Category: Computer Science
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Attack of the patent trolls
This week’s story on This American Life, When Patents Attack, is a good introduction to how the patent system is being used and abused, especially in the software industry. I listened to it today and got new insights into a complex problem. It will be aired on WYPR (88.1) at 4:00pm Sunday and available for…
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Perks help tech startups attract and retain employees
While you can find a treehouse to rent using Airbnb, they also have a mockup of one for their employees to chill in. Last week’s Wall Street Journal had a story, The Perk Bubble Is Growing as Tech Booms Again, on how technology companies compete for employees by offering more and more extravagant perks. “Here…
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PhD defense: Temporal Frame Comparison Function for the Metacognitive Loop
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Finding a Temporal Frame Comparison Function for the Metacognitive Loop Dean Earl Wright III 9:00am Wednesday 26 July 17 August 2011, ITE325 UMBC The field of Artificial Intelligence has seen steady advances in cognitive systems. However, many of these systems perform poorly when faced with situations outside of their training. And as…
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MS defense: Mitigating Coverage Loss in Wireless Sensor Networks
MS Thesis Defense Distributed Approach for Mitigating Coverage Loss in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor networks Kavin Rathinam Kasinathan 10:00am 15 July 2011, ITE 325b In a heterogeneous wireless sensor network, nodes with different sensing capabilities are dispersed throughout an area of interest. Nodes with similar capabilities are not necessarily collocated. When a node fails, the area…
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Clinical-Genomic Analysis for Disease Prediction, MS defense
MS Thesis Defense Clinical-Genomic Analysis for Disease Prediction Darshana Dalvi 10:00am 6 July 2011, ITE 346 Recent advances in genomic research have generated vast amounts of information that can help identify individuals who differ in their susceptibility to a particular disease or response to a specific treatment. This information may offer solutions for the treatment…
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Khan Academy does Computer Science
The Khan Academy is starting to publish a series of short instructional videos on computer science topics. The Introduction to Programming and Computer Science category currently has just 18 videos and these are all on basic programming topics in Python. Salman Khan's popular Khan Academy site has more than 2100 short videos covering "everything from…
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A 'Sputnik Moment' for Computer Science?
Today's New York Times has a "Room for Debate" opinion piece, Computer Science's 'Sputnik Moment'?, on the recent surge in interest in computing majors on US campuses. It asks "Will the influx of students into the field last, and can it raise American educational achievement along the way?" and features eight short essays incuding one…
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MS defense: Image Classification and Automated Extraction of Collocated Actin/Myosin Regions
MS Thesis Defense Image Classification and Automated Extraction of Collocated Actin/Myosin Regions Ronil S. Mokashi 10:00am Friday, 17 June 2011, ITE 325b This study illuminates the aspects of cell migration, which is central to many biological processes. To understand cell migration we examine the relationship between local cytoskeletal features and local morphology. We demonstrate this…
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MS defense: Akshaya Iyengar, Estimating Temporal Boundaries for Twitter Events
MS Thesis Defense Estimating Temporal Boundaries For Events Using Social Media Data Akshaya Iyengar 10:00am Wednesday, 15 June 2011, ITE 325b Social media websites like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube generate a high volume of user generated content as a major event occurs. Our goal is to automatically determine as accurately as possible when an event…
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MS Defense: Face Recognition for Mass Disaster Victims
MS Thesis Defense Face Recognition using Gabor Jets for Images of Mass Disaster Victims Kavita Dabke 11:00am Friday, 10 June 2011, ITE 325B Mass disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, blizzards and other natural calamities affect a large number of people in a short time duration. After such emergencies occur, people affected need medical…