Text-to-picture tools,systems, and approaches: a survey

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Text-to-picture systems attempt to facilitate high-level, user-friendly communication between humans and computers while promoting understanding of natural...     

RFID-based interactive multimedia system for the children

In this paper, we present an interactive edutainment system for the children that leverages multimedia and RFID technologies in a seamless manner. The proposed system allows children to learn about new objects/entities by tapping on physical objects through a specially designed RFID-Bluetooth based Tangible User Interface (TUI) tool. The output of the system is delivered as a set of appropriate multimedia representations related to the objects being tapped. The TUI uses RFID technology for object identification and Bluetooth communication to transmit data to the computer where the system??s software is running. We incorporated our system in three games that allow children of different ages to benefit from the system??s functionalities and encourage them to interact with it.     

Internet addiction: Meta-synthesis of qualitative research for the decade 1996–2006

Internet addiction is “an individual’s inability to control their Internet use, which in turn leads to feelings of distress and functional impairment of daily activities” [Shapira, N., Lessig, M., Goldsmith, T., Szabo, S., Lazoritz, M., Gold, M. et al. (2003). Problematic Internet use: Proposed classification and diagnostic criteria. Depression and Anxiety, 17(4), 207–216]. Previous research in this field has offered inconclusive data on whether Internet addiction can be classified as a disorder. This study provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of internet addiction through a meta-synthesis of qualitative studies on excessive Internet use published during the period of 1996–2006. Several constructs pertaining to the domain of Internet addiction have been identified and a theoretical model of Internet addiction has been proposed.     

Shape recognition and pose estimation for mobile Augmented Reality

Nestor is a real-time recognition and camera pose estimation system for planar shapes. The system allows shapes that carry contextual meanings for humans to be used as Augmented Reality (AR) tracking targets. The user can teach the system new shapes in real time. New shapes can be shown to the system frontally, or they can be automatically rectified according to previously learned shapes. Shapes can be automatically assigned virtual content by classification according to a shape class library. Nestor performs shape recognition by analyzing contour structures and generating projective-invariant signatures from their concavities. The concavities are further used to extract features for pose estimation and tracking. Pose refinement is carried out by minimizing the reprojection error between sample points on each image contour and its library counterpart. Sample points are matched by evolving an active contour in real time. Our experiments show that the system provides stable and accurate registration, and runs at interactive frame rates on a Nokia N95 mobile phone.     

Clustering of polarization-encoded images

Polarization-encoded imaging consists of the distributed measurements of polarization parameters for each pixel of an image. We address clustering of multidimensional polarization-encoded images. The spatial coherence of polarization information is considered. Two methods of analysis are proposed: polarization contrast enhancement and a more-sophisticated image-processing algorithm based on a Markovian model. The proposed algorithms are applied and validated with two different Mueller images acquired by a fully polarimetric imaging system.     

Folksonomy link prediction based on a tripartite graph for tag recommendation

Nowadays social tagging has become a popular way to annotate, search, navigate and discover online resources, in turn leading to the sheer amount of user-generated metadata. This paper addresses the problem of recommending suitable tags during folksonomy development from a graph-based perspective. The proposed approach adapts the Katz measure, a path-ensemble based proximity measure, for the use in social tagging systems. We model a folksonomy as a weighted, undirected tripartite graph. We then apply the Katz measure to this graph, and exploit it to provide tag recommendations for individual users. We evaluate our method on two real-world folksonomies collected from CiteULike and Last.fm. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the recommendation performance and is effective for both active taggers and cold-start taggers compared to existing algorithms.     

Co(II) Catalyzed Solvent Free Auto-Oxidation of Methylbenzenes to Substituted Benzoic Acids Under Phase Transfer Conditions

A novel methodology for the solvent free auto-oxidation of methylbenzenes under mild conditions is disclosed. The new scheme is based on a combination of metallic salt (cobalt chloride) and a quaternary ammonium phase transfer catalyst (didecyldimethylammonium bromide) which together form a complex soluble catalyst in the organic phase. Major reaction parameters are studied and optimized and the procedure is applied for the conversion of several substituted toluenes to the corresponding benzoic acids in excellent isolated yields.     

Semi-Markovian approach for modelling seismic aftershocks

In this paper, we present an approach, based on a Markov process, for modelling earthquake aftershocks. From our earthquake aftershock swarm files, we first show our preliminary observations on the phenomenon. Then we present the theoretical basis of a semi-Markovian approach and develop a parametric study of the proposed model. Finally, we discuss the results obtained to date, together with possible improvements of the model.