5823907
Building an e-learning platform by access grid and data grid technologies
Due to overall popularity of the Internet, e-learning has become a hot method of learning in recent years. Through the Internet, learners can freely absorb new knowledge without the restriction of time and place. Many companies have adopted e-learning to train their employees. The e-learning system can make an enterprise more competitive by increasing the knowledge of its employees. As we know, e-learning has become one of the most potential e-commerce businesses. At present, most e-learning environment architectures are in consideration of a single computer or server as its erecting foundation. As soon as its workload increases, the software and hardware need to be updated or renewed; this is a big burden to a company with insufficient budget. Thus, in this research we employ a kind of grid computing technology, called "access grid", to integrate the idle computer resources in an enterprise into an e-learning platform for substituting the purchase of costly high-level server and equipment. The access grid supports group-to-group communication via high-speed networking over the Internet. It provides high quality audio and real-time video interactive interface for e-learning users. All the hardware cost is reasonable so that companies or academies can easily set up their own access grid node. By using access grid technologies, enterprises can integrate their training materials into knowledge repository such as "data grid" as the e-learning VOD platform so that the knowledge can be shared and published more flexibly and widely.
32464432
An Enhanced Parallel Loop Self-Scheduling Scheme for Cluster Environments
In this paper, a parallel loop self-scheduling scheme for heterogeneous PC cluster systems is proposed. Though the proposed scheme does allow users to choose parameters before the execution initialization phase, there are still weaknesses that motivate us to go further with new improvements in that scheme. For instance, a decision on a fixed and monotonous parameter can easily lead to invalid schedule by using previous input information. Thus, it is proposed in this paper a new scheme, where the scheduling parameter can be adjusted dynamically and fit into most widely available computer systems, in order to provide higher overall performance.
7749374
A Performance-Based Approach to Dynamic Workload Distribution for Master-Slave Applications on Grid Environments
Effective workload distribution techniques can significantly reduce the total completion time of a program on grid computing environments. In this paper, we propose a dynamic performance-based workload partition approach for master-slave types of applications on grids. Furthermore, we implement two types of applications and conduct the experimentations on our grid testbed. Experimental results showed that our method could execute more efficiently than traditional schemes.
5672930
An e-Learning Platform Based on Grid Architecture
The overall popularity of the Internet has helped e-learning become a hot method for learning in recent years. Over the Internet, learners can freely absorb new knowledge without restrictions on time or place. Many companies have adopted e-learning to train their employees. An e-learning system can make an enterprise more competitive by increasing the knowledge of its employees. E-learning has been shown to have impressive potential in e-commerce. At present, most e-learning environment architectures use single computers or servers as their structural foundations. As soon as their work loads increase, their software and hardware must be updated or renewed. This is a big burden on organizations that lack sufficient funds. Thus, in this study we employ a kind of Grid Computing technology, called the ”Data Grid” to integrate idle computer resources in enterprises into e-learning platforms, thus eliminating the need to purchase costly high-level servers and other equipment.
7849532
A Peer-to-Peer Resource Sharing System with Data Grid Technology for Mobile Devices
Increases in mobile device processing power, storage capacity, and connectivity in recent years have led to a rapid rise in mobile device use. But mobile users face challenges in making connections with other users in order to share resources. To address this issue, we propose an architecture that uses peer-to-peer protocol to establish a resource sharing platform for mobile devices, combined with a data grid to help analyze and classify resources.
12951016
A shareable e-learning platform using data grid technology
Over the past decade, speed in the transmission of knowledge is no longer the way it used to be. Due to this influence, conventional educational methodology has also followed this trend and has gone through a momentous transformation. An excellent example is e-learning which has achieved and broken through the restrictions of time and space. In recent years it has become one of the most popular teaching methods. SCORM (Sharable Course Object Reference Model) the most popular e-learning standard has been adapted from many differing e-learning platforms. Normally, courseware meeting SCORM standards is sharable with other e-learning platforms. Most e-learning platforms however are unable to share courseware directly on the Internet. With this in mind, we have employed one type of grid computing technology called "data grid" in order to achieve this. This technology allows the integration of different SCORM platforms into a huge e-learning environment.
1680199
A heuristic method based on a statistical approach for Chinese text segmentation
The authors propose a heuristic method for Chinese automatic text segmentation based on a statistical approach. This method is developed based on statistical information about the association among adjacent characters in Chinese text. Mutual information of bi-grams and significant estimation of tri-grams are utilized. A heuristic method with six rules is then proposed to determine the segmentation points in a Chinese sentence. No dictionary is required in this method. Chinese text segmentation is important in Chinese text indexing and thus greatly affects the performance of Chinese information retrieval. Due to the lack of delimiters of words in Chinese text, Chinese text segmentation is more difficult than English text segmentation. Besides, segmentation ambiguities and occurrences of out-of-vocabulary words (i.e., unknown words) are the major challenges in Chinese segmentation. Many research studies dealing with the problem of word segmentation have focused on the resolution of segmentation ambiguities. The problem of unknown word identification has not drawn much attention. The experimental result shows that the proposed heuristic method is promising to segment the unknown words as well as the known words. The authors further investigated the distribution of the errors of commission and the errors of omission caused by the proposed heuristic method and benchmarked the proposed heuristic method with a previous proposed technique, boundary detection. It is found that the heuristic method outperformed the boundary detection method.
2271054
An information delivery system with automatic summarization for mobile commerce
Wireless access with handheld devices is a promising addition to the WWW and traditional electronic business. Handheld devices provide convenience and portable access to the huge information space on the Internet without requiring users to be stationary with network connection. Many customer-centered m-services applications have been developed. The mobile computing, however, should be extended to decision support in an organization. There is a desire of accessing most update and accurate information on handheld devices for fast decision making in an organization. Unfortunately, loading and visualizing large documents on handheld devices are impossible due to their shortcomings. In this paper, we introduce the fractal summarization model for document summarization on handheld devices. Fractal summarization is developed based on the fractal theory. It generates a brief skeleton of summary at the first stage, and the details of the summary on different levels of the document are generated on demands of users. Such interactive summarization reduces the computation load in comparing with the generation of the entire summary in one batch by the traditional automatic summarization, which is ideal for wireless access. The three-tier architecture with the middle-tier conducting the major computation is also discussed. Visualization of summary on handheld devices is also investigated. The automatic summarization, the three-tier architecture, and the information visualization are potential solutions to the existing problems in information delivery to handheld devices for mobile commerce.
11357878
Pseudorandom bit generators in stream-cipher cryptography
Progress in the design and analysis of pseudorandom bit generators over the last decade is surveyed. Background information is provided, and the linear feedback shift registers that serve as building blocks for constructing the generators are examined. Three methods for attacking keystream generators are reviewed, and three techniques for designing them are considered, focusing on how they fail or how their weakness is exposed under the attacks previously described. These techniques are nonlinear feedforward transformation, step control, and multiclocking.<<ETX>>
15850495
Automatic Summarization for Financial News Delivery on Mobile Devices
Christopher C. C. Yang and Fu Lee Wang Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China {yang, flwang}@se.cuhk.edu.hk ABSTRACT Wireless access with mobile devices is a promising addition to the WWW and traditional electronic business. Mobile devices provide convenience and portable access to the huge information space on the Internet. It is desire to access the most updated financial information through mobile devices in order to make critical and urgent decision for most of the investors. In this paper, we present a financial news delivery system on mobile devices based on the fractal summarization model. Fractal summarization is developed based on the fractal theory. It generates a brief skeleton of summary at the first stage, and the details of the summary on different levels of the document are generated on demands of users. Such interactive summarization reduces the computation load in comparing with the generation of the entire summary in one batch by the traditional summarization, which is ideal for wireless access.
14945726
Zero-IF VGA with novel offset cancellation
Reliable offset control is a vital feature of a zero-IF variable gain amplifier (VGA). Many traditional methods sacrifice speed (settling time) to achieve offset control by realizing a high pass feature in the signal path. This paper introduces a novel VGA architecture that is capable of controlling offset for all gain settings with a single offline calibration cycle. The VGA realizes very fast gain/startup settling time with only a slight increase in power and area requirements by eliminating the need for a high pass filter. The VGA circuit draws 3mA and has a gain range of 0~42dB with 1dB steps. It has a 10MHz bandwidth at 42dB, has a gain settling time of 140nsec, and controls output offset within 2.2mV