A low-complexity rate allocation algorithm for joint source-channel video coding The problem of enabling robust video transmission over lossy networks has become increasingly important because of the growing interest in video delivery over unreliable channels such as wireless networks. The more the coding process relies on an intensive use of prediction to improve the coding gain, the more the reconstructed sequence proves to be sensitive to information losses. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to introduce some redundant data in order to increase the robustness of the coded bit stream. A possible solution can be found filling a matrix structure with RTP packets and applying a Forward Error Correction (FEC) code on its rows. However, the matrix size and the chosen FEC code affect the performance of the coding system. The paper proposes a novel adaptation technique that tunes the amount of redundant information included in the packet stream and differs from previously proposed solutions since it relies on the percentage of null quantized transform coefficients in place of the activity or the Mean Square Error (MSE). This strategy is then integrated in a joint source-channel coder rate allocation algorithm that shares the available bits between the H.264/AVC coder and the channel coder according to the significance of the frame in the decoding process. Experimental results show that the presented approach significantly improves the quality of the reconstructed sequences at the decoder with respect to activity-based strategies and requires a low computational complexity.

O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

h.264/avc
joint source-channel coding
bit allocation
r-d parameterization
low complexity


Comorbidity of chronic diseases in the elderly: Patterns identified by a copula design for mixed responses Joint modeling of multiple health related random variables is essential to develop an understanding for the public health consequences of an aging population. This is particularly true for patients suffering from multiple chronic diseases. The contribution is to introduce a novel model for multivariate data where some response variables are discrete and some are continuous. It is based on pair copula constructions (PCCs) and has two major advantages over existing methodology. First, expressing the joint dependence structure in terms of bivariate copulas leads to a computationally advantageous expression for the likelihood function. This makes maximum likelihood estimation feasible for large multidimensional data sets. Second, different and possibly asymmetric bivariate (conditional) marginal distributions are allowed which is necessary to accurately describe the limiting behavior of conditional distributions for mixed discrete and continuous responses. The advantages and the favorable predictive performance of the model are demonstrated using data from the Second Longitudinal Study of Aging (LSOA II).

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I


Integrated design of the intelligent web-based Chinese Medical Diagnostic System (CMDS) Systematic development for digestive health Chinese Medicine (CM) has been recognized as the popular complementary medicine in the world and the abundance of healing knowledge has been transmitted and enriched from generation to generation. The well-recorded archive of Chinese medical knowledge has grown and developed into very detailed theory and philosophy together with a comprehensive and subtle system of diagnosis. Recently, the Internet has been quite often used in a variety of applications for medical purpose, i.e. to provide real-time and platform-independent access which can build and share knowledge about clinical diagnosis experiences, knacks, diseases treatments, and even prescriptions. In this respect, there is a real need of an intelligent system for Chinese medical physician or education because Chinese medicine has evolved complex methods of diagnosis and treatment tailored to the individuals subtle patterns of disharmony. This allows it not only to treat fully manifest diseases, but also to assist in maintaining health and balance to prevent illnesses from occurring. Ontologies become an important mechanism to build knowledge-based systems. The role of ontologies is to capture domain knowledge and provide a commonly agreed upon understanding of a domain. The advantages include the sharing and re-use of knowledge, and the better engineering of knowledge-based system with respect to acquisition, verification, and maintenance. In this paper, we propose a unifying framework for intelligent disease diagnosis system named CMDS Chinese Medical Diagnostic System where the medical ontology has been integrated for the system development, and the methodologies of its implementation for digestive health. CMDS uses web interface and expert system technology to act as human expertise and diagnose a number of digestive system diseases. Besides, to efficiently elicit the knowledge of digestive system from domain experts and construct the medical ontology, a hybrid knowledge acquisition strategy is proposed. CMDS provides a truly precise analysis for digestive system disease and the prototype system can diagnose up to 50 types of diseases amongst 10 species of primary digestive system, and just uses over 500 rules and 600 images for various diseases. The satisfactory performance of the system has proven that it could serve the educational purpose, act as a consultant role and the functionality can be extended to the whole body health system.

O O O O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I I O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

chinese medical diagnostic system
knowledge acquisition
ontology

web-based expert system
object-oriented approach


opportunistic forwarding in wireless networks with duty cycling Opportunistic forwarding, by which data is randomly relayed to a neighbor based on local network information, is a fault-tolerant distributed algorithm particularly useful for challenged ad hoc and sensor networks where it is difficult to obtain global topology information because of frequent disruptions. Also, duty cycling is a common technique that constrains the RF operations of wireless devices for saving the battery energy and thus extending the longevity of the network. The combination of opportunistic forwarding and duty cycling is a useful approach for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks that are plagued with energy constraints and poor connectivity. However, such a design is hampered by the difficulty of analyzing and controlling its performance, particularly, the end-to-end latency. This paper presents analytical results that shed light on the latency of opportunistic forwarding in wireless networks with duty cycling. In particular, we give approximation formulas and bounds for the expected latency of opportunistic forwarding in presence of duty cycling for general finite network topologies, and an exact formula for a specific regular network topology that captures some common sensor network deployment scenarios. Moreover, our results concern finite-sized networks, and hence, are practically more useful than other asymptotic analyses in the literature.

B I O O O O B I B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O B I O O O O O B I I I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

opportunistic forwarding
wireless ad hoc and sensor networks
duty cycling


Identification of Chaotic System Using Fuzzy Neural Networks with Time-Varying Learning Algorithm In this paper, robust fuzzy neural networks (FNNs) are proposed to identify chaotic systems. In the proposed FNNs, integrating support vector regression (SVR) and annealing robust time-varying learning algorithm (ARTVLA) is adopted to optimize the structure of neural networks. In the evolutionary procedure, first, SVR is adopted to determine the number of hidden layer nodes and the initial structure of the FNNs. After initialization, ARTVLA with nonlinear time- varying learning rate is then applied to train FNNs. In ARTVLA, a computationally efficient optimization method, particle swarm optimization (PSO), is adopted to simultaneously find optimal learning rates. With the promising learning rates, the ARTVLA- based FNNs (ARTVLA-FNNs) can overcome the stagnation in searching promising solutions. Due to the advantages of SVR and ARTVLA-FNNs (SVR-ARTVLA-FNNs), the proposed S'VR-ARTVLA-FNNs have good performance for identifying chaotic systems. Simulation results are illustrated the feasibility and superiority of the proposed SVR-ARTVLA-FNNs.

O O B I O B I I O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

fuzzy neural networks
support vector regression
chaotic system

annealing robust time-varying learning algorithms


native mpsoc co-simulation environment for software performance estimation Performance estimation of Multi-Processor System-On-Chip (MPSoC) at a high abstraction level is required in order to perform early architecture exploration and accurate design validations. Although abstract executable models provide interesting functional validation capabilities, they quickly become unsuitable when timing becomes an issue - Native software simulation, a good candidate from the speed point of view, suffers from this issue. In this paper, we present a transactional level simulation environment that allows reliable performance estimation with a specific focus on software timing estimation on multi processor architectures. The embedded software is compiled natively on the host running the simulation and instrumented to reflect its execution on a specific target processor and then executed on a simulation model of the underlying hardware. The key contribution of this work is the use of both static and dynamic analysis, that allow realistic timing measurements in native software simulation. Experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed method to accurately estimate software performance in co-simulation environments.

O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

code annotation
system simulation
cross-compilation


Validation and sensitivity study of an elastoplastic problem using the Worst Scenario Method Three models of elastoplasticity are compared on the basis of a classic example of a cyclically loaded notched bar. The numerical solution displays a monotonous dependence of the stress, adjacent to the notch, on the uncertain input material characteristics.

O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

validation of plasticity models
uncertain input data


NatalieQ: A web server for protein-protein interaction network querying Molecular interactions need to be taken into account to adequately model the complex behavior of biological systems. These interactions are captured by various types of biological networks, such as metabolic, gene-regulatory, signal transduction and protein-protein interaction networks. We recently developed Natalie, which computes high-quality network alignments via advanced methods from combinatorial optimization.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

network alignment
protein-protein interaction
sequence similarity
topology
wnt signaling pathway


experimental implementations of mixed integer programming algorithms The Mixed Integer Programming Interface Subroutine System (MIPIS)* consists of a set of programs written to facilitate the implementation of most known MIP algorithms in a common system environment. This experimental system [3] makes no claim to overall (running time) efficiency since it utilizes the experimental, Fortran based linear programming (LP) code NYLPS (New York Scientific Center Linear programming System [7])* known to be less efficient than other commercially available LP codes (e.g. MPS/360, etc.) written in Assembly Language. NYLPS is an OS/360 extension of LPS/360 [8] which operates under DOS/360. The study and associated development of MIPIS was directed toward examining the manner in which MIP algorithms would be implemented, in a flexible environment, rather than toward implementing another MIP production code. It is hoped that this experiment will motivate designers to provide additional flexibility for building and extending the scope of future mathematical programming systems.

O O O B I I O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O

mixed integer programming
mathematical programming
linear programming

algorithmic experimentation
branch and bound
integer programming
optimization


power-performance management on an ibm power7 server The processor and cooling subsystems of high-performance servers consume a significant portion of total system power. In this paper, we use the server energy-efficiency benchmark SPECpower_ssj2008 to assess dynamic power management strategies for these sub-systems on an IBM POWER 750 platform. First, we evaluate the impact of feedback-driven fan control to reduce power while continuously maintaining a suitable thermal environment. Next, we demonstrate the importance of refining traditional utilization-based DVFS algorithms when managing systems with large core and thread counts. We present a new approach and demonstrate its effectiveness with real-world scenarios for dynamic power management. With reliable runtime power management, we can safely boost (turbo) core frequencies beyond their nominal values to achieve higher throughput. The combined effect of dynamic fan and enhanced processor DVFS control yields an overall improvement of 43\% for the energy-efficiency score of the SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark on our test system.

O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

fan control
dvfs
power management
power7


Mining associations between web stock news volumes and stock prices The significant increases of web stock news volumes (WSNVs) are often associated with the significant changes of stock prices. When the WSNV for a firm increases insufficiently, the stock price movement is often placid. When the WSNV increases significantly, the stock price movement is often oscillatory. A method of determining the amplitude of worth-noting significant increase on the WSNV is presented, by automatically inflating the standard deviations with different scales for the firms of different sizes. A measure of significant changes of stock prices is defined. Based on statistics and neural networks, the associations between these measures are mined through experiments. The results of the study provide us with the new clues to the microstructure of the stock market from the vision of the Internet news.

O O O B I I I O B I O O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

web stock news volumes
stock prices
neural networks


modeling and verifying multi-agent behaviors using predicate/transition nets In a multi-agent system, how agents accomplish a goal task is usually specified by multi-agent plans built from basic actions (e.g. operators) of which the agents are capable. A critical problem with such an approach is how can the designer make sure the plans are reliable. To tackle this problem, this paper presents a formal approach for modeling and analyzing multi-agent behaviors using Predicate/Transition (PrT) nets, a high-level formalism of Petri nets. We construct a multi-agent model by representing agent capabilities as transitions. To verify a multi-agent PrT model, we adapt the planning graphs as a compact structure for the reachability analysis. We also demonstrate that, based on the PrT model, whether parallel actions specified in multi-agent plans can be executed in parallel and whether the plans guarantee the achievement of the goal can be verified by analyzing the dependency relations among the transitions.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

formal methods
predicate/transition nets
multiagent systems
verification


Noise- and compression-robust biological features for texture classification Texture classification is an important aspect of many digital image processing applications such as surface inspection, content-based image retrieval, and biomedical image analysis. However, noise and compression artifacts in images cause problems for most texture analysis methods. This paper proposes the use of features based on the human visual system for texture classification using a semisupervised, hierarchical approach. The texture feature consists of responses of cells which are found in the visual cortex of higher primates. Classification experiments on different texture libraries indicate that the proposed features obtain a very high classification near 97%. In contrast to other well-established texture analysis methods, the experiments indicate that the proposed features are more robust to various levels of speckle and Gaussian noise. Furthermore, we show that the classification rate of the textures using the presented biologically inspired features is hardly affected by image compression techniques.

B O O O O O B I B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O

texture classification
noise
image compression


On the communication complexity of Bar-Yehuda, Goldreich and Itai's randomized broadcasting algorithm The algorithm by Bar-Yehuda, Goldreich and Itai is one of the best known randomized broadcast algorithms for radio networks. Its probability of success and time complexity are nearly optimal. We propose a modification of this algorithm, which decreases the communication complexity, preserving other properties. Moreover, we show that the local communication complexity of the modified algorithm is deterministic.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


A Novel Two-Hop-Relay WCDMA Cellular System with Queuing Buffer In this paper, we present a novel two-hop-relay WCDMA cellular system with queuing capability, where a call can be queued in the incoming buffer at the congested Base Transceiver Station if no channel is immediately available, so as to reduce the call blocking probability. We develop an analytic model based on multidimensional Markov chains. Then based on this model, we can calculate the average system transmission rate, the queuing delay and the system call blocking probability respectively. Finally, through experimental simulations, we analyze the impact of the various parameters on the performance for the system.

O O O B B I O O O O O O O O O O O B B I O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

cellular system
wcdma
queuing capability
markov chains


Modelling homeorhesis by ordinary differential equations Homeorhesis is a necessary feature of any living system. If a system does not perform homeorhesis, it is nonliving. The present work develops the sufficient conditions for the ODE model to describe homeorhesis and suggests the structure of the model. The proposed homeorhesis model is fairly general. It treats homeorhesis as piecewise homeostasis. The model can be specified in different ways depending on the specific system and specific purposes of this analysis. An example of the specification is the PhasTraM model, the homeorhesis-aware nonlinear reaction-diffusion model for hyperplastic oncogeny in the previous works of the author. The qualitative agreement of the developed homeorhesis model with the living-system experimental results is noted. The work also shows that the basic mathematical models (such as the active-particle generalized kinetic theory) are substantially more important for the living-matter studies than in the case of nonliving matter. A few directions for future research are suggested as well. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

O B O O O O B O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

generalized kinetic theory
living system
homeorhesis

active particle
ordinary differential equation
exogenous signal


Performance benchmarking of wireless Web servers The advent of mobile computers and wireless networks enables the deployment of wireless Web servers and clients ill short-lived ad hoc network environments, such as classroom area networks. The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the performance capabilities of wireless Web servers ill such all environment. Network traffic measurements are conducted oil an in-building IEEE 802.11 b wireless ad hoc network, using a wireless-enabled Apache Web server, several wireless clients, and a wireless network traffic analyzer. The experiments focus oil the HTTP transaction rate and end-to-end throughput achievable in such all ad hoc network environment, and the impacts of factors such its Web object size, number of clients, and persistent HTTP connections. The results show that the wireless network bottleneck manifests itself ill several ways: inefficient HTTP performance, client-side packet losses, server-side packet losses, network thrashing, and unfairness among Web clients. Persistent HTTP connections offer tip to 350% improvement in HTTP transaction rate and user-level throughput, while also improving fairness for mobile clients accessing content from it wireless Web server. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

ad hoc networks
network traffic measurement
ieee 802.11b wlan
web performance


REVEL: Tactile Feedback Technology for Augmented Reality REVEL is an augmented reality (AR) tactile technology that allows for change to the tactile feeling of real objects by augmenting them with virtual tactile textures using a device worn by the user. Unlike previous attempts to enhance AR environments with haptics, we neither physically actuate objects or use any force-or tactile-feedback devices, nor require users to wear tactile gloves or other apparatus on their hands. Instead, we employ the principle of reverse electrovibration where we inject a weak electrical signal anywhere on the user body creating an oscillating electrical field around the user's fingers. When sliding his or her fingers on a surface of the object, the user perceives highly distinctive tactile textures augmenting the physical object. By tracking the objects and location of the touch, we associate dynamic tactile sensations to the interaction context. REVEL is built upon our previous work on designing electrovibration-based tactile feedback for touch surfaces [Bau, et al. 2010]. In this paper we expand tactile interfaces based on electrovibration beyond touch surfaces and bring them into the real world. We demonstrate a broad range of application scenarios where our technology can be used to enhance AR interaction with dynamic and unobtrusive tactile feedback.

O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

tactile displays
tangible interfaces
augmented surfaces
touch interaction


Lie-group-type neural system learning by manifold retractions ? The present manuscript treats the problem of adapting a neural signal processing system whose parameters belong to a curved manifold, which is assumed to possess the structure of a Lie group. Neural system parameter adapting is effected by optimizing a system performance criterion. Riemannian-gradient-based optimization is suggested, which cannot be performed by standard additive stepping because of the curved nature of the parameter space. Retraction-based stepping is discussed, instead, along with a companion stepsize-schedule selection procedure. A case-study of learning by optimization of a non-quadratic criterion is discussed in detail.

O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

neural learning theory
neural signal processing systems
lie groups


Does pseudo-relevance feedback improve distributed information retrieval systems? This paper presents a thorough analysis of the capabilities of the pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF) technique applied to distributed information retrieval (DIR). Previous studies have researched the application of PRF to improve the selection process of the best set of collections from a ranked list. This work emphasizes the effectiveness of PRF applied to the collection fusion problem. Usually, DIR systems apply PRF in the same way as traditional Information Retrieval systems. For each collection, local results are improved through PRF. A first question which arises is whether this local improvement is preserved in the final result. In addition, DIR systems merge the documents of rankings that are returned from a set of collections. Since a new global list of documents is available, we could use that list to apply PRF again, but on global level rather than on a local level. In order to apply global PRF, we have developed a merging approach called two-step RSV. Finally, we describe a number of experiments involving the two levels, local and global, of application of the PRF techniques.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


Externally growing self-organizing maps and its application to e-mail database visualization and exploration In this paper we present an approach to organize and classify e-mails using self-organizing maps. The aim is on the one hand to provide an intuitive visual profile of the considered mailing lists and on the other hand to offer an intuitive navigation tool, were similar e-mails are located close to each other, so that the user can scan easily for e-mails similar in content. To be able to evaluate this approach we have developed a prototypical software tool that imports messages from a mailing list and arranges/groups these e-mails based on a similarity measure. The tool combines conventional keyword search methods with a visualization of the considered e-mail collection. The prototype was developed based on externally growing self-organizing maps, which solve some problems of conventional self-organizing maps and which are computationally viable. Besides the underlying algorithms we present and discuss some system evaluations in order to show the capabilities of the approach.

O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

growing self-organizing maps
e-mail
document classification
information retrieval


Heuristic Discovery of Role-Based Trust Chains in Peer-to-Peer Networks Credential chains are needed in trusted peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, where trust delegation must be established between each pair of peers at specific role level. Role-based trust is refined from the coarse-grained trust model used in most P2P reputation systems. This paper offers a novel heuristic-weighting approach to selecting the most likely path to construct a role-based trust chain. We apply history-sensitive heuristics to measure the path complexity and to assess the chaining efficiency. Our method discovers successive edges of a trust chain, adaptively, to match with the demands in any given P2P application. New heuristic chaining algorithms are developed for backward, forward, and bidirectional discovery of trust chains. Our heuristic chain discovery scheme shortens the search time, reduces the memory requirement, and enhances the chaining accuracy in scalable P2P networks. Consider a trust graph over N credentials and M distinct role nodes. Our heuristic trust-chain discovery algorithms require O(N(2)logN) search time and O(M) memory space, if the secondary heuristics are generated offline in advance. These are improved from O(N(3)) search time and O(NM) space required in nonheuristic discovery algorithms developed by Li et al. [12]. Our analytical results are verified by extensive simulation experiments over typical classes of role- based trust graphs.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

peer-to-peer networks
role-based credentials
heuristic semantics
internet applications


Theatre, Play Doh and Comic Strips: Designing Organic User Interfaces with Young Adolescent and Teenage Participants This paper presents the process and outputs from a participatory design activity with secondary school children whose task was to design organic user interfaces (OUIs) for use in energy-aware applications. Although experienced in participatory design sessions with children and teenagers, the design team faced three new challenges in this work: how to convey the idea of OUIs, how to facilitate the pupils to design OUIs and how to interpret the OUI design ideas. To convey the ideas of OUI, the Obstructed Theatre method, used in other studies with children and teenagers, was used. In this work, the salient features of the OUI conveyed in the theatre were: its malleability, its potential to bend and change shape, its association with the body and its novelty. To facilitate the design, three scenarios of increasing user interface complexity were conveyed in the theatre; and three different media (i) slime and pipe cleaners, (ii) PlayDoh and small Lego bricks, (iii) fabric and sticky shapes that afforded the creation of designs representing future organic interactive technologies were deployed. To enable the design team to make sense of the resulting designs, a Comic Strip approach was used to capture the changes in the designs as they demonstrated interaction. The paper explores this work from three perspectives; first, the effectiveness of the Obstructed Theatre approach to convey requirements of OUIs, secondly, the effectiveness of the three media used in the design sessions to encourage design solutions for OUIs and thirdly, the quality and relevance of the design ideas generated in the sessions and communicated to the design team using the Comic Strips and their applicability to other contexts. The paper concludes with some thoughts on methods and materials that could be used to encourage design ideas for OUIs and offers some of the participants more innovative ideas for the research and development community.

O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O B O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O B I O O B O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

teenagers
participatory design
organic user interfaces
children


Hardness and algorithms for rainbow connection An edge-colored graph G is rainbow connected if any two vertices are connected by a path whose edges have distinct colors. The rainbow connection of a connected graph G, denoted rc(G), is the smallest number of colors that are needed in order to make G rainbow connected. In the first result of this paper we prove that computing rc(G) is NP-Hard solving an open problem from Caro et al. (Electron. J. Comb. 15, 2008, Paper R57). In fact, we prove that it is already NP-Complete to decide if rc(G)=2, and also that it is NP-Complete to decide whether a given edge-colored (with an unbounded number of colors) graph is rainbow connected. On the positive side, we prove that for every epsilon > 0, a connected graph with minimum degree at least epsilon n has bounded rainbow connection, where the bound depends only on epsilon, and a corresponding coloring can be constructed in polynomial time. Additional non-trivial upper bounds, as well as open problems and conjectures are also presented.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


Toward a higher-level visual representation for content-based image retrieval Having effective methods to access the desired images is essential nowadays with the availability of a huge amount of digital images. The proposed approach is based on an analogy between content-based image retrieval and text retrieval. The aim of the approach is to build a meaningful mid-level representation of images to be used later on for matching between a query image and other images in the desired database. The approach is based firstly on constructing different visual words using local patch extraction and fusion of descriptors. Secondly, we introduce a new method using multilayer pLSA to eliminate the noisiest words generated by the vocabulary building process. Thirdly, a new spatial weighting scheme is introduced that consists of weighting visual words according to the probability of each visual word to belong to each of the n Gaussian. Finally, we construct visual phrases from groups of visual words that are involved in strong association rules. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms the results of traditional image retrieval techniques.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

visual words
visual phrases
spatial weighting
plsa

surf
content-based image retrieval
gaussian mixture model


Almost autonomous training of mixtures of principal component analyzers In recent years, a number of mixtures of local PCA models have been proposed. Most of these models require the user to set the number of submodels (local models) in the mixture and the dimensionality of the submodels (i.e., number of PC's) as well. To make the model free of these parameters, we propose a greedy expectation-maximization algorithm to find a suboptimal number of submodels. For a given retained variance ratio, the proposed algorithm estimates for each submodel the dimensionality that retains this given variability ratio. We test the proposed method on two different classification problems: handwritten digit recognition and 2-class ionosphere data classification. The results show that the proposed method has a good performance.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

pca mixture model
em algorithm
regularization


performance evaluation of relevance feedback methods In this paper we review the evaluation of relevance feedback methods for content-based image retrieval systems. We start out by presenting an overview of current common practice, and argue that the evaluation of relevance feedback methods differs from evaluating CBIR systems as a whole. Specifically, we identify the challenging issues that are particular to the evaluation of retrieval employing relevance feedback. Next, we propose three guidelines to move toward more effective evaluation benchmarks. We focus particularly on assessing feedback methods more directly in terms of their goal of identifying the relevant target class with a small number of samples, and show how to compensate for query targets of varying difficulty by measuring efficiency at generalization.

O O O B I O O O O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


LTL over integer periodicity constraints Periodicity constraints are used in many logical formalisms, in fragments of Presburger LTL, in calendar logics, and in logics for access control, to quote a few examples. In the paper, we introduce the logic PLTLmod, an extension of Linear-Time Temporal Logic LTL with past-time operators whose atomic formulae are defined from a first-order constraint language dealing with periodicity. Although the underlying constraint language is a fragment of Presburger arithmetic shown to admit a PSPACE-complete satisfiability problem, we establish that PLTLmod model-checking and satisfiability problems remain in PSPACE as plain LTL (full Presburger LTL is known to be highly undecidable). This is particularly interesting for dealing with periodicity constraints since the language of PLTLmod has a language more concise than existing languages and the temporalization of our first-order language of periodicity constraints has the same worst case complexity as the underlying constraint language. Finally, we show examples of introduction the quantification in the logical language that provide to PLTLmod, EXPSPACE-complete problems. As another application, we establish that the equivalence problem for extended single-string automata, known to express the equality of time granularities, is PSPACE-complete by designing a reduction from QBF and by using our results for PLTLmod. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O B I B I O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

presburger ltl
periodicity constraints
qbf

computational complexity
buchi automaton


Ergonomic evaluation of the angle of abduction in a computer numerically controlled electro discharge machine environment Dynamic situations are not fully controlled and affected by uncertain human factors. Anthropometric considerations are important in the design of systems. Present research work have considered the angle of abduction, whose effect on operators performance has been ergonomically evaluated in a CNC-EDM environment. In this work, the experimental data are analyzed through an ANOVA using SPSS statistical software. The result indicates that the angle of abduction significantly affects the operators performance in a CNC-EDM interaction environment. Further analysis revealed that a 45 degree abduction angle gives the optimal performance as far as a humanmachine interaction environment is concerned.

O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

system design
cnc-edm environment
data entry task
visual display


An intelligent embedded system for malicious email filtering Disaster from computer viruses has been ranked at the top of computer crime incidents by CSI/FBI. However, many anti-virus systems have high latency and consume a lot in the available CPU resources for malicious code filtering. Nevertheless, switching or updating anti-virus software within different operating systems is costly, tedious, and annoying. Therefore, we have proposed a standalone intelligent Embedded Email Virus Filter system to overcome these drawbacks. The associative Petri net model that integrates malicious behavior reasoning is adopted to detect the malicious executable. The experimental results show that our proposed system has great potential in email virus filtering.

O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I


Volume preservation of multiresolution meshes Geometric constraints have proved to be efficient, for enhancing the realism of shape animation. The present paper addresses the computation and the preservation of the volume enclosed by multiresolution meshes. A wavelet based representation allows the mesh to be handled at any level of resolution. The key contribution is the calculation of the volume as a trilinear form with respect to the multiresolution coefficients. Efficiency is reached thanks to the pre-processing of a sparse 3D data structure involving the transposition of the filters while represented as a lifting scheme. A versatile and interactive method for preserving the volume during a deformation process is then proposed. It is based on a quadratic minimization subject to a linearization of the volume constraint. A closed form of the solution is derived.

O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

volume computation
constrained deformation
wavelets


An initialization method to simultaneously find initial cluster centers and the number of clusters for clustering categorical data The leading partitional clustering technique, k-modes, is one of the most computationally efficient clustering methods for categorical data. However, in the k-modes-type algorithms, the performance of their clustering depends on initial cluster centers and the number of clusters needs be known or given in advance. This paper proposes a novel initialization method for categorical data which is implemented to the k-modes-type algorithms. The proposed method can not only obtain the good initial cluster centers but also provide a criterion to find candidates for the number of clusters. The performance and scalability of the proposed method has been studied on real data sets. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed method is effective and can be applied to large data sets for its linear time complexity with respect to the number of data points.

O O O O O O B I I O B I I I O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

categorical data
initial cluster centers
the number of clusters

the k-modes-type algorithms
density measure


Optimization of the Return Loss of Differentially Fed Microstrip Patch Antenna Using ANN and Firefly Algorithm The microstrip patch antenna that have more than two feed points or lines is known as differential fed microstrip patch antenna. In this paper, firefly algorithm (FA) and artificial neural network (ANN) has been applied to a Flower shaped differentially fed microstrip patch antenna for optimizing the return loss. This new optimization method is much faster than conventional optimization methods. FA is the new nature-inspired algorithm which is based on the flashing behavior of fireflies in the summer sky in the hot and humid regions. To validate the ability of FA, the results obtained from FA are compared with that obtained using genetic algorithm (GA) and ANN, and it has been observed that FA performs better as compared to GA.

B O O B I O O O B I I O O O B I O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O B I O O B O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

microstrip patch antenna
firefly algorithm
genetic algorithm
optimization
return loss


Help features in digital libraries: types, formats, presentation styles, and problems Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Help features in digital libraries and identify problems related to their design. Design/methodology/approach - This study selects six digital libraries to represent a variety of digital libraries developed or sponsored by different types of organisations. The Help features of these selected digital libraries are examined by their types (explicit versus implicit), formats (texts, images, screenshots, multimedia materials, and interactive formats), and presentation styles (descriptive, guided, procedural, and exemplary). Findings - This study presents the types of Help features available in the selected digital libraries, and further characterises the formats and presentation styles of these Help features. In the process of analysis, the author also identifies six types of problems: lack of standards; tradeoff between using explicit Help and implicit help; tradeoff between using general Help versus specific Help; lack of interactive Help features; lack of dynamic presentation styles; and lack of Help features for advanced users and users who do not understand English. Research limitations/implications - In order to design Help features that facilitate users to effectively use digital libraries, further research needs to extend studies to what types of help-seeking situations users generally encounter and the corresponding support they need. Originality/value - This study provides insightful information regarding the current status and problems of the Help features in existing digital libraries.

O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I


Chronological simulation for transmission reliability margin evaluation with time varying loads This paper has as objective to assess the chronological variations in the Available Transfer Capability (ATC) caused by uncertainties associated with hourly load fluctuations and equipment availabilities. The system states resulting from these uncertainties are generated using the Monte Carlo Method with Sequential Simulation (MCMSS). The ATC for each generated state is evaluated through a linear optimal power flow based on the Interior-Point Method. These ATC values have been used to generate the probability distribution of the hourly ATC. This probability distribution enabled to estimate the Transmission Reliability Margin (TRM) for a specified risk level. The results, with a modified version of the IEEE Reliability test System, demonstrate that the time dependent uncertainties have a significant impact on the TRM.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

available transfer capability
monte carlo method

linear programming
composite system
power system reliability


New learning strategies in Bustillos and Oliveira model Armando Ticona Bustillos and Paulo Murilo C. de Oliveira first combined learning strategy with Penna model using a third bit string to represent knowledge. There are two forms of learning strategy in their model: individual learning through trial-and-error and social learning through copying knowledge from others. Based on the Bustillos-Oliveira model, we propose a new learning strategy: (1) Individual learning ability depending on knowledge, through which the individual learning ability is not a constant but in direct proportion to the knowledge level of individual; (2) Double-direction Social learning, under this, not only the young can learn from the elder, but also the elder can learn from the young; (3) The age-dependent learning capacity, we make the learning capacity a variable in inverse proportion to the age, unlike which has been represented in Bustillos and Oliveira's model as a constant. Under this new learning strategy represented above, we get different result in the level of knowledge of individuals from B-O model.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

predator-prey
evolution
cellular automata
coexistence and perdition


A Self-Stabilizing Algorithm for Finding a Minimal Distance-2 Dominating Set in Distributed Systems The study of various dominating set problems is an important area within graph theory. In applications, a dominating set in a system can be considered as an ideal place for allocating resources. And, a minimal dominating set allows allocating a smaller number of resources. Distance-versions of the concept of minimal dominating sets are more applicable to modeling real-world problems, such as placing a smaller number of objects within acceptable distances of a given population. However, due to the main restriction that any processor in a distributed system can only access the data of its direct neighbors, a self-stabilizing algorithm for finding a minimal distance-k (with k >= 2) dominating set is hard to get, and its correctness is hard to verify. In this paper, a self-stabilizing algorithm for finding a minimal distance-2 dominating set is proposed. The algorithm can be applied to any distributed system that operates under the central demon model. The correctness of the algorithm is verified.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

minimal distance-2 dominating set
self-stabilizing algorithm
dijkstra's central demon model
legitimate configuration


Packed-switched OTDM networks employing the packet compression/expansion technique Future networks should carry several types of traffic in a dynamical manner. Predominantly, optical networks could provide sufficiently high bandwidth for future bandwidth-intensive applications. Particularly, the packet-interleaved optical time division multiplexing (CYFDM) technology could be a promising candidate for future high-dynamical and high-capacity photonic networks. In this paper, photonic networks employing rate-conversion of data packets in the optical domain are addressed, thereby achieving a high bit-rate access to the optical medium on a packet-by-packet basis. Two rate-conversion methods including the compression/expansion loop and the optical delay line structure are discussed and compared relating to the power budget and the optical signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, a scalable optical packet rate-conversion unit is proposed and investigated by means of numerical simulations. The impact of the "time-out" phenomenon on the network performance and especially the improvement of the transmission efficiency and the average packet transfer delay by using the proposed scheme are shown.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

packet-interleaved otdm
optical packet compression/expansion


Algorithms and protocols for stateless constrained-based routing Quality of service (QoS) routing has generally been addressed in the context of reservation-based network services (e.g. ATM, ImServ), which require explicit (out of band) signaling of reservation requests and maintenance of per-flow state information. It has been recognized that the processing of per-flow state information poses scalability problems, especially at core routers. To remedy this situation, in this paper we introduce an approach for stateless QoS routing in IP networks that assumes no support for signaling or reservation from the network. Instead, our approach makes use of the currently unused two bits in the DiffServ (DS) byte of the IP packet header. Simple heuristics are used to identify a low-cost delay-constrained path. These heuristics essentially divide the end-to-end path into at most two 'superedges' that are connected by a 'relay node'. Routers that lie on the same superedge use either the cost metric or the delay metric (but not both) to forward the packet. Standard hop-by-hop forwarding is performed with respect to either metric. Two different approaches are presented for implementing the relay-based forwarding. In the first approach, a probing protocol is used to identify the relay node and the routing metrics of the superedges. Tunneling and packet encapsulation are then used to forward packets from the source node to the relay node and then from the relay node to the destination node. The second approach does not require probing, but instead relies on the time-to-live (TTL) field in the header of the IP packet. Simulations are presented to evaluate the cost performance of the various approaches. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

delay-constrained path selection
stateless routing


The distance spectral radius of digraphs ? Let D ( G ? ) denote the distance matrix of a strongly connected digraph G ? . The eigenvalue of D ( G ? ) with the largest modulus is called the distance spectral radius of a digraph G ? , denoted by ? ( G ? ) . In this paper, we first give sharp upper and lower bounds for the distance spectral radius for strongly connected digraphs; we then characterize the digraphs having the maximal and minimal distance spectral radii among all strongly connected digraphs; we also determine the extremal digraph with the minimal distance spectral radius with given arc connectivity and the extremal digraph with the minimal distance spectral radius with given dichromatic number.

O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O B I O O O O O O O B I I O O B I

distance spectral radius
dichromatic number
arc connectivity


A comparison study for displacement computation - Horn and Shunck's method versus March's method The aim of this study is to reveal the effectiveness of a displacement computation method proposed by March in 1988. In common with a method proposed by Horn and Shunck in 1981, March's method also utilizes the measure of the departure from smoothness in the computed displacement as a regularization term. However, these two method have a difference in the definition of the correspondence error between images. Horn and Shunck eliminated the second and higher order terms of spatial brightness variation, so that the correspondence error is defined as a linear model. On the other hand, March defined a non-linear model in which the second and higher order terms are preserved. In order to verify the difference between two methods experimentally, we compare two methods with simulation images. Consequently, it is shown that March's method gives more accurate displacement for non-linearity in the brightness variation and less computation cost. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

horn and shunck's method
march's method
non-linear brightness variation


Utility-Based Rate-Controlled Parallel Wireless Transmission of Multimedia Streams with Multiple Importance Levels Multimedia data often have different levels of importance such that more important bits are less error tolerant. A new rate control method for transporting such multimedia data over parallel wireless links with heterogeneous reliability is proposed. Rate-controlled parallel transmissions (RCPTs) of different layers of a multimedia stream with different levels of importance over a wireless channel that support multiple links with heterogeneous reliability can improve the efficiency in resource allocation while satisfying the quality-of-service (QoS) requirement of the multimedia connection. To exploit RCPT, we present and evaluate a novel dynamic resource allocation method that decomposes the available radio resources into multiple sets of links with different levels of reliability. We mathematically formulate a rate control problem for the flexible RCPT scheme and develop an efficient real-time resource allocation algorithm with a remarkably fast rate of convergence. Simulation results show that the proposed method improves the utility and reduces the power consumed for delivery of a multimedia stream at the required QoS, in comparison with a previous scheme, where different layers of each multimedia class are scheduled with dependency, and two schemes that provide homogeneous high or low reliability over all parallel links.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

heterogeneous reliability
resource allocation

multimedia delivery
parallel rate control


A novel efficient (t,n) threshold proxy signature scheme All previously proposed threshold proxy signature schemes have been based on discrete logarithms required for a protocol to generate and verify a shared secret among the proxy group. Therefore, it is necessary for the proxy signers to perform many expensive modular exponential computations and communications to obtain and verify a shared secret. Moreover, most of the existing threshold proxy signature schemes reveal that the receiver cannot find out who signed the proxy signatures. We propose an efficient (t,n) threshold proxy signature scheme based on Schnorrs scheme. Compared with existing (t,n) threshold proxy signature schemes, our scheme can reduce the amount of computations and communications. In our method, not only the original signer can know who generated the proxy signature, but also the receiver can certify the actuality of the group signers who made the proxy signature. We offer convenience and fair distribution of auditing a documents signers.

O O O O O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O

threshold proxy signature scheme
discrete logarithm
lagrange interpolation


Testing for jumps in conditionally Gaussian ARMAGARCH models, a robust approach Financial asset prices occasionally exhibit large changes. To deal with their occurrence, observed return series are assumed to consist of a conditionally Gaussian ARMAGARCH type model contaminated by an additive jump component. In this framework, a new test for additive jumps is proposed. The test is based on standardized returns, where the first two conditional moments of the non-contaminated observations are estimated in a robust way. Simulation results indicate that the test has very good finite sample properties, i.e. correct size and high proportion of correct jump detection. The test is applied to daily returns and detects less than 1% of jumps for three exchange rates and between 1% and 3% of jumps for about 50 large capitalization stock returns from the NYSE. Once jumps have been filtered out, all series are found to be conditionally Gaussian. It is also found that simple GARCH-type models estimated using filtered returns deliver more accurate out-of sample forecasts of the conditional variance than GARCH and Generalized Autoregressive Score (GAS) models estimated from raw data.

O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O B O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O


A neural network evaluation model for ERP performance from SCM perspective to enhance enterprise competitive advantage Due to increasing global competition, many enterprises are aware of the benefits of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). While the external environments and alliance partnerships facing an enterprise are becoming more complex, executives should consider appropriate partners to enhance efficiency and performance of supply chain management (SCM) as well as to gain potential competitive advantages. This study constructs a conceptual model to evaluate the performance and competitive advantages associated with ERP from a SCM perspective. The resulting model can be used to assist an enterprise in evaluating the potential partnerships. The survey data was gathered from a transnational textile firm in Taiwan. The training and learning models were based on the strategic thrust theory and used the Back-Propagation Network (BPN) as an evaluation tool.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O

enterprise resource planning (erp)
supply chain management (scm)
back-propagation network (bpn)


The front-tracking ALE method: Application to a model of the freezing of cell suspensions A new front-tracking method to compute discontinuous solutions on unstructured finite element meshes is presented. Using an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation, the mesh is continuously adapted by moving the nearest nodes to the interface. Thus, the solution is completely sharp at the interface and no smearing takes place. The dynamic node adjustment is confined to global nodes near the front, rendering remeshing unnecessary. The method has been applied to the osmotic motion of a two-dimensional cell arising from a concentration gradient generated by a moving solidification front. The engulfrnent of one cell by an advancing solidification front, which rejects the solutes in a binary salt solution, is then computed. The results indicate that the ice increases the solute gradient around the cell. Furthermore, the presence of the cell, which presents diffusion of the solute, leads to large changes in the morphology of the ice front. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

finite element method
front-tracking method
mesh fitting
cryobiology
osmosis
phase change


The VIP (violation of the Pauli exclusion principle) experiment The Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP) represents one of the fundamental principles of the modern physics and our comprehension of the surrounding matter is based on it. Even if today there are no compelling reasons to doubt its validity, it still spurs a lively debate on its limits, as testified by the abundant contributions found in the literature and in topical conferences. We present a method of searching for possible small violations of PEP for electrons, through the search for anomalous X-ray transitions in copper atoms, produced by fresh electrons which can decay in a Pauli- forbidden transition to the 1s level, already occupied by two electrons. The VIP Experiment has the scientific goal to improve by four orders of magnitude the present limit on the probability of PEP violation for electrons, bringing it into the 10(-30)-10(-31) region. Preliminary results, together with future plans, are presented.

O O O O O B I I O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


low-complexity frequency-domain algorithm for uwb timing In this paper, a low-complexity frequency-domain algorithm is proposed for Ultra Wideband (UWB) timing in multipath environment. By constructing the reasonable transmitted model, the algorithm can be carried out in frequency domain efficiently, inter symbol interference (ISI) and inter frame interference (IFI) are mitigated. Relative path delays and attenuations come out as by-products by one-dimensional searching. Most importantly, our timing algorithm has a very low computational requirement, which stems from simple addition and multiplication among vectors. The mean square errors (MSE) and bit error rate (BER) of this scheme are tested at the end of this paper. And comparisons demonstrate our algorithm outperforms another frequency processing method proposed in [1], [2].

O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O B I O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

the multipath channel
frequency-domain
dft


Defining Fairness in Reactive and Concurrent Systems We define when a linear-time temporal property is a fairness property with respect to a given system. This captures the essence shared by most fairness assumptions that are used in the specification and verification of reactive and concurrent systems, such as weak fairness, strong fairness, k-fairness, and many others. We provide three characterizations of fairness: a language-theoretic, a game-theoretic, and a topological characterization. It turns out that the fairness properties are the sets that are "large" from a topological point of view, that is, they are the co-meager sets in the natural topology of runs of a given system. This insight provides a link to probability theory where a set is "large" when it has measure 1. While these two notions of largeness are similar, they do not coincide in general. However, we show that they coincide for omega-regular properties and bounded Borel measures. That is, an omega-regular temporal property of a finite-state system has measure 1 under a bounded Borel measure if and only if it is a fairness property with respect to that system. The definition of fairness leads to a generic relaxation of correctness of a system in linear-time semantics. We define a system to be fairly correct if there exists a fairness assumption under which it satisfies its specification. Equivalently, a system is fairly correct if the set of runs satisfying the specification is topologically large. We motivate this notion of correctness and show how it can be verified in a system.

O B O O O B I O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O B O O O B I O O O B O B O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

theory
verification
fairness
concurrent systems
topology

languages
temporal properties
temporal logic
machine closure
game theory
model checking


Auto-Calibrated Parallel Imaging Reconstruction for Arbitrary Trajectories Using k-Space Sparse Matrices (kSPA) Image acquisition of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be accelerated by using multiple receiving coils simultaneously. The problem of reconstructing an unaliased image from partially sampled k-space data can be formulated as a large system of sparse linear equations. The k-space sparse matrix (kSPA) algorithm proposes to solve the system of equations by finding a sparse approximate inverse. This algorithm has been shown to accelerate the image reconstruction for a large number of coils. The original kSPA algorithm requires knowledge of coil sensitivities. Here, we propose and demonstrate an auto-calibrated kSPA algorithm that does not require the explicit computation of the coil sensitivity maps. We have also shown that calibration data, in principle, can be acquired at any region of k-space. This property applies to arbitrary sampling trajectories and all reconstruction algorithms based on k-space. In practice, because of its higher SNR, calibration data acquired at the center of k-space performed more favorably. Such auto-calibration can be advantageous in cases where an accurate sensitivity map is difficult to obtain.

O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

parallel imaging
sparse approximate inverse
sparse matrix

k-space sparse matrix (kspa)
magnetic resonance imaging (mri)


Branch-and-Bound Methods for Euclidean Registration Problems In this paper, we propose a practical and efficient method for finding the globally optimal solution to the problem of determining the pose of an object. We present a framework that allows us to use point-to-point, point-to-line, and point-to-plane correspondences for solving various types of pose and registration problems involving euclidean (or similarity) transformations. Traditional methods such as the iterative closest point algorithm or bundle adjustment methods for camera pose may get trapped in local minima due to the nonconvexity of the corresponding optimization problem. Our approach of solving the mathematical optimization problems guarantees global optimality. The optimization scheme is based on ideas from global optimization theory, in particular convex underestimators in combination with branch-and-bound methods. We provide a provably optimal algorithm and demonstrate good performance on both synthetic and real data. We also give examples of where traditional methods fail due to the local minima problem.

O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

registration
camera pose
global optimization


On support vector machines and sparse approximation for random processes After reviewing the role played by support vector machines and other sparse approximation instruments in studies about random processes, this work aims to emphasize some of their properties and proposes a space dimensionality reduction approach which is conceptually simple and computationally feasible. The stochastic analysis of random phenomena is often required in a context characterized by non-standard probabilistic assumptions. In other terms, real-life problems offer statistical model conditions such as strong forms of dependence, non-stationarity, non-gaussianity, for instance; it often appears that these features prevent from using classical statistical inference procedures or model-building strategies, and instead require computational techniques based on simulations and numerical approximation. One initial problem, here investigated, is how to cast these instruments in a certain theoretical framework, for then achieving suitable model structure and interpretation. This contribution, which is of an introductory nature, suggests further advances into the domain of real life applications, in particular time series.

O B I I O B I O B I O O O O O O B I I O O B I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

random processes
support vector machines
sparse approximation

reproducing kernel hilbert spaces
integral equations
wavelets
frames


caching and database scaling in distributed shared-nothing information retrieval systems A common class of existing information retrieval system provides access to abstracts. For example Stanford University, through its FOLIO system, provides access to the INSPECT database of abstracts of the literature on physics, computer science, electrical engineering, etc. In this paper this database is studied by using a trace-driven simulation. We focus on physical index design, inverted index caching, and database scaling in a distributed shared-nothing system. All three issues are shown to have a strong effect on response time and throughput. Database scaling is explored in two ways. One way assumes an optimal configuration for a single host and then linearly scales the database by duplicating the host architecture as needed. The second way determines the optimal number of hosts given a fixed database size.

O O B O O B O B I B O O B O O B I O O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O B O O O O O O O B I O O O O O B O B O O O O O O O O O O B O B B I O O B O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O B I O B B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B B

design
response time
throughput
access
paper
computer science
inverted index
systems
size
architecture
physical
distributed
database
effect
class
information retrieval

examples
scale
engine
trace driven simulation
sharing
indexing
abstraction
optimality
configurability
caches


A niched Pareto genetic algorithm for multiobjective environmental/economic dispatch A niched Pareto genetic algorithm (NPGA) based approach to solve the multiobjective environmental/economic dispatch (EED) problem is presented in this paper. The EED problem is formulated as a non-linear constrained multiobjective optimization problem. The proposed NPGA based approach handles the problem as a multiobjective problem with competing and non-commensurable cost and emission objectives. One of the main advantages of the proposed approach is that there is no restriction on the number of optimized objectives. The proposed approach has a diversity-preserving mechanism to overcome the premature convergence problem. A hierarchical clustering algorithm is developed and imposed to provide the decision maker with a representative and manageable Pareto-optimal set. In addition, fuzzy set theory is employed to extract the best compromise solution. Several optimization runs of the proposed approach are carried out on the standard IEEE 30-bus test system. The results demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach to generate well-distributed Pareto-optimal non-dominated solutions of the multiobjective EED problem in one single run. The comparison with the classical methods demonstrates the superiority of the proposed approach and confirms its potential to solve the multiobjective EED problem.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

economic dispatch
environmental impact
evolutionary algorithms


Scalable learning of probabilistic latent models for collaborative filtering We propose a scalable learning scheme for a probabilistic generative model for collaborative filtering. Predictive results of the model improve on current state of the art. The model is shown to work well in cold-start situations

B I O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

collaborative filtering
scalable learning

probabilistic model
latent variables
variational bayes


Drain-current DLTS study of an GaAs/InP MESFET Fast GaAs MetalSemiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor (MESFET) on InP exhibiting promising performances comparable to those grown on GaAs subtrates have already been fabricated. The lattice mismatch of 4% between GaAs and InP did not preclude device fabrication, although the characterization of such materials has shown the existence of high dislocation density at the interface and a residual biaxial tensile strain due to the difference between the thermoelastic properties of the two materials. The above-mentioned growth difficulties can generate many defects, which are very detrimental for device application. In this context, we have investigated deep levels on Rapid Thermal Annealed (RTA) GaAs/InP MESFET by means of Drain-Current Deep-Level Transient Spectroscopy (CDLTS). In this study, we have revealed the absence of dislocation-generated-deep level, the formation of an apparent hole-like observed for the first time with an activation energy of 0.3eV. On comparison with homo-epitaxial GaAs MESFET achieved under the same conditions, we note the absence of a deep level with an apparent activation energy of 0.4eV.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

drain-current deep-level transient spectroscopy


User-private information retrieval based on a peer-to-peer community Private information retrieval (PIR) is normally modeled as a game between two players: a user and a database. The user wants to retrieve some item from the database without the latter learning which item is retrieved. Most current PIR protocols are ill-suited to provide PIR from a search engine or large database: (i) their computational complexity is linear in the size of the database; (ii) they assume active cooperation by the database server in the PIR protocol. If the database cannot be assumed to cooperate, a peer-to-peer (P2P) user community is a natural alternative to achieve some query anonymity: a user gets her queries submitted on her behalf by other users in the P2P community. In this way, the database still learns which item is being retrieved, but it cannot obtain the real query histories of users, which become diffused among the peer users. We name this relaxation of PIR user-private information retrieval (UPIR). A peer-to-peer UPIR system is described in this paper which relies on an underlying combinatorial structure to reduce the required key material and increase availability. Extensive simulation results are reported and a distributed key management version of the system is described. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

privacy in statistical databases
combinatorial designs
ring signatures


Exploiting Click Constraints and Multi-view Features for Image Re-ranking Image re-ranking is effective in improving performance of text-based image searches. However, improvements from existing re-ranking algorithms are limited by two factors: one is that the associated textual information of images often mismatches their actual visual contents; the other is that a visual's features cannot accurately describe the semantic similarities between images. In this paper, we adopt click data to bridge the semantic gap. We propose a novel multi-view hypergraph-based learning (MHL) method that adaptively integrates click data with varied visual features. In particular, MHL considers pairwise discriminative constraints from click data to maximally distinguish images with high click counts from images with no click counts, and a semantic manifold is constructed. It then adopts hypergraph learning to build multiple manifolds from varied visual features. Finally, MHL integrates the semantic manifold with visual manifolds through an iterative optimization procedure. The weights of different manifolds and the re-ranking score are simultaneously obtained after using this optimization strategy. We conduct experiments on real world datasets and the results demonstrate that MHL outperforms state-of-the-art image re-ranking methods.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


An empirical study of misalignment between Australian CEOs and IT managers This paper discusses the results of a critical success factors (CSFs) study carried out to determine the key IT management needs of Australian CEOs. In the past, several studies to determine the IT management needs have been carried out, but they have aimed mostly at the IT managers, not the CEOs. This study fills this gap, and by comparing the CSFs of the CEOs with those of the IT managers shows the areas of misalignment in the management of IT in Australian enterprises. It is concluded that to achieve ongoing alignment, the CEOs and senior executives need to gain management level understanding of IT. But perhaps, even more important is for IT managers to develop a business oriented perspective for the success of their enterprise.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


GenCLOn: An ontology for city logistics City logistics is a discipline specialized to cope with the sustainability problems encountered in urban freight transport. A key characteristic of it is the heterogeneity of the stakeholders involved. Besides the traditional logistics actors such as shippers, carriers and receivers that share consistent interests (i.e. price and quality), city logistics highly respect the interests of public administrators and citizens that care more about the social welfare. To reach an optimal balance between private and public benefit, it is necessary to understand and in turn forecast the behavior pattern of different groups. In recent years, agent-based modeling has been practiced as an unconventional tool to fulfill this task for its strong capability on capturing the dynamic behavior of individual stakeholders and their interconnections. Referring to other domains (e.g. energy system) where the application of agent-based modeling is relatively mature, a following urgency is to achieve interoperability and in turn reusability between models via introducing formal ontology as a shared template with which developers can standardize their models. This paper introduces an initiative of developing an ontology that formalizes the domain knowledge of city logistics.

O O B O B I B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O B I


The Impact of Design and Code Reviews on Software Quality: An Empirical Study Based on PSP Data This research investigates the effect of review rate on defect removal effectiveness and the quality of software products, while controlling for a number of potential confounding factors. Two data sets of 371 and 246 programs, respectively, from a Personal Software Process (PSP) approach were analyzed using both regression and mixed models. Review activities in the PSP process are those steps performed by the developer in a traditional inspection process. The results show that the PSP review rate is a significant factor affecting defect removal effectiveness, even after accounting for developer ability and other significant process variables. The recommended review rate of 200 LOC/hour or less was found to be an effective rate for individual reviews, identifying nearly two-thirds of the defects in design reviews and more than half of the defects in code reviews.

O O O O O B I O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O B I O O O O O O B O B I

code reviews
design reviews
software process
software quality
defects
mixed models

inspections
software measurement
personal software process (psp)


Implicit and explicit integration schemes in the anisotropic bounding surface plasticity model for cyclic behaviours of saturated clay Two integration algorithms, namely the implicit return mapping and explicit sub-stepping schemes, are adopted in the anisotropic bounding surface plasticity model for cyclic behaviours of saturated clay and are implemented into finite element code. The model is a representative of a series of bounding surface models that have typical characteristics, including isotropic and kinematic hardening rules and a rotational bounding surface to capture complex but important cyclic behaviours of soils, such as cyclic shakedown and degradation. However, there is no explicit current yield surface in the model to which the conventional implicit algorithm returns the stress state back or the sub-stepping integration corrects the drift of the stress state. Hence, necessary modifications have been made for both of the integration schemes. First, the image stress point is mapped or corrected to the bounding surface instead of mapping back or correcting the stress state to the yield surface. Second, the unloadingloading criterion is checked to determine the image stress point rather than checking the yield criterion after giving the trial stress state in a conventional way. Comparative studies on the accuracy, stability and efficiency of the two integration schemes are conducted not only at the element level but also in solving boundary value problems of monotonic and cyclic bearing behaviours of rigid footings on saturated clay. For smaller strain increments, there is no significant difference in the accuracy between the two integration schemes, but the explicit integration shows a higher efficiency and accuracy. For relatively larger increments, the implicit return mapping algorithm presents good accuracy and more robustness, while the sub-stepping algorithm shows deteriorating accuracy and suffers the convergence problem. With the tolerance used in the present model, the bearing capacity of the rigid footing predicted by the return mapping algorithm is closer to the available analytical and numerical solutions, while the bearing capacity predicted by the sub-stepping algorithm shows a marginal increase.

O O B I O O O O B I I I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

bounding surface plasticity model
explicit integration
saturated clay


From computer ethics to responsible research and innovation in ICT ?: The transition of reference discourses informing ethics-related research in information systems The discourse concerning computer ethics qualifies as a reference discourse for ethics-related IS research. Theories, topics and approaches of computer ethics are reflected in IS. The paper argues that there is currently a broader development in the area of research governance, which is referred to as responsible research and innovation (RRI). RRI applied to information and communication technology (ICT) addresses some of the limitations of computer ethics and points toward a broader approach to the governance of science, technology and innovation. Taking this development into account will help IS increase its relevance and make optimal use of its established strengths.

O O B O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

ethics
responsible research and innovation
information systems


Simple instance selection for bankruptcy prediction Instance selection or outlier detection is an important task during data mining, which focuses on filtering out bad data from a given dataset. However, there is no rigid mathematical definition of what constitutes an outlier and an outlier is not a binary property. Therefore, different volumes of outliers may be detected depending on the setting of the threshold for what constitutes an outlier, e.g., the distance in distance-based outlier detection. In this study, we examine bankruptcy prediction performance achieved after removal of different outlier volumes from four widely used datasets, namely the Australian, German, Japanese, and UC Competition datasets. Specifically, a simple distance-based clustering outlier detection method is used. In addition, four popular classification techniques are compared, artificial neural networks, decision trees, logistic regression, and support vector machines. Experiments are conducted to examine (1) the prediction performance of the bankruptcy prediction models with and without instance selection, (2) the stability of bankruptcy prediction models after the removal of outliers from the testing set, and (3) the characteristics of these four different datasets. The results show that with the German dataset it is much more difficult for the prediction models to provide high rates of accuracy after outlier removal, while it is easier with the UC Competition dataset. Removing 50% of the outliers can lead to optimal performance of these four models. In addition, using the removed outliers to test the prediction accuracy of these models, we find that it is support vector machines (SVM) that provide the highest rate of prediction accuracy and perform with much more stability and good noise tolerance than the other three prediction models. Furthermore, the prediction accuracy of the SVM model followed by instance selection is similar to the one without instance selection (i.e., the SVM baseline). In other words, the difference in performance between the SVM and the SVM baseline is the least of the three models in comparison with their corresponding baselines.

O B I O B I B I O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O B I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

instance selection
outlier detection
data mining
bankruptcy prediction
clustering