Search

In this paper, we give the definition of randomized symmetric incentive compatible auctions. Then we define three monotone properties of such auctions and study the implication relationships among them. This paper extends our previous work [4] which was focused on deterministic symmetric incentive compatible auctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an online sponsored search auction that motivates advertisers to report their true budget, arrival time, departure time, and value per click. The auction is based on a modified Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) mechanism that allows for advertisers who arrive and depart in an online fashion, have a value per click, and are budget constrained. In tackling the problem of truthful budget, arrival and departure times, it turns out that it is not possible to achieve truthfulness in the classical sense (which we show in a companion paper). As such, we define a new concept called δ-gain. δ-gain bounds the utility a player can gain by lying as opposed to his utility when telling the truth. Building on the δ-gain concept we define another new concept called relative ε-gain, which bounds the relative ratio of the gain a player can achieve by lying with respect to his true utility. We argue that for many practical applications if the δ-gain and or the relative ε-gain are small, then players will not invest time and effort in making strategic choices but will truthtell as a default strategy. These concepts capture the essence of dominant strategy mechanisms as they lead the advertiser to choose truthtelling over other strategies. In order to achieve δ-gain truthful mechanism this paper also presents a new payment scheme, Time series Truthful Payment Scheme (TTPS), for an online budget-constrained auction mechanism. The payment scheme is a generalization of the VCG principles for an online scheduling environment with budgeted players. Using the concepts of δ-gain truthful we present the only known budget-constrained sponsored search auction with truthful guarantees on budget, arrivals, departures, and valuations. Previous works that deal with advertiser budgets only deal with the non-strategic case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software watermarking is a technique to protect programs from piracy through embedding secret information into the programs. As software unauthorized use and modification are ubiquitous in the world, progresses in software watermarking will certainly benefit software research and industry. In this paper, we study one of core concepts in this area - informed recognition. To recognize a watermark in a software is to judge the existence of such a watermark in the corresponding software code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titled Documents (TD) are short text documents that are segmented into two parts: Heading Part and Excerpt Part. With the development of the Internet, TDs are widely used as papers, news, messages, etc. In this paper we discuss the problem of automatic TDs categorization. Unlike traditional text documents, TDs have short headings which have less useless words comparing to their excerpts. Though headings are usually short, their words are more important than other words. Based on this observation we propose a titled document classification framework using the widely used MNB classifier. This framework puts higher weight on the heading words at the cost of some excerpt words. By this means heading words play more important roles in classification than the traditional method. According to our experiments on four datasets that cover three types of documents, the performance of the classifier is improved by our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of RFID technology, the so called internet of things for managing supply chain events has gained increasing attention. This paper proposes a peer to peer broker network on top of existing specifications for this infrastructure. With the broker network, event based communication is enabled for the internet of things. However, the main contribution of this paper is a mechanism to optimize event queries for in-network processing of supply chain events. Here, models of supply chain processes are exploited for optimizing event queries and enabling improved mapping of query operators to the broker network. Experiments are presented which show that the proposed mechanism reduces network load compared to existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal systems support people with different needs and different features during the interaction process making it more easy and natural. However naturalness can usually produce ambiguous interpretation. This paper discusses ambiguities in multimodal interaction proposing in particular two different examples of ambiguities: a) multimodal ambiguities produced combining un-ambiguous modal information containing contrasting concepts in multimodal dialogue, b) ambiguities arising by the propagation at multimodal level of a modal input ambiguity. Moreover, the paper proposes a formal representation of multimodal inputs using the hybrid approach that combines the attribute multi-set grammar with the linear logic. This paper starts from discussing the main features of a multimodal system and the classes of cooperation between modalities. The attribute multi-set grammar combined with the linear logic enables to highlight the multidimensionality of multimodality and allows to formally describe ambiguities that can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are huge numbers of documents in digital libraries. How to effectively organize these documents so that humans can easily browse or reference is a challenging task. Existing classification methods and chronological or geographical ordering only provide partial views of the news articles. The relationships among news articles might not be easily grasped. In this paper, we propose a near-duplicate copy detection approach to organizing news archives in digital libraries. Conventional copy detection methods use word-level features which could be time-consuming and not robust to term substitutions. In this paper, we propose a sentence-level statistics-based approach to detect near-duplicate documents, which is language independent, simple but effective. It's orthogonal to and can be used to complement word-based approaches. Also it's insensitive to actual page layout of articles. The experimental results showed the high efficiency and good accuracy of the proposed approach in detecting near-duplicates in news archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usability is a feature of software quality that has traditional significance in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community. Recent works that have been proposed by the Software Engineering (SE) community are intended to improve the usability of software applications. This paper combines aspects that are defined in both these communities to produce usable web applications. To achieve this goal, a well-known strategy to improve usability is used: usability patterns. However, many usability patterns and guidelines could only be applied when the final system is implemented. In this work, STATUS patterns have been chosen because they solve usability issues at conceptual level. The main purpose of this paper is to improve the usability of Web Applications automatically generated by OOWS (a model-based web engineering method) applying the STATUS patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various organizations use the RFID technology for linking, tracking and identifying objects in their operative context. Nevertheless, the RFID components cannot yet be considered as mobile, intelligent and communicating elements of the organization's information infrastructure. They are not always used for accomplishing the linkage between the physical world and the adopted Information Technologies (IT) solutions. Therefore, they are not used for enabling organizations to automatically monitor, decide, and take actions. Heterogeneous networked devices and services installed within the organizations, often work independently instead of collaborating for offering a better quality of the daily activities to the end-user. This paper discusses the adoption of a Smart Ubiquitous Platform (SUP) for monitoring and managing the documents circulation by using the RFID technology. Advantages of the adoption of RFID are discussed too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a neural-based method to map facial expressions between human and robot. We applied the method to a sensitivity communication robot, Ifbot, which has been developed by our industry-university joint research project. The method enables the robot to imitate an arbitrary human facial expression. The paper describes the feature extraction from face image, and proposes neural network based parameter matching between human facial expression and Ifbot's facial expression mechanism. This paper also reports the evaluation of the facial expression transmission performance of Ifbot with the proposed system. The evaluation shows the effectiveness of emphasizing emotional expressions and the possibility of using Ifbot as an agent for distance communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an association method using Concept-base. Concept-base is a large-scale relational database constructed by some electronic dictionaries and some newspapers. Each concept which is defined in Concept-base has attributes which characterize the concept and weights which show each attribute's importance. Concept-base enables to calculate the depth of relationship (Degree of Association) of two any concepts using attributes and weights. This paper proposes One Word Association Method which associates one word (concept) with some relative words (concepts). Also, a threshold of Degree of Association is defined using the evaluation result of One Word Association Method. Finally, Two Words Association Method is proposed based on the threshold of Degree of Association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose gesture recognition in multiple people environment. Our system is divided into two modules: Segmentation and Recognition. In segmentation part, we extract foreground area from input image, and we decide the closest person as a recognition subject. In recognition part, firstly we extract feature point of subject's both hands using contour based method and skin based method. Extracted points are tracked using Kalman filter. We use trajectories of both hands for recognizing gesture. In this paper, we use the simple queue matching method as a recognition method. We also apply our system as an animation system. Our method can select subject effectively and recognize gesture in multiple people environment. Therefore, proposed method can be used for real world application such as home appliance and humanoid robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web-based Geographic Information System(WebGIS) is a key direction towards GIS development. By analysing of the deficiency in the design of conventional WebGIS, this paper proposes an architecture of the intelligent WebGIS based on Multi-Agent, which has been applied in a agricultural WebGIS. In order to solve the key problem of Agent communication, the paper also presents an Agent communication model, which decreases the working capacity to maintain the communication protocl and enhances the system's adaptability and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider some problems about the computation time of evolutionary algorithms in this paper. First, some exact analytic expressions of the mean first hitting times of general evolutionary algorithms in finite search spaces are obtained theoretically by using the properties of Markov chain associated with evolutionary algorithms considered here. Then, by introducing drift analysis and applying Dynkin's Formula, the general upper and lower bounds of the mean first hitting times of evolutionary algorithms are estimated rigorously under some mild conditions listed in the paper. Those results in this paper are commonly useful. Also, the analytic techniques adopted in the paper are widely instructive for analyzing the computation time of evolutionary algorithms in a given search space as long as some specific mathematical arts are introduced accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many business solutions provide best practice process templates, both generic as well as for specific industry sectors. However, it is often the variance from template solutions that provide organizations with intellectual capital and competitive differentiation. In this paper, we present a modeling framework that is conducive to constrained variance, by supporting user driven process adaptations. The focus of the paper is on providing a means of utilizing the adaptations effectively for process improvement through effective management of the process variants repository (PVR). In particular, we will provide deliberations towards a facility to provide query functionality for PVR that is specifically targeted for effective search and retrieval of process variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the integration of linguistic knowledge in learning semantic user profiles able to represent user interests in a more effective way with respect to classical keyword-based profilesThis research was partially funded by the EC under the 6th FP IST IP VIKEF No. 507173, Priority 2.3.1.7 Semantic Based Knowledge Systems (www.vikef.net) and under the DELOS NoE on Digital Libraries, Priority: Technology-enhanced Learning and Access to Cultural Heritage - Contract n. G038-507618 (www.delos.info). The work was supported also by the research project "Modelli avanzati di personalizzazione per biblioteche elettroniche", year 2005, funded by the University of Bari.. Semantic profiles are obtained by integrating a naïve Bayes approach for text categorization with a word sense disambiguation strategy based on the WordNet lexical database (Section 2). Semantic profiles are exploited by the "conference participant advisor" service in order to suggest papers to be read and talks to be attended by a conference participant. Experiments on a real dataset show the effectiveness of the service (Section 3). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an identities(ID) based watermarking scheme for Java programs. In our scheme, the watermark is generated by participants’ identities, embedded via the watermarked opaque predicates, and verified using zero-knowledge proof. We also present a construction of a family of opaque predicates by Legendre symbol, which is resilient, cheap, and stealthy. The order of the watermark is encoded and embedded into the watermarked opaque predicates, and the watermarked opaque predicates are treated as threads of a Java program. Thus, the embedded watermark is dynamic and secure against all usual types of watermarks algorithms attacks and watermarks protocols attacks, and also secure against static and dynamic attacks. Keywords: Java programs, watermarked opaque predicates, ID, aggregate signature, watermarking scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent proliferation of documents, automatic metadata extraction from document becomes an important task. In this paper, we propose a novel template matching based method for header metadata extraction form semi-structured documents stored in PDF. In our approach, templates are defined, and the document is considered as strings with format. Templates are used to guide finite state automaton (FSA) to extract header metadata of papers. The testing results indicate that our approach can effectively extract metadata, without any training cost and available to some special situation. This approach can effectively assist the automatic index creation in lots of fields such as digital libraries, information retrieval, and data mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-organizational business cooperations can be described from different viewpoints each fulfilling a specific purpose. Since all viewpoints describe the same system they must not contradict each other, thus, must be consistent. Consistency can be checked based on common semantic concepts of the different viewpoints. This is sufficient for equal concepts, while weakly related concepts, e.g. related to runtime behavior of viewpoints, have to be considered explicitly. In this paper we identify dynamic consistency issues correlated to the runtime behavior between value and coordination viewpoints on behalf of an example. In particular, an issue class on occurrence estimations of execution options and an issue class on granularity differences in modelling are identified and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), software systems are decomposed into independent units, namely services, that interact with one another through message exchanges. To promote reuse and evolvability, these interactions are explicitly described right from the early phases of the development lifecycle. Up to now, emphasis has been placed on capturing structural aspects of service interactions. Gradually though, the description of behavioral dependencies between service interactions is gaining increasing attention as a means to push forward the SOA vision. This paper deals with the description of these behavioral dependencies during the analysis and design phases. The paper outlines a set of requirements that a language for modeling service interactions at this level should fulfill, and proposes a language whose design is driven by these requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inherent nonlinear of switched reluctance motor (SRM) makes it hard to get a good performance by using the conventional PID controller to the speed control of SRM. This paper develops a radial basis function (RBF) artificial neural network (ANN) nonlinear prediction model based adaptive PID controller for SRM. ANN, under certain condition, can approximate any nonlinear function with arbitrary precision. It also has a strong ability of adaptive, self-learning and self-organization. So, combining it with the conventional PID controller, a neural network based adaptive PID controller can be developed. Appling it to the speed control of SRM, a good control performance can be gotten. At the same time, the nonlinear mapping property and high parallel operation ability of ANN make it suitable to be applied to establish nonlinear prediction model performing parameter prediction. In this paper, two ANN - NNC and NNI are employed. The former is a back propagation (BP) ANN with sigmoid activation function. The later is an ANN using RBF as activation function. The former is used to adaptively adjust the parameters of the PID controller on line. The later is used to establish nonlinear prediction model performing parameter prediction. Compared with BP ANN with sigmoid activation function, the RBF ANN has a more fast convergence speed and can avoid getting stuck in a local optimum. Through parameter prediction, response speed of the system can be improved. To increase the convergence speed of ANN, an adaptive learning algorithm is adopted in this paper that is to adjust the learning rate according to the error. This can increase the convergence speed of ANN and make the system response quick. The experimental results demonstrate that a high control performance is achieved. The system responds quickly with little overshoot. The steady state error is zero. The system shows robust performance to the load torque disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for sensitivity communication robots which infer their dialogist's emotion. The method is based on the Bayesian approach: by using a Bayesian modeling for prosodic features. In this research, we focus the elements of emotion included in dialogist's voice. Thus, as training datasets for learning Bayesian networks, we extract prosodic feature quantities from emotionally expressive voice data. Our method learns the dependence and its strength between dialogist's utterance and his emotion, by building Bayesian networks. Bayesian information criterion, one of the information theoretical model selection method, is used in the building Bayesian networks. The paper finally proposes a reasoner to infer dialogist's emotion by using a Bayesian network for prosodic features of the dialogist's voice. The paper also reports some empirical reasoning performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a state transition model using context based approach for gesture analysis. This method defines the analysis situation as five different states; NULL, OBJECT, POSTURE, LOCAL, and GLOBAL. We first infer the situation of the system by estimating the transition of the state model, and then apply different analysis algorithms according to the system state. Gestures are analyzed with the queue-based matching method which is newly proposed in the paper instead of general gesture spotting algorithms. In the algorithm, movement of feature points; face and both hands, is compared directly, so gesture can be recognized quickly without applying any constraints for real world application. The transition of the states can be interpreted as the context of motion and that is estimated with conditional probability between the states in the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In WWW information integration, eliminating semantic hetero-geneity and implementing semantic combination is one of the key problems. This paper introduces classification ontology into WWW information integration to solve the semantic combination problem of heterogeneity classification architecture in Web information integration. However, there may be many kinds of ontology in a specific domain due to the structure of the websites, domain experts and different goals. So we have to combine all these kinds of ontology into logically unified integrated classification ontology in order to solve the problem of semantic heterogeneity commendably. This paper primarily discusses the method of building integrated classification ontology based on individual ontology, presents the definition of classification ontology, analyses the conceptual mapping and relational mapping between ontologies and solves the level conflict in the equivalent concepts. Keywords: Information integration, Classification ontology, Semantic, Similarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the upright face detection framework proposed by Viola et al. 2001 to handle in-plane rotated faces. These haar-like features work inefficiently on rotated faces, so this paper proposes a new set of ±26.565 ° haar-like features which can be calculated quickly to represent the features of rotated faces. Unlike previous face detection techniques in training quantities of samples to build different rotated detectors, with these new features, we address to build different rotated detectors by rotating an upright face detector directly so as to achieve in-plane rotated face detection. This approach is selected because of its computational efficiency, simplicity and training time saving. This proposed method is tested on CMU-MIT rotated test data and yields good results in accuracy and maintains speed advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new medium for questionnaire delivery, the Internet has the potential to revolutionize the survey process. Online-questionnaires can provide many capabilities not found in traditional paper-based questionnaires. Despite this, and the introduction of a plethora of tools to support online-questionnaire creation, current electronic survey design typically replicates the look-and-feel of paper-based questionnaires, thus failing to harness the full power of the electronic delivery medium. A recent environmental scan of online-questionnaire design tools found that little, if any, support is incorporated within these tools to guide questionnaire designers according to best-practice [Lumsden & Morgan 2005]. This paper briefly introduces a comprehensive set of guidelines for the design of online-questionnaires. Drawn from relevant disparate sources, all the guidelines incorporated within the set are proven in their own right; as an initial assessment of the value of the set of guidelines as a practical reference guide, we undertook an informal study to observe the effect of introducing the guidelines into the design process for a complex online-questionnaire. The paper discusses the qualitative findings — which are encouraging for the role of the guidelines in the ‘bigger picture' of online survey delivery across many domains such as e-government, e-business, and e-health — of this case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-fidelity prototyping is a widely used HCI knowledge elicitation technique. However, empirical evaluation methods for low-fidelity prototyping have remained relatively static even with the development and use of software prototyping tools. In this paper, we describe a framework based on constructionism theory to model design artefacts as measurable constructs within low-fidelity prototypes. This provides a novel approach to acquiring further cognitive user metrics within software based low-fidelity prototyping in the HCI domain. We describe two mobile software tools, PROTEUS and PROTEUS EVALUATOR, developed for the Tablet PC platform, which use our framework to aid our understanding of prototypes during their temporal construction. Results of using the tools in two scenario experiments are reported, each conducted with 40 HCI postgraduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social aspects of security of information systems are often discussed in terms of "actual security" and "perceived security". This may lead to the hypothesis that e-voting is controversial because in paper voting, actual and perceived security coincide, whereas they do not in electronic systems. In this paper, we argue that the distinction between actual and perceived security is problematic from a philosophical perspective, and we develop an alternative approach, based on the notion of trust. We investigate the different meanings of this notion in computer science, and link these to the philosophical work of Luhmann, who distinguishes between familiarity, confidence and trust. This analysis yields several useful distinctions for discussing trust relations with respect to information technology. We apply our framework to electronic voting, and propose some hypotheses that can possibly explain the smooth introduction of electronic voting machines in the Netherlands in the early nineties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are several researches on 2D gaze tracking techniques for the 2D screen for the Human-Computer Interaction. However, the researches for the gaze-based interaction to the stereo images or contents are not reported. The 3D display techniques are emerging now for the reality service. Moreover, the 3D interaction techniques are much more needed in the 3D contents service environments. This paper addresses the gaze-based 3D interaction techniques. It is well known that there are characteristics of eye vergence according to the depth of object to be focused by human. This paper presents our experimental research results about the characteristics of eye vergence according to stereo image depth. Our research result is evaluated and applied to the gaze-based 3D interaction with the parallax barrier stereo image display system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a framework for individualizing the learning material structure in adaptive learning system is introduced. It aims to utilize the learning characteristics and provide a personalized learning environment that exploit pedagogical model and fuzzy logic techniques. The learning material consists of 4 structures; 1) theory, 2) examples 3) exercises and 4) activities. The pedagogical model and learning characteristics are based on the student's personality factor (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)), whilst the fuzzy logic techniques are used to classify the structure of learning material which is based on student's personality factors. This paper tend to illustrate the construction of fuzzy set and fuzzy rules to find the best rules based on combination of two approaches; learning style approach and fuzzy logic approach for adapting the content to the user, allowing a learning system to dynamically adapt the choice of possible learning structure through the learning material based on the user's personality factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the advance of e-community, collaborative learning becomes popular on the Web. Among the learning models for collaborative learning on the Web, there are seminar-based model and project-based model. The objective of this paper is to compare the two learning models by analyzing learners' activities. Among learners' activities, we focus on learners' interaction level, their collaborability, and their accountability. Also, we propose new assessment items for evaluating learners fairly. In this paper, the existing evaluation items in traditional classroom-based collaborative learning are firstly analyzed in order to develop new evaluation criteria for the Web. Based on these analyzed items, we propose new items for assessing learners' activities in Web-based collaborative learning. After two Web-based classes, each of which has a different learning model, are performed, the proposed items are applied to compare the two learning models in terms of learners' interaction level, collaborability, and accountability. By performing this research, we can understand learners' activities clearer and can develop a better instructional technique to make improved academic achievement, improved attendance, and increased self-confidence in collaborative e-learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient searching system is needed to offer the exact result of diverse web information to the user. Due to this reason, it is important to extract and analyze the user requirements in the distributed information environment. The searching method proposed in this paper uses the keyword as well as its context information for effective searching. Moreover, the proposed searching method is extracted keywords by using the new keyword extraction method also proposed in this paper, and it is executed web searching based on keyword mining profile generated by the extracted keywords. Unlike the conventional searching method, which searched for information by representative words, the proposed searching method is more efficient and exact. This is because data are searched by the example-based query including the content information as well as the representative words. Moreover, this searching method makes a domain keyword list for a quick search. The domain keyword is the representative word of a special domain. The performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed in a series of experiments to identify its various characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present web is existing in the HTML and XML formats for persons to browse. Recently there is a trend towards the semantic web where the information can be can be processed and understood by agents. Most of the present research works focus on the translation from HTML to semantic web, but seldom on XML. In this paper, we design a method to translate XML to semantic web. It is known that ontologies play an important role in the semantic web, therefore firstly, we propose a genetic model to organize ontologies, and based on this model, we use three steps, viz. semantic translation, structural translation and schematic translation, to translate XML to semantic web. The aim of the paper is to facilitate the wide use of semantic web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests an automated method for document classification using an ontology, which expresses terminology information and vocabulary contained in Web documents by way of a hierarchical structure. Ontologybased document classification involves determining document features that represent the Web documents most accurately, and classifying them into the most appropriate categories after analyzing their contents by using at least two pre-defined categories per given document features. In this paper, Web documents are classified in real time not with experimental data or a learning process, but by similar calculations between the terminology information extracted from Web texts and ontology categories. This results in a more accurate document classification since the meanings and relationships unique to each document are determined. Keywords: Document classification, Ontology, Web Page classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of research has been devoted in recent years to the designing Fuzzy-Neural Networks (FNN) from input-output data. And some works were also done to analyze the performance of some methods from a rigorous mathematical point of view. In this paper, a new approximation bound for the clustering method, which is employed to design the FNN with the Gaussian Membership Function, is established. It is an improvement of the previous result in which the related approximation bound was somewhat complex. The detailed formulas of the error bound between the nonlinear function to be approximated and the FNN system designed based on the input-output data are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on e-learner community building has attracted much attention for its effectiveness in sharing the learning experience and resources among geographically dispersed e-learners. While collaborative filtering proves its success as one of the most efficient methods in finding similar users in e-commerce domain, it does meet special challenges in e-learning areas. In this paper, we incorporate multi-agent techniques into collaborative filtering and propose a novel community building scheme. By doing so, we manage to collect useful information from the learner behaviors and thus increase the scalability and flexibility of traditional collaborative filtering methods. The experiment on a standard benchmark shows that our scheme has reasonable community building quality and e-learners can make better recommendations to each other inside the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MPEG-4 system defines a binary format, called BIFS(BInary Format for Scene), and textual format, called XMT(eXtensible MPEG-4 Textual format) to represent the composition information of the scene featuring interactive content. BIFS was proposed for efficient transmission, and XMT based on XML, with the aim to support various playing environments and to enhance the reusability of the contents as it is converted into languages such as VRML, SMIL and etc. To provide interoperability of this XMT, this paper proposes the mechanism to convert XMT into SMIL using XSLT(XML Stylesheet Language Transformation). Further, this paper analyzes XMT and SMIL to propose a conversion method for various nodes, which do not match one to one, and defines XSLT for conversion. In addition, this paper represents various geometric objects that are not supported in the SMIL using SVG(Scalable Vector Graphics). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a security analysis for data hiding methods based on nested lattice codes, extending the analysis provided by previous works. The security is quantified in an information-theoretic sense by means of the information leakage between the watermarked signals seen by the attacker and the secret key used in the embedding process. The theoretical analysis accomplished in the first part of the paper addresses important issues such as the possibility of achieving perfect secrecy and the impact of the embedding rate and channel coding in the security level. In the second part, a practical algorithm for estimating the secret key is proposed, and the information extracted is used for implementing a reversibility attack on real images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new informed image watermarking algorithm is presented in this paper, which can achieve the information rate of 1/64 bits/pixel with high robustness. Firstly, the LOT (Locally Optimum Test) detector based on HMM in wavelet domain is developed to tackle the issue that the exact strength for informed embedding is unknown to the receiver. Then based on the LOT detector, the dirty-paper code for informed coding is constructed and the metric for the robustness is defined accordingly. Unlike the previous approaches of informed watermarking which take the informed coding and embedding process separately, the proposed algorithm implements a jointly coding and embedding optimization for high capacity and robust watermarking. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed to optimize the robustness and distortion constraints simultaneously. Extensive simulations are carried out which demonstrates that the proposed algorithm achieves significant improvements in performance against JPEG, gain attack, low-pass filtering and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The k-set agreement problem is a generalization of the uniform consensus problem: each process proposes a value, and each non-faulty process has to decide a value such that a decided value is a proposed value, and at most k different values are decided. It has been shown that any algorithm that solves the k-set agreement problem in synchronous systems that can suffer up to t crash failures requires $\lfloor \frac{t}{k} \rfloor +1$ rounds in the worst case. It has also been shown that it is possible to design early deciding algorithms where no process decides and halts after $\min\big( \lfloor \frac{f}{k} \rfloor +2, \lfloor \frac{t}{k} \rfloor +1\big)$ rounds, where f is the number of actual crashes in a run (0 ≤ f ≤ t). This paper explores a new direction to solve the k-set agreement problem in a synchronous system. It considers that the system is enriched with base objects (denoted [m,ℓ]_SA objects) that allow solving the ℓ-set agreement problem in a set of m processes (m < n). The paper has several contributions. It first proposes a synchronous k-set agreement algorithm that benefits from such underlying base objects. This algorithm requires $O(\frac{t \ell}{m k})$ rounds, more precisely, $R_t= \lfloor \frac{t}{\Delta} \rfloor +1$ rounds, where $\Delta= m \lfloor \frac{k}{\ell} \rfloor + (k\mbox{ mod } \ell)$. The paper then shows that this bound, that involves all the parameters that characterize both the problem (k) and its environment (t, m and ℓ), is a lower bound. The proof of this lower bound sheds additional light on the deep connection between synchronous efficiency and asynchronous computability. Finally, the paper extends its investigation to the early deciding case. It presents a k-set agreement algorithm that directs the processes to decide and stop by round $R_f=\min\big(\lfloor \frac{f}{\Delta} \rfloor +2, \lfloor \frac{t}{\Delta} \rfloor +1\big)$. These bounds generalize the bounds previously established for solving the k-set problem in pure synchronous systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SPAWAR Systems Center (SSC San Diego) of the U.S. Navy hosted two workshops on Active Conceptual Modeling of Learning (ACM-L). The first workshop was held at SSC San Diego on May 10-12, 2006 to introduce the Science &Technology (S&T) Initiative and identify a Research and Development agenda for the technology development investigation. Eleven invited researchers in Conceptual Modeling presented position papers on the proposed S&T Initiative. The second workshop was held on November 8, 2006 at the 25th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2006, 6-9 November 2006, in Tucson, Arizona. Complementary to the May Workshop, the November workshop was a forum for the international researchers and practitioners to present their papers as a result of a call for papers and to exchange ideas from various perspectives of the subject. This paper describes research issues identified by participants from the two ACM-L workshops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major purpose of the design of distributed databases is to improve system performance and to increase system reliability. Fragmentation and allocation play important roles in the development of a cost-efficient system. This paper addresses the problem of fragmentation in the context of complex value databases, which cover the common aspects of object-oriented databases, object-relational databases and XML. In this paper, we present a cost-based approach for horizontal and vertical fragmentation. Our approach is based on a cost model that takes the structure of complex value databases into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese firms heavily invest in enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) in recent years and expect that ERP can help them gain superior financial performance. Given the high costs and high risk of ERP investments, to quantify the financial benefits of ERP implementation is an important research issue. This paper empirically examines the impacts of ERP implementation on firm performance using the financial data from 50 Chinese chemical firms that implemented ERP. The firms' abnormal performance during the two-year implementation period and three-year post-implementation period was analyzed based on the guideline of Barber et al. on event studies. The results find no significant performance improvement during the implementation period and the three-year post-implementation period and a decline in performance in the first two years after implementation. However, a slight performance improvement in the third year after implementation may indicate that the financial benefits of ERP may show after a long-term ERP use. These results provide insight for Chinese firms that want to invest in ERP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new formalized definition of generalized association rale based on Multidimensional data. The algorithms named BorderLHSs and GenerateLHSs-Rule are designed for generating generalized association rule from multi-level frequent item sets based on Multidimensional Data. Experiment shows that the algorithms proposed in this paper are more efficiency, generate less redundant rules and have good performance in flexibility, scalability and complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, ontology technology is applied to Supply Chain information integration, in order to provide unified interface for semantic data and to share, reuse knowledge among information resources. Ontology can solve well the semantic heterogeneity problem of distributed, heterogeneous and autonomous data sources; and the problem of semantic interoperability. Since the objects on Supply Chain are highly dynamic and unpredictable, the information to be integrated is often changing along with the objects, which means that the corresponding ontology also needs to be changed. The process and methods how supply chain dynamic ontology changes is mainly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more information system applications have been adopted in China. Telecom operators in China are applying information services and solutions to more and more sectors and areas, of which the rural area is a typical example. Firstly, the paper describes the architecture of the mobile information system, which is based on telecommunication terminals and is realized through text messaging, voice, WAP and other means to satisfy the rural demanding, such as agricultural production, administrative management and other information applications. Secondly, the paper presents the business application model. It is not just the simple use of communication tools and instead, it includes using networks and information resources to the processes of information production, operation, promotion and so on. Thirdly, the paper investigates the value chain and business models. Finally, the benefits for both farmers and telecom operators would be discussed. It can increase the farmers' income, improve the rural market share of Chinese telecom operators and narrow the "information gap" between the cities and rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a reasonable proposition to suggest that a high level, meta-reasoner for Enterprise Information Systems should exist. Such a reasoner could act as a monitor, manager, planner, and trouble shooter for the information resources of an organization. The lead author has built such a reasoner, which is now in its nascent stages. The software is based upon a logic programming paradigm, and employs powerful reasoning formalisms recently developed within the logic programming community. One of those formalisms is a theory of actions. A key component of an action theory is the ability to reason with respect to time. Another key feature of an action theory is the ability to reason about the value of variables that take on different values determined by the context (i.e., time). These issues (time, and the values of variables with respect to time) taken together comprise what is known in the field as situation calculus. The variables that vary with respect to time are called fluents. This paper discusses the use of fluents in this meta-reasoner. We will suggest fluents and assertions about what fluents that could be, or should be used (or made). This paper will also discuss the relevance of these fluents and assertions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of language and culture in the effective design and widespread acceptance of handheld devices in foreign markets. To this end, key challenges that usability experts and interaction designers face while designing foreign language keypads for handheld devices are discussed and analyzed. The discussion presupposes English as the point of reference for design decisions but focuses on the challenges faced when considering foreign language devices. For the context of this paper, Arabic is cited as the ‘foreign' language in the design of BlackBerry devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SystemC is a popular open source library in C++ for developing embedded system design, from the abstract System Level Design until the accurate Register Transfer Level Design. SystemC simulation, however, runs in console mode (text-based), thus making it difficult for user to interact with the simulation. To extend the capabilities of SystemC simulation, it is necessary to create Graphical User Interface. In this paper we recommend to use RapidPLUS tool for making the interface for embedded system prototype to reduce time to market. We also propose the connectivity between RapidPLUS and SystemC by using socket communication that attached in JavaBean RapidPLUS object [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the battery and low-power H/W technologies for mobile and wearable computing devices have been advanced rapidly. But on the other hand the computation and communication demands of the embedded applications are increasing more rapidly. Therefore, the application developers are still required to develop their codes to utilize the available energy as efficient as possible. The provision of software power measurement with reasonable accuracy, consistency and low overhead is an indispensable factor for software power engineering. In this paper, we present a time-triggered mechanism for providing energy consumption profiles in the level of C functions. The similar mechanisms have already been introduced at the previous researches such as PowerScope and ePRO. Instead, we, in this paper, introduce our efforts to extend these researches to incorporate power domains and DVS(Dynamic Voltage Scaling), then interpret these mechanisms as the view of time-triggered approach for better understanding to the relationships among timer interrupt, context switching, DAQ triggering, multi-channel DAQ delay, and etc. From our experimental results, we could conclude that the time-triggered approach for the function level energy measurement properly worked with low overheads and produced consistent energy consumption profiles on the DVS-applied program codes running upon the platforms supporting multiple power domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]