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.     

Reducing model checking commitments for agent communication to model checking ARCTL and GCTL*

Social commitments have been extensively and effectively used to represent and model business contracts among autonomous agents having competing objectives in a variety of areas (e.g., modeling business processes and commitment-based protocols). However, the formal verification of social commitments and their fulfillment is still an active research topic. This paper presents CTLC⁺ that modifies CTLC, a temporal logic of commitments for agent communication that extends computation tree logic (CTL) logic to allow reasoning about communicating commitments and their fulfillment. The verification technique is based on reducing the problem of model checking CTLC⁺ into the problem of model checking ARCTL (the combination of CTL with action formulae) and the problem of model checking GCTL^* (a generalized version of CTL^* with action formulae) in order to respectively use the extended NuSMV symbolic model checker and the CWB-NC automata-based model checker as a benchmark. We also prove that the reduction techniques are sound and the complexity of model checking CTLC⁺ for concurrent programs with respect to the size of the components of these programs and the length of the formula is PSPACE-complete. This matches the complexity of model checking CTL for concurrent programs as shown by Kupferman et al. We finally provide two case studies taken from business domain along with their respective implementations and experimental results to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed technique. The first one is about the NetBill protocol and the second one considers the Contract Net protocol.     

Spatial and seasonal variations and ecotoxicological significance of sediment trace metal concentrations in Kebir-Rhumel basin (Northeast of Algeria)

This study sought to assess sediment contamination by trace metals (cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, manganese, nickel, lead and zinc), to localize contaminated sites and to identify environmental risk for aquatic organisms in Wadis of Kebir Rhumel basin in the Northeast of Algeria. Water and surficial sediments (0-5 cm) were sampled in winter, spring, summer and autumn from 37 sites along permanent Wadis of the Kebir Rhumel basin. Sediment trace metal contents were measured by Flame Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. Trace metals median concentrations in sediments followed a decreasing order: Mn > Zn > Pb > Cr > Cu > Ni > Co > Cd. Extreme values (dry weights) of the trace metals are as follows: 0.6-3.4 microg/g for Cd, 10-216 microg/g for Cr, 9-446 microg/g for Cu, 3-20 microg/g for Co, 105-576 microg/g for Mn, 10-46 microg/g for Ni, 11-167 microg/g for Pb, and 38-641 microg/g for Zn. According to world natural concentrations, all sediments collected were considered as contaminated by one or more elements. Comparing measured concentrations with American guidelines (Threshold Effect Level: TEL and Probable Effect Level: PEL) showed that biological effects could be occasionally observed for cadmium, chromium, lead and nickel levels but frequently observed for copper and zinc levels. Sediment quality was shown to be excellent for cobalt and manganese but medium to bad for cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc regardless of sites.     

Trust-based authentication scheme with user rating for low-resource devices in smart environments

In smart environments, pervasive computing contributes in improving daily life activities for dependent people by providing personalized services. Nevertheless, those environments do not guarantee a satisfactory level for protecting the user privacy and ensuring the trust between communicating entities. In this study, we propose a trust evaluation model based on user past and present behavior. This model is associated with a lightweight authentication key agreement protocol (Elliptic Curve-based Simple Authentication Key Agreement). The aim is to enable the communicating entities to establish a level of trust and then succeed in a mutual authentication using a scheme suitable for low-resource devices in smart environments. An innovation in our trust model is that it uses an accurate approach to calculate trust in different situations and includes a human-based feature for trust feedback, which is user rating. Finally, we tested and implemented our scheme on Android mobile phones in a smart environment dedicated for handicapped people.     

Agent societies and social networks for ubiquitous computing

In ubiquitous computing environments, providing appropriate services and information to users at the right place in the right way is challenging for many reasons: different user interests, heterogeneous devices and services, dynamic networks, information overload, or differing privacy levels, for example. Agent technology is a paradigm expected to play an increasing role in complex computing environments, and due to the increasing popularity of social networking services, we expect to see the convergence of agent and social web technologies. The goal of this theme issue is to bring together state-of-the-art research contributions that examine the convergence of agent technologies and social networks for ubiquitous computing.     

A Replicated Survey of IT Software Project Failures

Despite various industry reports about the failure rates of software projects, there's still uncertainty about the actual figures. Researchers performed a global Web survey of IT departments in 2005 and 2007. The results suggest that the software crisis is perhaps exaggerated and that most software projects deliver. However, the overall project failure rate, including cancelled and completed but poorly performing projects, remains arguably high for an applied discipline.     

A Dioid Model for Invariant Resource Sharing Problems

This paper proposes a model for invariant resource sharing problems in dioid algebra. A strong motivation for investigating the issue is the absence of a general systematic technique which can be used to tackle these problems. (min, +) constraints have been developed to handle resource sharing in Discrete-Event Dynamic Systems. In particular, the part that can be modeled by a Timed Event Graph induce (min, +)-linear equations which are constrained by the resource availability. The proposed algebraic model has been proved to describe the actual behavior of the systems dealt with. This paper will show two examples of systems that are modeled and controlled by means of this approach.     

Regional constrained controllability problem: Approaches and simulations

The aim of this paper is to deal with an output controllability problem. It consists in driving the state of a distributed parabolic system toward a state between two prescribed functions on a boundary subregion of the system evolution domain with minimum energy control. Two necessary conditions are derived. The first one is formulated in terms of subdifferential associated with a minimized functional. The second one is formulated as a system of equations for arguments of the Lagrange systems. Numerical illustrations show the efficiency of the second approach and lead to some conjectures. Recommended by Editorial Board member Fumitoshi Matsuno under the direction of Editor Jae Weon Choi. Zerrik El Hassan is a Professor at the university Moulay Ismail of Meknes in Morocco. He was an Assistant Professor in the faculty of sciences of Meknes and researcher at the university of Perpignan (France). He got his doctorat d etat in system regional analysis (1993) at the University Mohammed V of Rabat, Morocco. Professor Zerrik wrote many papers and books in the area of systems analysis and control. Now he is the Head of the research team MACS (Modeling Analysis and Control of Systems) at the university Moulay Ismail of Meknes in Morocco. Ghafrani Fatima is a Researcher at team MACS at the University Moulay Ismail of Meknes in Morocco. She wrote many papers in the area of systems analysis and control.     

Weak and strong stabilization of linear systems

We study the problem of stabilizing a distributed linear system on a subregion of its geometrical domain. We are concerned with two methods： the first approach enables us to characterize a stabilizing control via the steady state Riccati equation, and the second one is based on decomposing the state space into two suitable subspaces and studying the projections of the initial system onto such subspaces. The obtained results are performed through various examples.     

Photoelectric properties of undoped and lithium-doped Zn1−xMgxTe alloys

The room temperature photoelectric response of undoped and lithium-doped Zn_1–xMg_xTe (0 x 0.50) alloys has been measured in the wavelength range 0.50 3.0 m. The response curve for undoped samples is characterized by a single peak in the band edge region. The peak shifts with composition in accordance with the expected shift in the energy band gap. Lithium-doped samples show an additional peak centred at 1.04 eV for all compositions. This peak is attributed to photo-generated holes in the split-off band created as the result of electronic transitions to shallow acceptor impurities.