bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Development and Validation of the Technology Adoption and Gratification (TAG) Model in Higher Education
Authors: Islam A.Y.M. Atiquil
Published: January 2018

The prime objective of this study was to develop and validate the Technology Adoption and Gratification (TAG) Model to evaluate the adoption and gratification of lecturers in using ICT facilities for their teaching and research purposes in higher education. The second objective of this study was to evaluate the cross-cultural validation of the causal structure of the TAG model. A total of 396 lecturers were collected from two public universities, namely, University of Malaya in Malaysia and Jiaxing University in China using stratified random sampling procedure. The questionnaire's validity was established through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using SPSS version 21.0. The data was analyzed applying Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using AMOS version 18. The findings of the research using the TAG model discovered that the computer self-efficacy of the lecturers had a positive direct impact on their perceived usefulness and ease of use, while the latter two factors also had a significant direct impact on gratification and intention to use, separately. Meanwhile, gratification and actual use of ICT facilities were directly affected by intention to use. Moreover, computer self-efficacy had a positive and significant indirect impact on gratification and intention to use mediated by perceived usefulness and ease of use, respectively. In addition to lecturers' perceived ease of use and usefulness had a significant indirect effect on their gratification mediated by intention to use. The results of the invariance analysis of the TAG model also demonstrated that the model was valid for measuring lecturers' adoption and gratification in using ICT facilities. However, the TAG model works differently in cross-cultural settings. The findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the field of ICT by developing and validating the applicability of the TAG Model within institutions of higher education. Once validated the model could then be applied by future researchers, academicians and practitioners in the diverse context of education.
Technology Integration in Work Settings
Authors: Joshua-Gojer Ashwini Esther , Allen Jeff M. , Gavrilova-Aguilar Mariya
Published: January 2018

Technology integration is gaining preeminence in the workplace. While plentiful definitions exist, researchers have attempted to answer many questions related to technology. Most of the issues dealing with technology in the workplace address, but are not limited to, technological entry, technological adoption, technological adaptation, technological appropriation, and technological invention. This chapter delves into the concept of technology integration in work settings. Starting with definitions, the chapter examines the nature of technology, its interrelationship with knowledge and the learning organization, its importance in the workplace, and its association with innovation.
Understanding the Dimensions of IT Governance Culture
Authors: Rowlands Bruce , De Haes Steven , Van Grembergen Wim
Published: January 2018

The concept of IT governance culture is relatively new. In this paper, the authors develop an IT Governance culture model based on Detert et al's (2000) framework involving eight dimensions of culture. Each dimension is described in terms of how they relate to the implementation of IT governance initiatives. The authors' contribution is to illustrate the utility of the framework by linking the eight general cultural dimensions to propose a normative model of ITG values and beliefs, that they argue, represent the ‘ideal organisational culture' of successful ITG implementations. By doing so, they present a necessary step in developing the dimensions of the concept of ITG culture and moving products such as COBIT5 towards a more comprehensive framework based on systemic empirical research.
The Intention to Use Mobile Digital Library Technology
Authors: Alfaresi Sumayyah Hassan , Hone Kate
Published: January 2018

This paper presents a qualitative study on student adoption of mobile library technology in a developing world context. The findings support the applicability of a number of existing constructs from the technology acceptance literature, such as perceived ease of use, social influence and trust. However, they also suggest the need to modify some adoption factors previously found in the literature to fit the specific context of mobile library adoption. Perceived value was found to be a more relevant overarching adoption factor than perceived usefulness for this context. Facilitating conditions were identified as important but these differed somewhat from those covered in earlier literature. The research also uncovered the importance of trialability for this type of application. The findings provide a basis for improving theory in the area of mobile library adoption and suggest a number of practical design recommendations to help designers of mobile library technology to create applications that meet user needs.
Resources on the Stage
Authors: Findik Derya , Tansel Aysit
Published: January 2018

This study examines the impact of firm resources on ICT adoption by the Turkish business enterprises using firm level data. The data for this study consists of 3633 firms in manufacturing and services sectors. We investigate the effect of firm resources on the adoption of ICT by using ordered logit model. Adoption of ICT is an index variable including four categories which ranges from single technology ownership to four technology ownership. These technologies are local area network (LAN), wireless local area network (WLAN), intranet, and extranet. We assume that these technologies are complementary. We find that firms do not need to use same amount of resources while adopting single technology as they would while adopting complementary technologies. In the adoption of complementary technologies, the effect of firm size, trade openness, human capital, purposes of ICT usage and environmental factors such as region and industry increases. On the other hand, full complementarity among technologies does not require the full exploitation of the firm resources. As a result of inefficient use of firm resources, single and two technology owner firms, which are composed of resource-limited small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), do not accomplish the technology adoption benefits of the three and four technology owners. We discuss a set of policy implications to promote the efficient use of firm resources for single and two technology owner firms. The effect of firm resources on the adoption of complementary technologies is analysed in this study which has not been investigated before in this context.
Electronic Payment Adoption in the Banking Sector of Low-Income Countries
Authors: Alemu Teshome , Bandyopadhyay Tridib , Negash Solomon
Published: January 2018

Banks in low-income countries are launching e-banking services such as Internet banking, SMS banking, ATM banking, card banking, point of sales (PoS) and mobile banking. Among these planned services, ATM is the most matured service in many private and state owned banks in Ethiopia. ATM is a recent phenomenon in low-income countries (; ), and is still being introduced in financial sectors in low-income countries (Angeli, 2008; ) making investigation of factors of ICT technology adoption in low income countries timely. The authors test context specific applicability of UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) model. The authors' analysis of primary data suggests general applicability of the modified UTAUT model in explaining factors and antecedents of technology adoption but also identifies significant differences in the moderating factors of gender and age. Depending on whether they are above or below the age of 30, Ethiopian consumers of banking services exhibit highly differentiated levels of service credibility and technology risk acceptance towards ATM banking. This suggests that banking services sector in low income countries may like to clearly delineate and appropriately differentiate their awareness and reach-out strategies to their customers who belong to one or the other age group. Furthermore, women in this study are found to perceive themselves as more susceptible to fraud and other security risks in ATM banking, suggesting that special design considerations be incorporated in the way locations of ATMs are selected and in the way ATM technology features are accessed to ally such fears. The authors' work also shows research directions where other scholars may investigate an otherwise much diffused technology adoption in the low income countries of the world.
Engaging Urban Youth in Critical Media Literacy
Authors: Cho Hyesun , Gomabon Randy
Published: January 2018

This chapter describes how urban youth engaged in critical media literacy in the high school classroom by creating public service announcement (PSA) videos. The study delineates the process in which critical media literacy was implemented into diverse urban high school classrooms in Hawaii over a period of three years. The process included (1) acquiring technological and linguistic skills; (2) critically analyzing media texts; and (3) producing media on social issues. The data were collected from students' reflection journals, interviews with students and teachers, students' electronic portfolios, and participant observations by the researchers/teachers. Students expressed their voice toward positive social actions by producing PSAs on a range of social issues, such as poverty and discrimination. Building on multiliteracies and critical media literacy, this chapter argues for the importance of critical media literacy pedagogy that is deliberate to make curricular space for students' reflections and examinations of social issues.
A Comparative Study on GFT Adoption Behaviour Among Malaysian Paddy Farmers
Authors: Adnan Nadia , Nordin Shahrina Md , Noor Amir Noor
Published: January 2018

Agriculture is the major driving force of Malaysian economic. The aim of this research study is to segment the behavior of paddy farmers in Malaysia and understand how they influence adoption, and rejection of a green fertilizer technology(GFT). The objective of this paper is to establish the thinking which enables a society to bridge the gap between embracing GFT. Furthermore, the study builds the conceptual framework and examine the relationship among the relevant construct this framework is critically examining the technology adoption literature. To make this conceptual framework robust it is found in the literature that theory of planned behavior and Theory of reasoned action play the major role to segment farmer's behavior towards the adoption of GFT. This chapter highlights a number of issues that have bearings on the future roles of the fertilizer usage among Malaysian paddy farmers. These include the emerging notion of the awareness and trust of the GFT efficient way to increase the production.
How Perceived Quality Works in New Technology Adoption Process
Authors: Kim Ji Yoon , Yuan Xina , Kim Sang Yong , Lee Young Joo
Published: January 2018

This study attempts to explore the role of consumer's perception of quality within the new technology adoption process which is given little attention in the field of Information systems. In this regard, the authors developed an exploratory conceptual model in the level of consumer perception by exploring the antecedent of perceived quality. Three factors are introduced as determinants of perceived quality: perceived usefulness, perceived risk and trialability. Moreover, the authors investigate cross national differences among three countries including China, Korea and Japan by estimating our proposed model. An empirical study is conducted with analysis of the adoption mechanism for a new innovative product. Data analysis results support the authors proposed hypotheses, and significant differences are found among the three countries in regards to the new technology adoption process.
Global Governance vs. Regional Governance in Social Policy
Authors: Ünlü Adviye Damla
Published: January 2018

Globalization, the much-debated phenomenon of the last decade, has affected the governance of policies. Social policy governance is one of the most affected notions of the globalization process. Context of debates on social policy governance has been transformed from state-centric analysis to the multi-centric analysis. The future of the social policy is highly linked to both global governance and regional governance. In this regard, the aim of this chapter is to draw attention to the multi-centric nature of the social policy governance and to form a framework for the effects of intergovernmental institutions on social policy governance and to discuss their weaknesses and strengths particularly regarding the United Nations, Bretton Woods institutions and the European Union.
Exploring Technology Through Issues of Social Justice
Authors: Clausen Courtney K.
Published: January 2018

This action research project focuses on student-centered learning through the application of cultural relevant pedagogy and culturally responsive teaching in a high school summer enrichment computer science course. The research question guiding this project was: How does the integration of cultural competencies and culturally responsive teaching impact student learning in the secondary classroom? The content of the course focused on students learning about computer applications, research using digital resources retrieved from the Internet, and digital literacy as outlined by the International Society for Technology in Education Standards Students. This chapter examines pedagogy and practice highlighting the integration of culturally relevant pedagogy and cultural relevant teaching into a computer science course focused on current events and issues of social justice.
The Formation of Consensus in Iranian Online Communities
Authors: Honari Ali
Published: January 2018

For several years now, the role that digitally mediated social movements and online communities play in challenging authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa has been extensively debated. The focus of attention on the political use of the Internet shapes conventional wisdom that political issues are widespread in online communities in these contexts and that the users are predominantly oppositional users with political democratic motivations. Using fresh methods and techniques to gather a variety of online data, this chapter argues and reveals that, at least in the case of Iran, this view selectively overlooks the diversity of users and the broad range of issues frequently and intensively discussed among users in online communities. The failure to examine a broader range of issues means that scholars have neglected how consensus forms and develops among online users in other issues. This study broadens our understanding of the current social issues and possible areas of change in Iran through investigating a more comprehensive frame of the Iranian web.
Language Teachers' Perceptions of External and Internal Factors in Their Instructional (Non-) Use of Technology
Authors: Liu Haixia , Lin Chin-Hsi , Zhang Dongbo , Zheng Binbin
Published: January 2018

Prior studies (e.g., Li & Walsh, 2011) found that language teachers did not use technology fully despite its possible facilitating function in language teaching. Through a survey and group discussions, this study explores pre-service Chinese-language teachers' perceptions of the internal and external barriers to their instructional technology use. The respondents (N=47) expressed five main types of external barriers: a) lack of technology, b) difficulty in accessing the available technology, c) lack of technical support, d) lack of proper assessment, and e) negative parental attitude. The two main internal barriers identified in this research were a) negative attitude originating from teachers' pedagogical beliefs, and b) lack of technology-related knowledge. The findings of this study should be of practical use in the future design and implementation of professional development aiming at improving language teachers' use of technology in teaching.
Investigating the Connection Between Awareness and Internet Non-Use
Authors: Ting Carol
Published: January 2018

Empirical studies on technology adoption usually are based on data from self-reported measures, and a large subset of this literature draws on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) or Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). However, for non-Internet users, self-reported measures and these theoretical frameworks face important limitations: non-users often are under-informed about the technology and are unable to accurately explain their non-use. In addition, the measurement instruments in the TAM/TPB literature often are not applicable to non-users. Addressing these issues, this paper examines non-Internet users' awareness of the Internet's benefits and its impact on adoption intention. Focusing on the under-informed, this approach substitutes awareness for perceived usefulness (or affective attitude). Test results demonstrate good predictive power on non-Internet users' adoption intention, calling for caution when applying these commonly used analytical tools to study late-adopters of technology.
Consumer Creativity as a Prerequisite for the Adoption of New Technological Products
Authors: Frederiksen Marianne Harbo , Tanev Stoyan
Published: January 2018

Creativity is often conceptualized as actions and outcomes related to the creation of novel and useful ideas within the context of the development of new products. It is usually positioned in the activities of designers who play the role of “the creator”. In this paper the authors suggest “changing the subject” to consumers by claiming that creativity plays a key role in the adoption phase when they attempt to address their needs and preferences by appropriating the use value of everyday technological products. They emphasize that the product value perception which makes a potential consumer buy is the result of this consumer's own activities and efforts. Thus, the intensity of consumers' creative activities becomes a critical adoption factor. The authors suggest that activity-based approaches such as actor-network theory and activity theory could be quite appropriate in studying the dynamics and the design of new product adoption, and offer a comparative analysis indicating that actor-network theory has a greater potential to contribute to the interplay between consumer creativity and technology adoption research.
A Systematic Literature Review on Immigrants' Motivation for ICT Adoption and Use
Authors: Acharya Bhanu Bhakta
Published: January 2018

Several studies demonstrate that immigrants use computers and the Internet more than non-immigrants or earlier immigrants. What motivates immigrants to use information and communication technology (ICT)? What are the factors that influence immigrants' ICT behaviors? For this study, the author chose 20 peer-reviewed articles published between 2001 and 2015 to study immigrants' motivations for ICT adoption and use. The following article will discuss two motives for immigrants' ICT use, as well as identify seven factors influencing adoption, non-adoption, use, and non-use.
Illumination Invariant Face Recognition
Authors: Chan Chi Ho , Zou Xuan , Poh Norman , Kittler Josef
Published: January 2018

Illumination variation is one of the well-known problems in face recognition, especially in uncontrolled environments. This chapter presents an extensive and up-to-date survey of the existing techniques to address this problem. This survey covers the conventional passive techniques that attempt to solve the illumination problem by studying the visible light images, in which face appearance has been altered by varying illumination, as well as the active techniques that aim to obtain images of face modalities invariant to environmental illumination.
Introduction
Authors: Jakóbczak Dariusz Jacek
Published: January 2018

Computer vision needs suitable methods of shape representation and contour reconstruction. One of them, invented by the author and called method of Hurwitz-Radon Matrices (MHR), can be used in representation and reconstruction of shapes of the objects in the plane. Proposed method is based on a family of Hurwitz-Radon (HR) matrices. The matrices are skew-symmetric and possess columns composed of orthogonal vectors. 2D shape is represented by the set of successive nodes. It is shown how to create the orthogonal and discrete OHR operator and how to use it in a process of shape representation and reconstruction. Contour of the object, represented by successive contour points, consists of information which allows us to describe many important features of the object as shape coefficients. 2D curve modeling is a basic subject in many branches of industry and computer science.
Feature Extraction Algorithms to Color Image
Authors: Wu QingE , Yang Weidong
Published: January 2018

The existing image processing algorithms mainly studied on feature extraction of gray image with one-dimensional parameter, such as edges, corners. However, the extraction of some characteristic points to color image with three-dimensional parameters, such as the extraction of color edge, corner points, inflection points, etc., is an image problem to be urgently solved. In order to carry out a fast and accurate feature extraction on color image, this paper proposes two types of extraction algorithms to color edge and corner points of color image, i.e., similar color segment algorithm and pixel probabilistic algorithm, compares with the two algorithms, gives the two algorithms are used to different color distribution situations, as well as shows the extraction effect of color by the combination of the two algorithms, moreover, gives the contrast experiment and effect analysis of the two algorithms. To compare the similar color segment algorithm with the probabilistic algorithm, experimental results show that the similar color segment algorithm is better than the pixel probabilistic algorithm under the more obvious color edge, because it has the better edge detection, stronger anti-noise ability, faster processing speed and other advantages. Under the transition phase of color edge is gentle or color edge is no clear, the image detection effect of the pixel probabilistic algorithm is better than that of the similar color segment algorithm. But the combinative effect of the two algorithms is the best in this case, which is more close to the color effect of original image. Moreover, this paper analyzes the performance of the similar color segment algorithm, and gives the comparison of the proposed two algorithms and existing classical algorithms used usually to feature extraction of color image. The two algorithms proposed and these researches development in this paper have not only enriched the contents of image processing algorithms, but also provide a solution tool for image segmentation, feature extraction to target, precise positioning, etc., such as extraction of complexion, physiological color photographs processing, feature extraction of ionosphere, detection and extraction of biological composition of oceans, to be applied to a lots of departments, such as the police, hospital departments, surgery, polar department, and so on, as well as provide a way of thinking for the rapid, accurate detection of case, surgery, scientific research information search.
Biologically Inspired Components in Embedded Vision Systems
Authors: Ang Li-Minn , Seng Kah Phooi , Ngau Christopher Wing Hong
Published: January 2018

Biological vision components like visual attention (VA) algorithms aim to mimic the mechanism of the human vision system. Often VA algorithms are complex and require high computational and memory requirements to be realized. In biologically-inspired vision and embedded systems, the computational capacity and memory resources are of a primary concern. This paper presents a discussion for implementing VA algorithms in embedded vision systems in a resource constrained environment. The authors survey various types of VA algorithms and identify potential techniques which can be implemented in embedded vision systems. Then, they propose a low complexity and low memory VA model based on a well-established mainstream VA model. The proposed model addresses critical factors in terms of algorithm complexity, memory requirements, computational speed, and salience prediction performance to ensure the reliability of the VA in a resource constrained environment. Finally a custom softcore microprocessor-based hardware implementation on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is used to verify the implementation feasibility of the presented model.
Fuzzy Approaches and Analysis in Image Processing
Authors: D Ezhilmaran , M Adhiyaman
Published: January 2018

Fuzzy set theory originates to a great extent of interest among the researchers in past decades. It is a key tool to handle the imperfect of information in the diverse field. Typically, it plays a very important role in image processing and found the significant development in many active areas such as pattern recognition, neural network, medical imaging, etc. The use of fuzzy set theory is to tackle uncertainty in the form of membership functions when there is an image gray levels or information is lost. This chapter concerns the preliminaries of fuzzy, intuitionistic fuzzy, type-2 fuzzy and intuitionistic type-2 fuzzy set theory and its application in the fingerprint image; furthermore, the contrast enhancement and edge detection are carried out for that with the assistance of fuzzy set theory. It is useful to the students who want to self-study. This chapter composed just to address that issue.
A Proposed Grayscale Face Image Colorization System Using Particle Swarm Optimization
Authors: Hasnat Abul , Halder Santanu , Bhattacharjee Debotosh , Nasipuri Mita
Published: January 2018

The proposed work is a novel grayscale face image colorization approach using a reference color face image. It takes a reference color image which presumably contains semantically similar color information for the query grayscale image and colorizes the grayscale face image with the help of the reference image. In this novel patch based colorization, the system searches a suitable patch on reference color image for each patch of grayscale image to colorize. Exhaustive patch search in reference color image takes much time resulting slow colorization process applicable for real time applications. So PSO is used to reduce the patch searching time for faster colorization process applicable in real time applications. The proposed method is successfully applied on 150 male and female face images of FRAV2D database. “Colorization Turing test” was conducted asking human subject to choose the image (close to the original color image) between colorized image using proposed algorithm and recent methods and in most of the cases colorized images using the proposed method got selected.
Visual Tracking Using Multimodal Particle Filter
Authors: Tung Tony , Matsuyama Takashi
Published: January 2018

Visual tracking of humans or objects in motion is a challenging problem when observed data undergo appearance changes (e.g., due to illumination variations, occlusion, cluttered background, etc.). Moreover, tracking systems are usually initialized with predefined target templates, or trained beforehand using known datasets. Hence, they are not always efficient to detect and track objects whose appearance changes over time. In this paper, we propose a multimodal framework based on particle filtering for visual tracking of objects under challenging conditions (e.g., tracking various human body parts from multiple views). Particularly, the authors integrate various cues such as color, motion and depth in a global formulation. The Earth Mover distance is used to compare color models in a global fashion, and constraints on motion flow features prevent common drifting effects due to error propagation. In addition, the model features an online mechanism that adaptively updates a subspace of multimodal templates to cope with appearance changes. Furthermore, the proposed model is integrated in a practical detection and tracking process, and multiple instances can run in real-time. Experimental results are obtained on challenging real-world videos with poorly textured models and arbitrary non-linear motions.
Automated System for Crops Recognition and Classification
Authors: AlShahrani Alaa M. , Al-Abadi Manal A. , Al-Malki Areej S. , Ashour Amira S. , Dey Nilanjan
Published: January 2018

Marketing profit optimization and preventing the crops' infections are a critical issue. This requires crops recognition and classification based on their characteristics and different features. The current work proposed a recognition/classification system that applied to differentiate between fresh (healthy) from rotten crops as well as to identify each crop from the other based on their common feature vectors. Consequently, image processing is employed to perform the statistical measurements of each crop. ImageJ software was employed to analyze the desired crops to extract their features. These extracted features are used for further crops recognition and classification using the Least Mean Square Error (LMSE) algorithm in Matlab. Another classification method based on Bag of Features (BoF) technique is employed to classify crops into classes, namely healthy and rotten. The experimental results are applied of databases for orange, mango, tomato and potatoes. The achieved recognition (classification) rate by using the LMSE for all datasets (healthy and rotten) has 100%. However, after adding 10%, 20%, and 30% Gaussian noise, the obtained the average recognition rates were 85%, 70%, and 25%; respectively. Moreover, the classification (healthy and rotten) using BoF achieved accuracies of 100%, 88%, 94%, and 75% for potatoes, mango, orange, and tomato; respectively. Furthermore, the classification for all the healthy datasets achieved accuracy of 88%.
Support Vector Machines and Applications
Authors: Ladwani Vandana M.
Published: January 2018

Support Vector Machines is one of the powerful Machine learning algorithms used for numerous applications. Support Vector Machines generate decision boundary between two classes which is characterized by special subset of the training data called as Support Vectors. The advantage of support vector machine over perceptron is that it generates a unique decision boundary with maximum margin. Kernalized version makes it very faster to learn as the data transformation is implicit. Object recognition using multiclass SVM is discussed in the chapter. The experiment uses histogram of visual words and multiclass SVM for image classification.
Search Space Reduction in Biometric Databases
Authors: Kavati Ilaiah , Prasad Munaga V. N. K. , Bhagvati Chakravarthy
Published: January 2018

Deployment of biometrics for personal recognition in various real time applications lead to large scale databases. Identification of an individual on such large biometric databases using a one-one matching (i.e., exhaustive search) increases the response time of the system. Reducing the search space during identification increases the search speed and reduces the response time of the system. This chapter presents a comprehensive review of the current developments of the search space reduction techniques in biometric databases. Search space reduction techniques for the fingerprint databases are categorized into classification and indexing approaches. For the palmprint, the current search space reduction techniques are classified as hierarchical matching, classification and indexing approaches. Likewise, the iris indexing approaches are classified as texture based and color based techniques.
Application of Computer Vision Techniques for Exploiting New Video Coding Mechanisms
Authors: Arsenio Artur Miguel
Published: January 2018

One of the main concerns for current multimedia platforms is the provisioning of content that provides a good Quality of Experience to end-users. This can be achieved through new interactive, personalized content applications, as well by improving the image quality delivered to the end-user. This chapter addresses these issues by describing mechanisms for changing content consumption. The aim is to give Application Service Providers (ASPs) new ways to allow users to configure contents according to their personal tastes while also improving their Quality of Experience, and to possibly charge users for such functionalities. The authors propose to employ computer vision techniques to produce extra object information, which further expands the range of video personalization possibilities on the presence of new video coding mechanisms1.
Categorization of Plant and Insect Species via Shape Analysis
Authors: Zhao Haifeng , Wang Jiangtao , Yang Wankou
Published: January 2018

This chapter presents a graph-based approach to automatically categorize plant and insect species. In this approach, the plant leaf and insect objects are segmented from the background semi-automatically. For each object, the contour is then extracted, so that the contour points are used to form the vertices of a graph. We propose a vectorization method to recover clique histogram vectors from the graphs for classification. The clique histogram represents the distribution of one vertex with respect to its adjacent vertices. This treatment permits the use of a codebook approach to represent the graph in terms of a set of codewords that can be used for purposes of support vector machine classification. The experimental results show that the method is not only effective but also robust, and comparable with other methods in the literature for species recognition.
Automatic Learning Improves Human-Robot Interaction in Productive Environments
Authors: Hernandez Mauricio Andres Zamora , Marin Eldon Caldwell , Garcia-Rodriguez Jose , Azorin-Lopez Jorge , Cazorla Miguel
Published: January 2018

In the creation of new industries, products and services -- all of which are advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution -- the human-robot interaction that includes automatic learning and computer vision are elements to consider since they promote collaborative environments between people and robots. The use of machine learning and computer vision provides the tools needed to increase productivity and minimizes delivery reaction times by assisting in the optimization of complex production planning processes. This review of the state of the art presents the main trends that seek to improve human-robot interaction in productive environments, and identifies challenges in research as well as in industrial - technological development in this topic. In addition, this review offers a proposal on the needs of use of artificial intelligence in all processes of industry 4.0 as a crucial linking element among humans, robots, intelligent and traditional machines; as well as a mechanism for quality control and occupational safety.
Encoding Human Motion for Automated Activity Recognition in Surveillance Applications
Authors: Ladjailia Ammar , Bouchrika Imed , Harrati Nouzha , Mahfouf Zohra
Published: January 2018

As computing becomes ubiquitous in our modern society, automated recognition of human activities emerges as a crucial topic where it can be applied to many real-life human-centric scenarios such as smart automated surveillance, human computer interaction and automated refereeing. Although the perception of activities is spontaneous for the human visual system, it has proven to be extraordinarily difficult to duplicate this capability into computer vision systems for automated understanding of human behavior. Motion pictures provide even richer and reliable information for the perception of the different biological, social and psychological characteristics of the person such as emotions, actions and personality traits of the subject. In spite of the fact that there is a considerable body of work devoted to human action recognition, most of the methods are evaluated on datasets recorded in simplified settings. More recent research has shifted focus to natural activity recognition in unconstrained scenes with more complex settings.
Bio-Inspired Techniques in Rehabilitation Engineering for Control of Assistive Devices
Authors: Purushothaman Geethanjali
Published: January 2018

The intelligent control of assistive devices is possible from bio-signals or gestures to find the user's intention. The goal of the user intention recognition system is to develop computational methods for decoding the acquired bio-signal data. One of the methods of accomplishing the objective will be using the pattern recognition system. The study of higher level control of assistive device using various data processing techniques with bio-inspired techniques is in progress. The knowledge of bio-inspired computation is essential for the neophytes to develop algorithms for identification of intention from bioelectric signals. Most literatures, demonstrates the application using signals and not much definite study describes the various bio-inspiring computation involved to develop the control of assistive devices in real-time. Therefore, this chapter presents a brief survey of the various bio-inspiring techniques used in interfacing devices for identification of information from the user intends.
Human Face Region Detection Driving Activity Recognition in Video
Authors: Doulamis Anastasios , Voulodimos Athanasios , Varvarigou Theodora
Published: January 2018

Automatic recognition of human actions from video signals is probably one of the most salient research topics of computer vision with a tremendous impact for many applications. In this chapter, the authors introduce a new descriptor, the Human Constrained Pixel Change History (HC-PCH), which is based on PCH but focuses on the human body movements over time. They propose a modification of the conventional PCH that entails the calculation of two probabilistic maps based on human face and body detection, respectively. These HC-PCH features are used as input to an HMM-based classification framework, which exploits redundant information from multiple streams by employing sophisticated fusion methods, resulting in enhanced activity recognition rates.
Early Recognition of Suspicious Activity for Crime Prevention
Authors: Geetha M. Kalaiselvi , Arunnehru J. , Geetha A.
Published: January 2018

Automatic identification and early prediction of suspicious human activities are of significant importance in video surveillance research. By recognizing and predicting a criminal activity at an early stage, regrettable incidents can be avoided. Initially, an action recognition framework is developed for identifying the suspicious actions using interest point based 2D and 3D features and transform based approaches. This is subsequently followed by a novel approach for predicting the suspicious actions for crime prevention in real-world scenario. The prediction problem is formulated probabilistically and a novel approach that employs the mixture models for prediction is introduced. The developed system yields promising results for predicting the actions in real-time.
China's Environmental Challenges
Authors: Ploberger Christian
Published: January 2018

China's environmental and climate-change-related risk provides serious challenges to its development as they carry actual and potential social and economic implications for the livelihood of its population. Among the various environmental risks China faces, pollution in its various forms, drought and flooding, water scarcity, and sea-level rise are some of the more challenging ones. This variety of environmental issues highlights the complexity of addressing and managing these challenges, not least since China's growth strategy has the potential to exacerbate the negative impact on the environment, even when protecting the environment is a specific topic of the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020). China's environmental and climate-change-related challenge also carries regional and global implications by facilitating the global climate change dynamic as well as increasing the negative impact on the regional environment in northeast Asia. Even so, it would be misleading to identify China as the major source of global climate change.
The Agricultural Routing Planning in Field Logistics
Authors: Utamima Amalia , Reiners Torsten , Ansaripoor Amir , Seyyedhasani Hasan
Published: January 2018

The agricultural sector is facing the need to gain a higher yield on their fields while optimising their operations to stay competitive and satisfy the continuously increasing demand for produce. Cost reductions can be achieved by increasing the effective field size and reducing the operations without gain (e.g., driving longer distance to harvest the field). The agricultural routing planning (ARP) problem represents a specialisation of the travelling salesman problem (TSP) or vehicle routing problem (VRP) with focus on the agricultural operations and considerations of the field and vehicles configurations. In addition, various adaptations of the problem can be found in the literature that define a new problem class with specialised optimisation needs. This chapter introduces the ARP and reviews the past and current research and developments.
A Contemporary Approach to Plan Independent Logistics Actors
Authors: Taghipour Atour
Published: January 2018

Companies are dependent on the resources and information of other members of the supply chains. To manage their resources, companies use coordination mechanisms. Despite the inter-dependency between logistics actors, they are independent units with conflicting objectives. These two characteristics can increase the complexity of planning in logistics networks. According to the literature of supply chain management, some mechanisms largely use the information shared by members to achieve an optimal solution and some others are based on minimum level of information sharing. This chapter addresses the coordination problem in a logistics networks with more than two partners, while the information is in a private element that is not exchanged with other partners.
Truck Driver Turnover
Authors: Nadler S. Scott , Kros John F.
Published: January 2018

The purpose of this chapter is to identify those constructs that lead to driver turnover and to develop a logistic regression model to assist in predicting driver turnover. Interviews with drivers were conducted with 154 drivers at large truck stops. The theory of reasoned action (TRA), originating in the social psychology literature, is the theoretical approach in this study. This chapter makes contributions in two areas. From a managerial perspective, the study results indicate that companies can use a technique such as logistic regression as part of their driver-retention efforts in order to create competitive advantage by increasing efficiency and cutting costs. The resulting logistic regression model provides a concrete tool for analyzing driver turnover. Based on four factors, the model accounts for 84% of the variance and accurately predicts which drivers or driver classes are most at risk of turning over.
Industrie 4.0 by Siemens
Authors: Cozmiuc Diana , Petrisor Ioan
Published: January 2018

This article describes how digital disruption transforms all industries, leading to new business models based on the new technologies. In manufacturing, one model for digital disruption is Industrie 4.0, supported mainly in Germany. Proposals for Industrie 4.0 involve the virtualization and vertical and horizontal integration of the value chain, digital services, the digital transformation of products, the digital transformation of production equipment, the digital transformation of factories and supply chains. Whereas the former two are already in place today, the latter is researched and developed. Products and production equipment will be transformed from physical to cyber-physical. Together, they will negotiate as peers over the Internet of Things and form smart factories. Via the Internet of Services, the entire supply chain will be integrated. The most popular business model is mass customization, according to which the customer order triggers production and logistics in the entire supply chain. Siemens intends to use information technology to migrate customers to tomorrow's digitalization.
Influence of Axial Length on Axially Compressed Aluminum Polygonal Tube
Authors: Yokoya Keisuke , Miyazaki Makoto , Tojo Yusuke
Published: January 2018

Aluminum tubes are efficient energy absorbing components and are widely used in the automobile industry. In the previous report, the authors investigated the influence of cross-sectional shape on axially compressed aluminum tube by numerical analysis. However, there are only a few reports on length of aluminum tube. This paper deals with the influence of axial length and reinforcing rib on dynamic axially compressed aluminum polygonal tube in order to obtain the basic data of buckling and impact resistance. A numerical analysis of the dynamic deformation process of the polygonal tube was made with a finite element method. The result shows that even if the axial length was changed, there was no difference in the trend of the load-displacement curve in each cross-sectional shape. However, the maximum load part on load-displacement curve was changed. The buckling was generated partially and the deformation was larger at the corners in each axial length and cross-sectional shape.
Investigation on Microvoid Nucleation of High Temperature Nickel Based Superalloy under Thermal Shock
Authors: Shang Xin Chun , Xu Yan Ting , Wu Pei Fei
Published: January 2018

The metal would overheat and even burn under the thermal shock arisen as laser drilling, which causes micro-damage inside the metal. Cavitation is the most important origin for crack propagation and failure of metal. To understand the damage mechanism in the heat affected zone of the high temperature nickel based superalloy DD6, an experiment of microvoid nucleation was designed and implemented by laser drilling in DD6 sheet. The complex characteristics of micro-damage including microvoid near the perforation were observed by scanning electron microscopy. An analytic solution of the temperature field in DD6 sheet for thermal shock arisen as laser drilling was obtained on the basis of the non-Fourier heat conduction theory. As a result, the minimum of peak temperature during the thermal shock in the zone of microvoid nucleation was estimated, it can be approximately regarded as critical temperature of nucleation.
Numerical Analysis of Behavior on Opposing Unsteady Supersonic Jets in a Flow Field with Shields
Authors: Kinoshita Toshiki , Fukuoka Hiroshi , Umezu Ikurou
Published: January 2018

Collision dynamics of opposing unsteady supersonic jets injected in background gas with shock waves were calculated to simulate double pulsed laser ablation. Since the jets are deflected by collision and the motion of debris is ballistic. This characteristic can be used to reduce the number of debris when shields are mounted in front of substrate. The flow of jets through installed shields is complicated by the interaction between shields and jets, and between shields and shock waves. We investigate influence of shield position on the shock waves and the jets by numerical calculations. Axisymmetric two-dimensional compressible Euler equations were solved using the finite volume method by using ANSYS Fluent 14.0.0 code. The shields with slit was mounted parallel to the direction of initially injected jets. In order to investigate the influence of shield position on the shock waves and the jets, the shield position and background gas pressure were adopted as parameters. The jets and shock wave are deflected by collision and they can pass through the slit of shields. The passed shock wave reflects at the substrate mounted behind the slits and it forces back the jet to decrease the jet velocity. The shield position governs the velocity and amount of the jet that reach the substrate.