Blekinge Institute of Technology
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Time is perception is money - web response times in mobile networks with application to Quality of Experience
No full textThe number of mobile operators providing Internet access to end users is
growing. However, irrespective of the access network, we observe a distinct
sensitivity of user perception to response and download times, in particular
for interactive services on the web. In order to facilitate the choice of the
right network for a given task, this paper presents a systematic study of web
download time and corresponding throughput
as a function of the file size. Based on measurement data from three Swedish
mobile operators and a particular strategy of choosing file sizes, we find
surprisingly simple, yet sufficiently accurate approximations of download
times. These approximations are based on simple-to-measure parameters and
provide valuable quantitative insights into the acceleration of
HTTP/TCP/IP-based data delivery. The paper discusses the emergence of these
approximations and related errors. Furthermore, it correlates the findings with
Quality of Experience, thus building bridges between performance, user
perception and provisioning issues
Low Cost Methodology for Preliminary Road Maintenance Decision Support
No full textThis paper presents a low cost GIT based data collection technology that is
similar and an input to the ROad Maintenance Data Acquisition System (ROMDAS).
It is composed of a vehicle, two digital video cameras, 2 GPS receivers and a
notebook computer. Two different camcorders used for comparison purposes (one
real color and the other a modified consumer camera to register infrared) are
mounted at the front of the vehicle using a homemade gyro mounting. The GPS
receivers are placed at the dash board of the vehicle. The notebook computer
and GPS receivers are configured to record the position of the vehicle as it
moves. The GPS log files maintain recordings of the latitude, longitude, time,
speed and altitude of the vehicle position, as the researcher annotates a map
document in the ArcGIS 9.3 software with location referencing details and
various road attributes. This data collection technology is aimed at exposing
the potential of Geographic Information Technologies (GITs) in performing
inventory of the road condition. The captured data may be useful for a variety
of applications relevant to road inventory and maintenance. It is basically
recommended for preliminary road maintenance diagnosis for which in depth road
analysis may proceed for the affected road sections. With this technology, it
is possible to map road marks and other architecture along the road and provide
a map immediately by the end of the survey. In conclusion, data mining of the
spatial video databases to facilitate routine and periodic maintenance
decisions and the possibility to modify consumer cameras for research purposes
is recommended
Assessing the Benefits of Intelligent Truck Parking
No full textThe aim of this paper is to identify and provide a discussion about aspects
related to benefits of Intelligent Truck Parking (ITP) for Heavy Goods Vehicles
(HGVs) and their effects on different stakeholders. Most existing work has
narrowly focused on benefits for private cars and does not include the user
perspective. In this paper, a review of previous work helps identify benefit
areas and stakeholder groups relevant for HGV transport. These benefit areas
are then theoretically assessed and compared for different stakeholders.
Additionally, interview results of Swedish drivers’ and companies’ perceptions
of the ITP service are presented. Comparing results of the interviews with the
theoretical assessment indicates that the end users may not perceive ITP as
highly beneficial although they theoretically benefit the most. Companies,
particularly national haulage companies, expressed a low willingness to pay for
the service. The general conclusion is that the ITP service has a better chance
of success as part of a package of services rather than as a stand-alone
service
Exact Performance of Two-Way AF Relaying in Nakagami-m Fading Environment
No full textThe performance of two-way amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying networks over
independently but not necessarily
identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) Nakagami-m fading channels,
with integer and integer plus one-half values of fading parameter m, is
studied. Closed-form expressions for the cumulative distribution function
(CDF), probability density function (PDF), and moment generating function (MGF)
of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are presented. Utilizing these
results, we analyze the performance of two-way AF relaying system in terms of
outage probability, average symbol error rate (SER), and average sum-rate.
Simulations are performed to verify the correctness of our theoretical
analysis
A theory-based educational intervention targeting nurses’ attitudes and knowledge concerning cancer-related pain management: A study protocol of a quasi-experimental design
No full textBackground: Pain is one of the most frequent problems among patients diagnosed
with cancer. Despite the
availability of effective pharmacological treatments, this group of patients
often receives less than optimal
treatment. Research into nurses’ pain management highlights certain factors,
such as lack of knowledge and
attitudes and inadequate procedures for systematic pain assessment, as common
barriers to effective pain
management. However, educational interventions targeting nurses’ pain
management have shown promise. As
cancer-related pain is also known to have a negative effect on vital aspects of
the patient’s life, as well as being
commonly associated with problems such as sleep, fatigue, depression and
anxiety, further development of
knowledge within this area is warranted.
Methods/design: A quasi-experimental study design will be used to investigate
whether the implementation of
guidelines for systematic daily pain assessments following a theory-based
educational intervention will result in an
improvement in knowledge and attitude among nurses. A further aim is to
investigate whether the intervention
that targets nurses’ behaviour will improve hospital patients’ perception of
pain. Data regarding nurses’ knowledge
and attitudes to pain (primary outcome), patient perception regarding pain
(secondary outcome), together with
socio-demographic variables, will be collected at baseline and at four weeks
and 12 weeks following the
intervention.
Discussion: Nursing care is nowadays acknowledged as an increasingly
complicated activity and “nursing
complexity is such that it can be seen as the quintessential complex
intervention.” To be able to change and
improve clinical practice thus requires multiple points of attack appropriate
to meet complex challenges.
Consequently, we expect the theory-based intervention used in our
quasi-experimental study to improve care as
well as quality of life for this group of patients and we also envisage that
evidence-based guidelines targeting this
patient group’s pain will be implemented more widely.
Trial Registration Number: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT0131323
Evaluating JavaScript Execution Behavior and Improving the Performance of Web Applications with Thread-Level Speculation
No full textThis thesis addresses two issues: (i) The execution behavior of JavaScript in
established benchmarks and in real-world Web Applications and (ii) whether
Thread-Level Speculation is a suitable technique for taking advantage of
multicore systems in Web Applications written in JavaScript.
The first key result is that JavaScript execution behavior by the benchmarks
and the JavaScript execution behavior by the Web Applications differ in several
important aspects. For instance Web Applications often use function types such
as anonymous and eval functions. Our results also show that just-in-time
compilation often increases the execution time of Web Applications, despite
that just-in-time compilation decreases the execution time for most of the
benchmarks.
The second key result is that our implementation of Thread-Level Speculation
shows that it can be used to take advantage of multicore systems for Web
Applications. We have measured the effect on the execution time for a set of
Web Applications, and found that we are able to reduce JavaScript execution
time more than 8 times compared to the sequential version on a dual quad core
computer. For our use-cases we found that we used between 1.1 and 31.0 MB to
store information associated with speculation
Does user participation matter in the design and development of e-participation tools? Experiences from a proof-of-concept project
No full textThis paper presents experiences from a proof-of-concept project concerning a
tool for e-participation, Augment; a map-based mobile accessibility service
which relies on user-generated content. Using a Participatory Design approach,
the aim has been to include future users in the project from the start, so as
to ensure that the resulting service will be a useful and sustainable tool for
co-constructing accessibility in everyday life in collaboration among involved
stakeholders. The project has been struggling with the complexities of
combining academic competencies in Participatory Design and traditional project
management and systems development approaches. One of the most difficult issues
has been balancing widely differing experienced needs for controlling
distributed end-user participation. Our experiences so far raise serious
questions about how to combine models of open innovation and increased
user-involvement with current mainstream user-centered software and service
development models. While user-centered design seems to call for
users-on-demand, user-driven innovation of e-participation tools could, we
argue, benefit more from developers-on-demand
Accurate Adware Detection using Opcode Sequence Extraction
No full textAdware represents a possible threat to the security and privacy of computer
users. Traditional signature-based and heuristic-based methods have not been
proven to be successful at detecting this type of software. This paper presents
an adware detection approach based on the application of data mining on
disassembled code. The main contributions of the paper is a large publicly
available adware data set, an accurate adware detection algorithm, and an
extensive empirical evaluation of several candidate machine learning techniques
that can be used in conjunction with the algorithm. We have extracted sequences
of opcodes from adware and benign software and we have then applied feature
selection, using different configurations, to obtain 63 data sets. Six data
mining algorithms have been evaluated on these data sets in order to find an
efficient and accurate detector. Our experimental results show that the
proposed approach can be used to accurately detect both novel and known adware
instances even though the binary difference between adware and legitimate
software is usually small
Modulation Domain Adaptive Gain Equalizer for Speech Enhancement
No full textThis paper evaluates speech enhancement by filtering in the
modulation frequency domain, as an alternative to filtering
in conventional frequency domain. Adaptive Gain Equalizer
(AGE) is a commonly used single-channel speech enhancement algorithm. A
recently introduced class of signal transformations called modulation transform
has successfully made its place alongside classical time/frequency
representations. This paper presents an implementation of AGE within modulation
system, for the purpose of enhancing the speech signal. The successful
implementation of the proposed system has been validated with various
performance measurements, i.e., Signal to Noise Ratio Improvement (SNRI), Mean
Opinion Score (MOS) and Spectral Distortion (SD). A spectrogram analysis is
also presented to further substantiate the performance of this wor
Integrating Science, Technology and Innovation in the National Development Planning Process: The Case of Uganda
No full textScience, technology and innovation plays a critical role in enhancing economic
growth and contributing to national development. It is the means by which new
products and services are developed or improved and brought to the market.
However, to make this contribution, science, technology and innovation must be
integrated in the national development planning process. Over the years, the
integration of science, technology and innovation in Uganda’s national
development planning has been implicit. Intentions to use science, technology
and innovation as the vehicle for economic growth were evident in the country’s
comprehensive development framework such as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan
(1997 – 2008/09) and the National Development Plan (2010/11-2014/15). However,
strategies of how to use it to bring about the desired outcomes of economic
growth were lacking. The recent designation of science, technology and
innovation in the National Development Plan of Uganda as a sector that provides
institutional and infrastructural support to the production of goods and
services demonstrates that integration of science, technology and innovation in
development planning could be accomplished through endogenous efforts. But such
inclusion of science, technology and innovation in the Plan should not be taken
as an end in itself; rather it should be seen as a process. And implementation
of the science, technology and innovation provisions of the National
Development Plan ought to be undertaken within the context of the national
innovation system