Mytilene E-guide: a multiplatform mobile application tourist guide exemplar

This paper introduces an approach of enhancing the tourism experience by incorporating a tool that adopts a “web-to-mobile” model into tourism websites that allows for the adaptation of personalized tourism web content to be transferred to a mobile application hosted at users’ mobile device. These applications upon installation to mobile devices allow for browsing of adapted multimedia content with no requirement for constant network connection. Furthermore so we convey the development experiences of a multiplatform mobile tourist guide aimed at producing a personalized mobile guide application used in both an online and offline modes offering services to tourists such as a personal profiling-based recommendation system, a commenting system and location-based services. This paper focuses on the design, implementation and usability case study of a Multi-Platform Tourist Guide system for the Municipal Council of Mytilene, Greece.     

Influence of Ag admixtures on the crystallization of amorphous Fe75Si9B16

This work studies the influence of the Ag admixtures on the crystallization of the amorphous Fe₇₅Si₉B₁₆ alloy, with the aid of electric and magnetic measurements. It is concluded that the solid solubility of the Ag in these alloys is very small, reaching 2 at% at most. Because of microsegregation, the presence of even these minimal admixtures accelerates the crystallization procedure.     

Determination of the structures of small gold clusters on stepped magnesia by density functional calculations

The structural modifications of small supported gold clusters caused by realistic surface defects (steps) in the MgO(001) support are investigated by computational methods. The most stable gold cluster structures on a stepped MgO(001) surface are searched for in the size range up to 24 Au atoms, and locally optimized by density-functional calculations. Several structural motifs are found within energy differences of 1 eV: inclined leaflets, arched leaflets, pyramidal hollow cages and compact structures. We show that the interaction with the step clearly modifies the structures with respect to adsorption on the flat defect-free surface. We find that leaflet structures clearly dominate for smaller sizes. These leaflets are either inclined and quasi-horizontal, or arched, at variance with the case of the flat surface in which vertical leaflets prevail. With increasing cluster size pyramidal hollow cages begin to compete against leaflet structures. Cage structures become more and more favourable as size increases. The only exception is size 20, at which the tetrahedron is found as the most stable isomer. This tetrahedron is however quite distorted. The comparison of two different exchange-correlation functionals (Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof and local density approximation) show the same qualitative trends.     

Mechanical and adhesion properties of polymer-modified cement mortars in relation with their microstructure

In this study, cement mortars were modified with a commercial polymer admixture. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the polymer content on the mechanical and adhesion properties of the mortars and to relate these properties with mortars’ microstructure. A series of mortars were produced with various polymer/cement/water/aggregate ratios. The adhesion properties of the mortars to clay bricks were tested with a simplified tensile testing measurement. The microstructure of mortars, as well as interfaces, were evaluated by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It was found that with high polymer content, large size hardened particles are formed, reducing the compressive strength of the mortars. Polymer addition enhances the adhesion between the mortar and brick. The mortar microstructure at the interface affects the adhesion properties and the mode of failure.     

Electronic mobile guides: a survey

Mobile tourist guides have been in the spot light for the past decade and are becoming increasingly available in various forms to tourists visiting places. The majority of these mobile tourist guides are to be used via a constant network connection and some as proprietary standalone mobile applications installed on-device. Some are solely navigational assistants using positioning technologies for large cities offering exploratory services and others are used indoors, for example as museum guides. This research paper attempts to categorize these mobile guides using a detailed set of evaluation criteria in order to extract design principles which can be used by application designers and developers.     

Occlusion handling in outdoors augmented reality games

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The use of augmented reality (AR) becomes increasingly common in mobile game development as a means of enhancing the players’ view of the physical world...     

Accessible interactive television using the MPEG-21 standard

In this paper, the accessibility of interactive television (iTV) is discussed as a primary factor for its satisfactory adoption and commercial success. The work presented here is undertaken in the context of a research project that focuses on delivering iTV services to disabled children. This objective is accomplished through the utilization of the arising MPEG-21 standard. Based on that standard, iTV accessibility is investigated in terms of metadata and content adaptation. The novelty of the contribution lies on a systematic methodology that deals with a wide range of accessibility problems, as opposed to previous studies that focus mostly on users with only one specific disability.