Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Stegfs: A Steganographic File System, Hwee Hwa Pang, Kian-Lee Tan, Xuan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While user access control and encryption can protect valuable data from passive observers, those techniques leave visible ciphertexts that are likely to alert an active adversary to the existence of the data, who can then compel an authorized user to disclose it. This paper introduces StegFS, a steganographic file system that aims to overcome that weakness by offering plausible deniability to owners of protected files. StegFS securely hides user-selected files in a file system so that, without the corresponding access keys, an attacker would not be able to deduce their existence, even if the attacker is thoroughly familiar with the …

Hierarchical Text Classification Methods And Their Specification, Ee Peng Lim, Aixin Sun, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hierarchical text classification refers to assigning text documents to the categories in a given category tree based on their content. With large number of categories organized as a tree, hierarchical text classification helps users to find information more quickly and accurately. Nevertheless, hierarchical text classification methods in the past have often been constructed in a proprietary manner. The construction steps often involve human efforts and are not completely automated. In this chapter, we therefore propose a specification language known as HCL (Hierarchical Classification Language). HCL is designed to describe a hierarchical classification method including the definition of a category tree …

A Uml Extension For Modeling Aspect-Oriented Oo Systems, Aida Atef Zakaria

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Biodiversity And Ecosystem Informatics: Event And Process Tagging For Information Integration For The International Gulf Of Main Watershed, Mary-Kate Beard-Tisdale, Neal Pettigrew, Jeffrey Kahl, Malcolm L. Hunter Jr., Marilyn Lutz

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This incubation proposal addresses the issue of integrating large, diverse, and autonomous collections of scientific data within a complex institutional setting. The goal is to convert these autonomous collections into a shareable repository that supports synthesis of data through new metadata structures based on events and processes. The institutional setting is the data and data-gathering activities of over 80 agencies, NGOS, and academic and research institutions operating within the Gulf of Maine watershed. The metadata development will be coordinated by library and spatial information scientists working jointly with domain scientists. An essential task of this incubation effort will be the …

Research Strategy And Scoping Survey On Spreadsheet Practices, Thomas A. Grossman Jr., O Ozluk

Business Analytics and Information Systems

We propose a research strategy for creating and deploying prescriptive recommendations for spreadsheet practice. Empirical data on usage can be used to create a taxonomy of spreadsheet classes. Within each class, existing practices and ideal practices can he combined into proposed best practices for deployment. As a first step we propose a scoping survey to gather non-anecdotal data on spreadsheet usage. The scoping survey will interview people who develop spreadsheets. We will investigate the determinants of spreadsheet importance, identify current industry practices, and document existing standards for creation and use of spreadsheets. The survey will provide insight into user attributes, …

Generalized Metrics And Uniquely Determined Logic Programs, Pascal Hitzler, Anthony K. Seda

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The introduction of negation into logic programming brings the benefit of enhanced syntax and expressibility, but creates some semantical problems. Specifically, certain operators which are monotonic in the absence of negation become non-monotonic when it is introduced, with the result that standard approaches to denotational semantics then become inapplicable. In this paper, we show how generalized metric spaces can be used to obtain fixed-point semantics for several classes of programs relative to the supported model semantics, and investigate relationships between the underlying spaces we employ. Our methods allow the analysis of classes of programs which include the acyclic, locally hierarchical, …

Formal Concept Analysis And Resolution On Algebraic Domains - Preliminary Report, Matthias Wendt, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

We relate two formerly independent areas: Formal concept analysis and logic of domains. We will establish a correspondence between contextual attribute logic on formal contexts resp. concept lattices and a clausal logic on coherent algebraic cpos. We show how to identify the notion of formal concept in the domain theoretic setting. In particular, we show that a special instance of the resolution rule from the domain logic coincides with the concept closure operator from formal concept analysis. The results shed light on the use of contexts and domains for knowledge representation and reasoning purposes.

Personalizing Interactions With Information Systems, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialog-based applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles …

The Staging Transformation Approach To Mixing Initiative, Robert Capra, Michael Narayan, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Mixed-initiative interaction is an important facet of many conversational interfaces, flexible planning architectures, intelligent tutoring systems, and interactive information retrieval systems. Software systems for mixed-initiative interaction must enable us to both operationalize the mixing of initiative (i.e., support the creation of practical dialogs) and to reason in real-time about how a flexible mode of interaction can be supported (e.g., from a meta-dialog standpoint). In this paper, we present the staging transformation approach to mixing initiative, where a dialog script captures the structure of the dialog and dialog control processes are realized through generous use of program transformation techniques (e.g., partial …

Telephone Directory Web Service, Hua Sun

Theses Digitization Project

This was a project to develop a Telephone Directory Web service (TDWS) to provide convenient and cost-effective access to public telephone directory data.

Crafting A Research Paper, Ronan Fitzpatrick, Kevin O'Donnell

Conference papers

Writing research papers presents numerous different challenges, which vary from how to layout the various pages and format the text to what to include in the different sections that make up the paper. In order to clarify these issues this paper sets out guidelines and best practice approaches and demonstrates their use in the style of this paper.

Semantic Web Processes, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Learning Continuous Latent Variable Models With Bregman Divergences, Shaojun Wang, Dale Schuurmans

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present a class of unsupervised statistical learning algorithms that are formulated in terms of minimizing Bregman divergences— a family of generalized entropy measures defined by convex functions. We obtain novel training algorithms that extract hidden latent structure by minimizing a Bregman divergence on training data, subject to a set of non-linear constraints which consider hidden variables. An alternating minimization procedure with nested iterative scaling is proposed to find feasible solutions for the resulting constrained optimization problem. The convergence of this algorithm along with its information geometric properties are characterized.

Web Service: Been There, Done That?, Steffen Staab, Will Van Der Aalst, V. Richard Benjamins, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller, Chistoph Bussler, Alexander Maedche, Dieter Fensel, Dennis Gannon

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web services can be defined as loosely coupled, reusable software components that semantically encapsulate discrete functionality and are distributed and programmatically accessible over standard Internet protocols. Web services have received a lot of hype, the reasons for which are not easily determined. Some of their benefits might even seem to waste away, once we touch on the nitty-gritty details, because Web services per se do not offer a solution to underlying problems. The contributions included in this section delve into some of these issues, including: pitfalls of workflow issues; structuring procedural knowledge into problem-solving methods; discussing how a low initial …

Semantic N-Gram Language Modeling With The Latent Maximum Entropy Principle, Shaojun Wang, Dale Schuurmans, Fuchun Peng, Yunxin Zhao

Kno.e.sis Publications

We describe a unified probabilistic framework for statistical language modeling-the latent maximum entropy principle-which can effectively incorporate various aspects of natural language, such as local word interaction, syntactic structure and semantic document information. Unlike previous work on maximum entropy methods for language modeling, which only allow explicit features to be modeled, our framework also allows relationships over hidden features to be captured, resulting in a more expressive language model. We describe efficient algorithms for marginalization, inference and normalization in our extended models. We then present experimental results for our approach on the Wall Street Journal corpus.

Census 2000 Demographic Profile Report Of The Older Adult Population In Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Lorain And Medina Counties, Mark Salling, Sharon Bliss, Mcnamara, Brian

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

United States Diplomacy In The Age Of The Internet, Allison S. Greene

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The dynamics of international relations are constantly changing, and the origin of an extraordinary amount of that change can be traced to what has been coined the ‘Information Revolution.’ It is a revolution as profound and as significant as Gutenberg's invention of moveable metal type, and may result in social and political consequences of comparable magnitude. One of the most significant and far-reaching implications of this phenomenon is the emergence of the Internet. Since its inception, there have been many claims and assertions about existing and potential repercussions of the Internet within the diplomatic realm.

The purpose of this work …

International Extension Programs Information System, Yu-Pin Chang

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

White Board, Getahun Alemu

Theses Digitization Project

This project designs and implements a tool to enhance the current means of availing coursework information in educational systems.

Dbunifier: A Framework For Automated Unification Of Textual Data In Multiple Remote Data Sources, John S. Dembowski

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over time, advances in database technology and utilization have resulted in a rapid increase in the number and types of data sources. Simultaneously, numerous methods of unifying these various data sources have emerged. Research has shown that a more comprehensive set of data attribute matches between multiple schemas can be detected by combining a number of the unification methodologies as opposed to using a single method. In this research project, a unification framework, dbUNiFier, has been proposed as an approach to allow for easy integration of both existing and future unification methods and data sources.

On Quantitative Evaluation Of Clustering Systems, Ji He, Ah-Hwee Tan, Chew-Lim Tan, Sam-Yuan Sung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Clustering refers to the task of partitioning unlabelled data into meaningful groups (clusters). It is a useful approach in data mining processes for identifying hidden patterns and revealing underlying knowledge from large data collections. The application areas of clustering, to name a few, include image segmentation, information retrieval, document classification, associate rule mining, web usage tracking, and transaction analysis.

A Mathematical Model For Simplifying Representations Of Objects In A Geographic Information System, Gabriel Perrow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study of operations on representations of objects is well documented in the realm of spatial engineering. However, the mathematical structure and formal proof of these operational phenomena are not thoroughly explored. Other works have often focused on query-based models that seek to order classes and instances of objects in the form of semantic hierarchies or graphs. In some models, nodes of graphs represent objects and are connected by edges that represent different types of coarsening operators. This work, however, studies how the coarsening operator "simplification" can manipulate partitions of finite sets, independent from objects and their attributes. Partitions that …

Defining Open Source Software Project Success, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Digitization In An Archival Environment, Sally Mckay

E-JASL 1999-2009 (Volumes 1-10)

Introduction

Cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies house remarkable collections of cultural artifacts. It is the responsibility of the staff working for those institutions to preserve, protect and provide responsible stewardship for the materials, and to the best of their ability, provide continued long-term access (Russell, 2000).

Advances in technology allow institutions to provide expanded access and education; however, there are important priorities that must be addressed prior to embarking on a digital conversion project.

Digitization in an archival environment includes taking a physical object or analog item, such as an art object, a tape recording, …

Instance Based Attribute Identification In Database Integration, Ee Peng Lim, Cecil Chua, Roger Hsiang-Li Chiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Most research on attribute identification in database integration has focused on integrating attributes using schema and summary information derived from the attribute values. No research has attempted to fully explore the use of attribute values to perform attribute identification. We propose an attribute identification method that employs schema and summary instance information as well as properties of attributes derived from their instances. Unlike other attribute identification methods that match only single attributes, our method matches attribute groups for integration. Because our attribute identification method fully explores data instances, it can identify corresponding attributes to be integrated even when schema information …

Performance Measurement Framework For Hierarchical Text Classification, Ee Peng Lim, Aixin Sun, Wee-Keong Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hierarchical text classification or simply hierarchical classification refers to assigning a document to one or more suitable categories from a hierarchical category space. In our literature survey, we have found that the existing hierarchical classification experiments used a variety of measures to evaluate performance. These performance measures often assume independence between categories and do not consider documents misclassified into categories that are similar or not far from the correct categories in the category tree. In this paper, we therefore propose new performance measures for hierarchical classification. The proposed performance measures consist of category similarity measures and distance-based measures that consider …

Advances In Mobile Commerce Technologies, Ee Peng Lim, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

On Computing Condensed Frequent Pattern Bases, Jian Pei, Guozhu Dong, Wei Zou, Jiawei Han

Kno.e.sis Publications

Frequent pattern mining has been studied extensively. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of this mining is often limited, since the number of frequent patterns generated is often too large. In many applications it is sufficient to generate and examine only frequent patterns with support frequency in close-enough approximation instead of in full precision. Such a compact but close-enough frequent pattern base is called a condensed frequent patterns-base.

In this paper, we propose and examine several alternatives at the design, representation, and implementation of such condensed frequent pattern-bases. A few algorithms for computing such pattern-bases are proposed. Their effectiveness at pattern …

Web Service Technologies And Their Synergy With Simulation, Senthilanand Chandrasekaran, Gregory S. Silver, John A. Miller, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The World Wide Web has had a huge influence on the computing field in general as well as simulation in particular (e.g., Web-Based Simulation). A new wave of development based upon XML has started. Two of the most interesting aspects of this development are the Semantic Web and Web Services. This paper examines the synergy between Web service technology and simulation. In one direction, Web service processes can be simulated for the purpose of correcting/improving the design. In the other direction, simulation models/components can be built out of Web services. Work on seamlessly using simulation as a part of Web …

Detection And Generalization Of Spatio-Temporal Trajectories For Motion Imagery, Panayotis Partsinevelos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today's world of vast information availability users often confront large unorganized amounts of data with limited tools for managing them. Motion imagery datasets have become increasingly popular means for exposing and disseminating information. Commonly, moving objects are of primary interest in modeling such datasets. Users may require different levels of detail mainly for visualization and further processing purposes according to the application at hand. In this thesis we exploit the geometric attributes of objects for dataset summarization by using a series of image processing and neural network tools. In order to form data summaries we select representative time instances …