Computer-aided chess is an important teaching method, as it allows a student to play under every condition possible, and regulates the speed of his/her development at an incremental pace, measured against actual players in the rated chess community. It is also relatively inexpensive, and pervasive, and allows players to match themselves against competitors from across the world. The learning process extends beyond games, as interactive software has shown it teaches several skills, such as opening, strategy, tactics, and chess-problem solving. Furthermore, current applications allow chess players to establish rankings via online chess tournaments, meet international grandmasters, and have access to training tools based on strategies from chess masters. Using 250 chess software packages, this research classifies them into distinct categories based mainly on the Gobet and Jansen's organization of the chess knowledge. This is followed by extensive discussion that analyzes these training tools, in order to identify the best training techniques available building on a research on human computer interaction, cognitive psychology, and chess theory. --P.ii.
In face recognition, alignment of the face images has been a known open issue. This thesis proposes a displacement based local aligning scheme to construct a structural descriptive image template for comparison. To conquer the registration difficulties caused by the non-rigidity of human face images, a block displacement strategy is introduced to apply the regional voting scheme to face recognition field. Local Binary Pattern (LBP) is adopted to construct this block LBP displacement-based local matching approach, we name LBP-DLMA. Experiments are performed and have demonstrated the outstanding performances of this LBP-DLMA over the original LBP approach. It is expected and shown by experiments that this approach applies to both large and small sized images, and that it also applies to descriptor approaches other than LBP. --Leaf ii.
This thesis focuses on combining the two most important and wide spread declarative programming paradigms, functional and logic programming. The proposed approach aims at adding logic programming features which are native to Prolog onto Haskell. We develop extensions which replicate the target language by utilizing advanced features of the host language for an efficient implementation. The thesis aims to provide insights into merging two declarative languages namely, Haskell and Prolog by embedding the latter into the former and analyzing the results of doing so as the two languages have conflicting characteristics. The finished products will be something similar to a haskellised Prolog which has logic programming-like capabilities. --Leaf ii.
In this project, we present the design and implementation of virtual network testbeds for studying routing changes. A virtual network testbed is a computer network that is completely created in software, while routing changes directly impact on the reliability and the reachability information of the network. We used testbeds to emulate a small and a large-scale network on a single Linux machine. These emulated networks allow the study of network behavior and operations which are examined using two routing protocols: Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF). We implemented a fifteen-node network to study RIP, and a model of the GÈANT network to examine OSPF in virtual network testbeds. Each testbed represents an autonomous system (AS) or an intra-domain environment. Therefore, these environments provided us with the opportunities to evaluate routing changes in an AS. We used the testbeds to compare the routing of the original network with the new routing of the missing links and routers to see what changes occur. The GÈANT network is the large-scale network used for investigations in this project. We then used our emulation results of the large-scale network to compare with the simulation work for the same network topology-the GÈANT network, and confirmed that our emulation studies also identified important links and routers in the same network. --P.ii.
