The impact of visual layout factors on performance in Web pages: a cross-language study

Visual layout has a strong impact on performance and is a critical factor in the design of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and Web pages. Many design guidelines employed in Web page design were inherited from human performance literature and GUI design studies and practices. However, few studies have investigated the more specific patterns of performance with Web pages that may reflect some differences between Web page and GUI design. We investigated interactions among four visual layout factors in Web page design (quantity of links, alignment, grouping indications, and density) in two experiments: one with pages in Hebrew, entailing right-to-left reading, and the other with English pages, entailing left-to-right reading. Some performance patterns (measured by search times and eye movements) were similar between languages. Performance was particularly poor in pages with many links and variable densities, but it improved with the presence of uniform density. Alignment was not shown to be a performance-enhancing factor. The findings are discussed in terms of the similarities and differences in the impact of layout factors between GUIs and Web pages. Actual or potential applications of this research include specific guidelines for Web page design.     

I-convergence in probabilistic n-normed space

In this article we introduce the notion of I-Cauchy sequence and I-convergent sequence in probabilistic n-normed space. The concept of I*-Cauchy sequence and I*-convergence in probabilistic n-normed space are also introduced and some of their properties related to these notions have been established.     

A blind audio watermarking based on singular value decomposition and quantization

International Journal of Speech Technology - In this work, we have proposed a robust audio watermarking technique in which a binary image is embedded into a host audio signal for copyright...     

Reversible binary subtractor design using quantum dot-cellular automata

In the field of nanotechnology, quantum dot-cellular automata (QCA) is the promising archetype that can provide an alternative solution to conventional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuit. QCA has high device density, high operating speed, and extremely low power consumption. Reversible logic has widespread applications in QCA. Researchers have explored several designs of QCA-based reversible logic circuits, but still not much work has been reported on QCA-based reversible binary subtractors. The low power dissipation and high circuit density of QCA pledge the energy-efficient design of logic circuit at a nano-scale level. However, the necessity of too many logic gates and detrimental garbage outputs may limit the functionality of a QCA-based logic circuit. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a DG gate in QCA. The universal nature of the DG gate has been established. The QCA building block of the DG gate is used to achieve new reversible binary subtractors. The proposed reversible subtractors have low quantum cost and garbage outputs compared to the existing reversible subtractors. The proposed circuits are designed and simulated using QCA Designer-2.0.3.     

Low intensity visual data improvement using DWT and LWT based regularizer

Image Completion plays a vital role in compressed sensing, machine learning, and computer vision applications. The Rank Minimization algorithms are used to perform the image completion. The major problem with rank minimization algorithms is the loss of information in the recovered image at high corruption ratios. To overcome this problem Lifting wavelet transform based Rank Minimization (LwRM), and Discrete wavelet transform based Rank Minimization (DwRM) methods are proposed, which can recover the image, if the corrupted observations are more than 80%. The evaluation of the proposed methods are accomplished by Full Reference Image Quality Assessment (FRIQA) and No Reference Image Quality Assessment (NR-IQA) metrics. The simulation results of proposed methods are superior to state-of-the-art methods.

     

3D head tracking under partial occlusion

A new algorithm for 3D head tracking under partial occlusion from 2D monocular image sequences is proposed. The extended superquadric (ESQ) is used to generate a geometric 3D face model in order to reduce the shape ambiguity during tracking. Optical flow is then regularized by this model to estimate the 3D rigid motion. To deal with occlusion, a new motion segmentation algorithm using motion residual error analysis is developed. The occluded areas are successfully detected and discarded as noise. Furthermore, accumulation error is heavily reduced by a new post-regularization process based on edge flow. This makes the algorithm more stable over long image sequences. The algorithm is applied to both synthetic occlusion sequence and real image sequences. Comparisons with the ground truth indicate that our method is effective and is not sensitive to occlusion during head tracking.     

Addressing spatiotemporal and computational heterogeneity in structured adaptive mesh refinement

Structured adaptive mesh refinement (SAMR) techniques can provide accurate and cost- effective solutions to realistic scientific and engineering simulations modeling complex physical phenomena. However, the adaptive nature and inherent space–time heterogeneity of SAMR applications result in significant runtime management challenges. Moreover, certain SAMR applications involving reactive flows exhibit pointwise varying workloads and cannot be addressed by traditional parallelization approaches, which assume homogeneous loads. This paper presents hierarchical partitioning, bin-packing based load balancing, and Dispatch structured partitioning strategies to manage the spatiotemporal and computational heterogeneity in SAMR applications. Experimental evaluation of these schemes using 3-D Richtmyer–Meshkov compressible turbulence and 2-D reactive-diffusion kernels demonstrates the improvement in overall performance.     

Examining the influence of aggressive driving behavior on driver injury severity in traffic crashes

In this paper, we capture the moderating effect of aggressive driving behavior while assessing the influence of a comprehensive set of variables on injury severity. In doing so, we are able to account for the indirect effects of variables on injury severity through their influence on aggressive driving behavior, as well as the direct effect of variables on injury severity. The methodology used in the paper to accommodate the moderating effect of aggressive driving behavior takes the form of two models – one for aggressive driving and another for injury severity. These are appropriately linked to obtain the indirect and direct effects of variables. The data for estimation is obtained from the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Study (NMVCCS). From an empirical standpoint, we consider a fine age categorization until 20 years of age when examining age effects on aggressive driving behavior and injury severity.There are several important results from the empirical analysis undertaken in the current paper based on post-crash data collection on aggressive behavior participation just prior to the crash and injury severity sustained in a crash. Young drivers (especially novice drivers between 16 and 17 years of age), drivers who are not wearing seat belt, under the influence of alcohol, not having a valid license, and driving a pick-up are found to be most likely to behave aggressively. Situational, vehicle, and roadway factors such as young drivers traveling with young passengers, young drivers driving an SUV or a pick-up truck, driving during the morning rush hour, and driving on roads with high speed limits are also found to trigger aggressive driving behavior. In terms of vehicle occupants, the safest situation from a driver injury standpoint is when there are two or more passengers in the vehicle, at least one of whom is above the age of 20 years. These and many other results are discussed, along with implications of the result for graduated driving licensing (GDL) programs.