Abstract available in the Journal of Investigative Medicine.

Users spend more time than ever on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, while native app development continues to become harder due to platform fragmentation. The web is a promising platform for mobile applications because of its easy access and standardised technologies that work unanimously across many different platforms and operating systems. However, native applications have always had an edge over the web because of important features that have not been available anywhere else, such as push notifications, background synchronisation and offline support. Progressive Web Apps aim to bring the web platform closer to native by enabling many of these important features while still running completely in the web browser, with the possibility to install the application, effectively promoting it to a top-level application. This project will evaluate the capabilities of web-based mobile applications compared to traditional native mobile applications. Three simple proof of concept applications will be built to test the performance and user experience with the help of different JavaScript libraries and techniques for building a Progressive Web App. Then one of the implementations will be further developed and matched against an existing native application with similar features in terms of functionality and performance. The study finds that for this use case, a Progressive Web App may be used instead of a native app without missing out on any important functionality. This simplifies development and releases, by enabling rich code sharing between the different platforms as well as avoiding the app distribution platforms by distributing the application entirely through the web, automatic and transparent to the users. However, this solution means more responsibility in terms of infrastructure for developers to maintain and optimise as the application needs to be distributed by own servers. / Allt mer tid ägnas åt mobila enheter såsom smartphones och surfplattor, medan apputveckling blir allt svårare på grund av spridningen av plattformar. Webben är en lovande plattform för mobila applikationer på grund av dess lättillgänglighet och standardiserade teknologier som fungerar likadant på många olika plattformar och operativsystem. Trots detta har nativa appar alltid haft ett övertag gentemot webben på grund av funktioner som inte varit tillgängliga på andra platformar, såsom pushnotiser, bakgrundssynkronisering och offlinestöd. Progressive Web Apps syftar till föra webbplattformen närmare nativ genom att möjliggöra många av dessa funktioner men fortfarande köras enbart i webbläsaren, med möjlighet att installera applikationen på enheten. Projektet kommer att utvärdera kapaciteten i webbaserade mobila applikationer jämfört med traditionella mobilapplikationer. Tre stycken proof of concept-applikationer kommer att byggas för att testa prestanda och användarvänlighet med hjälp av olika JavaScript-bibliotek och tekniker för att bygga en Progressive Web App. Därefter kommer en av implementationerna att vidareutvecklas och utvärderas gentemot en existerade app med liknande funktionalitet. Studien visar att en Progressive Web App i det här användningsfallet kan ersätta en nativ mobilapplikation utan att gå miste om viktig funktionalitet. Det skulle förenkla utveckling och publicering, genom att möjliggöra koddelning mellan olika plattformar och undvika appdistribueringsplattformarna genom att distribuera applikationen enbart genom webben, automatiskt och transparent för användarna. Lösningen innebär dock mer ansvar i form av underhåll och optimering av infrastruktur eftersom applikationen måste distribueras genom egna servrar.

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<p>Conventional image compression algorithms use transform coding to achieve a compact representation of the image. Most transforms used in image compression algorithms map image data to a complete set of transform basis functions which can decorrelate image information and represent data in a more compact form. This technique has proven to be very efficient and is used in most state of the art compression algorithms. However, if an over-complete set of basis functions is available, the image information can be captured by fewer basis functions. This results in a more compact image representation and can potentially yield a better compression performance. In this thesis, we study the use of over-complete image representation as an alternative to transform coding techniques used in image compression. The matching pursuit (MP) algorithm is used to map the image to an over-complete dictionary. We develop new quantization and encoding algorithms for matching pursuit image coding and compare the proposed MP image encoder with state of the art image codecs that use transform coding techniques. Additionally, the iterative nature of the matching pursuit algorithm can be used to design progressive encoders. We also study progressive coding by matching pursuit and design new progressive MP encoders and show how they outperform existing solutions.</p> <p>We start by study of progressive coding by matching pursuit and design a progressive encoder for i.i.d. Gaussian sources. The choice of Gaussian sources is motivated by the fact that theoretical bounds on progressive coding of Gaussian sources are known and therefore can be used to determine the efficiency of matching pursuit in progressive coding. Our proposed MP progressive encoder outperforms all existing progressive encoders designed for Gaussian sources. However, redundancies in the MP algorithm prevents us from closing the gap that exists between progressive and non-progressive Gaussian source coding. Therefore, we design another progressive encoder based on lattice quantization and address some of the issues associated with our proposed MP encoder.</p> <p>In the second part of this thesis we study the application of matching pursuit m image compression. We start our study by developing a new adaptive quantization technique that can outperform existing quantization techniques designed for matching pursuit image coding. We continue our study by designing an optimal encoding algorithm for encoding MP coefficients and atom positions. The proposed encoding algorithm results in significant rate distortion improvement over existing encoding techniques. The use of our proposed encoding technique enables comparison of matching pursuit image coding with state of the art compression algorithms that use transform coding such as JPEG2000. Our proposed MP image encoder outperforms JPEG2000 at low bit rates and results in better visual quality at moderate bit rates. We show that the flexibility offered by the over-complete dictionary can result in superior performance compared to image compression using transform coding techniques.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This document only includes an excerpt of the corresponding thesis or dissertation. To request a digital scan of the full text, please contact the Ruth Lilly Medical Library's Interlibrary Loan Department (rlmlill@iu.edu).

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Educational reform in the New South took many forms. After the ravages of the Civil War, education in the South was chaotic and sporadic. Diverse external groups sought to improve the situation of the southern poor. They ranged from successful businessmen who organized philanthropic ventures such as the Southern Education Board to mission associations established by church denominations to minister to the disadvantaged rural population—both black and white. Within the South, various individuals and groups played critical roles in improving southern rural education. This study focuses on the creation of Tallulah Falls School in the north Georgia mountains by the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs. Tallulah Falls School’s founding in its cultural and social context reflects upon a number of issues that characterized the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. Of significance were the vision of a New South as articulated by Henry Grady and others, and the ‘discovery’ of Appalachia in the 1890s, followed by the perceived need to ‘repair’ it. Also influential was a different vision of a New South that drew upon the Lost Cause philosophy as articulated by the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy. Industrial education was seen as a means not only to educate but also to alleviate concerns about the potential loss of rural America and the legendary yeoman farmers that had been the foundation of the nation from its earliest days. The rise of great fortunes and the emergence of a middle class led those who had the resources to uplift and ‘repair’ through philanthropic means that which seemed to threaten the virtues and vitality of America. Although their motives were not purely altruistic, clubwomen exerted great effort to bring educational opportunities to the rural people of Georgia. Through personal involvement and by means of political and social reform, these clubwomen were prepared to their position and influence to ‘heal’ the children. Their endeavor at Tallulah Falls stands as an example of their determination to uplift poor, disadvantaged mountain children and their families and bring to them an awareness of an efficient, modern world.

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