Improvements on "IP-IAPP": A fast IP handoff protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless and mobile clients One of the most critical issues in introducing Wireless LAN (WLAN) real-time and delay sensitive applications, such as Voice over IP (VoIP), is guaranteeing IP service continuation during inter-subnet Basic Service Set (BSS) transitions. Even though WLANs offer very high channel bandwidth, they exhibit long network-layer handoff latency. This is a restraining factor for mobile clients using interactive multimedia applications such as VoIP or video streaming. In a previous work, we presented a novel fast and efficient IP mobility solution, called "IP-IAPP", which offers constant IP connectivity to the 802.11 mobile users and successfully preserves their ongoing sessions, even during subnet handoffs (fast recovery of active connections). It is an 802.11-dependent IP mobility solution, which accelerates the network reconfiguration phase after subnet handoffs and significantly reduces the IP handoff latency. It restores L3 connectivity almost simultaneously to the L2 connectivity after a subnet handoff, due to a zero-delay movement detection method. As a result, even the most demanding next generation WLAN applications such as Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) suffer insignificant disruption. In this paper we present an improved version of the IP-IAPP mobility mechanism (new optimized protocol procedures). Certain extensions have also been incorporated to the initial proposal, for the provision of more advanced services: (a) secure inter-AP IP-IAPP communications, (b) zero patching on the clients s/w, and (c) support of clients which use a dynamic IP address. Performance measurements out of further and more complex testing verify that the proposed method outperforms other existing mobility solutions, and still introduces the lesser imperative amendments to the existing 802.11 wireless LAN framework.

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


A fast robust and simple algorithm for estimating parameters of polynomial phase signals Polynomial phase signals belong to a wide class of signals used for modeling but processing associated to them are always difficult since they are non-stationary signals. In the method introduced in this paper, we take benefits of some advances in robust estimation in order to build a new algorithm for estimating the phasis parameters of polynomial phase signal. This algorithm has the advantages of being fast and being able to deal with signal whose phase is a polynomial of unknown order. The structure of this algorithm is robust to the shape of the noise.

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

polynomial phase signals
robust estimation

instantaneous frequency
parametric estimation
impulse noise


A new methodology for optimal placement of decoupling capacitors on printed circuit board This report describes a new methodology for the optimal placement of decoupling capacitors on the printed circuit board (PCB). This method searches the optimal position of decoupling capacitor so that the impedance characteristics at the power supply is minimized in the specified frequency range. In this method, the PCB is modeled by the PEEC method to handle the 3-dimensional structures and Krylov-subspace technique is applied to obtain efficiently the impedance characteristics in the frequency domain.

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

peec (partial element equivalent circuit)


An unstructured finite volume procedure for simulating flows with moving fronts The correct prediction of moving fronts is of utmost importance in mold injection. Due to the complexity of the computational domains encountered in this engineering application, finite element methods (FEM) are widely used for predicting the fluid flow. The prediction of the position of the front are, however, usually done using finite differences because of local mass conservation requirements. This paper presents a finite volume method for simulating flows with moving fronts using Voronoi discretization, where the conservation principles are obeyed in solving the flow variables inside the domain as well as in the moving front. The method extends the knowledge of the classical finite volume method for structured grids to unstructured grids.

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

finite volume method
unstructured grids
mold injection
moving fronts


Optimization based on bacterial chemotaxis We present an optimization algorithm based on a model of bacterial chemotaxis. The original biological model is used to formulate a simple optimization algorithm, which is evaluated on a set of standard test problems. Based on this evaluation, several features are added to the basic algorithm using evolutionary concepts in order to obtain an improved optimization strategy, called the bacteria chemotaxis (BC) algorithm. This strategy is evaluated on a number of test functions for local and global optimization, compared with other optimization techniques, and applied to the problem of inverse airfoil design. The comparisons show that on average, BC performs similar to standard evolution strategies and worse than evolution strategies with enhanced convergence properties.

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

bacterial chemotaxis
evolution strategies


Extraction of temporally correlated sources with its application to non-invasive fetal electrocardiogram extraction This letter addresses the problem of fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) extraction. A class of source extraction algorithms is proposed and it uses a combination of two different approaches: Barros's source extraction approach and Hyvrinen's fixed-point approach. The proposed algorithms can rapidly extract the desired FECG with little noise, and can work well in some poor situations. The validity and performance of the algorithms are confirmed by extensive computer simulations and experiments on real-world 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 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

independent component analysis (ica)
blind source separation (bss)
fetal electrocardiogram (fecg)


Representation and construction of self-dual aggregation operators Two different characterizations of self-dual aggregation operators are available in the literature: one based on C(x,y)=x/(x+1-y) C ( x , y ) = x / ( x + 1 - y ) and one based on the arithmetic mean. Both approaches construct a self-dual aggregation operator by combining an aggregation operator with its dual. In this paper, we fit these approaches into a more general framework and characterize N-invariant aggregation operators, with N an involutive negator. Various binary aggregation operators, fulfilling some kind of symmetry w.r.t. N and with a sufficiently large range, can be used to combine an aggregation operator and its dual into an N-invariant aggregation operator. Moreover, using aggregation operators to construct N-invariant aggregation operators seems rather restrictive. It suffices to consider n-ary operators fulfilling some weaker conditions. Special attention is drawn to the equivalence classes that arise as several of these n-ary operators can yield the same N-invariant aggregation operator.

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

self-duality
reciprocal relation
invariance under monotone bijections
group decisions and negotiations
fuzzy sets


Incompressible hydroelastic vibrations: finite element modelling of the elastogravity operator This paper deals with the low frequency vibratory analysis of fluidstructure interactions in an elastic tank partially filled with an incompressible inviscid liquid. The originality of this work is to give an exact expression of the gravity interface operator whereas other standard hydroelastic formulations treat this effect through approximations. The properties of this so-called elastogravity operator will be studied here from theoretical and numerical point of view. Experimental measurements will validate the computational model and allow to quantify the effect of coupling between the liquid sloshing and the hydroelastic deformations of the structure.

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

fluidstructure interactions
sloshing
gravity

internal liquid
hydroelasticity
hydrostatic pressure


Mixed Poisson-type processes with application in software reliability We introduce one generalization of the mixed Poisson process referred to as the mixed Poisson-type process. An approach taken here is to assume the l(1)-isotropy of interevent times and to define the parameter as a function of observable quantities. An inhomogeneous variant of the new process is studied as a software reliability model. As an illustration a numerical example is analyzed via the Gibbs sampler. The mixed Poisson-type process is constructed through probabilistic behaviour of observable quantities and includes the mixed Poisson processes the limiting case. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Object-based and class-based composition of transitive mixins In object-oriented composition, classes and class inheritance are applied to realize type relationships and reusable building blocks. Unfortunately, these two goals might be contradictory in many situations, leading to classes and inheritance hierarchies that are hard to reuse. Some approaches exist to remedy this problem, such as mixins, aspects, roles, and meta-objects. However, in all these approaches, situations where the mixins, aspects, roles, or meta-objects have complex interdependencies among each other are not well solved yet. In this paper, we propose transitive mixins as an extension of the mixin concept. This approach provides a simple and reusable solution to define mixins of mixins. Moreover, because mixins can be easily realized on top of aspects, roles, and meta-objects, the same solution can also be applied to those other approaches.

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 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 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

mixin classes
software composition
object-oriented composition


Quantifying topological robustness of networks under sustained targeted attacks In this paper, we introduce a measure to analyse the structural robustness of complex networks, which is specifically applicable in scenarios of targeted, sustained attacks. The measure is based on the changing size of the largest component as the network goes through disintegration. We argue that the measure can be used to quantify and compare the effectiveness of various attack strategies. Applying this measure, we confirm the result that scale-free networks are comparatively less vulnerable to random attacks and more vulnerable to targeted attacks. Then we analyse the robustness of a range of real world networks, and show that most real world networks are least robust to attacks based on betweenness of nodes. We also show that the robustness values of some networks are more sensitive to the attack strategy as compared to others. Furthermore, robustness coefficient computed using two centrality measures may be similar, even when the computational complexities of calculating these centrality measures may be different. Given this disparity, the robustness coefficient introduced potentially plays a key role in choosing attack and defence strategies for real world networks. While the measure is applicable to all types of complex networks, we clearly demonstrate its relevance to social network analysis.

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


A novel method for alignment of two nucleic acid sequences using ant colony optimization and genetic algorithms We describe a new method for pairwise nucleic acid sequence alignment that can also be used for pattern searching and tandem repeat searching within a nucleic acid sequence. The method is broadly a hybrid algorithm employing ant colony optimization (ACO) and the simple genetic algorithm. The method first employs ACO to obtain a set of alignments, which are then further processed by an elitist genetic algorithm, which employs primitive selection and a novel multipoint crossover-mutation operator to generate accurate alignments. The resulting alignments show a fair amount of accuracy for smaller and medium size sequences. Furthermore, this algorithm can be used rather quickly and efficiently for aligning shorter sequences and also for pattern searching in both nucleic acid and amino acid sequences. Furthermore, it can be used as an effective local alignment method or as a global alignment tool. On improvement of accuracy, this method can be extended for use towards multiple sequence alignment.

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

genetic algorithm
ant colony optimization
nucleic acid
sequence alignment


Virtual metrology for run-to-run control in semiconductor manufacturing In semiconductor manufacturing processes, run-to-run (R2R) control is used to improve productivity by adjusting process inputs run by run. A process will be controlled based on information obtained during or after a process, including metrology values of wafers. Those metrology values, however, are usually available for only a small fraction of sampled wafers. In order to overcome the limitation, one can use virtual metrology (VM) to predict metrology values of all wafers, based on sensor data from production equipments and actual metrology values of sampled wafers. In this paper, we develop VM prediction models using various data mining techniques. We also develop a VM embedded R2R control system using the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) scheme. The experiments consist of two parts: (1) verifying VM prediction models with actual production equipments data, and (2) conducting simulations of the R2R control system. Our VM prediction models are found to be accurate enough to be directly implemented in actual manufacturing processes. The simulation results show that the VM embedded R2R control system improves productivity. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

virtual metrology
data mining
semiconductor manufacturing

exponentially weighted moving average controller


Multilayer perceptron neural networks to compute quasistatic parameters of asymmetric coplanar waveguides Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have recently gained attention as fast and flexible vehicles to microwave modeling, simulation, and optimization. In this study, ANNs, based on the multilayer perceptron, were presented for accurate computation of the quasistatic parameters of asymmetric coplanar waveguides (ACPWs). Multilayer perceptron neural networks (MLPNNs) were trained with backpropagation, delta-bar-delta, extended delta-bar-delta, quick propagation, and LevenbergMarquardt algorithms to compute the quasistatic parameters, the characteristic impedance and the effective dielectric constant, of the ACPWs. The results of the MLPNNs trained with the LevenbergMarquardt algorithm for the quasistatic parameters of the ACPWs were in very good agreement with the results available in the literature obtained by using conformal-mapping technique.

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

asymmetric coplanar waveguides
quasistatic parameters
artificial neural networks
multilayer perceptron
levenbergmarquardt algorithm


ISDEP: Integrator of stochastic differential equations for plasmas In this paper we present a general description of the ISDEP code (Integrator of Stochastic Differential Equations for Plasmas) and a brief overview of its physical results and applications so far. ISDEP is a Monte Carlo code that calculates the distribution function of a minority population of ions in a magnetized plasma. It solves the ion equations of motion taking into account the complex 3D structure of fusion devices, the confining electromagnetic field and collisions with other plasma species. The Monte Carlo method used is based on the equivalence between the FokkerPlanck and Langevin equations. This allows ISDEP to run in distributed computing platforms without communication between nodes with almost linear scaling. This paper intends to be a general description and a reference paper in ISDEP.

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


Training and assessment with a faster than real-time simulation of a drinking water treatment plant The usefulness of a human-in-the-loop drinking-water-treatment-plant simulator was investigated for training and assessment. An in-simulator transfer of training experiment was conducted with three groups training with accelerated simulation, experienced operators (EO), inexperienced operators (IO), and laymen (L60x) and a group of laymen training at real-time speed (L1x). Participants learned how to improve water quality during training. Upon transfer, when confronted with a different process disturbance than during training, L60x performed significantly poorer than EO and IO combined. No difference was found between EO and IO, and during transfer, L60x outperformed L1x. These results indicate that learning to control slow and complex processes may improve by training with a realistic simulation running at accelerated speed.

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


On the performance of ad hoc wireless LANs: A practical queuing theoretic model In this paper, two Markov chain queuing models have been developed to obtain closed-form solutions for packet delay and packet throughput distributions in a real-time wireless communication environment using IEEE 802.11 DCF. An M/G/1/K queuing model is incorporated in both models. In the first model results are based on arbitrary contention conditions, namely, collision probabilities, transmission probabilities and contention window sizes vary arbitrarily among nodes contending for channel access. In the second model, however, the contention condition is limited by the assumption that collision probabilities remain constant among contending nodes. Results are presented for the fully-connected case. Two models are compared and validated via simulation with statistical analysis. The main contributions are the analysis of DCF and the foundation for the sensitivity analysis.

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

queuing theory
ad hoc networks
modelling and simulation


Clone evolution: a systematic review Detection of code clones similar or identical source code fragments is of concern both to researchers and to practitioners. An analysis of the clone detection results for a single source code version provides a developer with information about a discrete state in the evolution of the software system. However, tracing clones across multiple source code versions permits a clone analysis to consider a temporal dimension. Such an analysis of clone evolution can be used to uncover the patterns and characteristics exhibited by clones as they evolve within a system. Developers can use the results of this analysis to understand the clones more completely, which may help them to manage the clones more effectively. Thus, studies of clone evolution serve a key role in understanding and addressing issues of cloning in software. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the literature on clone evolution. In particular, we present a detailed analysis of 30 relevant papers that we identified in accordance with our review protocol. The review results were organized to address three research questions. Through our answers to these questions, we present the methods that researchers have used to study clone evolution, the patterns that researchers have found evolving clones to exhibit, and the evidence that researchers have established regarding the extent of inconsistent change undergone by clones during software evolution. Overall, the review results indicate that whereas researchers have conducted several empirical studies of clone evolution, there are contradictions among the reported findings, particularly regarding the lifetimes of clone lineages and the consistency with which clones are changed during software evolution. We identify human-based empirical studies and classification of clone evolution patterns as two areas that are in particular need of further work. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


FRF based joint dynamics modeling and identification Two mathematical models are proposed for the joint in mechanical structures. These models are used in the identification of joint dynamic properties. The joint properties are obtained using the measured FRF and substructures FE model. Both methods are evaluated through a numerical FE simulation. Both methods can accurately predict the joint dynamics in a modular tool.

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

joints
receptance coupling
frequency response functions


Recent advances in optimization techniques for statistical tabular data protection One of the main services of National Statistical Agencies (NSAs) for the current Information Society is the dissemination of large amounts of tabular data, which is obtained from microdata by crossing one or more categorical variables. NSAs must guarantee that no confidential individual information can be obtained from the released tabular data. Several statistical disclosure control methods are available for this purpose. These methods result in large linear, mixed integer linear, or quadratic mixed integer linear optimization problems. This paper reviews some of the existing approaches, with an emphasis on two of them: cell suppression problem (CSP) and controlled tabular adjustment (CTA). CSP and CTA have concentrated most of the recent research in the tabular data protection field. The particular focus of this work is on methods and results of practical interest for end-users (mostly, NSAs). Therefore, in addition to the resulting optimization models and solution approaches, computational results comparing the main optimization techniques both optimal and heuristic using real-world instances are also presented.

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

linear programming
network flows
mixed integer linear programming
large-scale optimization


Representation Theoretic Patterns in Three-Dimensional Cryo-Electron Microscopy II-The Class Averaging Problem In this paper we study the formal algebraic structure underlying the intrinsic classification algorithm, recently introduced in Singer et al. (SIAM J. Imaging Sci. 2011, accepted), for classifying noisy projection images of similar viewing directions in three-dimensional cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). This preliminary classification is of fundamental importance in determining the three-dimensional structure of macromolecules from cryo-EM images. Inspecting this algebraic structure we obtain a conceptual explanation for the admissibility (correctness) of the algorithm and a proof of its numerical stability. The proof relies on studying the spectral properties of an integral operator of geometric origin on the two-dimensional sphere, called the localized parallel transport operator. Along the way, we continue to develop the representation theoretic set-up for three-dimensional cryo-EM that was initiated in Hadani and Singer (Ann. Math. 2010, accepted).

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

representation theory
differential geometry
spectral theory
optimization theory
mathematical biology
3d cryo-electron microscopy


controlled sql query evolution for decision support benchmarks The synthesis of increased global competitiveness and the acceptance of commercially available multi purpose database management systems (DBMS) for decision support applications requires an ever more critical system evaluation and selection to be completed in a progressively short period of time. Designers of standard benchmarks, individual customer benchmarks and system stress tests alike are struggling to mastermind queries that are both representative to the real world and execute in a reasonable time. Additionally, the enriched functionality of every new DBMS release amplifies the complexity of today's decision support systems calling for a novel approach in query generation for benchmarks. This paper proposes a framework of so called query evolution rules that can be applied to typical decision support queries, written in SQL92. Deployed in combination with QGEN2, the query generator developed by the TPC for TPC-DS ?[13], these rules quickly turn a small set of queries into a large set of semantically similar queries for ad-hoc benchmarking purposes or they can be used to generate thousands of queries quickly to stress test optimizers or query execution engines without much user intervention.

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


Testing against a non-controllable stream X-machine using state counting Stream X-machines are a form of extended finite state machines that has received extensive study in recent years. A stream X-machine describes a system as a finite set of states, an internal store, called memory, and a finite number of transitions between the states, labelled by function names (the processing functions). One of the great benefits of using a stream X-machine to specify a system is its associated testing method. Under certain design for test conditions, this method produces a test suite that can determine the correctness of the implementation, provided that the processing functions of the stream X-machine specification have been correctly implemented (this can be checked by a separate testing process, using the same method or alternative functional methods). However, the application of the stream X-machine based testing method is often encumbered by the restrictive design for test conditions required. In practical applications, these conditions are achieved by designing extra functionality that will have to be disabled after testing has been completed. This is a time consuming process and can often be a source of error. This paper provides a strong generalisation of the existing method, which requires much laxer design for test conditions; these are naturally satisfied in practical applications and, furthermore, can be introduced into any stream X-machine specification without the need to add extra functionality. Consequently, the generalised method can be applied to virtually any system that can be specified by a stream X-machine. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

specification based testing
test generation
formal specifications
stream x-machines


An improved differential evolution algorithm in training and encoding prior knowledge into feedforward networks with application in chemistry Prior-knowledge-based feedforward networks have shown superior performance in modeling chemical processes. In this paper, an improved differential evolution (IDEP) algorithm is proposed to encode prior knowledge simultaneously into networks in training process, With regard to monotonic prior knowledge, IDEP algorithm employs a flip operation to adjust those prior-knowledge-violating networks to conform to the monotonicity. In addition, two strategies, Levenberg-Marquardt descent (LMD) strategy and random perturbation (RP) strategy, are adopted to speed up the differential evolution (DE) in the algorithm and prevent it from being trapped by some local minimums, respectively. To demonstrate the IDEP algorithm's efficiency, we apply it to model two chemical curves with the increasing monotonicity constraint. For comparison, four network-training algorithms without prior-knowledge constraints, as well as three existing prior-knowledge-based algorithms (which have some relationship and similarities with IDEP algorithm), are employed to solve the same problems. The simulation results show that IDEP's performance is better than all other algorithms. As a conclusion, IDEP algorithm and its promising prospective will be discussed in detail at the end of this paper. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

prior knowledge
improved differential evolution
flip operation

feedforward network
levenberg -marquardt descent strategy
random perturbation strategy


Iterative spatial join The key issue in performing spatial joins is finding the pairs of intersecting rectangles. For unindexed data sets, this is usually resolved by partitioning the data and then performing a plane sweep on the individual partitions. The resulting join can be viewed as a two-step process where the partition corresponds to a hash-based join while the plane-sweep corresponds to a sort-merge join. In this article, we look at extending the idea of the sort-merge join for one-dimensional data to multiple dimensions and introduce the Iterative Spatial Join. As with the sort-merge join, the Iterative Spatial Join is best suited to cases where the data is already sorted. However, as we show in the experiments, the Iterative Spatial Join performs well when internal memory is limited, compared to the partitioning methods. This suggests that the Iterative Spatial Join would be useful for very large data sets or in situations where internal memory is a shared resource and is therefore limited, such as with today's database engines which share internal memory amongst several queries. Furthermore, the performance of the Iterative Spatial Join is predictable and has no parameters which need to be tuned, unlike other algorithms. The Iterative Spatial Join is based on a plane sweep algorithm, which requires the entire data set to fit in internal memory. When internal memory overflows, the Iterative Spatial Join simply makes additional passes on the data, thereby exhibiting only a gradual performance degradation. To demonstrate the use and efficacy of the Iterative Spatial Join, we first examine and analyze current approaches to performing spatial joins, and then give a detailed analysis of the Iterative Spatial Join as well as present the results of extensive testing of the algorithm, including a comparison with partitioning-based spatial join methods. These tests show that the Iterative Spatial Join overcomes the performance limitations of the other algorithms for data sets of all sizes as well as differing amounts of internal memory.

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

plane-sweep
external memory algorithms
spatial databases


Prediction of time-dependent structural behaviour with recurrent neural networks for fuzzy data In the paper, an approach is described which permits the numerical, model-free prediction of uncertain time-dependent structural responses. Uncertain time-dependent structural actions and responses are modelled by means of fuzzy processes. The prediction approach is based on recurrent neural networks for fuzzy data trained by time-dependent results of measurements or numerical analyses. An efficient solution for network training and prediction is developed utilizing ?-cuts and fuzzy arithmetic. The approach is verified using a fractional rheological model. The capability of the approach is demonstrated by predicting the long-term structural behaviour of reinforced concrete plates strengthened by textile reinforced concrete layers.

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

fractional rheological model
textile reinforced concrete

recurrent neural network
fuzzy process
model-free prediction
time-dependent structural behaviour


SOME APPLICATIONS OF LATTICE BASED ROOT FINDING TECHNIQUES In this paper we present some problems and their solutions exploiting lattice based root finding techniques. In CaLC 2001, Howgrave-Graham proposed a method to find the Greatest Common Divisor (GCD) of two large integers when one of the integers is exactly known and the other one is known approximately. In this paper, we present three applications of the technique. The first one is to show deterministic polynomial time equivalence between factoring N (N = pq, where p > q or p, q are of same bit size) and knowledge of q(-1) mod p. Next, we consider the problem of finding smooth integers in a short interval. The third one is to factorize N given a multiple of the decryption exponent in RSA. In Asiacrypt 2006, Jochemsz and May presented a general strategy for finding roots of a polynomial. We apply that technique to solve the following two problems. The first one is to factorize N given an approximation of a multiple of the decryption exponent in RSA. The second one is to solve the implicit factorization problem given three RSA moduli considering certain portions of LSBs as well as MSBs of one set of three secret primes are same.

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

decryption exponent
greatest common divisor
factorization
lattice
rsa
smooth integers


Automatic detection and segmentation of bovine corpora lutea in ultrasonographic ovarian images using genetic programming and rotation invariant local binary patterns In this study, we propose a fully automatic algorithm to detect and segment corpora lutea (CL) using genetic programming and rotationally invariant local binary patterns. Detection and segmentation experiments were conducted and evaluated on 30 images containing a CL and 30 images with no CL. The detection algorithm correctly determined the presence or absence of a CL in 93.33% of the images. The segmentation algorithm achieved a mean (standard deviation) sensitivity and specificity of 0.86930.1371 and 0.91360.0503, respectively, over the 30 CL images. The mean root mean squared distance of the segmented boundary from the true boundary was 1.120.463mm and the mean maximum deviation (Hausdorff distance) was 3.392.00mm. The success of these algorithms demonstrates that similar algorithms designed for the analysis of in vivo human ovaries are likely viable.

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

corpora lutea
local binary patterns
genetic programming


An exploratory analysis of hierarchical spatial interaction: the case of regional income shares in Indonesia Regional interaction is generally understood as implying movement between regions at the same level of an hierarchy. This paper extends the notion to include an hierarchical system, thus facilitating the consideration of vertical interaction in the analysis of regional interaction. Obviously, vertical interaction is not altogether a new concept. One could find this concept in many analyses related to national-local or federal-state relationships. This paper treats hierarchy in a strict sense; spatial units are interacting one with another within, but not between, presumed super regions. A particular example drawn in this paper is the province-region relationships for the case of Indonesia. In this framework, provinces form a region, and regions form the nation. The DendrinosSonis model is then used as the basis for measuring the hierarchical spatial interaction in Indonesia. The analysis will explore the degree to which complementarity and competitive interaction revealed at one level in the hierarchy persist at lower or higher levels.

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 B 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 O O O O O O


Modification of pitch using DCT in the source domain In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for pitch modification. The linear prediction residual is obtained from pitch synchronous frames by inverse filtering the speech signal. Then the discrete cosine transform (DCT) of these residual frames is taken. Based on the desired factor of pitch modification, the dimension of the DCT coefficients of the residual is modified by truncating or zero padding, and then the inverse discrete cosine transform is obtained. This period modified residual signal is then forward filtered to obtain the pitch modified speech. The mismatch between the positions of the harmonics of the pitch modified signal and the LP spectrum of the original signal introduce gain variations, which is more pronounced in the case of female speech [Proc. Int. Conf. on Acoust. Speech and Signal Process. (1997) 1623]. This is minimised by modifying the radii of the poles of the filter to broaden the otherwise peaky linear predictive spectrum. The modified LP coefficients are used for both inverse and forward filtering. This pitch modification scheme is used in our Concatenative Speech synthesis system for Kannada. The technique has also been successfully applied to creating interrogative sentences from affirmative sentences. The modified speech has been evaluated in terms of intelligibility, distortion and speaker identity. Results indicate that our scheme results in acceptable speech in terms of all these parameters for pitch change factors required for our speech synthesis work.

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

concatenative synthesis
resampling
3 db bandwidth
spectral broadening


A statistical method of detecting synchronization for cardio-music synchrogram The cardio-music synchrogram, which is a visualization tool that helps us observe the phase synchronization between heartbeats and beats of music, is originated in cardiorespiratory synchrogram. In this paper, we proposed a novel statistical method for detecting synchronization periods in cardio-music synchrogram (CMS), and reported the synchronization periods of the cardiac activity for 8 subjects in a listening experiments. Our approach focused on the difference between the statistical distributions of the correlation coefficient calculated for the CMS in a control experiment and in the CMS in the listening experiment.

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

entrainment
cardio-music synchrogram
music therapy


enabling the future mobile environment This talk outlines the technology evolution and research needs to enable an increasingly user-centric and rich communication environment for consumers, mobile workforce and communities. The mobile society demands natural communication and seamless access, across mobile, portable or fixed domains, with bearer and device independence. This prospect of ubiquity or the notion of technology-independence is indeed possible by technology innovations and new research, in harmony with new ecosystems and partnerships appropriate for the new paradigms.To evolve the fixed-mobile convergence and the IP converged service environment, there is an increasing need to evaluate and optimize across different layers: broadband access, IP core engine and networking, common session control and service architecture, service creation, choreography and delivery, and of course user interface and user experience. This evolution will involve sensing, discovery, and personal-area networking to enhance the "reality" and create smart user spaces; it will include remote configurations, reconfigurability, and dynamic adaptation to the needs of the context and the intention of the user; and it will also demand the precious research on IP multimedia networks and broadband access technologies.Our collective energy, focus and partnership will enable and serve an increasingly user-centric, personalized and rich mobile communication environment.

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


Effective heuristic procedures for a field technician scheduling problem This paper addresses a field technician scheduling problem faced by many service providers in telecommunication industry. The problem is to assign a set of jobs, at different locations with time windows, to a group of field technicians with different job skills. Such a problem can be viewed as a generalization of the well-known vehicle routing problem with time windows since technician skills need to be matched with job types. We designed and tested several heuristic procedures for solving the problem, namely a greedy heuristic, a local search algorithm, and a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP). Our computational results indicate that GRASP is the most effective among them but requires more CPU time. However, the unique structure of GRASP allows us to exploit parallelism to achieve linear speed-up with respect to the number of machines used.

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


Optical anisotropy and photoluminescence temperature dependence for self-assembled InAs quantum islands grown on vicinal (001) InP substrates In this paper, we report on a detailed investigation of the effect of misorientated InP(001) substrates on the optical properties of InAs quantum islands grown by molecular beam epitaxy in the StranskiKrastanow regime. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence and polarization of photoluminescence (PPL) are studied. PPL shows a high degree of linear polarization, near 40%, for the sample grown on the substrate with 2 off miscut angle towards [110] direction (2F) and only 16% for the sample grown on the substrate with 2 off miscut angle towards [010] direction (2B). This result pointing out the growth of InAs quantum wires (QWr) on 2F substrate and of quasi-isotropic InAs quantum dots (QD) on 2B substrate. The luminescence remains strong at 300K as much as 36% of that at 8K, indicating a strong spatial localization of the carriers in the InAs QIs grown on InP(001).

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

optical anisotropy
photoluminescence
inp substrates


Bulk-tuned GmC filter using current cancellation A new approach for small transconductance (Gm) OTA designs, suitable for relatively low frequency filtering applications in the range of few kHz, is proposed. Small Gm values are achieved by a current cancellation technique, and are adjustable by bulk driving the MOS transistors of the input differential amplifier. The OTA design procedure takes into account Pelgrom?s modeling of mismatch errors. A common-mode feedback control circuit based on floating gate common-mode voltage detector that shares the filter main capacitances is also presented. Experimental results obtained with a low-pass filter with tunable cutoff frequency implemented in a 0.35?m CMOS process to verify the effectiveness of the design procedure have shown close agreement with the theory.

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

bulk-driven
cmos analog integrated circuits
small-gm ota


Stochastic programming for optimizing bidding strategies of a Nordic hydropower producer From the point of view of a price-taking hydropower producer participating in the day-ahead power market, market prices are highly uncertain. The present paper provides a model for determining optimal bidding strategies taking this uncertainty into account. In particular, market price scenarios are generated and a stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model that involves both hydropower production and physical trading aspects is developed. The idea is to explore the effects of including uncertainty explicitly into optimization by comparing the stochastic approach to a deterministic approach. The model is illustrated with data from a Norwegian hydropower producer and the Nordic power market at Nord Pool.

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

bidding
stochastic programming
scenarios


Modelling of cognitive activity during normal and abnormal situations using Object Petri Nets, application to a supervision system This article presents a method for the modelling of cognitive activity using Object Petri Nets. The method includes the recognition of the various classes of situation (normal and abnormal) which human operators are likely to meet whilst performing their tasks. Each of these classes is described according to the characteristics of the state of the system. We will present the various mental representations used during the control/command activity according to the main aims set by the operator. The examples given come from a project dealing with the integration of a a supervision system in a railway traffic regulation room.

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

activity modelling
design
human-machine systems
specification
human-machine interaction


Energy-Efficient Scheduling of Periodic Real-Time Tasks on Lightly Loaded Multicore Processors For lightly loaded multicore processors that contain more processing cores than running tasks and have dynamic voltage and frequency scaling capability, we address the energy-efficient scheduling of periodic real-time tasks. First, we introduce two energy-saving techniques for the lightly loaded multicore processors: exploiting overabundant cores for executing a task in parallel with a lower frequency and turning off power of rarely used cores. Next, we verify that if the two introduced techniques are supported, then the problem of minimizing energy consumption of real-time tasks while meeting their deadlines is NP-hard on a lightly loaded multicore processor. Finally, we propose a polynomial-time scheduling scheme that provides a near minimum-energy feasible schedule. The difference of energy consumption between the provided schedule and the minimum-energy schedule is limited. The scheme saves up to 64 percent of the processing core energy consumed by the previous scheme that executes each task on a separate core.

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

multicore processor
scheduling
dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

energy minimization
periodic real-time task


casual game design values In this article, I examine the phenomenon of casual games and the underlying transformation of digital play which the rise of this particular segment of the games industry is exposing. I argue that instead of a genuinely new phenomenon, we are facing a change that can be more accurately characterized as "the normalization of digital play". The expansion of the player basis as well as the instrumental and functional approaches to games concurs with the transformations of other digital environments. As digital environments have become more accessible to large populations and are increasingly part of everyday lives, the ways and means of using them are becoming multifaceted and part of wider experiences. In order to respond to the changes, I propose a framework of casual games design values. Transformation in the games cultures requires transformation in design approaches.

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

game design
framework
design values
casual games

analysis
web-downloadables
play culture transformation


Conferences as learning communities: some early lessons in using back-channel technologies at an academic conference distributed intelligence or divided attention? Abstract Most, if not all, researchers attend conferences as a part of their practice, and yet it is an under-researched activity. Little attention has been paid either to developing a theoretically informed understanding of conference practice as knowledge building, or to assessing the extent to which conferences are successful. This paper addresses these issues in the context of a small empirical study of the introduction of mobile, interactive (back-channel) technologies into a conference setting. Science studies and learning theories literatures are used to develop an eight-point statement describing the aims of an idealised conference. This is then used as a framework through which to make sense of what happened when back-channel technologies such as internet relay chat (IRC) and blogging were introduced into the 2004 Colston Symposium The Evolution of Learning and Web Technologies: Survival of the Fittest?. Focusing on sequential issues and the conference as a forum for knowledge building, the analysis shows that conference order is disrupted by the introduction of the back-channel technologies. Nevertheless, other pressures on academic and professional practice (the governance agenda, calls for greater collaboration and a more consensual approach, and so on) suggest that the potential of the new technologies to help open up the black box of scientific and professional practice will be seen as increasingly important. If these tools are to be used effectively in the future, conferences will need to be supported by new skills and practices.

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

interactive technology
mobile technology
sequence


an interface to support color blind computer users A new method for adapting digital images so that they are suitable for color blind viewers is presented. In contrast to earlier automatic methods which formulate the problem of adapting images for color blind observers as one of optimization, we demonstrate how it is possible to allow a user to compute a very wide range of adaptations in reasonable time under the control of a single variable. We demonstrate how the algorithm can be delivered as an adaptive technology via a simple interface, and evaluate the efficacy of our method using psychovisual experiments with simulated color blind users and a standard color vision test.

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


An adjustment algorithm for optimal run orders in design of experiments Using a systematic run order can be the proper way to conduct an experiment when a temporal trend is present. The construction of run orders that are optimally balanced for time trend effects is based on maximization of the information on the parameters of interest whereas the parameters of the postulated time trend are treated as nuisance parameters. An adjustment algorithm to improve the efficiency of the run orders obtained from a search over a predefined set of candidate points is presented. This is done by repeatedly moving the design points or the time points of the candidate list a small amount along their axes as long as an improvement in the efficiency is obtained. It is illustrated that the adjustment algorithm involves substantial increases in the efficiency of the run orders. The use of the adjustment algorithm in addition to a search over a coarse grid of candidate points is especially recommended in situations where the computation time has to be kept within reasonable limits.

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

adjustment algorithm
run order
time trend

optimum design of experiments
-optimality
exchange algorithm


detection is easier than computation (extended abstract) Perhaps the most important application of computer geometry involves determining whether a pair of convex objects intersect. This problem is well understood in a model of computation where the objects are given as input and their intersection is returned as output. However, for many applications, we may assume that the objects already exist within the computer and that the only output desired is a single piece of data giving a common point if the objects intersect or reporting no intersection if they are disjoint. For this problem, none of the previous lower bounds are valid and we propose algorithms requiring sublinear time for their solution in 2 and 3 dimensions.

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

data
point
intersection
applications
detection
input
model of computation
computation

object
lower bound
timing
algorithm
abstraction
computational geometry


Formalizing argumentative reasoning in a possibilistic logic programming setting with fuzzy unification Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming (P-DeLP) is a logic programming language which combines features from argumentation theory and logic programming, incorporating the treatment of possibilistic uncertainty at the object-language level. In spite of its expressive power, an important limitation in P-DeLP is that imprecise, fuzzy information cannot be expressed in the object language. One interesting alternative for solving this limitation is the use of PGL(+), a possibilistic logic over Godel logic extended with fuzzy constants. Fuzzy constants in PGL(+) allow expressing disjunctive information about the unknown value of a variable, in the sense of a magnitude, modelled as a (unary) predicate. The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, we formalize DePGL(+), a possibilistic defeasible logic programming language that extends P-DeLP through the use of PGL(+) in order to incorporate fuzzy constants and a fuzzy unification mechanism for them. Secondly, we propose a way to handle conflicting arguments in the context of the extended framework. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

possibilistic logic
fuzzy constants
fuzzy unification

defeasible argumentation
warrant computation


Perturbations of Wilson type and mixed type functional equations In this paper we investigate the superstability of Wilson type functional equations on abelian groups and the stability in the sense of Ger for mixed type functional equations on the set of positive real numbers.

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

superstability
stability in the sense of ger

wilson type and mixed type functional equation


Lower and upper bounds for the degree-constrained minimum spanning tree problem In this paper, we propose a Lagrangian Non-Delayed Relax-and-Cut algorithm for the Degree-Constrained Minimum Spanning Tree Problem (DCMSTP). Since degreeconstrained trees are the common vertices of the Spanning Tree and the b-Matching polytopes, strengthened DCMSTP lower bounds are generated through the use of Blossom Inequalities (Bls). Bis are facet defining for the b-Matching Polytope and, to the best of our knowledge, have never been used before for DCMSTP. Lagrangian information is also used here, in a Kruskal style algorithm (followed by local search) to obtain valid DCMSTP upper bounds. Whenever optimality could not be proven by Relax-and-Cut alone, Lagrangian lower bounds are carried over to a cutting plane algorithm, without the need for solving any separation problem. This is accomplished after identifying, at Relax-and-Cut, a small set of attractive Subtour Elimination Constraints and Bis. Computational results, on Euclidean and on random cost DCMSTP instances, indicate that our Relax-and-Cut lower bounds either dominate or else are competitive with linear programming and Lagrangian relaxation lower bounds found in the literature. Furthermore, our upper bounds appear competitive with the best in the literature. 0 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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

lagrangian relaxation
blossom inequalities

lagrangian warm start to cutting plane algorithms

degree constrained minimum spanning tree


Adaptive scanning using pixel similarity for H.264/AVC In H.264/AVC, the quantized coefficients are scanned in a zigzag pattern. But the zigzag scanning is not always efficient for the directional spatial predictions in the intra coding of H.264/AVC. In this letter, we propose an adaptive scanning using the pixel similarity of the neighboring pixels to achieve enhanced intra coding performance. The proposed method reduces the bit rate approximately 2% compared with H.264/AVC without video quality degradation.

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

h.264/avc
scanning order
intra prediction


Learning to generate novel views of objects for class recognition Multi-view object class recognition can be achieved using existing approaches for single-view object class recognition, by treating different views as entirely independent classes. This strategy requires a large amount of training data for many viewpoints, which can be costly to obtain. We describe a method for constructing a weak three-dimensional model from as few as two views of an object of the target class, and using that model to transform images of objects from one view to several other views, effectively multiplying their value for class recognition. Our approach can be coupled with any 2D image-based recognition system. We show that automatically transformed images dramatically decrease the data requirements for multi-view object class recognition.

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

object recognition
categorization
shape representation


Polynomial-Time Homology for Simplicial Eilenberg-MacLane Spaces In an earlier paper of adek, VokA (TM) inek, Wagner, and the present authors, we investigated an algorithmic problem in computational algebraic topology, namely, the computation of all possible homotopy classes of maps between two topological spaces, under suitable restriction on the spaces. We aim at showing that, if the dimensions of the considered spaces are bounded by a constant, then the computations can be done in polynomial time. In this paper we make a significant technical step towards this goal: we show that the Eilenberg-MacLane space , represented as a simplicial group, can be equipped with polynomial-time homology (this is a polynomial-time version of effective homology considered in previous works of the third author and co-workers). To this end, we construct a suitable discrete vector field, in the sense of Forman's discrete Morse theory, on . The construction is purely combinatorial and it can be understood as a certain procedure for reducing finite sequences of integers, without any reference to topology. The Eilenberg-MacLane spaces are the basic building blocks in a Postnikov system, which is a "layered" representation of a topological space suitable for homotopy-theoretic computations. Employing the result of this paper together with other results on polynomial-time homology, in another paper we obtain, for every fixed k, a polynomial-time algorithm for computing the kth homotopy group pi (k) (X) of a given simply connected space X, as well as the first k stages of a Postnikov system for X, and also a polynomial-time version of the algorithm of adek et al. mentioned above.

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

computational homotopy theory
eilenberg-maclane space


Classifying ambiguities in a visual spatial language Geographic information systems (GIS) manage geographical data and present the results visually using maps. Visual languages are well adapted to query such data. We propose to express queries sent to a GIS using symbolic maps with metaphors, i.e., visual representation of the spatial relationships making up the query. Visual languages suffer from the appearance of ambiguity. We distinguish visual ambiguities from selection ambiguities. Visual ambiguities appear when a given visual representation of a query corresponds with several interpretations. In order to define new spatial relationship, the user points out one (or several) metaphor(s) already available in the restitution space. Selection ambiguities appear when a given selection corresponds with several metaphors. We suggest palliating visual and selection ambiguities by associating a placing method with composition automata. The placing method insures to minimize level of ambiguity. We determine levels of ambiguity and user interaction complexity depending on the required expressive power. The higher the desired expressive power is, the higher the level of ambiguity is and thus the more complex the user interaction is. A prototype has been implemented to validate the placing method and the automaton allowing the highest expressive power.

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

geographic information systems (gis)
visual query languages
management of ambiguities


Image retargeting with multifocus fisheye transformation Image retargeting is a technique to adapt an original image to diverse screen sizes and aspect ratios on computing devices. This paper focuses on adapting large images for a small display. Some existing methods, such as scaling, cropping, and fisheye warping, are often flawed because they may lose the necessary details of the image, scarify content entirety, or fail to address the content continuity of images with multiple focuses. To address this issue, this paper presents a new fisheye-based approach to retarget images with multiple focuses. With fisheye-based image transformation, this approach can emphasize the focused areas of the image without completely discarding unfocused contents. With a multifocus conflict solution scheme, this approach offers a continuous content transition among multiple focused areas. With image retargeting algorithms implemented with this approach, we conducted experiments to study user preferences of retargeted images under different algorithms. The results of the experiments show that our approach is appropriate for image retargeting.

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

image retargeting
multifocus conflict
fisheye transformation


Neighbor sum distinguishing total colorings of planar graphs with maximum degree ? ? A (proper) total [k]-coloring of a graph G G is a mapping ?:V(G)?E(G)?[k]={1,2,,k} ? : V ( G ) ? E ( G ) ? [ k ] = { 1 , 2 , , k } such that any two adjacent elements in V(G)?E(G) V ( G ) ? E ( G ) receive different colors. Let f(v) f ( v ) denote the sum of the color of a vertex v v and the colors of all incident edges of v v . A total [k] [ k ] -neighbor sum distinguishing-coloring of G G is a total [k] [ k ] -coloring of G G such that for each edge uv?E(G) u v ? E ( G ) , f(u)?f(v) f ( u ) ? f ( v ) . By ? n s d ? ( G ) , we denote the smallest value k k in such a coloring of G G . In this paper, we show that if G G is a planar graph with ?(G)?14 ? ( G ) ? 14 , then ? n s d ? ( G ) ? ? ( G ) + 2 .

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

neighbor sum distinguishing total coloring


Some Aspects about Vagueness & Imprecision in Computer Network Fault-Tree Analysis Based on the available information (eg.multiple functional faults or sensor errors give rise to similar alarm patterns or outcomes), some states in the behaviour of a network can not be distinguished from one another. So, the computer network's fault tree reliability analysis frequently relies on imprecise or vague input data. The paper will use a Dempster-Shafer Theory to accommodate this vagueness and it will show how imprecision can give rise to false-negative, and false-positive inferences; there will be assigned upper and lower bounds for the probability on elements of the state space. After illustrating the computational simplicity of incorporating the Dempster-Shafer Theory probability assignments, we will apply them for analyzing the reliability of the network of our department.

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

reliability analysis
networks
fault tree


Traffic models for slotted optical packet switched networks Optical packet switching (OPS) has emerged as a promising architecture for the future alloptical network scenario. In order to have a successful deployment of OPS networks, several networking issues must be resolved, e.g., how to resolve contentions and how to provide Quality-of-Service (QoS) differentiation. Such networking studies often rely on teletraffic analysis in order to quantify the performance of the OPS network. In this paper, we introduce new and review existing traffic models for slotted buffer-less OPS networks. In particular, we present a novel asymmetric traffic model, suitable for studying the effects of non-uniform traffic. Optical packet switches with and without wavelength conversion are studied. Numerical evaluations and a comparison study of the presented traffic models are reported. The main contributions of this paper are to advance the field of establishing a theoretical framework for slotted OPS networks and to act as a tutorial for teletraffic engineering in such networks.

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

optical packet switching
teletraffic analysis
slotted


fs-PGBR: A Scalable and Delay Sensitive Cloud Routing Protocol This paper proposes an improved version of a fully distributed routing protocol, that is applicable for cloud computing infrastructure. Simulation results shows the protocol is ideal for discovering cloud services in a scalable manner with minimum latency.

O O 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


A Stochastic Cellular Automata for Modeling Pedestrian Groups Distribution Cellular Automata approach has already been used in the literature to develop computational models for the controlled generation of granulometric distribution. In this work, we present a model based on a Stochastic Cellular Automata to generate granulometric distribution of pedestrian groups in structured spaces, taking into account morphological properties of groups and basic behavioral rules. The main scope of the model is to produce plausible initial configurations for pedestrian simulations, giving a discussion about the calibration and the possible validation of the tool based on the CA-model.

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

stochastic ca
pedestrians
crowd
granulometric distributions
percolation
simulation


Analysis of channel allocation scheme for wireless cellular networks Compared to wired networks, the communication bandwidth in the wireless networks is limited. In trying to achieve QoS guaranteed wireless services, efficient utilisation of bandwidth resources becomes a fundamental issue. A number of channel allocation schemes have been proposed to fully utilise the wireless bandwidth, but many of them just proposed the channel allocation scheme without presenting a specific channel allocation model. In this paper, we propose and analyse three different channel allocation schemes for wireless networks. We build three system models based on a two-dimensional Markov chain to compute the performance of base station in terms of the new call blocking probability, the handover dropping probability, and the channel utilisation.

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 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 B I 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 B O O O O O O

channel allocation
handover
wireless networks


Towards the enhancement of e-democracy: identifying the notion of the middleman paradox Abstract. The challenge towards e-democracy, through the electronic transformation of political systems, has become increasingly evident within developed economies. It is regarded as an approach for increased and better quality citizen participation in the democratic processes. E-democracy forms a component of overall e-government initiatives where technology adoption and diffusion, to enhance wider access to, and the delivery of, government services, are apparent. However, previous research demonstrates that very few e-democracy proposals survive the stage of formal political decision-making to become substantive e-government projects within national or international agendas. Furthermore, the implementation ?of ?e-democracy ?projects ?is ?undertaken ?at ?a ?much ?slower ?pace and with dramatically less support than the implementation of other, so-called e-administration, activities in the public sector.

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

e-government
e-administration
e-democracy
digital democracy


Learning spatial relations in object recognition This paper studies two types of spatial relationships that can be learned from training examples for object recognition. The first one employs deformable relationships between object parts with a Gaussian model, while the second one describes pairwise relationships between pixel intensity values using Bayesian networks. We perform experiments on a human face dataset and a horse dataset, imposing the same amount of annotation of training data, which can be seen as sending knowledge to the learning algorithms. The result indicates that the Bayesian network method compares favorably to the deformable model, as it can capture long-distance stable relations in the object appearance. We also conclude that both methods are superior to strictly spatial matching by template and strictly non-spatial classifiers.

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

articulated object
part-based approach
shape
spatial relation


Model Selection in Kernel Based Regression using the Influence Function Recent results about the robustness of kernel methods involve the analysis of influence functions. By definition the influence function is closely related to leave-one-out criteria. In statistical learning, the latter is often used to assess the generalization of a method. In statistics, the influence function is used in a similar way to analyze the statistical efficiency of a method. Links between both worlds are explored. The influence function is related to the first term of a Taylor expansion. Higher order influence functions are calculated. A recursive relation between these terms is found characterizing the full Taylor expansion. It is shown how to evaluate influence functions at a specific sample distribution to obtain an approximation of the leave-one-out error. A specific implementation is proposed using a L(1) loss in the selection of the hyperparameters and a Huber loss in the estimation procedure. The parameter in the Huber loss controlling the degree of robustness is optimized as well. The resulting procedure gives good results, even when outliers are present in the data.

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

kernel based regression
robustness
influence function
model selection


Compact difference scheme for the fractional sub-diffusion equation with Neumann boundary conditions An effective finite difference scheme is considered for solving the time fractional sub-diffusion equation with Neumann boundary conditions. A difference scheme combining the compact difference approach the spatial discretization and L-1 approximation for the Caputo fractional derivative is proposed and analyzed. Although the spatial approximation order at the Neumann boundary is one order lower than that for interior mesh points, the unconditional stability and the global convergence order O(tau(2-alpha) + h(4)) in discrete L-2 norm of the compact difference scheme are proved rigorously, where tau is the temporal grid size and h is the spatial grid size. Numerical experiments are included to support the theoretical results, and comparison with the related works are presented to show the effectiveness of our method. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

compact difference scheme
stability
convergence
neumann boundary conditions

fractional sub-diffusion equation
discrete energy method


Edge field analysis In vector analysis, it is important to classify three flow primitives as translation, rotation and divergence. These three primitives can be detected utilizing line integral and surface integral according to the knowledge of vector analysis. In this paper, we introduce a method for extracting these three primitives utilizing edges in an image based on vector analysis, namely edge field analysis. The edge has the information of inclination. However, the edge has no information of the direction unlike vector. Hence, line integral and surface integral can not be directly applied to detect these three primitives utilizing edges. We firstly formulate the problem and describe the algorithm for detecting the three primitives in vector analysis. We then propose an algorithm for estimating three primitives regarding edge image as pseudo-vector field. For illustration, we apply edge field analysis to quasi-motion extraction and feature extraction. We also show the experimental results in terms of estimating the center of the flowers, the cell body of neuron, the eye of the storm, the center of the explosion and so on.

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

edge field analysis
vector analysis
feature extraction
rotation
divergence


Integrating agile software development into stage-gate managed product development Agile methods have evolved as a bottom-up approach to software development. However, as the software in embedded products is only one part of development projects, agile methods must coexist with project management models typically of the stage-gate type. This paper presents a qualitative case study of two large independent software system projects that have used eXtreme Programming (XP) for software development within contexts of stage-gate project management models. The study is comprised of open ended interviews with managers as well as practitioners, followed by a structured, fully traceable, qualitative analysis. We conclude that it is possible to integrate XP in a gate model context. Key issues for success are the interfaces towards the agile subproject and management attitudes towards the agile approach.

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

stage-gate project management
qualitative study
case studies


Inserting an edge into a planar graph Computing a crossing minimum drawing of a given planar graph G augmented by an additional edge e where all crossings involve e, has been a long standing open problem in graph drawing. Alternatively, the problem can be stated as finding a combinatorial embedding of a planar graph G where the given edge e can be inserted with the minimum number of crossings. Many problems concerned with the optimization over the set of all combinatorial embeddings of a planar graph turned out to be NP-hard. Surprisingly, we found a conceptually simple linear time algorithm based on SPQR-trees, that is able to find a solution with the minimum number of crossings.

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


Development of model categories for performance improvement studies related to airport terminal operations Simulation modelling has been widely used for the design and performance improvement of logistic terminal systems. One of the issues related to the performance improvement studies of airport terminal systems is the need for developing and using many different models of the same terminal system for solving its problems. A possible approach to address this difficulty is some form of problem clustering and model clustering, that is for the solution of problems from a problem category using corresponding models from the model category. In this paper, we discuss the conceptual modelling and development of three types of model categories called Fixed Facility Focus models, Variable Facility Focus models and Transient Entity Focus models and explain their use to solve problems of strategic nature related to fixed facilities, tactical problems related to the variable facilities, and operational problems related to transient entities and their schedules.

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relevance of eeg input signals in the augmented human reader This paper studies the discrimination of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals based in their capacity to identify silent attentive visual reading activities versus non reading states. The use of physiological signals is growing in the design of interactive systems due to their relevance in the improvement of the coupling between user states and application behavior. Reading is pervasive in visual user interfaces. In previous work, we integrated EEG signals in prototypical applications, designed to analyze reading tasks. This work searches for signals that are most relevant for reading detection procedures. More specifically, this study determines which features, input signals, and frequency bands are more significant for discrimination between reading and non-reading classes. This optimization is critical for an efficient and real time implementation of EEG processing software components, a basic requirement for the future applications. We use probabilistic similarity metrics, independent of the classification algorithm. All analyses are performed after determining the power spectrum density of delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma rhythms. The results about the relevance of the input signals are validated with functional neurosciences knowledge. The experiences have been performed in a conventional HCI lab, with non clinical EEG equipment and setup. This is an explicit and voluntary condition. We anticipate that future mobile and wireless EEG capture devices will allow this work to be generalized to common applications.

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

hci
similarity metrics
reading detection

feature relevance measurement
eeg processing and classification


A problem solving environment for multidisciplinary coupled simulations in computational grids This paper describes a software environment for doing multidisciplinary coupled simulations in computational grids using a combination of various existing software tools. The environment consists of the software integration system TENT for setting up, steering and monitoring the simulation, the code coupling library MpCCI for the numerical coupling of simulation codes, and the MPI implementation MPICH-G2 and the Globus Toolkit for running the coupled codes in distributed environments.

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multidisciplinary coupling
grid computing


Developing an optimized application hosting framework in Clouds A Cloud system, which is also often called a data center, may host a large number of application servers (termed as applications for short in this paper) that consume various types of resource, such as CPU, memory, and I/O. In such a scenario, the application placement strategy, which specifies how to host applications across the physical servers in the Cloud, is critical to achieve good system- and/or client-oriented performance. The existing application placement algorithms in literature assume that the consumption of system resources is proportional to the level of workloads submitted to the system. In this paper, we reveal that it may not be the case in some circumstances. Based on this observation, we design and implement an application placement framework, called EAPAC, for Clouds. The developed framework is able to achieve the optimized performance by judiciously allocating to the applications a proper mixture of different types of application request as well as an appropriate number of requests in each type. Further, we investigate the issue of resource conflicts among different applications when there exist concurrent requests in the system. We have conducted extensive experiments to evaluate the performance of the developed framework. The experiment results show that compared with the existing method in literature, EAPAC can improve the performance by 35% in terms of the reply rate. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

application placement
resource conflicts
cloud


An atmosphere-ocean time series model of global climate change Time series models of global climate change tend to estimate a low climate-sensitivity (equilibrium effect on global temperature of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations) and a fast adjustment rate to equilibrium. These results may be biased by omission of a key variable-heat stored in the ocean. A time series model of the atmosphere-ocean climate system is developed, in which surface temperature (atmospheric temperature over land and sea surface temperature) moves towards a long-run equilibrium with both radiative forcing and ocean heat content, while ocean heat content accumulates the deviations from atmospheric equilibrium. This model is closely related to Granger and Lee's multicointegration model. As there are only 55 years of observations on ocean heat content, the Kalman filter is used to estimate heat content as a latent state variable, which is constrained by the available observations. This method could be applied to other climate change problems where there are only limited observations on key variables. The final model adopted relates surface temperature to the heat content of the upper 300m of the ocean. The resulting parameter estimates are closer to theoretically expected values than those of previous time series models and the estimated climate sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide is 4.4 K. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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

global climate change
multicointegration
kalman filter


Using mutual information for appearance-based visual path following In this paper we propose a new way to achieve a navigation task (visual path following) for a non-holonomic vehicle. We consider an image-based navigation process. We show that it is possible to navigate along a visual path without relying on the extraction, matching and tracking of geometric visual features such as keypoint. The new proposed approach relies directly on the information (entropy) contained in the image signal. We show that it is possible to build a control law directly from the maximization of the shared information between the current image and the next key image in the visual path. The shared information between those two images is obtained using mutual information that is known to be robust to illumination variations and occlusions. Moreover the generally complex task of features extraction and matching is avoided. Both simulations and experiments on a real vehicle are presented and show the possibilities and advantages offered by the proposed method.

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