World Wide Web Browser Research Articles

Assessment of Citizens’ Actions against Light Pollution with Guidelines for Future Initiatives

Due to the wide reach of media reports about scientific research and technological tools such as the world wide web (WWW), the Internet, and web browsers, citizens today have access to factual information about the negative impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on their dark skies, and their health and well-being. This means they can now make educated decisions and take the necessary steps to help protect themselves and their communities from disruptive light pollution. Whilst this action is positive and welcomed, unfortunately, according to collected data, not all such initiatives have been successful. Although our understanding of this groundswell movement is deepening, further studies are required to complete a worldwide picture of the current situation. This paper therefore investigates the various actions taken by citizens, as well as the challenges, methods, and tools involved, regarding good practices initiated by grass roots activism on how to reduce existing and potential light pollution. The results of a comparative analysis of 262 international case studies (lawsuits and online petitions) reveal that, since the 1990s, there has been an increase in the number of legal cases related to light pollution due to the rise in public awareness, the availability of scientific knowledge via the Internet, and the ability to take accurate lighting measurements and perform lighting simulations. Also, in the last decade a new tool for digital participation in the form of online petitions has established a new movement of citizen action to mitigate the effects of light pollution. Based on this information, a seven-step framework involving recommendations for citizen action has been developed. It is expected that this new knowledge will benefit those citizens planning future efforts involving the development, implementation, and monitoring processes of outdoor lighting. Additionally, it might support the evolution of planning and policy approaches that are sustainable and necessary to improve the application and installation of ecologically/biologically responsible illumination for towns, cities, and natural habitats.

WEB BROWSERS: UNTANGLING THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Not only are Internet resources expanding exponentially, but they are becoming more sophisticated, incorporating a variety of multimedia and hypertext components. Internet documents on the World Wide Web may contain elaborately formatted text, color graphics, audio, and video as well as dynamic connections to other Internet resources via hypertext links. In addition to providing user-friendly access to hypermedia resources, most Web browsers (client software) provide a rich graphical environment for authoring and displaying electronic documents locally. This article describes the World Wide Web and a sampling of the available Web browsers. It then discusses a testproject developed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries designed to explore the potential, demands, and pitfalls of Web access to the Internet, as well as to investigate hypermedia document creation in an academic libraryenvironment. The experiences with the project qonfirmed the importance of the World Wide Web and Web browsers to this environment, so much so that providing access to these Internet resources must be seen as mandatory to any academic or upper level educational library providing electronic information access.

Error Analysis in Japanese Writing and Its Implementation in a Computer Assisted Language Learning System on the World Wide Web

This article deals with the implementation of error analysis for a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) program using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. This program can be used for learning the passive voice in Japanese on any World Wide Web (WWW) browser. To estimate the range of possible types of errors in Japanese passive constructions, a survey of errors made by foreign students was conducted. The software uses standard NLP tools such as morpheme and syntax analyzers, plus newly developed error analysis and feedback processing components. The program enables learners to type in sentences freely, detects their errors, and displays appropriate feedback messages to guide learners to correct their errors themselves. Evaluation of the program showed that it can obtain a high degree of accuracy and instructional effectiveness.

A Technology of Robot Simulation and Control

The internet provides a unique opportunity to remote control robots. Easy to use web interfaces enable people to control robots and to monitor their operation from the distance. This paper describes a remote control technology which combines computer network and an autonomous robot is constructed. The main feature of this technology is that users just need a general purpose computer and a world wide web browser, they can command the mobile robot in a remote location through internet.

HIGH SECURITY MONITORING AND CONTROL OF PROCESS VIA INTERNET

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a convenient way to access information on the net because the WWW browser integrates different network services into a common easily accessible user interface. These features coupled with low investment cost are especially suited for accessing information of the remote control and monitoring system. This paper describes a unique Web-based application which is implemented based on the client/server architecture. The user can view the real-time condition of remote process. In addition, the user can also control the operation of the substation at the server site. For augmentation the security factor, the port number that received by the server (from the client) must be dynamic. It can be done by sending the coefficients of an m-order equation from the client side and solving it by the server to find port number. Therefore the hackers could not be able to find port number easily.

Acquisition of Information Online: Knowledge, Navigation and Learning Outcomes

Research suggests that the World Wide Web (WWW) represents the intersection of at least two domains: content and technology. This investigation was designed to examine the relationship between prior knowledge and WWW browsing outcomes (i.e., navigation behavior and knowledge gain) within the context of a genetics Web site. Students randomly assigned to a treatment group were given a prereading activity designed to increase their prior knowledge within the domain of genetics. This group demonstrated significantly higher learning outcome scores than students in the control group. The treatment group also spent more time browsing, viewed more multimedia resources, and utilized more in-text embedded links. These results and others are interpreted in terms of instructional decisions and recommendations for future research.

Customizing Visualization in Three-Dimensional Urban GIS via Web-Based Interaction

This paper presents our research results of visualizing three-dimensional 3D city models in a web explorer environment under the supports of the digital building model, the digital terrain model, large-scale true urban orthoimage, and actual building sidewall pictures. A system has been designed and developed under a client/server architecture, which integrates the Internet Geographic Infor- mation System with multitier web applications for creation of a 3D city model. The front-end client provides a user interface for setting the properties of the 3D city model, and the back-end server processes these parameters and generates a 3D model, which is then sent back to the Virtual Reality Modeling Language-enabled World Wide Web browser for display and navigation. The technology for display and navigation of the 3D model is implemented using Java Server Pages/Servlet technology built under multitier web architecture. The technology for data accessing and processing is implemented through Java programming language. The displayer is linked to the database, where the required GIS spatial data are stored. The results from our experiments demonstrated that this developed system is able to display and visualize 3D city data in a web environment for public accesses. Using the sidewall pictures taken from real city buildings, we refill the white walls of urban buildings into a real appearance as seen in our real world cities. The player provides several click buttons to enhance the effect and position of visualization, including rotation, zoom, pan, seek, etc. The users can easily view the details of a specified building or/and the entire city in a moving 3D manner, and locate a specific building.

WWW.Cell Biology Education: Using the World Wide Web To Develop a New Teaching Topic

There are two essential ingredients for collecting information from the Internet: 1) a World Wide Web (Web) browser, and 2) an Internet search engine. The two most widely used Web browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape Communications Corporation's Navigator. There are, however, more than 120 browser software possibilities available. These browsers have been cataloged by Adrian Roselli and may be found at Evolt, a site that supports the exchange of Web design information. Web browsers are like brands of shoes; some fit better than others. By visiting Evolt, whose uniform resource locator (URL) is listed below, one might find a browser that works better. For example, some Internet users prefer Firefox (Figure 1) and Safari, because Web browsers have different efficiencies in displaying Internet information on different computer platforms. Figure 1 Search page from the Web browser known as Firefox. Image used with permission of Mozilla, parent of Firefox. For a free copy of Firefox, which operates on either Apple or IBM compatibles, visit http://www.mozilla.org. Evolt http://browsers.evolt.org/ As is the case with Web browsers, there are a number of Internet search engines. Each search engine has a variety of features that address different objectives for finding information from the Internet. The State University of New York at Albany has organized an excellent list of Internet search engines.

Acquisition and organization of personal knowledge through WWW browsing

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to construct a system to support the process whereby the user acquires knowledge by viewing electronic documents, including documents on the World Wide Web (WWW). The paper focuses on the structure of the individual knowledge and the context that forms its background, based on the experience, interests, and concerns of the individual user. A system called “MindHeap,” which models the structure of the individual knowledge in the system by interaction with the user, and presents the information to the user on the basis of that model, was previously implemented. The system has a function allowing interaction with the user in addition to the functions of an ordinary WWW browser. The user can input the part of the document that is of interest by tracing it on the screen. As a result of repeated input, the structure of the individual knowledge is automatically rearranged and systematized on the basis of the input and its context. Thus, the system supports the user with information in various formats. Evaluation experiments of the system are presented in this paper, demonstrating that the technique works effectively. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 87(11): 38–48, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20127

On Leveraging User Access Patterns for Topic Specific Crawling

In recent years, there has been considerable research on constructing crawlers which find resources satisfying specific conditions called predicates. Such a predicate could be a keyword query, a topical query, or some arbitrary contraint on the internal structure of the web page. Several techniques such as focussed crawling and intelligent crawling have recently been proposed for performing the topic specific resource discovery process. All these crawlers are linkage based, since they use the hyperlink behavior in order to perform resource discovery. Recent studies have shown that the topical correlations in hyperlinks are quite noisy and may not always show the consistency necessary for a reliable resource discovery process. In this paper, we will approach the problem of resource discovery from an entirely different perspective; we will mine the significant browsing patterns of world wide web users in order to model the likelihood of web pages belonging to a specified predicate. This user behavior can be mined from the freely available traces of large public domain proxies on the world wide web. For example, proxy caches such as Squid are hierarchical proxies which make their logs publically available. As we shall see in this paper, such traces are a rich source of information which can be mined in order to find the users that are most relevant to the topic of a given crawl. We refer to this technique as collaborative crawling because it mines the collective user experiences in order to find topical resources. Such a strategy turns out to be extremely effective because the topical consistency in world wide web browsing patterns turns out to very high compared to the noisy linkage information. In addition, the user-centered crawling system can be combined with linkage based systems to create an overall system which works more effectively than a system based purely on either user behavior or hyperlinks.

Homer II—man–machine interface to internet for blind and visually impaired people

HOMER II is a voice-driven text-to-speech system developed for blind or visually impaired persons for reading Slovenian texts. Users can obtain texts from the Internet site of the Association of Slovenian Blind and Visually Impaired Persons Societies from their Electronic Information System where they can find daily newspapers, some novels and other information. The system consists of four main modules. The first module enables Internet communication, retrieves text to a local disc and converts it to a standard form. The input interface manages the keyboard entry and/or speaker independent speech recognition. The output interface performs speech synthesis of a given text and in addition prints the same text magnified to the screen. The user dialog is responsible for the user friendly communication and controls other tasks of the system. Homer II was ported from Linux to the MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000 operating systems. For the best performance it uses multi-threading and other advantages of the 32-bit environment. Further versions of the HOMER system with even more advanced dialogue modules and some basic World Wide Web browsing functionality will represent an important tool in the distance learning and teaching process for the impaired persons using academic networks.

Spout: a transparent proxy for safe execution of Java applets

The advent of executable contents such as Java applets exposes World Wide Web (WWW) users to a new class of attacks that were not possible before. Despite an array of security checking, detection, and enforcement mechanisms built into the language model, the compiler, and the run-time system of Java, serious security breach incidents due to implementation bugs still arose repeatedly in the past several years. Without a provably correct implementation of Java's security architecture specification, it is difficult to make any conclusive statements about the security characteristic of current Java virtual machines. The Spout project takes an alternative approach to address Java's security problems. Rather than attempt a provable secure implementation, we aim to confine the damages of malicious Java applets to selective machines, thus, preventing the machines behind an organization's firewall from being attacked by malicious or buggy applets. More concretely, Spout is a distributed Java execution engine that transparently decouples the processing of an incoming applet's application logic from that of graphical user interface (GUI), such that the only part of an applet that is actually running on the requesting user's host is the harmless GUI code. A unique feature of the Spout architecture that does not exist in other similar systems, is that it is completely transparent to and does not require any modifications to WWW browsers or class libraries on the end hosts. This paper describes the detailed design, implementation, and performance measurements of the first Spout prototype, which also incorporates run-time resource monitoring mechanisms to counter denial-of-service attacks.

A web page transmission mechanism with transmission order control of inline objects

AbstractDue to the increasing popularity of the Internet, the WWW (World Wide Web) has become the most popular way to distribute multimedia contents. In the WWW, impressive information can be provided by embedding a large number of inline objects such as images in a WWW page. Since these inline objects are generally presented in WWW browsers in transmission order, the transmission order of inline objects becomes very important, especially for users accessing the Internet with a low‐speed connection such as a dial‐up line. In this paper, we propose a page transmission mechanism, which allows content authors to specify the transmission order of inline objects in WWW pages. First, we define a language to specify the transmission order of inline objects based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). We then discuss how we can implement the transmission order control, and propose a new protocol, HTSP (Hypertext Streaming Protocol), which realizes efficient transmission of ordered inline objects. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 33(4): 14–24, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.1116

WWW (World Wide Web) Communication and Publishing of Structural Formulas by XyMML (XyM Markup Language)

A tool for displaying and communicating chemical structural formulas has been developed on the basis of XyMML (XyM Markup Language), where a XyMML document according to the XML (Extensible Markup Language) specification has been transformed into an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) document by means of a translator program due to XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations). During this process, XyMML data written in such a XyMML document have been converted into XyM notations embedded in such an HTML document, which is browsed by virtue of a World Wide Web (WWW) browser including the XyMJava system. Another tool for printing chemical structural formulas has been developed so that the same XyMML document has been transformed into a XyMTeX document by means of XSLT. The resulting XyMTeX document has been used to print a document containing structural formulas through the TeX/LaTeX typesetting system. Thereby, the XyMML and the related techniques have been shown to have the potentiality of serving as a kernel for integrating WWW communication, electronic publishing, and conventional publishing in chemistry.

Integrating Guidon with the World Wide Web

Guidon is OCLC's graphical interface to Electronic Journals Online. The World Wide Web (WWW) is a system that OCLC and many other institutions use to offer services over the Internet. We have extended a prototype version of Guidon so that it can display Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents and function as a WWW browser. In addition to letting Guidon view Web pages, HTML offers several powerful features that could be integrated into OCLC's electronic journal services, such as a flexible forms capability.

Guidon Web Applying Java to Scholarly Electronic Journals

OCLC offers Electronic Journals Online, a service which provides access to electronic journals and high-quality display of text and graphics. The primary method of searching and displaying articles is through a proprietary client called Guidon, which is programmed in C++ and runs under MS Windows and on the Macintosh. The advent of Java support within World Wide Web browsers offers the possibility of re-implementing the features of Guidon in Java applets. This would enable OCLC to offer access to our existing databases without requiring users to load specialized software. As a research project we developed a prototype version of a document viewer in Java.

World Wide Web Access to Radiation Datasets for Environmental and Climate Change Studies

Five years of scanner data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), eight years of surface radiation budget (SRB) data, and one year of scanner radiation budget data from the French-Russian-German experiment, ScaRaB, will be available for use by colleges and universities [and primary and secondary (K-12) schools] over a World Wide Web browser. The database for ERBE is a 5-yr monthly average time series from February 1985 through December 1989, and ScaRaB is a 1-yr dataset from February 1994 to March 1995. ERBE and ScaRaB include shortwave radiative fluxes, emitted longwave radiative fluxes, and the earth's albedo measured at the top of the atmosphere. The SRB dataset spans the period from July 1983 through June 1991 and includes surface downward shortwave fluxes, surface downward longwave fluxes, surface albedos, and cloud percent. Students will have access to the data in three ways. They can display general image format images of any month and visually observe month-to-month or interannual variations. The data files for each month also have a spreadsheet format and can be downloaded in their entirety into any spreadsheet application program for further analysis. Third, using a live access server (LAS), students can interact directly with the data to select and subset datasets in terms of month, year, latitude, and longitude. The LAS allows students to view images of subsetted regions, and to subset data values to a file for further analysis. The server for this dataset is located at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia.

Web-based SCADA display systems (WSDS) for access via Internet

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a convenient may to access information on the net because the WWW browser integrates different network services into a common easily accessible user interface. These features coupled with low investment cost are especially suited for accessing information of the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system. This paper describes a unique Web-based application which is implemented based on the client/server architecture. The user can view the real-time data superimposed on one-line diagrams generated automatically using the VLSI's placement and routing techniques. In addition, the user can also control the operation of the substation at the server site. The choice of the Java language offers unique and powerful features such as zero client installation, on-demand access and platform independence to the design of the SCADA display system.

Interactive Visualization of Infrared Spectral Data: Synergy of Computation, Visualization, and Experiment for Learning Spectroscopy

A straightforward procedure is described to combine computation of molecular vibrational modes using commonly available molecular modeling programs with visualization of the modes using advanced features of the MDL Information Systems Inc. Chime World Wide Web browser plug-in. Minor editing of experimental spectra that are stored in the JCAMP-DX format allows linkage of IR spectral frequency ranges to Chime molecular display windows. The spectra and animation files can be combined by Hypertext Markup Language programming to allow interactive linkage between experimental spectra and computationally generated vibrational displays. Both the spectra and the molecular displays can be interactively manipulated to allow the user maximum control of the objects being viewed. This procedure should be very valuable not only for aiding students through visual linkage of spectra and various vibrational animations, but also by assisting them in learning the advantages and limitations of computational chemistry by comparison to experiment.

Going virtual with quicktime VR: new methods and standardized tools for interactive dynamic visualization of anatomical structures.

Continuing evolution of computer-based multimedia technologies has produced QuickTime, a multiplatform digital media standard that is supported by stand-alone commercial programs and World Wide Web browsers. While its core functions might be most commonly employed for production and delivery of conventional video programs (e.g., lecture videos), additional QuickTime VR "virtual reality" features can be used to produce photorealistic, interactive "non-linear movies" of anatomical structures ranging in size from microscopic through gross anatomic. But what is really included in QuickTime VR and how can it be easily used to produce novel and innovative visualizations for education and research? This tutorial introduces the QuickTime multimedia environment, its QuickTime VR extensions, basic linear and non-linear digital video technologies, image acquisition, and other specialized QuickTime VR production methods. Four separate practical applications are presented for light and electron microscopy, dissectable preserved specimens, and explorable functional anatomy in magnetic resonance cinegrams.