Contextual post-processing based on the confusion matrix in offline handwritten Chinese script recognition The inclusion of potentially correct characters in candidate sets is key to improving accuracy in the recognition of Chinese scripts in the aspect of contextual post-processing. This paper presents two methods based on a confusion matrix to recall the correct characters. The first method uses original candidates to conjecture the most likely correct characters, and then combines the conjectured set with the original candidates to produce a new candidate set. The second method performs an approximate matching of adjoining characters in a sentence with Chinese words so as to recall the most likely correct character. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods.

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

chinese character recognition
contextual post-processing
statistical language model
candidate expansion
combination
approximate word-matching


Fortran 90 implementation of the Hartree-Fock approach within the CNDO/2 and INDO models Despite the tremendous advances made by the ab initio theory of electronic structure of atoms and molecules, its applications are still not possible for very large systems. Therefore, semi-empirical model Hamiltonians based on the zero-differential overlap (ZDO) approach such as the Pariser-Parr-Pople, CNDO, INDO, etc. provide attractive, and computationally tractable, alternatives to the ab initio treatment of large systems. In this paper we describe a Fortran 90 computer program developed by us, that uses CNDO/2 and INDO methods to solve Hartree-Fock (HF) equation for molecular systems. The INDO method can be used for the molecules containing the first-row atoms, while the CNDO/2 method is applicable to those containing both the first-, and the second-row, atoms. We have paid particular attention to computational efficiency while developing the code, and, therefore, it allows us to perform calculations on large molecules such as C(60) on small computers within a matter of seconds. Besides being able to compute the molecular orbitals and total energies, our code is also able to compute properties such as the electric dipole moment, Mulliken Population analysis, and linear optical absorption spectrum of the system. We also demonstrate how the program can be used to compute the total energy per unit cell of a polymer. The applications presented in this paper include small organic and inorganic molecules, fullerene C(60). and model polymeric systems, viz., chains containing alternating boron and nitrogen atoms (BN chain), and carbon atoms (C chain).

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

hartree-fock method
self-consistent field approach
cndo/indo models


Audio-visual affect recognition The ability of a computer to detect and appropriately respond to changes in a user's affective state has significant implications to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). In this paper, we present our efforts toward audio-visual affect recognition on 11 affective states customized for HCI application (four cognitive/motivational and seven basic affective states) of 20 nonactor subjects. A smoothing method is proposed to reduce the detrimental influence of speech on facial expression recognition. The feature selection analysis shows that subjects are prone to use brow movement in face, pitch and energy in prosody to express their affects while speaking. For person-dependent recognition, we apply the voting method to combine the frame-based classification results from both audio and visual channels. The result shows 7.5% improvement over the best unimodal performance. For person-independent test, we apply multistream HMM to combine the information from multiple component streams. This test shows 6.1% improvement over the best component performance.

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

affective computing
emotion recognition
multimodal human-computer interaction


Origin of the C49C54 volume anomaly in TiSi2 thin films: an in-situ XRD and TEM analysis To analyze the origin of the C49C54 volume anomaly in TiSi2 thin films, accurate thermal expansion coefficients were determined for both TiSi2 phases using in-situ X-ray diffraction. Between room temperature and 900 K, the C49 coefficients exhibit a clear anisotropy and the volume expansion is found to be larger in C54. This contributes to reduce the 2.0% volume difference usually observed at room temperature to 1.6% at the transformation temperature. The magnitude of the volume discontinuity during transformation is an indication of a first-order transition. At the C49C54 transformation, TEM observations of annealed Ti/Si film capped with (111) TiN have shown that both phases coexist with a metal-rich third component indexed as Ti5Si3 and located beneath TiN.

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


Simple models for biomembrane structure and dynamics Simulation of biomembranes over length and time scales relevant to cellular biology is not currently feasible with molecular dynamics including full atomic detail. Barring an unforeseen revolution in the computer industry, this situation will not change for many decades. We present two coarse grained simulation models for biomembranes that treat water implicitly (i.e. no water molecules appear in our simulations. The hydrophobic effect, hydrodynamics and related properties are approximately included without simulation of solvent). These models enable the study of systems and phenomena previously intractable to simulation. The influence of membrane bound proteins on lipid ordering and the diffusion of membrane bound proteins is discussed.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 system for integral efficiency analysis of sustainable technologies Sustainability is receiving increasing interest from the CS community and average users. We present plans for a system that provides an integral efficiency analysis for recommending the most appropriate sustainable technology for a given location.

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


Closeness coefficient based nonlinear programming method for interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy multiattribute decision making with incomplete preference information The aim of this paper is to develop a closeness coefficient based nonlinear programming method for solving multiattribute decision making problems in which ratings of alternatives on attributes are expressed using interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) sets and preference information on attributes is incomplete. In this methodology, nonlinear programming models are constructed on the concept of the closeness coefficient, which is defined as a ratio of the square of the weighted Euclidean distance between an alternative and the IVIF negative ideal solution (IVIFNIS) to the sum of the squares of the weighted Euclidean distances between the alternative and the IVIF positive ideal solution (IVIFPIS) as well as the IVIFNIS. Simpler nonlinear programming models are deduced to calculate closeness intuitionistic fuzzy sets of alternatives to the IVIFPIS, which are used to estimate the optimal degrees of membership and hereby generate ranking order of the alternatives. The derived auxiliary nonlinear programming models are shown to be flexible with different information structures and decision environments. The proposed method is validated and compared with other methods. A real example is examined to demonstrate applicability of the proposed method in this paper.

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

fuzzy multiattribute decision making
preference
closeness coefficient

interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set


group recommendations with rank aggregation and collaborative filtering The majority of recommender systems are designed to make recommendations for individual users. However, in some circumstances the items to be selected are not intended for personal usage but for a group; e.g., a DVD could be watched by a group of friends. In order to generate effective recommendations for a group the system must satisfy, as much as possible, the individual preferences of the group's members. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of group recommendations obtained aggregating the individual lists of recommendations produced by a collaborative filtering system. We compare the effectiveness of individual and group recommendation lists using normalized discounted cumulative gain. It is observed that the effectiveness of a group recommendation does not necessarily decrease when the group size grows. Moreover, when individual recommendations are not effective a user could obtain better suggestions looking at the group recommendations. Finally, it is shown that the more alike the users in the group are, the more effective the group recommendations are.

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

rank aggregation
collaborative filtering


Coping with noisy search experiences The so-called Social Web has helped to change the very nature of the Internet by emphasising the role of our online experiences as new forms of content and service knowledge. In this paper we describe an approach to improving mainstream Web search by harnessing the search experiences of groups of like-minded searchers. We focus on the HeyStaks system (www.heystaks.com) and look in particular at the experiential knowledge that drives its search recommendations. Specifically we describe how this knowledge can be noisy, and we describe and evaluate a recommendation technique for coping with this noise and discuss how it may be incorporated into HeyStaks as a useful feature.

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


Self-invertible 2D log-gabor wavelets Orthogonal and biorthogonal wavelets became very popular image processing tools but exhibit major drawbacks, namely a poor resolution in orientation and the lack of translation invariance due to aliasing between subbands. Alternative multiresolution transforms which specifically solve these drawbacks have been proposed. These transforms are generally overcomplete and consequently offer large degrees of freedom in their design. At the same time their optimization gets a challenging task. We propose here the construction of log-Gabor wavelet transforms which allow exact reconstruction and strengthen the excellent mathematical properties of the Gabor filters. Two major improvements on the previous Gabor wavelet schemes are proposed: first the highest frequency bands are covered by narrowly localized oriented filters. Secondly, the set of filters cover uniformly the Fourier domain including the highest and lowest frequencies and thus exact reconstruction is achieved using the same filters in both the direct and the inverse transforms (which means that the transform is self-invertible). The present transform not only achieves important mathematical properties, it also follows as much as possible the knowledge on the receptive field properties of the simple cells of the Primary Visual Cortex (V 1) and on the statistics of natural images. Compared to the state of the art, the log-Gabor wavelets show excellent ability to segregate the image information (e.g. the contrast edges) from spatially incoherent Gaussian noise by hard thresholding, and then to represent image features through a reduced set of large magnitude coefficients. Such characteristics make the transform a promising tool for processing natural images.

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

log-gabor filters
oriented high-pass filters
image denoising
visual system


Age, Puberty, and Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence in Adolescence Abstract: This paper links sociological and epidemiologic research on violence and the life course to biosocial perspectives on pubertal maturation to examine risk factors associated with exposure to intimate partner violence in adolescence. While prior research has established early puberty as a risk factor for delinquent behavior, studies to date have not yet investigated whether early puberty is also linked to intimate partner violence in adolescence. Prior epidemiologic research has found that increasing age in adolescence is a risk factor for dating violence, but this work has not yet incorporated the element of pubertal maturation. The present study examines the relative effects of chronological age and maturational age in a biosocial model predicting risk for intimate partner violence among adolescent females, net of established control variables, using three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. These findings indicate that early maturation in females is an additional risk factor for exposure to intimate partner violence in adolescence. The importance of disentangling types of age effects as raised in the developmental literature and as supported by these findings is discussed in relation to the prevention of youth violence.

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

age
puberty
females
intimate partner violence
adolescence


Global analysis of combined reaction distillation processes Polyhedral relaxation is a powerful tool for determining global bounds on optimal solutions in chemical process synthesis. Combined reaction distillation processes are considered as a challenging application example. To reduce complexity of the resulting mixed integer linear optimization problems, model reduction by means of wave functions is proposed, and polyhedral relaxations of sigmoidal wave functions in two variables are derived. It is shown that these relaxations provide better approximation quality than approximating the composed functions individually. Further, the concave envelope of such functions is characterized and (nonlinear) convex underestimators are derived. The approximation results are employed in the computation of lower bounds on the vapor flow of a combined reaction distillation process with a metathesis reaction 2B reversible arrow A + C. We restrict computations to a domain around a known local optimum, trading computation time for some of the globality. This still proves a bound on the vapor flow, but for restricted operating conditions of the column. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

reaction
distillation
polyhedral relaxation

reactive distillation
side reactor
global optimization
minlp
milp


Facile fabrication of conducting polymer nanowire based field effect transistor with controlled shape and position In this paper, a facile method by which conducting polymer nanowire can be fabricated directly on the device platform in controlled position, width, and length is proposed. Conducting polymer was electrochemically deposited on the nanopatterned area of a working electrode. The shape and position of the nanowire, in particular the length of the nanowire can be easily controlled by modulation of the nanopatterned area via lithography method. Through the proposed fabrication method, a polypyrrole nanowire based field effect transistor was successfully established. This fabrication design provides an easy way to manufacture the conducting polymer nanowire based devices in controlled manner, and the devices are suitable for application in chemical and biological sensors as well as organic electronics.

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

conducting polymer nanowire
field effect transistor

shape control
position control
electrochemical polymerization


Model construction and parameter effect for TFT-LCD process based on yield analysis by using ANNs and stepwise regression The ability to improve yield in manufacturing process is an important competitiveness determinant for TFT-LCD factories. Until now, no any suitable theories were proposed to address the yield problem in TFT-LCD industry. However, the information (e.g. the domain knowledge or the parameter effect) obtained from the yield model will provide useful recommendations and improvements to those manufacturers. That is, the model construction and parameter effect for yield analysis will be a necessary issue to be addressed. In this study, we proposed a procedure incorporating the artificial neural networks (ANNs) and stepwise regression techniques to achieve the model construction and parameter effect. Besides, an illustrative case owing to TFT-LCD manufacturer at Tainan Science Park in Taiwan will be applied to verifying our proposed procedure.

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

liquid crystal displays (lcds)
artificial neural networks (anns)


PV-TONS: A photovoltaic technology ontology system for the design of PV-systems The impacts of climate change, the increasing demand for energy and the diminishing fossil fuel resources have resulted in the development and use of a large number of renewable energy technologies in building development. These technologies are generating a huge amount of information which often overwhelms interested users and thus makes it difficult for them to make informed choices about their applications. The emergence of Semantic Web technologies, the next generation of Web technologies, promises to considerably improve representation, sharing and re-use of information to support decision-making. This article investigates how the emerging Semantic Web enabling technologies can be used to both represent information and knowledge about renewable energy technologies, and facilitate system decision-making in recommending appropriate choices for use in different situations. Based on a review of literature, a prototype Semantic Web system known as the photovoltaic technology ontology system (PV-TONS) for managing knowledge about PV-systems is developed to demonstrate some Semantic Web capabilities. PV-TONS includes Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) that provides a reasoning mechanism to facilitate system decision support. To validate PV-TONS, a green building that uses PV-systems to generate its energy was employed as a case study.

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

climate change
ontology
renewable energy
semantic web


Distances on rhombus tilings The rhombus tilings of a simply connected domain of the Euclidean plane are known to form a flip-connected space (a flip is the elementary operation on rhombus tilings which rotates 180 degrees a hexagon made of three rhombi). Motivated by the study of a quasicrystal growth model, we are here interested in better understanding how "tight" rhombus tiling spaces are flip-connected. We introduce a lower bound (Hamming-distance) on the minimal number of flips to link two tilings (flip-distance), and we investigate whether it is sharp. The answer depends on the number n of different edge directions in the tiling: positive for n = 3 (dimer filings) or n = 4 (octagonal filings), but possibly negative for n = 5 (decagonal tilings) or greater values of n. A standard proof is provided for the n = 3 and n = 4 cases, while the complexity of the n = 5 case led to a computer-assisted proof (whose main result can however be easily checked manually). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

computer-assisted proof
phason
pseudoline arrangement
tiling space


Asymptotic surviving rate of trees with multiple fire sources For Hartnells firefighter game with f f vertices initially on fire and at most d d defended vertices per round, the surviving rate ?(G,f,d) ? ( G , f , d ) of a graph G G is the average proportion of its vertices that can be saved in the game on G G , where the average is taken over all sets of f f fire sources. Cai et al. (2010) showed that ? ( T , 1 , 1 ) = 1 ? O ( log n n ) = 1 ? o ( 1 ) for every tree T T of order n n . We study the maximum value c(f,d) c ( f , d ) such that ?(T,f,d)?c(f,d)?o(1) ? ( T , f , d ) ? c ( f , d ) ? o ( 1 ) for every tree T T of order n n , where the o(1) o ( 1 ) term tends to 0 0 as n n tends to infinity. In this notation, the result of Cai et al. states c(1,1)=1 c ( 1 , 1 ) = 1 . Our main results are that c ( f , 1 ) ? ( 1 3 ) f and that 4 9 ? c ( 2 , 1 ) ? 3 4 .

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 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


Optimal Strategies for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Multiple Cross-over Cognitive Radio Networks To improve the sensing performance, cooperation among secondary users can be utilized to collect space diversity. In this paper, we focus on the optimization of cooperative spectrum sensing in which multiple cognitive users efficiently cooperate to achieve superior detection accuracy with minimum sensing error probability in multiple cross-over cognitive radio networks. The analysis focuses on two fusion strategies: soft information fusion and hard information fusion. Under soft information fusion, the optimal threshold of the energy detector is derived in both noncooperative single-user and cooperative multiuser sensing scenarios. Under hard information fusion, the optimal randomized rule and the optimal decision threshold are derived according to the rule of minimum sensing error (MSE). MSE rule shows better performance on improving the final false alarm and detection probability simultaneously. By simulations, our proposed strategy optimizes the sensing performance for each cognitive user which is randomly distributed in the multiple cross-over cognitive radio networks.

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

cooperative spectrum sensing
soft information fusion
hard information fusion


roles of variables and programming skills improvement Roles of variables capture tacit expert knowledge in a form that can be taught in introductory programming courses. A role describes some stereotypic use of variables, and only ten roles are needed to cover 99\% of all variables in novice-level programs. This paper presents the results from a protocol analysis of a program creation task in an experiment where roles were introduced to novices learning Pascal programming. Students were divided into three groups that were instructed differently: in the traditional way with no treatment of roles in lectures or program animation; using roles in lectures but not in animation; and using a role-based program animator in addition to using roles in lectures. The results suggest that the introduction of roles provides novices a new conceptual framework for better mental processing of program information and that the use of role-based program animation increases novices' ability to apply data-related programming plans in program construction.

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


Mandatory Superannuation and Self-Sufficiency in Retirement: An Application of the APPSIM Dynamic Microsimulation Model One of the most significant concerns about the aging population in Australia is the impact on pension costs. Mandatory occupational superannuation was introduced in 1993 to reduce future pension costs: a person with moderate to high levels of superannuation can provide for themselves to some extent and thus has a reduced pension entitlement. The ability of mandatory superannuation to reduce future pension costs is best modeled by dynamic microsimulation, as this takes into account the effect of numerous factors such as disability, child rearing, employment history, and life expectancy on superannuation levels. This article uses the Australian Population and Policy Simulation Model (APPSIM), a dynamic microsimulation model (DMSM), to estimate and simulate the distributional impact on superannuation savings of four different policy scenarios: higher labor force participation across the board; reduced disability among over-40s; higher labor force participation among primary carers of children; and an increase in the mandatory superannuation contribution rate.

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


Invariant image watermarking using multi-scale Harris detector and wavelet moments Desynchronization attack is known as one of the most difficult attacks to resist, which can desynchronize the location of the watermark and hence causes incorrect watermark detection. It is a challenging work to design a robust image watermarking scheme against desynchronization attacks. Based on multi-scale Harris detector and wavelet moment theory, we propose a new content based image watermarking algorithm with low computational complexity, good visual quality and reasonable resistance toward desynchronization attacks in this paper. Firstly, the steady image feature points are extracted from the origin host by using multi-scale Harris detector, and the local feature regions (LFRs) are constructed adaptively according to the feature scale theory. Then, the LFRs are image normalized, and significant regions are obtained from the normalized LFRs by utilizing the invariant centroid theory. Finally, the digital watermark is embedded into the LFRs by modifying wavelet moment invariants of the significant regions. By binding the watermark with the geometrically invariant image features, the watermark detection can be done without synchronization error. Experimental results show that the proposed image watermarking is not only invisible and robust against common image processing operations as sharpening, noise adding, and JPEG compression etc, but also robust against the desynchronization attacks such as rotation, translation, scaling, row or column removal, cropping, and local random bend etc.

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

image watermarking
desynchronization attacks
wavelet moments


Word spotting based on a posterior measure of keyword confidence In this paper, an approach of keyword confidence estimation is developed that well combines acoustic layer scores and syllable-based statistical language model (LM) scores. An a posteriori (AP) confidence measure and its forward-backward calculating algorithm are deduced. A zero false alarm (ZFA) assumption is proposed for evaluating relative confidence measures by word spotting task. In a word spotting experiment with a vocabulary of 240 keywords, the keyword accuracy under the AP measure is above 94%, which well approaches its theoretical upper limit. In addition, a syllable lattice Hidden Markov Model (SLHMM) is formulated and a unified view of confidence estimation, word spotting, optimal path search, and N-best syllable re-scoring is presented. The proposed AP measure can be easily applied to various speech recognition systems as well.

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

word spotting
confidence measure
syllable lattice
zfa assumption


Opial type inequalities involving Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives of two functions with applications A large variety of very general but basic L (p)(1 <= p <= infinity) form Opial type inequalities, [Z. Opial, Sur une inegalite, Ann. Polon. Math. 8 (1960) 29-32] is established involving Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives [G. A. Anastassiou, Opial type inequalities involving fractional derivatives of functions, Nonlinear Stud. 6 (2) (1999) 207-230; Virginia Kiryakova, Generalized Fractional Calculus and Applications, in: Pitman Research Notes in Math. Series, vol. 301, Longman Scientific and Technical, Harlow; copublished in U. S. A with John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1994; Kenneth Miller, B. Ross, An Introduction to the Fractional Calculus and Fractional Differential Equations, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, 1993; Keith Oldham, Jerome Spanier, The Fractional Calculus: Theory and Applications of Differentiation and Integration to Arbitrary Order, Dover Publications, New York, 2006] of two functions in different orders and powers. From the developed results derive several other concrete results of special interest. The sharpness of inequalities is established there. Finally applications of some of these special inequalities are given in establishing uniqueness of solution and in giving upper bounds to solutions of initial value fractional problems involving a very general system of two fractional differential equations. Also upper bounds to various Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives of the solutions that are involved in the above systems are presented. (c) 2007 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

system of fractional differential equations


Keyword spotting in unconstrained handwritten Chinese documents using contextual word model ? We propose a contextual word model for keyword spotting from handwritten Chinese documents. The contextual word model combines character classifier, geometric and linguistic contexts. Promising results were obtained on a large handwriting database CASIA-HWDB. The geometric and linguistic contexts improve the spotting performance significantly.

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

chinese handwritten documents
word similarity


Learner support in UK public libraries Purpose. To convey the initial findings of Biblio.for.mEDA, an EU project exploring lifelong learning provision for adults in public libraries set in the context of a literature review regarding support for learners in public libraries. Design/methodology/approach. A total of 20 public library authorities in England agreed to participate in a survey of the resources, support and staffing to facilitate lifelong learning in public libraries. The data were analysed manually and reported here, including current provision for learners, collaborative working, plans for the future and consideration of the impacts on staff. The findings are reported in the context of other research exploring learning in public libraries and consideration of authority's web sites, annual library plans and position statements. Findings. Depicts current lifelong learning provision in public libraries and the challenges faced by staff in supporting learners. The varying degrees of learner support provided by library services are described including assistance for adults with basic skills needs. Research limitations/implications. The findings are indicative as only 20 public library managers completed the lifelong learning survey in the UK. Practical implications. Provides an extensive review of the literature pertaining to learning in public libraries. Results of the project provide a useful snapshot of current lifelong learning activity and the ways in which services are working to support adults wishing to learn. Originality/value. This paper offers recent research results and analysis of a pressing public library issue for practitioners.

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


JJGEN: A flexible program for generating lists of j j-coupled configuration state functions The success of large scale relativistic multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock calculations for atomic systems rely on judiciously chosen configuration expansions. Dependent on the atomic system as well as on the studied properties, various correlation effects need to be considered. Based on the active set approach, this program allows the user to generate general lists of j j-coupled configuration state functions to be used as input to the grasp2K multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock package [P Jonsson, X. He, C. Froese Fischer, I.P. Grant, Comput. Phys. Comm. (2007), in press].

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

jj-coupled configuration state functions


low-power side-channel attack-resistant asynchronous s-box design for aes cryptosystems In this work, a novel asynchronous combinational S-Box (substitution box) design for AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cryptosystems is proposed and validated. The S-Box is considered as the most critical component in AES crypto-circuits since it consumes the most power and leaks the most information against side-channel attacks. The proposed design is based on a delay-insensitive logic paradigm known as Null Convention Logic (NCL). The proposed NCL S-Box provides considerable benefits over existing designs since it consumes less power therefore suitable for energy-constrained mobile crypto-applications. It also emits less noise and has flatter power peaks therefore leaks less information against side-channel attacks such as differential power/noise analysis. Functional verification, analog simulation and power measurement of NCL S-Box have been done using Mentor Graphics EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools to assure low-power side-channel attack-resistant operation of the proposed clock-free AES S-Box design.

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

substitution box
null convention logic
advanced encryption standard

substitution box (s-box)
side-channel attacks (sca)
security
differential power/noise analysis
power/noise measurement


Lateral diffusion of flexible lipid chains: A dynamic Monte Carlo study A computer simulation study of the lateral diffusion of conformationally-disordered lipid molecules in a monolayer structure is reported. The simulations were carried out with dynamic Monte Carlo methods, employing two different representations of the internal motions of the lipid chains. The results indicate that the dependence of the lateral diffusion coefficients on the density (area-per-molecule) in the monolayer is determined by the conformational behavior of the lipid chains. The classical Cohen-Turnbull theory is found to provide a good description of the simulated lateral diffusion coefficients at moderate densities. The substantial deviations found at low densities are attributed to the small density fluctuations creating the free volume needed for the lateral diffusion process.

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

lipid chains
lateral diffusion
dynamic monte carlo


physical unclonable functions for device authentication and secret key generation Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are innovative circuit primitives that extract secrets from physical characteristics of integrated circuits (ICs). We present PUF designs that exploit inherent delay characteristics of wires and transistors that differ from chip to chip, and describe how PUFs can enable low-cost authentication of individual ICs and generate volatile secret keys for cryptographic operations.

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


The application of SOM as a decision support tool to identify AACSB peer schools For a business school, the selection of its peer schools is an important component of its International Association for Management Education (AACSB) (re)accreditation process. A school typically compares itself with other institutions having similar structural and identity-based attributes. The identification of peer schools is critical and can have a significant impact on a business school's accreditation efforts. For many schools the selection of comparable peer schools is a judgmental process. This study offers an alternative means for selection; a quantitative technique called Kohonen's Self-Organizing Map (SOM) network for clustering. In this research, we first demonstrate the capability of SOM as a clustering tool to visually uncover the relationships among AACSB-accredited schools. The results suggest that SOM is an effective and robust clustering method. Then, we compare the results of SOM with that of other clustering methods, such as K-means, Factor/K-means analysis, and kth nearest neighbor procedure. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that a two-dimensional SOM map can be used to integrate the results of various clustering methods and, thus, act as a visual decision support tool.

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

kohonen som networks
cluster analysis
aacsb accreditation
data mining


Foreign reserve crisis and the Korean industrial structure - A CGE approach A dynamic CGE model is used to investigate the major characteristics of the evolution of Korea's industrial structure up to the breakout of the foreign reserve crisis, and to make forecasts for the coming adjustment of the Korean economy. The basic framework used in the model is ORANI-F. The main modification made is the specification of supply functions in which domestic and export goods are differentiated. The modified specification is pursued to reflect features of the Korean economy that has been heavily export-oriented in its development path. The model is calibrated to Korean input-output (I-O) data for 1990, and the base year I-O data are updated by historical simulation in order to be utilized as a basis for forecasting. Historical simulation shows a fundamental weakness in Korea's industrial structure, which might have contributed significantly to the financial crisis. The forecasts are based on different scenarios regarding the exchange rate, interest rate, unemployment level, investment level, and productivity. Our study shows that an increase in productivity growth will be essential in order to achieve a recovery in growth and an improved current account position. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

dynamic cge model
korean economy
industrial structure
foreign reserve crisis
productivity


Geometric properties of ribs and fans of a Bezier curve Ribs and fans are interesting geometric entities that are derived from a given Bezier curve or surface based oil the recent theory of rib and fall decomposition. In this paper, we present some of new geometric properties of ribs and falls for a Bezier curve including composite fans, rib-invariant deformation, and fan-continuity in subdivision. We also give some examples for the presented properties.

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

geometric algorithm
composite fan
rib-invariance
fan-continuity


Diagnosis of osteoporosis by extraction of trabecular features from hip radiographs using support vector machine: An investigation panorama with DXA Lifespan and its quality can be improved by early diagnosis of osteoporosis. Analysis of trabecular boundness on digital hip radiographs could be useful for identifying subjects with low bone mineral density (BMD) or osteoporosis. The main aim of our study was to evaluate the ability of a kernel-based support vector machine (SVM) with respect to diagnosis and add to knowledge about the trabecular features of digital hip radiographs for identifying subjects with low BMD. In this paper we present an SVM kernel classifier-based computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for osteoporotic risk detection using digital hip radiographs. Initially, the original radiograph was intensified, then trabecular features such as boundness, orientation, solidity of spur and delta were evaluated and radial bias function (RBF) based discrimination was manifested. The next step was the evaluation of the diagnostic capability of the proposed method in order to spot subjects with low BMD at the femoral neck in 50 (50.714.3 years) South Indian women with no previous history of osteoporotic fracture. Out of 50 subjects, 28 were used to train the classifier and the other 22 were used for testing. The proposed system has achieved the highest classification accuracy documented so far by means of a fivefold cross-validation analysis with mean accuracy of 90% (95% confidence interval (CI): 82 to 98%); sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) were 90% (95% CI: 82 to 98%) and 89% (95% CI: 81 to 97%), respectively. Pearson's correlation was observed at the level of p<0.001, between extracted image trabecular features with age and BMDs measured by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Extracted image features also demonstrated significant differences between high and low BMD groups at the level of p<0.001. Our findings suggest that the proposed CAD system with SVM would be useful for spotting women vulnerable to osteoporotic risk.

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

hip radiograph
computer-aided diagnosis (cad)
support vector machine (svm)
bone micro architecture
screening tool
low bmd classification


Energy-efficient algorithms for distributed storage system based on block storage structure reconfiguration As the underlying core infrastructure for cloud computing, distributed storage systems like the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) are the foundation of all kinds of cloud services. However, designers of the ever-expanding systems have ignored the problem of high energy consumption, causing serious environmental and economic problems. The data availability and performance Quality of Service (QoS) requirements make it hard to use existing energy-saving technologies to solve the problem. After researching the data block?s storage structure and mechanism, and the relationship between the server?s status and the data block?s availability, the method to solve the problem of ensuring data availability and performance QoS requirements is proposed. The energy-saving model for the distributed storage system is defined. The algorithm divides the RACK into two distinct storage areas, Active-Zone and Sleep-Zone, reconfiguring the data storage structure using the block storage structure reconfiguration algorithm. To save energy, we turn the servers in Sleep-Zone to sleep mode while the workload is low. Numerical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the energy-efficient algorithms improved the energy efficiency for the distributed storage system.

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

cloud computing
distributed storage system


A two-dimensional beamcolumn finite element with embedded rotational discontinuities This paper presents a new two-dimensional two-noded beamcolumn finite element for the inelastic analysis of plane frames. The proposed element is capable of having multiple internal inelastic hinges whose positions are not limited to the ends of the element. Consequently, it is possible to use one element for one member of a frame structure even when distributed loads are present. At each inelastic hinge, the inelastic rotation is considered while the inelastic axial deformation is neglected. The proposed element is derived by the use of new shape functions. In the development of the shape functions, each inelastic hinge is treated as a location where a rotational discontinuity occurs. By embedding these rotational discontinuities into the expressions of the shape functions, the effect of the inelastic hinges can be included. The obtained stiffness matrix equation of the proposed element is simple and, therefore, practical. Finally, the validity and efficiency of the proposed element are verified by means of solving several numerical examples.

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 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 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

plastic analysis
beamcolumn elements
finite element analysis


A two-stage modeling with genetic algorithms for the nurse scheduling problem This study develops a two-stage mathematical modeling for a nurse scheduling system wherein hospital management requirements, government regulations, and nursing staffs shift preferences are incorporated. In the first stage, the nurse work and vacation schedules are arranged and genetic algorithm (GA) is used to solve for the optimal schedules and to check for any violation of government regulations, hospital management requirements, and the scheduling fairness. In the second stage, the nurse roster schedule is arranged and GA is further adopted to solve the optimal schedule. An empirical case study is performed and the results show that GA can be an efficient tool for solving the nurse scheduling problem. In addition, it can also be easily modified to suit different cases encountered in hospitals.

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


Detecting Anomalous Sexual Interests in Juvenile Sex Offenders Phallometric studies suggest that some adolescent sex offenders exhibit anomalous sexual interests. However, there have been ethical and practical objections to the phallometric testing of adolescents. Alternative measures may be needed if we are to understand the role of anomalous sexual interests in adolescent sexual offending. The Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI) was designed as a brief measure of pedophilic interests based on sexual offense history variables

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

phallometric studies
anomalous sexual interests
adolescents
sspi


On equivalents of well-foundedness - An experiment in MIZAR Four statements equivalent to well-foundedness (well-founded induction, existence of recursively defined functions, uniqueness of recursively defined functions, and absence of descending omega-chains) have been proved in MIZAR and the proofs mechanically checked for correctness. It seems not to be widely known that the existence (without the uniqueness assumption) of recursively defined functions implies well-foundedness. In the proof we used regular cardinals, a fairly advanced notion of set theory. The theory of cardinals in MIZAR was developed earlier by G. Bancerek. With the current state of the MIZAR system, the proofs turned out to be an exercise with only minor additions at the fundamental level. We would like to stress the importance of a systematic development of a mechanized data base for mathematics in the spirit of the QED Project.

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

mizar
qed project
set theory
regular cardinals


Information security concepts and practices: the case of a provincial multi-specialty hospital In recent years, major and widely accepted information security understandings and achievements confirm that the problem is complex. They clarify that technologies are fundamental tools, but management processes have even bigger relevance, as also prestigious international magazines dossier clearly explained recently. Such a magazine attention outlines the wide impact that the subject has on watchful decision makers. ISO17799 is an emerging standard in information security. In principle there are no reasons for considering it not applicable to the health care sector. In practice, because of both the just conceptual level of the standard and the peculiarities of the health care data and institutions, a lot of analysis and design work need to be invested any time a health care institution decides to deal with the subject. CEN/ENV 12924 is another emerging standard certainly more on the spot of the health care. Nevertheless, it also asks for evident further investigation. The practical case of information security design, implementation, management, and auditing inside a multi-specialty provincial Italian hospital will be described.

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


Application of fuzzy calculations for improving portfolio matrices In this paper, we draw upon portfolio analysis to develop and implement a strategic decision making model. We consider the limitations and problems of classic portfolio analysis approach and resolve these problems by using fuzzy set theory. In the proposed method, both internal and external factors are evaluated in linguistic terms and in terms of fuzzy triangular numbers. The fuzzy numbers are fed into an industry attractiveness-business analysis matrix. The novelty of the proposed approach comes from the fact that fuzzy numbers are processed without using conventional methods, allowing for strategies to be ranked.

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

fuzzy weighted average
strategic decision support system
ie matrix
fuzzy modeling


3D fingerprint reconstruction system using feature correspondences and prior estimated finger model The 3D reconstruction technique specific to human finger was studied. Improved orientation and frequency maps were proposed for feature extraction. 3D reconstruction results using different feature correspondences were researched. The paper for the first time analyzed and proposed the optimal finger shape model. Experimental results indicated which features are more suitable for 3D fingerprint reconstruction.

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 B I I

3d fingerprint reconstruction
finger shape model

fingerprint features correspondences
orientation map
frequency map
touchless multi-view imaging


Perception granular computing in visual haze-free task Multi-scale layered model for Grc from feature abstraction to classification. Develops a new focus for deep learning by introducing fuzzy logic. An effective approach is proposed by integrating fuzzy logical designing and PSVM. We report a promising results of our approach in the task of haze-free.

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 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

leveled granular system
machine learning
haze free
brain-like computer


Fast Mixing of Parallel Glauber Dynamics and Low-Delay CSMA Scheduling Glauber dynamics is a powerful tool to generate randomized, approximate solutions to combinatorially difficult problems. It has been recently used to design distributed carrier-sense multiple-access (CSMA) scheduling algorithms for multihop wireless networks. In this paper, we derive bounds on the mixing time of a generalization of Glauber dynamics where multiple links update their states in parallel and the fugacity of each link can be different. The results are used to prove that the average queue length (and hence, the delay) under the parallel-Glauber-dynamics-based CSMA grows polynomially in the number of links for wireless networks with bounded-degree interference graphs when the arrival rate lies in a fraction of the capacity region. Other versions of adaptive CSMA can be analyzed similarly. We also show that in specific network topologies, the low-delay capacity region can be further improved.

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

carrier-sense multiple-access (csma)
delay performance
markov chain
scheduling algorithm


Integrated design in a service marketplace This paper presents a service marketplace vision for enterprise-wide integrated design modeling. In this environment, expert participants and product development organizations are empowered to publish their geometric design, CAE, manufacturing, or marketing capabilities as live services that are operable over the Internet. These services are made available through a service marketplace. Product developers, small or large, can subscribe to and flexibly inter-relate these services to embody a distributed product development organization, while simultaneously creating system models that allow the prediction and analysis of integrated product performance. It is hypothesized that product development services will become commodities, much like many component-level products are today. It will be possible to rapidly interchange equivalent design service providers so that the development of the product and the definition of the product development organization become part of the same process. Computer-aided design tools will evolve to facilitate the publishing of live design services. A research prototype system called DOME is used to illustrate the concept and a pilot study with Ford Motor Company is used in a preliminary assessment of the vision.

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

integrated modeling
system modeling
design service marketplace


Detection and tracking of coronal mass ejections based on supervised segmentation and level set Coronal mass ejection (CME) events refer to the appearance of a new, discrete, white-light feature (with outward velocity) in a coronagraph. The huge amount of data provided by the pertinent instruments onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and, most recently, the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) makes the human-based detection of such events excessively time consuming. Although several algorithms have been proposed to address this issue, there is still lack of universal consensus about their reliability. This work presents a novel method for the detection and tracking of CMEs as recorded by the LASCO instruments onboard SOHO. The algorithm we developed is based on level set and region competition methods, the CMEs texture being characterized by their co-occurrence matrix. The texture information is introduced in the region competition motion equations, and in order to evolve the curve, a fast level set implementation is used.

O O O O B I 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 B 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

coronal mass ejections
supervised segmentation
texture


Three-block bi-focal PLS (3BIF-PLS) and its application in QSAR When X and Y are multivariate, the two-block partial least squares (PLS) method is often used. In this paper, we outline an extension addressing a special case of the three-block (X/Y/Z) problem, where Z sits "under" Y. We have called this approach three-block bi-focal PLS (3BIF-PLS). It views the X/Y relationship as the dominant problem, and seeks to use the additional information in Z in order to improve the interpretation of the Y-part of the X/Y association. Two data sets are used to illustrate 3BIF-PLS. Example I relates to single point mutants of haloalkane dehalogenase from Sphingomonas paucimobilis UT26 and their ability to transform halogenated hydrocarbons, some of which are found as organic pollutants in soil. Example II deals with soil remediation capability of bacteria. Whole bacterial communities are monitored over time using "DNA-fingerprinting" technology to see how pollution affects population composition. Since the data sets are large, hierarchical multivariate modelling is invoked to compress data prior to 3BIF-PLS analysis. It is concluded that the 3BIF-PLS approach works well. The paper contains a discussion of pros and cons of the method, and hints at further developmental opportunities.

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

two-block pls
three-block pls
hierarchical modelling


Direct kernel neighborhood discriminant analysis for face recognition A nonlinear face recognition technique based on neighborhood preserving discriminant analysis (NPDA) is proposed. The kernel trick is adopted to allow the efficient computation of local Fisher discriminant in high-dimensional feature space. Moreover, a direct solution for obtaining the optimal feature vectors in feature space is presented which can preserve the most discriminative information. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on the UMIST database, the ORL database and the FERET database by using six different methods. Experiments show that consistent and promising results are obtained.

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

direct kernel neighborhood preserving discriminant analysis


k-partitioning problems for maximizing the minimum load The optimization versions of the k-PARTITIONING problems are considered in this paper. For the objective to maximize the minimum load of m subsets, we first show that the FOLDING algorithm has a tight worst case ratio of max{2/k, 1/m}. Then, we present an algorithm called HARMONIC1 with a worst case ratio at least max{l/k, 1/([Sigma(i=1)(m) 1/i] + 1)}. It concludes the HARMONIC1 is better than FOLDING for k > 2([Sigma(i=1)(m) 1/i] + 1). We further show that HARMONIC1 is asymptotically optimal ordinal algorithm. We also present an algorithm HARMONIC2 for solving the general k(i)-PARTITIONING problem. (C) 2003 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 B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

partitioning
scheduling
analysis of algorithm


precise pointer reasoning for dynamic test generation Dynamic test generation consists of executing a program while gathering symbolic constraints on inputs from predicates encountered in branch statements, and of using a constraint solver to infer new program inputs from previous constraints in order to steer next executions towards new program paths. Variants of this technique have recently been adopted in several bug detection tools, including our whitebox fuzzer SAGE, which has found dozens of new expensive security-related bugs in many Windows applications and is now routinely used in various Microsoft groups. In this paper, we discuss how to perform precise symbolic pointer reasoning in the context of dynamic test generation. We present a new memory model for representing arbitrary symbolic pointer dereferences to memory regions accessible by a program during its execution, and show that this memory model is the most precise one can hope for in our context, under some realistic assumptions. We also describe how the symbolic constraints generated by our model can be solved using modern SMT solvers, which provide powerful constructs for reasoning about bit-vectors and arrays. This new memory model has been implemented in SAGE, and we present results of experiments with several large Windows applications showing that an increase in precision can often be obtained at a reasonable cost. Better precision in symbolic pointer reasoning means more relevant constraints and fewer imprecise ones, hence better test coverage, more bugs found and fewer redundant test cases.

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

software testing
program verification
automatic test generation


An efficient unstructured MUSCL scheme for solving the 2D shallow water equations A novel MUSCL scheme is developed to provide more efficient and accurate numerical solutions to the 2D shallow water equations. The scheme is flexible for implementation on all common 2D unstructured grids. The scheme satisfies the well-balanced property. It can be generalized into 3D tetrahedron grids and to solve other hyperbolic PDEs.

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

muscl scheme
shallow water equations
unstructured grids


Numerical schemes for dynamically orthogonal equations of stochastic fluid and ocean flows The quantification of uncertainties is critical when systems are nonlinear and have uncertain terms in their governing equations or are constrained by limited knowledge of initial and boundary conditions. Such situations are common in multiscale, intermittent and non-homogeneous fluid and ocean flows. The dynamically orthogonal (DO) field equations provide an adaptive methodology to predict the probability density functions of such flows. The present work derives efficient computational schemes for the DO methodology applied to unsteady stochastic NavierStokes and Boussinesq equations, and illustrates and studies the numerical aspects of these schemes. Semi-implicit projection methods are developed for the mean and for the DO modes, and time-marching schemes of first to fourth order are used for the stochastic coefficients. Conservative second-order finite-volumes are employed in physical space with new advection schemes based on total variation diminishing methods. Other results include: (i) the definition of pseudo-stochastic pressures to obtain a number of pressure equations that is linear in the subspace size instead of quadratic; (ii) symmetric advection schemes for the stochastic velocities; (iii) the use of generalized inversion to deal with singular subspace covariances or deterministic modes; and (iv) schemes to maintain orthonormal modes at the numerical level. To verify our implementation and study the properties of our schemes and their variations, a set of stochastic flow benchmarks are defined including asymmetric Dirac and symmetric lock-exchange flows, lid-driven cavity flows, and flows past objects in a confined channel. Different Reynolds number and Grashof number regimes are employed to illustrate robustness. Optimal convergence under both time and space refinements is shown as well as the convergence of the probability density functions with the number of stochastic realizations.

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

navierstokes
boussinesq
projection methods
total variation diminishing

uncertainty quantification
dynamical orthogonality
error subspace statistical estimation
ocean modeling
data assimilation


Open-source tools for dynamical analysis of Liley's mean-field cortex model A parallel open-source implementation of Liley's mean-field cortex model, in PETSc. We implement fully implicit time integration of nonlinear and variational equations. We perform equilibrium continuation, with computation of inhomogeneous eigenmodes. We compute periodic solutions with NewtonKrylov iteration.

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

hyperbolic partial differential equations

numerical partial differential equations


evaluation measures for preference judgments There has been recent interest in collecting user or assessor preferences, rather than absolute judgments of relevance, for the evaluation or learning of ranking algorithms. Since measures like precision, recall, and DCG are defined over absolute judgments, evaluation over preferences will require new evaluation measures that explicitly model them. We describe a class of such measures and compare absolute and preference measures over a large TREC collection.

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


deriving object typestates in the presence of inter-object references We are interested in static analysis of Java classes with the goal of discovering the preconditions under which a certain program point within a method may be reached, taking into account the effects of previous method calls on an object of that class. The information pertinent to this computation is represented as the object's typestate, which is a finite set of relevant predicates that abstract the object's actual state. The execution of a method depends on an object's current typestate as well as other input parameters; the object may transition to a different typestate during the method's execution.It is common for objects to contain references to other ob-jects. In such cases, an object's behavior may depend on, in addition to its own state, the state of objects it has a refer-ence to. The main contribution of this paper is to discover relevant object typestates, as well as transitions between typestates, in the presence of inter-object references. Our analysis first performs a combined predicate discovery and predicate abstraction to derive "boolean" versions of Java classes given as input. It then uses abstract interpretation to compute the typestate transitions caused by method calls. A novel aspect of this work is that a set of Java classes is analyzed in isolation, without any client program being pro-vided. To do this, the analysis simulates all possible client's actions via a synthetic heap, all of whose interesting config-urations are explored by our analysis.The information we compute can be put to use in several ways. It can be used in checking whether a given client code erroneously uses a set of Java classes in a way that can throw an exception. It can also be used in creating test drivers for Java classes in order to exercise all relevant code paths in the corresponding methods.

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

predicate abstraction
point
order
use
typestate
input
analysis
computation
presence
object
java
exception
account
paper
aspect
method
test
interpretation
code
behavior
exercise
class

heap analysis
interface specification
static analysis
relevance
informal
alias analysis
abstraction
transit
discoveries
version
effect
isolates
action


Analytical modeling and parameter extraction of top and bottom contact structures of organic thin film transistors This paper proposes a structure based model of an organic thin film transistor (OTFT) and analyzes its device physics. The analytical model is developed for the top contact structure by mapping the overlap region to the resistance (in the vertical direction) that includes the contact and the bulk sheet resistances. Total device resistance includes the vertical resistance per unit area of the contact region and the sheet resistance of the channel. In addition, the drain and the gate voltages take into account the potential drop across the respective contacts. The gate bias dependent mobility is considered in place of constant mobility, since; it is more realistic and relevant to the organic TFTs. The proposed analytical model is also applied to the bottom contact structure and the currentvoltage (IV) characteristics are obtained. Furthermore, a differential method is employed to extract the parameters, such as, mobility enhancement factor ?, threshold voltage VT, mobility B, characteristic length LC, vertical resistance RV and contact resistance RC. Finally, the model is validated in terms of electrical characteristics and performance parameters for both top and bottom contact structures. The analytical model results are in close agreement with the experimental results.

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

analytical modeling
contact resistance
organic thin film transistor
overlap region
parameter extraction
vertical resistance


Accurate, efficient and monotonic numerical methods for multi-dimensional compressible flows - Part I: Spatial discretization The present papers deal with numerical methods toward the accurate and efficient computations of multi-dimensional steady/unsteady compressible flows. In Part 1, a new spatial discretization technique is introduced to reduce excessive numerical dissipation in a non-flow-aligned grid system. Through the analysis of TVD limiters, a criterion is proposed to predict cell-interface states accurately both in smooth region and in discontinuous region. According to the criterion, a new way of re-evaluating the cell-interface convective flux in AUSM-type methods is developed. The resultant flux reduces numerical dissipation remarkably in multi-dimensional flows. Also, the monotonicity of AUSM-type methods is achieved by modifying the pressure splitting function directly based on the governing equations and the detection of sonic transition point with respect to a cell-interface. It is noted that the newly formulated AUSM-type flux for Multi-dimensional flows, named M-AUSMPW+, possesses many improved properties in term of accuracy, computational efficiency, monotonicity and grid independency. Through numerous test cases from contact and shock discontinuities, vortex flow, shock wave/boundary-layer interaction to viscous shock tube problems, M-AUSMPW+ proves to be efficient and about twice more accurate than conventional upwind schemes. The three-dimensional implementation of M-AUSMPW+ is expected to provide accuracy and efficiency improvement furthermore. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

multi-dimensional flow computations
advection property
ausm-type method
m-ausmpw
tvd limiting condition
muscl


Wavelet transforms associated to group representations and functions invariant under symmetry groups We study the wavelet transform of functions invariant under a symmetry group, where the wavelet transform is associated to an irreducible unitary group representation. Among other results a new inversion formula and a new covariance principle axe derived. As main examples we discuss the continuous wavelet transform and the short time Fourier transform of radially symmetric functions on R-d.

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

wavelet transform
short time fourier transform
symmetry groups

representations of locally compact groups


Relationships Between Smooth- and Small-Phase Conditions in X-Ray Phase-Contrast Imaging We analyze some relationships between the small- and smooth-phase conditions in propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging. Although these conditions are generally well-understood, our analysis yields the identification of physical conditions under which they are mathematically equivalent. We also demonstrate that the smooth-phase condition depends not only on the imaging system resolution and object-to-detector distance, but also on the topography of the wavefield phase function.

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

phase-retrieval
x-ray phase-contrast imaging


Simulation and sensitivity analysis of carbon storage and fluxes in the New Jersey Pine lands A major challenge in modeling the carbon dynamics of vegetation communities is the proper parameterization and calibration of eco-physiological variables that are critical determinants of the ecosystem process-based model behavior. In this study, we improved and calibrated a biochemical process-based WxBGC model by using in situ AmeriFlux eddy covariance tower observations. We simulated carbon dynamics of fire-dominated forests at tower sites and upscaled the tower site-based simulations to regional scale for the New Jersey Pinelands using LANDSAT-ETM land cover and DAYMET climate data. The Extended Fourier Amplitude Sensitivity Test approach was used to assess the higher-order sensitivity of model to critical eco-physiological parameters. The model predictions of CO(2) net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and gross ecosystem production (GEP) were in agreement with the eddy covariance measurements at the three tower sites in 2005. However, the model showed poor fit in 2006, grossly overestimating NEE and the ratio of ecosystem respiration to GEP because the model did not reflect the carbon loss caused by severe defoliation related to an outbreak of gypsy moths in that year. The model simulations indicated that wildfire reduced annual NEE in pine/scrub oak forest, while prescribed burning in oak/pine and pine/oak stands led to temporary increase in NEE for a period 1-2 years post burning. The uncertainty and sensitivity of the model carbon simulations were mainly attributable to the 2nd- and higher-order interactions between carbon allocation parameters, specific leaf area and fire mortality intensity. (C) 2011 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 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 B I 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 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 B 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 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

carbon dynamics
eddy covariance tower
wxbgc model
nee
gep

the extended fourier amplitude sensitivity test approach (efast)


Improving scheduling of emergency physicians using data mining analysis Emergency departments are the first line in hospitals to face emergency patients. As a major function of emergency medicine, when a patient comes to the emergency department, the emergency medical personnel will first perform a triage procedure and then transfer the patient to associated departments for treatment. Due to the utilization pattern of the Taiwanese people in medicine, the emergency departments in most major hospitals are always overcrowded. The arrangement of manpower or the distribution of resources to handle patients demands can affect disease outcomes and quality of medical treatment. Therefore, the prediction of demands of physician manpower certainly will affect the quality and cost in medical treatment, and has significant impact on patients life and satisfaction. This study used data mining, classification and a decision tree to analyze the prediction model of patients demand in the Emergency department from real treatment situations. The result was the accuracy of shift anticipation improved from 22% to 50%. This study also used anticipant performance evaluation matrix integrated with loss function to evaluate the performance between the anticipation of demand established by mining and the original arrangement. It helped to save the cost of the medical personnel by 37%. In the end it combined the DMAIC action procedure from 6-Sigma and developed an anticipation model that can be suitable in different departments to dispatch medical personnel. It provided a reference of the decision maker of the hospital.

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 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 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 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

data mining
emergency department
classification
performance evaluation matrix


Evaluating test suites and adequacy criteria using simulation-based models of distributed systems Test adequacy criteria provide the engineer with guidance on how to populate test suites. While adequacy criteria have long been a focus of research, existing testing methods do not address many of the fundamental characteristics of distributed systems, such as distribution topology, communication failure, and timing. Furthermore, they do not provide the engineer with a means to evaluate the relative effectiveness of different criteria nor the relative effectiveness of adequate test suites satisfying a given criterion. This paper makes three contributions to the development and use of test adequacy criteria for distributed systems: 1) a testing method based on discrete-event simulations, 2) a fault-based analysis technique for evaluating test suites and adequacy criteria, and 3) a series of case studies that validate the method and technique. The testing method uses a discrete-event simulation as an operational specification of a system in which the behavioral effects of distribution are explicitly represented. Adequacy criteria and test cases are then defined in terms of this simulation-based specification. The fault-based analysis involves mutation of the simulation-based specification to provide a foil against which test suites and the criteria that formed them can be evaluated. Three distributed systems were used to validate the method and technique, including the Domain Name System (DNS).

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

distributed systems
test adequacy criteria

discrete-event simulation
fault-based analysis


A data mining-constraint satisfaction optimization problem for cost effective classification We propose a data mining-constraint satisfaction optimization problem (DMCSOP) where it is desired to maximize the number of correct classifications at a lowest possible information acquisition cost. We show that the problem can be formulated as a set of several binary variable knapsack optimization problems, which are solved sequentially. We propose a heuristic hybrid simulated annealing and gradient-descent artificial neural network (ANN) procedure to solve the DM-CSOP. Using a real-world heart disease data set, we show that the proposed hybrid procedure provides a low-cost and high-quality solution when compared to a traditional ANN classification approach. The massive proliferation of very large databases in organizations makes it necessary to design cost effective and efficient data mining systems. This paper proposes a data mining constraint satisfaction optimization problem, which provides a high quality cost effective solution for a binary classification problem.

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

knapsack optimization
constraint satisfaction optimization
classification
simulated annealing

medical diagnosis
heuristics
artificial intelligence
neural networks


Determination of the emission rate from various opencast mining operations A study was carried out to determine the emission rate and develop an empirical formulae to calculate the emission rate of various opencast mining activities. The results of the study can be utilized by the mine environmental engineers and scientists working in the field of air quality monitoring for the advance prediction of a likely impact due to any upcoming project. To achieve the objectives, seven coal and three iron ore mining sites have been selected to generate emission data for major mining activities by considering type of mining, method of working, geographical location, accessibility and above all resource availability. Based on the study a set of 12 empirical formulae has been developed for the calculation of the suspended particulate matter emission rate from various opencast coal/mineral mining activities. The emission of gaseous pollutants (sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide) has been found to be negligible for various mining activities. Therefore, observation for gaseous pollutants has been considered for overall mining activities and subsequently empirical formulae have been developed. Validation of the developed empirical formulae has been carried out by conducting a field study at the Rajpura mine. The measured and calculated values of the emission rate have been compared for each activity. The average accuracy between the measured and calculated values for different activities has been found to vary between 77.2 and 80.4%.

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 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 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 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

opencast coal mine
air pollution
dispersion modelling
software


Low-complexity joint transmit and receive antenna selection for MIMO systems In this paper, we present a low-complexity algorithm for real-time joint transmit and receive antenna selection in MIMO systems. The computational complexity of exhaustive search in this problem grows exponentially with the number of transmit and receive antennas. We apply Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) to the joint transmit and receive antenna selection problem. In addition, applying the general BPSO to joint antenna selection, we also present a specific improvement to this population-based heuristic algorithm, namely, we feed cyclically shifted initial population so that the average convergence time (the number of iterations until reaching an acceptable solution) is reduced. The proposed BPSO for joint antenna selection problem has a low computational complexity, and its effectiveness is verified through simulation results.

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

joint antenna selection
binary particle swarm optimization
mimo

wireless communication
cyclically shifted population


On the interpretation and identification of dynamic Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models Dynamic Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models are not always easy to interpret, in particular when they are identified from experimental data. Ideally, it is desirable that a dynamic Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model should give accurate global nonlinear prediction and at the same time that its local models are close approximations to the local linearizations of the nonlinear dynamic system. The latter is important in many applications where the constituent local models are used individually and aids validation and interpretation of the model considerably, This defines a multi-objective identification problem, namely, the construction of a dynamic model that is a good approximation of both local and global dynamics of the underlying system. While these objectives are often conflicting, it Is shown that there exists a close relationship between dynamic Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models and dynamic linearization when using affine local model structures, which suggests that a solution to the multi-objective identification problem exists. However, it is also shown that the affine local model structure is a highly sensitive parameterization when applied in transient operating regimes, i.e,, far away from equilibrium. The reason is essentially that the constant term in the affine local model tends to dominate over the linear term during transients. In addition, it is inherently more difficult to design informative experiments in transient regions compared to near-equilibrium regions. Due to the multi-objective nature of the identification problem studied here, special considerations must be made during model structure selection, experiment design, and identification in order to meet both objectives. Some guidelines for experiment design are suggested and some robust nonlinear identification algorithms are studied. These include constrained and regularized identification and locally weighted identification. Their usefulness In the present context is illustrated by examples.

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

dynamic analysis
system identification
transient dynamics


InfluenceRank: Trust-Based Influencers Identification Using Social Network Analysis in Q&A Sites Question and Answering (Q&A) sites are recently gaining popularity on the Web. People using such sites are like a community-anyone can ask, anyone can answer, and everyone can share, since all of the questions and answers are public and searchable immediately. This mechanism can reduce the time and effort to find the most relevant answer. Unfortunately, the users suffer from answer quality problem due to several reasons including limited knowledge about the question domain, bad intentions (e.g. spam, making fun of others), limited time to prepare good answers, etc. In order to identify the credible users to help people find relevant answer, in this paper, we propose a ranking algorithm, InfluenceRank, which is basis of analyzing relationship in terms of users activities and their mutual trusts. Our experimental studies show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the baseline algorithms.

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

knowledge sharing
question answering
identifying influencers