A modified differential evolution algorithm for damage identification in submerged shell structures Obtaining good estimates of structural parameters from observed data is a particularly challenging task owing to the complex (often multi-modal) likelihood functions that often accompany such problems. As a result, sophisticated optimization routines are typically required to produce maximum likelihood estimates of the desired parameters. Evolutionary algorithms comprise one such approach, whereby nature-inspired mutation and crossover operations allow the sensible exploration of even multi-modal functions, in search of a global maximum. The challenge, of course, is to balance broad coverage in parameter space with the speed required to obtain such estimates. This work focuses directly on this problem by proposing a modified version of the Differential Evolution algorithm. The idea is to adjust both mutation and cross-over rates, during the optimization, in a manner that increases the convergence rate to the desired solution. Performance is demonstrated on the challenging problem of identifying imperfections in submerged shell structures.

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 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 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

differential evolution
maximum likelihood estimates


From order to disorder: the role of computer-based electronics projects on fostering of higher-order cognitive skills This research explored learning and thinking processes enhanced by integrating computers in secondary schools electronics projects. Electronics studies provide a sophisticated learning environment, where computers are simultaneously part of the subject matter learned (Technology Education), and a means for enhancing teaching and learning (Educational Technology), as seen in any other area of education. The follow-up on fifty students working on their final projects showed that students working on computer-based electronics projects tend to adopt flexible strategies, such as creating new ideas, risk-taking, improvisation, using trial and error methods for problem solving, and rapid transition from one design to another. In contrast, students working on non-computerized electronics projects are more likely to progress along a linear path: planning, construction, and troubleshooting. Computerized projects also promote the transfer of knowledge between students, and joint development of ideas. Students who exercise freedom in their project do not express the same independence in their documentation, and prepare portfolios that show how they, supposedly, developed their system in an orderly manner. It is important to educate students, and teachers, that creative design and problem solving requires a balance between openness, flexibility, and intuition, on the one hand, and systematic investigation, discipline, and hard work, on the other hand. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

application in subject areas
cooperative learning
secondary education
teaching/learning methods


Note on Jacobi's method for approximating dominant roots In 1834 Jacobi gave a method for approximating dominant roots of a polynomial. In 2002 Mignotte and Stefanescu showed that Jacobi's method works only when the dominant roots are simple. In this note, we show that Jacobi's method can still be useful even when the dominant roots are not simple, if we use it for approximating the "distinct" dominant roots. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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


Exact algorithms and applications for Tree-like Weighted Set Cover ? We introduce an NP-complete special case of the Weighted Set Cover problem and show its fixed-parameter tractability with respect to the maximum subset size, a parameter that appears to be small in relevant applications. More precisely, in this practically relevant variant we require that the given collection C of subsets of a base set S should be tree-like. That is, the subsets in C can be organized in a tree T such that every subset one-to-one corresponds to a tree node and, for each element s of S, the nodes corresponding to the subsets containing s induce a subtree of T . This is equivalent to the problem of finding a minimum edge cover in an edge-weighted acyclic hypergraph. Our main result is an algorithm running in O(k3?mn) O ( 3 k ? m n ) time where k denotes the maximum subset size, n:=|S| n : = | S | , and m:=|C| m : = | C | . The algorithm also implies a fixed-parameter tractability result for the NP-complete Multicut in Trees problem, complementing previous approximation results. Our results find applications in computational biology in phylogenomics and for saving memory in tree decomposition based graph algorithms.

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

minimum weighted edge cover on acyclic hypergraphs


The conundrum of sharing research data We must all accept that science is data and that data are science, and thus provide for, and justify the need for the support of, much-improved data curation. (Hanson, Sugden, & Alberts, 2011)

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

research data sets
collaboration
information reuse
information policy
motivation


Quantifying the Impact of Correlated Failures on Stochastic Flow Network Reliability This paper develops two techniques to analyse the performance of a stochastic-flow network (SFN) model, considering correlated failures. The first approach utilizes a correlated binomial distribution to characterize the failure behavior of the physical lines and routers internal to the individual edges and nodes in the network. The second employs a simulation technique, which can characterize correlated failures between every pair of physical lines and routers in the different edges and nodes comprising the network. Both approaches quantify the probability that a given amount of data can be sent from a source to a sink through this network. This probability that the network satisfies a specified level of demand is referred to as the SFN reliability. The techniques are demonstrated in the context of two case studies, including the Taiwan Academic Network, the backbone of the national computer network connecting all educational institutions in Taiwan. Experimental results demonstrate that correlation can produce a significantly negative impact on reliability, especially when there is a high level of network demand. The proposed approaches, thus, capture the influence of correlation on SFN reliability, offering methods to quantify the utility of reducing correlation.

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

correlated failure
stochastic-flow network (sfn)
stochastic-flow network reliability


Building a software experience factory using granular-based models Software quality is one of the most important practical features of software development. Project managers and developers look for methods and tools supporting software development processes and ensuring a required level of quality. To make such tools relevant, they should provide the designer/manager with some quantitative input useful for purposes of interpretation of the results. Knowledge provided by the tools leads to better understanding of the investigated phenomena. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive development methodology of logic-based models represented by fuzzy neural networks. A process of model development is performed in the stages of structural and parametric optimization. The structural optimization framework utilizes mechanisms of evolutionary computing, which become especially attractive in light of the structural optimization of the models. The parametric optimization is performed using the gradient-base method. The study comprises two detailed case studies dealing with existing software data. The first one deals with the quality assessment of software objects in an exploratory biomedical data analysis and visualization system. The second case is concerned with the model of software development effort discussed in the setting of some medical information system. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

software experience factory
software quality
evolutionary computing
software development effort

granular computing
logic-based models
software experimental data


Automatic extraction of metadata from scientific publications for CRIS systems Purpose - The aim of this paper is to develop a system for automatic extraction of metadata from scientific papers in PDF format for the information system for monitoring the scientific research activity of the University of Novi Sad (CRIS UNS). Design/methodology/approach - The system is based on machine learning and performs automatic extraction and classification of metadata in eight pre-defined categories. The extraction task is realised as a classification process. For the purpose of classification each row of text is represented with a vector that comprises different features: formatting, position, characteristics related to the words, etc. Experiments were performed with standard classification models. Both a single classifier with all eight categories and eight individual classifiers were tested. Classifiers were evaluated using the five-fold cross validation, on a manually annotated corpus comprising 100 scientific papers in PDF format, collected from various conferences, journals and authors' personal web pages. Findings - Based on the performances obtained on classification experiments, eight separate support vector machines (SVM) models (each of which recognises its corresponding category) were chosen. All eight models were established to have a good performance. The F-measure was over 85 per cent for almost all of the classifiers and over 90 per cent for most of them. Research limitations/implications - Automatically extracted metadata cannot be directly entered into CRIS UNS but requires control of the curators. Practical implications - The proposed system for automatic metadata extraction using support vector machines model was integrated into the software system, CRIS UNS. Metadata extraction has been tested on the publications of researchers from the Department of Mathematics and Informatics of the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad. Analysis of extracted metadata from these publications showed that the performance of the system for the previously unseen data is in accordance with that obtained by the cross-validation from eight separate SVM classifiers. This system will help in the process of synchronising metadata from CRIS UNS with other institutional repositories. Originality/value - The paper documents a fully automated system for metadata extraction from scientific papers that was developed. The system is based on the SVM classifier and open source tools, and is capable of extracting eight types of metadata from scientific articles of any format that can be converted to PDF. Although developed as part of CRIS UNS, the proposed system can be integrated into other CRIS systems, as well as institutional repositories and library management systems.

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

automatic metadata extraction
classification
support vector machines
pdf format

data handling
machine oriented languages


MorphoSys: An integrated reconfigurable system for data-parallel and computation-intensive applications This paper introduces MorphoSys, a reconfigurable computing system developed to investigate the effectiveness of combining reconfigurable hardware with general-purpose processors for word-level, computation-intensive applications. MorphoSys is a coarse-grain, integrated, and reconfigurable system-on-chip, targeted at high-throughput and data-parallel applications. It is comprised of a reconfigurable array of processing cells, a modified RISC processor core, and an efficient memory interface unit. This paper describes the MorphoSys architecture, including the reconfigurable processor array, the control processor, and data and configuration memories. The suitability of MorphoSys for the target application domain is then illustrated with examples such as video compression, data encryption and target recognition. Performance evaluation of these applications indicates improvements of up to an order of magnitude (or more) on MorphoSys, in comparison with other systems.

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

target recognition
video compression
data encryption

reconfigurable systems
reconfigurable cell array
single instruction multiple data
dynamic reconfiguration
bit-correlation
multimedia applications
mpeg-2


Design of a new globally stable explicit rate controller for ABR service with saturation In this paper, we consider the closed-loop rate-based flow control for available bit rate (ABR) service in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks, where the ABR sources adjust their transmission rates in response to feedback explicit rates (ER) from the network switches. The feedback ER may be saturated due to the peak cell rate (PCR) and the minimum cell rate (MCR). The buffer occupancy state of the network switch can also be saturated due to the buffer occupancy. To solve saturation nonlinearity problem and analyze the stability globally, a new ER controller is designed, which is composed of a nonlinear controller and a linear controller. The nonlinear controller is employed to bring buffer occupancy state inside the buffer saturation limits and ensure ER value between PCR and MCR. The linear controller is used to ensure that the buffer occupancy state converges to the desired buffer state. Finally, we demonstrate that good transient and steady-state performances can be achieved through a numerical example. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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 O O O O O O O O O O O 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 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

asynchronous transfer mode
available bit rate
explicit rate
linear controller
nonlinear controller


PERFORMANCE BASED CLUSTERING FOR BENCHMARKING OF CONTAINER PORTS: AN APPLICATION OF DEA AND CLUSTER ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE The operational performance of container ports has received more and more attentions in both academic and practitioner circles, the performance evaluation and process improvement of container ports have also been the focus of several studies. In this paper, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), an effective tool for relative efficiency assessment, is utilized for measuring the performances and benchmarking of the 77 world container ports in 2007. The used approaches in the current study consider four inputs (Capacity of Cargo Handling Machines, Number of Berths, Terminal Area and Storage Capacity) and a single output (Container Throughput). The results for the efficiency scores are analyzed, and a unique ordering of the ports based on average cross efficiency is provided, also cluster analysis technique is used to select the more appropriate targets for poorly performing ports to use as benchmarks.

O O O O B 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 B I 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 B 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

data envelopment analysis
benchmarking
container ports

decision support systems
performance measurement
machine learning


The predecessor-existence problem for k-reversible processes For k?1 k ? 1 , we consider the graph dynamical system known as a k-reversible process. In such a process, each vertex in the graph has one of two possible states at each discrete time. Each vertex changes its state between the present time and the next if and only if it currently has at least k neighbors in a state different than its own. Given a k-reversible process and a configuration of states assigned to the vertices, the Predecessor Existence problem consists of determining whether this configuration can be generated by the process from another configuration within exactly one time step. We can also extend the problem by asking for the number of configurations from which a given configuration is reachable within one time step. Predecessor Existence can be solved in polynomial time for k=1 k = 1 , but for k>1 k > 1 we show that it is NP-complete for bipartite graphs. When the graph in question is a tree we show how to solve it in O(n) O ( n ) time and how to count the number of predecessor configurations in O(n2) O ( n 2 ) time. We also solve Predecessor Existence efficiently for the specific case of 2-reversible processes when the maximum degree of a vertex in the graph is no greater than 3. For this case we present an algorithm that runs in O(n) O ( n ) time.

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

k-reversible processes
garden-of-eden configurations
predecessor-existence problem
graph dynamical systems


analysis of a simple evolutionary algorithm for the multiobjective shortest path problem We present a natural fitness function f for the multiobjective shortest path problem, which is a fundamental multiobjective combinatorial optimization problem known to be NP-hard. Thereafter, we conduct a rigorous runtime analysis of a simple evolutionary algorithm (EA) optimizing f . Interestingly, this simple general algorithm is a fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the problem under consideration, which exemplifies how EAs are able to find good approximate solutions for hard problems.

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

fpras
shortest path problem
runtime analysis
combinatorial optimization

multiobjective optimization
approximation algorithms
evolutionary algorithms


Simulation of two-dimensional oscillating flow using the lattice Boltzmann method A numerical study is presented for forced convection of an incompressible oscillating flow in a two-dimensional channel at constant wall temperature using the lattice Boltzmann method. The oscillatory motion of the fluid in the channel is driven by a periodic pressure gradient. The model adopted in this study is the coupled lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook model. Pressure boundary condition is used in the inlet and outlet boundaries, and extrapolation scheme is used in the solid boundaries. The dependence of the flow and heat transfer characteristics on different Womersley numbers and the amplitudes of the pressure gradient are presented. Results are consistent with those from previous numerical simulations and theoretical analyses.

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

lattice boltzmann method
forced convection
oscillating flow


an agent-based approach for managing symbiotic simulation of semiconductor assembly and test operation The rapid changing business environment of high-tech asset intensive enterprises such as semiconductor manufacturing constantly drives production managers to look for better solutions to improve the manufacturing process. Simulation, though identified to be the most appropriate technique to generate and test out possible execution plans, suffers from long cycle-time in the process of model update, analysis and verification. It is thus very difficult to carry out prompt "what-if' analysis to respond to abrupt changes in these systems. Symbiotic simulation systems have been proposed as a way of solving this problem by having the simulation and the physical system interact in a mutually beneficial manner. In this paper, we describe our work in developing a prototype proof-of-concept symbiotic simulation system that employs software agents in the monitoring, optimization and control of a semiconductor assembly and test operation.

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

symbiotic simulation
semiconductor manufacturing


Perceived quality of multimedia educational content: A cognitive style approach Cognitive styles influence the way how humans process information, with previous research demonstrating that they have significant effects on student learning in multimedia environments. On the other hand, the perceptual quality of the human multimedia experience is notoriously difficult to measure. In this paper, we report the results of an empirical study, which investigated the relationship between user cognitive styles and perceptual multimedia quality, in which users had the possibility to specify their desired Quality of Service settings - in terms of frame rates and color depth. Results show that whilst color choice is impacted by a participant's cognitive style, such Quality of Service parameters do not significantly affect perceived multimedia quality, and that users do not necessarily choose optimum presentation settings to enhance their perceived enjoyment and assimilation of multimedia informational content.

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

cognitive styles
multimedia
perceptual quality
quality of service


Numerical evaluation of the rotating crack model The paper discusses typical fracture mechanics problems which have been analyzed in order to evaluate the performance of the rotating crack model. The outcome indicates that the model is a promising tool for nonlinear analysis of concrete structures. For model-I cracking, the model is capable of simulating the whole range of size covered by limit analysis and linear elastic fracture mechanics, but when a slant mesh is used, a mesh bias is observed. For mixed-mode cracking, the model is capable of predicting the ultimate load for small concrete structures; the results of simulations for large concrete structures show a good coincidence with linear elastic fracture mechanics solutions.

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 B I 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 O O 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 B I O


Component-based waveform development: the Nucleus tool flow for efficient and portable software defined radio With the advent of multi-processor systems on chip (MPSoCs) and due to the complexity and variety of modern wireless standards, academia and industry are moving towards software defined radio (SDR) solutions. It is the goal of the SDR approach to allow designers to describe a radio standard or waveform by means of a high level language. This allows faster waveform development cycles and makes it easier to migrate waveforms across different platforms. Out of many software paradigms, component-based software engineering (CBSE) is an attractive match for SDR, especially for baseband applications. It abstracts waveforms in the traditional way algorithm designers think of their applications and guarantees a high degree of portability. However, existing CBSE approaches for SDR have not been able to close the gap between specification and implementation so as to achieve the computational performance and the energy efficiency of handcrafted solutions. The main reason for this gap is that these flows rely on traditional compilers to lower the high level specification to the platform. The work presented in this paper builds on the Nucleus Concept (Ramakrishnan et al., IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM 2009) [28]) in which computationally intensive kernels and their implementation characteristics on the target platform are known. This information allows a tool to close the performance gap, and thus enables efficient component-based SDR development. In this paper we present such a flow and its supporting environment, which includes state-of-the-art tools for system level design. The flow is demonstrated on a MIMO OFDM transceiver.

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

mpsoc programming
scheduling
mapping
real time systems
data flow graphs


Two-machine flowshop scheduling with job class setups to minimize total flowtime This paper studies the two-machine flowshop scheduling problem with job class setups to minimize the total flowtime. The jobs are classified into classes, and a setup is required on a machine if it switches processing of jobs from one class to another class, but no setup is required if the jobs are from the same class. For some special cases, we derive a number of properties of the optimal solution, based on which we design heuristics and branch-and-bound algorithms to solve these problems. Computational results show that these algorithms are effective in yielding near-optimal or optimal solutions to the tested problems.

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

flowshop scheduling
job class setups
heuristics
total flowtime


Harmonics and inter harmonics estimation of DFIG based standalone wind power system by parametric techniques Harmonics, inter harmonics estimation of standalone doubly fed induction generator. Dynamic estimation of inter-harmonics under variable rotor speed. Dynamic estimation of inter-harmonics for stiffness variation. Root MUSIC and ESPRIT is used with sliding window concept.

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

doubly fed induction generator (dfig)
inter-harmonics
sliding window esprit
sliding window root music


Distributed algorithms in wireless sensor networks: An approach for applying binary consensus in a real testbed In this work, we realize the binary consensus algorithm for use in wireless sensor networks. Binary consensus is used to allow a collection of distributed entities to reach consensus regarding the answer to a binary question and the final decision is based on the majority opinion. Binary consensus can play a basic role in increasing the accuracy of detecting event occurrence. Existing work on the binary consensus algorithm focuses on simulation of the algorithm in a purely theoretical sense. We fill the gap between the theoretical work and real hardware implementation by modifying the algorithm to function in wireless sensor networks. This is achieved by adding a method for nodes to determine who to communicate with as well as adding a heuristic for nodes to know when the algorithm has completed. Our implementation is asynchronous and based on random communication. In this work, we expand our previous implementation to test it on 139 hardware testbed. Moreover, we are able to minimize the convergence time achieving ultimate results. Our implementation show successful results and all the motes are able to converge to the expected value in very short time.

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

binary consensus
wireless sensor networks


teaching of image synthesis in functional style We have taught the 3D modelling and image synthesis for computer science students (Master level), exploiting very intensely the functional style of programming/scene description. Although no pure functional language was used, since we wanted to use popular programmable packages, such as POV-Ray, or the interactive modeller/renderer Blender, scriptable in Python, we succeded in showing that typical functional tools, such as higher-order functional objects, compositions and recursive combinations are useful, easy to grasp and to implement. We constructed implicit and parametric surfaces in a generic way, we have shown how to transform (deform) and blend surfaces using functional methods, and we have even found a case where the laziness, implemented through Python generators, turned to be useful.We exploited also some functional methods for the image processing: creation of procedural textures and their transformation.

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


using opinion polls to help measure business impact in agile development The achievement of quantifiable business impact is an essential goal of improvement activities in software development. Traditionally, a set of well-defined metrics built up a sound foundation for measuring the effects on business improvements before and afterwards. However, those metrics are not always equally applicable throughout all development methodologies, especially when moving from traditional (waterfall) towards agile development. Furthermore, some major impacts of improvement activities (e.g. customer satisfaction) might not be directly accessible with standard measurements. For this reason we suggest that opinion polls should supplement traditional metrics. Opinion polls fit perfectly into the idea of frequent feedback, given by customers as well as team members, that is an inherent part of agile processes. Thus, opinion polls are especially suitable for agile improvements. Adding subjectivity and the power of individual evaluation to objective metrics can help to analyze root causes that form the major levers for achieving business impact.

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

business impact
opinion polls
agile development

process improvement
software measurement


Prototype classifier design with pruning Algorithms reducing the storage requirement of the nearest neighbor classifier (NNC) can be divided into three main categories: Fast searching algorithms, Instance-based learning algorithms and Prototype based algorithms. We propose an algorithm, LVQPRU, for pruning NNC prototype vectors and a compact classifier with good performance is obtained. The basic condensing algorithm is applied to the initial prototypes to speed up the learning process. The learning vector quantization (LVQ) algorithm is utilized to fine tune the remaining prototypes during each pruning iteration. We evaluate LVQPRU on several data sets along with 12 other algorithms using ten-fold cross-validation. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has high generalization accuracy and good storage reduction ratios.

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

prototype selection
editing
instance-based learning
pruning technology


Passivity-Preserving Model Reduction Using Dominant Spectral-Zero Interpolation In this paper, the dominant spectral-zero method (dominant SZM) is presented, a new passivity-preserving model-reduction method for circuit simulation. Passivity is guaranteed via spectral-zero interpolation, and a dominance criterion is proposed for selecting spectral zeros. Dominant SZM is implemented as an iterative eigenvalue-approximation problem using the subspace-accelerated dominant-pole algorithm. Passive circuits are reduced automatically irrespective of how the original system equations are formulated (e.g., circuit models containing controlled sources or susceptance elements). Dominant SZM gives comparable and often more accurate reduced models than known techniques such as PRIMA, modal approximation, or positive real balanced truncation.

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

circuit simulation
interpolation
model reduction
passivity

subspace-accelerated dominant-pole algorithm (sadpa)


Remark on a 5-design related to a putative extremal doubly-even self-dual [96,48,20] code In this note, it is shown that if there is a self-orthogonal 5-(96,20,816) design, then the rows of its block-point incidence matrix generate an extremal doubly-even self-dual code of length 96. In other words, a putative extremal doubly-even self-dual code of length 96 is generated by the codewords of minimum weight.

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


Political mobilization through social network sites: The mobilizing power of political messages received from SNS friends Political mobilization through social network sites (SNSs) is examined. Voting intention is increased among past nonvoters. Who use SNSs through political messages. Which are received from their SNS friends.

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 O

electoral mobilization
political media use
information flow
political persuasion


An intelligent security agent for a reliable cipher system using PingPong An intelligent security agent for a reliable cipher system using a PingPong cipher is proposed. The system contains a security agent for security managements and services. The agent includes an intelligent selection of many security features: encryption processing speeds, encryption methods, encryption algorithms, synchronization methods, network interfaces, user authentications, security-bit levels, the size of synchronization patterns, etc. Furthermore, encryption algorithms with a PingPong-256, -192 and -128 for data confidentiality and a synchronization generator and detector with a SYNPAT-128, -112, -96, -80, and -64 for system stabilization are designed and analyzed.

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


Performance and quality of service of data and video movement over a 100Gbps testbed Digital instruments and simulations are creating an ever-increasing amount of data. The need for institutions to acquire these data and transfer them for analysis, visualization, and archiving is growing as well. In parallel, networking technology is evolving, but at a much slower rate than our ability to create and store data. Single fiber 100 Gbps networking solutions have recently been deployed as national infrastructure. This article describes our experiences with data movement and video conferencing across a networking testbed, using the first commercially available single fiber 100 Gbps technology. The testbed is unique in its ability to be configured for a total length of 60, 200, or 400 km, allowing for tests with varying network latency. We performed low-level TCP tests and were able to use more than 99.9% of the theoretical available bandwidth with minimal tuning efforts. We used the Lustre file system to simulate how end users would interact with a remote file system over such a high performance link. We were able to use 94.4% of the theoretical available bandwidth with a standard file system benchmark, essentially saturating the wide area network. Finally, we performed tests with H.323 video conferencing hardware and quality of service (QoS) settings, showing that the link can reliably carry a full high-definition stream. Overall, we demonstrated the practicality of 100Gbps networking and Lustre as excellent tools for data management.

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

high performance computing
performance analysis


Fault location method applied to transmission lines of general configuration A fault location method applied to transmission lines of any topology is proposed. The method uses the grids admittance and impedance matrices. The search for the fault location is performed in each lines section independently. Results show the robustness of the method even for high impedance faults. The method is capable to estimate the loads impedance.

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


Checking the consistency of a hybrid knowledge base system This paper concerns a method to verify the consistency of a hybrid knowledge base system. We assume the knowledge base of the verified system supports the representation of production rules and frame taxonomies. Moreover, the knowledge base can also be used to represent non-monotonic and uncertain reasoning. For the purpose of the verification, an ATMS like theory is created by simulating the deductive process needed to deduce an inconsistency. Next, the ATMS like theory is processed to compute a specification of the initial fact base that allows for the execution of a deductive tree that leads to the inconsistency.

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

verification
inconsistency
knowledge base system
production rules


Learning From Crowds For many supervised learning tasks it may be infeasible (or very expensive) to obtain objective and reliable labels. Instead, we can collect subjective (possibly noisy) labels from multiple experts or annotators. In practice, there is a substantial amount of disagreement among the annotators, and hence it is of great practical interest to address conventional supervised learning problems in this scenario. In this paper we describe a probabilistic approach for supervised learning when we have multiple annotators providing (possibly noisy) labels but no absolute gold standard. The proposed algorithm evaluates the different experts and also gives an estimate of the actual hidden labels. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method is superior to the commonly used majority voting baseline.

O O O O O O 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 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


performance-constrained template-driven retargeting for analog and rf layouts Performance of analog and RF integrated circuits is highly sensitive to layout parasitics. This paper presents a complete template-driven algorithm that automatically conducts performance-constrained parasitic-aware retargeting and optimization for analog and RF layouts. In order to ensure desired circuit performance even at high frequency, a lumped interconnect RLC model is deployed and geometric expressions of inductive parasitics are incorporated into optimization. Piecewise performance sensitivities with respect to layout parasitics are determined. Then the algorithm applies numeric performance sensitivities to control parasitic-related layout geometries by constructing performance constraints. The formulated problem is finally solved using a graph-based technique and mixed-integer nonlinear programming. The proposed method has been incorporated into a parasitic-aware automatic layout optimization and retargeting tool. It has been demonstrated to be effective and efficient especially when adapting layout design for new technologies or updated specifications.

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

parasitics optimization layout retargeting performance


Untangling the web of e-Research: Towards a sociology of online knowledge e-Research is a rapidly growing research area, both in terms of publications and in terms of funding. In this article we argue that it is necessary to reconceptualize the ways in which we seek to measure and understand e-Research by developing a sociology of knowledge based on our understanding of how science has been transformed historically and shifted into online forms. Next, we report data which allows the examination of e-Research through a variety of traces in order to begin to understand how knowledge in the realm of e-Research has been and is being constructed. These data indicate that e-Research has had a variable impact in different fields of research. We argue that only an overall account of the scale and scope of e-Research within and between different fields makes it possible to identify the organizational coherence and diffuseness of e-Research in terms of its socio-technical networks, and thus to identify the contributions of e-Research to various research fronts in the online production of knowledge.

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

e-research
e-science
cyberinfrastructure
sociology of science


Scheduling para-virtualized virtual machines based on events Para-virtualization features little performance degradation by presenting each virtual machine with an abstraction of hardware instead of fully emulating the hardware environment. A guest running atop Xen can achieve near-native performances. A critical part of Xen is its CPU scheduler which slices and dispatches physical CPU time to virtual machines. Xens credit scheduler utilizes blocked-to-boosted mechanism to improve latency and throughput of I/O tasks. It boosts the scheduling priority of a blocked VCPU that receives an event. The boosted VCPU then pre-empts the current VCPU and gets executed straightaway. However, virtual CPUs that receive events while processing CPU-intensive tasks seldom block. Thus, the mechanism does not favor these VCPUs which process mixed workloads. Moreover, VCPUs that constantly send request events are not properly prioritized either. The two problems above can result in poor application performance to guest domains. We propose a novel approach to improve the credit scheduler, making it appropriately prioritize such domains. Our solution includes two aspects: 1) to schedule the VCPU that receives I/O events as soon as possible; 2) to switch in frequent event senders to let them initiate more I/O requests from time to time. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that our approach not only improves the responsiveness of domains doing mixed workloads, but also minimizes the possibly caused scheduling unfairness.

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


IL-7 Modulates Osteoclastogenesis in Patients Affected by Solid Tumors High levels of interleukin-7 (IL-7) have been associated with bone loss due to its stimulatory osteoclastogenic activity. Osteolytic patients' peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) differentiate into osteoclasts without adding stimulating factors. Now, we investigated the potential role of IL-7 in the spontaneous osteoclastogenesis occurring in these patients. We identified significant differences in serum IL-7 levels between patients with/without bone metastases, suggesting that IL-7 might be effective as a clinical marker of disease progression. In patients' PBMC cultures we demonstrated that IL-7 stimulates osteoclastogenesis by inducing TNF-? release by T and B cells. These findings add further details to the disclosure of the mechanisms controlling bone metastases in solid tumors

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


Resource allocation in OFDMA networks based on interior point methods This paper studies a joint optimization problem of sub-carrier assignment and power allocation in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) wireless networks. A major challenge in solving the optimization problem is non-convexity caused by the combinatorial nature of sub-carrier assignment problem and/or non-convex objective functions. To address the combinatorial complexity, we formulate the resource allocation problem as an optimization problem with continuous variables. We propose a novel approach based on a penalty function method and an interior point method (PM/IPM) to solve the problem. In specific, using a two-step implementation, the penalty method is applied first to convert the non-convex feasible region to a convex one. Then, the interior point method is deployed to solve the problem which is non-convex only in the objective function. To evaluate the performance of PM/IPM, we apply a genetic algorithm (GA) that achieves near optimal solutions of the problem by iterative searching. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


Logic gates as repeaters (LGR) for area-efficient timing optimization Logic gates as repeaters (LGRs) a methodology for delay optimization of CMOS logic circuits with resistance-capacitance (RC) interconnects is described. The traditional interconnect segmentation by insertion of repeaters is generalized to segmentation by distributing logic gates over interconnect lines, reducing the number of additional, logically useless inverters. Expressions for optimal segment lengths and gate scaling are derived. Considerations are presented for integrating LGR into a VLSI design flow in conjunction with related methods. Several logic circuits have been implemented, optimized and verified by LGR. Analytical and simulation results were obtained, showing significant improvement in performance in comparison with traditional repeater insertion, while maintaining low complexity and small area.

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

delay
interconnect
logic
repeaters
timing optimization


the quest for an administrative nexus for information technology programs Information Technology and Information Systems have evolved as inherently interdisciplinary fields. While an essentially haphazard proliferation of programs has helped to create a field of study that can necessarily and appropriately cross boundaries between mathematics, science, engineering, and business disciplines, the historical ambiguity with respect to program naming and classification has been, for many individuals and institutions, a source of confusion. As a discipline, if indeed there can be a single discipline to consider, individuals, educational institutions, and practitioners are constantly addressing the issue of where programs belong, both pedagogically and administratively. The existence of numerous, competing classification schemes, none of which appears to either offer a compelling advantage or commands a consensus concerning appropriateness, is the core issue the authors address in this paper. An analysis of data that are freely available (web sites for relevant academic institutions and programs) reveals literally hundreds of titles and dozens of administrative configurations for programs that fall under the broader and typical headings of CS, IS, IT, MIS, etc.. A similar inquiry into the practitioner side of the problem reveals numerous competing schemes that include, CIP & SOC, not to mention a myriad of taxonomies from various industry and professional groups (ACM, IEEE, etc.). The one thing that can be asserted with essentially absolute confidence is that this amalgam is confusing at best, and the status quo is not in the long-term interests of the discipline. The authors make no grandiose claims to having developed a unified paradigm to magically make sense of the wide range of program offerings in the numerous Information Technology and Information Systems related disciplines. Rather, this paper recognizes and begins to address the need to lay a foundation for appropriately categorizing and classifying this diverse collection of programs and configuration.

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

information technology
information systems
classification


verification and change-impact analysis of access-control policies Sensitive data are increasingly available on-line through the Web and other distributed protocols. This heightens the need to carefully control access to data. Control means not only preventing the leakage of data but also permitting access to necessary information. Indeed, the same datum is often treated differently depending on context.System designers create policies to express conditions on the access to data. To reduce source clutter and improve maintenance, developers increasingly use domain-specific, declarative languages to express these policies. In turn, administrators need to analyze policies relative to properties, and to understand the effect of policy changes even in the absence of properties.This paper presents Margrave, a software suite for analyzing role-based access-control policies. Margrave includes a verifier that analyzes policies written in the XACML language, translating them into a form of decision-diagram to answer queries. It also provides semantic differencing information between versions of policies. We have implemented these techniques and applied them to policies from a working software application.

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 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

access-control policies
change-impact analysis
decision diagram


Algorithm 892: DISPMODULE, a Fortran 95 Module for Pretty-Printing Matrices A standard Fortran 95 module for printing scalars, vectors, and matrices to external files is provided. The module can display variables of default kind of all intrinsic types (integer, real, complex, logical, and character), and add-on modules are provided for data of the nondefault kind. The main module is self-contained and incorporating it only requires that it be compiled and linked with a program containing a "use dispmodule" statement. A generic interface and optional parameters are used, so that the same subroutine name, DISP, is used to display items of different data type and rank, irrespective of display options. The subroutine is quite versatile, and hopefully can improve Fortran's competitiveness against other array programming languages. The module also contains a function TOSTRING to convert numerical scalars and vectors to strings.

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

algorithms
design
matrix pretty-printing
matrix printing
output utilities
array programming language


A probability-based approach to comparison of fuzzy numbers and applications to target-oriented decision making In this paper, we introduce a new comparison relation on fuzzy numbers based on their alpha-cut representation and comparison probabilities of interval values. Basically, this comparison process combines a widely accepted interpretation of fuzzy sets together with the uncertain characteristics inherent in the representation of fuzzy numbers. The proposed comparison relation is then applied to the issue of ranking fuzzy numbers using fuzzy targets in terms of target-based evaluations. Some numerical examples are used to illuminate the proposed ranking technique as well as to compare with previous methods. More interestingly, according to the interpretation of the new comparison relation on fuzzy numbers, we provide a fuzzy target-based decision model as a solution to the problem of decision making under uncertainty, with which an interesting link between the decision maker's different attitudes about target and different risk attitudes in terms of utility functions can be established. Moreover, an application of the proposed comparison relation to the fuzzy target-based decision model for the problem of fuzzy decision making with uncertainty is provided. Numerical examples are also given for illustration.

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

decision-making
fuzzy number
fuzzy target


A phenomenologicalmathematical approach in simulating the loss in weight of chlorine during sodalite synthesis In a previous paper we described the results of a sodalite synthesis, performed by the mixing of metakaolinite and NaCl within an alumina crucible, heated in an oven at a temperature of 850C and ambient pressure. During the synthesis process, a loss of weight of the open crucible, attributed to chlorine (Cl) diffusion through the granular material contained inside the crucible, was observed. A very simple model was proposed, aimed at reproducing mathematically the experimental data behavior. Nevertheless, experimental and numerical result comparisons suggested the need for some modeling improvements. Thus, in this paper the already proposed analytical solution, based on the usual first principles approach, was modified through a backfitting phenomenologicalanalytical approach. We explored the assumptions that at the beginning of the experiment, the inventory of chlorine was completely or partially bound in the matrix, and that it was transformed into a gas free to diffuse only gradually over the transient. In addition, we explored the effect of full or partial variability in time of the diffusion coefficient. The apparent delay in the release of chlorine gas through the matrix mixture could be justified by an incomplete heating of the crucible at 850C and/or by some structure change of the mixture during the synthesis processes, eventually resulting in changes of diffusion coefficient values. The influences of the actual measurement process on the mathematical modeling setting, in particular the removal of some quantity of substance for diffractometer analysis, are also discussed. The final numerical results show an excellent agreement with the experimental data. Finally, it is worth noting that, notwithstanding the proposed methodology is addressed to the specific problem, it could have application in different fields.

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

sodalite synthesis
mathematical modeling


Semantic segmentation of images exploiting DCT based features and random forest A method for semantic image segmentation based on random forests. Novel texture features based on Discrete Cosine Transform to describe image regions. The method uses a limited amount of resources and works in realtime. The approach shows good performance overcoming other state of the art. The system obtains a better accuracy on small classes (i.e., Pedestrians).

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


Antibodies to Serotonin Attenuate Closed Head Injury Induced BloodBrain Barrier Disruption and Brain Pathology Closed head injury (CHI) often results in profound brain swelling and instant death of the victims due to compression of the vital centers. However, the neurochemical basis of edema formation in CHI is still obscure. Previous studies from our laboratory show that blockade of serotonin synthesis prior to CHI in a rat model attenuates brain edema, indicating a prominent role for serotonin in head injury. Thus, neutralization of endogenous serotonin activity and/or blocking of its receptors will induce neuroprotection in CHI. Since serotonin has more than 14 receptors and selective serotonin antagonists are still not available, we used serotonin antiserum to neutralize its in vivo effects before or after CHI in a rat model. CHI was produced by an impact of 0.224 N on the right parietal skull bone under Equithesin anesthesia by dropping a weight of 114.6g from a height of 20cm through a guide tube. This concussive brain injury resulted in bloodbrain barrier (BBB) disruption, brain edema formation, and volume swelling at 5h that were most pronounced in the contralateral cerebral hemisphere. The plasma and brain serotonin levels were increased several-fold at this time. Intracerebroventricular administration of serotonin antiserum (1:20, monoclonal) into the left lateral cerebral ventricle (30?L in PBS) 30min before or 30min (but not 60min) after CHI significantly attenuated BBB disruption, brain edema formation, volume swelling, and brain pathology. The plasma and brain serotonin levels continued to remain high. These observations are the first to suggest that antiserum to serotonin when administered into the CSF during the early phase of CHI are capable of inducing neuroprotection.

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

closed head injury
serotonin
brain edema
bloodbrain barrier
neuroprotection


All-to-all scatter in de Bruijn and Kautz networks In this paper, we describe algorithms for all-to-all scatter in all-port de Bruijn and Kautz networks. The algorithms axe memory-optimal and asymptotically time- and transmission-optimal. We give algorithms for the noncombining model and their modifications for the limited combining model. The algorithms achieve asymptotic optimality on both store-and-forward and wormhole switched networks.

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

kautz network
de bruijn network
average distance
all-to-all scatter
total exchange
store-and-forward
all-port capability


Fibrinogen Non-Inherited Heterogeneity and Its Relationship to Function in Health and Disease In healthy individuals fibrinogen occurs in more than one million non-identical forms because of the many possible combinations of biosynthetically or postbiosynthetically modified or genetically polymorphic sites. The various forms may show considerable differences in their functional properties. Normal variant sites are due to alternative splicing, modification of certain amino acid residues, and proteolysis. Both the A? and the ? chain occur in two splice forms, and it is known that only the shorter ? chain can interact with platelets, but the longer may bind thrombin and factor XIII. Many types of posttranslationally modified amino acid residues are present in fibrinogen. The A? chain is partially phosphorylated at two sites, possibly leading to protection against proteolysis. The B? chain is N-glycosylated and partially proline hydroxylated, each at one site. The ? chain is N-glycosylated at one site and the longer splice form doubly tyrosine-sulfated. The glycosylations are believed to protect against polymerization and proteolysis. All three chains are partially oxidized at methionine residues and deamidated at asparagine and glutamine residues. The A? and ? chain are partially carboxy-terminally degraded by proteolysis, the shorter forms causing a decrease in polymerization, crosslinking, and clot stability. Abnormal variants occur in patients with diabetes mellitus, in the form of glycated lysine residues; in patients with certain types of cancer, in the form of crosslinked degradation products; in patients with certain types of autoimmune disease, in the form of complexes with antibodies; in cigarette smokers; and in individuals treated with acetylsalicylic acid, in the form of acetylated lysine residues.

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

heterogeneity
alternative splicing
diabetes

posttranslational modification
phosphorylation
sulfation
hydroxylation
oxidation
glycosylation
proteolytic degradation
glycation
acetylation
procoagulant
anticoagulant
fibrin network structure
aspirin
oxidative stress


compositional analysis for linear control systems The complexity of physical and engineering systems, both in terms of the governing physical phenomena and the number of subprocesses involved, is mirrored in ever more complex mathematical models. While the demand for precise models is indisputable, the analysis of such system models remains challenging. Adopting techniques from computer science makes available a framework for compositional analysis of interconnected control systems. Simulation relations relate process models with their specifications thus checking whether the derived model behaves as desired. Based on that, compositional and assume-guarantee reasoning rules decompose the actual verification task into several subtasks that can be checked with less computational effort. Thus, modularly composed system models can be treated with modular analysis techniques. In this paper, we want to give an overview of how these concepts can be applied to analyze linear continuous-time systems (LTI). Motivated by the underlying physics, we introduce a general type of interconnection that can also be interpreted as a feedback control configuration in the spirit of decentralized control. Additionally, parallel composition of LTI systems is discussed with special emphasis on decomposition strategies for a given specification. The proposed methodology could be extended further to classes of hybrid systems where compositional analysis techniques are of particular interest.

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

linear systems
compositional reasoning
assume-guarantee reasoning


Adaptive spatial clustering in the presence of obstacles and facilitators The ASCDT+ algorithm can consider both obstacles (e.g. mountain) and facilitators (e.g. highway). The ASCDT+ algorithm can detect clusters with different shapes and densities at both global and local levels. The ASCDT+ algorithm is easy to implement with no need of user-specified parameters.

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

delaunay triangulation
obstacle
facilitator


An Improved Securer and Efficient Nonce-Based Authentication Scheme with Token-Update In this paper. we propose a mutual authentication scheme using nonce variable instead of Mac address and accompanying with token updates to improve the functionality. Lee et al. (2005a) and Shi et al. (2006) proposed the site authentication schemes by using the generating random numbers The site authentication can identify a personal computer using LAN card's Mac address, but the Mac address is easily detected through Address Resolution Protocol in the Open Systems Interconnection model Therefore. we propose an improved securer and efficient nonce-based authentication scheme providing mutual authentication to resist the replay attack, man-in-the-middle attack and Mac address attack.

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


framework of the decision support expert systems Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence have produced computer systems displaying human expert level expertise in several particular disciplines like medicine, organic chemistry, education, geological exploration... The Expert-System-Building systems became available and paper reviews prospects for their incorporation into DSS proposing Mixed Binary Linear Goal Programming (Discriminative Optimization in particular) as a framework for Decision Problems.

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

goal programming
discriminative optimization

management information system
mixed binary goal programming
expert system building system
knowledge engineering
linear goal programming decision models
decision support framework
decision support system
expert system
consultation system


Effect of redundancy on the mean time to failure of wireless sensor networks In data-driven wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the system must perform data sensing and retrieval and possibly aggregate data as a response at runtime. As a WSN is often deployed unattended in areas where replacements of failed sensors are difficult, energy conservation is of primary concern. While the use of redundancy is desirable in terms of satisfying user queries to cope with sensor and transmission faults, it may adversely shorten the lifetime of the WSN, as more sensor nodes will have to be used to answer queries, causing the energy of the system to drain quickly. In this paper, we analyze the effect of redundancy on the mean time to failure (MTTF) of a WSN in terms of the number of queries the system is able to answer correctly before it fails due to either sensor/transmission faults or energy depletion. In particular, we analyze the effect of redundancy on the MTTF of cluster-structured WSNs for energy conservations. We show that a tradeoff exists between redundancy and MTTF. Furthermore, an optimal redundancy level exists such that the MTTF of the system is maximized. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

wireless sensor networks
redundancy
mean time to failure


Improved heuristic algorithms for minimizing initial markings of Petri nets The minimum initial marking problem MIM of Petri nets is described as follows: "Given a Petri net and a firing count vector X, find an initial marking M-0, with the minimum total token number, for which there is a sequence delta of transitions such that each transition t appears exactly X(t) times in delta, the first transition is enabled at M-0 and the rest can be fired one by one subsequently." This paper proposes two heuristic algorithms AAD and AMIM+ and shows the following (1) and (2) through experimental results: (1) AAD is more capable than any other known algorithm; (2) AMIM+ can produce M-0, with a small number of tokens, even if other algorithms are too slow to compute M-0 as the size of an input instance gets very large.

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

minimal initial marking problems
legal firing sequence problems
deficient siphons
experimental evaluation


ON A CLASS OF OPERATORS FROM BERGMAN-TYPE SPACES TO WEIGHTED-TYPE SPACES Let D = {z is an element of C: vertical bar z vertical bar < 1} be the open unit disk in the complex plane C and H(D) be the space of all analytic functions on D. For phi an analytic self-map of D and g is an element of H(D), we define two operators on H(D) by DW phi,g f = (g . f o phi)' and W phi,gD f = (g . f' o phi). By using some growth properties of the inducing maps phi and g to the boundary of D, we obtain an asymptotical expression of the essential norms for operators DW phi,g and W phi,gD from Bergman-type to weighted-type spaces in this paper.

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

bergman-type space
weighted-type space
essential norm


dynamics of evolutionary robustness Recently there has been considerable interest in determining whether, and how much, evolutionary pressure for genetic robustness influences evolutionary processes. In this paper, we attempt to show that this evolutionary pressure does have a significant effect in typical genetic programming problems. Specifically we demonstrate that in a standard genetic programming implementation to solve a symbolic regression problem, pressure for genetic robustness forces the population away from high fitness, but less robust, solutions in favor of solutions with lower fitness, but higher genetic robustness.

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


Dual track and segmented single track bidirectional loop guidepath layout for AGV systems In this study, we develop integer programming models for simultaneous design of the guidepath track and location of the pickup and dropoff stations for automated guided vehicle systems. Two alternative bidirectional topologies are compared: a dual track loop, and a single track loop partitioned into non-overlapping segments, each served by a single vehicle. We show that the empty vehicle trips have a significant impact on the quality of design in both topologies. More importantly, we identify the difference between empty flow node balancing for a dual track loop with the empty flow edge balancing on a single track loop subject to segmentation. Our work presents an economic decision making model for the trade-off analysis between the costs associated with the additional shop floor space of a dual track loop and the increased vehicle fleet size of a segmented single track loop.

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

facility design
material handling
agvs
segmented flow topology
tandem configuration


A coupled statistical model for face shape recovery from brightness images We focus on the problem of developing a coupled statistical model that can be used to recover facial shape from brightness images of faces. We study three alternative representations for facial shape. These are the surface height function, the surface gradient, and a Fourier basis representation. We jointly capture variations in intensity and the surface shape representations using a coupled statistical model. The model is constructed by performing principal components analysis on sets of parameters describing the contents of the intensity images and the facial shape representations. By fitting the coupled model to intensity data, facial shape is implicitly recovered from the shape parameters. Experiments show that the coupled model is able to generate accurate shape from out-of-training-sample intensity 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

face analysis
shape-from-shading (sfs)
statistical models


Performance analysis of broadcast protocols in ad hoc networks based on self-pruning Self-pruning is an effective scheme for efficient broadcasting in ad hoc wireless networks. In a self-pruning broadcast protocol, a node may not forward a broadcast packet if a certain self-pruning condition is satisfied based on the neighborhood information. In a static network with an ideal MAC layer, only a subset of nodes forward the broadcast packet and still guarantee the complete network delivery. Various protocols have been proposed with different self-pruning conditions. Recently, a generic self-pruning protocol was proposed by Wu and Dai [ 21], which combines the strength of previous conditions and is more effective. In this paper, we first propose an enhanced version of the generic protocol, which is more elegant in interpreting existing protocols and has a simpler correctness proof. Then, we evaluate the performance of the family of self-pruning protocols under various network situations with ns2. The objective is to observe the efficiency and reliability of these protocols as a function of network density, congestion, and mobility, and provide a guideline of implementation in the "real world." Our performance analysis reveals that the protocol reliability is barely affected by packet collision. However, most self-pruning protocols suffer from low delivery ratio in highly mobile networks. We further explore various techniques that improve the delivery ratio and show that both high efficiency and reliability can be achieved in highly mobile networks.

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

localized algorithms
ns-2 simulation
self-pruning


Looking for a structural characterization of the sparseness measure of (frequent closed) itemset contexts ? It is widely recognized that the performances of frequent-pattern mining algorithms are closely dependent on data being handled, i.e., sparse or dense. The same situation applies to the efficiency of concise representations of frequently occurring patterns with respect to the extraction task and the obtained compactness rates, as well as for other data mining techniques such as clustering, and for the mining algorithms of different pattern classes such as hypergraphs. In this paper, we raise a fundamental question: how can we formally define the sparseness of an arbitrary context and assess its value? As an answer, based on the framework of the succinct system of minimal generators, we present an innovative characterization of context sparseness, as well as a new sparseness measure which results from the aggregation of two complementary measures, namely the succinctness and compactness measures of each equivalence class, induced by the Galois closure operator. Experiments carried out mainly attain a finer classification of benchmark contexts and, then, confirm our viewpoint that the dense and sparse labels are not absolute.

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

sparseness measure
succinct system of minimal generators
closed itemset

formal concept analysis
extraction context
minimal generator


Rate and Distortion Modeling of CGS Coded Scalable Video Content In this paper, we derive single layer and scalable video rate and distortion models for video bitstreams encoded using the coarse grain quality scalability (CGS) feature of the scalable extension of H. 264/AVC. In these models, we assume the source is Laplacian distributed and compensate for errors in the distribution assumption by linearly scaling the Laplacian parameter lambda. Moreover, we present simplified approximations of the derived models that allow for a run-time calculation of sequence dependent model constants. Our models use the mean absolute difference (MAD) of the prediction residual signal and the encoder quantization parameter (QP) as input parameters. Consequently, we are able to estimate the residual MAD, bitrate, and distortion of a future video frame at any QP value and for both base-layer and CGS layer packets. We also present simulation results that demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed models.

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

coarse grain scalability
rate-distortion modeling
scalable video coding


Traffic shaping in aggregate-based networks: implementation and analysis The Differentiated Services architecture allows providing scalable Quality of Service by means of aggregating flows to a small number of traffic classes. Among these classes a Premium Service is defined, for which end-to-end delay guarantees are of particular interest. However, in aggregate scheduling networks such delay bounds suffer significantly from effects that are due to multiplexing of flows to aggregates. A way to minimize the impacts of interfering flows is to shape incoming traffic, so that bursts are smoothed. Doing so reduces the queuing delay within the core of a domain, whereas an additional shaping delay at the edge is introduced. This paper addresses the issue of traffic shaping analytically by extending known Network Calculus. An equation that allows computing tight per-flow output bounds in aggregate scheduling networks is derived and a solution for shaped interfering flows is provided. We then give an overview on the shaping capabilities of current legacy routers, showing deviations of actual implementations compared to the idealized view. Finally, the evolved analytical framework is applied to an example scenario and the results are compared to corresponding measurements. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

aggregate scheduling
differentiated services
traffic shaping
network calculus
legacy routers


Price competition with service level guarantee in web services ? Web services have become quite popular over the last few years as they allow easier development and integration of business applications. Unlike traditional software systems, web services are self-contained modular software components that are delivered over a network (such as the Internet) and executed on a remote system hosting the requested services. However, the network and processing overhead associated with web services have also presented a significant challenge to its performance. As a result, a web service provider often announces a service-level agreement when launching a service. The service-level agreement provides a guarantee to the consumers that they can get the service they pay for at an assured level of quality. In this paper, we study the competition between two such providers offering functionally the same web services. Each provider needs to decide a service level (standard or premium) she would offer and a corresponding price for the selected service level to meet the QoS guarantee (in terms of an average response time of the service). We first analyze the case where the providers choose service levels and prices simultaneously, and then extend it to a sequential-move situation. Finally, we examine strategic choices of providers when the processing capacity is endogenized into the model.

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

service differentiation
quality of service guarantee
capacity constraint


DOES BLACK HOLE EVAPORATION IMPLY THAT PHYSICS IS NONUNITARY, AND IF SO, WHAT MUST THE LAWS OF PHYSICS LOOK LIKE? Stephen Hawking's discovery of black hole evaporation has the remarkable consequence that information is destroyed by a black hole, which can only be accommodated by modifying the laws of quantum mechanics. Different attempts to evade the information loss paradox were subsequently suggested, apparently without a satisfactory resolution of the paradox. On the other hand, attempting to include nonunitarity in quantum mechanics might lead to laws predicting observable consequences such as nonlocality or violation of energy-momentum conservation; but it may be possible to circumvent these obstacles. Recent developments seem to require a different view on quantum gravity and suggest that ideas about locality in physics and Hawking's semiclassical approximation are misleading. An accurate description may show unitary evolution and no information loss after all.

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

black hole evaporation
information loss paradox


A multi-modal approach to story segmentation for news video This research proposes a two-level, multi-modal framework to perform the segmentation and classification of news video into single-story semantic units. The video is analyzed at the shot and story unit (or scene) levels using a variety of features and techniques. At the shot level, we employ Decision Trees technique to classify the shots into one of 13 predefined categories or mid-level features. At the scene/story level, we perform the HMM (Hidden Markov Models) analysis to locate story boundaries. Our initial results indicate that we could achieve a high accuracy of over 95% for shot classification, and over 89% in F-1 measure on scene/story boundary detection. Detailed analysis reveals that HMM is effective in identifying dominant features, which helps in locating story boundaries. Our eventual goal is to support the retrieval of news video at story unit level, together with associated texts retrieved from related news sites on the web.

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

news story segmentation
multi-modal approach
learning-based approach


A small multi-needle probe for measuring soil thermal properties, water content and electrical conductivity Ready access to reliable low cost instrumentation for use in laboratory and field experimentation remains a priority for many working in the soil and environmental sciences area. In this paper we provide an overview of the multi-needle heat-pulse probe which can now provide measurements of soil temperature, soil thermal diffusivity, volumetric heat capacity, thermal conductivity, volumetric water content, and bulk soil electrical conductivity, all at the same position and time. We show that the multi-needle probe can provide high quality measurements, in some cases as good as or better than those obtained using other current methodology. As an example, multi-needle probes have been shown to yield measurements of volumetric water content with a root mean square error of 0.01 m3 m?3. Because of its small size the multi-needle probe should prove particularly useful for measurements near the soil surface, near to plant roots, and in other situations requiring fine spatial resolution in measurements. These probes can also be easily automated for unattended use to facilitate data collection as a function of time and space. We also highlight issues that need further analysis and research in helping guide further development of more robust multi-needle probe designs, especially for field applications.

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

environmental
volumetric
probe
spatial resolution


Applying 4-regular grid structures in large-scale access networks 4-Regular grid structures have been used in multiprocessor systems for decades due to a number of nice properties with regard to routing, protection, and restoration, together with a straightforward planar layout. These qualities are to an increasing extent demanded also in large-scale access networks, but concerning protection and restoration these demands have been met only to a limited extent by the commonly used ring and tree structures. To deal with the fact that classical 4-regular grid structures are not directly applicable in such networks, this paper proposes a number of extensions concerning restoration, protection, scalability, embeddability, flexibility, and cost. The extensions are presented as a tool case, which can be used for implementing semi-automatic and in the longer term full automatic network planning tools. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

communication system planning
topology
wan


Curricular modules: 3D and immersive visualization tools for learning The Center for Arts and Technology has undertaken a project designed to integrate the ideas of students and faculty from different disciplines. Curricular modules are created using virtual reality to illustrate six scientific principles that have traditionally been difficult for students to understand in a two-dimensional, static environment. The modules are developed by student/faculty cross-disciplinary teams. A benefit of the team approach is the mutual understanding that is gained by working with individuals with different expertise and backgrounds.

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


The need for a systems thinking approach to the planning of rural telecommunications infrastructure The Rural Telecommunications System is not just a technological system but a complex system of people and technology interdependent on other systems/subsystems. Therefore, the issues involved in the deployment of rural telecommunications infrastructure, if all its stakeholders are to benefit, are not always technological, but are often complex and messy, cutting across various aspects of the rural society, especially in developing countries. Consequently, the planning of rural telecommunications infrastructure requires an approach that addresses such complexities. It is proposed that a systems thinking approach to the planning of rural telecommunications infrastructure will yield far more value than is possible from current approaches, for all of its stakeholders.

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

rural telecommunications
systems thinking
planning


Regular sets of infinite message sequence charts This paper resumes the study of regular sets of message sequence charts (MSC) initiated by Henriksen et al. [Technical Report, BRICS RS-99-52, 1999]. Differently from their results, we consider infinite MSCs. It is shown that for bounded sets of infinite MSCs, the notions of recognizability, axiomatizability in monadic second order logic, and acceptance by a deterministic message passing automaton with Muller acceptance condition coincide. We furthermore characterize the expressive power of first order logic and of its extension by modulo-counting quantifiers over bounded infinite MSCs. In order to prove our results, we exhibit a new connection to the theory of Mazurkiewicz traces using relabeling techniques. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

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

message sequence charts
monadic second order logic
mazurkiewicz traces