This study aims to find differences in the perceived usage and importance of the Internet within characteristics of students. METU undergraduate students having a proper Internet connection were defined as population, and asked to answer the online questionnaire about perceived usage and importance of the Internet. For 653 eligible answers, Factorial ANOVA and independent samples t-test were used to compare mean scores of dependent variables across three independent variables: gender, accommodation type and faculty. Results indicate that although genders spent equal times on the Internet, their perceived usage and importance of the Internet differs. Females&rsquo / perceived usage and importance of the Internet for academic works and instant messaging are more than males, whereas males are using Internet for seeking current information like news, sending content to interactive web services and playing online games. This study also states that there is no evidence of a statistically significant difference for amount of the Internet usage between 3 accommodation types, METU Dormitories with high speed Internet connection, house with family or relatives, house with friends or alone. However, it is observed that students staying at METU Dormitories stated more instant messaging usage than that of staying at house with friends or alone. Between faculties, there is evidence that students from Faculty of Education are using Internet for academic course work more than the other faculties. Finally, students who are living in campus are more satisfied with the access speed to university local area network and Turkish National Research Network.

Web usage mining has become popular in various business areas related with Web site development. In Web usage mining, the commonly visited navigational paths are extracted in terms of Web page addresses from the Web server visit logs, and the patterns are used in various applications. The semantic information of the Web page contents is generally not included in Web usage mining. In this thesis, a framework for integrating semantic information with Web usage mining is implemented. The frequent navigational patterns are extracted in the forms of ontology instances instead of Web page addresses and the result is used for making page recommendations to the visitor. Moreover, an evaluation mechanism is implemented to find the success of the recommendation. Test results proved that stronger and more accurate recommendations are obtained by including semantic information in the Web usage mining instead of using on visited Web page addresses.

Many e-commerce web sites such as online book retailers or specialized information hubs such as online movie databases make use of recommendation systems where users are directed to items of interests based on past user interactions. Keyword-based approaches, collaborative and content filtering techniques have been tried and used over the years each having their own shortcomings. While keyword based approaches are naive and do not take content or context into account collaborative and content filtering techniques suffer from biased ratings, first item and first-rater problems. Recent approaches try to incorporate underlying semantic properties of data by employing ontology based usage mining. This thesis aims to design a recommendation system based on ontological data where web pages are seen as objects with attributes and relations. Instead of relying on users&rsquo / content ratings, user sessions are clustered on a iv semantic level to capture different behavioral groups. Since semantic information is used for the clustering distance function, each cluster represents a behavior group instead of simpler data groups. New users are then assigned to individual clusters that best represent their behavior and recommendations are generated accordingly. In this thesis we use the recommendation results as a means for measuring the effectiveness of the clusters we have generated. We have compared the results obtained using the ontological data and the results obtained without using it and shown that semantic integrating semantic knowledge increases both precision and recall.

The exponential expanding of the numbers of web sites and Internet users makes WWW the most important global information resource. From information publishing and electronic commerce to entertainment and social networking, the Web allows an inexpensive and efficient access to the services provided by individuals and institutions. The basic units for distributing these services are the web sites scattered throughout the world. However, the extreme fragility of web services and content, the high competence between similar services supplied by different sites, and the wide geographic distributions of the web users drive the urgent requirement from the web managers to track and understand the usage interest of their web customers. This thesis, "X-tracking the Usage Interest on Web Sites", aims to fulfill this requirement. "X" stands two meanings: one is that the usage interest differs from various web sites, and the other is that usage interest is depicted from multi aspects: internal and external, structural and conceptual, objective and subjective. "Tracking" shows that our concentration is on locating and measuring the differences and changes among usage patterns. This thesis presents the methodologies on discovering usage interest on three kinds of web sites: the public information portal site, e-learning site that provides kinds of streaming lectures and social site that supplies the public discussions on IT issues. On different sites, we concentrate on different issues related with mining usage interest. The educational information portal sites were the first implementation scenarios on discovering usage patterns and optimizing the organization of web services. In such cases, the usage patterns are modeled as frequent page sets, navigation paths, navigation structures or graphs. However, a necessary requirement is to rebuild the individual behaviors from usage history. We give a systematic study on how to rebuild individual behaviors. Besides, this thesis shows a new strategy on building content clusters based on pair browsing retrieved from usage logs. The difference between such clusters and the original web structure displays the distance between the destinations from usage side and the expectations from design side. Moreover, we study the problem on tracking the changes of usage patterns in their life cycles. The changes are described from internal side integrating conceptual and structure features, and from external side for the physical features; and described from local side measuring the difference between two time spans, and global side showing the change tendency along the life cycle. A platform, Web-Cares, is developed to discover the usage interest, to measure the difference between usage interest and site expectation and to track the changes of usage patterns. E-learning site provides the teaching materials such as slides, recorded lecture videos and exercise sheets. We focus on discovering the learning interest on streaming lectures, such as real medias, mp4 and flash clips. Compared to the information portal site, the usage on streaming lectures encapsulates the variables such as viewing time and actions during learning processes. The learning interest is discovered in the form of answering 6 questions, which covers finding the relations between pieces of lectures and the preference among different forms of lectures. We prefer on detecting the changes of learning interest on the same course from different semesters. The differences on the content and structure between two courses leverage the changes on the learning interest. We give an algorithm on measuring the difference on learning interest integrated with similarity comparison between courses. A search engine, TASK-Moniminer, is created to help the teacher query the learning interest on their streaming lectures on tele-TASK site. Social site acts as an online community attracting web users to discuss the common topics and share their interesting information. Compared to the public information portal site and e-learning web site, the rich interactions among users and web content bring the wider range of content quality, on the other hand, provide more possibilities to express and model usage interest. We propose a framework on finding and recommending high reputation articles in a social site. We observed that the reputation is classified into global and local categories; the quality of the articles having high reputation is related with the content features. Based on these observations, our framework is implemented firstly by finding the articles having global or local reputation, and secondly clustering articles based on their content relations, and then the articles are selected and recommended from each cluster based on their reputation ranks. / Wegen des exponentiellen Ansteigens der Anzahl an Internet-Nutzern und Websites ist das WWW (World Wide Web) die wichtigste globale Informationsressource geworden. Das Web bietet verschiedene Dienste (z. B. Informationsveröffentlichung, Electronic Commerce, Entertainment oder Social Networking) zum kostengünstigen und effizienten erlaubten Zugriff an, die von Einzelpersonen und Institutionen zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Um solche Dienste anzubieten, werden weltweite, vereinzelte Websites als Basiseinheiten definiert. Aber die extreme Fragilität der Web-Services und -inhalte, die hohe Kompetenz zwischen ähnlichen Diensten für verschiedene Sites bzw. die breite geographische Verteilung der Web-Nutzer treiben einen dringenden Bedarf für Web-Manager und das Verfolgen und Verstehen der Nutzungsinteresse ihrer Web-Kunden. Die Arbeit zielt darauf ab, dass die Anforderung "X-tracking the Usage Interest on Web Sites" erfüllt wird. "X" hat zwei Bedeutungen. Die erste Bedeutung ist, dass das Nutzungsinteresse von verschiedenen Websites sich unterscheidet. Außerdem stellt die zweite Bedeutung dar, dass das Nutzungsinteresse durch verschiedene Aspekte (interne und externe, strukturelle und konzeptionelle) beschrieben wird. Tracking zeigt, dass die Änderungen zwischen Nutzungsmustern festgelegt und gemessen werden. Die Arbeit eine Methodologie dar, um das Nutzungsinteresse gekoppelt an drei Arten von Websites (Public Informationsportal-Website, E-Learning-Website und Social-Website) zu finden. Wir konzentrieren uns auf unterschiedliche Themen im Bezug auf verschieden Sites, die mit Usage-Interest-Mining eng verbunden werden. Education Informationsportal-Website ist das erste Implementierungsscenario für Web-Usage-Mining. Durch das Scenario können Nutzungsmuster gefunden und die Organisation von Web-Services optimiert werden. In solchen Fällen wird das Nutzungsmuster als häufige Pagemenge, Navigation-Wege, -Strukturen oder -Graphen modelliert. Eine notwendige Voraussetzung ist jedoch, dass man individuelle Verhaltensmuster aus dem Verlauf der Nutzung (Usage History) wieder aufbauen muss. Deshalb geben wir in dieser Arbeit eine systematische Studie zum Nachempfinden der individuellen Verhaltensweisen. Außerdem zeigt die Arbeit eine neue Strategie, dass auf Page-Paaren basierten Content-Clustering aus Nutzungssite aufgebaut werden. Der Unterschied zwischen solchen Clustern und der originalen Webstruktur ist der Abstand zwischen Zielen der Nutzungssite und Erwartungen der Designsite. Darüber hinaus erforschen wir Probleme beim Tracking der Änderungen von Nutzungsmustern in ihrem Lebenszyklus. Die Änderungen werden durch mehrere Aspekte beschrieben. Für internen Aspekt werden konzeptionelle Strukturen und Funktionen integriert. Der externe Aspekt beschreibt physische Eigenschaften. Für lokalen Aspekt wird die Differenz zwischen zwei Zeitspannen gemessen. Der globale Aspekt zeigt Tendenzen der Änderung entlang des Lebenszyklus. Eine Plattform "Web-Cares" wird entwickelt, die die Nutzungsinteressen findet, Unterschiede zwischen Nutzungsinteresse und Website messen bzw. die Änderungen von Nutzungsmustern verfolgen kann. E-Learning-Websites bieten Lernmaterialien wie z.B. Folien, erfaßte Video-Vorlesungen und Übungsblätter an. Wir konzentrieren uns auf die Erfoschung des Lerninteresses auf Streaming-Vorlesungen z.B. Real-Media, mp4 und Flash-Clips. Im Vergleich zum Informationsportal Website kapselt die Nutzung auf Streaming-Vorlesungen die Variablen wie Schauzeit und Schautätigkeiten während der Lernprozesse. Das Lerninteresse wird erfasst, wenn wir Antworten zu sechs Fragen gehandelt haben. Diese Fragen umfassen verschiedene Themen, wie Erforschung der Relation zwischen Teilen von Lehrveranstaltungen oder die Präferenz zwischen den verschiedenen Formen der Lehrveranstaltungen. Wir bevorzugen die Aufdeckung der Veränderungen des Lerninteresses anhand der gleichen Kurse aus verschiedenen Semestern. Der Differenz auf den Inhalt und die Struktur zwischen zwei Kurse beeinflusst die Änderungen auf das Lerninteresse. Ein Algorithmus misst die Differenz des Lerninteresses im Bezug auf einen Ähnlichkeitsvergleich zwischen den Kursen. Die Suchmaschine „Task-Moniminer“ wird entwickelt, dass die Lehrkräfte das Lerninteresse für ihre Streaming-Vorlesungen über das Videoportal tele-TASK abrufen können. Social Websites dienen als eine Online-Community, in den teilnehmenden Web-Benutzern die gemeinsamen Themen diskutieren und ihre interessanten Informationen miteinander teilen. Im Vergleich zur Public Informationsportal-Website und E-Learning Website bietet diese Art von Website reichhaltige Interaktionen zwischen Benutzern und Inhalten an, die die breitere Auswahl der inhaltlichen Qualität bringen. Allerdings bietet eine Social-Website mehr Möglichkeiten zur Modellierung des Nutzungsinteresses an. Wir schlagen ein Rahmensystem vor, die hohe Reputation für Artikel in eine Social-Website empfiehlt. Unsere Beobachtungen sind, dass die Reputation in globalen und lokalen Kategorien klassifiziert wird. Außerdem wird die Qualität von Artikeln mit hoher Reputation mit den Content-Funktionen in Zusammenhang stehen. Durch die folgenden Schritte wird das Rahmensystem im Bezug auf die Überwachungen implementiert. Der erste Schritt ist, dass man die Artikel mit globalen oder lokalen Reputation findet. Danach werden Artikel im Bezug auf ihre Content-Relationen in jeder Kategorie gesammelt. Zum Schluß werden die ausgewählten Artikel aus jedem basierend auf ihren Reputation-Ranking Cluster empfohlen.

A metagenome originated from a shotgun sequencing of a microbial community is a heterogeneous mixture of rather short sequences. A vast majority of microbial species in a given community (99%) are likely to be non-cultivable. Many protein-coding regions in a new metagenome are likely to code for barely detectable homologs of already known proteins. Therefore, an ab initio method that would accurately identify the new genes is a vitally important tool of metagenomic sequence analysis. However, a heuristic model method for finding genes in short prokaryotic sequences with anonymous origin was proposed in 1999 prior to the advent of metagenomics. With hundreds of new prokaryotic genomes available it is now possible to enhance the original approach and to utilize direct polynomial and logistic approximations of oligonucleotide frequencies. The idea was to bypass traditional ways of parameter estimation such as supervised training on a set of validated genes or unsupervised training on an anonymous sequence supposed to contain a large enough number of genes. The codon frequencies, critical for the model parameterization, could be derived from frequencies of nucleotides observed in the short sequence. This method could be further applied for initializing the algorithms for iterative parameters estimation for prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic gene finders.

No description available.

<p>The building sector is a major contributor to theenvironmental loads generated by the society. The recognitionof this fact by the sector and a general strive toward asustainable society have lead to afocus on different toolsthat can be used to enhance the environmental performance ofthe sector and the society. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is oneof these tools. The LCA methodology was initially developed forassessments of short-lived consumer products. The increasinginterest in using the LCA methodology in the context of thebuilding sector has initiated a development of the methodologyto be able to consider the specific characteristics andconsiderations of the building sector. These are specific forthe building sector, but not always unique. Examples ofcharacteristics and considerations are: that each building isunique, the functional output is not always a physical productbut rather a service, the long service lives of buildings.These have implications on several elements in the LCAmethodology. The influenced elements that are dealt with inthis thesis are in particular the modeling of the system, thefunctional unit, boundary setting, life cycle scenarios,scenarios and inventory of the usage phase and allocationprocedures.</p><p>Buildings and constructions are commonly not static systems.The systems are rather dynamic in the sense that the systemwill provide different services based on the same physicalstructure during its service life. To be able to model thedynamic system sequential life cycle thinking is introduced anda list of topics is derived. The list of topics is a structuredpresentation of issues that are of interest in the pursuit of aflexible LCA methodology. The goal is to find out if amethodological approach is suitable for modeling dynamicsystems with a functional unit that is based on the providedservice rather than the physical building.</p><p>Boundary setting, life cycle scenarios, allocationprocedures, predicted service life and the modelling of theusage phase are all elements of the LCA methodology that havean potential to influence the result of an LCA in a significantway. The magnitude of the potential influence has beenmonitored based on the results of three case studies, whichhave been elaborated further to be able to estimate themagnitude of the potential influence.</p><p>There is a multitude of available allocation procedurespresented and used in different contexts. The procedures aredeveloped based on different considerations and with differentintended applications. Two alternative allocation proceduresare presented in this thesis. The first is a proceduredeveloped with multi recyclable materials in mind and it isbased on the recyclability of materials and products. Thesecond procedure is quite recently developed and it is based ona combination of economic parameters and recyclability.</p><p>The importance of the usage phase for buildings andconstructions has previously been recognised. The maincontributors to the environmental loads generated during theusage phase are energy use, maintenance and emissions fromproducts. It is, however, not very common to consider the usagephase in assessments conducted on materials and components,even though it is stipulated in e.g. ISO 14025 that the wholelife cycle should be considered. A proposal of a model toestimate the environmental loads is, therefore, presented.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>Life cycle assessment, Building materials andcomponents, Buildings and constructions, Allocation, Resultvariation, Usage phase, Energy demand</p>

Au début des années 2000, les médecins ont été incités à s'équiper du matériel informatique et de la connexion Internet au sein de leur cabinet. L'usage de l'information électronique par les médecins généralistes (MG) est demeuré mal connu en France. Nous voulions ici identifier les facteurs d'usages de l'information électronique par ces MG. <br />L'équipement des cabinets médicaux et l'offre foisonnante d'information médicale sur Internet pouvaient engendrer de nouvelles pratiques d'information chez les MG. Pour tester ces deux hypothèses, nous avons conduit deux enquêtes qualitatives auprès de MG (Grand Lyon et zones rurales de la région Rhône-Alpes).<br />Finalement, l'informatique est utilisée pour la gestion administrative du cabinet mais elle n'a pas fondamentalement modifié les pratiques documentaires des MG. L'activité secondaire des MG constitue souvent le moteur de la démarche de recherche d'information. Les Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication s'avèrent également peu intégrées dans les pratiques de Formation Médicale Continue.

Thèse d'exercice : Médecine. Médecine générale : Paris 12 : 2006. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. f. 126-129.

Ultrawideband and cognitive radio are two of the most important approaches that are shaping the future of wireless communication systems. At a first glance, the aims of UWB and cognitive radio do not seem to be overlapping significantly, however, there is a strong synergy between the capabilities of UWB and the goals of cognitive radio. One of the objectives of this thesis is to shed the first light on the marriage of these two important approaches.Ultrawideband (UWB) is a promising technology for future short-range, high-data rate wireless communication networks. Along with its exciting features including achieving high data rates, low transmission power requirement, and immunity to multipath effects, UWB is unique in its coexistence capability with narrowband systems.In this thesis, the details of practical UWB implementation are provided. Regarding the coexistence of UWB with licensed narrowband systems, narrowband interference (NBI)avoidance and cancelation techniques in the literature are investigated. It is aimed to emphasize that UWB is a strong candidate for cognitive radio, and this fact is proven by providing two different approaches in which ultrawideband is combined with cognitive radio to maximize the performance of unlicensed communications.