CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Parallel and Distributed Computing

The 14 chapters presented in this book cover a wide variety of representative works ranging from hardware design to application development. Particularly, the topics that are addressed are programmable and reconfigurable devices and systems, dependability of GPUs (General Purpose Units), network topologies, cache coherence protocols, resource allocation, scheduling algorithms, peertopeer networks, largescale network simulation, and parallel routines and algorithms. In this way, the articles included in this book constitute an excellent reference for engineers and researchers who have particular interests in each of these topics in parallel and distributed computing

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Transportation planning via location-based social networking data : exploring many-to-many connections

textToday’s metropolitan areas see changes in populations and land development occurring at faster rates than transportation planning can be updated. This dissertation explores the use of a new dataset from the location-based social networking spectrum to analyze origin-destination travel demand within Austin, TX. A detailed exploration of the proposed data source is conducted to determine its overall capabilities with respect to the Austin area demographics. A new methodology is proposed for the creation of origin-destination matrices using a peer-to-peer modeling structure. This methodology is compared against a previously examined and more traditional approach, the doubly-constrained gravity model, to understand the capabilities of both models with various friction functions. Each method is examined within the constructs of the study area’s existing origin-destination matrix by examining the coincidence ratios, mean errors, mean absolute errors, frequency ratios, swap ratios, trip length distributions, zonal trip generation and attraction heat maps, and zonal origin-destination flow patterns. Through multiple measures, this dissertation provides initial interpretations of the robust Foursquare data collected for the Austin area. Based upon the data analytics performed, the Foursquare data source is shown to be capable of providing immensely detailed spatial-temporal data that can be utilized as a supplementary data source to traditional transportation planning data collection methods or in conjunction with other data sources, such as social networking platforms. The examination of the proposed peer-to-peer methodology presented within this dissertation provides a first look at the potential of many-to-many modeling for transportation planning. The peer-to-peer model was found to be superior to the doubly-constrained gravity model with respect to intrazonal trips. Furthermore, the peer-to-peer model was found to better estimate productions, attractions, and zone to zone movements when a linear function was used for long trips, and was computationally more proficient for all models examined.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

Department of Computer Science Activity 1998-2004

This report summarizes much of the research and teaching activity of the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College between late 1998 and late 2004. The material for this report was collected as part of the final report for NSF Institutional Infrastructure award EIA-9802068, which funded equipment and technical staff during that six-year period. This equipment and staff supported essentially all of the department\u27s research activity during that period

Enabling peer-to-peer remote experimentation in distributed online remote laboratories

Remote Access Laboratories (RALs) are online platforms that allow human user interaction with physical instruments over the Internet. Usually RALs follow a client-server paradigm. Dedicated providers create and maintain experiments and corresponding educational content. In contrast, this dissertation focuses on a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service model for RALs where users are encouraged to host experiments at their location. This approach can be seen as an example of an Internet of Things (IoT) system. A set of smart devices work together providing a cyber-physical interface for users to run experiments remotely via the Internet. The majority of traditional RAL learning activities focus on undergraduate education where hands-on experience such as building experiments, is not a major focus. In contrast this work is motivated by the need to improve Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education for school-aged children. Here physically constructing experiments forms a substantial part of the learning experience. In the proposed approach, experiments can be designed with relatively simple components such as LEGO Mindstorms or Arduinos. The user interface can be programed using SNAP!, a graphical programming tool. While the motivation for the work is educational in nature, this thesis focuses on the technical details of experiment control in an opportunistic distributed environment. P2P RAL aims to enable any two random participants in the system - one in the role of maker creating and hosting an experiment and one in the role of learner using the experiment - to establish a communication session during which the learner runs the remote experiment through the Internet without requiring a centralized experiment or service provider. The makers need to have support to create the experiment according to a common web based programing interface. Thus, the P2P approach of RALs requires an architecture that provides a set of heterogeneous tools which can be used by makers to create a wide variety of experiments. The core contribution of this dissertation is an automaton-based model (twin finite state automata) of the controller units and the controller interface of an experiment. This enables the creation of experiments based on a common platform, both in terms of software and hardware. This architecture enables further development of algorithms for evaluating and supporting the performance of users which is demonstrated through a number of algorithms. It can also ensure the safety of instruments with intelligent tools. The proposed network architecture for P2P RALs is designed to minimise latency to improve user satisfaction and learning experience. As experiment availability is limited for this approach of RALs, novel scheduling strategies are proposed. Each of these contributions has been validated through either simulations, e.g. in case of network architecture and scheduling, or test-bed implementations, in case of the intelligent tools. Three example experiments are discussed along with users' feedback on their experience of creating an experiment and using others’ experimental setup. The focus of the thesis is mainly on the design and hosting of experiments and ensuring user accessibility to them. The main contributions of this thesis are in regards to machine learning and data mining techniques applied to IoT systems in order to realize the P2P RALs system. This research has shown that a P2P architecture of RALs can provide a wide variety of experimental setups in a modular environment with high scalability. It can potentially enhance the user-learning experience while aiding the makers of experiments. It presents new aspects of learning analytics mechanisms to monitor and support users while running experiments, thus lending itself to further research. The proposed mathematical models are also applicable to other Internet of Things applications

Building E-education platform for design-oriented learning

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-155).Design-oriented learning requires tools that support creative processes and student-to-student and student-to-faculty interactions. While most present E-Education systems perform as the asynchronous distribution channel for teaching material, they usually offer little support for project based design processes. This research maps out the key learning events in design classes at MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and proposes guidelines for building E-Education systems to support the unique characteristics of design-oriented learning. Two creative learning processes are identified and two independent, yet tightly related, software systems are implemented and evaluated. The first application, the Peer Review and Engineering Process (PREP), is a web system that helps instructors and students conduct and manage peer review evaluation of design concepts. The second is a real time application called InkBoard that leverages the Tablet PC and Ink medium to provide real-time collaborative sketching over TCP/IP networks. A new streaming network protocol for transferring Ink objects is proposed and implemented. A comparative study against other ink-enabled protocols is also presented.by Hai Ning.Ph.D