End-user adaptable technologies for rehabilitation: a systematic literature review

Universal Access in the Information Society - Studies on end-user adaptable applications for rehabilitation aim to offer exercises to patients based on their therapeutic goals and individual...     

An integrated architecture for the provision of health telematic services based on digital library technologies

monolithic information system to effectively serve the needs of an entire healthcare organizational structure. Thus, information and telecommunications systems must primarily provide the infrastructure to support the effective integration of distributed and heterogeneous components, ensuring overall integrity in terms of functional and information interworking. This approach i.e., the integration of heterogeneous autonomous distributed systems, to developing and managing regional healthcare networks ensures the transfer and integration of consistent information between healthcare facilities, without imposing constraints on the operation of individual clinical units. This paper presents the results of an ongoing effort for the design and implementation of an architecture based on digital library technologies, for the provision of user-oriented telematic services in a regional healthcare network. Specifically, it addresses issues related to the provision of user-oriented services, transparent to the needs of different user groups and the requirements of specific tasks, based on: a) meta-information for the creation of an information infrastructure for the regional healthcare network which is, effectively, a multimedia distributed digital library, b) intelligent informationretrieval strategies to selectively retrieve information from multimedia data, c) agent-based technologies for effective service delivery adapted to the current user needs and the task at hand, and d) middleware services that explicitly reveal not only the characteristics of the information sources, but also address the context of specific telematic services, through appropriate mediation mechanisms. Received: 10 April 1997 / Revised: 6 July 1997 / Accepted: 5 August 1997     

An overview of depth cameras and range scanners based on time-of-flight technologies

Time-of-flight (TOF) cameras are sensors that can measure the depths of scene points, by illuminating the scene with a controlled laser or LED source and then analyzing the reflected light. In this paper, we will first describe the underlying measurement principles of time-of-flight cameras, including: (1) pulsed-light cameras, which measure directly the time taken for a light pulse to travel from the device to the object and back again, and (2) continuous-wave-modulated light cameras, which measure the phase difference between the emitted and received signals, and hence obtain the travel time indirectly. We review the main existing designs, including prototypes as well as commercially available devices. We also review the relevant camera calibration principles, and how they are applied to TOF devices. Finally, we discuss the benefits and challenges of combined TOF and color camera systems.     

Semantic web technologies applied to software accessibility evaluation: a systematic literature review

Universal Access in the Information Society - Software accessibility is a current field of interest. Governments and organizations boost initiatives and legislations to assure universal access. On...     

基于AJAX和自动推理技术构建交互式数学Web服务

数学辅助学习平台一直是数学教育和计算机领域的研究热点。传统设计方法在教学互动、智能教育和界面友好性等环节存在若干制约因素。集成领先的AJAX思想和成熟的自动推理算法,提出新的数学Web服务系统设计方法,辅以MathML数学表示语言等多项先进技术,构建一个交互式数学Web服务学习平台。实际运行结果表明,平台具有良好的表现形式和运行性能,为使用者提供一个良好的交互式学习环境。     

An overview of multi-antenna technologies for space-ground integrated networks

Multi-antenna technologies have already achieved a series of great successes in the development of information networks. For future space-ground integrated networks (SGINs), the traditional various kinds of separated information networks will converge to a whole fully connected information network to provide more flexible and reliable services on a world scale. Regarding their great successes in existing systems, multiantenna technologies will be of critical importance for the realization of SGINs and multi-antenna technologies are definitely one of the most important enabling technologies for future converged SGINs. In this article, a comprehensive overview on multi-antenna technologies is given. We first investigate multi-antenna technologies from a theoretical viewpoint. It is shown that we can understand multi-antenna technologies in a general and unified point of view. This fact has two-fold meanings. First, the research on multi-antennas can help us understand the relationships between different technologies e.g., OFDMA, CDMA, etc. On the other hand, multi-antenna technologies are easy to integrate into various information systems. Following that, we discuss in depth the potentials and challenges of the multi-antenna technologies on different platforms and in different applications case by case. More specifically, we investigate spaceborne multi-antenna technologies, airborne multi-antenna technologies, shipborne multi-antenna technologies, etc. Moreover, the combinations of multiantenna technologies with other advanced wireless technologies e.g., physical layer network coding, cooperative communication, etc., are also elaborated.     

A review of technologies for sensing contact location on the surface of a display

Touchscreen interactive devices have become increasingly important in both consumer and commercial applications. This paper provides a broad overview of all touchscreen technologies in use today, organized into 13 categories with 38 variations. The 13 categories are projected capacitive, analog resistive, surface capacitive, surface acoustic wave, infrared, camera‐based optical, liquid crystal display in‐cell, bending wave, force sensing, planar scatter detection, vision‐based, electromagnetic resonance, and combinations of technologies. The information provided on each touchscreen technology includes a little history, some basic theory of operation, the most common applications, the key advantages and disadvantages, a few current issues or trends, and the author's opinion of the future outlook for the technology. Because of its dominance, this paper begins with projected capacitive; more information is provided on this technology than on any of the other touch technologies that are discussed. This paper covers only technologies that operate by contact with a display screen; this excludes technologies such as 3D gesture recognition, touch on opaque devices such as interactive whiteboards, and proximity sensing. This is not a highly technical paper; it sacrifices depth of information on any one technology for breadth of information on multiple technologies.     

Supporting the semi-automatic semantic annotation of web services: A systematic literature review

ContextSemantically annotating web services is gaining more attention as an important aspect to support the automatic matchmaking and composition of web services. Therefore, the support of well-known and agreed ontologies and tools for the semantical annotation of web services is becoming a key concern to help the diffusion of semantic web services.ObjectiveThe objective of this systematic literature review is to summarize the current state-of-the-art for supporting the semantical annotation of web services by providing answers to a set of research questions.MethodThe review follows a predefined procedure that involves automatically searching well-known digital libraries. As a result, a total of 35 primary studies were identified as relevant. A manual search led to the identification of 9 additional primary studies that were not reported during the automatic search of the digital libraries. Required information was extracted from these 44 studies against the selected research questions and finally reported.ResultsOur systematic literature review identified some approaches available for semantically annotating functional and non-functional aspects of web services. However, many of the approaches are either not validated or the validation done lacks credibility.ConclusionWe believe that a substantial amount of work remains to be done to improve the current state of research in the area of supporting semantic web services.     

Emergency medical services and beyond: Addressing new challenges through a wide literature review

One of the most important health care services is emergency medical service as it plays a vital role in saving people's lives and reducing the rate of mortality and morbidity. Over the last years, many review papers have discussed emergency medical services (EMS) location problems, however, only few review papers consider the full range of EMS systems. This review paper tries to fill this gap. Our review introduces the concept of emergency care pathway following the current trend in health care systems, i.e., shifting the central role from health care providers to patients. Considering the emergency care pathway, we provide a broad literature review and analysis in order to identify emerging challenges for future research.     

A systematic literature review on vision based gesture recognition techniques

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) technologies are rapidly evolving the way we interact with computing devices and adapting to the constantly increasing demands of modern paradigms. One of the most useful tools in this regard is the integration of Human-to-Human Interaction gestures to facilitate communication and expressing ideas. Gesture recognition requires the integration of postures, gestures, face expressions and movements for communicating or conveying certain messages. The aim of this study is to aggregate and synthesize experiences and accumulated knowledge about Vision-Based Recognition (VBR) techniques. The major objective of conducting this Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is to highlight the state-of-the-art in the context of vision-based gesture recognition with specific focus on hand gesture recognition (HGR) techniques and enabling technologies. After a careful systematic selection process, 100 studies relevant to the four research questions were selected. This process was followed by data collection, a detailed analysis, and a synthesis of the selected studies. The results reveal that among the VBR techniques, HGR is a predominant and highly focused area of research. Research focus is also found to be converging towards sign language recognition. Potential applications of HGR techniques include desktop applications, smart environments, entertainment, sign language interpretation, virtual reality and gamification. Although various experimental research efforts have been devoted to gestures recognition, there are still numerous open issues and research challenges in this field. Lastly, considering the results from this SLR, potential future research directions are suggested, including a much needed focus on grammatical interpretation, hybrid approaches, smartphone devices, normalization, and real-life systems.     

Classification algorithms for interactive multimedia services: a review

Interactive multimedia services, which integrate and unify techniques from a variety of disciplines, have been an active research topic for many years. However, two major challenges need to be overcome to provide a better service: The first is that interactive multimedia systems have to provide the contents a user needs at the right time no matter where the user is located and what device the user is using; the second is that the performance of such systems needs to be improved. Apparently, classification and clustering (also called unsupervised classification) algorithms play an indispensable role in these respects. Thus, this paper contains a review of the classification algorithms for interactive multimedia systems. Also discussed in this paper are several important issues, open questions, and trends.     

扫描探针显微镜的控制技术综述

扫描探针显微镜(SPM)具有高精度成像、纳米操纵等功能,是纳米科技、生命科学、材料科学和微电子等科学研究的重要工具.随着科学技术的发展,科学家和工程师们对科研工具SPM的性能也提出越来越高的要求.SPM控制技术作为提高SPM性能的关键技术之一,已经得到广泛的关注和研究.本文首先介绍SPM系统以及两种常用的SPM,讨论SPM扫描器(即压电驱动器)的特性及其数学模型;然后详细总结了SPM水平方向和竖直方向的控制技术,并且对扫描探针显微镜多输入多输出(SPM MIMO)控制技术进行了探讨;最后总结了SPM控制技术研究现状及其所面临的问题.     

A real-time mobile GIS based on the HBR-tree for location based services

Recently, as the growth of the wireless Internet, PDA, and HPC, the focus of research and development has been changed to LBS (location based service). To offer LBS efficiently, there must be a real-time GIS platform that can deal with dynamic status of moving objects and a location index which can deal with the characteristics of location data. Therefore, in this paper, we studied the real-time mobile GIS based on the HBR-tree to manage mass of location data efficiently. The real-time mobile GIS mainly consists of the HBR (Hash Based R)-tree and the real-time GIS platform. The HBR-tree is a combined index type of the R-tree and the spatial hash index. Although location data are updated frequently, update operations are done within the same hash table in the HBR-tree, so it costs less than other tree-based indexes. The real-time GIS platform consists of a real-time GIS engine, a middleware, and a mobile client.     

Voice in computing: an overview of available technologies

An attempt is made to bridge the differences between the voice and computing disciplines and foster crossdisciplinary dialogue by presenting an overview of the technologies useful in building voice/computing applications, along with some examples to illustrate how they can be used. The voice technologies relevant to computing are grouped into three general categories and explored in detail. They consist of: content processing, which is the manipulation and analysis of the payload of a voice channel; connection control, which is the setup and manipulation of connections between voice equipment; and software architectures, i.e. the organization of computing system software to facilitate the creation of voice-related applications