Is the Course of Steroid-Treated Polymyalgia Rheumatica More Severe in Women? Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) has a marked preponderance in women. The female sex has been claimed to be a risk factor for longer-course corticosteroid therapy and to be associated with more severe systemic symptoms and lower hemoglobin levels. Eighty consecutive patients affected by PMR, seen at two tertiary referral centers, were followed-up for a mean period of 14.9 months after initiating corticosteroid treatment. At presentation, women had longer disease duration and lower hemoglobin levels (both P= 0.05) than men. In contrast, their systemic signs of PMR were less common (P= 0.01). Women were treated with a slightly higher mean daily dose of prednisone (P= 0.055), and assumed a significantly higher cumulative dosage of the drug (P= 0.01). Accordingly, the mean number of steroid-related side effects was higher among women (P= 0.003). The number of relapses during steroid treatment (P= 0.02), but not that of recurrences, was increased in women. ESR, which was raised at presentation, significantly declined during follow-up to normal values in both subgroups (P < 0.00001 by analysis of variance [ANOVA]). Its decrease was significantly more pronounced in men than in women. Hemoglobin at follow-up was significantly higher in men than in women at any given time point. In conclusion, sex is probably modulating the response to corticosteroids. This finding emphasizes the need to consider differences between males and females in the clinical and therapeutic approach to PMR patients

O O O O O B I O 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 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 B 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 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 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

polymyalgia rheumatica
sex
corticosteroid
treatment


Massively multiplayer online game addiction: Instrument development and validation The primary objective of this paper is to develop and validate an instrument for massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) addiction. Three stages of instrument development were undertaken to achieve this objective: item generation, scale development, and instrument testing. The results of a confirmation factor analysis confirmed the existence of seven dimensions of MMOG addiction, namely Salience, Mood Modification, Tolerance, Withdrawal, Conflicts, Relapse, and Loss of Control. The final instrument exhibits adequate levels of reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity. The instrument is expected to assist future empirical research on MMOG addiction. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

B I I I O B I 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 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

massively multiplayer online game
instrument development

technology addiction
conceptualization
confirmatory factor analysis


bias and scalability in evolutionary development The introduction of a genotype-phenotype map modelled on biological development can potentially improve the scalability of evolutionary algorithms. Previous work by Gordon and Bentley demonstrated that such a model can be used to evolve patterns that map to useful but small phenotypes. This paper uses the same model to generate much larger patterns covering arrays of up to 64x64 cells. The results show that the model's performance is generally comparable to similar development-based systems [12, 14], and with some measures outperforms them. Additionally the inherent biases of the model are explored, such as the need to use symmetry-breaking initial conditions which some other models do not require. This exploration yields a set of guidelines that suggest what kinds of problem the model is suited to exploring.

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


Did federal regulation discourage facilities-based entry into US local telecommunications markets? In the United States from 2001 to 2006, federal regulations allowed entrants to lease from incumbents at relatively low cost all of the network infrastructure necessary to provide local phone service. These platform entrants could then provide phone service without installing any of their own equipment. Advocates of this policy claimed that it was needed to provide an economically feasible means by which entrants could serve residential customers. Critics contended that the policy substantially deterred loop entry whereby entrants installed their own switching equipment. An analysis of panel data for each state over this period indicates that the policy's critics may have been correct. The cross-price elasticity of loop entry with respect to platform price was roughly 1.0. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that loop entry may have decreased by roughly 20% due to platform entry price reductions.

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 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 B 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 B O O


The effects of social interactions with in-vehicle agents on a driver's anger level, driving performance, situation awareness, and perceived workload An in-vehicle agent can improve a driver's psychological state and road safety. Participants drove in a simulator with induced anger or neutral affect. Speech-based agents enhanced driver situation awareness and driving performance. Speech-based agents reduced participants' anger level and perceived workload. A driver's situation awareness mediated anger effects on driving performance.

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


Efficient kNN search in polyphonic music databases using a lower bounding mechanism Querying polyphonic music from a large data collection is an interesting topic. Recently, researchers have attempted to provide efficient methods for content-based retrieval in polyphonic music databases where queries are polyphonic. However, most of them do not work well for similarity search, which is important to many applications. In this paper, we propose three polyphonic representations with the associated similarity measures and a novel method to retrieve k music works that contain segments most similar to the query. In general, most of the index-based methods for similarity search generate all the possible answers to the query and then perform exact matching on the index for each possible answer. Based on the edit distance, our method generates only a few possible answers by performing the deletion and/or replacement operations on the query. Each possible answer is then used to perforin exact matching on a list-based index, which allows the insertion operations to be performed. For each possible answer, its edit distance to the query is regarded as a lower bound of the edit distances between the matched results and the query. Based on the kNN results that match a possible answer, the possible answers that cannot provide better results are skipped. By using this mechanism, we design a method for efficient kNN search in polyphonic music databases. The experimental results show that our method outperforms the previous methods in efficiency. We also evaluate the effectiveness of our method by showing the search results to the musician and nonmusician user groups. The experimental results provide useful guidelines on the design of a polyphonic music database.

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

polyphonic music information retrieval
indexing methods
search process
lower bounded edit distance


Annotation-based feature extraction from sets of SBML models Model repositories such as BioModels Database provide computational models of biological systems for the scientific community. These models contain rich semantic annotations that link model entities to concepts in well-established bio-ontologies such as Gene Ontology. Consequently, thematically similar models are likely to share similar annotations. Based on this assumption, we argue that semantic annotations are a suitable tool to characterize sets of models. These characteristics improve model classification, allow to identify additional features for model retrieval tasks, and enable the comparison of sets of models.

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


Face Recognition Under Varying Illumination Using Gradientfaces In this correspondence, we propose a novel method to extract illumination insensitive features for face recognition under varying lighting called the Gradientfaces. Theoretical analysis shows Gradientfaces is an illumination insensitive measure, and robust to different illumination, including uncontrolled, natural lighting. In addition, Gradientfaces is derived from the image gradient domain such that it can discover underlying inherent structure of face images since the gradient domain explicitly considers the relationships between neighboring pixel points. Therefore, Gradientfaces has more discriminating power than the illumination insensitive measure extracted from the pixel domain. Recognition rates of 99.83% achieved on PIE database of 68 subjects, 98.96% achieved on Yale B of ten subjects, and 95.61% achieved on Outdoor database of 132 subjects under uncontrolled natural lighting conditions show that Gradientfaces is an effective method for face recognition under varying illumination. Furthermore, the experimental results on Yale database validate that Gradientfaces is also insensitive to image noise and object artifacts (such as facial expressions).

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

face recognition
gradientfaces
gradient domain
illumination insensitive measure


Wireless ATM backbone network design problem Personal Communication Network (PCN) is an emerging wireless network that promises many new services for the telecommunication industry. The high speed backbone network (ATM or WDM) is one possible approach to provide broadband wireless transmission with PCN's using the ATM switching networks for interconnection of PCN cells. The wireless ATM backbone network design problem is that of allocating backbone links among ATM switches to reduce the effects of terminal mobility on the performance of ATM-based PCN's. In this paper, the wireless ATM backbone network design (WABND) problem is formulated and studied. The goal of the WABND is to minimize the location update cost under constraints. Since WABND is NP-hard, a heuristic algorithm and a genetic algorithm are proposed to solve it. These algorithms are used to find the close-to-optimal solution. Simulated results show that the proposed algorithms are able to achieve good performance.

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 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 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 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 B I 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

wireless atm
heuristic algorithm
genetic algorithm
backbone network


Replica exchange Monte-Carlo simulations of helix bundle membrane proteins: rotational parameters of helices We propose a united-residue model of membrane proteins to investigate the structures of helix bundle membrane proteins (HBMPs) using coarse-grained (CG) replica exchange Monte-Carlo (REMC) simulations. To demonstrate the method, it is used to identify the ground state of HBMPs in a CG model, including bacteriorhodopsin (BR), halorhodopsin (HR), and their subdomains. The rotational parameters of transmembrane helices (TMHs) are extracted directly from the simulations, which can be compared with their experimental measurements from site-directed dichroism. In particular, the effects of amphiphilic interaction among the surfaces of TMHs on the rotational angles of helices are discussed. The proposed CG model gives a reasonably good structure prediction of HBMPs, as well as a clear physical picture for the packing, tilting, orientation, and rotation of TMHs. The root mean square deviation (RMSD) in coordinates of C-alpha atoms of the ground state CG structure from the X-ray structure is 5.03 for BR and 6.70 for HR. The final structure of HBMPs is obtained from the all-atom molecular dynamics simulations by refining the predicted CG structure, whose RMSD is 4.38 for BR and 5.70 for HR.

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 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 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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

helix bundle membrane proteins
molecular dynamics simulations
structure prediction


Effective load balancing for cluster-based servers employing job preemption A cluster-based server consists of a front-end dispatcher and multiple back-end servers. The dispatcher receives incoming jobs, and then decides how to assign them to back-end servers, which in turn serve the jobs according to some discipline. Cluster-based servers have been widely deployed, as they combine good performance with low costs. Several assignment policies have been proposed for cluster-based servers, most of which aim to balance the load among back-end servers. There are two main strategies for load balancing: The first aims to balance the amount of workload at back-end servers, while the second aims to balance the number of jobs assigned to back-end servers. Examples of policies using these strategies are Dynamic and LC (Least Connected), respectively. In this paper we propose a policy, called LC*, which combines the two aforementioned strategies. The paper shows experimentally that when preemption is admitted (i.e., when jobs execute concurrently on back-end servers), LC* substantially outperforms both Dynamic and LC in terms of response-time metrics. This improved performance is achieved by using only information readily available to the dispatcher, rendering LC* a practical policy to implement. Finally, we study a refinement, called ALC* (Adaptive LC*), which further improves on the response-time performance of LC* by adapting its actions to incoming traffic rates. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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

cluster-based servers
back-end server architecture
simulation


Bayesian revision of the individual pair-wise comparison matrices under consensus in AHPGDM Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been widely used in group decision making (GDM). There are two traditional aggregation methods for the synthesis of group priorities in AHPGDM: aggregation of the individual judgments (AIJ) and aggregation of the individual priorities (AIP). However, AIJ and AIP may be less reliable because of inconsistency of the individual pair-wise comparison matrices (PCMs) and deviation among decision makers. Based on multiplicative AHP model with lognormal errors, we propose a Bayesian revision method for improving the individual PCMs under the assumption that the consensus exists among decision makers, which is considered an aid to AIJ and AIP. In order to effectively deal with decision making involving multiple actors when using AHP as the methodological support, we revise the individual PCMs using the Bayesian revision method before using AIJ and AIP for the synthesis of group priorities. The Bayesian revision method not only makes full use of the prior distribution for parameters and sample information while complying with the Pareto principal of social choice theory, but also provides the reliable individual Bayesian PCMs for AIJ and AIP. Finally two numerical examples are examined to illustrate the applications and advantages of the Bayesian revision method.

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

analytic hierarchy process (ahp)
group decision making (gdm)
pair-wise comparison matrix (pcm)
lognormal distribution


Nonparametric Bayesian clustering to detect bipolar methylated genomic loci With recent development in sequencing technology, a large number of genome-wide DNA methylation studies have generated massive amounts of bisulfite sequencing data. The analysis of DNA methylation patterns helps researchers understand epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. Highly variable methylation patterns reflect stochastic fluctuations in DNA methylation, whereas well-structured methylation patterns imply deterministic methylation events. Among these methylation patterns, bipolar patterns are important as they may originate from allele-specific methylation (ASM) or cell-specific methylation (CSM).

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


New constructions of even-variable rotation symmetric Boolean functions with maximum algebraic immunity Rotation symmetric Boolean functions (RSBFs), which are invariant under circular translations, have been used as components of some different cryptosystems. In this paper, we study the constructions of even-variable RSBFs with maximum algebraic immunity (AI). First, we present a new construction class of even-variable RSBFs with maximum AI, which has totally n/2 - 1 different constructions. And then in order to get even-variable RSBFs which achieve both maximum AI and high nonlinearity, an improved construction is proposed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. 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 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O

algebraic attack
boolean function
rotation symmetry


A mathematical model of atmospheric retention of man-made CO2 emissions Rust and Thijsse have previously shown that changes in global annual average temperature anomalies T(t(i)) compiled by the Climatic Research Unit vary linearly with atmospheric CO2 concentrations c(t(i)). The c(t(i)) can be related to man-made CO2 emissions F(t(i)) by a linear regression model whose solution vector gives the unknown retention fractions gamma(t(i)) of the F(t(i)) in the atmosphere. Gaps in the c(t(i)) record make the system underdetermined, but the constraints 0 <= gamma(t(i)) <= 1 make estimation tractable. The gamma(t(i)) are estimated by two methods: (1) assuming a finite harmonic expansion for gamma(t), and (2) using a constrained least squares algorithm to compute average values of gamma(t) on suitably chosen time subintervals. The final result is an estimate of gamma(t) with enough accuracy to establish the connection between emissions from fossil fuel use and land use changes and increases in global average annual temperature anomalies. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of IMACS.

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 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


Constrained quadrilateral meshes of bounded size We introduce a new algorithm to convert triangular meshes of polygonal regions, with or without holes, into strictly convex quadrilateral meshes of small bounded size. Our algorithm includes all vertices of the triangular mesh in the quadrilateral mesh, but may add extra vertices (called Steiner points). We show that if the input triangular mesh has t triangles, our algorithm produces a mesh with at most [3t/2]quadrilaterals by adding at most t + 2 Steiner points, one of which may be placed outside the triangular mesh domain. We also describe an extension of our algorithm to convert constrained triangular meshes into constrained quadrilateral ones. We show that if the input constrained triangular mesh has t triangles and its dual graph has h connected components, the resulting constrained quadrilateral mesh has at most [3t/2] + 4h quadrilaterals and at most t + 3h Steiner points, one of which may be placed outside the triangular mesh domain. Examples of meshes generated by our algorithm, and an evaluation of the quality of these meshes with respect to a quadrilateral shape quality criterion are presented as well.

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


Structured firewall design ? A firewall is a security guard placed at the point of entry between a private network and the outside Internet such that all incoming and outgoing packets have to pass through it. The function of a firewall is to examine every incoming or outgoing packet and decide whether to accept or discard it. This function is conventionally specified by a sequence of rules, where rules often conflict. To resolve conflicts, the decision for each packet is the decision of the first rule that the packet matches. The current practice of designing a firewall directly as a sequence of rules suffers from three types of major problems: (1) the consistency problem, which means that it is difficult to order the rules correctly; (2) the completeness problem, which means that it is difficult to ensure thorough consideration for all types of traffic; (3) the compactness problem, which means that it is difficult to keep the number of rules small (because some rules may be redundant and some rules may be combined into one rule). To achieve consistency, completeness, and compactness, we propose a new method called structured firewall design, which consists of two steps. First, one designs a firewall using a firewall decision diagram instead of a sequence of often conflicting rules. Second, a program converts the firewall decision diagram into a compact, yet functionally equivalent, sequence of rules. This method addresses the consistency problem because a firewall decision diagram is conflict-free. It addresses the completeness problem because the syntactic requirements of a firewall decision diagram force the designer to consider all types of traffic. It also addresses the compactness problem because in the second step we use two algorithms (namely FDD reduction and FDD marking) to combine rules together, and one algorithm (namely firewall compaction) to remove redundant rules. Moreover, the techniques and algorithms presented in this paper are extensible to other rule-based systems such as IPsec rules.

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

network security
firewall design
firewall policy


A note on specialization L-preorder of L-topological spaces, L-fuzzifying topological spaces, and L-fuzzy topological spaces It is shown that, for any spatial frame L (i.e., L is a complete lattice generated by the set of all prime elements), both the specialization L-preorder of L-topological spaces introduced by Lai and Zhang [Fuzzy preorder and fuzzy topology, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 157 (2006) 1865-1885] and that of L-fuzzifying topological spaces introduced by Fang and Qiu [Fuzzy orders and fuzzifying topologies, Internat. J. Approx. Reasoning 48 (2008) 98-109] are special cases of that of L-fuzzy topological spaces introduced by Fang [l-fuzzy Alexandrov topologies and specialization orders, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 158 (2007) 2359-2374]. (C) 2008 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 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 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

category theory
l-preorder
l-topology
l-fuzzifying topology
l-fuzzy topology
galois correspondence


Learning in multimodal training: Visual guidance can be both appealing and disadvantageous in spatial tasks Multimodal training involving both visual and auditory information was shown to improve text comprehension and reduce cognitive load. However, it is argued that in spatial tasks visual guidance can impair training effectiveness because it encourages shallow performance strategies and little exploration. Moreover, visual aids are attractive to both trainers as well as trainees, who tend to use them despite their potential disadvantages. To examine this potential training trap, two experimental studies were conducted. In Study 1, each trainer instructed trainees on how to perform a 3-D puzzle in two conditions: vocal guidance (17 trainees), where only vocal instructions were possible, and vocal guidance with mouse pointing (17 trainees), where the trainer could also use a mouse to point out positions on the trainee's screen. The results showed that while the use of the mouse pointer reduced trainees' mental load during training, it also drastically lowered performance level on a non-supervised test. In Study 2, a real-world version of puzzle was trained. A comparison of a vocal guidance group (16 trainees) to a group trained with an additional mouse pointing and drawing option (16 trainees) showed, as well, reduced performance levels with the additional visual aids. The results suggest that the abundant use of multimodal training in Augmented Reality (AR) applications should be re-evaluated. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A new heuristic for resource-constrained project scheduling in stochastic networks using critical chain concept This paper presents a newly developed resource-constrained project scheduling method in stochastic networks by merging the new and traditional resource management methods. In each project, the activities consume various types of resources with fixed capacities. The duration of each activity is a random variable with a given density function. Since the backward pass method is implemented for feeding-in resources. The problem is to determine the finish time of each activity instead of its start time. The objective of the presented model is defined as minimizing the multiplication of expected project duration and its variance. The values of activities finish times are determined at decision points when at least one activity is ready to be operated and there are available resources. If at a certain point of time, more than one activity is ready to be operated but available resources are lacking, a competition among ready activities is carried out in order to select the activities which must be operated first. This paper suggests a competition routine by implementing a policy to maximize the total contribution of selected activities in reducing the expected project duration and its variance. In this respect, a heuristic algorithm is developed and compared with the other existing methods.

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

project scheduling
stochastic networks
critical chain


Measurement of the mechanical properties of brightness enhancement films (BEFs) for LCDs by optical interferometry The brightness enhancement film (BEF) is one of the important components in the liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Since the thicknesses of BEFs are very less, it increases the difficulty to measure their mechanical properties. In this paper, we successfully propose a methodology by combining the micro tensile test and optical interferometry to characterize Youngs moduli and Poissons ratios of BEFs. In addition, the thermal and hygrothermal effects on the mechanical properties of BEFs were also investigated. The finite element analysis (FEA) was utilized to verify the precision of our proposed methodology. The results show that Youngs moduli of BEFs are influenced by temperature and humidity whereas Poissons ratios of BEFs are less influenced by temperature and humidity.

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

mechanical properties
micro tensile test
optical interferometry

brightness enhancement film (bef)
liquid crystal displays (lcds)


interactive visualization of volumetric data with webgl in real-time This article presents and discusses the implementation of a direct volume rendering system for the Web, which articulates a large portion of the rendering task in the client machine. By placing the rendering emphasis in the local client, our system takes advantage of its power, while at the same time eliminates processing from unreliable bottlenecks (e.g. network). The system developed articulates in efficient manner the capabilities of the recently released WebGL standard, which makes available the accelerated graphic pipeline (formerly unusable). The dependency on specially customized hardware is eliminated, and yet efficient rendering rates are achieved. The Web increasingly competes against desktop applications in many scenarios, but the graphical demands of some of the applications (e.g. interactive scientific visualization by volume rendering), have impeded their successful settlement in Web scenarios. Performance, scalability, accuracy, security are some of the many challenges that must be solved before visual Web applications popularize. In this publication we discuss both performance and scalability of the volume rendering by WebGL ray-casting in two different but challenging application domains: medical imaging and radar meteorology.

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

medical imaging
webgl
direct volume rendering

real-time visualization
weather radar volume
ray casting


a real-time bimanual 3d interaction method based on bare-hand tracking We present a vision-based gesture interaction technique that is capable of tracking both hands in real-time. By only recovering features calculated from images, large amount of computation for 3D reconstructing and features tracking in 3D voxel grid is avoided. Thus, our system becomes an ideal tool for bimanual 3D gesture interaction, which needs neither markers nor gloves. Experimental results show that our method can complete the same pipeline with much less computational resource compared to existing ones. What's more, the application interface shows the effectiveness and intuitiveness of our bimanual tracking method.

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


Constructible complexes and recursive division of posets Shellability has been extensively studied by many researchers since McMullen solved the Upper Bound Theorem for convex polytopes. There are also some important notions weaker than shellability, and in this paper we treat constructibility among these and define a notion of recursively dividable posers which corresponds to the notion of constructible complexes when seeing their face posets. Also, we define a notion of strongly constructible complexes and, correspondingly, strongly dividable posets by strengthening the conditions, and prove that strongly dividable posets are signable, This result means that strongly constructible simplicial complexes are partitionable. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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 B O O O O O O O O


A procedural approach of inspecting CAD model errors Neutral format translators such as STEP and IGES have been used to exchange CAD model between the various CAD systems in the product development process. But imperfect interoperability imposes costs on the industry due to higher costs of design and production and slower implementation of design changes. In this paper, we propose a procedural approach to inspect the CAD model's errors that occur in a neutral format We employed two separate inspection processes for checking CAD model errors without wasting excessive resources: the topological data structure and the geometrical data structure. We developed the 3D CAD model inspection system to check the topological and geometrical errors and applied it to case study. An inspection record can be edited in HTML, and thus can be shared by any designer at any time.

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

computer aided manufacturing
error analysis


Generating and accepting P systems with minimal left and right insertion and deletion In this paper we investigate the operations of insertion and deletion performed at the ends of a string. We show that using these operations in a P systems framework (which corresponds to using specific variants of graph control), computational completeness can even be achieved with the operations of left and right insertion and deletion of only one symbol, both in the generating as well as in the accepting case.

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

computational completeness
deletion
insertion
p systems


Accelerating the reduction to upper Hessenberg, tridiagonal, and bidiagonal forms through hybrid GPU-based computing We present a Hessenberg reduction (HR) algorithm for hybrid systems of homogeneous multicore with GPU accelerators that can exceed 25 the performance of the corresponding LAPACK algorithm running on current homogeneous multicores. This enormous acceleration is due to proper matching of algorithmic requirements to architectural strengths of the systems hybrid components. The results described in this paper are significant because the HR has not been properly accelerated before on homogeneous multicore architectures, and it plays a significant role in solving non-symmetric eigenvalue problems. Moreover, the ideas from the hybrid HR are used to develop a hybrid tridiagonal reduction algorithm (for symmetric eigenvalue problems) and a bidiagonal reduction algorithm (for singular value decomposition problems). Our approach demonstrates a methodology that streamlines the development of a large and important class of algorithms on modern computer architectures of multicore and GPUs. The new algorithms can be directly used in the software stack that relies on LAPACK.

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

tridiagonalization
bidiagonalization
two-sided factorizations
dense linear algebra
hybrid computing


Computing

decay

rates

for

new

physics

theories

with

FeynRules

and

MadGraph

We

present

new

features

of

the

FeynRules

and

MadGraph

programs

for

the

automatic

computation

of

decay

widths

that

consistently

include

channels

of

arbitrary

final-state

multiplicity.

The

implementations

are

generic

enough

so

that

they

can

be

used

in

the

framework

of

any

quantum

field

theory,

possibly

including

higher-dimensional

operators.

We

extend

at

the

same

time

the

conventions

of

the

Universal

FeynRules

Output

(or

UFO)

format

to

include

decay

tables

and

information

on

the

total

widths.

We

finally

provide

a

set

of

representative

examples

of

the

usage

of

the

new

functions

of

the

different

codes

in

the

framework

of

the

Standard

Model,

the

Higgs

Effective

Field

Theory,

the

Strongly

Interacting

Light

Higgs

model

and

the

Minimal

Supersymmetric

Standard

Model

and

compare

the

results

to

available

literature

and

programs

for

validation

purposes.

Program

title:

MadWidth

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Mathematica

and

Python.

Computer:

Platforms

on

which

Mathematica

and

Python

are

available.

Operating

system:

Operating

systems

on

which

Mathematica

and

Python

are

available.

Classification:

External

routines:

FeynRules

or

higher,

or

higher.

Nature

of

problem:

The

program

is

a

module

for

the

FeynRules

and

packages

that

allows

the

computation

of

tree-level

decay

widths

for

arbitrary

BSM

models.

The

module

consists

of

two

parts:

A

FeynRules

part,

which

allows

one

to

compute

analytically

all

tree-level

two-body

decay

rates

and

to

output

them

in

the

UFO

format.

A

part,

which

allows

the

numerical

computation

of

many-body

decay

rates.

Solution

method:

For

the

FeynRules

part,

the

analytic

expressions

for

the

three-point

vertices

can

be

squared

to

obtain

analytic

formulas

for

two-body

decay

rates.

For

the

part,

MadGraph

is

used

to

generate

all

Feynman

diagrams

contributing

to

the

decay,

and

diagrams

that

correspond

to

cascade

decays

are

removed.

Restrictions:

Mathematica

version

to

As

the

package

is

a

module

relying

on

FeynRules

and

all

restrictions

of

these

packages

apply.

Running

time:

The

computation

of

the

Feynman

rules

from

a

Lagrangian,

as

well

as

the

computation

of

the

decay

rates,

varies

with

the

complexity

of

the

model,

and

runs

from

a

few

seconds

to

several

minutes.

See

Section

of

the

present

manuscript

for

more

information.

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


Reprint of: Memory-constrained algorithms for simple polygons ? A constant-work-space algorithm has read-only access to an input array and may use only O(1) O ( 1 ) additional words of O ( log n ) bits, where n is the input size. We show how to triangulate a plane straight-line graph with n vertices in O(n2) O ( n 2 ) time and constant work-space. We also consider the problem of preprocessing a simple polygon P for shortest path queries, where P is given by the ordered sequence of its n vertices. For this, we relax the space constraint to allow s words of work-space. After quadratic preprocessing, the shortest path between any two points inside P can be found in O(n2/s) O ( n 2 / s ) time.

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

constant workspace
shortest path
simple polygon


Active Learning for Software Defect Prediction An active learning method, called Two-stage Active learning algorithm (TAL), is developed for software defect prediction. Combining the clustering and support vector machine techniques, this method improves the performance of the predictor with less labeling effort. Experiments validate its effectiveness.

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

defect prediction
active learning
support vector machine


A bi-objective weighted model for improving the discrimination power in MCDEA We examine GPDEA models in relation to the MCDEA framework. GPDEA models perform poorly in weight dispersion and discrimination power. The proposed BiO-MCDEA model outperforms GPDEA models in all datasets tested.

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

multi-criteria data envelopment analysis


Multi-label ensemble based on variable pairwise constraint projection Multi-label classification has attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years. To this end, many algorithms have been developed to classify multi-label data in an effective manner. However, they usually do not consider the pairwise relations indicated by sample labels, which actually play important roles in multi-label classification. Inspired by this, we naturally extend the traditional pairwise constraints to the multi-label scenario via a flexible thresholding scheme. Moreover, to improve the generalization ability of the classifier, we adopt a boosting-like strategy to construct a multi-label ensemble from a group of base classifiers. To achieve these goals, this paper presents a novel multi-label classification framework named Variable Pairwise Constraint projection for Multi-label Ensemble (VPCME). Specifically, we take advantage of the variable pairwise constraint projection to learn a lower-dimensional data representation, which preserves the correlations between samples and labels. Thereafter, the base classifiers are trained in the new data space. For the boosting-like strategy, we employ both the variable pairwise constraints and the bootstrap steps to diversify the base classifiers. Empirical studies have shown the superiority of the proposed method in comparison with other approaches.

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 B I 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 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

variable pairwise constraints
constraint projection

multi-label classification
ensemble learning
boosting


A study of the relationship between color-concept association and occupational background for Chinese The associations between ten colors and sixteen concepts were tested for four groups of Chinese with different occupations. Nine out of sixteen most-frequent color associations are the same for these groups. People with similar occupations yield similar color-concept associations.

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 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


Resource bounded symmetry of information revisited The information contained in a string x about a string y is the difference between the Kolmogorov complexity of y and the conditional Kolmogorov complexity of y given x, i.e., I (x : y)=C(y)-C(y vertical bar x). The Kolmogorov-Levin Theorem says that I (x : y) is symmetric up to a small additive term. We investigate if this property also holds for several versions of polynomial time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity. We study symmetry of information for some variants of distinguishing complexity CD where CD(x) is the length of a shortest program which accepts x and only x. We show relativized worlds where symmetry of information does not hold in a strong way for deterministic and nondeterministic polynomial time distinguishing complexities CDpoly and CNDpoly. On the other hand, for nondeterministic polynomial time distinguishing complexity with randomness, CAMD(poly), we show that symmetry of information holds for most pairs of strings in any set in NP. Our techniques extend work of Buhrman et al. (Language compression and pseudorandom generators, in: Proc. 19th IEEE Conf. on Computational Complexity, IEEE, New York, 2004, pp. 15-28) on language compression by AM algorithms, and have the following application to the compression of samplable sources, introduced in Trevisan et al. (Compression of sample sources, in: Proc. 19th IEEE Conf. on Computational Complexity, IEEE, New York, 2004, pp. 1-15): any element x in the support of a polynomial time samplable source X can be given a description of size - log Pr[X = x] + O(log(3) = n), from which x can be recovered by an AM algorithm. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

O O B I 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 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 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 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 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 O O O O B 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

kolmogorov complexity
symmetry of information
compression


Deconstructing blogs Purpose - A growing amount of information available on the web can be classified as contextual information, putting already existing information into a new context rather than creating isolated new information resources. Blogs are a typical and popular example of this category. By looking at blogs from a more context-oriented view, it is possible to deconstruct them into structures which are more contextual than just focused on the content, facilitating flexible reuse of these structures: that is the aim of this paper. Design/methodology/approach - The paper looks at the underlying structures of blogs and blog posts, representing them as multi-ended links. This alternative representation of blogs and blog posts allows us to represent them as reusable information structures. This paper presents blogs as a popular content type, but the approach of restructuring Web 2.0 content can be extended to other classes of information, as long as they can be regarded as being mainly contextual. Findings - By deconstructing blogs and blog posts into their essential properties, it can be shown how there is a simple and universal representation for blogs. This representation allows the reuse of blog information across specific blog or blogging platforms, and can even go beyond blogs by representing other web content which provides context. Originality/value - This paper presents a novel approach for mapping a popular web content type to a simple and universal representation. The value of such a unified representation lies in exposing the structural similarities among blogs and blog posts, and making them available for reuse.

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

inter-computer links
internet
information retrieval
communication


Feeling what you hear: task-irrelevant sounds modulate tactile perception delivered via a touch screen Several recent studies of crossmodal perception have demonstrated that the presentation of task-irrelevant auditory stimuli can modulate the number of tactile stimuli that a person perceives. In the present study, we attempted to extend these findings concerning audiotactile interactions in human information processing to a touch screen device. Two experiments were conducted in order to address the following research questions: 1) Can the presentation of task-irrelevant sounds be used to modify the perception of the number of tactile pulses delivered via a touch-screen device? 2) Do task-irrelevant auditory stimuli have a more pronounced effect on the tactile perception of numerosity when the task conditions become more attentionally-demanding (i.e., under conditions of dual-tasking)? The results of both experiments demonstrate that the presentation of task-irrelevant sounds can modulate the number of vibrotactile targets that a participant will perceive. What is more, task-irrelevant sounds had a larger effect on tactile perception when the participants had to perform a secondary attention-demanding task at the same time.

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

multimodal interaction
multisensory feedback
attention
dual-task performance
user interfaces
touch-screen


Shape Perception of Thin Transparent Objects with Stereoscopic Viewing Many materials, including water surfaces, jewels, and glassware exhibit transparent refractions. The human visual system can somehow recover 3D shape from refracted images. While previous research has elucidated various visual cues that can facilitate visual perception of transparent objects, most of them focused on monocular material perception. The question of shape perception of transparent objects is much more complex and few studies have been undertaken, particular in terms of binocular vision. In this article, we first design a system for stereoscopic surface orientation estimation with photo-realistic stimuli. It displays pre-rendered stereoscopic images and a real-time S3D (Stereoscopic 3D) shape probe simultaneously. Then we estimate people's perception of the shape of thin transparent objects using a gauge figure task. Our results suggest that people can consistently perceive the surface orientation of thin transparent objects, and stereoscopic viewing improves the precision of estimates. To explain the results, we present an edge-aware orientation map based on image gradients and structure tensors to illustrate the orientation information in images. We also decomposed the normal direction of the surface into azimuth angle and slant angle to explain why additional depth information can improve the accuracy of perceived normal direction.

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

transparent
stereoscopic
material perception

experimentation
human factors
3d shape perception
shape-from-texture


a mixed reality telepresence system with limited dof motion base and immersive display This paper describes a mixed reality (MR) telepresence system for a ride to provide users with a highly realistic sensation. To make a realistic scene in a virtual environment, it is necessary to combine visual information with a reproduction of the forces which a user experiences in the real environment. This paper proposes an MR telepresence system that presents a realistic image and an inertial force sensation using an immersive display and a motion base with limited degrees of freedom. In our approach, the realistic image is acquired with an omnidirectional camera and the inertial force is generated virtually by a combination of the acceleration of gravity and a video effect. In experiments, a prototype system has been proven to produce a highly realistic sensation in various environments.

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


A Cognitive Fault Diagnosis System for Distributed Sensor Networks This paper introduces a novel cognitive fault diagnosis system (FDS) for distributed sensor networks that takes advantage of spatial and temporal relationships among sensors. The proposed FDS relies on a suitable functional graph representation of the network and a two-layer hierarchical architecture designed to promptly detect and isolate faults. The lower processing layer exploits a novel change detection test (CDT) based on hidden Markov models (HMMs) configured to detect variations in the relationships between couples of sensors. HMMs work in the parameter space of linear time-invariant dynamic systems, approximating, over time, the relationship between two sensors; changes in the approximating model are detected by inspecting the HMM likelihood. Information provided by the CDT layer is then passed to the cognitive one, which, by exploiting the graph representation of the network, aggregates information to discriminate among faults, changes in the environment, and false positives induced by the model bias of the HMMs.

O O B I 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

distributed sensor network
hidden markov model
intelligent sensors


artistic paper-cut of human portraits This paper presents a method to render artistic paper-cut of human portraits. Rendering paper-cut images from photographs can be considered as an inhomogeneous image binarization problem, to which ideal solutions should reproduce vivid image details with sparse cuts. Especially for portrait paper-cut, good artworks should capture impressive facial features. To achieve this goal, our approach integrates bottom-up and top-down cues to better determine the binary values. In the bottom-up phase, facial components are localized on the input photograph, and their draft binary versions are proposed. In the top-down phase, we use pre-collected representative paper-cut templates, with which we synthesize the final paper-cut image by matching them with the bottom-up proposals. Experimental results show that our approach can produce visually satisfactory results.

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


Using genetic algorithm for the optimization of seismic behavior of steel planar frames with semi-rigid connections Beam-column connections have a significant role in the results of the analysis and the design of steel frames. In this paper, a genetic algorithm has been used for the non-linear analysis and design of steel frames. For minimizing the weight of frames, while satisfying the applied constraints and restraints such as the limits of normal and combined stresses, criteria such as target displacement(s) and the number and locations of plastic hinges were used. To analyze and design the frame elements, I and box-shaped standard sections were used for beams and columns, respectively. Finally, some clues for finding optimizing semi-rigid connection stiffness values for beam-to-column connections have been obtained. The degrees of these rigidities are obtained by a genetic algorithm during the procedure of optimization in order to reach a frame with the minimum weight. SAP2000 structural analysis program was used to perform modal analysis and linear and non-linear static solutions as well as the design of the elements. A MATLAB program was written for the process of optimization. The procedure of optimization was based on a weight minimization carried out for 9 steel frames. Thus, the optimum connection stiffness could be obtained for minimizing the weight of the structure. The results show that the non-linear analysis gives less weight for short period frames with semi-rigid connections compared to those of linear ones. However, by increasing the periods of frames, much less weights are obtained in the case of non-linear analysis with semi-rigid connections.

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 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 B I 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 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

semi-rigid connection
non-linear analysis
plastic hinge


Cyclic Orbit Codes A constant dimension code consists of a set of kappa-dimensional subspaces of F-q(n). Orbit codes are constant dimension codeswhich are defined as orbits of a subgroup of the general linear group, acting on the set of all subspaces of F-q(n). If the acting group is cyclic, the corresponding orbit codes are called cyclic orbit codes. In this paper, we show how orbit codes can be seen as an analog of linear codes in the block coding case. We investigate how the structure of cyclic orbit codes can be utilized to compute the minimum distance and cardinality of a given code and propose different decoding procedures for a particular subclass of cyclic orbit codes.

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

grassmannian
group action
network coding
projective space
subspace codes


A divide and conquer approach to anomaly detection, localization and diagnosis With the growing complexity of dynamic control systems, the effective diagnosis of all possible failures has become increasingly difficult and time consuming. The virtually infinite variety of behavior patterns of such systems due to control inputs and environmental influences further complicates system characterization and fault diagnosis. To circumvent these difficulties, we propose a new diagnostic method, consisting of three elements: the first, based on anomaly detection, identifies any performance deviation from normal operation; the second, based on anomaly/fault localization, localizes the problem, as best as possible, to the specific component or subsystem that does not operate properly and the third, fault diagnosis, discriminates known and unknown faults and identifies the type of the fault if it is previously known. Our prescriptive method for diagnostic design relies on the use of self-organizing maps (SOMs) for regionalization of the system operating conditions, followed by the performance assessment module based on time-frequency distributions (TFDs) and principal component analysis (PCA) for anomaly detection and fault diagnosis. The complete procedure is described in detail and demonstrated with an example of automotive engine control system.

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

self-organizing maps
timefrequency analysis


Trialing cartoons: Teachers' attitudes towards animation as an ELT instructional tool This paper explores the attitudes of teachers, as adult learners, towards learning to do animation. A part of popular culture which second-language students enjoy, until recently, animation has been technically too demanding for non-specialists to learn. Adult learners can experience e-learning as transformative, but also as a barrier. Thus, teacher reception is crucial in exploring the feasibility of animation as an instructional tool in language teaching. In all, 44 Hong Kong and mainland Chinese teachers were taught animation over ten weeks. Subsequently, three surveys elicited both quantitative and qualitative data. Appraisal analysis indicated teachers positively realised animation as valuable, worthwhile and satisfactory, but also difficult and time-consuming, and entailed high levels of communication. Quantitative data indicated their view that animation would be well-received by both colleagues and secondary language learners, as an instructional tool. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

english language teaching
adult learning


vector rational number reconstruction The final step of some algebraic algorithms is to reconstruct the common denominator d of a collection of rational numbers ( n i /d ) 1? i? n from their images ( a i ) 1? i? n mod M , subject to a condition such as 0 d ? N and N i }? N for a given magnitude bound N . Applying elementwise rational number reconstruction requires that M ? ?( N 2 ). Using the gradual sublattice reduction algorithm of van Hoeij and Novocin, we show how to perform the reconstruction efficiently even when the modulus satisfies a considerably smaller magnitude bound M ? ?( N 1+1/ c ) for c a small constant, for example 2 ? c ? 5. Assuming c ? O (1) the cost of the approach is O ( n (log M ) 3 ) bit operations using the original LLL lattice reduction algorithm, but is reduced to O ( n (log M ) 2 ) bit operations by incorporating the L 2 variant of Nguyen and Stehle. As an application, we give a robust method for reconstructing the rational solution vector of a linear system from its image, such as obtained by a solver using p -adic lifting.

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

lattice basis reduction
rational reconstruction


Decidability of bounded higher-order unification It is shown that unifiability of terms in the simply typed lambda calculus with beta and eta rules becomes decidable if there is a bound on the number of bound variables and lambdas in a unifier in eta-expanded beta-normal form. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

higher-order unification
decision algorithms
bounded unification problems
exponent of periodicity


Comparative evaluation of iterative and non-iterative methods to ground coordinate determination from single aerial images ? The single-ray backprojection problem refers to the process of determining ground coordinates of pixels in a single aerial image with the support of a digital surface model or a digital elevation model. Several methods have been employed to solve this problem. The iterative photogrammetric (IP) method, based on the inverse collinearity equations, is widely used in photogrammetry. The ray-tracing (RT) method, which is popular in computer graphics, computes the coordinates by intersecting the view ray with the surface. A third one is an iterative ray-tracing (IRT) method, which finds the intersection point by extending the view ray towards the surface by a certain step once a time until it hits the surface. Since the methods become diversified, there is a need to compare and evaluate them. This paper analyzes the principles of these three methods, tests them using a variety of data sets, and provides a comprehensive comparison on their strategies, parameter selection, divergence, occlusion-compliance, precision, robustness, and efficiency. The major difference of these methods is in the strategy of computing the intersection between the view ray and the surface, and this leads to their varied performance. It is found that the IP method is the most computationally efficient and can produce precise coordinates for simple surfaces, but it may surfer from the divergence and occlusion-induced problems for complicated ones. The rigorous RT method is precise, occlusion-compliant and parameter-free, but it is computationally intensive. The IRT method is intermediate in terms of efficiency. If the initial step is small enough, it can adequately address the occlusion-induced problem and produce satisfactory coordinates for complicated surfaces. This comparison provides a guide to method selection for the single-ray backprojection 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

digital mono-plotting
single-ray backprojection
iterative photogrammetric method
ray-tracing method
iterative ray-tracing method


adaptive transmission opportunity with admission control for ieee 802.11e networks The increase of IEEE 802.11's bandwidth led to a deployment of many multimedia applications over wireless networks. Nevertheless, these applications impose stringent constraints in QoS. In this context, a lot of works have been proposed in order to enhance the QoS-capable IEEE 802.11e MAC protocol. However, they settle for maintaining only an inter-QoS differentiation between the traffic classes, and neglect the intra-Qos differentiation. In fact, the flows belonging to the same service class are assigned the same MAC parameters regardless of their data rate, which leads to throughput fairness rather than perceived QoS fairness. On the other hand, the proposed schemes exhibit performance degradation when the number of flows increases. In this paper, we propose a new MAC protocol based on the reservation of the wireless channel through the use of transmission Opportunity (TXOPlimit) parameter. Each traffic class monitors the MAC queue and computes at runtime the TXOPlimit's value. Thus based on the class' priority and flow's data rate, we can ensure both intra and inter QoS differentiation. Additionally, we specify a distributed admission control mechanism that regulates the network load and protects the admitted flows from the new ones. Simulation results show that compared to the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) scheme of 802.11e, our protocol excels, in terms of network utilization and ability to maintain intra-QoS data rate differentiation. Further when introducing the admission control mechanism, we ensure high protection to the admitted flows, and maintain the network in steady state.

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


Boolean-valued belief functions Some reasons are briefly sketched in favour of the idea that, besides the classical probabilistic and possibilistic measures with uncertainties quantified by real numbers from the unit interval, also non-numerical uncertainty degrees are worth being admitted, analysed and discussed. Uncertainty degrees taking their values in complete Boolean algebras are investigated in more detail, in particular when following the pattern used in the theory of belief function (known also as Dempster-Shafer theory). Rather far going and deep analogies between the usual numerical belief functions and their Boolean-valued analogies are proved to hold true.

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


Positive solutions of higher-order periodic boundary value problems This paper deals with the existence of positive solutions for nth-order periodic boundary value problem [GRAPHICS] where L u(t) = u(n) (t) + Sigma(i=0)(n-1) a(i) u((i)) (t) is an n(th)-order linear differential operator and f : [0, 2pi] x R+ --> R+ is continuous. We obtain a sufficient condition that operator L satisfies the maximum principle in periodic boundary condition. Using this maximum principle and fixed-point index theory in cones, we obtain existence results of positive solutions. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. 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 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

n(th)-order pbvp
positive solution
cone
fixed-point index


Homogeneous Stream Processors With Embedded Special Function Units for High-Utilization Programmable Shaders We embed special function units (SFUs) in homogeneous stream processors (SPs) within a graphics processing unit (GPU), to improve its performance in running modern programmable shaders, which make poor use of a single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) architecture. We also compact instructions, so as to reduce the size of the instruction memory, and reduce area requirements by using a partial SFU in SPs, and a lookup table which is shared between multiple SFUs. The result is an increase of 88% in utilization and a reduction in the normalized area-delay product of 27%, compared to a baseline SIMD architecture. We verified our architecture on an field-programmable gate-array evaluation platform with an ARM9 host processor and a full 3-D graphics pipeline.

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

3-d graphics
graphics processing unit (gpu)
mobile device
programmable shader
special function unit (sfu)
stream processor (sp)


Efficient Hybrid Grid Synthesis Method Based on Genetic Algorithm for Power/Ground Network Optimization with Dynamic Signal Consideration This paper proposes all efficient design algorithm for power/ground (P/G) network synthesis with dynamic signal consideration, which is mainly caused by Ldi/dt noise and Cdv/dt decoupling capacitance (DE-CAP) Current in the distribution network. To deal with the nonlinear global optimization under synthesis constraints directly, the genetic algorithm (GA) is introduced. The proposed GA-based synthesis method call avoid the linear transformation loss and the restraint condition complexity in current SLP, SQP, ICG, and random-walk methods. In the proposed Hybrid Grid Synthesis algorithm, the dynamic signal is simulated in the gene disturbance process, and Trapezoidal Modified Euler (TME) method is introduced to realize the precise dynamic time step process. We also use a hybrid-SLP method to reduce the genetic execute time and increase the network synthesis efficiency. Experimental results on given power distribution network show the reduction on layout area and execution time compared with current P/G network synthesis 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 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

power/ground (p/g) network
genetic algorithm (ga)
trapezoidal modified euler (tme)
hybrid-slp
global area optimization
dynamic signal simulation


A solution to the Angel Problem We solve the Angel Problem, by describing a strategy that guarantees the win of an Angel of power 2 or greater. Basically, the Angel should move north as quickly as possible. However, he should detour around eaten squares, as long as the extra distance does not exceed twice the number of eaten squares evaded. We show that an Angel following this strategy will always spot a trap early enough to avoid it. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Current conveyors based allpass filters and quadrature oscillators employing grounded capacitors and resistors Six quadrature oscillator (QO) circuits are proposed. They are implemented through the proposed second-generation current conveyors (CCIIs) based high input impedance first-order allpass filters and the integrators as the building blocks. Outputs of two sinusoids with 90 phase difference are available in each of the proposed quadrature oscillators. The oscillation condition and oscillation frequency of each proposed quadrature oscillator are independently controllable through grounded resistors. All proposed circuits employ only grounded capacitors and resistors. The use of only grounded capacitors and resistors is ideal for integration. Experimental results are also included.

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 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 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

current conveyors
quadrature oscillators


the demos file system This paper discusses the design of the file system for DEMOS, an operating system being developed for the CRAY-1 computer at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The goals to be met, in particular the performance and usability considerations, are outlined. A description is given of the user interface and the general structure of the file system and the file system routines. A simple model of program behavior is used to demonstrate the effect of buffering data by the file system routines. A disk space allocation strategy is described which will take advantage of this buffering. The last section outlines how the performance mechanisms are integrated into the file system routines.

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

structure
usability
space
goals
behavior
design
performance
operating system
data
user interface
demonstrate
general
model
paper
laboratory
effect
allocation

strategies
computation
buffers
file systems
integrability


improving recommendation lists through topic diversification In this work we present topic diversification, a novel method designed to balance and diversify personalized recommendation lists in order to reflect the user's complete spectrum of interests. Though being detrimental to average accuracy, we show that our method improves user satisfaction with recommendation lists, in particular for lists generated using the common item-based collaborative filtering algorithm.Our work builds upon prior research on recommender systems, looking at properties of recommendation lists as entities in their own right rather than specifically focusing on the accuracy of individual recommendations. We introduce the intra-list similarity metric to assess the topical diversity of recommendation lists and the topic diversification approach for decreasing the intra-list similarity. We evaluate our method using book recommendation data, including offline analysis on 361, !, 349 ratings and an online study involving more than 2, !, 100 subjects.

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

recommendation
order
research
method
accuracy
user satisfaction
diversification
diversity
analysis
data
similarity
collaborative filtering
recommender systems
online

personality algorithm evaluation user completeness metrics


Learning Process Termination Criteria In a supervised learning, the relationship between the available data and the performance (what is learnt) is not well understood. How much data to use, or when to stop the learning process, are the key questions. In the paper, we present an approach for an early assessment of the extracted knowledge (classification models) in the terms of performance (accuracy). The key questions are answered by detecting the point of convergence, i.e., where the classification model's performance does not improve any more even when adding more data items to the learning set. For the learning process termination criteria we developed a set of equations for detection of the convergence that follow the basic principles of the learning curve. The developed solution was evaluated on real datasets. The results of the experiment prove that the solution is well-designed: the learning process stopping criteria are not subjected to local variance and the convergence is detected where it actually has occurred.

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

learning curve
learning process
classification
accuracy
assessment


Reliable non-prehensile door opening through the combination of vision, tactile and force feedback Whereas vision and force feedback-either at the wrist or at the joint level-for robotic manipulation purposes has received considerable attention in the literature, the benefits that tactile sensors can provide when combined with vision and force have been rarely explored. In fact, there are some situations in which vision and force feedback cannot guarantee robust manipulation. Vision is frequently subject to calibration errors, occlusions and outliers, whereas force feedback can only provide useful information on those directions that are constrained by the environment. In tasks where the visual feedback contains errors, and the contact configuration does not constrain all the Cartesian degrees of freedom, vision and force sensors are not sufficient to guarantee a successful execution. Many of the tasks performed in our daily life that do not require a firm grasp belong to this category. Therefore, it is important to develop strategies for robustly dealing with these situations. In this article, a new framework for combining tactile information with vision and force feedback is proposed and validated with the task of opening a sliding door. Results show how the vision-tactile-force approach outperforms vision-force and force-alone, in the sense that it allows to correct the vision errors at the same time that a suitable contact configuration is guaranteed.

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

sensor-based manipulation
tactile sensing
service robotics


Ordering policies for multi-item inventory systems subject to multiple resource constraints We study the multi-item inventory problem with multiple resource constraints. For the simplified variant of this problem with a single resource constraint, known heuristic solution approaches assume independent cycles, fixed cycles, and non-stationary order quantities. For the multiple constraint problem, however, only independent cycle solution algorithms exist in the literature. In this paper, we devise both fixed cycle and non-stationary approaches to the multiple constraint problem, and give computational results showing their potential cost-effectiveness over independent cycle methods. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

O O O O O O O O B I I 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


Power-based supplier selection in product development projects As stronger supplier might exert their power to influence a product development project for their own benefit, business negotiations will be more efficient if the customer has a clear understanding of its power with regards to each of its potential suppliers. This article takes the customer perspective in dealing with supplier selection and proposes a method to estimate the power of a customer versus potential suppliers. Based on an evaluation of their power, potential suppliers are then ranked. This selection procedure is illustrated with an example and evaluated against a case study taken from academic literature. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

supply chain management
suppliers selection


A Provably Correct Translation of the lambda-Calculus into a Mathematical Model of C plus We introduce a translation of the simply typed lambda-calculus into C++, and give a mathematical proof of the correctness of this translation. For this purpose we develop a suitable fragment of C++ together with a denotational semantics. We introduce a formal translation of the lambda-calculus into this fragment, and show that this translation is correct with respect to the denotational semantics. We show as well a completeness result, namely that by translating lambda-terms we obtain essentially all C++ terms in this fragment. We introduce a mathematical model for the evaluation of programs of this fragment, and show that the evaluation computes the correct result with respect to this semantics.

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

functional programming
object-oriented programming
inheritance
simply typed lambda-calculus
kripke-style logical relation
correctness proof


An optimal and processor efficient parallel sorting algorithm on a linear array with a reconfigurable pipelined bus system Optical interconnections attract many engineers and scientists attention due to their potential for gigahertz transfer rates and concurrent access to the bus in a pipelined fashion. These unique characteristics of optical interconnections give us the opportunity to reconsider traditional algorithms designed for ideal parallel computing models, such as PRAMs. Since the PRAM model is far from practice, not all algorithms designed on this model can be implemented on a realistic parallel computing system. From this point of view, we study Coles pipelined merge sort [Cole R. Parallel merge sort. SIAM J Comput 1988;14:77085] on the CREW PRAM and extend it in an innovative way to an optical interconnection model, the LARPBS (Linear Array with Reconfigurable Pipelined Bus System) model [Pan Y, Li K. Linear array with a reconfigurable pipelined bus systemconcepts and applications. J Inform Sci 1998;106;23758]. Although Coles algorithm is optimal, communication details have not been provided due to the fact that it is designed for a PRAM. We close this gap in our sorting algorithm on the LARPBS model and obtain an O(logN)-time optimal sorting algorithm using O(N) processors. This is a substantial improvement over the previous best sorting algorithm on the LARPBS model that runs in O(logNloglogN) worst-case time using N processors [Datta A, Soundaralakshmi S, Owens R. Fast sorting algorithms on a linear array with a reconfigurable pipelined bus system. IEEE Trans Parallel Distribut Syst 2002;13(3):21222]. Our solution allows efficiently assign and reuse processors. We also discover two new properties of Coles sorting algorithm that are presented as lemmas in this paper.

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 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 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 B 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 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 O O O O O O O O O

sorting
optical interconnection
parallel computing


practical rfid + sensor convergence toward context-aware x-reality Second Life is a representative virtual world accessible via the Internet. One can live in Second Life as a Resident, represented as an avatar. Now an important question is a raise that is, What if virtual world reflects real world (almost) exactly in the same way and vice versa? RFID and sensor technologies can drive life into virtual world i.e., RFID + Sensor technology augments user's experiences in the virtual world and enables real world synchronous response toward the virtual world. Furthermore, these two worlds can cross over to extend human life space (called cross-reality ). However, the main challenge of using RFID + Sensor technology in real world is the heterogeneity of RFID + Sensor devices and the sensing data. Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) middleware has emerged as the key technology to propel the innovative paradigm (i.e., cross-reality) realization because USN middleware provides solution to heterogeneity and more. This paper describes USN middleware (COSMOS) which intermediates between various USN applications and diverse physical resources such as RFID reader networks, sensor and actuator networks, etc. and shows how it functions as a part of cross-reality platform.

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


Loop Distribution and Fusion with Timing and Code Size Optimization In this paper, a technique that combines loop distribution with maximum direct loop fusion (LD_MDF) is proposed. The technique performs maximum loop distribution, followed by maximum direct loop fusion to optimize timing and code size simultaneously. The loop distribution theorems that state the conditions distributing any multi-level nested loop in the maximum way are proved. It is proved that the statements involved in the dependence cycle can be fully distributed if the summation of the edge weight of the dependence cycle satisfies a certain condition; otherwise, the statements should be put in the same loop after loop distribution. Based on the loop distribution theorems, algorithms are designed to conduct maximum loop distribution. The maximum direct loop fusion problem is mapped to the graph partitioning problem. A polynomial graph partitioning algorithm is developed to compute the fusion partitions. It is proved that the proposed maximum direct loop fusion algorithm produces the fewest number of resultant loop nests without violating dependence constraints. It is also shown that the resultant code size of the fused loops by the technique of loop distribution with maximum direct loop fusion is smaller than the code size of the original loops when the number of fused loops is less than the number of the original loops. The simulation results are presented to validate the proposed technique.

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

loop distribution
loop fusion
graph partitioning
code size


superimposed pilot-interference aided channel estimation and joint signal detection in amplify-and-forward relaying systems In this paper, we consider an AF relaying system without direct channel between the source node and the destination node, and use superimposed pilots to estimate the overall channel state information (CSI). Considering the superimposed pilot-interference (SPI) at the destination node is useful for channel estimation and data detection because the pilots and the data undergo the same channel fading due to superimposed sending, we utilize SPI to estimate CSI and detect the sending data. Simulation results show that our proposed method improves the spectral efficiency and obtain the satisfactory performance because of using superimposed pilots instead of traditional pilots.

O O O B I 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 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


Downlink radio resource optimization in wide-band CDMA systems Soft handover is analysed and optimized in the downlink direction of a WCDMA system in this paper. Downlink is chosen because the asymmetric nature of most new services supported by the next generation of mobile networks requires more capacity in that direction, and so this is likely to be the limiting factor. The study also sets out to resolve the often controversial opinions about the system level performance with soft handover in the downlink direction. Here. the performance of soft handover is investigated on the link level and on the system level separately. Apart from power control, the cell-selection scheme and power limits (which are ignored by most of the previous work in the literature) are also included. Results show that from the point of view of link quality, soft handover can prevent the downlink traffic channel power going beyond the power limit. From the system level point of view. the downlink capacity can be increased by choosing a proper soft handover overhead. The optimum value of the overhead depends closely on the cell-selection threshold and the radio environment. The paper proves that soft handover is an effective way for interference-reduction and radio resource optimization in the downlink direction for WCDMA systems. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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 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 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 B 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

wide-band code division multiple access (wcdma)


The ExplicitImplicitNull method: Removing the numerical instability of PDEs A general method to remove the numerical instability of partial differential equations is presented. Two equal terms are added to and subtracted from the right-hand side of the PDE: the first is a damping term and is treated implicitly, the second is treated explicitly. A criterion for absolute stability is found and the scheme is shown to be convergent. The method is applied with success to the mean curvature flow equation, the KuramotoSivashinsky equation, and to the RayleighTaylor instability in a Hele-Shaw cell, including the effect of surface tension.

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

stiff set of partial differential equations