Next generation session management for 3D teleimmersive interactive environments

In the recent past we have seen a boom of distributed interactive multimedia environments which use multiple correlated media sensors, multi-view displays, and advanced haptic-audio-visual user interfaces for teleimmersive gaming, business meetings and other collaborative activities. However, when we investigate the emerging teleimmersive environments closer, we realize that their overall session management, including end-to-end session setup, establishment and run-time management are not appropriate for the new demands that these environments present. These environments are cyber-physical rooms that demand (a) large scale of multi-sensory devices across geographically-distributed locations and (b) interaction with each other in synchronous and real-time manner. To deal with the new teleimmersive demands, we present a new session management design with (a) session initiation protocol(s) that understand media correlations, (b) view-based multi-stream topology establishment among multiple parties, (c) efficient, light-weight and distributed session monitoring with querying and debugging capabilities, (d) flexible view-based session adaptation with efficient topology adjustments, and (e) light-weighted and consistent session tear-down protocols. The presented design of the next generation session management protocols, services, algorithms and data structures is based on our extensive experiences with building 3D teleimmersive interactive systems, experimenting with high impact teleimmersive applications and deploying such environments at various venues.     

Unconstrained handwritten document retrieval

With the ever-increasing growth of the World Wide Web, there is an urgent need for an efficient information retrieval system that can search and retrieve handwritten documents when presented with user queries. However, unconstrained handwriting recognition remains a challenging task with inadequate performance thus proving to be a major hurdle in providing robust search experience in handwritten documents. In this paper, we describe our recent research with focus on information retrieval from noisy text derived from imperfect handwriting recognizers. First, we describe a novel term frequency estimation technique incorporating the word segmentation information inside the retrieval framework to improve the overall system performance. Second, we outline a taxonomy of different techniques used for addressing the noisy text retrieval task. The first method uses a novel bootstrapping mechanism to refine the OCR’ed text and uses the cleaned text for retrieval. The second method uses the uncorrected or raw OCR’ed text but modifies the standard vector space model for handling noisy text issues. The third method employs robust image features to index the documents instead of using noisy OCR’ed text. We describe these techniques in detail and also discuss their performance measures using standard IR evaluation metrics.     

An enhanced model framework of personalized material flow services

A growing concern about the consumer behavior in Internet economy has spurred the study of Material Flow, resulting in a unique type of consumer behavioral analysis. This research proposes an enhanced conceptual model for Personalized Material Flow Services for consumer behavior. In the era of Internet information technology, customer’s taste tends to be personalized for their market demand. It is observed that there are number of “Long Tail” phenomena in several successful e-commerce business cases. However, the Long Tail phenomenon is an open question for our research in terms of its role in e-commerce marketing. In the proposed model-X-Party Personalized Material Flow Services, three elements are discussed. They are “providing”, “locating” and “obtaining” based on X-Party Material Flow theory for which the concept of virtual collector, information filter and Material Flow coordinator are discussed. Business examples of Amazon, Dangdang and Taobao are used to analyze the elements of the virtual collector, information filter and Material Flow coordinator of the Personalized Material Flow Service system.     

Application of enhanced cluster validity index function to automatic stock portfolio selection system

This paper presents an automatic stock portfolio selection system. In the proposed approach, 53 financial indices are collected for each stock item and are consolidated into six financial ratios [Grey relational grades (GRGs)] using a Grey relational analysis model. The GRGs are processed using a modified form of the PBMF index method (designated as the Huang index function) to determine the optimal number of clusters per GRG. The resulting cluster indices are then processed using rough set theory to identify the stocks within the lower approximate sets. Finally, the GRGs of each stock item in the lower approximate sets are consolidated into a single GRG, indicating the ability of the stock item to maximize the rate of return. It is demonstrated that the proposed stock selection mechanism yields a higher rate of return than several existing portfolio selection systems.     

Affective data acquisition technologies in survey research

There is no agreement on how to formally incorporate affective data into statistical analysis and research conclusions. The information systems (IS) literature has recently published several position papers that have established a framework and perspective for using affective technology in IS research though. The frameworks have not been extensively tested, and are likely to evolve over time as empirical studies are conducted, and the validity of the methodologies is confirmed or disproved. A major goal of the current paper is to take the initial steps in translating the frameworks to usable methodologies, with application to improving our understanding of how to make effective empirical tests. This paper also investigates the adoption cycle of one of these technologies—electrodermal response (EDR) technologies—whose incarnation in the polygraph in forensic applications went through a complete adoption cycle in the twentieth century. The use of EDR response data in marketing research and surveys is nascent, but prior experience can help us to forecast and encourage its adoption in new research contexts. This research investigates three key questions: (1) What technology adoption model is appropriate for electrodermal response technology in forensic science? (2) What is the accuracy of affective electrodermal response readings? (3) What information is useful after superimposing affective EDR readings on contemporaneous survey data collection? Affective data acquisition technologies appear to add the most information when survey subjects are inclined to lie and have strong emotional feelings. Such data streams are informative, non-invasive and cost-effective. Informativeness is context-dependent though, and it relies on a complex set of still poorly understood human factors. Survey protocols and statistical analysis methods need to be developed to address these challenges.     

Research on the group decision-making about emergency event based on network technology

In order to improve decision-making efficiency about emergency event, this paper proposes a novel concept, i.e., Agile-Delphi Method, which is an integration of agile decision and Delphi Method implicating that the decision-makers instantly deliver, respond, treat, and utilize information via Delphi process while conducting group decision-making about emergency event. The paper details the mechanism of group decision-making about emergency event based on network technology and Agile-Delphi Method. Finally, the paper conducts an empiric analysis taking the “111 event”, i.e., the liquid ammonia spill event happened on November 1, 2006 in a phosphorus chemical company in China, as an example.     

Influences on standards adoption in de facto standardization

In the IT industry, de facto standards emerge from standards competition as firms offer incompatible technologies, and user choices determine the outcome of the competition. The standards literature suggests that strong network effects create a bias toward a standard with a large installed base, leading to a winner-take-all outcome. More recently, several researchers have revealed that the dynamics of standardization are much more complex than the explanation offered by the economic theory of networks. Markets do not always exhibit tipping behavior so there is not always a single winner in de facto standardization; and the size of an overall installed base does not always exert a strong influence on adoption decisions. In contrast, network effects drawn from local social influence may be more salient to user adoption decisions. We ask: (1) Do we always observe a winner-take-all outcome in de facto standards competition? (2) What are the different technology adoption patterns observed in de facto standards competition? (3) What are the implications of network effects, switching costs, pricing, and functionality enhancement strategies on the outcome of de facto standards competition in different user network structures? Drawing on the economic theory of networks, the complex network theory, and previous work in the standards literature, we examine the influence of network effects, switching costs, price, and technology functionality on user adoption decisions using agent-based simulation. We incorporate underlying user network structures frequently observed in the real world as an important determining factor of user adoption decisions. Our results suggest that de facto standardization process does not always follow a three-phased S-shaped pattern. Winner-take-all is not a necessary outcome of standards competition. User network structures have a significant impact on the dynamics and outcomes of standards competition.     

Controlling patterns of geospatial phenomena

Modeling spatially distributed phenomena in terms of its controlling factors is a recurring problem in geoscience. Most efforts concentrate on predicting the value of response variable in terms of controlling variables either through a physical model or a regression model. However, many geospatial systems comprises complex, nonlinear, and spatially non-uniform relationships, making it difficult to even formulate a viable model. This paper focuses on spatial partitioning of controlling variables that are attributed to a particular range of a response variable. Thus, the presented method surveys spatially distributed relationships between predictors and response. The method is based on association analysis technique of identifying emerging patterns, which are extended in order to be applied more effectively to geospatial data sets. The outcome of the method is a list of spatial footprints, each characterized by a unique “controlling pattern”—a list of specific values of predictors that locally correlate with a specified value of response variable. Mapping the controlling footprints reveals geographic regionalization of relationship between predictors and response. The data mining underpinnings of the method are given and its application to a real world problem is demonstrated using an expository example focusing on determining variety of environmental associations of high vegetation density across the continental United States.     

Formal methods for security in the Xenon hypervisor

This paper reports on the Xenon project’s use of formal methods. Xenon is a higher-assurance secure hypervisor based on re-engineering the Xen open-source hypervisor. The Xenon project used formal specifications both for assurance and as guides for security re-engineering. We formally modelled the fundamental definition of security, the hypercall interface behaviour, and the internal modular design. We used three formalisms: CSP, Z, and Circus for this work. Circus is a combination of Standard Z, CSP with its semantics given in Hoare and He’s unifying theories of programming. Circus is suited for both event-based and state-based modelling. Here, we report our experiences to date with using these formalisms for assurance.