VoiceXML dialog system of the multimodal IP-Telephony—The application for voice ordering service

The development of IP-Telephony in recent years has been substantial. The improvement in voice quality, the integration between voice and data, especially the interaction with multimedia has made the 3G communication more promising. The value added services of Telephony techniques alleviate the dependence on the phone and provide a universal platform for the multimodal telephony applications. For example, the web-based application with VoiceXML has been developed to simplify the human–machine interaction because it takes the advantage of the speech-enabled services and makes the telephone-web access a reality. However, it is not cost-efficient to build voice only stand-alone web application and is more reasonable that voice interfaces should be retrofitted to be compatible or collaborate with the existing HTML or XML-based web applications. Therefore, this paper considers that the functionality of the web service should enable multiple access modalities so that users can perceive and interact with the site in either visual or speech response simultaneously. Under this principle, our research develops a prototype system of multimodal VoIP with the integrated web-based Mandarin dialog system which adopts automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), VoiceXML browser, and VoIP technologies to create user friendly graphic user interface (GUI) and voice user interface (VUI). The users can use traditional telephone, cellular phone, or even VoIP connection via personal computer to interact with the VoiceXML server. In the mean time, the users browse the web and access the same content with common HTML or XML-based browser. The proposed system shows excellent performance and can be easily incorporated into voice ordering service for a wider accessibility.     

The User Pre-Occupancy Evaluation Method in designer–client communication in early design stage: A case study

The interaction between designers and clients is continuous during the briefing and architectural design stage. The efficiency of the interaction process may be decreased due to the limited experience of clients, such as the limited capacity in understanding drawings or reviewing design solutions. A User Pre-Occupancy Evaluation Method (UPOEM) was developed to enhance the designer–client communication by applying building information modeling, user activity simulation, and requirement management techniques. A case study is used to apply the UPOEM to verify the practical implementation in a real project and from which a comparative experimental study and questionnaire survey were conducted. The findings indicate that the UPOEM can help generate more suggestions for improving design solution during designer–client communication compared with traditional approach. It can also enhance the clients' understanding of the future built environment as well as their willingness in collaborative working with designers at the early design stage.     

重型锻压机刚柔耦合系统动力学分析

为对锻压装备优化设计、制造、故障诊断提供理论依据,采用刚柔耦合动力学模型,以315t液压机实验平台为研究对象,研究其动力学性能。基于有限元模态分析,得出了预应力结构的工程意义。应用动力学分析软件ADAMS,提出了创建液压机刚柔耦合模型的研究方法,揭示了系统动力学特性与时变负载的关系。数值仿真结果表明:预应力结构能够有效地增加系统刚度,减小结构弹性变形;同时,平衡系统能够显著地降低偏载的不利影响。     

Electronic structure of MoO3−x/graphene interface

The interfacial electronic structure of MoO_3−x/graphene has been investigated using photoemission spectroscopy. The experimental data showed that upon deposition of MoO_3−x, the Fermi level of graphene shifts downward gradually from its Dirac point due to the p-type doping effect. From the Fermi level shift of −0.28 eV, the hole density of graphene was estimated to be 5.44 × 10¹² cm⁻². The formation of surface negative dipole due to electron transfer from graphene to the deposited MoO_3−x films increased the sample′s work function. The existence of gap states in MoO_3−x induced by oxygen vacancies greatly reduced the hole injection barrier at the MoO_3−x/graphene interface.     

Post-Northridge connections with slit dampers to enhance strength and ductility

In 1994 and 1995, Northridge and Kobe earthquakes caused unexpected damages to beam-to-column connections which were followed by extensive investigations on the connections' behavior to resolve problems in their performance and to improve their strength and ductility. During these years methods were proposed by researchers which were mainly based on reducing the beam section or strengthening the connection. Adding slit dampers at the top and bottom of the beam flanges plates is another way to improve the connection behavior. These dampers are able to absorb and dissipate a significant amount of energy. Slit dampers caused a remarkable reduction in the plastic strain at the column face area and consequently kept plastic hinge formation away from the column face. In this study a total of 8 small slit dampers were used at the column face area. To find out best configuration for slit dampers which can only be used for newly designed connections, a parametric study was carried on their geometry. Generally the slit damper yields in shear or in flexure. Hence, for two different yield mechanisms (shear yielding and flexural yielding) details for designing of slit dampers were proposed and connection's strength and ductility were compared.     

Neural networks for predicting compressive strength of structural light weight concrete

Neural networks procedures provide a reliant analysis in several science and technology fields. Neural network is often applied to develop statistical models for intrinsically non-linear systems because neural networks behave the advantages of simulating complex behavior of many problems. In this investigation, the neural networks (NNs) are used to predict the compressive strength of light weight concrete (LWC) mixtures after 3, 7, 14, and 28 days of curing. Two models namely, feed-forward back propagation (BP) and cascade correlation (CC), were used. The compressive strength was modeled as a function of eight variables: sand, water/cement ratio, light weight fine aggregate, light weight coarse aggregate, silica fume used in solution, silica fume used in addition to cement, superplasticizer, and curing period. It is concluded that the CC neural network model predicated slightly accurate results and learned very quickly as compared to the BP procedure. The finding of this study indicated that the neural networks models are sufficient tools for estimating the compressive strength of LWC. This undoubtedly will reduce the cost and save time in this class of problems.     

A modified spray-winding approach to enhance the tensile performance of array-based carbon nanotube composite films

A carbon nanotube (CNT) array based spray-winding approach for CNT film fabrication was developed by adding a post hot-pressing process, and an epoxy solution was used to fabricate CNT/epoxy composite film. It showed that the hot-pressing process benefited the load transfer within CNT films by reducing the porosity among CNT bundles and was more efficient in improving the tensile properties of few wall CNT films. The epoxy modified multi-wall CNT film exhibited a tensile strength and modulus of 1540 MPa and 59 GPa, respectively. From the results of scanning electron microscopy and measurements of contact angle, Raman spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis, the main mechanism of the improvement was attributed to good wettability of CNT film with epoxy, high degree of CNT alignment, and high CNT load in the CNT film.     

情感语言——主题性建筑的通情之道

对主题性建筑来说,使其能传递某种主题情感至关重要.在其情感的传递过程中,所采用的建筑语言与普通建筑的表现语言不同,有其特殊的通情之道.笔者通过对主题性建筑及其情感语言的分析,说明了主题性建筑的通情之道——情感语言及其开放性的特点.     

Computer simulation of carbon nanotube pull-out from polymer by the molecular dynamics method

The influence of the polymer matrix density, chemical cross-links in the interface, and geometrical defect in the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the CNT pull-out from polymer has been analyzed by the molecular dynamics simulation. The interfacial shear strength (ISS) has also been estimated with the change of total potential energy. In the simulation, the crystalline polyethylene matrix is set up in a hexagonal array with the polymer chains parallel to the CNT axis. First, we investigate the effect of the polymer matrix density on the ISS by changing the distance between the chains. Simulated results show that the ISS increases with the increase of matrix density. Next, we examine the cross-link effect on the ISS by adding polyethylene cross-links in the interface. Here, an energy based switching criterion addressing cross-links traveling on the CNT has been proposed. It is found that the presence of cross-links and the cross-link positions affect the ISS. Finally, pentagon–heptagon defect, which reduces the tensile strength of the CNT and has been experimentally observed by Hashimoto et al. [Hashimoto A, Suenaga K, Gloter A, Urita K, Iijima S. Direct evidence for atomic defects in graphene layers. Nature 2004;430:870–3], has been addressed as a geometrical defect in the CNT. When cross-links are present between the CNT and the polymer, this defect reduces the ISS due to the improper connections of cross-links around this defective region.     

Protocol engineering for web services conversations

Although web services aim to bring about seamless and effective communication in a wide variety of Internet applications, the interactions between them are currently limited to simple request–response exchanges. However, in the longer term we believe this is unsustainable. In particular, we believe that more complex protocols for web service conversations are necessary if the participants are to tailor their needs and offers to the prevailing context and they are to coordinate multiple services in open and realistic environments. To this end, this paper combines and extends two recent web service languages, WS-Conversation Language (WSCL) and WS-Agreement, in order to obtain a method for engineering protocols of sufficient expressiveness for the next generation of flexible and autonomous services. Specifically, we propose that the protocols include speech-acts as the individual messages and we show how to model such speech-acts as WS-Agreement schemas, which can, in turn, be imported into the specification of the protocols in WSCL. To demonstrate our approach, we express a standard contracting protocol in the extended WSCL/WS-Agreement languages. Furthermore, we use statechart notation as a visual counterpart to help developers write clients that flexibly interact with a service and to help users to better understand how to interact with a service. Finally, we show that the translation between statecharts and WSCL/WS-Agreement protocols is straightforward.