Chinese Word Searching In Imaged Documents
An approach to searching for user-specified words in imaged Chinese documents, without the requirements of layout analysis and OCR processing of the entire documents, is proposed in this paper. A small number of Chinese characters that cannot be successfully bounded using connected component analysis due to larger gaps between elements within the characters are blacklisted. A suitable character that is not included in the blacklist is chosen from the user-specified word as the initial character to search for a matching candidate in the document. Once a matched candidate is found, the adjacent characters in the horizontal and vertical directions are examined for matching with other corresponding characters in the user-specified word, subject to the constraints of alignment (either horizontal or vertical direction) and size similarity. A weighted Hausdorff distance is proposed for the character matching. Experimental results show that the present method can effectively search the user-specified Chinese words from the document images with the format of either horizontal or vertical text lines, or both appearing on the same image.

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: 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: 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: Authenticated Broadcast Encryption Scheme
abstract: With the advancement of wireless networks and mobile access devices such as cell phones and PDAs, multimedia services could be offered through wireless broadcast networks to these mobile devices. Therefore, there is a need to securely deliver multimedia content/data to many users over an insecure channel. Broadcast encryption scheme could provide this solution. The first formal study of broadcast encryption scheme is by Fiat and Noar in 1993. Since then, many broadcast encryption schemes have been proposed to improve the efficiency which is measured by three parameters, that is, length of transmission messages, users' storage and computational overhead at a user device. Some broadcast encryption schemes require less users storage, but the length of transmission messages or computation overhead depends on the number of users. In this paper, we proposed an authenticated broadcast encryption scheme which has an additional property than current proposed broadcast encryption schemes, that is, all users can verify who the sender is. The proposed scheme is proved to be secure against chosen ciphertext attacks based on the decision l-bilinear Diffie-Hellman exponent assumption. Furthermore, the simulation results, transmission messages nearly independent of the number of users and reasonable user storage show that the proposed authenticated broadcast encryption scheme is efficient and suitable for mobile devices.

title: An Investigation of Online Group-Buying Institution and Buyer Behavior
abstract: This study draws on interdependency theory to propose and assess the effects of two artifacts - conditional purchase and information cue - on decisional choice in the online group-buying context. Our results suggest that buyers presented with conditional purchase options (i.e., of not honoring the purchase when the expected discount price is not met) are more willing to make a purchase choice (i.e., deviate from an inactive inertia). Counter-intuitively, provision of information cues (i.e., information about procurement actions of the other buyers) appears to induce inaction. However, when a choice has to be made between a riskier and a less risky choice, the presence of information cues leads to a higher propensity for the riskier choice. Implications for theory and practice are further discussed.

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: Low-power group key agreement for heterogeneous wireless networks
abstract: Heterogeneous wireless networks are gaining popularity as users can be connected to these networks without any cables and even when they are mobile. The high power nodes in heterogeneous wireless networks do not have energy constraints but the user nodes, which can be large in numbers, are usually low power energy constrained devices. Therefore, the GKA protocol used to secure group communications in these networks has to take into consideration both the low power nature of the user nodes and the network size. In this paper, we present an energy efficient and scalable GKA protocol, which uses our proposed Contributory Ring-Centralized (ContRi-Central) group model. Besides providing complexity analysis, we also show the computational and communication energy consumption costs analysis of all nodes running our proposed scheme and four other efficient GKA protocols. Both the complexity analysis and energy consumption costs analysis indicate that our proposed scheme is more efficient and suitable for heterogeneous wireless networks.

title: Public-Key Encryption from ID-Based Encryption Without One-Time Signature
abstract: Design a secure public key encryption scheme and its security proof are one of the main interests in cryptography In 2004, Canetti, Halevi and Katz  constructed a public key encryption (PKE) from a selective identity-based encryption scheme with a strong one-time signature scheme In 2005, Boneh and Katz  improved Canetti-Halevi-Katz construction by replacing a strong one-time signature with a message authentication code, but it is not publicly verifiable Later, Boyen, Mei and Waters  constructed PKE scheme directly from Waters' IBE scheme  , which is only secure against direct chosen-ciphertext attack and is not secure against adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack In 2006,  further improved the efficiency of Canetti-Halevi-Katz (CHK) construction by directly from Boneh-Boyen identity based encryption (IBE) scheme  with a weak one-time signature In this paper, we construct an efficient public key encryption scheme without one-time signature, which preserves a publicly verifiable property and secure against adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack The construction of the proposed scheme is based on Boneh-Boyen identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme  and a trapdoor function We also show that the proposed scheme is more efficient than CHK construction.