Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Extraction Of Information From Crowdsourcing: Experimental Test Employing Bayesian, Maximum Likelihood, And Maximum Entropy Methods, Mark P. Silverman

Faculty Scholarship

A crowdsourcing experiment in which viewers (the “crowd”) of a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television show submitted estimates of the number of coins in a tumbler was shown in an antecedent paper (Part 1) to follow a log-normal distribution ∧(m,s²). The coin-estimation experiment is an archetype of a broad class of image analysis and object counting problems suitable for solution by crowdsourcing. The objective of the current paper (Part 2) is to determine the location and scale parameters (m,s) of ∧(m,s²) by both Bayesian and maximum …

Solargest: Ubiquitous And Battery-Free Gesture Recognition Using Solar Cells, Dong Ma, Guohao Lan, Mahbub Hassan, Wen Hu, B. Mushfika Upama, Ashraf Uddin, Youseef, Moustafa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We design a system, SolarGest, which can recognize hand gestures near a solar-powered device by analyzing the patterns of the photocurrent. SolarGest is based on the observation that each gesture interferes with incident light rays on the solar panel in a unique way, leaving its distinguishable signature in harvested photocurrent. Using solar energy harvesting laws, we develop a model to optimize design and usage of SolarGest. To further improve the robustness of SolarGest under non-deterministic operating conditions, we combine dynamic time warping with Z-score transformation in a signal processing pipeline to pre-process each gesture waveform before it is analyzed for …

Weakly-Supervised Deep Anomaly Detection With Pairwise Relation Learning, Guansong Pang, Anton Van Den Hengel, Chuanhua Shen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper studies a rarely explored but critical anomaly detection problem: weakly-supervised anomaly detection with limited labeled anomalies and a large unlabeled data set. This problem is very important because it (i) enables anomalyinformed modeling which helps identify anomalies of interests and address the notorious high false positives in unsupervised anomaly detection, and (ii) eliminates the reliance on large-scale and complete labeled anomaly data in fullysupervised settings. However, the problem is especially challenging since we have only limited labeled data for a single class, and moreover, the seen anomalies often cannot cover all types of anomalies (i.e., unseen anomalies). We …

Esdra: An Efficient And Secure Distributed Remote Attestation Scheme For Iot Swarms, Boyu Kuang, Anmin Fu, Shui Yu, Guomin Yang, Mang Su, Yuqing Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An Internet of Things (IoT) system generally contains thousands of heterogeneous devices which often operate in swarms-large, dynamic, and self-organizing networks. Remote attestation is an important cornerstone for the security of these IoT swarms, as it ensures the software integrity of swarm devices and protects them from attacks. However, current attestation schemes suffer from single point of failure verifier. In this paper, we propose an Efficient and Secure Distributed Remote Attestation (ESDRA) scheme for IoT swarms. We present the first many-to-one attestation scheme for device swarms, which reduces the possibility of single point of failure verifier. Moreover, we utilize distributed …

Who, Where, And What To Wear?: Extracting Fashion Knowledge From Social Media, Yunshan Ma, Xun Yang, Lizi Liao, Yixin Cao, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Fashion knowledge helps people to dress properly and addresses not only physiological needs of users, but also the demands of social activities and conventions. It usually involves three mutually related aspects of: occasion, person and clothing. However, there are few works focusing on extracting such knowledge, which will greatly benefit many downstream applications, such as fashion recommendation. In this paper, we propose a novel method to automatically harvest fashion knowledge from social media. We unify three tasks of occasion, person and clothing discovery from multiple modalities of images, texts and metadata. For person detection and analysis, we use the off-the-shelf …

Enhancing Symbolic Execution Of Heap-Based Programs With Separation Logic For Test Input Generation, Long H. Pham, Quang Loc Le, Quoc-Sang Phan, Jun Sun, Shengchao Qin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Symbolic execution is a well established method for test input generation. Despite of having achieved tremendous success over numerical domains, existing symbolic execution techniques for heap-based programs are limited due to the lack of a succinct and precise description for symbolic values over unbounded heaps. In this work, we present a new symbolic execution method for heap-based programs based on separation logic. The essence of our proposal is context-sensitive lazy initialization, a novel approach for efficient test input generation. Our approach differs from existing approaches in two ways. Firstly, our approach is based on separation logic, which allows us to …

Explaining Regressions Via Alignment Slicing And Mending, Haijun Wang, Yun Lin, Zijiang Yang, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jinsong Dong, Qinghua Zheng, Ting Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Regression faults, which make working code stop functioning, are often introduced when developers make changes to the software. Many regression fault localization techniques have been proposed. However, issues like inaccuracy and lack of explanation are still obstacles for their practical application. In this work, we propose a trace-based approach to identifying not only where the root cause of a regression bug lies, but also how the defect is propagated to its manifestation as the explanation. In our approach, we keep the trace of original correct version as reference and infer the faulty steps on the trace of regression version so …

Inferring Accurate Bus Trajectories From Noisy Estimated Arrival Time Records, Lakmal Meegahapola, Noel Athaide, Kasthuri Jayarajah, Shili Xiang, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Urban commuting data has long been a vital source of understanding population mobility behaviour and has been widely adopted for various applications such as transport infrastructure planning and urban anomaly detection. While individual-specific transaction records (such as smart card (tap-in, tap-out) data or taxi trip records) hold a wealth of information, these are often private data available only to the service provider (e.g., taxicab operator). In this work, we explore the utility in harnessing publicly available, albeit noisy, transportation datasets, such as noisy “Estimated Time of Arrival" (ETA) records (commonly available to commuters through transit Apps or electronic signages). We …

New Challenges In Display-Saturated Environments, Mateusz Andrzej Mikusz, Tsu Wei Kenny Choo, Rajesh Krishna Balan, Nigel Davies, Youngki Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We live in a world in which our physical spaces are becoming increasingly enriched with computing technology. Pervasive displays have been at the forefront of this progression and are now commonplace. In this paper, we focus on the natural end-point of this trend and consider the case when displays become truly ubiquitous and saturate our physical environments. We use as motivation a state-of-the-art display deployment in which mobile users navigating the space are simultaneously exposed to many hundreds of displays within their field of view and we highlight a number of new research challenges.

Topicsummary: A Tool For Analyzing Class Discussion Forums Using Topic Based Summarizations, Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman, Renjini Ramesh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This Innovative Practice full paper, describes the application of text mining techniques for extracting insights from a course based online discussion forum through generation of topic based summaries. Discussions, either in classroom or online provide opportunity for collaborative learning through exchange of ideas that leads to enhanced learning through active participation. Online discussions offer a number of benefits namely providing additional time to reflect and synthesize information before writing, providing a natural platform for students to voice their ideas without any one student dominating the conversation, and providing a record of the student’s thoughts. An online discussion forum provides a …

Detecting Cyberattacks In Industrial Control Systems Using Online Learning Algorithms, Guangxia Li, Yulong Shen, Peilin Zhao, Xiao Lu, Jia Liu, Yangyang Liu, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Industrial control systems are critical to the operation of industrial facilities, especially for critical infrastructures, such as refineries, power grids, and transportation systems. Similar to other information systems, a significant threat to industrial control systems is the attack from cyberspace-the offensive maneuvers launched by "anonymous" in the digital world that target computer-based assets with the goal of compromising a system's functions or probing for information. Owing to the importance of industrial control systems, and the possibly devastating consequences of being attacked, significant endeavors have been attempted to secure industrial control systems from cyberattacks. Among them are intrusion detection systems that …

Generic Construction Of Elgamal-Type Attribute-Based Encryption Schemes With Revocability And Dual-Policy, Shengmin Xu, Yinghui Zhang, Yingjiu Li, Ximeng Liu, Guomin Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cloud is a computing paradigm for allowing data owners to outsource their data to enjoy on-demand services and mitigate the burden of local data storage. However, secure sharing of data via cloud remains an essential issue since the cloud service provider is untrusted. Fortunately, asymmetric-key encryption, such as identity-based encryption (IBE) and attribute-based encryption (ABE), provides a promising tool to offer data confidentiality and has been widely applied in cloud-based applications. In this paper, we summarize the common properties of most of IBE and ABE and introduce a cryptographic primitive called ElGamal type cryptosystem. This primitive can be used to …

Nonuniform Timeslicing Of Dynamic Graphs Based On Visual Complexity, Yong Wang, Daniel Archambault, Hammad Haleem, Torsten Moeller, Yanhong Wu, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Uniform timeslicing of dynamic graphs has been used due to its convenience and uniformity across the time dimension. However, uniform timeslicing does not take the data set into account, which can generate cluttered timeslices with edge bursts and empty timeslices with few interactions. The graph mining filed has explored nonuniform timeslicing methods specifically designed to preserve graph features for mining tasks. In this paper, we propose a nonuni-form timeslicing approach for dynamic graph visualization. Our goal is to create timeslices of equal visual complexity. To this end, we adapt histogram equalization to create timeslices with a similar number of events, …

Hybrid Catalysis For The Direct Addition Of Unactivated Aldehydes And Ketones To Alkenes And Alkynes, Jacob Porter

Dissertations (1934 -)

Reactions for the alpha functionalization of carbonyl compounds are important for the synthesis of complex organic materials such as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and natural products. Current methodology used to perform these reactions is inefficient in that pre-activated coupling partners or sensitive catalysts are usually required. Described herein is the study and development of bifunctional and dual catalytic systems for carbon-carbon bond formation via the direct addition of unactivated carbonyl compounds to unactivated alkenes/alkynes. A dual catalyst system is one which utilizes two distinct catalysts to simultaneously activate separate reactants, and in a bifunctional catalyst the two catalytic components are present separately …

Comprehending Test Code: An Empirical Study, Chak Shun Yu, Christoph Treude, Maurício Aniche

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Developers spend a large portion of their time and effort on comprehending source code. While many studies have investigated how developers approach these comprehension tasks and what factors influence their success, less is known about how developers comprehend test code specifically, despite the undisputed importance of testing. In this paper, we report on the results of an empirical study with 44 developers to understand which factors influence developers when comprehending Java test code. We measured three dependent variables: the total time spent reading a test suite, the ability to identify the overall purpose of a test suite, and the ability …

Supporting Software Architecture Maintenance By Providing Task-Specific Recommendations, Matthias Galster, Christoph Treude, Kelly Blincoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

During software maintenance, developers have different information needs (e.g., to understand what type of maintenance activity to perform, the impact of a maintenance activity and its effort). However, information to support developers may be distributed across various sources. Furthermore, information captured in formal architecture documentation may be outdated. In this paper, we put forward a late breaking idea and outline a solution to improve the productivity of developers by providing task-specific recommendations based on concrete information needs that arise during software maintenance.

Knowledge Base Question Answering With A Matching-Aggregation Model And Question-Specific Contextual Relations, Yunshi Lan, Shuohang Wang, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Making use of knowledge bases to answer questions (KBQA) is a key direction in question answering systems. Researchers have developed a diverse range of methods to address this problem, but there are still some limitations with the existing methods. Specifically, the existing neural network-based methods for KBQA have not taken advantage of the recent “matching-aggregation” framework for the sequence matching, and when representing a candidate answer entity, they may not choose the most useful context of the candidate for matching. In this paper, we explore the use of a “matching-aggregation” framework to match candidate answers with questions. We further make …

Mercury Concentrations In Bat Guano From Caves And Bat Houses In Florida And Georgia, Amy E. Edwards, Jenise L. Swall, Charles H. Jagoe

Virginia Journal of Science

Previous studies have indicated that several pollutants are bioaccumulating in insectivorous bats, including the heavy metal mercury. This has resulted in an increased presence of mercury in bat waste (guano). In this study, we collected bat guano from ten caves in Florida and Georgia and two bat houses in Florida and analyzed the samples for mercury concentrations (ppm). Since the predominant bat species using caves (Myotis austroriparius) versus bat houses (Tadarida braziliensis) were different, the objective of this study was to make statistical comparisons of the mercury concentrations among caves, between caves and bat houses, and between …

Paper-Based Flexible Electrode Using Chemically-Modified Graphene And Functionalized Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Composites For Electrophysiological Signal Sensing, Md Faruk Hossain, Jae Sang Heo, John Nelson, Insoo Kim

Bioelectrics Publications

Flexible paper-based physiological sensor electrodes were developed using chemically-modified graphene (CG) and carboxylic-functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotube composites (f@MWCNTs). A solvothermal process with additional treatment was conducted to synthesize CG and f@MWCNTs to make CG-f@MWCNT composites. The composite was sonicated in an appropriate solvent to make a uniform suspension, and then it was drop cast on a nylon membrane in a vacuum filter. A number of batches (0%~35% f@MWCNTs) were prepared to investigate the performance of the physical characteristics. The 25% f@MWCNT-loaded composite showed the best adhesion on the paper substrate. The surface topography and chemical bonding of the proposed CG-f@MWCNT …

Environmental Influences On The Stable Carbon Isotopic Composition Of Devonian And Early Carboniferous Land Plants, Zhenzhu Wan, Thomas J. Algeo, Patricia G. Gensel, Stephen E. Scheckler, William E. Stein, Walter L. Cressler Iii, Christopher M. Berry, Honghe Xu, Harold D. Rowe, Peter E. Sauer

Earth & Space Sciences Faculty Publications

Systematic analysis of the stable carbon isotopic composition of fossil land plants (δ13Cp) has the potential to offer new insights regarding paleoclimate variation and plant-environment interactions in early terrestrial ecosystems. δ13Cp was measured for 190 fossil plant specimens belonging to 10 genera of Early to Late Devonian age (Archaeopteris, Drepanophycus, Haskinsia, Leclercqia, Pertica, Psilophyton, Rhacophyton, Sawdonia, Tetraxylopteris, and Wattieza) and 2 genera of Early Carboniferous age (Genselia and Rhodeopteridium) collected from sites located mainly in the Appalachian Basin (22–30°S paleolatitude). For the full carbon-isotopic dataset (n=309), δ13Cp ranges from −20.3‰ to −30.5‰ with a mean of −25.5‰, similar to values …

Python Practice Assignments For Computer Science I, Hyrum Carroll, Hillary Fleenor

Computer Science and Information Technology Ancillary Materials

This set of practice assignments for Computer Science 1 were created under a Round Twelve Mini-Grant for Ancillary Materials Creation and Revision.

The assignments use the Python coding language and the repl.it coding platform and cover the following topics:

• Modules;
• Functions;
• Selections;
• Loops;
• Strings;
• Lists;
• Files;
• Dictionaries.

Beauty, Bees, And God: The Fibonacci Sequence As A Theological Springboard In Secondary Mathematics, John D. Brahier

Journal of Catholic Education

Catholic schools primarily should be in the business of making saints. This article identifies and explores a meaningful, engaging point of contact between mathematics and theology for high school math classes, the Fibonacci Sequence. This sequence serves as an engaging introduction to sequences and series; more importantly, the topic can be used as a springboard to theological discussions. The paper will provide a brief historical background to the Fibonacci Sequence, an explanation of how it can be used in a high school math classroom, and an exploration of three different theological touchpoints that the Fibonacci Sequence offers.

Eelgrass In Virginia: Assessing Opportunities And Obstacles For Blue Carbon Credits, Michael Jordan, Imani Price

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

This Paper seeks to explore a few of the questions that eelgrass restoration project proponents will need to consider prior to participating in a voluntary carbon credit market, like the VCS [Verified Carbon Standard]. Part I of this Paper explores whether the Commonwealth of Virginia could participate as a project proponent in a voluntary carbon credit market, and then analyzes both constitutional limitations and statutory limitations on the current state agency charged with overseeing the state-owned bottomlands—the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC). It also explores a few possible solutions to constitutional and statutory issues. Assuming that the eelgrass restoration activities …

Federal Funding Programs: Benefit-Cost Analyses And Low To Moderate Income Communities, Kelsey Mcneill, Alyssa Glass

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

“Global average sea level has risen by about 7-8 inches (about 16-21cm) since 1990, with about 3 of those inches (about 7 cm) occurring since 1993.” Since both the ocean and the atmosphere are getting warmer, global sea levels are projected to rise at an increased rate over the coming centuries. Unsurprisingly, rise in sea level disproportionately negatively impacts coastal communities. For instance, a combination of high magnitude storms and sea level rise causes dangerous flooding to occur farther inland than in the past. Higher sea levels will also cause communities to flood more frequently around high tide even in …

Macromolecular Engineering Of Biomass Polymers And Stimuli-Responsive Materials Towards Enhanced Thermomechanical Properties, Meghan E. Lamm

Theses and Dissertations

Commodity polymers are used in every aspect of daily life, and most of these polymeric materials are synthesized using petroleum-derived sources. There are direct environmental consequences to this petroleum dependence including greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Biomass-based polymers show promise for the mitigation on negative environmental impact, in comparison with petroleum-derived counterparts. However, some biopolymers suffer from low chain entanglement due to bulky or long side chain structures, resulting in poor mechanical properties. In this dissertation work, macromolecular engineering is used to design biomass-derived polymers featuring a variety of structures and functionalities. Additionally, biopolymer properties (including thermomechanical enhancement) and …

Ultra-Fast Sensors To Study The Fundamental Neurochemistry Underlying Disease, Alyssa West

Theses and Dissertations

Serotonin is a vital neurotransmitter whose exact roles are ill-defined. Dysfunctions in serotonin signaling are thought to underlie a myriad of neurological problems including depression and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Prior to investigating serotonin’s role in disease states, one must understand more about the functionality of serotonin in healthy in vivo models. To study serotonin in vivo, fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) and fast- scan controlled adsorption voltammetry (FSCAV) are employed to measure evoked and basal serotonin concentration, respectively. These methods, combined with mathematical modeling, provide information regarding regulatory mechanisms of serotonin neurotransmission. FSCV and FSCAV are first applied to …

Multilevel Combinatorial Optimization Across Quantum Architectures, Hayato Ushijima-Mwesigwa, Ruslan Shaydulin, Christian F.A. Negre, Susan M. Mniszewski, Yuri Alexeev, Ilya Safro

Publications

Emerging quantum processors provide an opportunity to explore new approaches for solving traditional problems in the Post Moore's law supercomputing era. However, the limited number of qubits makes it infeasible to tackle massive real-world datasets directly in the near future, leading to new challenges in utilizing these quantum processors for practical purposes. Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms that leverage both quantum and classical types of devices are considered as one of the main strategies to apply quantum computing to large-scale problems. In this paper, we advocate the use of multilevel frameworks for combinatorial optimization as a promising general paradigm for designing hybrid …

Informing Joyality 4 Kids: Ecopsychology Education To Support Upper Primary Children’S Well-Being Through Environmental And Social Crisis, Cambry Baker

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Responding to climate change and the state of the world demands psychological resilience and a transformative shift towards sustainable behavior. Children inheriting our uncertain future require psychological support and tools of well-being to fuel emotionally sustainable activism. In this paper I investigate how best to support upper primary aged children through environmental and social issues with Joyality 4 Kids, an educational ecopsychology program.

During November of 2019 I completed the Joyality Program processes independently, then conducted two focus group interviews with five individuals experienced in the Joyality Program and/or environmental education to develop the processes for an eight-hour Joyality 4 …

Vulnerability And Adaptability Of Mangrove Forests On Misali Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Samantha A. Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As climate change threatens to cause heightened sea levels and decreased rainfall patterns in the Indian Ocean, mangrove forests are forced to adapt or suffer. This study aims to analyze the persistence of four prominent mangrove forests on Misali Island based on vulnerability and adaptability. The study focuses on three types of forests: overwash, coastal fringing, and scrub. Forest A, an overwash forest, was the main site of study and was surveyed for species type and seedling/sapling counts using ten transects which ranged from 40 to 91.7 meters in length. Data was analyzed in order to determine biodiversity, zonation, and …

Data From: Cavitation Clusters In Lipid Systems – The Generation Of A Bifurcated Streamer And The Dual Collapse Of A Bubble Cluster, Silvana Martini, Peter Birkin, Tadd T. Truscott

Browse all Datasets

Over the past decade several studies have reported the use of high intensity ultrasound (HIU) to induce the crystallization of lipids. The effect that HIU has on lipid crystallization is usually attributed to the generation of cavities but acoustic cavitation has never been fully explored in lipids. The dynamics of a particular cavitation cluster next to a piston like emitter in an oil, was investigated in this study. The lipid systems, which are important in food processing, are studied with high-speed camera imaging, laser scattering and pressure measurements. A sequence of stable clusters were noted. In addition, a bifurcated streamer …