title: Generalized Simulated Annealing

text: We propose a new stochastic algorithm (generalized simulated annealing) for computationally finding the global minimum of a given (not necessarily convex) energy/cost function defined in a continuous D-dimensional space. This algorithm recovers, as particular cases, the so called classical (“Boltzmann machine”) and fast (“Cauchy machine”) simulated annealings, and can be quicker than both. Key-words: Simulated annealing; Nonconvex optimization; Gradient descent; Generalized Statistical Mechanics.


title: Apples-to-apples in cross-validation studies: pitfalls in classifier performance measurement

text: Cross-validation is a mainstay for measuring performance and progress in machine learning. There are subtle differences in how exactly to compute accuracy, F-measure and Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) in cross-validation studies. However, these details are not discussed in the literature, and incompatible methods are used by various papers and software packages. This leads to inconsistency across the research literature. Anomalies in performance calculations for particular folds and situations go undiscovered when they are buried in aggregated results over many folds and datasets, without ever a person looking at the intermediate performance measurements. This research note clarifies and illustrates the differences, and it provides guidance for how best to measure classification performance under cross-validation. In particular, there are several divergent methods used for computing F-measure, which is often recommended as a performance measure under class imbalance, e.g., for text classification domains and in one-vs.-all reductions of datasets having many classes. We show by experiment that all but one of these computation methods leads to biased measurements, especially under high class imbalance. This paper is of particular interest to those designing machine learning software libraries and researchers focused on high class imbalance.


title: An Effective High Threating Alarm Mining Method for Cloud Security Management

text: Security equipment such as intrusion prevention system is an important supplementary for security management. They reduce the difficulty of network management by giving alarms corresponding to different attacks instead of raw traffic packet inspection. But there are many false alarms due to their running mechanism, which greatly reduces its usability. In this paper, we develop a hierarchical framework to mine high threating alarms from the massive alarm logs, and aim to provide fundamental and useful information for administrators to design efficient management policy. First, the alarms are divided into two parts based on their attributes, the first part mainly includes several kinds of famous attacks which are critical for security management, we proposed a similar alarm mining method based on Choquet integral to cluster and rank the frequently occurred attacks. The rest alarms constitute the second part, which are caused by the potential threats attacks, also include many false alarms. To reduce the effect of false alarms and rank the potential threats, we employ the frequent pattern mining algorithm to mine correlation rules and then filter false alarms. Following, we proposed a self-adapting threat degree calculation method to qualify the threat degree of these alarms after filtering. To verity the methods developed, an experimental platform is constructed in the campus network of Xi’an Jiaotong University. Experimental results based on the data collected verify the efficiency of the developed methods. For the first kind of alarms, the similar alarms mining accuracy is higher than 97% and the alarms are ranked with different processing urgencies. For the rest alarms, the proposed methods have filtering accuracy above 80% and can rank the potential threats. Based on the ranking results, administrators can deal with the high threats with their limited time and energy, in turn, keep the network under control.


title: Application of Data Mining Classification Algorithms for Breast Cancer Diagnosis

text:
Breast cancer is one of the diseases that represent a large number of incidence and mortality in the world. Data mining classifications techniques will be effective tools for classifying data of cancer to facilitate decision-making.
 The objective of this paper is to compare the performance of different machine learning algorithms in the diagnosis of breast cancer, to define exactly if this type of cancer is a benign or malignant tumor.
 Six machine learning algorithms were evaluated in this research Bayes Network (BN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbors algorithm (Knn), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Decision Tree (C4.5) and Logistic Regression. The simulation of the algorithms is done using the WEKA tool (The Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis) on the Wisconsin breast cancer dataset available in UCI machine learning repository.


title: An Unsupervised Clustering Tool for Unstructured Data

text: We present an unsupervised clustering tool, Principal Direction Divisive Partitioning, which is a scal-able and versatile top-down method applicable to any set of data that can be represented as numerical vectors. A description of the basic method, a summary of the main application areas where this has been used, and some recent results on the selection of signiicant words as well as the process of updating clusters as new data arrives is discussed.


title: Basic studies on wet adhesion system for wall climbing robots

text: This paper reports a vacuum-based wet adhesion system for wall climbing robots. In this adhesion system, a suction cup adheres on a wet surface. The problems addressed are an adherability on a rough surface, which is comes from the seal action of a liquid, and low friction between suction cup and adhered rough and smooth surfaces which is comes form lubricating action of a liquid. Generally, it is difficult that a vacuumed suction cup adheres on rough surface such concrete plate and hardly slidable. In this paper, the adhesion force and friction when a suction cup adheres on smooth glass plate and concrete plate are measured and compared wet condition with dry condition. The experiment result showed that a viscosity is important at the sealing performance of adhesion on rough surface. The silicon oil of a viscosity of 5000cSt allows a suction cup to adhere on concrete surface. In this condition it comes up to the adhesion force when a suction cup adheres on smooth glass with dry condition.


title: Selection from alphabetic and numeric menu trees using a touch screen: breadth, depth, and width

text: Goal items were selected by a series of touch-menu choices among sequentially subdivided ranges of integers or alphabetically ordered words. The number of alternatives at each step, <italic>b</italic>, was varied, and, inversely, the size of the target area for the touch. Mean response time for each screen was well described by <italic>T</italic> = <italic>k</italic>+<italic>c</italic>log<italic>b</italic>, in agreement with the Hick-Hyman and Fitts' laws for decision and movement components in series. It is shown that this function favors breadth over depth in menus, whereas others might not. Speculations are offered as to when various functions could be expected.


title: FILA: Fine-grained indoor localization

text: Indoor positioning systems have received increasing attention for supporting location-based services in indoor environments. WiFi-based indoor localization has been attractive due to its open access and low cost properties. However, the distance estimation based on received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is easily affected by the temporal and spatial variance due to the multipath effect, which contributes to most of the estimation errors in current systems. How to eliminate such effect so as to enhance the indoor localization performance is a big challenge. In this work, we analyze this effect across the physical layer and account for the undesirable RSSI readings being reported. We explore the frequency diversity of the subcarriers in OFDM systems and propose a novel approach called FILA, which leverages the channel state information (CSI) to alleviate multipath effect at the receiver. We implement the FILA system on commercial 802.11 NICs, and then evaluate its performance in different typical indoor scenarios. The experimental results show that the accuracy and latency of distance calculation can be significantly enhanced by using CSI. Moreover, FILA can significantly improve the localization accuracy compared with the corresponding RSSI approach.


title: Detection of covert attacks on cyber-physical systems by extending the system dynamics with an auxiliary system

text: Securing cyber-physical systems is vital for our modern society since they are widely used in critical infrastructure like power grid control and water distribution. One of the most sophisticated attacks on these systems is the covert attack, where an attacker changes the system inputs and disguises his influence on the system outputs by changing them accordingly. In this paper an approach to detect such an attack by extending the original system with a switched auxiliary system is proposed. Furthermore, a detection system using a switched Luenberger observer is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by a simulation example.


title: Matchmaker: constructing constrained texture maps

text: Texture mapping enhances the visual realism of 3D models by adding fine details. To achieve the best results, it is often necessary to force a correspondence between some of the details of the texture and the features of the model.The most common method for mapping texture onto 3D meshes is to use a planar parameterization of the mesh. This, however, does not reflect any special correspondence between the mesh geometry and the texture. The Matchmaker algorithm presented here forces user-defined feature correspondence for planar parameterization of meshes. This is achieved by adding positional constraints to the planar parameterization. Matchmaker allows users to introduce scores of constraints while maintaining a valid one-to-one mapping between the embedding and the 3D surface. Matchmaker's constraint mechanism can be used for other applications requiring parameterization besides texture mapping, such as morphing and remeshing.Matchmaker begins with an unconstrained planar embedding of the 3D mesh generated by conventional methods. It moves the constrained vertices to the required positions by matching a triangulation of these positions to a triangulation of the planar mesh formed by paths between constrained vertices. The matching triangulations are used to generate a new parameterization that satisfies the constraints while minimizing the deviation from the original 3D geometry.


title: A First Step towards Eye State Prediction Using EEG

text: In this paper, we investigate how the eye state (open or closed) can be predicted by measuring brain waves with an EEG. To this end, we recorded a corpus containing the activation strength of the fourteen electrodes of a commercial EEG headset as well as the manually annotated eye state corresponding to the recorded data. We tested 42 different machine learning algorithms on their performance to predict the eye state after training with the corpus. The best-performing classifier, KStar, produced a classification error rate of only 2.7% which is a 94% relative reduction over the majority vote of 44.9% classification error.


title: Differences in energy expenditure during high-speed versus standard-speed yoga: A randomized sequence crossover trial.

text:
OBJECTIVES
To compare energy expenditure and volume of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production during a high-speed yoga and a standard-speed yoga program.

DESIGN
Randomized repeated measures controlled trial.

SETTING
A laboratory of neuromuscular research and active aging.

INTERVENTIONS
Sun-Salutation B was performed, for eight minutes, at a high speed versus and a standard-speed separately while oxygen consumption was recorded. Caloric expenditure was calculated using volume of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Difference in energy expenditure (kcal) of HSY and SSY.

RESULTS
Significant differences were observed in energy expenditure between yoga speeds with high-speed yoga producing significantly higher energy expenditure than standard-speed yoga (MD=18.55, SE=1.86, p<0.01). Significant differences were also seen between high-speed and standard-speed yoga for volume of oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide produced.

CONCLUSIONS
High-speed yoga results in a significantly greater caloric expenditure than standard-speed yoga. High-speed yoga may be an effective alternative program for those targeting cardiometabolic markers.


title: Deep Unfolding: Model-Based Inspiration of Novel Deep Architectures

text: Model-based methods and deep neural networks have both been tremendously successful paradigms in machine learning. In model-based methods, we can easily express our problem domain knowledge in the constraints of the model at the expense of difficulties during inference. Deterministic deep neural networks are constructed in such a way that inference is straightforward, but we sacrifice the ability to easily incorporate problem domain knowledge. The goal of this paper is to provide a general strategy to obtain the advantages of both approaches while avoiding many of their disadvantages. The general idea can be summarized as follows: given a model-based approach that requires an iterative inference method, we unfold the iterations into a layer-wise structure analogous to a neural network. We then de-couple the model parameters across layers to obtain novel neural-network-like architectures that can easily be trained discriminatively using gradient-based methods. The resulting formula combines the expressive power of a conventional deep network with the internal structure of the model-based approach, while allowing inference to be performed in a fixed number of layers that can be optimized for best performance. We show how this framework can be applied to the non-negative matrix factorization to obtain a novel non-negative deep neural network architecture, that can be trained with a multiplicative back-propagation-style update algorithm. We present experiments in the domain of speech enhancement, where we show that the resulting model is able to outperform conventional neural network while only requiring a fraction of the number of parameters. We believe this is due to the ability afforded by our framework to incorporate problem level assumptions into the architecture of the deep network. arXiv.org This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright c ©Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 2014 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139


title: Channel Estimation for Massive MIMO Using Gaussian-Mixture Bayesian Learning

text: Pilot contamination posts a fundamental limit on the performance of massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems due to failure in accurate channel estimation. To address this problem, we propose estimation of only the channel parameters of the desired links in a target cell, but those of the interference links from adjacent cells. The required estimation is, nonetheless, an underdetermined system. In this paper, we show that if the propagation properties of massive MIMO systems can be exploited, it is possible to obtain an accurate estimate of the channel parameters. Our strategy is inspired by the observation that for a cellular network, the channel from user equipment to a base station is composed of only a few clustered paths in space. With a very large antenna array, signals can be observed under extremely sharp regions in space. As a result, if the signals are observed in the beam domain (using Fourier transform), the channel is approximately sparse, i.e., the channel matrix contains only a small fraction of large components, and other components are close to zero. This observation then enables channel estimation based on sparse Bayesian learning methods, where sparse channel components can be reconstructed using a small number of observations. Results illustrate that compared to conventional estimators, the proposed approach achieves much better performance in terms of the channel estimation accuracy and achievable rates in the presence of pilot contamination.


title: Bayesian Compressive Sensing

text: The data of interest are assumed to be represented as N-dimensional real vectors, and these vectors are compressible in some linear basis B, implying that the signal can be reconstructed accurately using only a small number M Lt N of basis-function coefficients associated with B. Compressive sensing is a framework whereby one does not measure one of the aforementioned N-dimensional signals directly, but rather a set of related measurements, with the new measurements a linear combination of the original underlying N-dimensional signal. The number of required compressive-sensing measurements is typically much smaller than N, offering the potential to simplify the sensing system. Let f denote the unknown underlying N-dimensional signal, and g a vector of compressive-sensing measurements, then one may approximate f accurately by utilizing knowledge of the (under-determined) linear relationship between f and g, in addition to knowledge of the fact that f is compressible in B. In this paper we employ a Bayesian formalism for estimating the underlying signal f based on compressive-sensing measurements g. The proposed framework has the following properties: i) in addition to estimating the underlying signal f, "error bars" are also estimated, these giving a measure of confidence in the inverted signal; ii) using knowledge of the error bars, a principled means is provided for determining when a sufficient number of compressive-sensing measurements have been performed; iii) this setting lends itself naturally to a framework whereby the compressive sensing measurements are optimized adaptively and hence not determined randomly; and iv) the framework accounts for additive noise in the compressive-sensing measurements and provides an estimate of the noise variance. In this paper we present the underlying theory, an associated algorithm, example results, and provide comparisons to other compressive-sensing inversion algorithms in the literature.


title: Exploiting Software: How to Break Code

text: To be useful, software must respond to events in a predictable manner. The results can then be used as a window to the interior workings of the code, revealing some of the mechanisms of operations, which may be used to find ways to make it fail in a dangerous way. To some, the window is as clear as a six inch thick pane of lead, but to those with a high level of understanding it can be clear, or at the very least serve as a keyhole. This is an allusion to the old detective stories where someone looks through the keyhole to see what is behind the door. For these reasons, no software that interacts with humans can ever be considered completely secure, and human error in the development of the software can leave the equivalent of keyholes throughout the code.


title: A tutorial on cross-layer optimization in wireless networks

text: This tutorial paper overviews recent developments in optimization-based approaches for resource allocation problems in wireless systems. We begin by overviewing important results in the area of opportunistic (channel-aware) scheduling for cellular (single-hop) networks, where easily implementable myopic policies are shown to optimize system performance. We then describe key lessons learned and the main obstacles in extending the work to general resource allocation problems for multihop wireless networks. Towards this end, we show that a clean-slate optimization-based approach to the multihop resource allocation problem naturally results in a "loosely coupled" cross-layer solution. That is, the algorithms obtained map to different layers [transport, network, and medium access control/physical (MAC/PHY)] of the protocol stack, and are coupled through a limited amount of information being passed back and forth. It turns out that the optimal scheduling component at the MAC layer is very complex, and thus needs simpler (potentially imperfect) distributed solutions. We demonstrate how to use imperfect scheduling in the cross-layer framework and describe recently developed distributed algorithms along these lines. We conclude by describing a set of open research problems


title: Learning to guide task and motion planning using score-space representation

text: In this paper, we propose a learning algorithm that speeds up the search in task and motion planning problems. Our algorithm proposes solutions to three different challenges that arise in learning to improve planning efficiency: what to predict, how to represent a planning problem instance, and how to transfer knowledge from one problem instance to another. We propose a method that predicts constraints on the search space based on a generic representation of a planning problem instance, called score space, where we represent a problem instance in terms of performance of a set of solutions attempted so far. Using this representation, we transfer knowledge, in the form of constraints, from previous problems based on the similarity in score space. We design a sequential algorithm that efficiently predicts these constraints, and evaluate it in three different challenging task and motion planning problems. Results indicate that our approach perform orders of magnitudes faster than an unguided planner.


title: A Comparison of Intensive Care Unit Mortality Prediction Models through the Use of Data Mining Techniques

text:
OBJECTIVES
The intensive care environment generates a wealth of critical care data suited to developing a well-calibrated prediction tool. This study was done to develop an intensive care unit (ICU) mortality prediction model built on University of Kentucky Hospital (UKH)'s data and to assess whether the performance of various data mining techniques, such as the artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM) and decision trees (DT), outperform the conventional logistic regression (LR) statistical model.

METHODS
The models were built on ICU data collected regarding 38,474 admissions to the UKH between January 1998 and September 2007. The first 24 hours of the ICU admission data were used, including patient demographics, admission information, physiology data, chronic health items, and outcome information.

RESULTS
Only 15 study variables were identified as significant for inclusion in the model development. The DT algorithm slightly outperformed (AUC, 0.892) the other data mining techniques, followed by the ANN (AUC, 0.874), and SVM (AUC, 0.876), compared to that of the APACHE III performance (AUC, 0.871).

CONCLUSIONS
With fewer variables needed, the machine learning algorithms that we developed were proven to be as good as the conventional APACHE III prediction.


title: Multispectral pedestrian detection: Benchmark dataset and baseline

text: With the increasing interest in pedestrian detection, pedestrian datasets have also been the subject of research in the past decades. However, most existing datasets focus on a color channel, while a thermal channel is helpful for detection even in a dark environment. With this in mind, we propose a multispectral pedestrian dataset which provides well aligned color-thermal image pairs, captured by beam splitter-based special hardware. The color-thermal dataset is as large as previous color-based datasets and provides dense annotations including temporal correspondences. With this dataset, we introduce multispectral ACF, which is an extension of aggregated channel features (ACF) to simultaneously handle color-thermal image pairs. Multi-spectral ACF reduces the average miss rate of ACF by 15%, and achieves another breakthrough in the pedestrian detection task.


title: Indoor scene segmentation using a structured light sensor

text: In this paper we explore how a structured light depth sensor, in the form of the Microsoft Kinect, can assist with indoor scene segmentation. We use a CRF-based model to evaluate a range of different representations for depth information and propose a novel prior on 3D location. We introduce a new and challenging indoor scene dataset, complete with accurate depth maps and dense label coverage. Evaluating our model on this dataset reveals that the combination of depth and intensity images gives dramatic performance gains over intensity images alone. Our results clearly demonstrate the utility of structured light sensors for scene understanding.


title: Wireless Mesh Software Defined Networks (wmSDN)

text: In this paper we propose to integrate Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) formed by OpenFlow switches. The use of a centralized network controller and the ability to setup arbitrary paths for data flows make SDN a handy tool to deploy fine-grained traffic engineering algorithms in WMNs. However, centralized control may be harmful in multi-hop radio networks formed by commodity devices (e.g. Wireless Community Networks), in which node isolation and network fragmentation are not rare events. To exploit the pros and mitigate the cons, our framework uses the traditional OpenFlow centralized controller to engineer the routing of data traffic, while it uses a distributed controller based on OLSR to route: i) OpenFlow control traffic, ii) data traffic, in case of central controller failure. We implemented and tested our Wireless Mesh Software Defined Network (wmSDN) showing its applicability to a traffic engineering use-case, in which the controller logic balances outgoing traffic among the Internet gateways of the mesh. Albeit simple, this use case allows showing a possible usage of SDN that improves user performance with respect to the case of a traditional mesh with IP forwarding and OLSR routing. The wmSDN software toolkit is formed by Open vSwitch, POX controller, OLSR daemon and our own Bash and Python scripts. The tests have been carried out in an emulation environment based on Linux Containers, NS3 and CORE tools.


title: Closed loop speed control of chopper fed DC motor for industrial drive application

text: In this paper a comparative transient and robustness analysis of closed loop speed control employing different linear controllers for the same dc motor using 4 quadrant chopper is investigated. The controller configurations can be broadly classified under (i) Integer order PID controller (ii) linear state space observer and (iii) fractional order PID controller. All of them exhibit superior performances, the first one is the conventional controller used in industries but the later two are modern controllers that have rich potential for industry use and have large advantage over the conventional controllers. The closed loop control of chopper fed DC motor is shown with the 1st quadrant operation of chopper circuit.


title: Input Sentence Splitting and Translating

text: We propose a method to split and translate input sentences for speech translation in order to overcome the long sentence problem. This approach is based on three criteria used to judge the goodness of translation results. The criteria utilize the output of an MT system only and assumes neither a particular language nor a particular MT approach. In an experiment with an EBMT system, in which prior methods cannot work or work badly, the proposed split-and-translate method achieves much better results in translation quality.


title: The Alternating Decision Tree Learning Algorithm

text: The application of boosting procedures to decision tree algorithms has been shown to produce very accurate classi ers. These classiers are in the form of a majority vote over a number of decision trees. Unfortunately, these classi ers are often large, complex and diÆcult to interpret. This paper describes a new type of classi cation rule, the alternating decision tree, which is a generalization of decision trees, voted decision trees and voted decision stumps. At the same time classi ers of this type are relatively easy to interpret. We present a learning algorithm for alternating decision trees that is based on boosting. Experimental results show it is competitive with boosted decision tree algorithms such as C5.0, and generates rules that are usually smaller in size and thus easier to interpret. In addition these rules yield a natural measure of classi cation con dence which can be used to improve the accuracy at the cost of abstaining from predicting examples that are hard to classify.


title: High-quality speech coding with SampleRNN

text: We provide a speech coding scheme employing a generative model based on SampleRNN that, while operating at significantly lower bitrates, matches or surpasses the perceptual quality of state-of-theart classic wide-band codecs. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme can provide a meaningful rate-distortion trade-off without retraining. We evaluate the proposed scheme in a series of listening tests and discuss limitations of the approach.


title: A natural language planner interface for mobile manipulators

text: Natural language interfaces for robot control aspire to find the best sequence of actions that reflect the behavior intended by the instruction. This is difficult because of the diversity of language, variety of environments, and heterogeneity of tasks. Previous work has demonstrated that probabilistic graphical models constructed from the parse structure of natural language can be used to identify motions that most closely resemble verb phrases. Such approaches however quickly succumb to computational bottlenecks imposed by construction and search the space of possible actions. Planning constraints, which define goal regions and separate the admissible and inadmissible states in an environment model, provide an interesting alternative to represent the meaning of verb phrases. In this paper we present a new model called the Distributed Correspondence Graph (DCG) to infer the most likely set of planning constraints from natural language instructions. A trajectory planner then uses these planning constraints to find a sequence of actions that resemble the instruction. Separating the problem of identifying the action encoded by the language into individual steps of planning constraint inference and motion planning enables us to avoid computational costs associated with generation and evaluation of many trajectories. We present experimental results from comparative experiments that demonstrate improvements in efficiency in natural language understanding without loss of accuracy.


title: The Myth of Millions of Annual Self-Defense Gun Uses: A Case Study of Survey Overestimates of Rare Events

text: A criminologist has been using national self-report surveys to estimate the incidence of self-defense gun use in the United States (Kleck 199 I). His most recent estimate is that civilians use guns in self-defense against offenders more than 2.5 million times each year (Kleck and Gertz 1995). This figure has been widely cited, not only by the National Rifle Association but in the media and in Congress. A criminologist in Canada is touting high self-defense estimates for that country, derived from similar self-report surveys (Mauser 1995). All attempts at external validation of the 2.5 million figure show that it is an enormous overestimate (Hemenway, in press). For example, in 34% of the times a gun was used for self-defense, the offender was allegedlycommitting a burglary. In other words, guns were reportedly used by defenders for self-defense in approximately 845,000 burglaries. From sophisticated victimization surveys, however,we know that there were fewer than 6 million burglaries in the year of the survey and in only 22% of those cases was someone certainly at home (1.3 million burglaries). Since only 42% of U.S. households own firearms,


title: One Century of Brain Mapping Using Brodmann Areas*

text: 100 years after their publication, Brodmann’s maps of the cerebral cortex are universally used to locate neuropsychological functions. On the occasion of this jubilee the life and work of Korbinian Brodmann are reported. The core functions of each single Brodmann area are described and Brodmann’s views on neuropsychological processes are depicted. 100 Jahre nach ihrer Veröffentlichung wird Brodmanns Kartierung des zerebralen Kortex universell zur Lokalisation neuropsychologischer Funktionen eingesetzt. Anlässlich dieses Jubiläums werden Leben und Werk von Korbinian Brodmann dargestellt. Die wesentlichen Funktionen der einzelnen Brodmann-Areale werden beschrieben und Brodmanns Ansichten über neuropsychologische Prozesse wiedergegeben.


title: CONTEXTUAL CLASSIFICATION OF POINT CLOUD DATA BY EXPLOITING INDIVIDUAL 3D NEIGBOURHOODS

text: The fully automated analysis of 3D point clouds is of great importance in photogrammetry, remote sensing and computer vision. For reliably extracting objects such as buildings, road inventory or vegetation, many approaches rely on the results of a point cloud classification, where each 3D point is assigned a respective semantic class label. Such an assignment, in turn, typically involves statistical methods for feature extraction and machine learning. Whereas the different components in the processing workflow have extensively, but separately been investigated in recent years, the respective connection by sharing the results of crucial tasks across all components has not yet been addressed. This connection not only encapsulates the interrelated issues of neighborhood selection and feature extraction, but also the issue of how to involve spatial context in the classification step. In this paper, we present a novel and generic approach for 3D scene analysis which relies on (i) individually optimized 3D neighborhoods for (ii) the extraction of distinctive geometric features and (iii) the contextual classification of point cloud data. For a labeled benchmark dataset, we demonstrate the beneficial impact of involving contextual information in the classification process and that using individual 3D neighborhoods of optimal size significantly increases the quality of the results for both pointwise and contextual classification.


title: Examining the factors that influence early adopters' smartphone adoption: The case of college students

text: The influence of early adopters on potential adopters’ decisions of whether or not to adopt a product is known to be critical. In this paper, we examine the factors that influence the adoption behavior of smartphone early adopters by looking at smartphone adoption behavior of college students, because a large portion of the early adopters of smartphones are college students. Our focus is on the effect of normative peer influence on a college student’s smartphone adoption. We also examine the influence of other factors such as selfinnovativeness, self-efficacy, the decision maker’s attitudes towards a product, financial burden of using the product, familial influence, and other demographic factors (e.g., age and gender). College students’ adoption behavior is studied using logit and probit choice models developed based on random utility theory. The discrete choice models are empirically estimated using survey data. We find important influence of friends, financial burden, and other family members on the smartphone adoption of college students who adopted smartphones earlier than other students. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


title: The calvaria of Sangiran 38, Sendangbusik, Sangiran Dome, Java.

text: We describe in detail Sangiran 38 (S38), an adult partial calvaria recovered in 1980 from the Bapang (Kabuh) Formation of the Sangiran Dome near the hamlet of Sendangbusik, Java. Several other hominins (Bukuran, Hanoman 1, and Bs 9706) recovered in the vicinity come from either the upper-most Sangiran (Pucangan) or lower-most Bapang formations. S38 is from the lower Bapang Formation, which (40)Ar/(39)Ar age estimates suggest spans between 1.47 and 1.58Ma. Anatomical and metric comparisons with a worldwide set of 'early non-erectus'Homo, and Homo erectus (sensu lato) fossils indicate S38 is best considered a member of H. erectus. Although smaller in size, S38 is similar in overall morphology to the Bukuran specimen of similar age and provenance. The S38 calvaria exhibits several depressed lesions of the vault consistent with a scalp or systemic infection or soft tissue cyst.


title: Using Discriminant Eigenfeatures for Image Retrieval

text: |This paper describes the automatic selection of features from an image training set using the theories of multi-dimensional linear discriminant analysis and the associated optimal linear projection. We demonstrate the eeectiveness of these Most Discriminating Features for view-based class retrieval from a large database of widely varying real-world objects presented as \well-framed" views, and compare it with that of the principal component analysis.


title: A Novel Economic Sharing Model in a Federation of Selfish Cloud Providers

text: This paper presents a novel economic model to regulate capacity sharing in a federation of hybrid cloud providers (CPs). The proposed work models the interactions among the CPs as a repeated game among selfish players that aim at maximizing their profit by selling their unused capacity in the spot market but are uncertain of future workload fluctuations. The proposed work first establishes that the uncertainty in future revenue can act as a participation incentive to sharing in the repeated game. We, then, demonstrate how an efficient sharing strategy can be obtained via solving a simple dynamic programming problem. The obtained strategy is a simple update rule that depends only on the current workloads and a single variable summarizing past interactions. In contrast to existing approaches, the model incorporates historical and expected future revenue as part of the virtual machine (VM) sharing decision. Moreover, these decisions are not enforced neither by a centralized broker nor by predefined agreements. Rather, the proposed model employs a simple grim trigger strategy where a CP is threatened by the elimination of future VM hosting by other CPs. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed model in terms of the increased profit and the reduction in the variance in the spot market VM availability and prices.


title: Binding mechanism of PicoGreen to DNA characterized by magnetic tweezers and fluorescence spectroscopy

text: Fluorescent dyes are broadly used in many biotechnological applications to detect and visualize DNA molecules. However, their binding to DNA alters the structural and nanomechanical properties of DNA and, thus, interferes with associated biological processes. In this work we employed magnetic tweezers and fluorescence spectroscopy to investigate the binding of PicoGreen to DNA at room temperature in a concentration-dependent manner. PicoGreen is an ultrasensitive quinolinium nucleic acid stain exhibiting hardly any background signal from unbound dye molecules. By means of stretching and overwinding single, torsionally constrained, nick-free double-stranded DNA molecules, we acquired force-extension and supercoiling curves which allow quantifying DNA contour length, persistence length and other thermodynamical binding parameters, respectively. The results of our magnetic tweezers single-molecule binding study were well supported through analyzing the fluorescent spectra of stained DNA. On the basis of our work, we could identify a concentration-dependent bimodal binding behavior, where, apparently, PicoGreen associates to DNA as an intercalator and minor-groove binder simultaneously.


title: Applications of Random Sampling in Computational Geometry, II

text: Random sampling is used for several new geometric algorithms. The algorithms are “Las Vegas,” and their expected bounds are with respect to the random behavior of the algorithms. One algorithm reports all the intersecting pairs of a set of line segments in the plane, and requires <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>A</italic> + <italic>n</italic> log <italic>n</italic>) expected time, where <italic>A</italic> is the size of the answer, the number of intersecting pairs reported. The algorithm requires <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>n</italic>) space in the worst case. Another algorithm computes the convex hull of a point set in <italic>E</italic><supscrpt>3</supscrpt> in <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>n</italic> log <italic>A</italic>) expected time, where <italic>n</italic> is the number of points and <italic>A</italic> is the number of points on the surface of the hull. A simple Las Vegas algorithm triangulates simple polygons in <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>n</italic> log log <italic>n</italic>) expected time. Algorithms for half-space range reporting are also given. In addition, this paper gives asymptotically tight bounds for a combinatorial quantity of interest in discrete and computational geometry, related to halfspace partitions of point sets.


title: Comparison of Different Classification Techniques Using WEKA for Breast Cancer

text: The development of data-mining applications such as classification and clustering has shown the need for machine learning algorithms to be applied to large scale data. In this paper we present the comparison of different classification techniques using Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis or in short, WEKA. WEKA is an open source software which consists of a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks. The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance of different classification or clustering methods for a set of large data. The algorithm or methods tested are Bayes Network, Radial Basis Function, Pruned Tree, Single Conjunctive Rule Learner and Nearest Neighbors Algorithm. A fundamental review on the selected technique is presented for introduction purposes. The data breast cancer data with a total data of 6291 and a dimension of 699 rows and 9 columns will be used to test and justify the differences between the classification methods or algorithms. Subsequently, the classification technique that has the potential to significantly improve the common or conventional methods will be suggested for use in large scale data, bioinformatics or other general applications. Keywords— Machine Learning, Data Mining, WEKA, Classification, Bioinformatics.


title: Classification of Liver Cancer using Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Machine

text: The purpose of this study is to compare the performance of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) for liver cancer classification. The performance of both models is compared and validated on BUPA Liver Disorder Dataset in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and Area under Curve (AUC). The comparative results show that the SVM classifier outperforms ANN classifier where SVM gives an accuracy of 63.11%, specificity of 100% and AUC of 68.34% where as ANN gives classification accuracy of 57.28%, specificity of 32.56 and AUC of 53.78. This result indicates that the classification capability of SVM is better than ANN and may potentially fill in a critical gap in the use of current or future classification algorithms for liver cancer.


title: A simulation study of the number of events per variable in logistic regression analysis.

text: We performed a Monte Carlo study to evaluate the effect of the number of events per variable (EPV) analyzed in logistic regression analysis. The simulations were based on data from a cardiac trial of 673 patients in which 252 deaths occurred and seven variables were cogent predictors of mortality; the number of events per predictive variable was (252/7 =) 36 for the full sample. For the simulations, at values of EPV = 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25, we randomly generated 500 samples of the 673 patients, chosen with replacement, according to a logistic model derived from the full sample. Simulation results for the regression coefficients for each variable in each group of 500 samples were compared for bias, precision, and significance testing against the results of the model fitted to the original sample. For EPV values of 10 or greater, no major problems occurred. For EPV values less than 10, however, the regression coefficients were biased in both positive and negative directions; the large sample variance estimates from the logistic model both overestimated and underestimated the sample variance of the regression coefficients; the 90% confidence limits about the estimated values did not have proper coverage; the Wald statistic was conservative under the null hypothesis; and paradoxical associations (significance in the wrong direction) were increased. Although other factors (such as the total number of events, or sample size) may influence the validity of the logistic model, our findings indicate that low EPV can lead to major problems.


title: The Role of ICT to Achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

text: This paper is aiming at illustrating the potential of ICT for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals which were declared by the United Nations in 2015 as binding for all nations of our planet addressing both developing and developed countries. ICT must play a significant role if the SDGs should be achieved as projected in 2030. The paper gives an overview of some of the existing efforts in this area and is written as an appeal to all professionals, scientists and IT-professional and their organization to take a holistic approach for all ICT-activities and projects to always include and monitor the effects of their work on the SDGs. The impacts of ICT on sustainability are twofold: On the one hand there might be negative effects on sustainability such as the generation of electronic waste, on the other hand ICT is definitely an enabler to more efficient resource usage, education and business operations which is critical success factor for achieving the SDGs.


title: Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning with Extremely Noisy Observations

text: Multi-agent reinforcement learning systems aim to provide interacting agents with the ability to collaboratively learn and adapt to the behaviour of other agents. In many real-world applications, the agents can only acquire a partial view of the world. Here we consider a setting whereby most agents’ observations are also extremely noisy, hence only weakly correlated to the true state of the environment. Under these circumstances, learning an optimal policy becomes particularly challenging, even in the unrealistic case that an agent’s policy can be made conditional upon all other agents’ observations. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm enhanced by a communication medium (MADDPG-M), which implements a two-level, concurrent learning mechanism. An agent’s policy depends on its own private observations as well as those explicitly shared by others through a communication medium. At any given point in time, an agent must decide whether its private observations are sufficiently informative to be shared with others. However, our environments provide no explicit feedback informing an agent whether a communication action is beneficial, rather the communication policies must also be learned through experience concurrently to the main policies. Our experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm performs well in six highly non-stationary environments of progressively higher complexity, and offers substantial performance gains compared to the baselines.


title: Modified GDI Technique-A Power Efficient Method For Digital Circuit Design

text: This paper presents logic style compariso ns based on different logic functions and claimed m odified Gate Diffusion Input logic (Mod-GDI) to be much more power-efficient than Gate Diffusion Input logic (GDI) and complementary CMOS logic design. However, DC and Tr ansient analysis performed on more efficient modifi ed Gate Diffusion Input logic (Mod-GDI) circuit realization s and a wider range of different logic cells, as we ll as the use of practical circuit arrangements reveal Mod-GDI to be superior to GDI and CMOS in the majority cases wit h respect to speed, area, power dissipation, and power-delay pro ducts. This manuscript shows that Mod-GDI is the logic style of preference for the realization of arbitrary combinational circuits, if low voltage, low power, and small power-delay products are of concern. All Simulations are perfor med through PSPICE based on 0.18 μm CMOS technology, and results show power characteristics of Mod-GDI technique of low power digital circuit design. Simulation results shows up to 45% reduction in power-delay product in Mod-GDI. Mod-GDI approach allows realization of a broad variety of multifaceted logic functions by means of only two transistors. T his technique is appropriate for designing of fast, low power circuits, using reduced number of transistor (as compared to CMOS techniques), while improving power characteris tics.


title: MOMENTUM EFFECT , VALUE EFFECT , RISK PREMIUM AND PREDICTABILITY OF STOCK RETURNS – A STUDY ON INDIAN MARKET

text: Article History Received: 26 March 2018 Revised: 2 May 2018 Accepted: 9 May 2018 Published: 14 May 2018


title: Automated Classification of L/R Hand Movement EEG Signals using Advanced Feature Extraction and Machine Learning

text: In this paper, we propose an automated computer platform for the purpose of classifying Electroencephalography (EEG) signals associated with left and right hand movements using a hybrid system that uses advanced feature extraction techniques and machine learning algorithms. It is known that EEG represents the brain activity by the electrical voltage fluctuations along the scalp, and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a device that enables the use of the brain’s neural activity to communicate with others or to control machines, artificial limbs, or robots without direct physical movements. In our research work, we aspired to find the best feature extraction method that enables the differentiation between left and right executed fist movements through various classification algorithms. The EEG dataset used in this research was created and contributed to PhysioNet by the developers of the BCI2000 instrumentation system. Data was preprocessed using the EEGLAB MATLAB toolbox and artifacts removal was done using AAR. Data was epoched on the basis of Event-Related (De) Synchronization (ERD/ERS) and movement-related cortical potentials (MRCP) features. Mu/beta rhythms were isolated for the ERD/ERS analysis and delta rhythms were isolated for the MRCP analysis. The Independent Component Analysis (ICA) spatial filter was applied on related channels for noise reduction and isolation of both artifactually and neutrally generated EEG sources. The final feature vector included the ERD, ERS, and MRCP features in addition to the mean, power and energy of the activations of the resulting Independent Components (ICs) of the epoched feature datasets. The datasets were inputted into two machinelearning algorithms: Neural Networks (NNs) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Intensive experiments were carried out and optimum classification performances of 89.8 and 97.1 were obtained using NN and SVM, respectively. This research shows that this method of feature extraction holds some promise for the classification of various pairs of motor movements, which can be used in a BCI context to mentally control a computer or machine. Keywords—EEG; BCI; ICA; MRCP; ERD/ERS; machine learning; NN; SVM


title: UMBC_EBIQUITY-CORE: Semantic Textual Similarity Systems

text: We describe three semantic text similarity systems developed for the *SEM 2013 STS shared task and the results of the corresponding three runs. All of them shared a word similarity feature that combined LSA word similarity and WordNet knowledge. The first, which achieved the best mean score of the 89 submitted runs, used a simple term alignment algorithm augmented with penalty terms. The other two runs, ranked second and fourth, used support vector regression models to combine larger sets of features.


title: Modular Construction of Time-Delay Neural Networks for Speech Recognition

text: Several strategies are described that overcome limitations of basic network models as steps towards the design of large connectionist speech recognition systems. The two major areas of concern are the problem of time and the problem of scaling. Speech signals continuously vary over time and encode and transmit enormous amounts of human knowledge. To decode these signals, neural networks must be able to use appropriate representations of time and it must be possible to extend these nets to almost arbitrary sizes and complexity within finite resources. The problem of time is addressed by the development of a Time-Delay Neural Network; the problem of scaling by Modularity and Incremental Design of large nets based on smaller subcomponent nets. It is shown that small networks trained to perform limited tasks develop time invariant, hidden abstractions that can subsequently be exploited to train larger, more complex nets efficiently. Using these techniques, phoneme recognition networks of increasing complexity can be constructed that all achieve superior recognition performance.


title: Box Pleating is Hard

text: In their seminal 1996 paper, Bern and Hayes initiated investigation into the computational complexity of origami [3]. They proved that it is NP-hard to determine whether a given general crease pattern can be folded flat, when the creases have or have not been assigned crease directions (mountain fold or valley fold). Since that time, there has been considerable work in analyzing the computational complexity of other origami related problems. For example, Arkin et al. [1] proved that deciding foldability is hard even for simple folds, while Demaine et al. [4] proved that optimal circle packing for origami design is also hard. At the end of their paper, Bern and Hayes pose some interesting open questions to further their work. While most of them have been investigated since, two in particular (problems 2 and 3) have remained untouched until now. First, while the gadgets used in their hardness proof for unassigned crease patterns are relatively straightforward, their gadgets for assigned crease patterns are considerably more convoluted, and quite difficult to check. In particular, we found an error in their crossover gadget where signals are not guaranteed to transmit dependably for wires that do not cross orthogonally, which is required in their construction. Is there a simpler way to achieve a correct result (i.e. “without tabs”)? Second, their reductions construct creases at a variety of unconstrained angles. Is deciding flat foldability easy under more restrictive inputs? For example box pleating, folding only along creases aligned at multiples of 45◦ to each other, is a subset of particular interest in transformational robotics and selfassembly, with a universality result constructing arbitrary polycubes using box pleating [2]. In this paper we prove deciding flat foldability of box pleated crease patterns to be NP-hard in both the unassigned and assigned cases, using relatively simple gadgets containing no more than 20 layers at any point. A crease pattern is a straight-line graph of creases on a square paper which all must be folded by ±180◦ resulting in a flat folding, a piecewise isometry in the plane such that the paper does not intersect itself. We call a crease a valley fold if it folds


title: Valuing American Options by Simulation : A Simple Least-Squares Approach

text: This article presents a simple yet powerful new approach for approximating the value of American options by simulation. The key to this approach is the use of least squares to estimate the conditional expected payoff to the optionholder from continuation. This makes this approach readily applicable in path-dependent and multifactor situations where traditional finite difference techniques cannot be used. We illustrate this technique with several realistic examples including valuing an option when the underlying asset follows a jump-diffusion process and valuing an American swaption in a 20-factor string model of the term structure.


title: Occlusion Culling in OpenSG PLUS

text: Very large polygonal models are frequently used in scientific computing, mechanical engineering, or virtual medicine. An effective technique to handle these large models is occlusion culling. Like most large model techniques, occlusion culling trades overhead costs with the rendering costs of the possibly occluded geometry. In this paper, we present occlusion culling techniques for OpenSG. These techniques utilize OpenGL or OpenGL extensions to determine occlusion information. Techniques utilizing image space and temporal coherence are used to optimize occlusion query efficiency. Only the standard OpenSG data structures are used and no precomputation is necessary for the presented techniques.


title: Analyzing (social media) networks with NodeXL

text: We present NodeXL, an extendible toolkit for network overview, discovery and exploration implemented as an add-in to the Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet software. We demonstrate NodeXL data analysis and visualization features with a social media data sample drawn from an enterprise intranet social network. A sequence of NodeXL operations from data import to computation of network statistics and refinement of network visualization through sorting, filtering, and clustering functions is described. These operations reveal sociologically relevant differences in the patterns of interconnection among employee participants in the social media space. The tool and method can be broadly applied.


title: In Search of the Uncanny Valley

text: Recent advances in computer animation and robotics have lead to greater and greater realism of human appearance to be obtained both on screen and in physical devices. A particular issue that has arisen in this pursuit is whether increases in realism necessarily lead to increases in acceptance. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests that high, though not perfect, levels of realism will result in poor acceptance. We review this concept and its psychological basis.


title: Timeline: A Dynamic Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Model for Recovering Birth/Death and Evolution of Topics in Text Stream

text: Topic models have proven to be a useful tool for discovering latent structures in document collections. However, most document collections often come as temporal streams and thus several aspects of the latent structure such as the number of topics, the topics’ distribution and popularity are time-evolving. Several models exist that model the evolution of some but not all of the above aspects. In this paper we introduce infinite dynamic topic models, iDTM, that can accommodate the evolution of all the aforementioned aspects. Our model assumes that documents are organized into epochs, where the documents within each epoch are exchangeable but the order between the documents is maintained across epochs. iDTM allows for unbounded number of topics: topics can die or be born at any epoch, and the representation of each topic can evolve according to a Markovian dynamics. We use iDTM to analyze the birth and evolution of topics in the NIPS community and evaluated the efficacy of our model on both simulated and real datasets with favorable outcome.


title: Robust control of uncertain Markov Decision Processes with temporal logic specifications

text: We present a method for designing a robust control policy for an uncertain system subject to temporal logic specifications. The system is modeled as a finite Markov Decision Process (MDP) whose transition probabilities are not exactly known but are known to belong to a given uncertainty set. A robust control policy is generated for the MDP that maximizes the worst-case probability of satisfying the specification over all transition probabilities in this uncertainty set. To this end, we use a procedure from probabilistic model checking to combine the system model with an automaton representing the specification. This new MDP is then transformed into an equivalent form that satisfies assumptions for stochastic shortest path dynamic programming. A robust version of dynamic programming solves for a ε-suboptimal robust control policy with time complexity O(log1/ε) times that for the non-robust case.


title: Enforcing k-anonymity in Web Mail Auditing

text: We study the problem of k-anonymization of mail messages in the realistic scenario of auditing mail traffic in a major commercial Web mail service. Mail auditing is necessary in various Web mail debugging and quality assurance activities, such as anti-spam or the qualitative evaluation of novel mail features. It is conducted by trained professionals, often referred to as "auditors", who are shown messages that could expose personally identifiable information. We address here the challenge of k-anonymizing such messages, focusing on machine generated mail messages that represent more than 90% of today's mail traffic. We introduce a novel message signature Mail-Hash, specifically tailored to identifying structurally-similar messages, which allows us to put such messages in a same equivalence class. We then define a process that generates, for each class, masked mail samples that can be shown to auditors, while guaranteeing the k-anonymity of users. The productivity of auditors is measured by the amount of non-hidden mail content they can see every day, while considering normal working conditions, which set a limit to the number of mail samples they can review. In addition, we consider k-anonymity over time since, by definition of k-anonymity, every new release places additional constraints on the assignment of samples. We describe in details the results we obtained over actual Yahoo mail traffic, and thus demonstrate that our methods are feasible at Web mail scale. Given the constantly growing concern of users over their email being scanned by others, we argue that it is critical to devise such algorithms that guarantee k-anonymity, and implement associated processes in order to restore the trust of mail users.


title: Descriptive versus interpretive phenomenology: their contributions to nursing knowledge.

text: A number of articles in the nursing literature discuss the differences between descriptive and interpretive approaches to doing phenomenology. A review of studies demonstrates, however, that many researchers do not articulate which approach guides the study, nor do they identify the philosophical assumptions on which the study is based. Such lack of clarity makes it difficult for the reader to obtain a sense of how the knowledge produced by the study is to be evaluated and used. In this article, the authors compare the philosophical components of descriptive and interpretive approaches to doing phenomenology and illustrate types of knowledge produced by each through reviewing specific studies. They focus on the various uses of phenomenology in generating useful knowledge for health care practice.


title: SQLEM: Fast Clustering in SQL using the EM Algorithm

text: Clustering is one of the most important tasks performed in Data Mining applications. This paper presents an efficient SQL implementation of the EM algorithm to perform clustering in very large databases. Our version can effectively handle high dimensional data, a high number of clusters and more importantly, a very large number of data records. We present three strategies to implement EM in SQL: horizontal, vertical and a hybrid one. We expect this work to be useful for data mining programmers and users who want to cluster large data sets inside a relational DBMS.


title: Author Identification Using Imbalanced and Limited Training Texts

text: This paper deals with the problem of author identification. The common N-grams (CNG) method [6] is a language-independent profile-based approach with good results in many author identification experiments so far. A variation of this approach is presented based on new distance measures that are quite stable for large profile length values. Special emphasis is given to the degree upon which the effectiveness of the method is affected by the available training text samples per author. Experiments based on text samples on the same topic from the Reuters Corpus Volume 1 are presented using both balanced and imbalanced training corpora. The results show that CNG with the proposed distance measures is more accurate when only limited training text samples are available, at least for some of the candidate authors, a realistic condition in author identification problems.


title: Bigrams of Syntactic Labels for Authorship Discrimination of Short Texts

text: We present a method for authorship discrimination that is based on the frequency of bigrams of syntactic labels that arise from partial parsing of the text. We show that this method, alone or combined with other classification features, achieves a high accuracy on discrimination of the work of Anne and Charlotte Brontë, which is very difficult to do by traditional methods. Moreover, high accuracies are achieved even on fragments of text little more than 200 words long. .................................................................................................................................................................................


title: A Probabilistic Analysis of the Rocchio Algorithm with TFIDF for Text Categorization

text: The Rocchio relevance feedback algorithm is one of the most popular and widely applied learning methods from information retrieval. Here, a probabilistic analysis of this algorithm is presented in a text categorization framework. The analysis gives theoretical insight into the heuristics used in the Rocchio algorithm, particularly the word weighting scheme and the similarity metric. It also suggests improvements which lead to a probabilistic variant of the Rocchio classi er. The Rocchio classi er, its probabilistic variant, and a naive Bayes classi er are compared on six text categorization tasks. The results show that the probabilistic algorithms are preferable to the heuristic Rocchio classi er not only because they are more well-founded, but also because they achieve better performance.


title: Multiple nutrient deficiency detection in paddy leaf images using color and pattern analysis

text: Paddy being the staple food of India is majorly affected by deficiency of primary nutrient elements like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Leaves can be deficient with multiple nutrient elements at a same time. This can alter natural color of paddy leaves. Such leaves are considered as defective. The proposed work is to automate multiple nutrient element deficiency identification of paddy leaves. Pattern analysis RGB color features are extracted to identify defective paddy leaves. Firstly the database of healthy, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium defected paddy leaves are created. For any test image effective comparison at different levels are employed such as multiple color comparison, multiple pattern comparison and combination of color and patterns comparison, so that defectiveness is accurately identified for combination of deficiency such as nitrogen-phosphorus(NP), nitrogen-potassium(NK) and phosphorous-potassium (KP).


title: Facial Landmark Detection with Tweaked Convolutional Neural Networks

text: This paper concerns the problem of facial landmark detection. We provide a unique new analysis of the features produced at intermediate layers of a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained to regress facial landmark coordinates. This analysis shows that while being processed by the CNN, face images can be partitioned in an unsupervised manner into subsets containing faces in similar poses (i.e., 3D views) and facial properties (e.g., presence or absence of eye-wear). Based on this finding, we describe a novel CNN architecture, specialized to regress the facial landmark coordinates of faces in specific poses and appearances. To address the shortage of training data, particularly in extreme profile poses, we additionally present data augmentation techniques designed to provide sufficient training examples for each of these specialized sub-networks. The proposed Tweaked CNN (TCNN) architecture is shown to outperform existing landmark detection methods in an extensive battery of tests on the AFW, ALFW, and 300W benchmarks. Finally, to promote reproducibility of our results, we make code and trained models publicly available through our project webpage.


title: Undervalued or Overvalued Customers : Capturing Total Customer Engagement Value

text: Customers can interact with and create value for firms in a variety of ways. This article proposes that assessing the value of customers based solely upon their transactions with a firm may not be sufficient, and valuing this engagement correctly is crucial in avoiding undervaluation and overvaluation of customers. We propose four components of a customer’s engagement value (CEV) with a firm. The first component is customer lifetime value (the customer’s purchase behavior), the second is customer referral value (as it relates to incentivized referral of new customers), the third is customer influencer value (which includes the customer’s behavior to influence other customers, that is increasing acquisition, retention, and share of wallet through word of mouth of existing customers as well as prospects), and the fourth is customer knowledge value (the value added to the firm by feedback from the customer). CEV provides a comprehensive framework that can ultimately lead to more efficient marketing strategies that enable higher long-term contribution from the customer. Metrics to measure CEV, future research propositions regarding relationships between the four components of CEV are proposed and marketing strategies that can leverage these relationships suggested.


title: Wordnet Enhanced Automatic Crossword Generation

text: We report on a system for automatically generating and displaying crosswords from a system manager supplied database of potential clues and corresponding words that index those clues. The system relies on the lexical relations encoded in WordNet to enhance the aesthetics of the resulting crossword by making it easier to automatically identify a grid that may be populated with words and clues that have a thematic focus. The system architecture is provided in overview, as is empirical evaluation.


title: Software evolution storylines

text: This paper presents a technique for visualizing the interactions between developers in software project evolution. The goal is to produce a visualization that shows more detail than animated software histories, like code_swarm [15], but keeps the same focus on aesthetics and presentation. Our software evolution storylines technique draws inspiration from XKCD's "Movie Narrative Charts" and the aesthetic design of metro maps. We provide the algorithm, design choices, and examine the results of using the storylines technique. Our conclusion is that the it is able to show more details when compared to animated software project history videos. However, it does not scale to the largest projects, such as Eclipse and Mozilla.


title: Complex Sequential Question Answering: Towards Learning to Converse Over Linked Question Answer Pairs with a Knowledge Graph

text: While conversing with chatbots, humans typically tend to ask many questions, a significant portion of which can be answered by referring to large-scale knowledge graphs (KG). While Question Answering (QA) and dialog systems have been studied independently, there is a need to study them closely to evaluate such real-world scenarios faced by bots involving both these tasks. Towards this end, we introduce the task of Complex Sequential QA which combines the two tasks of (i) answering factual questions through complex inferencing over a realistic-sized KG of millions of entities, and (ii) learning to converse through a series of coherently linked QA pairs. Through a labor intensive semi-automatic process, involving in-house and crowdsourced workers, we created a dataset containing around 200K dialogs with a total of 1.6M turns. Further, unlike existing large scale QA datasets which contain simple questions that can be answered from a single tuple, the questions in our dialogs require a larger subgraph of the KG. Specifically, our dataset has questions which require logical, quantitative, and comparative reasoning as well as their combinations. This calls for models which can: (i) parse complex natural language questions, (ii) use conversation context to resolve coreferences and ellipsis in utterances, (iii) ask for clarifications for ambiguous queries, and finally (iv) retrieve relevant subgraphs of the KG to answer such questions. However, our experiments with a combination of state of the art dialog and QA models show that they clearly do not achieve the above objectives and are inadequate for dealing with such complex real world settings. We believe that this new dataset coupled with the limitations of existing models as reported in this paper should encourage further research in Complex Sequential QA.


title: Can we learn to gamble efficiently

text: Betting is an important problem faced by millions of sports fans each day. Presented with an upcoming matchup between team A and team B, and given the opportunity to place a 50/50 wager on either, where should a gambler put her money? This decision is not, of course, made in isolation: both teams will have played a number of decided matches with other teams throughout the season. Furthermore, a reasonable assumption to make is that the relation “A tends to beat B” is transitive. Under transitivity, the best prediction strategy is clearly to sort the teams by their abilities and predict according to this ranking. The obvious difficulty is that the best ranking of the teams is not known an advance. But there’s a more subtle issue: even with knowledge of all match outcomes in advance, i.e. a list of items of the form (team X < team Y ), it’s NP-hard to determine the best ranking of the teams when the outcomes are noisy. This is exactly the infamous Minimum Feedback Arc Set problem. The question we pose is as follows: can we design a non-trivial online prediction strategy in this setting which achieves vanishing regret relative to the best ranking in hindsight, even when the latter is computationally infeasible? It is tempting to believe this is impossible, as competing with the best ranking would appear tantamount to finding the best ranking. However, this assertion is false: the algorithm need not learn a ranking explicitly, it must only output a prediction (X < Y ) or (Y < X) when presented with a pair (X, Y ), and these predictions do not necessarily have to satisfy transitivity. Indeed, consider the following simple algorithm: treat each team pair (X, Y ) as an independent learning problem (ignoring all other matchups). In the long run, this will achieve vanishing regret with respect to the best ranking. So why is this not desirable? The trivial approach unfortunately admits a bad regret bound: the algorithm must see O(n) matches per team before it can start to make decent predictions. On the other hand, there is an information-theoretic approach that requires only O(log n) observations per team—the downside, unfortunately, is that this requires exponential computation. We would like to achieve this rate with an efficient method.


title: Towards Building Forensics Enabled Cloud Through Secure Logging-as-a-Service

text: Collection and analysis of various logs (e.g., process logs, network logs) are fundamental activities in computer forensics. Ensuring the security of the activity logs is therefore crucial to ensure reliable forensics investigations. However, because of the black-box nature of clouds and the volatility and co-mingling of cloud data, providing the cloud logs to investigators while preserving users' privacy and the integrity of logs is challenging. The current secure logging schemes, which consider the logger as trusted cannot be applied in clouds since there is a chance that cloud providers (logger) collude with malicious users or investigators to alter the logs. In this paper, we analyze the threats on cloud users' activity logs considering the collusion between cloud users, providers, and investigators. Based on the threat model, we propose Secure-Logging-as-a-Service ( SecLaaS), which preserves various logs generated for the activity of virtual machines running in clouds and ensures the confidentiality and integrity of such logs. Investigators or the court authority can only access these logs by the RESTful APIs provided by SecLaaS, which ensures confidentiality of logs. The integrity of the logs is ensured by hash-chain scheme and proofs of past logs published periodically by the cloud providers. In prior research, we used two accumulator schemes Bloom filter and RSA accumulator to build the proofs of past logs. In this paper, we propose a new accumulator scheme - Bloom-Tree, which performs better than the other two accumulators in terms of time and space requirement.


title: Cloud forensics: A research perspective

text: Cloud computing and digital forensics are both developing topics and researching these topics requires an understanding of the main aspects of both cloud computing and digital forensics. In cloud computing it is necessary not only to understand its characteristics and the different services and deployment models but also to survey the underpinning elements of cloud computing such as virtualization and the distributed computing which are important to identify its impact on current digital forensics guidelines and procedures. Unlike papers discussing the challenges and opportunities presented by cloud computing in relation to digital forensics, in this paper, we will discuss the underpinning cloud computing elements which are required to provide forensics friendly cloud services. Furthermore, we suggest a set of questions that will aid in the process of cloud forensics analysis.


title: The wisdom development scale: further validity investigations.

text: Researchers are gaining an interest in the concept of wisdom, a more holistic yet often ineffable educational outcome. Models of wisdom abound, but few have rigorously tested measures. This study looks at Brown's (2004a, 2004b) Model of Wisdom Development and its associated measure, the Wisdom Development Scale (WDS; Brown & Greene, 2006). The construct validity, measurement invariance, criterion validity, and reliability of scores from the WDS were assessed with over 3000 participants from two separate groups: one a sample of professionals and the other a sample of college students. Support for construct validity and reliability with these samples was found, along with measurement invariance. Latent means analyses showed predicted discrimination between the groups, and criterion validity evidence, with another measure of collegiate educational outcomes, was found.


title: Rule Extraction from Support Vector Machines: An Overview of Issues and Application in Credit Scoring

text: 1 Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, K.U.Leuven Naamsestraat 69, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium {David.Martens;Johan.Huysmans; Bart.Baesens;Jan.Vanthienen}@econ.kuleuven.be 2 School of Computing, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, Singapore 117543, Singapore rudys@comp.nus.edu.sg 3 University of Southampton, School of Management, Highfield Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Bart@soton.ac.uk


title: Disgust is a factor in extreme prejudice.

text: Understanding intergroup prejudice is a dominant research focus for social psychology. Prejudice is usually conceptualized as a continuum of positive/negative affect, but this has limitations. It neither reflects people's ability to maintain simultaneous positive and negative stereotypes of others nor explains extreme prejudice (bigotry). Some researchers have proposed multidimensional models of prejudice in which different negative emotions are evoked depending on the situation. Extending this to bigotry raises the question of which emotions are most relevant. Therefore, this study looked at 'anti-group' texts--writings which promote extreme intergroup hostility--and analysed the frequency of emotive language. Findings suggest that bigotry may be distinguished by high levels of disgust.


title: Thinking forensics: Cognitive science for forensic practitioners.

text: Human factors and their implications for forensic science have attracted increasing levels of interest across criminal justice communities in recent years. Initial interest centred on cognitive biases, but has since expanded such that knowledge from psychology and cognitive science is slowly infiltrating forensic practices more broadly. This article highlights a series of important findings and insights of relevance to forensic practitioners. These include research on human perception, memory, context information, expertise, decision-making, communication, experience, verification, confidence, and feedback. The aim of this article is to sensitise forensic practitioners (and lawyers and judges) to a range of potentially significant issues, and encourage them to engage with research in these domains so that they may adapt procedures to improve performance, mitigate risks and reduce errors. Doing so will reduce the divide between forensic practitioners and research scientists as well as improve the value and utility of forensic science evidence.


title: CoSIP: A Constrained Session Initiation Protocol for the Internet of Things

text: The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of billions of constrained devices, denoted as “smart objects” (SO), in an Internet-like structure. SOs typically feature limited capabilities in terms of computation and memory and operate in constrained environments, such low-power lossy networks. As IP has been foreseen as the standard for smart-object communication, an e↵ort to bring IP connectivity to SOs and define suitable communication protocols (i.e. CoAP) is being carried out within standardization organisms, such as IETF. In this paper, we propose a constrained version of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), named “CoSIP”, whose intent is to allow constrained devices to instantiate communication sessions in a lightweight and standard fashion. Session instantiation can include a negotiation phase of some parameters which will be used for all subsequent communication. CoSIP can be adopted in several application scenarios, such as service discovery and publish/subscribe applications, which are detailed. An evaluation of the proposed protocol is also presented, based on a Java implementation of CoSIP, to show the benefits that its adoption can bring about, in terms of compression rate with the existing SIP protocol and message overhead compared with the use of CoAP.


title: The relational model is dead, SQL is dead, and I don't feel so good myself

text: We report the opinions expressed by well-known database researchers on the future of the relational model and SQL during a panel at the International Workshop on Non-Conventional Data Access (NoCoDa 2012), held in Florence, Italy in October 2012 in conjunction with the 31st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling. The panelists include: Paolo Atzeni (Università Roma Tre, Italy), Umeshwar Dayal (HP Labs, USA), Christian S. Jensen (Aarhus University, Denmark), and Sudha Ram (University of Arizona, USA). Quotations from movies are used as a playful though effective way to convey the dramatic changes that database technology and research are currently undergoing.


title: Adaptively generating high quality fixes for atomicity violations

text: It is difficult to fix atomicity violations correctly. Existing gate lock algorithm (GLA) simply inserts gate locks to serialize exe-cutions, which may introduce performance bugs and deadlocks. Synthesized context-aware gate locks (by Grail) require complex source code synthesis. We propose Fixer to adaptively fix ato-micity violations. It firstly analyses the lock acquisitions of an atomicity violation. Then it either adjusts the existing lock scope or inserts a gate lock. The former addresses cases where some locks are used but fail to provide atomic accesses. For the latter, it infers the visibility (being global or a field of a class/struct) of the gate lock such that the lock only protects related accesses. For both cases, Fixer further eliminates new lock orders to avoid introducing deadlocks. Of course, Fixer can produce both kinds of fixes on atomicity violations with locks. The experi-mental results on 15 previously used atomicity violations show that: Fixer correctly fixed all 15 atomicity violations without introducing deadlocks. However, GLA and Grail both intro-duced 5 deadlocks. HFix (that only targets on fixing certain types of atomicity violations) only fixed 2 atomicity violations and introduced 4 deadlocks. Fixer also provides an alternative way to insert gate locks (by inserting gate locks with proper visibility) considering fix acceptance.


title: A model for team-based access control (TMAC 2004)

text: Role based access control (RBAC) has been proved to be effective for defining access control. However, in an environment where collaborative work is needed, additional features should be added on top of RBAC to accommodate the new requirements. In this paper we describe a team access control extension model called TMAC04 (Team-Based Access Control 2004), which is built on the well-known RBAC. The TMAC04 model efficiently represents teamwork in the real world. It allows certain users to join a team based on their existing roles in an organization within limited contexts and new permissions to perform the required work.


title: Lumbar stabilization: a review of core concepts and current literature, part 2.

text: Lumbar-stabilization exercise programs have become increasingly popular as a treatment for low-back pain. In this article, we outline an evidence-based medicine approach to evaluating patients for a lumbar-stabilization program. We also discuss typical clinical components of this type of program and the rationale for including these particular features based on the medical literature.


title: Mars Exploration Rover mobility assembly design, test and performance

text: In January 2004, NASA landed two mobile robotic spacecraft, or rovers, on opposite sides of the planet Mars. These rovers, named Spirit and Opportunity, were each sent on their own scientific mission of exploration. Their objective was to work as robotic geologists. After more than a year the vehicles are still in excellent health, and returning vast amounts of scientific information on the ancient water processes that helped form Mars. Key to the success of the rovers was the development of their advanced mobility system. In this paper the mobility assembly, the mechanical hardware that determines the vehicles mobility capability, is described. The details of the design, test, and performance of the mobility assembly are shown to exceed the mission requirements. The rovers' ability to traverse the Mars terrain with its combination of rocks, craters, soft soils, and hills was verified, and the system design validated.


title: AZIMUT, a leg-track-wheel robot

text: AZIMUT is a mobile robotic platform that combines wheels, legs and tracks to move in three-dimensional environments. The robot is symmetrical and is made of four independent leg-track-wheel articulations. It can move with its articulations up, down or straight, or to move sideways without changing the robot's orientation. To validate the concept, the rst prototype developed measures 70.5 cm 70.5 cm with the articulations up. It has a body clearance of 8.4 cm to 40.6 cm depending on the position of the articulations. The design of the robot is highly modular, with distributed embedded systems to control the di erent components of the robot.


title: Rocky 7: a next generation Mars rover prototype

text: This paper provides a system overview of a new Mars rover prototype, Rocky 7 1. We describe all system aspects: mechanical and electrical design, computer and software infrastructure , algorithms for navigation and manipulation, science data acquisition, and outdoor rover testing. In each area, the improved or added functionality is explained in a context of its path to ight, and within the constraints of desired science missions.


Stability and traction control of an actively actuated micro-rover


title: A 5.58 nW Crystal Oscillator Using Pulsed Driver for Real-Time Clocks

text: A 5.58 nW real-time clock using a crystal oscillator is presented. In this circuit, the amplifier used in a traditional circuit is replaced with pulsed drivers. The pulse is generated with precise timing using a DLL. With this approach, an extremely low oscillation amplitude of 160 mV results in low-power operation. This low-amplitude oscillation is sustained robustly using additional supply voltages: a lower supply for the final drive stage and a higher supply used for pulses that drive the final drive stage, which ensures low ON-resistance necessary for reliable operation. The different supply levels are generated on-chip by a switched capacitor network (SCN) from a single supply. The circuit has been tested at different supply voltages and temperatures. It shows a minimum power consumption of 5.58 nW and power supply sensitivity of 30.3 ppm/V over supply voltage of 0.94-1.2 V, without degrading the crystal's temperature dependency: between -20 °C and 80 °C. Moreover, its performance as a real-time clock has been verified by measurement of an Allan deviation of 1.16 × 10-8.


title: Understanding Intra-Class Knowledge Inside CNN

text: Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been successful in image recognition tasks, and recent works shed lights on how CNN separates different classes with the learned inter-class knowledge through visualization [8, 10, 13]. In this work, we instead visualize the intra-class knowledge inside CNN to better understand how an object class is represented in the fully-connected layers. To invert the intraclass knowledge into more interpretable images, we propose a non-parametric patch prior upon previous CNN visualization models [8, 10]. With it, we show how different “styles” of templates for an object class are organized by CNN in terms of location and content, and represented in a hierarchical and ensemble way. Moreover, such intra-class knowledge can be used in many interesting applications, e.g. style-based image retrieval and style-based object completion.


title: Branches of evolutionary algorithms and their effectiveness for clustering records

text: Clustering is a process that aims to group the similar records in one cluster and dissimilar records in different clusters. K-means is one of the most popular and well-known clustering technique for its simplicity and light weight. However, the main drawback of K-means clustering technique is that it requires a user (data miner) to estimate the number of clusters in advance. Another limitation of K-means is that it has a tendency to get stuck at local optima. In order to overcome these limitations many evolutionary algorithm based clustering techniques have been proposed since the 1990s and applied to various fields. In this paper, we present an up-to-date review of some major evolutionary algorithm based clustering techniques for the last twenty (20) years (1995-2015). A total of 63 ranked (i.e. based on citation reports and JCR/CORE rank) evolutionary algorithm based clustering approaches are reviewed. Maximum of the techniques do not require any user to define the number of clusters in advance. We present the limitations and advantages of some evolutionary algorithm based clustering techniques. We also present a thorough discussion and future research directions of evolutionary algorithm based clustering techniques.


title: 13C-NMR-Based Metabolomic Profiling of Typical Asian Soy Sauces

text: It has been a strong consumer interest to choose high quality food products with clear information about their origin and composition. In the present study, a total of 22 Asian soy sauce samples have been analyzed in terms of (13)C-NMR spectroscopy. Spectral data were analyzed by multivariate statistical methods in order to find out the important metabolites causing the discrimination among typical soy sauces from different Asian regions. It was found that significantly higher concentrations of glutamate in Chinese red cooking (CR) soy sauce may be the result of the manual addition of monosodium glutamate (MSG) in the final soy sauce product. Whereas lower concentrations of amino acids, like leucine, isoleucine and valine, observed in CR indicate the different fermentation period used in production of CR soy sauce, on the other hand, the concentration of some fermentation cycle metabolites, such as acetate and sucrose, can be divided into two groups. The concentrations of these fermentation cycle metabolites were lower in CR and Singapore Kikkoman (SK), whereas much higher in Japanese shoyu (JS) and Taiwan (China) light (TL), which depict the influence of climatic conditions. Therefore, the results of our study directly indicate the influences of traditional ways of fermentation, climatic conditions and the selection of raw materials and can be helpful for consumers to choose their desired soy sauce products, as well as for researchers in further authentication studies about soy sauce.


title: A Dose of Reality: Overcoming Usability Challenges in VR Head-Mounted Displays

text: This video presents insights into the usability challenges present in consumer VR Head-Mounted Displays regarding a users' capability to interact with and be aware of reality. We demonstrate how these issues can be overcome through selectively incorporating necessary elements of reality into VR, as a user engages with reality. We term this approach Engagement-Dependent Augmented Virtuality.


title: Understanding Human Mobility from Twitter

text: Understanding human mobility is crucial for a broad range of applications from disease prediction to communication networks. Most efforts on studying human mobility have so far used private and low resolution data, such as call data records. Here, we propose Twitter as a proxy for human mobility, as it relies on publicly available data and provides high resolution positioning when users opt to geotag their tweets with their current location. We analyse a Twitter dataset with more than six million geotagged tweets posted in Australia, and we demonstrate that Twitter can be a reliable source for studying human mobility patterns. Our analysis shows that geotagged tweets can capture rich features of human mobility, such as the diversity of movement orbits among individuals and of movements within and between cities. We also find that short- and long-distance movers both spend most of their time in large metropolitan areas, in contrast with intermediate-distance movers' movements, reflecting the impact of different modes of travel. Our study provides solid evidence that Twitter can indeed be a useful proxy for tracking and predicting human movement.


title: Volume/weight/cost comparison of a 1MVA 10 kV/400 V solid-state against a conventional low-frequency distribution transformer

text: Solid-State Transformers (SSTs) are an emergent topic in the context of the Smart Grid paradigm, where SSTs could replace conventional passive transformers to add flexibility and controllability, such as power routing capabilities or reactive power compensation, to the grid. This paper presents a comparison of a 1000 kVA three-phase, low-frequency distribution transformer (LFT) and an equally rated SST, with respect to volume, weight, losses, and material costs, where the corresponding data of the SST is partly based on a full-scale prototype design. It is found that the SST's costs are at least five times and its losses about three times higher, its weight similar but its volume reduced to less than 80%. In addition, an AC/DC application is also considered, where the comparison turns out in favor of the SST-based concept, since its losses are only about half compared to the LFT-based system, and the volume and the weight are reduced to about one third, whereas the material costs advantage of the LFT is much less pronounced.


title: Civitas: The Smart City Middleware, from Sensors to Big Data

text: Software development for smart cities bring into light new concerns, such as how to deal with scalability, heterogeneity (sensors, actuators, high performance computing devices, etc.), geolocation information or privacy issues, among some. Traditional approaches to distributed systems fail to address these challenges, because they were mainly devoted to enterprise IT environments. This paper proposes a middleware framework, called Civitas, specially devoted to support the task of service development for the Smart City paradigm. This paper also analyzes the main drawbacks of traditional approaches to middleware service development and how these are overcome in the middleware framework proposed here.