Counting clicks and beeps: Exploring numerosity based haptic and audio PIN entry

Haptic and audio cues now appear commonly in computer interfaces, partially due to inherent advantages such as their support for eyes-free interaction. Their invisible, unobservable nature also makes them ideal candidates for security interfaces in which users have to enter secret information such as passwords. In particular, researchers have explored this idea through the design of PIN entry authentication systems based on multi-modal combinations of visual and non-visual content or on the recognition of small sets of unimodal haptic or audio stimuli. This paper highlights the benefits and performance limitations of these approaches and introduces an alternative based on unimodal audio or haptic temporal numerosity – the ability to accurately and rapidly determine the number of cues presented in rapid temporal succession. In essence, in a numerosity interface, rather than recognizing distinct cues, users must count the number of times that a single cue occurs. In an iterative process of design and evaluation, three prototypes implementing this concept are presented and studies of their use reported. The results show the fastest PIN entry times and lowest error rates to be 8 s and 2%, figures that improve substantially on previous research. These results are attained while maintaining low levels of workload and substantial resistance to observation attack (as determined via camera attack security studies). In sum, this paper argues that unimodal audio and haptic numerosity is a valuable and relatively unexplored metaphor for non-visual input and demonstrates the validity of this claim in the demanding task of unobservable authentication systems.     

Effects of user age and target-expansion methods on target-acquisition tasks using a mouse

Target expansion, i.e., the increase of target size according to cursor movement, can be a practical scheme to improve the usability of target-selection tasks using a mouse. This study examined the effects of different user age groups and target-expansion methods on target-acquisition tasks with grouped icons. Twenty-eight subjects performed acquisition tasks under eight experimental conditions: combinations of four expansion areas (no, one-icon, fish-eye, and group expansion) and two expansion techniques (occlusion and push). Older users took longer to acquire targets than younger users; however, they showed no significant difference in accuracy. Target expansion did not substantially improve performance speed compared to the static condition. However, the error rate was lowest when group area was expanded with the push technique, and both age groups were most satisfied with one-icon area expansion with the occlusion technique. We suggest alternative guidelines in designing target-expansion schemes.     

Comparison between cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry when coupled with EQCM for the study of the SEI on a carbon film electrode

Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry have been conducted with the electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) to characterize electron-beam deposited carbon film electrodes in LiClO₄-containing mixed electrolytes of ethylene carbonate (EC) and dimethyl carbonate (DMC). For a system whose electrolyte viscosity changes in the course of experiments, such as the above combination of electrode and electrolyte, the mass change per mole of electrons transferred (MPE) of the species on quartz crystals depends on the potential scan rate of CV. Chronoamperometry with a short period is more desirable for the estimation of the MPE of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) because the viscosity-induced frequency change, which hinders the correct MPE estimation, constitutes a small portion of the measured frequency change under this experimental condition.     

Fabrication of Al/AlN composites by in situ reaction

The tensile properties and microstructures of various Al alloys fabricated by the pressureless infiltration method under a nitrogen atmosphere were examined. The spontaneous infiltration of molten metal into the powder bed occurred at 800 °C for 1 h under a nitrogen atmosphere. As a result, it was possible to fabricate Al alloys reinforced with AlN particles formed by in situ reaction. A significant strengthening even in the control alloy occurred due to the formation of in situ AlN particle even without an addition of artificial reinforcement. Strength values of the control alloy were increased with decreasing Al powders in bottom powders bed. In addition, tensile strength in Al–Mg alloys was increased with Mg content.     

Enhanced carrier confinement in AlInGaN-InGaN quantum wells in near ultraviolet light-emitting diodes

To increase carrier confinement, the GaN barrier layer was substituted with an AlInGaN quaternary barrier layer which was lattice-matched to GaN in the GaN-InGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs). Photoluminescence (PL) and high-resolution X-ray diffraction measurements showed that the AlInGaN barrier layer has a higher bandgap energy than the originally used GaN barrier layer. The PL intensity of the five periods of AlInGaN-InGaN MQWs was increased by three times compared to that of InGaN-GaN MQWs. The electroluminescence (EL) emission peak of AlInGaN-InGaN MQWs ultraviolet light-emitting diode (UV LED) was blue-shifted, compared to a GaN-InGaN MQWs UV LED and the integrated EL intensity of the AlInGaN-InGaN MQWs UV LED increased linearly up to 100 mA. These results indicated that the AlInGaN-InGaN MQWs UV LED has a stronger carrier confinement than a GaN-InGaN MQWs UV LED due to the larger barrier height of the AlInGaN barrier layer compared to a GaN barrier layer.     

H.264/AVC baseline profile to MPEG‐4 visual simple profile transcoding to reduce the spatial resolution

In this study, we propose a heterogeneous transcoding method of converting an H.264/Advanced video coding (AVC) Baseline profile (BP) video bitstream into an MPEG‐4 Visual simple profile (VSP) video bitstream. The proposed method reduces the spatial resolution for mobile terminals, which support only low resolution video bitstreams. When the H.264/AVC BP video bitstream is transformed into the MPEG‐4 VSP video bitstream, the conversions between the H.264/AVC BP block types and the MPEG‐4 VSP block types are performed by analyzing the macroblocks (MBs) conversion probability and calculating the difference values of motion vector. The proposed transcoding method runs on average 5.5 times faster than the cascaded transcoding methods, for a degradation of the PSNR (peak‐signal‐to ratio) of less than 0.5 dB. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 16, 24–33, 2006     

A new LDPC decoding algorithm aided by segmented cyclic redundancy checks for magnetic recording channels

We introduce a new low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoding algorithm that exploits the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) information of data segments. By using the error detection property of the CRC, we can successively decode data segments of a codeword corrupted by random errors and erasures. The key idea is that the messages from the variable nodes with correct checksum are fixed to deterministic log likelihood ratio values during LDPC iterative decoding. This approach improves the decoding speed and codeword error rate without significant modification of the LDPC decoding structure. Moreover, the CRC is also used for an early stopping criterion of LDPC decoding. Simulation results verify our claims.     

A simple receding horizon control for state delayed systems and its stability criterion

In this paper, a simple receding horizon (or model predictive) control for state delayed systems is presented and its solution is given in a closed form by a reduction method. While the control for a time-delay system is usually complex, the proposed controller is simple to construct and therefore can be simply implemented in real applications. To check the closed-loop stability of the proposed controller, a sufficient condition is provided by linear matrix inequalities. In addition, a numerical algorithm is presented for computing the eigenvalues of systems with distributed time delays, which can be used as a necessary and sufficient condition to check closed-loop stability. It is shown by simulation that this simple control can be a stabilizing control for time-delay systems.