Robust topology optimization accounting for spatially varying manufacturing errors This paper presents a robust approach for the design of macro-, micro-, or nano-structures by means of topology optimization, accounting for spatially varying manufacturing errors. The focus is on structures produced by milling or etching; in this case over- or under-etching may cause parts of the structure to become thinner or thicker than intended. This type of error is modeled by means of a projection technique: a density filter is applied, followed by a Heaviside projection, using a low projection threshold to simulate under-etching and a high projection threshold to simulate over-etching. In order to simulate the spatial variation of the manufacturing error, the projection threshold is represented by a (non-Gaussian) random field. The random field is obtained as a memoryless transformation of an underlying Gaussian field, which is discretized by means of an EOLE expansion. The robust optimization problem is formulated in a probabilistic way: the objective function is defined as a weighted sum of the mean value and the standard deviation of the structural performance. The optimization problem is solved by means of a Monte Carlo method: in each iteration of the optimization scheme, a Monte Carlo simulation is performed, considering 100 random realizations of the manufacturing error. A more thorough Monte Carlo simulation with 10000 realizations is performed to verify the results obtained for the final design. The proposed methodology is successfully applied to two test problems: the design of a compliant mechanism and a heat conduction problem.

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

topology optimization
manufacturing errors
monte carlo method


The end of the "European Paradox" This paper evaluates the European Paradox according to which Europe plays a leading world role in terms of scientific excellence, measured in terms of the number of publications, but lacks the entrepreneurial capacity of the US to transform this excellent performance into innovation, growth, and jobs. Citation distributions for the US, the European Union (EU), and the Rest of the World are evaluated using a pair of high- and low-impact indicators, as well as the mean citation rate (MCR). The dataset consists of 3.6 million articles published in 1998-2002 with a common 5-year citation window. The analysis is carried at a low aggregation level, namely, the 219 sub-fields identified with the Web of Science categories distinguished by Thomson Scientific. The problems posed by international co-authorship and the multiple assignments of articles to sub-fields are solved following a multiplicative strategy. We find that, although the EU has more publications than the US in 113 out of 219 sub-fields, the US is ahead of the EU in 189 sub-fields in terms of the high-impact indicator, and in 163 sub-fields in terms of the low-impact indicator. Finally, we verify that using the high-impact indicator the US/EU gap is usually greater than when using the MCR.

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

citation impact
research performance
us/european union gap
high- and low-impact indicators


Efficient partial-surface registration for 3D objects We present a new method for three-dimensional partial-surface registration that utilizes both regional surface properties and shape rigidity constraint to align a partial object surface and its corresponding complete surface. The statistical properties of the vertices on the object surface are first computed and compared with each other to find the initial candidate correspondences. We use the overall object-shape rigidity constraint and a clustering method to obtain an approximation of the transformation parameters while, at the same time, rejecting correspondence outliers. The transformation parameters can be further refined with an iterative approach. The algorithm does not require any feature extraction or initial pose estimation, and is especially applicable when the object surfaces are formed by a large number of vertices, smooth with few salient features, and contain many regionally similar surface patches. Experiments confirm that the proposed scheme can achieve accurate registration results in an efficient manner.

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

statistical properties
rigidity constraint
clustering

3d registration
partial surface
4-point tuple
iterative refinement


DFTS: A dynamic fault-tolerant scheduling for real-time tasks in multicore processors This paper presents a dynamic scheduling for real-time tasks in multicore processors to tolerate single and multiple transient faults. The scheduling is performed based on three important issues: (1) current released tasks, (2) current available processor cores, and (3) consideration of the number of faults and their occurrences. Using tasks utilization along with a defined criticality threshold in the proposed scheduling method, current ready tasks are divided into critical- and noncritical ones. Based on whether a task is critical or noncritical, an appropriate fault-tolerance policy is exploited. Moreover, scheduling decisions are made to fulfill two key goals: (1) increasing scheduling feasibility and (2) decreasing the total tasks execution time. Several simulation experiments are carried out to compare the proposed method with two well-known methods, called checkpointing with rollback recovery and hardware replication. Experimental results reveal that in the presence of multiple transient faults, the feasibility rate of the proposed method is considerably higher than the other well-known fault-tolerance methods. Moreover, the average timing overhead of this method is lower than the traditional methods.

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


A video-based door monitoring system using local appearance-based face models In this paper, we present a real-time video-based face recognition system. The developed system identifies subjects while they are entering a room. This application scenario poses many challenges. Continuous, uncontrolled variations of facial appearance due to illumination, pose, expression, and occlusion of non-cooperative subjects need to be handled to allow for successful recognition. In order to achieve this, the system first detects and tracks the eyes for proper registration. The registered faces are then individually classified by a local appearance-based face recognition algorithm. The obtained confidence scores from each classification are progressively combined to provide the identity estimate of the entire sequence. We introduce three different measures to weight the contribution of each individual frame to the overall classification decision. They are distance-to-model (DTM), distance-to-second-closest (DT2ND), and their combination. We have conducted closed-set and open-set identification experiments on a database of 41 subjects. The experimental results show that the proposed system is able to reach high correct recognition rates. Besides, it is able to perform facial feature and face detection, tracking, and recognition in real-time. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

face recognition from video
feature tracking
discrete cosine transform
fusion


Computational complexity of the parallel knock-out problem We consider computational complexity questions related to parallel knock-out schemes for graphs. In such schemes, in each round, each remaining vertex of a given graph eliminates exactly one of its neighbours. We show that the problem of whether, for a given bipartite graph, such a scheme can be found that eliminates every vertex is NP-complete. Moreover, we show that, for all fixed positive integers k >= 2, the problem of whether a given bipartite graph admits a scheme in which all vertices are eliminated in at most (exactly) k rounds is NP-complete. For graphs with bounded tree-width, however, both of these problems are shown to be solvable in polynomial time. We also show that r-regular graphs with r >= 1, factor-critical graphs and 1-tough graphs admit a scheme in which all vertices are eliminated in one round. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


sweeps over wireless sensor networks We present a robust approach to data collection, aggregation, and dissemination problems in sensor networks. Our method is based on the idea of a sweep over the network: a wavefront that traverses the network, passes over each node exactly once, and performs the desired operation(s). We do not require global information about the sensor field such as node locations. Instead, in a preprocessing phase, we compute a potential function over the network whose gradients guide the sweep process. The sweep itself operates asynchronously, using only local operations to advance the wavefront. The gradient information provides a local ordering of the nodes that helps reduce the number of MAC-layer collisions as the wavefront advances, while also globally shaping the wavefront so as to conform to the sensor field layout. The approach is robust to both link volatility and node failures that may be present in real network conditions. The potential is computed by a stable diffusion process in which each node repeatedly set its potential to the average of the potentials of its neighbors. Aggregation paths are decided on-line as the sweep proceeds and no fixed tree structure is needed over the course of the computation. We present simulation results illustrating the correctness of the algorithm and comparing the performance of the sweep to aggregation trees under various network conditions.

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


A Formalization Proposal of Timed BPMN for Compositional Verification of Business Processes The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is currently being used by companies as the Business Process (BP) standard modeling language. In this work, we define a timed semantics of BPMN in terms of the Communicating Sequential Processes + Time (CSP+T) process calculus in order to detail the behaviour of processes within a fixed time span. By adding a formal specification to the response times of activities, temporal constraints, and temporal constraints in communications and task collaboration. we are able to specify and develop the Business Process Task Model (BPTM) of a target BP. We also demonstrate how our proposal can be integrated into the Formal Compositional Verification Approach (FVCA) to allow the use of state-of-the-art MC tools to automatically verify BPTMs. Finally, we examine the application of the proposal to a BPTM verification related to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) enterprise-business.

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

compositional verification
formal specification
task model


First-order Hamiltonian field theory and mechanics This article deals with the geometric analysis of the evolutionary and the polysymplectic approach in first-order Hamiltonian field theory. Based on a variational formulation in the Lagrangian picture, two possible counterparts in a Hamiltonian formulation are discussed. The main difference between these two approaches, which are important for the application, is besides a different bundle construction, the different Legendre transform as well as the analysis of the conserved quantities. Furthermore, the role of the boundary conditions in the Lagrangian and in the Hamiltonian pictures will be addressed. These theoretical investigations will be completed by the analysis of several examples, including the wave equation, a beam equation and a special subclass of continuum mechanics in the presented framework.

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

polysymplectic structure
partial differential equations


From concepts to clinical reality: An essay on the benchmarking of biomedical terminologies It is only by fixing on agreed meanings of terms in biomedical terminologies that we will be in a position to achieve that accumulation and integration of knowledge that is indispensable to progress at the frontiers of biomedicine. Standardly, the goal of fixing meanings is seen as being realized through the alignment of terms on what are called concepts. Part I addresses three versions of the concept-based approachby Cimino, by Wster, and by Campbell and associatesand surveys some of the problems to which they give rise, all of which have to do with a failure to anchor the terms in terminologies to corresponding referents in reality. Part II outlines a new, realist solution to this anchorage problem, which sees terminology construction as being motivated by the goal of alignment not on concepts but on the universals (kinds, types) in reality and thereby also on the corresponding instances (individuals, tokens). We outline the realist approach and show how on its basis we can provide a benchmark of correctness for terminologies which will at the same time allow a new type of integration of terminologies and electronic health records. We conclude by outlining ways in which the framework thus defined might be exploited for purposes of diagnostic decision-support.

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

ontology
referent tracking
concept orientation
realism
electronic health record
diagnostic decision-support


A two-parameter continuation algorithm using radial basis function collocation method for rotating BoseEinstein condensates We propose RBFCM for a coupled nonlinear Schrdinger eigenvalue problem (CNLSE). Two-parameter continuation method is proposed to trace the solution curve of CNLSE. Dynamical formation of vortex structures of BEC is observed via our novel algorithm.

O O O 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

radial basis collocation
ground state solutions
nonlinear schrdinger equation
boseeinstein condensate


Statistical shape knowledge in variational motion segmentation We present a generative approach to model-based motion segmentation by incorporating a statistical shape prior into a novel variational segmentation method. The shape prior statistically encodes a training set of object outlines presented in advance during a training phase. In a region competition manner the proposed variational approach maximizes the homogeneity of the motion vector field estimated on a set of regions, thus evolving the separating discontinuity set. Due to the shape prior, this discontinuity set is not only sensitive to motion boundaries but also favors shapes according to the statistical shape knowledge. In numerical examples we verify several properties of the proposed approach: for objects which cannot be easily discriminated from the background by their appearance, the desired motion segmentation is obtained, although the corresponding segmentation based on image intensities fails. The region-based formulation facilitates convergence of the contour from its initialization over fairly large distances, and the estimated flow field is progressively improved during the gradient descent minimization. Due to the shape prior, partial occlusions of the moving object by unfamiliar objects are ignored, and the evolution of the motion boundary is effectively restricted to the subspace of familiar shapes.

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

statistical learning
variational methods
mumfordshah functional
shape recognition
diffusion snake


DisCons: a novel tool to quantify and classify evolutionary conservation of intrinsic protein disorder Analyzing the amino acid sequence of an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) in an evolutionary context can yield novel insights on the functional role of disordered regions and sequence element(s). However, in the case of many IDPs, the lack of evolutionary conservation of the primary sequence can hamper the study of functionality, because the conservation of their disorder profile and ensuing function(s) may not appear in a traditional analysis of the evolutionary history of the protein.

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

large-scale sequence analysis
molecular recognition features (morfs)
short linear motifs (slims)


Understanding online knowledge sharing: An interpersonal relationship perspective The unique features and capabilities of online learning are built on the ability to connect to a wider range of learning resources and peer learners that benefit individual learners, such as through discussion forums, collaborative learning, and community building. The success of online learning thus depends on the participation, engagement, and social interaction of peer learners, which leads to knowledge sharing. Thus, without frequent and persistent interaction, it is doubtful whether knowledge sharing can take place in online learning. This study argues that theories about the development and maintenance of social relationships provide a theoretical foundation for understanding the motivation to engage in online knowledge sharing behavior. An Online Knowledge Sharing Model (OKSM) is proposed and empirically tested among undergraduate students using an online learning environment. The model introduces two new constructs - Perceived Online Attachment Motivation (POAM) and Perceived Online Relationship Commitment (PORC), which together explained 71 percent of the variance observed in self-reported online knowledge sharing behavior. The findings provide some explanations for the motivation to share knowledge, and have several implications for the design of the features and capabilities of online learning environments. (C) 2010 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

computer mediated communication
learning communities
media in education
pedagogical issues


Learning failure-free PRISM programs We propose algorithms which learn recursive PRISM programs generalising dynamic Bayesian networks by defining halting distributions. The learned models represent stochastic automata which encode dependencies amongst the words of the accepted languages. The algorithms were evaluated in five tasks and shown to learn models close to the original ones with respect to the proposed objective function.

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

probabilistic inductive logic programming


GUI for PC auto-shutdown Computer is a part and parcel of our daily life. It is being widely used at homes, offices, schools and industries. It is now an important issue to save user program and data as well as hardware and software of the personal computer (PC) itself from damage and corruption due to sudden power failure. This paper presents the solution of the problem. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed that monitors the status of the power supply of the PC. Whenever power goes out, it saves all the files that are opened and initiates auto-shutdown of the PC.

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

graphical user interface (gui)
auto-shutdown
auto-saving


A numerical method for the accurate solution of the Fokker-Planck-Landau equation in the nonhomogeneous case A new approach for the accurate numerical solution of the Fokker-Planck-Landau (FPL) equation in the nonhomogeneous case is presented. The method couples, through a time-splitting algorithm, a finite-volume scheme for the transport with a fast spectral solver for the efficient solution of the collision operator recently introduced. The scheme allows the use of different grids in the velocity space for the transport and the collision phases. The use of a suitable explicit Runge-Kutta solver for the time integration of the collision phase permits avoid once of excessive small time steps induced by the stiffness of the diffusive collision operator. Numerical results for both space homogeneous and space nonhomogeneous situations show the efficiency and the accuracy of the present method. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

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

fokker-planck-landau equation
vlasov-poisson system
spectral methods
splitting algorithms


Experimental analysis of guess-and-determine attacks on clock-controlled stream ciphers Guess-and-Determine (GD) attacks have recently been proposed for the effective analysis of word-oriented stream ciphers. This paper discusses GD attacks on clock-controlled stream ciphers, which use irregular clocking for a non-linear function. The main focus is the analysis of irregular clocking for GD attacks. We propose GD attacks on a typical clock-controlled stream cipher AA5, and calculate the process complexity of our proposed GD attacks. In the attacks, we assume that the clocking of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) is truly random. An important consideration affecting the practicality of these attacks is the question of whether these assumptions are realistic. Because in practice, the clocking is determined by the internal states. We implement miniature ciphers to evaluate the proposed attacks, and show that they are applicable. We also apply the GD attacks to other clock controlled stream ciphers and compare them. Finally, we discuss some properties of GD attacks on clock-controlled stream ciphers and the effectiveness of the clock controllers. Our research results contain information that are useful in the design of clock-controlled stream ciphers.

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

guess-and-determine attack
clock control


Development of a VR-based experienceable education system - A cyber world of virtual operator in virtual control room - A VR-based experienceable education system has been developed by realizing human-shaped virtual operator in virtual control room of Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The virtual operator has expertise knowledge about NPP on how to diagnose some anomalies and operate the control panels by himself. The human-like body motion of the virtual operator can be generated as 3 dimensional (3-d) animations. With this education system, a trainee can watch the virtual operator operating the control panels from any view-direction the trainee would like to see. And he can also 'experience' the plant operation by viewing the control room from the virtual operator's viewpoint as if the trainee would operate the control panels by himself. Moreover, the trainee can understand what the virtual operator thinks, by hearing the verbal utterance of the virtual operator. With this education system, it is expected that the trainee can master the skills for operating the control panels effectively. The overall architecture of the developed education system and the functional configuration of the system are described in this paper.

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

virtual reality
human motion
computer animation


Political Blogs and Blogrolls in Canada Forums for Democratic Deliberation? Several theorists have entertained the possibility that the egalitarian nature of Internet-based discussion may facilitate meaningful democratic deliberative discussions amongst citizens. This article provides a preliminary empirical test of these claims by examining the extent to which blogs and blogroll communities act as forums for such deliberations. The analysis uses a dataset derived from a content analysis performed on blogs from three Canadian partisan blogrolls in October 2005. We perform three tests of the deliberative qualities of blog-based discussions: (a) whether discussion is characterized by equality of participation; (b) whether bloggers discuss substantive issues; and (c) whether bloggers engage constructively in discussions with political opponents. We find that this online discussion does exhibit some deliberative characteristics but that this discussion is often characterized by inequality of discussion, a focus on non-substantive issues, and unconstructive engagement between bloggers.

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

blogging
online communication
political discussion


Similarity search of time-warped subsequences via a suffix tree This paper proposes an indexing technique for fast retrieval of similar subsequences using the time-warping distance. The time-warping distance is a more suitable similarity measure than the Euclidean distance in many applications where sequences may be of different lengths and/or different sampling rates. The proposed indexing technique employs a disk-based suffix tree as an index structure and uses lower-bound distance functions to filter out dissimilar subsequences without false dismissals. To make the index structure compact and hence accelerate the query processing, it converts sequences in the continuous domain into sequences in the discrete domain and stores only a subset of the suffixes whose first values are different from those of the immediately preceding suffixes. Extensive experiments with real and synthetic data sequences revealed that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the sequential scan and LB scan approaches and scales well in a large volume of sequence databases. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

sequence database
categorization
time-warping distance


Using mega-fuzzification and data trend estimation in small data set learning for early FMS scheduling knowledge Provided with plenty of data (experience), data mining techniques are widely used to extract suitable management skills from the data. Nevertheless, in the early stages of a manufacturing system, only rare data can be obtained, and built scheduling knowledge is usually fragile. Using small data sets, this research's purpose is improving the accuracy of machine learning for flexible manufacturing system (FMS) scheduling. The study develops a data trend estimation technique and combines it with mega-fuzzification and adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS). The results of the simulated FMS scheduling problem indicate that learning accuracy can be significantly improved using the proposed method involving a very small data set.

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

small data set
scheduling
flexible manufacturing system
anfis
data trend


The acceptance of personal health devices among patients with chronic conditions Five factors that influence chronic patients use intention of PHDs were identified. An acceptance model of PHDs was proposed and discussed. People generally expressed positive attitude toward future functions of a PHD. Suggestions for the designer of PHDs and e-health service were discussed.

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

personal health device
chronic patient
experience of phds
function preference


Scheduling problems with two competing agents to minimize minmax and minsum earliness measures A relatively new class of scheduling problems consists of multiple agents who compete on the use of a common processor. We focus in this paper on a two-agent setting. Each of the agents has a set of jobs to be processed on the same processor, and each of the agents wants to minimize a measure which depends on the completion times of its own jobs. The goal is to schedule the jobs such that the combined schedule performs well with respect to the measures of both agents. We consider measures of minmax and minsum earliness. Specifically, we focus on minimizing maximum earliness cost or total (weighted) earliness cost of one agent, subject to an upper bound on the maximum earliness cost of the other agent. We introduce a polynomial-time solution for the minmax problem, and prove NP-hardness for the weighted minsum case. The unweighted minsum problem is shown to have a polynomial-time solution.

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


Packet Classification with Hierarchical Cross-Producting Packet classification has become one of the most important application techniques in network security since the last decade. The technique involves a traffic descriptor or user-defined criteria to categorize packets to a specific forwarding class which will be accessible for future security handling. To achieve fast packet classification, we propose a new scheme, Hierarchical Cross-Producting. This approach simplifies the classification procedure and decreases the distinct combinations of fields by hierarchically decomposing the multi-dimensional space based on the concept of telescopic search. Analogous to the use of telescopes with different powers**, a multiple-step process is used to search for targets. In our scheme, the multi-dimensional space is endowed with a hierarchical property which self-divides into several smaller subspaces, whereas the procedure of packet classification is translated into recursive searching for matching subspaces. The required storage of our scheme could be significantly reduced since the distinct field specifications of subspaces is manageable. The performance are evaluated based on both real and synthetic filter databases. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed scheme.

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

packet forwarding
firewalls
network intrusion detection systems


Increasing bondability and ball-shear force of gold balls thermosonic bonding to flex substrates by depositing a nickel layer To improve the bondability and ball-shear force of gold balls that are thermosonically bonded to copper electrodes over flex substrates, a nickel layer was deposited on the surface of the copper electrodes to increase their rigidity. A silver layer was then deposited on the nickel layer to prevent oxidation of the copper electrodes during the thermosonic bonding process. This nickel layer was expected to enhance the rigidity of copper electrodes over the flex substrates, increasing the thermosonic bonding efficiency of gold balls to copper electrodes over the flex substrates. Deposition the nickel layer on the copper electrodes improved the elastic modulus of the flex substrates, indicating that the nickel layer is effective in enhancing the rigidity of copper electrodes over the flex substrates. The bondability and ball-shear force of gold balls that are thermosonically bonded to copper electrodes increases with the thickness of the nickel layer given fixed bonding parameters. One hundred percent bondability and high ball-shear force can be achieved when gold balls are thermosonically bonded to copper electrodes with the deposition of a 0.5?m-thick nickel layer. Herein, the ball-shear force was higher than that specified in JEDEC standards. Furthermore, gold balls that were thermosonically bonded to copper electrodes with a nickel layer had a large bonded area with an extensive scrape, while gold balls that were thermosonically bonded to copper electrodes without a nickel layer had a blank surface morphology. This experimental result was similar to that of tests of the elastic modulus of flex substrates, similarity can be used to explain that the effectiveness of the nickel layer in increasing the rigidity of copper electrodes, increasing the bonding efficiency at the bonding interface between gold balls and copper electrodes during thermosonic bonding process. After ball-shear test, a layer that was stuck on the ball bond was observed at the location of fracture of the ball bonds for gold balls they were thermosonically boned on copper electrodes with 0.5?m-thick nickel layer. This observation implies that the ball-shear force of the gold balls that were bonded on the copper electrodes exceeded even the adhesive force of the layers that were deposited on the copper electrodes. The deposition of a 0.5?m-thick nickel layer on copper electrodes over flex substrates improved the rigidity of the copper electrodes; the ultrasonic power could be propagated to the bonding interface between the gold balls and the copper electrodes, increasing the bondability and ball-shear force.

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

thermosonic bonding process
flex substrates
copper electrodes
gold balls
nickel layer


WNT5a in Tongue and Fungiform Papilla Development Fungiform papillae are complex taste organs that develop in a pattern on anterior tongue in rodent embryos. Several intrinsic secreted molecules are important for papilla development and patterning, including sonic hedgehog, bone morphogenetic proteins, Noggin, epidermal growth factor, and WNTs. Recent data about roles of WNTs in regulation of tongue and fungiform papilla development lead to new insights about the importance of tissue and timing contexts when studying the effects of morphogenetic proteins. WNT/?-catenin signaling is required for formation of fungiform papillae, but not for determining tongue size and shape. In contrast, WNT5a apparently is important for tongue outgrowth, but not papilla development. Preliminary data from WNT5a mutant mice separate genetic programs for papilla number from those for tongue shape and size.

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


PSHREG: A SAS macro for proportional and nonproportional subdistribution hazards regression The %pshreg SAS macro fits Fine-Gray models for competing risks. The macro first modifies a given data set and then uses PROC PHREG for analysis. Many useful features of PROC PHREG can now be applied to a Fine-Gray model. Time-dependent effects can be accommodated by time-by-covariate interactions. For small data sets, the Firth correction is available.

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

regression analysis
survival analysis
sas software
subdistribution hazard ratio
cumulative incidence


The Algebraic Degree of Perfect Binary Codes In this communication, we give a complete characterization for the range of the algebraic degree of perfect binary codes. For 1-perfect binary codes, we show that for any d in the algebraic degree range, there are Vasil'ev codes with algebraic degree d. It is also shown that the algebraic degree of 1-perfect binary codes is independent of the rank and the dimension of the kernel.

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

affine invariant
algebraic normal form
leading form
perfect binary code


Vulnerabilities of cyber-physical systems to stale dataDetermining the optimal time to launch attacks This paper presents a new vulnerability assessment model based on timing attacks. In particular, it examines the problem where an adversary has access to a certain sensor reading or a controller output signal in real time, but can only cause denial of service (DoS). Jamming the communications to a device can cause the system to work with stale data that, in turn, could interfere with the control algorithm to the extent of driving the system to an undesirable state. If the DoS attack is not timed properly, the use of stale data by the controller or actuator would have a limited impact on the process. However, if the attacker is able to launch the DoS attack at the correct time, the use of stale data can drive the system to an unsafe state. This paper uses the Tennessee Eastman challenge process to investigate the problem of an attacker who has to identify (in real time) the optimal moment to launch a DoS attack. The results suggest that, by attacking sensor and controller signals, the attacker can manipulate the process at will, but the success of the attack depends considerably on the specific stale values due to the dynamic nature of the process. The choice of time to begin an attack is forward-looking, requiring the attacker to consider each current opportunity against the possibility of a better opportunity in the future; this lends itself to the theory of optimal stopping problems. In particular, this paper studies the applicability of the Best Choice Problem (also known as the Secretary Problem), quickest change detection and statistical process outliers. The analysis can be used to identify specific sensor measurements that need to be protected and the time-to-response necessary to enable process operators and asset owners to define appropriate attack response strategies.

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

timing attacks
best choice problem
secretary problem


Variance enhanced K-medoid clustering This paper proposes new variance enhanced clustering methods to improve the popular K-medoid algorithm by adapting variance information in data clustering. Since measuring similarity between data objects is simpler than mapping data objects to data points in feature space, these pairwise similarity based clustering algorithms can greatly reduce the difficulty in developing clustering based pattern recognition applications. A web-based image clustering system has been developed to demonstrate and show the clustering power and significance of the proposed methods. Synthetic numerical data and real-world image collection are applied to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods on the prototype system. As shown as the web-demonstration, the proposed method, variance enhanced K-medoid model, groups similar images in clusters with various variances according to the distribution of image similarity values. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Robust predictive cruise control for commercial vehicles In this paper we explore learning-based predictive cruise control and the impact of this technology on increasing fuel efficiency for commercial trucks. Traditional cruise control is wasteful when maintaining a constant velocity over rolling hills. Predictive cruise control (PCC) is able to look ahead at future road conditions and solve for a cost-effective course of action. Model- based controllers have been implemented in this field but cannot accommodate many complexities of a dynamic environment which includes changing road and vehicle conditions. In this work, we focus on incorporating a learner into an already successful model- based predictive cruise controller in order to improve its performance. We explore back propagating neural networks to predict future errors then take actions to prevent said errors from occurring. The results show that this approach improves the model based PCC by up to 60% under certain conditions. In addition, we explore the benefits of classifier ensembles to further improve the gains due to intelligent cruise control.

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 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

learning control
artificial neural networks
autonomous vehicles


On the complexity of binary samples Consider a class H of binary functions h : X -> {-1, +1} on an interval X = [0, B] subset of IR. Define the sample width of h on a finite subset (a sample) S subset of X as omega(S)(h) = min(x epsilon S) vertical bar omega h(x)vertical bar where omega(h)(x) = h(x) max{a >= 0 : h(z) = h(x), x - a = beta}. Through an application of the Sauer-Shelah result on the density of sets an upper estimate is obtained on the growth function ( or trace) of the class {A(beta,h) : h epsilon H}, beta > 0, i.e., on the number of possible dichotomies obtained by intersecting all hypersets with a fixed collection of samples S epsilon S(l) of cardinality m. The estimate is 2 Sigma(2left perpendicular B/(2 beta) right perpendicular)(i=0) (m-l/i).

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


The psychological experience of prototyping While scholars have studied what design practices accomplish, few have considered how people feel when enacting these practices. An eighteen-month ethnographic study of a high-tech firm examined the psychological experience of engaging in the practice of low-fidelity prototyping. The study finds that the production and rapid visualization of multiple ideas through low-fidelity prototyping allows practitioners to reframe failure as an opportunity for learning, supports a sense of forward progress, and strengthens beliefs about creative ability. Results suggest how design work practices can be designed to help employees manage in uncertain conditions.

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

psychology of design
design management
design practice
design cognition
job design


Hydrological cycle simulation of an irrigation district based on a SWAT model A distributed hydrological cycle model of an irrigation district was developed based on the SWAT model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) and an artificial-natural composite of the hydrological cycle was considered. The SWAT model was modified in the aspects of the extraction of ditches, distributed subbasins and hydrologic response units, and the calculation method of the crop's actual ET. The applicability of the model was validated in the Fenhe irrigation district. The information on hydrology, weather and water use from 1996 to 2001 in the Fenhe irrigation district was used to simulate and analyze the water balance. The sensitive parameters were estimated by E(ns), R(E) and R(2). The model was further validated with the monthly flow data from 2002 to 2006. The results showed that the simulated results of two monitoring points meet the estimated requirements. The RE value of the average annual runoff at the Erba Station varied from 7.34% to 19.13% except a low RE value (30.70%) in 2006. The RE of the average annual run of fat the Yitang station was from 17.21% to 9.86% with an exceptional RE value (21.13%) in 2003. From the monthly simulated results, the R(2) of the monthly runoff at the Erb a and Yitang stations was 0. 81 and 0. 77, respectively. The E(ns) of the monthly run off was 0. 72 and 0. 65, respectively. A modified SWAT model was applicable for water balance simulation at the Fenhe irrigation district. (C) 2009 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

geographic information system
distributed hydrological model
runoff simulation
precision water management


Optical absorption and band gap shift of n-doped AlxGa1?xAs alloys grown by MBE We have investigated the band gap shift of Si-doped AlxGa1?xAs alloys as a function of both silicon concentration and Al composition. Correlation and impurity scattering effects were included in the theoretical model. The optical absorption of Al0.3Ga0.7As:Si at the fundamental band gap energy has been measured by a photoacoustic spectroscopy technique. We found the energy gap at about 1.8 eV. The samples were grown by molecular beam epitaxy and the Al fraction was measured by reflection high energy electro-diffraction technique.

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

band gap energy
photoacoustic spectroscopy
molecular beam epitaxy


A separable low complexity 2D HMM with application to face recognition In this paper, we propose a novel low-complexity separable but true 2D Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and its application to the problem of Face Recognition (FR). The proposed model builds on an assumption of conditional independence in the relationship between adjacent blocks. This allows the state transition to be separated into vertical and horizontal state transitions. This separation of state transitions brings the complexity of the hidden layer of the proposed model from the order of ((NT)-T-3) to the order of (2N(2)T), where N is the number of the states in the model and T is the total number of observation blocks in the image. The system performance is studied and the impact of key model parameters, i.e., the number of states and of kernels of the state probability density function, is highlighted. The system is tested on the facial database of AT&T Laboratories Cambridge and the more complex facial database of the Georgia Institute of Technology where recognition rates up to 100 percent and 92.8 percent have been achieved, respectively, with relatively low complexity.

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


VDB-MR: MapReduce-based distributed data integration using virtual database Data Integration is becoming very important in many commercial applications and scientific research. A lot of algorithms and systems have been proposed and developed to address related issues from different aspects. Virtual database systems are well-recognized as one of the effective solutions of data integration. The existing execution modules in virtual database systems are very ineffective. MapReduce (MR) is a new computing model for parallel processing and has a good performance on large-scale data execution. In this paper, we propose a new distributed data integration system, called VDB-MR, which is based on the MapReduce technology, to efficiently integrate data from heterogeneous data sources. With VDB-MR, a unified view (i.e., a single virtual database) of multiple databases can be provided to users. We also conducted a series of experiments to evaluate VDB-MR by comparing it with an open source data integration system OGSA-DAI and two DBMSs in parallel. Experiment results show that VDB-MR significantly outperforms OGSA-DAI and the DBMSs in parallel.

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

mapreduce
virtual database
data integration


From natural to artificial life: Biomimetic mechanisms in animat designs This paper describes several models that incorporate some biomimetic mechanisms into the control architecture of an animal that has to survive in a changing environment. The adaptive capacities of these mechanisms are compared to engineering solutions, in application domains that involve navigation, action selection, and evolutionary design. It is argued that, although impressive adaptive capacities are already afforded by such biomimetic mechanisms, these capacities are nevertheless limited by the shortcomings of current biological knowledge. It is also argued that these shortcomings could be remedied were biologists willing to take advantage of the bottom-up and synthetic point of view with which artificial life might complement their traditional top-down and analytic approach.

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


Estimating market power in the Internet backbone. Using the IP transit Band-X database Recent studies have found the Internet backbone to be more competitive than was thought before. This paper explores a novel route to monitor market power using prices and quality data from the online trading site Band-X. First the hypothesis that Europe is a connectivity market on its own, is tested and then, by using a Panel data regression, the paper finds that these markets are not fully competitive since company specific reputation effects play a major role and price variations are only marginally affected by qualitative variables. Worryingly, companies with high prices are often able to supply an inferior quality transit.

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


Spectral

and

cross-spectral

analysis

of

uneven

time

series

with

the

smoothed

Lomb-Scargle

periodogram

and

Monte

Carlo

evaluation

of

statistical

significance

Many

spectral

analysis

techniques

have

been

designed

assuming

sequences

taken

with

a

constant

sampling

interval.

However,

there

are

empirical

time

series

in

the

geosciences

(sediment

cores,

fossil

abundance

data,

isotope

analysis,

that

do

not

follow

regular

sampling

because

of

missing

data,

gapped

data,

random

sampling

or

incomplete

sequences,

among

other

reasons.

In

general,

interpolating

an

uneven

series

in

order

to

obtain

a

succession

with

a

constant

sampling

interval

alters

the

spectral

content

of

the

series.

In

such

cases

it

is

preferable

to

follow

an

approach

that

works

with

the

uneven

data

directly,

avoiding

the

need

for

an

explicit

interpolation

step.

The

Lomb-Scargle

periodogram

is

a

popular

choice

in

such

circumstances,

as

there

are

programs

available

in

the

public

domain

for

its

computation.

One

new

computer

program

for

spectral

analysis

improves

the

standard

Lomb-Scargle

periodogram

approach

in

two

ways:

It

explicitly

adjusts

the

statistical

significance

to

any

bias

introduced

by

variance

reduction

smoothing,

and

it

uses

a

permutation

test

to

evaluate

confidence

levels,

which

is

better

suited

than

parametric

methods

when

neighbouring

frequencies

are

highly

correlated.

Another

novel

program

for

cross-spectral

analysis

offers

the

advantage

of

estimating

the

Lomb-Scargle

cross-periodogram

of

two

uneven

time

series

defined

on

the

same

interval,

and

it

evaluates

the

confidence

levels

of

the

estimated

cross-spectra

by

a

non-parametric

computer

intensive

permutation

test.

Thus,

the

cross-spectrum,

the

squared

coherence

spectrum,

the

phase

spectrum,

and

the

Monte

Carlo

statistical

significance

of

the

cross-spectrum

and

the

squared-coherence

spectrum

can

be

obtained.

Both

of

the

programs

are

written

in

ANSI

Fortran

in

view

of

its

simplicity

and

compatibility.

The

program

code

is

of

public

domain,

provided

on

the

website

of

the

journal

Different

examples

(with

simulated

and

real

data)

are

described

in

this

paper

to

corroborate

the

methodology

and

the

implementation

of

these

two

new

programs.

(C)

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

cross-spectrum
irregular data
nyquist frequency


Testing of the voice communication in smart home care This article is aimed to describe the method of testing the implementation of voice control over operating and technical functions of Smart Home Come. Custom control over operating and technical functions was implemented into a model of Smart Home that was equipped with KNX technology. A sociological survey focused on the needs of seniors has been carried out to justify the implementation of voice control into Smart Home Care. In the real environment of Smart Home Care, there are usually unwanted signals and additive noise that negatively affect the voice communication with the control system. This article describes the addition of a sophisticated system for filtering the additive background noise out of the voice communication with the control system. The additive noise significantly lowers the success of recognizing voice commands to control operating and technical functions of an intelligent building. Within the scope of the proposed application, a complex system based on fuzzy-neuron networks, specifically the ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Interference System) for adaptive suppression of unwanted background noises was created. The functionality of the designed system was evaluated both by subjective and by objective criteria (SSNR, DTW). Experimental results suggest that the studied system has the potential to refine the voice control of technical and operating functions of Smart Home Care even in a very noisy environment.

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

voice recognition
.net framework
microprocessor
synthesis
fieldbus
ets
c#


Uncalibrated flatfielding and illumination vector estimationfor photometric stereo face reconstruction Within the context of photometric stereo reconstruction, flatfielding may be used to compensate for the effect of the inverse-square law of light propagation on the pixel brightness. This would require capturing a set of reference images at an off-line imaging session, which employs a calibrating device that should be captured under the exact conditions as the main session. Similarly, the illumination vectors, on which photometric stereo relies, are typically precomputed based on another dedicated calibration session. In practice, implementing such off-line sessions is inconvenient and often infeasible. This work aims at enabling accurate photometric stereo reconstruction for the case of non-interactive on-line capturing of human faces. We propose unsupervised methodologies, which extract all information that is required for accurate face reconstruction from the images of interest themselves. Specifically, we propose an uncalibrated flatfielding and an uncalibrated illumination vector estimation methodology, and we assess their effect on photometric stereo face reconstruction. Results demonstrate that incorporating our methodologies into the photometric stereo framework halves the reconstruction error, while eliminating the need of off-line calibration.

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

photometric stereo
flatfielding
illumination vector estimation

inverse-square law for light propagation


Networks of polarized evolutionary processors ? Definition of a new version of networks of evolutionary processors. A uniform and linear time solution to the 3-colorability problem. A non-uniform, linear size and time solution to the Common Algorithmic Problem which can be easily extended to a uniform solution.

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

network of polarized evolutionary processor


Differential adaptation: An operational approach to adaptation for solving numerical problems with CBR Case-based reasoning relies on four main steps: retrieval, adaptation, revision and retention. This article focuses on the adaptation step; we propose differential adaptation as an operational formalization of adaptation for numerical problems. The solution to a target problem is designed on the basis of relations existing between a source case (problem and solution) and a target case. Differential adaptation relies on the metaphor of differential calculus where small variations on variable values are related to variations of function values. Accordingly, variations between problems correspond to variations between variable values and variations between solutions to variations between function values. Operators inspired from differential calculus are able to manipulate the variations and to support the whole adaptation process. Differential adaptation is operational and provides generic operators that can be reused for different real-world numerical situations.

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

case-based problem solving
knowledge intensive cbr system
reformulation
similarity path


Electronic structure of oxygen vacancies in hafnium oxide The electronic structure of oxygen vacancies and polyvacancies in HfO2 was studied theoretically from the first-principles calculations and experimentally, by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The electronic structure calculations of crystalline HfO2 were performed within the hybrid density functional theory. The experimental photoelectron spectra indicate that both nonstoichiometric chemistry and Ar-ion bombardment of hafnia films lead to the generation of the defect states at 3.0eV above the valence band. According to the calculations, these defect states are attributed to the oxygen vacancies.

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

photoelectron spectroscopy
density functional theory
defect states

oxygen vacancy
absorption spectra
hafnium dioxide


A space and time efficient algorithm for SimRank computation SimRank has become an important similarity measure to rank web documents based on a graph model on hyperlinks. The existing approaches for conducting SimRank computation adopt an iteration paradigm. The most efficient deterministic technique yields O(n(3)) worst-case time per iteration with the space requirement O(n(2)), where n is the number of nodes (web documents). In this paper, we propose novel optimization techniques such that each iteration takes O(min {n . m . n(t)}) time and O(n + m) space, where m is the number of edges in a web-graph model and r <= log 7. In addition, we extend the similarity transition matrix to prevent random surfers getting stuck, and devise a pruning technique to eliminate impractical similarities for each iteration. Moreover, we also develop a reordering technique combined with an over-relaxation method, not only speeding up the convergence rate of the existing techniques, but achieving I/O efficiency as well. We conduct extensive experiments on both synthetic and real data sets to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our iteration techniques.

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 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

graph similarity
link-based analysis
optimal algorithms


The metafront system: Safe and extensible parsing and transformation We present the metafrent too] for specifying flexible, safe, and efficient syntactic transformations between languages defined by context-free grammars. The transformations are guaranteed to terminate and to map grammatically legal input to grammatically legal output. We rely on a novel parser algorithm that is designed to support gradual extensions of a grammar by allowing productions to remain in a natural style and by statically reporting ambiguities and errors in terms of individual productions as they are being added. Our tool may be used as a parser generator in which the resulting parser automatically supports a flexible, safe, and efficient macro processor, or as an extensible lightweight compiler generator for domain-specific languages. We show substantial examples of both kinds. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

language extensibility
context-free grammars


Curvature Interpolation Method for Image Zooming We introduce a novel image zooming algorithm, called the curvature interpolation method (CIM), which is partial-differential-equation (PDE)-based and easy to implement. In order to minimize artifacts arising in image interpolation such as image blur and the checkerboard effect, the CIM first evaluates the curvature of the low-resolution image. After interpolating the curvature to the high-resolution image domain, the CIM constructs the high-resolution image by solving a linearized curvature equation, incorporating the interpolated curvature as an explicit driving force. It has been numerically verified that the new zooming method can produce clear images of sharp edges which are already denoised and superior to those obtained from linear methods and PDE-based methods of no curvature information. Various results are given to prove effectiveness and reliability of the new method.

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

curvature interpolation method (cim)
partial differential equation (pde)
super-resolution (sr)


rewriting nested xml queries using nested views We present and analyze an algorithm for equivalent rewriting of XQuery queries using XQuery views, which is complete for a large class of XQueries featuring nested FLWR blocks, XML construction and join equalities by value and identity. These features pose significant challenges which lead to fundamental extension of prior work on the problems of rewriting conjunctive and tree pattern queries. Our solution exploits the Nested XML Tableaux (NEXT) notation which enables a logical foundation for specifying XQuery semantics. We present a tool which inputs XQuery queries and views and outputs an XQuery rewriting, thus being usable on top of any of the existing XQuery processing engines. Our experimental evaluation shows that the tool scales well for large numbers of views and complex queries.

B O O O O O B 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 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 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


Application of circuit and field-circuit methods in designing process of small induction motors with stator cores made from amorphous iron Purpose - To investigate the use of amorphous iron as the stator core material to increase the efficiency of electric machines in serialised production. Design/methodology/approach - In the design process of a new structure for the induction motor with a stator core made from amorphous iron it is necessary to apply the circuit method and the field-cicuit method. The use of the circuit method allows quick calculations of many versions of the designed motor, but the use of the field-circuit method is necessary for verification of the maximal value of the flux density in the entire area of the cross-sections of the motor core. Findings - A new construction for the small induction motor with the stator core made from amorphous iron was designed based on the classical structure of the four-pole induction motor. In the designed motor a decrease of the electric energy costs was observed, which is much bigger than the material costs, and in effect lower total costs for the designed motor were obtained. Practical implications - According to necessary changes in the motor construction, due to lower saturation limit for this material, the authors obtained a significant increase in the motor efficiency and a decrease in the total cost of the motor. The development of a new technology allows the cutting of amorphous magnetic materials and the production of electric motors from them. Originality/value - This paper shows the possibility of using amorphous magnetic materials for stator core of small induction machines and the advantages of such construction for obtaining more efficient motor construction.

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


Fractal, multifractal and sliding window correlation dimension analysis of sedimentary time series ? Multifractal analysis, the box counting technique and sliding window correlation dimension analysis are methods for the detection and description of nonlinear variations in sedimentary time/depth series measurements such as well-log data. Combinations of these methods allow the detection of sedimentary discontinuities and fractal clustering of events such as bentonite layers or fossils horizons in sedimentary sections. The methods are used to analyze linear, periodic, fractal and random patterns with different sampling intervals and after setting distinctive measurement thresholds. Application of the methods is illustrated by means of computer simulation models and on the gamma-ray log from a Mid-Cretaceous sedimentary time series.

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

time series analysis
sedimentation models


Telescoping in the context of symbolic summation in Maple This paper is an exposition of different methods for computing closed forms of definite sums. The focus is on recently-developed results on computing closed forms of definite sums of hypergeometric terms. A design and an implementation of a software package which incorporates these methods into the computer algebra system Maple are described in detail.

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

symbolic summation
maple
hypergeometric terms

software design
telescoping sums
zeilbergers algorithm
closed form


An efficient and comprehensive scheduler on Asymmetric Multicore Architecture systems Several studies have shown that Asymmetric Multicore Processors (AMPs) systems, which are composed of processors with different hardware characteristics, present better performance and power when compared to homogeneous systems. With Moores law behavior still lasting, core-count growth creates typical non-uniform memory accesses (NUMA). Existing schedulers assume that the underlying architecture is homogeneous, and as consequence, they may not be well suited for AMP and NUMA systems, since they, respectively, do not properly explore hardware elements asymmetry, while improving memory utilization by avoid multi-processes data starvation. In this paper we propose a new scheduler, namely NUMA-aware Scheduler, to accommodate the next generation of AMP architectures in terms of architecture asymmetry and processes starvation. Experimental results show that the average speedup is 1.36 times faster than default Linux scheduler through evaluation using PARSEC benchmarks, demonstrating that the proposed technique is promising when compared to other prior studies.

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

single-isa heterogeneous multicore processors


Integrating execution dependencies into the transaction closure framework The transaction closure framework provides means to describe and reason about different kinds of dependencies between interrelated transactions. In this paper, we investigate execution dependencies for describing certain control flows among related transactions of a transaction closure. In particular, we consider the transitivity property for all kinds of transaction execution dependencies and present a complete and minimal set of rules for reasoning about the transitivity of execution dependencies. Furthermore, we analyze the relationship between execution and termination dependencies and point out that some dependency combinations are incompatible. Using derived transitive dependencies, we are able to conclude how arbitrary transactions of a transaction closure are transitively interrelated and, thus, to detect contradictory dependency specifications as well as superfluous transactions.

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

transaction closure
execution dependencies
transitive dependencies
superfluous transactions


Computation of exact confidence intervals from discrete data using studentized test statistics A new area of research interest is the computation of exact confidence limits or intervals for a scalar parameter of interest theta from discrete data by inverting a hypothesis test based on a studentized test statistic. See, for example, Chan and Zhang (1999), Agresti and Min (200 1) and Agresti (2003) who deal with theta a difference of binomial probabilities and Agresti and Min (2002) who deal with theta an odds ratio. However, neither (1) a detailed analysis of the computational issues involved nor (2) a reliable method of computation that deals effectively with these issues is currently available. In this paper we solve these two problems for a very broad class of discrete data models. We suppose that the distribution of the data is determined by (theta, psi) where psi is a nuisance parameter vector. We also consider six different studentized test statistics. Our contributions to (1) are as follows. We show that the P-value resulting from the hypothesis test, considered as a function of the null-hypothesized value of theta, has both "jump" and "drop" discontinuities. Numerical examples are used to demonstrate that these discontinuities lead to the failure of simple-minded approaches to the computation of the confidence limit or interval. We also provide a new method for efficiently computing the set of all possible locations of these discontinuities. Our contribution to (2) is to provide a new and reliable method of computing the confidence limit or interval, based on the knowledge of this set.

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

confidence limit
discrete data
nuisance parameter


Quantum security in wireless sensor networks Security in sensor networks, though an important issue for widely available wireless networks, has been studied less extensively than other properties of these networks, such as, for example, their reliability. The few security schemes proposed so far are based on classical cryptography. In contrast, the present paper develops a new security solution, based on quantum cryptography. The scheme developed here comes with the advantages quantum cryptography has over classical cryptography, namely, effectively unbreakable keys and therefore effectively unconditionally secure messages. Our security system ensures privacy of the measured data field in the presence of an intruder who listens to messages broadcast in the field.

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

wireless sensor networks
quantum cryptography

quantum teleportation
entanglement swapping


OS portal: an economic approach for making an embedded kernel extensible With the rapid development of embedded system techniques and Internet technologies, network-enabled embedded devices have grown in their popularity. One critical design trend of such devices is that they are shifting from static and fixed-function systems to more dynamic and extensible ones, which are capable of running various kinds of applications. To support the diversity of the applications, kernels on these devices must be extensible. However, making embedded kernels extensible is challenging due to the shortage of resources on these devices. In this paper, we propose the operating system portal framework, which makes embedded kernels become extensible while keeping the added overheads minimal. By storing kernel modules on a resource-rich server and loading them on demand, the need for equipping a local storage on the device is eliminated. In addition, we propose mechanisms for reducing the memory requirements and performing on-line module replacement on the embedded devices. According to the performance evaluation, our approach requires only 1% of the resource requirements, compared to the traditional approaches. This allows our framework to be applied on a wide range of embedded devices. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

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

extensible kernels
network-enabled embedded devices


Towards a flexible deployment of business rules Business rules give rise to an important set of requirements on any system being developed or procured for an enterprise. While most of the work done in this area focuses on identifying and documenting business rules, we have proposed a methodology that addresses several aspects of the business rules lifecycle: acquisition, deployment and evolution. The methodology assumes that business rules are expressed in terms of business concepts and corporate knowledge that are captured in a high level architecture. The architecture proposed consists of three interconnected components: the enterprise model, the business rules model and the decision support model. This approach permits a greater variety of rules to be specified while providing an opportunity to automate the production of deployable business rules. The ability to deal with the inconsistent and ambiguous rules is crucial in capturing the conflicting requirements placed on the operation of any large scale enterprise. This paper presents a flexible deployment of business rules, which not only supports decision making in the face of conflicting requirements, but also the evolution of those requirements in the face of changing regulatory environments, competitive markets and corporate goals.

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

decision support systems
enterprise modeling
requirements engineering
inconsistency
ambiguity
decision tree learning


A general model of parameterized OWA aggregation with given orness level The paper proposes a general optimization model with separable strictly convex objective function to obtain the consistent OWA (ordered weighted averaging) operator family. The consistency means that the aggregation value of the operator monotonically changes with the given orness level. Some properties of the problem are discussed with its analytical solution. The model includes the two most commonly used maximum entropy OWA operator and minimum variance OWA operator determination methods as its special cases. The solution equivalence to the general minimax problem is proved. Then, with the conclusion that the RIM (regular increasing monotone quantifier) can be seen as the continuous case of OWA operator with infinite dimension, the paper further proposes a general RIM quantifier determination model, and analytically solves it with the optimal control technique. Some properties of the optimal solution and the solution equivalence to the minimax problem for RIM quantifier are also proved. Comparing with that of the OWA operator problem, the RIM quantifier solutions are usually more simple, intuitive, dimension free and can be connected to the linguistic terms in natural language. With the solutions of these general problems, we not only can use the OWA operator or RIM quantifier to obtain aggregation value that monotonically changes with the orness level for any aggregated set, but also can obtain the parameterized OWA or RIM quantifier families in some specific function forms, which can incorporate the background knowledge or the required characteristic of the aggregation problems. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

owa operator
rim quantifier
maximum entropy
minimum variance
minimax problem


Flexible Robust Group Key Agreement A robust group key agreement protocol (GKA) allows a set of players to establish a shared secret key, regardless of network/node failures. Current constant-round GKA protocols are either efficient and nonrobust or robust but not efficient; assuming a reliable broadcast communication medium, the standard encryption-based group key agreement protocol can be robust against arbitrary number of node faults, but the size of the messages broadcast by every player is proportional to the number of players. In contrast, nonrobust group key agreement can be achieved with each player broadcasting just constant-sized messages. We propose a novel 2-round group key agreement protocol, which tolerates up to T node failures, using O(T)-sized messages for any T. We show that the new protocol implies a fully-robust group key agreement with logarithmic-sized messages and expected round complexity close to 2, assuming random node faults. The protocol can be extended to withstand malicious insiders at small constant factor increases in bandwidth and computation. The proposed protocol is secure under the (standard) Decisional Square Diffie-Hellman assumption.

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


WPS orchestration using the Taverna workbench: The eScience approach eScience is an umbrella concept which covers internet technologies, such as web service orchestration that involves manipulation and processing of high volumes of data, using simple and efficient methodologies. This concept is normally associated with bioinformatics, but nothing prevents the use of an identical approach for geoinfomatics and OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) web services like WPS (Web Processing Service). In this paper we present an extended WPS implementation based on the PyWPS framework using an automatically generated WSDL (Web Service Description Language) XML document that replicates the WPS input/output document structure used during an Execute request to a server. Services are accessed using a modified SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) interface provided by PyWPS, that uses service and input/outputs identifiers as element names. The WSDL XML document is dynamically generated by applying XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) to the getCapabilities XML document that is generated by PyWPS. The availability of the SOAP interface and WSDL description allows WPS instances to be accessible to workflow development software like Taverna, enabling users to build complex workflows using web services represented by interconnecting graphics. Taverna will transform the visual representation of the workflow into a SCUFL (Simple Conceptual Unified Flow Language) based XML document that can be run internally or sent to a Taverna orchestration server. SCUFL uses a dataflow-centric orchestration model as opposed to the more commonly used orchestration language BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) which is process-centric.

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

wsdl description
soap
web processing service
pywps
taverna workbench
orchestration


Differential relaying scheme for tapped transmission line connecting UPFC and wind farm A differential protection scheme using wavelet transform is presented. The scheme reliably distinguishes internal faults from external faults. The speed accuracy is within one cycle from the fault inception. Easy implementation.

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

teed transmission line
discrete wavelet transform (dwt)
discrete fourier transform (dft)
unified power flow controller (upfc)
wind-farm


A Divide-and-Conquer Approach for Minimum Spanning Tree-Based Clustering Due to their ability to detect clusters with irregular boundaries, minimum spanning tree-based clustering algorithms have been widely used in practice. However, in such clustering algorithms, the search for nearest neighbor in the construction of minimum spanning trees is the main source of computation and the standard solutions take O(N(2)) time. In this paper, we present a fast minimum spanning tree-inspired clustering algorithm, which, by using an efficient implementation of the cut and the cycle property of the minimum spanning trees, can have much better performance than O(N(2))

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 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

divisive hierarchical clustering algorithm


Finite-time lag synchronization of delayed neural networks In this paper, a finite-time lag synchronization of coupled neural networks with time delay is investigated. By means of the Lyapunov stability theory, a feedback controller is designed for achieving lag synchronization between two delayed neural networks systems in finite time. Paper extends some basic results from the area of finite time to time-delay systems. Numerical simulations on coupled Lu neural systems illustrate the effectiveness of the results.

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

neural networks
lag synchronization
time delay

finite time stability theory
lyapunov stability theorem


Unsupervised clustering for nontextual web document classification While the breath of vocabulary used in long documents may mislead the traditional keyword-based retrieval systems, the demands for techniques in nontextual Web classification and retrieval from a large document collection are mounting. Only a few prototype systems have attempted to classify hypertext on the basis of nontextual elements in order to locate unfamiliar documents. As a result, a large portion of Web documents having pictorial information in nature is far beyond the reach of most current search engines. In this research, we devise a novel quantitative model of nontextual World Wide Web (WWW) classification based on image information. An intelligent content-sensitive, attribute-rich image classifier is presented. An image similarity measure is used to deduce the likelihood among images. Different image feature vectors have been constructed and evaluated. Evaluation shows images judged to be similar by human form interesting clusters in our unsupervised learning. Comparison with other clustering technique, such as Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC), demonstrates that our approach is found useful in content-based image information retrieval.

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


Mean-square exponential stability for stochastic discrete-time recurrent neural networks with mixed time delays ? In this paper, the mean-square exponential stability problem for discrete-time recurrent neural networks with time-varying discrete and distributed delays is investigated. Considering the delay distributions, a novel class of Lyapunov functional is introduced. By exploiting all possible information in mixed time delays, a sufficient condition for the whole system to be mean-square exponentially stable is given. Numerical examples are proposed to illustrate the effectiveness of the method, and show that by using the approach in this paper, the obtained results are less conservative than the existing ones.

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

discrete-time recurrent neural networks
mixed time-delays
mean-square exponential stability
stochastic system
linear matrix inequalities (lmis)


An exploratory study of factors influencing repurchase behaviors toward game items: A field study The factors that influence the repurchase behavior of game item are determined. Numerous field data (a sample of 2,060,685 among 84,434,287) are used. Time-related factors (purchase recency, frequency, and cycle) are significant. Unconscious purchase behavior should be a focus in the future.

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 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

game item
repurchase behavior
field data


Security considerations for the spiral development model High risks found in the spiral development life cycle model. Lack of security in software spiral development life cycle. More security testing is needed in the spiral development model. Incorporate security in all phases of spiral software development can reduce risk.

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

spiral development life cycle
software development
risk


Disassociation for electronic health record privacy Diagnosis codes in Electronic Health Records (EHR) may re-identify patients. Existing works are limited in their privacy and utility specification model. Disassociation can preserve privacy by carefully partitioning records. We propose a novel algorithm for guaranteeing data utility and privacy. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.

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

privacy
electronic health records
disassociation
diagnosis codes