Monitoring water uptake of polyurethanes by in situ fluorescence technique

The water uptake of three polyurethane adhesives was studied by an in situ fluorescence method applying extrinsic fluorescent probes. The measurements were made in water immersion at 50 and 80°C, and in water vapor at 50°C. An intensity ratio method was applied, in which ratios of the highest and lowest intensity changes in the fluorescence emission bands were used to determine the amount of water sorbed in the polymer films. The ratio method was used to compare the fluorescence data with those obtained by a conventional gravimetric method. Comparable results were obtained. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 82: 1593–1599, 2001     

A neuro-fuzzy system for chemical agent detection

The authors previously introduced a fuzzy version of Kohonen's well-known self-organizing map neural network model. In this novel neuro-fuzzy system, the neurons of Kohonen's original model are replaced by fuzzy rules. Each fuzzy rule is composed of fuzzy sets and an output singleton. Since the fuzzy self-organizing map is a modified version of Kohonen's original model, the self-organizing map and the learning vector quantization learning laws can be used to tune the neuro-fuzzy system. Originally, the fuzzy self-organizing map was intended to be used as an unknown function approximator, while Kohonen's self-organizing map is primarily used as a neural classifier. In this paper, the authors show how the fuzzy self-organizing map can also be used as a neuro-fuzzy classifier. Simulation results show that, in chemical agent detection, the fuzzy self-organizing map not only gives better classification results than Kohonen's model, but it also has smaller number of fuzzy rules than the corresponding neurons required by Kohonen's self-organizing map     

Vertical Navigation of Layout Adapted Web Documents

With the development of mobile devices, digital televisions and game consoles, a vast amount of different client terminals become capable to browse the Internet. Content providers have to find adaptation solutions to serve all devices at the same time. This paper introduces a dynamic layout adaptation algorithm for web documents and an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that supports layout adaptation. The presented layout adaptation language is based on existing World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications, i.e., XFrames and CSS. Adaptation might results in several pages within one document. There is a need for a navigation method for browsing such documents. Therefore, we introduce a navigation method that supports paging. An implementation of the adaptation algorithm and the navigation method is also discussed in this paper.     

Special Issue The 2nd Web Information Systems Engineering Conference (WISE'01)

Editorial Introduction

Special Issue The 2nd Web Information Systems Engineering Conference (WISE'01)     

Nine methods to extend SMIL for multimedia applications

The SMIL 2.0 multimedia standard has been designed for use on the Web. It supports keyboard and mouse as input devices. Typically, SMIL players can play out text, images, audio, and video. SMIL also has a strong support for declarative synchronization and timing. Being an open standard, SMIL could well be utilized in custom applications, in environments such as info kiosks and multimedia consoles. However, these environments usually require better input and output capabilities not available in SMIL. This paper presents nine methods to extend SMIL for custom multimedia applications. The methods include ways to attach new input sources, output capabilities, and extended internal logic. Also, an implementation of an extensible SMIL player is given. As a conclusion, SMIL can be extended in several ways for custom multimedia applications. These extensions will provide new ideas for the future multimedia languages. Recently, W3C has published SMIL 2.1, which is an updated version of the SMIL 2.0 specification. Kari Pihkala graduated from the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, where he received his M.Sc. degree in 1999 and Ph.D. degree in 2004. His research interests include XML, multimedia, and mobile devices. Petri Vuorimaa is head of the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. He has both M.Sc. (1990) and Dr.Tech. (1995) degrees from Tampere University of Technology, Finland. His current research interests include digital television, mobile multimedia, and XML.     

Leveraging declarative languages in web application development

Web Applications have become an omnipresent part of our daily lives. They are easy to use, but hard to develop. WYSIWYG editors, form builders, mashup editors, and markup authoring tools ease the development of Web Applications. However, more advanced Web Applications require servers-side programming, which is beyond the skills of end-user developers. In this paper, we discuss how declarative languages can simplify Web Application development and empower end-users as Web developers. We first identify nine end-user Web Application development levels ranging from simple visual customization to advanced three-tier programming. Then, we propose expanding the presentation tier to support all aspects of Web Application development. We introduce a unified XForms-based framework—called XFormsDB—that supports both client-side and server-side Web Application development. Furthermore, we make a language extension proposal—called XFormsRTC—for adding true real-time communication capabilities to XForms. We also present XFormsDB Integrated Development Environment (XIDE), which assists end-users in authoring highly interactive data-driven Web Applications. XIDE supports all Web Application development levels and, especially, promotes the transition from markup authoring and snippet programming to single and unified language programming.     

XForms in X-Smiles

World Wide Web Consortium is currently specifying XForms form language, which is intended to be the next generation language for WWW forms. In XForms, content is separated from presentation. Thus, forms can be versioned easily for different purposes. In addition, the form fields can be pre- and auto-filled. Finally, XForms allows the validation of the data at the client side before it is send to the server. The major browsers do not currently support XForms, which prevents the early utilisation of XForms. In this paper, we describe our implementation of XForms. The implementation is part of our X-Smiles browser, which is an open source XML browser.     

Open graphical framework for interactive TV

Multimedia end-user terminals are expected to perform advanced user interface related tasks. These tasks are carried out by user interface runtime tools and include, among others, the visualization of complex graphics and the efficient handling of user input. In addition, the terminal’s graphical system is expected, for example, to be able to synchronize audio and video, and control different contexts on the same screen. Finally, the availability of high-level tools to simplify the user interface implementation and the adaptiveness of the user interfaces for a diversity of configurations are, as well, desirable features. This paper presents a layered model that meets the just mentioned requirements. The architecture is divided into five different layers: hardware abstraction layer, multimedia cross platform libraries, graphical environment, GUI toolkit and high-level languages. Moreover, this paper presents the experiences of developing a prototype system based on the architecture, targeted to digital television receivers. In order to evaluate the prototype, some already developed DVB-MHP compliant digital television applications were tested. Finally, the prototype was extended with a high-level profile (i.e., SMIL support) and a low-level one (i.e., access to the framebuffer memory).

A Digital Television Navigator

Digital television is a new, interesting, and rich platform for developing next generation multimedia services. Navigator is the most important service of digital television. It acts as the main index of all services available in set-top box. In this paper, we describe the definition of a Navigator, its functionality, its information retrieval processes, and its information source based on DVB-SI (Service Information) which is multiplexed in MPEG2 Transport Streams (TS). The process of developing a Navigator in Java language is presented. A software model including navigation model, state model of a remote control, and data structures is introduced. Furthermore, a software reference model for DVB-SI demultiplexing is described. Its implementation was based on a client/server approach using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). The development issues, performance evaluation, and future research topics are given as conclusions.