Search results for: user’s perspective
1318 An Efficient Watermarking Method for MP3 Audio Files
Authors: Dimitrios Koukopoulos, Yiannis Stamatiou
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In this work, we present for the first time in our perception an efficient digital watermarking scheme for mpeg audio layer 3 files that operates directly in the compressed data domain, while manipulating the time and subband/channel domain. In addition, it does not need the original signal to detect the watermark. Our scheme was implemented taking special care for the efficient usage of the two limited resources of computer systems: time and space. It offers to the industrial user the capability of watermark embedding and detection in time immediately comparable to the real music time of the original audio file that depends on the mpeg compression, while the end user/audience does not face any artifacts or delays hearing the watermarked audio file. Furthermore, it overcomes the disadvantage of algorithms operating in the PCMData domain to be vulnerable to compression/recompression attacks, as it places the watermark in the scale factors domain and not in the digitized sound audio data. The strength of our scheme, that allows it to be used with success in both authentication and copyright protection, relies on the fact that it gives to the users the enhanced capability their ownership of the audio file not to be accomplished simply by detecting the bit pattern that comprises the watermark itself, but by showing that the legal owner knows a hard to compute property of the watermark.
Keywords: Audio watermarking, mpeg audio layer 3, hard instance generation, NP-completeness.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18341317 Comparative Advantage of Mobile Agent Application in Procuring Software Products on the Internet
Authors: Michael K. Adu, Boniface K. Alese, Olumide S. Ogunnusi
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This paper brings to fore the inherent advantages in application of mobile agents to procure software products rather than downloading software content on the Internet. It proposes a system whereby the products come on compact disk with mobile agent as deliverable. The client/user purchases a software product, but must connect to the remote server of the software developer before installation. The user provides an activation code that activates mobile agent which is part of the software product on compact disk. The validity of the activation code is checked on connection at the developer’s end to ascertain authenticity and prevent piracy. The system is implemented by downloading two different software products as compare with installing same products on compact disk with mobile agent’s application. Downloading software contents from developer’s database as in the traditional method requires a continuously open connection between the client and the developer’s end, a fixed network is not economically or technically feasible. Mobile agent after being dispatched into the network becomes independent of the creating process and can operate asynchronously and autonomously. It can reconnect later after completing its task and return for result delivery. Response Time and Network Load are very minimal with application of Mobile agent.Keywords: Activation code, internet, mobile agent, software developer, software products.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6271316 Design and Implementation of a Software Platform Based on Artificial Intelligence for Product Recommendation
Authors: G. Settanni, A. Panarese, R. Vaira, A. Galiano
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Nowadays, artificial intelligence is used successfully in the field of e-commerce for its ability to learn from a large amount of data. In this research study, a prototype software platform was designed and implemented in order to suggest to users the most suitable products for their needs. The platform includes a recommender system based on artificial intelligence algorithms that provide suggestions and decision support to the customer. Specifically, support vector machine algorithms have been implemented combined with natural language processing techniques that allow the user to interact with the system, express their requests and receive suggestions. The interested user can access the web platform on the internet using a computer, tablet or mobile phone, register, provide the necessary information and view the products that the system deems them the most appropriate. The platform also integrates a dashboard that allows the use of the various functions, which the platform is equipped with, in an intuitive and simple way. Also, Long Short-Term Memory algorithms have been implemented and trained on historical data in order to predict customer scores of the different items. Items with the highest scores are recommended to customers.
Keywords: Deep Learning, Long Short-Term Memory, Machine Learning, Recommender Systems, Support Vector Machine.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3251315 Hybrid Authentication System Using QR Code with OTP
Authors: Salim Istyaq
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As we know, number of Internet users are increasing drastically. Now, people are using different online services provided by banks, colleges/schools, hospitals, online utility, bill payment and online shopping sites. To access online services, text-based authentication system is in use. The text-based authentication scheme faces some drawbacks with usability and security issues that bring troubles to users. The core element of computational trust is identity. The aim of the paper is to make the system more compliable for the imposters and more reliable for the users, by using the graphical authentication approach. In this paper, we are using the more powerful tool of encoding the options in graphical QR format and also there will be the acknowledgment which will send to the user’s mobile for final verification. The main methodology depends upon the encryption option and final verification by confirming a set of pass phrase on the legal users, the outcome of the result is very powerful as it only gives the result at once when the process is successfully done. All processes are cross linked serially as the output of the 1st process, is the input of the 2nd and so on. The system is a combination of recognition and pure recall based technique. Presented scheme is useful for devices like PDAs, iPod, phone etc. which are more handy and convenient to use than traditional desktop computer systems.
Keywords: Graphical Password, OTP, QR Codes, Recognition based graphical user authentication, usability and security.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16611314 Ethics in the Technology Driven Enterprise
Authors: Bobbie Green, James A. Nelson
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Innovations in technology have created new ethical challenges. Essential use of electronic communication in the workplace has escalated at an astronomical rate over the past decade. As such, legal and ethical dilemmas confronted by both the employer and the employee concerning managerial control and ownership of einformation have increased dramatically in the USA. From the employer-s perspective, ownership and control of all information created for the workplace is an undeniable source of economic advantage and must be monitored zealously. From the perspective of the employee, individual rights, such as privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, continue to be stalwart legal guarantees that employers are not legally or ethically entitled to abridge in the workplace. These issues have been the source of great debate and the catalyst for legal reform. The fine line between ethical and legal has been complicated by emerging technologies. This manuscript will identify and discuss a number of specific legal and ethical issues raised by the dynamic electronic workplace and conclude with suggestions that employers should follow to respect the delicate balance between employees- legal rights to privacy and the employer's right to protect its knowledge systems and infrastructure.Keywords: Information, ethics, legal, privacy
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20551313 Planning Method Study on the Ecological Restrained Construction Area from the Perspective of Governance: A Case from Yangzijin, Yangzhou, China
Authors: Rushi Tan, Yilun Xu, Xiaohui Wang
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The restrained construction zoning, an important part in the urban master plan, is a necessary planning tool to control the city sprawl, to guarantee the reservation implementation of the various types of protective elements, and to realize the storage of the essential urban spatial resources. Simultaneously, owing to the diverse constitutes of restrained construction area and the various stakeholders involved in, its planning requires an overall consideration of all elements from the perspective of coordination+, balance and practicability to deal with the problems and conflicts in this process. Taking Yangzijin Ecological Restrained Construction Area in Yangzhou as an example, this study analyzes all the potential actors, agencies and stakeholders in this restrained construction area, as well as the relevant conflicts between each other. Besides, this study tries to build up a planning procedure based on the framework of governance theory, and proposes a possible planning method that combines "rigidity" and "flexibility" to protect the ecological limitation boundary, to take every interest into account, and to promote economic development in a harmonious society.
Keywords: Restrained construction area, governance, stakeholder, flexible stratagem, China.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19671312 Speaker Identification using Neural Networks
Authors: R.V Pawar, P.P.Kajave, S.N.Mali
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The speech signal conveys information about the identity of the speaker. The area of speaker identification is concerned with extracting the identity of the person speaking the utterance. As speech interaction with computers becomes more pervasive in activities such as the telephone, financial transactions and information retrieval from speech databases, the utility of automatically identifying a speaker is based solely on vocal characteristic. This paper emphasizes on text dependent speaker identification, which deals with detecting a particular speaker from a known population. The system prompts the user to provide speech utterance. System identifies the user by comparing the codebook of speech utterance with those of the stored in the database and lists, which contain the most likely speakers, could have given that speech utterance. The speech signal is recorded for N speakers further the features are extracted. Feature extraction is done by means of LPC coefficients, calculating AMDF, and DFT. The neural network is trained by applying these features as input parameters. The features are stored in templates for further comparison. The features for the speaker who has to be identified are extracted and compared with the stored templates using Back Propogation Algorithm. Here, the trained network corresponds to the output; the input is the extracted features of the speaker to be identified. The network does the weight adjustment and the best match is found to identify the speaker. The number of epochs required to get the target decides the network performance.Keywords: Average Mean Distance function, Backpropogation, Linear Predictive Coding, MultilayeredPerceptron,
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18931311 Contextual Variables Affecting Frustration Level in Reading: An Integral Inquiry
Authors: Mae C. Pavilario
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This study employs a sequential explanatory mixed method. Quantitatively it investigated the profile of grade VII students. Qualitatively, the prevailing contextual variables that affect their frustration-level were sought based on their perspective and that of their parents and teachers. These students were categorized as frustration-level in reading based on the data on word list of the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI). The researcher-made reading factor instrument translated to local dialect (Hiligaynon) was subjected to cross-cultural translation to address content, semantic, technical, criterion, or conceptual equivalence, the open-ended questions, and one unstructured interview was utilized. In the profile of the 26 participants, the 12 males are categorized as grade II and grade III frustration-levels. The prevailing contextual variables are personal-“having no interest in reading”, “being ashamed and fear of having to read in front of others” for extremely high frustration level; social environmental-“having no regular reading schedule at home” for very high frustration level and personal- “having no interest in reading” for high frustration level. Kendall Tau inferential statistical tool was used to test the significant relationship in the prevailing contextual variables that affect frustration-level readers when grouped according to perspective. Result showed that significant relationship exists between students-parents perspectives; however, there is no significant relationship between students’ and teachers’, and parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. The themes in the narratives of the participants on frustration-level readers are existence of speech defects, undesirable attitude, insufficient amount of reading materials, lack of close supervision from parents, and losing time and focus on task. Intervention was designed.
Keywords: Contextual variables, frustration-level readers, perspective, inquiry.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 11291310 Water, Sanitation and Health in Developing Countries: How Far from Sustainable Development?
Authors: May A. Massoud
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The availability of water in adequate quantity and quality is imperative for sustainable development. Worldwide, significant imbalance exists with regards to sustainable development particularly from a water and sanitation perspective. Water is a critical component of public health, and failure to supply safe water will place a heavy burden on the entire population. Although the 21st century has witnessed wealth and advanced development, it has not been realized everywhere. Billions of people are still striving to access the most basic human needs which are food, shelter, safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. The global picture conceals various inequalities particularly with regards to sanitation coverage in rural and urban areas. Currently, water scarcity and in particular water governance is the main challenge which will cause a threat to sustainable development goals. Within the context of water, sanitation and health, sustainable development is a confusing concept primarily when examined from the viewpoint of policy options for developing countries. This perspective paper aims to summarize and critically evaluate evidence of published studies in relation to water, sanitation and health and to identify relevant solutions to reduce public health impacts. Evidently, improving water and sanitation services will result in significant and lasting gains in health and economic development.Keywords: developing countries, health, sanitation, sustainability, water
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14211309 Accurate Position Electromagnetic Sensor Using Data Acquisition System
Authors: Z. Ezzouine, A. Nakheli
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This paper presents a high position electromagnetic sensor system (HPESS) that is applicable for moving object detection. The authors have developed a high-performance position sensor prototype dedicated to students’ laboratory. The challenge was to obtain a highly accurate and real-time sensor that is able to calculate position, length or displacement. An electromagnetic solution based on a two coil induction principal was adopted. The HPESS converts mechanical motion to electric energy with direct contact. The output signal can then be fed to an electronic circuit. The voltage output change from the sensor is captured by data acquisition system using LabVIEW software. The displacement of the moving object is determined. The measured data are transmitted to a PC in real-time via a DAQ (NI USB -6281). This paper also describes the data acquisition analysis and the conditioning card developed specially for sensor signal monitoring. The data is then recorded and viewed using a user interface written using National Instrument LabVIEW software. On-line displays of time and voltage of the sensor signal provide a user-friendly data acquisition interface. The sensor provides an uncomplicated, accurate, reliable, inexpensive transducer for highly sophisticated control systems.
Keywords: Electromagnetic sensor, data acquisition, accurately, position measurement.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9611308 Recommender Systems Using Ensemble Techniques
Authors: Yeonjeong Lee, Kyoung-jae Kim, Youngtae Kim
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This study proposes a novel recommender system that uses data mining and multi-model ensemble techniques to enhance the recommendation performance through reflecting the precise user’s preference. The proposed model consists of two steps. In the first step, this study uses logistic regression, decision trees, and artificial neural networks to predict customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in each product group. Then, this study combines the results of each predictor using the multi-model ensemble techniques such as bagging and bumping. In the second step, this study uses the market basket analysis to extract association rules for co-purchased products. Finally, the system selects customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in each product group and recommends proper products from same or different product groups to them through above two steps. We test the usability of the proposed system by using prototype and real-world transaction and profile data. In addition, we survey about user satisfaction for the recommended product list from the proposed system and the randomly selected product lists. The results also show that the proposed system may be useful in real-world online shopping store.
Keywords: Product recommender system, Ensemble technique, Association rules, Decision tree, Artificial neural networks.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 42221307 Latent Semantic Inference for Agriculture FAQ Retrieval
Authors: Dawei Wang, Rujing Wang, Ying Li, Baozi Wei
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FAQ system can make user find answer to the problem that puzzles them. But now the research on Chinese FAQ system is still on the theoretical stage. This paper presents an approach to semantic inference for FAQ mining. To enhance the efficiency, a small pool of the candidate question-answering pairs retrieved from the system for the follow-up work according to the concept of the agriculture domain extracted from user input .Input queries or questions are converted into four parts, the question word segment (QWS), the verb segment (VS), the concept of agricultural areas segment (CS), the auxiliary segment (AS). A semantic matching method is presented to estimate the similarity between the semantic segments of the query and the questions in the pool of the candidate. A thesaurus constructed from the HowNet, a Chinese knowledge base, is adopted for word similarity measure in the matcher. The questions are classified into eleven intension categories using predefined question stemming keywords. For FAQ mining, given a query, the question part and answer part in an FAQ question-answer pair is matched with the input query, respectively. Finally, the probabilities estimated from these two parts are integrated and used to choose the most likely answer for the input query. These approaches are experimented on an agriculture FAQ system. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach outperformed the FAQ-Finder system in agriculture FAQ retrieval.
Keywords: FAQ, Semantic Inference, Ontology.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13791306 Low Value Capacitance Measurement System with Adjustable Lead Capacitance Compensation
Authors: Gautam Sarkar, Anjan Rakshit, Amitava Chatterjee, Kesab Bhattacharya
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The present paper describes the development of a low cost, highly accurate low capacitance measurement system that can be used over a range of 0 – 400 pF with a resolution of 1 pF. The range of capacitance may be easily altered by a simple resistance or capacitance variation of the measurement circuit. This capacitance measurement system uses quad two-input NAND Schmitt trigger circuit CD4093B with hysteresis for the measurement and this system is integrated with PIC 18F2550 microcontroller for data acquisition purpose. The microcontroller interacts with software developed in the PC end through USB architecture and an attractive graphical user interface (GUI) based system is developed in the PC end to provide the user with real time, online display of capacitance under measurement. The system uses a differential mode of capacitance measurement, with reference to a trimmer capacitance, that effectively compensates lead capacitances, a notorious error encountered in usual low capacitance measurements. The hysteresis provided in the Schmitt-trigger circuits enable reliable operation of the system by greatly minimizing the possibility of false triggering because of stray interferences, usually regarded as another source of significant error. The real life testing of the proposed system showed that our measurements could produce highly accurate capacitance measurements, when compared to cutting edge, high end digital capacitance meters.
Keywords: Capacitance measurement, NAND Schmitt trigger, microcontroller, GUI, lead compensation, hysteresis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 73701305 Perspective and Challenge of Tidal Power in Bangladesh
Authors: Md. Alamgir Hossain, Md. Zakir Hossain, Md. Atiqur Rahman
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Tidal power can play a vital role in integrating as new source of renewable energy to the off-grid power connection in isolated areas, namely Sandwip, in Bangladesh. It can reduce the present energy crisis and improve the social, environmental and economic perspective of Bangladesh. Tidal energy is becoming popular around the world due to its own facilities. The development of any country largely depends on energy sector improvement. Lack of energy sector is because of hampering progress of any country development, and the energy sector will be stable by only depend on sustainable energy sources. Renewable energy having environmental friendly is the only sustainable solution of secure energy system. Bangladesh has a huge potential of tidal power at different locations, but effective measures on this issue have not been considered sincerely. This paper summarizes the current energy scenario, and Bangladesh can produce power approximately 53.19 MW across the country to reduce the growing energy demand utilizing tidal energy as well as it is shown that Sandwip is highly potential place to produce tidal power, which is estimated approximately 16.49 MW by investing only US $10.37 million. Besides this, cost management for tidal power plant has been also discussed.
Keywords: Sustainable energy, tidal power, cost analysis, power demand, gas crisis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 35431304 Access of Small and Medium Enterprises to Finance in Rural Areas: Case of Indonesia and Thailand
Authors: N. Ikasari, T. Sumransat, U. Eko, R. Kusumastuti
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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are regarded as the engine for economic development, notwithstanding their continuous financing conundrum. In the case of developing countries, access to finance is a reflection of the effectiveness of government policy. The widely accepted perspective to assess small businesses’ access to finance is that of economic view. The existing body of literature presents access to finance in three dimensions; they are accessibility, eligibility and affordability. Within this perspective, the role of socio-cultural has not explored. This study is aimed at investigating the existence of any socio-cultural factors within access to finance issue in Asian countries where governance is enriched by countries’ values and beliefs. The significance of this study is the instigation of supplementary dimension to assess access to finance that eventually contributes to the development of micro-finance policy. Indonesia and Thailand are selected as cases in point, where distinction is drawn on the level of cultural diversity and micro-finance policy in respective country. A questionnaire is used to collect information related to the three dimensions of access to finance as well as to explore alternative financing reasoning to elaborate the issue from the demand side. Questionnaires are distributed to 60 small business owners operating in Indonesia and the same number in Thailand. In order to present a complete understanding on the matter at hand, interviews with banks are conducted to capture the perspective as presented by the supply side. Research findings show that small business owners and banks in Indonesia and Thailand are in agreement that access to finance is not deemed as an issue. However, trust issue that exists mutually between financing users and providers leads small business owners in Indonesia to look for alternative financing other than banks. The findings contribute to the refinement of micro-financing policy in Indonesia and Thailand.
Keywords: Access to finance, Indonesia, small and medium enterprises, Thailand.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19761303 Sleep Scheduling Schemes Based on Location of Mobile User in Sensor-Cloud
Authors: N. Mahendran, R. Priya
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The mobile cloud computing (MCC) with wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technology gets more attraction by research scholars because its combines the sensors data gathering ability with the cloud data processing capacity. This approach overcomes the limitation of data storage capacity and computational ability of sensor nodes. Finally, the stored data are sent to the mobile users when the user sends the request. The most of the integrated sensor-cloud schemes fail to observe the following criteria: 1) The mobile users request the specific data to the cloud based on their present location. 2) Power consumption since most of them are equipped with non-rechargeable batteries. Mostly, the sensors are deployed in hazardous and remote areas. This paper focuses on above observations and introduces an approach known as collaborative location-based sleep scheduling (CLSS) scheme. Both awake and asleep status of each sensor node is dynamically devised by schedulers and the scheduling is done purely based on the of mobile users’ current location; in this manner, large amount of energy consumption is minimized at WSN. CLSS work depends on two different methods; CLSS1 scheme provides lower energy consumption and CLSS2 provides the scalability and robustness of the integrated WSN.
Keywords: Sleep scheduling, mobile cloud computing, wireless sensor network, integration, location, network lifetime.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9761302 Design and Application of NFC-Based Identity and Access Management in Cloud Services
Authors: Shin-Jer Yang, Kai-Tai Yang
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In response to a changing world and the fast growth of the Internet, more and more enterprises are replacing web-based services with cloud-based ones. Multi-tenancy technology is becoming more important especially with Software as a Service (SaaS). This in turn leads to a greater focus on the application of Identity and Access Management (IAM). Conventional Near-Field Communication (NFC) based verification relies on a computer browser and a card reader to access an NFC tag. This type of verification does not support mobile device login and user-based access management functions. This study designs an NFC-based third-party cloud identity and access management scheme (NFC-IAM) addressing this shortcoming. Data from simulation tests analyzed with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) suggest that the NFC-IAM not only takes less time in identity identification but also cuts time by 80% in terms of two-factor authentication and improves verification accuracy to 99.9% or better. In functional performance analyses, NFC-IAM performed better in salability and portability. The NFC-IAM App (Application Software) and back-end system to be developed and deployed in mobile device are to support IAM features and also offers users a more user-friendly experience and stronger security protection. In the future, our NFC-IAM can be employed to different environments including identification for mobile payment systems, permission management for remote equipment monitoring, among other applications.
Keywords: Cloud service, multi-tenancy, NFC, IAM, mobile device.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 11181301 Secure Protocol for Short Message Service
Authors: Shubat S. Ahmeda, Ashraf M. Ali Edwila
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Short Message Service (SMS) has grown in popularity over the years and it has become a common way of communication, it is a service provided through General System for Mobile Communications (GSM) that allows users to send text messages to others. SMS is usually used to transport unclassified information, but with the rise of mobile commerce it has become a popular tool for transmitting sensitive information between the business and its clients. By default SMS does not guarantee confidentiality and integrity to the message content. In the mobile communication systems, security (encryption) offered by the network operator only applies on the wireless link. Data delivered through the mobile core network may not be protected. Existing end-to-end security mechanisms are provided at application level and typically based on public key cryptosystem. The main concern in a public-key setting is the authenticity of the public key; this issue can be resolved by identity-based (IDbased) cryptography where the public key of a user can be derived from public information that uniquely identifies the user. This paper presents an encryption mechanism based on the IDbased scheme using Elliptic curves to provide end-to-end security for SMS. This mechanism has been implemented over the standard SMS network architecture and the encryption overhead has been estimated and compared with RSA scheme. This study indicates that the ID-based mechanism has advantages over the RSA mechanism in key distribution and scalability of increasing security level for mobile service.Keywords: Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), End-to-end Security, Identity-based Cryptography, Public Key, RSA, SMS Protocol.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22231300 Development of a Real-Time Simulink Based Robotic System to Study Force Feedback Mechanism during Instrument-Object Interaction
Authors: Jaydip M. Desai, Antonio Valdevit, Arthur Ritter
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Robotic surgery is used to enhance minimally invasive surgical procedure. It provides greater degree of freedom for surgical tools but lacks of haptic feedback system to provide sense of touch to the surgeon. Surgical robots work on master-slave operation, where user is a master and robotic arms are the slaves. Current, surgical robots provide precise control of the surgical tools, but heavily rely on visual feedback, which sometimes cause damage to the inner organs. The goal of this research was to design and develop a realtime Simulink based robotic system to study force feedback mechanism during instrument-object interaction. Setup includes three VelmexXSlide assembly (XYZ Stage) for three dimensional movement, an end effector assembly for forceps, electronic circuit for four strain gages, two Novint Falcon 3D gaming controllers, microcontroller board with linear actuators, MATLAB and Simulink toolboxes. Strain gages were calibrated using Imada Digital Force Gauge device and tested with a hard-core wire to measure instrument-object interaction in the range of 0-35N. Designed Simulink model successfully acquires 3D coordinates from two Novint Falcon controllers and transfer coordinates to the XYZ stage and forceps. Simulink model also reads strain gages signal through 10-bit analog to digital converter resolution of a microcontroller assembly in real time, converts voltage into force and feedback the output signals to the Novint Falcon controller for force feedback mechanism. Experimental setup allows user to change forward kinematics algorithms to achieve the best-desired movement of the XYZ stage and forceps. This project combines haptic technology with surgical robot to provide sense of touch to the user controlling forceps through machine-computer interface.
Keywords: Haptic feedback, MATLAB, Simulink, Strain Gage, Surgical Robot.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 32121299 Object Recognition on Horse Riding Simulator System
Authors: Kyekyung Kim, Sangseung Kang, Suyoung Chi, Jaehong Kim
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In recent years, IT convergence technology has been developed to get creative solution by combining robotics or sports science technology. Object detection and recognition have mainly applied to sports science field that has processed by recognizing face and by tracking human body. But object detection and recognition using vision sensor is challenge task in real world because of illumination. In this paper, object detection and recognition using vision sensor applied to sports simulator has been introduced. Face recognition has been processed to identify user and to update automatically a person athletic recording. Human body has tracked to offer a most accurate way of riding horse simulator. Combined image processing has been processed to reduce illumination adverse affect because illumination has caused low performance in detection and recognition in real world application filed. Face has recognized using standard face graph and human body has tracked using pose model, which has composed of feature nodes generated diverse face and pose images. Face recognition using Gabor wavelet and pose recognition using pose graph is robust to real application. We have simulated using ETRI database, which has constructed on horse riding simulator.
Keywords: Horse riding simulator, Object detection, Object recognition, User identification, Pose recognition.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20881298 An Approach for Vocal Register Recognition Based on Spectral Analysis of Singing
Authors: Aleksandra Zysk, Pawel Badura
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Recognizing and controlling vocal registers during singing is a difficult task for beginner vocalist. It requires among others identifying which part of natural resonators is being used when a sound propagates through the body. Thus, an application has been designed allowing for sound recording, automatic vocal register recognition (VRR), and a graphical user interface providing real-time visualization of the signal and recognition results. Six spectral features are determined for each time frame and passed to the support vector machine classifier yielding a binary decision on the head or chest register assignment of the segment. The classification training and testing data have been recorded by ten professional female singers (soprano, aged 19-29) performing sounds for both chest and head register. The classification accuracy exceeded 93% in each of various validation schemes. Apart from a hard two-class clustering, the support vector classifier returns also information on the distance between particular feature vector and the discrimination hyperplane in a feature space. Such an information reflects the level of certainty of the vocal register classification in a fuzzy way. Thus, the designed recognition and training application is able to assess and visualize the continuous trend in singing in a user-friendly graphical mode providing an easy way to control the vocal emission.Keywords: Classification, singing, spectral analysis, vocal emission, vocal register.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13131297 An AI-Based Dynamical Resource Allocation Calculation Algorithm for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Authors: Zhou Luchen, Wu Yubing, Burra Venkata Durga Kumar
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As the scale of the network becomes larger and more complex than before, the density of user devices is also increasing. The development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks is able to collect and transform data in an efficient way by using software-defined networks (SDN) technology. This paper proposed a three-layer distributed and dynamic cluster architecture to manage UAVs by using an AI-based resource allocation calculation algorithm to address the overloading network problem. Through separating services of each UAV, the UAV hierarchical cluster system performs the main function of reducing the network load and transferring user requests, with three sub-tasks including data collection, communication channel organization, and data relaying. In this cluster, a head node and a vice head node UAV are selected considering the CPU, RAM, and ROM memory of devices, battery charge, and capacity. The vice head node acts as a backup that stores all the data in the head node. The k-means clustering algorithm is used in order to detect high load regions and form the UAV layered clusters. The whole process of detecting high load areas, forming and selecting UAV clusters, and moving the selected UAV cluster to that area is proposed as offloading traffic algorithm.
Keywords: k-means, resource allocation, SDN, UAV network, unmanned aerial vehicles.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3501296 An Algorithm of Finite Capacity Material Requirement Planning System for Multi-stage Assembly Flow Shop
Authors: T. Wuttipornpun, U. Wangrakdiskul, W. Songserm
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This paper aims to develop an algorithm of finite capacity material requirement planning (FCMRP) system for a multistage assembly flow shop. The developed FCMRP system has two main stages. The first stage is to allocate operations to the first and second priority work centers and also determine the sequence of the operations on each work center. The second stage is to determine the optimal start time of each operation by using a linear programming model. Real data from a factory is used to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed FCMRP system and also to guarantee a practical solution to the user. There are five performance measures, namely, the total tardiness, the number of tardy orders, the total earliness, the number of early orders, and the average flow-time. The proposed FCMRP system offers an adjustable solution which is a compromised solution among the conflicting performance measures. The user can adjust the weight of each performance measure to obtain the desired performance. The result shows that the combination of FCMRP NP3 and EDD outperforms other combinations in term of overall performance index. The calculation time for the proposed FCMRP system is about 10 minutes which is practical for the planners of the factory.Keywords: Material requirement planning, Finite capacity, Linear programming, Permutation, Application in industry.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23011295 Do Firms Need Strategic Alliances?
Authors: Yun Mi, Ko, Hye Jung, Joo
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This study develops a relation to explore the factors influencing management and technology capabilities in strategic alliances. Alliances between firms are recognizing increasingly popular as a vehicle to create and extract greater value from the market. Firm’s alliance can be described as the collaborative problem solving process to solve problems jointly. This study starts from research questions what factors of firm’s management and technology characteristics affect performance of firms which are formed alliances. In this study, we investigated the effect of strategic alliances on company performance. That is, we try to identify whether firms made an alliance with other organizations are differed by characteristics of management and technology. And we test that alliance type and alliance experiences moderate the relationship between firm’s capabilities and its performance. We employ problem-solving perspective and resource-based view perspective to shed light on this research questions. The empirical work is based on the Survey of Business Activities conducted from2006 to 2008 by Statistics Korea. We verify correlations between to point out that these results contribute new empirical evidence on the effect of strategic alliances on company performance.
Keywords: Problem solving process, strategic alliance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15441294 Dependency Theory on Examining the Relationship between the United States and the Middle East: In the Case of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey
Authors: Abdelhafez Abdel Hafez
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Dependency theory was developed since 1950s, with economic concerns. It divided the world into two parts, the states of the peripheral (third world countries) and the states of the core (the developed capitalist countries). Another perspective developed to the theory with the implementation of the idea of semi-peripheral states in the new world order. With these divisions (core, peripheral, semi-peripheral) this study aims to develop a concept from the perspective of dependency theory, to understand the nature of the relationship of the U.S. with the Middle East Regions through its relation with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The tested countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey) are seeking a foothold and influential role in the region. The paper argued that the U.S. directs its policies toward the region, in the way to guarantee no country of the region will be in semi-peripheral level (that could create competitions or danger on the U.S. interest). Therefore, U.S. policies in the region have varied from declaring war to diplomatic channels and sometimes ignoring. The paper is based on the dependency theory, and other international relations theories used to study the Middle East in the international context.
Keywords: Dependency, hegemony, imperialism, Middle East.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5491293 Smartphone Photography in Urban China
Authors: Wen Zhang
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The smartphone plays a significant role in media convergence, and smartphone photography is reconstructing the way we communicate and think. This article aims to explore the smartphone photography practices of urban Chinese smartphone users and images produced by smartphones from a techno-cultural perspective. The analysis consists of two types of data: One is a semi-structured interview of 21 participants, and the other consists of the images created by the participants. The findings are organised in two parts. The first part summarises the current tendencies of capturing, editing, sharing and archiving digital images via smartphones. The second part shows that food and selfie/anti-selfie are the preferred subjects of smartphone photographic images from a technical and multi-purpose perspective and demonstrates that screenshots and image texts are new genres of non-photographic images that are frequently made by smartphones, which contributes to improving operational efficiency, disseminating information and sharing knowledge. The analyses illustrate the positive impacts between smartphones and photography enthusiasm and practices based on the diffusion of innovation theory, which also makes us rethink the value of photographs and the practice of ‘photographic seeing’ from the screen itself.
Keywords: Digital photography, photographic-seeing, media convergence, technological innovation, smartphone, selfie/anti-selfie, image-text.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16721292 Finite Element Modelling of a 3D Woven Composite for Automotive Applications
Authors: Ahmad R. Zamani, Luigi Sanguigno, Angelo R. Maligno
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A 3D woven composite, designed for automotive applications, is studied using Abaqus Finite Element (FE) software suite. Python scripts were developed to build FE models of the woven composite in Complete Abaqus Environment (CAE). They can read TexGen or WiseTex files and automatically generate consistent meshes of the fabric and the matrix. A user menu is provided to help define parameters for the FE models, such as type and size of the elements in fabric and matrix as well as the type of matrix-fabric interaction. Node-to-node constraints were imposed to guarantee periodicity of the deformed shapes at the boundaries of the representative volume element of the composite. Tensile loads in three axes and biaxial loads in x-y directions have been applied at different Fibre Volume Fractions (FVFs). A simple damage model was implemented via an Abaqus user material (UMAT) subroutine. Existing tools for homogenization were also used, including voxel mesh generation from TexGen as well as Abaqus Micromechanics plugin. Linear relations between homogenised elastic properties and the FVFs are given. The FE models of composite exhibited balanced behaviour with respect to warp and weft directions in terms of both stiffness and strength.
Keywords: 3D woven composite, meso-scale finite element modelling, homogenisation of elastic material properties, Abaqus Python scripting.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9221291 Thermal Evaluation of Printed Circuit Board Design Options and Voids in Solder Interface by a Simulation Tool
Authors: B. Arzhanov, A. Correia, P. Delgado, J. Meireles
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Quad Flat No-Lead (QFN) packages have become very popular for turners, converters and audio amplifiers, among others applications, needing efficient power dissipation in small footprints. Since semiconductor junction temperature (TJ) is a critical parameter in the product quality. And to ensure that die temperature does not exceed the maximum allowable TJ, a thermal analysis conducted in an earlier development phase is essential to avoid repeated re-designs process with huge losses in cost and time. A simulation tool capable to estimate die temperature of components with QFN package was developed. Allow establish a non-empirical way to define an acceptance criterion for amount of voids in solder interface between its exposed pad and Printed Circuit Board (PCB) to be applied during industrialization process, and evaluate the impact of PCB designs parameters. Targeting PCB layout designer as an end user for the application, a user-friendly interface (GUI) was implemented allowing user to introduce design parameters in a convenient and secure way and hiding all the complexity of finite element simulation process. This cost effective tool turns transparent a simulating process and provides useful outputs after acceptable time, which can be adopted by PCB designers, preventing potential risks during the design stage and make product economically efficient by not oversizing it. This article gathers relevant information related to the design and implementation of the developed tool, presenting a parametric study conducted with it. The simulation tool was experimentally validated using a Thermal-Test-Chip (TTC) in a QFN open-cavity, in order to measure junction temperature (TJ) directly on the die under controlled and knowing conditions. Providing a short overview about standard thermal solutions and impacts in exposed pad packages (i.e. QFN), accurately describe the methods and techniques that the system designer should use to achieve optimum thermal performance, and demonstrate the effect of system-level constraints on the thermal performance of the design.Keywords: Quad Flat No-Lead packages, exposed pads, junction temperature, thermal management and measurements.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19261290 A New Model for Question Answering Systems
Authors: Mohammad Reza Kangavari, Samira Ghandchi, Manak Golpour
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Most of the Question Answering systems composed of three main modules: question processing, document processing and answer processing. Question processing module plays an important role in QA systems. If this module doesn't work properly, it will make problems for other sections. Moreover answer processing module is an emerging topic in Question Answering, where these systems are often required to rank and validate candidate answers. These techniques aiming at finding short and precise answers are often based on the semantic classification. This paper discussed about a new model for question answering which improved two main modules, question processing and answer processing. There are two important components which are the bases of the question processing. First component is question classification that specifies types of question and answer. Second one is reformulation which converts the user's question into an understandable question by QA system in a specific domain. Answer processing module, consists of candidate answer filtering, candidate answer ordering components and also it has a validation section for interacting with user. This module makes it more suitable to find exact answer. In this paper we have described question and answer processing modules with modeling, implementing and evaluating the system. System implemented in two versions. Results show that 'Version No.1' gave correct answer to 70% of questions (30 correct answers to 50 asked questions) and 'version No.2' gave correct answers to 94% of questions (47 correct answers to 50 asked questions).Keywords: Answer Processing, Classification, QuestionAnswering and Query Reformulation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21251289 Identifying Quality Islamic Content in Community Question Answering Sites
Authors: Rabia Bibi, Muhammad Shahzad Faisal, Khalid Iqbal, Atif Inayat
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Internet is growing rapidly and new community-based content is added by people every second. With this fast-growing community-based content, if a user requires answers of particular questions, then reviews are required from experts or community. However, it is difficult to get quality answers. The Muslim community all over the world is seeking help to get their questions and issues discussed to get answers. Online web portals of religious schools and community-based question answering sites are two big platforms to solve the issues of users. In the case of religious schools, there are experts and qualified religious scholars (mufti) who can give the expert opinion. However, the quality of community-based content cannot be guaranteed as it may not be an answer that satisfies the question of a user. Users on CQA sites may include spammers or individual criticizing the questioner instead of providing useful answers. In this paper, we research strategies to naturally distinguish the right content. As an experiment, we concentrate on Yahoo! Answers, and Quora, popular online QA sites, where questions are asked, answered, edited, and organized by a large community of users. We present the classification of data to categorize both relevant and irrelevant answers. Specifically, we demonstrate that the proposed framework can isolate quality answers from the rest with an exactness near that of people.
Keywords: Community-based question and answering, evaluation and prediction of quality answer, answer classification, Islamic content, answer ranking.
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