Semantic similarity measurement based on knowledge mining: an artificial neural net approach This article presents a new approach to automatically measure semantic similarity between spatial objects. It combines a description logic based knowledge base (an ontology) and a multi-layer neural network to simulate the human process of similarity perception. In the knowledge base, spatial concepts are organized hierarchically and are modelled by a set of features that best represent the spatial, temporal and descriptive attributes of the concepts, such as origin, shape and function. Water body ontology is used as a case study. The neural network was designed and human subjects' rankings on similarity of concept pairs were collected for data training, knowledge mining and result validation. The experiment shows that the proposed method achieves good performance in terms of both correlation and mean standard error analysis in measuring the similarity between neural network prediction and human subject ranking. The application of similarity measurement with respect to improving relevancy ranking of a semantic search engine is introduced at the end.

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

semantic similarity
search engine
ranking
ontology

geospatial semantics
geospatial knowledge discovery
spatial data mining


An Instance vs. The Instance This article argues how one problem of computing lies in realizing a significant instance given a class or type. Analysis of a case study on digital narrative suggests two general processes for instantiating significant instances: interaction and optimization. The article then explains how the problem of universals needs to be deconstructed when trying to understand what type of entities significant instances are and what the process for obtaining them is.

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

instance
class
optimization
interaction
the problem of universals


On absolute Nrlund summability factors In this paper, a general theorem on |N,pn|k | N , p n | k summability factors has been proved. This theorem also generalizes some known results.

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


Polyhedral mixture of linear experts for many-to-one mapping inversion and multiple controllers Feed-forward control schemes require an inverse mapping of the controlled system. In adaptive systems this inverse mapping is learned from examples. The biological motor control is very redundant, as are many robotic systems, therefore the mapping is many-to-one and the inverse problem is ill posed. In this paper we present a novel architecture and algorithms for the approximation and inversion of many-to-one functions. The proposed architecture retains all the possible solutions available to the controller in real time. This is done by a modified mixture of experts architecture, where each expert is linear and more than a single expert may be assigned to the same input region. The learning is implemented by the hinging hyperplanes algorithm. The proposed architecture is described and its operation is illustrated for some simple cases. Finally, the virtue of redundancy and its exploitation by multiple controllers are discussed.

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

redundancy
motor control
inverse problem
mixture of experts
hinging hyperplanes


Testable embedded system firmware development: the outin methodology Reliability is of paramount importance to just about any embedded system firmware. This paper presents the outin methodology (OIM), a new reliability-driven approach to developing such a system, which is intended to detect static and, more importantly, dynamic errors much faster than the usual firmware development methods. In this approach, the core functionality is developed together with an interface software that is used specifically for testing the core functionality. This paper describes the use of this approach in a real life situation and discusses the benefits, potential pitfalls, and other possible application areas.

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


Cloud E-learning for Mechatronics: CLEM We have designed and developed a new customized cloud platform for e-learning. We have designed and developed a new cloud framework to model mechatronic devices. We have evaluated the system with users and teachers in the field. The proposed system is the first cloud based e-learning system for mechatronics.

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 B

cloud computing
e-learning
remote virtual laboratories
community
ecosystem


Cobalt oxide nanosheet humidity sensor integrated with circuit on chip The work studies a micro humidity sensor integrated with a seven-stage ring oscillator circuit-on-a-chip fabricated by the commercial 0.35?m complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process and a post-process. The structure of the humidity sensor consists of interdigitated electrodes and a sensing film. The sensing film is cobalt oxide nanosheet that is prepared by a precipitationoxidation method. The sensor, which is a capacitive type, changes in capacitance when the sensing film adsorbs or desorbs water vapor. The ring oscillator circuit is employed to convert the capacitance of the sensor into the oscillation frequency output. The post-process of the sensor includes etching the sacrificial oxide layer and coating the sensing film on the interdigitated electrodes.

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


OctoMap: an efficient probabilistic 3D mapping framework based on octrees Three-dimensional models provide a volumetric representation of space which is important for a variety of robotic applications including flying robots and robots that are equipped with manipulators. In this paper, we present an open-source framework to generate volumetric 3Denvironment models. Our mapping approach is based on octrees and uses probabilistic occupancy estimation. It explicitly represents not only occupied space, but also free and unknown areas. Furthermore, we propose an octree map compression method that keeps the 3D models compact. Our framework is available as an open-source C++ library and has already been successfully applied in several robotics projects. We present a series of experimental results carried out with real robots and on publicly available real-world datasets. The results demonstrate that our approach is able to update the representation efficiently and models the data consistently while keeping the memory requirement at a minimum.

O O O B 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 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 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


A new approach for determining the time step when propagating with the Lanczos algorithm A new criterion for choosing the time step used when numerically solving time-dependent Schroedinger equation with the Lanczos method is presented. Following Saad, Stewart and Leyk, an explicit expression for the time step is obtained from the remainder of the Chebyshev series of the matrix exponential.

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

time-dependent schroedinger equation
wavepackets
unitary time evolution
chebyshev expansion


Towards effective parsing with neural networks: Inherent generalisations and bounded resource effects This article explores how the effectiveness of learning to parse with neural networks can be improved by including two architectural features relevant to language: generalisations across syntactic constituents and bounded resource effects. A number of neural network parsers have recently been proposed, each with a different approach to the representational problem of outputting parse trees. In addition, some of the parsers have explicitly attempted to capture an important regularity within language, which is to generalise information across syntactic constituents. A further property of language is that natural bounds exist for the number of constituents which a parser need retain for later processing. Both the generalisations and the resource bounds may be captured in architectural features which enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of learning to parse with neural networks. We describe a number of different types of neural network parser, and compare them with respect to these two features. These features are both explicitly present in the Simple Synchrony Network parser, and we explore and illustrate their impact on the process of learning to parse in some experiments with a recursive grammar.

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

structured representations
syntactic parsing
systematicity


high performance annotation-aware jvm for java cards Early applications of smart cards have focused in the area of personal security. Recently, there has been an increasing demand for networked, multi-application cards. In this new scenario, enhanced application-specific on-card Java applets and complex cryptographic services are executed through the smart card Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In order to support such computation-intensive applications, contemporary smart cards are designed with built-in microprocessors and memory. As smart cards are highly area-constrained environments with memory, CPU and peripherals competing for a very small die space, the VM execution engine of choice is often a small, slow interpreter. In addition, support for multiple applications and cryptographic services demands high performance VM execution engine. The above necessitates the optimization of the JVM for Java Cards.In this paper we present the concept of an annotation-aware interpreter that optimizes the interpreted execution of Java code using Java bytecode SuperOperators (SOs). SOs are groups of bytecode operations that are executed as a specialized VM instruction. Simultaneous translation of all the bytecode operations in an SO reduces the bytecode dispatch cost and the number of stack accesses (data transfer to/from the Java operand stack) and stack pointer updates. Furthermore, SOs help improve native code quality without hindering class file portability. Annotation attributes in the class files mark the occurrences of valuable SOs, thereby dispensing the expensive task of searching and selecting SOs at runtime. Besides, our annotation-based approach incurs minimal memory overhead as opposed to just-in-time (JIT) compilers.We obtain an average speedup of 18\% using an interpreter customized with the top SOs formed from operation folding patterns. Further, we show that greater speedups could be achieved by statically adding to the interpreter application-specific SOs formed by top basic blocks. The effectiveness of our approach is evidenced by performance improvements of (upto) 131\% obtained using SOs formed from optimized basic blocks.

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

superoperators
virtual machine
high performance


A methodology for creating ontologies for engineering design This paper describes a six-stage methodology for developing ontologies for engineering design, together with the research methods and evaluation of each stage. The methodology focuses upon understanding a user's domain models through empirical research. A case study of an ontology for searching, indexing, and retrieving engineering knowledge is described. The root concepts of the ontology were elicited from engineering designers. Relationships between concepts are extracted as the ontology is populated. The contribution of this research is a methodology to allow researchers. and industry to create ontologies for their particular purpose and a thesaurus for the terms within the ontology.

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


High finite-sample efficiency and robustness based on distance-constrained maximum likelihood Good robust estimators can be tuned to combine a high breakdown point and a specified asymptotic efficiency at a central model. This happens in regression with MM- and ? ? -estimators among others. However, the finite-sample efficiency of these estimators can be much lower than the asymptotic one. To overcome this drawback, an approach is proposed for parametric models, which is based on a distance between parameters. Given a robust estimator, the proposed one is obtained by maximizing the likelihood under the constraint that the distance is less than a given threshold. For the linear model with normal errors, simulations show that the proposed estimator attains a finite-sample efficiency close to one while improving the robustness of the initial estimator. The same approach also shows good results in the estimation of multivariate location and scatter.

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

robust multivariate location and scatter


the average-case complexity of counting distinct elements We continue the study of approximating the number of distinct elements in a data stream of length n to within a (1 ?) factor. It is known that if the stream may consist of arbitrary data arriving in an arbitrary order, then any 1-pass algorithm requires ?(1/? 2 ) bits of space to perform this task. To try to bypass this lower bound, the problem was recently studied in a model in which the stream may consist of arbitrary data, but it arrives to the algorithm in a random order. However, even in this model an ?(1/? 2 ) lower bound was established. This is because the adversary can still choose the data arbitrarily. This leaves open the possibility that the problem is only hard under a pathological choice of data, which would be of little practical relevance. We study the average-case complexity of this problem under certain distributions. Namely, we study the case when each successive stream item is drawn independently and uniformly at random from an unknown subset of d items for an unknown value of d . This captures the notion of random uncorrelated data . For a wide range of values of d and n , we design a 1-pass algorithm that bypasses the ?(1/? 2 ) lower bound that holds in the adversarial and random-order models, thereby showing that this model admits more space-efficient algorithms. Moreover, the update time of our algorithm is optimal. Despite these positive results, for a certain range of values of d and n we show that estimating the number of distinct elements requires ?(1/? 2 ) bits of space even in this model. Our lower bound subsumes previous bounds, showing that even for natural choices of data the problem is hard.

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


The Wi-Fi congestion crisis: Regulatory criteria for assessing spectrum congestion claims This work was motivated by ubiquitous claims that Wi-Fi is congested. We tried to understand what this claim might mean, and to test if it was true. We conclude that there is no unanimity on measuring congestion or service degradation. We find no hard evidence that current congestion justifies regulatory action. We propose five criteria regulators can use to test claims of spectrum congestion.

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


taxonomy of exertion games A new set of computationally-augmented games have emerged recently that require the user to move their body. These exertion games are believed to contribute to social, mental and in particular, physical benefits, marking a change in how we perceive computer gaming. However, although these games are a commercial success, research is lacking a theoretical understanding how to analyse existing and guide future designs. We present initial investigations towards a taxonomy of such exertion games with a focus on social aspects, based on work on traditional play and sports. Our contribution lays the foundation for the creation of a theoretical framework on exertion games, expanding our understanding of this exciting new area.

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

categorization
model
exertion interface
game
exergames
obesity


Existence and uniqueness of periodic solution for prescribed mean curvature Rayleigh type p-Laplacian equation In this paper, a prescribed mean curvature Rayleigh type p-Laplacian equation with a deviating argument was investigated. Based on the coincidence degree theory and some analysis techniques, a series of existence and uniqueness results of periodic solution to the equation were obtained. At last, several illustrative examples were given to illustrate the main results.

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

prescribed mean curvature
periodic solution
existence
uniqueness


Intelligent simulation based decision support environment in this paper, we describe a simulation based decision support environment, intended to control Complex Discrete Systems (CDS), in particular to control production systems. The main topics discussed here include CDS modelling, the simulation kernel and exploiting the results of the simulation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

complex discrete systems
modelling
simulation


Computational aspects of DNA mixture analysis Statistical analysis of DNA mixtures for forensic identification is known to pose computational challenges due to the enormous state space of possible DNA profiles. We describe a general method for computing the expectation of a product of discrete random variables using auxiliary variables and probability propagation in a Bayesian network. We propose a Bayesian network representation for genotypes, allowing computations to be performed locally involving only a few alleles at each step. Exploiting appropriate auxiliary variables in combination with this representation allows efficient computation of the likelihood function and prediction of genotypes of unknown contributors. Importantly, we exploit the computational structure to introduce a novel set of diagnostic tools for assessing the adequacy of the model for describing a particular dataset.

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

deconvolution
genotype representation
junction tree
model diagnostics
prequential monitor
triangulation


Localization and Chemical Characterization of the Audiogenic Stress Pathway Neuronal pathways involved in stress responses to extreme somatosensory stimuli were investigated by immunostaining, viral tract tracing, and experimental brain surgery in rats. Acute audiogenic stress, which elicits an immediate marked elevation in plasma ACTH and corticosterone concentrations, was used as a model. Loud noise (105 dB, 30 min) elicited c-fos activation within neurons in all of the components of the auditory system and stress-sensitive brain nuclei, including corticotropin-releasing hormone-synthesizing parvicellular neurons in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN). c-Fos activation was also seen in the medial paralemniscal nucleus in the pons (MPL) and in the subparafascicular nucleus (SPF) in the midbrain. After injection of neurotropic virus (pseudorabies, Bartha strain) into the PVN, neurons in the MPL and the parvicellular portion of the SPF were retrogradely infected. It has been shown by immunostaining that MPL and SPF neurons express a newly discovered neuropeptide, tuberoinfundibular peptide of 39 residues (TIP39). TIP39 is present in a fine neuronal network in the PVN. Audiogenic stress-elicited c-fos activation in TIP39-containing neurons of the MPL and SPF. TIP39 immunoreactivity disappeared from the PVN after transection of MPL and SPF projections to the nucleus. These observations suggest that TIP39-containing MPL and SPF neurons may participate in mediating audiogenic stress responses.

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

c-fos
tract-tracing
double immunostaining


Row and column generation technique for a multistage cutting stock problem The multistage cutting stock problem (CSP) generalizes the one-dimensional CSP when a lengthwise cutting process is distributed over two or more successive stages. At every stage of the cutting process incoming rolls are slit into smaller rolls by width. The problem is to minimize total trim loss occurring at all stages of technological process meeting customer demands for finished rolls. We propose a row and column generation technique for solving the multistage one-dimensional CSP. The technique is a generalization of the column generation method suggested by Gilmore and Gomory for solving a classic CSP. The procedure generates only those intermediate rolls (rows) and cutting patterns (columns) that are needed. An auxiliary problem embedded into the frame of the revised simplex algorithm is a non-linear knapsack problem that can be solved efficiently. Computational results prove the overall method is a valuable addition to the tool set for modeling and solving the multistage CSP. We investigate a broad class of large-scale linear programming models and suggest a new and efficient way to solve them. The proposed method belongs to a category of decomposition techniques generalizing the famous column generation method. An iteration of the revised simplex algorithm may enrich the LP matrix either by generating a new column, as a purely column generation method does, or by generating a combination of a new row and a pair of new columns. The method is a row and column generation technique that we propose and investigate. Applications modeled by a multistage CSP occur in the industries that use a multistage cutting process: paper, leather, film, steel, etc., or a nested packing/loading process: transportation. The unknown variables in the multistage cutting stock problem are intermediate sizes (rows) and cutting patterns (columns). According to the algorithm both are to be generated dynamically. The proposed algorithm brings tremendous benefits in terms of the quality of solutions and computational performance.

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

multistage cutting stock problem
large-scale optimization


Knowledge Discovery Through Experiential Learning From Business and Other Contemporary Data Sources: A Review and Reappraisal Every day massive amount of data is generated, collected, and stored in information repositories such as databases and data warehouses. Current information technology is sufficiently mature and powerful to store any amount of raw data in an organized manner. However, finding useful patterns, trends, rules, correlations, and deviations in large amount of data, and/or making meaningful predictions from it still remains one of the main challenges of the information era. The more data one has, the more difficult it is to analyze and draw meaningful conclusions. Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) and data mining (DM) is a field, which uses computer-based and analytic technologies to efficiently extract intelligence from data that humans need. In this article, we review the process of knowledge discovery in databases, and describe selected methodologies, methods and tools, tasks, basic learning paradigms, and applications for knowledge generation by computer learning from data instances. We also examine the current trends in the field with respect to the data types mined, data mining methods used, classes of data mining applications, as well as the data mining software used.

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

knowledge discovery in databases
data mining
methods
tools
methodologies
experiential learning
applications
review


Seismic damage detection in a building frame via finite element model updating This study is aimed at detecting and locating the damage in the beams with the aid of vibration based system identification and finite element model updating method, using limited number of responses recorded during strong earthquakes. The response of the structure at unmonitored degrees of freedom is estimated by interpolating recorded responses in time domain. Modal parameters are identified using frequency domain decomposition and empirical transfer function estimates. It is found that a combination of a suite of system identification techniques with sensitivity based finite element model updating can potentially locate and quantify the damage in a moment resistant frame.

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

modal identification
inverse problem
structural health monitoring
regularization


Simulation of resonant tunneling devices: origin of the \(I\)\(V\) multi-peak behavior Multi-peak behavior of the \(I\)\(V\) curves of an AlAs/GaAs/AlAs double-barrier resonant tunneling diode combined with a layer of InAs quantum dots (QDs) is simulated. Our simulation results show that the coupling between the energy level in the emitter quantum well (quantum dot) layer and that in the central quantum well is the key point in understanding the origin of the \(I\)\(V\) multi-peak behavior. The embedded designed QD layer at the emitter spacer can enhance this effect. The effects of device temperature on the \(I\)\(V\) characteristics are also obtained. Our results provide the physical basis for understanding and utilizing the multi-peak behavior of \(I\)\(V\) curves in designing resonant tunneling devices.

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

resonant tunneling structure
multi-peak
\(i\)\(v\) characteristics


Method of spherical harmonic series in the problem of minimization of atmosphere pollution by fractions of harmful admixtures The problem of minimization of atmosphere pollution by fractions of harmful admixtures is studied. It is supposed that a controlled object is described by non-stationary integral-differential transfer equation with special boundary conditions and control parameters, which are included in the right part of equation as delta-functions. Minimized integral quadratic functional characterizes energy expenditure for control and depends on the average squared deflection of fraction concentration from the desired final state. Optimal conditions are obtained with the help of Pontryagin's maximum principle. The method of spherical harmonic series is applied. (C) 2004 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

the problem of minimization
controlled object
minimized integral quadratic functional
maximum principle


A System of Time-Dependent Hemivariational Inequalities with Volterra Integral Terms In this paper, we consider a system of time-dependent hemivariational inequalities with Volterra integral terms by using a surjectivity theorem for pseudomonotone operators and the Banach fixed point theorem, rather than the Knaster-Kuratowski-Mazurkiewicz theorems used by many researchers in recent literature for systems of hemivariational inequalities. Under some suitable conditions, the existence and uniqueness result of solution to the problem considered is obtained by proving that a derived vector inclusion problem with Volterra integral term is solvable.

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

volterra integral term
banach fixed point theorem


A current-mode analog multiplier/divider based on CCCDTA A novel simple current-mode analog multiplier/divider, based on current-controlled current-differencing transconductance amplifier (CCCDTA), is presented. The proposed circuit employs only single CCCDTA without any external passive element requirement and it can work as multiplier and divider without changing its topology. In addition, the proposed circuit can work as gain-controllable current amplifier. The circuit performances are depicted through PSPICE simulations. The simulated results show that: for 1.5 V power supply, the total harmonic distortion is about 0.1%, the - 3 dB bandwidth is more than 26.94MHz, maximum input range is about 100 ? A and the output current is low sensitive to temperature variations.

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


Evolutionary computation based three-area automatic generation control In this paper, various novel heuristic stochastic search techniques have been proposed for optimization of proportionalintegral-derivative gains used in Sugeno fuzzy logic based automatic generation control of multi-area thermal generating plants. The techniques are genetic algorithm, various types of particle swarm optimization and bacteria foraging optimization. Numerical results show that all optimization techniques are more or less equally very effective in yielding optimal transient responses of area frequency and tie-line power flow deviations, but still MCASO and BFO yield much more global true optimal results. Particle swarm optimizations take the least time to achieve the same optimal gains. These gains are for nominal system parameters. For varying off-nominal on-line system parameters, fast acting Sugeno fuzzy logic manipulates the nominal gains adaptively to determine transient responses.

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


Wavelength Contention-Free via Optical Bypass Within a Colorless and Directionless ROADM A conventional colorless and directionless reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) architecture is modified to add intra-node optical bypass and achieve either statistical or absolute contention-free performance. The contention-free performance is accomplished without relying on external transponders and optical transport network (OTN) switches. Furthermore, the overall ROADM has a smaller size, lower power consumption, and lower cost than those of conventional colorless, directionless, and contentionless ROADMs.

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

add/drop multiplexers
optical switches
wavelength routing
wdm networks


the ball in the hole "The Ball in The Hole" is an interactive video installation, running on GPL homemade software, which uses the principle of tele-presence. Two rooms are showing a projected mirror, where the user can see and recognize himself. On the floor there is a spiral, containing a luminescent ball. When the user grabs the ball, spontaneously attempting to play with it, the projected mirror will start erasing, showing the other room. The ball, as an interface, will act on the video as an eraser on a pencil drawing. The two rooms / spaces are symmetrical. After the complete erasure of the image, the mirror will show the remote room only. At this point the game flips: the ball, rubber and pencil at the same time, gets the capability to erase the other person / space / video. Therefore this deletion of the Otherness corresponds to the redrawing of the Self. You draw as much as you erase, in a direct proportion. The process continues endlessly rendering the installation a social happening where the user becomes the main character of an improvised performance.

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

culture
multimedia arts
technology
interaction


MULTI-CRITERIA SCHEDULING OF PIPELINE WORKFLOWS (AND APPLICATION TO THE JPEG ENCODER) Mapping workflow applications onto parallel platforms is a challenging problem, even for simple application patterns such as pipeline graphs. Several antagonist criteria should be optimized, such as throughput and latency (or a combination). A typical application class is digital image coding, where images are processed in steady-state mode. In this paper, we study the general bi-criteria mapping problem (minimizing period and latency) for pipeline graphs on communication homogeneous platforms. We present an integer linear programming formulation for this NP-hard problem. Furthermore, we provide several efficient polynomial bi-criteria heuristics, whose relative performance is evaluated through extensive simulations. As a case study, we provide simulations and MPI experimental results for the JPEG encoder application pipeline on a cluster of workstations.

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

algorithmic skeletons
multi-criteria optimization
complexity results
jpeg encode pipeline
heterogeneous platforms


cog extractor The Component Object Graphic (COG) model describes documents as a series of distinct, encapsulated graphical blocks (termed COGs) that are positioned on the page rather than the traditional approach (taken by formats such as PostScript, PDF and SVG) of describing each page as one monolithic block of drawing operators that create marks on the page to form the content. Previous work [1, 2] has demonstrated how this paradigm can be implemented on top of both PDF and SVG.Tools have previously been created which allow the creation of COG documents [1, 3] and manipulation of existing COGs to form new documents [1, 4]. Missing from the COG toolkit has been a method of producing COGs from already existing content. The proposed solution is a new tool entitled 'COG Extractor' that allows the user to select an area of an existing document to be extracted and converted to be a COG in PDF or SVG form.The first process is to get the documents into a format that can easily be understood. The most sensible choice is PDF since there are several tools that can convert other formats into PDF.It is then necessary to parse the PDF content stream for the page to be extracted and to derive the meaning of the operators in the page's content stream. PDF's operators can be divided into two classes: those that image content, and those that define the state (such as fill colour, line width) that content is imaged with. This causes problems since each imaging operators depends on the cumulative effect of all previous state operators. It is therefore necessary to work out exactly which operators are responsible for drawing the content.This is achieved by combining consecutive state operators together to form a state-change object, which encapsulates all changes in state at that point. Everything following the state-change object in the PDF content stream then become children of that state-change object. This produces a tree representation of the document where the drawing operators form the leaf nodes. The state of any drawing operator can then be calculated by walking back along its parents in the tree.From this tree it is then possible to calculate the bounding box of each drawing operator and see if it intersects with the area to be extracted. If they do not intersect, then that drawing operator can be pruned from the tree.An optimization phase can remove any state-change nodes that are no longer required (e.g nodes for which all children have been removed). This tree can then be exported as a COG in PDF or SVG format for future use.

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


Design and implementation of a distributed information system for collaborative product development Collaborative Product Development (CPD) is an engineering process that involves decision-making through iterative communication and coordination among product designers throughout the lifecycle of the product. The high level of collaboration and communication of a CPD environment requires a robust Distributed Information System. In this paper, we review existing research related to CPD and propose an information framework termed VE4PD based on the integration of web services and agent technologies to manage the CPD process. An implementation system is developed to validate the application.

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

collaborative product development
distributed information system
web services


Can the size of the epiphysis determine the number of secondary ossification centers? A mathematical approach Previous studies have concluded that the chemical feedback (loop) between two reagent molecular factors through a reaction-diffusion mechanism could explain the stable spatial pattern found in the origin of the secondary ossification centres (SOCs). Furthermore, the emergence of the SOC may depend on the size and shape of the head of the bone, as observed in different animals. In this paper, we develop new computer simulations that study the effect of the size of the epiphysis on the emergence of the SOC. This study determines two or more SOCs, that may appear in the head of long bones, depending on the size of the epiphysis.

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


Screening of factors influencing the performance of manipulator using combined array design of experiment approach A robot must manipulate objects with high accuracy and repeatability to perform precise tasks. However, deviation in performance is attributed to uncertainties and improper selection of control, noise, and process factors. The information regarding the effect of these factors on performance is almost non-existent. A probabilistic approach has been used to model and simulate the performance of manipulator. The combined array fractional factorial design of experiment approach has been employed to identify the significant factors and their interactions. This approach helps in screening of the manipulator factors and focus on those that are important. To explore further, two indices, viz. link length ratio and link mass ratio, have been proposed and impact of these indices on manipulator performance is investigated. A two degree of freedom (2-DOF) RR planar manipulator performing a task with cubic and quintic trajectory has been used to illustrate the approach. It has been observed that the statistically significant factors are different for different tasks in workspace. It has also been observed that for the same task, factors responsible for performance variations are different for cubic and quintic trajectories. Finally, it has been demonstrated that the link length ratio change has significant influence on performance compared to link mass ratio.

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

fractional factorial design
link length ratio
link mass ratio

manipulator performance variations
control factors
noise factors
positional error
mean positional error
half-normal plot: anova


Wavelet energy-based visualization and classification of high-dimensional signal for bearing fault detection This study investigates a methodology for interpretable visualizing and classifying high-dimensional data such as vibration signals in machine fault detection application. Although principal component analysis is one of the most widely used dimension reduction methods, it does not clearly explain the source of signal variations (i.e., statistical characteristics such as mean and variance), but just locate signals on low-dimensional space which maximizing data dispersion. This deficiency restricts its interpretability to specific problems of process control and thus limits their broader usefulness. To overcome this deficiency, this study exploits the multiscale energy analysis of discrete wavelet transformation, so-called wavelet scalogram, in unsupervised manner. Wavelet scalogram allows us to first obtain a very low-dimensional feature subset of our data, which is strongly correlated with the characteristics of the data without considering the classification method used, although each of these features is uncorrelated with each other. In supervised learning scheme, it can be eventually combined with silhouette statistics for the purpose of more effective visualization of the main sources of different classes and classifying signals into different classes. Finally, nonparametric multi-class classifiers such as classification and regression tree and k-nearest neighbors quantitatively evaluate the performance of our approach for machine fault classification problem in terms of the 10-fold misclassification error rate.

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

scalogram visualization vibration classification


PROBABILISTIC CONDITIONAL-INDEPENDENCE STRUCTURES AND MATROID THEORY - BACKGROUND Special conditional independence structures have been recognized to be matroids. This opens new possibilities for the application of matroid theory methods (duality, miners, expansions) to the study of conditional independence and, on the other hand, starts a new probabilistic branch of matroid representation theory.

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

conditional independence
matroids
expansions

dependence independence structures relations


Very high-speed and high-accuracy current-steering CMOS D/A converter using a novel 3-D decoder In this paper a 10-bit 1.2-GSample/s Nyquist current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is presented. Segmentation (90%) has been used to get the best DNL and reduce glitch energy. This segmentation ratio guarantees the monotonicity. Higher performance is achieved using a novel 3-D thermometer decoding method which reduces the area, power consumption, and the number of control signals of the digital section. Simulation results show that the spurious-free-dynamic-range (SFDR) in Nyquist rate is better than 65 dB for sampling frequency up to 1.2-GSample/s. The analog voltage supply is 3.3 V while the digital part of the chip operates at only 2.4 V. Total power consumption in Nyquist rate measurement is 149 mW. The chip has been processed in a standard 0.35 mu m CMOS technology. Active area of chip is 1.97 mm(2).

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

current steering dac
3-d thermometer decoding
high accuracy
integrated circuits


Load balanced parallel QR decomposition on shared memory multiprocessors This paper introduces a new parallel QR decomposition algorithm with two key advantages over previous techniques. It is specifically designed to achieve high parallel efficiency on shared memory parallel computers with a modest number of processors, and the novel load balancing method described here considers total computational work as opposed to just balancing Givens rotations. This results in expected efficiencies which approach optimal as problem size grows relative to number of processors. The hybrid nature of the algorithm seeks to maximize computation between communication and synchronization. Implementation results on shared memory multiprocessors track expected performance well up to 12 processors, and initial performance results on a distributed shared memory machine are presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

shared memory multiprocessors
load balancing
qr decomposition


A multipath en-route filtering method for dropping reports in sensor networks In this paper, we propose a multipath en-route filtering method to deal with the problems caused by black hole attacks and selective forwarding attacks. Our result shows that the method is more resilient to these problems up to a certain number of compromised nodes than the statistical en-route filtering scheme.

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

multipath routing
compromised node
enroutefiltering


Design of ARQ protocols for two-user cooperative diversity systems in wireless networks Automatic repeat-request (ARQ) protocols for two-user cooperative diversity system employing Alamouti space-time coding are investigated in this paper. A whole cooperative transmit frame of an original cooperative system consists of three sub-frames. According to different feedback schedules in a transmit frame at the destination, two basic ARQ protocols, namely post-cooperating and pre-cooperating, are proposed and analyzed. We show that both proposed ARQ protocols can improve the throughput in two-user cooperative system. Pre-cooperating protocol yields 50% gains in users' throughput than post-cooperating protocol if both users have high user-destination average received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the destination. Nevertheless, if both of user-destination average received SNRs are low, post-cooperating protocol is more effective than pre-cooperating protocol. Proposed protocols provide useful basic tools for designing more complicated ARQ protocols. Finally, simulation results verify our analysis. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

packet error rate
alamouti space-time coding


a neural model for unsupervised taxonomy enrichment The most important prerequisite for the success of the Semantic Web research is the construction of complete and reliable domain ontologies. In this paper we describe an unsupervised framework for domain ontology enrichment based on mining domain text corpora. Specifically, we enrich the hierarchical backbone of an existing ontology, i.e. its taxonomy, with new domain-specific concepts. The framework is based on an extended model of hierarchical self-organizing maps. As being founded on an unsupervised neural network architecture, the framework can be applied to different languages and domains. Terms extracted by mining a text corpus encode contextual content information, in a distributional vector space. The enrichment behaves like a classification of the extracted terms into the existing taxonomy by attaching them as hyponyms for the nodes of the taxonomy. The experiments reported are in the "Lonely Planet" tourism domain. The taxonomy and the corpus are the ones proposed in the PASCAL ontology learning and population challenge. The experimental results prove that the quality of the enrichment is considerably improved by using semantics based vector representations for the classified (newly added) terms, like the document category histograms (DCH) and the document frequency times inverse term frequency (DF-ITF) weighting scheme.

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

unsupervised neural network
taxonomy enrichment


A configurable translation-based cross-lingual ontology mapping system to adjust mapping outcomes Ontologies are widely considered as the building blocks of the semantic web, and with them, comes the data interoperability issue. As ontologies are not necessarily always labelled in the same natural language, one way to achieve semantic interoperability is by means of cross-lingual ontology mapping. Translation techniques are often used as an intermediate step to translate the conceptual labels within an ontology. This approach essentially removes the natural language barrier in the mapping environment and enables the application of monolingual ontology mapping tools. This paper shows that the key to this translation-based approach to cross-lingual ontology mapping lies with selecting appropriate ontology label translations in a given mapping context. Appropriateness of the translations in the context of cross-lingual ontology mapping differs from the ontology localisation point of view, as the former aims to generate correct mappings whereas the latter aims to adapt specifications of conceptualisations to target communities. This paper further demonstrates that the mapping outcome using the translation-based cross-lingual ontology mapping approach is conditioned on the translations selected for the intermediate label translation step. In particular, this paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel cross-lingual ontology mapping system: SOCOM++. SOCOM++provides configurable properties that can be manipulated by a user in the process of selecting label translations in an effort to adjust the subsequent mapping outcome. It is shown through the evaluation that for the same pair of ontologies, the mappings between them can be adjusted by tuning the translations for the ontology labels. This finding is not yet shown in the previous research.

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

semantic-oriented configurable ontology label translation


Development of a real-time range finder interpolating the parallax signals for surfaces In order to apply "eyes" to an autonomous running vehicle, a real-time range finder has been developed that can measure both the distance to every point on a plane without any pattern and its inclination. Although it seems contrary to the fact that the parallax is inversely proportional to the distance, this paper derives the mathematical ground that a plane in a real 3-D space (X, Y, Z) is mapped also into the plane in a spatial parallax (x, y, Deltax). On this basis, an electronic circuit has been manufactured which can compute in video rate the interpolation value between the parallaxes at two characteristic points by using several programmable logic devices. It has also been demonstrated that this device is applicable to the measurements of the slant angles of and the directions normal to a simple plane or a slightly curved surface. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

mechatronics and robotics
sensor
electronics
shape measurement
optical measurement
measurement
stereo vision
real-time measurement
visual equipment
distance image


Sign-preserving of principal eigenfunctions in P1 finite element approximation of eigenvalue problems of second-order elliptic operators This paper is concerned with the P1 finite element approximation of the eigenvalue problem of second-order elliptic operators subject to the Dirichlet boundary condition. The focus is on the preservation of the basic properties of the principal eigenvalue and eigenfunctions of the continuous problem. It is shown that when the stiffness matrix is an irreducible M-matrix, the discrete eigenvalue problem maintains almost all of the basic properties such as the smallest eigenvalue being real and simple and the corresponding eigenfunctions being either positive or negative inside the physical domain. Mesh conditions leading to such a stiffness matrix are also studied. A sufficient condition is that the mesh is simplicial, interiorly connected, and acute when measured in the metric specified by the inverse of the diffusion matrix. The acute requirement can be replaced by the Delaunay condition in two dimensions. Numerical results show that when the stiffness matrix is not an M-matrix, a finite element approximation can be structurally different from the continuous eigenvalue problem: the eigenfunctions corresponding to the smallest eigenvalue can change sign over the physical domain and the smallest eigenvalue (in modulus) can even be complex for the case with nonsymmetric operators.

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

finite element method
sign-preserving
positivity-preserving
perron's theorem


Adaptive similarity search in streaming time series with sliding windows The challenge in a database of evolving time series is to provide efficient algorithms and access methods for query processing, taking into consideration the fact that the database changes continuously as new data become available. Traditional access methods that continuously update the data are considered inappropriate, due to significant update costs. In this paper, we use the IDC-Index (Incremental DFT Computation Index), an efficient technique for similarity query processing in streaming time series. The index is based on a multidimensional access method enhanced with a deferred update policy and an incremental computation of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), which is used as a feature extraction method. We focus both on range and nearest-neighbor queries, since both types are frequently used in modern applications. An important characteristic of the proposed approach is its ability to adapt to the update frequency of the data streams. By using a simple heuristic approach, we manage to keep the update frequency at a specified level to guarantee efficiency. In order to investigate the efficiency of the proposed method, experiments have been performed for range queries and k-nearest-neighbor queries on real-life data sets. The proposed method manages to reduce the number of false alarms examined, achieving high answers vs. candidates ratio. Moreover, the results have shown that the new techniques exhibit consistently better performance in comparison to previously proposed approaches.

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

streaming time series similarity search sliding window performance evaluation


AODV_RR: A Maximum Transmission Range Based Ad Hoc on-Demand Distance Vector Routing in MANET Nodes in a mobile ad hoc network are battery constrained devices and energy efficiency becomes an important consideration. In a multi-hop mobile ad hoc network the most common method to achieve energy efficiency is the transmission power control scheme in which a node transmits the data packets to its nearest neighbor which is at minimum required power level. However this scheme minimizes only the transmission power within the nodes neighborhood and energy efficiency at the link level is possible. With this scheme it is not possible to minimize the overall energy consumption of the network and the communication overhead of the network is not minimized. An analysis has been performed and our results have proved that instead of using low transmission power, the routing strategy needs to be controlled and only certain nodes are to be allowed to receive and process this routing request based on the received signal strength, then the overall energy consumption of the network can be minimized and the communication overhead is also minimized. The modified routing strategy is applied to the basic ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol and a maximum transmission range based ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol named AODV range routing (AODV_RR) is proposed and studied under different network sizes. Measurable difference in performance is realized and the proposed AODV_RR perform better than normal AODV with respect to all the selected metrics.

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

manet
transmission power
energy efficiency
transmission range
range routing


inapproximability of the tutte polynomial The Tutte polynomial of a graph G is a two-variable polynomial T(G;x,y) that encodes many interesting properties of the graph. We study the complexityof the following problem, for rationals x and y: take as input a graph G , and output a value which is a good approximation to T(G;x,y). We are interested in determining for which points (x,y) there is a fullypolynomial randomised approximation scheme (FPRAS) for T(G;x,y). Our main contribution is a substantial widening of the region known to benon-FPRASable.

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 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


Chaos

Many-Body

Engine

A

new

version

of

code

C#

for

chaos

analysis

of

relativistic

many-body

systems

with

reactions

In

this

paper

we

present

a

new

version

of

the

Chaos

Many-Body

Engine

C#

application

(Grossu

etal.

In

order

to

benefit

from

the

latest

technological

advantages,

we

migrated

the

application

from.Net

Framework

to.Net

Framework

New

tools

were

implemented

also.

Trying

to

estimate

the

particle

interactions

dependence

on

initial

conditions,

we

considered

a

new

distance,

which

takes

into

account

only

the

structural

differences

between

two

systems.

We

used

this

distance

for

implementing

the

Structural

Lyapunov

function.

We

propose

also

a

new

precision

test

based

on

temporal

reversed

simulations.

Program

title:

Chaos

Many-Body

Engine

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

URL:

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Visual

C#.Net

Computer:

PC

Operating

system:.Net

Framework

running

on

MS

Windows

RAM:

MB

Classification:

Catalogue

identifier

of

previous

version:

Journal

reference

of

previous

version:

Computer

Physics

Communications

Does

the

new

version

supersede

the

previous

version?:

Yes

Nature

of

problem:

Chaos

analysis

of

three-dimensional,

relativistic

many-body

systems

with

reactions.

Solution

method:

Second

order

RungeKutta

algorithm.

Implementation

of

temporal

reversed

simulation

precision

test,

and

Structural

Lyapunov

function.

Reasons

for

new

version:

In

order

to

benefit

from

the

advantages

involved

in

the

latest

technologies

(e.g.

LINQ

Chaos

Many-Body

Engine

was

migrated

from.Net

Framework

to.Net

Framework

In

addition

to

existing

energy

conservation

we

propose

also

a

reverse

simulation

precision

test.

Thus,

for

a

regular

simulation,

we

considered

the

corresponding

reversed

process:

initial

time

equals

the

end

time

of

regular

simulation,

and

temporal

resolution

d

t

One

can

compare

the

initial

state

of

the

regular

system,

and

the

final

state

of

the

reversed

one

t

using,

for

example,

the

phase-space

distance.

Trying

to

measure

particle

interactions

dependence

on

initial

conditions,

we

considered

the

following

distance,

which

takes

into

account

only

the

structure

differences

between

two

many-body

systems

with

reactions:

Inspired

by

the

Lyapunov

Exponent

we

implemented

the

evolution

in

time

of

the

Structural

Lyapunov

function,

for

two

identical

systems

with

slightly

different

initial

conditions:

Migration

from.Net

Framework

to.Net

Framework

Implementation

of

new

chaos

analysis

tools:

Reverse

simulation

precision

test

Structural

Lyapunov

function.

we

applied

the

Chaos

Many-Body

Engine

to

some

nuclear

relativistic

collisions

at

A

GeV/c

(SKM

We

considered

also

some

first

tests

on

He+He

head-on

collisions

at

A

TeV/c

(choose

the

Simulation?

Collision

menu,

and

set

the

appropriate

parameters

However,

in

this

case,

more

complex

reaction

schemas

should

be

considered.

Further

investigation

on

higher

energies

is

currently

in

progress.

He+He

central,

head-on

collision

at

A

TeV/c

(example

of

use).

Restrictions:

The

reverse

simulation

precision

test

does

not

apply

for:

systems

with

reactions,

parallel

simulations,

and

Monte

Carlo

simulations.

Running

time:

quadratic

complexity.

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


UML for electronic systems design: a comprehensive overview UML has been widely accepted by the software community for several years. As electronic systems design can no longer be seen as an isolated hardware design activity, UML becomes of significant interest as a unification language for systems description combining both HW and SW components. This article provides a comprehensive view of the UML applied to System-on-Chip (SoC) and hardware-related embedded systems design. The modeling concepts in the UML language are first introduced, including major diagrams for the representation of the behavior and the structure of systems. The principles behind application specific UML customizations (UML profiles) are summarized, and several examples relevant for SoC design are given, such as the SysML (System Modeling Language) and the SoC Profile. Thereafter, various approaches associating UML with existing HW/SW design languages are presented. Beyond language aspects, the article addresses the question of UML-based design flows, and shows how UML can be applied concretely to the development of electronic-based systems. The current situation about tool support constitutes the last focus of the article. In particular, we show how UML tools can be combined with well-known simulation environments, such as MATLAB.

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

model-based design
system specification
modelling languages


GRIND-derived pharmacophore model for a series of alpha-tropanyl derivative ligands of the sigma-2 receptor A pharmacophore model for the sigma-2 receptor was derived using GRIND (GRid INdependent Descriptors) descriptors arising from a 3D-level procedure whose main prerogative is that it does not require ligand alignment. PLS models for sigma-2 affinity (sigrna-2 model: r(2) =0.83, q(2) =0.63) and sigi-na-1/sigma-2 selectivity (r(2)=0.72, q(2) =0.46) were derived using a series of a-tropanyl derivatives. The models provide pictures of the virtual receptor site (VRS) significant enough to attain a qualitative pharmacophoric representation of the sigma receptor. They give the internal geometrical relationships within two hydrophobic areas (hydrophobic-1 and -2) and a H-bond donor receptor region with which ligands establish non-covalent bonds.

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

alignment free 3d descriptors
grind descriptors
sigma ligands


From floated to conventional confidence intervals for the relative risks based on published doseresponse data A doseresponse meta-analysis of epidemiological studies can encounter different types of confidence intervals (floated vs. conventional). This paper illustrates how to back calculate conventional confidence intervals from a set of relative risks reported with floated confidence intervals or floated standard errors. Furthermore, we provide an implementation of the formulas in a user-friendly program developed for Stata software. I exemplify the point using published data about alcohol intake and endometrial cancer incidence from the Million Women Study.

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

floating absolute risk
confidence interval
meta-analysis


Short-term multi-objective optimization scheduling for cascaded hydroelectric plants with dynamic generation flow limit based on EMA and DEA Static generation flow strategy is good for single objective optimization. Dynamic generation flow strategy coordinates dynamically water consumption. DEA method is used to coordinate the performance of all objective functions. A hybrid method presents a new way to solve multi-objective optimization problems.

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

cascaded hydroelectric plants
dynamic generation flow limit

short term optimization scheduling
multi-objective optimization
electromagnetism-like algorithm
data envelopment analysis


Quarternary signal sets for digital communications with nonuniform sources This letter considers the signal design problems for quaternary digital communications with nonuniform sources. The designs are considered for both the average and equal energy constraints and for a two-dimensional signal space. A tight upper bound on the bit error probability (BEP) is employed as the design criterion. The optimal quarternary signal sets are presented and their BEP performance is compared with that of the standard QPSK and the binary signal set previously designed for nonuniform sources. Results shows that a considerable saving in the transmitted power can be achieved by the proposed average-energy signal set for a highly nonuniform source.

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

signal design
nonuniform sources
bit error probability


Mask-based second-generation connectivity and attribute filters Connected filters are edge-preserving morphological operators, which rely on a notion of connectivity. This is usually the standard 4 and 8-connectivity, which is often too rigid since it cannot model generalized groupings such as object clusters or partitions. In the set-theoretical framework of connectivity, these groupings are modeled by the more general second-generation connectivity. In this paper, we present both an extension of this theory, and provide an efficient algorithm based on the Max-Tree to compute attribute filters based on these connectivities. We first look into the drawbacks of the existing framework that separates clustering and partitioning and is directly dependent on the properties of a preselected operator. We then propose a new type of second-generation connectivity termed mask-based connectivity which eliminates all previous dependencies and extends the ways the image domain can be connected. A previously developed Dual-Input Max-Tree algorithm for area openings is adapted for the wider class of attribute filters on images characterized by second-generation connectivity. CPU-times for the new algorithm are comparable to the original algorithm, typically deviating less than 10 percent either way.

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

mathematical morphology
second-generation connectivity
connectivity class
dual input maxtree
attribute filter


automatic generation of an agent's basic behaviors The agent approach, as seen by [9], intends to design "intelligent" behaviors. Yet, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods often fail when confronted with complex tasks. We are therefore trying to develop a methodology for the automated design of agents (in the framework of Markov Decision Processes) in the case where the global task can be decomposed into simpler -possibly concurrent- sub-tasks. Our main idea is to automatically combine basic behaviors using RL methods. This led us to propose two complementary mechanisms presented in the current paper. The first mechanism builds a global policy using a weighted combination of basic policies (which are reusable), the weights being learned by the agent (using Simulated Annealing in our case). An agent designed this way is highly scalable as, without further refinement of the global behavior, it can automatically combine several instances of the same basic behavior to take into account concurrent occurences of the same subtask. The second mechanism aims at creating new basic behaviors for combination. It is based on an incremental learning method that builds on the approximate solution obtained through the combination of older behaviors.

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

markov decision processes
reinforcement learning

adaptation
complex environments
scalability


Spectral analysis with incomplete time series: an example from seismology A method for spectral analysis of nonequidistantly spaced time series is presented: the CLEAN algorithm performs an iterative deconvolution of the spectral window in the frequency domain. We demonstrate the capability of the method on synthetic data examples and apply CLEAN to seismological data, in an example where we seek temporal changes in elastic wave velocities. The observed periodic changes of phase differences consist of frequencies, which in principle can be explained by the influence of solid earth tides, but also by other effects with similar periodicities. Only CLEAN enabled us to enlarge the time window over missing data segments until the frequency resolution was accurate enough to rule out solid earth tides as cause for the observed periodic changes. A MATLAB version of the CLEAN algorithm is available from the authors, or from the IAMG server, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

missing data
clean algorithm
solid earth tides

fourier transform
lomb-scargle normalized periodogram
temporal variations


Unblinking eyes: the ethics of automating surveillance In this paper I critique the ethical implications of automating CCTV surveillance. I consider three modes of CCTV with respect to automation: manual (or non-automated), fully automated, and partially automated. In each of these I examine concerns posed by processing capacity, prejudice towards and profiling of surveilled subjects, and false positives and false negatives. While it might seem as if fully automated surveillance is an improvement over the manual alternative in these areas, I demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. In preference to the extremes I argue in favour of partial automation in which the system integrates a human CCTV operator with some level of automation. To assess the degree to which such a system should be automated I draw on the further issues of privacy and distance. Here I argue that the privacy of the surveilled subject can benefit from automation, while the distance between the surveilled subject and the CCTV operator introduced by automation can have both positive and negative effects. I conclude that in at least the majority of cases more automation is preferable to less within a partially automated system where this does not impinge on efficacy.

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

surveillance
automation
cctv
operator
prejudice
profiling
false positives
false negatives


On-line reliability prediction via dynamic failure rate model This paper presents a new dynamic reliability approach which is able to take into account the various operating conditions under which the considered system has evolved (past and present). To this end, we propose a differential model of failure rate, combined with the state space representation of the process, as well as a parameterization procedure. A numerical example shows the practical applicability of the proposed approach.

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

dynamic reliability models
operating functions
state-space representation


Unified Mathematical Programming Frameworks for Survivable Logical Topology Routing in IP-over-WDM Optical Networks The survivable logical topology routing problem in an IP-over-WDM optical network is to map each link (u; v) in the logical topology (at the IP layer) into a lightpath between the nodes u and v in the physical topology (at the optical layer) such that failure of a physical link does not cause the logical topology to become disconnected. It is assumed that both the physical and logical topologies are at least two-edge connected. For this problem, two lines of investigation have been pursued in the literature: one pioneered by Modiano and Narula-Tam [Proc. IEEE INFO-COM, 2001, p. 348] and the other pioneered by Kurant and Thiran [Proc. Int. Conf. on Broadband Networks (BROAD-NETS), 2004, p. 44]. Since then there has been a great deal of research on this problem. Most of the works have not considered limitations imposed on the routings by physical capacity limits and other metrics in addition to survivability. In this paper, we first introduce two concepts: weakly survivable routing and strongly survivable routing. We then provide mathematical programming formulations for two problems. The first problem is to design a survivable lightpath routing that maximizes the logical demand satisfaction before and after a physical link failure. The second problem is to add spare capacities to the physical links to guarantee routability of all logical link demands before and after a physical link failure. We conclude with heuristics that mitigate the computational complexity of the mathematical programming formulations and with simulation results comparing these heuristics with the mathematical programming formulations.

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

logical topology routing
mathematical programming
survivability


A framework for pricing government e-services Governments are in the early stages of providing constituents with information and services online over the Internet. E-government service decisions should be rooted in solid finance principles, such as efficiency, equity and revenue adequacy. Pricing decisions should be tailored to meet the demands of particular constituent groups and the revenue needs of government. By so doing, governments can more quickly and broadly expand online service delivery and increase the net benefits to stakeholders. By segmenting e-services into government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) transactions and applying different pricing schedules for e-services with different demand elasticity's, governments can increase overall consumer surplus, while generating additional revenue. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

e-government
e-service
e-commerce
price elasticity
public finance
user charges
market segmentation
price discrimination


View-Based Discriminative Probabilistic Modeling for 3D Object Retrieval and Recognition In view-based 3D object retrieval and recognition, each object is described by multiple views. A central problem is how to estimate the distance between two objects. Most conventional methods integrate the distances of view pairs across two objects as an estimation of their distance. In this paper, we propose a discriminative probabilistic object modeling approach. It builds probabilistic models for each object based on the distribution of its views, and the distance between two objects is defined as the upper bound of the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the corresponding probabilistic models. 3D object retrieval and recognition is accomplished based on the distance measures. We first learn models for each object by the adaptation from a set of global models with a maximum likelihood principle. A further adaption step is then performed to enhance the discriminative ability of the models. We conduct experiments on the ETH 3D object dataset, the National Taiwan University 3D model dataset, and the Princeton Shape Benchmark. We compare our approach with different methods, and experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach.

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

gaussian mixture model (gmm)
kullback-leibler (kl) divergence


A method of simple adaptive control for nonlinear systems using neural networks This paper presents a method of simple adaptive control (SAC) using neural networks for a class of nonlinear systems with bounded-input bounded-output (BIBO) and bounded nonlinearity. The control input is given by the sum of the output of the simple adaptive controller and the output of the neural network. The neural network is used to compensate for the nonlinearity of the plant dynamics that is not taken into consideration in the usual SAC. The role of the neural network is to construct a linearized model by minimizing the output error caused by nonlinearities in the control systems. Furthermore, convergence and stability analysis of the proposed method is performed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed through computer simulation.

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

bounded-input bounded-output (bibo)
nonlinear system


The

Tiled

Bitmap

Forensic

Analysis

Algorithm

Tampering

of

a

database

can

be

detected

through

the

use

of

cryptographically

strong

hash

functions.

Subsequently,

applied

forensic

analysis

algorithms

can

help

determine

when,

what,

and

perhaps

ultimately

who

and

why.

This

paper

presents

a

novel

forensic

analysis

algorithm,

the

Tiled

Bitmap

Algorithm,

which

is

more

efficient

than

prior

forensic

analysis

algorithms.

It

introduces

the

notion

of

a

candidate

set

(all

possible

locations

of

detected

tampering(s))

and

provides

a

complete

characterization

of

the

candidate

set

and

its

cardinality.

An

optimal

algorithm

for

computing

the

candidate

set

is

also

presented.

Finally,

the

implementation

of

the

Tiled

Bitmap

Algorithm

is

discussed,

along

with

a

comparison

to

other

forensic

algorithms

in

terms

of

space/time

complexity

and

cost.

An

example

of

candidate

set

generation

and

proofs

of

the

theorems

and

lemmata

and

of

algorithm

correctness

can

be

found

in

the

appendix,

which

can

be

found

on

the

Computer

Society

Digital

Library

at

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

database management
security, integrity, and protection
temporal databases


A transformational creativity tool to support chocolate designers ? A new formulation of combinational, exploratory and transformational creativity is presented. The creativity support system is based on the relationship between appropriateness and relevance. A novel and flavorful combination of chocolate and fruit can be suggested by the creativity support system.

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

cognigtive system
creativity support system


PARMON: a portable and scalable monitoring system for clusters Workstation/PC clusters have become a cost-effective solution for high performance computing. C-DAC's PARAM 10000 (or OpenFrame, internal code name) is a large cluster of high-performance workstations interconnected through low-latency and high bandwidth networks. The management and control of such a huge system is a tedious and challenging task since workstations/PCs are typically designed to work as a standalone system rather than part of a cluster We have designed and developed a tool called PARMON that allows effective monitoring and control of large clusters. It supports the monitoring of critical system resource activities and their utilization at three different levels: entire system, node and component level. It also allows the monitoring of multiple instances of the same component; for instance, multiple processors in SMP type cluster nodes. PARMON is a portable, flexible, interactive, scalable, location-transparent, and comprehensive environment based on client-server technology, The major components of PARMON are parmon-server-system resource activities and utilization information provider and parmon-client-a GUI based client responsible for interacting with parmon-server and users for data gathering in real-time and presenting information graphically for visualization. The client is developed as a Java application and the server is developed as a multithreaded server using C and POSIX/Solaris threads since Java does not support interfaces to access system internals, PARMON is regularly used to monitor PARAM 10000 supercomputer, a cluster of 48+ Ultra-4 workstations powered by the Solaris operating system. The recent popularity of Beowulf-class clusters (dedicated Linux clusters) in terms of price-performance ratio has motivated us to port PARMON to Linux (accomplished by porting system dependent portions of parmon-server). This enables management/monitoring of both Solaris and Linux-based clusters (federated clusters) through a single user interface. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

client-server
cluster monitoring
high-performance computing


Recognition of partially occluded and deformed binary objects A method dealing with recognition of partially occluded and affine transformed binary objects is presented. The method is designed for objects with smooth curved boundary. It divides an object into affine-invariant parts and uses modified radial vector for the description of parts. Object recognition is performed via string matching in the space of radial vectors. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

image recognition
partial occlusion
affine transformation
inflection point


Are We All Online Content Creators Now? Web 2.0 and Digital Divides Despite considerable interest in online content creation there has been comparatively little academic analysis of the distribution of such practices, both globally and among social groups within countries. Drawing on theoretical frameworks used in digital divide studies, I outline differences in motivation, access, skills, and usage that appear to underlie and perpetuate differences in online content creation practices between social groups. This paper brings together existing studies and new analyses of existing survey datasets. Together they suggest online content creators tend to be from relatively privileged groups and the content of online services based on their contributions may be biased towards what is most interesting or relevant to them. Some implications of these findings for policymakers and researchers are considered.

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

prosumer
produser
participation divide
convergence culture
digital literacy
creativity
web 2.0
wikipedia
self expression
citizen journalism


A new dynamic cellular learning automata-based skin detector Skin detection is a difficult and primary task in many image processing applications. Because of the diversity of various image processing tasks, there exists no optimum method that can perform properly for all applications. In this paper, we have proposed a novel skin detection algorithm that combines color and texture information of skin with cellular learning automata to detect skin-like regions in color images. Skin color regions are first detected, by using a committee structure, from among several explicit boundary skin models. Detected skin-color regions are then fed to a texture analyzer which extracts texture features via their color statistical properties and maps them to a skin probability map. This map is then used by cellular learning automata to adaptively make a decision on skin regions. Conducted experiments show that the proposed algorithm achieves the true positive rate of about 86.3% and the false positive rate of about 9.2% on Compaq skin database which shows its efficiency.

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

skin detection
cellular learning automata

skin map
skin color space
texture analysis