System Evaluation

This paper proposes several speech technology improvements for increasing robustness, reliability and ergonomics in speech interfaces for controlling aerial vehicles. These improvements consist of including a statistical language model for increasing the robustness against spontaneous speech, incorporating confidence measures for evaluating the performance of on-line the speech engines (better reliability), and a flexible response generation for improving the interface ergonomics. This paper includes a detailed description of the speech control interface developed as a result of the collaboration between the GTH (Grupo de Tecnología del Habla or Speech Technology Group) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and the company Boeing Research and Technology Europe under the contract No. 206/05. This interface includes modules that perform speech recognition, natural language understanding and response generation via a speech synthesizer. In the system evaluation, the final results reported a 96.4% Word Accuracy and a 92.2% Semantic Concept Accuracy. This paper also provides a state-of-art review of using Speech Technology for controlling aerial vehicles, comparing the main initiatives carried out. A significant conclusion of this work is that Speech Technology is now ready enough to be considered as a new modality (in parallel with traditional ones) for introducing high level commands while the controller is carrying out others actions when interacting with these control systems. In critical applications (such as this) the best performance of this technology is achieved when all the configuration possibilities of the speech engines are accessible and the speech interface is designed in collaboration with Speech Technology experts.

The purpose of this paper is to describe potential improvements in patient safety resulting from design decisions in the development of a computerized decision support system (DSS) for managing opioid therapy for chronic noncancer pain. ATHENA-DSS is an automated decision support system developed in a collaboration between Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to increase guideline-adherent prescribing and to change physician behavior. Based on data in patients' computerized medical record and knowledge of the clinical domain encoded in a knowledge base, the system gives patient-specific recommendations to primary care providers at the point of care. ATHENA-Opioid Therapy is based on a previous system, ATHENA-Hypertension, and is designed to follow the VA/Department of Defense clinical practice guideline for the management of opioid therapy for chronic noncancer pain. We describe the rationale for development of decision support system elements and a graphical user interface to increase patient safety during primary care treatment for chronic pain. The ATHENA-Opioid Therapy system focuses on reducing patient risk in four main ways by: (1) identifying patients with comorbidities or concurrent prescriptions that raise risk for overdose and recommending more conservative dosing; (2) identifying patients with mental health problems that increase risk of medication abuse and recommending referral to psychiatric care and close monitoring; (3) assisting doctors with complex pharmacologic calculations to reduce the risk of mistakes when initiating, titrating, or switching medications; and (4) presenting relevant information to clinicians in an easy-to-use format. We describe a system evaluation plan that we believe is essential to ensure that deployment of ATHENA-Opioid Therapy leads to improvements in patient safety and increases in guideline-concordant prescribing, and we discuss the limitations of this system for patient safety efforts.

Oculodermal melanocytosis (nevus of Ota) is a benign, congenital, melanocytic pigmentary disorder, most commonly involving the area innervated by the first and second divisions of the trigeminal nerve. We describe a case of cutaneous melanoma that developed in a nevus of Ota.

Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) is employed to rank the irrigation subsystems of Mahi Bajaj Sagar Project, Rajasthan, India. Seven performance evaluation criteria, namely, land development works, timely supply of inputs, conjunctive use of water resources, participation of farmers, economic impact, crop productivity and environmental conservation are employed. Kohonen Artificial Neural Networks (KANN) is employed to classify the irrigation subsystems that can be utilized for further ranking by MAUT. Spearman rank correlation technique is employed to compute correlation coefficient values between the obtained ranking pattern. Sensitivity analysis studies are also made to check the robustness in ranking. The proposed methodology can be applied for similar situations.

Objective: To analyze the continuing medical education program developed at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, formally initiated in 2002, carried out in six successive 12-month cycles and focused on participating physicians, as to compliance with the program over time and as to educational production measured by a credit system. Methods: This is a descriptive (population) study that used a scoring

Today Machine Translation (MT) systems are commercially available for a variety of language pairs and in price range, which makes them accessible to the nonprofessionals. Yet there is no standard evaluation for any type of translation systems whether automatic or manual especially for the commercial systems that involve Arabic language in the Arabic region. This paper presents a brief survey of evaluation of MT system methods and its importance. It also presents some approaches for developing a comprehensive evaluation system without any developer cooperation. Although we proposed some dimension for MTS's, we concentrated on translation quality evaluation of the MTS not the MTS itself dimension for MTS's, we concentrated on translation quality evaluation of the MTS not the MTS itself. dimension for MTS's, we concentrated on translation quality evaluation of the MTS not the MTS itself 2 The situation in the Arabic region As the globalization of the Arabic world becomes common, more than 180 million speakers around the world, problems caused by lack of communication can seriously affect its situation especially as a receiver of knowledge more than a producer. Thereby its need to MT is essential and there should 1 Some approach for a machine

The present investigation examines the impact of family, self, and peer systems, evaluated during early adolescence, on the development of interpersonal competence in young adulthood. The participants were 110 Caucasian individuals, their mothers, and one of their teachers. At the first assessment, the participants ranged in age from 11.5 to 15.1 years old. Approximately six years later, the participants completed a second evaluation involving assessment of interpersonal competence. Increased interparental conflict and parental divorce predicted decreased self-esteem. Decreased self-esteem predicted poorer peer-adolescent relationships, which, in turn, forecasted poorer adult interpersonal competence. The results suggest that living in a distressed family leads to diminished self-esteem which can influence the quality of peer relationships and place an adolescent on a trejectory toward difficulties in interpersonal competence during adulthood.

Accounting educators continuously seek ways to effectively integrate instructional technology into accounting coursework as a means to facilitate active learning environments and address the technology-driven learning preferences of the current generation of students. Most accounting textbook publishers now provide interactive, web-based learning systems as a supplement to their textbooks. However, there are critical differences across publishers with respect to the system's interface, functions, content, features, and support. These differences directly impact the effectiveness of a web-based learning system as an instructional tool and as a corollary, may impact the ultimate utility of the associated textbook as a pedagogical resource. As such, an evaluation of available webbased learning systems is an essential component of the textbook review process and should consist of a meticulous evaluation of the system's functionality and features in light of instructor and student needs and preferences. Unfortunately, given the functional intricacies and disparity in features across web-based learning systems, this can be a daunting task. The purpose of this paper is to offer accounting educators some practical guidance on evaluating web-based learning systems prior to adoption. This guidance is presented in the form of a framework based on key processes underlying the systems development life cycle (SDLC), a logical process model used by systems professionals to guide the acquisition and/or development of information systems.

The authors of this article discuss how a mixed-methods research team designed and conducted a 4-year study (Variations in Teachers' Work and Lives and Their Effects on Pupils) that tracked 300 teachers in 100 schools in England over a 3-year fieldwork period. The authors discuss processes that led to new knowledge. Although mixed methods are becoming more popular, few published accounts describe in detail how researchers have moved beyond the use and integration of mixed methods to arrive at more synergistic understandings. The advantage of synergistic approaches is their consideration and combination of a greater range of data, resulting in more nuanced, authentic accounts and explanations of complex realities.

Recent legislative and local school accountability efforts have placed a premium on the collection, analysis, and use of student assessment data for educational improvement. As a result, schools have sought assessments that will provide additional information about student performance. In response, a burgeoning boon industry formed-formative educational assessment systems. In this study we describe how districts search for and acquire formative assessment systems to meet their needs. We focus on three school districts that adopted three different formative assessment systems. Our findings suggest the fit between a system's characteristics and a school district's intended use is the most important consideration in instituting a successful formative assessment system that will have a positive impact on teacher education and student learning.

This paper encompasses t w o main topics: a broad and general analysis of the issue of performance evaluation of NLP systems and a report on a specific approach developed by the authors and experimented on a sample test case. More precisely, it first presents a brief survey of the major works in the area of NIP systems evaluation. Then, after introducing the notion of the life cycle of an N I P system, it focuses on the concept of performance evaluation and analyzes the scope and the major problems of the investigation. The tools generally used within computer science to assess the quality of a software system are briefly reviewed, and their applicability to the task of evaluation of NLP systems is discussed. Particular attention is devoted to the concepts of efficiency, correctness, reliability, and adequacy, and how all of them basically fail in capturing the peculiar features of performance evaluation of an N I P system is discussed. Two main approaches to performance evaluation are later introduced; namely, black-box-and modelbased, and their most important characteristics are presented. Finally, a specific model for performance evaluation proposed by the authors is illustrated, and the results of an experiment with a sample application are reported. The paper concludes with a discussion o n research perspectwes, open problems, and importance ofperformance evaluation to industrial applications.

NOTICE: This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. N either t he U nited S tates Government, n or an y a gency t hereof, n or an y o f their e mployees, nor a ny of t heir c ontractors, s ubcontractors, or t heir e mployees, m ake an y warranty, e xpress or i mplied, or a ssume a ny l egal l iability or responsibility for t he a ccuracy, completeness, or us efulness of a ny i nformation, a pparatus, pr oduct, or process di sclosed, or represent t hat its us e would not infringe pr ivately owned r ights. R eference h erein t o an y s pecific commercial p roduct, p rocess, o r s ervice b y t rade n ame, t rademark, m anufacturer, o r o therwise, does not ne cessarily c onstitute or i mply i ts e ndorsement, r ecommendation, or f avoring b y t he United States Government, any agency thereof, or any of their contractors or subcontractors. T he views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government, any agency thereof, or any of their contractors.

In many countries the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education has been stimulated. To explore the implementation process and its support within secondary schools, research was conducted on modelling aspects of ICT implementation in Dutch secondary school practice. Case studies were carried out in 10 secondary schools by interviewing the school board, school leader, ICT co-ordinator, some teachers, pupils who liked ICT, pupils who did not like ICT, and some parents. In addition, relevant school documents were studied and lesson practice was observed. The information was subjected to a qualitative analysis from multilevel and school development points of view. The empirical results suggest ®ve successive phases of ICT implementation within schools, which constitute ®ve models representing the gradual ICT transformation of educational and learning processes. The ®fth model, however, was designed theoretically as this phase had not yet been realised in educational practice. Finally, educational and policy support actions to the ICT transformation process in school are presented in a structured way. The results are worthwhile for school practice and national policies, but they also need further underpinning and validation through research in other schools. #

Usability does not exist in any absolute sense; it can only be defined with reference to particular contexts. This, in turn, means that there are no absolute measures of usability, since, if the usability of an artefact is defined by the context in which that artefact is used, measures of usability must of necessity be defined by that context too. Despite this, there is a need for broad general measures which can be used to compare usability across a range of contexts. In addition, there is a need for "quick and dirty" methods to allow low cost assessments of usability in industrial systems evaluation. This chapter describes the System Usability Scale (SUS) a reliable, low-cost usability scale that can be used for global assessments of systems usability.

Chlorination of drinking water is a common practice, used by numerous municipalities in the United States (US) to safeguard their water supplies. However, the chlorine used can chemically react with organic components in the drinking water to produce unwanted chlorination by-products. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the use of granular activated carbon produced from nutshells (almond, English walnut, pecan) in a point-of-use (POU) water filtration system designated 'Envirofilter' and to determine its efficacy in removing select, potentially carcinogenic chlorination by-products, namely the trihalomethanes (THMs) bromodichloromethane, bromoform and dibromochloromethane. The POU water filtration system that contained the nutshell-based carbons was designated 'Envirofilter' and adsorption efficiencies of this system were compared to that of four commercially available POU home water filter systems, namely, BRITA, Omni Filter, PUR and Teledyne Water Pik. Eight different 'Envirofilters' were constructed of individual or binary mixtures of carbons produced from acid-activated almond or pecan shells and steam-activated pecan or walnut shells and evaluated for adsorption of the three chlorination by-products. The results indicate that only two of the eight 'Envirofilters' failed to remove more THMs than the commercial POU systems. In both cases, these filters contained carbons with either 100% acid-activated almond shells or 100% acid-activated pecan shells. All six of the other filters contained carbons with either 50% or 100% steam-activated pecan shells or steam-activated walnut shells. Therefore, 'Envirofilters' appeared to depend on the presence of steam-activated nutshell carbons for their success. The six effective 'Envirofilters' reduced THM levels to below the Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL) required by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). Based on these results, these six 'Envirofilters' may be considered as a replacement for existing commercial filter systems because of their efficacy and projected cost.

Over the years the software engineering community has increasingly realized the important role software architecture plays in fulfilling the quality requirements of a system. The quality attributes of a software system are, to a large extent determined by the system's software architecture. In recent years various tools and techniques have been developed that allow for design for quality attributes, such as performance or maintainability, at the software architecture level. We believe this design approach can be applied not only to non-operational quality attributes such as performance or maintainability, but also to operational quality attributes such as usability. This paper presents and describes a scenario based assessment method to assess whether a given software architecture (provided usability) meets the usability requirements (required usability).

As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. At least two reasons account for this trend: the first is the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, and the second is the availability of feasible technologies after 30 years of research. Even though current machine recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited by the conditions imposed by many real applications. For example, recognition of face images acquired in an outdoor environment with changes in illumination and/or pose remains a largely unsolved problem. In other words, current systems are still far away from the capability of the human perception system. This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of still-and video-based face recognition research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of machine recognition of faces. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing recognition techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as psychophysical studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered.

Recognizing and generating textual entailment and paraphrases are regarded as important technologies in a broad range of NLP applications, including, information extraction, summarization, question answering, information retrieval, machine translation and text generation. Both textual entailment and paraphrasing address relevant aspects of natural language semantics. Entailment is a directional relation between two expressions in which one of them implies the other, whereas paraphrase is a relation in which two expressions convey essentially the same meaning. Indeed, paraphrase can be defined as bi-directional entailment. While it may be debatable how such semantic definitions can be made well-founded, in practice we have already seen evidence that such knowledge is essential for many applications.

The paper describes a Multicriteria Decision Support System which aims at presenting a complete and spherical evaluation of the Athens Stock Exchange stocks. The system evaluates the stocks on the basis of three approaches : Fundamental Analysis, Technical Analysis and Stock-Exchange Analysis. The system introduced in this paper utilises Multicriteria Analysis methods and embodies a large volume of relevant information. It is a 'live' system and operates in 'real world conditions' since its data are updated on a daily basis through a multitude of sources. The final output of the system is an overall evaluation of the ASE stocks and a stock ranking with the best stock first and the worst last, in order to be used in supporting investment decision-making. Finally, the system is intended for both institutional and private investors.

Increasingly healthcare policy and decision makers are demanding evidence to justify investments in health information systems. This demand requires an adequate evaluation of these systems. A wide variety of approaches and methodologies have been applied in assessing the impact of information systems in health care, ranging from controlled clinical trials to use of questionnaires and interviews with users. In this paper we describe methodological approaches which we have applied and refined for the past 10 years for the evaluation of health information systems. The approaches are strongly rooted in theories and methods from cognitive science and the emerging field of usability engineering. The focus is on assessing human computer interaction and in particular, the usability of computer systems in both laboratory and naturalistic settings. The methods described can be a part of the formative evaluation of systems during their iterative development, and can also complement more traditional assessment methods used in summative system evaluation of completed systems. The paper provides a review of the general area of systems evaluation with the motivation and rationale for methodological approaches underlying usability engineering and cognitive task analysis as applied to health information systems. This is followed by a detailed description of the methods we have applied in a variety of settings in conducting usability testing and usability inspection of systems such as computer-based patient records. Emerging trends in the evaluation of complex information systems are discussed.

Household wastewater treatment PPCP removal Domestic wastewater Constructed wetland Biofilters Sand filters a b s t r a c t Occurrence and removal efficiencies of 13 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) as well as BOD 5 , TSS and NH 4 þ were evaluated for the first time in thirteen onsite household secondary wastewater treatment systems, including two compact biofilters followed by Filtralite-P filter units, two biological sand filters, five horizontal subsurface flow and four vertical flow constructed wetlands. As expected, all systems removed TSS and BOD 5 efficiently (>95% removal). The PPCP removal efficiencies exceeded 80% with the exception of carbamazepine, diclofenac and ketoprofen because of their more recalcitrant characteristics. Despite no statistical differences in the PPCP removal were observed between the different systems evaluated, the vegetated vertical flow constructed wetlands which had unsaturated flow and hence better oxygenation, appeared consistently to perform better in terms of PPCP removal efficiency. The combined effects of vegetation and unsaturated water flow provide a higher tolerance to variations in loading rate and a consistent removal rate. (J.M. Bayona). A v a i l a b l e a t w w w . s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / w a t r e s 0043-1354/$ -see front matter ª w a t e r r e s e a r c h 4 3 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 5 5 -6 2

Xylopia emarginata Mart. é uma espécie de ocorrência nas matas de galerias, caracterizada pela sua tolerância às saturações hídricas potencializando-a para a recuperação dos ecossistemas ciliares. Com o objetivo de caracterizar geneticamente a espécie, foram estudadas duas populações naturais localizadas em campo rupestre, divididas naturalmente em cinco subpopulações, com altitude entre 940 e 1010 m, no município de Itumirim, MG (S 21º21'42,8"; W 44º46'0,52"). O processamento das amostras e as análises genéticas foram realizados no Departamento de Ciências Florestais da Universidade Federal de Lavras. A eqüidade gênica observada na subpopulação 1 foi de 36%, na 2 de 9%, na 3 de 27% e de 72% nas subpopulações 4 e 5, indicando que as subpopulações 1, 2 e 3 apresentam menor variabilidade genética. As heterozigosidades observadas (Ĥ o ) foram 0,484 e 0,722 e as esperadas (Ĥ e ) 0,395 e 0,425 para as populações A e B, respectivamente. Estimativas significativas do índice de fixação (f ) ocorreram nas subpopulações 1 (-0,389), 4 (-0,45) e 5 (-0,848), ao contrário daquelas encontradas nas subpopulações 2 (-0,105) e 3 (-0,209). Os índices de diversidade genética demonstram a existência de excesso de heterozigotos entre as subpopulações (F = -0,29). Somente as subpopulações 1 x 4, 2 x 3, 4 x 5 não apresentaram divergência genética. Os baixos níveis de fluxo alélico detectados entre algumas subpopulações possivelmente são devidos à presença do divisor d'águas, que pode estar atuando como barreira física. Elevada identidade genética foi observada entre as subpopulações 1 e 4, confirmando os resultados obtidos de fluxo alélico. As subpopulações 1, 4 e 5 são mais próximas geneticamente, mesmo estando mais distantes geograficamente, o que pode ser explicado pelo fluxo alélico. Dados dessa natureza são importantes para programas de coleta de sementes visando a conservação genética da espécie.

Prior applications of gas isotopic data to reservoir studies have often suggested that measured differences of a few per mil in gases sampled between wells indicated hydrocarbon compartmentalization concomitant with poor reservoir communication. These conclusions were generally invoked without adequate consultation and integration of geological and engineering well data, and only revealed to be true in the simplest of circumstances where pressure data clearly suggested the same. Not surprisingly, gas isotope data has yet to find widespread production engineering applications as a convincing tool for reservoir formation evaluation. This situation is unlikely to change due to the prohibitive drilling economics of acquiring adequate quantities of physical gas samples from down-hole tools in every zone of interest across multiple wells in a field. Recent application of a new technique, mud gas isotope logging (MGIL), has shown comparable isotopic data to traditional gas samples collected from down-hole tools while providing the petroleum systems analyst with the necessary large datasets needed to make accurate and confident reservoir evaluations. Many additional benefits of MGIL to formation evaluation have also been recognized, and it is envisaged MGIL possesses the potential to develop as a standard protocol on drilling wells. This paper documents the first published application of MGIL in the context of complete field-scale reservoir integration and production appraisal encompassing 18 well penetrations over a 3-yr drilling program. Case data from the Horn Mountain Field (Gulf of Mexico) are used to demonstrate this technology and its impact to field assessment and appraisal. Initial well data and two 3-D seismic surveys were used to assess reservoir continuity and compartmentalization across the field. Subtle pressure and gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) differences from eight appraisal wells suggested that the main economic M-Sand may be divided into at least two compartments, however the data could not be unambiguously relied upon in itself. MGIL data provided the strongest evidence in confirming the existence of two 'baffled' field compartments. Significantly for subsequent development wells, MGIL data were able to accurately discern and allocate compartments in wells without reliable wireline or absent MDT pressure data. MGIL data also recognized the significance of geological features such as a shale-filled channel visible on amplitude maps, and inferred to serve in concert with faults as a baffled flow barrier. Data such as these may have important implications for reservoir energy and pressure support during production. The impact of hydrocarbon stratification attributed to geological reservoir structural features and/or hydrocarbon phase geochemical density characteristics are also examined.

The main purpose of formulating methodologies for building systems' evaluation in low-cost housing is to find an effective solution for the huge Brazilian housing deficit of approximately five million housing units, mainly due to an accelerated population growth in urban centers. Low-cost housing programs are usually implemented in a broad sense, with no regard to local specific conditions. Thus, building systems of quite similar characteristics are employed in places with different climatic conditions, which leads to low-quality houses that do not respond to the users' needs. In this paper, the results of the application of formulas to predict daily indoor temperatures in three monitored low-cost houses in Curitiba, Brazil, are presented. The houses were occupied by families having neither cooling nor heating devices and are built of different building materials with different thermal properties. The monitoring of the houses took place both in winter and in summer. Measured data were also compared with simulated data. In this case, the French software COMFIE was used. Finally, the results of the thermal simulations were compared with those of predictive formulas developed by Givoni.

This project designs a Web-based evaluation management system for the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). Problem statement: The Msc students in College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) in applied sciences had to take their final project as a project paper in order to fulfill the requirements of their programs and be able to graduate. The final project was evaluated in two parts; first part is representing 40% of the total mark and evaluated by evaluators. Second part was representing 60% of the total mark and evaluated by the student's supervisor. These evaluation were done manually. Both the evaluators and supervisors had to fill in the evaluation forms manually and submit them to the office. Approach: The design research methodology or sometimes called "improvement research" contained the major steps: Awareness the problem, suggestion, development, evaluation and conclusion. Results: Both evaluators and supervisors can fill in the evaluation forms through the Internet. Bring the advantage of saving time and resources over traditional paper and pencil scan sheet method. For enhancing the performance of current final project evaluation process in College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) this study proposed a web based evaluation management system to replace the current paper forms used by the evaluators and supervisors. Conclusion: Implementing this system will enable the evaluation results to be entered, presume and retrieved anytime anywhere.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is among the most common causes of chronic liver disease in the western world. It is now recognized that these patients have myriad of important co-morbidities (e.g., diabetes, hypothyroidism and metabolic syndrome). The workup of patients with suspected NAFLD should consist of excluding competing etiologies and systemic evaluation of metabolic comorbidities. NAFLD is histologically categorized into steatosis and steatohepatitis, two states with fairly dichotomous natural history. While significant progress has been made in terms of noninvasively predicting advanced fibrosis, insufficient progress has been made in predicting steatohepatitis. Currently, liver biopsy remains the gold standard for the histological stratification of NAFLD. While sustained weight loss can be effective to treat NASH, it is often difficult to achieve. Foregut bariatric surgery can be quite effective in improving hepatic histology in selected patients without liver failure or significant portal hypertension. Thiazolidinediones have shown promise and the results from the ongoing, large multicenter study should become available soon. Large multicenter studies of CB, receptor anatagonists are also underway but their results will not be available for several years. Several recent studies have highlighted that cardiovascular disease is the single most important cause of morbidity and mortality in this patient population. Conclusion: Health care providers should not only focus on liver disease but also concentrate on aggressively modifying and treating their cardiovascular risk factors. (HEPATOLOGY 2009;49:306-317.)

For many people faced with a tough purchasing decision, the research tool of choice is a web browser. Search engines solve the general problem of finding relevant data, however it is up to the user to sort, filter, and evaluate it. Decision support methods such as LSP can turn raw data into formal evaluations, but they are generally disconnected from the Web -the most up-to-date, widely-used, and convenient source of data available. This paper demonstrates how LSP can be connected to the Web, so that live data from e-commerce web sites can be used in consumer-oriented system evaluations.

The IEEE Reliability Test System RTS developed by the Application of Probability Method Subcommittee has been used to compare and test a wide range of generating capacity and composite system evaluation techniques and subsequent digital computer programs. The IEEE-RTS requires the utilization of computer programs to obtain indices and therefore is not entirely suited to the development of basic concepts and an appreciation of the assumptions associated with conducting practical system reliability studies.

Systems for radio-frequency identification (RFID) realize a bidirectional wireless communication between a reader device and cheap passive tags (e.g., an RFID chip with an antenna printed on badges for access-control systems) in the near field of an antenna. This paper deals with the automatic and fast tuning of the resonant reader antennas in the widely used 13.56-MHz frequency band, resulting in a performance improvement and an increased READ/WRITE range. A novel RFID reader system is proposed with a tuning transformer for the automatic adjustment of the resonant circuit center frequency. This is achieved by shifting the magnetic operating point (i.e., the biasing direct-current (dc) magnetization) of a Ni-Zn ferrite transformer by means of an additional dc winding. The operation principle and the performance potential of this device are demonstrated by measurements on a prototypical RFID system.

In collaborative information finding systems, evaluations provided by users assist other users with similar needs. This article examines the problem of getting users to provide evaluations, thus overcoming the so-called "free-riding" behavior of users. Free riders are those who use the information provided by others without contributing evaluations of their own. This article reports on an experiment conducted using the "AntWorld," system, a collaborative information finding system for the Internet, to explore the effect of added motivation on users' behavior. The findings suggest that for the system to be effective, users must be motivated either by the environment, or by incentives within the system. The findings suggest that relatively inexpensive extrinsic motivators can produce modest but significant increases in cooperative behavior.

Excellent on-farm irrigation management and design have traditionally been promoted for reasons of improved yields and farm input costs. More recently, external pressures require even more detail to on-farm irrigation. These external pressures include competition for water by urban and environmental interests, plus degradation of aquifers and rivers. As irrigation progresses from an art to a science, new concepts must

Intrusion-detection systems aim at detecting attacks against computer systems and networks, or in general against information systems. Indeed, it is difficult to pro-vide provably secure information systems and to main-tain them in such a secure state during their ...

The goal of this paper is to presents Brief Description of literature on Image Based human and machine recognition of faces during 1987 to 2010. Machine recognition of faces has several applications. As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. In addition, relevant topics such as Brief studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered. In this paper numerous method which related to image based 3D face recognition are discussed.

Over the past five years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded development of speech translation systems for tactical applications. A key component of the research program has been extensive system evaluation, with dual objectives of assessing progress overall and comparing among systems. This paper describes the methods used to obtain BLEU, TER, and METEOR scores for two-way English-Iraqi Arabic systems. We compare the scores with measures based on human judgments and demonstrate the effects of normalization operations on BLEU scores. Issues that are highlighted include the quality of test data and differential results of applying automated metrics to Arabic vs. English.

Robot manipülatörün eksen sayısının artmasıyla birlikte, robotun hareket yeteneği de artmaktadır, fakat bununla beraber robotun denetimi de zorlaşmakta ve denetim algoritması daha karmaşık hale gelmektedir. Bu çalışmada endüstride kullanılan kartezyen-özgül robot denetim yöntemi uygulanmıştır. DSP uygulamaları için geliştirilmiş bir FPGA kullanılarak üç eksenli robotun kartezyen denetimi gerçekleştirilmiştir. Geliştirilen sistem, manevra kolundan gelen sinyalleri yorumlayarak robotun hangi yönde hareket edeceğini saptar ve yeni x, y değerlerini bularak çözümlenmesi için kinematik bloğuna gönderir. Gerçekleştirilmiş olan kinematik bloğunun içerisinde, robotun ucunun konumlanması istenilen x, y değerlerine karşılık gelen eklem açıları robotun ters kinematik denklemlerinin çözülmesi ile elde edilir. Bulunan açılar, sistemde yer alan açı-sinyal genişliği bloğuna gönderilir. Açı-sinyal genişliği bloğu girişindeki açı değerlerini okuyarak, robotun eklemlerinde yer alan servo motorların bu açılarda konumlanması için gerekli olan darbe genişliklerini hesaplar ve bu genişlik değerlerini ilgili eksen denetleyicilerine gönderir. Eksen denetleyicileri girişlerindeki sinyal genişlik değerlerini okurlar ve bu genişlik değerlerine sahip kare dalgaları çıkışlarında üreterek robotun eklemlerinde yer alan motorların denetim uçlarına göndererek robotu istenilen koordinatlarda konumlandırırlar. Sistemin çözümü, denetimi doğru ve hızlı bir şekilde gerçekleştirilmiş olur.