed participants' interactions with the nudges, the content of their posts, and opinions collected through surveys. We found that reminders about the audience of posts can prevent unintended disclosures without major burden; however, introducing a time …

From Facebook Regrets To Facebook Privacy Nudges, Yang Wang, Pedro Giovanni Leon, Xiaoxuan Chen, Saranga Komanduri, Gregory Norcie, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Norman Sadeh

Lorrie F Cranor

As social networking sites (SNSs) gain in popularity, instances of regrets following online (over)sharing continue to be reported. In June 2010, a pierogi mascot for the Pittsburgh Pirates was fired because he posted disparaging comments about the team on his Facebook page. More recently, a high school teacher was forced to resign because she posted a picture on Facebook in which she was holding a glass of wine and a mug of beer. These incidents illustrate how, in addition to fostering socialization and interaction between friends and strangers, the ease and immediacy of communication that SNSs make possible can sometimes …

“I Read My Twitter The Next Morning And Was Astonished” A Conversational Perspective On Twitter Regrets, Manya Sleeper, Justin Cranshaw, Patrick Kelley, Blase Ur, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Norman Sadeh

Lorrie F Cranor

We present the results of an online survey of 1,221 Twitter users, comparing messages individuals regretted either saying during in-person conversations or posting on Twitter. Participants generally reported similar types of regrets in person and on Twitter. In particular, they often regretted messages that were critical of others. However, regretted messages that were cathartic/expressive or revealed too much information were reported at a higher rate for Twitter. Regretted messages on Twitter also reached broader audiences. In addition, we found that participants who posted on Twitter became aware of, and tried to repair, regret more slowly than those reporting in-person regrets. …

When Disclosure Is Involuntary: Empowering Users With Control To Reduce Concerns, David W. Wilson, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Bradley Dorn, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Modern organizations must carefully balance the practice of gathering large amounts of valuable data from individuals with the associated ethical considerations and potential negative public image inherent in breaches of privacy. As it becomes increasingly commonplace for many types of information to be collected without individuals' knowledge or consent, managers and researchers alike can benefit from understanding how individuals react to such involuntary disclosures, and how these reactions can impact evaluations of the data-collecting organizations. This research develops and empirically tests a theoretical model that shows how empowering individuals with a sense of control over their personal information can help …

Information Technology For Development In Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises, Jie Xiong, Sajda Qureshi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Development is a concept that is often used to describe growth in organizations and the regions in which they reside. While research in Information Systems (IS) recognizes the importance of Information Technology (IT) in improving the organizational performance, a great deal of emphasis is given towards understanding large organizations. While social-economic development and transformation relies on new technological infrastructures and organizational changes, there is still a weak link between the organization studies with Information Technology (IT) as it relates to the growth of organizations. It appears that a greater research focus is needed in understanding the use of IT in …

Mobilerp, Anthony Fata

Computer Engineering

MobilERP is a system that increases traceability of parts in a manufacturing process in a simple paperless way. The system contains three components, a desktop application, a mobile app, and a database. The mobile application allows employees to scan (using a bar code scanner) parts that they are working/finishing on during the manufacturing process. As the part goes down the assembly line, individuals will barcode scan using the app to track the progress. These changes would get updated to the database, where then the designated person can track the progress of the part as well as any problems or concerns …

An Immersive Telepresence System Using Rgb-D Sensors And Head-Mounted Display, Xinzhong Lu, Ju Shen, Saverio Perugini, Jianjun Yang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instructor to effectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The …

Intent Classification Of Short-Text On Social Media, Hemant Purohit, Guozhu Dong, Valerie L. Shalin, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Social media platforms facilitate the emergence of citizen communities that discuss real-world events. Their content reflects a variety of intent ranging from social good (e.g., volunteering to help) to commercial interest (e.g., criticizing product features). Hence, mining intent from social data can aid in filtering social media to support organizations, such as an emergency management unit for resource planning. However, effective intent mining is inherently challenging due to ambiguity in interpretation, and sparsity of relevant behaviors in social data. In this paper, we address the problem of multiclass classification of intent with a use-case of social data generated during crisis …

Modeling Social Media Content With Word Vectors For Recommendation, Ying Ding, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In social media, recommender systems are becoming more and more important. Different techniques have been designed for recommendations under various scenarios, but many of them do not use user-generated content, which potentially reflects users’ opinions and interests. Although a few studies have tried to combine user-generated content with rating or adoption data, they mostly reply on lexical similarity to calculate textual similarity. However, in social media, a diverse range of words is used. This renders the traditional ways of calculating textual similarity ineffective. In this work, we apply vector representation of words to measure the semantic similarity between text. We …

Fast Reinforcement Learning Under Uncertainties With Self-Organizing Neural Networks, Teck-Hou Teng, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Using feedback signals from the environment, a reinforcement learning (RL) system typically discovers action policies that recommend actions effective to the states based on a Q-value function. However, uncertainties over the estimation of the Q-values can delay the convergence of RL. For fast RL convergence by accounting for such uncertainties, this paper proposes several enhancements to the estimation and learning of the Q-value using a self-organizing neural network. Specifically, a temporal difference method known as Q-learning is complemented by a Q-value Polarization procedure, which contrasts the Q-values using feedback signals on the effect of the recommended actions. The polarized Q-values …

Bring-Your-Own-Application (Byoa): Optimal Stochastic Application Migration In Mobile Cloud Computing, Jonathan David Chase, Dusit Niyato, Sivadon Chaisiri

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The increasing popularity of using mobile devices in a work context, has led to the need to be able to support more powerful computation. Users no longer remain in an office or at home to conduct their activities, preferring libraries and cafes. In this paper, we consider a mobile cloud computing scenario in which users bring their own mobile devices and are offered a variety of equipment, e.g., desktop computer, smart- TV, or projector, to migrate their applications to, so as to save battery life, improve usability and performance. We formulate a stochastic optimization problem to optimize the allocation of …