Critiquing-based recommenders: survey and emerging trends

Critiquing-based recommender systems elicit users?? feedback, called critiques, which they made on the recommended items. This conversational style of interaction is in contract to the standard model where users receive recommendations in a single interaction. Through the use of the critiquing feedback, the recommender systems are able to more accurately learn the users?? profiles, and therefore suggest better recommendations in the subsequent rounds. Critiquing-based recommenders have been widely studied in knowledge-, content-, and preference-based recommenders and are beginning to be tried in several online websites, such as MovieLens. This article examines the motivation and development of the subject area, and offers a detailed survey of the state of the art concerning the design of critiquing interfaces and development of algorithms for critiquing generation. With the help of categorization analysis, the survey reveals three principal branches of critiquing based recommender systems, using respectively natural language based, system-suggested, and user-initiated critiques. Representative example systems will be presented and analyzed for each branch, and their respective pros and cons will be discussed. Subsequently, a hybrid framework is developed to unify the advantages of different methods and overcome their respective limitations. Empirical findings from user studies are further presented, indicating how hybrid critiquing supports could effectively enable end-users to achieve more confident decisions. Finally, the article will point out several future trends to boost the advance of critiquing-based recommenders.     

图像数据库管理系统的关键技术研究综述*

综述了图像数据库的体系结构和框架,设计了一个图像数据库通用框架。围绕通用框架,综述了存储机制、数据模型、语义模型、图像检索和可视化等关键技术,分析了它们的研究现状和有待解决的问题。     

New trends on e-Procurement applying semantic technologies

The present editorial note introduces the concept of e-Procurement and the use of semantic technologies to improve some of the processes involved in electronic purchasing processes. Currently there is a growing interest to boost the use of electronic communications to deal with Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C) or Administration-to-Administration (A2A) relationships. New technologies are emerging with the aim of: (1) reducing costs; (2) providing more intelligent environments to make decisions in more timely and accurate fashion and (3) improving the overall efficiency of business processes. More specifically, e-Procurement defined as the business to business purchase and sale of supplies over the Internet can be found in a variety of ways from public marketplaces involving many firms to private exchanges that are currently facing a challenging environment to migrate from paper-based systems to an electronic ecosystem. However several interlinked challenges to achieve a successful transition have been identified such as lack of interoperable and standard-based infrastructures (data and services), legal uncertainties including the necessity of improving trust, privacy and provenance of data and information and lack of transparency, accessibility or usability to name a few. In this context semantic-based technologies arise to afford a common and standard data model that eases the interoperability, integration and creation of knowledge-based systems. Taking into account the necessity of a more interoperable and intelligent system to manage e-Procurement processes and the emerging application of semantics in different domains, this special issue is intended to provide researchers, developers and practitioners a summary of the current status of e-Procurement applying semantics.     

Damping-enabling technologies for broadband control of piezo-stages: A survey

Piezo-actuated nanopositioning stages, denoted as piezo-stages, have become more and more popular in high-speed and high-precision operation, such as high-speed scanning imaging in atomic force microscope (AFM), and stepping–scanning lithography based on wafer stages. But lightly damping dynamics largely limits motion control bandwidth and trajectory tracking performance of the piezo-stages after piezoelectric hysteresis has been well compensated, which makes the modal damping enhancement of the stages challenging. To address this demand, some active and passive damping approaches for piezo-stages have been proposed. This paper reviews and discusses various damping-enabling technologies, which can be chosen for the flexure-based piezo-stages, and highlights some possible research opportunities.     

Robot-environment dynamic interaction survey and future trends

Our aim was to consider interaction control problems from different viewpoints, primarily taking into account practical problems and needs. Basic strategies for controlling the interaction of a robot with the environment are the subject of the paper. The paper also provides a historical perspective on interaction control, summarizing the major achievements in this area for the last 25 years. After this long period of investigation we are now faced with an inevitable change of generation in this field. Many young enthusiastic researchers are focusing now on various attractive issues in human-robot-environment interaction control, especially from the viewpoint of novel disciplines such as artificial intelligence, mechatronics, augmented reality, etc. Considering more complex tasks, the application of force sensors and interaction control techniques is certainly not sufficient to provide the robot with a required degree of autonomy and intelligence. The paper attempts to provide unified theoretical force and position control paradigms considering basic control issues: stability, performance, and robustness. This framework assumes a general dynamic environment and uses an inverse dynamic control strategy to design various controllers for specific force and position stabilization tasks. Stability problems during the dynamic control tasks are also considered in the paper using different stability criteria. The established contact stability theory has been expanded to the control and synthesis. Therefore, one of the basic characteristics of regular bipedal walk of humanoid robots is the maintenance of their dynamic balance during the walk, whereby a decisive role is played by the unpowered degrees of freedom arising at the foot-ground contact. Hence, the role of Zero-Moment Point (ZMP) as an indicator of dynamic balance is indispensable. On the other hand, we are witnesses of the diverse realizations of locomotion systems, from those with human-like feet, aiming to mimic in full the human gait, passive walkers, which practically roll on specially profiled feet, to the footless locomotion systems. It is quite clear that any of these systems can realize a gait (very often such gait is not dynamically balanced), but our present study shows that the performances of such walking systems are essentially different and inapt to meet the requirements that are stated for the humanoids in a human environment. This study points out the indispensability of the regular, fully dynamically balanced gait for the simultaneous realization of locomotion-manipulation activities, as well as for the walk in an unstructured environment.     

New trends on e-Procurement applying semantic technologies: Current status and future challenges

The present paper introduces and reviews existing technology and research works in the field of e-Procurement. More specifically this survey aims to collect those relevant approaches that have tackled the challenge of delivering more advanced and intelligent e-Procurement management systems due to its relevance in the industry to afford more timely, adaptable and flexible decisions in purchasing processes. Although existing tools and techniques have demonstrated their ability to manage e-Procurement processes as a part of a supply management system there is a lack of interoperability among tools, tangled dependencies between processes or difficulties to exploit existing data and information to name a few that are preventing a proper use of the new dynamic and data-based environment. On the other hand semantic-based technologies emerge to provide the adequate building blocks to represent domain-knowledge and elevate the meaning of information resources through a common and shared data model (RDF) with a formal query language (SPARQL) and accessible via the Internet Protocols. In this sense the Linked Data effort has gained momentum to apply the principles of the aforementioned initiative to boost the re-use of information and data across different tools and processes. That is why authors review both existing open issues in the context e-Procurement with special focus on public procurement and semantic-based approaches to address them. To do so a preliminary research study is conducted to assess the state of the art in the context of e-Procurement and semantic-based systems. Afterwards main drawbacks of existing e-Procurement systems are presented to narrow down in semantic-based approaches applied to this field. Once the current status in both areas is reviewed, authors purpose the use and creation of an e-Procurement index to evaluate the quality of service of procurement systems. In this light the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is used to set up an initial weight for each indicator in the index and to perform a first comparison between traditional and semantic-based approaches. Finally some discussion, conclusions and future challenges are also outlined.     

光纤液位传感技术研究进展与趋势

介绍了光纤液位传感器相较于普通液位传感器的特点和优势,梳理光纤液位传感技术发展脉络,简单介绍其分类.针对静态与动态应用场景下的光纤液位测量技术展开分析,列举了国内外有代表性的最新研究成果,并对未来发展趋势进行展望.     

A survey of approaches and trends in person re-identification

Person re-identification is a fundamental task in automated video surveillance and has been an area of intense research in the past few years. Given an image/video of a person taken from one camera, re-identification is the process of identifying the person from images/videos taken from a different camera. Re-identification is indispensable in establishing consistent labeling across multiple cameras or even within the same camera to re-establish disconnected or lost tracks. Apart from surveillance it has applications in robotics, multimedia and forensics. Person re-identification is a difficult problem because of the visual ambiguity and spatiotemporal uncertainty in a person's appearance across different cameras. These difficulties are often compounded by low resolution images or poor quality video feeds with large amounts of unrelated information in them that does not aid re-identification. The spatial or temporal conditions to constrain the problem are hard to capture. However, the problem has received significant attention from the computer vision research community due to its wide applicability and utility. In this paper, we explore the problem of person re-identification and discuss the current solutions. Open issues and challenges of the problem are highlighted with a discussion on potential directions for further research.     

Affective data acquisition technologies in survey research

There is no agreement on how to formally incorporate affective data into statistical analysis and research conclusions. The information systems (IS) literature has recently published several position papers that have established a framework and perspective for using affective technology in IS research though. The frameworks have not been extensively tested, and are likely to evolve over time as empirical studies are conducted, and the validity of the methodologies is confirmed or disproved. A major goal of the current paper is to take the initial steps in translating the frameworks to usable methodologies, with application to improving our understanding of how to make effective empirical tests. This paper also investigates the adoption cycle of one of these technologies—electrodermal response (EDR) technologies—whose incarnation in the polygraph in forensic applications went through a complete adoption cycle in the twentieth century. The use of EDR response data in marketing research and surveys is nascent, but prior experience can help us to forecast and encourage its adoption in new research contexts. This research investigates three key questions: (1) What technology adoption model is appropriate for electrodermal response technology in forensic science? (2) What is the accuracy of affective electrodermal response readings? (3) What information is useful after superimposing affective EDR readings on contemporaneous survey data collection? Affective data acquisition technologies appear to add the most information when survey subjects are inclined to lie and have strong emotional feelings. Such data streams are informative, non-invasive and cost-effective. Informativeness is context-dependent though, and it relies on a complex set of still poorly understood human factors. Survey protocols and statistical analysis methods need to be developed to address these challenges.     

Sampled-data control systems with non-uniform sampling: A survey of methods and trends

The convergence of sensing, computing, communication and control elements drives the traditional point-to-point control systems towards networked control systems. Sampled-data control systems, which focus on the significant interplay between sampling and control, play a critical role in modern networked control systems, including intelligent transportation systems, smart grids, and advanced manufacturing systems. This paper presents a survey of methods and trends in non-uniform sampled-data control systems, where sampling and control actions are performed in an aperiodic manner. First, some fundamental issues of both continuous- and discrete-time sampled-data control systems are discussed. Next, main methods in both continuous-time and discrete-time domains are elaborated, respectively. Then, event-triggered sampling, under which sampling is executed only when the system needs attention, is examined. Typical triggering mechanisms in the existing literature are reviewed and classified into four types according to different threshold functions. Furthermore, two applications in terms of automated vehicle platoons and islanded microgrids are provided to demonstrate that sampled-data control methods are capable to support relevant practical application scenarios. Finally, several challenging issues are envisioned to direct future research.     

Current trends on ICT technologies for enterprise information systems

As business conditions change rapidly, the need for integrating business and technical systems calls for novel ICT frameworks and solutions to remain concurrent in highly competitive markets. A number of problems and issues arise in this regard. In this paper, four big challenges of enterprise information systems (EIS) are defined and discussed: (1) data value chain management; (2) context awareness; (3) usability, interaction and visualization; and (4) human learning and continuous education. Major contributions and research orientations of ICT technologies are elaborated based on selected key issues and lessons learned. First, the semantic mediator is proposed as a key enabler for dealing with semantic interoperability. Second, the context-aware infrastructures are proposed as a main solution for making efficient use of EIS to offer a high level of customization of delivered services and data. Third, the product avatar is proposed as a contribution to an evolutionary social, collaborative and product-centric and interaction metaphor with EIS. Fourth, human learning solutions are considered to develop individual competences in order to cope with new technological advances. The paper ends with a discussion on the impact of the proposed solutions on the economic and social landscape and proposes a set of recommendations as a perspective towards next generation of information systems.     

PieBridge：一种按需可扩展的跨链架构

区块链由于其去中心、可溯源等特性,已被广泛应用于数字货币、供应链金融、智慧医疗等不同领域. 随着应用需求的不断拓宽,各独立区块链协作以构建更广泛价值互联网的需求日益增强,因而迫切需要研究跨链技术. 然而当前区块链生态规模不断扩大、丰富,异构/同构区块链间的互联互通需求也随之快速增长. 而现有跨链研究无法应对架构可扩展性与跨链需求多样性方面的挑战. 针对上述问题,基于“按需建域”的理念,提出一种按需可扩展的跨链架构PieBridge,并提出了一套4层跨链交互协议栈,解耦跨链传输、验证、事务与应用,满足不同跨链应用在隐私、安全、性能等方面的差异化需求. 同时实现了PieBridge原型系统,并通过建模分析与实验证明了PieBridge的可扩展性以及其对差异化跨链交互需求的灵活支持.

     

Classical dynamic consensus and opinion dynamics models: A survey of recent trends and methodologies

Consensus reaching is an iterative and dynamic process that supports group decision-making models by guiding decision-makers towards modifying their opinions through a feedback mechanism. Many attempts have been recently devoted to the design of efficient consensus reaching processes, especially when the dynamism is dependent on time, which aims to deal with opinion dynamics models. The emergence of novel methodologies in this field has been accelerated over recent years. In this regard, the present work is concerned with a systematic review of classical dynamic consensus and opinion dynamics models. The most recent trends of both models are identified and the developed methodologies are described in detail. Challenges of each model and open problems are discussed and worthwhile directions for future research are given. Our findings denote that due to technological advancements, a majority of recent literature works are concerned with the large-scale group decision-making models, where the interactions of decision-makers are enabled via social networks. Managing the behavior of decision-makers and consensus reaching with the minimum adjustment cost under social network analysis have been the top priorities for researchers in the design of classical consensus and opinion dynamics models.     

A survey on emerging broadband wireless access technologies

Wireless broadband technologies provide ubiquitous broadband access to wireless users, enabling services that were available only to wireline users. In this paper, we summarize emerging wireless broadband access technologies, ranging from WLANs to satellite communications. We explain the latest standards in the IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16 families in detail. The MAC layer mechanisms of IEEE 802.11e, 802.11n, and 802.11s standards are explained as well as the point-to-multipoint and Mesh modes of IEEE 802.16. The recent mobility amendment to the WiMAX family, IEEE 802.16e, is also described. Though the earliest versions of some of these technologies date back to 1996 (such as IEEE 802.11) and some are obsolete (such as HiperLAN), they have been included in this survey for the sake of completeness.Wireless technologies can be categorized based on their coverage areas. IEEE 802.11 and ETSI HiperLAN standards are considered for wireless access in local areas. IEEE 802.16 and 802.22, ETSI HiperACCESS and HiperMAN, WiBro, and HAP technologies can be used to provide service in metropolitan areas. Lastly, IEEE 802.20 and satellite systems provide service as wide area networks. Since the aim of this survey is to summarize wireless broadband technologies for data services, technologies such as Wireless USB are excluded. 3G and 4G systems have also been excluded since they are covered in detail in [C. Smith, D. Collins, 3G Wireless Networks, second ed., McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2006; S.G. Glisic, Advanced Wireless Networks: 4G Technologies, Wiley Publishing, 2005].     

Indoor location identification technologies for real-time IoT-based applications: An inclusive survey

The advent of the Internet of Things has witnessed tremendous success in the application of wireless sensor networks and ubiquitous computing for diverse smart-based applications. The developed systems operate under different technologies using different methods to achieve their targeted goals. In this treatise, we carried out an inclusive survey on key indoor technologies and techniques, with to view to explore their various benefits, limitations, and areas for improvement. The mathematical formulation for simple localization problems is also presented. In addition, an empirical evaluation of the performance of these indoor technologies is carried out using a common generic metric of scalability, accuracy, complexity, robustness, energy-efficiency, cost and reliability. An empirical evaluation of performance of different RF-based technologies establishes the viability of Wi-Fi, RFID, UWB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and Light over other indoor technologies for reliable IoT-based applications. Furthermore, the survey advocates hybridization of technologies as an effective approach to achieve reliable IoT-based indoor systems. The findings of the survey could be useful in the selection of appropriate indoor technologies for the development of reliable real-time indoor applications. The study could also be used as a reliable source for literature referencing on the subject of indoor location identification.     

数字视频中错误掩盖技术研究综述

根据目前错误掩盖领域研究热点,从解码端掩盖技术以及编解码结合的掩盖技术两个研究方向介绍其发展状况,比较并总结了传统插值掩盖技术和主要的新技术的优劣。指出在编码端进行的错误掩盖技术发展渐趋与其他学科结合,编解码结合的掩盖技术则致力于利用不同的数据隐藏技术在编码端嵌入更有价值的冗余信息,有助于迅速了解错误掩盖领域技术的发展状况。最后指出了进一步研究的方向。     

A survey of energy-saving technologies in cloud data centers

The Journal of Supercomputing - As an important part of the new infrastructure, the cloud data center is developing rapidly, and its energy consumption problem is becoming more and more prominent....     

Anti-emulation trends in modern packers: a survey on the evolution of anti-emulation techniques in UPA packers

Writing modern day executable packers has turned into a rather profitable business. In many cases, the reason for packing is not protecting genuine applications against piracy or plagiarism, but rather avoiding reverse-engineering and detection of malicious samples. Unlike developers, which show moderate interest for using a packer and lack time and resources for creating one, malware creators show a huge interest and are willing to spend large amounts of money to use this technology (especially if it offers protection against security solutions). This happens mainly because protecting from piracy and plagiarism isn’t that profitable as spreading new and undetected malware on as many computers as possible. Consequently, creating a custom packer designed to avoid malware detection has grown into a very profitable business.However, developing a good packer is not an easy task to accomplish. Novel techniques of achieving anti-static analysis, anti-virtual machine, anti-sandbox, anti-emulation, anti-debugging, anti-patching, and so on, have to be discovered and added regularly. From the malware creator’s perspective, this must happen frequently enough so that the updates are issued shortly after malware researchers analyze and bypass the existing mechanisms because, once these techniques are bypassed, the detection rate increases in the case of the malware samples packed with the old version of the packer.In this paper, we present our findings which resulted from closely monitoring the fight between malware researchers and packer developers during a period of almost two years. We focus on three different packers used for prevalent malware families like Upatre, Gamarue, Hedsen. We named those packers UPA 1, UPA 2, and UPA 3 and we discuss the mechanisms used in them to achieve anti-emulation. Each technique is presented by listing the code and explaining the inner workings in details. In the end, we manage to get a grasp of the current trends in achieving anti-emulation when developing modern packers.     

A survey of mobile and wireless technologies for augmented reality systems

Recent advances in hardware and software for mobile computing have enabled a new breed of mobile augmented reality (AR) systems and applications. A new breed of computing called ‘augmented ubiquitous computing’ has resulted from the convergence of wearable computing, wireless networking, and mobile AR interfaces. In this paper, we provide a survey of different mobile and wireless technologies and how they have impact AR. Our goal is to place them into different categories so that it becomes easier to understand the state of art and to help identify new directions of research. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.