Arabic information retrieval: techniques, tools and challenges

The amount of Arabic electronic information is growing drastically on the web. Statistics shows that the number of Internet users in the Middle East has increased enormously since the year 2000 due to increase in ICT awareness and its importance within Arab countries. As a result this has raised the need to find effective methods and techniques for allocating and retrieving the Arabic-based content from the web. This paper presents major Information Retrieval (IR) tools and techniques and it highlights few challenges in this regard

Converged Networking: A Review of Concepts and Technologies

Converged networking is an emerging technology thrust that integrates voice, video, and data traffic on a single network. Converged networking encompasses several aspects, all of which are related to the aggregation of networking activity. Such aspects include, Payload convergence, Protocol convergence, Physical convergence, Device convergence, Application convergence, Technology convergence, etc. In recent years the Internet has developed into a global data network that is highly accepted as a multimedia information platform, which has the potential to develop into an alternative carrier network in the future. Several convergence scenarios have been recently proposed, ranging from integrating communication services and computer application into two separate networks, to building a seamless multimedia network, which converges the Central Office based network and the Internet in a single network, thereby enabling telecommunications operators and service provider's tremendous investment in existing network infrastructure to be fully utilized. This paper offers introduction and review of the networking technologies. The paper presents the existing multiple networks into two infrastructures: an ATM/Frame Relay (Ethernet)- based corporate network with integrated voice, video, and data traffic and an Internet-based network for secure intranet, extranet and remote access. This work is aimed at summarizing the internetworking basics and technologies which are essential for the emerging converged networking systems. The specific areas addressed here are networking basics, networking technologies, types of traffic, and convergence of computer and communication networks

Biological Effects of EM Radiations from Mobile Phones

Direct health effects could result following exposure to RF by thermal (heating effects). Recent Studies have shown that there are public fears on effects that can be caused mainly by holding mobile phones close to the body, or as a result of possible non-thermal effects from both phones and base stations.  This paper offers an overview on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation caused by mobile phones. Exposures of individuals to RF radiation from these sources will depend upon their proximity and may be above those from mobile phone base stations, although still well below guidelines. From a review of the scientific literature, it is concluded that there were no established health effects from exposure to the RF fields from mobile phones. However, there are gaps in knowledge requiring further research, but current knowledge suggests that RF exposure to levels below the guidelines were not a risk to health

Opinion mining: approaches, resources and challenges

Web2.0 has contributed tremendously towards the rapid growth of web contents which ensures that customers utilize existing blogs, discussion forums, e-commerce and many other sites to express their opinions and read reviews of other people on different products and services which they plan to procure. Such an online wealth of information over the web has helped customers, firms, manufacturers, service providers, social and government units to take proper decision to procure or enhance various products and services. This practice has triggered the need to enhance existing methods and techniques to extract and summarize opinions from different online reviews. This paper surveys recent and leading methods and techniques that are used for opinion mining and then outlines available resources which have been developed in this regard. The paper also presents few challenges and open issues that need to be addressed and researched in more depth in order to improve the way opinions are extracted and summarized to users and other interested groups

Semantic and fuzzy aspects of opinion mining

In recent years the amount of opinions and reviews available on the web has grown tremendously and therefore the role of sentiment analysis is even more crucial than before. Given the very ambiguous and imprecise nature of sentiments and of their expressions, this study focuses on the review of semantic and fuzzy aspects of opinion mining. Opinions are fuzzy in nature and dealing with the semantic part of the expressed sentiments possesses many challenges and require effective techniques to properly extract and summarize people's views. Previous studies have often reflected that the use of fuzzy logic techniques have proved to be beneficial in mining reviews. This paper presents a review covering the semantic and Fuzzybased logic techniques and methods in sentiment analysis and challenges appear in the field

Network Control and Engineering for QoS, Security and Mobility II

International audienc