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 Department: Department of Computer Science
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 Collection: UNT Theses and Dissertations
Refactoring FrameNet for Efficient Relational Queries
The FrameNet database is being used in a variety of NLP research and applications such as word sense disambiguation, machine translation, information extraction and question answering. The database is currently available in XML format. The XML database though a wholesome way of distributing data in its entireness, is not practical for use unless converted to a more application friendly database. In light of this we have successfully converted the XML database to a relational MySQL™ database. This conversion reduced the amount of data storage amount to less than half. Most importantly the new database enables us to perform fast complex querying and facilitates use by applications and research. We show the steps taken to ensure relational integrity of the data during the refactoring process and a simple demo application demonstrating ease of use. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4443/
Content-based image retrieval by integration of metadata encoded multimedia (image and text) features in constructing a video summarizer application.
Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is the retrieval of images from a collection by means of internal feature measures of the information content of the images. In CBIR systems, text media is usually used only to retrieve exemplar images for further searching by image feature content. This research work describes a new method for integrating multimedia text and image content features to increase the retrieval performance of the system. I am exploring the content-based features of an image extracted from a video to build a storyboard for search retrieval of images. Metadata encoded multimedia features include extracting primitive features like color, shape and text from an image. Histograms are built for all the features extracted and stored in a database. Images are searched based on comparing these histogram values of the extracted image with the stored values. These histogram values are used for extraction of keyframes from a collection of images parsed from a video file. Individual shots of images are extracted from a video clip and run through processes that extract the features and build the histogram values. A keyframe extraction algorithm is run to get the keyframes from the collection of images to build a storyboard of images. In video retrieval, speech recognition and other multimedia encoding could help improve the CBIR indexing technique and makes keyframe extraction and searching effective. Research in area of embedding sound and other multimedia could enhance effective video retrieval. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4238/
Control mechanisms and recovery techniques for real-time data transmission over the Internet.
Streaming multimedia content with UDP has become popular over distributed systems such as an Internet. This may encounter many losses due to dropped packets or late arrivals at destination since UDP can only provide best effort delivery. Even UDP doesn't have any self-recovery mechanism from congestion collapse or bursty loss to inform sender of the data to adjust future transmission rate of data like in TCP. So there is a need to incorporate various control schemes like forward error control, interleaving, and congestion control and error concealment into real-time transmission to prevent from effect of losses. Loss can be repaired by retransmission if roundtrip delay is allowed, otherwise error concealment techniques will be used based on the type and amount of loss. This paper implements the interleaving technique with packet spacing of varying interleaver block size for protecting real-time data from loss and its effect during transformation across the Internet. The packets are interleaved and maintain some time gap between two consecutive packets before being transmitted into the Internet. Thus loss of packets can be reduced from congestion and preventing loss of consecutive packets of information when a burst of several packets are lost. Several experiments have been conducted with video data for analysis of proposed model. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3268/
Higher Compression from the Burrows-Wheeler Transform with New Algorithms for the List Update Problem
Burrows-Wheeler compression is a three stage process in which the data is transformed with the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, then transformed with Move-To-Front, and finally encoded with an entropy coder. Move-To-Front, Transpose, and Frequency Count are some of the many algorithms used on the List Update problem. In 1985, Competitive Analysis first showed the superiority of Move-To-Front over Transpose and Frequency Count for the List Update problem with arbitrary data. Earlier studies due to Bitner assumed independent identically distributed data, and showed that while Move-To-Front adapts to a distribution faster, incurring less overwork, the asymptotic costs of Frequency Count and Transpose are less. The improvements to Burrows-Wheeler compression this work covers are increases in the amount, not speed, of compression. Best x of 2x-1 is a new family of algorithms created to improve on Move-To-Front's processing of the output of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform which is like piecewise independent identically distributed data. Other algorithms for both the middle stage of Burrows-Wheeler compression and the List Update problem for which overwork, asymptotic cost, and competitive ratios are also analyzed are several variations of Move One From Front and part of the randomized algorithm Timestamp. The Best x of 2x - 1 family includes Move-To-Front, the part of Timestamp of interest, and Frequency Count. Lastly, a greedy choosing scheme, Snake, switches back and forth as the amount of compression that two List Update algorithms achieves fluctuates, to increase overall compression. The Burrows-Wheeler Transform is based on sorting of contexts. The other improvements are better sorting orders, such as “aeioubcdf...” instead of standard alphabetical “abcdefghi...” on English text data, and an algorithm for computing orders for any data, and Gray code sorting instead of standard sorting. Both techniques lessen the overwork incurred by whatever List Update algorithms are used by reducing the difference between adjacent sorted contexts. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2909/
Modeling the Impact and Intervention of a Sexually Transmitted Disease: Human Papilloma Virus
Many human papilloma virus (HPV) types are sexually transmitted and HPV DNA types 16, 18, 31, and 45 account for more than 75% if all cervical dysplasia. Candidate vaccines are successfully completing US Federal Drug Agency (FDA) phase III testing and several drug companies are in licensing arbitration. Once this vaccine become available it is unlikely that 100% vaccination coverage will be probable; hence, the need for vaccination strategies that will have the greatest reduction on the endemic prevalence of HPV. This thesis introduces two discrete-time models for evaluating the effect of demographic-biased vaccination strategies: one model incorporates temporal demographics (i.e., age) in population compartments; the other non-temporal demographics (i.e., race, ethnicity). Also presented is an intuitive Web-based interface that was developed to allow the user to evaluate the effects on prevalence of a demographic-biased intervention by tailoring the model parameters to specific demographics and geographical region. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5289/
DADS - A Distributed Agent Delivery System
Mobile agents require an appropriate platform that can facilitate their migration and execution. In particular, the design and implementation of such a system must balance several factors that will ensure that its constituent agents are executed without problems. Besides the basic requirements of migration and execution, an agent system must also provide mechanisms to ensure the security and survivability of an agent when it migrates between hosts. In addition, the system should be simple enough to facilitate its widespread use across large scale networks (i.e Internet). To address these issues, this thesis discusses the design and implementation of the Distributed Agent Delivery System (DADS). The DADS provides a de-coupled design that separates agent acceptance from agent execution. Using functional modules, the DADS provides services ranging from language execution and security to fault-tolerance and compression. Modules allow the administrator(s) of hosts to declare, at run-time, the services that they want to provide. Since each administrative domain is different, the DADS provides a platform that can be adapted to exchange heterogeneous blends of agents across large scale networks. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3352/
Performance comparison of data distribution management strategies in large-scale distributed simulation.
Data distribution management (DDM) is a High Level Architecture/Run-time Infrastructure (HLA/RTI) service that manages the distribution of state updates and interaction information in large-scale distributed simulations. The key to efficient DDM is to limit and control the volume of data exchanged during the simulation, to relay data to only those hosts requiring the data. This thesis focuses upon different DDM implementations and strategies. This thesis includes analysis of three DDM methods including the fixed grid-based, dynamic grid-based, and region-based methods. Also included is the use of multi-resolution modeling with various DDM strategies and analysis of the performance effects of aggregation/disaggregation with these strategies. Running numerous federation executions, I simulate four different scenarios on a cluster of workstations with a mini-RTI Kit framework and propose a set of benchmarks for a comparison of the DDM schemes. The goals of this work are to determine the most efficient model for applying each DDM scheme, discover the limitations of the scalability of the various DDM methods, evaluate the effects of aggregation/disaggregation on performance and resource usage, and present accepted benchmarks for use in future research. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4524/
The Design and Implementation of a Prolog Parser using javacc
Operatorless Prolog text is LL(1) in nature and any standard LL parser generator tool can be used to parse it. However, the Prolog text that conforms to the ISO Prolog standard allows the definition of dynamic operators. Since Prolog operators can be defined at run-time, operator symbols are not present in the grammar rules of the language. Unless the parser generator allows for some flexibility in the specification of the grammar rules, it is very difficult to generate a parser for such text. In this thesis we discuss the existing parsing methods and their modified versions to parse languages with dynamic operator capabilities. Implementation details of a parser using Javacc as a parser generator tool to parse standard Prolog text is provided. The output of the parser is an “Abstract Syntax Tree” that reflects the correct precedence and associativity rules among the various operators (static and dynamic) of the language. Empirical results are provided that show that a Prolog parser that is generated by the parser generator like Javacc is comparable in efficiency to a hand-coded parser. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3251/
Arithmetic Computations and Memory Management Using a Binary Tree Encoding af Natural Numbers
Two applications of a binary tree data type based on a simple pairing function (a bijection between natural numbers and pairs of natural numbers) are explored. First, the tree is used to encode natural numbers, and algorithms that perform basic arithmetic computations are presented along with formal proofs of their correctness. Second, using this "canonical" representation as a base type, algorithms for encoding and decoding additional isomorphic data types of other mathematical constructs (sets, sequences, etc.) are also developed. An experimental application to a memory management system is constructed and explored using these isomorphic types. A practical analysis of this system's runtime complexity and space savings are provided, along with a proof of concept framework for both applications of the binary tree type, in the Java programming language. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc103323/
Benchmark-based Page Replacement (BBPR) Strategy: A New Web Cache Page Replacement Strategy
World Wide Web caching is widely used through today's Internet. When correctly deployed, Web caching systems can lead to significant bandwidth savings, network load reduction, server load balancing, and higher content availability. A document replacement algorithm that can lower retrieval latency and yield high hit ratio is the key to the effectiveness of proxy caches. More than twenty cache algorithms have been employed in academic studies and in corporate communities as well. But there are some drawbacks in the existing replacement algorithms. To overcome these shortcomings, we developed a new page replacement strategy named as Benchmark-Based Page Replacement (BBPR) strategy, in which a HTTP benchmark is used as a tool to evaluate the current network load and the server load. By our simulation model, the BBPR strategy shows better performance than the LRU (Least Recently Used) method, which is the most commonly used algorithm. The tradeoff is a reduced hit ratio. Slow pages benefit from BBPR. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4215/
The Design and Implementation of an Intelligent Agent-Based File System
As bandwidth constraints on LAN/WAN environments decrease, the demand for distributed services will continue to increase. In particular, the proliferation of user-level applications requiring high-capacity distributed file storage systems will demand that such services be universally available. At the same time, the advent of high-speed networks have made the deployment of application and communication solutions based upon an Intelligent Mobile Agent (IMA) framework practical. Agents have proven to present an ideal development paradigm for the creation of autonomous large-scale distributed systems, and an agent-based communication scheme would facilitate the creation of independently administered distributed file services. This thesis thus outlines an architecture for such a distributed file system based upon an IMA communication framework. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2523/
Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) for Children Story Selection in ASP.NET and C#
This paper describes the general architecture and function of a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) system implemented with ASP.NET and C#. Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and XML Web Services provide a flexible, standards-based model that allows clients to access data. Web Form Pages offer a powerful programming model for Web-enabled user interface. The system provides a variety of mechanisms and services related to story retrieval and adaptation. Users may browse and search a library of text stories. More advanced CBR capabilities were also implemented, including a multi-factor distance-calculation for matching user interests with stories in the library, recommendations on optimizing search, and adaptation of stories to match user interests. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4417/
Dynamic Resource Management in RSVP- Controlled Unicast Networks
Resources are said to be fragmented in the network when they are available in non-contiguous blocks, and calls are dropped as they may not end sufficient resources. Hence, available resources may remain unutilized. In this thesis, the effect of resource fragmentation (RF) on RSVP-controlled networks was studied and new algorithms were proposed to reduce the effect of RF. In order to minimize the effect of RF, resources in the network are dynamically redistributed on different paths to make them available in contiguous blocks. Extra protocol messages are introduced to facilitate resource redistribution in the network. The Dynamic Resource Redistribution (DRR) algorithm when used in conjunction with RSVP, not only increased the number of calls accommodated into the network but also increased the overall resource utilization of the network. Issues such as how many resources need to be redistributed and of which call(s), and how these choices affect the redistribution process were investigated. Further, various simulation experiments were conducted to study the performance of the DRR algorithm on different network topologies with varying traffic characteristics. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3048/
Embedded monitors for detecting and preventing intrusions in cryptographic and application protocols.
There are two main approaches for intrusion detection: signature-based and anomaly-based. Signature-based detection employs pattern matching to match attack signatures with observed data making it ideal for detecting known attacks. However, it cannot detect unknown attacks for which there is no signature available. Anomaly-based detection builds a profile of normal system behavior to detect known and unknown attacks as behavioral deviations. However, it has a drawback of a high false alarm rate. In this thesis, we describe our anomaly-based IDS designed for detecting intrusions in cryptographic and application-level protocols. Our system has several unique characteristics, such as the ability to monitor cryptographic protocols and application-level protocols embedded in encrypted sessions, a very lightweight monitoring process, and the ability to react to protocol misuse by modifying protocol response directly. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4414/
Algorithms for Efficient Utilization of Wireless Bandwidth and to Provide Quality-of-Service in Wireless Networks
This thesis presents algorithms to utilize the wireless bandwidth efficiently and at the same time meet the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the users. In the proposed algorithms we present an adaptive frame structure based upon the airlink frame loss probability and control the admission of call requests into the system based upon the load on the system and the QoS requirements of the incoming call requests. The performance of the proposed algorithms is studied by developing analytical formulations and simulation experiments. Finally we present an admission control algorithm which uses an adaptive delay computation algorithm to compute the queuing delay for each class of traffic and adapts the service rate and the reliability in the estimates based upon the deviation in the expected and obtained performance. We study the performance of the call admission control algorithm by simulation experiments. Simulation results for the adaptive frame structure algorithm show an improvement in the number of users in the system but there is a drop in the system throughput. In spite of the lower throughput the adaptive frame structure algorithm has fewer QoS delay violations. The adaptive call admission control algorithm adapts the call dropping probability of different classes of traffic and optimizes the system performance w.r.t the number of calls dropped and the reliability in meeting the QoS promised when the call is admitted into the system. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2635/
Analyzing Microwave Spectra Collected by the Solar Radio Burst Locator
Modern communication systems rely heavily upon microwave, radio, and other electromagnetic frequency bands as a means of providing wireless communication links. Although convenient, wireless communication is susceptible to electromagnetic interference. Solar activity causes both direct interference through electromagnetic radiation as well as indirect interference caused by charged particles interacting with Earth's magnetic field. The Solar Radio Burst Locator (SRBL) is a United States Air Force radio telescope designed to detect and locate solar microwave bursts as they occur on the Sun. By analyzing these events, the Air Force hopes to gain a better understanding of the root causes of solar interference and improve interference forecasts. This thesis presents methods of searching and analyzing events found in the previously unstudied SRBL data archive. A new web-based application aids in the searching and visualization of the data. Comparative analysis is performed amongst data collected by SRBL and several other instruments. This thesis also analyzes events across the time, intensity, and frequency domains. These analysis methods can be used to aid in the detection and understanding of solar events so as to provide improved forecasts of solar-induced electromagnetic interference. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3655/
The Multipath Fault-Tolerant Protocol for Routing in Packet-Switched Communication Network
In order to provide improved service quality to applications, networks need to address the need for reliability of data delivery. Reliability can be improved by incorporating fault tolerance into network routing, wherein a set of multiple routes are used for routing between a given source and destination. This thesis proposes a new fault-tolerant protocol, called the Multipath Fault Tolerant Protocol for Routing (MFTPR), to improve the reliability of network routing services. The protocol is based on a multipath discovery algorithm, the Quasi-Shortest Multipath (QSMP), and is designed to work in conjunction with the routing protocol employed by the network. MFTPR improves upon the QSMP algorithm by finding more routes than QSMP, and also provides for maintenance of these routes in the event of failure of network components. In order to evaluate the resilience of a pair of paths to failure, this thesis proposes metrics that evaluate the non-disjointness of a pair of paths and measure the probability of simultaneous failure of these paths. The performance of MFTPR to find alternate routes based on these metrics is analyzed through simulation. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4199/
Visualization of Surfaces and 3D Vector Fields
Visualization of trivariate functions and vector fields with three components in scientific computation is still a hard problem in compute graphic area. People build their own visualization packages for their special purposes. And there exist some general-purpose packages (MatLab, Vis5D), but they all require extensive user experience on setting all the parameters in order to generate images. We present a simple package to produce simplified but productive images of 3-D vector fields. We used this method to render the magnetic field and current as solutions of the Ginzburg-Landau equations on a 3-D domain. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3235/
A Comparison of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering Frameworks and Methodologies
Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) covers issues on developing systems with software agents. There are many techniques, mostly agent-oriented and object-oriented, ready to be chosen as building blocks to create agent-based systems. There have been several AOSE methodologies proposed intending to show engineers guidelines on how these elements are constituted in having agents achieve the overall system goals. Although these solutions are promising, most of them are designed in ad-hoc manner without truly obeying software developing life-cycle fully, as well as lacking of examinations on agent-oriented features. To address these issues, we investigated state-of-the-art techniques and AOSE methodologies. By examining them in different respects, we commented on the strength and weakness of them. Toward a formal study, a comparison framework has been set up regarding four aspects, including concepts and properties, notations and modeling techniques, process, and pragmatics. Under these criteria, we conducted the comparison in both overview and detailed level. The comparison helped us with empirical and analytical study, to inspect the issues on how an ideal agent-based system will be formed. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4411/
Modeling Complex Forest Ecology in a Parallel Computing Infrastructure
Effective stewardship of forest ecosystems make it imperative to measure, monitor, and predict the dynamic changes of forest ecology. Measuring and monitoring provides us a picture of a forest's current state and the necessary data to formulate models for prediction. However, societal and natural events alter the course of a forest's development. A simulation environment that takes into account these events will facilitate forest management. In this thesis, we describe an efficient parallel implementation of a land cover use model, Mosaic, and discuss the development efforts to incorporate spatial interaction and succession dynamics into the model. To evaluate the performance of our implementation, an extensive set of simulation experiments was carried out using a dataset representing the H.J. Andrews Forest in the Oregon Cascades. Results indicate that a significant reduction in the simulation execution time of our parallel model can be achieved as compared to uni-processor simulations. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4305/
Intelligent Memory Management Heuristics
Automatic memory management is crucial in implementation of runtime systems even though it induces a significant computational overhead. In this thesis I explore the use of statistical properties of the directed graph describing the set of live data to decide between garbage collection and heap expansion in a memory management algorithm combining the dynamic array represented heaps with a mark and sweep garbage collector to enhance its performance. The sampling method predicting the density and the distribution of useful data is implemented as a partial marking algorithm. The algorithm randomly marks the nodes of the directed graph representing the live data at different depths with a variable probability factor p. Using the information gathered by the partial marking algorithm in the current step and the knowledge gathered in the previous iterations, the proposed empirical formula predicts with reasonable accuracy the density of live nodes on the heap, to decide between garbage collection and heap expansion. The resulting heuristics are tested empirically and shown to improve overall execution performance significantly in the context of the Jinni Prolog compiler's runtime system. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4399/
Impact of actual interference on capacity and call admission control in a CDMA network.
An overwhelming number of models in the literature use average inter-cell interference for the calculation of capacity of a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network. The advantage gained in terms of simplicity by using such models comes at the cost of rendering the exact location of a user within a cell irrelevant. We calculate the actual per-user interference and analyze the effect of user-distribution within a cell on the capacity of a CDMA network. We show that even though the capacity obtained using average interference is a good approximation to the capacity calculated using actual interference for a uniform user distribution, the deviation can be tremendously large for non-uniform user distributions. Call admission control (CAC) algorithms are responsible for efficient management of a network's resources while guaranteeing the quality of service and grade of service, i.e., accepting the maximum number of calls without affecting the quality of service of calls already present in the network. We design and implement global and local CAC algorithms, and through simulations compare their network throughput and blocking probabilities for varying mobility scenarios. We show that even though our global CAC is better at resource management, the lack of substantial gain in network throughput and exponential increase in complexity makes our optimized local CAC algorithm a much better choice for a given traffic distribution profile. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4496/
DICOM Image Scrubbing Software Library/Utility
This software is aimed at providing user-friendly, easy-to-use environment for the user to scrub (de-identify/modify) the DICOM header information. Some tools either anonymize or default the values without the user interaction. The user doesn't have the flexibility to edit the header information. One cannot scrub set of images simultaneously (batch scrubbing). This motivated to develop a tool/utility that can scrub a set of images in a single step more efficiently. This document also addresses security issues of the patient confidentiality to achieve protection of patient identifying information and some technical requirements digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4189/
Agent-based architecture for web deployment of multi-agents as conversational interfaces.
Agent-based architecture explains the rationale and basis for developing agents that can interact with users through natural language query/answer patterns developed systematically using AIML (artificial intelligence mark-up language) scripts. This thesis research document also explains the architecture for VISTA (virtual interactive story-telling agents), which is used for interactive querying in educational and recreational purposes. Agents are very effective as conversational interfaces when used along side with graphical user interface (GUI) in applications and Web pages. This architecture platform can support multiple agents with or with out sharing of knowledgebase. They are very useful as chat robots for recreational purposes, customer service and educational purposes. This platform is powered by Java servlet implementation of Program D and contained in Apache Tomcat server. The AIML scripting language defined here in is a generic form of XML language and forms the knowledgebase of the bot. Animation is provided with Microsoft® Agent technology and text-to-speech support engine. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4187/
A Security Model for Mobile Agents using X.509 Proxy Certificates
Mobile agent technology presents an attractive alternative to the client-server paradigm for several network and real-time applications. However, for most applications, the lack of a viable agent security model has limited the adoption of the agent paradigm. This thesis presents a security model for mobile agents based on a security infrastructure for Computational Grids, and specifically, on X.509 Proxy Certificates. Proxy Certificates serve as credentials for Grid applications, and their primary purpose is temporary delegation of authority. Exploiting the similarity between Grid applications and mobile agent applications, this thesis motivates the use of Proxy Certificates as credentials for mobile agents. A new extension for Proxy Certificates is proposed in order to make them suited to mobile agent applications, and mechanisms are presented for agent-to-host authentication, restriction of agent privileges, and secure delegation of authority during spawning of new agents. Finally, the implementation of the proposed security mechanisms as modules within a multi-lingual and modular agent infrastructure, the Distributed Agent Delivery System, is discussed. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3320/
Dynamic Grid-Based Data Distribution Management in Large Scale Distributed Simulations
Distributed simulation is an enabling concept to support the networked interaction of models and real world elements that are geographically distributed. This technology has brought a new set of challenging problems to solve, such as Data Distribution Management (DDM). The aim of DDM is to limit and control the volume of the data exchanged during a distributed simulation, and reduce the processing requirements of the simulation hosts by relaying events and state information only to those applications that require them. In this thesis, we propose a new DDM scheme, which we refer to as dynamic grid-based DDM. A lightweight UNT-RTI has been developed and implemented to investigate the performance of our DDM scheme. Our results clearly indicate that our scheme is scalable and it significantly reduces both the number of multicast groups used, and the message overhead, when compared to previous grid-based allocation schemes using large-scale and real-world scenarios. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2699/
Security problems in 802.11 wireless networks standard due to the inefficiency of wired equivalent privacy protocol.
Due to the rapid growth of wireless networking, the fallible security issues of the 802.11 standard have come under close scrutiny. Nowadays most of the organizations are eager to setup wireless local area networks to reduce the hassles of limited mobility provided by conventional wired network. There are serious security issues that need to be sorted out before everyone is willing to transmit valuable corporate information on a wireless network. This report documents the inherent flaws in wired equivalent privacy protocol used by the 802.11 standard and the ensuing security breaches that can occur to a wireless network due to these flaws. The solutions suggested in this report might not actually make the 802.11 standard secure, but will surely help in the lead up to a secure wireless network standard. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4182/
A general purpose semantic parser using FrameNet and WordNet®.
Syntactic parsing is one of the best understood language processing applications. Since language and grammar have been formally defined, it is easy for computers to parse the syntactic structure of natural language text. Does meaning have structure as well? If it has, how can we analyze the structure? Previous systems rely on a one-to-one correspondence between syntactic rules and semantic rules. But such systems can only be applied to limited fragments of English. In this thesis, we propose a general-purpose shallow semantic parser which utilizes a semantic network (WordNet), and a frame dataset (FrameNet). Semantic relations recognized by the parser are based on how human beings represent knowledge of the world. Parsing semantic structure allows semantic units and constituents to be accessed and processed in a more meaningful way than syntactic parsing, moving the automation of understanding natural language text to a higher level. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4483/
An Annotated Bibliography of Mobile Agents in Networks
The purpose of this thesis is to present a comprehensive colligation of applications of mobile agents in networks, and provide a baseline association of these systems. This work has been motivated by the fact that mobile agent systems have been deemed proficuous alternatives in system applications. Several mobile agent systems have been developed to provide scalable and cogent solutions in network-centric applications. This thesis examines some existing mobile agent systems in core networking areas, in particular, those of network and resource management, routing, and the provision of fault tolerance and security. The inherent features of these systems are discussed with respect to their specific functionalities. The applicability and efficacy of mobile agents are further considered in the specific areas mentioned above. Although an initial foray into a collation of this nature, the goal of this annotated bibliography is to provide a generic referential view of mobile agent systems in network applications. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3310/
Machine Language Techniques for Conversational Agents
Machine Learning is the ability of a machine to perform better at a given task, using its previous experience. Various algorithms like decision trees, Bayesian learning, artificial neural networks and instance-based learning algorithms are used widely in machine learning systems. Current applications of machine learning include credit card fraud detection, customer service based on history of purchased products, games and many more. The application of machine learning techniques to natural language processing (NLP) has increased tremendously in recent years. Examples are handwriting recognition and speech recognition. The problem we tackle in this Problem in Lieu of Thesis is applying machine-learning techniques to improve the performance of a conversational agent. The OpenMind repository of common sense, in the form of question-answer pairs is treated as the training data for the machine learning system. WordNet is interfaced with to capture important semantic and syntactic information about the words in the sentences. Further, k-closest neighbors algorithm, an instance based learning algorithm is used to simulate a case based learning system. The resulting system is expected to be able to answer new queries with knowledge gained from the training data it was fed with. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4385/
XML-Based Agent Scripts and Inference Mechanisms
Natural language understanding has been a persistent challenge to researchers in various computer science fields, in a number of applications ranging from user support systems to entertainment and online teaching. A long term goal of the Artificial Intelligence field is to implement mechanisms that enable computers to emulate human dialogue. The recently developed ALICEbots, virtual agents with underlying AIML scripts, by A.L.I.C.E. foundation, use AIML scripts - a subset of XML - as the underlying pattern database for question answering. Their goal is to enable pattern-based, stimulus-response knowledge content to be served, received and processed over the Web, or offline, in the manner similar to HTML and XML. In this thesis, we describe a system that converts the AIML scripts to Prolog clauses and reuses them as part of a knowledge processor. The inference mechanism developed in this thesis is able to successfully match the input pattern with our clauses database even if words are missing. We also emulate the pattern deduction algorithm of the original logic deduction mechanism. Our rules, compatible with Semantic Web standards, bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages and support interactive content retrieval using natural language. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4288/
Extensions to Jinni Mobile Agent Architecture
We extend the Jinni mobile agent architecture with a multicast network transport layer, an agent-to-agent delegation mechanism and a reflection based Prolog-to-Java interface. To ensure that our agent infrastructure runs efficiently, independently of router-level multicast support, we describe a blackboard based algorithm for locating a randomly roaming agent. As part of the agent-to-agent delegation mechanism, we describe an alternative to code-fetching mechanism for stronger mobility of mobile agents with less network overhead. In the context of direct and reflection based extension mechanisms for Jinni, we describe the design and the implementation of a reflection based Prolog-to-Java interface. The presence of subtyping and method overloading makes finding the most specific method corresponding to a Prolog call pattern fairly difficult. We describe a run-time algorithm which provides accurate handling of overloaded methods beyond Java's reflection package's limitations. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2773/
The Feasibility of Multicasting in RMI
Due to the growing need of the Internet and networking technologies, simple, powerful, easily maintained distributed applications needed to be developed. These kinds of applications can benefit greatly from distributed computing concepts. Despite its powerful mechanisms, Jini has yet to be accepted in mainstream Java development. Until that happens, we need to find better Remote Method Invocation (RMI) solutions. Feasibility of implementation of Multicasting in RMI is worked in this paper. Multicasting capability can be used in RMI using Jini-like technique. Support of Multicast over Unicast reference layer is also studied. A piece of code explaining how it can be done, is added. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4170/
User Modeling Tools for Virtual Architecture
As the use of virtual environments (VEs) is becoming more widespread, user needs are becoming a more significant part in those environments. In order to adapt to the needs of the user, a system should be able to infer user interests and goals. I developed an architecture for user modeling to understand users' interests in a VE by monitoring their actions. In this paper, I discussed the architecture and the virtual environment that was created to test it. This architecture employs sensors to keep track of all the users' actions, data structures that can store a record of significant events that have occurred in the environment, and a rule base. The rule base continually monitors the data collected from the sensors, world state, and event history in order to update the user goal inferences. These inferences can then be used to modify the flow of events within a VE. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4169/
Agent extensions for peer-to-peer networks.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have seen tremendous growth in development and usage in recent times. This attention has brought many developments as well as new challenges to these networks. We will show that agent extensions to P2P networks offer solutions to many problems faced by P2P networks. In this research, an attempt is made to bring together JXTA P2P infrastructure and Jinni, a Prolog based agent engine to form an agent based P2P network. On top of the JXTA, we define simple Java API providing P2P services for agent programming constructs. Jinni is deployed on this JXTA network using an automated code update mechanism. Experiments are conducted on this Jinni/JXTA platform to implement a simple agent communication and data exchange protocol. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4382/
DirectShow Approach to Low-Cost Multimedia Security Surveillance System
In response to the recent intensive needs for civilian security surveillance, both full and compact versions of a Multimedia Security Surveillance (MSS) system have been built up. The new Microsoft DirectShow technology was applied in implementing the multimedia stream-processing module. Through Microsoft Windows Driver Model interface, the chosen IEEE1394 enabled Fire-i cameras as external sensors are integrated with PC based continuous storage unit. The MSS application also allows multimedia broadcasting and remote controls. Cost analysis is included. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3297/
Building an Intelligent Filtering System Using Idea Indexing
The widely used vector model maintains its popularity because of its simplicity, fast speed, and the appeal of using spatial proximity for semantic proximity. However, this model faces a disadvantage that is associated with the vagueness from keywords overlapping. Efforts have been made to improve the vector model. The research on improving document representation has been focused on four areas, namely, statistical co-occurrence of related items, forming term phrases, grouping of related words, and representing the content of documents. In this thesis, we propose the idea-indexing model to improve document representation for the filtering task in IR. The idea-indexing model matches document terms with the ideas they express and indexes the document with these ideas. This indexing scheme represents the document with its semantics instead of sets of independent terms. We show in this thesis that indexing with ideas leads to better performance. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4275/