RORSIM: a warship collision avoidance 3D simulation designed to complement existing Junior Warfare Officer training Royal Navy Junior Warfare Officers (JWO) undergo a comprehensive training package in order to prepare them to be officers of the watch. One aspect of this training relates to their knowledge of the Rules of the Road or COLREGS; the rules for the manoeuvring and signalling that approaching vessels make in order to avoid collision. The training and assessment exercises undertaken predominantly use non-interactive static materials. These do not exercise the required skill in reconciling information from maritime charts, radar displays and out-of-the-window monitoring. Consequently, performance during assessment on the VR-based bridge simulator falls short. This paper describes The Rules of the Road SIMulator (RORSIM)a proof of concept interactive 3D (i3D) simulator developed to bridge the training gap between classroom teaching and VR bridge simulator assessment. RORSIMs differentiation and its key functionality in terms of visualisaton, physics/interaction and game mechanics are influenced by the consideration of pedagogical learning models during requirements capture. This capture is formalised by a Training Gap Use Casea graphical viewpoint using the Universal Modelling Language which can assist developers in requirements capture and development of i3D tools for existing training programmes. Key functionality, initial JWO feedback and a planned pilot study design are reported.

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

serious games
game-based training
virtual environments
defence


On preconditioning for a parallel solution of the Richards equation In this paper, we present a class of preconditioning methods for a parallel solution of the three-dimensional Richards equation. The preconditioning methods Jacobi scaling, block-Jacobi, incomplete lowerupper, incomplete Cholesky and algebraic multigrid were applied in combination with a parallel conjugate gradient solver and tested for robustness and convergence using two model scenarios. The first scenario was an infiltration into initially dry, sandy soil discretised in 500,000 nodes. The second scenario comprised spatially distributed soil properties using 275,706 numerical nodes and atmospheric boundary conditions. Computational results showed a high efficiency of the nonlinear parallel solution procedure for both scenarios using up to 64 processors. Using 32 processors for the first scenario reduced the wall clock time to slightly more than 1% of the single processor run. For scenario 2 the use of 64 processors reduces the wall clock time to slightly more than 20% of the 8 processors wall clock time. The difference in the efficiency of the various preconditioning methods is moderate but not negligible. The use of the multigrid preconditioning algorithm is recommended, since on average it performed best for both scenarios.

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

three-dimensional
multi-processor
unsaturated flow
water flow
preconditioner


how users repeat their actions on computers: principles for design of history mechanisms Several striking characteristics of how often people repeat their actions on interactive systems are abstracted from usage data gleaned from many users of different classes over a period of months. Reformulated as empirically-based general principles, these provide design guidelines for history mechanisms specifically and modern user interfaces generally. Particular attention is paid to the repetition of command lines, and to the probability distribution of the next line given a sequential history list of previous ones. Several ways are examined of conditioning this distribution to enhance predictive power. A brief case study of actual use of a widely-used history system is also included.

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

attention use systems users design data probability power general

histories
case studies
interactive system
computation
user interface
distributed
design guideline
action
predict
class


Multi-criteria expertness based cooperative method for SARSA and eligibility trace algorithms Temporal difference and eligibility traces are of the most common approaches to solve reinforcement learning problems. However, except in the case of Q-learning, there are no studies about using these two approaches in a cooperative multi-agent learning setting. This paper addresses this shortcoming by using temporal difference and eligibility traces as the core learning method in multi-criteria expertness based cooperative learning (MCE). The experiments, performed on a sample maze world, show the results of an empirical study on temporal difference and eligibility trace methods in a MCE based cooperative learning setting.

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

cooperative learning
reinforcement learning
temporal difference
eligibility traces

multi-criteria expertness
knowledge transfer


Identifying criteria for multimodel software process improvement solutions - based on a review of current problems and initiatives In this article, we analyze current initiatives in multimodel software process improvement and identify criteria for multimodel solutions. With multimodel, we mean the simultaneous usage of more than one quality approach (e.g. standards, methods, techniques to improve software processes). This paper discusses first the current problems regarding the use of multiple software quality approaches. Subsequently, multimodel initiatives are categorized into three different groups, respectively: quality approach harmonization, quality approach integration, and quality approach mapping. Based on an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of current multimodel initiatives in these three classes, we derive a set of criteria, which can provide a basis for multimodel software process improvement solutions. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

multimodel
software process improvement
integration
harmonization
mapping
quality approach


a symmetric transformation for 3-body potential molecular dynamics using force-decomposition in a heterogeneous distributed environment Evaluating the Force Matrix constitutes the most computationally intensive part of a Classical Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation. In three-body MD simulations, the total energy of the system is determined by the energy of every unique triple in the system and the force matrix is three-dimensional. The execution time of a three-body MD algorithm is thus proportional to the cube of the number of atoms in the system. Fortunately, there exist symmetries in the Force Matrix that can be exploited to improve the running time of the algorithm. While this optimization is straight forward to implement in the case of sequential code, it has proven to be nontrivial for parallel code even in a homogeneous environment. In this paper, we present two force matrix transformations that are capable of exploiting the symmetries in a 3-body force matrix in both a homogeneous and a heterogeneous environment while balancing the load among all the participating processors. The first transformation distributes the number of interactions to be computed uniformly among all the slices of the force matrix along any of the axes. The transformed matrix can be scheduled using any well known heterogeneous slice-level scheduling technique. The second transformation distributes interactions to be computed uniformly over the entire volume of the force matrix allowing us to perform a block decomposition of the force matrix. The transformed force matrix can be scheduled by any block level scheduling algorithm. We also derive theoretical bounds for efficiency and load balance for our transformations and prove some interesting and useful properties of our transformations and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages. The performance of an MPI implementation of the transformations is studied in terms of the Step Time Variation Ratio (STVR) in a homogeneous and heterogeneous environment.

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


Analysis of TDOA and TDOA/SS Based Geolocation Techniques in a Non-Line-of-Sight Environment The performance analysis of wireless geolocation in a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environment is a very important issue. Since Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) determines the physical impossibility of the variance of an unbiased estimator being less than the bound, many studies presented the performance analysis in terms of CRLB. Several CRLBs for time-of-arrival (TOA), pseudo-range TOA, angle-of-arrival (AOA), and signal strength (SS) based positioning methods have been derived for NLOS environment. However, the performance analysis of time difference of arrival (TDOA) and TDOA/SS based geolocation techniques in a NLOS environment is still an opening issue. This paper derives the CRLBs of TDOA and TDOA/SS based positioning methods for NLOS environment. In addition, theoretical analysis proves that the derived CRLB for TDOA is the same as that of pseudo-range TOA and the TDOA/SS scheme has a lower CRLB than the TDOA (or SS) scheme.

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

cramer-rao lower bound (crlb)
hybrid schemes
mobile location
non-line-of-sight (nlos)
time difference of arrival (tdoa)


An improved scheme for identifying fault zone in a series compensated transmission line using undecimated wavelet transform and Chebyshev Neural Network Improved fault zone identification scheme for series compensated transmission line is developed. Application of the UDWT compare to DWT found advantageous. Advantages gained by the ChNN as a classifier compare to other AI techniques have been discussed in detail. Effect of measurement noise on performance of the algorithm is also investigated. Use of half cycle post fault current data only improves speed of operation.

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

fault zone identification
series compensated transmission line
chebyshev neural network


A Blind Watermarking Scheme Using New Nontensor Product Wavelet Filter Banks As an effective method for copyright protection of digital products against illegal usage, watermarking in wavelet domain has recently received considerable attention due to the desirable multiresolution property of wavelet transform. In general, images can be represented with different resolutions by the wavelet decomposition, analogous to the human visual system (HVS). Usually, human eyes are insensitive to image singularities revealed by different high frequency subbands of wavelet decomposed images. Hence, adding watermarks into these singularities will improve the imperceptibility that is a desired property of a watermarking scheme. That is, the capability for revealing singularities of images plays a key role in designing wavelet-based watermarking algorithms. Unfortunately, the existing wavelets have a limited ability in revealing singularities in different directions. This motivates us to construct new wavelet filter banks that can reveal singularities in all directions. In this paper, we utilize special symmetric matrices to construct the new nontensor product wavelet filter banks, which can capture the singularities in all directions. Empirical studies will show their advantages of revealing singularities in comparison with the existing wavelets. Based upon these new wavelet filter banks, we, therefore, propose a modified significant difference watermarking algorithm. Experimental results show its promising results.

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

nontensor product wavelet filter
singularities
watermarking


Optimal throughput-delay scaling in wireless networks - Part I: The fluid model Gupta and Kumar (2000) introduced a random model to study throughput scaling in a wireless network with static nodes, and showed that the throughput per source-destination pair is Theta (1/root n log n). Grossglauser and Tse (2001) showed that when nodes are mobile it is possible to have a constant throughput scaling per source-destination pair. In most applications, delay is also a key metric of network performance. It is expected that high throughput is achieved at the cost of high delay and that one can be improved at the cost of the other. The focus of this paper is on studying this tradeoff for wireless networks in a general framework. Optimal throughput-delay scaling laws for static and mobile wireless networks are established. For static networks, it is shown that the optimal throughput-delay tradeoff is given by D (n) = Theta (nT(n)), where T(n) and D(n) are the throughput and delay scaling, respectively. For mobile networks, a simple proof of the throughput scaling of e(l) for the Grossglauser-Tse scheme is given and the associated delay scaling is shown to be 19 (n log n). The optimal throughput-delay tradeoff for mobile networks is also established. To capture physical movement in the real world, a random-walk (RW) model for node mobility is assumed. It is shown that for throughput of 0 (1/root/n log n), which can also be achieved in static networks, the throughput-delay tradeoff is the same as in static networks, i.e., D(n) = Theta(nT(n)). Surprisingly, for almost any throughput of a higher order, the delay is shown to be Theta (n log n), which is the delay for throughput of Theta(1). Our result, thus, suggests that the use of mobility to increase throughput, even slightly, in real-world networks would necessitate an abrupt and very large increase in delay.

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

scaling laws
throughput scaling
wireless networks

queueing theory
random walks
throughput-delay tradeoff


Highly responsive and efficient QoS routing using pre- and on-demand computations along with a new normal measure Multi-constrained path (MCP) selection is one of the great challenges that QoS routing (QoSR) faces. To address it in an efficient and highly responsive manner, we propose a new QoSR algorithm, namely NM_MCP (normal measure-based multiple constrained path). Using the Dijkstras algorithm with respect to each link metric, NM_MCP pre-computes k primary paths in advance, where k is the number of link weights. When a routing request arrives, NM_MCP executes a modified version of the Dijkstras algorithm using a newly proposed, normal-measure-based nonlinear cost function. Extensive simulations show that NM_MCP achieves higher success rate in finding feasible paths with less computational cost than existing algorithms. To further improve the performance, we incorporate Pareto and nonlinear look-ahead mechanisms into the algorithm.

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

pareto optimal
multi-objective optimization


A tour of Tempo: a program specializer for the C language Specialization is an automatic approach to customizing a program with respect to configuration values. In this paper, we present a survey of Tempo, a specializer for the C language. Tempo offers specialization at both compile time and run time, and both program and data specialization. To control the specialization process, Tempo provides the program developer with a declarative language to describe specialization opportunities for a given program. The functionalities and features of Tempo have been driven by the needs of practical applications. Tempo has been successfully applied to a variety of realistic programs in areas such as operating systems and networking. We give an overview of the design of Tempo and of its use in specializing realistic applications. (C) 2004 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B O O O O O O O

program specialization
program analysis
imperative language


Using string matching to detect video transitions The detection of shot boundaries in videos captures the structure of the image sequences by the identification of transitional effects. This task is important in the video indexing and retrieval domain. The video slice or visual rhythm is a single two-dimensional image sampling that has been used to detect several types of video events, including transitions. We use the longest common subsequence (LCS) between two strings to transform the video slice into one-dimensional signals obtaining a highly simplified representation of the video content. We also developed a chain of mathematical morphology operations over these signals leading to the detection of the most frequent video transitions, namely, cut, fade, and wipe. The algorithms are tested with success with various genres of videos.

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


nearest neighbor sampling for better defect prediction An important step in building effective predictive models applies one or more sampling techniques. Traditional sampling techniques include random, stratified, systemic, and clustered. The problem with these techniques is that they focus on the class attribute , rather than the non-class attributes. For example, if a test instance's nearest neighbor is from the opposite class of the training set, then it seems doomed to misclassification. To illustrate this problem, this paper conducts 20 experiments on five different NASA defect datasets (CM1, JM1, KC1, KC2, PC1) using two different learners (J48 and Nave Bayes). Each data set is divided into 3 groups, a training set, and "nice/nasty" neighbor test sets. Using a nearest neighbor approach, "Nice neighbors" consist of those test instances closest to class training instances. "Nasty neighbors" are closest to opposite class training instances. The "Nice" experiments average 94 percent accuracy and the "Nasty" experiments average 20 percent accuracy. Based on these results a new nearest neighbor sampling technique is proposed.

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

nearest neighbor analysis
nasa data repository
decision trees
empirical software engineering


an integrity constraints driven system for updating spatial databases This paper describes a prototypal system which has been implemented in order to explore the possibility of using topological integrity constraints as interactive drivers to support spatial database updates. The idea of using constraints to drive updates is applied also in traditional (non-spatial) databases; for example, in order to preserve referential integrity, the user can be forced to select a value in a given set, instead of permitting him to write an arbitrary value and then checking that the value satisfies the constraint. This idea seems to be much more relevant in spatial databases, both because spatial data possesses a much richer set of constraints, and because spatial updates are more complex and error-prone than traditional, alphanumeric updates. The paper first defines formally a rather general spatial database environment with integrity constraints, then describes a prototypal system which has been built in order to explore the practical effectiveness of the general idea (the feasibility includes performance, because the constraints are used during the interaction with the user). The prototype which has been implemented is capable of driving updates on simple polygons and uses a restricted class of integrity constraints; however, it is sufficiently powerful to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.

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


A Lagrangian augmented Hopfield network for mixed integer non-linear programming problems The augmented Lagrangian function has better convergence and solution properties for mixed integer non-linear programming problems than either standard Lagrangian function, or penalty function approaches. The Hopfield neural network based approaches that have been proposed to solve this function have used continuous neurons to represent discrete variables. The augmented Hopfield network has both discrete and continuous neurons. Here a Lagrangian augmented Hopfield network (LAHN) is constructed by including augmented Lagrangian multiplier neurons in the augmented Hopfield network. This new network is applied to the generator scheduling problem (a mixed integer non-linear programming problem) and results illustrate that improved solutions are obtained.

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

hopfield neural network
augmented lagrangian


Enhancing visitors experience in art museums using mobile technologies Mobile technologies are present in our daily life and the functionality of these devices should not be restricted to support phone calls or to organize peoples work. We live in a world of connectivity and mobile devices allow users to access a great variety of resources using IR, Wi-Fi, RFID, Bluetooth, GPS, GPRS, and so on. In particular, PDA and smartphones are being successfully applied to cultural heritages as an alternative to traditional audio-guides. These electronic guides are offered to users in order to make the visit to the exhibition more pleasant and effective. Our research group has been working in the design and development of mobile software for art museums based on PDA for the past four years. During this period two systems were developed. This paper summarizes the basic features of both applications. The first one is currently operating in a real museum. These applications have been designed by applying a user-centered development process and the main goal of these systems is to improve visitors satisfaction by using the PDA while visiting the museum. As the result of usability evaluations performed with real users on the first application, the definition, implementation and evaluation of a new system was conceived. Moreover, the paper describes how personalization issues influenced the development of the system. Location-awareness, internationalization, HCI patterns, language adaptation to visitors and accessibility issues were the most important contributions to personalize the application. The final evaluation performed on the system has proved that the main goals initially stated were successfully achieved.

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

user centered design
location-awareness
ubiquitous computing
user centered development


Co-Abstraction of Shape Collections We present a co-abstraction method that takes as input a collection of 3D objects, and produces a mutually consistent and individually identity-preserving abstraction of each object. In general, an abstraction is a simpler version of a shape that preserves its main characteristics. We hypothesize, however, that there is no single abstraction of an object. Instead, there is a variety of possible abstractions, and an admissible one can only be chosen conjointly with other objects' abstractions. To this end, we introduce a new approach that hierarchically generates a spectrum of abstractions for each model in a shape collection. Given the spectra, we compute the appropriate abstraction level for each model such that shape simplification and inter-set consistency are collectively maximized, while individual shape identities are preserved.

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

co-abstraction
mutual abstraction
shape character extraction


Evaluation of the performance of a passiveactive vibration isolation system Effects of actuator output constraints on feed-forward active isolation systems. Modified cost functions are proposed to limit control force magnitudes. Maximum control force is required at frequency corresponding to rigid body mode. Constrained control systems can only achieve 5-10 dB power flow reductions.

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

passiveactive isolation
transfer matrix
control force constraint


A note on communicating between information systems based on including degrees In order to study the communication between information systems, Gong and Xiao (2010, International journal of general systems, 39, 189-206) proposed the concept of general relation mappings based on including degrees. Some properties and the extension for fuzzy information systems of the general relation mappings have been investigated there. In this paper, we point out by counterexamples that several assertions (Lemmas 3.1 and 3.2, Theorems 4.1 and 4.3) in the aforementioned work are not true in general.

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


Artificial Intelligence approaches for the generation and assessment of believable human-like behaviour in virtual characters Analysis of the believability assessment in video game characters. Differences between First-person and Third-person assessment in Turing test. Cognitive modelling of human-like behaviour generation in video games. Application of Machine Consciousness research to human-like behaviour generation. Results up to 47% of humanness in video games characters.

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

human-like behaviour
non-player characters
cognitive architectures
genetic algorithm
artificial neural networks


Access Control Management for SCADA Systems The information technology revolution has transformed all aspects of our society including critical infrastructures and led a significant shift from their old and disparate business models based oil proprietary and legacy environments to more open and consolidated ones. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have been widely used not only for industrial processes but also for some experimental facilities. Due to the nature of open environments, managing SCADA systems should meet various security requirements since system administrators need to deal with a large number of entities and functions involved in critical infrastructures. In this paper. we identify necessary access control requirements in SCADA systems and articulate access control policies for the simulated SCADA systems. We also attempt to analyze and realize those requirements and policies in the context of role-based access control that is suitable for simplifying administrative tasks in large scale enterprises.

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

supervisory control and data acquisition (scada)


Multiple peer-assessment modes to augment online student question-generation processes In view of the current theoretical and empirical support for a student-generated questions approach to learning along with the advantageous features of network technology, several online student question-generation learning systems with a peer-assessment component have been developed. Despite this, all existing systems are limited in terms of the types of communication modes permissible for peer-assessment. Online discourse experience and the quantity and quality of interaction may vary as a result of the specific interaction mode students are exposed to. Because of this and the fact that versatile learning spaces are both possible and potentially desirable during the various stages of learning and teaching, multiple peer-assessment modes were created, and the overall attitudes of learners toward peer-assessment as well as their preferences toward respective peer-assessment modes were examined. The collected data confirmed the perceived usefulness of peer-assessment for developing higher-order thinking and cognitive elaboration. Support was demonstrated for student question-generation activities, for which learners typically have limited prior experience. Additionally, in light of the apparent overwhelming preference for and superiority of the more interactive two-way and multi-way modes over the one-way mode and the perceived learning potential of these modes, it is suggested that designers of similar systems should consider their inclusion. Finally, even though multi-way learning was found to be both the preferred and most supportive mode for learning, students also revealed distinct reasons for their preferences for respective interaction modes. In general, these reasons supported the premise that multiple peer-assessment modes are needed in order to accommodate individual preferences and needs. Suggestions and implications for instructional implementation, system development, and future studies are offered. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

applications in subject areas
computer-mediated communication
cooperative/collaborative learning
teaching/learning strategies


A study of the spontaneous air flow through a moving porous medium When a layer of porous material such as the felt moves with respect to the surrounding air, the induced pressure difference will drive the air through the moving porous material. In many industrial applications including the paper machine drying pocket ventilation, this spontaneous air-flow phenomenon is significant and needs to be taken into consideration in the design process. This paper addresses the issues such as the velocity distribution along the moving felt and how the flow rate through the porous material correlates with the felt permeability and thickness. In particular, computational approaches are compared with existing experimental results and validated with an analytical model.

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


A three-state recursive sequential Bayesian algorithm for biosurveillance A serial signal detection algorithm is developed to monitor pre-diagnosis and medical diagnosis data pertaining to biosurveillance. The algorithm is three-state sequential, based on Bayesian thinking. It accounts for non-stationarity, irregularity and seasonality, and captures serial structural details of an epidemic curve. At stage n n , a trichotomous variable governing the states of an epidemic is defined, and a prior distribution for time-indexed serial readings is set. The technicality consists of finding a posterior state probability based on the observed data history, using the posterior as a prior distribution for stage n+1 n + 1 and sequentially monitoring surges in posterior state probabilities. A sensitivity analysis for validation is conducted and analytical formulas for the predictive distribution are supplied for error management purposes. The method is applied to syndromic surveillance data gathered in the United States (US) District of Columbia metropolitan area.

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

bayesian sequential update
dynamic control


Using free augmented reality app in teaching programs for children with disabilities Mobile devices with free app could design teaching materials. Augmented reality techniques will transform the display method to help children to do the task by themselves. Data showed that the participants could finish the task via augmented reality (AR) app support.

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

augmented reality
mobile
free app
children


Random walk with restart: fast solutions and applications How closely related are two nodes in a graph? How to compute this score quickly, on huge, disk-resident, real graphs? Random walk with restart (RWR) provides a good relevance score between two nodes in a weighted graph, and it has been successfully used in numerous settings, like automatic captioning of images, generalizations to the "connection subgraphs", personalized PageRank, and many more. However, the straightforward implementations of RWR do not scale for large graphs, requiring either quadratic space and cubic pre-computation time, or slow response time on queries. We propose fast solutions to this problem. The heart of our approach is to exploit two important properties shared by many real graphs: (a) linear correlations and (b) block-wise, community-like structure. We exploit the linearity by using low-rank matrix approximation, and the community structure by graph partitioning, followed by the Sherman-Morrison lemma for matrix inversion. Experimental results on the Corel image and the DBLP dabasets demonstrate that our proposed methods achieve significant savings over the straightforward implementations: they can save several orders of magnitude in pre-computation and storage cost, and they achieve up to 150 x speed up with 90%+ quality preservation.

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

relevance score
random walk with restart


specifying and implementing ui data bindings with active operations Modern GUI toolkits propose the use of declarative data bindings to link the domain data to their presentations. These approaches work fine for defining simple bindings, but require an increasing programming effort as soon as the bindings become more complex. In this paper, we propose the use of active operations for specifying and implementing UI data bindings to tackle this issue. We demonstrate that the proposed approach goes beyond the usual declarative data bindings by combining the simplicity of the declarative approaches with the expressiveness of active operations.

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


Classification Tree for Risk Assessment in Patients Suffering From Congestive Heart Failure via Long-Term Heart Rate Variability This study aims to develop an automatic classifier for risk assessment in patients suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF). The proposed classifier separates lower risk patients from higher risk ones, using standard long-term heart rate variability (HRV) measures. Patients are labeled as lower or higher risk according to the New York Heart Association classification (NYHA). A retrospective analysis on two public Holter databases was performed, analyzing the data of 12 patients suffering from mild CHF (NYHA I and II), labeled as lower risk, and 32 suffering from severe CHF (NYHA III and IV), labeled as higher risk. Only patients with a fraction of total heartbeats intervals (RR) classified as normal-to-normal (NN) intervals (NN/RR) higher than 80% were selected as eligible in order to have a satisfactory signal quality. Classification and regression tree (CART) was employed to develop the classifiers. A total of 30 higher risk and 11 lower risk patients were included in the analysis. The proposed classification trees achieved a sensitivity and a specificity rate of 93.3% and 63.6%, respectively, in identifying higher risk patients. Finally, the rules obtained by CART are comprehensible and consistent with the consensus showed by previous studies that depressed HRV is a useful tool for risk assessment in patients suffering from CHF.

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

congestive heart failure (chf)
data mining
decision tree
heart rate variability (hrv)


The electron scattering at grain boundaries in tungsten films The impact of electron scattering at grain boundaries in polycrystalline tungsten (W) thin films is studied with a unique approach. Two nominally 300nm-thick films, a (110)-oriented epitaxial and a (110)-textured polycrystalline W film, were prepared in identical fabrication conditions except for the substrates, i.e., Al2O3 substrate for the epitaxial film and thermally oxidized Si substrate for the polycrystalline film. The significantly larger dimension of the film thickness than the electron mean free path in W allows the contribution of surface scattering to be negligible, and the additional resistivity for the polycrystalline W film relative to the epitaxial film is attributed to grain boundary scattering. The MayadasShatzkes (MS) grain boundary scattering model is employed for quantitative analyses, with the grain boundary reflection coefficient determined to be 0.420.02 and 0.400.02 at 293K and 4.2K, respectively, using the measured lateral grain size of 1197nm. Based on the grain boundary reflection coefficient determined in this study and the surface scattering coefficient (p=0.11) of the FuchsSondheimer model given elsewhere, the resistivity of W lines having line-widths less than 10nm is predicted to be lower than that of Cu lines.

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


Multimedia access to mobile environments using indoor semantic maps In this paper, we present a semantic map model in order to represent multimedia environments using mobile devices. Our approach makes it possible defining indoor maps and locating the objects of interest. This model is based on an Ontology, which defines both semantic qualities and graphic forms of the objects that exist in the multimedia environment (rooms, doors, cameras, ...). The semantic of the maps enables to query and to reason the map content automatically. For example, in this work, we solve the indoor routing adding a heuristic that exploits the topology of the interior spaces, which has been evaluated by obtaining a significant improvement in indoor spaces. In addition, the proposed Ontology includes the location and the remote services of the multimedia resources, such as ambient cameras and microphones. Thus, users can access in real time to multimedia resources through the maps displayed on mobile devices. The mobile applications have been developed, tested and measured both in light devices and hand-held computers.

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

semantic maps
multimedia resources
mobile devices
routing


Gait identification using shadow biometrics We propose a novel biometrics method based on shadows (shadow biometrics, SB) and introduce a SB-based person identification method for a vision-based surveillance system. Conventional biometric identification based on body movements, as is the case in gait recognition, uses cameras that provide a good view of entire human body. Aerial search and surveillance systems only see the human body from top view with a smaller cross-section and with less details than seen in side views, which is further aggravated by the lower resolution associated with this imagery. Shadows, i.e. body projections due to the Sun, or artificial lights at night, can offer body biometrics information that cannot be directly seen in body top view. In this paper we use SB for person identification, automatically extracting shadows in captured video images, and processing them to extract gait features, further analyzed by spherical harmonics. We demonstrate shadow-based person identification in experiments inside a building using artificial light and outside under the Sun. The introduced method using spherical harmonics outperforms methods based on Fourier transform, gait energy image, and active energy image. Furthermore, we show that the combination of body and shadow areas, as seen from an oblique camera on an upper floor of a building, has better performance than using body only or shadow only information.

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

shadow biometrics
gait
person identification
spherical harmonics


3d visualization of integrated process information Industrial plants are complex and consist of a large number of components. Human operators are responsible for operating these processes. Operators use the interface daily and strongly depend on information from the system and the possibilities to execute control commands in the system. This interactive demonstration uses a 3D process model of the plant area as the user interface for control systems. This interface supports extended information integration and remote collaboration.

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

spatial visualization
operator interfaces
industrial control systems
collaboration support tools
3d interfaces


A secure agent-based framework for internet trading in mobile computing environments Most of the current Internet trading frameworks, in particular their negotiation and payment phases, are intended for customers frequently connected to the Internet during an entire transaction. This requirement cannot be easily met in the high communication cost and/or low bandwidth settings, typically found in mobile computing environments. Based on the software agent paradigm, a new secure agent-based framework for Internet trading in mobile computing environments is proposed in this paper. The framework is composed of two new protocols. One is the agent-based auction-like negotiation protocol, another is the agent-based payment protocol. Both of them are dedicated to solve the trade problems of Internet trading in mobile computing environments and ensured to be safe by cryptographic technologies. The combination of the two secure protocols constitutes an integrative solution for Internet trading in mobile computing environments.

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

electronic commerce
mobile agent
auction-like negotiation
secure electronic transaction (set)
signcryption


a new power-area efficient 4-pam full-clock cmos pre-emphasis transmitter for 10gb/s serial links A new area-power efficient 4-PAM full-clock pre-emphasis CMOS transmitter for 10-Gb/s serial links is proposed. The transmitter reduces the chip area and power consumption by minimizing the number of DACs for 4-PAM pre-emphasis and the DC power consumption of each DAC. The number of DACs is set by the number of pre-emphasis taps and is independent of the number of parallel bits. The power consumption of each DAC is lowered by modulating the DC current in accordance with the level of output currents. A new full-clock multiplexing scheme is proposed to double the data rate of the widely used half-clock scheme without increasing the clock frequency. The transmitter is implemented in TSMC 0.18?m 1.8V CMOS technology and analyzed using SpectreRFM from Cadence Design Systems with BSIM3.3V transistor models and microstrip lines for channels. Simulation results are presented.

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


Production lot size problem with failure in repair and backlogging derived without derivatives Conventional approaches for solving the production lot size problems are by using the differential calculus on the long-run average production-inventory cost function with the need to prove optimality first. This note presents a simple algebraic method to replace the use of calculus for determining the optimal lot size. This study refers to the approach used by Grubbstrm and Erdem [Grubbstrm, R.W., Erdem, A., 1999. The EOQ with backlogging derived without derivatives, International Journal of Production Economics 59, 529530] and extends it to the model examined by Chiu and Chiu [Chiu, S.W., Chiu, Y.-S.P., 2006. Mathematical modelling for production system with backlogging and failure in repair. Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research 65(6), 499506]. This paper demonstrates that the lot size solution and the optimal production-inventory cost of an imperfect EMQ model can be derived without derivatives. As a result, the practitioners or students with little or no knowledge of calculus may be able to manage or understand with ease the realistic production systems.

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

production
optimal lot size
failure in repair
backlogging
emq


Bisecting a 4-connected graph with three resource sets Let G=(V,E) G = ( V , E ) be an undirected graph with a node set V and an arc set E. G has k pairwise disjoint subsets T1,T2,,Tk T 1 , T 2 , , T k of nodes, called resource sets, where |Ti| | T i | is even for each i. The partition problem with k resource sets asks to find a partition V1 V 1 and V2 V 2 of the node set V such that the graphs induced by V1 V 1 and V2 V 2 are both connected and |V1?Ti|=|V2?Ti|=|Ti|/2 | V 1 ? T i | = | V 2 ? T i | = | T i | / 2 holds for each i=1,2,,k i = 1 , 2 , , k . The problem of testing whether such a bisection exists is known to be NP-hard even in the case of k=1 k = 1 . On the other hand, it is known that if G is (k+1) ( k + 1 ) -connected for k=1,2 k = 1 , 2 , then a bisection exists for any given resource sets, and it has been conjectured that for k?3 k ? 3 , a (k+1) ( k + 1 ) -connected graph admits a bisection. In this paper, we show that for k=3 k = 3 , the conjecture does not hold, while if G is 4-connected and has K4 K 4 as its subgraph, then a bisection exists and it can be found in O(|V|3log|V|) O ( | V | 3 log | V | ) time. Moreover, we show that for an arc-version of the problem, the (k+1) ( k + 1 ) -edge-connectivity suffices for k=1,2,3. k = 1 , 2 , 3 .

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

graph algorithm
graph partition problem
graph connectivity
embedding


Minimizing the total completion time in single-machine scheduling with step-deteriorating jobs In this paper, we study a scheduling problem of minimizing the total completion time on a single machine where the processing time of a job is a step function of its starting time and a due date that is common to all jobs. This problem has been shown to be NP-hard in the literature. To derive optimal solutions from a practical aspect, we develop a lower bound and two elimination rules to design branch-and-bound algorithms. Through computational experiments, we show that the proposed properties are effective in curtailing unnecessary explorations during the solution-finding process, and that the synergy of these properties can solve problems with up to 100 jobs in a few seconds. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

O O B I I 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

single-machine scheduling
step deterioration
branch-and-bound algorithm


Analysis of random sleep scheme for wireless sensor networks Energy conserving design is the research focus to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. A simple and effective way to save energy is to place sensor nodes in sleep mode periodically. However, sleep mode corresponds to low power consumption as well as to reduced network capacity and increased latency. This paper develops an analytical framework to study the interaction between random sleep scheme and network performance. Our framework consists of the queueing model for sensor node and performance model for the whole network. We derived the network throughput, power consumption and packet delivery delay. Our analytical models shed light on the guidelines to design random sleep scheme and enable us to explore the trade-offs existing between sensor sleep/active dynamics and those performance measures.

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

random sleep scheme
power consumption
throughput
packet delivery delay


Creases and boundary conditions for subdivision curves Our goal is to find subdivision rules at creases in arbitrary degree subdivision for piece-wise polynomial curves, but without introducing new control points e.g. by knot insertion. Crease rules are well understood for low degree (cubic and lower) curves. We compare three main approaches: knot insertion, ghost points, and modifying subdivision rules. While knot insertion and ghost points work for arbitrary degrees for B-splines, these methods introduce unnecessary (ghost) control points. The situation is not so simple in modifying subdivision rules. Based on subdivision and subspace selection matrices, a novel approach to finding boundary and sharp subdivision rules that generalises to any degree is presented. Our approach leads to new higher-degree polynomial subdivision schemes with crease control without introducing new control points.

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

subdivision curve
b-spline
boundary condition


Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis for bankruptcy prediction This paper uses Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) for the prediction of the 2008 USA banking crisis. PLS regression transforms a set of correlated explanatory variables into a new set of uncorrelated variables, which is appropriate in the presence of multicollinearity. PLS-DA performs a PLS regression with a dichotomous dependent variable. The performance of this technique is compared to the performance of 8 algorithms widely used in bankruptcy prediction. In terms of accuracy, precision, F-score, Type I error and Type II error, results are similar; no algorithm outperforms the others. Behind performance, each algorithm assigns a score to each bank and classifies it as solvent or failed. These results have been analyzed by means of contingency tables, correlations, cluster analysis and reduction dimensionality techniques. PLS-DA results are very close to those obtained by Linear Discriminant Analysis and Support Vector Machine.

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

financial ratios
solvency
data mining
pls-da


Addressing health disparities in Hispanic breast cancer: accurate and inexpensive sequencing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 Germline mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes account for 2025% of inherited breast cancers and about 10% of all breast cancer cases. Detection of BRCA mutation carriers can lead to therapeutic interventions such as mastectomy, oophorectomy, hormonal prevention therapy, improved screening, and targeted therapies such as PARP-inhibition. We estimate that African Americans and Hispanics are 45 times less likely to receive BRCA screening, despite having similar mutation frequencies as non-Jewish Caucasians, who have higher breast cancer mortality. To begin addressing this health disparity, we initiated a nationwide trial of BRCA testing of Latin American women with breast cancer. Patients were recruited through community organizations, clinics, public events, and by mail and Internet. Subjects completed the consent process and questionnaire, and provided a saliva sample by mail or in person. DNA from 120 subjects was used to sequence the entirety of BRCA1 and BRCA2 coding regions and splice sites, and validate pathogenic mutations, with a total material cost of $85/subject. Subjects ranged in age from 23 to 81 years (mean age, 51years), 6% had bilateral disease, 57% were ER/PR+, 23% HER2+, and 17% had triple-negative disease.

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

hispanic populations
genetic testing
underserved populations


the story of a working workflow management system This work presents experiences with the adopting of a workflow management system in a large financial institution. We describe the gradual evolution of a traditional work process, from manual to computational regulation of coordination. The study shows that computational workflows may increase labor productivity remarkably and in general have significant economic benefits, but also that to make current workflow technologies yield such results requires unorthodox twists and tweaks in the workflow design to allow for worker control and process overview. The paper argues that workflow technology is now at a stage where the contribution of CSCW is obviously needed.

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

service oriented architecture (soa)
bpel
case study
workflow management (wfm)
business process management (bpm)


Exploring the potential for using the grid to support health impact assessment modelling This paper explores the potential use of grid technology in healthcare, from the perspective of a European health authority in a Regional Healthcare Network (RHCN) seeking to model the effects of a proposed hospital closure programme. The paper reviews the strategic implications of using a grid-based application to enable the collation and analyses of public health information (PHI) to support healthcare planning and capital development. The paper also considers relevant issues in relation to the analysis of data extracted from Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems and Patient Management Systems (PMS), across many hospitals and Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCC) in a region, via a grid-based application. The potential for the use of the grid to support PHI in compute and data intensive tasks is discussed, together with a proposed way forward for the development of a grid-based RHCN PHI service. The paper is based on an earlier paper presented by David Piggott at the First European HealthGrid Conference held in Lyons, France on 17th January 2003, together with subsequent research undertaken by Trinity College Dublin into the use of the grid to support healthcare impact assessment and planning applications.

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 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 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

grid computing
hospital planning
public health


Image segmentation based on merging of sub-optimal segmentations In this paper a heuristic segmentation algorithm is presented based on the oversegmentation of an image. The method uses a set of different segmentations of the image produced previously by standard techniques. These segmentations are combined to create the oversegmented image. They can be performed using different techniques or even the same technique with different initial conditions. Based on this oversegmentation a new method of region merging is proposed. The merging process is guided using only information about the behavior of each pixel in the input segmentations. Therefore, the results are an adequate combination of the features of these segmentations, allowing to mask the negative particularities of individual segmentations. In this work, the quality of the proposal is analyzed with both artificial and real images using a evaluation function as case of study. The results show that our algorithm produces high quality global segmentations from a set of low quality segmentations with reduced execution times.

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

region-merging heuristic
segmentation evaluation


Dimensionality reduction of electropalatographic data using latent variable models We consider the problem of obtaining a reduced dimension representation of electropalatographic (EPG) data. An unsupervised learning approach based on latent variable modelling is adopted, in which an underlying lower dimension representation is inferred directly from the data. Several latent variable models are investigated, including factor analysis and the generative topographic mapping (GTM). Experiments were carried out using a subset of the EUR-ACCOR database, and the results indicate that these automatic methods capture important, adaptive structure in the EPG data. Nonlinear latent variable modelling clearly outperforms the investigated linear models in terms of log-likelihood and reconstruction error and suggests a substantially smaller intrinsic dimensionality for the EPG data than that claimed by previous studies. A two-dimensional representation is produced with applications to speech therapy, language learning and articulatory dynamics.

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

dimensionality reduction
latent variable models
factor analysis

mixtures of multivariate bernoulli distributions


a user-centered www application for macroseismic data dissemination and rapid re-use The paper discusses a concrete WWW application providing historical seismicity data of the Italian area. The application is user-centered in that it makes data available through working metaphors adopted by domain experts who cooperated in interface prototyping and testing. An example of data and software re-use is given, as a tool for timely disseminating specific information during the seismic crisis of September/October 1997 in Central Italy.

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

code re-use
user-centered
earthquakes
data re-use


A new result on the p-irreducibility of binding polynomials Binding polynomials and p-irreducibility are important concepts in biochemistry. In this paper, we study the p-irreducibility of binding polynomials with degree four and present, for the first time, an explicit criterion for p-irreducibility, which is expressed by polynomials in the coefficients of a given binding polynomial. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Exploring top managers innovative IT (IIT) championing behavior: Integrating the personal and technical contexts Innovative information technologies (IIT) will create or improve a product and enhance intra-organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Based on the TOE framework and upper echelon theory, this study investigated the relationships between top managers individual differences and IIT championing behavior from two perspectives: the personal context and the technical context. An empirical survey was administered to 130 top managers to test the research model. The results reveal that 52.6% of the variance in top managers IIT championing behavior can be explained by three antecedent variables: the OSL, IIT absorptive capacity, and involvement. Finally, the implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

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 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 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

championing behavior
upper echelon theory
toe framework

top management support
individual difference


Detecting duplicate biological entities using Markov random field-based edit distance Detecting duplicate entities in biological data is an important research task. In this paper, we propose a novel and context-sensitive Markov random field-based edit distance (MRFED) for this task. We apply the Markov random field theory to the Needleman-Wunsch distance and combine MRFED with TFIDF, a token-based distance algorithm, resulting in SoftMRFED. We compare SoftMRFED with other distance algorithms such as Levenshtein, SoftTFIDF, and Monge-Elkan for two matching tasks: biological entity matching and synonym matching. The experimental results show that SoftMRFED significantly outperforms the other edit distance algorithms on several test data collections. In addition, the performance of SoftMRFED is superior to token-based distance algorithms in two matching tasks.

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

duplicate detection
biomedical digital libraries


Approximation Algorithms for Multiprocessor Scheduling under Uncertainty Motivated by applications in grid computing and project management, we study multiprocessor scheduling in scenarios where there is uncertainty in the successful execution of jobs when assigned to processors. We consider the problem of multiprocessor scheduling under uncertainty, in which we are given n unit-time jobs and m machines, a directed acyclic graph C giving the dependencies among the jobs, and for every job j and machine i, the probability p (ij) of the successful completion of job j when scheduled on machine i in any given particular step. The goal of the problem is to find a schedule that minimizes the expected makespan, that is, the expected time at which all of the jobs are completed. The problem of multiprocessor scheduling under uncertainty was introduced by Malewicz and was shown to be NP-hard even when all the jobs are independent. In this paper, we present polynomial-time approximation algorithms for the problem, for special cases of the dag C. We obtain an O(log n)-approximation for the case of independent jobs, an O(log mlog nlog (n+m)/log log (n+m))-approximation when C is a collection of disjoint chains, an O(log mlog (2) n)-approximation when C is a collection of directed out- or in-trees, and an O(log mlog (2) nlog (n+m)/log log (n+m))-approximation when C is a directed forest.

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

approximation algorithms
multiprocessor scheduling


An exploration of instruction fetch requirement in out-of-order superscalar processors The performance of superscalar processors depends on many parameters with correlated effects. This paper explores the relations between some of these parameters, and more particularly, the requirement in instruction Fetch bandwidth. We introduce new enhancements to increase the bandwidth of conventional instruction Fetch engines. However, experiments show that the performance does not increase proportionally to the fetch. Once the measured IPC is half the instruction Fetch bandwidth, increasing the Fetch bandwidth brings very little improvement. In order to better understand this behavior, we develop a model From the empirical observation that the available instruction parallelism grows as the square root of the instruction window size. From the model, we derive that the Fetch bandwidth requirement grows as the square root of the distance between mispredicted branches. We also verify experimentally that, to double the IPC, one should both double the fetch bandwidth and decrease the number of mispredicted branches fourfold.

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

out-of-order superscalar processor
two-block ahead branch prediction
square-root model


LTE-based humanoid robotics system Although the robots integrated with communication module can provide various functions, there is intrinsic limitation because of the instable wireless connection, restricted bandwidth and limited coverage of network. Fortunately, assisted by LTE (Long Term Evolution) techniques, the robots can be deployed more widely to support bandwidth-intensive applications. Hence, this paper proposes a LTE-based robotics system integrated with cloud computing to enhance the capability of data transmissions and intelligence for providing higher quality and more friendly services. Furthermore, we develop a robot with emotional recognition and feedback for improving Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE), and design a testbed for verifying systems feasibility and 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O 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


Numerical solution of the three-dimensional fluid flow in a rotating heterogeneous porous channel A numerical solution to the problem of the three-dimensional fluid flow in a long rotating heterogeneous porous channel is presented. A co-ordinate transformation technique is employed to obtain accurate solutions over a wide range of porous media Ekman number values and consequent boundary layer thicknesses. Comparisons with an approximate asymptotic solution (for large values of Ekman number) and with theoretical predictions on the validity of Taylor-Proudman theorem in porous media for small values of Ekman number show good qualitative agreement. An evaluation of the boundary layer thickness is presented and a power-law correlation to Ekman number is shown to well-represent the results for small values of Ekman number. The different three-dimensional fluid flow regimes are presented graphically, demonstrating the distinct variation of the flow field over the wide range of Ekman numbers used. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

rotating flow
heterogeneous porous media
coriolis acceleration
secondary circulation


A database of local fields We describe our online database of finite extensions of Q(p), and how it can be used to facilitate local analysis of number fields. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

local field
p-adic field
root numbers
wild ramification
galois group


New finite element for analysis of shear lag A new model of describing the shear lag phenomenon in thin-walled beams with arbitrary open or closed cross-sections is defined on the basis of the warping function proposed by Proki?. The general approach to the solution of the problem is based on the finite element method. The principle of virtual displacements has been used to give a new linear stiffness matrix. The method is illustrated by examples.

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

shear lag
warping function
finite element method

thin-walled structures
box girders
numerical analysis


A serial AC voltage controller using bipolar matrix-reactance chopper Purpose - Aims to focus on steady state and transient state analysis of basic properties of new solution for a single-phase serial AC voltage controller. Furthermore, simulation and experimental test results of 3 kVA models are provided to confirm and verify the theoretical approach. Design/methodology/approach - Presents a converter with auxiliary transformer and bipolar PWM AC matrix-reactance chopper (MRC), based on Cuk B2 topology. The MRC has the possibility of bipolar AC voltage conversion with magnitude of voltage transformation function greater than 1. The peak voltage detection method in the control circuit is applied to fast control of the load voltage changes. The steady state and transient state theoretical analysis based on averaged models of the presented controller is used. There is a four-terminal description of the basic properties in the presented approach. Findings - In the proposed solution only half the number of switches compared with the case of full bridge matrix chopper solution is used. The nominal load voltage can be obtained even for 50 per cent step-down of the supply voltage. Originality/value - Presents new topology and properties of single-phase serial AC voltage controller.

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

electrical equipment
voltage fluctuations
modelling


Overcoming the Lack of Screen Space on Mobile Computers One difficulty for interface design on mobile computers is lack of screen space caused by their small size. This paper describes a small pilot study and two formal experiments that investigate the usability of sonically-enhanced buttons of different sizes. The underlying hypothesis being that presenting information about the buttons in sound would increase their usability and allow their size to be reduced. An experimental interface was created that ran on a 3Com Palm III mobile computer and used a simple calculator-style interface to enter data. The buttons of the calculator were changed in size between 464, 868 and 16616 pixels and used a range of different types of sound from basic to complex. Results showed that sounds significantly improved usability for both standard and small button sizes - more data could be entered with sonically-enhanced buttons and subjective workload reduced. More sophisticated sounds that presented more information about the state of the buttons were shown to be more effective than the standard Palm III sounds. The results showed that if sound was added to buttons then they could be reduced in size from 16616 to 868 pixels without much loss in quantitative performance. This reduction in size, however, caused a significant increase in subjective workload. Results also showed that when a mobile device was used in a more realistic situation (whilst walking outside) usability was significantly reduced (with increased workload and less data entered) than when used in a usability laboratory. These studies show that sound can be beneficial for usability and that care must be taken to do testing in realistic environments to get a good measure of mobile device usability.

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

earcons
evaluation
non-speech sounds
pdas
sonically-enhanced widgets


Frequent subtree mining - An overview Mining frequent subtrees from databases of labeled trees is a new research field that has many practical applications in areas such as computer networks, Web mining, bioinformatics, XML document mining, etc. These applications share a requirement for the more expressive power of labeled trees to capture the complex relations among data entities. Although frequent subtree mining is a more difficult task than frequent itemset mining, most existing frequent subtree mining algorithms borrow techniques from the relatively mature association rule mining area. This paper provides an overview of a broad range of tree mining algorithms. We focus on the common theoretical foundations of the current frequent subtree mining algorithms and their relationship with their counterparts in frequent itemset mining. When comparing the algorithms, we categorize them according to their problem definitions and the techniques employed for solving various subtasks of the subtree mining problem. In addition, we also present a thorough performance study for a representative family of algorithms.

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

canonical representation
a priori
enumeration tree
subtree isomorphism


A numerical method for diffusionconvection equation using high-order difference schemes In this paper, we propose a simple general form of high-order approximation of O(c2+ch2+h4) O ( c 2 + ch 2 + h 4 ) to solve the two-dimensional parabolic equation ?uxx+?uyy=F(x,y,t,u,ux,uy,ut) ? u x x + ? u y y = F ( x , y , t , u , u x , u y , u t ) , where ? and ? are positive constants. We apply the compact form for solving diffusionconvection equation. The results of numerical experiments are presented and compared with analytical solutions to confirm the higher accuracy of the presented scheme.

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

finite difference
fourth-order approximation
krylov subspace methods
three-diagonal solver


distributed secret on the basis of the linear correcting codes Shamir's method has been examined in the present enouncement as one of the most commented methods in secret sharing. Different properties and possibilities of the method have been analyzed in reconstructing the secret. The method of shared storage and reconstruction of secret information on the basis of the linear correcting codes has been suggested. By using the properties of the processes encoding and decoding with linear codes, part of the disadvantages in Shamir's secret sharing scheme has been removed in the present enouncement.

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


Collaborative neighbor representation based classification using l(2)-minimization approach Applications of sparse signal representation in image processing and pattern recognition have attracted a great deal of attention. Sparse representation based classification (SRC) methods emphasizes on sparse representation computed by l(1)-minimization to exploit the underlying sparsity in the problem domain, and argued the importance of sparse representation that improved the discrimination to achieve robust and accurate classification results. Recently, many studies have shown the role of collaborative representation (CR) in SRC, which actually improved the classification accuracy. In this paper, we proposed a novel collaborative neighbor representation method for multi-class classification based on l(2)-minimization approach with the assumption of locally linear embedding (LLE). The proposed method represents a test sample over the dictionary by automatically choosing optimal nearest basis spanned in the same linear subspace as of test sample. The proposed representation method achieves competitive classification accuracy via optimal neighbor representation having discriminative learning power. Extensive experiments on real-world face and digit databases are performed to analyze the performance of the proposed method against SRC methods. Result clearly shows that the proposed method achieves competitive results for face recognition and pattern classification, and is significantly much faster and comparably accurate than SRC based classification methods. (C) 2012 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 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

sparse representation
collaborative representation
pattern classification
face recognition


efficient analysis and execution of correct and complete model transformations based on triple graph grammars Triple Graph Grammars are a well-established, formal and intuitive concept for the specification and analysis of bidirectional model transformations. In previous work we have formalized and analyzed already termination, correctness, completeness, local confluence and functional behaviour. In this paper, we show how to improve the efficiency of the execution and analysis of model transformations in practical applications by using triple rules with negative application conditions (NACs). In addition to specification NACs , which improve the specification of model transformations, the generation of filter NACs improves the efficiency of the execution and the analysis of functional behaviour supported by critical pair analysis of the tool AGG. We illustrate the results for the well-known model transformation from class diagrams to relational database models.

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

functional behaviour
model transformation
triple graph grammars


Quasi-upward planarity An upward planar drawing of a directed graph (digraph) is a planar drawing such that all the edges are represented by curves monotonically increasing in the vertical direction. In this paper we introduce and study the concept of quasi-upward planarity. Quasi-upward planarity allows us to extend the upward planarity theory to a large class of digraphs including digraphs that also hake directed cycles. First, we characterize the digraphs that have a quasi-upward planar drawing. Second, we give a polynomial time algorithm fur computing "optimal" quasi-upward planar drawings within a given planar embedding. Further, we apple branch and bound techniques to the problem of computing optimal quasi-upward planar drawings, considering all possible planar embeddings. The paper also contains experimental results about the proposed techniques.

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 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 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


Quantum error correction via codes over GF (4) The problem of finding quantum-error-correcting codes is transformed into the problem of finding additive codes over the field GF(4) which are self-orthogonal with respect to a certain trace inner product. Many new codes and new bounds are presented, as well as a table of upper and lower bounds on such codes of length up to 30 qubits.

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

codes, self-orthogonal, geometry, orthogonal


A general method for convergence theorems of fuzzy set-valued random variables and its applications to martingales and uniform amarts In this paper, we shall first give a general method for convergence theorem of fuzzy set-valued random variables. By using this "sandwich" method, we give the proofs of convergence theorems for fuzzy set-valued martingales, sub- and supermartingales in the sense of the extended Hausdorff metric H-infinity. Also we shall state a convergence result about uniform amarts.

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

fuzzy set-valued random variables
fuzzy set-valued martingales
submartingales
uniform smarts
extended hausdorff metric h infinity


A knowledge-based approach for selecting information sources Through the Internet and the World-Wide Web, a vast number of information sources has become available, which offer information on various subjects by different providers, often in heterogeneous formats. This calls for tools and methods for building an advanced information-processing infrastructure. One issue in this area is the selection of suitable information sources in query answering. In this paper, we present a knowledge-based approach to this problem, in the setting where one among a set of information sources (prototypically, data repositories) should be selected for evaluating a user query. We use extended logic programs (ELPs) to represent rich descriptions of the information sources, an underlying domain theory, and user queries in a formal query language (here, XML-QL, but other languages can be handled as well). Moreover, we use ELPs for declarative query analysis and generation of a query description. Central to our approach are declarative source-selection programs, for which we define syntax and semantics. Due to the structured nature of the considered data items, the semantics of such programs must carefully respect implicit context information in source-selection rules, and furthermore combine it with possible user preferences. A prototype implementation of our approach has been realized exploiting the DLV KR system and its plp front-end for prioritized ELPs. We describe a representative example involving specific movie databases, and report about experimental results.

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

knowledge representation
nonmonotonic reasoning
logic programming
answer-set programming
information-source selection
preference handling


Forced muon catalyzed fusion in heterogeneous layers of hydrogen isotopes Muon cycling dynamics for muon catalyzed fusion in heterogeneous solid layers are considered through decay of complex molecule [(dtmu)(nu)*,(J)dee](v,k). The suggested fusion system consists of three layers which axe alternatively repeated. The first layer is D/T (deuterium, tritium) which provides [(dtmu)(nu)*, (J)dee](v,k) molecules. The second layer is T-2 molecules which are used to slow down the muonic atoms and the third layer is D-2 molecules. The design is in a way in which dtmu, muonic deuterium and tritium molecules, axe produced in resonance. It is shown, by considering muonic dynamics theoretically in a suggested heterogeneous system and determining its cycling rate by using a more advanced calculational method, that for equal deuterium, tritium concentration (C-d=C-t=0.5) in D/T layer and phi'=phi(0)=phi=1 (relative density for each layer respectively and given in liquid hydrogen density LHD=4.25x10(22) cm(-3)), the muon cycling rate is optimum for the suggested heterogeneous system and has 15% enhancement with respect to the conventional D/T system. It is also shown that for phi(0)<0.0003 the muon cycling rate in D-2 is almost stopped, and for φ(0)&GE;1 muon cycling rate increases, but this is not recommended due to low and costly tritium availability.

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

muon dynamics
heterogeneous three layers
forced fusion
computational method


Sampled-Data Synchronization of Chaotic Lur'e Systems With Time Delays This paper studies the problem of sampled-data control for master-slave synchronization schemes that consist of identical chaotic Lur'e systems with time delays. It is assumed that the sampling periods are arbitrarily varying but bounded. In order to take full advantage of the available information about the actual sampling pattern, a novel Lyapunov functional is proposed, which is positive definite at sampling times but not necessarily positive definite inside the sampling intervals. Based on the Lyapunov functional, an exponential synchronization criterion is derived by analyzing the corresponding synchronization error systems. The desired sampled-data controller is designed by a linear matrix inequality approach. The effectiveness and reduced conservatism of the developed results are demonstrated by the numerical simulations of Chua's circuit and neural network.

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

chaotic systems
lur'e systems
neural networks
sampled-data control


Cell morphodynamics visualization from images of zebrafish embryogenesis Laser scanning microscopy provides high-resolution nondestructive in vivo imaging to capture specific structures that have been fluorescently labeled, such as cellular nuclei and membranes, throughout early zebrafish embryogenesis. An increasingly challenging problem biologists must face is how to effectively explore, follow, and study the thousands of cells contained in the resulting time-varying volume data that are large in space, time, and variable domain. Visual data explorations, such as direct volume rendering, have been successfully used for the analysis of volumetric data. However, visualizing large-scale time-varying fields remains a challenging problem. In this paper we present a novel Focus+Context animated volume rendering. The technique is based on the distance map of objects of interest and on a scene graph architecture. We demonstrate that distance map driven volume rendering, implemented in modern graphics hardware, is suited to generate run time and interactive representations such as ghosted rendering and cut-away rendering. The experimental results on zebrafish embryogenesis data demonstrate that the technique is suited to uncover and to analyze biological events, such as organogenesis, contained in time-varying volumetric dataset.

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

focus+context volume rendering
multidimensional dataset visualization
time-varying visualization