The development of integrated career portal in university using agile methodology

A gap between university graduate's quality and industry sector demand is one of the challenge university has to tackle, which makes university graduates absorption in job market slows down. One of the tools that can be used to bridge between graduates and companies is an integrated career portal. This portal can be optimized to help industry find the employees they need from the alumni from university. On the other hand, this tool can help graduates to get job that suits their competency. By using the portal, alumni can hopefully minimize the number of unemployed university graduates and accelerate their absorption into job market. The development of this career portal will use agile methodology. Questionnaire was distributed to alumni and employers to collect information about what user need in the portal. The result of this research can create a career portal which integrated business process and social media.


Internet of Things security and forensics: Challenges and opportunities

The Internet of Things (IoT) envisions pervasive, connected, and smart nodes interacting autonomously while offering all sorts of services. Wide distribution, openness and relatively high processing power of IoT objects made them an ideal target for cyber attacks. Moreover, as many of IoT nodes are collecting and processing private information, they are becoming a goldmine of data for malicious actors. Therefore, security and specifically the ability to detect compromised nodes, together with collecting and preserving evidences of an attack or malicious activities emerge as a priority in successful deployment of IoT networks. In this paper, we first introduce existing major security and forensics challenges within IoT domain and then briefly discuss about papers published in this special issue targeting identified challenges.


Auto cropping for digital photographs

In this paper, we propose an effective approach to the nearly untouched problem, still photograph auto cropping, which is one of the important features to automatically enhance photographs. To obtain an optimal result, we first formulate auto cropping as an optimization problem by defining an energy function, which consists of three sub models: composition sub model, conservative sub model, and penalty sub model. Then, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is employed to obtain the optimal solution by maximizing the objective function. Experimental results and user studies over hundreds of photographs show that the proposed approach is effective and accurate in most cases, and can be used in many practical multimedia applications.


Amplified Boomerang Attacks Against Reduced-Round MARS and Serpent

We introduce a new cryptanalytic technique based on Wagner’s boomerang and inside-out attacks. We first describe this new attack in terms of the original boomerang attack, and then demonstrate its use on reduced-round variants of the MARS core and Serpent. Our attack breaks eleven rounds of the MARS core with 2 chosen plaintexts, 2 memory, and 2 partial decryptions. Our attack breaks eight rounds of Serpent with 2 chosen plaintexts, 2 memory, and 2 partial decryptions.


The naturalness of reproduced high dynamic range images

The problem of visualizing high dynamic range images on the devices with restricted dynamic range has recently gained a lot of interest in the computer graphics community. Various so-called tone mapping operators have been proposed to face this issue. The field of tone mapping assumes thorough knowledge of both the objective and subjective attributes of an image. However, there no published analysis of such attributes exists so far. In this paper, we present an overview of image attributes which are used extensively in different tone mapping methods. Furthermore, we propose a scheme of relationships between these attributes, leading to the definition of an overall quality measure which we call naturalness. We present results of the subjective psychophysical testing that we have performed to prove the proposed relationship scheme. Our effort sets the stage for well-founded quality comparisons between tone mapping operators. By providing good definitions of the different attributes, comparisons, be they user-driven or fully automatic, are made possible at all.


Real-Time Ray Tracing with CUDA

The graphics processors (GPUs) have recently emerged as a low-cost alternative for parallel programming. Since modern GPUs have great computational power as well as high memory bandwidth, running ray tracing on them has been an active field of research in computer graphics in recent years. Furthermore, the introduction of CUDA, a novel GPGPU architecture, has removed several limitations that the traditional GPU-based ray tracing suffered. In this paper, an implementation of high performance CUDA ray tracing is demonstrated. We focus on the performance and show how our design choices in various optimization lead to an implementation that outperforms the previous works. For reasonably complex scenes with simple shading, our implementation achieves the performance of 30 to 43 million traced rays per second. Our implementation also includes the effects of recursive specular reflection and refraction, which were less discussed in previous GPU-based ray tracing works.


Are men really more ‘ oriented ’ toward short-term mating than women ?

According to Sexual Strategies Theory (D.M. Buss and D.P. Schmitt 1993), both men and women possess psychological adaptations for short-term mating. However, men may possess three adaptations that make it seem as though they are generally more ‘oriented’ toward short-term mating than women: (1) Men possess greater desire for short-term sexual relationships than women; (2) Men prefer larger numbers of sexual partners over time than women; and (3) Men require less time before consenting to sex than women. We review a wide body of psychological theory and evidence that corroborates the presence of these adaptations in men’s short-term sexual psychology. We also correct some recurring misinterpretations of Sexual Strategies Theory, such as the mistaken notion that women are designed solely for long-term mating. Finally, we document how the observed sex differences in short-term mating complement some feminist theories and refute competing evolutionary theories of human sexuality. Psychology, Evolution & Gender 3.3 December 2001 pp. 211–239 Psychology, Evolution & Gender ISSN 1461-6661 print/ISSN 1470-1073 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/1461666011011933 1


Automatic Detection of Respiration Rate From Ambulatory Single-Lead ECG

Ambulatory electrocardiography is increasingly being used in clinical practice to detect abnormal electrical behavior of the heart during ordinary daily activities. The utility of this monitoring can be improved by deriving respiration, which previously has been based on overnight apnea studies where patients are stationary, or the use of multilead ECG systems for stress testing. We compared six respiratory measures derived from a single-lead portable ECG monitor with simultaneously measured respiration air flow obtained from an ambulatory nasal cannula respiratory monitor. Ten controlled 1-h recordings were performed covering activities of daily living (lying, sitting, standing, walking, jogging, running, and stair climbing) and six overnight studies. The best method was an average of a 0.2-0.8 Hz bandpass filter and RR technique based on lengthening and shortening of the RR interval. Mean error rates with the reference gold standard were plusmn4 breaths per minute (bpm) (all activities), plusmn2 bpm (lying and sitting), and plusmn1 breath per minute (overnight studies). Statistically similar results were obtained using heart rate information alone (RR technique) compared to the best technique derived from the full ECG waveform that simplifies data collection procedures. The study shows that respiration can be derived under dynamic activities from a single-lead ECG without significant differences from traditional methods.


Location and Time Aware Social Collaborative Retrieval for New Successive Point-of-Interest Recommendation

In location-based social networks (LBSNs), new successive point-of-interest (POI) recommendation is a newly formulated task which tries to regard the POI a user currently visits as his POI-related query and recommend new POIs the user has not visited before. While carefully designed methods are proposed to solve this problem, they ignore the essence of the task which involves retrieval and recommendation problem simultaneously and fail to employ the social relations or temporal information adequately to improve the results.
 In order to solve this problem, we propose a new model called location and time aware social collaborative retrieval model (LTSCR), which has two distinct advantages: (1) it models the location, time, and social information simultaneously for the successive POI recommendation task; (2) it efficiently utilizes the merits of the collaborative retrieval model which leverages weighted approximately ranked pairwise (WARP) loss for achieving better top-n ranking results, just as the new successive POI recommendation task needs. We conducted some comprehensive experiments on publicly available datasets and demonstrate the power of the proposed method, with 46.6% growth in Precision@5 and 47.3% improvement in Recall@5 over the best previous method.


MOBILE LEARNING FOR EDUCATION : BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES

Education and training is the process by which the wisdom, knowledge and skills of one generation are passed on to the next. Today there are two form s f education and training: conventional education and distance education. Mobile learning, or "M-Lear ning", offers modern ways to support learning process through mobile devices, such as handheld an d tablet computers, MP3 players, smart phones and mobile phones. This document introduces the sub ject of mobile learning for education purposes. It examines what impact mobile devices have had on teaching and learning practices and goes on to look at the opportunities presented by the use of d igital media on mobile devices. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the current state of mobi le learning, benefits, challenges, and it’s barrier s to support teaching and learning. Data for this paper w re collected through bibliographic and internet research from January to March 2013. Four key areas will be addressed in this paper: 1. An analysis of Mobile Learning. 2. Differentiating E-Learning from Mobile Learning 3. Value and Benefits of Mobile Learning 4. Challenges and Barriers of M obile Learning: Study showed that M-Learning as a Distance learning brought great benefits to socie ty include : Training when it is needed, Training a t any time; Training at any place; Learner-centred co ntent; Avoidance of re-entry to work problems; Training for taxpayers, and those fully occupied du ring university lectures and sessions at training centres; and The industrialisation of teaching and learning. And also, notebooks, mobile Tablets, iPod touch, and iPads are very popular devices for mobil e learning because of their cost and availability o f apps. --------------------------------


Combining Naive Bayes and Decision Tree for Adaptive Intrusion Detection

In this paper, a new learning algorithm for adaptive network intrusion detection using naive Bayesian classifier and decision tree is presented, which performs balance detections and keeps false positives at acceptable level for different types of network attacks, and eliminates redundant attributes as well as contradictory examples from training data that make the detection model complex. The proposed algorithm also addresses some difficulties of data mining such as handling continuous attribute, dealing with missing attribute values, and reducing noise in training data. Due to the large volumes of security audit data as well as the complex and dynamic properties of intrusion behaviours, several data miningbased intrusion detection techniques have been applied to network-based traffic data and host-based data in the last decades. However, there remain various issues needed to be examined towards current intrusion detection systems (IDS). We tested the performance of our proposed algorithm with existing learning algorithms by employing on the KDD99 benchmark intrusion detection dataset. The experimental results prove that the proposed algorithm achieved high detection rates (DR) and significant reduce false positives (FP) for different types of network intrusions using limited computational resources.


Learning Filter Banks Using Deep Learning For Acoustic Signals

Designing appropriate features for acoustic event recognition tasks is an active field of research. Expressive features should both improve the performance of the tasks and also be interpret-able. Currently, heuristically designed features based on the domain knowledge requires tremendous effort in hand-crafting, while features extracted through deep network are difficult for human to interpret. In this work, we explore the experience guided learning method for designing acoustic features. This is a novel hybrid approach combining both domain knowledge and purely data driven feature designing. Based on the procedure of log Mel-filter banks, we design a filter bank learning layer. We concatenate this layer with a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. After training the network, the weight of the filter bank learning layer is extracted to facilitate the design of acoustic features. We smooth the trained weight of the learning layer and re-initialize it in filter bank learning layer as audio feature extractor. For the environmental sound recognition task based on the Urbansound8K dataset [1], the experience guided learning leads to a 2% accuracy improvement compared with the fixed feature extractors (the log Mel-filter bank). The shape of the new filter banks are visualized and explained to prove the effectiveness of the feature design process.


Improved Algorithm for Intrusion Detection Using Genetic Algorithm and SNORT

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) detects the network attacks by scanning each data packets. There are various approaches were done for making better IDS, though traditional IDS approaches are insufficient in terms of automating detection of attacks as attackers evolved. This research is focused on Genetic Algorithm approach used in Intrusion Detection. This research shows that how the traditional SNORT and Genetic Algorithm combined together so that the number of rules of SNORT is decreased. Experimental results Shows That IDS using Genetic Algorithm and SNORT can decrease the amount of detection time, CPU Utilization and Memory Utilization. Keywords—Genetic Algorithm, SNORT, Fitness Function,


Probabilistic Semantics and Pragmatics: Uncertainty in Language and Thought

Language is used to communicate ideas. Ideas are mental tools for coping with a complex and uncertain world. Thus human conceptual structures should be key to language meaning, and probability—the mathematics of uncertainty— should be indispensable for describing both language and thought. Indeed, probabilistic models are enormously useful in modeling human cognition (Tenenbaum et al., 2011) and aspects of natural language (Bod et al., 2003; Chater et al., 2006). With a few early exceptions (e.g. Adams, 1975; Cohen, 1999b), probabilistic tools have only recently been used in natural language semantics and pragmatics. In this chapter we synthesize several of these modeling advances, exploring a formal model of interpretation grounded, via lexical semantics and pragmatic inference, in conceptual structure. Flexible human cognition is derived in large part from our ability to imagine possibilities (or possible worlds). A rich set of concepts, intuitive theories, and other mental representations support imagining and reasoning about possible worlds—together we will call these the conceptual lexicon. We posit that this collection of concepts also forms the set of primitive elements available for lexical semantics: word meanings can be built from the pieces of conceptual structure. Larger semantic structures are then built from word meanings by composition, ultimately resulting in a sentence meaning which is a phrase in the “language of thought” provided by the conceptual lexicon. This expression is truth-functional in that it takes on a Boolean value for each imagined world, and it can thus be used as the basis for belief updating. However, the connection between cognition, semantics, and belief is not direct: because language must flexibly adapt to the context of communication, the connection between lexical representation and interpreted meaning is mediated by pragmatic inference.


Clinical and symptomatological reflections: the fascial system

Every body structure is wrapped in connective tissue, or fascia, creating a structural continuity that gives form and function to every tissue and organ. Currently, there is still little information on the functions and interactions between the fascial continuum and the body system; unfortunately, in medical literature there are few texts explaining how fascial stasis or altered movement of the various connective layers can generate a clinical problem. Certainly, the fascia plays a significant role in conveying mechanical tension, in order to control an inflammatory environment. The fascial continuum is essential for transmitting muscle force, for correct motor coordination, and for preserving the organs in their site; the fascia is a vital instrument that enables the individual to communicate and live independently. This article considers what the literature offers on symptoms related to the fascial system, trying to connect the existing information on the continuity of the connective tissue and symptoms that are not always clearly defined. In our opinion, knowing and understanding this complex system of fascial layers is essential for the clinician and other health practitioners in finding the best treatment strategy for the patient.


Towards Online-Recognition with Deep Bidirectional LSTM Acoustic Models

Online-Recognition requires the acoustic model to provide posterior probabilities after a limited time delay given the online input audio data. This necessitates unidirectional modeling and the standard solution is to use unidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural networks (RNN) or feedforward neural networks (FFNN). It is known that bidirectional LSTMs are more powerful and perform better than unidirectional LSTMs. To demonstrate the performance difference, we start by comparing several different bidirectional and unidirectional LSTM topologies. Furthermore, we apply a modification to bidirectional RNNs to enable online-recognition by moving a window over the input stream and perform one forwarding through the RNN on each window. Then, we combine the posteriors of each forwarding and we renormalize them. We show in experiments that the performance of this online-enabled bidirectional LSTM performs as good as the offline bidirectional LSTM and much better than the unidirectional LSTM.


A License Plate-Recognition Algorithm for Intelligent Transportation System Applications

In this paper, a new algorithm for vehicle license plate identification is proposed, on the basis of a novel adaptive image segmentation technique (sliding concentric windows) and connected component analysis in conjunction with a character recognition neural network. The algorithm was tested with 1334 natural-scene gray-level vehicle images of different backgrounds and ambient illumination. The camera focused in the plate, while the angle of view and the distance from the vehicle varied according to the experimental setup. The license plates properly segmented were 1287 over 1334 input images (96.5%). The optical character recognition system is a two-layer probabilistic neural network (PNN) with topology 108-180-36, whose performance for entire plate recognition reached 89.1%. The PNN is trained to identify alphanumeric characters from car license plates based on data obtained from algorithmic image processing. Combining the above two rates, the overall rate of success for the license-plate-recognition algorithm is 86.0%. A review in the related literature presented in this paper reveals that better performance (90% up to 95%) has been reported, when limitations in distance, angle of view, illumination conditions are set, and background complexity is low


Semantic Spaces: Measuring the Distance between Different Subspaces

Semantic Space models, which provide a numerical representation of words’ meaning extracted from corpus of documents, have been formalized in terms of Hermitian operators over real valued Hilbert spaces by Bruza et al. [1]. The collapse of a word into a particular meaning has been investigated applying the notion of quantum collapse of superpositional states [2]. While the semantic association between words in a Semantic Space can be computed by means of the Minkowski distance [3] or the cosine of the angle between the vector representation of each pair of words, a new procedure is needed in order to establish relations between two or more Semantic Spaces. We address the question: how can the distance between different Semantic Spaces be computed? By representing each Semantic Space as a subspace of a more general Hilbert space, the relationship between Semantic Spaces can be computed by means of the subspace distance. Such distance needs to take into account the difference in the dimensions between subspaces. The availability of a distance for comparing different Semantic Subspaces would enable to achieve a deeper understanding about the geometry of Semantic Spaces which would possibly translate into better effectiveness in Information Retrieval tasks.


Fracture detection in x-ray images through stacked random forests feature fusion

Bone fractures are among the most common traumas in musculoskeletal injuries. They are also frequently missed during the radiological examination. Thus, there is a need for assistive technologies for radiologists in this field. Previous automatic bone fracture detection work has focused on detection of specific fracture types in a single anatomical region. In this paper, we present a generalized bone fracture detection method that is applicable to multiple bone fracture types and multiple bone structures throughout the body. The method uses features extracted from candidate patches in X-ray images in a novel discriminative learning framework called the Stacked Random Forests Feature Fusion. This is a multilayer learning formulation in which the class probability labels, produced by random forests learners at a lower level, are used to derive the refined class distribution labels at the next level. The candidate patches themselves are selected using an efficient subwindow search algorithm. The outcome of the method is a number of fracture bounding-boxes ranked from the most likely to the least likely to contain a fracture. We evaluate the proposed method on a set of 145 X-rays images. When the top ranking seven fracture bounding-boxes are considered, we are able to capture 81.2% of the fracture findings reported by a radiologist. The proposed method outperforms other fracture detection frameworks that use local features, and single layer random forests and support vector machine classification.


Neural Disambiguation of Causal Lexical Markers Based on Context

Causation is a psychological tool of humans to understand the world and it is projected in natural language. Causation relates two events, so in order to understand the causal relation of those events and the causal reasoning of humans, the study of causality classification is required. We claim that the use of linguistic features may restrict the representation of causality, and dense vector spaces can provide a better encoding of the causal meaning of an utterance. Herein, we propose a neural network architecture only fed with word embeddings for the task of causality classification. Our results show that our claim holds, and we outperform the state-of-the-art on the AltLex corpus. The source code of our experiments is publicly available.1


Chapter 12 DATA MINING IN SOCIAL MEDIA

The rise of online social media is providing a wealth of social network data. Data mining techniques provide researchers and practitioners the tools needed to analyze large, complex, and frequently changing social media data. This chapter introduces the basics of data mining, reviews social media, discusses how to mine social media data, and highlights some illustrative examples with an emphasis on social networking sites and blogs.


The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation, and Applications

Like modal logic, temporal logic, or description logic, separation logic has become a Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications,”. The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications (Franz Baader, Diego Calvanese, Deborah. McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, Peter. To formalize knowledge, we employ various logic-based formalisms, such as The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications.


Attributive Concept Descriptions with Complements

Schmidt-SchaulL M. and G. Smolka, Attributive concept descriptions with complements, Artificial Intelligence 48 (1991) 1-26. We investigate the consequences of adding unions and complements to attributive concept descriptions employed in terminological knowledge representation languages. It is shown that deciding coherence and subsumption of such descriptions are PSPACE-complete problems that can be decided with linear space.


Racer: A Core Inference Engine for the Semantic Web

In this paper we describe Racer, which can be considered as a core inference engine for the semantic web. The Racer inference server offers two APIs that are already used by at least three different network clients, i.e., the ontology editor OilEd, the visualization tool RICE, and the ontology development environment Protege 2. The Racer server supports the standard DIG protocol via HTTP and a TCP based protocol with extensive query facilities. Racer currently supports the web ontology languages DAML+OIL, RDF, and OWL.


The Semantic Web" in Scientific American


Hand Gesture Recognition System

The task of gesture recognition is highly challenging due to complex background, presence of nongesture hand motions, and different illumination environments. In this paper, a new technique is proposed which begins by detecting the hand and determining its canter, tracking the hands trajectory and analyzing the variations in the hand locations, and finally recognizing the gesture. The proposed technique overcomes background complexity and distance from camera which is up to 2.5 meters. Experimental results show that the proposed technique can recognize 12 gestures with rate above 94%. Keywords— Hand gesture recognition, skin detection, Hand tracking.


A review of split-bolus single-pass CT in the assessment of trauma patients

The purpose of this study was to review and compare the image quality and radiation dose of split-bolus single-pass computed tomography(CT) in the assessment of trauma patients in comparison to standard multi-phase CT techniques. An online electronic database was searched using the MESH terms “split-bolus,” “dual phase,” and “single pass.” Inclusion criteria required the research article to compare a split contrast bolus protocol in a single-pass scan in the assessment of trauma patients. Studies using split-bolus CT technique in non-traumatic injury assessment were excluded. Six articles met the inclusion criteria. Parenchymal and vascular image qualities, as well as subjective image quality assessments, were equal or superior in comparison to non-split-bolus multi-phase trauma CT protocols. Split-bolus single-pass CT decreased radiation exposure in all studies. Further research is required to determine the superior split-bolus protocol and the specificity and sensitivity of detecting blunt cerebrovascular injury screening, splenic parenchymal vascular lesions, and characterization of pelvic vascular extravasation.


Dual-Band Microstrip Bandpass Filter Using Stepped-Impedance Resonators With New Coupling Schemes

A microstrip bandpass filter using stepped-impedance resonators is designed in low-temperature co-fired ceramic technology for dual-band applications at 2.4 and 5.2 GHz. New coupling schemes are proposed to replace the normal counterparts. It is found that the new coupling scheme for the interstages can enhance the layout compactness of the bandpass filter; while the new coupling scheme at the input and output can improve the performance of the bandpass filter. To validate the design and analysis, a prototype of the bandpass filter was fabricated and measured. It is shown that the measured and simulated performances are in good agreement. The prototype of the bandpass filter achieved insertion loss of 1.25 and 1.87 dB, S11 of -29 and -40 dB, and bandwidth of 21% and 12.7% at 2.4 and 5.2 GHz, respectively. The bandpass filter is further studied for a single-package solution of dual-band radio transceivers. The bandpass filter is, therefore, integrated into a ceramic ball grid array package. The integration is analyzed with an emphasis on the connection of the bandpass filter to the antenna and to the transceiver die


A Survey on the Security of Stateful SDN Data Planes

Software-defined networking (SDN) emerged as an attempt to introduce network innovations faster, and to radically simplify and automate the management of large networks. SDN traditionally leverages OpenFlow as device-level abstraction. Since OpenFlow permits the programmer to “just” abstract a static flow-table, any stateful control and processing intelligence is necessarily delegated to the network controller. Motivated by the latency and signaling overhead that comes along with such a two-tiered SDN programming model, in the last couple of years several works have proposed innovative switch-level (data plane) programming abstractions capable to deploy some smartness directly inside the network switches, e.g., in the form of localized stateful flow processing. Furthermore, the possible inclusion of states and state maintenance primitives inside the switches is currently being debated in the OpenFlow standardization community itself. In this paper, after having provided the reader with a background on such emerging stateful SDN data plane proposals, we focus our attention on the security implications that data plane programmability brings about. Also via the identification of potential attack scenarios, we specifically highlight possible vulnerabilities specific to stateful in-switch processing (including denial of service and saturation attacks), which we believe should be carefully taken into consideration in the ongoing design of current and future proposals for stateful SDN data planes.


Prosthetic gingival reconstruction in a fixed partial restoration. Part 1: introduction to artificial gingiva as an alternative therapy.

The Class III defect environment entails a vertical and horizontal deficiency in the edentulous ridge. Often, bone and soft tissue surgical procedures fall short of achieving a natural esthetic result. Alternative surgical and restorative protocols for these types of prosthetic gingival restorations are presented in this three-part series, which highlights the diagnostic and treatment aspects as well as the lab and maintenance challenges. A complete philosophical approach involves both a biologic understanding of the limitations of the hard and soft tissue healing process as well as that of multiple adjacent implants in the esthetic zone. These limitations may often necessitate the use of gingiva-colored "pink" restorative materials and essential preemptive planning via three-dimensional computer-aided design/computer-assisted manufacture to achieve the desired esthetic outcome. The present report outlines a rationale for consideration of artificial gingiva when planning dental prostheses. Prosthetic gingiva can overcome the limitations of grafting and should be a consideration in the initial treatment plan. (Int J Periodontics Restorative Dent 2009;29:471-477.).


Car monitoring, alerting and tracking model: Enhancement with mobility and database facilities

Statistics show that the number of cars is increasing rapidly and so is the number of car theft attempts, locally and internationally. Although there are a lot of car security systems that had been produced lately, but the result is still disappointing as the number of car theft cases still increases. The thieves are inventing cleverer and stronger stealing techniques that need more powerful security systems. This project “Car Monitoring and Tracking System” is being proposed to solve the issue. It introduces the integration between monitoring and tracking system. Both elements are very crucial in order to have a powerful security system. The system can send SMS and MMS to the owner to have fast response especially if the car is nearby. This paper focuses on using MMS and database technology, the picture of the intruder will be sent via local GSM/GPRS service provider to user (and/or) police. The Database offers the required information about car and owner, which will help the police or security authorities in their job. Moreover, in the event of theft local police and user can easily track the car using GPS system that can be link to Google Earth and other mapping software. The implementation and testing results show the success of prototype in sending MMS to owner within 40 seconds and receiving acknowledgment to the database (police or security unit) within 4 minutes. The timing and results are suitable to owner and police to take suitable action against intruder.


Data Governance Framework for Big Data Implementation with a Case of Korea

Big Data governance requires a data governance that can satisfy the needs for corporate governance, IT governance, and ITA/EA. While the existing data governance focuses on the processing of structured data, Big Data governance needs to be established in consideration of a broad sense of Big Data services including unstructured data. To achieve the goals of Big Data, strategies need to be established together with goals that are aligned with the vision and objective of an organization. In addition to the preparation of the IT infrastructure, a proper preparation of the components is required to effectively implement the strategy for Big Data services. We propose the Big Data Governance Framework in this paper. The Big Data governance framework presents criteria different from existing criteria at the data quality level. It focuses on timely, reliable, meaningful, and sufficient data services, focusing on what data attributes should be achieved based on the data attributes of Big Data services. In addition to the quality level of Big Data, the personal information protection strategy and the data disclosure/accountability strategy are also needed to achieve goals and to prevent problems. This paper performed case analysis based on the Big Data Governance Framework with the National Pension Service of South Korea. Big Data services in the public sector are an inevitable choice to improve the quality of people's life. Big Data governance and its framework are the essential components for the realization of Big Data service.


Numeric data frames and probabilistic judgments in complex real-world environments

This thesis investigates human probabilistic judgment in complex real-world settings to identify processes underpinning biases across groups which relate to numerical frames and formats. Experiments are conducted replicating real-world environments and data to test judgment performance based on framing and format. Regardless of background skills and experience, people in professional and consumer contexts show a strong tendency to perceive the world from a linear perspective, interpreting information in concrete, absolute terms and making judgments based on seeking and applying linear functions. Whether predicting sales, selecting between financial products, or forecasting refugee camp data, people use minimal cues and systematically apply additive methods amidst non-linear trends and percentage points to yield linear estimates in both rich and sparse informational contexts. Depending on data variability and temporality, human rationality and choice may be significantly helped or hindered by informational framing and format. The findings deliver both theoretical and practical contributions. Across groups and individual differences, the effects of informational format and the tendency to linearly extrapolate are connected by the bias to perceive values in concrete terms and make sense of data by seeking simple referent points. People compare and combine referents using additive methods when inappropriate and adhere strongly to defaults when applied in complex numeric environments. The practical contribution involves a framing manipulation which shows that format biases (i.e., additive processing) and optimism (i.e., associated with intertemporal effects) can be counteracted in judgments involving percentages and exponential growth rates by using absolute formats and positioning defaults in future event context information. This framing manipulation was highly effective in improving loan choice and repayment judgments compared to information in standard finance industry formats. There is a strong potential to increase rationality using this data format manipulation in other financial settings and domains such as health behaviour change in which peoples’ erroneous interpretation of percentages and non-linear relations negatively impact choice and behaviours in both the short and long-term.


A reconfigurable three- and single-phase AC/DC non-isolated bi-directional converter for multiple worldwide voltages

AC/DC converters for worldwide deployment or multiple applications are often required to operate with single-or three-phase AC connections at a variety of voltages. Electric vehicle charging is an excellent example: a typical AC/DC converter optimized for a 400 V three-phase European connection will only produce about 35% of rated power when operating on a 240 V single-phase connection in North America. This paper proposes a reconfigurable AC-DC converter with integral DC-DC stage that allows the single-phase AC power to roughly double compared to a standard configuration, up to 2/3 of the DC/DC stage rating. The system is constructed with two conventional back-to-back three-phase two-level bridges. When operating in single-phase mode, rather than leaving the DC side under-utilized, our proposed design repurposes one of the DC phase legs and the unused AC phase to create two parallel single-phase connections. This roughly doubles the AC output current and hence doubles the single phase AC power.


Instructional video in e-learning: Assessing the impact of interactive video on learning effectiveness

Interactive video in an e-learning system allows proactive and random access to video content. Our empirical study examined the influence of interactive video on learning outcome and learner satisfaction in e-learning environments. Four different settings were studied: three were e-learning environments—with interactive video, with non-interactive video, and without video. The fourth was the traditional classroom environment. Results of the experiment showed that the value of video for learning effectiveness was contingent upon the provision of interactivity. Students in the e-learning environment that provided interactive video achieved significantly better learning performance and a higher level of learner satisfaction than those in other settings. However, students who used the e-learning environment that provided non-interactive video did not improve either. The findings suggest that it may be important to integrate interactive instructional video into e-learning systems. # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


IoT based monitoring and control of appliances for smart home

The recent technology in home automation provides security, safety and comfortable life at home. That is why in the competitive environment and fast world, home automation technology is required for every person. This purposed home automation technology provides smart monitoring and control of the home appliances as well as door permission system for interaction between the visitor and home/office owner. The control and monitoring the status (ON/OFF of the appliances) have been implemented using multiple ways such as The Internet, electrical switch, and Graphical User Interface (GUI) interface. The system has low-cost design, user-friendly interface, and easy installation in home or multi-purpose building. Using this technology, the consumer can reduce the wastage of electrical power by regular monitoring of home appliances or the proper ON/OFF scheduling of the devices.


2.1 28Gb/s 560mW multi-standard SerDes with single-stage analog front-end and 14-tap decision-feedback equalizer in 28nm CMOS

A high-speed SerDes must meet multiple challenges including high-speed operation, intensive equalization technique, low power consumption, small area and robustness. In order to meet new standards, such a OIF CEI-25G-LR, CEI-28G-MR/SR/VSR, IEEE802.3bj and 32G-FC, data-rates are increased to 25 to 28Gb/s, which is more than 75% higher than the previous generation of SerDes. For SerDes applications with several hundreds of lanes integrated in single chip, power consumption is very important factor while maintaining high performance. There are several previous works at 28Gb/s or higher data-rate [1-2]. They use an unrolled DFE to meet the critical timing margin, but the unrolled DFE structure increases the number of DFE slicers, increasing the overall power and die area. In order to tackle these challenges, we introduce several circuits and architectural techniques. The analog front-end (AFE) uses a single-stage architecture and a compact on-chip passive inductor in the transimpedance amplifier (TIA), providing 15dB boost. The boost is adaptive and its adaptation loop is decoupled from the decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) adaptation loop by the use of a group-delay adaptation (GDA) algorithm. DFE has a half-rate 1-tap unrolled structure with 2 total error latches for power and area reduction. A two-stage sense-amplifier-based slicer achieves a sensitivity of 15mV and DFE timing closure. We also develop a high-speed clock buffer that uses a new active-inductor circuit. This active-inductor circuit has the capability to control output-common-mode voltage to optimize circuit operating points.


Understanding Human Motion and Gestures for Underwater Human-Robot Collaboration

In this paper, we present a number of robust methodologies for an underwater robot to visually detect, follow, and interact with a diver for collaborative task execution. We design and develop two autonomous diver-following algorithms, the first of which utilizes both spatialand frequency-domain features pertaining to human swimming patterns in order to visually track a diver. The second algorithm uses a convolutional neural network-based model for robust tracking-by-detection. In addition, we propose a hand gesture-based human-robot communication framework that is syntactically simpler and computationally more efficient than the existing grammar-based frameworks. In the proposed interaction framework, deep visual detectors are used to provide accurate hand gesture recognition; subsequently, a finite-state machine performs robust and efficient gesture-to-instruction mapping. The distinguishing feature of this framework is that it can be easily adopted by divers for communicating with underwater robots without using artificial markers or requiring memorization of complex language rules. Furthermore, we validate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed methodologies through extensive field experiments in closedand open-water environments. Finally, we perform a user interaction study to demonstrate the usability benefits of our proposed interaction framework compared to existing methods.


mTOR regulation of autophagy.

Nutrient starvation induces autophagy in eukaryotic cells through inhibition of TOR (target of rapamycin), an evolutionarily-conserved protein kinase. TOR, as a central regulator of cell growth, plays a key role at the interface of the pathways that coordinately regulate the balance between cell growth and autophagy in response to nutritional status, growth factor and stress signals. Although TOR has been known as a key regulator of autophagy for more than a decade, the underlying regulatory mechanisms have not been clearly understood. This review discusses the recent advances in understanding of the mechanism by which TOR regulates autophagy with focus on mammalian TOR (mTOR) and its regulation of the autophagy machinery.


EyeTell: Video-Assisted Touchscreen Keystroke Inference from Eye Movements

Keystroke inference attacks pose an increasing threat to ubiquitous mobile devices. This paper presents EyeTell, a novel video-assisted attack that can infer a victim's keystrokes on his touchscreen device from a video capturing his eye movements. EyeTell explores the observation that human eyes naturally focus on and follow the keys they type, so a typing sequence on a soft keyboard results in a unique gaze trace of continuous eye movements. In contrast to prior work, EyeTell requires neither the attacker to visually observe the victim's inputting process nor the victim device to be placed on a static holder. Comprehensive experiments on iOS and Android devices confirm the high efficacy of EyeTell for inferring PINs, lock patterns, and English words under various environmental conditions.


Rigid-Foldable Thick Origami

In this paper, a method is proposed for geometrically constructing thick panel structures that follow the kinetic behavior of rigid origami by using tapered or two-ply panels and hinges located at their edges. The proposed method can convert generalized pattern of rigid-foldable origami into thick panels structure with kinetic motion, which leads to novel designs of origami for various engineering purposes including architecture.


Moving ERP Systems to the Cloud-Data Security Issues

This paper brings to light data security issues and concerns for organizations by moving their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to the cloud. Cloud computing has become the new trend of how organizations conduct business and has enabled them to innovate and compete in a dynamic environment through new and innovative business models. The growing popularity and success of the cloud has led to the emergence of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ERP systems, a new alternative approach to traditional on-premise ERP systems. Cloud-based ERP has a myriad of benefits for organizations. However, infrastructure engineers need to address data security issues before moving their enterprise applications to the cloud. Cloud-based ERP raises specific concerns about the confidentiality and integrity of the data stored in the cloud. Such concerns that affect the adoption of cloud-based ERP are based on the size of the organization. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) gain the maximum benefits from cloud-based ERP as many of the concerns around data security are not relevant to them. On the contrary, larger organizations are more cautious in moving their mission critical enterprise applications to the cloud. A hybrid solution where organizations can choose to keep their sensitive applications on-premise while leveraging the benefits of the cloud is proposed in this paper as an effective solution that is gaining momentum and popularity for large organizations.


Implementation of RSA 2048-bit and AES 256-bit with digital signature for secure electronic health record application

This research addresses the implementation of encryption and digital signature technique for electronic health record to prevent cybercrime problem such as robbery, modification and unauthorized access. In this research, RSA 2048-bit algorithm, AES 256-bit and SHA 256 will be implemented in Java programming. Secure Electronic Health Record Information (SEHR) application design is intended to combine given services, such as confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. Cryptography is used to ensure the file records and electronic documents for detailed information on the medical past, present and future forecasts that have been given only for the patients. The document will be encrypted using an encryption algorithm based on NIST Standard. In the application, there are two schemes, namely the protection and verification scheme. This research uses black-box testing and white-box testing to test the software input, output, and code without testing the process and design that occurs in the system. We demonstrated the implementation of cryptography in Secure Electronic Health Record Information (SEHR). The implementation of encryption and digital signature in this research can prevent archive thievery which is shown on implementation and is proven on the test.


An automotive radar network based on 77 GHz FMCW sensors

Automotive radar sensors will be used in many future applications to increase comfort and safety. Adaptive cruise control (ACC), parking aid, collision warning or avoidance and pre crash are some automotive applications, which are based on high performance radar sensors. This paper describes results gained by an European Commission funded research project and a new radar network based on four individual monostatic 77 GHz FMCW radar sensors. Each sensor measures target range and velocity simultaneously and extremely accurate even in multiple target situations with a maximum range of 40 m. The azimuth angle is estimated by multilateration techniques in a radar network architecture. The system design and the signal processing of this network are described in detail in this paper. Due to the high range resolution performance of each radar sensor ordinary targets cannot be considered any longer as point but as extended targets. System capability, performance and reliability can be improved essentially if the single sensor FMCW signal processing, the target position processing in the radar network and the tracking scheme are jointly optimized.


Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science?: a critical review.

This article considers 3 claims that cognitive sex differences account for the differential representation of men and women in high-level careers in mathematics and science: (a) males are more focused on objects from the beginning of life and therefore are predisposed to better learning about mechanical systems; (b) males have a profile of spatial and numerical abilities producing greater aptitude for mathematics; and (c) males are more variable in their cognitive abilities and therefore predominate at the upper reaches of mathematical talent. Research on cognitive development in human infants, preschool children, and students at all levels fails to support these claims. Instead, it provides evidence that mathematical and scientific reasoning develop from a set of biologically based cognitive capacities that males and females share. These capacities lead men and women to develop equal talent for mathematics and science.


Reality mining based on Social Network Analysis

Data Mining is the extraction of hidden predictive information from large databases. The process of discovering interesting, useful, nontrivial patterns from large spatial datasets is called spatial data mining. When time gets associated it becomes spatio temporal data mining. The study of spatio temporal data mining is of great concern for the study of mobile phone sensed data. Reality Mining is defined as the study of human social behavior based on mobile phone sensed data. It is based on the data collected by sensors in mobile phones, security cameras, RFID readers, etc. All allow for the measurement of human physical and social activity. In this paper Netviz, Gephi and Weka tools have been used to convert and analyze the Facebook. Further, analysis of a reality mining dataset is also presented.


Improving Restaurants by Extracting Subtopics from Yelp Reviews

In this paper, we describe latent subtopics discovered from Yelp restaurant reviews by running an online Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm. The goal is to point out demand of customers from a large amount of reviews, with high dimensionality. These topics can provide meaningful insights to restaurants about what customers care about in order to increase their Yelp ratings, which directly affects their revenue. We used the open dataset from the Yelp Dataset Challenge with over 158,000 restaurant reviews. To find latent subtopics from reviews, we adopted Online LDA, a generative probabilistic model for collections of discrete data such as text corpora. We present the breakdown of hidden topics over all reviews, predict stars per hidden topics discovered, and extend our findings to that of temporal information regarding restaurants peak hours. Overall, we have found several interesting insights and a method which could definitely prove useful to restaurant owners.


Ontology Based SMS Controller for Smart Phones

Text analysis includes lexical analysis of the text and has been widely studied and used in diverse applications. In the last decade, researchers have proposed many efficient solutions to analyze / classify large text dataset, however, analysis / classification of short text is still a challenge because 1) the data is very sparse 2) It contains noise words and 3) It is difficult to understand the syntactical structure of the text. Short Messaging Service (SMS) is a text messaging service for mobile/smart phone and this service is frequently used by all mobile users. Because of the popularity of SMS service, marketing companies nowadays are also using this service for direct marketing also known as SMS marketing.In this paper, we have proposed Ontology based SMS Controller which analyze the text message and classify it using ontology aslegitimate or spam. The proposed system has been tested on different scenarios and experimental results shows that the proposed solution is effective both in terms of efficiency and time. Keywords—Short Text Classification; SMS Spam; Text Analysis; Ontology based SMS Spam; Text Analysis and Ontology


BP-STDP: Approximating backpropagation using spike timing dependent plasticity

The problem of training spiking neural networks (SNNs) is a necessary precondition to understanding computations within the brain, a field still in its infancy. Previous work has shown that supervised learning in multi-layer SNNs enables bio-inspired networks to recognize patterns of stimuli through hierarchical feature acquisition. Although gradient descent has shown impressive performance in multi-layer (and deep) SNNs, it is generally not considered biologically plausible and is also computationally expensive. This paper proposes a novel supervised learning approach based on an event-based spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) rule embedded in a network of integrate-and-fire (IF) neurons. The proposed temporally local learning rule follows the backpropagation weight change updates applied at each time step. This approach enjoys benefits of both accurate gradient descent and temporally local, efficient STDP. Thus, this method is able to address some open questions regarding accurate and efficient computations that occur in the brain. The experimental results on the XOR problem, the Iris data, and the MNIST dataset demonstrate that the proposed SNN performs as successfully as the traditional NNs. Our approach also compares favorably with the state-of-the-art multi-layer SNNs.


A Requirements-to-Implementation Mapping Tool for Requirements Traceability

Software quality is a major concern in software engineering, particularly when we are dealing with software services that must be available 24 hours a day, please the customer and be kept permanently. In software engineering, requirements management is one of the most important tasks that can influence the success of a software project. Maintain traceability information is a fundamental aspect in software engineering and can facilitate the process of software development and maintenance. This information can be used to support various activities such as analyzing the impact of changes and software verification and validation. However, traceability techniques are mainly used between requirements and software test cases. This paper presents a prototype of a tool that supports the mapping of functional requirements with the pages and HTML elements of a web site. This tool helps maintaining requirements traceability information updated and, ultimately, increasing the efficiency of requirements change management, which may contribute to the overall quality of the software service.


Neuroevolution: from architectures to learning

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are applied to many real-world problems, ranging from pattern classification to robot control. In order to design a neural network for a particular task, the choice of an architecture (including the choice of a neuron model), and the choice of a learning algorithm have to be addressed. Evolutionary search methods can provide an automatic solution to these problems. New insights in both neuroscience and evolutionary biology have led to the development of increasingly powerful neuroevolution techniques over the last decade. This paper gives an overview of the most prominent methods for evolving ANNs with a special focus on recent advances in the synthesis of learning architectures.


Genetic programming - on the programming of computers by means of natural selection

Page ii Complex Adaptive Systems John H. Holland, Christopher Langton, and Stewart W. Wilson, advisors Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press edition John H. Holland Toward a Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life edited by Francisco J. Varela and Paul Bourgine Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection John R. Koza


Survey of Neural Transfer Functions

The choice of transfer functions may strongly influence complexity and performance of neural networks. Although sigmoidal transfer functions are the most common there is no a priori reason why models based on such functions should always provide optimal decision borders. A large number of alternative transfer functions has been described in the literature. A taxonomy of activation and output functions is proposed, and advantages of various non-local and local neural transfer functions are discussed. Several less-known types of transfer functions and new combinations of activation/output functions are described. Universal transfer functions, parametrized to change from localized to delocalized type, are of greatest interest. Other types of neural transfer functions discussed here include functions with activations based on nonEuclidean distance measures, bicentral functions, formed from products or linear combinations of pairs of sigmoids, and extensions of such functions making rotations of localized decision borders in highly dimensional spaces practical. Nonlinear input preprocessing techniques are briefly described, offering an alternative way to change the shapes of decision borders.


Back propagation neural network with adaptive differential evolution algorithm for time series forecasting

The back propagation neural network (BPNN) can easily fall into the local minimum point in time series forecasting. A hybrid approach that combines the adaptive differential evolution (ADE) algorithm with BPNN, called ADE–BPNN, is designed to improve the forecasting accuracy of BPNN. ADE is first applied to search for the global initial connection weights and thresholds of BPNN. Then, BPNN is employed to thoroughly search for the optimal weights and thresholds. Two comparative real-life series data sets are used to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the hybrid method. The proposed ADE–BPNN can effectively improve forecasting accuracy relative to basic BPNN, autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA), and other hybrid models. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


A Hypercube-Based Encoding for Evolving Large-Scale Neural Networks

Research in neuroevolutionthat is, evolving artificial neural networks (ANNs) through evolutionary algorithmsis inspired by the evolution of biological brains, which can contain trillions of connections. Yet while neuroevolution has produced successful results, the scale of natural brains remains far beyond reach. This article presents a method called hypercube-based NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (HyperNEAT) that aims to narrow this gap. HyperNEAT employs an indirect encoding called connective compositional pattern-producing networks (CPPNs) that can produce connectivity patterns with symmetries and repeating motifs by interpreting spatial patterns generated within a hypercube as connectivity patterns in a lower-dimensional space. This approach can exploit the geometry of the task by mapping its regularities onto the topology of the network, thereby shifting problem difficulty away from dimensionality to the underlying problem structure. Furthermore, connective CPPNs can represent the same connectivity pattern at any resolution, allowing ANNs to scale to new numbers of inputs and outputs without further evolution. HyperNEAT is demonstrated through visual discrimination and food-gathering tasks, including successful visual discrimination networks containing over eight million connections. The main conclusion is that the ability to explore the space of regular connectivity patterns opens up a new class of complex high-dimensional tasks to neuroevolution.


On code reuse from StackOverflow: An exploratory study on Android apps

Context: Source code reuse has been widely accepted as a fundamental activity in software development. Recent studies showed that StackOverflow has emerged as one of the most popular resources for code reuse. Therefore, a plethora of work proposed ways to optimally ask questions, search for answers and find relevant code on StackOverflow. However, little work studies the impact of code reuse from Stack-


CFGAN: A Generic Collaborative Filtering Framework based on Generative Adversarial Networks

Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have achieved big success in various domains such as image generation, music generation, and natural language generation. In this paper, we propose a novel GAN-based collaborative filtering (CF) framework to provide higher accuracy in recommendation. We first identify a fundamental problem of existing GAN-based methods in CF and highlight it quantitatively via a series of experiments. Next, we suggest a new direction of vector-wise adversarial training to solve the problem and propose our GAN-based CF framework, called CFGAN, based on the direction. We identify a unique challenge that arises when vector-wise adversarial training is employed in CF. We then propose three CF methods realized on top of our CFGAN that are able to address the challenge. Finally, via extensive experiments on real-world datasets, we validate that vector-wise adversarial training employed in CFGAN is really effective to solve the problem of existing GAN-based CF methods. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our proposed CF methods on CFGAN provide recommendation accuracy consistently and universally higher than those of the state-of-the-art recommenders.


A Tale of Two Data-Intensive Paradigms: Applications, Abstractions, and Architectures

Scientific problems that depend on processing largeamounts of data require overcoming challenges in multiple areas:managing large-scale data distribution, co-placement andscheduling of data with compute resources, and storing and transferringlarge volumes of data. We analyze the ecosystems of thetwo prominent paradigms for data-intensive applications, hereafterreferred to as the high-performance computing and theApache-Hadoop paradigm. We propose a basis, common terminologyand functional factors upon which to analyze the two approachesof both paradigms. We discuss the concept of "Big DataOgres" and their facets as means of understanding and characterizingthe most common application workloads found acrossthe two paradigms. We then discuss the salient features of thetwo paradigms, and compare and contrast the two approaches.Specifically, we examine common implementation/approaches ofthese paradigms, shed light upon the reasons for their current"architecture" and discuss some typical workloads that utilizethem. In spite of the significant software distinctions, we believethere is architectural similarity. We discuss the potential integrationof different implementations, across the different levelsand components. Our comparison progresses from a fully qualitativeexamination of the two paradigms, to a semi-quantitativemethodology. We use a simple and broadly used Ogre (K-meansclustering), characterize its performance on a range of representativeplatforms, covering several implementations from bothparadigms. Our experiments provide an insight into the relativestrengths of the two paradigms. We propose that the set of Ogreswill serve as a benchmark to evaluate the two paradigms alongdifferent dimensions.


Towards a Self-Organized Agent-Based Simulation Model for Exploration of Human Synaptic Connections

In this paper, the early design of our selforganized agent-based simulation model for exploration of synaptic connections that faithfully generates what is observed in natural situation is given. While we take inspiration from neuroscience, our intent is not to create a veridical model of processes in neurodevelopmental biology, nor to represent a real biological system. Instead, our goal is to design a simulation model that learns acting in the same way of human nervous system by using findings on human subjects using reflex methodologies in order to estimate unknown connections.


BIM: An integrated model for planned and preventive maintenance of architectural heritage

Modern digital technologies give us great possibilities to organize knowledge about constructions, regarding multidisciplinary fields like preservation, conservation and valorization of our architectural heritage, in order to suggest restoration projects and related work, or to suppose a planned preventive maintenance. New procedures to archive, analyze and manage architectural information find a natural support in 3D model, thanks to the development of capacities of new modeling software. Moreover, if the model contains or interfaces with a heterogeneous archive of information, as it is for BIM, this model can be considered as the bases of critical studies, projects of restoration, heritage maintenance, integrated management, protection, and valorization, and evaluation of economic aspects, management and planning, that can flow into a planned preventive maintenance [1]. The aspect that limit the use of BIM technology is the set up parametric object library inside programs: the standardized level of these objects deals difficulty with survey and restoration issues, where each single element has its own historical and architectural characterization [2]. From this foreword, the goal of this research is more evident: the possibilities of using BIM modeling to the existing constructions and cultural heritage, as a support for the construction and management of a Plan for planned preventive maintenance.


Energy Efficient Smartphone-Based Activity Recognition using Fixed-Point Arithmetic

In this paper we propose a novel energy efficient approach for the recognition of human activities using smartphones as wearable sensing devices, targeting assisted living applications such as remote patient activity monitoring for the disabled and the elderly. The method exploits fixed-point arithmetic to propose a modified multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) learning algorithm, allowing to better preserve the smartphone battery lifetime with respect to the conventional floating-point based formulation while maintaining comparable system accuracy levels. Experiments show comparative results between this approach and the traditional SVM in terms of recognition performance and battery consumption, highlighting the advantages of the proposed method.


Design for reliability of power electronics modules

0026-2714/$ see front matter 2009 Published by doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2009.07.055 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0)20 8331 8660 E-mail address: c.bailey@gre.ac.uk (C. Bailey). Power electronics uses semiconductor technology to convert and control electrical power. Demands for efficient energy management, conversion and conservation, and the increasing take-up of electronics in transport systems has resulted in tremendous growth in the use of power electronics devices such as Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT’s). The packaging of power electronics devices involves a number of challenges for the design engineer in terms of reliability. For example, IGBT modules will contain a number of semiconductor dies within a small footprint bonded to substrates with aluminum wires and wide area solder joints. To a great extent, the reliability of the package will depend on the thermo-mechanical behavior of these materials. This paper details a physics of failure approach to reliability predictions of IGBT modules. It also illustrates the need for a probabilistic approach to reliability predictions that include the effects of design variations. Also discussed are technologies for predicting the remaining life of the package when subjected to qualification stresses or in service stresses using prognostics methods. 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.


A Real-time Inversion Attack on the GMR-2 Cipher Used in the Satellite Phones

The GMR-2 cipher is a kind of stream cipher currently being used in some Inmarsat satellite phones. It has been proven that such cipher can be cracked using only one frame known keystream but with a moderate executing times. In this paper, we present a new thorough security analysis of the GMR-2 cipher. We first study the inverse properties and the relationship of the cipher’s components to reveal a bad one-way character of the cipher. Then by introducing a new concept called “valid key chain” according to the cipher’s key schedule, we for the first time propose a real-time inversion attack using one frame keystream. This attack contains three phases: (1) table generation (2) dynamic table looks-up, filtration and combination (3) verification. Our analysis shows that, using the proposed attack, the exhaustive search space for the 64-bit encryption key can be reduced to about 2 when one frame (15 bytes) keystream is available. Compared with previous known attacks, this inversion attack is much more efficient. Finally, the proposed attack are carried out on a 3.3GHz platform, and the experimental results demonstrate that the 64-bit encryption-key could be recovered in around 0.02s on average.


Review on virtual synchronous generator (VSG) for enhancing performance of microgrid

Increasing penetration level of Distributed Generators (DGs)/ Renewable energy sources (RES) creates low inertia problems, damping effect on grid dynamic performance and stability. Voltage rise by reverse power from PV generations, excessive supply of electricity in the grid due to full generation of the DGs, power fluctuations due to variable nature of Renewable energy sources, and degradation of frequency regulation can be considered as some negative results of mentioned hurdle. For securing such a grid there should add inertia, virtually. The proposed control approach based on an inverter connected in Microgrid, which operated as a virtual synchronous generator (VSG) reacting only in transitory situations. Super capacitor (SC), an energy storage system (ESS) included in MG-forming inverter i.e., a normal inverter structure used for contributing system robustness and reliability. In steady-state load distributed between the MG-supporting inverter are achieved with two restoration controllers for active and reactive powers. The virtual inertia hypothesis can be used for maintaining a large share of DGs in future grids without affect system stability. This proposed system analyzed and simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK.


Predicting short-term interests using activity-based search context

A query considered in isolation offers limited information about a searcher's intent. Query context that considers pre-query activity (e.g., previous queries and page visits), can provide richer information about search intentions. In this paper, we describe a study in which we developed and evaluated user interest models for the current query, its context (from pre-query session activity), and their combination, which we refer to as intent. Using large-scale logs, we evaluate how accurately each model predicts the user's short-term interests under various experimental conditions. In our study we: (i) determine the extent of opportunity for using context to model intent; (ii) compare the utility of different sources of behavioral evidence (queries, search result clicks, and Web page visits) for building predictive interest models, and; (iii) investigate optimally combining the query and its context by learning a model that predicts the context weight for each query. Our findings demonstrate significant opportunity in leveraging contextual information, show that context and source influence predictive accuracy, and show that we can learn a near-optimal combination of the query and context for each query. The findings can inform the design of search systems that leverage contextual information to better understand, model, and serve searchers' information needs.


A 280-KBytes Twin-Bit-Cell Embedded NOR Flash Memory With a Novel Sensing Current Protection Enhanced Technique and High-Voltage Generating Systems

A novel sensing current protection enhanced (SCPE) technique and high-voltage (HV) generating systems are adopted to greatly enhance the advantages of the twin-bit cell. The SCPE technique provides the tradeoff of sensing margin loss between “1” and “0” bits sensing case to realize fast read access. The read speed is improved by 7.7%. HV generating systems with parallel-series-transform and capacitance-shared techniques are proposed to satisfy the complicated requirements of output capability and current drivability with lower area penalty. The HV periphery area decreases by 71%. A 1.5-V 280-KBytes embedded NOR flash memory IP has been fabricated in HHGrace (Shanghai Huahong Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation) 90-nm 4 poly 4 metal CMOS process. The complicated operation voltages and access time of 23.5 ns have been achieved at 1.5 V. The die size of the proposed IP is 0.437 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and the area size of charge pump has been reduced to 0.006 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> on average.


A survey of methods for data fusion and system adaptation using autonomic nervous system responses in physiological computing

Physiological computing represents a mode of human–computer interaction where the computer monitors, analyzes and responds to the user’s psychophysiological activity in real-time. Within the field, autonomic nervous system responses have been studied extensively since they can be measured quickly and unobtrusively. However, despite a vast body of literature available on the subject, there is still no universally accepted set of rules that would translate physiological data to psychological states. This paper surveys the work performed on data fusion and system adaptation using autonomic nervous system responses in psychophysiology and physiological computing during the last ten years. First, five prerequisites for data fusion are examined: psychological model selection, training set preparation, feature extraction, normalization and dimension reduction. Then, different methods for either classification or estimation of psychological states from the extracted features are presented and compared. Finally, implementations of system adaptation are reviewed: changing the system that the user is interacting with in response to cognitive or affective information inferred from autonomic nervous system responses. The paper is aimed primarily at psychologists and computer scientists who have already recorded autonomic nervous system responses and now need to create algorithms to determine the subject’s psychological state. 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. All rights reserved.


Review: Graph Databases

This paper covers NOSQL databases. With the increase in net users and applications it is important to understand graph databases, the future of tomorrow’s data storage and management. Basic architecture of some graph databases has been discussed to know their working and how data is stored in the form of nodes and relationships. KeywordsNOSQL databases, Neo4j, JENA, DEX, InfoGrid, FlockDB.


Differential effects of atomoxetine on executive functioning and lexical decision in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and reading disorder.

OBJECTIVE
The effects of a promising pharmacological treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), atomoxetine, were studied on executive functions in both ADHD and reading disorder (RD) because earlier research demonstrated an overlap in executive functioning deficits in both disorders. In addition, the effects of atomoxetine were explored on lexical decision.

METHODS
Sixteen children with ADHD, 20 children with ADHD + RD, 21 children with RD, and 26 normal controls were enrolled in a randomized placebo-controlled crossover study. Children were measured on visuospatial working memory, inhibition, and lexical decision on the day of randomization and following two 28-day medication periods.

RESULTS
Children with ADHD + RD showed improved visuospatial working memory performance and, to a lesser extent, improved inhibition following atomoxetine treatment compared to placebo. No differential effects of atomoxetine were found for lexical decision in comparison to placebo. In addition, no effects of atomoxetine were demonstrated in the ADHD and RD groups.

CONCLUSION
Atomoxetine improved visuospatial working memory and to a lesser degree inhibition in children with ADHD + RD, which suggests differential developmental pathways for co-morbid ADHD + RD as compared to ADHD and RD alone.

CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRY
B4Z-MC-LYCK, NCT00191906; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00191906.


Gradient Regularization Improves Accuracy of Discriminative Models

Regularizing the gradient norm of the output of a neural network with respect to its inputs is a powerful technique, rediscovered several times. This paper presents evidence that gradient regularization can consistently improve classification accuracy on vision tasks, using modern deep neural networks, especially when the amount of training data is small. We introduce our regularizers as members of a broader class of Jacobian-based regularizers. We demonstrate empirically on real and synthetic data that the learning process leads to gradients controlled beyond the training points, and results in solutions that generalize well.


A robust data scaling algorithm to improve classification accuracies in biomedical data

Machine learning models have been adapted in biomedical research and practice for knowledge discovery and decision support. While mainstream biomedical informatics research focuses on developing more accurate models, the importance of data preprocessing draws less attention. We propose the Generalized Logistic (GL) algorithm that scales data uniformly to an appropriate interval by learning a generalized logistic function to fit the empirical cumulative distribution function of the data. The GL algorithm is simple yet effective; it is intrinsically robust to outliers, so it is particularly suitable for diagnostic/classification models in clinical/medical applications where the number of samples is usually small; it scales the data in a nonlinear fashion, which leads to potential improvement in accuracy. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we conducted experiments on 16 binary classification tasks with different variable types and cover a wide range of applications. The resultant performance in terms of area under the receiver operation characteristic curve (AUROC) and percentage of correct classification showed that models learned using data scaled by the GL algorithm outperform the ones using data scaled by the Min-max and the Z-score algorithm, which are the most commonly used data scaling algorithms. The proposed GL algorithm is simple and effective. It is robust to outliers, so no additional denoising or outlier detection step is needed in data preprocessing. Empirical results also show models learned from data scaled by the GL algorithm have higher accuracy compared to the commonly used data scaling algorithms.


Compliance with Information Security Policies: An Empirical Investigation

Information security was the main topic in this paper. An investigation of the compliance to information security policies were discussed. The author mentions that the insignificant relationship between rewards and actual compliance with information security policies does not make sense. Quite possibly this relationship results from not applying rewards for security compliance. Also mentions that based on the survey conducted, careless employee behavior places an organization's assets and reputation in serious jeopardy. The major threat to information security arises from careless employees who fail to comply with organizations' information security policies and procedures.


Fisher Discrimination Dictionary Learning for sparse representation

Sparse representation based classification has led to interesting image recognition results, while the dictionary used for sparse coding plays a key role in it. This paper presents a novel dictionary learning (DL) method to improve the pattern classification performance. Based on the Fisher discrimination criterion, a structured dictionary, whose dictionary atoms have correspondence to the class labels, is learned so that the reconstruction error after sparse coding can be used for pattern classification. Meanwhile, the Fisher discrimination criterion is imposed on the coding coefficients so that they have small within-class scatter but big between-class scatter. A new classification scheme associated with the proposed Fisher discrimination DL (FDDL) method is then presented by using both the discriminative information in the reconstruction error and sparse coding coefficients. The proposed FDDL is extensively evaluated on benchmark image databases in comparison with existing sparse representation and DL based classification methods.


More on the fragility of performance: choking under pressure in mathematical problem solving.

In 3 experiments, the authors examined mathematical problem solving performance under pressure. In Experiment 1, pressure harmed performance on only unpracticed problems with heavy working memory demands. In Experiment 2, such high-demand problems were practiced until their answers were directly retrieved from memory. This eliminated choking under pressure. Experiment 3 dissociated practice on particular problems from practice on the solution algorithm by imposing a high-pressure test on problems practiced 1, 2, or 50 times each. Infrequently practiced high-demand problems were still performed poorly under pressure, whereas problems practiced 50 times each were not. These findings support distraction theories of choking in math, which contrasts with considerable evidence for explicit monitoring theories of choking in sensorimotor skills. This contrast suggests a skill taxonomy based on real-time control structures.


The Effects of Interaction Goals on Negotiation Tactics and Outcomes: A Dyad-Level Analysis Across Two Cultures

This study investigates how negotiators’ interaction goals influence their own and their counterparts’ negotiation tactics and outcomes across two cultures using a simulated employment contract negotiation. Results show that when negotiators placed greater importance on competitive goals, they used more distributive persuasion and fewer priority information exchange tactics, which reduced their counterparts’ profit; negotiators’ competitive goals also caused their counterparts to use fewer priority information exchange tactics, which in turn hurt their own profit. Dyad members’ competitive goals have an indirect, negative impact on joint profit. In addition, Chinese negotiators placed greater importance on competitive goals and used more distributive and fewer integrative tactics than Americans, but the associations between goals and tactics did not differ across cultures. Nevertheless, members of the two cultures took different paths to improve joint profit; as a result, Chinese dyads achieved no less joint profit than American dyads. The study sheds light on culture’s effect on the interactive processes by which goals impact negotiation performance.


Solving job-shop scheduling problems by genetic algorithm

Job-shop Scheduling Problem (JSP) is one of extremely hard problems because it requires very large combinatorial search space and the precedence constraint between machines. The traditional algorithm used to solve the problem is the branch-andbound method, which takes considerable computing time when the size of problem is large. W e propose a new method for solving JSP using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and demonstrate its efficiency by the standard benchmark of job-shop scheduling problems. Some important points of G A are how t o represent the schedules as an individuals and to design the genetic operators for the representation in order t o produce better results.


Detection of ulcerative colitis severity in colonoscopy video frames

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by periods of relapses and remissions affecting more than 500,000 people in the United States. The therapeutic goals of UC are to first induce and then maintain disease remission. However, it is very difficult to evaluate the severity of UC objectively because of non-uniform nature of symptoms associated with UC, and large variations in their patterns. To address this, we objectively measure and classify the severity of UC presented in optical colonoscopy video frames based on the image textures. To extract distinct textures, we are using a hybrid approach in which a new proposed feature based on the accumulation of pixel value differences is combined with an existing feature such as LBP (Local Binary Pattern). The experimental results show the hybrid method can achieve more than 90% overall accuracy.


Finding surprising patterns in a time series database in linear time and space

The problem of finding a specified pattern in a time series database (i.e. query by content) has received much attention and is now a relatively mature field. In contrast, the important problem of enumerating all surprising or interesting patterns has received far less attention. This problem requires a meaningful definition of "surprise", and an efficient search technique. All previous attempts at finding surprising patterns in time series use a very limited notion of surprise, and/or do not scale to massive datasets. To overcome these limitations we introduce a novel technique that defines a pattern surprising if the frequency of its occurrence differs substantially from that expected by chance, given some previously seen data.


Everyday Life Information Seeking : Approaching Information Seeking in the Context of “ Way of Life ”

The study offers a framework for the study of everyday life information seeking (ELIS) in the context of way of and mastery of life.Way of life is defined as the “order of things,” manifesting itself, for example, in the relationship between work and leisure time, models of consumption, and nature of hobbies. Mastery of life is interpreted as “keeping things in order; ” four ideal types of mastery of life with their implications for ELIS, namely optimistic-cognitive, pessimistic-cognitive, defensiveaffective and pessimistic-affective mastery of life are outlined. The article reviews two major dimensions of ELIS, there are. the seeking of orienting and practical information. The research framework was tested in an empirical study based on interviews with teachers and industrial workers, eleven of both. The main features of seeking orienting and practical information are reviewed, followed by suggestions for refinement of the research framework.


Ultra-wideband antipodal vivaldi antenna array with Wilkinson power divider feeding network

In this paper, a two element antipodal Vivaldi antenna array in combination with an ultra-wideband (UWB) Wilkinson power divider feeding network is presented. The antennas are placed in a stacked configuration to provide more gain and to limit cross talk between transmit and receive antennas in radar applications. Each part can be realized with standard planar technology. For a single antenna element, a comparison in performance is done between standard FR4 and a Rogers® RO3003 substrate. The antenna spacing is obtained using the parametric optimizer of CST MWS®. The performance of the power divider and the antenna array is analyzed by means of simulations and measurements.


The Vivaldi Aerial

The Vivaldi Aerial is a new member of the class of aperiodic continuously scaled antenna structures and, as such, it has theoretically unlimited instantaneous frequency bandwidth. This aerial has significant gain and linear polarisation and can be made to conform to a constant gain vs. frequency performance. One such design has been made with approximately 10 dBI gain and ¿20 dB sidelobe level over an instantaneous frequency bandwidth extending from below 2 GHz to above 40 GHz.


Ultra-wideband Vivaldi arrays for see-through-wall imaging radar applications

Two Vivaldi antenna arrays have been presented. First is an 8-element tapered slot array covering 1.2 to 4 GHz band for STW applications for brick/concrete wall imaging. Second is a 16-element antipodal array operating at 8 to 10.6 GHz for high resolution imaging when penetrating through dry wall. Based on the two designs, and utilizing a smooth wide band slot to microstrip transition to feed the Vivaldi antenna array, a 1–10 GHz frequency band can be covered. Alternatively, the design can be used in a reconfigurable structure to cover either a 1–3 GHz or 8–10 GHz band. Experimental and measured results have been completed and will be discussed in detail. The designs will significantly impact the development of compact reconfigurable and portable systems.


Analysis of Ultra Wideband Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna Design

The characteristics of antipodal Vivaldi antennas with different structures and the key factors that affect the performance of the antipodal antennas have been investigated. The return loss, radiation pattern and current distribution with various elliptical loading sizes, opening rates and ground plane sizes have been analyzed and compared using full wave simulation tool. Based on the parameter study, a design that is capable of achieving a bandwidth from 2.1 GHz to 20 GHz has been identified.


A 324-Element Vivaldi Antenna Array for Radio Astronomy Instrumentation

This paper presents a 324-element 2-D broadside array for radio astronomy instrumentation which is sensitive to two mutually orthogonal polarizations. The array is composed of cruciform units consisting of a group of four Vivaldi antennas arranged in a cross-shaped structure. The Vivaldi antenna used in this array exhibits a radiation intensity characteristic with a symmetrical main beam of 87.5° at 3 GHz and 44.2° at 6 GHz. The measured maximum side/backlobe level is 10.3 dB below the main beam level. The array can operate at a high frequency of 5.4 GHz without the formation of grating lobes.


Finger printing on the web

Nowadays, companies such as Google [1] and Facebook [2] are present on most websites either through advertising services or through social plugins. They follow users around the web collecting information to create unique user profiles. This serious threat to privacy is a major cause for concern, as this reveals that there are no restrictions on the type of information that can be collected, the duration it can be stored, the people who can access it and the purpose of use or misuse. In order to determine if there indeed is any statistically significant evidence that fingerprinting occurs on certain web services, we integrated 2 software namely, FPBlock [6], a prototype browser extension that blocks web-based device fingerprinting, and AdFisher [10], an automated tool that sending out thousands of automated Web browser instances, in such a manner so that the data collected by FP-Block could be fed to AdFisher for analysis.


Cloud-assisted body area networks: state-of-the-art and future challenges

Body Area Networks (BANs) are emerging as enabling technology for many human-centered application domains such as health-care, sport, fitness, wellness, ergonomics, emergency, safety, security, and sociality. A BAN, which basically consists of wireless wearable sensor nodes usually coordinated by a static or mobile device, is mainly exploited to monitor single assisted livings. Data generated by a BAN can be processed in real-time by the BAN coordinator and/or transmitted to a server-side for online/offline processing and long-term storing. A network of BANs worn by a community of people produces large amount of contextual data that require a scalable and efficient approach for elaboration and storage. Cloud computing can provide a flexible storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of body sensor data streams. In this paper, we motivate the introduction of Cloud-assisted BANs along with the main challenges that need to be addressed for their development and management. The current state-of-the-art is overviewed and framed according to the main requirements for effective Cloud-assisted BAN architectures. Finally, relevant open research issues in terms of efficiency, scalability, security, interoperability, prototyping, dynamic deployment and management, are discussed.


Visual and Infrared Sensor Data-Based Obstacle Detection for the Visually Impaired Using the Google Project Tango Tablet Development Kit and the Unity Engine

A novel visual and infrared sensor data-based system to assist visually impaired users in detecting obstacles in their path while independently navigating indoors is presented. The system has been developed for the recently introduced Google Project Tango Tablet Development Kit equipped with a powerful graphics processor and several sensors which allow it to track its motion and orientation in 3-D space in real-time. It exploits the inbuilt functionalities of the Unity engine in the Tango SDK to create a 3-D reconstruction of the surrounding environment, then associates a Unity collider component with the user and utilizes it to determine his interaction with the reconstructed mesh in order to detect obstacles. The user is warned about any detected obstacles via audio alerts. An extensive empirical evaluation of the obstacle detection component has yielded favorable results, thus, confirming the potential of this system for future development work.


BioGlass: Physiological parameter estimation using a head-mounted wearable device

This work explores the feasibility of using sensors embedded in Google Glass, a head-mounted wearable device, to measure physiological signals of the wearer. In particular, we develop new methods to use Glass's accelerometer, gyroscope, and camera to extract pulse and respiratory rates of 12 participants during a controlled experiment. We show it is possible to achieve a mean absolute error of 0.83 beats per minute (STD: 2.02) for heart rate and 1.18 breaths per minute (STD: 2.04) for respiration rate when considering different combinations of sensors. These results included testing across sitting, supine, and standing still postures before and after physical exercise.


Monocular Depth Estimation: A Survey

Monocular depth estimation is often described as an illposed and inherently ambiguous problem. Estimating depth from 2D images is a crucial step in scene reconstruction, 3D object recognition, segmentation, and detection. The problem can be framed as: given a single RGB image as input, predict a dense depth map for each pixel. This problem is worsened by the fact that most scenes have large texture and structural variations, object occlusions, and rich geometric detailing. All these factors contribute to difficulty in accurate depth estimation. In this paper, we review five papers that attempt to solve the depth estimation problem with various techniques including supervised, weakly-supervised, and unsupervised learning techniques. We then compare these papers and understand the improvements made over one another. Finally, we explore potential improvements that can aid to better solve this problem.