This paper reports the deployment of a tele-health monitoring system to be installed at an actual care house, which can monitor heart and breathing rates, and in/out of bed status of elderly residents over the Internet. Through a one-month operation, we could recognize several serious problems. This paper indicates these problems and suggests solutions to overcome them.

The dramatic increases in computing power and bandwidth over the past decade and more have enabled significant improvements in the global learning environment via distance education. Yet, while distance education has dramatically reduced the barriers between different geographic regions, it has not yet had a similar impact on reducing the barriers between different languages. This paper discusses a system that helps non-native English students to better understand lectures that are delivered in English via the Internet in distance learning environments. The system integrates speech recognition, a language parser, and machine translation to instantly generate transcripts of lectures and display them simultaneously with audio and video streams. We present the method, design, functionality, and implementation issues, which provide a synchronous and interactive distance learning environment in which non-native English students can learn materials in English more easily.

In this paper, we revisit multiple-bit differential detection (MBDD) of differential offset quadrature phase-shift keying (DOQPSK) with conventional bit-wise differential encoding (DE). We introduce two novel MBDD schemes that outperform Simon's MBDD and approach the performance of coherent detection (CD) as the observation window size N increases. The proposed full-size (F-MBDD) and improved (I-MBDD) MBDD schemes use the full available (N - 1 bit intervals) and a reduced (N - 3 bit intervals) detection window, respectively. For both MBDD schemes accurate BER approximations are derived. Our results show that I-MBDD of DOQPSK with bit-wise DE achieves a performance similar to that of Phoel's MBDD of DOQPSK with more complex symbol-wise DE. Since the complexity per bit decision of brute force decoding of MBDD of DOQPSK grows exponentially with N, we develop a fast decoding algorithm with a complexity per bit decision of order log(N + 1).

In this paper, we consider multiple-bit differential detection (MBDD) of differential offset quadrature phase-shift keying (DOQPSK) with conventional bit-wise differential encoding (DE). We propose two novel MBDD schemes that outperform Simon's MBDD and approach the performance of coherent detection (CD) as the observation window size N increases. The first scheme uses the full available detection window spanning N-1 bit intervals, and is referred to as F-MBDD. A careful bit-error rate (BER) analysis shows that a significant performance improvement can be realized by reducing the detection window size to N-3 bit intervals. The resulting improved MBDD (I-MBDD) of DOQPSK with bit-wise DE achieves a similar performance as Phoel's MBDD of DOQPSK with more complex symbol-wise DE. For both F-MBDD and I-MBDD, tight upper bounds and accurate BER approximations are derived. In addition, since the complexity per bit decision of brute-force decoding of MBDD of DOQPSK grows exponentially with N, we develop optimum and suboptimum fast decoding algorithms with complexities per bit decision of orders log(N+1) and N, respectively.

Businesses operate today in an increasingly dynamic environment through a worldwide network of information exchanges and business transactions. The Semantic Web - an extension of the current Web - which comprises ontologies and XML-related technologies, provides a shared and standardized vocabulary that can be communicated among automatic and human agents to share information and knowledge. Consider that an electronic business is a set of business processes governed by business rules that run over the Internet. These business rules play a significant role in determining the success or failure of a business as a whole. The goal of this paper is to introduce a framework that is designed to build business systems faster and which can more easily accommodate changes within a business. The advantages of this framework arise from its unity and simplicity, and especially its ability to effectively change, add, and/or delete business rules.

This paper introduces an alternative methodology, Lyee methodology, which provides a unified and deterministic framework to enhance the efficiency of software development and simplifies system maintenance and integration. This framework also simplifies the complexity of the software structure and provides a structure for users or customers to express their intentions or knowledge directly in the software. Due to the simplicity of the Lyee software structure and development, the majority of Lyee developers need not possess any programming experience.