12125361
Hybrid index structures for location-based web search
There is more and more commercial and research interest in location-based web search, i.e. finding web content whose topic is related to a particular place or region. In this type of search, location information should be indexed as well as text information. However, the index of conventional text search engine is set-oriented, while location information is two-dimensional and in Euclidean space. This brings new research problems on how to efficiently represent the location attributes of web pages and how to combine two types of indexes. In this paper, we propose to use a hybrid index structure, which integrates inverted files and R*-trees, to handle both textual and location aware queries. Three different combining schemes are studied: (1) inverted file and R*-tree double index, (2) first inverted file then R*-tree, (3) first R*-tree then inverted file. To validate the performance of proposed index structures, we design and implement a complete location-based web search engine which mainly consists of four parts: (1) an extractor which detects geographical scopes of web pages and represents geographical scopes as multiple MBRs based on geographical coordinates; (2) an indexer which builds hybrid index structures to integrate text and location information; (3) a ranker which ranks results by geographical relevance as well as non-geographical relevance; (4) an interface which is friendly for users to input location-based search queries and to obtain geographical and textual relevant results. Experiments on large real-world web dataset show that both the second and the third structures are superior in query time and the second is slightly better than the third. Additionally, indexes based on R*-trees are proven to be more efficient than indexes based on grid structures.
18003538
Automatic Synchronized Browsing of Images Across Multiple Devices
Mobile devices are undergoing considerable progress during recent years. Using these portable devices, people can easily capture and share photos even when they are on the move. Doubtlessly, browsing a large number of images on such small-form-factor devices is still hard and time-consuming, especially when they are distributed across various devices. In this paper, we propose a novel synchronized approach to facilitate image browsing across multiple devices. In this approach, similar images across multiple devices can be simultaneously presented for users to make comparatively viewing or searching. Experimental results show that the synchronized approach is beneficial to improve users' browsing experience.
11709445
Learning user interest for image browsing on small-form-factor devices
Mobile devices which can capture and view pictures are becoming increasingly common in our life. The limitation of these small-form-factor devices makes the user experience of image browsing quite different from that on desktop PCs. In this paper, we first present a user study on how users interact with a mobile image browser with basic functions. We found that on small displays, users tend to use more zooming and scrolling actions in order to view interesting regions in detail. From this fact, we designed a new method to detect user interest maps and extract user attention objects from the image browsing log. This approach is more efficient than image-analysis based methods and can better represent users' actual interest. A smart image viewer was then developed based on user interest analysis. A second experiment was carried out to study how users behave with such a viewer. Experimental results demonstrate that the new smart features can improve the browsing efficiency and are a good compliment to traditional image browsers.
7137580
Adapting Web pages for small-screen devices
We propose a page-adaptation technique that splits existing Web pages into smaller, logically related units. To do this, we must first solve two technical problems: how to detect an existing Web page's semantic structure, and how to split a Web page into smaller blocks based on that structure. To date, we've implemented our technique in Web browsers for mobile devices, in a proxy server for adapting Web pages on the fly, and as an authoring tool plug-in for converting existing Web pages. The Web page can then be adapted to form a two-level hierarchy with a thumbnail representation at the top level for providing a global view and an index to a set of subpages at the bottom level for detailed information.
10639273
Maximizing information throughput for multimedia browsing on small displays
As a great many new devices with diverse capabilities are having a population boom, their limited display sizes become the major obstacle that has undermined their usefulness for information access. We introduce our recent research on adapting multimedia content, including images, videos and Web pages, for browsing on small-form-factor devices. A theoretical framework as well as a set of novel methods for presenting and rendering multimedia under limited screen sizes is proposed to improve the user experience. The content modeling and processing are provided as subscription-based Web services on the Internet. Experiments show that our approach is extensible and able to achieve satisfactory results with high efficiency.
37379077
Improving Web Browsing on Small Devices Based on Table Classification
Browsing large web pages on small screens is still very inconvenient due to their limited display sizes. A straightforward solution is eliminating the annoying horizontal scrolling requirement, i.e. present all the contents into a single narrow column, usually named one-column view. It is implemented by deleting the layout that will cause horizontal scrolling. However, after deleting the layout structure, some structural information becomes unreadable, like data tables. In this paper, we propose an approach to improve web browsing on small devices by classifying HTML tables into data tables and layout tables. For data tables, we try to preserve the original structural information in the final presentation. Therefore, the browsing experience can be improved for the one-column view. Experimental results show that our approach can achieve a satisfactory performance.
1796664
"ONE" a new tool for supply chain network optimization and simulation
Nowadays, in a hotly competitive environment, companies are continuously trying to provide products and/or services to customers faster, cheaper, and better than the competitors do. Managers have learned that they cannot do it alone; rather, they must work on a cooperative basis with other organizations in order to succeed. Although the resulting enterprise networks are more competitive, the tasks for planning, management and optimization are much more difficult and complex. In this paper, we present a newly developed toolbox "ONE" to support decision makers for the assessment, design and improvement of such supply chain networks. The toolbox comprises innovative and user-friendly concepts related to the modeling, simulation and optimization of enterprise networks by additionally taking into account social and environmental impacts as well as uncertainty and risk that are always inherent within modern enterprise networks.
14041261
Discount auctions for procuring heterogeneous items
e-Procurement is an Internet based business process for sourcing direct or indirect materials. In this paper we propose an auction mechanism called as discount auctions for procuring multiple items. The bid from a supplier consists of individual costs for each of the items and a discount function, which specifies the discount over the number of items. We show that such a bid is more meaningful and cost effective in terms of bid preparation and communication in common procurement scenarios. The bid evaluation problem is modeled as a mixed integer linear program and various structures in the problem that can be exploited for developing algorithms are explored. A heuristic based on linear programming relaxation is proposed to determine a feasible solution to the problem and its closeness to optimality is studied with computational experiments.
2399803
Exact solution of the nonlinear dynamics of recurrent neural mechanisms for direction selectivity
Abstract Different theoretical models have tried to investigate the feasibility of recurrent neural mechanisms for achieving direction selectivity in the visual cortex. The mathematical analysis of such models has been restricted so far to the case of purely linear networks. We present an exact analytical solution of the nonlinear dynamics of a class of direction selective recurrent neural models with threshold nonlinearity. Our mathematical analysis shows that such networks have form-stable stimulus-locked traveling pulse solutions that are appropriate for modeling the responses of direction selective cortical neurons. Our analysis shows also that the stability of such solutions can break down giving raise to a different class of solutions (“lurching activity waves”) that are characterized by a specific spatio-temporal periodicity. These solutions cannot arise in models for direction selectivity with purely linear spatio-temporal filtering.
39255438
Design of progressive auctions for procurement based on Lagrangian relaxation
Auction mechanisms have been found successful in implementing e-procurement, with the buyer as the auctioneer and the sellers as the bidders. Single round auctions are prevalently used in e-procurement, in which the suppliers submit sealed bids in response to the buyer's request-for-quote. The bid evaluation problem faced by the buyer is an optimization problem that selects the winning bids to minimize the cost of procurement. Though these auction types are advantageous in many scenarios, progressive auctions (multiple rounds) are preferred in terms of information elicitation and bid preparation. This paper demonstrates the design of progressive auctions, from their single-round counterparts, using Lagrangian relaxation. In particular, we show that an appropriate algorithm for a judiciously selected Lagrangian relaxation of the bid evaluation problem, can help in designing a progressive auction. The procurement of multiple units of a single item is considered with linear and piecewise linear supply curves.
22043660
Colour tonality inspection using eigenspace features
In industrial quality inspection of colour texture surfaces, such as ceramic tiles or fabrics, it is important to maintain a consistent colour shade or tonality during production. We present a multidimensional histogram method using a novelty detection scheme to inspect the surfaces. The image noise, introduced by the imaging system, is found mainly to affect the chromatic channels. For colour tonality inspection, the difference between images is very subtle and comparison in the noise dominated chromatic channels is error prone. We perform vector-ordered colour smoothing and extract a localised feature vector at each pixel. The resulting histogram represents an encapsulation of local and global information. Principal component analysis (PCA) is performed on this multidimensional feature space of an automatically selected reference image to obtain reliable colour shade features, which results in a reference eigenspace. Then unseen product images are projected onto this eigenspace and compared for tonality defect detection using histogram comparison. The proposed method is compared and evaluated on a data set with groundtruth.