Document analysis at DFKI. - Part 1: Image analysis and text recognition

Document analysis is responsible for an essential progress in office automation. This paper is part of an overview about the combined research efforts in document analysis at the DFKI. Common to all document analysis projects is the global goal of providing a high level electronic representation of documents in terms of iconic, structural, textual, and semantic information. These symbolic document descriptions enable an "intelligent\u27; access to a document database. Currently there are three ongoing document analysis projects at DFKI: INCA, OMEGA, and PASCAL2000/PASCAL+. Though the projects pursue different goals in different application domains, they all share the same problems which have to be resolved with similar techniques. For that reason the activities in these projects are bundled to avoid redundant work. At DFKI we have divided the problem of document analysis into two main tasks, text recognition and text analysis, which themselves are divided into a set of subtasks. In a series of three research reports the work of the document analysis and office automation department at DFKI is presented. The first report discusses the problem of text recognition, the second that of text analysis. In a third report we describe our concept for a specialized document analysis knowledge representation language. The report in hand describes the activities dealing with the text recognition task. Text recognition covers the phase starting with capturing a document image up to identifying the written words. This comprises the following subtasks: preprocessing the pictorial information, segmenting into blocks, lines, words, and characters, classifying characters, and identifying the input words. For each subtask several competing solution algorithms, called specialists or knowledge sources, may exist. To efficiently control and organize these specialists an intelligent situation-based planning component is necessary, which is also described in this report. It should be mentioned that the planning component is also responsible to control the overall document analysis system instead of the text recognition phase onl

Contested Road Space: Public Narratives and Bus Rapid Transit in Indore, India

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has a demonstrated capacity to improve safety, mobility and accessibility for multiple types of road users. In India, where road safety is an ongoing problem, the national government has supported cities’ efforts to implement BRT as a cost-effective tool to improve urban travel. The case of Indore’s iBus attests to the cultural and institutional barriers that Indian cities may face in gaining public support for BRT. After a contentious implementation process, the High Court ruled to open the dedicated bus lane to private automobiles, resulting in drops in ridership and increases in accidents and travel delay. This study examines the competing, public narratives that framed the issues during and after project construction. Contested notions of the public interest, the cause of traffic problems, and community participation informed the basis for the arguments that culminated in the court ruling

How to design for persistence and retention in MOOCs?

Design of educational interventions is typically carried out following a design cycle involving phases of investigation, conceptualization, prototyping, implementation, execution and evaluation. This cycle can be applied at different levels of granularity e.g. learning activity, module, course or programme. In this paper we consider an aspect of learner behavior that can be critical to the success of many MOOCs i.e. their persistence to study, and the related theme of learner retention. We reflect on the impact that consideration of these can have on design decisions at different stages in the design cycle with the aim of en-hancing MOOC design in relation to learner persistence and retention, with particular attention to the European context

1992 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

For the 28th consecutive year, a NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program was conducted at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The program was conducted by the University of Alabama and MSFC during the period June 1, 1992 through August 7, 1992. Operated under the auspices of the American Society for Engineering Education, the MSFC program, was well as those at other centers, was sponsored by the Office of Educational Affairs, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. The basic objectives of the programs, which are the 29th year of operation nationally, are (1) to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; (2) to stimulate and exchange ideas between participants and NASA; (3) to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of the participants' institutions; and (4) to contribute to the research objectives of the NASA centers

ELIN: A Newspaper Universal Multimedia Access Platform Based on Mpeg Standards

ISBN:0-88989-530-2Nowadays, technologies involved in Web information distribution services are evolving to adapt themselves to new user requirements. Usually, these new technologies are used separately. This paper presents ELIN (Electronic Newspaper Initiative) project, an European Commission funded project, that tries to integrate the newest standards and technologies involved in multimedia delivery. It has as objective the delivery of any type of media format to any kind of user terminal in an efficient way. In order to do that, it takes the approach of using MPEG standards: MPEG-4 for video delivery, MPEG-7 for data classification and MPEG-21 for data management and adaptation. So it integrates the totality of solutions provided for the MPEG group. In order to test this technology, ELIN has chosen the online newspaper field. Therefore, it provides a toolkit to be used by mass media companies to set an advanced electronic newspaper. This toolkit enables to personalize the delivery of news using collaborative filtering, to build a XML file architecture to store and manage data, to deliver information in video (MPEG-4) or in HTML format for low capabilities devices, to adapt media for different capabilities terminals and includes a 3 Dimension environment to create an user community to communicate between them and share data objects

The nature of process-produced data: towards a social-scientific source criticism

Probleme des Alltagslebens werden zunehmend Gegenstand administrativer Datensammlung und Verarbeitung. Diese quantitativen Daten können von der Sozialwissenschaft nur dann sinnvoll in die Arbeit einbezogen werden, wenn ihre Entstehungsbedingungen und ihr Verwendungszusammenhang in der Verwaltung berücksichtigt werden. Diese sozialwissenschaftliche Quellenkritik stellen die Autoren am Beispiel von Daten aus dem Bereich Köln vor. Nach grundsätzlichen Erwägungen über das Verhältnis von Alltagsleben und Verwaltungssystem, wird am Kölner Beispiel erläutert, wie die Verwaltung über Fragebögen Alltagsdaten sammelt und gewichtet. Der Vereinzelung in der Datenerhebung durch Verwaltungseinheiten führt zur Vernachlässigung bestimmter Daten aus dem Alltagsleben. In einem weiteren Abschnitt werden der Datenaustausch zwischen Institutionen und das darauf aufbauende Kommunikationsnetz mit seinen Defiziten dargestellt. Anschließend werden Daten daraufhin untersucht, inwieweit der Datenerheber der Verwaltung auf ihre Struktur Einfluß nimmt. Abschließend wird das Verhältnis zwischen Bürokratie der Verwaltung und Klienten behandelt. (BG