A generic middleware-based platform for scalable cluster computing In this paper, we address the design of a generic and scalable platform for cluster computing. The architecture of the platform is based on middleware technology in order to ensure easy distribution of the software components along the participating workstations and to exploit advanced communication techniques, such as event notification and object registration. The computational tasks are referred to as intelligent agents, which are software agents that are capable of executing particular algorithms on input data. The developed platform offers advanced features such as transparent load balancing, task scheduling, run time compilation of agent code and migration of tasks. The architecture of the platform will be outlined from a computational point of view and each component will be described in detail. Furthermore, the engineering aspects of the platform will be covered. In addition, a sample scenario for computational tasks in the area of telecommunication network design and management will be described, together with a performance evaluation of the platform.

O O O O O O O O O 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


A new evolutionary clustering search for a no-wait flow shop problem with set-up times This paper addresses the m-machine no-wait flow shop problem where the set-up time of a job is separated from its processing time. The performance measure considered is the total flowtime. A new hybrid metaheuristic Genetic AlgorithmCluster Search is proposed to solve the scheduling problem. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated and the results are compared with the best method reported in the literature. Experimental tests show superiority of the new method for the test problems set, regarding the solution quality.

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


A symmetry preserving alternating projection method for matrix model updating The matrix model updating problem (MMUP), considered in this paper, concerns updating a symmetric second-order finite element model so that the updated model reproduces a given set of desired eigenvalues and eigenvectors by replacing the corresponding ones from the original model, and preserves the symmetry of the original model. In an optimization setting, this is a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. Taking advantage of the special structure of the constraint sets, it is first shown that the MMUP can be formulated as an optimization problem over the intersection of some special subspaces and linear varieties on the space of matrices. Using this formulation, an alternating projection method (APM) is then proposed and analyzed. The projections onto the involved subspaces and linear varieties are characterized. To the best of our knowledge, an alternating projection method for MMUP has not been proposed in the literature earlier. A distinct practical feature of the proposed method is that it is implementable using only a few measured eigenvalues and eigenvectors. No knowledge of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the associated quadratic matrix pencil is required. The results of our numerical experiments on both illustrative and benchmark problems show that the algorithm works well. The paper concludes with some future research problems.

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

model updating problems
quadratic matrix pencils
alternating projection methods


Numerical simulation of fracture and damage behaviour of concrete at different ages Based on the experiment results, the damage and fracture behavior of concrete at the ages of ld, 2d, 7d and 28d, in three-point bending and uniaxial tensile tests, were simulated with a finite element S program, ABAQUS. The critical stress intensity factor K-IC(3) and the critical crack tip opening displacement (CTODC) of concrete were calculated with effective-elastic crack approach for the three-point bending test of grade C30 concrete. Based on the crack band model, a bilinear strain-softening curve was derived to simulate the LOAD-CMOD curves and LOAD-Displacement curves. In numerical analysis of the uniaxial tension test of concrete of grade C40, the damage and fracture mechanics were combined. The smeared cracking model coupling with damaged variable was adopted to. evaluate the onset and development of microcracking of uniaxial tensile specimen. The uniaxial tension test was simulated by invoking the damage plastic model which took both damage and plasticity as inner variables with user subroutines. All the numerical simulated results show good agreement with the experimental results.

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

concrete
abaqus
uniaxial tension test
damage
fracture


Towards an Agile Approach to Adapting Dynamic Collaboration Support to Student Needs This paper investigates the use of conversational agents to scaffold on-line collaborative learning discussions through an approach called Academically Productive Talk (APT). In contrast to past work on dynamic support for collaborative learning, where agents were used to elevate conceptual depth by leading students through directed lines of reasoning (Kumar & Ros, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 4(1), 2011), this APT-based approach uses generic prompts that encourage students to articulate and elaborate their own lines of reasoning, and to challenge and extend the reasoning of their teammates. This paper integrates findings from a series of studies across content domains (biology, chemistry, engineering design), grade levels (high school, undergraduate), and facilitation strategies. APT based strategies are contrasted with simply offering positive feedback when the students themselves employ APT facilitation moves in their interactions with one another, an intervention we term Positive Feedback for APT engagement. The pattern of results demonstrates that APT based support for collaborative learning can significantly increase learning, but that the effect of specific APT facilitation strategies is context specific. It appears the effectiveness of each strategy depends upon factors such as the difficulty of the material (in terms of being new conceptual material versus review) and the skill level of the learner (urban public high school vs. selective private university). In contrast, Feedback for APT engagement does not positively impact learning. In addition to an analysis based on learning gains, an automated conversation analysis technique is presented that effectively predicts which strategies are successfully operating in specific contexts. Implications for design of more agile forms of dynamic support for collaborative learning are discussed.

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

automatic collaborative learning process analysis


Analysis of global behaviors in a classical power system The global dynamical behavior of a classical power system consisting of n generators is studied in this paper. Existence and uniqueness of an invariant curve in 2n-dimensional space under suitable conditions are proved. The invariant curve is globally attracting so that the system behaves exactly as a one-dimensional system. Furthermore, a rotation number is defined in the power system and then, it is proved that each generator has one rotation number, but n rotation numbers for the n generators are all equal. Moreover, the rotation number is used to determine the dynamical behavior of the system, in the sense that if it is a rational number, an attractor of the system is composed of subharmonics while if an irrational number, the attractor is composed of horizontal curves. As a consequence the system has no chaotic motion under these conditions. Finally, numerical simulations are used to verify the theoretical analysis. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

classical power system
invariant curve
rotation number


A software trustworthiness evaluation model using objective weight based evidential reasoning approach Evaluation of software trustworthiness is an extensively investigated topic. A lot of software trustworthiness evaluation (STE) models and systems have been proposed in the literature. While scholars have concentrated their efforts on the design and development of trustworthiness metrics, other STE characteristics have been neglected, such as various types of uncertainties and objective of the attribute weights determination. This paper focuses on the STE problems that include both quantitative and qualitative indicators with uncertainties. We propose an objective weight based evidential reasoning approach that employs total uncertainty measure to solve STE problems with specific trustworthiness requirements. A complex software is evaluated by the proposed STE model to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness.

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

software trustworthiness
evidential reasoning approach

uncertainly evaluation
objective weighting
mada


An efficient algorithm for hydrodynamical interaction of many deformable drops An efficient and accurate 3D algorithm for dynamical simulations of many deformable drops with strong hydrodynamical interactions at zero Reynolds numbers is developed. The drop-to-medium viscosity ratio, lambda, and the Bond number are arbitrary, and the drops are subject to gravity with stationary triply periodic boundary conditions. The algorithm, at each step, is a hybrid of boundary-integral and economical multipole techniques, with extensive use of rotational transformations and economical truncation of multipole expansions to optimize near-field interactions. A significant part of the code is the new, "best paraboloid-spline" technique for calculating the normal vectors and curvatures on drop surfaces, which greatly improves the quality of long-time simulations. Examples show the phenomenon of clustering in a concentrated sedimenting emulsion for lambda = 0.25 and 1, which leads to an increase in the average sedimentation velocity with time. A high efficiency of the method is demonstrated, with two orders-of-magnitude gains over the standard O((NNDelta2)-N-2) boundary-integral technique for N similar to 10(2) drops in a periodic cell with N-Delta similar to 10(3) triangular boundary elements per drop, so that typical long-time dynamical simulations can be performed in a few days or weeks on a standard workstation (as compared to the several years which would be required for the same simulations using standard boundary-integral techniques). The effects of drop triangulation and truncation of multipole expansions on dynamical simulations are assessed. (C) 2000 Academic Press.

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

deformable drops
hydrodynamical interactions
sedimentation

boundary integrals
stokes flow
multipole methods


Segmentation of 2-D and 3-D objects from MRI volume data using constrained elastic deformations of flexible Fourier contour and surface models This paper describes a new model-based segmentation technique combining desirable properties of physical models (snakes), shape representation by Fourier parametrization, and modelling of natural shape variability. Flexible parametric shape models are represented by a parameter vector describing the mean contour and by a set of eigenmodes of the parameters characterizing the shape variation. Usually the segmentation process is divided into an initial placement of the mean model and an elastic deformation restricted to the model variability. This, however, leads to a separation of biological variation due to a global similarity transform from small-scale shape changes originating from elastic deformations of the normalized model contours only. The performance can be considerably improved by building shape models normalized with respect to a small set of stable landmarks (AC-PC in our application) and by explaining the remaining variability among a series of images with the model flexibility. This way the image interpretation is solved by a new coarse-to-fine segmentation procedure based on the set of deformation eigenmodes, making a separate initialization step unnecessary. Although straightforward, the extension to 3-D is severely impeded by difficulties arising during the generation of a proper surface parametrization for arbitrary objects with spherical topology. We apply a newly developed surface parametrization which achieves a uniform mapping between object surface and parameter space. The 3-D procedure is demonstrated by segmenting deep structures of the human brain from MR volume data.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 analysis of anatomical objects


Head pose estimation using image abstraction and local directional quaternary patterns for multiclass classification ? Cartoon-like facial contour images can abstract properties of common facial poses. Our methods reduced the noise caused by variations in identity, facial expressions. Facial binary images delivered good results without any illumination compensation. LDQP method with image abstraction outperformed state of the art algorithms.

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

head pose estimation
image abstraction
multiclass classification


Neural network-based failure rate prediction for De Havilland Dash-8 tires An artificial neural network (ANN) model for predicting the failure rate of De Havilland Dash-8 airplane tires utilizing the two-layered feed-forward back-propagation algorithm as a learning rule is developed. The inputs to the neural network are independent variables and the output is the failure rate of the tires. Six years of data are used for model building and validation. Model validation, which reflects the suitability of the model for future prediction is performed by comparing the predictions of the model with that of Weibull regression model. The results show that the failure rate predicted by the ANN is closer in agreement with the actual data than the failure rate predicted by the Weibull model.

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

back-propagation
neural networks
aircraft reliability
preventive maintenance


Regional and on-farm wireless sensor networks for agricultural systems in Eastern Washington Recent advances in sensor and wireless radio frequency (RF) technologies and their convergence with the Internet offer vast opportunities for development and application of sensor systems for agriculture. The objective was to create regional and on-farm sensor networks that provide remote, real-time monitoring and/or control of important farming operations that add value through improved efficiency and efficacy of targeted management practices. This paper describes hardware and software components of technologies we developed for regional and on-farm sensor networks and their implementation in two agricultural applications in Washington State, an agricultural weather network and an on-farm frost monitoring network. The regional sensor network consists of our AWN200 data logger equipped with a 900MHz, frequency hopping, spread spectrum (FHSS) radio configured into masterrepeaterslave network for broad geographic coverage. A single master is configured with multiple repeaters to provide a RF line-of-sight telemetry backbone network. Independent network backbones from disparate geographic regions are then aggregated in a central database via standard Internet protocols for further processing and dissemination. Software includes firmware to operate the data logger and radio telemetry aspects of the AWN200 in an agricultural weather network application called AgWeatherNet (http://www.weather.wsu.edu). The on-farm sensor network uses our SS100 radio/logger which includes a 900MHz, FHSS radio, with software designed primarily for mobile, real-time farm operations and management applications. The network is deployed in a star topology in which a strategically placed base radio is responsible for network synchronization, data collection from remote stations within the network, and re-broadcasting collected data to roamer radio units attached to mobile computers and/or directly to the Internet. Client software, AgFrostNet, operating on a computer connected to a roamer, collects, manages, and display data in real-time. This software was designed specifically for air temperature monitoring during frost/freeze protection events. Both the regional AgWeatherNet WSN and the on-farm AgFrostNet networks were successfully implemented in Washington State. Problems encountered were mainly associated with power management under periods of low solar energy and with electrostatic discharge (ESD) damage to gallium-arsenide (GaAs) based transmitreceive switches in the radios during storms, a problem now corrected. Both systems have been made commercially available to growers via a novel arrangement between WSU and a local manufacturer.

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

precision agriculture
parameter retrieval
farm computers


Structural performance evaluation of curvilinear structure detection algorithms with application to retinal vessel segmentation Curvilinear structures are useful features in a variety of applications, particularly in medical image analysis. Compared to other commonly used features such as edges and regions, there is relatively few work on performance evaluation methodologies for curvilinear structure detection algorithms. For instance, a pixel-wise comparison with ground truth has been used in all recent publications on vessel detection in retinal images. In this paper we propose a novel structure-based methodology for evaluating the performance of 2D and 3D curvilinear structure detection algorithms. We consider the two aspects of performance, namely detection rate and detection accuracy, separately, in contrast to their mixed handling in earlier approaches that typically produces biased impression of detection quality. By doing so, the proposed performance measures give us a more informative and precise performance characterization. Experiments on both synthetic and real examples will be given to demonstrate the advantages of our approach.

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

performance evaluation
curvilinear structure

vessel network
airway tree
graph matching


Comparing the Teaching-Learning Process With and Without the Use of Computerized Technological Resources Computerized technological resources have become essential in education, particularly for teaching topics that require the performance of specific tasks. These resources can effectively help the execution of such tasks and the teaching-learning process itself. After the development of a Web site on the topic of nursing staff scheduling, this study aimed at comparing the development of students involved in the teaching-learning process of the previously mentioned topic, with and without the use of computer technology. Two random groups of undergraduate nursing students from a public university in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, were organized: a case group (used the Web site) and a control group (did not use the Web site). Data were collected from 2003 to 2005 after approval by the Research Ethics Committee. Results showed no significant difference in motivation or knowledge acquisition. A similar performance for the two groups was also verified. Other aspects observed were difficulty in doing the nursing staff scheduling exercise and the students' acknowledgment of the topic's importance for their training and professional lives; easy access was considered to be a positive aspect for maintaining the Web site.

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

comparative study
educational technology
nursing informatics
nursing teaching
teaching-learning process


Marketing Segmentation Through Machine Learning Models An Approach Based on Customer Relationship Management and Customer Profitability Accounting Customer relationship management (CRM) aims to build relations with the most profitable clients by performing customer segmentation and designing appropriate marketing tools. In addition, customer profitability accounting (CPA) recommends evaluating the CRM program through the combination of partial measures in a global cost-benefit function. Several statistical techniques have been applied for market segmentations although the existence of large data sets reduces their effectiveness. As an alternative, decision trees are machine learning models that do not consider a priori hypotheses, achieve a high performance, and generate logical rules clearly understood by managers. In this article, a three-stage methodology is proposed that combines marketing feature selection, customer segmentation through univariate and oblique decision trees, and a new CPA function based on marketing, data warehousing, and opportunity costs linked to the analysis of different scenarios. This proposal is applied to a large insurance marketing data set for alternative cost and price conditions showing the superiority of univariate decision trees over statistical techniques.

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

customer relationship management
customer profitability accounting
marketing

artificial intelligence
cost-benefit analysis


DIRECTIONAL SELECTION OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL COMPLEX DISCRETE WAVELET TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATION TO IMAGE PROCESSING In this study, a novel direction selection method using the two-dimensional complex discrete wavelet transform (2D-CDWT) is proposed. In order to achieve arbitrary direction selection, the directional filters are first designed. Calculation procedure of directional selection can be shown as follows: (1) The 16 sub-images are generally generated from the original image by the 2D-CDWT without a down-sampling process and the 12 sub-images that correspond to the high-frequency components are selected. (2) The 12 sub-images are filtered by using the designed directional filter. (3) The down-sampling process is carried out and the resulting images are obtained. Furthermore, this method is applied to the surface analysis of a wafer, and it is confirmed that our method is effective in detecting irregular direction components.

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

wavelet transform
direction selection
image processing
wafer


A comparison of machine learning techniques for customer churn prediction We present a comparative study on the most popular machine learning methods applied to the challenging problem of customer churning prediction in the telecommunications industry. In the first phase of our experiments, all models were applied and evaluated using cross-validation on a popular, public domain dataset. In the second phase, the performance improvement offered by boosting was studied. In order to determine the most efficient parameter combinations we performed a series of Monte Carlo simulations for each method and for a wide range of parameters. Our results demonstrate clear superiority of the boosted versions of the models against the plain (non-boosted) versions. The best overall classifier was the SVM-POLY using AdaBoost with accuracy of almost 97% and F-measure over 84%.

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

churn prediction
machine learning techniques


Multispectral panoramic mosaicing Image mosaicing overcomes the limitations of a cameras limited field of view by aligning and pasting suitably transformed frames in a sequence of overlapping images. This paper deals with multispectral mosaicing for enhancement of spectral informationinformation from the thermal infra-red (IR, hereafter) band and visible band images is directly fused at the pixel level. All subsequent operations can be carried out using the fused mosaic instead of the individually sensed images. We develop a geometric relationship between a visible band panoramic mosaic and an IR one. Our system uses a fast algorithm for automatic panoramic mosaicing. We show results of inter-band mosaic superposition in support of the proposed strategies.

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

multispectral mosaicing
geometric hashing
least-squares estimation


Entropy-Based Approach to Analyze and Classify Mineral Aggregates This paper presents an automatic method to detect and classify weathered aggregates by assessing changes of colors and textures. The method allows the extraction of aggregate features from images and the automatic classification of them based on surface characteristics. The concept of entropy is used to extract features from digital images. An analysis of the use of this concept is presented and two classification approaches, based on neural networks architectures, are proposed. The classification performance of the proposed approaches is compared to the results obtained by other algorithms (commonly considered for classification purposes). The obtained results confirm that the presented method strongly supports the detection of weathered aggregates.

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

self-organizing novelty detection (sonde)


Evaluations of fractal geometry and invariant moments for shape classification of corn germplasm1 Computer vision-based techniques were developed and evaluated for classifying different shapes of germplasms (ear of corn). An algorithm was developed to discriminate round-shaped germplasms based on two features, i.e. circularity and dimensional ratio. Two different approaches based on fractal geometry and higher order invariant moments were used for classification of non-round shaped germplasms. In the fractal-based approach, two additional fractal geometry-based features (i.e. fractal-shape factor and fractal perimeter) were developed and used with fractal dimension and aspect ratio to represent the shape features of the germplasms. Classifications rules based on modified Euclidean measures and distance weighted K-nearest neighborhood were used for classifying the germplasms into one of three non-round-shape classes (cylindrical, cylindrical-conical and conical). Though the overall correspondence for classifying non-round germplasms was 60% (based on 80 samples), a maximum correspondence of 80% could be obtained for classifying cylindrical germplasms (based on 18 samples). Neither method could provide similar classification correspondence for cylindrical-conical germplasms. On the other hand, these methods, however, showed a correspondence of 82.5% for classifying non-round corn germplasms into cylindrical and non-cylindrical (conical and cylindrical-conical) shapes.

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

corn germplasm
computer vision
pattern recognition


Chaotic bat swarm optimisation (CBSO) A new chaotic-based bat swarm optimisation algorithm has been developed. For devising it, different chaotic Bat strategies map functions were tested. In the proposed chaotic BSO, the loudness is updated via multiplying a linearly decreasing function by chaotic map function.

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


A modified analytical hierarchy process (M-AHP) approach for decision support systems in natural hazard assessments A modified analytical hierarchy process (M-AHP) is suggested. The consistency ratio value in the M-AHP never exceeds 0.10. A computer code called M-AHP is provided.

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

modified analytical hierarchy process (m-ahp)


Performance comparison under failures of MPI and MapReduce: An analytical approach Analytical models are proposed to quantify the impact of failures. A numerical study is conducted on both MPI and MapReduce applications under failures. The impact of different parameters on the failure-prone performance is investigated. Extensive experiments are carried out to examine the accuracy of the proposed models.

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 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


The

Chandrasekhar

function

revisited

The

need

for

an

accurate

(better

than

significant

digits)

and

fast

algorithm

for

calculating

the

Chandrasekhar

function,

H(?,?)

H

has

stimulated

the

present

analysis

of

different

solutions

of

the

relevant

integral

equation.

It

has

been

found

that

a

very

accurate

analytical

solution

can

be

derived

that

is

conveniently

used

in

the

range

of

small

arguments,

and

In

a

limited

range

of

arguments,

the

H

H

function

can

be

expressed

in

terms

of

a

rapidly

converging

series

of

Bernoulli

constants.

For

example,

the

H

H

function

for

and

was

readily

calculated

with

an

accuracy

of

digits.

A

new

algorithm,

derived

from

an

integral

representation,

is

proposed

for

efficient

calculations.

Together

with

an

algorithm

published

by

Stibbs

and

Weir

this

algorithm

was

used

in

calculations

of

extensive

tables

of

the

H

H

function

with

an

accuracy

of

significant

digits.

Based

on

the

above

analysis,

a

mixed

algorithm

optimized

with

respect

to

the

execution

time

was

designed.

Program

title:

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

FORTRAN

Computer:

Any.

Operating

system:

Windows

XP,

Windows

Windows

Linux.

RAM:

Mb

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

Algorithms

derived

from

an

integral

representation

of

the

H

H

function

generally

exhibit

a

slow

convergence

which

may

considerably

delay

calculations

involving

integration

of

functions

containing

the

H

H

function.

Furthermore,

a

set

of

reference

values

of

the

H

H

function

of

a

very

high

accuracy

is

useful

in

analysis

of

performance

of

different

algorithms,

and

thus

a

relevant

computational

procedure

is

needed

for

that

purpose.

Solution

method:

Problem

of

slow

convergence

is

circumvented

by

the

derivation

and

use

of

an

analytical

solution

sufficiently

accurate

in

the

range

of

small

arguments.

In

the

range

of

arguments

exceeding

a

new

integral

representation

is

derived

that

is

rapidly

converging

and

can

be

easily

adjusted

to

calculations

with

accuracy

of

significant

digits.

A

mixed

algorithm

is

constructed

that

is

optimized

with

respect

to

the

execution

time.

Restrictions:

The

arguments

for

the

Chandrasekhar

function,

x

x

and

omega

o

m

e

g

a

(notation

used

in

the

code),

are

restricted

to

the

range:

x

and

o

m

e

g

a

Unusual

features:

The

GaussLegendre

quadrature

is

used

in

calculations

of

the

H

H

function

from

different

integral

representations.

The

optimum

number

of

abscissas,

N

N

was

found

to

be

equal

to

To

control

accuracy,

the

bipartition

approach

is

used,

i.e.,calculations

are

repeated

after

halving

the

integration

interval

until

the

desired

accuracy

is

reached.

Running

time:

On

average,

about

s

for

both

arguments

of

the

Chandrasekhar

function

exceeding

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

isotropic scattering
new solutions
new optimized code
high accuracy tabulation
particle transport in condensed matter


Fuzzy inference system based automatic Brunnstrom stage classification for upper-extremity rehabilitation We investigated stroke patients upper extremity motion in a major hospital. We discovered that features related to Brunnstrom stages can be extracted using PCA. An ANFIS was trained to evaluate the recovery progress based on Brunnstrom stages. Trained system was tested for validity with actual patients motion data. System generated outputs are found matching with human experts judgment.

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

stroke rehabilitation
brunnstrom recovery stages
motion quality evaluation
principle component analysis
adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system


Calculation of shell frequency distributions obtained with shell-mapping schemes In order to calculate the transmit power in shell-mapping-based transmission schemes, the frequencies of the shells are required. In this correspondence, a simple but general method for the calculation of these frequencies is derived. The method has approximately the same complexity as the shell-mapping encoder. As an example, the method is shown in detail for the shell-mapping scheme specified for the international telephone-line V.34 modem standard. Moreover, a very simple approximation is given which is tight for large constellations.

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

average transmit power
frequencies of signal points
shell mapping


Staged self-assembly and polyomino context-free grammars Previous work by Demaine et al. (Nat Comput 6937:100114, 2012) developed a strong connection between smallest context-free grammars and staged self-assembly systems for one-dimensional strings and assemblies. We extend this work to two-dimensional polyominoes and assemblies, comparing staged self-assembly systems to a natural generalization of context-free grammars we call polyomino context-free grammars (PCFGs). We achieve nearly optimal bounds on the largest ratios of the smallest PCFG and staged self-assembly system for a given polyomino with \(n\) cells. For the ratio of PCFGs over assembly systems, we show that the smallest PCFG can be an \(\varOmega (n/\log ^3{n})\)-factor larger than the smallest staged assembly system, even when restricted to square polyominoes. For the ratio of assembly systems over PCFGs, we show that the smallest staged assembly system is never more than a \(O(\log {n})\)-factor larger than the smallest PCFG and is sometimes an \(\varOmega (\log {n}/\log \log {n})\)-factor larger.

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

atam
biocomputing
combinatorial optimization
formal languages
hierarchical self-assembly
tile assembly
2ham


A sketch-based system for highway design with user-specified regions of influence To create traffic simulations of high visual-fidelity, each component part needs to be designed and modelled in great detail. Roads can be created manually, but this can become a time-consuming and laborious process when modelling large-scale networks. Therefore, automated techniques for generating road networks efficiently and effectively, is highly desirable in both urban-planning and entertainment industries. In this paper we present a novel sketch-based tool to semi-automate the design, creation, and visualisation of road networks across both flat and undulating terrains. Our tool is guided by input sketches and a combination of prioritised constraints, including the curvature of roads, their inclination, and the volume of ground that would be displaced during construction. We introduce Influence Regions which are user-specified areas of the terrain that influence the path of the roads generated, and are used to attract or repel roads to/from certain obstacles or designated areas, such as forestation, listed buildings, marshland, etc. A user study is conducted to evaluate the usability of the system and the quality of roads generated in a diverse range of scenarios. The results indicate that our system is both user-friendly and able to produce roads that are true to the user's intention.

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

sketch-based
road design
road generation


Exact likelihood ratio test of independence of binary responses within clusters We consider the exact likelihood ratio test of independence of binary responses within clusters developed by George and Kodell (J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 1996, 91, 16021611) conditional on the sufficient statistics for the nuisance parameter under the null hypothesis. Only an exchangeability of responses within clusters is assumed for the distribution of the observed vector. Two formulas for the exact P-values are obtained. An algorithm is proposed to avoid unnecessary enumeration when the cluster size is two. We compare the exact and asymptotic P-values in several cases.

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

correlated binary data
exact test
otolaryngology
ophthalmology
longitudinal study


Rapid door number recognition by a humanoid mobile robot A static door number recognition system for mobile robots in office buildings is presented. The motivation behind the development of such a system is to update the localization results of dead reckoning or improve other distance-sensor based localization. Emphasis is placed on how to reduce the processing time of a template-matching based recognition method to enable real-time image-base localization for a mobile robot. A gap-based heuristic idea is put forward to increase the recognition accuracy. The experimental results show that door numbers can be rapidly and correctly identified under different environmental conditions and postures of the camera.

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

door number plate
template matching
image processing


your skin knows when you will jump Motivation: Most of the affective gaming researches are focusing on using physiological measures to determine the emotional state of the user, while others try to create applications where the player can influence the game with his/her inner emotional states. We would like to mix these two approaches taking advantage of the psychological phenomena of anticipation of stress and using it up in games to predict user actions. Research Approach: Our research focuses on the user action in the course of play, and tries to establish a link between physiological parameters reflecting on the user's emotional sate and the interaction he/she initiates in the game. Research Design: In our experiments we are recording skin conductance response while playing a simple arcade game. We train artificial neural networks to learn when the user interacts (jumps). Findings: In our paper we demonstrate that neural networks are not only capable of learning the exact time, but are also able to predict a jump 2 seconds before it is carried out only from the skin conductance data.

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 B I I O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O 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
affective gaming
skin conductance response


A flexible streaming software architecture for scientific instruments The recently completed prototyping efforts for a new type of riometer, the Advanced Rio-Imaging Experiment in Scandinavia (ARIES), required the development of a uniquely flexible software architecture to deal with what in software engineering terms is referred to as a Wicked System: Source, volume and type of data as well as required processing are only very loosely defined at the outset of the project. Speed, reconfigurability, remote control and data provenance are of major importance for the success of the project both during development and during operation of the deployed prototype. Details of the Advanced Riometer Components (ARCOM) component-based software architecture are presented. The software architecture is not specific to ARIES, and ARCOM components can readily be re-used in other, similar instruments.

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

provenance
software architecture
streaming


Design through making: crafts knowledge as facilitator to collaborative new product development Collaboration between manufacturers and craft makers is believed by many crafts theorists to offer new originality, insight and specialist expertise to design for production. In practice, however, there exists a discrepancy between this ideal and a reality of unreconcilable cultural and methodological differences. This paper documents and discusses such a collaboration as an example of best practice with implications for managers, educators, designers and craft makers. It identifies a new role for craft makers with the appropriate knowledge and experience to act as bridges within companies, facilitating the adoption of design methodologies appropriate to changing priorities in the manufacturing industries.

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

case study
communication
design management


Time-bounded reachability in tree-structured QBDs by abstraction This paper studies quantitative model checking of infinite tree-like (continuous-time) Markov chains. These tree-structured quasi-birth death processes are equivalent to probabilistic pushdown automata and recursive Markov chains and are widely used in the field of performance evaluation. We determine time-bounded reachability probabilities in these processes - which with direct methods, i.e., uniformization, result in an exponential blow-up - by applying abstraction. We contrast abstraction based on Markov decision processes (MDPs) and interval-based abstraction; study various schemes to partition the state space, and empirically show their influence on the accuracy of the obtained reachability probabilities. Results show that grid-like schemes, in contrast to chain- and tree-like ones, yield extremely precise approximations for rather coarse abstractions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

probabilistic simulation
queueing theory


High-order quadratures for the solution of scattering problems in two dimensions We construct an iterative algorithm for the solution of forward scattering problems in two dimensions. The scheme is based on the combination of high-order quadrature formulae, fast application of integral operators in LippmannSchwinger equations, and the stabilized bi-conjugate gradient method (BI-CGSTAB). While the FFT-based fast application of integral operators and the BI-CGSTAB for the solution of linear systems are fairly standard, a large part of this paper is devoted to constructing a class of high-order quadrature formulae applicable to a wide range of singular functions in two and three dimensions; these are used to obtain rapidly convergent discretizations of LippmannSchwinger equations. The performance of the algorithm is illustrated with several numerical examples.

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

quadratures scattering singular lippmannschwinger


Mediastinal atlas creation from 3-D chest computed tomography images: Application to automated detection and station mapping of lymph nodes One important aspect of lung cancer staging is the assessment of mediastinal lymph nodes in 3-D chest computed tomography (CT) images. In the current clinical routine this is done manually by analyzing the 3-D CT image slice by slice to find nodes, evaluate them quantitatively, and assign labels to them for describing the clinical and pathologic extent of metastases. In this paper we present a method to automate the process of lymph node detection and labeling by creation of a mediastinal average image and a novel lymph node atlas containing probability maps for mediastinal, aortic, and N1 nodes. Utilizing a fast deformable registration approach to match the atlas with CT images of new patients, our method can maintain an acceptable runtime. In comparison to previously published methods for mediastinal lymph node detection and labeling it also shows a good sensitivity and positive predictive value.

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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 atlas
mediastinum
lymph node map


topological analysis of a single line drawing for 3d shape recovery This paper discusses the issues and unsolved problems in face identification in 3D shape recovery from 2D sketches. The sketch is drawn from a single projection and is given in the form of a line drawing. Topological analysis of the drawing help identifying faces of the 3D model the sketch depicts. The face information can significantly reduce the complexity of 3D reconstruction. Imperfections in the drawing may affect the topological analysis of a line drawing. A revised methodology that can handle general objects and imperfect line drawings is discussed. Deletion and partition operations are proposed in converting a non-manifold to manifolds when the conversion is possible. A method that partitions certain complex manifold objects to reduce the complexity of 3D reconstruction is also proposed.

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 B I O O O O O O O O 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

face identification
topological analysis


Accuracy of single dipole source localization by BP neural networks from 18-channel EEGs A problem of estimating biopotential sources in the brain based on EEG signals observed on the scalp is known as an important inverse problem of electrophysiology. Usually there is no closed-form solution for this problem and it requires iterative techniques such as the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Considering the nonlinear properties of inverse problem, and signal to noise ratio inherent in EEG signals, a back propagation neural network has been recently proposed as a solution. In this paper, we investigated the properties of neural networks and its localization accuracy for single dipole source localization. Based on the results of extensive studies, we concluded the neural networks are highly feasible in single-source localization with a small number of electrodes (18 electrodes), also examined the usefulness of this method for clinical application with a case of epilepsy.

O O O B O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O 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 multiscale wavelet-inspired scheme for nonlinear diffusion Nonlinear diffusion filtering and wavelet shrinkage are two successfully applied methods for discontinuity preserving denoising of signals and images. Recently, relations between both methods have been established taking into account wavelet shrinkage at one scale. In this paper, we propose a new explicit scheme for nonlinear diffusion which directly incorporates ideas from multiscale Haar wavelet shrinkage. We prove that our scheme permits larger time steps while preserving convergence to the mean signal value. Numerical examples demonstrate the behavior of our scheme for two and three scales.

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

haar wavelet filter bank
signal denoising
nonlinear diffusion filtering


Correcting an inconsistent set of linear inequalities by the generalized Newton method In this paper, we consider correcting an inconsistent set of linear inequalities by minimal changes in problem data using the l2-norm. A new formulation of the problem is introduced, which involves minimizing a nonconvex fractional function. Then by utilizing the generalized Newton (GN) method, two heuristic algorithms are developed to solve the fractional minimization problem. We further consider correcting inconsistent linear inequalities with extra non-negativity constraints on the variables. For this specific case, we also propose two heuristic algorithms. Finally, we report encouraging numerical results.

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 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

inconsistent linear inequalities
generalized newton method

fractional optimization
dinkelbach's method


STATE COMPLEXITY AND APPROXIMATION We discuss a number of essential questions concerning the state complexity research. The questions include why many basic problems were not studied earlier, whether there is a general algorithm for state complexity of combined operations, and whether there is a new and effective approach in this area of research. The concept of state complexity approximation is also discussed. We show that state complexity approximation can be used to obtain good results when the exact state complexities are difficult to find and when the exact state complexities are too complex to comprehend. We also list a number of questions for future research in this area.

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

state complexity
approximation
combined operations

regular languages
finite automata
undecidability


Parameterized energylatency trade-offs for data propagation in sensor networks We study the problem of greedy, single path data propagation in wireless sensor networks, aiming mainly to minimize the energy dissipation. In particular, we first mathematically analyze and experimentally evaluate the energy efficiency and latency of three characteristic protocols, each one selecting the next hop node with respect to a different criterion (minimum projection, minimum angle and minimum distance to the destination). Our analytic and simulation findings suggest that any single criterion does not simultaneously satisfy both energy efficiency and low latency. Towards parameterized energylatency trade-offs we provide as well hybrid combinations of the two criteria (direction and proximity to the sink). Our hybrid protocols achieve significant performance gains and allow fine-tuning of desired performance. Also, they have nice energy balance properties, and can prolong the network lifetime.

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

wireless sensor networks
data propagation
energy efficiency
simulation

algorithms
routing
performance evaluation


Term norm distribution and its effects on Latent Semantic Indexing Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) uses the singular value decomposition to reduce noisy dimensions and improve the performance of text retrieval systems. Preliminary results have shown modest improvements in retrieval accuracy and recall, but these have mainly explored small collections. In this paper we investigate text retrieval on a larger document collection (TREC) and focus on distribution of word norm (magnitude). Our results indicate the inadequacy of word representations in LSI space on large collections. We emphasize the query expansion interpretation of LSI and propose an LSI term normalization that achieves better performance on larger collections.

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


Scheduling trajectories on a planar surface with moving obstacles An algorithm for scheduling the trajectory of a point object, which moves on a plane surface comprising a set of moving obstacles, is introduced. Different quantitative criteria may be met by the schedule, e.g., the course connecting two individual locations being the shortest in length, the least expensive, the fastest as regard to its duration, etc. A prototype system that implements the algorithm is presented. Several example scenarios are also discussed.

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

spatio-temporal modeling
graphs
trajectory schedule
optimum paths
moving objects


A novel fault detection and localization scheme for mesh all-optical networks based on monitoring-cycles We previously showed the feasibility of a fault detection scheme for all-optical networks (AONs) based on their decomposition into monitoring-cycles (m-cycles). In this paper, an m-cycle construction for fault detection is formulated as a cycle cover problem with certain constraints. A heuristic spanning-tree based cycle construction algorithm is proposed and applied to four typical networks: NSFNET, ARPA2, SmallNet, and Bellcore. Three metrics: grade of fault localization, wavelength overhead, and the number of cycles in a cover are introduced to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. The results show that it achieves nearly optimal performance.

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

fault detection
fault localization
cycle cover


Control-flow checking by software signatures This paper presents a new signature monitoring technique, CFCSS (Control Flow Checking by Software Signatures); CFCSS is a pure software method that checks the control flow of a program using assigned signatures. An algorithm assigns a unique signature to each node in the program graph and adds instructions for error detection. Signatures are embedded in the program during compilation time using the constant field of the instructions and compared with run-time signatures when the program is executed. Another algorithm reduces the code size and execution time overhead caused by checking instructions in CFCSS. A "branching fault injection experiment" was performed with benchmark programs. Without CFCSS, an average of 33.7% of the injected branching faults produced undetected incorrect outputs; however, with CFCSS, only 3.1% of branching faults produced undetected incorrect outputs. Thus it is possible to increase error detection coverage for control flow errors by an order of magnitude using CFCSS. The distinctive advantage of CFCSS over previous signature monitoring techniques is that CFCSS is a pure software method, i.e., it needs no dedicated hardware such as a watchdog processor for control flow checking. A watchdog task in multitasking environment also needs no extra hardware, but the advantage of CFCSS over a watchdog task is that CFCSS can be used even when the operating system does not support multitasking.

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

assigned signatures
control flow checking
signature monitoring

fault injection experiments
software error detection


a singer identification technique for content-based classification of mp3 music objects As there is a growing amount of MP3 music data available on the Internet today, the problems related to music classification and content-based music retrieval are getting more attention recently. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically classify MP3 music objects according to their singers. First, the coefficients extracted from the output of the polyphase filters are used to compute the MP3 features for segmentation. Based on these features, an MP3 music object can be decomposed into a sequence of notes (or phonemes ). Then for each MP3 phoneme in the training set, its MP3 feature is extracted and used to train an MP3 classifier which can identify the singer of an unknown MP3 music object. Experiments are performed and analyzed to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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

singer identification
music classification
mp3

content-based music classification
mp3 databases
music feature extraction
music databases
mp3 classification


Belief Propagation for Continuous State Spaces: Stochastic Message-Passing with Quantitative Guarantees The sum-product or belief propagation (BP) algorithm is a widely used message-passing technique for computing approximate marginals in graphical models. We introduce a new technique, called stochastic orthogonal series message-passing (SOSMP), for computing the BP fixed point in models with continuous random variables. It is based on a deterministic approximation of the messages via orthogonal series basis expansion, and a stochastic estimation of the basis coefficients via Monte Carlo techniques and damped updates. We prove that the SOSMP iterates converge to a delta-neighborhood of the unique BP fixed point for any tree-structured graph, and for any graphs with cycles in which the BP updates satisfy a contractivity condition. In addition, we demonstrate how to choose the number of basis coefficients as a function of the desired approximation accuracy delta and smoothness of the compatibility functions. We illustrate our theory with both simulated examples and in application to optical flow estimation.

O O O O O O 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

sum-product for continuous state spaces
low-complexity belief propagation
stochastic approximation
monte carlo methods
orthogonal basis expansion


A2M - A program to compute all possible mineral modes from geochemical analyses A2M ('Analysis to Mineralogy') is a computer program to determine, for given total chemical analyses, all possible mineral modes from an arbitrary but pre-specified set of minerals. A2M is specifically designed to address the case in which the number of minerals is greater than the number of analysed elements (oxides). Since in this case the solution is not unique, all extreme mineral modes are determined. They span a finite convex polyhedron in the solution space with dimension 'number of minerals' minus 'number of elements'. Every possible solution can be obtained as linear combination of the extreme modes; and the arithmetic mean of all extreme modes (i.e. the centre of gravity of the solution polyhedron) is a routine output of A2M, which can be regarded as the 'best' solution in the absence of any additional information. The use of A2M is illustrated with several examples. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

geochemistry
mass balance
singular value decomposition


Multidimensional scaling approach for node localization using received signal strength measurements Node localization has played an important role in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, cooperative localization using received signal strength (RSS) measurements is addressed. The technique of weighted multidimensional scaling (WMDS) which relies on pairwise distance information between nodes is utilized in our algorithm development. Assuming that the transmit power is available, we first convert the original nonlinear localization problem to a system of linear equations, leading to computational attractiveness. It is also proved that the positioning accuracy of the WMDS solution attains the CramrRao lower bound at sufficiently small noise conditions. Furthermore, the proposed method is extended to the unknown transmit power case by exploiting the ratio of squared distance estimates extracted from the RSS information. The effectiveness of the WMDS approach is demonstrated via comparison with several conventional RSS-based positioning methods.

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

node localization
received signal strength
multidimensional scaling


from usability tasks to usable user interfaces In this paper we describe how the identification of usability tasks in the task model as an early consideration of usability in the process can directly influence the design of usable User Interfaces (UI). We intend to make system analysts and UI designers work and communicate better by sharing artifacts, thus providing a process that aims at the integration of professionals working with a productive process in order to develop UIs with usability.

O B I 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 B I O O 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

user interfaces
usability tasks
integration


On rate-reliability-distortion function for a robust descriptions system A source coding problem is considered for a robust description system with one encoder and many decoders. The rate-reliability-distortion function is specified. An example is given showing a distinction in calculation of the rate-reliability-distortion function as compared with the rate-distortion function.

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

hamming distance
multiple descriptions
rate-distortion function
reliability function
rate-reliability-distortion dependence
source coding with fidelity criterion


Requirements analysis of information services for patients on a general practitioner's website - Patient and general practitioner's perspectives Objective: To elicit and analyze information needs of patients and primary care physicians (GPs) regarding the information services (static and functional) that a GP's practice website should provide. Methods: To find candidate information services, we conducted a literature search and examined primary care physicians' websites, especially Dutch websites. Semi-structured depth interviews with the stakeholders, Dutch patients and GPs, were done to arrive at a final checklist. We then conducted a survey to elicit the level of importance associated with each service on the checklist. The data underwent statistical analysis and relevant requirements were formulated. The requirements were then validated by interviews. General website quality and usability aspects were elicited from the literature. Results: The research resulted in a checklist of 38 selected information services including their priority ratings for patients and GPs; a discrepancy list between GP and patient priorities; and a requirements document containing information services (14 static and 6 functional), and general quality and usability aspects (8 and 5). Conclusion: The following items occurred in the top 10 of both user groups: general practice information, information of local public health institutions, self-help information, repeat prescription, links to health web sites. At the bottom on both priority lists were: links to journals, tests and forums. Dutch GPs are much more selective in terms of which information services to provide on-line. Discrepancy between the two groups concerns on-line services that seem to require a change to the GP's workflow, or those services that are not recognized for reimbursing the GP. Although the Dutch patients' requirements seem to generalize to other patients, the conflict list might depend an the primary care system.

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

information services (mesh)
medical websites


Reachability of the synchronous state in a mutually connected PLL network Second-order phase locked loops (PLLs) are devices that are able to provide synchronization between the nodes in a network even under severe quality restrictions in the signal propagation. Consequently, they are widely used in telecommunication and control. Conventional masterslave (MS) clock-distribution systems are being replaced by mutually connected (MC) ones due to their good potential to be used in new types of application such as wireless sensor networks, distributed computation and communication systems. Here, by using an analytical reasoning, a nonlinear algebraic system of equations is proposed to establish the existence conditions for the synchronous state in an MC PLL network. Numerical experiments confirm the analytical results and provide ideas about how the network parameters affect the reachability of the synchronous state. The phase-difference oscillation amplitudes are related to the node parameters helping to design PLL neural networks. Furthermore, estimation of the acquisition time depending on the node parameters allows the performance evaluation of time distribution systems and neural networks based on phase-locked techniques.

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


Mathematics of the Neural Response We propose a natural image representation, the neural response, motivated by the neuroscience of the visual cortex. The inner product defined by the neural response leads to a similarity measure between functions which we call the derived kernel. Based on a hierarchical architecture, we give a recursive definition of the neural response and associated derived kernel. The derived kernel can be used in a variety of application domains such as classification of images, strings of text and genomics data.

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

unsupervised learning
computer vision
kernels


Analysis of reactive scheduling problems in a job shop environment In this paper, we study the reactive scheduling problems in a stochastic manufacturing environment. Specifically, we test the several scheduling policies under machine breakdowns in a classical job shop system. In addition, we measure the effect of system size and type of work allocation (uniform and bottleneck) on the system performance. The performance of the system is measured for the mean tardiness and makespan criteria. We also investigate a partial scheduling scheme under both deterministic and stochastic environments for several system configurations.

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


algebraic analysis on asymptotic stability of continuous dynamical systems In this paper we propose a mechanisable technique for asymptotic stability analysis of continuous dynamical systems. We start from linearizing a continuous dynamical system, solving the Lyapunov matrix equation and then check whether the solution is positive definite. For the cases that the Jacobian matrix is not a Hurwitz matrix, we first derive an algebraizable sufficient condition for the existence of a Lyapunov function in quadratic form without linearization. Then, we apply a real root classification based method step by step to formulate this derived condition as a semi-algebraic set such that the semi-algebraic set only involves the coefficients of the pre-assumed quadratic form. Finally, we compute a sample point in the resulting semi-algebraic set for the coefficients resulting in a Lyapunov function. In this way, we avoid the use of generic quantifier elimination techniques for efficient computation. We prototypically implemented our algorithm based on DISCOVERER . The experimental results and comparisons demonstrate the feasibility and promise of our 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 O O O O O O O O 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

lyapunov functions
lyapunov matrix equations
semi-algebraic sets


Design of down-sampling processors for radio communications This paper deals with design and implementation of digital filter processors to be used as down-samplers in wireless transceivers. We consider a homodyne direct conversion and propose an improved method to specify each stage of the cascade structure. The proposed scheme results in a globally compact implementation. The method is detailed for DECT standard and illustrated by a fixed point FPGA based implementation.

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

wireless transceiver
multimode digital decimation filtering
sigma delta conversion


An investigation of the effects of touchpad location within a notebook computer This study evaluated effects of the location of a notebook computer's integrated touchpad, complimenting previous work in the area of desktop mouse location effects. Most often integrated touchpads are located in the computer's wrist rest, and centered on the keyboard. This study characterized effects of this bottom center location and four alternatives (top center, top right, right side, and bottom right) upon upper extremity posture, discomfort, preference, and performance. Touchpad location was found to significantly impact each of those measures. The top center location was particularly poor, in that it elicited more ulnar deviation, more shoulder flexion, more discomfort, and perceptions of performance impedance. In general, the bottom center, bottom right, and right side locations fared better, though subjects wrists were more extended in the bottom locations. Suggestions for notebook computer design are provided.

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 B I O O O

pointing device
wrist posture
musculoskeletal discomfort


Numerical solution of fractional ordinary and partial differential equations by an operational technique The purpose of this paper is to present a numerical technique for solving the fractional ordinary differential equations (FODEs) and fractional partial differential equations (FPDEs). The proposed technique is based on operational Tau method (OTM). The main idea behind the OTM is to convert the desired problem to some operational matrices. The development of the technique for FODEs and FPDEs is considered. Some linear and nonlinear experiments are applied to solve 1D and 2D fractional differential equations (FDEs) and a comparison is made between the proposed technique and the other methods. The results demonstrate the accuracy and the validity of the new 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 B I I I O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

spectral methods
operational approach of the tau method
improved algebraic formulation


is an open organizational culture an important factor in the hospital-in-the-home This paper shows some of the tools and methods that Hospital-in-the-Home Units (HHU) have used to update organizational memory. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the links among the extent to which a HHU possesses some unlearning practices and some memories and the strengths of its outcomes from the practitioners' point of view (human capital).

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

organizational memory
open organizational culture


Formal verification of robotic surgery tasks by reachability analysis In this paper we discuss the application of formal methods for the verification of properties of control systems designed for autonomous robotic systems. We illustrate our proposal in the context of surgery by considering the automatic execution of a simple action such as puncturing. To prove that a sequence of subtasks planned on pre-operative data can successfully accomplish the surgical operation despite model uncertainties, we specify the problem by using hybrid automata. We express the requirements of interest as questions about reachability properties of the hybrid automaton model. Then, we use the tool Ariadne to study how the choice of the control parameters and the measurement error affect the safety of the system.

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


Projective interpolation of polynomial vectors and improved key recovery attack on SFLASH SFLASH is an instance of the famous C* \(^{-}\) multivariate public key cryptographic schemes and it was chosen by the NESSIE cryptographic project of the European Consortium in 2003 as a candidate signature algorithm used for digital signatures on limited-resource devices. Recently, a successful private key recovery attack on SFLASH was proposed by Bouillaguet, Fouque and Macario-Rat by uncovering the kernel properties of quadratic forms of the central map. The most expensive step in the attack is the calculation of kernel vectors of skew-symmetric matrices over a bivariate polynomial ring. Bouillaguet et al. proposed two methods to accomplish this computation. Both methods involve symbolic computation on bivariate polynomials. The first method computes characteristic polynomials of matrices of polynomials and is very expensive. The second method involves a Grbner basis computation and so its complexity is difficult to estimate. In this paper, we show this critical step of calculating kernel vectors can be done by numerical computation on field elements instead of symbolic computation. Our method uses a nondeterministic interpolation of polynomial vectors called projective interpolation, and its complexity can be explicitly evaluated. Experiments show that it is much faster, making the total attack on SFLASH about 30 times faster (the critical step is about 100 times faster) than the first method of Bouillaguet et al. The new method is also slighter faster than their second method.

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

sflash
symbolic computation
numerical computation
projective interpolation


The importance of accounting for the number of co-authors and their order when assessing research performance at the individual level in the life sciences Accurate measurement of research productivity should take account of both the number of co-authors of every scientific work and of the different contributions of the individuals. For researchers in the life sciences, common practice is to indicate such contributions through position in the authors list. In this work, we measure the distortion introduced to bibliometric ranking lists for scientific productivity when the number of co-authors or their position in the list is ignored. The field of observation consists of all Italian university professors working in the life sciences, with scientific production examined over the period 20042008. The outcomes of the study lead to a recommendation against using indicators or evaluation methods that ignore the different authors contributions to the research results.

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

research evaluation
co-authorship
fractional counting
bibliometrics
biology
medicine


An autonomic message dissemination protocol for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks: a density and priority levels aware approach The broadcasting communication mode is widely used in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks. It is used for sending emergency messages, road-traffic information or to help routing protocols to determine routes. This communication mode is known to be hard to achieve efficiently since it depends on the network density. Indeed, broadcasting methods may cause network congestion if they are not well designed. This paper introduces a novel Autonomic Dissemination Method (ADM) which delivers messages in accordance with given message classes and network density levels. The proposed approach is based on two steps: an offline optimization process and an online adaptation to the network characteristics. ADM allows each node to dynamically adapt its broadcasting strategy not only with respect to the network density, but also according to the class of the message to send: emergency (high-priority), road-traffic (medium-priority) or either comfort message (low-priority). The ultimate goal of ADM is to make effective use of radio resources when there are many messages to send simultaneously. This approach increases the efficiency of the broadcast process in terms of message delivery ratio, latency and interferences reduction. The autonomic computing paradigm improves the robustness of protocols.

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

vanet
broadcasting protocol
message priority level
density evaluation


Structures of precision losses in computing approximate Grobner bases In computing approximate Grobner bases, it is not easy to trace precision losses of floating-point coefficients of intermediate approximate polynomials. The measured precision losses are usually much larger than their genuine values. One reason causing this phenomenon is that most existing methods for tracing precision losses do not consider the dependence of such precision losses in any polynomial (as an equation). In this paper, we define an algebraic structure called PL-space (precision loss space) for a polynomial (as an equation) and set up a theory for it. We prove that any PL-space has a finite weak basis and a strong basis and show how they effect on tracing precision losses by an example. Based on the study of minimal strong bases, we propose the concept of dependence number which reveals the complexity of the dependence of precision losses in a polynomial. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Effects of scholars gender and professional position on publishing productivity in different publication types. Analysis of a Finnish university This paper examines the effects of a scholars position and gender on publishing productivity in several types of scientific publications: monographs, articles in journals, articles in edited books, and articles in conference proceedings. The data consist of 1,367 scholars who worked at the University of Helsinki, Finland, during the period 20022004. The analysis shows that professors are the most productive, PhDs publish more than non-PhDs, and men perform better than women, also when other scholarly characteristics are controlled for. These differences are greater for monographs and articles in edited books than for articles in journals. In terms of conference proceedings, no remarkable productivity differences were found.

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


Mitigating On-Off attacks in reputation-based secure data aggregation for wireless sensor networks In-network aggregation is considered as an efficient way to reduce the energy consumption in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, it opens doors for a compromised node to distort the integrity of the aggregated data by altering the data and disrupting transmission of the aggregation results. Thus, several secure data aggregation protocols were designed to mitigate the effect of the node compromise attack and ensure data integrity. Most protocols can detect the manipulation of the aggregation results and then reject them at the base station, which gives a single node compromise the opportunity to disrupt the limited resources in the network. Reputation-based secure data aggregation protocols take a step further in helping to identify compromised nodes as early as possible. However, reputation-based protocols are prone to On-Off attacks (OOs) in which a compromised node is able to affect the aggregation results without being detected. The compromised node behaves maliciously now and then to ensure that its reputation value is within the trustable level. A solution to defeat this attack is proposed in this paper. The significance of the proposal is twofold: (i) it extends Alzaid et al.'s protocol and mitigates the effect of the OO on the aggregation results, and (ii) it considers non-homogeneous environments, which requires distinguishing between abrupt and incipient changes. In a comparative analysis of our proposal with Alzaid et al.'s protocol, plain estimate, and reputation-based estimate shows its superior performance in mitigating the effect of the attack. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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
compromised nodes

reputation systems
change point detection
estimation theory
on-off attacks


A dual of well-behaving type designed minimum distance In this paper, we propose a lower hound for the minimum distance of [n, k] linear codes which are specified by generator matrices whose rows are k vectors of a given sequence of n. linearly independent vectors over a finite field. The Feng-Rao bound and the order bound give the lower bounds for the minimum distance of the dual codes of the codes considered in this paper. We show that the proposed bound gives the true minimum distance for Reed-Solomon and Reed-Muller codes and exceeds the Goppa bound for some L-type algebraic geometry codes.

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designed minimum distance
order bound
algebraic geometry codes

feng-rao bound
generalized hamming weights


The number of shortest paths in the arrangement graph A solution to the shortest path enumeration problem can find numerous applications in studying issues related to interconnection networks. In this paper, we enumerate the number of shortest paths between any two vertices in an arrangement graph by establishing a bijection between these shortest paths and a collection of ordered forests of certain bi-colored trees, via minimum factorizations of permutations corresponding to such vertices in terms of so-called arrangement transpositions, and then count the number of these forests with the help of an existing result on the enumeration of such bi-colored trees. Our result generalizes previous ones and can be applied to solve the same problem for other related graphs such as the alternating group graph. On the other hand, the techniques applied to derive such an enumeration result further extend the ongoing work of counting the number of minimum factorizations of a permutation in terms of a certain type of transposition, a rather interesting problem in the area of algebraic combinatorics.

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

minimum factorization of a permutation
bi-colored tree
interconnection network


Optimal release policies for a software system with warranty cost and change-point phenomenon Determining the software quality and release time of the software is an important role of software reliability. Software reliability growth models (SRGMs) are applications of software reliability. The change-point is defined as the prominent change in the software testing time, in connection with the quality of a software error occurrence or error-detection phenomenon. As a result, the software reliability growth process, based on the change-point, affects the precision of the software reliability prediction, based on the SRGMs. To find the accurate total expected delivery cost with a suitable warranty period of the software system, a new cost model for the software system with the warranty and change-point phenomenon is proposed in this paper. The entire expected delivery cost and the reliability of the software system is calculated using the change-point SRGM. The optimal release time is calculated by reducing the overall estimated delivery cost for various desired reliability levels. Based on the proposed warranty cost model and the reliability of the software system, we have derived some optimal release policies. Numerical illustrations and interconnected discussed data are itemized. From the testing outcome, we get software release policies that provide a comprehensive analysis of software based on the total expected delivery cost with a suitable warranty period, desired level of reliability, and change-point. Moreover, these policies will be helpful for project managers to decide where to stop the testing for customer release at the exact time with a suitable warranty period.

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

software reliability
optimal release policies