Addison Y. S. Su

A privacy protection scheme in H.264/AVC by data hiding

In this research, a privacy protection mechanism in H.264/AVC videos is proposed. The sensitive or private visual information in frames, which should not be viewable by the general public or regular users, will be scrambled by directly modifying or removing the related data in H.264/AVC compressed bitstreams. In order to allow the authorized users to recover the partially scrambled video frames, the methodology of information hiding is employed; that is, the correct information is embedded and transmitted along with the video bitstream. After retrieving the data, the authorized users can descramble the protected areas in frames. Experimental results show that the partial scrambling can be achieved effectively and the size of the resulting video is kept under good control.

A Multiple Objectives Optimization Approach for QoS-Based Web Services Compositions

While a lot of Web Services are available nowadays, Quality-of-Service (QoS) becomes a crucial concern to distinguish alternatives from each other. QoS-based service composition aims to determining optimal combinations among exponential candidates with consideration of overall non-functional performance. In this paper, a multiple objectives optimization approach is proposed for the decision-making process. First, we design a pattern-wise replacement method to derive composite QoS objectives of a given XML-encoded workflow process. According to the process descriptions, the composite QoS objectives will be available by synthesizing non-functional metrics of primitive patterns repeatedly. Second, we employ the ε-Pareto dominance relations to discriminate the overall QoS performance of combinations. Thus user can freely set any desirable ε values to define the precision of service composition’s QoS performance. Finally, we present a genetic algorithm to find out the optimal combinations through evolutionary computation. The experimental results have shown that the proposed approach is more efficient and effective in terms of user-defined ε values for different QoS objectives.

Improvement of Streaming Video in Differential Service Networks by Using Opportunity RED Mechanism

The video streaming service is one of the emerging services for network users. The network conveys various kinds of traffic to the users and different traffic classes always have different quality requirements. Therefore, it is a critical issue to allocate suitable network resource to suitable traffic class for better service quality provisioning and resource utilization. This paper considers the characteristics of video frames to forward the video packet in an efficient way. The proposed scheme properly utilizes the unused bits of the differential service (DS) field of the IP header to provide some heuristic information for packet early discarding. Thus, by using the opportunity random early dropping (RED) concept, the proposed packet correlated RED (PCRED) scheme refers the heuristic information to selectively drop useless packet that is not helpful for the improvement of receiving quality for better buffer and bandwidth utilization. Exhaustive simulations were conducted to compare the performance of the proposed scheme with the RED with in/out (RIO) and weighted RED (WRED) schemes. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is superior to the other schemes for video streaming services.

Information password recovery with GPU

The protective techniques of WINZIP files include compressing the original document and encrypting the AES key. If we want to decrypt the WINZIP file, we require very large computing power and techniques of reducing the password space. In this paper, we have developed a GPU-based parallelized computing system to quickly find out the correct password, and the new system can make parallel decryption, decompression and plain text recognition for encrypted WINZIP files by using OpenCL computing technology on graphics cards ATI 6990 and NVIDIA GTX 690. The experimental results have shown that the speed of the GPU-based parallelized computing system increases about 5,670 password/second (depends on the graphics card ATI 6990) compared to sequential execution on the Intel Xeon X5650.

Cooperative Learning by Location-Based Augmented Reality for an Inquiry Learning Course

Inquiry learning has been developed for years and many countries have incorporated inquiry learning into the scope of K-12 education. The knowledge-sharing process of inquiry learning tends to be complex. Therefore, we propose using location-based augmented reality (AR) to immerse students in the inquiry learning process. Mobile devices were used to immediately record and observe objects and enable learners to communicate with each other and engage in discussions, which raises their level of knowledge. The process of inquiry learning entails five steps: asking a question, attempting to answer the question, stimulating creative concepts, multiple people discussing the topic, and lastly, reaching a conclusion based on discourse and discovering an in-depth question from the conclusion, resulting in a new inquiry cycle. Therefore, to better understand learner behaviours in online knowledge-sharing discussions using location-based AR, we used an interaction analysis model to explore knowledge discussion behaviours among multiple participants to understand whether location-based AR helps students achieve higher phases of knowledge construction.

Ubiquitous Collaborative Learning in Knowledge-Aware Virtual Communities

In this paper, we applied peer-to-peer (P2P) and instant messenger (IM) approaches to provide a seamless integration of learning resources. The learning resources contain three categories, namely learning collaborators, content, and services. This seamless learning environment aimed for knowledge sharing in collaboration supported virtual learning communities. Content found by peer-to-peer network refers to the sources of explicit knowledge; while the discussion and interaction details recorded in instant messenger network is the source of tacit knowledge. Interaction occurred in social network can be bi-parties communication, message exchange, file sharing, and knowledge sharing. Results of this study demonstrate that the applied knowledge sharing mechanism helps learning collaborators find right content and related knowledgeable collaborators who are willing to share their knowledge

The computational rules extractor in the detection of tax evasion

It is a serious problem of tax evasion in all domains. Because of the narrow human factors, there are case-by-case basis not to examine reported tax cases. Hence, it is a very demanding challenge to grow an effective tax evasion detection mechanism. In this paper, we use the proposed rule extractor approaches (PFHRCNN) to detect tax evasion. The experiment results show the proposed PFHRCNN for tax evasion detection systems is a good way.

Power Saving-Based Radio Resource Scheduling in Long-Term Evolution Advanced Network

It is well known that power saving is one of the most important issues for mobile device in accessing network services. The efficient conservation of energy for longer operation times of a mobile station is vital to the success of various mobile applications. This paper proposes a systematic approach to allocate radio resources in Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) network by considering the channel condition and QoS requirements, while the power saving is a centric issue during the scheduling process. The proposed scheme includes the selection of component carriers (CC) and the allocation of radio resource to satisfy the QoS demands while minimize the power consumption of user equipment (UE). Additionally, exhaustive simulations were performed to examine the performance of the proposed scheme. Both http and video streaming traffic models were applied during the simulations. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves better performance when compared to the other scheme.

Collaborative Search Research in College Computer Courses

The Internet has become the most important information source for students; however, most students lack adequate search processes and search abilities when solving problems using Web search. Current Web search with a single-user environment does not require students to seek assistance in solving their problem. Therefore, how to use information problem solving model to help students solve problems is an emerging issue, and integrated collaborative Web technologies with a suitable model is a key solution. We propose a novel collaborative search system, and it develops the knowledge base of an expert system by organizing the problem of the students. The experimental data were conducted with 36 students at a college school in Northern Taiwan. The results show that collaborative search benefits college student information gathering and improves search processes and search abilities.

Simulation of Efficient Vehicle Dispatching and Routing for the Application in Intelligent Transportation System

This paper provides the simulation for a designed vehicle dispatching and routing system for safe and efficient vehicle transportation. The objective of the simulation is to verify the performance of the cooperative dispatching and routing decisions for vehicles within a specific area consisting of streets and several intersections. In addition to computing a specific routing path for the arrival vehicle based on its destination and safety considerations, the proposed scheme provides a detour mechanism under the transportation cost constraint. This paper also points out the existence of hidden conflicting path problems in the dispatching approach and proposes a backtracking approach to solve this problem at the route decision phase so that the travel time can be guaranteed. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively assign the vehicles with proper routes and without any collisions with good performance.