Jihad Mohamad Alja'am

QUWI: An Arabic and English Handwriting Dataset for Offline Writer Identification

This paper presents a new offline dataset called the Qatar University Writer Identification dataset (QUWI). This dataset contains both Arabic and English handwritings and can be used to evaluate the performance of offline writer identification systems. It consists of handwritten documents of 1017 volunteers of different ages, nationalities, genders and education levels. The writers were asked to copy a specific text and to generate a random text, which allows the dataset to be used for both text-dependent and text-independent writer identification tasks. We describe the gathering and processing steps and define several evaluation tasks regarding the use of this dataset.

The ICDAR2011 Arabic Writer Identification Contest

Arabic writer identification is a very active research field. However, no standard benchmark is available for researchers in this field. The aim of this competition is to gather researchers and compare recent advances in Arabic writer identification. This competition was hosted by Kaggle, it has attracted thirty participants from both academia and industry. This paper gives details on this competition, including the evaluation procedure, description of participating methods and their performances.

Folksonomy link prediction based on a tripartite graph for tag recommendation

Nowadays social tagging has become a popular way to annotate, search, navigate and discover online resources, in turn leading to the sheer amount of user-generated metadata. This paper addresses the problem of recommending suitable tags during folksonomy development from a graph-based perspective. The proposed approach adapts the Katz measure, a path-ensemble based proximity measure, for the use in social tagging systems. We model a folksonomy as a weighted, undirected tripartite graph. We then apply the Katz measure to this graph, and exploit it to provide tag recommendations for individual users. We evaluate our method on two real-world folksonomies collected from CiteULike and Last.fm. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the recommendation performance and is effective for both active taggers and cold-start taggers compared to existing algorithms.

Tele-Wobble: A Telerehabilitation Wobble Board for Lower Extremity Therapy

Ankle deficiencies occur quite often among poststroke patients and people working in physically demanding professions in general. Computerized telerehabilitation systems have emerged as promising assistive tools for effective diagnosis and rehabilitation interventions. Consequently, the process of recording and analyzing the medical data captured by such systems has become vital for the generation of efficient reports that can assist clinicians to assess their patients health. In this paper, we present our telerehabilitation system called “Tele-Wobble” that consists of a modified version of a wobble board mounted with sensors and actuators, a software training game, and a web-service architecture that allows for remote monitoring of the patients training progress. The system aims to provide clinicians with key performance measurements captured during the patients training session. Our evaluations showed that Tele-Wobble may offer an efficient and cost-effective home-based rehabilitation for patients with ankle deficiencies.

A Fuzzy-Based Adaptive Rehabilitation Framework for Home-Based Wrist Training

Computer-based rehabilitation systems have emerged as promising assistive tools for effective training and diagnosis and gained popularity in clinical settings. For many patients, home-based rehabilitation can be really beneficial in their therapy journeys since it can eliminate the obstacles encountered by many of them in clinics, such as travel distance and cost. However, an effective home-training system requires a good adaptation mechanism that conforms to both the patients abilities and the therapists performance requirements. This paper introduces a Web-enabled wrist rehabilitation framework that adopts the fuzzy logic approach to provide adaptive tasks for the patient while considering the therapist training guidance. We also assess the effectiveness of the framework while coping with different training parameters by simulating a number of performance scenarios and experimenting with normal subjects. Simulation results, as well as experimental analysis, demonstrated the ability of the proposed framework to adapt to patients performance and therapists feedback.

ICDAR 2013 Competition on Gender Prediction from Handwriting

The prediction of gender from handwriting is a very interesting research field. However, no standard benchmark is available for researchers in this field. The aim of this competition is to gather researchers and compare recent advances in gender prediction from handwriting. This competition has been hosted on Kaggle, it has attracted 194 teams from both academia and industry. This paper gives details on this competition, including the dataset used, the evaluation procedure and description of participating methods and their performances.

SmartPads: a plug-N-play configurable tangible user interface

One common concern with video games today is the lack of physical activity they demand from the user. The design of games and tangible user interfaces (TUIs) that stimulate players and engage them into fun exercising activities is starting to attract the attention of many researchers and companies. This paper presents the software and hardware design and development of a TUI intended for exercise-based games targeted mostly towards children. The proposed TUI, SmartPads, can be constructed using elemental building blocks (pads) into numerous shapes. The pads-which are individually controlled by microcontrollers-are mapped onto a computer screen in real-time. A user interacts with the TUI by stepping on the pads. To evaluate the functionality and efficiency of the TUI, we developed three games in the field of exergaming. The games also have an educational value and are integrated with multimedia output modalities to enrich children’s playing experience.

Learn-pads: A mathematical exergaming system for children's physical and mental well-being

Child obesity is one of the major challenges facing modern societies, especially in developed countries. Exergaming tools are considered as effective means to reduce obesity among kids because they require the children to exert physical strength while playing the games. However, most of the existing exergaming tools focus more on the physical well-being of its users and almost neglect the mental aspect. In this paper, we present an exergaming system that combines both aspects by promoting not only entertainment, but also learning through physical activity. The system consists of a set of footpads that allow the user to interact with video games enriched with multimedia and aimed at enhancing the math knowledge of children. Our study shows that the system have created an atmosphere of fun among the children and engaged them in learning.

An assistive computerized system for children with moderate intellectual and learning disabilities

We aim in this project to develop a system for children with intellectual and learning disabilities that supports collaboration, data exploration, communication and creativity. The system offers specific tutorials on basic concepts. It can enhance the communications and learning capabilities of the children. The tutorial contents contains multimedia elements that help the children understand effectively the topics. An assessment component is being developed to evaluate the children understanding. Parents can also be involved in the learning process by adding some contents suitable to their children.

An Assistive Computerized System for Children with Intellectual and Learning Disabilities

This work proposes an assistive computerized system using the Arabic language for children with intellectual and learning disabilities (ILD) who are resident at Shafallah Center in Doha, Qatar. The system is flexible and can be used by parents, children and teachers, where they can employ the materials according to specific needs. The contents are developed with the help of special education instructors. The tutorials cover a range of topics on basic concepts of living including simple mathematics and sciences. The animated images used in the tutorials are taken from the childrens environment, so they can feel more comfortable when using the system. After studying the tutorials, children can solve puzzles based on the topics they learned. A simple intelligent greedy algorithm is used to guide children to a solution. Concept analysis are used to extract the main ideas of electronic texts and dialogues, link them with images, sounds and clips, and present them to the children with ILD.