| Romanian dependency parser developed based on parsers for other Romanic languages | | BIBAK | PDF | 1-20 | |
| Iulia Maria Florea; Traian Rebedea; Costin-Gabriel Chiru | |||
| Determining the syntactic dependencies is an important task in natural
language processing, as it is useful for improving the results of a wide range
of applications, such as machine translation, opinion mining,
question-answering systems and others. This paper presents an initial step for
semi-automatically building a corpus annotated with syntactic dependencies for
Romanian and enriched with information about the type of the words and the
relationships between them. As Romanian lacks an open-source syntactic or
dependency parser specially trained on Romanian phrases, this corpus is
necessary for obtaining better results for linguistic applications that are in
need of dependency parse trees. To achieve this, we have started from two types
of well-known parsers, the first trained for French syntactic parsing and the
second for Spanish dependency parsing, that have been modified for analyzing
phrases written in Romanian. The results we have obtained using these two
methods are compared with the ones returned by the single existing dependency
parser trained for Romanian on a medium-size corpus, which is available at this
moment as a web service. Keywords: natural language processing, dependency parsing, parser adaptation, feature
extraction, syntax | |||
| InstantPlay -- A Cloud Gaming Platform | | BIBAK | PDF | 21-36 | |
| Serban Ungureanu; Andrei Panu; Lenuta Alboaie; Sabin-Corneliu Buraga; Adrian Iftene | |||
| Cloud Gaming is a mechanism that enables users to play various games without
having them installed on their computers. Games are running on servers in cloud
and graphic output is compressed and sent over network. This offer major
advantages that we will underlie in Section 1. In Section 2 we present how
cloud gaming has become an effervescent field in computer science and we make a
brief introduction of similar solutions. In section 3 we describe our solution
and in next section we present a usage scenario and the results obtained
comparing our proposal with an existing trading platform. Keywords: cloud computing, gaming as a service, video streaming | |||
| Analytical platform for the study of usage data generated by telemedicine services | | BIBAK | PDF | 37-52 | |
| Daniela-Anca Sâu | |||
| Telemedicine researches nowadays focus more and more on the complexity of
the services that can be delivered and on the development of new paradigms of
healthcare delivery. The paper proposes a different approach, a study in one
area that has been neglected, but might provide useful insights for optimizing
telemedicine services offering and that consists in the analysis of the data
generated by a telemedicine application and correlating it with the
geographical area where the telemedicine services were accessed. The scope of
the study is to identify the most relevant data held by a telecommunication
operator and processing it to expose the results in a simple and intuitive
manner. Thus, a clear imagine of the usage indicators and the manner in which
this usage can be correlated with the geographical position will bring a
significant contribution in decision making process of optimizing telemedicine
services offering. With this purpose we propose as solution an analytical
platform based on a datamart that aliments an OLAP cube for enabling queries on
different axes of interest. The paper presents both the data modeling and
architecture, and the way of visualizing the results. The results visualization
is done in an interactive manner, through personalized dashboards that contain
the aggregated information at the highest level, enabling decision making in
telemedicine services offering and delivery. Keywords: data mining, data mart, Online Analytical Processing, Call Detail Records | |||
| Interactive marketing system on Internet | | BIBAK | PDF | 53-70 | |
| Electra Mitan; Ana-Maria Borozan | |||
| This paper presents IMM-Market, an interactive marketing system on Internet,
that can be used by any organization for the future development of business in
a modern manner. The system was developed as a web portal and includes the
following modules: information, networking, management, marketing. Users that
can access the system are divided in: authorised users (having operating
function; can access the system public zone), experts (having leading function;
can access the expert area), and administrators (can access the expert area and
the Administration component of the system). IMM-Market can be accessed by
anyone, anytime, and from anywhere. With a friendly interface IMM-Market is an
interactive business process management tool that can support: the
investigation of the market and consumption, testing of the products
acceptability on the market, sales modeling, tracking of the consumption
products, evaluation and testing of products, price research. Keywords: Interactive Marketing, Internet, Business Administration | |||
| User Interaction Techniques with 3D Particle-based Models | | BIBAK | PDF | 71-88 | |
| Denisa Copâean; Adrian Sabou; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| In order to develop flexible, highly-interactive applications we must ensure
interaction between the user and modeled objects. Particle-based modeling
introduces specific challenges with regard to interaction in the virtual
environment, requiring the development of particular interaction techniques in
order to simulate the user's natural operations. This paper presents user
interaction techniques with deformable particle-based models, namely selection,
manipulation and volume slicing. We also describe the concepts and techniques
that form the basis of these interactions, such as bounding volume and the
implementation of the slicing instrument. Finally we describe challenges
occurring when ensuring interaction in three-dimensional scene using
bi-dimensional capable input devices. Keywords: volumetric objects, 3D, parallelism, cutting | |||
| User interface standardization | | BIBAK | PDF | 89-92 | |
| David Faure; Jean Vanderdonckt | |||
| The UsiXML ITEA 2 project developed an innovative model-driven engineering
method to improve the user interface design for the benefit of both industrial
and academic end-users in terms of productivity and reusability. The goal of
UsiXML was to define, validate, and standardise an open user interface
description language (UIDL), increasing productivity and reusability, and
improving usability and accessibility. The development efforts in UsiXML
resulted in a draft submitted to W3C and were rewarded with the ITEA Excellence
Award 2013 for standardization. Keywords: user interfaces, model-based engineering, meta-models, standardization | |||
| Multi-User Interaction Meta-Model | | BIBAK | PDF | 93-116 | |
| Josefina Guerrero-Garcí Juan Gonzáz-Calleros | |||
| In recent years, there has been a wide interest on how groups of people work
together, and on how collaboration might be supported. Many authors, rely on
Task Modeling to design collaborative information systems. Task models can be
represented at various abstraction levels. When designers want to specify only
requirements regarding how activities should be performed, they consider only
the main high-level tasks. On the other hand, when designers aim to provide
precise design indications then the activities are represented at a small
granularity, thus including aspects related to the dialogue model of a user
interface (which defines how system and user actions can be sequenced). In this
paper a comparative analysis of selected models involving multiple users in an
interaction is provided in order to identify concepts which are underexplored
in today's multi-user interaction task modeling. This comparative analysis is
based on three families of criteria: information criteria, conceptual coverage,
and expressiveness. Merging the meta-models of the selected models enables to
come up with a broader meta-model that could be instantiated in most situations
involving multi-user interaction, like workflow information systems, CSCW. Keywords: Computer Supported Collaborative Work, Task Modeling, User Modeling,
Business Process, Workflow | |||
| A model-based approach to generate connection-aware applications for the mobile web | | BIBAK | PDF | 117-138 | |
| Javier R. Escolar; Cristina G. CachóIgnacio Marí Jean Vanderdonckt; Vivian Motti | |||
| The development of context-sensitive applications for the mobile web implies
significant challenges for developers, mainly due to device diversity and the
variability of the Delivery Context. One specific challenge is to create
applications able to work not only when connection is available but also when
disconnected. The effort required to create such applications is excessively
high in spite of the facilities provided by emerging technologies. A
model-based approach for the development of this type of applications is
presented in this article. We present a navigation model described by means of
an extended version of the State Charts eXtensible Markup Language (SCXML)
proposed by W3C. Keywords: mobile, web, offline applications, model-based, SCXML, navigation model | |||
| UsiGesture: Test and Evaluation of an Environment for Integrating Gestures in User Interfaces | | BIBAK | PDF | 139-160 | |
| Francois Beuvens; Jean Vanderdonckt | |||
| User interfaces allowing gesture recognition and manipulation are becoming
more and more popular these last years. It however remains a hard task for
programmers to developer such interfaces: some knowledge of recognition systems
is required, along with user experience and user interface management
knowledge. It is often difficult for only one developer to handle all this
knowledge by itself and it is why a team gathering different skills is most of
the time needed. We previously presented a method along with a tool in order to
ease the collaboration between members of such a team. In this paper, we
present results and feedbacks collected by observing different teams that
followed the method and/or used the proposed tool. Keywords: HCI, recognition, pen-based interaction, User interface modeling | |||
| Towards a Culture-Adaptable User-Interface Architecture | | BIBAK | PDF | 161-194 | |
| Iyad Khaddam; Jean Vanderdonckt | |||
| Culture plays a role in the way humans interact with the machine. It implies
changes on the UI to fit cultural needs, practices and preferences. Knowledge
on these implications are sparsed and insufficient until the moment. Employing
culture knowledge as rules in the design and development of software user
interfaces looks far to achieve. Even though, user interface designers and
developers still need to consider differences in user interfaces. Our approach
to support user interface developers and designers is to propose a user
interface architecture that enhances their ability to apply changes imposed by
culture. Our contribution is to analyse culture studies to identify concerns
and requirements for such architecture, propose an architecture that satisfies
some of these requirements and discuss an idea towards an enhanced one. Keywords: Culture, UI architecture, HCI, culture models | |||
| Using social networks among Romanian students -- variable, advantages and limits | | BIBAK | PDF | 195-208 | |
| Dragos Daniel Iordache | |||
| Social Networking Sites (SNSs) allow people to present themselves, join
interest groups and establish or maintain connections with others. Most social
networks are for teenagers and adults, although some have no lower age limit.
These sites can be oriented towards work-related contexts (LinkedIn.com),
connecting users with common interests or for university students (original
destination of Facebook.com). The goal of this paper is to identify the main
factors that motivate students in Romania to use various social networks, the
people encouraged to use them as well as the limits and possible risks
associated with use of SNSs. Results are based on content analysis of the
responses to the open questions of the instrument applied to 172 students from
the University of Bucharest and Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest. Keywords: Social Networking Sites, students, advantages, limits, determinants | |||
| The modeling, analysis and classification of conversations in collaborative environments | | BIBAK | PDF | 209-224 | |
| Alexandru Bardas; Mihai Dascalu; Stefan Trausan-Matu | |||
| The classification of conversations in collaborative environments is needed
for a better understanding of discussed subjects. Ontologies represent an
efficient and representative method of conceptualising a domain. Starting with
a predefined set of ontologies for multiple domains, a precise conversation
classification between multiple members is wanted. To facilitate this process,
the language in which the messages are written must be detected and there
should be as little grammatical errors as possible. In this manner, the
keywords used by the conversation's participants can be found among the
concepts from the ontologies, while the dominant and central concepts determine
the domains on which the conversations are classified. For doing this analysis,
we built a web collaborative platform that enables realtime communication
between users, the visualisation of keywords within ontologies using radial
graphs and the transcript export in an accessible format for further analysis.
The platform is accessible on any type of device, being capable of displaying
the minimal needed information for a mobile device and automatically rescaling
on a bigger screen. In this paper we provide details regarding the
application's implementation, the advantages of using it and its classification
system, as well as the benefits of integrating it in different educational
contexts. Keywords: instant messaging, conversation, collaboration, classification, spell
checking, ontology | |||
| A short classification of audio games in the context of improving interaction and accessibility for visually impaired people | | BIBAK | PDF | 225-238 | |
| Oana Balan; Alin Moldoveanu; Florica Moldoveanu; Oana-Maria Ferche | |||
| Making computer games accessible to blind people is a very difficult task.
As the majority of computer games available on the market today are
graphics-based, the visually impaired part of the population is highly deprived
of this useful technological means of entertainment and education. This lack of
accessibility has led to the development of adaptable and entertaining
audio-based games, since the late 1970s. As hearing is a relatively reliable
sense that can, to some extent, replace sight, these ludic virtual environments
render their complete experience through auditory cues. Even if at the moment
audio games do not draw the attention of developers as much as their video
counterparts, we believe that they present obvious advantages. They should be
studied more intensively in order to lead to the development of useful and
accessible applications that would improve the interaction between the computer
and the blind users. This paper aims to present a brief classification of the
most significant audio games and to discuss their functional aspects, the most
used means of interaction and the best design strategies related to the
development of alternative game approaches towards facilitating the connection
between the visually-disadvantaged players and the computer. Keywords: virtual reality, HCI, audio game, 3D sound, visually-impaired people | |||
| Practical implementation of a hand gesture recognition application for use in human-computer Interaction | | BIBAK | PDF | 239-258 | |
| Bradi Rares; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| The task of hand gesture recognition is actively researched and challenging
because of complex backgrounds, different lighting environments and
unpredictable hand movements. This paper presents an analysis along with an
implementation of a system that can recognize the hand center, the fingers and
the hand wrist. Hand center recognition is done by finding the minimum
inscribed circle in the hand contour. Fingers are detected using the
k-curvature algorithm. The hands positions along a trajectory are analyzed and
based on those a general direction is established. The features are tracked in
time using Kalman filter in order to achieve robustness in use and have
stability in the features locations. The hand gestures are made out of a
desired direction and a certain positioning of the fingers. An analysis is
performed on three levels with the purpose of: quantifying the robustness of
the system to lighting and background, determining the error rate and the
processing rate. Keywords: gesture recognition, hand gesture, k-curvature, real-time systems, image
segmentation, cameras, computer vision, feature extraction, tracking,
fingertips | |||
| Beta testing of a dynamic language identification software component -- preliminary results | | BIBAK | PDF | 259-272 | |
| Costin Pribeanu; Paul Fogarassy-Neszly | |||
| Automatic language identification in a given text belongs to a general
category of algorithms of text classifications with many applications. Some
recent developments concerns language dependent speech synthesis. For such
application, dynamic language identification is required, involving special
algorithms, capable to dynamically recognize the language in texts received as
a continuous stream of data. This paper presents some preliminary results
during the testing of two different versions of the dynamic language
identification implementation (alpha and beta), with emphasis on the second
one. Two parameters were manipulated during testing: the amount of analyzed
text and the inertia in changing the language. The evaluation has been done
from a usability perspective with a focus on the effectiveness and efficiency
of language identification. Beta testing results are useful to reveal the
optimal level of parameters and suggest new directions to improve the method
and algorithms. Keywords: automatic language recognition, dynamic language recognition, beta testing,
speech synthesis, usability, assistive technologies | |||
| Named entities identification | | BIBAK | PDF | 273-288 | |
| Liviu Sebastian Matei; Stefan Trausan Matu | |||
| An important topic in natural language processing is represented by named
entities recognition inside texts. This article describes a novel approach used
for detecting named entities that tries to improve the results obtained with
the named entity recognition module from Stanford NLP library. In order to
determine and classify named entities, this new model uses the Naive Bayes
classifier. Our method is focused on named entities of type person and
organization but it can be easily extended to other types of named entities. As
training data we are using text that is manually annotated, text annotated with
Stanford NLP toolkit and a set of XML files containing rules that describe
different patterns. After the training, we are using the naive Bayes classifier
in order to classify new entities. As test data we are using a Reuters
collection of approximate 25000 articles among which 150 articles were manually
annotated and used as training data. In order to evaluate the method we are
computing the precision, the recall and the F1 factor. Keywords: named entities, Bayes, machine learning, natural language processing | |||
| Some aspects of the internet influence on the health-related behavior of the Romanian students | | BIBAK | PDF | 289-304 | |
| Valentina Marinescu | |||
| The present article starts from the premise that the debate about the health
system offers a privileged perspective to address themes that are at the
intersection of media discourse, public health policies, institutions and
organizations in the field of medical and social issues. "What is the influence
of the Internet on the health behavior of Romanian students?" -- this was the
research question at the basis of the present article. A survey on a sample 330
students from the University of Bucharest was made in order to offer an answer.
The findings suggest that the Internet plays an important role in modelling
healthy behaviors of Romanian students. Keywords: health literacy, mass media, internet, health-related behavior | |||
| Using semantic resources in an image retrieval system | | BIBAK | PDF | 305-320 | |
| Alexandra-Mihaela Siriteanu; Adrian Iftene | |||
| In the recent years, with the development of the intelligent devices, users
are sharing more and more multimedia data across the Internet using social
networks. This is the reason why, web search has also become the main method
for people to fulfill their information needs. Nevertheless, searching for
diverse data is not that straightforward, since most information retrieval
systems base their algorithms on popularity, relevance, rather than
dissimilarity. In the CHIST-ERA project MUCKE (Multimedia and User Credibility
Knowledge Extraction), we created a multimedia retrieval system that takes into
consideration both relevance and diversity. To address the problem of
diversification, we explore two approaches: (1) using semantic resources (like
YAGO) in the processing of the initial query, and (2) the operations of
clustering the results provided by us, based on the images titles or based on
their content. In this paper, we present the first approach and we compare the
results of our solution with the results provided by the Google search engine. Keywords: Image retrieval, Search diversification, Semantic resources, YAGO | |||
| The analysis of interactions in a collaborative learning session on instant messagery | | BIBAK | PDF | 321-330 | |
| Sibel (Molomer) Denisleam; Stefan Trausan Matu | |||
| The paper analyzes the interaction in a group of students who use instant
messaging (IM) Yahoo Messenger to write a sorting algorithm. This analysis aims
to identify words in a natural language and the methods of extracting important
words, sentences, utterances and implicit links. Words are analyzed in terms of
coherence and cohesion in text followed by a combination of words based on
different ontologies. Keyword Analysis, searches the words or the sets of words
using PolyCAFe system. Studying the relations between words, we can determine
the meaning of words using WordNet ontology. The relations between words can
rely on Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm that performs association between
words in different lines and in the same space. In this paper we introduce the
concept of breaks in collaboration analyzed both face to face and one online.
Breaks can be viewed as silences, hesitations and can be analyzed from several
aspects such as time, participant response. Keywords: CSCL, conversation analysis, extracting words, pauses | |||
| User Interaction Techniques based on 3D Graphical Annotation in eLearning Environments | | BIBAK | PDF | 331-350 | |
| Teodor Stefanut; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| Multimedia eLearning resources (i.e. images, video files, and 3D models)
allow the exemplification and intuitive representation of high complexity
concepts. At the same time, the interaction with these resources cannot be
efficiently implemented nu based on text communication and analysis (i.e. chat,
email, forums). In order to enable the users involved in didactic activities,
either trainers or trainees, to focus on the content of the materials and less
on learning the interaction tools and methods, we propose the use of graphical
annotations as the base of a new user interaction style. Specific interaction
techniques will be described throughout the article, for each phase of the
teaching process: resources creation, resources analysis, communication between
participants in the context of the information presented, knowledge evaluation.
In order to enable natural integration of 3D graphical annotations in the
lesson model we will also describe a new modelling approach, both at the
control level (e.g. creating new resources or modifying the visual structure of
existing ones) and analysis/representational level (e.g. represent student
answers to specific problems). Keywords: interaction techniques, eLearning, 3D graphical annotation | |||