WIXLIB

14BreakPoolside 2:20 – 2:35 p.m.Sponsored by Course TechnologySession IV2:35 – 3:55 p.m.Azalea Room:Master’s Degree PresentationsSession Chair: Greg Kawell, Samford University2:35 – 2:55JagBot - A Fully Autonomous Tour Guide Robot, CharlesV. Smith III, Michael Skinner, and James Sakalaukus,University of South Alabama2:55 – 3:15Using Perl to Statically Analyze C Code, Paul Cleaveland,East Tennessee State University3:15 – 3:35The Future is Multi-Touch, Rathy Mohan, ColumbusState University3:35 – 3:55Extensible Software Requirements, Christopher Kilgore,East Tennessee State UniversityDogwood I:Undergraduate PresentationsSession Chair: Otha Britton, University of Tennessee–Martin2:35 – 2:55IDL-Wave: an Application for the NASA/TIMEDSatellite Team, Ameer Armaly and Sean Wilson,Furman University2:55 – 3:15Creating Application Shutdown Scripts for the Caterpillar Inc.Server Maintenance Process, DeMarcus Thomas,Mississippi Valley State University3:15 – 3:35Computational Solutions of Newton’s Laws of Motion,Shawn Bordeaux, Talladega College3:35 – 3:55Arithmetic Extension of an Expert System Shell, BrittanyStreeter, Talladega College

15Dogwood II:Doctoral Degree/Professional PresentationsSession Chair: Tony Pittarese, East Tennessee StateUniversity2:35 – 2:55Cycles in XML Schema and Data Integration, Lila Razaviand Susan V. Vrbsky, University of Alabama2:55 – 3:15A Transdisciplinary Approach Towards Clinical ResearchEvaluation, Varadraj Prabhu Gurupur, University ofAlabama–Birmingham3:15 – 3:35Matching UML Class Diagrams Across Reverse EngineeringTools, Yan Liang, University of Alabama3:35 – 3:55Godel and the Use of Automated Theorem Proving Software,David Frazier, East Tennessee State University(Professional Presentation)Highlander Room:Professional PresentationsSession Chair: Brian Toone, Samford University2:35 – 2:55A Curriculum for an Early Database Course to Support ITand CS Majors, Donald Sanderson, East TennesseeState University2:55 – 3:15IS Students, Ethics, and Social Responsibility, Vernon L.McGlone and Teresa A. McGlone, University of theCumberlands and Eastern Kentucky University3:15 – 3:35Server Side Programming and Php, Jim Vandergriff, AustinPeay State University3:35 – 3:55Behind the Scenes at the Annual Conference of the MidSoutheast Chapter of the ACM, Jim Clark, University ofTennessee–Martin

16Session V:4:00 – 5:00 p.m.Dogwood I:Undergraduate Posters/Presentations4:00 – 4:20Intra-Vehicle UWB Channel Measurements, Asia Walton,Talladega CollegeDogwood II:Professional PresentationsSession Chair: Ken Adcock, Cleveland StateCommunity College4:00 – 4:20Why Teach Assembly Language?, Edward L. Bosworth,Columbus State University4:20 – 4:40PedOGoGE: Pedagogical OpenGL Game Engine, JeffRoach, East Tennessee State University4:40 – 5:00Have Model Will Simulate!, Rodrigo Obando and WayneSummers, Columbus State University5:00 – 5:30 p.m.Business Meeting, Dogwood II5:30 – 7:00 p.m.Social Gathering, Hospitality Suite7:00 – 8:30 p.m.Awards Banquet, Azalea RoomEntertainment: Mike Edwards9:00 p.m.Social Gathering, Hospitality Suite

17Notes

18A special “thank you” goes to the The University ofAlabama at Birmingham, Edward Bosworth, and CourseTechnology for lending financial support to this year’sconference, and to students from the University ofTennessee–Martin Student Chapter of ACM for technicalsupport.

19Keynote AddressNetwork Performance for Clusters and GridsDr. Martin SwanyUniversity of DelawareHigh performance networks enable cluster and grid computing as viableparadigms. The achievable network performance is critical to the overallperformance of the system. Despite increases in the speed of both processorsand networks, there is a growing "network performance gap'' that limits theability to perform faster data movement. There are various bottlenecks toachievable network performance and consequently, many potential techniquesto improve performance. This talk explores techniques for improving networkperformance and explores potential evolution of network systems.

20About the SpeakerMartin Swany is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer andInformation Sciences at the University of Delaware. He received his B.A. andM.S. from the University of Tennessee in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Hecompleted his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2003 andjoined the faculty of the University of Delaware that year. He is a 2004recipient of the US Department of Energy Early Career Principal Investigatoraward. Since 2005, Swany has been the Internet2 Faculty Fellow involvingwork in network metrics and performance enhancing middleware. His researchinterests include high-performance parallel and distributed computing andnetworking.

21Student AbstractsUndergraduate Programs

22A Comparison of Metaprogramming Techniquesto Support Code Coverage Analysis of TestCasesTimothy F UptainFaculty Advisor: Dr. Jeff GrayUniversity of Alabama–BirminghamMetaprogramming uses reflection to adapt a program by allowing theinterpretation and meaning of a programming language to be altered atcompile-time or run-time. Javassist and OpenJava are two metaprogrammingenvironments that can be used to modify an existing Java application. Javassistworks directly with the bytecode of a compiled program and generates amodified representation that provides some new capability. OpenJava is asource-to-source translator that parses a program, applies metaobjects thatalter the parse tree, and outputs a modified version of the original source code.The methods used by both of these metaprogramming tools are similar, butdiffer based on their adaptation time (e.g., compile-time or load-time) and typeof artifact that is adapted (e.g., source code or byte code). Both of thesemetaprogramming environments allow the instrumentation of some newfeature or requirement into an existing application in an automated manner.This presentation describes an investigation that uses the metaprogrammingcapabilities of Javassist and OpenJava to instrument existing code to determinethe level of code coverage within a series of test cases. Code coverage analysisis a vital tool to assist in understanding the level of depth in software testing bydetermining how much of a program’s code is executed during a test case.Determining the depth of coverage of a program’s code during testing is avaluable asset because it can reveal any untested areas of a program, whichmight contain potential logic errors hidden in some obscure execution path.The presentation will offer an introduction to metaprogramming andreflection, describe the different techniques used in Javassist and OpenJava,and demonstrate how code coverage can be instrumented into existingapplications using both techniques.

23Younger Dryas Impact StudyCancelled

24Using the Intellibrain Robotics Platform forEducational and Research PurposesCancelled

25Increasing Retention in Computer Science byUsing Alice TechniquesTavaris PaytonFaculty Advisor: Syed RazaTalladega CollegeThe Higher Education Research Institute found that the number of collegefreshman interested in computer science as a major of study between 2000 and2005 dropped by 70% in the US, and the Taulbee Survey found that computerscience enrollment at research universities dropped by 50% (Kelleher, Pausch).Students are getting bored with the most popular tools and teachings that areused to acquaint them with programming. The stereotypical characteristics ofcomputer science play a very important role within these statistics. Thesecharacteristics include, but are not limited to computer science being boring,hard, geeky, and nerdy. This discourages students with exceptional andprominent math and computer skills. In order to overcome this problem,many different tools are being introduced to show students the brighter side ofcomputer science. One of those tools is Alice. Alice is a graphic program thatteaches students programming by using three-dimensional (3D) worlds andcharacters. Alice has been very successful because it motivates and excitesstudents of different ages. This research involves a 3D world using aninteractive environment that enhances the characters’ knowledge aboutcomputer science.

26Robust Speech Synthesis and Understanding fora Robotic Tour GuideJohn LicatoFaculty Advisors: Dr. Michael V. Doran and Dr. W. Eugene SimmonsUniversity of South AlabamaMicrosoft SAPI (Speech Application Programming Interface) allows for easyaccess to the speech synthesis and recognition features built into every versionof Microsoft’s Windows Vista. The library allows for individual words to berecognized, and for grammars to be programmed. These grammars allow for aprogrammable way to dynamically combine words and phrases and determineappropriate responses; a way to “understand” what was said. In the noisyenvironment of a college campus, a set of grammars were written with theintention of mounting a laptop and microphone atop a robot that would serveas a tour guide for students. The robot would use GPS and other tools todetermine its location, and the speech system would adjust its grammars andpreset responses depending on this information. The responses and grammarswere designed to allow for multiple variations of questions, taking into accountthe noisy environment and having the goal of a speech system that would notrequire user training – so that anyone could simply walk up and start talking toit.In an effort to create a more dynamic speech interface, we also modified thesystem so that it would have four grammars active at once: one for grammarsspecific to the current location, one for the general location, one that was notlocation-specific and an experimental fourth “dynamic” grammar which wouldbe used for future development. Using this system we were able to create aspeech interface with a high rate of recognition, even in a relatively noisyoutdoor environment.

27The Virtual Collaborative Student UniverseProjectDavid KolbColumbus State UniversityThe Virtual Collaborative Student Universe (VCSU) Project is an undertakingto create a 3d virtual world that students can produce content for andinstructors can use for class specific content. This paper will cover several ofthe conceptual ideas the project is seeking to implement in VCSU. These willinclude audio/visual art galleries for students, custom areas for gameprogramming students, classrooms for instructors and student dorm rooms.Also, it will survey previous uses of virtual worlds for education and thelessons we can draw from them going forward. Finally, these lessons will beapplied towards creating a 3d virtual environment fulfilling the project’s goals.

28Parallel Adventures With Conway’sGame of LifeAdam Corum, Brian Hawks, Ben Hollomon,and Ryan HartFaculty Advisor: Bob BradleyUniversity of Tennessee–MartinThis presentation will focus on our parallel implementations of Conway'sGame of Life. We will demonstrate both our GPU and CPU versions. OurGPU version was written using Microsoft's XNA programming library. It iswritten as a shader and does nearly all of its calculations entirely on the graphiccard's GPU. Since even cheap graphics cards have large amounts of on-boardRAM and hundreds of parallel processing pipelines, this allows the program tobe extremely fast (running thousand's of generations per second) and yet usehardly any CPU resources. We will talk about the advantages of doingcalculations on the GPU and also mention the challenges that this methodfaces. We will also demonstrate our parallel CPU version written using C# 3.0.This version uses the new C# parallel for-loop to allow it to take advantage ofmultiple CPU cores. We will show how easy it is to use this method anddemonstrate what kind of speed up it can offer your programs. Lastly we willdemonstrate our standard C version that we use as a benchmark for theother programs. And if time allows, we will demonstrate our not parallel, butvery portable, iPhone version.

29An Interactive Approach to Inspire Females inComputer ScienceCancelled

30On the Implementation of a Novel BoundaryRepresentation for a Triangle MeshEric FreesFaculty Advisor: Dr. John K. JohnstoneUniversity of Alabama–BirminghamThe representation of shape is one of the fundamental issues of computergraphics, and a dominant choice for the computer representation of shape isthe polygon mesh. A boundary representation (b-rep) of the mesh is a datastructure for storing the vertices, edges, and faces of the mesh so that access totopological relationships, such as a vertex's neighboring edges or a face'sneighboring faces, is efficient. A b-rep is crucial to the efficiency of mostalgorithms that work with a mesh.We consider a novel boundary representation, called the corner boundaryrepresentation, introduced by Ken Joy in 2003. The central element of thecorner b-rep is a lath with three pointers: a pointer to a vertex, a pointer to theneighboring lath moving clockwise within the face, and a pointer to theneighboring lath moving clockwise about the vertex. We consider theadvantages of the corner b-rep over other b-reps, including the winged edge,half edge, split edge, and quad edge.This talk is focused on the issues that arise in implementing the corner b-rep.Although open source implementations of other better known b-reps arewidely available, we are not aware of any implementations of the corner b-rep.We develop a key algorithm missing from Joy's paper: how to build the cornerb-rep of a mesh from a list of its vertices and faces (as in a typical mesh fileformat).

31Navigation SimulationRobert M. Rudnick and Jenny L. PlottUniversity of South AlabamaThe goal of the overall project is to create a tour guide robot that can givetours of campus to new and incoming students and attract students. Thiscomplex task has been divided into smaller tasks. Engineering students arebuilding the physical robot and working on basic movement and thefunctionality that it will need. A Computer Science student is working closelywith the engineering department on the robot's ability to use GPS todetermine where it is located and where it will need to go. Two CS studentshave developed a program that allows the robot to have an interactive dialogwith users. The project presented here is a simulation of the robot’s ability tofollow a path for a tour.The simulated routes will be useful when the actual robot begins to move as a“you are here” visualization of the path. In the process of this work it wasdecided that the robot would need to visit the CIS compound, theAdministration building, the Mitchell Center, the Bookstore/Student Centerarea, and the Engineering compound. We plotted paths and important pointsfor the robot to move through or stop at on maps of the necessary parts ofcampus. Along each path a variety of points were defined: location points,waypoints, speaking points, and decision points. When the robot reaches oneof these points the appropriate actions would take place. A graphicalsimulation has been implemented in C#. The focus of the simulation was theunderlying data structure. We created a linked list of points that could betraversed in either direction, with each decision point having a list of points towhich it is directly connected. To handle the different types of points,inheritance from a basic point class was used to create classes for the necessarytypes.

32Autonomous Navigation, Exploration, andVisualization with the Khepera RobotsBrian Bodkin and James LancasterFaculty Advisor: Dr. Cen LiMiddle Tennessee State UniversityThe Khepera robot is a miniature robot equipped with infrared distance and lightsensors and encoders. Khepera robots have been used in various experimental settingsfor research. In particular, it has been an ideal test bed for evolutionary algorithms andalgorithms for collective robot behavior generation. Khepera has also been used fortesting AI navigation algorithms in educational settings. There, the focus has been onreactive navigation, and on semi-autonomous, serial controlled navigation.This research work explored the capabilities of Khepera as a fully autonomous robotfor navigation and exploration. The research team first investigated the sensingcapabilities of the robot for navigation purposes. Based on the experimental results, anappropriate model mimicking a typical office floor layout was constructed. A hybridarchitecture was adopted for programming the robot. The hybrid architecture consistsof a high level, deliberative planning layer that is separated from a lower level, reactivebehavior execution layer. In the planning layer, the D* Lite search algorithm wasadapted to find the shortest path between a starting and a destination location. Aninternal map corresponding the environment is constructed and used in the planningstage. In the behavior execution layer, separate routines were developed that carries outthe navigation defined for pre-specified behaviors. The shortest path computed fromthe planning layer are passed to the executed by one instr

1:40 - 2:00 ETSU's SAP Initiative, Tony Pittarese, East Tennessee State University 2:00 - 2:20 The Semantic Web: The Next Evolution of the WWW, Christopher C. Whitehead, Columbus State University Highlander Room: Professional Presentations Session Chair: Brenda Parker, Middle Tennessee State University