Conversational interfaces have received much attention as a promising natural communication channel between humans and computers. A typical conversational interface consists of three major systems: speech understanding, dialog management and spoken language generation. In such a conversational interface, speech recognition…

Current methods for bipedal walking control include playback of recorded joint motion and the derivation of dynamic equations to map desired forces at the body to the required torques at the joints. Both methods require a significant amount of up-front…

Web-based learning environments are becoming increasingly popular in higher education. One of the most important web-learning resources is the virtual laboratory (VL), which gives students an easy way for training and learning through the Internet. Moreover, on-line collaborative communication represents…

While birdsong is a model system for animal communication studies, our knowledge is derived primarily from the study of only one sex and is therefore incomplete. The study of song in a role-reversed species would provide a unique opportunity to…

Rich Internet Applications offer Web surfers a richer user experience, mainly due to better responsiveness and enhanced user interface capabilities. In recent years, existing design methodologies targeting traditional Web 1.0 applications were extended to also support RIAs. These extensions do…

Studies of tropical secondary forest succession face strong limitations due to the slow pace of succession and the time-consuming task of monitoring processes. The occurrence of tree rings in secondary forest trees may help expand our knowledge on succession in…

Trypanosoma cruzi isolates from 23 acute chagasic patients from localities of Western Venezuela (state
of Barinas) where Chagas’ disease is endemic were typed using ribosomal and mini-exon gene markers.
Results showed that isolates of the two major phylogenetic lineages, T.…

AIM: To discover whether nursing students believed that a post-registration cardiac module was meeting their needs.

METHOD: A descriptive qualitative approach was used in this study. Semi-structured interviews were recorded with a purposive sample of six registered nurses who…

This dissertation analyzes the strategic implications of customization policies available to companies that must simultaneously provide service and learn about their customers through automated interfaces. The first part of the dissertation lays out the theoretical framework within which the analysis…

Signature schemes are fundamental cryptographic primitives, useful as a stand-alone application, and as a building block in the design of secure protocols and other cryptographic objects. In this thesis, we study both the uses that signature schemes find in protocols,…