Document retrieval from compressed images
With the emergence of digital libraries, more and more documents are stored and transmitted through the Internet in the format of compressed images. It is of significant meaning to develop a system which is capable of retrieving documents from these compressed document images. Aiming at the popular compression standard-CCITT Group 4 which is widely used for compressing document images, we present an approach to retrieve the documents from CCITT Group 4 compressed document images in this paper. The black and white changing elements are extracted directly from the compressed document images to act as the feature pixels, and the connected components are detected simultaneously. Then the word boxes are bounded based on the merging of the connected components. Weighted Hausdorff distance is proposed to assign all of the word objects from both the query document and the document from database to corresponding classes by an unsupervised classifier, whereas the possible stop words are excluded. Document vectors are built by the occurrence frequency of the word object classes, and the pair-wise similarity of two document images is represented by the scalar product of the document vectors. Nine groups of articles pertaining to different domains are used to test the validity of the presented approach. Preliminary experimental results with the document images captured from students’ theses show that the proposed approach has achieved a promising performance.

title: Improving Pronoun Resolution Using Statistics-Based Semantic Compatibility Information
abstract: In this paper we focus on how to improve pronoun resolution using the statistics-based semantic compatibility information. We investigate two unexplored issues that influence the effectiveness of such information: statistics source and learning framework. Specifically, we for the first time propose to utilize the web and the twin-candidate model, in addition to the previous combination of the corpus and the single-candidate model, to compute and apply the semantic information. Our study shows that the semantic compatibility obtained from the web can be effectively incorporated in the twin-candidate learning model and significantly improve the resolution of neutral pronouns.

title: Correcting document image warping based on regression of curved text lines
abstract: Image warping is a common problem when one scans or photocopies a document page from a thick bound volume, resulting in shading and curved text lines in the spine area of the bound volume. This will not only impair readability, but will also reduce the OCR accuracy. Further to our earlier attempt to correct such images, this paper proposes a simpler connected component analysis and regression technique. Compared to our earlier method, the present system is computationally less expensive and is resolution independent too. The implementation of the new system and improvement of OCR accuracy are presented in this paper.

title: Motion deblurring for optical character recognition
abstract: This paper investigates the problem of blurring caused by motion during image capture of text documents. Motion blurring prevents proper optical character recognition of the document text contents. One area of such applications is to deblur name card images obtained from handheld cameras. In this paper, a complete motion deblurring procedure for document images has been proposed. The method handles both uniform linear motion blur and uniform acceleration motion blur. Experiments on synthetic and real-life blurred images prove the feasibility and reliability of this algorithm provided that the motion is not too irregular. The restoration procedure consumes only small amount of computation time.

title: Document Flattening through Grid Modeling and Regularization
abstract: For document images captured by a digital camera, perspective and geometric distortions make it hard to recognize the document content properly. In this paper, we propose an integrated document restoration technique, which is capable of removing perspective and geometric distortions, and producing a flattened and fronto-parallel text image that is friendly to the generic OCR systems. The proposed document restoration is accomplished through grid modeling, which divides camera images into multiple quadrilateral grids using vertical text directions and the x lines and base lines. The global distortions are then removed through grid regularization that transforms the quadrilateral grids together with the pixel contents to the regular square grids. Experimental results show the proposed method is fast and easy for implementation

title: Chart analysis and recognition in document images
abstract: Hidden Markov models are a probabilistic modeling tool for time series data. It has been successfully applied to many areas, such as speech recognition, hand-written character recognition, etc. In this paper, we present a novel statistical approach using ergodic hidden Markov models to recognize scientific charts. We also present a newly developed feature extraction method for chart images. Unlike traditional primitive-based diagram recognition method, our approach need not recognize the graphic primitives in charts thus bypassing the recognition error problem caused by the inaccurate primitive extraction that is also a major obstacle to the construction of a general chart recognition system.

title: Energy-efficient ID-based group key agreement protocols for wireless networks
abstract: One useful application of wireless networks is for secure group communication, which can be achieved by running a group key agreement (GKA) protocol. One well-known method of providing authentication in GKA protocols is through the use of digital signatures. Traditional certificate-based signature schemes require users to receive and verify digital certificates before verifying the signatures but this process is not required in ID-based signature schemes. In this paper, we present an energy-efficient ID-based authenticated GKA protocol and four energy-efficient ID-based authenticated dynamic protocols, namely join, leave, merge and partition protocol, to handle dynamic group membership events, which are frequent in wireless networks. We provide complexity and energy cost analysis of our protocols and show that our protocols are more energy-efficient and suitable for wireless networks.

title: The use of bigrams to enhance text categorization
abstract: In this paper, we present an efficient text categorization algorithm that generates bigrams selectively by looking for ones that have an especially good chance of being useful. The algorithm uses the information gain metric, combined with various frequency thresholds. The bigrams, along with unigrams, are then given as features to two different classifiers: Naive Bayes and maximum entropy. The experimental results suggest that the bigrams can substantially raise the quality of feature sets, showing increases in the break-even points and F1 measures. The McNemar test shows that in most categories the increases are very significant. Upon close examination of the algorithm, we concluded that the algorithm is most successful in correctly classifying more positive documents, but may cause more negative documents to be classified incorrectly.

title: An Empirical Investigation of the Auction Buyer's Choice to Buy Out or Bid: Cry of Regret or Laugh of Satisfaction?
abstract: Online auction buyers often face the predicament of choosing between the buyout strategy and the bidding strategy to acquire an auctioned product. A buyer who chooses to buy out will obtain the item immediately at the posted price while the one who chooses to bid will have to monitor the bidding process in the hope of acquiring the product at a price lower than the posted one. Despite the wealth of auction literature, relatively few studies empirically assess the buyout option. This study seeks to bridge the gap by investigating how the buyout option (permanent or temporary) and price parameters (starting price and buyout price) affect the formation of two emotions, namely anticipated satisfaction of choice and anticipated regret of outcome, which in turn affect the buying strategy (i.e., buy out or bid). We employ laboratory experiments in our study and our results indicate two interesting findings. First, when the permanent buyout option is available, a buyer is more likely to exhibit loss aversion characteristics and prefer to adopt the buyout strategy. Second, when the temporary buyout option is present, the thought that one could avoid premature ending of auction by exercising the bidding option at the start decreases one’s preference for adopting the buyout strategy. Implications of these results for further research and practice are discussed.

title: A Human Capital Perspective of Organizational Intention to Adopt Open Source Software
abstract: This study adopts the human capital perspective as a theoretical lens to understand the factors that influence organizational intention to adopt open source software (OSS). We posit that availability of internal human capital and accessibility to external human capital significantly affect an organization’s intention to adopt OSS either directly or indirectly through switching cost. We analyze survey responses from 81 chief information officers or information systems managers and the results indicate that organizational availability of internal human capital has an indirect effect on an organization’s intention to adopt OSS through switching cost whereas accessibility to external human capital has a direct effect on an organization’s intention to adopt OSS. This study has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the unique approach from the human capital perspective adds to the extant literature on organizational adoption of innovation and calls for more attention to be directed at understanding the influence of human capital in an increasingly technologically complex environment. Practically, our findings suggest that potential OSS adopters and proponents should develop the human capital necessary for effective exploitation of OSS.

title: Comparison-Shopping Websites: An Empirical Investigation on the Influence of Decision Aids and Information Load on Consumer Decision-Making Behavior
abstract: Rapid advances in Internet commerce technology have brought about the emergence of comparison-shopping Websites, which act as agents to consolidate vast amounts of product information. Researchers have traditionally focused on incorporating the latest database interrogation technology and investigating the economic implications of the existence of comparison-shopping Websites. Little attention has been paid to understanding whether the decision aids provided are capable of assisting a consumer in managing a large quantity of information or, more importantly, are compatible with the decision-making behavior of the consumer. This study surveys several successful comparison-shopping Websites, enumerates two comercially successful forms of decision aids (i.e., screening and sorting), and examines their effects on decision effectiveness under different information loads. Based on a 3×2×2 factorial controlled experiment, we had three major findings. First, more sophisticated screening aids that assist a consumer in filtering a large quantity of information do not necessarily improve decision effectiveness. Surprisingly, our results even suggest that in some circumstances the opposite could be true. Second, the results indicate that the effectiveness of decision aids, to a large extent, depends on the information load. Third, decision makers are adaptive. One may supplement the absence of more sophisticated screening aids with the sorting aid.