bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Organic cation transporter 3 modulates murine basophil functions by controlling intracellular histamine levels
Authors: Schneider Elke , Machavoine François , Pléau Jean-Marie , Bertron Anne-France , Thurmond Robin L. , Ohtsu Hiroshi , Watanabe Takehiko , Schinkel Alfred H. , Dy Michel
Published: August 2005

In this study, we identify the bidirectional organic cation transporter 3 (OCT3/Slc22a3) as the molecule responsible for histamine uptake by murine basophils. We demonstrate that OCT3 participates in the control of basophil functions because exogenous histamine can inhibit its own synthesis—and that of interleukin (IL)-4, IL-6, and IL-13—through this means of transport. Furthermore, ligands of H3/H4 histamine receptors or OCT3 inhibit histamine uptake, and outward transport of newly synthesized histamine. By doing so, they increase the histamine content of basophils, which explains why they mimic the effect of exogenous histamine. These drugs were no longer effective in histamine-free histidine decarboxylase (HDC)-deficient mice, in contrast with histamine itself. Histamine was not taken up and lost its inhibitory effect in mice deficient for OCT3, which proved its specific involvement. Intracellular histamine levels were increased strongly in IL-3–induced OCT3−/− bone marrow basophils, and explained why they generated fewer cytokines than their wild-type counterpart. Their production was enhanced when histamine synthesis was blocked by the specific HDC inhibitor α-fluoro-methyl histidine, and underscored the determinant role of histamine in the inhibitory effect. We postulate that pharmacologic modulation of histamine transport might become instrumental in the control of basophil functions during allergic diseases.
Balancing diversity and tolerance
Authors: Jacobi Annett M. , Diamond Betty
Published: August 2005

The autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is caused by a failure of B cell tolerance. Recent studies in mouse models of SLE have identified several distinct tolerance checkpoints that must each function appropriately to protect against disease. However, studies of B cell repertoire selection in humans are essential to understand which checkpoints are defective in human autoimmune diseases.
DAP12 (KARAP) amplifies inflammation and increases mortality from endotoxemia and septic peritonitis
Authors: Turnbull Isaiah R. , McDunn Jonathan E. , Takai Toshiyuki , Townsend R. Reid , Cobb J. Perren , Colonna Marco
Published: August 2005

DAP12 (KARAP) is a transmembrane signaling adaptor for a family of innate immunoreceptors that have been shown to activate granulocytes and monocytes/macrophages, amplifying production of inflammatory cytokines. Contrasting with these data, recent studies suggest that DAP12 signaling has an inhibitory role in the macrophage response to microbial products (Hamerman, J.A., N.K. Tchao, C.A. Lowell, and L.L. Lanier. 2005. Nat. Immunol. 6:579–586). To determine the in vivo role for DAP12 signaling in inflammation, we measured the response of wild-type (WT) and DAP12−/− mice to septic shock. We show that DAP12−/− mice have improved survival from both endotoxemia and cecal ligation and puncture–induced septic shock. As compared with WT mice, DAP12−/− mice have decreased plasma cytokine levels and a decreased acute phase response during sepsis, but no defect in the recruitment of cells or bacterial control. In cells isolated after sepsis and stimulated ex vivo, DAP12 signaling augments lipopolysaccharide-mediated cytokine production. These data demonstrate that, during sepsis, DAP12 signaling augments the response to microbial products, amplifying inflammation and contributing to mortality.
Rule, Practice, And Pragmatism In Transnational Commercial Law
Authors: Goode Roy
Published: August 2005

I feel privileged to have been invited to deliver this yearřs FA Mann lecture in succession to a long line of distinguished lawyers who have paid their own tribute to one of the most outstanding German legal émigrés of the 1930s. Francis Mann became a legend in his lifetime for his profound scholarship and his expertise in international and commercial litigation. While still in Germany he had fallen under the spell of the legendary Martin Wolff, the great conflicts lawyer, with whom he was able to resume contact years later in England. Mann himself was to become a leading light in both private and public international law. He had strong views on everything, a few of them decidedly unorthodox. His workThe Legal Aspect of Moneybecame a classic, and he died in bed while correcting the proofs of the fifth edition. Happily, Charles Proctor has taken over the mantle of editing the sixth edition, which has now been published by Oxford University Press. Full details of the contributions to English law by Wolff, Mann and other outstanding German émigré lawyers will be found in a collection of essays in a fine new publication,Jurists Uprooted, edited by Sir Jack Beatson and Professor Reinhard Zimmerman.
Further Development Of The Law Of The Sea Convention: Mechanisms For Change
Authors: Boyle Alan
Published: August 2005

How do treaties evolve? How in particular do we ensure the [durability over time] of a globalconvention, intended to elaborate [a new and comprehensive regime for the law of the sea] ?1Earlier attempts to do so all failed. Why should the most recent attempt be any more successful?
Recent Developments In International Criminal Law:Trying To Stay Afloat Between Scylla And Charybdis
Authors: Swaak-Goldman Olivia
Published: August 2005

An analysis of recent development in international criminal law shows the emergence of two countervailing trends: on the one hand a broadening trend, in that the various prosecutorial meansused to hold individuals accountable for violations of certain international crimes has expanded; and on the other hand a narrowing trend, in that the protection from prosecution afforded by international law to certain individuals, that once seemed to falter, has been reinstated.
FIXING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE CONCEPT OF CRIME: THE CHALLENGE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Authors: Guinchard Audrey
Published: August 2005

In England and Wales, as elsewhere, criminal law stands in sharp contrast to other systems of social control. Criminal offences and their related penalties are clearly distinguishable from civil wrongs and their associated (civil) sanctions. And because the term ‘civil law’ refers not only to the domain of torts, but also encompasses administrative law, criminal penalties are, in addition, distinguished from the administrative or regulatory sanctions. This ‘distinction between criminal and civil justice has been such a basic feature of the common law’1that it shapes not only substantive law but also the organization of the courts into civil, criminal and sometimes administrative chambers or divisions. More importantly, the distinction between civil and criminal sanctions will lead to the application of different procedural rules: civil proceedings, used for the imposition of civil sanctions, are less stringent that their criminal counterpart applied when the offender faces a criminal sanction. This more gentle approach can be detected in both the burden and standard of proof.
French Constitutional Council And European Law
Authors: Bell John
Published: August 2005

In 1996, the current President of the French Constitutional Council (the Conseil Constitutionnel), Pierre Mazeaud, wrote:
I. Avena And Other Mexican Nationals {Mexico V United States Of America), Judgment Of 31 MARCH 2004
Authors: Ghandhi Sandy
Published: August 2005

On 9 January 2003 Mexico instituted proceedings against the United States of America for violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963.1 Mexico based the jurisdiction of theCourt on Article 36(1) of the Statute of the Court which provides that:
Reaction Characteristics of Magnesia–Spinel Refractories with Cement Clinker
Authors: Guo Zongqi , Palco Stefan , Rigaud Michel
Published: August 2005

The adherence ability of cement clinker on magnesia–spinel refractories is investigated, using a sandwich test, at 1550°C for 30 min under a load of 5.3 kPa. Fractional factorial experiments determine that the silica ratio (SR)—SiO2/(Al2O3+Fe2O3) and particle size of raw meal, as well as heating rate, have a significant effect on adherence ability. Microstructural analyses indicate that the adherence ability depends upon reactions between clinker and refractories at high temperature. Only spinel reacts with CaO and 3CaO·SiO2 from clinker to form n‐calcium aluminate (such as 3CaO·Al2O3, 12CaO·7Al2O3, CaO·Al2O3), but there is no reaction between MgO and the clinker. Fine crystalline spinel, evenly distributed in magnesia‐based brick, is prone to reacting with lime‐containing phases from clinker to form low melting phases and a belite‐enriched zone at the clinker/brick interface. This reaction positively contributes to the high adherence on a magnesia−spinel brick. The high content of liquid in clinker with low SR accelerates reactions between spinel and clinker, while a limited reaction occurs at the brick/clinker interface with high silica.
Texture Analysis and Finite Element Modeling of Operational Stresses in Ceramic Injection Molding Components for High‐Pressure Pumps
Authors: Wenzelburger Martin , Fischer Ralph , Gadow Rainer
Published: August 2005

Texturization of microstructures in ceramic components during injection of thermoplastic feedstocks into the mold is a well‐known problem in ceramic injection molding (CIM) technology. The influences of textures on the mechanical properties of components with anisotropic properties, which depend on crystallite structure and orientation, usually involve weakening of the structure by the formation of separation planes and accumulation of stresses, which can lead to crack initiation and subcritical failure. A light optical texture analysis technique was developed for the analysis of thin section preparations from optically anisotropic ceramic materials. An internal Al2O3 gear rim for high‐pressure gear pumps that is manufactured by CIM was chosen for the evaluation of this technique. Components were produced from thermoplastic ceramic feedstocks with different rheological behavior. Thin sections were prepared from the sintered parts. The texture was analyzed by polarized transmission light microscopy of the thin sections and colorimetric analysis of the crystal orientation. For the evaluation of the component properties, function, and lifetime, operating tests on a test bench were carried out as well as finite element (FE) simulation of the stress distribution in the components under operational load with regard to the texturization. The results were used for the localization of stress gradients and their comparison and correlation to the texturization. The functionality of this texture analysis method was proved by the tests, and it is expected to be a convenient novel method for the analysis and optimization of the parameters in CIM processes and the design of injection gate and mold.
Activity and Structure of Perovskites as Diesel‐Reforming Catalysts for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell
Authors: Liu Di‐Jia , Krumpelt Michael
Published: August 2005

Recent progress in developing perovskite materials as more cost‐effective catalysts in autothermal reforming (ATR) of diesel fuel to hydrogen‐rich reformate for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) application is reported. Perovskite‐type metal oxides with B sites partially exchanged by ruthenium were prepared and evaluated under ATR reaction conditions. The hydrogen yield, reforming efficiency, and COx selectivity of these catalysts were investigated using diesel surrogate fuel with 50 ppm sulfur. The catalyst performances have approached or exceeded a benchmark, high‐cost rhodium‐based material. In parallel with the reactivity study, we also investigated the physical properties of B‐site doped perovskites and their impact on the reforming performance using various characterization techniques such as BET, X‐ray powder diffraction, temperature programmable reduction, scanning electron microscopy, and synchrotron X‐ray absorption spectroscopy. We found that ruthenium is highly dispersed into perovskite lattice and its redox behavior is directly associated with reforming activity.
PROBING SO(10) SYMMETRY BREAKING PATTERNS THROUGH SFERMION MASS RELATIONS
Authors: ANANTHANARAYAN B. , PANDITA P. N.
Published: August 2005

We consider supersymmetric SO(10) grand unification where the unified gauge group can break to the Standard Model gauge group through different chains. The breaking of SO(10) necessarily involves the reduction of the rank, and consequent generation of nonuniversal supersymmetry breaking scalar mass terms. We derive squark and slepton mass relations, taking into account these nonuniversal contributions to the sfermion masses, which can help distinguish between the different chains through which the SO(10) gauge group breaks to the Standard Model gauge group. We then study some implications of these nonuniversal supersymmetry breaking scalar masses for the low energy phenomenology.
STATIC MONOPOLES AND THEIR ANTICONFIGURATIONS
Authors: TEH ROSY , WONG KHAI-MING
Published: August 2005

Recently, we have reported on the existence of some monopoles, multimonopole, and antimonopoles configurations. In this paper we would like to present more monopoles, multimonopole, and antimonopoles configurations of the magnetic ansatz of Ref. 9 when the parameters p and b of the solutions takes different serial values. These exact solutions are a different kind of BPS solution. They satisfy the first order Bogomol'nyi equation but possess infinite energy. They can have radial, axial, or rotational symmetry about the z-axis. We classified these serial solutions as (i) the multimonopole at the origin; (ii) the finitely separated 1-monopoles; (iii) the screening solutions of multimonopole and (iv) the axially symmetric monopole solutions. We also give a construction of their anticonfigurations with all the magnetic charges of poles in the configurations reversed. Half-integer topological magnetic charge multimonopole also exist in some of these series of solutions.
NONPERTURBATIVE APPROACH TO YANG–MILLS THERMODYNAMICS
Authors: HOFMANN RALF
Published: August 2005

An analytical and nonperturbative approach to SU(2) and SU(3) Yang–Mills thermodynamics is developed and applied. Each theory comes in three phases: A deconfining, a preconfining, and a confining one. We show how macroscopic and inert scalar fields emerge in each phase and how they determine the ground-state physics and the properties of the excitations. While the excitations in the deconfining and preconfining phases are massless or massive gauge modes the excitations in the confining phase are massless or massive spin-1/2 fermions. The nature of the two phase transitions is investigated for each theory. We compute the temperature evolution of thermodynamical quantities in the deconfining and preconfining phase and estimate the density of states in the confining phase. Some implications for particle physics and cosmology are discussed.
CANONICAL BÄCKLUND TRANSFORMATION — A NEW DISCRETE INTEGRABLE SYSTEM AND BETHE ANSATZ
Authors: MUKHERJEE SUPRIYA , CHOWDHURY A. ROY , CHOUDHURY A. GHOSE
Published: August 2005

A new discrete Lax operator involving discrete canonical variable is introduced which generate new integrable system, and is analyzed in the light of the new concept of canonical Bäcklund transformation and classical r-matrix. The generating function of the transformation is explicitly deduced. The second half of the paper deals with the quantization problem where an explicit form of the Bethe equations are deduced.
PHASE SEPARATION AND MAXIMUM FLOW PHASE IN THE ASYMMETRIC EXCLUSION PROCESS WITH CREATION AND ANNIHILATION
Authors: JIANG RUI , YUAN YAO-MING , WU QING-SONG
Published: August 2005

In this paper, we have investigated the interplay of the asymmetric exclusion process (ASEP) of parallel updated rules with "Langmuir kinetics" (LK) by equipping the ASEP system with the additional feature of local particle creation at empty sites with rate ωa and annihilation with rate ωd. Two slightly different models are proposed. It is shown that the phase separation may occur in both models. However, in one model, the maximum flow phase may occur but in the other model, there only exists the constant bulk density phase.
EFFECT OF THE SURFACES ON ORIENTATIONAL PROPERTIES AND PECULIARITIES OF PHASE TRANSITIONS IN THERMOTROPIC NEMATICS
Authors: NESRULLAJEV ARIF , TEPEHAN FATMA Z.
Published: August 2005

In this work, the effect of thin films on the orientational, thermotropic and optical properties and on the peculiarities of the nematic–isotropic liquid phase transition has been carried out.

The planar textures of MBBA+EBBA eutectic mixture on the surfaces coated with Al2O3and ZrO2thin films have been obtained. The optical and thermodynamical parameters of the obtained, oriented textures have been determined. The effect of thin films on the temperature width of heterophase region and on the nematic–isotropic liquid phase transition temperatures has been investigated. The shift of the phase transition temperatures and the change of the temperature width of the heterophase region have been revealed.

For the analysis of peculiarities of the nematic–isotropic liquid phase transition and the heterophase regions of this transition, the mean field theory has been used.
ALGORITHMS FOR MINIMAX STATE PREDICTION OF TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
Authors: ROZENBAUM ANATOLY N. , DESHNER ANDREY I.
Published: August 2005

A problem of individual prediction of the state of technical systems is considered, where an approach for solving the problem is based on construction of minimax robust algorithms applicable in case of incomplete and insufficient measurements. Suggested algorithms are tested with real data samples.
Gazing and frowning as a new human--computer interaction technique
Authors: Surakka Veikko , Illi Marko , Isokoski Poika
Published: August 2005

The present aim was to study a new technique for human--computer interaction. It combined the use of two modalities, voluntary gaze direction and voluntary facial muscle activation for object pointing and selection. Fourteen subjects performed a series of pointing tasks with the new technique and with a mouse. At short distances the mouse was significantly faster than the new technique. However, there were no statistically significant differences at medium and long distances between the techniques. Fitts' law analyses were performed both by using only error-free trials and using also data including error trials (i.e., effective target width). In all cases both techniques seemed to follow Fitts' law, although for the new technique the effective target width correlation coefficient was smallerR= 0.776 than for the mouseR= 0.991. The regression slopes suggested that at very long distances (i.e., beyond 800 pixels) the new technique might be faster than the mouse. The new technique showed promising results already after a short practice and in the future it could be useful especially for physically challenged persons.
Removing communications in clustered microarchitectures through instruction replication
Authors: Aletà Alex , Codina Josep M. , González Antonio , Kaeli David
Published: August 2005

The need to communicate values between clusters can result in a significant performance loss for clustered microarchitectures. In this work, we describe an optimization technique that removes communications by selectively replicating an appropriate set of instructions. Instruction replication is done carefully because it might degrade performance due to the increased contention it can place on processor resources. The proposed scheme is built on top of a previously proposed state-of-the-art modulo-scheduling algorithm. Though this algorithm has been proved to be very effective at reducing communications, results show that the number of communications can be further decreased by around one-third through replication, which results in a significant speedup. IPC is increased by 25% on average for a four-cluster microarchitecture and by as much as 70% for selected programs. We also show that replicating appropriate sets of instructions is more effective than doubling the intercluster connection network bandwidth.
A low-complexity fetch architecture for high-performance superscalar processors
Authors: Santana Oliverio J. , Ramirez Alex , Larriba-Pey Josep L. , Valero Mateo
Published: August 2005

Fetch engine performance is a key topic in superscalar processors, since it limits the instruction-level parallelism that can be exploited by the execution core. In the search of high performance, the fetch engine has evolved toward more efficient designs, but its complexity has also increased.In this paper, we present the stream fetch engine, a novel architecture based on the execution of long streams of sequential instructions, taking maximum advantage of code layout optimizations. We describe our design in detail, showing that it achieves high fetch performance, while requiring less complexity than other state-of-the-art fetch architectures.
A compiler framework for speculative optimizations
Authors: Lin Jin , Chen Tong , Hsu Wei-Chung , Yew Pen-Chung , Ju Roy Dz-Ching , Ngai Tin-Fook , Chan Sun
Published: August 2005

Speculative execution, such as control speculation or data speculation, is an effective way to improve program performance. Using edge/path profile information or simple heuristic rules, existing compiler frameworks can adequately incorporate and exploit control speculation. However, very little has been done so far to allow existing compiler frameworks to incorporate and exploit data speculation effectively in various program transformations beyond instruction scheduling. This paper proposes a speculative static single assignment form to incorporate information from alias profiling and/or heuristic rules for data speculation, thus allowing existing frameworks to be extended to support both control and data speculation. Such a general framework is very useful for EPIC architectures that provide run-time checking (such as
advanced load address table
) on data speculation to guarantee the correctness of program execution. We use SSAPRE as one example to illustrate how to incorporate data speculation in partial redundancy elimination, register promotion, and strength reduction. Our extended framework allows both control and data speculations to be performed on top of SSAPRE and, thus, enables more aggressive speculative optimizations. The proposed framework has been implemented on Intel's Open Research Compiler. We present experimental data on some SPEC2000 benchmark programs to demonstrate the usefulness of this framework.
Intraprogram dynamic voltage scaling
Authors: Xie Fen , Martonosi Margaret , Malik Sharad
Published: August 2005

Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) has become an important dynamic power-management technique to save energy. DVS tunes the power-performance tradeoff to the needs of the application. The goal is to minimize energy consumption while meeting performance needs. Since CPU power consumption is strongly dependent on the supply voltage, DVS exploits the ability to control the power consumption by varying a processor's supply voltage and clock frequency. However, because of the energy and time overhead associated with switching DVS modes, DVS control has been used mainly at the interprogram level.In this paper, we explore the opportunities and limits of intraprogram DVS scheduling. An analytical model is derived to predict the maximum energy savings that can be obtained using intraprogram DVS given a few known program and processor parameters. This model gives insights into scenarios where energy consumption benefits from intraprogram DVS and those where there is no benefit. The model helps us extrapolate the benefits of intraprogram DVS into the future as processor parameters change. We then examine how much of these predicted benefits can actually be achieved through compile-time optimal settings of DVS modes. We extend an existing mixed-integer linear program formulation for this scheduling problem by accurately accounting for DVS energy switching overhead, by providing finer-grained control on settings and by considering multiple data categories in the optimization. Overall, this research provides a comprehensive view of intraprogram compile-time DVS management, providing both practical techniques for its immediate deployment as well theoretical bounds for use into the future.
Numerically estimating internal models of dynamic virtual objects
Authors: Robles-De-La-Torre G. , Sekuler R.
Published: August 2005

Precise manipulation of objects is ordinarily limited by visual, kinesthetic, motor, and cognitive factors. Specially designed virtual objects and tasks minimize such limitations, making it possible to isolate and estimate the internal model that guides subjects' performance. Subjects manipulated a computer-generated virtual object (
vO
), attempting to align
vO
to a target whose position changed randomly every 10 s. To analyze the control actions subjects use while manipulating the
vO
, we benchmarked human performance against that of ideal performers (IPs), behavioral counterparts to ideal observers used in sensory research. These comparisons showed that subjects performed as feed-forward, predictive controllers. Simulations with degraded-IPs suggest that human asymptotic performance was not limited by imprecisions of vision or of motor timing, but resulted mainly from inaccuracies in the internal models of
vO
dynamics.
Evaluating discourse understanding in spoken dialogue systems
Authors: Higashinaka Ryuichiro , Miyazaki Noboru , Nakano Mikio , Aikawa Kiyoaki
Published: August 2005

This article describes a method for creating an evaluation measure for discourse understanding in spoken dialogue systems. No well-established measure has yet been proposed for evaluating discourse understanding, which has made it necessary to evaluate it only on the basis of the system's total performance. Such evaluations, however, are greatly influenced by task domains and dialogue strategies. To find a measure that enables good estimation of system performance only from discourse understanding results, we enumerated possible discourse-understanding-related metrics and calculated their correlation with the system's total performance through dialogue experiments.
The optimum pipeline depth considering both power and performance
Authors: Hartstein A. , Puzak Thomas R.
Published: August 2005

The impact of pipeline length on both the power and performance of a microprocessor is explored both by theory and by simulation. A theory is presented for a range of power/performance metrics,

BIPS
m
/W

. The theory shows that the more important power is to the metric, the shorter the optimum pipeline length that results. For typical parameters neither
BIPS/W
nor

BIPS
2
/W

yield an optimum, i.e., a non-pipelined design is optimal. For

BIPS
3
/W

the optimum, averaged over all 55 workloads studied, occurs at a 22.5 FO4 design point, a 7 stage pipeline, but this value is highly dependent on the assumed growth in latch count with pipeline depth. As dynamic power grows, the optimal design point shifts to shorter pipelines. Clock gating pushes the optimum to deeper pipelines. Surprisingly, as leakage power grows, the optimum is also found to shift to deeper pipelines. The optimum pipeline depth varies for different classes of workloads: SPEC95 and SPEC2000 integer applications, traditional (legacy) database and on-line transaction processing applications, modern (e. g. web) applications, and floating point applications.
Consistent and automatic replica regeneration
Authors: Yu Haifeng , Vahdat Amin
Published: August 2005

Reducing management costs and improving the availability of large-scale distributed systems require automatic replica
regeneration
, that is, creating new replicas in response to replica failures. A major challenge to regeneration is maintaining consistency when the replica group changes. Doing so is particularly difficult across the wide area where failure detection is complicated by network congestion and node overload.In this context, this article presents Om, the first read/write peer-to-peer, wide-area storage system that achieves high availability and manageability through online automatic regeneration while still preserving consistency guarantees. We achieve these properties through the following techniques. First, by utilizing the
limited view divergence
property in today's Internet and by adopting the
witness model
, Om is able to regenerate from any single replica, rather than requiring a majority quorum, at the cost of a small (10
−6
in our experiments) probability of violating consistency during each regeneration. As a result, Om can deliver high availability with a small number of replicas, while traditional designs would significantly increase the number of replicas. Next, we distinguish
failure-free
reconfigurations from
failure-induced
ones, enabling common reconfigurations to proceed with a single round of communication. Finally, we use a
lease graph
among the replicas and a two-phase write protocol to optimize for reads, so that reads in Om can be processed by any single replica. Experiments on PlanetLab show that consistent regeneration in Om completes in approximately 20 seconds.
DISP
Authors: Ellard Daniel , Megquier James
Published: August 2005

DISP is a practical client-server protocol for the distributed storage of immutable data objects. Unlike most other contemporary protocols, DISP permits applications to make explicit tradeoffs between total storage space, computational overhead, and guarantees of availability, integrity, and privacy on a per-object basis. Applications specify the degree of redundancy with which each item is encoded, what level of integrity checks are computed and stored with each item, and whether items are stored in an encrypted format. At one extreme, clients willing to pay the overhead are guaranteed privacy, integrity, and availability of data stored in the system as long as fewer than half the servers are Byzantine. At the other extreme, objects that do not require privacy or integrity in the face of Byzantine servers can be stored with very low computational and storage overhead.DISP is efficient in terms of message count, message size, and storage requirements: even in the worst case, the read and write protocols require a number of messages that are linear with respect to the number of servers. In terms of message size, DISP requires transferring only marginally more than
L
bytes to correctly read an object of size
L
, even in the face of Byzantine server failures. In this article we provide a description of DISP and an analysis of its fault-tolerant properties. We also analyze the complexity of the protocol and discuss several potential applications. We conclude with a description of our prototype implementation and measurements of its performance on commodity hardware.
ACM SIGMM retreat report on future directions in multimedia research
Authors: Rowe Lawrence A. , Jain Ramesh
Published: August 2005

The ACM Multimedia Special Interest Group was created ten years ago. Since that time, researchers have solved a number of important problems related to media processing, multimedia databases, and distributed multimedia applications. A strategic retreat was organized as part of ACM Multimedia 2003 to assess the current state of multimedia research and suggest directions for future research. This report presents the recommendations developed during the retreat. The major observation is that research in the past decade has significantly advanced hardware and software support for distributed multimedia applications and that future research should focus on identifying and delivering applications that impact users in the real-world.The retreat suggested that the community focus on solving three grand challenges: (1) make authoring complex multimedia titles as easy as using a word processor or drawing program, (2) make interactions with remote people and environments nearly the same as interactions with local people and environments, and (3) make capturing, storing, finding, and using digital media an everyday occurrence in our computing environment. The focus of multimedia researchers should be on applications that incorporate correlated media, fuse data from different sources, and use context to improve application performance.
Salient stills
Authors: Teodosio Laura , Bender Walter
Published: August 2005

Salient Stills are a class of images that reflect the aggregation of the temporal changes that occur in a moving-image sequence with the salient features of individual frames preserved. They convey the intended expression of an entire series of moving frames---a visual summary of camera and object movements. The original frames, which may include variations in focal length or field of view, or moving objects, are combined to create a single still image. The still image may have multiresolution patches, a larger field of view, or higher overall resolution than any individual frame in the original image sequence. Salient Stills may also contain selected significant objects from individual or multiple video frames. Salient Stills attempt to retain much of the original content (detail) and spatial and temporal extent (context) of the original video or film sequence.
Automatic temporal layout mechanisms revisited
Authors: Buchanan M. Cecelia , Zellweger Polle T.
Published: August 2005

A traditional static document has a spatial layout that specifies where objects in the document appear. Because multimedia documents incorporate time, they also require a temporal layout, or schedule, that specifies when events in the document occur. This article argues that multimedia document systems should provide mechanisms for automatically producing temporal layouts for documents. The major advantage of this approach is that it makes it easier for authors to create and modify multimedia documents.This article revisits our 1993 framework for understanding automatic temporal formatters and explores the basic issues surrounding them. It also describes the Firefly multimedia document system, which was developed in 1992 to test the potential of automatic temporal formatting. Using our original framework, the paper reviews a representative sample of recent automatic document formatters. This analysis validates the basic framework and demonstrates the progress of the field in the intervening decade. A discussion of potential extensions to the framework is included.
View changes in augmented reality computer-aided-drawing
Authors: Shin Do Hyoung , Dunston Phillip S. , Wang Xiangyu
Published: August 2005

A prototype augmented reality computer-aided-drawing (AR CAD) prototype aimed at supporting a design detailing and review process has been developed. Utilizing head-mounted displays, AR CAD supports users in manipulating design models with two possible view change mechanisms---observer movement around the virtual object (model) or rotation of the virtual object. Previous studies in scene recognition across views of real objects yielded performances that were better under observer movement conditions, than under object rotation conditions. Based on these studies, it is hypothesized that the perception of 3D designs in an augmented scene from the AR CAD prototype is also better when changing views by observer movement than by model rotation. This study presents an experiment to test this hypothesis, so as to address the question of the appropriate mechanisms for view change that best support the perception of 3D designs presented in an augmented reality platform. The findings from the experiment suggest that an individual's perception of 3D designs in an augmented scene from AR CAD depends, in part, on the type of view change, showing that performance was better after observer movement than after model rotation.
Enhancing haptic detection of surface undulation
Authors: Kikuuwe Ryo , Sano Akihito , Mochiyama Hiromi , Takesue Naoyuki , Fujimoto Hideo
Published: August 2005

This paper introduces a device for enhancing detection of surface undulation through active touch. This device, which we call a “tactile contact lens,” is composed of a sheet and numerous pins arranged on one side of the sheet. Experimental results show that a small bump on a surface can be detected more accurately through this device than by bare finger and than through a flat sheet. A mathematical analysis of this phenomenon suggests two possible explanations for this phenomenon. One lies in the lever-like behavior of the pins. The pins convert the local inclination of the object surface into the tangential displacement of the skin surface. The second is the spatial aliasing effect resulting from the discrete contact. Due to this effect, the temporal change in the skin surface displacement is efficiently transduced into the temporal change in the skin tissue strain. The results of this analysis are then discussed in relation to other sensitivity-enhancing materials, tactile sensing mechanisms, and tactile/haptic display devices.
Display of virtual braille dots by lateral skin deformation: feasibility study
Authors: Lévesque Vincent , Pasquero Jérôme , Hayward Vincent , Legault Maryse
Published: August 2005

When a progressive wave of localized deformations occurs tangentially on the fingerpad skin, one typically experiences the illusion of a small object sliding on it. This effect was investigated because of its potential application to the display of Braille. A device was constructed that could produce such deformation patterns along a line. Blind subjects' ability to read truncated Braille characters (‘○○’, ‘○•’, ‘•○’, and ‘••’) using the device was experimentally tested and compared to their performance with a conventional Braille medium. While subjects could identify two-character strings with a high rate of success, several factors need to be addressed before a display based on this principle can become practical.
HapticWalker---a novel haptic foot device
Authors: Schmidt Henning , Hesse Stefan , Bernhardt Rolf , Krüger Jörg
Published: August 2005

This paper presents a new haptic locomotion interface, which comprises two programmable foot platforms with permanent foot machine contact. It is designed as a scalable and modular system with unit-by-unit extensibility offering up to six plus one degrees of freedom (DOF) per foot. The basic setup comprises three DOF per foot in the sagittal plane.The machine is based on a rigid hybrid parallel-serial robot kinematics structure. It is equipped with electrical direct drive motors, enabling highly dynamic footplate motions. For contact force measurement, six DOF force/torque sensors are mounted under each foot platform. The system was developed for major application in gait rehabilitation, hence great importance was attached to the incorporation of maximum passive and active security measures for machine users and medical operating personnel.The simulator is able to perform walking trajectories with speeds of up to 5 km/h and 120 steps/min. The system is able to simulate not only slow and “smooth” trajectories like walking on an even floor, up/down staircases, but also foot motions like walking on rough ground or even stumbling or sliding, which require high system dynamics.The machine is controlled by a self-developed full-featured robot control whose soft and hardware is based on up-to-date industrial standards and interfaces. The robot control software is based on RTLinux and runs on an industrial PC. The real-time motion generator includes a newly developed Fourier-based algorithm for the interpolation of natural cyclic walking trajectories. For the implementation of asynchronous events (e.g., sliding, stumbling), the controller comprises especially developed algorithms for automatic motion override adaptation. Different modes of haptic behavior needed for gait rehabilitation, ranging from full foot support during swing phase to completely passive behavior, are currently under development.Intuitive and safe machine operation by nontechnical personnel such as clinicians and physiotherapists is achieved via a separate Windows-based graphical user interface software comprising different window areas for machine programming and operation, real-time off-line simulation and online data visualization in two and three dimensions has been developed as well.A working prototype of the system has been built and tested successfully, including all soft and hardware components. Although the machine has been designed and built for major application in gait rehabilitation, its range of applicability is not limited to this area. It could be integrated into any setup requiring a highly dynamic haptic foot interface and permanent foot machine contact if needed.
Accelerated warmup for sampled microarchitecture simulation
Authors: Haskins John W. , Skadron Kevin
Published: August 2005

To reduce the cost of cycle-accurate software simulation of microarchitectures, many researchers use statistical sampling: by simulating only a small, representative subset of the end-to-end dynamic instruction stream in cycle-accurate detail, simulation results complete in much less time than simulating the cycle-by-cycle progress of an entire benchmark. In order for sampled simulation results to accurately reflect the nature the full dynamic instruction stream, however, state in the simulated cache and branch predictor must match or closely approximate state as it would have appeared had cycle-accurate simulation been used for the entire simulation. Researchers typically address this issue by prefixing a period of warmup---in which cache and branch predictor state are modeled in addition to programmer-visible architected state---to each cluster of contiguous instructions in the sample.One conservative, but slow approach is to always simulate cache and branch predictor state, whether among the cycle-accurate clusters, or among the instructions preceding each cluster. To save time, warmup heuristics have been proposed, but there is no one-size-fits-all heuristic for any benchmark. More rigorous, analytical warmup approaches are necessary in order to balance the requirements of high accuracy and rapidity from sampled simulations. This paper explores this issue and in particular demonstrates the merits ofmemory reference reuse latency(MRRL).Relative to the IPC measured by modeling all precluster cache and branch predictor activity, MRRL generated an average error in IPC of less than 1% and simultaneously reduced simulation running times by an average of approximately 50% (or 95% of the maximum potential speedup).
Panoptes: scalable low-power video sensor networking technologies
Authors: Feng Wu-Chi , Kaiser Ed , Feng Wu Chang , Baillif Mikael Le
Published: August 2005

Video-based sensor networks can provide important visual information in a number of applications including: environmental monitoring, health care, emergency response, and video security. This article describes the Panoptes video-based sensor networking architecture, including its design, implementation, and performance. We describe two video sensor platforms that can deliver high-quality video over 802.11 networks with a power requirement less than 5 watts. In addition, we describe the streaming and prioritization mechanisms that we have designed to allow it to survive long-periods of disconnected operation. Finally, we describe a sample application and bitmapping algorithm that we have implemented to show the usefulness of our platform. Our experiments include an in-depth analysis of the bottlenecks within the system as well as power measurements for the various components of the system.
Semantics and feature discovery via confidence-based ensemble
Authors: Goh Kingshy , Li Beitao , Chang Edward Y.
Published: August 2005

Providing accurate and scalable solutions to map low-level perceptual features to high-level semantics is essential for multimedia information organization and retrieval. In this paper, we propose a confidence-based dynamic ensemble (CDE) to overcome the shortcomings of the traditionalstaticclassifiers. In contrast to the traditional models, CDE can make dynamic adjustments to accommodate new semantics, to assist the discovery of useful low-level features, and to improve class-prediction accuracy. We depict two key components of CDE: a multi-level function that asserts class-prediction confidence, and the dynamic ensemble method based upon the confidence function. Through theoretical analysis and empirical study, we demonstrate that CDE is effective in annotating large-scale, real-world image datasets.
Network file storage with graceful performance degradation
Authors: Jiang Anxiao (Andrew) , Bruck Jehoshua
Published: August 2005

A file storage scheme is proposed for networks containing heterogeneous clients. In the scheme, the performance measured by file-retrieval delays degrades gracefully under increasingly serious faulty circumstances. The scheme combines coding with storage for better performance. The problem is NP-hard for general networks; and this article focuses on tree networks with asymmetric edges between adjacent nodes. A polynomial-time memory-allocation algorithm is presented, which determines how much data to store on each node, with the objective of minimizing the total amount of data stored in the network. Then a polynomial-time data-interleaving algorithm is used to determine which data to store on each node for satisfying the quality-of-service requirements in the scheme. By combining the memory-allocation algorithm with the data-interleaving algorithm, an optimal solution to realize the file storage scheme in tree networks is established.
Challenges and design choices in nanoscale CMOS
Authors: Narendra Siva G.
Published: August 2005

The driving force for the semiconductor industry growth has been the elegant scaling nature of CMOS technology. In this article, we will first review the history of technology scaling that follows Moore's law from the prespective of microprocessor designs. Challenges to continue the historical scaling trends will be highlighted and design choices to address two specific challenges, process variation and leakage power, will be discussed. In nanoscale CMOS technology generations, supply and threshold voltages will have to continually scale to sustain performance increase, limit energy consumption, control power dissipation, and maintain reliability. These continual scaling requirements on supply and threshold voltages pose several technology and circuit design challenges. One such challenge is the expected increase in process variation and the resulting increase in design margins. Concept of adaptive circuit schemes to deal with increasing design margins will be explained. Next, with threshold voltage scaling, subthreshold leakage power has become a significant portion of total power in nanoscale CMOS systems. Therefore, it has become imperative to accurately predict and minimize leakage power of such systems, especially with increasing within-die threshold voltage variation. A model that predicts system leakage based on first principles will be presented and circuit techniques to reduce system leakage will be discussed. It is essential to point out that this article does not cover all challenges that nanoscale CMOS systems face. Challenges that are not detailed in the main sections of the article and speculation on what future nanoscale silicon based CMOS systems might resemble are summarized.