In this Chapter, we imagine a decision maker (or a group of experts) trying to establish or examine fair procedures to combine opinions about alternatives related to different points of view.

Multiple criteria decision making

Discrete element models for non-spherical particle systems: From theoretical developments to applications

Endogenous DC electric fields (EF) are present during embryogenesis and are generated in vivo upon wounding, providing guidance cues for directional cell migration (galvanotaxis) required in these processes. To understand the role of beta (β)4 integrin in directional migration, the migratory paths of either primary human keratinocytes (NHK), β4 integrin-null human keratinocytes (β4−), or those in which β4 integrin was reexpressed (β4+), were tracked during exposure to EFs of physiological magnitude (100 mV/mm). Although the expression of β4 integrin had no effect on the rate of cell movement, it was essential for directional (cathodal) migration in the absence of epidermal growth factor (EGF). The addition of EGF potentiated the directional response, suggesting that at least two distinct but synergistic signaling pathways coordinate galvanotaxis. Expression of either a ligand binding–defective β4 (β4+AD) or β4 with a truncated cytoplasmic tail (β4+CT) resulted in loss of directionality in the absence of EGF, whereas inhibition of Rac1 blinded the cells to the EF even in the presence of EGF. In summary, both the β4 integrin ligand–binding and cytoplasmic domains together with EGF were required for the synergistic activation of a Rac-dependent signaling pathway that was essential for keratinocyte directional migration in response to a galvanotactic stimulus.

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β4 integrin and epidermal growth factor coordinately regulate electric field-mediated directional migration via Rac1

We introduce a semi-supervised approach to training for statistical machine translation that alternates the traditional Expectation Maximization step that is applied on a large training corpus with a discriminative step aimed at increasing word-alignment quality on a small, manually word-aligned sub-corpus. We show that our algorithm leads not only to improved alignments but also to machine translation outputs of higher quality.

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Semi-Supervised Training for Statistical Word Alignment

A translation training device which extracts from two nonparallel Corpora a set of parallel sentences. The system finds parameters between different sentences or phrases, in order to find parallel sentences. The parallel sentences are then used for training a data-driven machine translation system. The process can be applied repetitively until sufficient data is collected or until the performance of the translation system stops improving.

Discovery of parallel text portions in comparable collections of corpora and training using comparable texts

Pervasive computing applications allow users to access information from anywhere while traveling and using variety of devices Heterogeneity and limitation of resources involved in this application demand adaptation of content according to the current context (device, user, network etc) The dynamic nature of adaptation mechanisms together with emerging opportunities of Web Service technology provides new approach of adaptation which is service-based While this approach would provide a valuable service for the end customer, the service provider, and the content provider, it is important to have an architectural framework which is simple, scalable, flexible and interoperable Moreover, in order to provide a complete service-based content negotiation and adaptation solution, we must have a model, or a tool, that allows defining environmental constraints, mapping them to appropriate adaptation service requirements and finding an optimal service configurationIn this paper, we present service-based content adaptation architecture, enabling the use of third-party adaptation services and a novel content negotiation and adaptation model The proposed architectural framework is validated through a prototype

Modeling service-based multimedia content adaptation in pervasive computing

New developments in computing and communication technology facilitate mobile data access to multimedia application systems such as healthcare, tourism and emergency. In these applications, users can access information with variety of devices having heterogeneous capabilities. One of the requirements in these applications is to adapt the content to the user's preferences, device capabilities and network conditions. In this paper we present a distributed content adaptation approach for distributed multimedia systems. In this approach content adaptation is performed in several steps and the adaptation tools are implemented by external services, we call them adaptation services. In order to determine the type and sequence of the adaptation services, we develop an adaptation graph based on client profile, network conditions, content profile (meta-data) and available adaptation services. Different quality criteria are used to optimize the adaptation graph.

Content adaptation in distributed multimedia systems

Pervasive systems are created by introducing wireless communication into distributed multimedia systems. These systems facilitate mobile data access to applications such as health care, tourism and emergency. However new challenges have emerged that has not been adequately addressed in traditional distributed multimedia systems. In pervasive systems, data must be adapted to the user's preferences, device capabilities and network conditions. Several content adaptation techniques have been proposed to fit the data to the usage environment. In this paper we present a distributed content adaptation framework (DCAF) for distributed multimedia systems and its prototype implementation. The architecture takes into consideration client profile, network conditions, content profile (meta-data) and available adaptation services (third party software elements) to construct an optimal dynamic adaptation graph.

Distributed content adaptation for pervasive systems

Multimedia content adaptation has been proved to be an effective mechanism to mitigate the problem of devices and networks heterogeneity and constraints in pervasive computing environments. Moreover, it enables to deliver data taking into consideration the user's preferences and the context of his/her environment. In this paper, we present an algorithm for service composition and protocols for executing service composition plan. Both the algorithm and the protocols are implemented in our distributed content adaptation framework (DCAF) which provides a service-based content adaptation architecture. Finally, a performance evaluation of the algorithm and the protocols is presented.

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Efficient Execution of Service Composition for Content Adaptation in Pervasive Computing

Content adaptation is an attractive and effective solution to resolve the mismatch of resources and properties between the delivery context and the multimedia content in heterogeneous environments. The problem with multimedia content adaptation is that there is no a single complete software solution that can satisfy all types of required adaptation needs. In order to solve this problem adaptation tools can be developed as services for example using Web Services and make them accessible via standard web protocols. Since adaptation is a multi-step process, an adaptation need can be realized as composition of a number of adaptation services. However, it becomes difficult when there are several services to realize an adaptation need which leads to different composition possibilities. In this paper we present an algorithm called Multimedia Adaptation Graph Generator (MAGG) that composes distributed multimedia adaptation services. The algorithm is tested in a Distributed Content Adaptation Framework (DCAF) prototype and its experimental result is presented.

Girma Berhe

Papers

Modeling service-based multimedia content adaptation in pervasive computing

Content adaptation in distributed multimedia systems

Distributed content adaptation for pervasive systems

Efficient Execution of Service Composition for Content Adaptation in Pervasive Computing

Planning-Based Multimedia Adaptation Services Composition for Pervasive Computing