Kamran Abid

A survey on search results diversification techniques

The quantity of information placed on the web has been greater than before and is increasing rapidly day by day. Searching through the huge amount of data and finding the most relevant and useful result set involves searching, ranking, and presenting the results. Most of the users probe into the top few results and neglect the rest. In order to increase user’s satisfaction, the presented result set should not only be relevant to the search topic, but should also present a variety of perspectives, that is, the results should be different from one another. The effectiveness of web search and the satisfaction of users can be enhanced through providing various results of a search query in a certain order of relevance and concern. The technique used to avoid presenting similar, though relevant, results to the user is known as a diversification of search results. This article presents a survey of the approaches used for search result diversification. To this end, this article not only provides a technical survey of existing diversification techniques, but also presents a taxonomy of diversification algorithms with respect to the types of search queries.

A Novel Full Polarisation Controller Integrated Monolithically with a Semiconductor Laser

A full polarisation controller integrated monolithically with a semiconductor laser is reported. Conversion efficiency from transverse electric to transverse magnetic is obtained around 50 to 68 %. The device is fabricated on InP/AlGaInAs MQW hetero-structure.

Electrically tuneable spectral responsivity in gated silicon photodiodes

We report the observation of electrically tuneable spectral responsivity in silicon-based photodetectors. The current flowing through a lateral p-i-n junction photodiode can be changed by changing either the gate bias or the intensity of incident light, with the devices exhibiting typical optical responsivities of 65 A/W. The peak sensitivity of the device can be changed over the entire visible region by changing the gate voltage in a 5 V range. This happens because with increasing gate bias, an accumulation layer of holes is pulled closer to the Si-SiO2 interface, enhancing the blue response of the device.