http://hdl.handle.net/2104/4810 2013-05-21T17:36:17Z 2013-05-21T17:36:17Z Chiam, Tak Chien. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/8526 2012-11-29T16:27:46Z 2012-11-29T00:00:00Z

Age classification from facial images for detecting retinoblastoma. Chiam, Tak Chien. Facial age estimation from images is a difficult problem, both because it is naturally difficult to tell the exact age of a person visually, and because of the variations in images, such as illumination, pose, and expression. We want to classify people into two groups, children (age ≤ 5) and adults (age > 5), to facilitate the detection of retinoblastoma, a type of pediatric cancer. Current regression based methods are ineffective, as they usually have mean absolute error of 5 years, which is too high for our purposes. We study the facial anthropometric measurements of humans at different ages, and build a system based on these growth patterns. We detect 76 facial landmarks using Active Shape Models, analyze all possible ratios computable from these landmarks, and use the best ratios as input into a Support Vector Machine. Our final system does very well on our problem, correctly classifying 85% of images.

2012-11-29T00:00:00Z Montañez, George D. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/8233 2013-03-14T13:52:03Z 2011-09-14T00:00:00Z

Information storage capacity of genetic algorithm fitness maps. Montañez, George D. To accurately measure the amount of information a genetic algorithm can generate, we must first measure the amount of information one can store, using a fitness map. The amount of information generated, minus the storage capacity, gives a tighter estimate on the levels of information generated by genetic algorithms. To measure the information storage capacity of fitness maps, we use the method suggested by Abu-Mostafa et al. (Abu-Mostafa and St Jacques, 1985) for measuring the information storage capacity of general forms of memory. Additionally, we measure the information in reference to the active information metric, as developed by Dembski et al. (Dembski and Marks, 2009). Our results show that a number of bits linear in the size of the search space can be stored in a fitness map, but only a logarithmic number of bits can be extracted by a genetic algorithm with stabilizing population and fixed population size.

2011-09-14T00:00:00Z Allen, Jon D. (Jon Douglas) http://hdl.handle.net/2104/8197 2012-11-20T21:36:19Z 2011-09-14T00:00:00Z

MultiKarma : a fully decentralized virtual multi-currency. Allen, Jon D. (Jon Douglas) Participant-based technologies enable users to contribute resources to a shared pool that in the aggregate provides valuable services, such as social networks, massive multiplayer online games, file exchange, etc. Such systems depend on participant contribution; however, some peers may be unwilling to contribute at a level on par with their consumption. Monetary systems incentivize participation through compensation that allows portability, asynchronous participation, granularity and misbehavior costs. The use of government-backed currencies for incentive structures in participant-based systems results in exchange barriers and high transaction costs, while centralized virtual currencies (e.g., Facebook credits) remove many of the benefits of currency. Karma proposes the use of peer-to-peer systems to create a decentralized, consensus-based currency; however, it lacks a complete specification or implementation. We provide a specification, implementation, and evaluation of Karma. Next, we extend Karma to create a multi-currency system called MultiKarma where participants can mint, manage, and distribute their own currency.

2011-09-14T00:00:00Z Ewert, Winston. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/8080 2012-11-20T21:36:34Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Studies of active information in search. Ewert, Winston. A search process is an attempt to locate a solution to a problem, such as an optimization problem, where the space is usually too large to exhaustively sample. In order to investigate this idea this work looks a three examples of searches as cases studies. The examples considered are the location of a hidden string using a hamming distance, the encoding of a binary string using a perceptron, and developing programs using nand gates. In all of these cases, it is shown that the search processes work by making use of problem specific information. In addition, the algorithms used to demonstrate these search processes are often relatively inefficient at extracting the information from the available knowledge sources. Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

2010-01-01T00:00:00Z