2 research outputs found
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Multi agent system for web database processing, on data extraction from online social networks.
In recent years, there has been a
ood of continuously changing information
from a variety of web resources such as web databases, web sites,
web services and programs. Online Social Networks (OSNs) represent
such a eld where huge amounts of information are being posted online
over time. Due to the nature of OSNs, which o er a productive source
for qualitative and quantitative personal information, researchers from
various disciplines contribute to developing methods for extracting data
from OSNs. However, there is limited research which addresses extracting
data automatically. To the best of the author's knowledge, there
is no research which focuses on tracking the real time changes of information
retrieved from OSN pro les over time and this motivated the
present work.
This thesis presents di erent approaches for automated Data Extraction
(DE) from OSN: crawler, parser, Multi Agent System (MAS) and Application
Programming Interface (API). Initially, a parser was implemented
as a centralized system to traverse the OSN graph and extract the pro-
le's attributes and list of friends from Myspace, the top OSN at that
time, by parsing the Myspace pro les and extracting the relevant tokens
from the parsed HTML source les. A Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithm
was used to travel across the generated OSN friendship graph
in order to select the next pro le for parsing. The approach was implemented
and tested on two types of friends: top friends and all friends.
In case of top friends, 500 seed pro les have been visited; 298 public
pro les were parsed to get 2197 top friends pro les and 2747 friendship
edges, while in case of all friends, 250 public pro les have been parsed
to extract 10,196 friends' pro les and 17,223 friendship edges.
This approach has two main limitations. The system is designed as
a centralized system that controlled and retrieved information of each
user's pro le just once. This means that the extraction process will stop
if the system fails to process one of the pro les; either the seed pro le
( rst pro le to be crawled) or its friends. To overcome this problem,
an Online Social Network Retrieval System (OSNRS) is proposed to
decentralize the DE process from OSN through using MAS. The novelty
of OSNRS is its ability to monitor pro les continuously over time.
The second challenge is that the parser had to be modi ed to cope with
changes in the pro les' structure. To overcome this problem, the proposed
OSNRS is improved through use of an API tool to enable OSNRS
agents to obtain the required elds of an OSN pro le despite modi cations
in the representation of the pro le's source web pages. The experimental
work shows that using API and MAS simpli es and speeds up the
process of tracking a pro le's history. It also helps security personnel,
parents, guardians, social workers and marketers in understanding the
dynamic behaviour of OSN users. This thesis proposes solutions for web
database processing on data extraction from OSNs by the use of parser
and MAS and discusses the limitations and improvements.Taibah Universit
Une approche logicielle du traitement de la dyslexie : étude de modèles et applications
Neuropsychological disorders are widespread and generate real public health problems. In particular in our modern society, where written communication is ubiquitous, dyslexia can be extremely disabling. Nevertheless we can note that the diagnosis and remediation of this pathology are fastidious and lack of standardization. Unfortunately it seems inherent to the clinical characterization of dyslexia by exclusion, to the multitude of different practitioners involved in such treatment and to the lack of objectivity of some existing methods. In this respect, we decided to investigate the possibilities offered by modern computing to overcome these barriers. Indeed we have assumed that the democratization of computer systems and their computing power could make of them a perfect tool to alleviate the difficulties encountered in the treatment of dyslexia. This research has led us to study the techniques software as well as hardware, which can conduct to the development of an inexpensive and scalable system able to attend a beneficial and progressive changing of practices in this pathology field. With this project we put ourselves definitely in an innovative stream serving quality of care and aid provided to people with disabilities. Our work has been identifying different improvement areas that the use of computers enables. Then each of these areas could then be the subject of extensive research, modeling and prototype developments. We also considered the methodology for designing this kind of system as a whole. In particular our thoughts and these accomplishments have allowed us to define a software framework suitable for implementing a software platform that we called the PAMMA. This platform should theoretically have access to all the tools required for the flexible and efficient development of medical applications integrating business processes. In this way it is expected that this system allows the development of applications for caring dyslexic patients thus leading to a faster and more accurate diagnosis and a more appropriate and effective remediation. Of our innovation efforts emerge encouraging perspectives. However such initiatives can only be achieved within multidisciplinary collaborations with many functional, technical and financial means. Creating such a consortium seems to be the next required step to get a funding necessary for realizing a first functional prototype of the PAMMA, as well as its first applications. Some clinical studies may be conducted to prove undoubtedly the effectiveness of such an approach for treating dyslexia and eventually other neuropsychological disorders.Les troubles neuropsychologiques sont très répandus et posent de réels problèmes de santé publique. En particulier, dans notre société moderne où la communication écrite est omniprésente, la dyslexie peut s’avérer excessivement handicapante. On remarque néanmoins que le diagnostic et la remédiation de cette pathologie restent délicats et manquent d’uniformisation. Ceci semble malheureusement inhérent à la caractérisation clinique par exclusion de la dyslexie, à la multitude de praticiens différents impliqués dans une telle prise en charge ainsi qu’au manque d’objectivité de certaines méthodes existantes. A ce titre, nous avons décidé d’investiguer les possibilités offertes par l’informatique actuelle pour surmonter ces barrières. Effectivement, nous avons supposé que la démocratisation des systèmes informatiques et leur puissance de calcul pourraient en faire un outil de choix pour pallier les difficultés rencontrées lors de la prise en charge de la dyslexie. Cette recherche nous a ainsi mené à étudier les techniques, aussi bien logicielles que matérielles, pouvant conduire au développement d’un système bon marché et évolutif qui serait capable d’assister un changement bénéfique et progressif des pratiques qui entourent cette pathologie. Avec ce projet, nous nous plaçons définitivement dans un courant innovant au service de la qualité des soins et des aides apportées aux personnes souffrant d’un handicap. Notre travail a ainsi consisté à identifier différents axes d’amélioration que l’utilisation de l’outil informatique rend possible. Chacun de ces axes a alors pu faire l’objet de recherches exhaustives, de modélisations et de développements de prototypes. Nous avons également réfléchi à la méthodologie à mettre en œuvre pour concevoir un tel système dans sa globalité. En particulier, nos réflexions et ces différents accomplissements nous ont permis de définir un framework logiciel propice à l’implémentation d’une plate-forme logicielle que nous avons appelée la PAMMA. Cette plate-forme devrait théoriquement pouvoir disposer de tous les outils permettant le développement souple et efficace d’applications médicales intégrant des processus métiers. Il est ainsi attendu de ce système qu’il permette le développement d’applications, pour la prise en charges des patients dyslexiques, conduisant à un diagnostic plus rapide et plus précis ainsi qu’à une remédiation plus adaptée et plus efficace. De notre effort d’innovation ressortent des perspectives encourageantes. Cependant, ce type d’initiative ne peut se concrétiser qu’autour de collaborations pluridisciplinaires disposant de nombreux moyens fonctionnels, techniques et financiers. La constitution d’un tel consortium semble donc être la prochaine étape nécessaire à l’obtention des financements pour réaliser un premier prototype fonctionnel de la PAMMA, ainsi que de premières applications. Des études cliniques pourront être alors menées pour prouver indubitablement l’efficacité d’une telle approche dans le cadre de la prise en charge de la dyslexie, ainsi qu’éventuellement d’autres troubles neuropsychologiques