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An augmented reality browser is an alternative of a web browser in augmented spaces, which aimed at navigating and publishing overlaid interactive contents. This enabled end users to explore digital information on existing points of interests (POIs) and the application developers to publish overlaid information in the form of layers and channels, etc. These browsing interfaces were vital for publishing and locating contents to unfold the potential of augmented spaces. This paper contributed an analytical review on the recent emergence of mobile augmented reality browsers from the perspective of technological information publishing and usage scenarios. This comparative analysis of the augmented reality browsers would help researchers and industrial scientists to identify the most relevant augmented reality browser for specific applications like object tracking, content overlaying, and ensuring realism up to major extent. This study would also provide guidelines for next generation enriched, seamless and adaptive augmented reality browsers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributions: The underrepresentation of women in computer science (CS) majors has long been a focus of attention in many academic documents, the majority of them from the United States and Europe. There is, however, a lack of information about educational interventions (EIs) for women in computing in Latin America. The contribution of this article is to cover this gap and describe what researchers in Latin American countries have been publishing about the recruitment and retention of women in the CS field. Background: Many EIs targeting female students at different educational levels—K-12, undergraduate, and graduate—have been undertaken to increase the participation of women in computing in Latin America. However, descriptions of these activities rarely are included in international academic databases. Research Questions: This literature mapping addresses two main research questions (RQ) about the topic of women in computing in academic publications in Latin American countries: RQ1) what are the characteristics of the publications about women in computing in Latin America? and RQ2) what are the published interventions to recruit and retain women in computing in Latin America? To answer RQ1, six subquestions were created covering year, language, country of origin, document type, and professional track. Furthermore, for RQ2, two subquestions were created involving educational level and the use of software development with a female theme. Methodology: This investigation used the systematic literature mapping process. To achieve a broad coverage of papers, the following sources were included: Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EBSCO, the proceedings of the Latin American Women in Computing Conference (LAWCC), and those of the Women in Technology (WIT) workshop colocated with the annual conference of the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). The included papers were published in the last decade (2010–2020) and written in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. Findings: The literature mapping encompasses 197 academic documents, 48.2% of which were written in Portuguese, 28.7% in English, and 23.1% in Spanish. The papers originated from 15 of the 20 Latin American countries. Brazil and Costa Rica have the highest number of publications overall. The documents describe initiatives to increase the participation of women in computing majors that cover the entire educational spectrum, from K-12 to graduate programs, but papers targeting populations in higher education have started to appear recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study discussed in this article attempts to trace the research trends in information and communication technology (ICT) in top 10 countries during 1999-2018, as reflected by scholarly publications index in the Scopus database. During the mentioned time period, total 18,382 research papers were published. Of these, maximum 1622 (8.82%) records were published in 2017. The annual growth (- 11.07 to 51.30) and the compound annual growth (- 0.01 to 0.23) have shown a fluctuating trend. However, a considerable number of records (7345) were published in the field of computer science while 52.35% of the records (9623) were journal article-type publications. 'Information and communication technology' was the most significant keyword used in 4997 records while the average (145.3) publications were contributed by top 10 organizations in which Japan National Institute of Information and Communications Technology was the most productive organization with 256 records. The maximum contributing country was the United States, standing for 22% of the total publications produced. Toyoshima, M. is the most prolific author with 53 publications on a particular topic, that is, ICT. The overall relative growth has shown a decreasing trend (0.92 to 0.09) while during the period of study, the doubling time has shown an increasing trend (0.75 to 7.54). Out of the total 18,382 records, total 209,919 citations were recorded in which the maximum citations (20,548) were found in 2010. Out of the total 55,913 research papers, maximum (5058) records were contributed by two authors while the least number of publications (2186) came from four authors. The mean value of the degree of collaborations was 0.92 and the overall degree of collaboration has exhibited an increasing trend during the period of study. The average author's collaboration coefficient and modified collaboration coefficient was recorded to be 0.69 while collaborative index was recorded at 4.21. However, Lotka's law of authors' productivity shows, the authors observed are somehow unlike from the numbers of authors expected during the period of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, most coverless image steganography (CIS) methods are based on robust mapping rules. However, due to the limited mapping expression relationship between secret information and hash sequence, it is a challenge to further improve the hiding ability of coverless information hiding. Towards this goal, this paper proposes a robust coverless steganography scheme using camouflage image(CI-CIS). For the sender, CI-CIS introduces an camouflage image as the transmission carrier and establishes the correlation between them by Convolutional Neural Network(CNN) features. For the receiver, the camouflage image can retrieve the corresponding stego-image to recover the secret information. To this end, we designed a reversible retrieval scheme between stego-image and camouflage image by using image clustering. At the same time, since the semantic features represented by CNN are robust to image attacks, our method can increase the capability of the CIS effectively. Besides, we also build an inverted index to improve retrieval efficiency. Experimental results and analysis show that the CI-CIS has higher robustness and more flexible capacity setting compared with the existing CIS methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/Purpose This paper investigates the gaps between industry and academia perceptions of information technology fields, such as computer science, software engineering, and computer engineering, and it identifies areas of asymmetry between curricula and industry expectations. The study mainly focuses on the skills required of IT professionals (graduated students) and on how higher education institutes equip students for industry. Background Higher education institutes have several IT-related departments. However, it is not clear whether these departments have sufficient content to equip students with industry-related skills. Rapid advances mean that some curriculum topics are redundant before the end of a standard two- or four-year degree programs. Balancing the technical/non-technical skills and adjusting the curricula to better prepare the students for industry is a constant demand for higher education institutions. Several studies have demonstrated that a generic curriculum is inadequate to address current IT industry needs. Methodology The study involved a comprehensive survey of IT professionals and compa- nies using a Web-based questionnaire sent directly to individual companies, academics, and employers. 64 universities and 38 companies in 24 countries were represented by the 209 participants, of whom 99 were IT professionals, 72 academics, and 38 employers. Contribution This paper is intended to guide academics in preparing dynamic curricula that can be easily adapted to current industry trends and technological developments, with content directly relevant to student's careers. In addition, the results may identify the skills that students need to secure employment and the courses that will provide skills in line with current industry trends. Findings The results indicate a lack of emphasis on personal and non-technical skills in undergraduate education compared to general computer science, software development, and coding courses. Employers' and software experts' responses emphasize that soft skills should not be ignored, and that, of these, analytical thinking and teamwork are the two most requested. Rather than a theoretical emphasis, courses should include hands-on projects. Rapid developments and innovations in information technologies demand that spiral and waterfall models are replaced with emerging software development models, such as Agile and Scrum development. Recommendations for Practitioners A multidisciplinary approach should be taken to the teaching of soft skills, such as communication, ethics, leadership, and customer relations. Establishing multiple learning tracks in IT education would equip students with specialized knowledge and skills in IT. An effective communication channel should be established between students and industry. It is also important to reduce the distance between academics and students and to provide an interactive environment for technical discussions. Enterprise level computing and Framework use provide job market advantages. Recommendations for Researchers Researchers and department heads, particularly those involved in curriculum design and accreditation, could use the results of this exemplary study to identify key topics for attention. Impact on Society Changes of various degrees are required in the current curricula in many higher education institutions to better meet student needs. Societies and technology are dynamic in nature, and information technology-related curricula in higher education institutions should be equally dynamic. Future Research Since technology (especially information technology) transforms and advances itself so rapidly, this study should be replicated t to investigate how these changes affect the gap between revised curricula and current industry expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernization of the educational content in the field of Computer science, or IT subjects, in the conditions of Czech primary schools is a relatively widely discussed topic today, as the educational content as well as the teaching methods of IT subjects at primary schools often remain more or less unchanged for many years. However, a completely different situation can be observed abroad, where, for many years, prominent experts have been making proposals to change the concept of teaching so that pupils are not only educated to become active technology users, but are also encouraged to try to devise their own procedures, propose tools for solving specific problems and develop the so-called computational thinking. So, what does the specific educational content of IT subjects at the 1st and 2nd stage of Czech primary schools look like? Which IT topics are actually taught? Are there any topics in teaching that are not embedded or accentuated in the curriculum documents? We will try to answer these questions in the submitted paper, which presents some partial outputs of the conducted research focused primarily on the issue of the acceptance of educational content of IT subjects taught at primary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results of bibliometric and text-based analysis of Computer Science research output produced by academia from the Republic of Moldova during the 2013-2018 years. The authors have collected data for research output indexed in three databases: Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and National Bibliometric Instrument (NBI). Data from these databases were collected to obtain important indicators such as total number of research papers and citations, citation impact, h-index, collaboration patterns, top institutions, authors and publication sources. A detailed comparative analysis was performed based on these data. The authors also have performed a text-based analysis on keywords of papers indexed to identify thematic trends for research in Computer Science field. The analytical results present a detailed and useful picture of the status and the competence in Computer Science research in the Republic of Moldova. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periodic assessment of enrollment in programs is helpful in different ways. It reveals patterns that may not be immediately clear and it identifies contributing factors that provide insight into sustaining growth. For Information Technology (IT) programs, this kind of assessment takes another dimension - the rapid changes of IT may dictate on faculty members to continuously study market demand and to reshape their program's curriculum in response to the demand. This study assesses the recent trends of enrollment in Computer Science programs. It presents enrollment trends in the years since the turn of the century, analyzes the factors that contributed to the cycles occurring during these years, and provides recommendations for sustaining the most recent trend. This paper sheds light on a program in Computer Science at a university in Western Pennsylvania. It shows how this department continued assessing the trends regularly and how they are responding to the most recent enrollment trends in their program. The paper concludes with a summary and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on the 40 years of development of Computer Graphics and, more recently, Visual computing (VC) at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany, from its beginning in 1975 to the leading “Computer Graphics and Visual Computing Hub” in Europe as of 2014. This development is described along three axes. First, the institutional development and its rational to establish Computer Graphics as a discipline of Computer Science and as an enabling technology for developing our Knowledge Society, are described. Second, the scientific and technological impact based on the teaching activities and the large number of theses submitted in Darmstadt for the area during these 40 years are addressed. Finally, the research road maps of the Computer Graphics and Visual Computing Hub in Darmstadt are presented relatively to the different stages of CG and VC research, relatively to a scientific view to the large number of projects implemented over these 40 years and, finally, also relatively to the project results as seen from the media. In order to manage the quantity as well as the complexity of the information available, the description of these road maps is divided in four time periods: 1975–1984, 1985–1994, 1995–2004 and 2004–2015. The paper also gives the view of the authors on how they see the future of Computer Graphics and Visual Computing. At the end, the paper includes an extensive list of references for the reported content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: An approach is presented to provide contextualized feedback for students using a project management (PM) tool. This approach covers the ten PM knowledge areas, guiding students through the planning of software projects. Background: Because software PM is unfeasible without the support of a PM tool there is a growing demand that these tools be taught in the higher education computer courses. Hence, several approaches already have been proposed to improve this teaching, such as educational PM tools or simulators, which facilitate the application of specific PM techniques and the treatment of their results. Another approach to improve the teaching of PM tools is instructional feedback, but little information is as yet available on how to provide instructional feedback when teaching software PM. Intended Outcomes: Instructional feedback, essential to helping students to learn, is based on an evaluation of their actions and decisions. To take advantage of this instructional approach, this paper proposes an instructional feedback technique to be employed in an instructional unit (IU) teaching PM tools aligned with the project management body of knowledge. Application Design: This technique was evaluated through an experiment carried out in undergraduate computer courses. Control and experiential groups were exposed to the same IU, with only the experiential group using the instructional feedback technique. Findings: The proposed feedback technique contributes to student learning, meeting students’ need for better explanations to acquire a comprehensive understanding of PM theory and its practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) realizes a two-way communication of electricity data through by interconnecting with a computer network as the core component of the smart grid. Meanwhile, it brings many new security threats and the traditional intrusion detection method can’t satisfy the security requirements of AMI. In this paper, an intrusion detection system based on Online Sequence Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) is established, which is used to detecting the attack in AMI and carrying out the comparative analysis with other algorithms. Simulation results show that, compared with other intrusion detection methods, intrusion detection method based on OS-ELM is more superior in detection speed and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent smart devices have adopted heterogeneous multi-core processors which have high-performance big cores and low-power small cores. Unfortunately, the conventional task scheduler for heterogeneous multi-core processors does not provide appropriate amount of CPU resources for multimedia applications (whose QoS is important to users), resulting in energy waste; it often executes multimedia applications and non-multimedia applications on the same core. In this paper, we propose an advanced task scheduler for heterogeneous multi-core processors, which provides appropriate amount of CPU resources for multimedia applications. Our proposed task scheduler isolates multimedia applications from non-multimedia applications at runtime, exploiting the fact that multimedia applications have a specific thread for video/audio playback (to play video/audio, a multimedia application should use a function that generates the specific thread). Since multimedia applications usually require a smaller amount of CPU resources than non-multimedia applications due to dedicated hardware decoders, our proposed task scheduler allocates the former to the small cores and the latter to the big cores. In our experiments on an Android-based development board, our proposed task scheduler saves system-wide (not just CPU) energy consumption by 8.9 percent, on average, compared to the conventional task scheduler, preserving QoS of multimedia applications. In addition, it improves performance of non-multimedia applications by 13.7 percent, on average, compared to the conventional task scheduler. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent studies show that individuals in a social network can be divided into different groups of densely connected communities, and these individuals who bridge different communities, referred to as structural hole spanners, have great potential to acquire resources/information from communities and thus benefit from the access. Structural hole spanners are crucial in many real applications such as community detections, diffusion controls, viral marketing, etc. In spite of their importance, little attention has been paid to them. Particularly, how to accurately characterize the structural hole spanners and how to devise efficient yet scalable algorithms to find them in a large social network are fundamental issues. In this paper, we study the top-$k$ structural hole spanner problem. We first provide a novel model to measure the quality of structural hole spanners through exploiting the structural hole spanner properties. Due to its NP-hardness, we then devise two efficient yet scalable algorithms, by developing innovative filtering techniques that can filter out unlikely solutions as quickly as possible, while the proposed techniques are built up on fast estimations of the upper and lower bounds on the cost of an optimal solution and make use of articulation points in real social networks. We finally conduct extensive experiments to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model, and to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms using real world datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can capture the characteristics of structural hole spanners accurately, and the structural hole spanners found by the proposed algorithms are much better than those by existing algorithms in all considered social networks, while the running times of the proposed algorithms are very fast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aimed at examining challenges and benefits associated with the incorporation of information technology in Ghanaian Quantity Surveying practice. A structured questionnaire survey was carried out to solicit the views of 45 Chief Quantity Surveyors of quantity surveying firms in Kumasi and Accra on the issue under investigation. The findings from the study revealed that the Microsoft project, Autodesk Quantity Takeoff, Masterbill, In-house software, QSPlus and QS Elite are the six most frequently used Quantity Surveying softwares in quantity surveying practices. The results further showed that 'inadequate training and education in the use of IT tools', 'high cost of innovation/learning a new technology' and 'low margins resulting in little scope for investment in IT innovation and learning are the topmost challenges to the adoption of IT in QS practices. Increase in productivity through streamlined data entry and management', 'increased productivity through automated quantities and cost calculations and improved savings in operation cost are among the benefits perceived to be associated with the adoption of IT in Quantity Surveying practice. Identification of the challenges and knowing the benefits associated with the adoption of IT should encourage industry practitioners to embrace the future prospects of IT adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information indexing is an extremely useful solution for wireless broadcast channels, because of its energy efficiency. Full text search on the wireless broadcast stream is another popular type of information dissemination access. This research paper discusses indexing schemes for full text search information, using two levels of structure B+ tree and inverted list. The partial replication in the B+ tree indexing scheme is proposed to extend the existing full text search indexing scheme. In the proposed work, the index information of B+ tree has been cut to reduce access time and tuning time: metrics for evaluating indexing schemes. The replication in B+ tree may be done up to a certain level of the indexed informat+ion (Data). Evaluation and analysis of the proposed indexing scheme show an excellent improvement over existing indexing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A commonly used strategy to improve search accuracy is through feedback techniques. Most existing work on feedback relies on positive information, and has been extensively studied in information retrieval. However, when a query topic is difficult and the results from the first-pass retrieval are very poor, it is impossible to extract enough useful terms from a few positive documents. Therefore, the positive feedback strategy is incapable to improve retrieval in this situation. Contrarily, there is a relatively large number of negative documents in the top of the result list, and it has been confirmed that negative feedback strategy is an important and useful way for adapting this scenario by several recent studies. In this paper, we consider a scenario when the search results are so poor that there are at most three relevant documents in the top twenty documents. Then, we conduct a novel study of multiple strategies for relevance feedback using both positive and negative examples from the first-pass retrieval to improve retrieval accuracy for such difficult queries. Experimental results on these TREC collections show that the proposed language model based multiple model feedback method which is generally more effective than both the baseline method and the methods using only positive or negative model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the great need for computer-related career professionals, some universities that offer specialties to develop professionals with knowledge to cover the mention need, present a decrease in enrollment, which can cause a wide variety of problems. That is why in this paper we set out to investigate what the main factors that directly or indirectly affect student enrollment in computer-related careers are, to establish a literature-based starting point, and to help select the best possible strategy to improve enrollment. To reach this goal, we did a documentary research, categorizing each one of the factors with its respective analysis. In the results, we explain several challenges that educators face, due to the evolution of society needs, two of them are: teaching-learning models and technology; besides, it became evident that the relevance of this academic programs remain available since there is a high demand for these professionals in Mexico, as well as in the world; finally, we showed some intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors that have an essential relevance at the time that a student chooses the career to study. On the other hand, we reflected that the perception of everything that involves the study of a Computing-related career is a factor to be considered in the selection of an educational program of higher education. This study could be a reference for universities that are facing decreasing enrollment concerns. In conclusion, we analyzed and identified the main factors that have an impact on the demand for a career related to engineering, providing possible lines of action for increasing school enrollment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]