Music-Related Media-Contents Synchronization over theWeb: the IEEE 1599 Initiative

IEEE 1599 is an international standard originally conceived for music, which aims at providing a comprehensive description of the media contents related to a music piece within a multi-layer and synchronized environment. A number of o_- line and stand-alone software prototypes has been realized after its standardization, occurred in 2008. Recently, thanks to some technological advances (e.g. the release of HTML5), the engine of the IEEE 1599 parser has been ported on the Web. Some non-trivial problems have been solved, e.g. the management of multiple simultaneous media streams in a client-server architecture. After providing an overview of the IEEE 1599 standard, this article presents a survey of the recent initiatives regarding audio-driven synchronization over the Web

Fruizione evoluta via Web di contenuti musicali e multimediali: il portale EMIPIU

Il presente lavoro descrive il portale EMIPIU, un\u2019interfaccia Web per la fruizione evoluta di contenuti musicali. Esso si basa sulle caratteristiche del formato IEEE 1599, che consente di codificare l\u2019informazione musicale eterogenea relativa ad un singolo brano all\u2019interno di un unico documento XML. Il portale fornisce accesso a una libreria di pezzi in formato IEEE 1599, rappresentativi di diversi periodi storici, stili e organici strumentali. Per la loro fruizione e stato realizzato un lettore multimediale IEEE 1599 in HTML5, le cui peculiarita permettono di scaricare in streaming e visualizzare flussi multimediali multipli. L\u2019articolo descrive nel dettaglio il progetto, soffermandosi sulle caratteristiche principali del formato IEEE 1599, del portale EMIPIU, della teca digitale e del player

A nanocommunication system for endocrine diseases

Nanotechnology is a newand very promising area of research which will allow several new applications to be created in different fields, such as, biological, medical, environmental, military, agricultural, industrial and consumer goods. This paper focuses specifically on nanocommunications, which will allow interconnected devices, at the nano-scale, to achieve collaborative tasks, greatly changing the paradigm in the fields described. Molecular communication is a new communication paradigm which allows nanomachines to exchange information using molecules as carrier. This is the most promising nanocommunication method within nanonetworks, since it can use bio-inspired techniques, inherit from studied biological systems, which makes the connection of biologic and man-made systems a easier process. At this point, the biggest challenges in these type of nanocommunication are to establish feasible and reliable techniques that will allow information to be encoded, and mechanisms that ensure a molecular communication between different nodes. This paper focus on creating concepts and techniques to tackle these challenges, and establishing new foundations on which future work can be developed. The created concepts and techniques are then applied in an envisioned medical application, which is based on a molecular nanonetwork deployed inside the Human body. The goal of this medical application is to automatously monitor endocrine diseases using the benefits of nanonetworks, which in turn connects with the internet, thus creating a Internet of NanoThings system. The concepts and techniques developed are evaluated by performing several simulations and comparing with other researches, and the results and discussions are presented on the later sections of this paper

Context-Aware UPnP-AV Services for Adaptive Home Multimedia Systems

Recommended by Harald Kosch One possibility to provide mobile multimedia in domestic multimedia systems is the use of Universal Plug and Play Audio Visual (UPnP-AV) devices. In a standard UPnP-AV scenario, multimedia content provided by a Media Server device is streamed to Media Renderer devices by the initiation of a Control Point. However, there is no provisioning of context-aware multimedia content customization. This paper presents an enhancement of standard UPnP-AV services for home multimedia environments regarding context awareness. It comes up with context profile definitions, shows how this context information can be queried from the Media Renderers, and illustrates how a Control Point can use this information to tailor a media stream from the Media Server to one or more Media Renderers. Moreover, since a standard Control Point implementation only queries one Media Server at a time, there is no global view on the content of all Media Servers in the UPnP-AV network. This paper also presents an approach of multimedia content integration on the Media Server side that provides fast search for content on the network. Finally, a number of performance measurements show the overhead costs of our enhancements to UPnP-AV in order to achieve the benefits

On the use of voice descriptors for glottal source shape parameter estimation

International audienceThis paper summarizes the results of our investigations into estimating the shape of the glottal excitation source from speech signals. We employ the Liljencrants-Fant (LF) model describing the glottal flow and its derivative. The one-dimensional glottal source shape parameter Rd describes the transition in voice quality from a tense to a breathy voice. The parameter Rd has been derived from a statistical regression of the R waveshape parameters which parameterize the LF model. First, we introduce a variant of our recently proposed adaptation and range extension of the Rd parameter regression. Secondly, we discuss in detail the aspects of estimating the glottal source shape parameter Rd using the phase minimization paradigm. Based on the analysis of a large number of speech signals we describe the major conditions that are likely to result in erroneous Rd estimates. Based on these findings we investigate into means to increase the robustness of the Rd parameter estimation. We use Viterbi smoothing to suppress unnatural jumps of the estimated Rd parameter contours within short time segments. Additionally, we propose to steer the Viterbi algorithm by exploiting the covariation of other voice descriptors to improve Viterbi smoothing. The novel Viterbi steering is based on a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) that represents the joint density of the voice descriptors and the Open Quotient (OQ) estimated from corresponding electroglottographic (EGG) signals. A conversion function derived from the mixture model predicts OQ from the voice descriptors. Converted to Rd it defines an additional prior probability to adapt the partial probabilities of the Viterbi algorithm accordingly. Finally, we evaluate the performances of the phase minimization based methods using both variants to adapt and extent the Rd regression on one synthetic test set as well as in combination with Viterbi smoothing and each variant of the novel Viterbi steering on one test set of natural speech. The experimental findings exhibit improvements for both Viterbi approaches

Cálculo orgânico de secções quaisquer en flexão desviada segundo o Eurocódigo 2

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Civil (especialização em Estruturas). Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Sistema de processamento automático de cheques portugueses

Estágio realizado no INESC-Porto e orientado pelo Eng.º Pedro Miguel CarvalhoTese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores - Major em Telecomunicações. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Modelos multidimensionais de resposta ao item

Tese de doutoramento em Engenharia Industrial e de SistemasNeste trabalho estudamos as propriedades dos modelos de resposta ao item em termos teóricos e de aplicabilidade a dados reais. Em particular: exploramos modelos de resposta ao item unidimensionais dicotómicos e politómicos; aplicamos modelos unidimensionais para grupos múltiplos; utilizamos procedimentos estatísticos de equalização e linking para comparar classificações obtidas pela aplicação de diferentes instrumentos e generalizamos os modelos unidimensionais logísticos de 1, 2 e 3 parâmetros a modelos multidimensionais. Propomos estimar os parâmetros dos itens e dos factores latentes do modelo multidimensional de resposta ao item compensatório logístico de 2 parâmetros, conjugando a estimação bayesiana com o uso de métodos de simulação Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Para isso, recorremos ao algoritmo de Metropolis-Hastings com amostragem Gibbs. A estimação de todos os parâmeros do modelo é feita simultaneamente. Para testar o procedimento, usamos dados simulados considerando 2 e 3 factores latentes. Utilizamos o critério de informação de Akaike (AIC) para seleccionar o número de dimensões que melhor se adequa aos dados. Os resultados mostram que se obtêm boas estimativas pela aplicação do procedimento proposto em termos de correlação, de erro absoluto médio e de erro quadrático médio. Com o propósito de verificarmos os resultados obtidos, aplicamos a abordagem proposta a dados reais, recolhidos no âmbito do projecto de investigação Eficácia Escolar no Ensino da Matemática (3EM). A metodologia adoptada é inovadora e os resultados obtidos confirmam a sua apropriação para a estimação dos parâmetros do modelo.In this work we propose to study psychometric properties of item response models in theoretical terms and in the applicability to real data. In particular, we explore unidimensional dichotomous and polytomous item response models; we apply unidimensional item response model to multiple groups; we use the statistical procedures equating and linking to compare results obtained by the application of different instruments and we generalize unidimensional 1, 2 and 3 parameter logistic item response models to multidimensional models. We propose to estimate item parameters and latent factors of the 2 parameter logistic multidimensional compensatory item response model, using bayesian estimation procedure and simulation methods, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In order to do this, we use the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm with steps of Gibbs. The estimation of all parameters of the model is done simultaneously. To test the procedure, we use simulated data considering 2 and 3 latent factors. To select the number of dimensions that best fit the data, we utilize the Akaike’s information criteria (AIC). The results show that good estimates are obtained by the proposed procedure in terms of correlation, mean absolute error and root mean square error. With the propose to confirm the results obtained, we apply the proposed procedure to real data, collected as part of a research project entitled School Effectiveness in Mathematics Teaching (3EM). The methodology adopted is an innovation and the results confirm the appropriation to the estimates of the model parameters

Anuário Científico – 2008 Resumos de Artigos, Comunicações, Teses e Livros

A divulgação do conhecimento resultante da Ciência, Investigação e Actividade Profissional de mérito reconhecido são indissociáveis e necessários numa sociedade em evolução, sem descurar a vertente pedagógica, numa Instituição de Ensino Superior. Verificou-se que durante este período se assistiu a um incremento das publicações científicas dos docentes do ISEL. Por outro lado, existiu um maior envolvimento em projectos de investigação e um acréscimo na conclusão do grau de Doutor. Assim, o anuário científico de 2008 constitui um documento de divulgação desta actividade no Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa em parceria com outros Politécnicos, Universidades e Centros de Investigação nacionais e internacionais. Numa altura em que se avizinham mudanças estruturais no Ensino Superior, esperamos que o poder político avalie as instituições pelo trabalho desenvolvido e pela qualidade dos engenheiros que estas formam

The use of technology to improve swimming performance: skill focus

When working with elite swimmers, it is necessary to determine areas in which small changes can result in improved performances during the pinnacle events each year as a culmination of improvements within the daily training environment. The swimming skills of starts and turns comprise approximately 30% of the total race time in events with distances up to 100m (Thayer and Hay, 1984) indicating the importance of skills to overall race performances. Data from the 2011 World Championships is presented to highlight the percentage of race time spent in the start and turn phases for all events. [Continues.