Oliver Mroß
email: oliver.mross@tu-dresden.de

Klaus Meißner
email: klaus.meissner@tu-dresden.de

A Runtime Environment for Distributed Mashups in Multi-Device Scenarios

Keywords: Multi-Device Environment, Distributed Mashups, Runtime Environment, Model-based Mashup Development

Multi-device scenarios pave the way for new applications that allow the user to interact collaboratively with other users or enhance the interaction through the combination of different devices. To realize such applications, a new development paradigm is needed. Traditional methods do not support the dynamic extension or alteration of the application's feature set. Our approach is based on the idea of modeling the composition and distribution of several application components, so that the component implementations and their assignment to specific execution environments (component distribution) can be determined dynamically. All application components are linked together as an overlay network in the context of the multi-device environment. Therefore, we propose an architecture of a runtime environment and an overview of the component distribution process during the load-time of a multi-device mashup.

Introduction

The quickly growing popularity of mobile devices and their rich feature set are leading to the need for applications, in which several interactive devices can be used in combination. Such applications allow the user to collaborate with other users across the borders of their personal devices. These scenarios range from simple data sharing to complex applications, in which multiple users can connect with each other and create a shared view on distributed content that can be modified from different devices, e. g., a collaborative decision making application. In each of these scenarios the devices are providing a distributed user interface of the application.

The device mobility can cause the dynamic adaption of the distribution state during the application's runtime. If another person and her Smartphone, for example, are entering the interaction environment, the application could integrate a new UI element that allows the person to take part in the collaboration. To distribute the user interface in the context of a multi-device environment the application developer has to provide a specific UI for each device. The problem here is the development effort to create multi-device applications. Another problem is the dynamic availability of mobile devices. The application developer has no knowledge of the configuration of the mul-ti-device environment. This means that a static distribution of the user interface is not possible during the application's design-time.

In our approach, we address both problems through the use of the development methods from the mashup domain. Hence, we denote such applications as modelbased distributed mashups. From the perspective of the application developer, these methods allow to reduce the development effort, because they introduce a strict separation between the application and the UI development. The application developer describes only the composition of the application, the communication between the application components and their distribution as part of an application model. We assume there are several classes of UI components and each class contains device specific UI component implementations. They are provided in a public component repository service that allows registering reusable black-box application components. To address the problem of the dynamic device availability, the composition and distribution descriptions declare properties of required application components and runtime environments, i. e., they do not include concrete assumptions about the availability of application components or devices. To make clear what we understand by the notion of a distributed model-based mashup application, we will give a simple development example now.

Example 1. An application developer defines an application model that includes the description of three application components. The first one is a UI component, which is responsible for the presentation and manipulation of a UML diagram in the context of a Smart TV. The second one is a service component that transforms all raw data of the acceleration and position sensor of a Smartphone into a two-dimensional representation, which is used as input parameter for the previously mentioned UI component. The third component has the same functionality as the second, but it has to be executed on a Tablet computer. Besides the component requirements, the distribution and the communication requirements between the application components are described in the application model as well. In this scenario it contains two communication channels. The first one connects the UI component with the service component that should be executed on the Smartphone. The second communication channel connects the previously mentioned UI component with the service component that should be executed on the Tablet computer.

To generate and execute the distributed mashup, a new kind of runtime environment is needed, which we will explain in this paper. Hence, the remaining paper is structured as follows. Related work will be discussed in the following Sect. 2. In Sect. 3 we will give an overview of the architecture of a runtime environment that enables the execution of a distributed mashup. After that, we will sketch the individual phases of the dynamic loading process of a model-based distributed mashup in Sect. 4. In the final Sect. 5 we draw conclusions and will give an outlook on the next research steps.

Related Work

In [START_REF] Banavar | Challenges : An Application Model for Pervasive Computing[END_REF] the vision of a new model of pervasive applications is based on three precepts. The second precept says that different devices can be seen as portals to one virtual application. We share this view, but we understand the notion of a virtual application as a network of components that are distributed and executed on different devices in a distributed runtime environment. In the CRUISe project [START_REF] Pietschmann | Semantics-based discovery, selection and mediation for presentation-oriented mashups[END_REF] a modelbased development method and a browser-based thin-server-runtime [START_REF] Pietschmann | A Thin-Server Runtime Platform for Composite Web Applications[END_REF] of mashup applications were developed. The application's composition on the presentation layer is defined as part of the composition model. It contains component templates that are matched and ranked against a set of already existing mashup components, i. e., the mashup application is generated dynamically during the application's load-time. However, the CRUISe approach does not support the execution of components in distributed runtime environments nor it provides needed operations to distribute UI components dynamically on a set of heterogeneous devices. Our current project DoCUMA is based on the CRUISe research results and will extend the mashup development methods to create applications for collaborative multi-device scenarios. To model the distribution of UI components during the design time of an application a meta-model was developed in [START_REF] Demeure | The 4C Reference Model for Distributed User Interfaces[END_REF]. Its entities represent digital and physical elements of the smart environment on a high-level abstraction layer. Specific aspects like the distribution requirement description that is needed to compute the dynamic distribution of application components are not part of the meta-model. The approaches in [START_REF] Manca | Flexible support for distributing user interfaces across multiple devices[END_REF][START_REF] Blumendorf | Dynamic user interface distribution for flexible multimodal interaction[END_REF] describe the use of UI properties to characterize the distribution of abstract UI elements on model layer -the CARE-properties [START_REF] Coutaz | Four easy pieces for assesing the usability of multimodal interaction: the CARE properties[END_REF]. They allow to bind an abstract UI to a concrete device of the smart environment during the design time. Our approach addresses the dynamic distribution of black-box UI components, thus a static binding between UI components and their runtime environment is not feasible. Hence, a runtime environment descriptor for each interactive device is needed to compute the mashup component distribution dynamically. In [START_REF] Togias | Ontology-Based Representation of UPnP Devices and Services for Dynamic Context-Aware Ubiquitous Computing Applications[END_REF] the device description model of the UPnP standard [START_REF]UPnP Forum: UPnP Device Architecture[END_REF] is transferred into an ontological representation. It allows the dynamic determination of the valid mapping between the set of required mashup components and the set of their appropriate runtime environments.

Finally, in [START_REF] Nickelsen | Open: open pervasive environments for migratory interactive services[END_REF] a distributed runtime environment is described that enables the migration of UI components between heterogeneous devices. It is based on a reverse engineering process that comprises the generation of an abstract user interface model from a UI implementation, which is the starting point of a model-to-code transformation. The result of the transformation is a device specific UI. In our approach we use black-box UI components, which do not allow a reverse engineering in the way of the approach in [START_REF] Nickelsen | Open: open pervasive environments for migratory interactive services[END_REF]. To allow the migration of UI components between heterogeneous devices, we will focus on the concept of adapting the component implementation by replacing the migrating application component [START_REF] Ketfi | Automatic Adaptation of Component-based Software: Issues and Experiences[END_REF] with an optimal component that is a device specific variant of the same component class during the application's runtime.

Overview of the Architecture

In this Sect., the architecture of the runtime environment of a distributed mashup application is presented. In the remainder of this paper it is denoted as the Client-Server-Runtime (CSR). Figure Fig. 1 visualizes the main parts of the CSR -the client-and the server-side runtime environment. Both can execute different application components in parallel, which are linked together as an overlay network that is built on top of the connected devices. In this paper, the client-side part of the CSR is denoted as CRTE (Client Side Runtime Environment) and the server-side is denoted as SRTE (Server Side Runtime Environment). The CRTE is responsible for the instantiation, initialization, execution and visualization of the mashup UI components. Further, it encapsulates all communication features that are needed to execute a distributed mashup successfully. These include local and remote communication features, e. g., the creation of local and distributed communication channels. To migrate and replicate UI components between different devices, each CRTE provide serialization and deserialization capabilities that allow the exchange of component state information between different devices.

The SRTE is responsible to register multiple applications. Hence, it provides a service that allows the application developer to register several application models, which describe the application composition and communication patterns of several mashup components. Another feature is the dynamic discovery and registration of multiple devices and their runtime environment descriptions. Furthermore, the SRTE mediates messages between all distributed application components and between the runtime environments. Another important feature of the SRTE is the execution of the application's loading process, in which the application components and the appropriate CRTEs are determined dynamically. This is discussed in Sect. 4.

In the left part of Fig. 1 several services are depicted, which are needed to load and execute a distributed mashup application. In the following Sect., we will dwell on this aspect.

Services of the CSR

Application Repository (AppRe). With the help of this service the application developer can provide predefined application models in the context of the multi-device environment. From this perspective the AppRe service acts as a central registry for multi-device applications whose execution context is the whole interactive environment. Furthermore, the service provides functionalities that enable the SRTE to publish all available multi-device applications like a broadcaster. This is necessary, because we assume that the user has no knowledge of the existence of the smart environment and its applications, e. g., in public places. This means that the SRTE and CRTE have to provide automatic discovery mechanisms, which enables the user to discover available multi-device applications. We assume further, that each user has installed the CRTE on his (mobile) device, since the discovery mechanisms cannot be realized only with the help of client-side web technologies.

Component Repository (CoRe).

This service is a fundamental part of the generation procedure of the distributed mashup, because it provides functionalities to access several application component implementations and their interface descriptors in the SMCDL format (Semantic Mash-up Component Description Language) [START_REF] Pietschmann | Semantics-based discovery, selection and mediation for presentation-oriented mashups[END_REF]. We assume that for each platform (Smartphones, Tablet computers, Desktops), there are specific application components, which provide the foundation of generating a distributed mashup across the borders of heterogeneous devices. Another fundamental function of this service is the registration of several application components. This includes the registration of device-specific components, which encapsulate services of the interactive device, e. g., the access to embedded sensors or in-and output devices.

After we have given an overview of our approach of a distributed runtime environment, we will describe the dynamic loading process of a model-based distributed mashup and its individual phases in the next Sect. 4.

Loading Process of a Distributed Mashup

In our approach the load-time of a model based distributed mashup can be divided into the following phases. Each phase uses runtime environment features that are distributed on the client-and server-side. A more detailed description on what middleware components are used in which phase, is not part of this paper.

Process Phases

Discovery. During this phase the SRTE collects several pieces of information. The first ones are characterizing the device and the software platform that forms the foundation to execute future application components (CRTE discovery). The second part of information are the user credentials (user discovery), which are needed to determine the valid set of available applications. In other words every user has a predefined application set that depends on the user preferences and the associated user role. The applications per user are the third information piece (application discovery).

Once the user has logged in, he can choose to join an active or load an associated application. The first case is out of the scope of this paper.

Application Selection. After the completion of the discovery phase, the next step of the loading process is the presentation of the determined application set to the user. Therefore, the SRTE analyses every application description in the set of the available applications and sends a reduced information set to present all available application models as visual entries in the context of the client device. That means that the user can initiate the loading process of a distributed mashup from his personal device. We denote it as the initial device. After the user selects a model reference, a message is sent from the user's CRTE to the SRTE, where it causes the initiation of the serverside model interpretation procedure.

Interpretation. The main goal of this phase is to determine what mashup components are needed by the application, what components are available and what

CRTEs could be used to realize the specified distributed mashup (represented by application model). Therefore, following steps are executed. First, the SRTE resolves the associated application model from the received model reference that was selected by the user. The model is used as input parameter during the invocation of the server-side mashup loading process. Second, all CRTE descriptors are retrieved and used as input parameter during the loading procedure invocation. That means that every CRTE could be used as a potential execution environment of the mashup components. Besides these two input parameters, the third information set -the interface descriptors of all application components -is already provided by third party component developers as entities of the previously mentioned CoRe service. After the SRTE has retrieved all required information, the interpretation procedure will be triggered. The knowledge of the needed application components is extracted from the application model. It encompasses functional properties of the required application components, e. g., supported properties, operations and event messages. Furthermore, the knowledge of the component distribution is extracted from the application model too, because in our approach the application developer defines the distribution per mashup component explicitly, i. e., there is an association between the description of the needed mashup component and the description of the required distribution context. The distribution context spans several aspects, e. g., device characteristics like the display resolution or context characteristics like the maximum distance between the initial device (that represents the user's position) and the needed execution context of the bound mashup components. The characteristics of the available CRTEs are determined from the registered runtime descriptors. They include runtime environment aspects, e. g., the supported in-and output modalities and the software platform aspects, such as provided APIs or available rendering capabilities (audio and video player features, etc.). With the help of this information the SRTE can derive what application component is executable within the context of which CRTE.

Matching & Ranking. The main goal of this phase is the computation of the final distribution set that describes the distribution of those mashup components, which correspond one side with the functional requirements and on the other side with the distribution requirements that are both part of the application model. In our approach the algorithm to compute the distribution set consists of the following steps. First, the interpreted information of the application model is used to determine the set of usable CRTEs. Therefore, the SRTE needs to consider the registered runtime environment descriptions, which characterize the functional and non-functional properties of the corresponding CRTE. In other words, the CRTE descriptors are matched against the descriptions of the required distribution context in the application model. In our approach, each distribution context description represents one required CRTE per mashup component. After the corresponding CRTE was determined, the associations between the distribution contexts and the functional component requirements are used to create a matrix that comprises the mapping between a CRTE and a mashup component requirement. In the second step of our algorithm, each entry of the previously mentioned matrix is used to compute the best matching application component implementation. The result of our distribution algorithm is a refined matrix (distribution set) that describes the mapping between the entries of the set of usable CRTEs and the entries of the set of available mashup component implementations.

Apportionment.

In our approach a distributed mashup application is characterized as a network of communicating mashup components, which are executed in the distributed context of several runtime environments (CRTEs). This involves the execution of multiple application components in the context of a single CRTE. To integrate these components successfully, the communication description of the application model is needed during the integration process. That is, the model has to be apportioned into several model fragments, to reduce the communication overhead between the SRTE and CRTE. These fragments have to be bound to these mashup components, which are part of the previously mentioned distribution set. Hence, the set has to be extended with modal data, for example, communication channel descriptions per mashup component. The result of this phase is an extended distribution set that contains several entries and each entry incorporate the following information units: a unique identifier of the mashup component, a component descriptor (functional and non-functional component properties) in the SMCDL format, the executable code of the mashup component, model fragment information and the identifier of the corresponding CRTE.

The first parameter is created in the context of the SRTE, because it is responsible to route all communication messages between the distributed mashup components. The second parameter incorporates all information that is necessary to integrate the component in a remote execution context, e. g., external software libraries. The third parameter covers all information that is necessary for instantiating and executing the application components. The fourth parameter contains the model data, e. g., the description of the communication behavior between the mashup components. The last parameter represents the CRTE, in which context the application components should be executed.

Integration. After the extended distribution set was created, the last phase of the loading process will begin -the distributed integration of all included mashup components. It covers the instantiation, initialization and the optional layout-and rendering-process of several mashup components in the remote context of different CRTEs. For this purpose the SRTE has created a bidirectional communication channel to every CRTE during the aforementioned discovery phase. In our approach we will use Web Sockets, which allow the SRTE to push application specific messages to the client-side. As input parameter the extended distribution set is used in this phase. First the set is sorted under the criteria of the CRTE, because this allows to group the distribution set and each group covers all mashup components that are executed in the same context. Second, for each group an integration command message is created, which causes the associated CRTE to start a client-side integration procedure, in that each delivered mashup component is instantiated and initialized. This message contains all information of each group member (component ID, component description, executable code and model fragment data) that is needed for the remote integration procedure.

Conclusion and Further Work

In this paper, we presented our approach to realize a distributed mashup application for multi-device scenarios. We used model-based development methods that are known from the mashup domain, e. g., modeling the composition and communication of application components. To distribute mashup components on heterogeneous devices further conditions must be fulfilled during the load-time. To address the problem of the dynamic availability of mobile devices every personal device has to provide a discovery feature that allows the server-side device registration and the clientside application selection. Modern web browser do not provide such discovery features, that means we need to extent the browser capabilities to use it as a universal runtime environment for mashup components. Furthermore, in our approach an application is provided and executed by the multi-device environment and not by the device itself. Hence, the personal device of the user has to communicate with a central server that provides all available applications.

Another problem that we address is the heterogeneity of multiple interactive devices. To overcome this issue, in our approach for every device a specific mashup com-ponent implementation has to be registered in a public component repository service. Each mashup component is associated with a descriptor that contains functional and non-functional property information, such as supported operations and capabilities. Especially, the non-functional component description part contains requirement descriptions from the perspective of the component developer, e. g., needed devicespecific sensors or in-and output resources. That means that the client-side runtime environment has to provide self-descriptive properties that condition the deployability of a mashup component. Hence, each potential runtime environment provides a generic interface that allows aggregating the runtime environment descriptors on the serverside during the discovery phase.

As further research, we will investigate the possibilities to express the distribution requirements per needed mashup component as part of the application model with the help of semantic technologies, e. g., SPARQL-queries 1 . We assume that this will help us to simplify the matching process, because these queries can be used directly in the matching phase of the application loading process. No additional interpretation and transformation operations have to be implemented. Furthermore, we will extend existing standards for device description, e. g., the UPnP standard, with additional nonfunctional properties, because we need to describe what device-specific (in-and output) and what software-specific conditions must be fulfilled to execute a mashup component. For example, a component developer wants to annotate that his mashup component is only executable on a smartphone with a camera and a Webkit-based browser. Therefore, we plan to describe these runtime environment properties in an ontological representation format, because we assume that semantic technologies will help us to reduce the implementation effort and improve the quality of the dynamic matching between required distribution contexts and the available runtime environments.

Fig. 1

 1 Fig. 1 Overview of the CSR

Acknowledgement

The work of Oliver Mroß is founded by the European Social Fund (ESF), Free State Saxony (Germany) and T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH (Germany, Dresden) and is filed under ESF-080951831.


Guoqing Li

Guangling Sun
email: sunguangling@shu.edu.cn

Xinpeng Zhang

Robust Face Recognition in Low Resolution and Blurred Image Using Joint Information in Space and Frequency

Keywords: face recognition, low resolution and blur, Enhanced Local Frequency Descriptor, frequency correlation, fusion

Recognizing faces in low resolution and blurred images is common yet challenging task. Local Frequency Descriptor (LFD) has been proved to be effective for this problem and is extracted from a spatial neighborhood of each pixel of a frequency plane regardless of correlations between frequencies. To explore the frequency correlations and preserve low resolution and blur insensitive simultaneously, we propose Enhanced LFD (ELFD) in which information in space and frequency is jointly utilized so as to be more descriptive and discriminative than LFD. The selection of window size of short-term of Fourier transform adaptive to the testing image is also analyzed. In addition, linear weighting fusion of recognition results given by magnitude and phase is proposed. The experiments conducted on Yale and FERET databases demonstrate that promising results have been achieved by the proposed ELFD, adaptive window size selection and fusion scheme.

Introduction

Due to a wide range of potential applications as well as academic challenges, face recognition has attracted much attention during the last decade. Despite great progress has been made in design of scheme robust to expressions and aging of subjects, partial occlusions, illuminations and inaccurate registrations, most of them aimed at recognizing faces in high quality image. Once coping with degraded images caused by such as blur, low resolution, noise etc, the performance will decline dramatically. Hence, in this paper, we will focus on robust blurred and low resolution face recognition. There roughly exist three categories of ways in literature to handle face recognition from blurred and low resolution image. The first category is to deblur or super-resolve an image, then feed the restored image to the recognition engine [START_REF] Nishiyama | Facial Deblur Inference Using Subspace Analysis for Recognition of Blurred Faces[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Face hallucination: Theory and Practice[END_REF]. While the separated scheme is straightforward, the goal of image restoration is not consistent with recognition. And even worse, especially for blurred image, if the blur model is unknown or complex, notable artifacts introduced by deblurring will in fact decline the recognition performance. The second category is to do a direct recognition from blurred or low resolution image without deblurring or super resolution. Zhang et al [START_REF] Zhang | Close the Loop: Joint Blind Image Restoration and Recognition with Sparse Representation Prior[END_REF] presented a joint blind restoration and recognition framework based on sparse repre-sentation. Once blur kernel is estimated, it is applied to blur the training set to produce a blur dictionary and the sparse coding of the blurred face using the blur dictionary is determined to give recognition result. Moreover, the kernel is estimated iteratively in a loop. We also have explored the blind blurred image recognition in which two frameworks are investigated [START_REF] Sun | Blurred Image Classification Using Adaptive Dictionary[END_REF]. One is first to infer the kernel as a separate step, then the kernel is used to generate a data dictionary and an adaptive SIFT feature dictionary is also obtained accordingly. The other is to integrate the kernel estimation and the adaptive SIFT dictionary inference into a common model. The two steps are alternatively executed until stop criterion is reached. The drawback of works in [START_REF] Zhang | Close the Loop: Joint Blind Image Restoration and Recognition with Sparse Representation Prior[END_REF] and [START_REF] Sun | Blurred Image Classification Using Adaptive Dictionary[END_REF] is the low efficiency since the time consumption of blurring operation is too heavy. Li et al [START_REF] Li | Low-Resolution Face Recognition via Coupled Locality Preserving Mappings[END_REF] learned two coupled mapping matrix that mapped a pair of high and low resolution image to a unique feature space. The target of the couple mapping matrix is to make the distance between two points in feature space as close as possible provide that they are corresponding to a pair of high and low resolution version of a same image. The approach is high efficiency and also without super resolution, but the mapped feature is global. The last category is to extract blur invariant or insensitive features. Heikkilä et al analyzed Local Phase Quantization (LPQ) descriptor robust to centrally symmetric blur [START_REF] Heikkilä | Methods for Local Phase Quantization in Blur-Insensitive Image Analysis[END_REF]. LPQ relied on short-term of Fourier transform (STFT). They noticed that the local quantized phase information is nearly invariant in low frequency band. Clearly, only phase information is not appropriate since magnitude is also very useful for recognition shown by work [START_REF] Xie | Fusing Local Patterns of Gabor Magnitude and Phase for Face Recognition[END_REF]. Lei et al proposed Local Frequency Descriptor (LFD) that both magnitude and phase are extracted [START_REF] Lei; Ahonen | Local Frequency Descriptor for Low-Resolution Face Recognition[END_REF]. Similar to Local Binary Pattern (LBP) encoding relative relations between two pixels [START_REF] Ahonen | Face Description with Local Binary Patterns:Application to Face Recognition[END_REF], LFD is defined in terms of relations of two local Fourier transforms of neighboring pixels of blurred image and proved to be insensitive to arbitrary type of blur kernel.

Our idea stems from the work in [START_REF] Lei; Ahonen | Local Frequency Descriptor for Low-Resolution Face Recognition[END_REF]. It has been shown that LFD is effective for recognizing low resolution face to a certain extent. We notice that the correlations between frequencies are beneficial for improving recognition performance particularly for low resolution and blurred degradations. Further, an adaptive selection of window size of STFT should be adopted. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the LFD. Section 3 gives a detail discussion of the Enhanced LFD and the adaptive selection of window size of STFT. Sections 4 demonstrate good experimental results on Yale and FERET databases. Conclusion and future work are provided in section 5.

Review on Local Frequency Descriptor

LFD is based on STFT, which is calculated over a local area N x centered at x of an image f(x) as follows:

x 2 y F ( ) ( ) ( ) f         u x u T i i j y i i N y y x e (1)
where u = {u 1 , u 2 ,…u L } denote a set of 2D frequencies, ( )  x denote a window function and ( )

 
x is the conjugate of it. An example of size 55 and 4 selected frequencies is shown in figure 1. The STFT of an image using size 55 and the 4 selected frequencies is demonstrated in figure 2. Then local magnitude descriptor (lmd) and local phase descriptor (lpd) are extracted from magnitude and phase of STFT respectively. Similar to LBP, lmd and lpd are both dependent on binary strings describing relative relations between value of a position and its 8 neighbors. Once a binary string is obtained, it will be encoded a decimal integer.

(c) u2 (d) u3 (e) u4 (f) u1 (g) u2 (h) u3 (i) u4

3

Adaptive Window Size Selection and Enhanced LFD

Adaptive Window Size Selection

A low resolution or blurred image ( ) g x is modeled as a convolution between a high quality image ( ) f x and a blur kernel ( )

k x : ( ) ( ) ( ) g f k   x x x
(2) Assume we focus on two positions x i and x j and two local regions centered at the two positions. In terms of definition of STFT, the Fourier transforms of the two local regions are as follows:

F ( ) [ ( ) ( )] F ( ) [ ( ) ( )] i j i j F f F f x x u x x x u x x x       (3)
Suppose the size of ( )

 x is W. Clearly, for the two local es ( ) ( ) i f   x x x and ( ) ( ) j f   x x
x , their sizes are both W. Now let the two local images blurred by blur kernel ( ) k x , the corresponding Fourier transforms are as follows:

  G ( ) ( ) [ ( ) ( )] K( ) F ( ) G ( ) ( ) [ ( ) ( )] K( ) F ( ) i i j j i j F k f F k f                   x x x x u x x x x u u u x x x x u u (4)
Suppose the size of ( ) k x is K, the size of blurred local image will be the larger value between K and W. For a same frequency u k , a blur invariant is true due to G ( ) / G ( )=F ( ) / F ( )

i i i i k k k k x x x x   u u u u .
Nevertheless, the blur operation is first done then a local area is extracted so that for low resolution and blurred image, the STFT is as follows:

    ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )[ ( ) ( )] ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )[ ( ) ( )] i j i i j j F g F k f F g F k f                       x x G u x x x x x x x G u x x x x x x x (5)
Similar to (3), the size of local image

( )[ ( ) ( )] i k f    x x x x and ( )[ ( ) ( )] j k f    x x x
x are both W. Obviously, the blur insensitive will be compromised. However, we can make ( )

i x G u and ( ) j x G u approximate ( ) i x G u  and ( ) j x G u 
respectively as close as possible by changing W. Being adaptive to the size of blur kernel of current testing image, W must be larger or at least equal to K; otherwise the blur insensitive is completely impossible. Given a general blur kernel of size 1919, two STFT windows of sizes of 1111 and 2121 are utilized on high quality and corresponding blurred image, the magnitude discrepancy between high quality and blurred image corresponding to window sizes of 1111 and 2121 respectively have been illustrated in figure 3.We can see that the discrepancy of size of 2121 is reduced to certain extend compared with that of size of 1111. This result is just consistent with our analysis.

Certainly, the window size should not be too large yet for the ultimate goal of the descriptor is to characterize texture and structure of a local area. If the size is too large, the descriptor will be meaningless. Hence blur insensitive and local property is in fact a trade-off. In experiment, we choose a slightly larger window size than K.

Enhanced Local Frequency Descriptor Using Joint Information in Space and Frequency

While LFD descriptor has been demonstrated to be effective for recognizing low resolution and blurred face, correlations among frequencies has not been explored since LFD only encoded the spatial neighboring relation in each single frequency plane (FP) independently. In fact, the joint representation in space and frequency is more descriptive and discriminative for recognition. To accomplish the joint representation, we propose to concatenate the binary relation of respective correlated frequencies at the same spatial locations named Enhanced LFD (ELFD). For the sake of recognition performance and efficiency, we choose arbitrary two frequencies from all frequencies as correlated frequencies. As mentioned in section 2, 4 frequencies u 1 , u 2 , u 3 and u 4 are selected. Accordingly, a total of 12 2-frequency combinations are pro-

u1 u2 u3 u4 u1 u2 u3 u4
duced:

1 2 1 3 1 4 2 1 2 3 2 4 3 1 3 2 3 4 4 1 4 2 4 3
( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , ), ( , )

u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u u

. Of a couple of correlated frequencies, the former is principal FP, the latter is its correlated FP. For arbitrary a couple of correlated frequencies and a spatial location, the extended binary relations contain the 8-neighborings at the principal FP and 4-neighborings at the correlated FP. Detailed description will be given in following.

Based on the magnitude of STFT   , M x u at u and x, the enhance lmd (elmd) is defined as follows: [START_REF] Heikkilä | Methods for Local Phase Quantization in Blur-Insensitive Image Analysis[END_REF] where k denotes the focused position and m denotes the position of one of neighbors of pixel positioned at k. Depending on the binary relations, elmd is encoded as a decimal integer:

          1 if , , , , , 0 otherwise M M T M M      k m k m , , u u u u
            4 1 2 1 1 elmd ( , , ) 1 5 , , , 2 , , , 2 p
          1 if
, and , are in the same quadrant , , , 0 otherwise

P P T P P     k m k m , , u u u u (8)
Depending on the binary relations, elpd is also encoded as a decimal integer:

            4 1 2 1 1 elpd( , , ) 1 5
, , , Next, each of the 24 labeled images is divided empirically into 44=16 non-overlapping sub-regions. Thereafter a total of 1612=192 regional label histograms are generated and concatenated into a long feature vector for both magnitude and phase. To declare the low resolution and blur insensitive properties of ELFD, for a sub-region indicated by red rectangle, two histograms of 4096 bins corresponding to original and low resolution with scale of 2 have been demonstrated in figure 6. It can be seen that the two histograms of original and low resolution image indeed stay consistently on the whole though there exists sight variations between them.

1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 3132             1 1 1 0 9 5 4 3 1 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 3643                
Naturally, the main drawback of ELFD is the substantially increased number of bins being 2 l , where l is the length of encoded binary string. The dimensionality of feature vector will be much higher with bins number increasing. It will introduce curse of dimensionality and make the feature unstable. We tackle it with a learning scheme: depending on training set, a global label histogram is obtained first. In a sequel, percentages of all bins are ordered and two bins of least percentage are combined into one bin and the two percentages are summed as the percentage of the combined bin. Ordering and combinations of bins are executed alternatively and iteratively until a satisfied number of bins are achieved. The final kept and combined bins are called valid bins. The original bins of a tested sub-region histogram will be adjusted and combined into a much lower number of bins in terms of the learned valid bins. The specific valid number of bins will be explained in experiment section. The optimal valid number of bins is 48, Gaussian window of STFT and linear SVM classifier are adopted. Half of samples are training and the rest are testing. In addition, 5 cross validation is conducted. For magnitude and phase, all feature planes (for instance, 4 feature planes for LFD, 12 feature planes for ELFD) are concatenated to compose a complete feature vector to feed the linear SVM classifier. Fix and adaptive window size of STFT, LFD and ELFD are compared respectively. Finally, recognition results of magnitude of ELFD and phase of LFD are fused by an optimal linear weighting strategy to improve the recognition performance. All results have been listed in table 1. In this table, lmd/lpd with suffix "f" refers to fixed size and "a" refers to adaptive size. Accordingly, elmda and elpda refer to elmd and elpd with adaptive size respectively.

 Fixed Size versus Adaptive Size

We test a fix size of 1111. For adaptive size, we empirically set the size for low resolution of 2 scale and 4 scale to 1111 and 2121 respectively and slightly larger than kernel size for other degradations. In fact, we do not know blur kernel size in advance in reality, but the problem is simplified by assuming it is known in this paper. The great improvements obtained by the adaptive window size indicate that the feasibility and necessity of it.

 LFD versus ELFD

Results of both databases have shown the performance of elmd is superior to lmd but the performance of elpd is inferior to lpd in contrast. This may ascribe to curse of dimensionality since the dimensions of elmd and elpd are much higher than that of lmd and lpd. This means that if appropriate discriminant analysis is implemented, the performance of elpd will surpass lpd and the advantage of elmd will be further increased.

 Fusion Strategy

Through an optimal weighting value, the recognition performance could be improved by linear fusion of distance given by elmda and lpda. By an empirical search, the optimal weighting of results provided by elmda is 0.8 and the other is 0.2.

Conclusions and Future Work

A novel local face representation robust to low resolution and blurred degradation and other usual variations called Enhanced LFD is proposed. It improves the performance of LFD by utilizing the correlations among different frequencies so as to present a joint local descriptor of two correlated frequencies at identical spatial locations. In addition, adaptive size selection for window of STFT is proposed and a discussion in depth about it is presented. Last, a linear weighting fusion strategy is implemented. Encouraging results have been obtained on commonly used Yale and FERET database. Future work will complement discriminate analysis for ELFD instead of direct concatenations and develop methods of automatic inference for blur kernel size of testing image.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. u1=(1/5,0); u 2 =(0,1/5); u 3 =(1/5,1/5); u 4 =(1/5,-1/5);

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. (a) Original face image. (b)-(i) magnitudes and phases of STFT at frequencies u 1 ,u 2 ,u 3 and u 4 from left to right.

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Magnitude discrepancies between high quality and blurred image. The left four figures correspond window size of 1111, the right four figures correspond window size of 2121.

  where u p denotes principal FP and u c denotes its correlated FP.Similarly, based on the phase of STFT   , P x u at u and x, the enhance lpd (elpd) is defined as follows:

  example has been illustrated in figure4where U 1 is principal FP and U 2 is its correlated FP. The encoded integers of all positions compose a labeled image and the 12 labeled magnitude and phase images are shown in figure5.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. The ELFD at a location and two correlated FPs.

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Labeled magnitude and phase images of ELFD

Fig. 6 .Fig. 7 .

 67 Fig. 6. Histograms of a sub-region

Table 1 .

 1 Accuracy Rates of Yale and FERET (%)

					Yale							FERET
	Type	lmdf	lpdf	lmda	lpda	elmda	elpda	fusion	lmdf	lpdf	lmda	lpda	elmda	elpda	fusion
	LR2	98.67	94.67	98.67	95.33	99.33	94.67	99.56	95.33	91.83	95.33	92.83	96.67	93.33	96.83
	LR4	96.67	81.33	96.89	90.44	99.11	92.00	99.56	91.50	56.33	94.00	88.83	95.83	88.17	95.50
	Gaussian	94.22	61.33	94.22	82.67	97.78	81.11	98.00	90.17	40.33	90.17	78.67	92.83	71.00	93.50
	motion	94.00	76.44	94.00	90.89	97.78	89.56	97.78	92.33	81.33	92.33	85.50	94.67	85.00	95.83


Mey-Tyng Wang

Guo-Hong Lei

Success Factors and Problems Encountered in the Workplace Learning of University/College of Technology Students in Taiwan: A Five-star Hotel as An Example

Keywords: university/college of technology, workplace learning, success factor, hospitality industry

In order to help students in universities/colleges of technology close the education-employment gaps, Taiwan's educational authorities promoted workplace-learning programs. However, what are the success factors and problems encountered? This article reaches three defined conclusions: 1) student can internalize knowledge and skills over time, and apply them to workplace except for improving performance; 2) student can develop initiative characters, improve innovation, and even activate industries to think with novel ideas; 3) and, the lacking earnest attitude as well as deficiency of communication ability affect the performance which should be. Following with these conclusions, three recommendations are offered: 1) it would be proper to strengthen student's professional intellect for future development; 2) it would be proper to strengthen student's vocational capability in practice, including individual personality; 3) and, it would be proper to offer related testing or scaling tools to help student get awareness and thus upgrade their attitude during workplace-learning.

Introduction

Due to the widespread of higher education, upgrading of vocational technical education, and the changing of economics, society, and enterprise structure, it is necessary for high level vocational education institutions-including university/college of technology, and junior college of technology-to adapt themselves timely. Not only the teaching of vocational education institutions have to be implemented under such principles that discriminate none and cater to specific nature of the individual, but also those vocational education institutions have to face changing manpower needs in business, as well as to coordinate with government policy. Therefore, The most significant difference between vocational education institutions and general universities is that vocational education institutions emphasis pragmatic approach that s gaps between learning and performance, and combine theory and practicein order that students could be capable of applying their skills and capability to workplace (Ministry of Education, 2010a).

There were critics that most higher education students have difficulty to join in the workplace after graduation. Under government policy, universities/colleges of technology currently are strengthening their internship programs in order to help students to experience workplace earlier, shorten career exploring period, recognize what workplace needs, establish correct working attitude, and thus expand their career opportunities. As a result, it would be necessary and realistic trend forthe school to pay attention on WL. However, in the light of the fact that there are so many WL approaches, it is worth to understand if those approaches could effectively help students to learn in WL, and benefit both of students and industry. Therefore, this research aims to: 1) understand the factors leading to success in WL for students in universities/colleges of technology; and 2) understand what WL obstacles that those students would encounter . Via literature review as well as interviews with students and managerial level of a hotel, this research also aims to provide the schools and industries involving in WL program with suggestions and recommendations.

2 Literature Review

Current condition and trend of WL in Taiwan

In a broad sense, WL includes learning activities in workplace, semi-workplace, and community. In the US, the most popular six categories of internship that university/college students participate in are: cooperative education (co-op), field experience, practicum, service learning, externship, and apprenticeship (Lee, L. S., & Lai, C. C., 2011, quoted from WetFeet, u.d.). Among these six categories, cooperative education is a policy mode promoted by government and is also a strategic integration of higher education and the industry. And as [START_REF] Meng | New Thinking for Academic-Industry Collaboration)[END_REF] points out, it is a kind of cooperation between the industries and schools. Encompassing their main subjects, the design of WL is to encourage students go to workplace to meet development requirements of individual career and professional skill [START_REF] Linn | Career exploration via cooperative education and lifespan occupational choice[END_REF]. Despite of different modes, WL could still help students to utilize their knowledge, intellects, and interpersonal relationship to have a real-world view of workplace earlier. Furthermore, along with the refined curricula designs for students, a proper combination of academic intellects and working experience could be achieved by giving high commitment, as well as offering suitable working environment (

2.2

Situated learning perspectives

Under the concept of cooperative education, WL aims to form a real situation, in which situated learning model could be used to improve the students' learning effectiveness, and provide the educators with different thinking in order to inspire more innovative teaching approaches. Situated learning is considered as a society participation process, and both community and culture would affect the members' learning models.. During this socialization process, the interaction between experienced and inexperienced members would deliver recessive and dominant knowledge and then a common interpretation of a matter could be reached [START_REF] Lave | Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation[END_REF]. In terms of workplace, learning behaviors could be seen in every aspect of WL situation, and the learning effectiveness could be evaluated by degree of participation. By doing so, students who have different learning requirements could have more understandings about the diversity and difference of education. Therefore, situated learning put the emphasis on realized relations between learning and social culture, as well as the interaction between learners and environment, and thus the efficiency of WL could be improved.

Factors leading to successful WL

Critical factors leading to successful WL could be divided into absorptive capacity in workplace and mission objectives for WL. WL is not only limited in schools, but also includes internships based on cooperative education; thus, through WL, students could combine theory and practice , and then transform and apply learned knowledge, skill and capacity (Hui-Hua [START_REF] Chiu | An Empirical Study on Relationship Among Learning Environment, Personal Attributes and Absorptive Capacity -An Example of Students from Department of Hotel and Restaurant Management of S School Under Rotary Cooperative Education Program[END_REF]. Therefore, students have to firstly acquire related knowledge and skills, follow with the process of self-transform and internalize, and then apply learned knowledge and skills to WL.

Perspective of absorptive capacity

Due to the perspective of absorptive capacity (ACAP) proposed by [START_REF] Zahra | Absorptive Capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension[END_REF], the importance of absorptive capacity has caught those eyes of strategic management, technology management, international business, and organizational economics. There are two forms of absorptive capacity: potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) and realized absorptive capacity(RACAP). PACAP includes knowledge acquisition and assimilation capacities; while RACAP includes knowledge transformation and exploitation. A model of ACAP is as figure 1.

Systemic View of WL

According to "What Makes for Good Workplace Learning" prepared by Australian National Training Authority, ANTA (2003), the ultimate goal of WL should be business competitiveness and innovative capacity. An ideal WL, some important channels such as networks and partnerships should be included. These channels will be transformed, after socialized process, into capability to reach the WL goals of improving competitiveness and innovative capacity. A systemic view of workplace learning is as figure 2.

Findings and Discussion

This research put the emphasis on tourism-one of the Six Key Emerging Industries. Therefore, the authors specifically choose a five-start hotel locates in northern Taiwan as research subject regarding its good transportation location and the worldwide business service it provides. The hotel cooperate with eight universities/colleges of technology, and there are 24 students participating in WL. Through case studies and semiconstructive interview, the authors interview with participants who join cooperative education, including one senior manager, one administrative personnel, and three internship students in third or forth grade of college/university. Questionnaire writings are prepared in accordance with literature review and research outlines. If uncertainties are found during the review of interview materials, there will be e-mails or telephone calls to enquire further information to make sure that all contents in questionnaire are keeping in consistence and meeting the requirements of this research so that

The workgroup and individual

Skills and capability Innovative capacity

The workplace learning community

Workplace learning

for increased competitiveness and innovative capacity this research could contribute to credibility and validity. After systematically sorting out, factors leading to success or problems resulting from obstacle in WL for students of universities/colleges of technology are detailed below.

3.1

Factors leading to success in workplace for students of universities/colleges of technology

1.1 Students' capabilities to absorb, internalize, and apply

Analysis in this research consists with the theories raised by [START_REF] Zahra | Absorptive Capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension[END_REF], and [START_REF] Lave | Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation[END_REF].Students could acquire knowledge from school, gain practical experiences of society from hotel, merge them together and then to apply them in the workplace.

Five-start hotel can lead to innovation skills

Analysis in this research consists with the theory raised by ANTA (2003). It shows that active and practical learning could improve the innovative capacity for students and activate the innovative thinking for the industry; meanwhile, the hotel could also offer professional trainings to improve practical operation capability.

3.2

Problems resulting from obstacle in workplace learning for students in universities/colleges of technology 3.2.1 Theory learned in school could be applied to hotel business in those but could not improve its effectiveness. In the interview results, show that professional knowledge teaching remains inadequate due to students' desire for more professional knowledge. The above information represents that professional knowledge could only be applied to basic practices in the industry but could not improve its effectiveness, which means that the mission objectives of the industry could not be reached. This also demonstrates that the knowledge learned in the school could not reach ANTA's perspective of a WL that could improve competitiveness (ANTA, 2003).

Deficiency of communication ability

The environment of global competition requires the capability performing with knowledge, skills, and attitudes [START_REF] Hunter | Knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences necessary to become globally competent[END_REF][START_REF] Schejbal | Global Competencies, Liberal Studies, and the Needs of Employers[END_REF]. Analysis against interview results that students are lacking basic knowledge and proper attitude. As a result, students need to be more capable in terms of communication, language, and positive attitude.

Conclusion and Suggestions

Conclusions

4.1.1 Student could internalize knowledge and skills over time, and apply them to workplace except for improving effectiveness By internalizing professional knowledge and practice, the students could flexibly apply their knowledge and experiences to workplace and accomplish general working mission and goals. However, in terms of cost saving and improving service quality, the effectiveness is limited.

Student could develop initiative characters, improve innovation, and even acti-

vate the industry to think with novel ideas Students would be more capable after receiving basic professional knowledge, and know how to reason and logically analyze, systematically criticize, and make decision. By experiencing practical operation in hotel, active and energetic students who have received multi-dimensional trainings would become more flexible. Their innovative capability would be also upgraded.

The lacking earnest attitude as well as deficiency of communication ability

would affect the performance which should be The quality and effectiveness of students in workplace are largely decided by their attitudes and communicating capacity, such as values, oral expression, listening, English speaking, respect and acceptance, interaction with people from different departments, interpersonal relationship, and teamwork.

Suggestions

It would be a proper way to strengthen student's professional intellect for further development

Facing different unexpected situations, students would usually respond with being at a loss or unable to react. As a result, it would be better for hotel to offer more advanced training in legal knowledge, management skills, service professions, cost control. By doing so, related rights of both students and business owner could be protected, the students could also have more opportunities to shorten the adaptation period because they have become more capable of multiple capabilities as well as competitiveness.

It would be a proper way to strengthen student's vocational capability in

pratice, including individual personality Universities/colleges of technology should consider efforts to improve students' positive mind and characters, empathy and sense of morality, values judging, recognizing professional functions of business organization, in order to strengthen their capabilities in practical operation. Additionally, students should be encouraged to share, exchange the knowledge the have learned, and join healthy activities such as professional speech, preschool or nursing home visiting.

It would be a proper way to offer related testing or scaling tools to help student

gaining awareness and thus upgrade their attitude during workplace learning. Hotel managers are encouraged to provide aptitude test before conducting interview. If any student with negative attitude are found during interview, hotel managers are advised to explain to him/her the hardship would have to face in order to reduce the possibility that students might not be able to accomplish mission and thus the effectiveness could be improved.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. A model of ACAP (Source: Zahra & Gerard, 2002)

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. A systemic view of workplace learning (Source: NCVER, 2003.)

  Parsons, Caylor, & Simmons, 2005). Taiwan's Ministry of Education has integrated cooperative education-related affairs, such as off campus internship, college-internship matchmaking, industry's participation of internship mechanism, and competence rebuilding, into a unified program (Ministry of Education, 2010c). The promulgation of Off-Campus Students Internship Implementation Program (amendment) in 21 January, 2011 by the Ministry aims to offer experiential learning earlier to establish proper attitude towards work for students, increase pragmatic teaching resources for the school and career positions for students, and reduce orientation training cost for the industry (Ministry of Education, 2011).


Ching-Hui Shih
email: chshih@asia.edu.tw

The effects of governmental subsidy on the quality of education in Taiwan's private universities and colleges

Keywords: governmental subsidy, educational quality, DEA

The government arranges subsidies for private colleges annually with excellent academic performance. In order to justify if government subsidies can enhance the quality of education, this paper will investigate the relationship between governmental subsidy and education quality of Taiwanese private universities and colleges through data envelopment analysis and regression analysis on research data. Empirical results for the principles of the current government allocation of funds to provide advice, expect to enhance the quality of education, more limited government resources for the best allocation.

Introduction

In view of the need for innovation and knowledge in the 21st century, countries around the world have been actively nurturing talents and this task has inevitably fall into the hands of universities around the world. Universities have become the place for competing for knowledge, innovation and human resource, thus causing the competitiveness of a country's university to be the index for the country's national competitiveness. Development of higher education in Taiwan has gone from 4 universities in 1949 to 163 universities in 2011 and total number of students has also increased from 5000 to 1,340,000. There are 54 public universities (33.13%) with 440,000 students (33.84%) enrolled in it and 109 private universities (66.87%) with 900,000 students enrolled (67.16%) (Ministry of Education Statistics 2011). These facts have shown the intention by the Taiwan government to provide better educational advancement path and higher education for more Taiwanese citizens. However, the Taiwan government is concerned if the quality of education provided to the students is able to be kept at a high level. Article 13 of the Taiwan fundamental law of education states that "The government and the people may conduct education experiments as needed and strength research and assessment of education to improve education quality and promote education development." C.S. Wu feels that improving the quality of education not only fulfills the demands of the society, but also ensures the competitiveness of the schools is maintained at a high level, proving the importance of education quality [START_REF] Wu | The essence of education quality management[END_REF].

Geuna and Martin pointed out in their studies that universities in Europe and Asia-Pacific are given subsidies based on the results of their performance appraisal [START_REF] Geuna | University research evaluation and funding: an international comparison[END_REF]. The Taiwan government has adopted the "Private School Law" to improve the quality of education in private colleges and reduce the advantage in resources available that public colleges have over private colleges. The government also arranges subsidies for private colleges annually and offers scholarships to students with excellent academic performance. Annual subsidy for private colleges has increased by 46.43% over the years, from NT$ 4.7 billion in 1996 to NT$ 6.9 billion in 2009. However, there has been a lack of literatures discussing if the subsidies are beneficial for improving education quality.

There are many papers in Taiwan discussing about the education quality in Taiwan. There are papers discussing about education quality assurance [START_REF] Yao | A comparative study of higher education quality assurance mechanisms-In Britain, The United States, Germany, Australia, Japan, and France[END_REF] [1] [START_REF] Lim | Quality assurance in higher education: A study of developing countries[END_REF] [15] [START_REF] June | The Implications of European, American and Chinese quality management models to improving education quality[END_REF] and theory to education quality [16] [17] [2] [3] [START_REF] Wang | An analysis of the contents of the evaluation model of elementary and junior high school[END_REF]. However, there is a lack of papers verifying the effect of government subsidies has on education quality. Therefore, this paper will perform research on Taiwan private universities and discuss about the relationship between government subsidy and education quality.

2

Literature Review

Reward, Subsidy revenue

According to "Implementation Regulations for Establishing an Accounting System Regarding School Endowment Corporations and Private Schools" and "Regulations under the agreement for Establishing an Accounting System Regarding School Endowment Corporations and Private Schools", schools that have accepted donations and subsidies from government agencies, local organizations or individuals have to be categorized by the school as "revenue from donations and subsidies". Subsidies from government agencies have to be further categorized as "subsidy revenue" and donations from foreign government agencies, local organizations and individuals have to be further categorized as "donation revenue". The Ministry of Education in Taiwan has set the working standard for the audit of rewards and subsidies for private schools. The grant of rewards is evaluated based on the performance, administrative operations, school-running character, reward implementation performance and policy performance. Subsidies are divided into school size subsidy and overall resource subsidy. The 2011 Ministry of Education award for administrative Affairs in Private Schools development plan states that subsidies takes up 20% of the total funds and rewards takes up 80% of the total funds. This shows that the Ministry of Education are emphasizing on school performance, causing every university to perform at its best to obtain the rewards. Schools can use this as an evidence of excellent school performance and attract students to enroll.

Lai Y.U., Hu W.H., Kuo C.J. pointed out in their research that the better the school performance of private universities, the more the government subsidy will be and these lead to more disclosure of financial information. [START_REF] Lai | Effects of school performance and financial information disclosure of private universities and colleges on government financial support and private donation[END_REF] Therefore, there is a positive relationship between school performance of private universities and government subsidies. Moreover, financial information disclosure of private universities and colleges also has a positive relationship with government subsidies.

Endowment

Research results by Lin C.L., Ho Y.c has shown that there is a positive correlation between information transparency and endowments and there is a negative correlation between endowment and financial manipulation. [START_REF] Lin | Implications of information Transparency and financial manipulation on donations: Empirical evidences from Not-for-profit organizations in Taiwan[END_REF] Therefore, higher transparency of financial information results in lesser chance of mismatch in endowment records due to the positive correlation of the two. However, higher level of financial manipulation will cause a negative perception from donators and potential donators due to the negative correlation. Lai Y.U., Hu W.H., Kuo C.J. pointed out in their research that private universities and colleges performance does not have a significant correlation with private donations and financial records have shown that private donations have not reached a significant level for private universities and colleges. [START_REF] Lai | Effects of school performance and financial information disclosure of private universities and colleges on government financial support and private donation[END_REF] It is a common for large scale organizations to attract people for private donations due to their access to more resources allowing them to easily become the concern of the public. Lin C.L., C.C. Hsieh feels that the scale of the organization will affect the endowments of not-for-profit organizations. [START_REF] Lin | Determinants of donations in not-for-profit organizations[END_REF]

Education Quality

Sallis feels that it is difficult to judge the quality of education because quality of education is a subjective concept. [START_REF] Sallis | Total quality management in education,3rd[END_REF] Juran pointed out that education quality is the requirement for achieving the final objective of education and fits the requirement of legal law. [START_REF] Juran | A universal approach to management for quality[END_REF] It allows the students receiving the education to be effective in their production and services in the work force. Wang R.J. thinks that in addition to teaching and research, higher education quality standards should also include administrative and management activities of the university.

The current trend in colleges is being able to provide functions that focus on teachings, researches and services. Therefore, Wu C.S. reckons that education quality should be judged by "learning quality", "teaching quality", "administrative quality", "environment quality", "research quality" and "social service quality". [START_REF] Wu | The essence of education quality management[END_REF] Yang F.F., C.Y. Huang performed regression analysis using variables such as ratio of teachers with doctorate title, number of publications by department teachers, faculty academic research funds, student-teacher ratio, amount of resources in the library per students and equipment funds per student. [START_REF] Yang | The application of a hedonic model o a quality-adjusted price index for private universities of Taiwan[END_REF] Research Methods

Data source and sampling

The main objective of this paper is to discuss the relationship of Taiwanese private university subsidy and education quality. The data source will come from the official website of Ministry of Education and the financial statement page of various universities. Source of the data comes from 109 private universities and data will 2006 till 2008 will be sampled. There will be a total of 309 data samples excluding incomplete data.

Variables

I. Subsidy

All subsidies should only be by the school and the main source of the subsidies comes from government agencies. Data for this subsidy can be acquired from financial reports made public by the school's accountant. II. Education Quality Judgment of education quality is difficult because education quality is a subjective concept. [START_REF] Wang | An analysis of the contents of the evaluation model of elementary and junior high school[END_REF] This paper uses data envelopment analysis and judge the education quality based on concepts coming from the first article of University Act, "Universities shall encourage academic research, cultivating talent, enhancing culture, serving society and accelerating the development of the country." Therefore, factors used to judge the quality of education includes teaching, research and services. These factors are similar to the indications for evaluation of teachers in every school. For "teaching", number of students will be the measureable variable and for "research", the measureable variable will be the cooperative education revenue from National Science Council and Industry-University research funds. Lastly, the measureable variable for "services" will be the promotion revenue. Judgment concept factors are divided into manpower and funding. The quality and quantity of teachers will be the main factors affecting manpower. Quantity of the teachers refers to the number of teachers with position higher than assistant professors and quality of teachers refers to the degree the teachers hold. Finally, library resources, recurrent expenditures and capital expenditure will be the factors affecting funding.

III. Endowments All endowments coming from foreign government agencies, local organizations and individual donations have to be classified as endowments by the school receiving them. The main sources are the founder or affiliated companies and a small portion of endowments comes from alumni and the public. This small portion should be made public on the report by the school accountant.

IV. Scale of the school Fang J.J. pointed out the scale of the school will affect the quality of education. [START_REF] June | The Implications of European, American and Chinese quality management models to improving education quality[END_REF] Research will be done based on this fact and the scale of the school will be directly proportional to the total assets of the school.

V. Nature of the school

The schools will be categorized into 1) universities in general and 2) technical and vocational training universities.

VI. Teaching expenditure

All expenditures used on teaching, research, guidance and discipline will be included and this data shall be made public by the school's accountant.

3.3

Assumptions.

Guena and Martin stated that evaluation results of university performance are used as indications for government subsidy for schools in Europe and Asia-pacific. [START_REF] Lai | Effects of school performance and financial information disclosure of private universities and colleges on government financial support and private donation[END_REF] Based on the working standards for the audit of rewards and subsidies for private schools by Ministry of Education in Taiwan, 80% of the total subsidy is allocated based on indications such as "university evaluations", "education character", "administrative performance" and "planning and execution of funding". Therefore, if a school is capable of receiving more subsidies, this indicates that they have a better education quality. It can be deduced that subsidy income has a positive correlation with education quality.

Assumption 1

Taiwan private university's subsidy has a positive correlation with education quality.

Empirical Models

The model below will be used to verify if the previous assumption stands.

EQ =β 0 +β 1 GSR +β 2 DR +β 3 Size +β 4 TE +β 5 SC + ε

In the above model, EQ refers to education quality, GSR is grants and subsidies received from the government, DR is donations received, Size is the size of the school, TE is teaching expenses, SC is the school character and lastly ε is error term.

4

Empirical results and analysis

Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficient analysis results

Table 1 show the descriptive statistics results of each variable. From the table, it can be observed that the mean value for education quality of the private universities is 0.8258. The government subsidy has a mean value of NT$150,319 thousand. The maximum amount of subsidy is NT$625,968 thousand and the minimum amount of subsidy is NT$0. The average amount of endowments is NT$53,971 thousand, maximum amount of endowments is NT$625,968 thousand and minimum amount of endowments is NT$0. The size of the school has a mean value of NT$4,042,319 thousand. The largest size is NT$22,345,737 thousand and the smallest size is NT$1,046 thousand. The mean amount of teaching expenses is NT$686,140 thousands. The maximum amount of teaching expenses is NT$2,310,121 thousand and the minimum amount of teaching expenses is NT$64,267 thousand.

From Table 1, the average government subsidy of NT$150,319 thousand for private universities takes up only 21.91% of the average teaching expenses (NT$686,140 thousand), taking up a small portion of the teaching expenses. Donations from board of directors make up for the majority of the endowments for a newly established university in 2007. The average endowment over the three years is NT$53,971 thousand and it only makes up for 7.87% of the average teaching expenses (NT$686,140 thousand), taking up a small portion of teaching expenses too.

Regression Analysis Results

Table 2 shows the empirical results based on assumption 1. The coefficient after adjustment to regression mode is found to be 0.069 and F value is 5.567 (P value is 0.0000). The standardized coefficient is -0.237 and this shows that Taiwan private universities' subsidy has a negative correlation with education quality. This result does not match with assumption 1 that "Taiwan private university's subsidy has a positive correlation with education quality." This means that higher subsidy from the government does not lead to better education quality.

On the controllable variables, the regression coefficient for donations is 0.028 and this shows an insignificant level. This means that donations do not have a huge influence on education quality. Regression coefficient of school size is -0.252, showing a significant level. This means that the bigger the size of the school, the worse the education quality is. Teaching expenses have a regression coefficient of 0.432 and this significant level means higher teaching expenses leads to better education quality. Lastly, school character has regression value of 0.107 and this value is of low significance. This means that the character of the school has no influence on the education quality. Research results have shown that private universities have negative correlations between subsidy and education quality. This correlation does not match with the assumption that subsidy and education quality has positive correlations and this can be a pondering subject. One of the reasons is there are currently 109 private universities and there are a total of 163 universities including public universities. The intense competition between the universities and the decrease from 300,000 to 200,000 in the number of students enrolling in universities has caused every school to gain crisis awareness. They believe they have to enhance their education quality by recruiting high quality students to improve the performance of the school. Therefore, every school offers hefty scholarships to attract good quality students to the school. Moreover, schools have encouraged teachers and professors to strive for funding such as subsidies from National Science Council and Industry-University Cooperation Funds. Another possible reason is government subsidy does not have a significant effect on the school expenses to improve education quality. The average amount of subsidy per school is NT$150,319 and the average expenses per school is NT$686,140. The subsidy takes up 21.91% of the total expenses, showing an insignificant effect on the expenses.

Control variables "teaching expenses" and "education quality" have a positive correlation. "Size of school" and "education quality" has a negative correlation. These conclusions have shown that "teaching expenses" and "size of school" are two factors affecting education quality. Endowments and education quality have shown a negative correlation but the level is insignificant.

5.2

Suggestions (1) Review the allocation of funding to gain maximum benefit

In 2011, the Ministry of Education has split funding into subsidy and rewards. Subsidies are further split into subsidy for size of school and general resources subsidy. These subsidies take up 20% of the total funding. Rewards are split into evaluation performance, school character, administrative operation, reward subsidy operation performance and policy performance. These take up 80% of the total funding. This distribution does not have a significant effect in improving education quality. Therefore, the government has to reconsider the distribution to achieve maximum benefits.

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2) Encourage public donations to gain finance

The paper has shown that donations from the public are relatively low compared to other donations. Every school has to improve their transparency and promote the school's advantage. Schools can also either work together with companies of the same idea or create school enterprises. This will improve the revenue of the school and combine theory with practical work, allowing for a win-win situation.

(3) Strengthen financial autonomy to pursue sustainable development With the country facing increasingly difficult finance, the government has decreased the subsidies towards higher education. Therefore, Taiwanese universities are encouraged to raise funds to improve the finance of the universities. The best solution is to couple traditional basic researches with consideration for future finance development. Schools should strengthen their applied research field and commercialize the knowledge such as offering short-term professional courses, various job training or technology consulting services. The funding received will be a hefty amount and will be able to compensate for the lack of government subsidies.

Table 1 .

 1 Descriptive Statistics for each variable Grants and Subsidies Received, DR: Donations Received,EQ: Education Quality DEA: DEA efficiency value,Size: Size of the school,SC: School character,TE: Teaching Expenses

	Variable	Unit	Min. Value	Max. Value	Mean	Standard Deviation
		NT$ thous	0.000	625,968
	GSR	and	0.000	3,210,620	150,319.33	118,945.141
	DR	NT$ thousand	1,046	22,345,737	53,970.65	267,512.390
	Size	NT$ thous	64,267	2,310,121	4,042,318.8	4,011,100.692
	TE	and			6	453,544.696
	SC	NT$ thous			686,139.98	0.471
		and			1.67
	GSR:

Table 2 .

 2 Empirical results for regression analysis of independent variables and education qualityA total of 103 private universities and colleges from 2006 -2008 are sampled in this research to investigate the relationship between subsidy and education quality.

		Variable	Non-	Standardized	T Value	VIF
			standardized	Coefficient
			coefficient
	Intercept	0.741		13.985***
	Subsidy	-3.490	-0.237	-2.237**	3.702
	Donations	1.821	0.028	0.431	1.376
	School Size	-1.101	-0.252	-2.800***	2.677
	Teaching	1.669	0.432	3.971***	3.907
	Expenses
	School	0.040	0.107	1.587	1.491
	Character
		Note: R 2 value after adjustment is 0.069. F value is 5.567, p < 0.0001 * P<0.05 , ** P<0.01
	5	Conclusions and Suggestions
	5.1	Conclusions