Video color conceptualization using optimization

Color conceptualization aims to propagate"color concepts"from a library of natural color images to the input image by changing the main color.However,the existing method may lead to spatial discontinuities in images because of the absence of a spatial consistency constraint.In this paper,to solve this problem,we present a novel method to force neighboring pixels with similar intensities to have similar color.Using this constraint,the color conceptualization is formalized as an optimization problem with a quadratic cost function.Moreover,we further expand two-dimensional(still image)color conceptualization to three-dimensional(video),and use the information of neighboring pixels in both space and time to improve the consistency between neighboring frames.The performance of our proposed method is demonstrated for a variety of images and video sequences.     

OKQA：一个基于本体的软件开发知识QA工具

近年来,软件开发模式逐渐从经验驱动的手工构造模式到知识驱动的自动生成模式进行转换,而在知识驱动的软件开发过程中,QA工具可以帮助开发人员更好地理解项目源代码。一般的,开发人员往往需要阅读大量文档、并对软件项目代码进行静态分析,利用某种形式化的查询方法才能获取软件项目的相关信息,这增加了软件开发的时间成本和学习成本。基于该问题,实现了一个基于本体的软件开发知识QA工具OKQA,OKQA可以支持开发人员的自然语言查询输入,帮助开发人员找到理解软件代码的相关答案,从而有效地指导开发人员理解及复用软件代码。     

Towards an agent-oriented approach to conceptualization

Agent-oriented modeling provides a new technique for the conceptualization of agent-based systems. This paper extends and formalizes this agent-oriented modeling approach to the conceptualization process. It defines agent models and proposes a high-level methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. It also includes analogies with the object-oriented and other existing agent-oriented methodologies, wherever applicable. The paper is concluded with a case study and an insight to future challenges.     

A quality-time-cost-oriented strategy for product conceptualization

In general, product development companies aim to deliver products of optimal quality while incurring minimal cost in the shortest time possible. In this work, a quality-time-cost-oriented strategy (QTCOS) is proposed to facilitate product concept generation and selection. Firstly, general sorting is employed to elicit an initial product platform. The platform, constructed with a design space framework (DSF), serves as a base for generating a preliminary range of design options. Using the repertory grids elicitation method, designers contribute importance ratings with respect to a set of time and cost criteria for the range of design options. To account for trade-offs between cost and time related concerns, these ratings are employed to reduce the number of the derived design options, and thereby used as input features to a restricted coulomb energy (RCE) neural network. The RCE network function is applied to classify the set of design options into different patterns, i.e. cost-time-pairs. The classification results can subsequently serve as bases for the selection of preferred design options. A case study on wood golf club design is conducted to illustrate the proposed QTCOS.     

Port-based ontology modeling to support product conceptualization

In today's rapidly changing marketplace, product demand is one of the most powerful driving forces behind design, thus rendering product conceptualization full of challenges. As a port can be defined as the point of action between a component and its environment, it plays a crucial role in capturing component concepts and realizing conceptual design. This paper presents a convenient approach to representation of the intended exchange of signals, energy, and/or materials and the generation and management of port-based knowledge (PBK). A port-based ontology modeling (PBOM) process that supports product conceptualization is described. A port definition and port functional representation are provided first with their semantic synthesis then employed to describe a port ontology. Second, details of the construction of a port-based ontology (PBO) repository that contains the assorted primitive functions, similarity calculations, and primitive concepts needed to map component connections and interactions are provided. The hierarchical attributes and taxonomy of ports are established, and the compatibility rules are then used to determine the connectability of two components. Next, the PBOM process is presented and a port-based, multi-view model is articulated, with the definition of each view and the projected relationships among the views given. Furthermore, a port-based ontology language (PBOL) that represents the process of port ontology refinement is presented, and a port-based function–behavior–structure (FBS) modeling framework is constructed for primitive system configuration. Finally, the results of a correction tape dispenser case study carried out to validate the efficiency of the port ontology for product conceptualization are presented.     

Human-centric product conceptualization using a design space framework

Designing products to fit human needs, preferences and capabilities is an essential key to competitiveness. In contested product markets, the management of user-related knowledge is therefore critical. Studies have shown that the identification and implementation of user requirements are significant issues for determining successful product development, especially during the conceptual design phase. User requirements represented in a single or limited level of abstraction is inadequate for effective incorporation into the conceptual design process. Such representation of user needs is argued here to be associated with issues such as the errors of problem framing, which is a cause of inadmissible, uncreative or sub-optimal designs. In this paper, a human-centric knowledge organization structure, Design Space Framework, is established to facilitate the consistent incorporation of user information into the length of the product conceptualization process. The role of this structure in human-centric design is illustrated in a case study.     

The conceptualization and measurement of m-commerce user satisfaction

Many of the instruments for measuring user-perceived system quality and user information satisfaction were developed in the context of mainframe, PC and wire-based technologies of a bygone era. With the proliferation of wireless technologies, users are increasingly interfacing and interacting with mobile commerce (m-commerce) systems. It is therefore important to develop new instruments and scales, which are directly targeted for these new interfaces and applications. User satisfaction is commonly acknowledged as one of the useful proxy measures of system success. This study addresses the concern for an effective m-commerce system design by means of the conceptualization and measurement of an m-commerce user satisfaction (MCUS) construct. In this article, we introduce and define this construct of MCUS, provide empirical validation of the construct and its underlying dimensionality, develop a standardized instrument with desirable psychometric properties for measuring MCUS, and explore the measure’s theoretical and practical application. This empirically validated instrument will be useful to researchers in developing and testing m-commerce systems theories, as well as to organizations in designing better-accepted m-commerce systems.     

A conceptualization of driving behaviour as threat avoidance

Abstract

A behavioural analysis of the driving task is presented, arising out of a brief review of the motivational dimensions of Wilde's (1981) theory of risk homeostasis and the zero risk model of driver behaviour proposed by Näätänen ana Summala (1976). The analysis is developed into a threat-avoidance model of driver behaviour. This suggests that, when confronted with a discriminative stimulus for a potential aversive event, what a driver does depends in particular on the rewards and punishments for alternative responses. Implications of the model for the learner driver, road safety measures and earlier conceptualizations of driver motivation are discussed.     

Knowledge Acquisition Advisor (KA): An interactive knowledge-acquisition tool for expert system development

A new interactive knowledge acquisition tool, called Knowledge Acquisition Advisor (KA²), is presented in this paper. The new tool will help knowledge engineers to conduct effective knowledge-elicitation interviews with domain experts through structured knowledge acquisition for both analytic and synthetic problems. A graphic modeling data structure, called Knowledge Graph is proposed, which allows knowledge engineers to model domain problems with their images and understanding. By using Knowledge Graph, knowledge engineers are able to decompose a domain problem into several components, to model the feature of each component, and to explore their relations by linking them with sets of questions. These questions can later be employed to guide the KA interview. Moreover, KA² is particularly useful for interview through computer networks, so the knowledge acquisition can take place remotely.     

Information Systems Use: Construct conceptualization and scale development

Information Systems Use (ISU) is an essential part of the human behaviors in utilizing computers in organizations. The construct has been widely used to measure IS adoption or IS success. However, few studies attempt to understand ISU in a job and organizational setting where employees use various types of IS for different tasks. To better understand ISU, it is necessary to contextualize the construct in users’ overall work related activities. We classified the overall IS/IT use in an organization into three different types of IS; Information Reporting Systems (IRSs), Decision Support Systems (DSSs), and Group Support System (GSSs). Based on this classification, we developed four items for each type of ISU behaviors. The resulting ISU instrument was tested using a dataset of 231 responses collected in a survey. Both exploratory factor analysis and PLS are employed to successfully establish reliability, convergent/discriminate validity, and predictive validity. The contribution of this research is to provide better and more robust measurements for the ISU construct, which should help to lay a firmer foundation for further research on IS success.     

Zero anaphora resolution by case-based reasoning and pattern conceptualization

Effective anaphora resolution is helpful to many applications of natural language processing such as machine translation, summarization and question answering. In this paper, a novel resolution approach is proposed to tackle zero anaphora, which is the most frequent type of anaphora shown in Chinese texts. Unlike most of the previous approaches relying on hand-coded rules, our resolution is mainly constructed by employing case-based reasoning and pattern conceptualization. Moreover, the resolution is incorporated with the mechanisms to identify cataphora and non-antecedent instances so as to enhance the resolution performance. Compared to a general rule-based approach, the proposed approach indeed improves the resolution performance by achieves 78% recall and 79% precision on solving 1051 zero anaphora instances in 382 narrative texts.     

Service licensing: conceptualization, formalization, and expression

Service licensing enables a broader usage of services and a means for designing business strategies and relationships. A service license describes the terms and conditions that permit the use of and access to a service, in a machine interpretable way, which services can understand. The distribution of services spanning across organizational boundaries raises problems related to intellectual value that are less explored in service-oriented research. Being a way to manage the rights between service consumers and service providers, licenses become significant in services. As the nature of services differs significantly from traditional software and components, services prevent the direct adoption of software and component licenses. The concept of preserving certain rights of owner and presenting certain rights to consumer, addressed by service licensing, is incipient in the field of service-oriented computing. We propose a formalization of licensing clauses for an unambiguous definition of a service license. We extend the Open Digital Rights Language to implement the clauses of service licensing, in a machine interpretable way. We illustrate the concepts of service licensing based on a case study of service license compliance verification in a real world scenario.     

A stakeholder-oriented innovative product conceptualization strategy based on fuzzy integrals

Knowledge, experiences and skills of corporate members promote new ideas into products, in the context of innovative design. This dynamism is especially important in the critical product conceptualization stage. In customer-oriented design paradigm, most methodologies focus on exploiting end-user requirements, instead of considering project stakeholder requirements in a holistic manner. Previous research in the area of innovative product conceptualization focused on such aspects as functional, cognitive, marketing and commercial perspectives. It involves the participations of customers, designers, engineers, marketers and business managers. Accordingly, a stakeholder-oriented innovative product concept development system (IPCDS) is established to integrate the bespoke four perspectives so as to evaluate product concept innovation comprehensively. To resolve the incomplete, ambiguous, uncertain and subjective nature of innovative design knowledge, the product platform represented in a design knowledge hierarchy (DKH) is generated using general sorting. Subsequently, an innovative design criteria matrix (DCM) constructed using repertory grids technique is rated with regard to specific design option. The ratings are then used as input features to the fuzzy integrals technique, for the purpose of innovative design. A case study on cellular phone design is used for system illustration and the results are discussed on the basis of product concept innovation.     

The conceptualization and empirical validation of web site user satisfaction

This article addresses the concern for effective web site design by means of the conceptualization and empirical validation of a web site user satisfaction construct. Based on IS success theory, hypermedia design theory, a qualitative exploratory pilot study, and a quantitative online critical incident technique, we introduce and define the construct of web site user satisfaction, explore its dimensionality, provide empirical validation of the construct and its underlying dimensionality, develop a standardized instrument with desirable psychometric properties for measuring WUS, and explore the measure’s theoretical and practical application.     

User satisfaction with business-to-employee portals: conceptualization and scale development

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate the business-to-employee portal user satisfaction (B2EPUS) measure. Five sequential stages of scale development were undertaken to achieve this purpose: conceptual model development, item generation, content validation, exploratory study, and confirmatory study. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five dimensions of the B2EPUS, namely Usefulness, Confidentiality, Ease of Use, Convenience of Access, and Portal Design as the dimensions of the construct. Competing model analysis indicates that the second-order factor model is the better fitting for the B2EPUS construct. The theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as directions for future research are discussed in the concluding sections of this paper.     

A scheme for mechanical assembly design and assembly line layout conceptualization

A scheme in this paper makes possible to analyze a complex assembly design at an early design stage and generate assembly sequences efficiently. The designer's knowledge is used to obtain the preference module set. The modulability of the set is tested and used to generate assembly sequences hierarchically. Sequences generated by this scheme reflect the designers' preference for modules and facilitates to figure out an assembly line layout from an assembly design. The applicability of the scheme is verified in an example.