The Odrysian Kingdom – a Concept of an Interactive Multimedia Application for Educational Purposes

The presentation of cultural heritage is difficult comprehensive and constantly updated topic. Researchers often focus more on the different techniques to digitize artifacts of cultural heritage. This work focuses on the overall shape and structure of future multimedia application whose specificity is determined by the topic - Odrysian kingdom. Below is presented a concept for structure and content-based information available for individual kings from Odryssae dynasty. Special attention is paid to the presentation of preserved artifacts associated with the reign of specific rulers. The main concept of multimedia application dedicated to the Odrysian kingdom, it is to be used in teaching programs related to cultural heritage and history of antiquity in universities. The aim of designers is that it can be modified easy for use in museums also.

Design issues and caching strategies for CD-ROM based multimedia storage

CD-ROMs have proliferated as a distribution media for desktop machines for a large variety of multimedia applications (targeted for a single-user environment) like encyclopedias, magazines and games. With CD-ROM capacities up to 3 GB being available in the near future, they will form an integral part of Video on Demand (VoD) servers to store full-length movies and multimedia. In the first section of this paper we look at issues related to the single- user desktop environment. Since these multimedia applications are highly interactive in nature, we take a pragmatic approach, and have made a detailed study of the multimedia application behavior in terms of the I/O request patterns generated to the CD-ROM subsystem by tracing these patterns. We discuss prefetch buffer design and seek time characteristics in the context of the analysis of these traces. We also propose an adaptive main-memory hosted cache that receives caching hints from the application to reduce the latency when the user moves from one node of the hyper graph to another. In the second section we look at the use of CD-ROM in a VoD server and discuss the problem of scheduling multiple request streams and buffer management in this scenario. We adapt the C-SCAN (Circular SCAN) algorithm to suit the CD-ROM drive characteristics and prove that it is optimal in terms of buffer size management. We provide computationally inexpensive relations by which this algorithm can be implemented. We then propose an admission control algorithm which admits new request streams without disrupting the continuity of playback of the previous request streams. The algorithm also supports operations such as fast forward and replay. Finally, we discuss the problem of optimal placement of MPEG streams on CD-ROMs in the third section.

COGNITIVE IMPACT OF INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA

Technology has been gradually introduced in heath education. One of the most attractive features of this technology-based education is the use of multimedia. In this article we explore the research evidence about the role that multimedia is playing in education. From that analysis we describe the most relevant features of this technology to prepare a common ground of discussion about the evaluation of its impact on educational outcomes. As part of this analysis, we organize current research evidence on the use of technology in medical education, distinguishing diverse variables involved in the process, like knowledge (declarative, procedural), learner characteristics, curricular scenario, etc. This article presents an overview of the Distributed Representations theory and its relationship with research on educational outcomes and multimedia. Next we discuss the relationship between media and diverse learning theories, proposing a theory based taxonomy for educational multimedia.

A low overhead error confinement method based on application statistical characteristics

Reliability has emerged as a critical design constraint especially in memories. Designers are going to great lengths to guarantee fault free operation of the underlying silicon by adopting redundancy-based techniques, which essentially try to detect and correct every single error. However, such techniques come at a cost of large area, power and performance overheads which making many researchers to doubt their efficiency especially for error resilient systems where 100% accuracy is not always required. In this paper, we present an alternative method focusing on the confinement of the resulting output error induced by any reliability issues. By focusing on memory faults, rather than correcting every single error the proposed method exploits the statistical characteristics of any target application and replaces any erroneous data with the best available estimate of that data. To realize the proposed method a RISC processor is augmented with custom instructions and special-purpose functional units. We apply the method on the proposed enhanced processor by studying the statistical characteristics of the various algorithms involved in a popular multimedia application. Our experimental results show that in contrast to state-of-the-art fault tolerance approaches, we are able to reduce runtime and area overhead by 71.3% and 83.3% respectively.

Quando as crianças contam histórias: estudo para o desenvolvimento de uma aplicação multimédia interativa de suporte ao conto de histórias por crianças do 1º CEB

Concetualmente ancorado em referenciais teóricos que demonstram o papel fundamental da narrativa e a ubiquidade dos produtos dos esquemas narrativos nos vários domínios da vida humana, bem como a importância do desenvolvimento de competências narrativas adequadas enquanto processo determinante no sentido da construção da literacia, este trabalho procurou compreender os processos de estruturação e a estrutura de histórias contadas por crianças do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico (CEB), numa abordagem morfológica suportada pela teoria e modelo de Vladimir Propp, no sentido da concetualização e prototipagem de uma aplicação multimédia de suporte ao conto de histórias. Os estudos empíricos conduzidos, de natureza comparativo-exploratória, permitiram que as crianças assumissem o papel de contadoras de histórias e informantes, fornecendo-nos o corpus e conteúdo para análises morfológicas e de conteúdo, sobretudo qualitativas e com objetivos fundamentalmente descritivos. Os resultados do estudo suportaram o delineamento de linhas orientadoras para o desenvolvimento do modelo concetual e requisitos funcionais de uma aplicação multimédia de suporte ao conto de histórias, de natureza educativa, que veio a designar-se por Curucucu©, Conto eu ou contas tu?. O processo de prototipagem da aplicação multimédia implementou uma abordagem iterativa e centrada no aluno para efeitos de concetualização, desenho, implementação e testes da ferramenta e tendo como preocupação central o desenvolvimento de interfaces adequadas, quer às crianças, quer aos objetivos e contextos de utilização, integrando crianças e professores do 1.º CEB, bem como outros informantes (na qualidade de peritos) em fases específicas do processo. Para além das limitações encontradas no estudo, avançam-se propostas de investigação futura.

Estudo de Funcionalidades HTML5 para um Editor de Imagem na Internet

Hoje em dia existem múltiplas aplicações multimédia na Internet, sendo comum qualquer website apresentar mais de uma forma de visualização de informação além do texto como, por exemplo: imagens, áudio, vídeo e animação. Com aumento do consumo e utilização de Smartphone e Tablets, o volume de tráfego de internet móvel tem vindo a crescer rapidamente, bem como o acesso à internet através da televisão. As aplicações web-based ganham maior relevância devido à maior partilha ou consumo de conteúdos multimédia, com ou sem edição ou manipulação da mesma, através de redes sociais, como o Facebook. Neste documento é apresentado o estudo de alternativas HTML5 e a implementação duma aplicação web-based no âmbito do Mestrado de Engenharia Informática, ramo de Sistemas Gráficos e Multimédia, no Instituto Superior Engenharia do Porto (ISEP). A aplicação tem como objetivo a edição e manipulação de imagens, tanto em desktop como em dispositivos móveis, sendo este processo exclusivamente feito no lado do cliente, ou seja, no Browser do utilizador. O servidor é usado somente para o armazenamento da aplicação. Durante o desenvolvimento do projeto foi realizado um estudo de soluções de edição e manipulação de imagem existentes no mercado, com a respetiva análise de comparação e apresentadas tecnologias Web modernas como HTML5, CSS3 e JavaScript, que permitirão desenvolver o protótipo. Posteriormente, serão apresentadas, detalhadamente, as várias fases do desenvolvimento de um protótipo, desde a análise do sistema, à apresentação do protótipo e indicação das tecnologias utilizadas. Também serão apresentados os resultados dos inquéritos efetuados a um grupo de pessoas que testaram esse protótipo. Finalmente, descrever-se-á de forma mais exaustiva, a implementação e serão apontadas dificuldades encontradas ao longo do desenvolvimento, bem como indicadas futuras melhorias a introduzir.

Estudio comparativo del manejo de las urgencias psiquiátricas en el entrenamiento de estudiantes de medicina

Esta actividad teórico-practica nos amplio nuestro conocimiento y capacidad de producción de medios de instrucción tales como la multimedia.

Aplicativo multimídia em plataforma móvel para o ensino da mensuração da pressão venosa central

O objetivo do estudo foi desenvolver e avaliar um aplicativo multimídia em plataforma móvel para o ensino da Mensuração da Pressão Venosa Central (PVC). A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em três fases (Levantamento das necessidades; Metodologia de desenvolvimento do aplicativo multimídia e Avaliação do aplicativo multimídia). A multimídia foi o método escolhido por favorecer um ambiente motivador e dinâmico, integrar imagens e textos num aplicativo disponível para celulares, constituindo-se um meio móvel e autônomo de aprendizagem. Os resultados permitem demonstrar a viabilidade do desenvolvimento da ferramenta para subsidiar a prática pedagógica e abrem perspectivas para acreditar que, na educação em Enfermagem, a tecnologia disponível pode descortinar novos modos de aprender significativamente.

Tecniche per il controllo dinamico del consumo di potenza per piattaforme system-on-chip

Providing support for multimedia applications on low-power mobile devices remains a significant research challenge. This is primarily due to two reasons: • Portable mobile devices have modest sizes and weights, and therefore inadequate resources, low CPU processing power, reduced display capabilities, limited memory and battery lifetimes as compared to desktop and laptop systems. • On the other hand, multimedia applications tend to have distinctive QoS and processing requirementswhichmake themextremely resource-demanding. This innate conflict introduces key research challenges in the design of multimedia applications and device-level power optimization. Energy efficiency in this kind of platforms can be achieved only via a synergistic hardware and software approach. In fact, while System-on-Chips are more and more programmable thus providing functional flexibility, hardwareonly power reduction techniques cannot maintain consumption under acceptable bounds. It is well understood both in research and industry that system configuration andmanagement cannot be controlled efficiently only relying on low-level firmware and hardware drivers. In fact, at this level there is lack of information about user application activity and consequently about the impact of power management decision on QoS. Even though operating system support and integration is a requirement for effective performance and energy management, more effective and QoSsensitive power management is possible if power awareness and hardware configuration control strategies are tightly integratedwith domain-specificmiddleware services. The main objective of this PhD research has been the exploration and the integration of amiddleware-centric energymanagement with applications and operating-system. We choose to focus on the CPU-memory and the video subsystems, since they are the most power-hungry components of an embedded system. A second main objective has been the definition and implementation of software facilities (like toolkits, API, and run-time engines) in order to improve programmability and performance efficiency of such platforms. Enhancing energy efficiency and programmability ofmodernMulti-Processor System-on-Chips (MPSoCs) Consumer applications are characterized by tight time-to-market constraints and extreme cost sensitivity. The software that runs on modern embedded systems must be high performance, real time, and even more important low power. Although much progress has been made on these problems, much remains to be done. Multi-processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) are increasingly popular platforms for high performance embedded applications. This leads to interesting challenges in software development since efficient software development is a major issue for MPSoc designers. An important step in deploying applications on multiprocessors is to allocate and schedule concurrent tasks to the processing and communication resources of the platform. The problem of allocating and scheduling precedenceconstrained tasks on processors in a distributed real-time system is NP-hard. There is a clear need for deployment technology that addresses thesemulti processing issues. This problem can be tackled by means of specific middleware which takes care of allocating and scheduling tasks on the different processing elements and which tries also to optimize the power consumption of the entire multiprocessor platform. This dissertation is an attempt to develop insight into efficient, flexible and optimalmethods for allocating and scheduling concurrent applications tomultiprocessor architectures. It is a well-known problem in literature: this kind of optimization problems are very complex even in much simplified variants, therefore most authors propose simplified models and heuristic approaches to solve it in reasonable time. Model simplification is often achieved by abstracting away platform implementation ”details”. As a result, optimization problems become more tractable, even reaching polynomial time complexity. Unfortunately, this approach creates an abstraction gap between the optimization model and the real HW-SW platform. The main issue with heuristic or, more in general, with incomplete search is that they introduce an optimality gap of unknown size. They provide very limited or no information on the distance between the best computed solution and the optimal one. The goal of this work is to address both abstraction and optimality gaps, formulating accurate models which accounts for a number of ”non-idealities” in real-life hardware platforms, developing novel mapping algorithms that deterministically find optimal solutions, and implementing software infrastructures required by developers to deploy applications for the targetMPSoC platforms. Energy Efficient LCDBacklightAutoregulation on Real-LifeMultimediaAp- plication Processor Despite the ever increasing advances in Liquid Crystal Display’s (LCD) technology, their power consumption is still one of the major limitations to the battery life of mobile appliances such as smart phones, portable media players, gaming and navigation devices. There is a clear trend towards the increase of LCD size to exploit the multimedia capabilities of portable devices that can receive and render high definition video and pictures. Multimedia applications running on these devices require LCD screen sizes of 2.2 to 3.5 inches andmore to display video sequences and pictures with the required quality. LCD power consumption is dependent on the backlight and pixel matrix driving circuits and is typically proportional to the panel area. As a result, the contribution is also likely to be considerable in future mobile appliances. To address this issue, companies are proposing low power technologies suitable for mobile applications supporting low power states and image control techniques. On the research side, several power saving schemes and algorithms can be found in literature. Some of them exploit software-only techniques to change the image content to reduce the power associated with the crystal polarization, some others are aimed at decreasing the backlight level while compensating the luminance reduction by compensating the user perceived quality degradation using pixel-by-pixel image processing algorithms. The major limitation of these techniques is that they rely on the CPU to perform pixel-based manipulations and their impact on CPU utilization and power consumption has not been assessed. This PhDdissertation shows an alternative approach that exploits in a smart and efficient way the hardware image processing unit almost integrated in every current multimedia application processors to implement a hardware assisted image compensation that allows dynamic scaling of the backlight with a negligible impact on QoS. The proposed approach overcomes CPU-intensive techniques by saving system power without requiring either a dedicated display technology or hardware modification. Thesis Overview The remainder of the thesis is organized as follows. The first part is focused on enhancing energy efficiency and programmability of modern Multi-Processor System-on-Chips (MPSoCs). Chapter 2 gives an overview about architectural trends in embedded systems, illustrating the principal features of new technologies and the key challenges still open. Chapter 3 presents a QoS-driven methodology for optimal allocation and frequency selection for MPSoCs. The methodology is based on functional simulation and full system power estimation. Chapter 4 targets allocation and scheduling of pipelined stream-oriented applications on top of distributed memory architectures with messaging support. We tackled the complexity of the problem by means of decomposition and no-good generation, and prove the increased computational efficiency of this approach with respect to traditional ones. Chapter 5 presents a cooperative framework to solve the allocation, scheduling and voltage/frequency selection problem to optimality for energyefficient MPSoCs, while in Chapter 6 applications with conditional task graph are taken into account. Finally Chapter 7 proposes a complete framework, called Cellflow, to help programmers in efficient software implementation on a real architecture, the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The second part is focused on energy efficient software techniques for LCD displays. Chapter 8 gives an overview about portable device display technologies, illustrating the principal features of LCD video systems and the key challenges still open. Chapter 9 shows several energy efficient software techniques present in literature, while Chapter 10 illustrates in details our method for saving significant power in an LCD panel. Finally, conclusions are drawn, reporting the main research contributions that have been discussed throughout this dissertation.

¿Que enseñar y cómo enseñar? Perspectivas en la evolución de las Facultades de Comunicación para la enseñanza del Ciberperiodismo

El presente estudio analiza los aspectos formativos que tienen las facultades de comunicación, las tendencias y las iniciativas que algunos centros están desarrollando como parte experimental para un nuevo ecosistema educacional. Propone una reflexión del periodismo, no sólo como profesión, sino, fundamentalmente, como disciplina científica, avalada y justificada su enseñanza en las Facultades de Comunicación. Fomenta la realización de investigación aplicada, a través de Media Labs, de modelos periodísticos, sin menoscabo de la ética de la información y de la calidad en la redacción, en las ilustraciones, correcciones y producción de materiales en plataformas digitales y multimedia.

A Cross-Layer Optimized Scheme and Its Application in Mobile Multimedia Networks with QoS Provision

To cope with the rapid growth of multimedia applications that requires dynamic levels of quality of service (QoS), cross-layer (CL) design, where multiple protocol layers are jointly combined, has been considered to provide diverse QoS provisions for mobile multimedia networks. However, there is a lack of a general mathematical framework to model such CL scheme in wireless networks with different types of multimedia classes. In this paper, to overcome this shortcoming, we therefore propose a novel CL design for integrated real-time/non-real-time traffic with strict preemptive priority via a finite-state Markov chain. The main strategy of the CL scheme is to design a Markov model by explicitly including adaptive modulation and coding at the physical layer, queuing at the data link layer, and the bursty nature of multimedia traffic classes at the application layer. Utilizing this Markov model, several important performance metrics in terms of packet loss rate, delay, and throughput are examined. In addition, our proposed framework is exploited in various multimedia applications, for example, the end-to-end real-time video streaming and CL optimization, which require the priority-based QoS adaptation for different applications. More importantly, the CL framework reveals important guidelines as to optimize the network performance

Technology enhanced learning and augmented reality : an application on multimedia interactive books

Multimedia Interactive Book (miBook) reflects the development of a new concept of virtual interpretation of traditional text books and audio-visual content. By encompassing new technological approaches, using augmented reality technology, allows the final user to experience a variety of sensorial stimuli while enjoying and interacting with the content; therefore enhancing the learning process. miBook stands for a global educational intention to enable people not only to access but also to appropriate intellectually valuable contents coming from different linguistic and cultural contexts.

Digital signage application : developing a public venue multimedia touch-screen

La señalización digital o digital signage es una tecnología de comunicaciones digital que se está usando en los últimos años para reemplazar a la antigua publicidad impresa. Esta tecnología mejora la presentación y promoción de los productos anunciados, así como facilita el intercambio de información gracias a su colocación en lugares públicos o al aire libre. Las aplicaciones con las que cuenta este nuevo método de publicidad son muy variadas, ya que pueden variar desde ambientes privados en empresas, hasta lugares públicos como centros comerciales. Aunque la primera y principal utilidad de la señalización digital es la publicidad para que el usuario sienta una necesidad de adquirir productos, también la posibilidad de ofrecer más información sobre determinados artículos a través de las nuevas tecnologías es muy importante en este campo. La aplicación realizada en este proyecto es el desarrollo de un programa en Adobe Flash a través de lenguaje de programación XML. A través de una pantalla táctil, el usuario de un museo puede interactivamente acceder a un menú en el que aparecen los diferentes estilos de arte en un determinado tiempo de la historia. A través de una línea de tiempo se puede acceder a información sobre cada objeto que esté expuesto en la exhibición. Además se pueden observar imágenes de los detalles más importantes del objeto que no pueden ser vistos a simple vista, ya que no está permitido manipularlos. El empleo de la pantalla interactiva sirve para el usuario de la exhibición como una herramienta extra para recabar información sobre lo que está viendo, a través de una tecnología nueva y fácil de usar para todo el mundo, ya que solo se necesita usar las propias manos. La facilidad de manejo en aplicaciones como estas es muy importante, ya que el usuario final puede no tener conocimientos tecnológicos por lo que la información debe darse claramente. Como conclusión, se puede decir que digital signage es un mercado que está en expansión y que las empresas deben invertir en el desarrollo de contenidos, ya que las tecnologías avanzan aunque el digital signage no lo haga, y este sector podría ser muy útil en un futuro no muy lejano, ya que la información que es capaz de transmitir al espectador en todos los lugares es mucho más válida y útil que la proporcionada por un simple póster impreso en una valla publicitaria. Abstract The Digital signage is a digital communications technology being used in recent years to replace the old advertising printed. This technology improves the presentation and promotion of the advertised products, and makes easy the exchange of information with its placement in public places or outdoors. The applications that account this new method of advertising are several; they can range from private rooms in companies, to public places like malls. Although the first major utility of Digital signage is the advertising that makes the user feel and need of purchasing products. In addition, the chance of providing more information about certain items through new technologies is very important in this field. The application made in this project is the development of a program in Adobe Flash via XML programming language. Through a touch-screen, a museum user can interactively access a menu in which different styles of art in a particular time in history appears. Through a timeline you can access to information about each object that is exposed on display. Also you can see pictures of the most important details of the object that can not be seen with the naked eye, since it is not allowed to manipulate it. The use of the interactive screen serves to the user exhibition as an extra tool to gather information about what is seeing through a new technology and easy to use for everyone, since only need to use one’s own hands. The ease of handling in applications such as this is very important as the end user may not have expertise technology so the information should be clearly. As conclusion, one can say digital signage is an expansion market and companies must invest in content development, as although digital technologies advance digital signage does not, and this sector could be very useful in a near future, because information that is able of transmitting the everywhere viewer is much more valid and useful than that provided by a simple printed poster on a billboard.

A scalable multimedia content processing framework with application to TV shopping

The advent of smart TVs has reshaped the TV-consumer interaction by combining TVs with mobile-like applications and access to the Internet. However, consumers are still unable to seamlessly interact with the contents being streamed. An example of such limitation is TV shopping, in which a consumer makes a purchase of a product or item displayed in the current TV show. Currently, consumers can only stop the current show and attempt to find a similar item in the Web or an actual store. It would be more convenient if the consumer could interact with the TV to purchase interesting items. ^ Towards the realization of TV shopping, this dissertation proposes a scalable multimedia content processing framework. Two main challenges in TV shopping are addressed: the efficient detection of products in the content stream, and the retrieval of similar products given a consumer-selected product. The proposed framework consists of three components. The first component performs computational and temporal aware multimedia abstraction to select a reduced number of frames that summarize the important information in the video stream. By both reducing the number of frames and taking into account the computational cost of the subsequent detection phase, this component component allows the efficient detection of products in the stream. The second component realizes the detection phase. It executes scalable product detection using multi-cue optimization. Additional information cues are formulated into an optimization problem that allows the detection of complex products, i.e., those that do not have a rigid form and can appear in various poses. After the second component identifies products in the video stream, the consumer can select an interesting one for which similar ones must be located in a product database. To this end, the third component of the framework consists of an efficient, multi-dimensional, tree-based indexing method for multimedia databases. The proposed index mechanism serves as the backbone of the search. Moreover, it is able to efficiently bridge the semantic gap and perception subjectivity issues during the retrieval process to provide more relevant results.^