In this paper, we present a novel no-reference (NR) method to assess the quality of JPEG-coded images using a sequential learning algorithm for growing and pruning radial basis function (GAP-RBF) network. The features for predicting the perceived image quality are extracted by considering key human visual sensitivity factors such as edge amplitude, edge length, background activity and backgroun...

Substantial uncertainty exists about the impact of school quality on the black-white achievement gap. Our results, based on both Texas Schools Project (TSP) administrative data and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS), differ noticeably from other recent analyses of the black-white achievement gap by providing strong evidence that schools have a substantial effect on the differential....

The major problem of most CBIR approaches is bad quality in terms of recall and precision. As a major reason for this, the semantic gap between high-level concepts and low-level features has been identified. In this paper we describe an approach to reduce the impact of the semantic gap by deriving high-level (semantic) from low-level features and using these features to improve the quality of C...

The call center industry is a relatively new in Bangladesh. Only telecommunications and very few organizations are now providing customer service and support via call centers. Call centers do not exist for the customer to physically interact with, apart from via the telephone. The nature of the service encounter between the call center and customer is predominantly undertaken by using technolog...

Semantic aspects of programming have been studied in academia for many years as a means to achieve higher software quality. It is not clear to which extent these have been accepted in programming industry. Therefore, we made a case study of an industrial project using a checklist of quality criteria speci cally produced for this study. The results from the case study show that high level docume...

Women are less likely than men to earn degrees from high quality post-baccalaureate programs, and this tendency has been growing over time. I show that, aside from the biomedical sciences, this cannot be explained by changes in the type of program where women tend to earn degrees. Instead, sorting by quality within degree program is the main contributor to the growing gap. Most of this sorting ...