Book categories

Fundamental Concepts in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Practical Design Problems

Second Edition

by Reza Adhami, Peter M. Meenen, III, and Dennis Hite

2007

In many cases, the beginning engineering student is thrown into upper-level engineering courses without an adequate introduction to the basic material. This, at best, causes undue stress on the student as they feel unprepared when faced with unfamiliar material, and at worst, results in students dropping out of the program or changing majors when they discover that their chosen field of engineering is not what they thought it was. The purpose of this text is to introduce the student to a general cross-section of the field of electrical and computer engineering. The text is aimed at incoming freshmen, and as such, assumes that the reader has a limited to nonexistent background in electrical engineering and knowledge of no more than pre-calculus in the field of mathematics. By exposing s...

How to Manage Cybersecurity Risk

A Security Leader's Roadmap with Open FAIR

by Christopher T. Carlson

2019

Protecting information systems to reduce the risk of security incidents is critical for organizations today. This writing provides instruction for security leaders on the processes and techniques for managing a security program. It contains practical information on the breadth of information security topics, referring to many other writings that provide details on technical security topics. This provides foundation for a security program responsive to technology developments and an evolving threat environment.The security leader may be engaged by an organization that is in crisis, where the priority action is to recover from a serious incident. This work offers foundation knowledge for the security leader to immediately apply to the organization's security program while improving it to the...

BASCOM Programming of Microcontrollers with Ease

An Introduction by Program Examples

by Claus Kuhnel

2001

BASCOM-8051 and BASCOM-AVR are development environments built around a powerful BASIC compiler. Both are suited for project handling and program development for the 8051 family and its derivatives as well as for the AVR microcontrollers from Atmel.

TCP/IP - The Ultimate Protocol Guide

Complete 2 Volume Set

by Philip M. Miller

2010

This is the complete 2 volume set, containing both volumes one (ISBN: 9781599424910) and two (ISBN: 9781599425436) packaged together. The book provides a complete guide to the protocols that comprise the Internet Protocol Suite, more commonly referred to as TCP/IP. The work assumes no prior knowledge of TCP/IP and only a rudimentary understanding of LAN/WAN access methods. The book is split into a number of sections; the manner in which data is transported between systems, routing principles and protocols, applications and services, security, and Wide Area communications. Each section builds on the last in a tutorial manner and describes the protocols in detail so serving as a reference for students and networking professionals of all levels. Volume I - Data Delivery & Routing Sectio...

TCP/IP - The Ultimate Protocol Guide

Volume 1 - Data Delivery and Routing

by Philip M. Miller

2009

The book provides a complete guide to the protocols that comprise the Internet Protocol Suite, more commonly referred to as TCP/IP. The work assumes no prior knowledge of TCP/IP and only a rudimentary understanding of LAN/WAN access methods. The book is split into a number of sections; the manner in which data is transported between systems, routing principles and protocols, applications and services, security, and Wide Area communications. Each section builds on the last in a tutorial manner and describes the protocols in detail so serving as a reference for students and networking professionals of all levels. Volume I - Data Delivery & Routing Section A: Introduction Section B: The Internet Protocol Section C: Reliable and Unreliable Data Delivery Section D: Quality of Service ...

Business Database Technology (2nd Edition)

Theories and Design Process of Relational Databases, SQL, Introduction to OLAP, Overview of NoSQL Databases

by Shouhong Wang, Ph.D & Hai Wang, Ph.D.

2022

Business Database Technology provides essential knowledge of database technology for four-year college/university business students who study information technology and data resource management.

Students will learn basic data structure techniques in databases, relational database model, design and implementation of relational databases, normalization, SQL, physical relational database design techniques, database administration, relational databases in computer networks, data warehouses, overview of OLAP (online analytical processing), and introduction to NoSQL databases.

Proceedings of the Multi-Conference 2011

2nd International Conference on Signals, Systems & Automation (ICSSA 2011) & 1st International Conference on Intelligent Systems & Data Processing (ICISD 2011)

by Dr. Himanshu B. Soni and Dr. Apurva Shah (editors-in-chief)

2011

The International Conference on Signals, Systems and Automation (ICSSA 2011) aims to spread awareness in the research and academic community regarding cutting-edge technological advancements revolutionizing the world. The main emphasis of this conference is on dissemination of information, experience, and research results on the current topics of interest through in-depth discussions and participation of researchers from all over the world. The objective is to provide a platform to scientists, research scholars, and industrialists for interacting and exchanging ideas in a number of research areas. This will facilitate communication among researchers in different fields of Electronics and Communication Engineering. The International Conference on Intelligent System and Data Processing (I...

TCP/IP - The Ultimate Protocol Guide

Volume 2 - Applications, Access and Data Security

by Philip M. Miller

2009

The book provides a complete guide to the protocols that comprise the Internet Protocol Suite, more commonly referred to as TCP/IP. The work assumes no prior knowledge of TCP/IP and only a rudimentary understanding of LAN/WAN access methods. The book is split into a number of sections; the manner in which data is transported between systems, routing principles and protocols, applications and services, security, and Wide Area communications. Each section builds on the last in a tutorial manner and describes the protocols in detail so serving as a reference for students and networking professionals of all levels. Volume I - Data Delivery & Routing Section A: Introduction Section B: The Internet Protocol Section C: Reliable and Unreliable Data Delivery Section D: Quality of Service S...

Prediction of Upper Body Power of Cross-Country Skiers Using Machine Learning Methods Combined with Feature Selection Algorithms

by Mustafa Mikail Ozciloglu & Mehmet Fatih Akay (advisor)

2017

Upper body power (UBP) is one of the most important factors affecting the performance of cross-country skiers during races. Although some initial studies have already attempted to predict UBP, until now, no study has attempted to apply machine learning methods combined with various feature selection algorithms to identify the discriminative features for prediction of UBP. The purpose of this study is to develop new prediction models for predicting the 10-second UBP (UBP10) and 60-second UBP (UBP60) of cross-country skiers by using General Regression Neural Networks (GRNN), Radial-Basis Function Network (RBF), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Single Decision Tree (SDT) and Tree Boost (TB) along with the Relief-F feature selection algorithm, minimum redundancy maxim...

Vision-based Robot Navigation

Quest for Intelligent Approaches Using a Sparse Distributed Memory

by Mateus Mendes, A. Paulo Coimbra, & Manuel M. Crisostomo

2012

Starting with a summary of the history of Artificial Intelligence, this book makes the bridge to the modern debate on the definition of Intelligence and the path to building Intelligent Machines. Since the definition of Intelligence is itself subject to open debate, the quest for Intelligent machines is pursuing a moving target. Apparently, intelligent behaviour is, to a great extent, the result of using a sophisticated associative memory, more than the result of heavy processing. The book describes theories on how the brain works, associative memory models and how a particular model - the Sparse Distributed Memory (SDM) - can be used to navigate a robot based on visual memories. Other robot navigation methods are also comprehensively revised and compared to the method proposed. The per...

The 8051/8052 Microcontroller

Architecture, Assembly Language, and Hardware Interfacing

by Craig Steiner

2005

This book was written with the novice or intermediate 8052 developer in mind. Assuming no prior knowledge of the 8052, it takes the reader step-by-step through the architecture including discussions and explanations of concepts such as internal RAM, external RAM, Special Function Registers (SFRs), addressing modes, timers, serial I/O, and interrupts. This is followed by an in-depth section on assembly language which explains each instruction in the 8052 instruction set as well as related concepts such as assembly language syntax, expressions, assembly language directives, and how to implement 16-bit mathematical functions. The book continues with a thorough explanation of the 8052 hardware itself, reviewing the function of each pin on the microcontroller and follows this with the design ...

Head-Order Techniques and Other Pragmatics of Lambda Calculus Graph Reduction

by Nikos B. Troullinos

2011

The operational aspects of Lambda Calculus are studied as a fundamental basis for high-order functional computation. We consider systems having full reduction semantics, i.e., equivalence-preserving transformations of functions. The historic lineage from Eval-Apply to SECD to RTNF/RTLF culminates in the techniques of normal-order graph Head Order Reduction (HOR). By using a scalar mechanism to artificially bind relatively free variables, HOR makes it relatively effortless to reduce expressions beyond weak normal form and to allow expression-level results while exhibiting a well-behaved linear self-modifying code structure. Several variations of HOR are presented and compared to other efficient reducers, with and without sharing, including a conservative breadth-first one which mechanically...

Arduino for the Cloud

Arduino Yun and Dragino Yun Shield

by Claus Kuhnel

2015

Arduino for the Cloud considers the Arduino Yun and the Dragino Yun Shield as components closing the gap between a typical microcontroller application and connection to the cloud. Arduino Yun combines the classic Arduino with an Atheros AR9331 system-on-a-chip (SoC) for wireless access points and routers platforms, which uses the Linux distribution Linino (OpenWRT) operating system. The Dragino Yun Shield expands any Arduino with network capabilities by the Atheros AR9331.The combination of microcontroller and Linux device supports the whole chain from sensor to software applications in the cloud by hardware and software. This book deals with the Arduino and the Linux device and their interaction, without the need of detailed Linux knowledge.

Visualization of Interface Metaphor for Software

An Engineering Approach

by Dinesh S. Katre

2011

This book presents a comprehensive process for visualization of interface metaphor for software. It is helpful in designing interactive user interfaces with magical super-affordances and definitive user experiences. As per the ancient Indian Vedic literature, metaphors are always conceived out of Vastu (entities having existence in our world). The visualization process given in the book shows how metaphorization could help in innovating highly experiential user interfaces, as one can create Avastu (non entities) by combining different objects and imaginative properties together. The main highlights of this process are selection and dissection of interface metaphor, pre-facto analysis, qualitative and quantitative evaluation, mapping between user and application domain lexicons, specialized...

R^² - Heaps with Suspended Relaxation for Manipulating Priority Queues and a New Algorithm for Reweighting Graphs

by Ruth Shrairman

2004

This research is dedicated to two main problems in finding shortest paths in the graphs. The first problem is to find shortest paths from an origin to all other vertices in non-negatively weighted graph. The second problem is the same, except it is allowed that some edges are negative. This is a more difficult problem that can be solved by relatively complicated algorithms. We attack the first problem by introducing a new data structure - Relaxed Heaps that implements efficiently two main operations critical for the improvement of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. R²heaps with suspended relaxation proposed in this research gives the best known worst-case time bounds of O(1) for a decrease_key operation and O(logn) for a delete_min operation. That results in the best worst-case running...

The ALISA Shape Module

Adaptive Shape Recognition using a Radial Feature Token

by Glenn C. Becker

2002

Shape classification is a challenging image processing problem because shapes can occur in any position, at any orientation, and at any scale in an image. Shapes can also be obscured by gaps in their boundaries, occlusions, and noise. General shape classifiers often suffer from low precision, and specialized shape classifiers rely on specific features, like vertices or connected boundaries, making them difficult to generalize. The objective of this research is to design, implement, and test a general, high-precision two-dimensional shape classifier that is invariant to translation, scale, and rotation, as well as robust to gaps in the shape boundary, occlusions, and noise. To achieve this objective, the radial feature token (RFT) is implemented as the ALISA Shape Module, which learns to cl...

Beautiful Mates

Applying Principles of Beauty to Computer Chess Heuristics

by Ben P. Walls

1997

A synopsis of eminent computer chess programs reveal that they are designed around a 'brute force' approach. An argument is made that by continuing the 'brute force' search approach, computer chess development is moving away from human evaluation methods. Research is done into studies of evaluation methods, and a discovery is made that humans use a form of intuition, called their 'sense of beauty', to choose the best chess move. A paper by Margulies is cited which formulates principles of beauty which apply to chess. Three versions of a chess program are developed, using no heuristics, standard chess heuristics, and beauty heuristics formulated from Margulies principles. The performance of the three versions of the program are compared using chess puzzles, and rated for how quickly they fi...

Distributed Programming in Ada with Protected Objects

by Pascal Ledru

1998

As distributed applications become more sophisticated, their implementation becomes more and more difficult. It is therefore important to study how to facilitate the implementation of efficient distributed applications. This thesis reviews the different classes of distributed languages and presents a new approach to develop efficient distributed programs using the Ada language. This approach is compared in detail with existing distributed programming languages, existing approaches to distributed Ada programs, and the Distributed Annex of the new revision of Ada language.

Experience-Based Language Acquisition

A Computational Model of Human Language Acquisition

by Brian E. Pangburn

2002

Almost from the very beginning of the digital age, people have sought better ways to communicate with computers. This research investigates how computers might be enabled to understand natural language in a more humanlike way. Based, in part, on cognitive development in infants, we introduce an open computational framework for visual perception and grounded language acquisition called Experience-Based Language Acquisition (EBLA). EBLA can watch a series of short videos and acquire a simple language of nouns and verbs corresponding to the objects and object-object relations in those videos. Upon acquiring this protolanguage, EBLA can perform basic scene analysis to generate descriptions of novel videos.The general architecture of EBLA is comprised of three stages: vision processing, entit...

Gesture Generation by Imitation

From Human Behavior to Computer Character Animation

by Michael Kipp

2005

In an effort to extend traditional human-computer interfaces research has introduced embodied agents to utilize the modalities of everyday human-human communication, like facial expression, gestures and body postures. However, giving computer agents a human-like body introduces new challenges. Since human users are very sensitive and critical concerning bodily behavior the agents must act naturally and individually in order to be believable. This dissertation focuses on conversational gestures. It shows how to generate conversational gestures for an animated embodied agent based on annotated text input. The central idea is to imitate the gestural behavior of a human individual. Using TV show recordings as empirical data, gestural key parameters are extracte...

Displacement Mapping and Volume Rendering Graphics Hardware

by Michael C. Doggett

2002

This dissertation introduces new hardware architectures for more realistic surface rendering of three dimensional objects and the rendering of volumetric datasets. Surface rendering is dealt with in the first part of the dissertation where the architectures for displacement map rendering in hardware are proposed. This work represents the first to appear in scientific literature on displacement map hardware rendering. Where possible these architectures propose components that integrate into currently available pipelines and make use of existing units in those pipelines. Displacement map rendering in hardware is a desired feature currently under development by most graphics hardware vendors. The first architecture is scan-line based and works just before rasterization and the second adaptiv...

A Spare Capacity Planning Methodology for Wide Area Survivable Networks

by Adel A. Al-Rumaih

1999

In this dissertation, a new spare capacity planning methodology is proposed utilizing path restoration. The approach is based on forcing working flows/traffic which are on paths that are disjoint to share spare backup capacity. The algorithm for determining the spare capacity assignment is based on genetic algorithms and is capable of incorporating non-linear variables such as non-linear cost function and QoS variables into the objective and constraints. The proposed methodology applies to a wider range of fault scenarios than most of the current literature. It can tolerate link-failures, node-failures, and link-and-node failures. It consists of two stages: the first stage generates a set of network topologies that maximize the sharing between backup paths by forcing them to use a subse...

A Reactive Approach to Comprehensive Global Garbage Detection

by Sylvain R Y Louboutin

1999

Comprehensive global garbage detection (GGD) in object-oriented distributed systems, i.e., GGD intrinsically able to detect distributed cycles of garbage, has mostly been addressed via graph tracing algorithms. Graph tracing algorithms must account for every live object in the system before any resource can actually be reclaimed which compromises both their scalability and robustness in a distributed environment. Alternative non-comprehensive approaches trade-off comprehensiveness for scalability and robustness under the assumptions that distributed cycles of garbage are rare and that all comprehensive algorithms are necessarily unscalable. This thesis contends instead that distributed cycles of garbage are as likely to occur as local cycles and that a comprehensive alternative to g...

Software-Agents and Liberal Order

An Inquiry along the Borderline between Economics and Computer Science

by Dirk N Wagner

2000

"Liberal order and software-agents" - long-established ideas and modern technology are bridged. The impulse for undertaking this effort comes from the observation that it becomes difficult for computer science alone to create order for and within machines. The growing complexity of computer systems, open networks like the Internet, and the increasingly social role of software entities push the traditional quest for total global control out of reach. Economic theory of social order offers extensive experience with such conditions, so that it can complement and guide research in computer science. It is shown that a common understanding between economics and computer science's sub-field of distributed artificial intelligence is possible on the level of software-agents. On this basis, four fun...

On Perl

Perl for Students and Professionals

by Jugal K. Kalita

2004

The book has an introductory chapter that gets the reader started quickly with programming in Perl. The initial part of the book discusses Perl expressions, statements, control flow, built-in data types such as arrays and hashes, and complex data structures built using references. The chapter on regular expressions is exemplary with about fifty well-motivated example programs that make this useful topic particularly accessible. The book has an excellent chapter on modules and object-oriented programming. On Perl has several chapters covering specialized topics. The chapter on socket-based network programming deals with forking and using fork to write complex interactive client-server programs. There is a chapter with in-depth discussion of CGI programming including error-ha...

An IT and Security Comparison Decision Support System for Wireless LANs

802.11 infosec and WiFi LAN comparison

by Kevin T. Reynolds, CISSP, PMP

2004

Are all Wireless LANs equal? A network administrator is faced with a plethora of wireless services, complex radio issues, and products for wireless data. There are brand new protocols and products that could become obsolete a day after installation! Over 40% of all deployed WLANs do not even have minimum security activated, exposing the company's network and records to easy outsider access.The WLAN industry is characterized by rapidly changing, incomplete or proprietary standards, which can impact interoperability goals. There are complicated ownership costs, performance limitations, and security configurations that exist for WLANs which many network administrators may not understand or know how to compare. This dissertation presents a decision support system (DSS) that enables a nov...

Context Mediation among Knowledge Discovery Components

by Alex Buchner

2004

Context Mediation is a field of research that is concerned with the interchange of information across different environments, which provides a vehicle to bridge semantic gaps among disparate entities. Knowledge Discovery is concerned with the extraction of actionable information from large databases. A challenge that has received relatively little attention is knowledge discovery in a highly disparate environment, that is multiple heterogeneous data sources, multiple domain knowledge sources and multiple knowledge patterns. This thesis tackles the problem of semantic interoperability among data, domain knowledge and knowledge patterns in a knowledge discovery process using context mediation. Context fundamentals are introduced, which encompasses the concepts of context identity, sem...

Application of Scheduling Theory to Spacecraft Constellations

by Christopher J. Graham

2000

In this thesis we advance the state-of the practice in the Space Mission Operations domain by leveraging single spacecraft technologies along with classical scheduling frameworks and notation to create a scheduler for a constellation of spacecraft. We define a scheduling product that is focused on the problem of scheduling networked groups of spacecraft, called constellations. Within this thesis we show that the constellation schedule problem is a very complex problem, and the application of heuristics is one approach that allow us to schedule successfully. Our first objective, comprising chapters 1, 2, and 3, is to describe the spacecraft constellation domain and the objectives of the thesis. This background provides a foundation for understanding the constellation scheduling problem doma...

Information Theoretic Approach to Logic Functions Minimization

by Denis V. Popel

2000

Information theory methods are of wide use in contemporary logic design, but their proper application to Computer Aided Design (CAD) is rather impossible without strong theoretical and practical justification. Our research is focused on logic function minimization which is an essential component of any system for digital circuit design. The well-known information theory methods to minimize logic functions should be improved and developed towards new problems appeared while increasing the number of CAD applications. We report new results on logic functions minimization by information theory standpoint. We have developed an information theoretic model of recursive decomposition of logic functions. Based on this model, a novel technique for efficient Decision Tree design of various types (AND...

A Machine Translation Approach to Cross Language Text Retrieval

by Maria Gabriela Fernández-Diaz

2005

Cross Language Text Retrieval (CLTR) has been defined as the retrieval of documents in a language different from that of the original query. To make this possible some kind of mechanism has to be applied in order to translate the information contained in the source sentence. Many different approaches have been carried out with the purpose of transferring the information from the source language query to the target language one. Though all these methods deal with a way of translating as much information as possible from the source query, little research has been conducted in relation to the field of Machine Translation (MT). The purpose of this research work is to determine the feasibility of using MT techniques for CLTR. Specifically, I will describe how a MT system has been adapted withou...

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing for Beginners

by Renée Kennedy & Terry Kent

2005

Search engine optimization requires strong organization. Organization will put you above your competition. This book teaches you a successful optimization process.

Some highlights are:
- How search engines work
- Variables that will affect search engine ranks
- Link popularity
- Five samples of pages that work in the engines
- How to submit
- How to analyze your progress
- A troubleshooting section
- A great glossary of terms

Utility of Perspecta 3D Volumetric Display for the Completion of Tasks

by Thomas Tyler

2006

This study analyzes experimental data generated by human subjects using the Perspecta 3D Volumetric Display and a 2D flat screen liquid crystal display (LCD). The analysis reveals differences in how experiment participants used the display technologies.

Data-Driven Modeling using Spherical Self-Organizing Feature Maps

by Archana P. Sangole

2006

Researchers and data analysts are increasingly relying on graphical tools to assist them in modeling their data, generating their hypotheses, and gaining deeper insights on their experimentally acquired data. Recent advances in technology have made available more improved and novel modeling and analysis media that facilitate intuitive, task-driven exploratory analysis and manipulation of the displayed graphical representations. In order to utilize these emerging technologies researchers must be able to transform experimentally acquired data vectors into a visual form or secondary representation that has a simple structure and, is easily transferable into the media. As well, it is essential that it can be modified or manipulated within the display environment. This thesis presents a da...

Decision Making in Uncertain Situations

An Extension to the Mathematical Theory of Evidence

by Fabio Campos

2006

The main problem addressed by this work is how to model and combine bodies of knowledge (or evidence) while maintaining the representation of the unkowledge and of the conflict among the bodies. This is a problem with far-reaching applications in many knowledge segments, in particular for the fields of artificial intelligence, product design, decision making, knowledge engineering and uncertain probability. It must be kept in mind that knowledge based systems depend on algorithms able to relate the inputs of a system to a correct answer coming out of the knowledge-base, and both the inputs and the knowledge-base are subject to information imperfections caused by the unknowledge and the conflict. There are several formalism to deal with knowledge representation and combination, among them...

A Study on the Tone-Reservation Technique for Peak-to-Average Power Ratio Reduction in OFDM Systems

by Umer Ijaz Butt

2010

Multicarrier Modulation (MCM) has significant features over Single Carrier Modulation (SCM). Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a special form of Multicarrier Modulation with its key feature of Orthogonality. Along with the several advantages of MCM or specifically OFDM, it has some drawbacks, too, in which High Peak to Average Power ratio is the dominant one. There are different techniques available to lower that PAPR. Every technique has its own benefit as well as shortcoming, so each is suitable for different circumstances. Tone Reservation is one technique in which a small set of subcarriers are reserved for Peak Cancellation Signal. This PCS helps to lower the PAPR of the whole signal. PAPR reduction by tone reservation depends heavily on the quantity, locations a...

Automated Generation of Geometrically-Precise and Semantically-Informed Virtual Geographic Environments Populated with Spatially-Reasoning Agents

by Mehdi Mekni

2010

Multi-Agent Geo-Simulation (MAGS) is a modelling paradigm which has attracted a growing interest from researchers and practitioners for the study of various phenomena in a variety of domains such as traffic simulation, urban dynamics, environment monitoring, as well as changes of land use and cover, to name a few. These phenomena usually involve a large number of simulated actors (implemented as software agents) evolving in, and interacting with, an explicit spatial environment representation commonly called Virtual Geographic Environment (VGE). Since a geographic environment may be complex and large-scale, the creation of a VGE is difficult and needs large quantities of geometrical data originating from the environment characteristics (terrain elevation, location of objects and agents, et...

Indoor Wireless Metering Networks

A Collection of Algorithms Enabling Low Power/Low Duty-Cycle Operations

by Nicola Altan

2010

Wireless Metering Networks (WMN), a special class of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), consisting of a large number of tiny inexpensive sensor nodes are a viable solution for many problems in the field of building automation, especially if the expected lifetime of the network permits to synchronize the network maintenance with the schedule for routine maintenance of the building. In order to meet the resulting energy constraints, the nodes have to operate according to an extremely low duty cycle schedule. The existence of an energy efficient MAC Layer protocol, the adoption of a robust time synchronization mechanism and the implementation of effective network discovery and maintenance strategies are key elements for the success of a WMN project. The main goal of this work was the developm...

A Security Framework for Mobile Agent Systems

by Omer Mansoor Paracha

2009

Agent technology is a novel approach for the development of distributed systems. In particular, mobile agents can provide much greater flexibility and robustness than the traditional distributed system methodologies since they provide mobility from platform to platform. Thus, they form a vast area of research. One key problem faced by the mobile agent systems is security. A migrating agent can face many threats while migrating to a host/ agent platform. Similarly the platform can be maliciously affected by an agent. A number of different approaches have been suggested in the literature to deal with security of mobile agents. In this thesis, we present an overview of such threats and present an "agent threat model" for mobile agent systems. Based on this model, we survey and evaluate the te...

Into Complexity

A Pattern-oriented Approach to Stakeholder Communications

by Cornelis Pieters

2010

The NWO-programme "the societal aspects of genomics", has called for stronger means of collaboration and deliberative involvement between the various stakeholders of genomics research. Within the project group assembled at the UH, this call was translated to the 'lingua democratica', in which the prerequisites of such deliberative efforts were put to scrutiny. The contribution of this thesis has taken a more or less abstract angle to this task, and sought to develop a vocabulary that can be shared amongst various stakeholders with different backgrounds, interests and stakes for any complex theme, although genomics has more or less been in focus throughout the research. As 'complexity thinking' is currently a theme in both the 'hard' sciences as the social sciences and the humanities, and ...

Computational Model of Listener Behavior for Embodied Conversational Agents

by Elisabetta Bevacqua

2010

During a conversation, listeners do not assimilate passively all of the speaker's words; they actively participate in the interaction providing information about how they feel and what they think of the speaker's speech. The speaker relies on signals emitted by the listener to know if he is listening or not, understanding or not, agreeing or not, etc. This informs the speaker on the success or failure of the communication and helps him to decide how to carry on with the interaction. In this thesis, to refer to signals provided by listeners, we adopt the term backchannel proposed by Yngve. We define backchannels as acoustic and non-verbal signals provided during the speaker's turn to exchange information about the communicative functions: contact, perception, understanding, and attitude. Ba...

Performance Optimization of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)

by Mlindi Mashologu

2010

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is the basic network architecture for Next Generation Networks (NGN) which is intended to bridge the divide between the traditional circuit switched and packet switched networks, thereby providing a single network capable of providing all service offerings. IMS is based on the IP infrastructure and it enables the convergence of data, speech and video on the same network platform. The IMS forms the basis of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), where fixed-line operators are striving to provide mobile access and mobile operators are trying to provide fixed access. This is done to provide both services to a customer in a single device. The IMS is based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is a text-based protocol. The IMS will generally create additional...

Gamma Ray Electronic Collimation Using a Large Volume CZT Crystal

by Estanislao Aguayo

2007

Gamma ray detection techniques for radioisotope imaging purposes are quickly evolving. Monte Carlo simulations show the possibility of achieving an outstanding image spatial resolution in the images obtained with techniques using electronic collimation. The great advantage of using electronic collimation is the increased efficiency of the gamma camera with respect to the usage of the mechanical collimation technique. These new imaging techniques require radiation detectors with very specific features, such as low noise, desired stooping power and compactness. In this thesis project, an apparatus for detection of a Compton deposition of gamma rays, capable of differentiating the position of interaction of the gamma ray in the active volume of the detector, has been developed. The d...

Software Maintenance - A Management Perspective

(Issues, Tools, Techniques, and Trends)

by Phaneendra Nath Vellanky

2007

Computer systems play an important role in our society. Software drives those systems. Massive investments of time and resources are made in developing and implementing these systems. Maintenance is inevitable. It is hard and costly. Considerable resources are required to keep the systems active and dependable. We cannot maintain software unless maintainability characters are built into the products and processes. There is an urgent need to reinforce software development practices based on quality and reliability principles. Though maintenance is a mini development lifecycle, it has its own problems. Maintenance issues need corresponding tools and techniques to address them. Software professionals are key players in maintenance. While development is an art and science, maintenan...

Toponym Resolution in Text

Annotation, Evaluation and Applications of Spatial Grounding of Place Names

by Jochen L. Leidner

2008

The problem of automatic toponym resolution, or computing the mapping from occurrences of names for places as found in a text to an unambiguous spatial footprint of the location referred to, such as a geographic latitude/longitude centroid is difficult to automate due to insufficient and error-prone geographic databases, and a large degree of place name ambiguity: common words need to be distinguished from proper names (geo/non-geo ambiguity), and the mapping between names and locations is ambiguous (London can refer to the capital of the UK or to London, Ontario, Canada, or to about forty other Londons on earth). This thesis investigates how referentially ambiguous spatial named entities can be grounded, or resolved, with respect to an extensional coordinate model robustly on open-domain...

Computer Simulation Using Excel without Programming

by Evon M. O. Abu-Taieh

2008

Defining Simulation in its broadest aspect as embodying a certain model to represent the behavior of a system, whether that may be an economic or an engineering one, with which conducting experiments is attainable. Such a technique enables the management, when studying models currently used, to take appropriate measures and make fitting decisions that would further complement today's growth sustainability efforts, apart from cost decrease, as well as service delivery assurance. As such, the Computer Simulation technique contributed in cost decline; depicting the "cause & effect", pinpointing task-oriented needs or service delivery assurance, exploring possible alternatives, identifying problems, as well as, proposing streamlined measurable deliverable solutions, providing the platform fo...

Multimodal Distinctive Behavior for Expressive Embodied Conversational Agents

by Maurizio Mancini

2008

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are a new type of computer interface which have human-like bodies and conversational skills. Users interacting with agents will be more engaged and participative if the agents exhibit behaviors which look coherent across different situations and emotional states. In the present work, we aim at increasing agents' believability by looking at two main aspects of the problem: - an agent must be able to show its emotional state and communicative intentions not only through specific facial expressions, gestures, etc., but also by varying the quality of its movements (e.g., their speed, amplitude, etc.) and the choice of the modalities that are used to communicate; - the agent must maintain a distinctive behavior, that is, its global behavior tendency has ...

Building Mathematical Models in Excel

A Guide for Agriculturists

by Christopher Teh Boon Sung

2015

This book is for agriculturists, many of whom are either novices or non-computer programmers, about how they can build their mathematical models in Microsoft Excel. Of all modeling platforms, spreadsheets like Excel require the least proficiency in computer programming. This book introduces an Excel add-in called BuildIt (available for free as download) that shields users from having to use Excel’s VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) programming language and yet allows agriculturists to build simple to large complex models without having to learn complicated computer programming techniques or to use sophisticated Excel techniques. This book first discusses how BuildIt works and how it is used to build models. Examples range from the simple to progressively more complex mathematical mode...

Bitcoins

Mining, Transaction, Security Challenges and Future of This Currency

by Muhammad Aslam Zahid

2015

In this dissertation, I have presented a comprehensive research on Bitcoin. Bitcoin was introduced in 2009. This is a decentralized digital currency and works like cash, but they are mined like gold (Volastro, CNBC Explains: How to mine bitcoins on your own, 2014). In this thesis, I will explain that how this currency works and how users can mine Bitcoins. Bitcoins mining is a very hard process, it is almost impossible to create Bitcoins on simple computer. You need specialist hardware to generate Bitcoins. Pool mining is quite popular these days, as numbers of people are taking interest in making money, so the difficulty level of mining Bitcoin is increasing day by day. I am using codes based on publically available sources in order to explore the algorithms for mining, hashing and transa...

Bitcoin for Nonmathematicians

Exploring the Foundations of Crypto Payments

by Slava Gomzin

2016

It's thoughtless to start using something you don't trust. It's difficult to start trusting something you don't understand. Bitcoin for Nonmathematicians contains answers to the following questions: how bitcoin is different from other payment systems, and why we can trust cryptocurrencies. The book compares bitcoin with its predecessors and competitors, and demonstrates the benefits of cryptocurrency over any other existing methods of payments. Bitcoin for Nonmathematicians starts from overview of the evolution of payment systems from gold and paper money to payment cards to cryptocurrencies, and ends up with explaining the fundamentals of security and privacy of crypto payments by explaining the details of cryptography behind bitcoin in layman's terms.

Soft-Computing in Capital Market

Research and Methods of Computational Finance for Measuring Risk of Financial Instruments

by Jibendu Kumar Mantri (editor)

2014

Computational Finance, an exciting new cross-disciplinary research area, depends extensively on the tools and techniques of computer science, statistics, information systems and financial economics for educating the next generation of financial researchers, analysts, risk managers, and financial information technology professionals. This new discipline, sometimes also referred to as “Financial Engineering” or “Quantitative Finance” needs professionals with extensive skills both in finance and mathematics along with specialization in computer science. Soft-Computing in Capital Market hopes to fulfill the need of applications of this offshoot of the technology by providing a diverse collection of cross-disciplinary research. This edited volume covers most of the recent, advanced research ...