Combining Concept- with Content-based Multimedia Retrieval

The arrival of the XML standard opened new doors for structured document search. Common approach in XML retrieval is to directly exploit the documents structure. However this is likely to fail for two reasons. First of all, it neglects the rich multimedia character of documents on the Internet, where a wide variety of multimedia objects can be found such as text, images and streaming video. Secondly, using the document structure as the basis for searching the content of a document can easily lead to semantical misinterpretation of the document's content. This chapter discusses an approach for searching rich multimedia document collections, that tackles these two problems using a combination of conceptual search and content-based retrieval

Combining Concept- with Content-Based Multimedia Retrieval

The arrival of the XML standard opened new doors for structured document search. Common approach in XML retrieval is to directly exploit the documents structure. However this is likely to fail for two reasons. First of all, it neglects the rich multimedia character of documents on the Internet, where a wide variety of multimedia objects can be found such as text, images and streaming video. Secondly, using the document structure as the basis for searching the content of a document can easily lead to semantical misinterpretation of the document's content. This chapter discusses an approach for searching rich multimedia document collections, that tackles these two problems using a combination of conceptual search and content-based retrieval

Transactive Memory Structures and Collaborative Information Technology Role in Turbulent Teams: An Experiment

This research examines the role of collaborative information technologies and their interaction with transactive memory. We simulated a project group where members worked towards completing an interdependent sequence of tasks to reach a common goal. In our experiments, we observed that the change in technology functionalities did not affect group performance significantly although their impact on transactive memory strength was significant. Additional analyses showed that these functionalities can increase the team performance when a dynamic event such as departure occurs in a group. In summary, the role of technology can be unclear in a static group but collaborative information technologies can moderate the impact of a dynamic event on the team performance

NASA\u27s Web Architecture and Content

This project was completed for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters to determine the current state of NASA’s webspace. As per the Federal CIO, NASA currently supports 3092 website URLs. Our team randomly selected 312 websites from NASA’s webspace and surveyed their responsible NASA employee for information about the website. With the survey data, our team developed personas from each of NASA’s target audiences. Our team conducted user experience testing with these personas to observe the effectiveness of NASA’s websites in serving their target audiences. This project resulted in data on the current state of NASA’s webspace, the potential effectiveness of tested websites, and evidence that persona driven user testing could be a useful technique for NASA in the future

access: v.10, no.02, Summer 1996

published or submitted for publicatio

Geospatial Data-sharing in UK Higher Education: informal repositories and users’ perspectives

This report outlines research into the sharing of geospatial datasets by researchers based in UK universities as part of the GRADE project, a scoping exercise for the creation of a geospatial data repository for UK Higher Education. The report contains an informal assessment of technologies used to typically share geographical information and contrasted these through an experiment with novel, informal peer-to-peer data-sharing technologies and the GRADE project’s demonstrator repository. The study adopts a qualitative research approach to help explicate the issues that representatives from the GI community experienced in the context of the experiment and concerns and opportunities presented as a result. The analysis includes a discussion of materials presented at a one day workshop that brought participants together and a SWOT analysis of both the informal sharing methods and the GRADE demonstrator repository. A list of ten recommendations is given towards the end of the report, highlighting a need to consider the wider context of a research data repository in terms of educating its user base in data policy and licensing considerations relating to GI; the need to continue and develop such repositories in relation to wider research and (national) geospatial data infrastructures; to adopt better practice with regard to metadata handling and creation for both the resource and the community using it; and to recognise the opportunities such a resource presents for both the development of technical tools to support research and a environment to support qualitative research into such activities, as part of a wider information society

ProjectSpot

This project is about how we created a website for students in the Computer Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. For this project, we gathered information about the process of finding a Major Qualifying Project. We researched how to develop a system that would allow students to interact to find and form project groups. We then constructed a system using PHP, CodeIgniter, MySQL, Javascript, HTML, and CSS. We set up our project to work with the Central Authentication Service that WPI provides, in order to allow users to login. We conducted user tests and a heuristic evaluation in order to analyze and improve our project. We made our project available to the members of the Computer Science Department so that it could be used to coordinate groups for projects

Database Optimization Aspects for Information Retrieval

There is a growing need for systems that can process queries, combining both structured data and text. One way to provide such functionality is to integrate information retrieval (IR) techniques in a database management system (DBMS). However, both IR and database research have been separate research fields for decades, resulting in different - even conflicting - approaches to data management. Each DBMS has a component called a "query optimizer", which plays a crucial role in the efficiency and flexibility of the system. So, for successful integration the IR techniques and data structures, as well as the DBMS query optimizer, should be adapted to enable mutual cooperation. The author concentrates on top-N queries - a common class of IR queries. An IR top-N query asks for the N best documents given a set of keywords. The author proposes processing the data in batches as a compromise between IR and DBMS query processing. Experiments with this technique show that porting IR optimization techniques is (still) not a promising option due to the additional administrative overhead. Two new mathematical models are introduced to eliminate this overhead: a model that predicts selectivity, which is a crucial factor in the execution costs, and a model that predicts the quality of the top-N