bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Multiple origins of cultivated grapevine (Vitis vinifera L. ssp. sativa) based on chloroplast DNA polymorphisms
Authors: ARROYO‐GARCÍA R. , RUIZ‐GARCÍA L. , BOLLING L. , OCETE R. , LÓPEZ M. A. , ARNOLD C. , ERGUL A. , SÖYLEMEZO˝LU G. , UZUN H. I. , CABELLO F. , IBÁÑEZ J. , ARADHYA M. K. , ATANASSOV A. , ATANASSOV I. , BALINT S. , CENIS J. L. , COSTANTINI L. , GORISLAVETS S. , GRANDO M. S. , KLEIN B. Y. , McGOVERN P. E. , MERDINOGLU D. , PEJIC I. , PELSY F. , PRIMIKIRIOS N. , RISOVANNAYA V. , ROUBELAKIS‐ANGELAKIS K. A. , SNOUSSI H. , SOTIRI P. , TAMHANKAR S. , THIS P. , TROSHIN L. , MALPICA J. M. , LEFORT F. , MARTINEZ‐ZAPATER J. M.
Published: July 2006

The domestication of the Eurasian grape (Vitis vinifera ssp. sativa) from its wild ancestor (Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris) has long been claimed to have occurred in Transcaucasia where its greatest genetic diversity is found and where very early archaeological evidence, including grape pips and artefacts of a ‘wine culture’, have been excavated. Whether from Transcaucasia or the nearby Taurus or Zagros Mountains, it is hypothesized that this wine culture spread southwards and eventually westwards around the Mediterranean basin, together with the transplantation of cultivated grape cuttings. However, the existence of morphological differentiation between cultivars from eastern and western ends of the modern distribution of the Eurasian grape suggests the existence of different genetic contribution from local sylvestris populations or multilocal selection and domestication of sylvestris genotypes. To tackle this issue, we analysed chlorotype variation and distribution in 1201 samples of sylvestris and sativa genotypes from the whole area of the species’ distribution and studied their genetic relationships. The results suggest the existence of at least two important origins for the cultivated germplasm, one in the Near East and another in the western Mediterranean region, the latter of which gave rise to many of the current Western European cultivars. Indeed, over 70% of the Iberian Peninsula cultivars display chlorotypes that are only compatible with their having derived from western sylvestris populations.
Porcine Conceptus Oct‐4 mRNA Expression During Peri‐implantation Development
Authors: Spencer DS , Ross JW , Ashworth MD , Geisert RD , Rickords LF
Published: July 2006

Contents

OCT‐4 is a transcriptional regulator of pluripotent cells throughout embryonic and germ cell lineage development prior to cellular differentiation during murine, bovine and porcine peri‐implantation development. In contrast to murine OCT‐4 expression, bovine and porcine expression is detected in both the inner cell mass and trophoblast. Delayed down regulation of OCT‐4 gene expression in farm species may be a consequence of the lengthened period of peri‐implantation. Expression of OCT‐4 mRNA has not been characterized during conceptus attachment to the uterine surface in the pig. The objective of the present study was to determine conceptus OCT‐4 mRNA expression during porcine peri‐implantation development from days 10–17 of gestation. Total RNA was extracted from multiple pools of conceptuses collected on days 10, 12, 13, 15 and 17 of pregnancy. Quantitative RT‐PCR was utilized to assay conceptus OCT‐4 mRNA synthesis. Day of conceptus development significantly affected (p < 0.001) OCT‐4 mRNA expression. Conceptus expression of OCT‐4 was greatest on days 10 and 12 of pregnancy being approximately 7.7‐ and 11.6‐fold greater compared to expression on days 15 and 17, respectively. Results from the present study suggest that down regulation of OCT‐4 may be critical in trophoblastic expansion and uterine epithelial attachment during establishment of pregnancy in the pig.
High‐temperature fatigue crack growth in Inconel 718 subjected to high strain amplitudes
Authors: ANDERSSON M. , PERSSON C. , MELIN S.
Published: July 2006

Fatigue crack growth experiments in Inconel 718 subjected to high strain amplitudes at 650 °C have been conducted. In the study the effects of load amplitude, ratio and frequency have been investigated. It was found that crack growth is a mixture of cyclic and time dependent mechanisms, depending on the load frequency. The load frequency was also found to have a strong influence on the crack growth rate. Also, crack closure was found to play an important role. By using an effective J‐integral and including a frequency compensation term it was possible to summarize crack growth data into an empirical life prediction law, which seems to be in reasonable agreement with data from other studies.
Executive Functioning and Preschoolers' Understanding of False Beliefs, False Photographs, and False Signs
Authors: Sabbagh Mark A. , Moses Louis J. , Shiverick Sean
Published: July 2006

Two studies were conducted to investigate the specificity of the relationship between preschoolers' emerging executive functioning skills and false belief understanding. Study 1 (N=44) showed that 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds' performance on an executive functioning task that required selective suppression of actions predicted performance on false belief tasks, but not on false photograph tasks. Study 2 (N=54) replicated the finding from Study 1 and showed that performance on the executive functioning task also predicted 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds' performance on false sign tasks. These findings show that executive functioning is required to reason only about representations that are intended to reflect a true state of affairs. Results are discussed with respect to theories of preschoolers' theory‐of‐mind development.
Conditions for Sustainable Optimal Economic Development
Authors: Farzin Y. Hossein
Published: July 2006

This paper shows that, for dynamic optimizing economies with different types of natural resource, environmental, and human‐made capital stocks, a necessary and sufficient condition for permanently sustaining an optimal utility/consumption level is thestationarityof the current‐value Hamiltonian. For economies whose development is not exogenously and directly affected by time (i.e., time‐autonomous economies), this stationarity condition generalizesDixit et al.’s (1980) “zero‐net‐aggregate‐investment” rule of sustain‐ability, which in turn generalizes Solow‐Hartwick’s sustainability rule. For non‐autonomous economies, the stationarity condition isnotgenerally fulfilled, and the current‐value Hamiltonianunder(over) estimates the true welfare level by an amount equal to the discounted value of the net “pure time effect.” For the non‐autonomous case of atime‐dependent utility discount rate, a general condition on the discount rate function (of which thehyperbolicdiscount rate function is a special case) upholds the results obtained for autonomous cases. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies that promote both optimality and sustainability objectives.
Three Poverties in Urban China
Authors: Knight John , Shi Li
Published: July 2006

Radical economic reform and rapid marketization in the late 1990s could be expected to create new poverty and insecurity in Chinese cities. Accordingly, the extent and nature of poverty in urban China is examined by means of a 1999 cross‐section household survey. Three types of poverty—“income and consumption”, “income not consumption” and “consumption not income”—are distinguished. A large proportion of the poor have income above, but consumption below, the poverty line. The estimated consumption function shows the importance of consumption smoothing, of precautionary considerations, of saving for investment opportunities, and of special needs related to the presence of children or sickness. An exercise is conducted to compare the three types of poverty by decomposing the divergence in the consumption of each poverty group from its benchmark consumption. Unpredicted financial assets and income, and differences in special needs, are important in contrasting and explaining the three poverties.
COMPARING GLASS COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSES*
Authors: BAXTER M. J. , COOL H. E. M. , JACKSON C. M.
Published: July 2006

In a recently published study of Romano‐British colourless glass compositions, using inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy, 28 glasses from Colchester sampled in a previous study were resampled. This was done deliberately, with a view to examining the repeatability of results from sampling on different occasions. We report on our results here, developing in the process some simple statistical methodology that could be applied in similar situations. The potential for combining analyses undertaken at different times is discussed and illustrated.
SAND FOR ROMAN GLASS PRODUCTION: AN EXPERIMENTAL AND PHILOLOGICAL STUDY ON SOURCE OF SUPPLY*
Authors: SILVESTRI A. , MOLIN G. , SALVIULO G. , SCHIEVENIN R.
Published: July 2006

This paper reports the results of an experimental study performed on Campanian littoral sand, together with a careful philological analysis of Pliny's text concerning the production of glass using the above sand in order to verify its suitability. Accurate chemical and mineralogical characterization of sand samples and experimental glasses was carried out, proving the unsuitability of sand for glass production in its original state. Taking into account both the results of the philological analysis of Pliny's text and the mineralogical assemblage of the sand, a new hypothesis regarding Roman glass‐making technology is proposed and tested here. The technology implies the production of ‘quartz‐enriched’ sand by means of selective grindings according to the different degrees of hardness and cleavage of the mineralogical phases. Melting experiments, carried out on treated sand and in the temperature range compatible with Roman technology, yielded a glass with composition similar to those of typical Roman glasses. Therefore, new perspectives on the sources of supply of raw materials, hitherto debated, are opened up.
A 3‐Year Study of Addiction Mutual‐help Group Participation Following Intensive Outpatient Treatment
Authors: Kelly John F. , Stout Robert , Zywiak William , Schneider Robert
Published: July 2006

Background: Addiction‐focused mutual‐help group participation is associated with better substance use disorder (SUD) treatment outcomes. However, little has been documented regarding which types of mutual‐help organizations patients attend, what levels of participation may be beneficial, and which patients, in particular, are more or less likely to participate. Furthermore, much of the evidence supporting the use of these organizations comes from studies examining participation and outcomes concurrently, raising doubts about cause–effect connections, and little is known about influences that may moderate the degree of any general benefit.

Method: Alcohol‐dependent outpatients (N=227; 27% female; M age=42) enrolled in a randomized‐controlled telephone case monitoring trial were assessed at treatment intake and at 1, 2, and 3 years postdischarge. Lagged‐panel, hierarchical linear models tested whether mutual‐help group participation in the first and second year following treatment predicted subsequent outcomes and whether these effects were moderated by gender, concurrent axis I diagnosis, religious preference, and prior mutual‐help experience. Robust regression curve analysis was used to examine dose–response relationships between mutual‐help and outcomes.

Results: Mutual‐help participation was associated with both greater abstinence and fewer drinks per drinking day and this relationship was not found to be influenced by gender, Axis I diagnosis, religious preference, or prior mutual‐help participation. Mutual‐help participants attended predominantly Alcoholics Anonymous and tended to be Caucasian, be more educated, have prior mutual‐help experience, and have more severe alcohol involvement. Dose–response curve analyses suggested that even small amounts of participation may be helpful in increasing abstinence, whereas higher doses may be needed to reduce relapse intensity.

Conclusions: Use of mutual‐help groups following intensive outpatient SUD treatment appears to be beneficial for many different types of patients and even modest levels of participation may be helpful. Future emphasis should be placed on ways to engage individuals with these cost‐effective resources over time and to gather and disseminate evidence regarding additional mutual‐help organizations.
An Interdisciplinary Faculty Development Model for the Prevention and Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorders
Authors: Manwell Linda Baier , Pfeifer Judie , Stauffacher Ellyn A.
Published: July 2006

Background: The skills of faculty working in health fields are inadequate to meet the needs of those adversely affected by alcohol. This project was designed to increase the teaching, clinical, and research activities of faculty from multiple disciplines at the university level.

Methods: The faculty development model included two 2‐day skills‐based courses held 6 months apart, precourse and postcourse evaluations, active mentoring, and development of a specific work plan for each participant. The educational model utilized skills‐based courses previously developed for full‐time clinical/teaching medical faculty with limited time and resources.

Results: A total of 153 participants at 6 locations completed the courses; 131 completed the 6‐month follow‐up interview. Sixty‐four designed teaching, clinical, or research projects during the 6‐month period between the first and second courses. Precourse versus postcourse clinical scores from standardized patient encounters showed highly significant improvements in screening, brief intervention, and motivational interviewing skills (p<0.001). At the 6‐month follow‐up interview, 61% of the participants reported teaching on alcohol, tobacco, or drug problems; 49% reported clinical activities in this area; 36% reported conducting research; 10% had submitted manuscripts for publication; 12% had submitted grant applications; and 32% percent had sought additional AODA training. Participants gave high scores to all components of the faculty development model; 81% would repeat the training and 98% would recommend the program to colleagues.

Conclusions: This cost‐effective faculty development program can serve as a model to increase educational programs on substance abuse at public universities, increase faculty research activities in the alcohol area, and increase clinical programs in university hospitals.
Nicotine Decreases Blood Alcohol Concentrations in Adult Rats: A Phenomenon Potentially Related to Gastric Function
Authors: Parnell Scott E. , West James R. , Chen Wei‐Jung A.
Published: July 2006

Background: In spite of the fact that drinking and smoking often occur together, little is known about the pharmacokinetic interaction between alcohol and nicotine. Previous research in neonatal rats demonstrated that nicotine reduces blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) if alcohol and nicotine are administered simultaneously. However, it is unclear whether such a phenomenon can be observed in adult subjects, given the fact that there is an ontogenetic difference in alcohol metabolism.

Methods: A range of nicotine doses (0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 6 mg/kg) were administered individually with an alcohol dose (4 g/kg) via intragastric (IG) intubation to adult female rats, and the resultant BACs were measured at various time points following drug administration. Furthermore, the hypothesis that nicotine's role in reducing BACs is mediated through factors related to gastric function was examined by comparing the resultant BACs after an IG intubation or intraperitoneal (IP) injection of alcohol.

Results: The results from this study showed significant nicotine dose–related decreases in BACs with 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 6 mg/kg doses of nicotine at the various time points assessed. This effect, however, occurred only when alcohol was administered via IG intubation, but not after an IP injection of alcohol.

Conclusions: These results suggest that the nicotine‐induced decrease in BAC may be related to gastric function. One possible explanation was related to nicotine's action in delaying gastric emptying. The longer the alcohol was retained in the stomach, the more likely that the alcohol would be metabolized by gastric alcohol dehydrogenase before its absorption into the bloodstream by the small intestine (the major site of alcohol absorption).
Nicotine Stimulation on Extracellular Glutamate Levels in the Nucleus Accumbens of Ethanol‐withdrawn Rats In Vivo
Authors: Saellstroem Baum S. , Huebner Anke , Krimphove M. , Morgenstern Rudolf , Badawy Abdulla A.‐B. , Spies Claudia D.
Published: July 2006

Background: Nicotine can release glutamate in the limbic system. Presynaptic activation of glutamate receptors might be relevant for the subsequent firing of excitatory postsynaptic potentials. This might be relevant in early ethanol withdrawal. The effects and differences of nicotine stimulation on glutamate response measured by microdialysis in the nucleus accumbens (NAC) between ethanol‐withdrawn rats (EW group) and ethanol‐naïve rats (control group) were investigated.

Methods: Rats were ethanol‐intoxicated according to a binge‐drinking model: recurrent cycle of 4 days of intoxication (EW group) or 5% sucrose (control group), followed by a 3‐day recovery. This was followed by a 2‐day intoxication period and subsequent abstinence. After the last oral intake, microdialysis was performed in the left NAC for a 16‐hour withdrawal period. At the end of the withdrawal period, a rated withdrawal score (RWS) was documented. Then, nicotine was given subcutaneously at a dose of 0.5 mg/kg and amino acid levels determined by microdialysis were followed for an additional 3 hours.

Results: The RWS was not correlated to the last amount of ethanol received, but was correlated to the total amount of ethanol administered during the pretreatment period: the basal values of extracellular glutamate were found to be decreased in the EW group before withdrawal. Cessation of ethanol significantly increased glutamate levels with a peak between 4 and 10 hours after the last oral intake. Sixteen hours after ethanol withdrawal, the same level as in the control group was achieved. Nicotine significantly increased glutamate levels in the NAC of the EW group but not in ethanol‐naïve rats.

Conclusions: This study showed that withdrawal of ethanol was associated with an increase in extracellular glutamate levels. Systemic administration of nicotine in vivo produced an increase in extracellular levels of glutamate in the core region of the NAC during ethanol withdrawal. This might be a relevant pathomechanism for increased craving either for alcohol or for nicotine after ethanol withdrawal.
Effects of Ethanol and Acetaldehyde on Reactive Oxygen Species Production in Rat Hepatic Stellate Cells
Authors: Novitskiy Gennadiy , Traore Kassim , Wang Lan , Trush Michael A. , Mezey Esteban
Published: July 2006

Background: Alcoholism is a common cause of cirrhosis. Hepatic stellate cells are the main source of collagen that ultimately leads to hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) enhance stellate cell activation and stimulate fibrogenesis. In this study, the acute effects of ethanol (ET) and acetaldehyde (AC) were determined on the production of ROS in isolated rat hepatic stellate cells.

Methods: Rat stellate cells were isolated in situ by perfusion of the portal vein and cultured. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was determined by luminol‐derived chemiluminescence (CL), while superoxide anion (O2•−) production was assessed by the fluorescent probe hydroethidine.

Results: AC increased the formation of H2O2 and O2•−, and these effects were first detectable at AC concentrations of 5 and 10 μM, respectively, reaching a maximum at 50 to 75 μM. Reduction of glutathione (GSH) synthesis by 1‐buthionine sulfoximide (BSO) or by GSH conjugation with dimethylmaleate (DEM) further enhanced the effects of AC on H2O2 and O2•− formation, while N‐acetylcysteine (NAC) decreased H2O2 and eliminated the enhanced generation of O2•− caused by AC. Raloxifene, which inhibits O2•− production by NAD(P)H oxidase, reduced the effects of AC on H2O2 and O2•− production. ET increased H2O2 or O2•− only in the presence of BSO or DEM.

Conclusions: This study shows that concentrations of AC, which occur in vivo after the ingestion of alcoholic beverages, result in the formation of ROS in rat hepatic stellate cells. The increases in ROS are known to activate stellate cells promoting fibrogenesis.
Releasing growth factors from activated human platelets after chitosan stimulation: a possible bio‐material for platelet‐rich plasma preparation
Authors: Shen E‐Chin , Chou Tz‐Chong , Gau Ching‐Hwa , Tu Hsiao‐Pei , Chen Yen‐Teen , Fu Earl
Published: July 2006

Introduction: Thrombin is commonly used for activating the platelets and releasing the growth factors on the application of platelet‐rich plasma (PRP). We have previously reported that chitosan can enhance rabbit platelet aggregation. In this study, the effects of chitosan on the subsequent growth factors release after human platelets activation were examined to evaluate the possibility of chitosan being used as a substitute for thrombin during PRP preparation.

Material and methods: Human platelet activation was determined by aggregation, adhesion and α‐granule membrane glycoprotein expression. Platelet aggregation was measured by the turbidimetric method, the adhesion was directly examined on chitosan‐coated glass plates under light microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the α‐granule membrane glycoprotein was detected by fluorescent isothiocyanate (FITC)‐conjugated anti‐CD61 antibody through flow cytometry. The subsequent epidermal growth factor (EGF), platelet‐derived growth factor (PDGF)‐AB and transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β1 release from platelets were assayed by ELISA after mixing with chitosan.

Results: The enhancing effects on the platelet adhesion and the aggregation from chitosan were observed. Under both microscopes, the adhesive platelets on the chitosan‐coated plates were not only greater in number but also earlier in activation than those on the control plates. With flow cytometry, increased glycoprotein IIIa expression in platelets was detected after chitosan treatment. Greater concentrations of growth factors were measured from PRP after chitosan treatment than after the solvent treatment.

Conclusion: Because of the observations of growth factors releasing from activated human platelets after chitosan stimulation, we suggest that chitosan may be an appropriate substitute for thrombin in PRP preparation.
Optimizing optimal reduction
Authors: Coppola Paolo , Martini Simone
Published: July 2006

We propose a type inference algorithm for lambda terms in elementary affine logic (EAL). The algorithm decorates the syntax tree of a simple typed lambda term and collects a set of linear constraints. The result is a parametric elementary type that can be instantiated with any solution of the set of collected constraints.We point out that the typeability of lambda terms in EAL has a practical counterpart, since it is possible to reduce any EAL-typeable lambda terms with the Lamping's abstract algorithm obtaining a substantial increase of performances.We show how to apply the same techniques to obtain decorations of intuitionistic proofs into linear logic proofs.
ME-based biomedical named entity recognition using lexical knowledge
Authors: Park Kyung-Mi , Kim Seon-Ho , Rim Hae-Chang , Hwang Young-Sook
Published: July 2006

In this paper, we present a two-phase biomedical NE-recognition method based on a ME model: we first recognize biomedical terms and then assign appropriate semantic classes to the recognized terms. In the two-phase NE-recognition method, the performance of the term-recognition phase is very important, because the semantic classification is performed on the region identified at the recognition phase. In this study, in order to improve the performance of term recognition, we try to incorporate lexical knowledge into pre- and postprocessing of the term-recognition phase. In the preprocessing step, we use domain-salient words as lexical knowledge obtained by corpus comparison. In the postprocessing step, we utilize χ
2
-based collocations gained from Medline corpus. In addition, we use morphological patterns extracted from the training data as features for learning the ME-based classifiers. Experimental results show that the performance of NE-recognition can be improved by utilizing such lexical knowledge.
Software thread integration for embedded system display applications
Authors: Dean Alexander G.
Published: July 2006

Embedded systems require control of many concurrent real-time activities, leading to system designs that feature a variety of hardware peripherals, with each providing a specific, dedicated service. These peripherals increase system size, cost, weight, and design time. Software thread integration (STI) provides low-cost thread concurrency on general-purpose processors by automatically interleaving multiple threads of control into one. This simplifies hardware to software migration (which eliminates dedicated hardware) and can help embedded system designers meet design constraints, such as size, weight and cost. We have developed concepts for performing STI and have implemented many in our automated postpass compiler Thrint. Here we present the transformations and examine how well the compiler integrates threads for two display applications. We examine the integration procedure, the processor load, and code memory expansion. Integration allows reclamation of CPU idle time, allowing run-time speedups of 1.6x to 3.6x.
A systematic approach in managing post-deployment system changes
Authors: Kang David , Chiang Roger
Published: July 2006

In current IT practices, the task of managing post-deployment system changes often falls in no-man's land.
Enterprise integration across the globally disbursed service organization
Authors: Shore Barry
Published: July 2006

The goal of enterprise integration---to create a shared informationenvironment that supports the delivery of products or services---becomes an even greater challenge when business units are spread throughout the world, decentralized, and accustomed to working their own way.
Farewell address
Authors: Patterson David A.
Published: July 2006

As my term ends, I offer my perspective on two important challenges facing ACM.
The learning edge
Authors: Armour Phillip G.
Published: July 2006

Getting into the Flow of software development.
A simple approach to improving email communication
Authors: Jackson Thomas W. , Burgess Anthony , Edwards Janet
Published: July 2006

Going back to basics.
Graph mining
Authors: Chakrabarti Deepayan , Faloutsos Christos
Published: July 2006

How does the Web look? How could we tell an abnormal social network from a normal one? These and similar questions are important in many fields where the data can intuitively be cast as a graph; examples range from computer networks to sociology to biology and many more. Indeed, anyM:Nrelation in database terminology can be represented as a graph. A lot of these questions boil down to the following: “How can we generate synthetic but realistic graphs?” To answer this, we must first understand what patterns are common in real-world graphs and can thus be considered a mark of normality/realism. This survey give an overview of the incredible variety of work that has been done on these problems. One of our main contributions is the integration of points of view from physics, mathematics, sociology, and computer science. Further, we briefly describe recent advances on some related and interesting graph problems.
Computing the real parabolic cylinder functions
U
(
a
,
x
),
V
(
a
,
x
)
Authors: Gil Amparo , Segura Javier , Temme Nico M.
Published: July 2006

Methods for the computation of real parabolic cylinder functions
U
(
a
,
x
), and
V
(
a
,
x
) and their derivatives are described. We give details on power series, asymptotic series, recursion and quadrature. A combination of these methods can be used for computing parabolic cylinder functions for unrestricted values of the order
a
and the variable
x
except for the overflow/underflow limitations. By factoring the dominant exponential factor, scaled functions can be computed without practical overflow/underflow limitations. In an accompanying article we describe the precise domains for these methods and we present the Fortran 90 codes for the computation of these functions.
Remark on Algorithm 815
Authors: Hasselman Berend
Published: July 2006

We show that the Fortran source code for Algorithm 815 contains an error and we propose a correction. The error may cause the algorithm to generate incorrect results. We also show that the performance of the corrected algorithm can be improved by a minor adjustment in the code.
Instruction packing
Authors: Sharkey Joseph J. , Ponomarev Dmitry V. , Ghose Kanad , Ergin Oguz
Published: July 2006

Traditional dynamic scheduler designs use one issue queue entry per instruction, regardless of the actual number of operands actively involved in the wakeup process. We propose Instruction Packing---a novel microarchitectural technique that reduces both delay and power consumption of the issue queue by sharing the associative part of an issue queue entry between two instructions, each with, at most, one nonready register source operand at the time of dispatch. Our results show that this technique results in 40% reduction of the IQ power and 14% reduction in scheduling delay with negligible IPC degradations.
Efficient address remapping in distributed shared-memory systems
Authors: Zhang Lixin , Parker Mike , Carter John
Published: July 2006

As processor performance continues to improve at a rate much higher than DRAM and network performance, we are approaching a time when large-scale distributed shared memory systems will have remote memory latencies measured in tens of thousands of processor cycles. The Impulse memory system architecture adds an optional level of address indirection at the memory controller. Applications can use this level of indirection to control how data is accessed and cached and thereby improve cache and bus utilization and reduce the number of memory accesses required. Previous Impulse work focuses on uniprocessor systems and relies on software to flush processor caches when necessary to ensure data coherence. In this paper, we investigate an extension of Impulse to multiprocessor systems that extends the coherence protocol to maintain data coherence without requiring software-directed cache flushing. Specifically, the multiprocessor Impulse controller can gather/scatter data across the network while its coherence protocol guarantees that each gather request gets coherent data and each scatter request updates every coherent replica in the system. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system can significantly outperform conventional systems, achieving an average speedup of 9X on four memory-bound benchmarks on a 32-processor system.
Efficient identification of hot data for flash memory storage systems
Authors: Hsieh Jen-Wei , Kuo Tei-Wei , Chang Li-Pin
Published: July 2006

Hot data identification for flash memory storage systems not only imposes great impacts on flash memory garbage collection but also strongly affects the performance of flash memory access and its lifetime (due to wear-levelling). This research proposes a highly efficient method for on-line hot data identification with limited space requirements. Different from past work, multiple independent hash functions are adopted to reduce the chance of false identification of hot data and to provide predictable and excellent performance for hot data identification. This research not only offers an efficient implementation for the proposed framework, but also presents an analytic study on the chance of false hot data identification. A series of experiments was conducted to verify the performance of the proposed method, and very encouraging results are presented.
The urge to converge
Authors: Greiner Lynn
Published: July 2006

Sophisticated technologies are migrating to handheld devices, bringing new risks along with significant benefits.
Wi-Fi and the morality of sharing
Authors: Rowell Laurie
Published: July 2006

A few weeks back my cable connection went down just as I was mailing a time-sensitive draft. Muttering, I pawed through a tangle of wires for a telephone cord. To my disgust, I no longer even had a corded phone from which to pirate one.
VigilNet
Authors: He Tian , Krishnamurthy Sudha , Luo Liqian , Yan Ting , Gu Lin , Stoleru Radu , Zhou Gang , Cao Qing , Vicaire Pascal , Stankovic John A. , Abdelzaher Tarek F. , Hui Jonathan , Krogh Bruce
Published: July 2006

This article describes one of the major efforts in the sensor network community to build an integrated sensor network system for surveillance missions. The focus of this effort is to acquire and verify information about enemy capabilities and positions of hostile targets. Such missions often involve a high element of risk for human personnel and require a high degree of stealthiness. Hence, the ability to deploy unmanned surveillance missions, by using wireless sensor networks, is of great practical importance for the military. Because of the energy constraints of sensor devices, such systems necessitate an energy-aware design to ensure the longevity of surveillance missions. Solutions proposed recently for this type of system show promising results through simulations. However, the simplified assumptions they make about the system in the simulator often do not hold well in practice, and energy consumption is narrowly accounted for within a single protocol. In this article, we describe the design and implementation of a complete running system, called VigilNet, for energy-efficient surveillance. The VigilNet allows a group of cooperating sensor devices to detect and track the positions of moving vehicles in an energy-efficient and stealthy manner. We evaluate VigilNet middleware components and integrated system extensively on a network of 70 MICA2 motes. Our results show that our surveillance strategy is adaptable and achieves a significant extension of network lifetime. Finally, we share lessons learned in building such an integrated sensor system.
Summarizing level-two topological relations in large spatial datasets
Authors: Lin Xuemin , Liu Qing , Yuan Yidong , Zhou Xiaofang , Lu Hongjun
Published: July 2006

Summarizing topological relations is fundamental to many spatial applications including spatial query optimization. In this article, we present several novel techniques to effectively construct cell density based spatial histograms for range (window) summarizations restricted to the four most important level-two topological relations: contains, contained, overlap, and disjoint. We first present a novel framework to construct a multiscale Euler histogram in 2D space with the guarantee of the exact summarization results for aligned windows in constant time. To minimize the storage space in such a multiscale Euler histogram, an approximate algorithm with the approximate ratio 19/12 is presented, while the problem is shown NP-hard generally. To conform to a limited storage space where a multiscale histogram may be allowed to have only
k
Euler histograms, an effective algorithm is presented to construct multiscale histograms to achieve high accuracy in approximately summarizing aligned windows. Then, we present a new approximate algorithm to query an Euler histogram that cannot guarantee the exact answers; it runs in constant time. We also investigate the problem of nonaligned windows and the problem of effectively partitioning the data space to support nonaligned window queries. Finally, we extend our techniques to 3D space. Our extensive experiments against both synthetic and real world datasets demonstrate that the approximate multiscale histogram techniques may improve the accuracy of the existing techniques by several orders of magnitude while retaining the cost efficiency, and the exact multiscale histogram technique requires only a storage space linearly proportional to the number of cells for many popular real datasets.
All-frequency relighting of glossy objects
Authors: Wang Rui , Tran John , Luebke David
Published: July 2006

We present a technique for interactive rendering of glossy objects in complex and dynamic lighting environments that captures interreflections and all-frequency shadows. Our system is based on precomputed radiance transfer and separable BRDF approximation. We factor glossy BRDFs using a separable decomposition and keep only a few low-order approximation terms, each consisting of a purely view-dependent and a purely light-dependent component. In the precomputation step, for every vertex, we sample its visibility and compute a direct illumination transport vector corresponding to each BRDF term. We use modern graphics hardware to accelerate this step and further compress the data using a nonlinear wavelet approximation. The direct illumination pass is followed by one or more interreflection passes, each of which gathers compressed transport vectors from the previous pass to produce global illumination transport vectors. To render at run time, we dynamically sample the lighting to produce a light vector, also represented in a wavelet basis. We compute the inner product of the light vector with the precomputed transport vectors, and the results are further combined with the BRDF view-dependent components to produce vertex colors. We describe acceleration of the rendering algorithm using programmable graphics hardware and discuss the limitations and trade-offs imposed by the hardware.
Fast simulation of overflow probabilities in a queue with Gaussian input
Authors: Dieker A. B. , Mandjes M.
Published: July 2006

In this article, we study a queue fed by a large number
n
of independent discrete-time Gaussian processes with stationary increments. We consider the many-sources asymptotic regime, that is, the buffer-exceedance threshold
B
and the service capacity
C
are scaled by the number of sources (
B
≡
nb
and
C
≡
nc
).We discuss four methods for simulating the steady-state probability that the buffer threshold is exceeded: the single-twist method (suggested by large deviation theory), the cut-and-twist method (simulating timeslot by timeslot), the random-twist method (the twist is sampled from a discrete distribution), and the sequential-twist method (simulating source by source).The asymptotic efficiency of these four methods is analytically investigated for
n
→ ∞. A necessary and sufficient condition is derived for the efficiency of the single-twist method, indicating that it is nearly always asymptotically inefficient. The other three methods, however, are asymptotically efficient. We numerically evaluate the four methods by performing a detailed simulation study where it is our main objective to compare the three efficient methods in practical situations.
Infoglut
Authors: Denning Peter J.
Published: July 2006

Overload of cheap information threatens our ability to function in networks; value-recognizing architectures promise significant help.
What road ahead for Microsoft and Windows?
Authors: Cusumano Michael A.
Published: July 2006

Untangling the snarled history of the frequently delayed Windows operating system.
An application of eyegaze tracking for designing radiologists' workstations
Authors: Atkins M. Stella , Moise Adrian , Rohling Robert
Published: July 2006

The goal of this research is to use eyegaze tracking data to provide insights into designing radiology workstations. We designed a look-alike radiology task with artificial stimuli. The task involved a comparative visual search of two side-by-side images, using two different interaction techniques. We tracked the eyegaze of four radiologists while they performed the task and measured the duration of the fixations on the controls, the left and right images, and on the artificial targets. Response time differences between the two interaction techniques exceeded the differences of fixations on the controls. Fixations on the left-side images are longer than the right-side images, and the search for multifeatured targets occurs in two phases: first a regular scan path search phase for a likely target and then a confirmation phase of several fixations on the target in each side-by-side image. We conclude that eyegaze tracking shows that disruption of visual search leads to cognitive disruption; subjects use the left image as a reference image and multiple saccades between left and right side images are necessary, because of the limitations of the visual working memory.
Appearance-space texture synthesis
Authors: Lefebvre Sylvain , Hoppe Hugues
Published: July 2006

The traditional approach in texture synthesis is to compare color neighborhoods with those of an exemplar. We show that quality is greatly improved if pointwise colors are replaced by appearance vectors that incorporate nonlocal information such as feature and radiance-transfer data. We perform dimensionality reduction on these vectors prior to synthesis, to create a new appearance-space exemplar. Unlike a texton space, our appearance space is low-dimensional and Euclidean. Synthesis in this information-rich space lets us reduce runtime neighborhood vectors from 5x5 grids to just 4 locations. Building on this unifying framework, we introduce novel techniques for coherent anisometric synthesis, surface texture synthesis directly in an ordinary atlas, and texture advection. Remarkably, we achieve all these functionalities in real-time, or 3 to 4 orders of magnitude faster than prior work.
Interactive local adjustment of tonal values
Authors: Lischinski Dani , Farbman Zeev , Uyttendaele Matt , Szeliski Richard
Published: July 2006

This paper presents a new interactive tool for making local adjustments of tonal values and other visual parameters in an image. Rather than carefully selecting regions or hand-painting layer masks, the user quickly indicates regions of interest by drawing a few simple brush strokes and then uses sliders to adjust the brightness, contrast, and other parameters in these regions. The effects of the user's sparse set of constraints are interpolated to the entire image using an edge-preserving energy minimization method designed to prevent the propagation of tonal adjustments to regions of significantly different luminance. The resulting system is suitable for adjusting ordinary and high dynamic range images, and provides the user with much more creative control than existing tone mapping algorithms. Our tool is also able to produce a tone mapping automatically, which may serve as a basis for further local adjustments, if so desired. The constraint propagation approach developed in this paper is a general one, and may also be used to interactively control a variety of other adjustments commonly performed in the digital darkroom.
High dynamic range texture compression
Authors: Roimela Kimmo , Aarnio Tomi , Itäranta Joonas
Published: July 2006

We present a novel compression scheme for high dynamic range textures, targeted for hardware implementation. Our method encodes images at a constant 8 bits per pixel, for a compression ratio of 6:1. We demonstrate that our method achieves good visual fidelity, surpassing DXTC texture compression of RGBE data which is the most practical method on existing graphics hardware. The decoding logic for our method is simple enough to be implemented as part of the texture fetch unit in graphics hardware.
Multiple interacting liquids
Authors: Losasso Frank , Shinar Tamar , Selle Andrew , Fedkiw Ronald
Published: July 2006

The particle level set method has proven successful for the simulation oftwoseparate regions (such as water and air, or fuel and products). In this paper, we propose a novel approach to extend this method to the simulation of as many regions as desired. The various regions can be liquids (or gases) of any type with differing viscosities, densities, viscoelastic properties, etc. We also propose techniques for simulating interactions between materials, whether it be simple surface tension forces or more complex chemical reactions with one material converting to another or two materials combining to form a third. We use a separate particle level set method for each region, and propose a novel projection algorithm that decodes the resulting vector of level set values providing a "dictionary" that translates between them and the standard single-valued level set representation. An additional difficulty occurs since discretization stencils (for interpolation, tracing semi-Lagrangian rays, etc.) cross region boundaries naively combining non-smooth or even discontinuous data. This has recently been addressed via ghost values, e.g. for fire or bubbles. We instead propose a new paradigm that allows one to incorporate physical jump conditions in data "on the fly," which is significantly more efficient for multiple regions especially at triple points or near boundaries with solids.
Photorealistic rendering of rain streaks
Authors: Garg Kshitiz , Nayar Shree K.
Published: July 2006

Photorealistic rendering of rain streaks with lighting and viewpoint effects is a challenging problem. Raindrops undergo rapid shape distortions as they fall, a phenomenon referred to as oscillations. Due to these oscillations, the reflection of light by, and the refraction of light through, a falling raindrop produce complex brightness patterns within a single motion-blurred rain streak captured by a camera or observed by a human. The brightness pattern of a rain streak typically includes speckles, multiple smeared highlights and curved brightness contours. In this work, we propose a new model for rain streak appearance that captures the complex interactions between the lighting direction, the viewing direction and the oscillating shape of the drop. Our model builds upon a raindrop oscillation model that has been developed in atmospheric sciences. We have measured rain streak appearances under a wide range of lighting and viewing conditions and empirically determined the oscillation parameters that are dominant in raindrops. Using these parameters, we have rendered thousands of rain streaks to create a database that captures the variations in streak appearance with respect to lighting and viewing directions. We have developed an efficient image-based rendering algorithm that uses our streak database to add rain to a single image or a captured video with moving objects and sources. The rendering algorithm is very simple to use as it only requires a coarse depth map of the scene and the locations and properties of the light sources. We have rendered rain in a wide range of scenarios and the results show that our physically-based rain streak model greatly enhances the visual realism of rendered rain.
Direct-to-indirect transfer for cinematic relighting
Authors: Hašan Miloš , Pellacini Fabio , Bala Kavita
Published: July 2006

This paper presents an interactive GPU-based system for cinematic relighting with multiple-bounce indirect illumination from a fixed view-point. We use a deep frame-buffer containing a set of view samples, whose indirect illumination is recomputed from the direct illumination on a large set of gather samples, distributed around the scene. This
direct-to-indirect transfer
is a linear transform which is particularly large, given the size of the view and gather sets. This makes it hard to precompute, store and multiply with. We address this problem by representing the transform as a set of sparse matrices encoded in wavelet space. A hierarchical construction is used to impose a wavelet basis on the unstructured gather cloud, and an image-based approach is used to map the sparse matrix computations to the GPU. We precompute the transfer matrices using a hierarchical algorithm and a variation of photon mapping in less than three hours on one processor. We achieve high-quality indirect illumination at 10-20 frames per second for complex scenes with over 2 million polygons, with diffuse and glossy materials, and arbitrary direct lighting models (expressed using shaders). We compute per-pixel indirect illumination without the need of irradiance caching or other subsampling techniques.