Browser Plug-in Research Articles

Gigapixel optical microscopy for meteorite characterization

We present an automated microscopy system for the optical characterization of meteorite thin sections. The system employs focus-stacking and high-dynamic range imaging to facilitate high-contrast and unpolished samples. Images are acquired at ∼385 nm/pixel and automatically stitched together to create a billion-pixel image for a typical ∼1 cm2 thin section. This image can be viewed in a web browser (with smooth panning and zooming) using a free browser plugin. The software we created to acquire and assemble these images is made freely available for others to create a similar system. Large optical digital images of meteorite sections make it possible to collaboratively inspect and characterize the sample by using the web browser interface as a “virtual microscope”. The system can be employed on any optical microscope with a computerized stage and consumer-grade digital camera, and can be used in a wide range of applications.

Mining search and browse logs for web search

Huge amounts of search log data have been accumulated at Web search engines. Currently, a popular Web search engine may receive billions of queries and collect terabytes of records about user search behavior daily. Beside search log data, huge amounts of browse log data have also been collected through client-side browser plugins. Such massive amounts of search and browse log data provide great opportunities for mining the wisdom of crowds and improving Web search. At the same time, designing effective and efficient methods to clean, process, and model log data also presents great challenges. In this survey, we focus on mining search and browse log data for Web search. We start with an introduction to search and browse log data and an overview of frequently-used data summarizations in log mining. We then elaborate how log mining applications enhance the five major components of a search engine, namely, query understanding, document understanding, document ranking, user understanding, and monitoring and feedback. For each aspect, we survey the major tasks, fundamental principles, and state-of-the-art methods.

User analytics with UbeOne

As web and mobile applications become more sensitive to the user context, there is a shift from purely off-line processing of user actions (log analysis) to real-time user analytics that can generate information about the user context to be instantly leveraged by the application. Ubeone is a system that enables both real-time and aggregate analytics from user data. The system is designed as a set of lightweight, composeable mechanisms that can progressively and collectively analyze a user action, such as pinning, saving or printing a web page. We will demonstrate the system capabilities on analyzing a live feed of URLs printed through a proprietary, web browser plug-in. This is in fact the first analysis of web printing activity. We will also give a taste of how the system can enable instant recommendations based on the user context.

LabSocket: A New Trend in Remote Labs

Many companies and universities understand the trends of evolution in direction of â??Remote Engineering - REâ? like a strong need to sustain the development and especially the fast and deep evolution in the field of â??Virtual Instrumentation â?? VIâ? with direct connection in engineering and education. In this paper we combine a new system â??LabSocket â?? LSâ? with a recognized standard in education â??National Instruments Engineering Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation - Suite NI ELVISâ? and the new myDAQ board for students hands-on laboratories. In recent years at the Creativity Laboratory from â??Transylvaniaâ? University of Brasov â?? Romania many LabVIEW applications based on NI ELVIS and myDAQ have been developed. Now, based on the LabSocket system developed by Bergmans Mechatronics LLC, we can begin to control these applications over the web, and thereby increase the learning opportunities offered to the students. A significant attribute of the LabSocket system is that it extends the functionality of LabVIEW-based industrial or educational applications to the browser, without the use of browser plug-ins or requiring developers to write any HTML or JavaScript code.

A case for SIP in Javascript

This article presents the challenges and compares the alternatives to interoperate between SIP-based systems and the emerging standards for web real-time communication (WebRTC). We argue for an endpoint- and web-focused architecture, and present both sides of the SIP in JavaScript approach. Until WebRTC has ubiquitous cross-browser availability, we suggest a fallback strategy for web developer: detect and use HTML5 if available; otherwise, fall back to a browser plugin.

Transforming clinical imaging and 3D data for virtual reality learning objects: HTML5 and mobile devices implementation

Web deployable anatomical simulations or "virtual reality learning objects" can easily be produced with QuickTime VR software, but their use for online and mobile learning is being limited by the declining support for web browser plug-ins for personal computers and unavailability on popular mobile devices like Apple iPad and Android tablets. This article describes complementary methods for creating comparable, multiplatform VR learning objects in the new HTML5 standard format, circumventing platform-specific limitations imposed by the QuickTime VR multimedia file format. Multiple types or "dimensions" of anatomical information can be embedded in such learning objects, supporting different kinds of online learning applications, including interactive atlases, examination questions, and complex, multi-structure presentations. Such HTML5 VR learning objects are usable on new mobile devices that do not support QuickTime VR, as well as on personal computers. Furthermore, HTML5 VR learning objects can be embedded in "ebook" document files, supporting the development of new types of electronic textbooks on mobile devices that are increasingly popular and self-adopted for mobile learning.

ENGLISH

In the information technology era, the technical institutions have radically changed the information environment. Information and communication technology (ICT) has created a new opportunities to effectively store and transmit the digital video over networks. E-learning will be introduced as an integral part of an environment where teaching is transformed and where learning is an ongoing, creative process.1 Along with the basic concepts of e-learning technology and its applications to the technical education using software’s and hardware requirements, the basic objective of science and engineering education in India is to devise and guide reforms that will transform India into a strong and vibrant knowledge economy. In this context, the focus areas for National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) project have been (i) higher education, (ii) professional education, (iii) distance education, and (iv) continuous and open learning,2. The E-Vidya solution is deployed on a local high capacity server of required specification where it can be installed in each college campus. Client computers access the streaming media content over the standard high speed campus LAN using a web browser and media player plug-in. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/djlit.32.6.2842

An optimized web-based approach for collaborative stereoscopic medical visualization

ObjectiveMedical visualization tools have traditionally been constrained to tethered imaging workstations or proprietary client viewers, typically part of hospital radiology systems. To improve accessibility to real-time, remote, interactive, stereoscopic visualization and to enable collaboration among multiple viewing locations, we developed an open source approach requiring only a standard web browser with no added client-side software.Materials and MethodsOur collaborative, web-based, stereoscopic, visualization system, CoWebViz, has been used successfully for the past 2 years at the University of Chicago to teach immersive virtual anatomy classes. It is a server application that streams server-side visualization applications to client front-ends, comprised solely of a standard web browser with no added software.ResultsWe describe optimization considerations, usability, and performance results, which make CoWebViz practical for broad clinical use. We clarify technical advances including: enhanced threaded architecture, optimized visualization distribution algorithms, a wide range of supported stereoscopic presentation technologies, and the salient theoretical and empirical network parameters that affect our web-based visualization approach.DiscussionThe implementations demonstrate usability and performance benefits of a simple web-based approach for complex clinical visualization scenarios. Using this approach overcomes technical challenges that require third-party web browser plug-ins, resulting in the most lightweight client.ConclusionsCompared to special software and hardware deployments, unmodified web browsers enhance remote user accessibility to interactive medical visualization. Whereas local hardware and software deployments may provide better interactivity than remote applications, our implementation demonstrates that a simplified, stable, client approach using standard web browsers is sufficient for high quality three-dimensional, stereoscopic, collaborative and interactive visualization.

INTERACTIVE 3D LANDSCAPES ON LINE

Abstract. The paper describes challenges identified while developing browser embedded 3D landscape rendering applications, our current approach and work-flow and how recent development in browser technologies could affect. All the data, even if processed by optimization and decimation tools, result in very huge databases that require paging, streaming and Level-of-Detail techniques to be implemented to allow remote web based real time fruition. Our approach has been to select an open source scene-graph based visual simulation library with sufficient performance and flexibility and adapt it to the web by providing a browser plug-in. Within the current Montegrotto VR Project, content produced with new pipelines has been integrated. The whole Montegrotto Town has been generated procedurally by CityEngine. We used this procedural approach, based on algorithms and procedures because it is particularly functional to create extensive and credible urban reconstructions. To create the archaeological sites we used optimized mesh acquired with laser scanning and photogrammetry techniques whereas to realize the 3D reconstructions of the main historical buildings we adopted computer-graphic software like blender and 3ds Max. At the final stage, semi-automatic tools have been developed and used up to prepare and clusterise 3D models and scene graph routes for web publishing. Vegetation generators have also been used with the goal of populating the virtual scene to enhance the user perceived realism during the navigation experience. After the description of 3D modelling and optimization techniques, the paper will focus and discuss its results and expectations.

Browser Design Impacts Multitasking

With smartphones, tablets and laptops, it has become easier than ever to multitask constantly. How does the design of devices and applications encourage or discourage multitasking behavior? Given the ease and seamlessness of switching between goal-oriented tasks and distractions in a browser, and the propensity to lose track of time, our design team focused on increasing awareness of switching between browser tabs, and on increasing awareness of how time is spent within tabs. We designed a browser plug-in that automatically categorized URLs as work or non-work, altered tab color, size and placement, and added a status bar that displayed the total amount of time spent on a tab and overall in work/non-work mode. We conducted a two-week field study to evaluate the effects on browsing behavior. We found that modifying the browser design influenced multitasking: participants spent less time on non-work tabs, switched between tabs less frequently and spent more time on work-related websites.

Animating Algorithms as a DSP Teaching Tool

This paper introduces the notion of ‘animation’ of digital signal processing algorithms and related concepts. The purpose of the paper is threefold: (i) to introduce the idea of animation of algorithms as an adjunct to teaching DSP; (ii) to discuss some possible approaches to developing such animations, and motivate possible scenarios where algorithm animation would be of benefit in explaining abstract DSP principles; and (iii) to provide details on a method which successfully demonstrates the algorithm animations using a web browser without the need for user-installed software or browser plug-ins.

Sensory effects for ambient experiences in the World Wide Web

More and more content in various formats becomes available via the World Wide Web (WWW). Currently available Web browsers are able to access and interpret these contents (i.e., Web videos, text, image, and audio). These contents stimulate only senses like audition or vision. Recently, it has been proposed to stimulate also other senses while consuming multimedia content, through so-called sensory effects. These sensory effects aim to enhance the ambient experience by providing effects such as light, wind, vibration, etc. The effects are represented as Sensory Effect Metadata (SEM) description which is associated to multimedia content and is rendered on devices like fans, vibration chairs, or lamps. In this paper we present two subjective quality assessments which comprise sensory effects, such as light, in the area of the WWW and their results achieved. The first assessment evaluates the influence of light effects on the Quality of Experience (QoE). The second assessment measures the impact of different settings for the color calculation on the viewing experience. Furthermore, we describe a Web browser plug-in for Mozilla Firefox which is able to render such sensory effects that are provided via the WWW.

An Empirical Analysis of the Effectiveness of Browser-based Antiphishing Solutions

Phishing has by far become the most dangerous form of fraud to hit online business. Due to the key role in accessing the Internet, web browsers are at a strategic position to offer the protection against the risks of phishing attacks. Varieties of security companies have proposed their browser-based antiphishing solutions to protect the end-use. In this paper, we used 3403 fresh phishing URLs and 1000 legitimate URLs to conduct four experiments on ten popular anti-phishing tools including browsers and browser plug-ins. Overall, we found that the Google Chrome and Firefox identified the most phishing sites, but these two browsers still missed more than 20% fraudulent sites. Qihoo 360 Secure Explorer did a strong performance under the APAC dataset that demonstrate their excellent abilities of the Chinese-target phishing detection. We also found that different anti-phishing tools have totally different reactions between regions and languages. And finally, we proposed our suggestions for designing a comprehensive anti-phishing mechanism.

A Hardware Virtualization Based Component Sandboxing Architecture

Modern applications comprise multiple components, such as browser plug-ins, often of unknown provenance and quality. Statistics show that failure of such components accounts for a high percentage of software faults. Enabling isolation of such fine-grained components is therefore necessary to increase the robustness and resilience of security-critical and safety-critical computer systems. In this paper, we evaluate whether such fine-grained components can be sandboxed through the use of the hardware virtualization support available in modern Intel and AMD processors. We compare the performance and functionality of such an approach to two previous software based approaches. The results demonstrate that hardware isolation minimizes the difficulties encountered with software based approaches, while also reducing the size of the trusted computing base, thus increasing confidence in the solution's correctness. We also show that our relatively simple implementation has equivalent run-time performance, with overheads of less than 34%, does not require custom tool chains and provides enhanced functionality over software-only approaches, confirming that hardware virtualization technology is a viable mechanism for fine-grained component isolation.

Friend Lens: novel web content sharing through strategic manipulation of cached html

Current methods of content sharing include blogs, social networking sites, and social bookmarking sites. This article details the construction and novel features of Friend Lens, a web application that allows users to both author original content and to extract complete copies of external sites using PHP, making it a hybrid blog and social booking site. Friend Lens implements a method of collaboration with the ability to highlight posts and to make a composite of multiple highlights across many users. Composite highlights use a colour scale to emphasise the content that received the most highlights. Unlike popular social bookmarking sites like Clipmarks or Diigo, all of Friend Lens' functionality works with the need to install a browser plug-in. To evaluate Friend Lens, human subjects rated Facebook, Clipmarks, and Friend Lens in three general categories: community, posting content, and practicality of use. The results are reported in this article.

Pocketome: an encyclopedia of small-molecule binding sites in 4D.

The importance of binding site plasticity in protein–ligand interactions is well-recognized, and so are the difficulties in predicting the nature and the degree of this plasticity by computational means. To assist in understanding the flexible protein–ligand interactions, we constructed the Pocketome, an encyclopedia of about one thousand experimentally solved conformational ensembles of druggable binding sites in proteins, grouped by location and consistent chain/cofactor composition. The multiplicity of pockets within the ensembles adds an extra, fourth dimension to the Pocketome entry data. Within each ensemble, the pockets were carefully classified by the degree of their pairwise similarity and compatibility with different ligands. The core of the Pocketome is derived regularly and automatically from the current releases of the Protein Data Bank and the Uniprot Knowledgebase; this core is complemented by entries built from manually provided seed ligand locations. The Pocketome website (www.pocketome.org) allows searching for the sites of interest, analysis of conformational clusters, important residues, binding compatibility matrices and interactive visualization of the ensembles using the ActiveICM web browser plugin. The Pocketome collection can be used to build multi-conformational docking and 3D activity models as well as to design cross-docking and virtual ligand screening benchmarks.

WebWatch

BioTechniquesVol. 51, No. 3 WebWatchOpen AccessWebWatchKevin AhernKevin AhernSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:3 Apr 2018https://doi.org/10.2144/000113730AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail Getting PersonalThe advent of rapid, relatively inexpensive genomic sequencing methods has catalyzed the arrival of the personal genome era—and with it, a number of accompanying issues of privacy, data storage, and clinical import. Tracking popular insight on this important topic is The Personal Genome web site. Stewarded by Personal Genome Project Executive Director Jason Bobe, the blog features documentary videos, essays, and other provocative thoughts offering important perspectives of the use of genomic information. Archives date back to 2003.[http://thepersonalgenome.com]Rose ParadeThe delight of gardeners and the symbol of lovers, roses are an integral part of our culture and have long had the attention of plant breeders worldwide. This diversity of species is well-cataloged at www.EveryRose.com, which documents over 7500 varieties with 2700 accompanying photos. Visitors can search the online database to identify roses by a number of criteria, including color, classification, flower shape, size, habitat, fragrance, and more. A companion database links searchers with suppliers. They can use the site to locate rose gardens, read creative writing about roses, and locate clubs, as well.[www.everyrose.com]The “Hot Cocoa” rose (2001 T. Carruth, Russet floribunda).© 2004 Trevor Inkpen, www.everyrose.com.Stimulating SimulationChemistry lends itself well to the use of computer simulations to illustrate basic concepts. The Chemistry Education Research Group, led by professor Tom Greenbowe of Iowa State University's Department of Chemistry, has assembled an impressive array of downloadable simulations covering all manner of general chemistry principles. Topic areas include product prediction, kinetics, stoichiometry, acid-base equilibria, solutions, thermochemistry, gas laws, and electrochemistry. Animations, tutorials, and simulations are abundant; users will want to update their Flash and other browser plug-ins, as they are needed in force.[www.chem.iastate.edu/group/Greenbowe/sections/projectfolder/simDownload/index4.html]Stress Address“Coping with plant environmental stress is the foundation of sustainable agriculture,” proclaims the byline of the informative Plantstress site. With a substantial catalog of news and related articles, these folks are in a prime position to make such a statement. Focused on agricultural methods and the green revolution, the site lists a number of abiotic stresses endured by plants—including drought, salinity, oxidative, heat, cold, water-logging, mineral deficiency, and mineral toxicity—along with techniques for mitigation. Contributions are from a number of worldwide experts, and news on the opening page is timely. Other sections of the site connect researchers with methods, presentations, references, and even each other.[www.plantstress.com]Deceptive AdvertisingmiRNAs perform critical post-translational regulation of at least one third of mammalian genes, and the sequence specificity of the interaction of miRNAs and their target genes is both a boon and a bane for regulation. Aiming to identify other potential miRNA-affected genes is the focus of a novel database known as Patrocles. Assembled using data from publicly accessible databases and scientific literature, Patrocles maps potential genes/probes with genomic coordinates relevant to the appropriate species (human, chimpanzee, rat, dog, cow, or chicken). Over 10,000 putative DNA sequence polymorphisms (DSPs) that might influence miRNA-mediated regulation have been identified for humans alone.[www.patrocles.org]Flower PowerWith the evolution of angiosperms and their flowers came beautiful displays, instruments of economic importance (think fruit production and seed dispersal), and evolving insect species to service them. Indeed, the coevolution of insects and flowers is a well-studied biological phenomenon. Understanding the biochemistry that gave rise to flowers is important from the perspectives of botany, commerce, food production, and molecular evolution. It also provides a focus for the Floral Genome Project, hosted by Penn State University. At the project's web site, visitors can download cDNA library data from over 20 species of angiosperms from which the most flower diversity is found. They can also request clones, access methods, view chronologically organized publications, and undertake sophisticated sequence searches.[http://fgp.bio.psu.edu]FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 51, No. 3 Follow us on social media for the latest updates Metrics Downloaded 85 times History Published online 3 April 2018 Published in print September 2011 Information© 2011 Author(s)PDF download

Extending Web Browsers with a Unity 3D-Based Virtual Worlds Viewer

Many virtual worlds are accessed via a rich client interface that must be downloaded and installed into the user's environment. For many users, especially enterprise users, this large download and install represents a significant obstacle to virtual world acceptance. The authors describe a technical implementation that uses the Unity 3D browser plug-in as a way to access a virtual world from within a Web browser. Using this familiar tool, users can interact with the rich virtual environments provided by Second Life and OpenSimulator.

BrowserGuard: A Behavior-Based Solution to Drive-by-Download Attacks

Along with an increasing user population of various web applications, browser-based drive-by-download attacks soon become one of the most common security threats to the cyber community. A user using a vulnerable browser or browser plug-ins may become a victim of a drive-by-download attack right after visiting a vicious web site. The end result of such attacks is that an attacker can download and execute any code on the victim's host. This paper proposes a runtime, behavior-based solution, BrowserGuard, to protect a browser against drive-by-download attacks. BrowserGuard records the download scenario of every file that is loaded into a host through a browser. Then based on the download scenario, BrowserGuard blocks the execution of any file that is loaded into a host without the consent of a browser user. Due to its behavior-based detection nature, BrowserGuard does not need to analyze the source file of any web page or the run-time states of any script code, such as Javascript. BrowserGuard also does not need to maintain any exploit code samples and does not need to query the reputation value of any web site. We utilize the standard BHO mechanism of Windows to implement BrowserGuard on IE 7.0. Experimental results show that BrowserGuard has low performance overhead (less than 2.5%) and no false positives and false negatives for the web pages used in our experiments.

Exploration to Virtual Reality 3D Key Techniques based on Cosmo Browser Plug-in

Paper mainly discussed some key techniques in virtual system programming based on Cosmo browser plug-in, including virtual apperceive sensor, three dimension human body model, virtual avatar application, VRML extension etc. Explanation, execution and presentation of VRML scenes are realized through virtual browser. It is responsible for presenting sight and sound experience of scene graphs. Interaction between user and environment is one of the essential functions of virtual system. There are three apperceive sensor nodes in VRML system, including VisibilitySensor, ProximitySensor and Collision node. They are mainly used to sense objects whether user visible or their closeness with user, also whether happening collision. Paper mainly studied NavigationInfo node’s grammatical pattern and its avatarSize field. These determine the collision detection and user perspective scope with the undulating terrain. H-ANIM format, which is tightly integrated with VRML, is mainly used to construct three human body structure on WWW page. Paper mainly emphasizes on its hierarchy node association structure. Virtual avatar technology is the foundation for cooperative multi-user to apperceive current colony’s working status. When running VRML program, an invisible explorer avatar can be assumed in three-dimensional space. There are mainly used four kinds of techniques to extend VRML function. They are embedding VRML into HTML, associating Script node with Java class, quoting JavaScript code and programming through EAI. Building correspondence channel between VRML scene and external world is EAI’s function. EAI directly extends VRML’s environment interaction efficiency and programming ability.