» Masters Papers

2002

• Author Parmelee, Mary
• Title Design For Change: Ontology-Driven Knowledgebase Applications For Dynamic Biological Domains
• Abstract Post-genomic biology is producing a plethora of rapidly changing complex data. Yet extracting useful information from this data is limited by current knowledge management methodologies. Biological knowledge management is complicated by ambiguous nomenclature, cultural differences between biologists and computer scientists, and conventional database technology that was not designed to support rapidly changing complex domains. A recent trend in ontology-driven database design has emerged to address this challenge. While ontologies provide effective knowledge models, attempts to transform ontologies into knowledgebases have revealed an impedance mismatch or ontology transformation gap. A unique methodology called Ultra-Structure Theory (UT) may provide an ontology transform solution that supports large scale, dynamic biological domains by expressing the complexity in data rather than programming code. This thesis aims to survey ontology and database theory and methodologies, and describe how UT integrates and extends them to provide a flexible, semantically expressive knowledgebase solution using standard relational database technology.

2002

• Author Bauers, Anne
• Title Interaction Techniques for Large Digital Images: A Comparative Study
• Abstract Digital images are examined on computer screens in a variety of contexts, including radiology, cartography, art, and satellite imaging. Frequently these digital images are larger than computer screens, and computer software programs use different paradigms for allowing users to zoom in and out of the image and to navigate around it. With recent advances in CPU and Internet connection speed, users may view large images that are not stored locally at a rapid rate. However, there has been no systematic investigation of what image-viewing paradigms are most effective for viewing images at these faster speeds. This paper reports on a study designed to research the types of methods that best allow users to access and view large images at both fast and slow speeds. Five different viewing techniques are described and examined. The researchers found that techniques that enable both intuitive and systematic searching tend to perform best at a fast speed, while techniques that minimize the number of interactions with the image are most effective at a slow speed. Additionally, based on an informal survey, users prefer by a large margin the Point-Zoom technique, which allows them to interact freely with the image and move around it easily.

2003

• Author Yang, Jian
• Title Extending eprints archives to improve access to scholarly materials.
• Abstract This study is centered on the current crisis of the scholarly publishing system and its possible solution --- Open Archive Initiative (OAI). Cost, access, peer review and archiving are four major issues facing the current scholarly publishing system. Rapid increase in the price of journals and publications, limited access by the researchers to those publications, an inefficient peer review system, and difficulties archiving print media all pose a threat a threat for the free flow of the scholarly information. The Open Archive Initiative is trying to address the above issues by exploring and setting up standards for digital archiving systems. In this study, we implemented EPrints system which is one of the most influential open source software applications that is capable of creating OAI-compliant archives. We extended EPrints system to support scholarly interaction including claim, concept and reviews.

2004

• Author Chen, Patrick
• Title Closing the Information Gap: PIRE, a portable, open source information retrieval tool
• Abstract In the world of Database Management, there are many tiers of complexity and financial expenditure that any one organization may choose to commit to the storage and manipulation of data. While Standards such as SQL have helped standardize the storage and retrieval of information, the ability of the user to access and manipulate data is an area of a great deal of customization and expense depending on the industry. As a result, while it can be relatively inexpensive to set up storage for a database, it can be very expensive and time consuming to create an user interface for the use of said data. This project seeks to create an open-source and easily configurable web interface for simple object-based research. With this tool, users should be able to quickly create a unique map for any individual database which will enable the script to provide easy and exhaustive research.

2004

• Author Lewis, Kali C.
• Title TRANS-CONTIG: Transcription factors and their corresponding contigs, a web database
• Abstract This study uses data created by the author at the NCBI, National Center for Biotechnology, to create a database for the purpose of investigating bioinformatics problems. At the NCBI, researchers have been studying snippets of DNA previously thought to be insignificant DNA. However, these snippets have been conserved throughout evolution and may be significantly important. The Transfac project at NCBI took data from the TRANSFAC database and matched it with its corresponding contigs. For this project, the author used this data and created, TRANS-CONTIG, a searchable web database. The database provides searching capabilities to the user and links directly to related NIH databases.

2004

• Author Speck, Robert C.
• Title The effect of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing on Independent Record Labels.
• Abstract This study describes a web-based questionnaire survey of the effects of peer-to-peer file sharing on independent record labels in the United States and Canada. The owners and managers of such labels were contacted via email and asked to participate anonymously in the survey. The survey encouraged them to describe their labels, estimate the financial impact file sharing has had on their labels, and share their opinions of file sharing. A total of 883 label owners and managers were contacted. Ninety-seven responded. The data was evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. The survey results indicate that approximately two-thirds of the respondents favored file sharing and reported that it either benefited or at least did not harm their businesses. However, a consistent proportion of the respondents either opposed file sharing or had no opinion of it at all. Finally, most of those respondents who included comments with the survey expressed opposition to file sharing.

2004

• Author Ni, Mao
• Title Automatic extraction of author self contributed metadata for Electronic Theses and Dissertations.
• Abstract This paper discusses the design and implement of an automatic way to extract the metadata from PDF files in the process of the submission to the Electronic and Theses Dissertations (ETDs). During the submission, each ETDs system requires some metadata about the theses to facilitate the metadata search after it is archived. Those metadata, like creator, title, data, abstract, subject and publisher, comply with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. In most of all existing ETDs repositories, students are required to manually type in these metadata, which discourages students¡¦ submission, especially when resubmissions are needed due to the errors found in the theses, because they have to type all the metadata again each time they submit the theses. By standardizing a method for capturing the metadata from the original documents, our project aims to enable digital repository, which hosts the ETDs collection, to automatically extract the metadata from the theses, making the submissions much easier and more convenient for the students.

2005

• Author Barnett, Clifton A.
• Title XHTML as an Emerging Innovation for the World Wide Web
• Abstract XHTML is an innovative metadata standard that blends the traditional World Wide Web markup language HTML with the less well-known markup language XML. It is currently only used in a small percentage of documents on the Web. The purpose of this paper is take a look at what sort of penetration XHTML has achieved to date, and make a preliminary effort at mapping the diffusion process of this innovation. To this end, I developed three categories of web page to examine, online shops, personal homepages, and university academic library homepages. I then proceeded to collect the URLs and document types (HTML or XHTML) of seventy-five web pages for each category. I also examined archived data to determine the approximate implementation date for those pages that had adopted XHTML. Using this data, I drew some preliminary conclusions about the state of diffusion in which XHTML is currently, as well as identifying which areas will require further study in future works.

2005

• Author Barbe, Stephen R.
• Title UNC Departmental Profiles Project: Designing an Online Database Retrieval and Reporting System for the UNC Department of Institutional Research and Assessment
• Abstract The project was initiated at the request of the management of the Department of Institutional Research and Assessment. IR&A is responsible for collecting, summarizing and statistically analyzing a vast amount of university data which is currently stored in a large SAS database and accessed through a SAS application. The management of IR&A felt that the current system had grown too unwieldy and sought an alternative solution for making this data accessible to their user population. This paper describes the phases of the project, from the initial gathering of functional requirements and design of a project plan to the design and construction of a new relational database to store and the design and development of a dynamic Web-based front end for accessing and manipulating the data.

2005

• Author Fox, Jackson R.
• Title A Survey of Electronic Note-Taking Behavior in Information and Library Science Students
• Abstract A survey of graduate students in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was conducted to evaluate the adoption of digital technology for note-taking in classrooms. Previous work has demonstrated that note-taking is an effective tool for information processing. Furthermore, digital tools could increase the utility of notes by allowing students to better organize information, retrieve information, and integrate external information sources. Results of the survey indicate that while students recognize digital notes as possessing positive attributes, adoption of digital note-taking is hampered by immature software and hardware tools.