Using web-enabled mobile phones for audience participation in database lectures

This paper evaluates the possible benefits of integrating audience response systems through mobile devices. Typically, existing clicker systems use proprietary radio remotes to send votes to a computer and display this information on screen. While proven to be a useful tool in lectures, adoption has been limited due to their up-front costs. Using mobile devices as a replacement is discussed as an alternative method by making it less intrusive and rootless. A prototype system was implemented to test these assumptions and was evaluated in a typical lecture with undergraduate students studying ‘Database Fundamentals’. The students chose between this system and a typical clicker system and were asked to answer identical quizzes. While their feedback shows little benefit of the prototype over traditional systems, the mobile system offers tangible benefits to the lecturer in speeding up preparation of quizzes and setup time

Automated License Plate Recognition Systems

Automated license plate recognition systems make use of machines learning coupled with traditional algorithmic programming to create software capable of identifying and transcribing vehicles’ license plates. From this point, automated license plate recognition systems can be capable of performing a variety of functions, including billing an account or querying the plate number against a database to identify vehicles of concern. These capabilities allow for an efficient method of autonomous vehicle identification, although the unmanned nature of these systems raises concerns over the possibility of their use for surveillance, be it against an individual or group. This thesis will explore the fundamentals behind automated license plate recognition systems, the state of their current employment, currently existing limitations, and concerns raised over the use of such systems and relevant legal examples. Furthermore, this thesis will demonstrate the training of a machine learning model capable of identifying license plates, followed by a brief examination of performance limitations encountered

E-Business Application Development with Java Technology and Oracle: The Fortune Invest Inc. Case

Due to the popularity of E-business applications, Web-based database application development has become an important topic in the information systems curriculum. There is a need to explore ways to teach such a topic effectively. This paper presents a teaching case on the development of an e-business application for Fortune Invest Inc. using Java server technology with Java Database Connectivity to Oracle databases. The teaching case has the following features: 1) complete coverage of the fundamentals of e-business application development. 2) systematic integration of the knowledge in database design, implementation, programming languages, networking, Web development and system analysis. 3) script execution independent of any platforms. 4) accessible web sites on the Internet with sample code provided. The teaching case was tested in upper division CIS courses in three academic quarters during the past two years at California State University, Los Angeles. The teaching approach emphasizes learning by doing in order to motivate the student and to produce an effective learning outcome. The paper is accompanied by comprehensive teaching notes as well as executable programming scripts

Natural images from the birthplace of the human eye

Here we introduce a database of calibrated natural images publicly available through an easy-to-use web interface. Using a Nikon D70 digital SLR camera, we acquired about 5000 six-megapixel images of Okavango Delta of Botswana, a tropical savanna habitat similar to where the human eye is thought to have evolved. Some sequences of images were captured unsystematically while following a baboon troop, while others were designed to vary a single parameter such as aperture, object distance, time of day or position on the horizon. Images are available in the raw RGB format and in grayscale. Images are also available in units relevant to the physiology of human cone photoreceptors, where pixel values represent the expected number of photoisomerizations per second for cones sensitive to long (L), medium (M) and short (S) wavelengths. This database is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Unported license to facilitate research in computer vision, psychophysics of perception, and visual neuroscience.Comment: Submitted to PLoS ON

Dynamic Web-Based Business Processing Systems Using Active Server Pages

Virtually every business organization is considering how to re-engineer appropriate business processes to utilize the Web to increase efficiency.  The importance of event-driven application development in a relational database environment has become the primary model applied in business and web commerce related activities.  By providing students with a fundamental understanding of how these information systems can be re-engineered to work efficiently in a web-based environment, we can help prepare the next generation of business professionals with a solid working knowledge to enable them to achieve rapid productivity in real world business environments. This paper presents a Case study that describes a practical and manageable methodology which can be utilized to educate students concerning the concepts and skills necessary to design, develop, and implement dynamic web-based business processing systems. This case will provide the reader with the conceptual, practical, and technical knowledge necessary to understand the fundamentals of these web-based processing systems, and to explicitly describe how to develop these effective systems with a minimal amount of hardware and software resources

NH DES Site Specific Program Policy Alternatives

In New Hampshire, the Department of Environmental Services’ (NH DES) Site Specific Program, which enforces Administrative Rule Env-Ws 415 pursuant to RSA 485, is the primary mechanism for regulating stormwater runoff from development sites to surface waters. Rule Env-Ws 415 expires June 30, 2004. Although Program staff will recommend renewing the current Rule to continue regulatory authority over the short term, NH DES has also expressed an intention to organize a committee that will renew and revise Env-Ws 415 during the course of 2004 and 2005. The purpose of this report is to provide NH DES with applicable stormwater management policy alternatives for consideration during the revision of Env-Ws 415 and the Site Specific Program. When approached for suggestions on how the NHEP could assist NH DES staff with the Rule revision process, NH DES requested assistance with identifying consistently referenced and credible citations for best management practice recommendations, particularly those that promote infiltration, in other states. A list of references cited by best management practices manuals is included as an appendix to this paper

Development and Evaluation of the Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS)

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system on the performance of students

Employing Emotion Cues to Verify Speakers in Emotional Talking Environments

Usually, people talk neutrally in environments where there are no abnormal talking conditions such as stress and emotion. Other emotional conditions that might affect people talking tone like happiness, anger, and sadness. Such emotions are directly affected by the patient health status. In neutral talking environments, speakers can be easily verified, however, in emotional talking environments, speakers cannot be easily verified as in neutral talking ones. Consequently, speaker verification systems do not perform well in emotional talking environments as they do in neutral talking environments. In this work, a two-stage approach has been employed and evaluated to improve speaker verification performance in emotional talking environments. This approach employs speaker emotion cues (text-independent and emotion-dependent speaker verification problem) based on both Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and Suprasegmental Hidden Markov Models (SPHMMs) as classifiers. The approach is comprised of two cascaded stages that combines and integrates emotion recognizer and speaker recognizer into one recognizer. The architecture has been tested on two different and separate emotional speech databases: our collected database and Emotional Prosody Speech and Transcripts database. The results of this work show that the proposed approach gives promising results with a significant improvement over previous studies and other approaches such as emotion-independent speaker verification approach and emotion-dependent speaker verification approach based completely on HMMs.Comment: Journal of Intelligent Systems, Special Issue on Intelligent Healthcare Systems, De Gruyter, 201

Experimental evaluation of new pipe sleeve with weep holes for concrete leakage prevention

Mortar is a layer with high water absorption rate over concrete due to its porous structure. The mortar layer that frequently exposed to water or moisture is more likely to contain moisture in its layer. The example of area that is mostly exposed to water is the bathroom. The water infiltrated and trapped in the mortar slab in the bathroom will eventually increase the moisture content of the mortar slab and will raise many problems such as the deterioration of the building structure surface. Therefore, this study has been carried out to produce a technology to remove the trapped water in the mortar slab and to reduce the moisture content in the mortar layer. The infiltration rate of the water into the mortar slabs installed with the conventional pipe sleeve (T1), the circular weep-holes pipe sleeve (T2), the vertical weep-holes pipe sleeve (T3) and the inclined weep-holes pipe sleeve (T4) have been measured and the results show that T4 has recorded the highest reading of 7.74 ml/min compared to other pipe sleeves. Besides that, T4 has also recorded the highest water flow rate out of the mortar with 1.31 ml/min and recorded the lowest moisture content of 10.1%. Inclined weep-holes pipe sleeve was proven able to work better than other designs. Therefore, the New Pipe Sleeve (NPS) performance with inclined weep-holes designs are studied in depth by changing the weep-holes angles to 15°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 75° and weep-holes surface area of 6%, 8% and 10%. As a result, the weep-holes angle of 60° with 10% weep-holes surface area has recorded the highest water infiltration rate and water flow rate out of the mortar with 20.898 ml/min and 3.764 ml/min, respectively, obtaining the highest reduction of the moisture content by 3.1%. The optimum performance of the pipe sleeve with inclined weep-holes design has been proposed by using Design Expert Software and the optimum performance can be achieved with the used of the weep-holes angle of 69.55° and 10% weep-holes surface area, producing water infiltration rate of 20.4513 ml/min and water flow rate out of the mortar of 3.3795 ml/min. Therefore, application of optimise design of weep-holes has promising potential method to reduce leakage and fungi problem that normally occurred in bathroom area