A Tutorial on Integrating CDS/ISIS Databases with the World Wide Web

With the emergence of Internet, the global connectivity of computers has become a reality. Internet has progressed to provide many user-friendly tools like Gopher, WAIS, WWW etc. for information publishing and access. The WWW, which integrates all other access tools, also provides a very convenient means for publishing and accessing multimedia and hypertext linked documents stored in computers spread across the world. With the emergence of WWW technology, most of the information activities are becoming Web-centric. Once the information is published on the Web, a user can access this information from any part of the world. A Web browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer is used as a common user interface for accessing information/databases. This will greatly relieve a user from learning the search syntax of individual information systems. Libraries are taking advantage of these developments to provide access to their resources on the Web. CDS/ISIS is a very popular bibliographic information management software used in India. In this tutorial we present details of integrating CDS/ISIS with the WWW. A number of tools are now available for making CDS/ISIS database accessible on the Internet/Web. Some of these are 1) the WAIS_ISIS Server. 2) the WWWISIS Server 3) the IQUERY Server. In this tutorial, we have explained in detail the steps involved in providing Web access to an existing CDS/ISIS database using the freely available software, WWWISIS. This software is developed, maintained and distributed by BIREME, the Latin American & Caribbean Centre on Health Sciences Information. WWWISIS acts as a server for CDS/ISIS databases in a WWW client/server environment. It supports functions for searching, formatting and data entry operations over CDS/ISIS databases. WWWISIS is available for various operating systems. We have tested this software on Windows '95, Windows NT and Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Appolo) Kernel 2. 0. 36 on an i686. The testing was carried out using IISc's main library's OPAC containing more than 80,000 records and Current Contents issues (bibliographic data) containing more than 25,000 records. WWWISIS is fully compatible with CDS/ISIS 3.07 file structure. However, on a system running Unix or its variant, there is no guarantee of this compatibility. It is therefore safe to recreate the master and the inverted files, using utilities provided by BIREME, under Unix environment.

Optimizing Multimedia Experience in a Thin Client Environment for a Resource Constrained Processor

In this paper, we study how TCP and UDP flows interact with each other when the end system is a CPU resource constrained thin client. The problem addressed is twofold, 1) the throughput of TCP flows degrades severely in the presence of heavily loaded UDP flows 2) fairness and minimum QoS requirements of UDP are not maintained. First, we identify the factors affecting the TCP throughput by providing an in-depth analysis of end to end delay and packet loss variations. The results obtained from the first part leads us to our second contribution. We propose and study the use of an algorithm that ensures fairness across flows. The algorithm improves the performance of TCP flows in the presence of multiple UDP flows admitted under an admission algorithm and maintains the minimum QoS requirements of the UDP flows. The advantage of the algorithm is that it requires no changes to TCP/IP stack and control is achieved through receiver window control.

A design methodology for selecting and placement of sensors in multimedia surveillance systems

This paper addresses the problem of how to select the optimal number of sensors and how to determine their placement in a given monitored area for multimedia surveillance systems. We propose to solve this problem by obtaining a novel performance metric in terms of a probability measure for accomplishing the task as a function of set of sensors and their placement. This measure is then used to find the optimal set. The same measure can be used to analyze the degradation in system 's performance with respect to the failure of various sensors. We also build a surveillance system using the optimal set of sensors obtained based on the proposed design methodology. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed design methodology in selecting the optimal set of sensors and their placement.

A dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme for interactive multimedia applications over cellular networks

Cellular networks played key role in enabling high level of bandwidth for users by employing traditional methods such as guaranteed QoS based on application category at radio access stratum level for various classes of QoSs. Also, the newer multimode phones (e.g., phones that support LTE (Long Term Evolution standard), UMTS, GSM, WIFI all at once) are capable to use multiple access methods simulta- neously and can perform seamless handover among various supported technologies to remain connected. With various types of applications (including interactive ones) running on these devices, which in turn have different QoS requirements, this work discusses as how QoS (measured in terms of user level response time, delay, jitter and transmission rate) can be achieved for interactive applications using dynamic bandwidth allocation schemes over cellular networks. In this work, we propose a dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme for interactive multimedia applications with/without background load in the cellular networks. The system has been simulated for many application types running in parallel and it has been observed that if interactive applications are to be provided with decent response time, a periodic overhauling of policy at admission control has to be done by taking into account history, criticality of applications. The results demonstrate that interactive appli- cations can be provided with good service if policy database at admission control is reviewed dynamically.

QUAD: quality assessment of documents

We propose a set of metrics that evaluate the uniformity, sharpness, continuity, noise, stroke width variance,pulse width ratio, transient pixels density, entropy and variance of components to quantify the quality of a document image. The measures are intended to be used in any optical character recognition (OCR) engine to a priori estimate the expected performance of the OCR. The suggested measures have been evaluated on many document images, which have different scripts. The quality of a document image is manually annotated by users to create a ground truth. The idea is to correlate the values of the measures with the user annotated data. If the measure calculated matches the annotated description,then the metric is accepted; else it is rejected. In the set of metrics proposed, some of them are accepted and the rest are rejected. We have defined metrics that are easily estimatable. The metrics proposed in this paper are based on the feedback of homely grown OCR engines for Indic (Tamil and Kannada) languages. The metrics are independent of the scripts, and depend only on the quality and age of the paper and the printing. Experiments and results for each proposed metric are discussed. Actual recognition of the printed text is not performed to evaluate the proposed metrics. Sometimes, a document image containing broken characters results in good document image as per the evaluated metrics, which is part of the unsolved challenges. The proposed measures work on gray scale document images and fail to provide reliable information on binarized document image.

Hybrid online non-negative matrix factorization for clustering of documents

When document corpus is very large, we often need to reduce the number of features. But it is not possible to apply conventional Non-negative Matrix Factorization(NMF) on billion by million matrix as the matrix may not fit in memory. Here we present novel Online NMF algorithm. Using Online NMF, we reduced original high-dimensional space to low-dimensional space. Then we cluster all the documents in reduced dimension using k-means algorithm. We experimentally show that by processing small subsets of documents we will be able to achieve good performance. The method proposed outperforms existing algorithms.

SeaMo plus : a virtual real-time multimedia service framework on handhelds to enable remote real-time patient monitoring for mobile doctors

The key requirements for enabling real-time remote healthcare service on a mobile platform, in the present day heterogeneous wireless access network environment, are uninterrupted and continuous access to the online patient vital medical data, monitor the physical condition of the patient through video streaming, and so on. For an application, this continuity has to be sufficiently transparent both from a performance perspective as well as a Quality of Experience (QoE) perspective. While mobility protocols (MIPv6, HIP, SCTP, DSMIP, PMIP, and SIP) strive to provide both and do so, limited or non-availability (deployment) of these protocols on provider networks and server side infrastructure has impeded adoption of mobility on end user platforms. Add to this, the cumbersome OS configuration procedures required to enable mobility protocol support on end user devices and the user's enthusiasm to add this support is lost. Considering the lack of proper mobility implementations that meet the remote healthcare requirements above, we propose SeaMo+ that comprises a light-weight application layer framework, termed as the Virtual Real-time Multimedia Service (VRMS) for mobile devices to provide an uninterrupted real-time multimedia information access to the mobile user. VRMS is easy to configure, platform independent, and does not require additional network infrastructure unlike other existing schemes. We illustrate the working of SeaMo+ in two realistic remote patient monitoring application scenarios.

Better QOS with W/T SPR codes for the transmission of multimedia signals in Optical CDMA networks

In this paper optical code-division multiple-access (O-CDMA) packet network is considered, which offers inherent security in the access networks. The application of O-CDMA to multimedia transmission (voice, data, and video) is investigated. The simultaneous transmission of various services is achieved by assigning to each user unique multiple code signatures. Thus, by applying a parallel mapping technique, we achieve multi-rate services. A random access protocol is proposed, here, where all distinct codes are used, for packet transmission. The codes, Optical Orthogonal Code (OOC), or 1D codes and Wavelength/Time Single-Pulse-per-Row (W/T SPR), or 2D codes, are analyzed. These 1D and 2D codes with varied weight are used to differentiate the Quality of Service (QoS). The theoretical bit error probability corresponding to the quality of each service is established using 1D and 2D codes in the receiver noiseless case and compared. The results show that, using 2D codes QoS in multimedia transmission is better than using 1D codes.

Segregating Discourse Segments from Engineering Documents for Knowledge Acquisition

The broader goal of the research being described here is to automatically acquire diagnostic knowledge from documents in the domain of manual and mechanical assembly of aircraft structures. These documents are treated as a discourse used by experts to communicate with others. It therefore becomes possible to use discourse analysis to enable machine understanding of the text. The research challenge addressed in the paper is to identify documents or sections of documents that are potential sources of knowledge. In a subsequent step, domain knowledge will be extracted from these segments. The segmentation task requires partitioning the document into relevant segments and understanding the context of each segment. In discourse analysis, the division of a discourse into various segments is achieved through certain indicative clauses called cue phrases that indicate changes in the discourse context. However, in formal documents such language may not be used. Hence the use of a domain specific ontology and an assembly process model is proposed to segregate chunks of the text based on a local context. Elements of the ontology/model, and their related terms serve as indicators of current context for a segment and changes in context between segments. Local contexts are aggregated for increasingly larger segments to identify if the document (or portions of it) pertains to the topic of interest, namely, assembly. Knowledge acquired through such processes enables acquisition and reuse of knowledge during any part of the lifecycle of a product.

Improved recognition of aged Kannada documents by effective segmentation of merged characters

In optical character recognition of very old books, the recognition accuracy drops mainly due to the merging or breaking of characters. In this paper, we propose the first algorithm to segment merged Kannada characters by using a hypothesis to select the positions to be cut. This method searches for the best possible positions to segment, by taking into account the support vector machine classifier's recognition score and the validity of the aspect ratio (width to height ratio) of the segments between every pair of cut positions. The hypothesis to select the cut position is based on the fact that a concave surface exists above and below the touching portion. These concave surfaces are noted down by tracing the valleys in the top contour of the image and similarly doing it for the image rotated upside-down. The cut positions are then derived as closely matching valleys of the original and the rotated images. Our proposed segmentation algorithm works well for different font styles, shapes and sizes better than the existing vertical projection profile based segmentation. The proposed algorithm has been tested on 1125 different word images, each containing multiple merged characters, from an old Kannada book and 89.6% correct segmentation is achieved and the character recognition accuracy of merged words is 91.2%. A few points of merge are still missed due to the absence of a matched valley due to the specific shapes of the particular characters meeting at the merges.

Danka Multimedia: Una sociedad cooperativa en expansión en la nueva economía digital

[ES] Danka Multimedia es una sociedad cooperativa que ofrece servicios de comunicación integral en el ámbito de marketing y la formación mediante el uso de las nuevas tecnologías. Por el sector de actividad en el que se encuentra, así como por su propia vocación empresarial, Danka ha experimentado desde sus inicios un proceso paulatino de crecimiento. Este crecimiento está siendo cada más vez progresivo y, por ello, la empresa se está viendo obligada a hacer frente a una serie de problemas derivados del mismo. Estos conflictos derivados del crecimiento, comunes a todo tipo de empresa, se ven acrecentados en el caso de Danka Multimedia por su personalidad jurídica, los valores y cultura que ello conlleva y el sector de actividad en el que desarrolla su actividad. La gestión de este crecimiento, por parte de Danka Multimedia, es el tema central que se aborda a lo largo del caso.