Recent Patents on Computer Science - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2011

Mobile devices are radically changing the way in which we work and communicate. The most innovative smartphones provide several features that support, without additional hardware, the adoption of Augmented Reality interfaces in mobile applications, enabling the combination of the real world with virtual information on the device screen. In the original vision, Augmented Reality enabled only to superimpose relevant information on the mobile device, using knowledge of the user's position and other context. More recently, following the web 2.0 direction, new solutions allow the user to create and share information. In this paper, we review related work, identify the most relevant patents and detail the challenges in this field. We also describe the main results and patents adopting this technology in different application fields and outline future developments.

Business Process Management Systems are increasingly used by organizations to define, coordinate, analyze and improve their business environment. Business Process Management Systems and Decision Support have a large commercial potential and it is a very interesting field for research and invention. In this paper, an overview of recent patents related to Business Process Management over the past seven years is given.

The area of software development has undergone a rapid expansion and this trend is so far continuing. Each developer has to learn constantly and master new technology. However, the foundation a developer gains at the beginning of his/her career playing a crucial role. An essential part of studies at faculties preparing students in the area of computer science is the development of student's ability to think algorithmically. There are many different theoretical researches which deal with the question of how to consequently develop algorithmic thinking of students. Their basic aim is to improve the quality of teaching and students' self-learning. The aim of this paper is to introduce our approach that has proven to be successful in the optimization of teaching and learning a subject developing algorithmic thinking of beginners. This is followed by a discussion of the benefits of multimedia applications, explaining and visualizing the subject matter, testing the knowledge of students, and the recent key patents that have emerged in this field. A brief description of further deepening of algorithmic thinking within combinatorial optimization using appropriate multimedia support is given at the end of the paper.

Image retrieval aims at searching similar semantic contents of images to the users' queries. However, the major challenge of image retrieval is to make computers understand high-level concepts of images, e.g. objects. In other words, automatic image annotation by object recognition and categorization can achieve semantic-based image retrieval. However, object categorization is a very important and challenging problem in computer vision. To evaluate some proposed object categorization algorithm, a pilot experiment is usually conducted based on a chosen small scale dataset in order to quickly obtain some useful results for later large scale experiments. Although there are a number of object categorization benchmarks, it is time consuming to consider all of them for the pilot experiment. This patent paper analyzes three wellknown benchmarks, which are Corel, IAPR, and Caltech, and tries to identify the levels of easiness and difficulty for image annotation. In addition, relevant patents are also reviewed in this manuscript. In the experiments, local region-based image features were extracted from these datasets and the Euclidean distances between images were analyzed in order to understand the distance distribution of images in the feature space. Moreover, image annotation accuracy using SVM and k-NN classifiers were examined. The experimental results showed that Caltech is the easiest dataset, which allows classifiers to provide the highest rate of annotation accuracy. On the other hand, IAPR is the toughest dataset and Corel stands at the middle position.

Serving as an important data storage medium for information and data processing systems, hard disk drives (HDD) are once again called to increase recording density toward regions of multi-terabyte (TB) per inch square to meet the ever-increasing demand for information storage. With such demand, requirement for high accuracy in positioning magnetic read/write elements on spinning magnetic disks for data accessing and recording has been rigorous and is now reaching down to sub-nanometer range, which motivates extensive research and development for advanced mechanical and servo systems applied in HDD. This paper will first conduct an overall review of magnetic recording mechanism in terms of position error signals (PES) in HDD. Secondly, repeatable runout (RRO) component of PES will be explained in details through signal processing technique, followed by extensive review and discussion of various methods and trends in identifying and minimizing written-in and real-time RRO contributors in high capacity magnetic hard disk drives. Finally, the key patents that have emerged in this subject will be identified accordingly in the context of this paper.

Research community has been showing an immense interest for more than a decade in issues related to providing better than best effort service guarantees on the Internet. A number of options have been explored in this regard. Differentiated Services architecture is one of the proposed solutions that treat traffic flows based on their pre-assigned classes to eliminate scalability issue, otherwise a difficult and non trivial problem to solve. Bandwidth Broker is a logical resource management entity in Differentiated Services domain that performs a number of important functions at inter and intra-domain level to optimize resource utilization. Optimal resource management is not only complex but is tricky in this scenario, as the network's service providing ability is greatly affected by the optimality of domain management. Hence, Bandwidth Broker has been a focus of a lot of research efforts. This paper: a) provides a brief but concise discussion on different functions and modules of Bandwidth Broker, b) points out some advance features proposed for BB's performance enhancements and, c) reviews recent patents directly and indirectly related to Bandwidth Broker.

Rapid development of network technologies has led to a proliferation of networked video applications, making efficient and effective assessment of the related Quality of (user) Experience (QoE) an acute need. In literature, there has been a non-uniform view of Quality of Service (QoS) and therefore the concept of QoE is introduced to avoid the confusion. The difference between QoS and QoE is first clarified in this paper. Then QoE metrics in the current standardized framework for Internet Protocol (IP) based streaming applications in 3G networks, i.e., 3GPP PSS, are introduced. Moreover, objective QoE evaluation for networked video is addressed in respect to perceived video quality, which can be categorized into the parametric-planning model, parametric packet-layer model, parametric bit-stream-layer model, media-layer model, and hybrid model. The related characteristics, state-of-the-art, standardization process and key patents are respectively reviewed.

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent databases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by different computation methods, bioinformatics, medical informatics, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, hardware architectures, software, theory and methods involved and related to computer science.