A Novel Approach Based on Multi-View Content Analysis and Semi-Supervised Enrichment for Movie Recommendation

Although many existing movie recommender systems have investigated recommendation based on information such as clicks and tags, much less efforts have been made to explore the multimedia content of movies, which has potential information for the elicitation of the user’s visual and musical preferences.In this paper, we explore the content from three media types (image, text, audio) and propose a novel multi-view semi-supervised movie recommendation method, which represents each media type as a view space for movies.The three views of movies are integrated to predict the rating values under the multi-view framework.Furthermore, our method considers the casual users who rate limited movies.The algorithm enriches the user profile with a semi-supervised way when there are only few rating histories.Experiments indicate that the multimedia content analysis reveals the user’s profile in a more comprehensive way.Different media types can be a complement to each other for movie recommendation.And the experimental results validate that our semi-supervised method can effectively enrich the user profile for recommendation with limited rating history.     

CyVOD: a novel trinity multimedia social network scheme

How to comprehensively explore, improve and deploy multimedia social networks (MSNs) has become a hot topic in the era of emerging pervasive mobile multimedia. More and more MSNs offer a great number of convenient tools, services, and applications for multimedia contents including video and audio that users share willingly and on demand. However, concerns with digital rights management (DRM)-oriented multimedia security, as well as the efficiency of multimedia usage and sharing are meanwhile intensified due to easier distribution and reproduction of multimedia content in a wide range of social networks. The paper proposes a comprehensive framework for multimedia social network, and realized a cross-platform MSN prototype system, named as CyVOD, to support two kinds of DRM modes. The proposed framework effectively protects copyrighted multimedia contents against piracy, and supports a more efficient recommendation system for its better handling of the tradeoff between multimedia security and ease of use.     

Ergonomics action research II: a framework for integrating HF into work system design

This paper presents a conceptual framework that can support efforts to integrate human factors (HF) into the work system design process, where improved and cost-effective application of HF is possible. The framework advocates strategies of broad stakeholder participation, linking of performance and health goals, and process focussed change tools that can help practitioners engage in improvements to embed HF into a firm's work system design process. Recommended tools include business process mapping of the design process, implementing design criteria, using cognitive mapping to connect to managers’ strategic goals, tactical use of training and adopting virtual HF (VHF) tools to support the integration effort. Consistent with organisational change research, the framework provides guidance but does not suggest a strict set of steps. This allows more adaptability for the practitioner who must navigate within a particular organisational context to secure support for embedding HF into the design process for improved operator wellbeing and system performance.

Practitioner Summary: There has been little scientific literature about how a practitioner might integrate HF into a company's work system design process. This paper proposes a framework for this effort by presenting a coherent conceptual framework, process tools, design tools and procedural advice that can be adapted for a target organisation.     

QoS Management in Educational Digital Library Environments

Advances in multimedia computing technologies offer new approaches to the support of computer-assisted education and training within many application domains. Novel interactive presentation tools can be built to enhance traditional teaching methods with more active learning. Since a variety of user expectations are possible in such an environment, research must address the incorporation of these factors into presentation tools. During an interactive learning/training process, presentation tools must be able to handle various types of delays. A flexibly adjustable quality of service (QoS) should thus be supported. In this paper, we investigate a framework and systematic strategies for supporting the continuous and synchronized retrieval and presentation of multimedia data streams in a client/server distributed multimedia environment for educational digital libraries. Specifically, we establish a practical framework for specifying multimedia objects, tasks, schedules, and synchronization constraints between media streams. We identify the QoS parameters critical to the support of multimedia presentations for learning and training activities. Based on the proposed framework and QoS specifications, we develop presentation scheduling and buffer management strategies which can enforce the specified QoS requirements in an educational digital library environment.     

Cross-community knowledge building with idea thread mapper

Research on computer-supported collaborative learning faces the challenge of extending student collaboration to higher social levels and enabling cross-boundary interaction. This study investigated collaborative knowledge building among four Grade 5 classroom communities that studied human body systems with the support of Idea Thread Mapper (ITM). While students in each classroom collaborated in their local (home) discourse space to investigate various human body functions, they generated reflective syntheses— “super notes”—to share knowledge progress and challenges in a cross-community meta-space. As a cross-community collaboration, students from the four classrooms further used the Super Talk feature of ITM to investigate a common problem: how do people grow? Data sources included classroom observations and videos, online discourse within each community, students’ super notes and records of Super Talk discussion shared across the classrooms, and student interviews. The results showed that the fifth-graders were able to generate high quality super notes to reflect on their inquiry progress for cross-classroom sharing. Detailed analysis of the cross-classroom Super Talk documented students’ multifaceted understanding constructed to understand how people grow, which built on the diverse ideas from each classroom and further contributed to enriching student discourse within each individual classroom. The findings are discussed focusing on how to approach cross-community collaboration as an expansive and dynamic context for high-level inquiry and continual knowledge building with technology support.

     

Soft multimedia anomaly detection based on neural network and optimization driven support vector machine

Software multimedia anomaly detection model based on neural network and optimization driven support vector machine is discussed in this paper. For multimedia information, most traditional information security technology has its limitations. For example, the limitation of the encryption technology is that on the one hand, the encrypted files resulting from the incomprehension of attributes interfere with the transfer of multimedia information. On the other hand, the encrypted multimedia information is likely to attract the attacker’s curiosity and attention, and is likely to be cracked, and once it is cracked, the system loses control of the information. To deal with these challenges, this study integrates soft computing techniques to finalize the enhanced multimedia anomaly detection model. With respect to the neural network, a random system with random factors is referred to as a random system. These practical systems are generally described and modeled by stochastic differential equations. In this study, we combined the double support vector machine and decision tree support vector machine to construct a new double support vector machine decision tree classifier. Kernel function and convex optimization were integrated to guarantee an optimal solution. Experimental results demonstrated the robustness of the model compared with other recent techniques.

     

What went right? An analysis of the protective factors in aviation near misses

Abstract

Learning from successful safety outcomes, or what went right, is an important emerging component of maintaining safe systems. Accordingly, there are increasing calls to study normal performance in near misses as a part of safety management activities. Despite this, there is limited guidance on how to accomplish this in practice. This article presents a study in which using Rasmussen’s risk management framework to analyse 16 serious incidents from the aviation domain. The findings show that a network of protective factors prevents accidents with factors identified across the sociotechnical system. These protective networks share many properties with those identified in accidents. The article demonstrates that is possible to identify these networks of protective factors from incident investigation reports. The theoretical implications of these results and future research opportunities are discussed.

Practitioner Statement: The analysis of near misses is an important part of safety management activities. This article demonstrates that Rasmussen?s risk management framework can be used to identify networks of protective factors which prevent accidents. Safety practitioners can use the framework described to discover and support the system-wide networks of protective factors.     

A review and framework of laser-based collaboration support

New technologies are emerging to enable and support physical, implicit and explicit collaborations. They are essential for dealing with increasingly complex systems in unstructured, dynamic environments. The purpose of this article is to review the role of laser technology in enabling better, more precise interactions and their control, and to identify opportunities and challenges in this area. While the most common applications of laser technology are found in medical and health care, manufacturing, and communication, other domains such as safety, quality assurance, agriculture, construction, entertainment, defense, transportation, and law enforcement also benefit from it. In spite of the rapid dissemination of this technology, its role in support of collaboration and discovery is still in its infancy. Research activities concerning new ways of using lasers as a collaboration supporting technology that may strengthen new areas have been relatively limited. Nevertheless, the translation to this domain of collaboration support has been recognized as vital for activities that demand increasingly more coordinated effort among interacting agents (e.g., humans, machines, particles) and digital, possibly also photonic agents. Recent advances in laser technology in a number of application domains are reviewed in this article, focusing primarily on lasers’ role for supporting different forms of precision interactions and collaboration. In addition, a framework with five collaboration support functions and five collaboration dimensions is defined for this review. The taxonomy framework is useful for enabling better understanding of the existing and emerging opportunities that laser-based technology offers for collaboration support, its advantages and several research gaps.     

Secure multimedia distribution in cloud computing using re-encryption and fingerprinting

Recently, cloud computing becomes a main platform for the distribution of multimedia content. The paradigm of multimedia distribution has been shifted from the models in traditional ways to the one in cloud computing. Security and privacy are two most important issues in multimedia distribution. The new model in cloud computing concerns the following issues. Firstly, outsourced content should be confidential except a data owner (DO). Secondly, the CSP is semi-trusted in the public cloud computing environment. A malicious data user (DU) may collude with the CSP to harm the DO’s rights and interests. Thirdly, the rights and interests of DU, including anonymity and unlinkability, should be protected. Based on the above problems, we propose and analyze a Multimedia Distribution based Re-encryption and Fingerprinting (MDRF) scheme in cloud computing. The proposed scheme 1) allows efficient distribution of the content while preserving security and privacy of copyright holders and end users, 2) resolve the problems of piracy tracing, collusion resistance, and dispute resolution, and 3) protect the rights and interests of DU, including anonymity and unlinkability. The analysis part demonstrates that the security of DO and DU are well provided in the proposed scheme. The experimental results evaluate the performance of our framework in terms of collusion resistance of the fingerprint and imperceptibility of fingerprint embedding.

     

SemantEco: A semantically powered modular architecture for integrating distributed environmental and ecological data

We aim to inform the development of decision support tools for resource managers who need to examine large complex ecosystems and make recommendations in the face of many tradeoffs and conflicting drivers. We take a semantic technology approach, leveraging background ontologies and the growing body of linked open data. In previous work, we designed and implemented a semantically enabled environmental monitoring framework called SemantEco and used it to build a water quality portal named SemantAqua. Our previous system included foundational ontologies to support environmental regulation violations and relevant human health effects. In this work, we discuss SemantEco’s new architecture that supports modular extensions and makes it easier to support additional domains. Our enhanced framework includes foundational ontologies to support modeling of wildlife observation and wildlife health impacts, thereby enabling deeper and broader support for more holistically examining the effects of environmental pollution on ecosystems. We conclude with a discussion of how, through the application of semantic technologies, modular designs will make it easier for resource managers to bring in new sources of data to support more complex use cases.     

Conceptual modeling of multimedia objects for user-tailored information presentations

This paper presents a formal framework for the representation of knowledge concerning the use of multimedia information in the context of designing user-tailored information presentations. The aim is to support efficient development and maintenance of knowledge bases and effective utilization of knowledge for adaptive information presentations. It is conjectured that a hybrid knowledge representation framework that mixes formal knowledge structures with canned fragments of multimedia information and distinguishes between categories of medium-independent information items and types of presentation forms comprehensively can achieve this aim. The framework supports subject-based classification of reusable multimedia objects and their utilization according to presentation intentions and to pragmatic constraints. This approach, although it is considered complementary, contrasts to approaches that require systems to build every presentation from scratch.     

E-Science in the classroom – Towards viability

E-Science has the potential to transform school science by enabling learners, teachers and research scientists to engage together in authentic scientific enquiry, collaboration and learning. However, if we are to reap the benefits of this potential as part of everyday teaching and learning, we need to explicitly think about and support the work required to set up and run e-Science experiences within any particular educational context. In this paper, we present a framework for identifying and describing the resources, tools and services necessary to move e-Science into the classroom together with examples of these. This framework is derived from previous experiences conducting educational e-Science projects and systematic analysis of the categories of ‘hidden work’ needed to run these projects. The articulation of resources, tools and services based on these categories provides a starting point for more methodical design and deployment of future educational e-Science projects, reflection on which can also help further develop the framework. It also points to the technological infrastructure from which such tools and services could be built. As such it provides an agenda of work to develop both processes and technologies that would make it practical for teachers to deliver active, and collaborative e-Science learning experiences on a larger scale within and across schools. Routine school e-Science will only be possible if such support is specified, implemented and made available to teachers within their work contexts in an appropriate and usable form.     

Multimedia tool as a predictor for social media advertising- a YouTube way

Multimedia has embraced the marketing industry with its innovative tools. Advertising as a part of marketing is not an exception. Social media is one of its tools which is growing with an accelerating speed and facilitating meaningful participation. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google and is considered to leverage its features to provide nothing but the best to its users. Marketers of beauty products have also realized its potential and are using YouTube as a powerful marketing tool. The paper attempts to evaluate importance of YouTube as a multimedia tool. Content analysis of hundred YouTube advertisements of the beauty segment has been done to identify their critical success factors like Audio content (sound saturation, background music, loud and fast music, sound effects), Visual Category (No. of cuts, visual effects, intense imagery, slow motion, bold/ unusual colours), Content category (acted out, unexpected format, surprise ending), Message Appeals (Rational, Fear, Social, Youth, Statistics, Bandwagon and Celebrity Appeal) and viewers’ response through the number of views and likes. Accordingly, a framework has been proposed that may be useful for the managers who develop promotional strategies for the organizations. AIDA model has been used to validate the framework.     

Dynamic playout scheduling algorithms for continuous multimedia streams

In this paper, we investigate a playout scheduling framework for supporting the continuous and synchronized presentations of multimedia streams in a distributed multimedia presentation system. We assume a situation in which the server and network transmissions provide sufficient support for the delivery of media objects. In this context, major issues regarding the enforcement of the smooth presentation of multimedia streams at client sites must be addressed to deal with rate variance of stream presentations and delay variance of networks. We develop various playout-scheduling algorithms that are adaptable to quality-of-service parameters. The proposed algorithms permit the local adjustment of unsynchronized presentations by gradually accelerating or retarding presentation components, rather than abruptly skipping or pausing the presentation materials. A comprehensive experimental analysis of the proposed algorithms demonstrates that our algorithms can effectively avoid playout gaps (or hiccups) in the presentations. This scheduling framework can be readily used to support customized multimedia presentations.     

Seamless video access for mobile devices by content-aware utility-based adaptation

Today’s Internet multimedia services are characterized by heterogeneous networks, a wide range of terminals, diverse user preferences, and varying natural environment conditions. Heterogeneity of terminals, networks, and user preferences impose nontrivial challenges to the Internet multimedia services for providing seamless multimedia access particularly for mobile devices (e.g., laptops, tablet PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, etc.). Thus, it is essential that advanced multimedia technologies are developed to deal with these challenges. One of these technologies is video adaptation, which has gained significant importance with its main objective of enabling seamless access to video contents available over the Internet. Adaptation decision taking, which can be considered as the “brain” of video adaptation, assists video adaptation to achieve this objective. Scalable Video Coding (SVC) offers flexibility for video adaptation through providing a comprehensive set of scalability parameters (i.e., temporal, spatial, and quality) for producing scalable video streams. Deciding the best combination of scalability parameters to adapt a scalable video stream while satisfying a set of constraints (e.g., device specifics, network bandwidth, etc.) poses challenges for the existing adaptation services to enable seamless video access. To ease such challenges, an adaptation decision taking technique employing a utility-based approach to decide on the most adequate scalability parameters for adaptation operations is developed. A Utility Function (UF), which models the relationships among the scalability parameters and weights specifying the relative importance of these parameters considering video content characteristics (i.e., motion activity and structural feature), is proposed to assist the developed technique. In order to perform the developed adaptation decision taking technique, a video adaptation framework is also proposed in this paper. The adaptation experiments performed using the proposed framework prove the effectiveness of the framework to provide an important step towards enabling seamless video access for mobile devices to enhance viewing experience of users.     

Improving media services on P2P networks

The Media Accelerating Peer Services system extends P2P infrastructures to improve multimedia services across heterogeneous computing platforms. In this article, we present an architecture and resource management and adaptation framework that transcends existing infrastructures to accommodate and accelerate multimedia peer applications and services. We also propose key technology components that support seamless adaptation of resources to enhance quality of service and the building of better tools and applications that utilize the peer-computing network's underlying power     

Enabling assisted strategic negotiations in actual-world procurement scenarios

In the everyday business world, the sourcing process of multiple goods and services usually involves complex negotiations (via telephone, fax, etc.) that include discussion of product and service features. Nowadays, this is a high-cost process due to the scarce use of tools that streamline this negotiation process and assist purchasing managers’ decision-making. With the advent of Internet-based technologies, it has become feasible the idea of tools enabling low-cost, assisted, fluid, on-line dialogs between buyer enterprises and their providers wherever they are located. Consequently, several commercial systems to support on-line negotiations (e-sourcing tools) have been released. It is our view that there is still a need for these systems to incorporate effective decision support. This article presents the foundations of Quotes, a commercial sourcing application developed by iSOCO that, in addition to cover the whole sequence of sourcing tasks, incorporates decision support facilities based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques that successfully address previous limitations within a single and coherent framework. The paper focuses on the computational realization of sourcing tasks along with the decision support facilities they require. While supported negotiation events are Request for Quotations/Proposals (RFQs/RFPs) and reverse auctions, decision support facilities include offer generation, offer comparison, and optimal bid set computation (winner determination) in combinatorial negotiations. Additionally, the paper presents a compound of experiences and lessons learned when using Quotes for real sourcing processes.     

Effect of kinesthetic and tactile haptic feedback on the quality of experience of edutainment applications

Haptic technologies and applications have received enormous attention in the last decade. The incorporation of haptic modality into multimedia applications adds excitement and enjoyment to an application. It also adds a more natural feel to multimedia applications, that otherwise would be limited to vision and audition, by engaging as well the user’s sense of touch, giving a more intrinsic feel essential for ambient intelligent applications. However, the improvement of an application’s Quality of Experience (QoE) by the addition of haptic feedback is still not completely understood. The research presented in this paper focuses on the effect of haptic feedback and what it potentially adds to the experience of the user as opposed to the traditional visual and auditory feedback. In essence, it investigates certain issues regarding stylus-based haptic education applications and haptic-enhanced entertainment videos. To this end, we used two haptic applications: the haptic handwriting learning tool to experiment with force feedback haptic interaction and the tactile YouTube application for tactile haptic feedback. In both applications, our analysis shows that the addition of haptic feedback will increase the QoE in the absence of fatigue or discomfort for this category of applications. This implies that the incorporation of haptic modality (both force feedback as well as tactile feedback) has positively contributed to the overall QoE for the users.     

A Framework for Internet Media Services Delivery to the Home Environment

In this paper, we propose a framework that enables Internet service providers (ISPs) to provide multimedia content to generic devices located inside the domestic networks of their customers (such as PCs and generic media players) in a seamless manner. In order to achieve this transparent integration between ISP-provided multimedia content and generic consumer media players, the domestic gateway becomes a managed UPnP AV/DLNA (Universal Plug and Play/Digital Living Network Alliance) media server, which can be dynamically updated by the broadband operator using Broadband Forum’s CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) WAN Management Protocol (CWMP) extensions specifically designed for this purpose. This framework enables the domestic gateway to become a mediator for both operator-provided and Internet media content, provided through UPnP services visible inside the domestic LAN. The adoption of a neutral UPnP/DLNA architecture that uses plugins to abstract each service allows it to become independent of the domestic gateway platform, allowing ISPs to easily add support for new media services while better coping with protocol updates. The proposed framework has been developed and validated in the scope of the project S3P, in cooperation between the University of Coimbra and Portugal Telecom’s PT Inovação innovation and R&D unit.