Large Deviations and Moments for the Euler Characteristic of a Random Surface We study random surfaces constructed by glueing together N/k filled k-gons along their edges, with all (N - 1)!! = (N - 1)(N - 3) ... 3 . 1 pairings of the edges being equally likely. (We assume that lcm{2, k} divides N.) The Euler characteristic of the resulting surface is related to the number of cycles in a certain random permutation of {1 ,..., N}. Gamburd has shown that when 2 lcm{2, k} divides N, the distribution of this random permutation converges to that of the uniform distribution on the alternating group A(N) in the total-variation distance as N -> infinity. We obtain large-deviations bounds for the number of cycles that, together with Gamburd's (Ann Probab 34 (2006), 1827-1848) result, allow us to derive sharp estimates for the moments of the number of cycles. These estimates allow us to confirm certain cases of conjectures made by Pippenger and Schleich (Random Struct Algorithm 28 (2006), 247-288). (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 37, 465-476, 2010

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

random permutations
permutation cycles
surface triangulations


Knowledge management strategies: Toward a taxonomy This paper draws on primary and secondary data to propose a taxonomy of strategies, or "schools," for knowledge management. The primary purpose of this framework is to guide executives on choices to initiate knowledge management projects according to goals, organizational character, and technological, behavioral, or economic biases. It may also be useful to teachers in demonstrating the scope of knowledge management and to researchers in generating propositions for further study.

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


Emerging practices for mapping and linking life sciences data using RDF A case series Members of the W3C Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLS IG) have published a variety of genomic and drug-related data sets as Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples. This experience has helped the interest group define a general data workflow for mapping health care and life science (HCLS) data to RDF and linking it with other Linked Data sources. This paper presents the workflow along with four case studies that demonstrate the workflow and addresses many of the challenges that may be faced when creating new Linked Data resources. The first case study describes the creation of linked RDF data from microarray data sets while the second discusses a linked RDF data set created from a knowledge base of drug therapies and drug targets. The third case study describes the creation of an RDF index of biomedical concepts present in unstructured clinical reports and how this index was linked to a drug side-effect knowledge base. The final case study describes the initial development of a linked data set from a knowledge base of small molecules. This paper also provides a detailed set of recommended practices for creating and publishing Linked Data sources in the HCLS domain in such a way that they are discoverable and usable by people, software agents, and applications. These practices are based on the cumulative experience of the Linked Open Drug Data (LODD) task force of the HCLS IG. While no single set of recommendations can address all of the heterogeneous information needs that exist within the HCLS domains, practitioners wishing to create Linked Data should find the recommendations useful for identifying the tools, techniques, and practices employed by earlier developers. In addition to clarifying available methods for producing Linked Data, the recommendations for metadata should also make the discovery and consumption of Linked Data easier.

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


Tracking control of the linear differential inclusion The tracking control of linear differential inclusion is discussed. First, the definition of uniformly ultimate boundedness for linear differential inclusion is given. Then, a feedback law is constructed by using the convex hull Lyapunov function. The sufficient condition is given to guarantee the tracking error system uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, a numerical example is simulated to illustrate the effectiveness of this control design.

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

tracking control
uniformly ultimate boundedness

linear differential inclusions
convex hull lyapunov functions


An iteration normalization and test method for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data Next generation sequencing technologies are powerful new tools for investigating a wide range of biological and medical questions. Statistical and computational methods are key to analyzing massive and complex sequencing data. In order to derive gene expression measures and compare these measures across samples or libraries, we first need to normalize read counts to adjust for varying sample sequencing depths and other potentially technical effects.

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


Growth of Typhus Group and Spotted Fever Group Rickettsiae in Insect Cells Abstract: To analyze the host dependency of rickettsial growth, NIAS-AeAl-2 insect cells (AeAl2) derived from mosquito were first used in this study. It was demonstrated that typhus group rickettsiae (TGR) grew well in AeAl2 cells, but spotted fever group rickettsiae (SFGR) failed. To elucidate the inhibitory process of the growth of SFGR in AeAl2 cells, the adherence and invasion were first analyzed. SFGR possessed abilities to adhere to and invade AeAl2 cells as well as TGR in contrast to their inability of the growth in the cells. Morphologically, generation of microvilli could not be observed on AeAl2 cells inoculated with either group of rickettsiae. On the contrary, Vero cells inoculated with rickettsiae generated a great number of microvilli that adhered to rickettsiae and engulfed them into the cells. The roles of rickettsial major outer membrane protein A and B (rOmpA and rOmpB) were later investigated using E. coli expressing either rOmpA or rOmpB on their surface. Bacteria expressing either one of the major outer membrane proteins of rickettsiae as well as bacteria not expressing these proteins showed adherence to and invasion of AeAl2 cells. Thus, it is yet to be elucidated whether these major outer membrane proteins have any roles in these steps.

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

adherence
growth
insect cells
invasion
rickettsiae
spotted fever group
typhus group


Using evolution strategies to solve DEC-POMDP problems Decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (DEC-POMDP) is an approach to model multi-robot decision making problems under uncertainty. Since it is NEXP-complete there is no efficient exact algorithm to solve these problems and in spite of the attention it has taken recently, so far only a few approximate solutions that can solve small problems have been proposed. In this study, we offer a novel approximate solution algorithm for DEC-POMDP problems using evolution strategies, and a novel approach to approximately calculate the fitness of the chromosomes which correspond to the expected reward. We also propose a new problem which is a more complex, modified version of the grid meeting problem and solve it. Our results show that our algorithm is scalable and we can solve problems that have more states than the problems attempted in previous studies.

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

dec-pomdp
multi-robot decision making
evolution control


Rate-Compatible LDPC Convolutional Codes Achieving the Capacity of the BEC In this paper, we propose a new family of rate-compatible regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes. The construction is based on graph extension, i.e., the codes of lower rates are generated by successively extending the graph of the base code with the highest rate. Theoretically, the proposed rate-compatible family can cover all the rational rates from 0 to 1. In addition, the regularity of degree distributions simplifies the code optimization. We prove analytically that all the LDPC convolutional codes of different rates in the family are capable of achieving the capacity of the binary erasure channel (BEC). The analysis is extended to the general binary memoryless symmetric channel, for which a capacity-approaching performance can be achieved. Analytical thresholds and simulation results for finite check and variable node degrees are provided for both BECs and binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channels. The results confirm that the decoding thresholds of the rate-compatible codes approach the corresponding Shannon limits over both channels.

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

graph extension
ldpc convolutional codes

low-density parity-check (ldpc) codes
rate-compatible codes
shannon limit


Kernel generalized fuzzy c-means clustering with spatial information for image segmentation The generalized fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm with improved fuzzy partition (GFCM) is a novel modified version of the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm (FCM). GFCM under appropriate parameters can converge more rapidly than FCM. However, it is found that GFCM is sensitive to noise in gray images. In order to overcome GFCM?s sensitivity to noise in the image, a kernel version of GFCM with spatial information is proposed. In this method, first a term about the spatial constraints derived from the image is introduced into the objective function of GFCM, and then the kernel induced distance is adopted to substitute the Euclidean distance in the new objective function. Experimental results show that the proposed method behaves well in segmentation performance and convergence speed for gray images corrupted by noise.

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

generalized fuzzy c-means clustering (gfcm)


Global scaling of synaptic efficacy: Homeostasis in silicon synapses Synaptic homeostasis is a mechanism present in biological neural systems that acts to maintain an homogeneous and stable computational substrate, in face of intrinsic inhomogeneities among neurons, and of their continuous changes due to learning processes and variations in the statistics of the input signals. In hardware spike-based neural networks homeostasis could be useful for solving issues such as mismatch and temperature drifts. Here we present a synaptic circuit that supports both spike-based learning and homeostatic mechanisms, and show how it can be used in conjunction with a software control algorithm to model global synaptic scaling homeostatic mechanism.

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

avlsi
neuromorphic
synapse
spike-based learning


Adaptive image replica detection based on support vector classifiers This paper presents a system for image replica detection. The idea behind the proposed approach is to adapt a system for detecting the replica of a specific reference image. The system is then able to classify test images as replicas of the reference image or as unrelated images. More precisely, the test procedure is as follows. A set of features is extracted from a test image, representing texture, colour and grey-level characteristics. These features are then feed into a preprocessing step, which is fine-tuned to the reference image. Finally, the resulting features are entered to a support vector classifier that determines if the test image is a replica of the reference image. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system. Target applications include search for copyright infringement (e.g. variations of copyrighted images) and known illicit content (e.g. paedophile images known to the police).

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

features extraction
support vector machine
dimensionality reduction
copyright infringement detection


Scheduling of a two-stage differentiation flowshop to minimize weighted sum of machine completion times This paper considers the problem of scheduling a two-stage flowshop that consists of a common critical machine in stage one and two independent dedicated machines in stage two. All the jobs require processing first on the common critical machine. Each job after completing its critical operation in stage one will proceed to the dedicated machine of its type for further processing in stage two. The objective is to minimize the weighted sum of stage-two machine completion times. We show that the problem is strongly NP-hard, and develop an O(n3) O ( n 3 ) polynomial time algorithm to solve the special case where the sequences of both types of jobs are given. We also design an approximation algorithm with a tight performance ratio of 4 3 for the general case.

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

flowshop
approximation algorithm
performance ratio


passive online rogue access point detection using sequential hypothesis testing with tcp ack-pairs Rogue (unauthorized) wireless access points pose serious security threats to local networks. In this paper, we propose two online algorithms to detect rogue access points using sequential hypothesis tests applied to packet-header data collected passively at a monitoring point. One algorithm requires training sets, while the other does not. Both algorithms extend our earlier TCP ACK-pair technique to differentiate wired and wireless LAN TCP traffic, and exploit the fundamental properties of the 802.11 CSMA/CA MAC protocol and the half duplex nature of wireless channels. Our algorithms make prompt decisions as TCP ACK-pairs are observed, and only incur minimum computation and storage overhead. We have built a system for online rogue-access-point detection using these algorithms and deployed it at a university gateway router. Extensive experiments in various scenarios have demonstrated the excellent performance of our approach: the algorithm that requires training provides rapid detection and is extremely accurate (the detection is mostly within 10 seconds, with very low false positive and false negative ratios); the algorithm that does not require training detects 60\%-76\% of the wireless hosts without any false positives; both algorithms are light-weight (with computation and storage overhead well within the capability of commodity equipment).

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

sequential hypothesis testing
rogue access point detection


Towards improving speech detection robustness for speech recognition in adverse conditions Recognition performance decreases when recognition systems are used over the telephone network, especially wireless network and noisy environments. It appears that non-efficient speech/non-speech detection (SND) is an important source of this degradation. Therefore, speech detection robustness to noise is a challenging problem to be examined, in order to improve recognition performance for the very noisy communications. Several studies were conducted aiming to improve the robustness of SND used for speech recognition in adverse conditions. The present paper proposes some solutions aiming to improve SND in wireless environment. Speech enhancement prior detection is considered. Then, two versions of SND algorithm, based on statistical criteria, are proposed and compared. Finally, a post-detection technique is introduced in order to reject the wrongly detected noise segments.

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

speech/non-speech detection
spectral subtraction
adaptive algorithm
likelihood ratio criterion
wavelets


Multigrid preconditioned conjugate-gradient solver for mixed finite-element method The mixed finite-element approximation to a second-order elliptic PDE results in a saddle-point problem and leads to an indefinite linear system of equations. The mixed system of equations can be transformed into coupled symmetric positive-definite matrix equations, or a Schur complement problem, using block Gauss elimination. A preconditioned conjugate-gradient algorithm is used for solving the Schur complement problem. The mixed finite-element method is closely related to the cell-centered finite difference scheme for solving second-order elliptic problems with variable coefficients. For the cell-centered finite difference scheme, a simple multigrid algorithm can be defined and used as a preconditioner. For distorted grids, an additional iteration is needed. Nested iteration with a multigrid preconditioned conjugate gradient inner iteration results in an effective numerical solution technique for the mixed system of linear equations arising from a discretization on distorted grids. Numerical results show that the preconditioned conjugate-gradient inner iteration is robust with respect to grid size and variability in the hydraulic conductivity tensor.

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

multigrid
distorted grids
conjugate gradient
nested iteration

mixed finite element method
lowest-order raviart-thomas
subsurface flow


Fast pursuit of mobile nodes using TPR trees In this paper, we consider a set of mobile nodes, each of which moves with constant velocity. We present algorithms to determine which of these mobile nodes can be captured the soonest by a set of one or more pursuers. We use a time parameterized R-tree (TPR-tree) to index these moving points. We then develop algorithms that operate on the TPR-tree to answer three query variations: (1) a single pursuer that is faster than all of the mobile nodes, (2) a single pursuer that is slower than some of the mobile nodes and (3) multiple pursuers. Experimental results show that our algorithms are simpler and faster than other approaches to solve the problem.

O B 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 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 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


Statickinematic duality and the principle of virtual work in the mechanics of fractal media The framework for the mechanics of solids, deformable over fractal subsets, is outlined. While displacements and total energy maintain their canonical physical dimensions, renormalization group theory permits to define anomalous mechanical quantities with fractal dimensions, i.e., the fractal stress [?*] and the fractal strain [?*]. A fundamental relation among the dimensions of these quantities and the Hausdorff dimension of the deformable subset is obtained. New mathematical operators are introduced to handle these quantities. In particular, classical fractional calculus fails to this purpose, whereas the recently proposed local fractional operators appear particularly suitable. The static and kinematic equations for fractal bodies are obtained, and the duality principle is shown to hold. Finally, an extension of the GaussGreen theorem to fractional operators is proposed, which permits to demonstrate the Principle of Virtual Work for fractal media.

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

renormalization group transformations
fractals
anomalous dimensions
solid mechanics


K-Dimensional Coding Schemes in Hilbert Spaces This paper presents a general coding method where data in a Hilbert space are represented by finite dimensional coding vectors. The method is based on empirical risk minimization within a certain class of linear operators, which map the set of coding vectors to the Hilbert space. Two results bounding the expected reconstruction error of the method are derived, which highlight the role played by the codebook and the class of linear operators. The results are specialized to some cases of practical importance, including K-means clustering, nonnegative matrix factorization and other sparse coding methods.

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

k-means clustering and vector quantization


Improving legal information retrieval using an ontological framework A variety of legal documents are increasingly being made available in electronic format. Automatic Information Search and Retrieval algorithms play a key role in enabling efficient access to such digitized documents. Although keyword-based search is the traditional method used for text retrieval, they perform poorly when literal term matching is done for query processing, due to synonymy and ambivalence of words. To overcome these drawbacks, an ontological framework to enhance the users query for retrieval of truly relevant legal judgments has been proposed in this paper. Ontologies ensure efficient retrieval by enabling inferences based on domain knowledge, which is gathered during the construction of the knowledge base. Empirical results demonstrate that ontology-based searches generate significantly better results than traditional search methods.

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


Binary vector quantizer design using soft centroids Soft centroids method is proposed for binary vector quantizer design. Instead of using binary centroids, the codevectors can take any real value between one and zero during the codebook generation process. The binarization is performed only for the final codebook. The proposed method is successfully applied for three existing codebook generation algorithms: GLA, SA and PNN.

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

binary images
vector quantization
clustering algorithms
image coding


Antibodies in Myasthenia Gravis and Related Disorders Acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibodies are present in around 85% of patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) as measured by the conventional radioimmunoprecipitation assay. Antibodies that block the fetal form of the AChR are occasionally present in mothers who develop MG after pregnancy, especially in those whose babies are born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita. The antibodies cross the placenta and block neuromuscular transmission, leading to joint deformities and often stillbirth. In these mothers, antibodies made in the thymus are mainly specific for fetal AChR and show restricted germline origins, suggesting a highly mutated clonal response; subsequent spread to involve adult AChR could explain development of maternal MG in those cases who first present after pregnancy. In the 15% of seronegative MG patients without AChR antibodies (SNMG), there are serum factors that increase AChR phosphorylation and reduce AChR function, probably acting via a different membrane receptor. These factors are not IgG and could be IgM or even non-Ig serum proteins. In a proportion of SNMG patients, however, IgG antibodies to the muscle-specific kinase, MuSK, are present. These antibodies are not found in AChR antibody-positive MG and are predominantly IgG4. MuSK antibody positivity appears to be associated with more severe bulbar disease that can be difficult to treat effectively.

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

myasthenia gravis
arthrogryposis multiplex congenita
musk

fetal acetylcholine receptor
adult acetylcholine receptor
muscle-specific kinase
seronegative myasthenia
muscle atrophy
disease severity


the dsys25 sensor platform In this demonstration, a new sensor platform named DSYS25 is presented. The platform has a unique hardware design and runs a customized version of the TinyOS operating system. Transceiver hardware and packaging distinguish the D-Systems platform from other available designs.

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


A note on approximation measures for multi-valued dependencies in relational databases We consider the problem of defining a normalized approximation measure for multi-valued dependencies in relational database theory. An approximation measure is a function mapping relation instances to real numbers. The number to which an instance is mapped, intuitively, describes the strength of the dependency in that instance. A normalized approximation measure for functional dependencies has been proposed previously: the minimum number of tuples that need be removed for the functional dependency to hold divided by the total number of tuples. This leads naturally to a normalized measure for multi-valued dependencies: the minimum number of tuples that need be removed for the multi-valued dependency to hold divided by the total number of tuples. The measure for functional dependencies can be computed efficiently, O(\r\ log(\r\)) where \r\ is the relation instance. However, we show that an efficient algorithm for computing the analogous measure for multi-valued dependencies is not likely to exist. A polynomial time algorithm for computing the measure would lead to a polynomial time algorithm for an NP-complete problem (proven by a reduction from the maximum edge biclique problem in graph theory). Hence, we argue that it is not a good measure. We propose an alternate measure based on the lossless join characterization of multi-valued dependencies. This measure is efficiently computable, O(\r\(2)). (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

graph algorithms
computational complexity
multi-valued dependencies
bicliques


Ldr2Hdr: On-the-fly reverse tone mapping of legacy video and photographs New generations of display devices promise to provide significantly improved dynamic range over conventional display technology. In the long run, evolving camera technology and file formats will provide high fidelity content for these display devices. In the near term, however, the vast majority of images and video will only be available in low dynamic range formats. In this paper we describe a method for boosting the dynamic range of legacy video and photographs for viewing on high dynamic range displays. Our emphasis is on real-time processing of video streams, such as web streams or the signal from a DVD player. We place particular emphasis on robustness of the method, and its ability to deal with a wide range of content without user adjusted parameters or visible artifacts. The method can be implemented on both graphics hardware and on signal processors that are directly integrated in the HDR displays.

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

image and video processing
high dynamic range/tone mapping
methods and applications
signal processing


evaluating the accuracy of fault localization techniques We investigate claims and assumptions made in several recent papers about fault localization (FL) techniques. Most of these claims have to do with evaluating FL accuracy. Our investigation centers on a new subject program having properties useful for FL experiments. We find that Tarantula (Jones et al.) works well on the program, and we show weak support for the assertion that coverage-based test suites help Tarantula to localize faults. Baudry et al. used automatically-generated mutants to evaluate the accuracy of an FL technique that generates many distinct scores for program locations. We find no evidence to suggest that the use of mutants for this purpose is invalid. However, we find evidence that the standard method for evaluating FL accuracy is unfairly biased toward techniques that generate many distinct scores, and we propose a fairer method of accuracy evaluation. Finally, Denmat et al. suggest that data mining techniques may apply to FL. We investigate this suggestion with the data mining tool Weka, using standard techniques for evaluating the accuracy of data mining classifiers. We find that standard classifiers suffer from the class imbalance problem. However, we find that adding cost information improves accuracy.

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


Development of tolerant features for characterization of masses in mammograms In this paper, four new features for the analysis of breast masses are presented. These features were designed to be insensitive to the exact shape of the contour of the masses, so that an approximate contour, such as the one extracted via an automated segmentation algorithm, can be employed in their computation. Two of the features, SpSI Sp SI and SpGO Sp GO , measure the degree of spiculation of a mass and its likelihood of being spiculated. One of these features, SpGO Sp GO , is a measure of the relative gradient orientation of pixels that correspond to possible spicules. The other feature, SpSI Sp SI , is based on a comparison of mutual information measures between selected components of the mammographic images. The last two features, Fz1 Fz 1 and Fz2 Fz 2 , measure the local fuzziness of the mass margins based on points defined automatically. The features were tested for characterization (i.e. discrimination between circumscribed and spiculated masses) and diagnosis (i.e. discrimination between benign and malignant masses) of breast masses using a set of 319 masses and three different classifiers. In the characterization experiments the features produced a result of approximately 89% correct classification. In the diagnosis experiments, the performance achieved was approximately 81% of correct classification.

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

breast masses
classification
characterization
diagnosis

breast cancer
mammography
feature extraction


Ontological modelling of content management and provision Information provision to address the changing requirements can be best supported by content management. The current information technology enables information to be stored and provided from various distributed sources. To identify and retrieve relevant information requires effective mechanisms for information discovery and assembly. This paper presents a method, which enables the design of such mechanisms, with a set of techniques for articulating and profiling users requirements, formulating information provision specifications, realising management of information content in repositories, and facilitating response to the users requirements dynamically during the process of knowledge construction. These functions are represented in an ontology which integrates the capability of the mechanisms. The ontological modelling in this paper has adopted semiotics principles with embedded norms to ensure coherent course of actions represented in these mechanisms.

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

content management
ontological modelling

personalised information provision
semantic analysis
norms construction


A Comprehensive Instrument for Measuring Individual Competency of IT Applications in an Enterprise IT Environment An instrument that can efficiently measure individual competency of IT applications (ICITA) is presented. It allows an organization to develop and manage the IT application capability of individuals working in an enterprise IT environment. The measurement items are generated from the definition and major components of individual competency of IT applications. The reliability and validity of the instrument construct are verified by factor and correlation analysis. A 15-item instrument is proposed to efficiently measure individual competency of IT applications and the instrument will contribute to the improved ICITA of human resources working in an enterprise IT environment.

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


Magnetic field around the aluminium electrolysis cells Two magnetostatic applications are reported, related to the magnetic field around the aluminium electrolysis cells. The first exhibits the magnetic field created by the current carrying parts in the cell neighbourhood, by taking into account the influence of the magnetic bodies. The second is referring to a magnetostatic shield with double walls, designated to protect the electronic data acquisition equipment when is used in this environment. As introduction, some features are presented and discussed for three models used in the field calculation of magnetically polarised bodies and the algorithm of iterative calculation in spaces with sparse magnetic bodies.

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


Structural stability and electronic property of C68X4 (X = H, F, and Cl) fullerene compounds A systematic study on the geometrical structures and electronic properties of C68X4 (X = H, F. and Cl) fullerene compounds has been carried out on the basis of density functional theory. In all classical C68X4 isomers with two adjacent pentagons and one quasifullerene isomer [C-5:C-68(f)] containing a heptagon in the framework, the C-s:0064 isomers are most favorable in energy. The addition reaction energies of C68X4 (C-s:0064) are high exothermic, and C68F4 is more thermodynamically accessible. The C68X4 (C-s:0064) possess strong aromatic character, with nucleus independent chemical shifts ranging from -22.0 to -26.1 ppm. Further investigations on electronic properties indicate that C68F4 and C68Cl4 could be excellent electron-acceptors for potential photonic/photovoltaic applications in consequence of their large vertical electron affinities (3.29 and 3.15 eV, respectively). The Mulliken charge populations and partial density of states are also calculated, which show that decorating C-68 fullerene with various X atoms will cause remarkably different charge distributions in C68X4 (C-s:0064) and affect their electronic properties distinctly. Finally, the infrared spectra of the most stable C68X4 (C-s:0064) molecules are simulated to assist further experimental characterization. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

density functional theory (dft)
isolated pentagon rule (ipr)


Data description: A general framework of information granules The study is concerned with a granular data description in which we propose a characterization of numeric data by a collection of information granules so that the key structure of the data, their topology and essential relationships are described in the form of a family of fuzzy sets information granules. A comprehensive design process is introduced in which we show a two-phase development strategy: first, numeric prototypes are built with the use of Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) that is followed by their augmentation resulting in a collection of information granules. In the design of information granules we engage the fundamental ideas of Granular Computing, especially the principle of justifiable granularity. A series of experiments is presented to visualize the key steps of the construction of information granules.

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

data description
granular computing
information granules
principle of justifiable granularity

fuzzy clustering
software data
interpretation


A connectionist model for convex-hull of a planar set A neural network model is proposed for computation of the convex-hull of a finite planar set. The model is self-organizing in that it adapts itself to the hull-vertices of the convex-hull in an orderly fashion without any supervision. The proposed network consists of three layers of processors. The bottom layer computes the activation functions, the outputs of which are passed onto the middle layer. The middle layer is used for winner selection. These information are passed onto the topmost layer as well as fed back to the bottom layer. The network in the topmost layer self-organizes by labeling the hull-processors in an orderly fashion so that the final convex-hull is obtained from the topmost layer. Time complexities of the proposed model are analyzed and are compared with existing models of similar nature.

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

neural networks
self-organization
convex-hull


Actuator fault and abnormal operation diagnoses for auto-balancing two-wheeled cart control This paper employs a Pl observer to detect abnormal information in an auto-balancing two-wheeled cart caused by actuator faults and steering load torques. A fault diagnosis scheme which contains the strategies of both fault-detection and fault-evaluation is proposed in this paper. Analysis and design of the Pl observer are then discussed in detail. A statistical threshold that has the benefits of improving decision-making reliability is investigated for diagnosing a possible abnormal operation and/or a serious actuator malfunction. illustrated examples are given for evaluating the performance and feasibility of the presented fault diagnosis strategy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Web-based remote online maximum wind power monitoring and control system The shortage of traditional energy sources like fossil fuels is getting worse on earth today. Therefore, the exploitation in dipping renewable energy such as wind power has become an essential issue in both academia and industry recently. The installed wind power capacity in the world has been increasing rapidly over the past decade. However, wind energy is distributed, and varies significantly according to the meteorological conditions. As a result, the development of online wind power monitoring system is indispensable before installing a wind power generation. In this article, a PC-based virtual instrument (VI) that can carry out an online maximum wind power tracking using LabVIEW and the microprocessor (MCS-8051) is proposed. The nearby PC (Server) can collect real-time data, that is, wind direction, speed, etc., that is transmitted to remote PCs (clients) for instant wind power analysis via the Web. The history of wind information can also be recorded and tracked in the database by clients. A practical model of small wind generation system is set up to demonstrate its online operation for remote dynamic maximum wind power monitoring and control. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


An explicit level set approach for generalized shape optimization of fluids with the lattice Boltzmann method This study is concerned with a generalized shape optimization approach for finding the geometry of fluidic devices and obstacles immersed in flows. Our approach is based on a level set representation of the fluid-solid interface and a hydrodynamic lattice Boltzmann method to predict the flow field. We present an explicit level set method that does not involve the solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation and allows using standard nonlinear programming methods. In contrast to previous works, the boundary conditions along the fluid-structure interface are enforced by second-order accurate interpolation schemes, overcoming shortcomings of flow penalization methods and Brinkman formulations frequently used in topology optimization. To ensure smooth boundaries and mesh-independent results, we introduce a simple, computationally inexpensive filtering method to regularize the level set field. Furthermore, we define box constraints for the design variables that guarantee a continuous evolution of the boundaries. The features of the proposed method are studied by two numeric examples of two-dimensional steady-state flow problems. Copyright (C) 2009 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

immersed boundary technique
interpolation boundary condition
regularity control
adjoint sensitivity analysis


Parallel architecture for 2-D discrete wavelet transform with low energy consumption A novel two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (2-DDWT) parallel architecture for higher throughput and lower energy consumption is proposed. The proposed architecture fully exploits full-page burst accesses of DRAM and minimizes the number of DRAM activate and precharge operations. Simulation results revealed that the architecture reduces the number of clock cycles for DRAM memory accesses as well as the DRAM power consumption with moderate cost of internal memory. Evaluation of the VLSI implementation of the architecture showed that the throughput of wavelet filtering was increased by parallelizing row filtering with a minimum area cost, thereby enabling DRAM full-page burst accesses to be exploited.

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

dwt
signal processing
efficient memory access
burst access
asic


On the computation of ensemble averages for spatially non-uniform particle systems When there is no clear separation between micro- and macro-scales, ergodicity cannot be invoked to transform ensemble into volume averages. In such cases it is necessary to use ensemble averaging directly. A straightforward calculation of such averages converges slowly and therefore requires a large number of realizations of the system. This paper describes a much more efficient method based on the use of a Fourier expansion of the quantity to be averaged. The advantages of the Fourier approach are estimated in general terms and demonstrated explicitly with several examples for the specific problem of equal spheres in a viscous fluid. The analytical estimates suggest that similar results can be expected for other situations as well. It is shown both analytically and numerically that the variance of the Fourier coefficients is in many cases significantly smaller than that of the direct method, which leads to a much faster convergence of the former. The paper also describes a method by which the probability distribution of a uniform ensemble can be biased so as to mimic that of a non-uniform one with prescribed properties.

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

computational ensemble averaging
non-uniform systems
stokes flow
sedimentation


On complexity of minimization and compression problems for models of sequential choice ? A model of sequential choice of depth k for binary relations r1,r2,,rk on a set A of alternatives relates each X?A to its subset Crk(Cr2(Cr1(X))), where , Y?A. The minimization problem is of building an equivalent model of minimal depth; the compression problem is posed similarly, but the model built must satisfy some insertion condition. We prove that for k?3, the minimization and compression problems for models of depth k are NP-hard (for k=2, they are polynomial). Parameters of local algorithms solving these problems are investigated, and it is shown that the compression problem is decidable by algorithms working with neighbourhoods of size 3, whereas the minimization problem is not decidable for any finite neighbourhood size. For an arbitrary k, a model of depth k is built such that its minimization problem is not decidable with the use of neighbourhoods smaller than the whole model.

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

sequential choice
binary relations
complexity
minimization problem
compression problem
local algorithms


Bounds from a card trick We describe a new variation of a mathematical card trick, whose analysis leads to new lower bounds for data compression and estimating the entropy of a Markov source.

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

empirical entropy
estimating entropy
markov sources


A study of the social networking website service in digital content industries: The Facebook case in Taiwan We examine antecedents of SNS continuance intention. We extend DeLone and McLean work with social motives and private information service. Both user satisfaction and social interaction affect SNS continuance intention. Private information service is more important among other antecedent factors.

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

social networking
user satisfaction
social interaction
digital content industries

delone and mcleans model
continuance usage


Spoken query processing for interactive information retrieval It has long been recognized that interactivity improves the effectiveness of Information Retrieval systems. Speech is the most natural and interactive medium of communication and recent progress in speech recognition is making it possible to build systems that interact with the user via speech. However, given the typical length of queries submitted to Information Retrieval systems, it is easy to imagine that the effects of word recognition errors in spoken queries must be severely destructive on the system's effectiveness. The experimental work reported in this paper shows that the use of classical Information Retrieval techniques for spoken query processing is robust to considerably high levels of word recognition errors, in particular for long queries. Moreover, in the case of short queries, both standard relevance feedback and pseudo relevance feedback can be effectively employed to improve the effectiveness of spoken query processing.

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

information retrieval
spoken query processing


secure and efficient protocol for mobile payments Electronic Payments have gained tremendous popularity in the modern world. Credit/debit cards and online payments are in widespread use. Bringing electronic payments to the mobile world offers huge utility for mobile users. Lack of standardized protocols, interoperability and security are major roadblocks in developing a mobile payment infrastructure. A scheme called SEMOPS (Secure Mobile Payment Service) has already been proposed by A. Vilmos and S. Karnouskos. This proposed SEMOPS architecture addresses these problems. However, it will work inefficiently for micropayments due to a lot of computation and communication for every payment. Good micropayment support is extremely important for mobile payment systems to succeed. This work focusses on enabling efficient micropayment support in SEMOPS scheme. An analysis of the security and efficiency of the proposed method is given in this paper. Our new proposed method has been found to be very efficient for micropayments in SEMOPS.

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


Indexing of Tagged Moving Objects over Localized Trajectory with Time Intervals in RFID Systems Since a radio frequency identification (RFID) transponder (tag) generates both location and time information when it enters and leaves a reader, the trajectory of a moving, tagged object can be traced. Due to the time intervals between entries to successive readers, during which tags are not tracked, accurate tracing of complete trajectories can be difficult. To overcome this problem, we propose a tag trajectory indexing scheme called TR-tree (R-tree-based tag trajectory index) that can trace tags by combining the local trajectories at each reader. In experiments, this scheme showed superior performance compared with other indices.

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


noise in deep submicron digital design As technology scales into the deep submicron regime, noise immunity is becoming a metric of comparable importance to area, timing, and power for the analysis and design of VLSI systems. This paper defines noise as it pertains to digital systems and addresses the technology trends which are bringing noise issues to the forefront. The noise sources which are plaguing digital systems are explained. A metric referred to as noise stability is defined, and a static noise analysis methodology based on this metric is introduced to demonstrate how noise can be analyzed systematically. Analysis issues associated with on-chip interconnect are also considered. This paper concludes with a discussion of the device, ciruit, layout, and logic design issues associated with noise.

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

logic design
stability
systems
methodology
analysis
device
design
layout
interconnect
demonstrate
power
timing
paper
noise

digitize
cmos circuits
static analysis
technologies
association
metrication
inductance
noise margins
crosstalk


A new control circuit for asynchronous micropipelines In this paper, we present a new configuration of an asynchronous micropipeline, called Locally Distributed Asynchronous (LDA) micropipeline, using a new control circuit. The control circuit generates local control signals according to the 4-phase signaling protocol. The control circuit is used to control the dynamic logic in the datapath. Comparisons based on simulations with other earlier published asynchronous micropipelines are also presented.

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

asynchronous design
zero-overhead
dual-rail coding


Growth Hormone-induced Neuroprotection in the Neural Retina during Chick Embryogenesis Recent studies have established that retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) of the neural retina are extrapituitary sites of growth hormone (GH) production and action in early chick embryos prior to the ontogeny of pituitary somatotrophs. The presence of GH in axons of the RGCs is, however, restricted to the period when the retinofugal neurons project to and synapse with visual centers within the brain, suggesting roles for GH in axonal growth or guidance. Autocrine and/or paracrine actions of retinal GH are also neuroprotective for RGCs during developmental waves of apoptosis that characterize RGC differentiation. The anti-apoptotic actions of retinal GH use signaling mechanisms that are common to other established neurotrophins (e.g., brain-derived growth factor, insulin-like growth factor-1, transforming growth factor ?-1). Retinal GH is therefore a novel neurotrophin in the visual system during chick embryogenesis.

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

growth hormone
retinal ganglion cells
apoptosis


optimizing cmos circuits for low power using transistor reordering This paper addresses the optimization of a circuit for low power using transistor reordering. The optimization algorithm relies on a stochastic model of a static CMOS gate that includes the power of internal nodes of the gate. This power-consumption model depends on the switching activity and the equilibrium probabilities of the inputs of the gate. The model allows an exploration of the different configurations of a gate that are obtained by reordering its transistors. Thus, the best configuration of each gate is selected and the overall power consumption of the circuit is reduced.

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

combinational synthesis
power modeling
low-power design


Distributed control and constraint preconditioners Optimization problems with constraints that involve a partial differential equation arise widely in many areas of the sciences and engineering, in particular in problems of design. The solution of such PDE-constrained optimization problems is usually a major computational task. Here we consider simple problems of this type: distributed control problems in which the 2- and 3-dimensional Poisson problem is the PDE. Large dimensional linear systems result from the discretization and need to be solved: these systems are of saddle-point type. We introduce an optimal preconditioner for these systems that leads to convergence of symmetric Krylov subspace iterative methods in a number of iterations which does not increase with the dimension of the discrete problem. These preconditioners are block structured and involve standard multigrid cycles. The optimality of the preconditioned iterative solver is proved theoretically and verified computationally in several test cases. The theoretical proof indicates that these approaches may have much broader applicability for other partial differential equations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

saddle point problems
poe-constrained optimization
optimal control
conjugate gradient method


Colonial competitive differential evolution: An experimental study for optimal economic load dispatch A new DE algorithm based on socio-political evolution for ELD problem. A review and comparative study of proposed methods for ELD problem. CCDE algorithms ware successfully implemented for ELD problem.

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

differential evolution (de)
colonial competitive de (ccde)
benchmark functions


Eigenvector centrality based cluster size control in randomly deployed wireless sensor networks We propose a new Eigenvector Based Cluster Size Control method Ev-CSC. Ev-CSC utilizes PageRank and ? cut set to address uneven energy consumption. WSN is modeled as fuzzy graph to address dynamic and uncertain characteristics. Ev-CSC is independent of node density, shape of deployment region and sink position. Simulation results indicate improved network lifetime and energy efficiency.

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

cluster size control
fuzzy graph
eigenvector centrality
wireless sensor networks


Design and implementation of parallel counterpropagation networks using MPI The objective of this research is to construct parallel models that simulate the behavior of artificial neural networks. The type of network that is simulated in this project is the counterpropagation network and the parallel platform used to simulate that network is the message passing interface (MPI). In the next sections the counterpropagation algorithm is presented in its serial as well as its parallel version. For the latter case, simulation results are given for the session parallelization as well as the training set parallelization approach. Regarding possible parallelization of the network structure, there are two different approaches that are presented; one that is based to the concept of the intercommunicator and one that uses remote access operations for the update of the weight tables and the estimation of the mean error for each training stage.

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

neural networks
counterpropagation
message passing interface

parallel programming
communicators
process groups
point to point communications
collective communication
rma operations


comparison of parallel algorithms for modelling mass-springs systems with several apis on modern gpus The paper proposes and compares two parallel algorithms for GPU simulation of a mass-spring cloth model and image based collision detection and response approach. The algorithms are implemented using three different APIs for GPU programming: OpenGL plus GLSL, NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL. The speed of the two algorithms is measured on each of the APIs and results are presented. Conclusions are drawn at the end of the paper.

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


Characterization of Dendritic Cells in Humans with Type 1 Diabetes The characterization of dendritic cells (DCs) in diabetes has primarily examined in vitro-generated DCs. In this study, we have compared the composition and phenotype of naturally occurring DCs within the peripheral blood of subjects with type 1 diabetes, latent-onset autoimmune diabetes in adults, and nondiabetic controls. We find that circulatory DC subsets exist in normal frequencies and phenotypic states in diabetic patients. In vivo, DCs were located around the pancreatic islets in type 1 diabetic patients, but were absent in pancreatic tissue of normal controls. These findings provide new insight toward understanding the pathological role of DCs in type 1 diabetes.

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


Linear-time wrappers to identify atypical points: Two subset generation methods The wrapper approach to identify atypical examples can be preferable to the filter approach (which may not be consistent with the classifier in use), but its running time is prohibitive. The fastest available wrappers are quadratic in the number of examples, which is far too expensive for atypical detection. The algorithm presented in this paper is a linear-time wrapper that is roughly 75 times faster than the quadratic wrappers on average over 7 classifiers and 20 data sets tested in this research. Also, two subset generation methods for the wrapper are introduced and compared. Atypical points are defined in this paper as the misclassified points that the proposed algorithm (Atypical Sequential Removing: ASR) finds not useful to the classification task. They may include outliers as well as overlapping samples. ASR can identify and rank atypical points in the whole data set without damaging the prediction accuracy. It is general enough that classifiers without reject option can use it. Experiments on benchmark data sets and different classifiers show promising results and confirm that this wrapper method has some advantages and can be used for atypical detection.

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

atypical data
outlier detection
linear wrapper
sample subset selection


Biogeography-based optimization for voltage stability improvement and reactive reserve management This paper proposes a biogeography-based optimization algorithm to enhance the voltage stability of a power system. It computes the optimal quantity of reactive power support with a view to place the static VAR compensator at the most appropriate nodes. The scheme inflicts an effective management of VAR resources in the process of improving the voltage profile and reducing the network losses. It includes the results of IEEE 30-node system to illustrate the feasibility of the approach.

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

voltage stability
static var compensator

biogeography-based optimization
real power loss minimization
facts devices


Examining the effect of user satisfaction on system usage and individual performance with business intelligence systems: An empirical study of Taiwan's electronics industry The advent of new information technology has radically changed the end-user computing environment over the past decade. To enhance their management decision-making capability, many organizations have made significant investments in business intelligence (BI) systems. The realization of business benefits from BI investments depends on supporting effective use of BI systems and satisfying their end user requirements. Even though a lot of attention has been paid to the decision-making benefits of BI systems in practice, there is still a limited amount of empirical research that explores the nature of end-user satisfaction with BI systems. End-user satisfaction and system usage have been recognized by many researchers as critical determinants of the success of information systems (IS). As an increasing number of companies have adopted BI systems, there is a need to understand their impact on an individual end-user's performance. In recent years, researchers have considered assessing individual performance effects from IS use as a key area of concern. Therefore, this study aims to empirically test a framework identifying the relationships between end-user computing satisfaction (EUCS), system usage, and individual performance. Data gathered from 330 end users of BI systems in the Taiwanese electronics industry were used to test the relationships proposed in the framework using the structural equation modeling approach. The results provide strong support for our model. Our results indicate that higher levels of EUCS can lead to increased BI system usage and improved individual performance, and that higher levels of BI system usage will lead to higher levels of individual performance. In addition, this study's findings, consistent with DeLone and McLean's IS success model, confirm that there exists a significant positive relationship between EUCS and system usage. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

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

business intelligence
user satisfaction
system usage
individual performance


GLOUDS: Representing tree-like graphs The Graph Level Order Unary Degree Sequence (GLOUDS) is a new succinct data structure for directed graphs that are tree-like, in the sense that the number of additional edges (w.r.t. a spanning tree) is not too high. The algorithmic idea is to represent a BFS-spanning tree of the graph (consisting of n nodes) with a well known succinct data structure for trees, named LOUDS, and enhance it with additional information that accounts for the non-tree edges. In practical tests, our data structure performs well for graphs containing up to m=5n m = 5 n edges, while still having competitive running times for listing adjacent nodes.

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


FLOW EFFECT AROUND TWO SQUARE CYLINDERS ARRANGED SIDE BY SIDE USING LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD The flow around two square cylinders arranged side by side has been investigated through lattice Boltzmann method under different Reynolds numbers and various spaceratios (s = d/D, d is the separation distance between two cylinders, D is the characteristic length) from 1.0, 1.1 to 2.7, including 18 space ratios. It is found that the flip-flop regime occurs at small space ratios and the synchronized regime occurs at large space ratios. Wide and narrow wakes at small spacing are formed and intermittently change behind the cylinders, and the biased flowing the gap is bistable. The frequency of vortex shedding is different in two wakes. The upper frequency is smaller than the lower frequency for small space ratios (s 140 because of the nonlinear interaction between the wakes, and the instability of flow becomes stronger with the increase in Reynolds numbers. On the other hand, the vortex shedding type from the cylinder occurs in-phase when s < 2.5 and s = 2.5 for Re < 190, whereas that occurs anti-phase when s = 2.5 for Re <= 190. In addition, the pressure varies a little on the left surfaces and greatly on the right surfaces of both cylinders with the increase in Reynolds number at s = 2.5.

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

square cylinder
drag coefficient
lift coefficient


A New Regularity Criterion for the 3D Navier-Stokes Equations via Two Entries of the Velocity Gradient Tensor We consider the Cauchy problem for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in R 3, and provide a new regularity criterion involving only two entries of the Jacobian matrix of the velocity field.

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


TICOM and the Search for OKW/Chi In the final days of the Third Reich, the Allies sent TICOM intelligence assault teams into Germany in search of the signal intelligence secrets of the Wehrmacht. Chief among their targets was the Wehrmacht cryptologic service OKW/Chi. As OKW/Chi dissolved in the final days of the war, its archive disappeared, resulting in a months-long search from the northern most border of Germany to the mountains of Bavaria and Austria. This is the story of that search, of which details had remained classified for over 60 years.

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

30 a
u
okw
chi
russian fish
schliersee archive
ultra
wilhelm fenner


Argument Relevance as the Right Kind of Epistemic Reason A defense of the view that there is a central purpose in presenting an argument: to establish its conclusion, and so to secure belief in it. Relevance is then relevance to that purpose. To deem a statement relevant to an argument is to claim that it functions as a kind of epistemic reason pertaining to the cogency of an argument to establish its conclusion. Criticism of Walton's dialogue-relative understanding of relevance, as well as the probabilistic criterion of relevance or evidence.

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

argumentation
pragmatics
irrelevance
walton
dialogue
ad hominem
probabilistic criterion of relevance


A highly efficient implementation of a backpropagation learning algorithm using matrix ISA BackPropagation (BP) is the most famous learning algorithm for Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). BP has received intensive research efforts to exploit its parallelism in order to reduce the training time for complex problems. A modified version of BP based on matrixmatrix multiplication was proposed for parallel processing. In this paper, we present the implementation of Matrix BackPropagation (MBP) using scalar, vector, and matrix Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs). Besides this, we show that the performance of the MBP is improved by switching from scalar ISA to vector ISA. It is further improved by switching from vector ISA to matrix ISA. On a practical application, speech recognition, the speedup of training a neural network using unrolling scalar ISA over scalar ISA is 1.83. On eight parallel lanes, the speedups of using vector, unrolling vector, and matrix ISAs are respectively 10.33, 11.88, and 15.36, where the maximum theoretical speedup is 16. The results obtained show that the use of matrix ISA gives a performance close to optimal, because of reusing the loaded data, decreasing the loop overhead, and overlapping the memory operations with arithmetic operations.

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

parallel architecture
vector/matrix processing
parallel algorithms
backpropagation algorithm
reusing data
loop unrolling


NetCluster: A clustering-based framework to passive measurements data analyze internet Internet measured data collected via passive measurement are analyzed to obtain localization information on nodes by clustering (i.e., grouping together) nodes that exhibit similar network path properties. Since traditional clustering algorithms fail to correctly identify clusters of homogeneous nodes, we propose the NetCluster novel framework, suited to analyze Internet measurement datasets. We show that the proposed framework correctly analyzes.synthetically generated traces. Finally, we apply it to real traces collected at the access link of Politecnico di Torino campus LAN and discuss the network characteristics as seen at the vantage point. (C) 2013 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

internet measurements and characterization


a uniform approach to communication and computation The paper presents a uniform approach to computing and communication, which seems well-suited to dynamically handle information flows in an emergency management system and overcomes the drawbacks of layered architectures. The overall system is modelled as a computational graph consisting of components and connectors, which are recursively modelled as lower-level graphs. Micro-components, i.e., software modules which can be executed on a single computational node, are the basic building blocks. This paves the way to the design and implementation of adaptive systems where both introspective and domain information are treated in a uniform way to realize context-aware strategies supporting distributed computations and context-aware routing.

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

adaptivity
cross-layer
emergency management systems
context-based routing


A multi-objective analysis for import quota policy making in a perishable fruit and vegetable supply chain: A system dynamics approach This study investigates a supply chain of perishable fruits and vegetables. A simulation model using system dynamics approach is proposed to study the behaviors and relationships within the supply chain and to determine the impact of the supply, demand and price interactions. The proposed model yields an insight into the overall agricultural system, taking into account the influence of import quota policies. The purpose of this study is to develop a multi-objective model identifying the best import quota policy for Tehran Municipality Organization of Fruits and Vegetables. The multiple objectives are considered to be price mean, price variation and markup. Key conclusions were reached on how to conduct the multi-objective analysis with the aim of import quota policy making. The multi-objective analysis provides not a single solution but a complete non-dominated set of alternatives as potential compromise solutions among multiple objectives. A close examination of surface and contour plots reveals informative trade-offs. The obtained Pareto frontier contour plots assist decision makers to develop quick import quota policies by presenting a range of choice available to decision makers and providing them with the trade-off information among multiple objectives effectively.

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

perishable fruit and vegetable
supply chain
import quota
price

multi-objective modeling
system dynamics application


toward technologies that support family reflections on health Previous research has explored how technology can motivate healthy living in social groups such as friends and coworkers. However, little research has focused on the implications of collecting, sharing, and reflecting upon health information within families. To explore this domain, we conducted a study that consisted of a week-long journaling activity followed by semi-structured interviews and formative design activities with 15 families (66 people). We identified four areas in which these practices are unique in a family context. Based on these findings we propose preliminary considerations for technologies that effectively support family reflections on health data.

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

exercise
information sharing
lifestyle
nutrition


A hybrid shifting bottleneck-tabu search heuristic for the job shop total weighted tardiness problem In this paper, we study the job shop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing the total weighted tardiness. We propose a hybrid shifting bottleneck-tabu search (SB-TS) algorithm by replacing the re-optimization step in the shifting bottleneck (SB) algorithm by a tabu search (TS). In terms of the shifting bottleneck heuristic, the proposed tabu search optimizes the total weighted tardiness for partial schedules in which some machines are currently assumed to have infinite capacity. In the context of tabu search, the shifting bottleneck heuristic features a long-term memory which helps to diversify the local search. We exploit this synergy to develop a state-of-the-art algorithm for the job shop total weighted tardiness problem (JS-TWT). The computational effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated on standard benchmark instances from the literature.

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

job shop
weighted tardiness
shifting bottleneck
tabu search


A unified approach for analyzing persistent, non-persistent and ON-OFF TCP sessions in the Internet Most of the studies on TCP assume a fixed number of persistent TCP connections. A few of the recent studies look at non-persistent TCP connections but with many limiting assumptions. We look at a bottleneck router which has real time UDP traffic, TCP ON-OFF traffic and a stochastic flow of non-persistent TCP connections going through it. Our analysis is able to handle a large number (100 s) of TCP connections and still provides the mean file download times of each of these connections when all of them have different packet sizes, round trip times and max window size. Using this approach we are able to model almost all the different traffic types that exist in the Internet today. We also study systems employing RED control, which is recommeded to be used in the Internet. We demostrate the effectiveness of RED for congestion control in realistic Internet scenarios both theoretically and via simulations. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

persistent and non-persistent tcp connections


Fast recursive grayscale morphology operators: from the algorithm to the pipeline architecture This paper presents a new algorithm for efficient computation of morphological operations for gray images and the specific hardware. The method is based on a new recursive morphological decomposition method of 8-convex structuring elements by only causal two-pixel structuring elements (2PSE). Whatever the element size, erosion or/and dilation can then be performed during a unique raster-like image scan involving a fixed reduced analysis neighborhood. The resulting process offers low computation complexity combined with easy description of the element form. The dedicated hardware is generic and fully regular, built from elementary interconnected stages. It has been synthesized into an FPGA and achieves high-frequency performances for any shape and size of structuring element.

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

mathematical morphology
8-convex structuring element operators
regular dedicated pipeline architecture


audio watermarking algorithm for real-time speech integrity and authentication Data integrity and source origin authentication are essential topics for real-time multimedia systems. But traditional method, such as MAC, is not very applicable to overcome the distortion introduced in real-time multimedia communication. In this paper a new integrity mechanics deploying speech watermarking is presented. The advocated approach adopts public key encryption to efficiently generate non-repudiate speech. In the last part of the article, a speech watermarking algorithm incorporating with GSM 610 full-rate coder is proposed.

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


Carnitine Replacement in End-Stage Renal Disease and Hemodialysis Abstract: In patients with chronic renal failure, not yet undergoing hemodialysis (HD), plasma acylcarnitines accumulate in part due to a decreased renal clearance of esterified carnitine moieties. In these patients, a high acylcarnitine/free-carnitine ratio is usually found in plasma. Patients undergoing maintenance HD, usually present with plasma carnitine insufficiency, due to accumulation of metabolic intermediates combined with impaired carnitine biosynthesis, reduced protein intake and increased removal via HD. Plasma carnitine concentrations rapidly decrease to 40% of baseline level during the dialysis session, with a slow restoration of the carnitine concentration during the interdialytic period, mainly from organs of storage (skeletal muscle). Dietary intake also plays an important role in carnitine homeostasis of HD patients since the prevalence of malnutrition ranges from 18% to 75% of these cases. This could differentially affect various body compartments, with clinical consequences such as impaired muscle function, decreased wound healing, altered ventilatory response, and abnormal immune function. Repeated hemodialytic treatments are associated with decreased carnitine stores in skeletal muscle. The administration of intravenous l-carnitine (LC) postdialysis replenishes the free carnitine removed from the blood and contributes to replenishment of muscle carnitine content. LC supplementation in selected uremic patients may yield clinical benefits by ameliorating several conditions, such as erythropoietin-resistant anemia, decreased cardiac performance, intradialytic hypotension, muscle symptoms, as well as impaired exercise and functional capacities. Furthermore, LC may positively influence the nutritional status of HD patients by promoting a positive protein balance, and by reducing insulin resistance and chronic inflammation, possibly through an effect on leptin resistance.

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


Fuzzy games: A characterization of the core In this paper we extend to the cooperative fuzzy games case the reduced game introduced by Davis and Maschler [The kernel of a cooperative game, Naval Res. Logist. Quart. 12 (1965) 223-259]. We shall introduce two types of such a reduced game to cooperative fuzzy games and define the related properties of consistency and converse consistency. We further offer two axiomatizations of the core on the domain of all cooperative fuzzy games by means of consistency and its converse. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


is content publishing in bittorrent altruistic or profit-driven? BitTorrent is the most popular P2P content delivery application where individual users share various type of content with tens of thousands of other users. The growing popularity of BitTorrent is primarily due to the availability of valuable content without any cost for the consumers. However, apart from required resources, publishing (sharing) valuable (and often copyrighted) content has serious legal implications for users who publish the material (or publishers). This raises a question that whether (at least major) content publishers behave in an altruistic fashion or have other incentives such as financial. In this study, we identify the content publishers of more than 55K torrents in two major BitTorrent portals and examine their behavior. We demonstrate that a small fraction of publishers is responsible for 67\% of the published content and 75\% of the downloads. Our investigations reveal that these major publishers respond to two different profiles. On the one hand, antipiracy agencies and malicious publishers publish a large amount of fake files to protect copyrighted content and spread malware respectively. On the other hand, content publishing in BitTorrent is largely driven by companies with financial incentives. Therefore, if these companies lose their interest or are unable to publish content, BitTorrent traffic/portals may disappear or at least their associated traffic will be significantly reduced.

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


Microbial information regimen in EU geographical indications Fermented food Geographical Indications (GIs), protected within the framework of Intellectual Property and Human Rights, are based on various forms of local knowledge and technical practices and on various aspects of local biodiversity, ranging from plant varieties and animal breeds to microbial ecosystem. In the light of the EC Regulation 510/2006 relating to the protection of EU GIs, information about microbial resource management in GIs production is not unequivocally defined. We argue that it is possible to integrate the microbial resource information regimen coherently within the intellectual property framework for GIs. Product specification of GI fermented foods might comprise a list of autochthonous microbial strains representing the virtuous microbial biodiversity of a specific terroir and for a given method of food production. The autochthonous strains should be genotypically and technologically characterized and deposited in microbial collections. This approach will be useful in improving the unique qualities of products, and in ensuring a strong focus on the biological risks for human health and industrial exigencies of product standardization. Additionally, it is important to underline that a multi-strain starter culture essentially satisfies the patentable criteria.

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

geographical indications
microbial resource

intellectual property rights
food microbiology
autochthonous microflora
ec regulation 510/2006


Effective Pattern Discovery for Text Mining Many data mining techniques have been proposed for mining useful patterns in text documents. However, how to effectively use and update discovered patterns is still an open research issue, especially in the domain of text mining. Since most existing text mining methods adopted term-based approaches, they all suffer from the problems of polysemy and synonymy. Over the years, people have often held the hypothesis that pattern (or phrase)-based approaches should perform better than the term-based ones, but many experiments do not support this hypothesis. This paper presents an innovative and effective pattern discovery technique which includes the processes of pattern deploying and pattern evolving, to improve the effectiveness of using and updating discovered patterns for finding relevant and interesting information. Substantial experiments on RCV1 data collection and TREC topics demonstrate that the proposed solution achieves encouraging performance.

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

text classification
pattern mining
information filtering


an evolutionary approach to collective communication scheduling In this paper, we describe two evolutionary algorithms aimed at scheduling collective communications on interconnection networks of parallel computers. To avoid contention for links and associated delays, collective communications proceed in synchronized steps. Minimum number of steps is sought for the given network topology, wormhole (pipelined) switching, minimum routing and given sets of sender and/or receiver nodes. Used algorithms are able not only re-invent optimum schedules for known symmetric topologies like hyper-cubes, but they can find schedules even for any asymmetric or irregular topologies in case of general many-to-many collective communications. In most cases does the number of steps reach the theoretical lower bound for the given type of collective communication; if it does not, non-minimum routing can provide further improvement. Optimum schedules may serve for writing high-performance communication routines for application-specific networks on chip or for development of communication libraries in case of general-purpose interconnection networ.

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

collective communications
communication scheduling