Earticle

Neurofeedback, which is considered an alternative medicine, is a training that changes the cerebral activation state by a patient's own efforts. New Neurofeedback users often have a hard time learning to control their own brain waves. For this reason, many users give up on Neurofeedback therapy prematurely. Neurofeedback advocates have been studying a variety of brain activation state control methods to develop easier Neurofeedback therapies to overcome this defect. Humans receive a variety of external information with the help of various sensory organs such as the eyes and ears. This information is recognized by the cerebrum, and as a result it induces changes in the activation state of the brain. Auditory stimulation of external stimuli is perceived as sound by stimulating the brain through air conduction. In general, the auditory stimulus bandwidth from 20Hz to 20KHz is used. Auditory stimulus of ultrasound higher than 22KHz is not used as an external stimulus to induce the brain activation state change, since humans cannot hear beyond this bandwidth. It is known that auditory stimulus of ultrasound bandwidth directly stimulates the cochlea of the inner ear and can induce changes in the brain activation state. However, no specific research results that compare the difference between the audible and the ultrasound stimulus has been presented, so there are limitations utilizing the ultrasound bandwidths in practical applications. For this reason, this study has analyzed changes in brain activation utilizing the auditory stimulation in audible and in ultrasound frequency. The research result of this study can be applied in a variety of applications, which uses ultrasound auditory stimulus.

This paper proposes a framework for developing a concurrent program using the discrete event system specification (DEVS) formalism. Within the proposed framework, a concurrent program is modeled by the DEVS formalism, and the modeling result is validated through simulation in a DEVS abstract simulator environment, called DEVSim++. Then, the validated modeling results are translated to multi-threaded program codes written in a conventional programming language. For that, each DEVS model which specifies behavior of a component is converted to a single thread, called an atomic thread, and every connection information between the components are clustered together and converted to a data structure, called a port mapping table. This paper also proposes an efficient solution which combines several atomic threads into a new thread, called a combined thread.

To overcome the decrease in the recognition rate of voice recognition in noisy environments, the implementation of Audio Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR), which combines voice and lip information, has been attempted since the 1990s. This study aims to investigate the discrimination of various features extracted from lip image data using dynamic time warping (DTW) as an objective function to implement a robust lip-reading system as the core process of AVSR. The features taken from existing literature are grid-based features, including gray level, optical flow, and Sobel operator gradient, and various ratios of lip shapes calculated based on coordinates. According to the results of the application of DTW to respective feature generation methods using 180 pieces of data collected from ten study subjects who each uttered six isolated words three times, the mean recognition rate was found to be up to 60.55%. The feature that showed the highest recognition rate was the combined vector of a width/height ratio of the outer lip and the height of the inner lip, and grid-based features were found to outperform coordinate-based features in the recognition rate of certain words.

The lossy compression approaches accept some loss of information and data that have been compressed using lossy methods normally cannot be restored perfectly. While accepting this error in the restoration, one can attain efficient method and obtain higher compression ratios. In this paper, we study the method to compress RGB image in YCbCr color space. By using chroma subsampling approach, we reduce data size while the loss of information is not much.

Dynamic network topology is one of the inherent features of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET). However, it may lead to unfeasible test sequences in the FSM-based active conformance testing, due to the topological distinction between testing sequences generation and its execution. In this paper, a formal model, named Evolving-Graph- based Finite State Machine (EGFSM), is proposed to help alleviate the impact of the dynamic network on conformance testing in MANETs. The evolving graph theory is first introduced to extend the Finite State Machine model to describe the dynamic behavior of the protocol with time-varying network topology. In the testing scenario with a predictable node movement pattern, test sequences adaptable to the dynamic topological changescan be generated on the basis of the EGFSM for the protocol under testing. A case study based on the AODV routing protocol is conducted, and promising experimental results show that it is a feasible way to test the protocols in MANETs using an EGFSM.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is simple stochastic global optimization technique, but it exists unbalanced global and local search ability, slow convergence speed and solving accuracy. An improved simulated annealing (ISAM) algorithm is introduced into the PSO algorithm with crossover and Gauss mutation to propose an improved PSO (ISAMPSO) algorithm based on the mutation operator and simulated annealing in this paper. In the ISAMPSO algorithm, the mutation operator of genetic algorithm is introduced into the SA algorithm as a generation mechanism of new solution in order to propose an improved simulated annealing algorithm with mutation (ISAM). Then the ISAM algorithm is introduced into the PSO algorithm to jump out the local optimum, effectively achieve the global optimum adjust and optimize the population, maintain the diversity of the population, improve the local search ability and convergence speed. Six classical functions are selected to test the performance of the proposed ISAMPSO algorithm. The simulation experiments results show that the proposed ISAMPSO algorithm can effectively overcomes the stagnation phenomenon and enhance the global search ability. The convergence speed and accuracy were better than the PSO algorithm.

Due to the development of IT, distribution of smart phone, and an increase of use of SNS, various types of contents are being produced and consumed in Internet. Therefore, information searching technology has become important due to a sharp rise in data. However, information searching technology requires much of background knowledge and hence has been recognized as what was difficult to access to. Issues with previous search engine were how many of qualified personnel with background knowledge along with huge amount of development expenses were required. Therefore, search engines have been recognized as what was exclusively possessed by leading IT companies or specialized organizations. This study is intended to suggest a search engine with an index structure for making it convenient to effectively search information by distributed crawling massive amount of websites and web-documents in the distributed environment. Search engine suggested in this study has been realized by Hadoop structure for supporting the distributed processing.

With the development of e-commerce, more and more small and medium enterprises begin to start building their own business platform; it is undeniable that e-commerce technology to business development brings new opportunities. In this paper, we make an empirical analysis to test how enterprises could improve their cooperative performance by developing their E-business strategy. The result shows that IT competitiveness including process cooperation ability and knowledge sharing capability, enterprises’ dynamic capability including relationship ability, agile Enterprise and operation innovation. Through regression analysis, we find that dynamic capabilities play an important role in the process of enterprise competition. On this basis, we put forward relevant policy suggestions.

In this paper, we researched about Minecraft as interactive program for digital art. This research will study the potential of Minecraft as realization. In digital art field, interaction is important. Many digital artists use the digital technology for their digital art works using various interaction program. Unique interactions, peculiar enjoyments or entertaining elements make digital art works look like a game. Games and Digital art are quite similar in terms of interaction between producer and audience. Naturally, game devices (Kinect, Wii Remote, Leap -motion) and programs are used in digital art field. They can realize interaction in digital art field in various ways. In particular, game engines are widely used to implement interaction with 3D virtual space in digital art. Normally, game engine has the disadvantage that artists feel difficulty to use it because of programming. They are different on a case by case, all game engines need programming. But Minecraft is easy to implement 3D virtual space and interaction without programming. Minecraft is a sandbox independent video game originally created by Swedish programmer Markus and later developed and published by the Swedish company Mojang. It’s easy to deal than most game engine so, it is used in elementary schools for education in the United States. It seems to pixel art work in 3D virtual space. This research will prove the possibility of Minecarft in interactive digital art.