Non-manual cues in automatic sign language recognition

Present work deals with the incorporation of non-manual cues in automatic sign language recognition. More specifically, eye gaze, head pose, and facial expressions are discussed in relation to their grammatical and syntactic function and means of including them in the recognition phase are investigated. Computer vision issues related to extracting facial features, eye gaze, and head pose cues are presented and classification approaches for incorporating these non-manual cues into the overall Sign Language recognition architecture are introduced.     

Estimation of behavioral user state based on eye gaze and head pose—application in an e-learning environment

Most e-learning environments which utilize user feedback or profiles, collect such information based on questionnaires, resulting very often in incomplete answers, and sometimes deliberate misleading input. In this work, we present a mechanism which compiles feedback related to the behavioral state of the user (e.g. level of interest) in the context of reading an electronic document; this is achieved using a non-intrusive scheme, which uses a simple web camera to detect and track the head, eye and hand movements and provides an estimation of the level of interest and engagement with the use of a neuro-fuzzy network initialized from evidence from the idea of Theory of Mind and trained from expert-annotated data. The user does not need to interact with the proposed system, and can act as if she was not monitored at all. The proposed scheme is tested in an e-learning environment, in order to adapt the presentation of the content to the user profile and current behavioral state. Experiments show that the proposed system detects reading- and attention-related user states very effectively, in a testbed where children’s reading performance is tracked.

A clairvoyant site allocation policy based on service demands of jobs in a computational grid

In the present paper we evaluate the performance of three different site allocation policies in a 2-level computational grid with heterogeneous sites. We examine the case where service demands of jobs show high variability, and we consider that schedulers are aware of the service times. A simulation model is used to evaluate performance in terms of the average response time and slowdown, under medium and high load. The impact of the various input parameters on performance is also taken into account. Simulation results show that one policy outperforms the other two that are examined, especially at high load. Furthermore, no performance degradation is observed when estimations are used instead of exact knowledge about job service times.     

A repairable queueing model with two-phase service,start-up times and retrial customers

A repairable queueing model with a two-phase service in succession, provided by a single server, is investigated. Customers arrive in a single ordinary queue and after the completion of the first phase service, either proceed to the second phase or join a retrial box from where they retry, after a random amount of time and independently of the other customers in orbit, to find a position for service in the second phase. Moreover, the server is subject to breakdowns and repairs in both phases, while a start-up time is needed in order to start serving a retrial customer. When the server, upon a service or a repair completion finds no customers waiting to be served, he departs for a single vacation of an arbitrarily distributed length. The arrival process is assumed to be Poisson and all service and repair times are arbitrarily distributed. For such a system the stability conditions and steady state analysis are investigated. Numerical results are finally obtained and used to investigate system performance.     

Adaptive Head-to-Tail: Active Queue Management based on implicit congestion signals

Active Queue Management is a convenient way to administer the network load without increasing the complexity of end-user protocols. Current AQM techniques work in two ways; the router either drops some of its packets with a given probability or creates different queues with corresponding priorities. Head-to-Tail introduces a novel AQM approach: the packet rearrange scheme. Instead of dropping, HtT rearranges packets, moving them from the head of the queue to its tail. The additional queuing delay triggers a sending rate decrease and congestion events can be avoided. The HtT scheme avoids explicit packet drops and extensive retransmission delays. In this work, we detail the HtT algorithm and demonstrate when and how it outperforms current AQM implementations. We also approach analytically its impact on packet delay and conduct extensive simulations. Our experiments show that HtT achieves better results than Droptail and RED methods in terms of retransmitted packets and Goodput.     

Probabilistic model checking for the quantification of DoS security threats

Secure authentication features of communication and electronic commerce protocols involve computationally expensive and memory intensive cryptographic operations that have the potential to be turned into denial-of-service (DoS) exploits. Recent proposals attempt to improve DoS resistance by implementing a trade-off between the resources required for the potential victim(s) with the resources used by a prospective attacker. Such improvements have been proposed for the Internet Key Exchange (IKE), the Just Fast Keying (JFK) key agreement protocol and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL/TLS) protocol. In present article, we introduce probabilistic model checking as an efficient tool-assisted approach for systematically quantifying DoS security threats. We model a security protocol with a fixed network topology using probabilistic specifications for the protocol participants. We attach into the protocol model, a probabilistic attacker model which performs DoS related actions with assigned cost values. The costs for the protocol participants and the attacker reflect the level of some resource expenditure (memory, processing capacity or communication bandwidth) for the associated actions. From the developed model we obtain a Discrete Time Markov Chain (DTMC) via property preserving discrete-time semantics. The DTMC model is verified using the PRISM model checker that produces probabilistic estimates for the analyzed DoS threat. In this way, it is possible to evaluate the level of resource expenditure for the attacker, beyond which the likelihood of widespread attack is reduced and subsequently to compare alternative design considerations for optimal resistance to the analyzed DoS threat. Our approach is validated through the analysis of the Host Identity Protocol (HIP). The HIP base-exchange is seen as a cryptographic key-exchange protocol with special features related to DoS protection. We analyze a serious DoS threat, for which we provide probabilistic estimates, as well as results for the associated attacker and participants' costs.     

Accessibility-based reranking in multimedia search engines

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Traditional multimedia search engines retrieve results based mostly on the query submitted by the user, or using a log of previous searches to provide...     

Cooperative schemes for path establishment in mobile ad-hoc networks under shadow-fading

The performance of routing protocols for multi-hop path-establishment in Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANET) is examined when the individual radio links undergo shadow fading of parameterized severity. Such propagation modeling is typical of ground-level networking along with node mobility. The metrics of main interest are the probability of having a reliable multi-hop path plus the temporal statistics of such availability under a Markovian model. Such availability is an indicator for the suitability of the network to carry delay-sensitive applications (push-to-talk voice, streaming video) in uninterrupted manner. It is shown that high levels of diversity are necessary in such adverse environments, as obtained either by multiple independent paths or via concurrent cooperative transmission. Analytical and simulation comparisons of typical routing options are presented on the above metrics, plus on the required nodal engagement for supporting such diversity.     

Evaluation of polyesters from renewable resources as alternatives to the current fossil-based polymers. Phase transitions of poly(butylene 2,5-furan-dicarboxylate)

Poly(butylene 2,5-furan dicarboxylate) (PBF) is an alipharomatic polyester that can be prepared using monomers derived from renewable resources such as 2,5-furan dicarboxylic acid and 1,4-butanediol. In the present work the thermal behavior of PBF was studied. Multiple melting was observed during heating traces of samples isothermally crystallized from the melt using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The wide angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) patterns did not reveal the presence of a second crystal population, or a crystal transition upon heating. DSC study showed that the phenomena are closely related to recrystallization. Temperature modulated DSC (TMDSC) tests indeed evidenced enhanced recrystallization. The equilibrium melting point was estimated to be 184.5 °C using the linear Hoffman–Weeks extrapolation. The heat of fusion of the pure crystalline polymer was found equal to 129 J/g or (27.35 kJ/mol), a little lower than that of PBT. The Lauritzen–Hoffman secondary nucleation theory was used and the surface energy values and the work of chain folding were found to be comparable to those of PBT, but quite lower than those of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). The non-isothermal crystallization on cooling and the cold-crystallization of quenched samples were also studied. Condensed spherulites were observed on isothermal crystallization under large supercoolings by using polarized optical microscopy (POM), while the spherulites turned to ring-banded morphology at higher temperatures. In every case the nucleation density was high.