A biplanar fluoroscopic approach for the measurement, modeling, and simulation of needle and soft-tissue interaction A methodology for modeling the needle and soft-tissue interaction during needle insertion is presented. The approach consists of the measurement of needle and tissue motion using a dual C-arm fluoroscopy system. Our dual C-arm fluoroscopy setup allows real time 3-D extraction of the displacement of implanted fiducials in the soft tissue during needle insertion to obtain the necessary parameters for accurate modeling of needle and soft-tissue interactions. The needle and implanted markers in the tissue are tracked during the insertion and withdrawal of the needle at speeds of 1.016mm/s, 12.7mm/s and 25.4mm/s. Both image and force data are utilized to determine important parameters such as the approximate cutting force, puncture force, the local effective modulus (LEM) during puncture, and the relaxation of tissue. We have also validated the LEM computed from our finite element model with arbitrary needle puncture tasks. Based on these measurements, we developed a model for needle insertion and withdrawal that can be used to generate a 1-DOF force versus position profile that can be experienced by a user operating a haptic device. This profile was implemented on a 7-DOf haptic device designed in our laboratory.

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

surgical simulation
soft-tissue modeling
needle insertion simulation
haptic feedback


Optimization of wastewater treatment facilities using process simulation The role of process simulation in designing, evaluating, and optimizing wastewater treatment facilities is discussed. Alternatives for controlling VOC emissions from treatment plants and removing dissolved solids from clarified effluent streams are evaluated. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

computer-aided process design
process modeling
environmental impact assessment
waste minimization


Bayesian approaches to the model selection problem in the analysis of latent stage-sequential process Recently, a great deal of attention has been paid to the stage-sequential process for the longitudinal data. A number of methods for analyzing stage-sequential processes have been derived from the family of finite mixture modeling. However, the research on the sequential process is rendered difficult by the fact that the number of latent components is not known a priori. To address this problem, we adopt the reversible jump MCMC (RJMCMC) and the Bayesian nonparametric approach, which provide a set of principles for the systematic model selection for the stage-sequential process. Using a latent class profile analysis, we evaluate the performance of RJMCMC and the Bayesian nonparametric method on the model selection problem.

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

dirichlet process
finite mixture model
latent class analysis
stage-sequential process


Explaining counterexamples using causality When a model does not satisfy a given specification, a counterexample is produced by the model checker to demonstrate the failure. A user must then examine the counterexample trace, in order to visually identify the failure that it demonstrates. If the trace is long, or the specification is complex, finding the failure in the trace becomes a non-trivial task. In this paper, we address the problem of analyzing a counterexample trace and highlighting the failure that it demonstrates. Using the notion of causality introduced by Halpern and Pearl, we formally define a set of causes for the failure of the specification on the given counterexample trace. These causes are marked as red dots and presented to the user as a visual explanation of the failure. We study the complexity of computing the exact set of causes, and provide a polynomial-time algorithm that approximates it. We then analyze the output of the algorithm and compare it to the one expected by the definition. The algorithm is implemented as a feature in the IBM formal verification platform RuleBasePE, where the visual explanations are an integral part of every counterexample trace. Our approach is independent of the tool that produced the counterexample, and can be applied as a light-weight external layer to any model checking tool, or used to explain simulation traces.

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

hardware verification
explanation of counterexamples


An investigation of the reliability of solderable ICA with low-melting-point alloy (LMPA) filler The reliability properties of solderable ICA interconnections were investigated. The metallurgically-interconnected solderable ICA show good electrical reliability. The interfacial IMC layers were transformed from scallop-type to layer-type IMC. The fracture surface showed a semi-brittle fracture mode. Solderable ICA can achieve excellent electrical/mechanical reliability properties.

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

intermetallic compounds
isotropic conductive adhesive
low melting point alloy
reduction capability
wettability


What kind of knowledge is in Wikipedia? Unsupervised extraction of properties for similar concepts This article presents a novel method for extracting knowledge from Wikipedia and a classification schema for annotating the extracted knowledge. Unlike the majority of approaches in the literature, we use the raw Wikipedia text for knowledge acquisition. The main assumption made is that the concepts classified under the same node in a taxonomy are described in a comparable way in Wikipedia. The annotation of the extracted knowledge is done at two levels: ontological and logical. The extracted properties are evaluated in the traditional way, that is, by computing the precision of the extraction procedure and in a clustering task. The second method of evaluation is seldom used in the natural language processing community, but it is regularly employed in cognitive psychology.

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

knowledge acquisition
natural language processing


architecting ambient intelligence systems Ambient Intelligence (AmI) systems refer to ubiquitous computing with focus on human experiences. The AmI ideas are based on the premise that if environment around individuals can be personalized for the current needs of an individual, then the lives can be more productive and enjoyable. New and existing technologies will be used to personalize spaces and experiences in AmI environments. The goal of AmI is to make computing and technology transparent and invisible to the individual. AmI is characterized by unobtrusive and mostly invisible technologies working together, anticipating the needs, and personalizing the environment and experiences for individuals. This paper presents new ideas in developing AmI infrastructure for deploying AmI services. The proposed system architecture is based on characterizing the roles and rights of individuals in the current environment and designing components and services that respond to these roles. The generalized architecture can be used to adapt physical as well as virtual spaces to fit individual preferences. A general architecture is necessary to move AmI from a collection of "cool gadgets" to an ambient and aware service focused on personalization for individuals.

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

personalization
ambient intelligence
architecture


Combining MRI, EMA and EPG measurements in a three-dimensional tongue model A three-dimensional (3D) tongue model has been developed using MR images of a reference subject producing 44 artificially sustained Swedish articulations. Based on the difference in tongue shape between the articulations and a reference, the six linear parameters jaw height, tongue body, tongue dorsum, tongue tip, tongue advance and tongue width were determined using an ordered linear factor analysis controlled by articulatory measures. The first five factors explained 88% of the tongue data variance in the midsagittal plane and 78% in the 3D analysis. The six-parameter model is able to reconstruct the modelled articulations with an overall mean reconstruction error of 0.13 cm, and it specifically handles lateral differences and asymmetries in tongue shape. In order to correct articulations that were hyperarticulated due to the artificial sustaining in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition, the parameter values in the tongue model were readjusted based on a comparison of virtual and natural linguopalatal contact patterns, collected with electropalatography (EPG). Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) data was collected to control the kinematics of the tongue model for vowel-fricative sequences and an algorithm to handle surface contacts has been implemented, preventing the tongue from protruding through the palate and teeth. (C) 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

magnetic resonance imaging
electromagnetic articulography
electropalatography

three-dimensional modelling
linear component analysis
kinematic control
parameter tuning
boundary contact handling


Service, quality and human factors As pressures on the service economy from globalisation increase, new techniques may be appropriate for designing service systems. This paper examines the tradition of service quality and argues that its unique characteristics, such as the joint production of offerings by operators and customers, could benefit from the techniques of human factors. The interaction between human factors and quality is reviewed and four issues are extracted that should be directly applicable to service encounters. These are interface design, the understanding of error causation, a design for operator well-being and human/automation function allocation. A framework is proposed for considering technology explicitly in the design of service systems.

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


Effect of plasma treatments on interface chemistry and adhesion strength between porous SiO2 low-k film and SiC/SiN layers In this study, the interface chemistry and adhesion strengths between porous SiO2 low-dielectric-constant film and SiN capping layer as well as SiC etch stop layer have been investigated under different plasma treatments. Elements of Si, O, and N constructed an interlayer region with mixing SiN and SiO bonds at the interface between the porous SiO2 film and SiN capping layer. After plasma treatments especially O2 plasma, the oxygen content at the interface increased, and the binding energy obviously shifted to a higher level. Under nanoindentation and nanoscratch tests, interface delamination occurred, and the interface adhesion strength was accordingly measured. After plasma treatments especially the O2 plasma, more SiO bonds of high binding energy existed at the interface, and thus the interface adhesion strength was effectively improved. The adhesion energy of SiO2/SiN and SiC/SiO2 interfaces was enhanced to 4.7 and 10.5J/m2 measured by nanoindentation test, and to 1.3 and 2.0J/m2 by nanoscratch test, respectively.

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


Static heuristics for robust resource allocation of continuously executing applications ? We investigate two distinct issues related to resource allocation heuristics: robustness and failure rate. The target system consists of a number of sensors feeding a set of heterogeneous applications continuously executing on a set of heterogeneous machines connected together by high-speed heterogeneous links. There are two quality of service (QoS) constraints that must be satisfied: the maximum end-to-end latency and minimum throughput. A failure occurs if no allocation is found that allows the system to meet its QoS constraints. The system is expected to operate in an uncertain environment where the workload, i.e.,the load presented by the set of sensors, is likely to change unpredictably, possibly resulting in a QoS violation. The focus of this paper is the design of a static heuristic that: (a) determines a robust resource allocation, i.e.,a resource allocation that maximizes the allowable increase in workload until a run-time reallocation of resources is required to avoid a QoS violation, and (b) has a very low failure rate (i.e.,the percentage of instances a heuristic fails). Two such heuristics proposed in this study are a genetic algorithm and a simulated annealing heuristic. Both were seeded by the best solution found by using a set of fast greedy heuristics.

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

genetic algorithm
resource allocation
robustness
simulated annealing

heterogeneous distributed computing
task scheduling
shipboard computing
static mapping


Improving the desolvation penalty in empirical protein pK(a) modeling Unlike atomistic and continuum models, empirical pk(a) predicting methods need to include desolvation contributions explicitly. This study describes a new empirical desolvation method based on the Born solvation model. The new desolvation model was evaluated by high-level Poisson-Boltzmann calculations, and discussed and compared with the current desolvation model in PROPKA-one of the most widely used empirical protein pK(a) predictors. The new desolvation model was found to remove artificial erratic behavior due to discontinuous jumps from man-made first-shell cutoffs, and thus improves the desolvation description significantly.

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


Modeling vague spatial data warehouses using the VSCube conceptual model Although many real world phenomena are vague and characterized by having uncertain location or vague shape, existing spatial data warehouse models do not support spatial vagueness and then cannot properly represent these phenomena. In this paper, we propose the VSCube conceptual model to represent and manipulate shape vagueness in spatial data warehouses, allowing the analysis of business scores related to vague spatial data, and therefore improving the decision-making process. Our VSCube conceptual model is based on the cube metaphor and supports geometric shapes and the corresponding membership values, thus providing more expressiveness to represent vague spatial data. We also define vague spatial aggregation functions (e.g. vague spatial union) and vague spatial predicates to enable vague SOLAP queries (e.g. intersection range queries). Finally, we introduce the concept of vague SOLAP and its operations (e.g. drill-down and roll-up). We demonstrate the applicability of our model by describing an application concerning pest control in agriculture and by discussing the reuse of existing models in the VSCube conceptual model.

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

spatial data warehouse
spatial vagueness

conceptual modeling
vague spatial object


Acquisition of complex model knowledge by domain theory-controlled generalization Nearly all three-dimensional reconstruction methods lack proper model knowledge that reflects the scene. Model knowledge is required in order to reduce ambiguities which occur during the reconstruction process. It must comprise the scene and is therefore complex, and additionally difficult to acquire. In this paper we present an approach for the learning of complex model knowledge. A (large) sample set of three-dimensionally acquired buildings represented as graphs is generalized by the use of background knowledge. The background knowledge entails domain-specific knowledge and is utilized for the search guidance during the generalization process of EXRES. The generalization result is a distribution of relevant patterns which reduces ambiguities occurring in 3D object reconstruction (here: buildings). Three different applications for the 3D reconstruction of buildings from aerial images are executed whereas binary relations of so-called building atoms, namely tertiary nodes and faces, and building models are learned. These applications are evaluated based on (a) the estimated empirical generalization error and (b) the use of information coding theory and statistics by comparing the learned knowledge with non-available a priori knowledge.

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

machine learning
statistical analysis
data mining
generic scene knowledge
semantic modeling


The reductionist paradox: are the laws of chemistry and physics sufficient for the discovery of new drugs? Reductionism is alive and well in drug-discovery research. In that tradition, we continually improve experimental and computational methods for studying smaller and smaller aspects of biological systems. Although significant improvements continue to be made, are our efforts too narrowly focused? Suppose all error could be removed from these methods, would we then understand biological systems sufficiently well to design effective drugs? Currently, almost all drug research focuses on single targets. Should the process be expanded to include multiple targets? Recent efforts in this direction have lead to the emerging field of polypharmacology. This appears to be a move in the right direction, but how much polypharmacology is enough? As the complexity of the processes underlying polypharmacology increase will we be able to understand them and their inter-relationships? Is "new" mathematics unfamiliar in much of physics and chemistry research needed to accomplish this task? A number of these questions will be addressed in this paper, which focuses on issues and questions not answers to the drug-discovery conundrum.

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

biological reductionism
emergent properties
hierarchy


the phase-shifting network design of electronically-steered smart antennas for td-scdma systems This paper firstly introduced some principles of the phase-shifting network of an electronically-steered smart antenna for TD-SCDMA systems. Secondly, we described the principle of a phase-shifter. The proposed phase-shifter is used in TD-SCDMA systems and is simulated by the Ansoft HFSS software. Simulation results show that the proposed phase-shifter can obtain better angle of phase-shifting. The phase-shifting network based on the proposed phase- shifter can also attain efficient downtilt angle.

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

td-scdma
phase-shifting network
radition pattern


Investigating coherence and multimedia effects of a technology-mediated collaborative environment This paper presents an experiment investigating the impact of context-relevant graphics on a knowledge sharing task in a technology-mediated collaborative (TMC) environment. The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) is introduced as the theoretical base for the hypotheses. The principles of multimedia and coherence from the CTML are used to hypothesize about the effectiveness of graphics embedded in TMC environments. Comprehension and transfer are used as dependent measures. Three TMC interface treatments were considered (no graphic, irrelevant graphic, relevant graphic). Hierarchical analysis of covariance (HANCOVA) comparing TMC treatments indicated no significant differences in comprehension; however, transfer scores for the TMC teams with context-relevant graphics were significantly higher than the other TMC teams. Although adding graphics to the collaborative interface improves the level of understanding developed within a group, the graphics need to be context relevant to be effective. These findings support the coherence and multimedia principles and provide guidance for designers of TMC environments.

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


Optimization method for the inverse problem of reconstructing the source term in a parabolic equation This work investigates the inverse problem of reconstructing a spacewise dependent heat source in the parabolic heat equation using a final temperature measurement. Such problem has important application in a large field of applied science. On the basis of the optimal control framework, the existence and necessary condition of the minimizer for the cost functional are established. The global uniqueness and stability of the minimizer are deduced from the necessary condition. The Landweber iteration algorithm is applied to the inverse problem and some numerical results are presented for various typical test examples. (C) 2009 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

inverse problem
source term
optimization method
numerical results


Exponential periodicity of continuous-time and discrete-time neural networks with delays Exponential periodicity of continuous-time neural networks with delays is investigated. Without assuming the boundedness and differentiability of the activation functions, some new sufficient conditions ensuring existence and uniqueness of periodic solution for a general class of neural systems are obtained. Discrete-time analogue of the continuous-time system with periodic input is formulated and we study their dynamical characteristics. The exponential periodicity of the continuous-time system is preserved by the discrete-time analogue without any restriction imposed on the uniform discretization step-size.

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

activation functions
delays
exponential periodicity

discrete-time analogue
exponential stability


Dependability evaluation of an air traffic control computing system As air traffic over France is growing rapidly, the existing air traffic control (ATC) system has to evolve to satisfy the increasing demand. The selection of the new automated computing system (denoted CAUTRA) is based, among other things, on dependability evaluation. This paper is devoted to the dependability evaluation of the CAUTRA, however, emphasis is put on a subset: the regional control center (RCC). Starting from the analysis of the impact of CAUTRA failures on air traffic safety, five levels of service degradation are defined for the global system grading the effects of these failures on the service delivered to the controllers to ensure traffic safety. The RCC failure modes leading to these degradation levels are then defined and evaluated using stochastic Petri nets. The modeling approach consists in modeling the system as a set of modules interconnected via coupling mechanisms. The system model is constructed in several steps according to an incremental approach. Each step integrates the failure and recovery assumptions of an additional component and updates the model of the previous step by accounting for the impact of the new component on the behavior of those already included in the model. The application of this approach to the CAUTRA allowed us to analyze several configurations of the CAUTRA architecture and to identify improvement areas to minimize the impact of CAUTRA failures on air traffic safety.

O O O O B I I 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 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 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 B I I

stochastic petri nets
air traffic control
air traffic safety

dependability modeling
markov chains
safety analysis


Non-weak inhibition and phase resetting at negative values of phase in cells with fast-slow dynamics at hyperpolarized potentials Phase response is a powerful concept in the analysis of both weakly and non-weakly perturbed oscillators such as regularly spiking neurons, and is applicable if the oscillator returns to its limit cycle trajectory between successive perturbations. When the latter condition is violated, a formal application of the phase return map may yield phase values outside of its definition domain; in particular, strong synaptic inhibition may result in negative values of phase. The effect of a second perturbation arriving close to the first one is undetermined in this case. However, here we show that for a MorrisLecar model of a spiking cell with strong time scale separation, extending the phase response function definition domain to an additional negative value branch allows to retain the accuracy of the phase response approach in the face of such strong inhibitory coupling. We use the resulting extended phase response function to accurately describe the response of a MorrisLecar oscillator to consecutive non-weak synaptic inputs. This method is particularly useful when analyzing the dynamics of three or more non-weakly coupled cells, whereby more than one synaptic perturbation arrives per oscillation cycle into each cell. The method of perturbation prediction based on the negative-phase extension of the phase response function may be applicable to other excitable cell models characterized by slow voltage dynamics at hyperpolarized potentials.

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

phase resetting
phase return map
synaptic inhibition
morrislecar model

phase response curve
spike-time response curve
pulse coupled oscillators
non-weak coupling


Laser-assisted patterning of solution-processed oxide semiconductor thin film using a metal absorption layer We present a method to pattern solution-processed oxide semiconductor thin films by all laser process. A metal thin film is first photoetched by a spatially-modulated pulsed NdYAG laser beam and this layer is then covered with a semiconductor film. Uniform irradiation by the same laser generates a thermo-elastic force on the underlying metal layer and this force serves to detach it from the substrate, leaving only a patterned semiconductor structure. Sharp-edged zinctin oxide (ZTO) patterns at the micrometer scales could be fabricated over a few square centimeters by a single pulse of 850mJ. A mobility of 7.610?2cm2V?1s?1, an on/off ratio higher than 106, and an off-current of 1.9110?11A were achieved from a thin film transistor (TFT) with the patterned ZTO channel. These values were similar to those from a reference TFT, demonstrating the feasibility of this patterning process for electronic devices.

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


Intranet boundaries as guidelines for systems integration Systems integration (SI) has been examined from two main vantage points. External B2B SI focuses on transactional interactions between customers and suppliers in the value chain. Internal intraorganizational SI focuses on structural interactions between functional units of the firm. Both approaches present problems for intranet integrations that serve communities of practice and formal project teams that cross organizational boundaries. This paper examines a few nontransactional intranet integrations, using a model of social actor interactions, affiliations, environments, and identities, to characterize integration types. The analysis identifies an alternative, project-based integration approach that may be more appropriate for intranets shared by interorganizational teams and communities. The model-driven evaluation also demonstrates how practitioners can use pre-integration intranet boundaries as guidelines for selectively implementing transactional, structural, and project-based integration approaches.

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

b2b e-commerce
information-system integration


Web-based tutor for interactive design of connections in steel buildings There are a large number of connection types in steel structures. This is an area where students cannot get enough in the classroom. Design of each steel connection type is unique. At the same, there are similarities in designs of various connection types. These two factors plus the open-ended nature of the design can make the learning of so many different types of connections both challenging and tedious. While a number of tools are available to help teach design of connections there is no interactive online tool for teaching and learning of design of connections in steel structures. In this article a novel interactive approach and a Java applet, called Connection Tutor, is presented for design of a variety of connections in steel structures. Connection Tutor is intended to be used as a user-friendly supplement in teaching design of connections in steel structures. 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 20: 568577, 2012

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

steel structures
connections
java applet


Approximating the bottleneck plane perfect matching of a point set A bottleneck plane perfect matching of a set of n points in R2 R 2 is defined to be a perfect non-crossing matching that minimizes the length of the longest edge; the length of this longest edge is known as bottleneck . The problem of computing a bottleneck plane perfect matching has been proved to be NP-hard. We present an algorithm that computes a bottleneck plane matching of size at least n 5 in O(nlog2?n) O ( n log 2 ? n ) -time. Then we extend our idea toward an O(nlog?n) O ( n log ? n ) -time approximation algorithm which computes a plane matching of size at least 2 n 5 whose edges have length at most 2 + 3 times the bottleneck.

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

bottleneck matching
geometric graph
unit disk graph


Progressing the state-of-the-art in grammatical inference by competition - The Omphalos Context-Free Language Learning Competition This paper describes the Omphalos Context-Free Language Learning Competition held as part of the International Colloquium on Grammatical Inference 2004. After the success of the Abbadingo Competition on the better known task of learning regular languages, the competition was created in an effort to promote the development of new and better grammatical inference algorithms for context-free languages, to provide a forum for the comparison of different grammatical inference algorithms and to gain insight into the current state-of-the-art of context-free grammatical inference algorithms. This paper discusses design issues and decisions made when creating the competition, leading to the introduction of a new complexity measure developed to estimate the difficulty of learning a context-free grammar. It presents also the results of the competition and lessons learned.

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


A weakly stable method for linear integral equations of the first kind Studies a new method of a weak approximation for a stable solution of some first kind integral equations integral K-b(a)(x, y)u(x)dx = f(y) with continuous kernel. It is well known that the problem of resolution of these equations is ill-posed in the sense of the methods that use the strong norms such as the one of uniform convergence. The method developed here is based on a weak formulation of the problem enabling us to weakly approach the solution and guarantee some weak stability with respect to the topology of simple convergence. An application to the inverse Laplace transform is treated at the end of this 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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


Tight Analysis of the (1+1)-EA for the Single Source Shortest Path Problem We conduct a rigorous analysis of the (1 + 1) evolutionary algorithm for the single source shortest path problem proposed by Scharnow, Tinnefeld, and Wegener (The analyses of evolutionary algorithms on sorting and shortest paths problems, 2004, Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms, 3(4):349-366). We prove that with high probability, the optimization time is O(n(2) max{l, log(n)}), where l is the smallest integer such that any vertex can be reached from the source via a shortest path having at most l edges. This bound is tight. For all values of n and l we provide a graph with edge weights such that, with high probability, the optimization time is of order Omega(n(2) max{l, log(n)}). To obtain such sharp bounds, we develop a new technique that overcomes the coupon collector behavior of previously used arguments. Also, we exhibit a simple Chernoff type inequality for sums of independent geometrically distributed random variables, and one for sequences of random variables that are not independent, but show a desired behavior independent of the outcomes of the previous random variables. We are optimistic that these tools find further applications in the analysis of evolutionary algorithms.

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

theory
single source shortest paths
runtime analysis


dynamic power management for streaming data This paper presents a method that uses data buffers to smoothen request variations and to create long idleness for power management. This method considers the power consumed by the buffers and assigns an energy penalty for buffer underflow. Our approach provides analytic formulas for calculating the optimal buffer sizes and the amount of data to store in the buffers. We use video prefetching as a case study and obtain power savings of more than 74\% for MPEG-1 and 34\% for MPEG-2 videos.

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


Response surface modeling of vibrating omega tube (Copper) electromechanical Coriolis mass flow sensor Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is a combination of statistical and mathematical techniques to represent the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a physical system by explicit functions. This methodology has been widely employed in many applications such as design optimization, response prediction and model validation. But so far the literature related to its application in Coriolis mass flow sensing is scarce. Therefore the present work evaluates the effect of sensor location, excitation frequency on the performance of Coriolis Mass Flow Sensor (CMFS). The experiments were performed in a systematic manner with three successive trials using the indigenously developed setup of CMFS. Central composite design of RSM was adopted for analyzing the results. A second order, non-linear mathematical model has been developed for establishing the relationship among design parameters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been performed to verify the fit and adequacy of the developed mathematical models.

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

response surface method modeling
copper omega tube


Group sparse representation for image categorization and semantic video retrieval Multimedia content analysis and management are a promising and challenging theme. In this paper we develop a novel approach to image representation, which we call group sparse representation (GSR), for image classification and video retrieval. The basic idea is to represent a test image as a weighted combination of all the training images. In particular, we introduce two sets of weight coefficients, one for each training image and the other for each class. Moreover, we formulate our concern as a group nonnegative garrote model. The resulting representations are sparse, and they are appropriate for discriminant analysis. Experiments on Caltech101 and PASCAL VOC2008 image dataset and TRECVID2005 video corpus testify that our proposed approach is efficient and effective.

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

group sparse representation
nonnegative garrote

compressive sensing
bag-of-sift-words
l1-minimization
apcluster


MEASUREMENT AND MEANING IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH: METHODOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS Despite renewed interest and many advances in methodology in recent years, information systems and organizational researchers face confusing and inconsistent guidance on how to choose amongst, implement, and interpret findings from the use of different measurement procedures. In this article, the related topics of measurement and construct validity are summarized and discussed, with particular focus on formative and reflective indicators and common method bias, and, where relevant, a number of allied issues are considered. The perspective taken is an eclectic and holistic one and attempts to address conceptual and philosophical essentials, raise salient questions, and pose plausible solutions to critical measurement dilemmas occurring in the managerial, behavioral, and social sciences.

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

construct validity
common method bias
reflective indicators
measurement

formative indicators
structural equation models


Localization and regularization behavior of mixed finite elements for 2D structural problems with damaging material A class of Lagrangian mixed finite elements is presented for applications to 2D structural problems based on a damage constitutive model. Attention is focused on localization and regularization issues as compared with the correspondent behavior of Lagrangian displacement-based elements. A non-local regularization procedure of integral type is adopted. A predictorcorrector technique is used to solve the evolution problem of the damage variable. The proposed elements show superior performances for typical structural applications.

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

mixed finite elements
damage
localization
regularization


Strict constraints on 2D primitive pairs for engineering symbol recognition: Theory and application Geometric constraints on the line-line pair, line-arc pair and arc-arc pair are proposed. The constraints are able to encode the geometric relations between lines, arcs and circles. A geometric proof is presented to demonstrate that the constraints are stable under translation, rotation, uniform scaling or reflection of the primitive pairs. Based on the constraints, an algorithm for recognizing symbols in drawings is developed. Experimental results show that, compared with three other methods, our method can distinguish more primitive pairs and has higher accuracy in engineering symbol recognition.

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

coordinated multi-point transmission
multicell cooperation
capacity analysis
mimo-ofdm
power allocation
frequency selective mimo channel


Efficient reconstruction from non-uniform point sets We propose a method for non-uniform reconstruction of 3D scalar data. Typically, radial basis functions, trigonometric polynomials or shift-invariant functions are used in the functional approximation of 3D data. We adopt a variational approach for the reconstruction and rendering of 3D data. The principle idea is based on data fitting via thin-plate splines. An approximation by B-splines offers more compact support for fast reconstruction. We adopt this method for large datasets by introducing a block-based reconstruction approach. This makes the method practical for large datasets. Our reconstruction will be smooth across blocks. We give reconstruction measurements as error estimations based on different parameter settings and also an insight on the computational effort. We show that the block size used in reconstruction has a negligible effect on the reconstruction error. Finally we show rendering results to emphasize the quality of this 3D reconstruction technique.

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

non-uniform reconstruction
variational approximation
b-splines
3d object modeling


E-Government institutionalizing practices of a land registration mapping system Delivering on the promise of E-Government (E-Gov) to implement IT-enabled changes implies that processes and service delivery modifications are incorporated into the routine operations of the public sector. This is referred to as institutionalization. In contrast, institutionalizing E-Gov involves practices through which system functionalities and procedures come to assume an embedded status within the organizational environment. Prior research has focused on institutionalization but offered few clues on these institutionalizing practices of E-Gov within organizations. Our theoretical framework posits that institutionalizing of E-Gov can be analyzed as situated practices. We apply this conceptual approach to analyze the case of an 11-year implementation of a strategic E-Gov project that automated the land mapping registration services and their delivery to the public. We examine institutionalization outcomes as construction of actor-networks and institutionalizing practices as enactment of actor-network reconfiguration. Our findings provide evidence of black-box status for some E-Gov functions and situated institutionalization for others. We thereby extend the research on E-Gov post-adoption and post-implementation behaviors by providing early evidence of generic institutionalization measures and institutionalizing practices.

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


Trimming of 3D solid finite element meshes using parametric surfaces: Application to sheet metal forming In this paper we present a methodology for trimming 3D solid finite element meshes using a non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) surfaces representation. The algorithms applied in the identification of the spatial position of the finite element (FE) nodes and elements relative to the trimming surface are described, as well as, the explanation of the correction methods adopted to geometrically rearrange the trimmed elements. Three different strategies are proposed to adjust, with greater or lesser accuracy, the trimmed FE mesh to the trimming surface. The first consists only of an element elimination strategy, while the other two are based on a nodal stretching strategy, aiming for more accurate adjustment of the finite elements boundary to the trimming surface. Finally, to highlight the capabilities of the developed program, a mesh generation example is given by trimming a mesh with the shape of a blank automotive panel.

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

cutting
hexahedral meshes
solid finite elements


Truncating the hierarchy of moment equations based on point distribution - application to innovation diffusion The phenomenon of innovation diffusion, modeled as a nonlinear birth process, leads to a hierarchy of moment equations. For gaining insight into the evolution of moments of a number of adopters in innovation diffusion, truncation procedures based on point distributions are proposed for truncating the hierarchy of moment equations. It is found that the results obtained by employing new truncation procedures are in close agreement with analytical results based on system size expansion for large population size. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

truncation procedures
innovation diffusion

moments hierarchy
two-point distribution
gaussian distribution
bass model
nui model


A computational approach to body mass index prediction from face images Human faces encode plenty of useful information. Recent studies in psychology and human perception have found that facial features have relations to human weight or body mass index (BMI). These studies focus on finding the correlations between facial features and the BMI. Motivated by the recent psychology studies, we develop a computational method to predict the BMI from face images automatically. We formulate the BMI prediction from facial features as a machine vision problem, and evaluate our approach on a large database with more than 14,500 face images. A promising result has been obtained, which demonstrates the feasibility of developing a computational system for BMI prediction from face images at a large scale. (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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O B I O O B I O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

facial features
bmi prediction
machine vision
large database


Unitary space-time modulation for multiple-antenna communications in Rayleigh flat fading Motivated by information-theoretic considerations, we propose a signaling scheme, unitary space-time modulation, for multiple-antenna communication links. This modulation is ideally suited for Rayleigh fast-fading environments, since it does not require the receiver to know or learn the propagation coefficients. Unitary space-time modulation uses constellations of T X M space-time signals {Phi(l), l = 1, ..., L}, where T represents the coherence interval during which the fading is approximately constant, and M < T is the number of transmitter antennas. The columns of each Phi(l) are orthonormal. When the receiver does not know the propagation coefficients, which between pairs of transmitter and receiver antennas are modeled as statistically independent, this modulation performs very well either when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high or when T much greater than M. We design some multiple-antenna signal constellations and simulate their effectiveness as measured by bit-error probability with maximum-likelihood decoding. We demonstrate that two antennas have a 6-dB diversity gain over one antenna at 15-dB SNR.

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

channel coding
fading channels
multielement antenna arrays
space-time modulation
transmitter and receiver diversity
wireless communications


Geophysics and NIH image It is possible to interpret 2D and 3D seismic data using NIH Image, a free medical imaging software product developed by the US National Institutes of Health. Using Image, or one of several developing spin-offs, the basic flow of seismic interpretation can be accomplished. It is also capable of some advanced methods such as volume visualization, amplitude calibration to well control, cube displays and reservoir area/volume estimates. All figures in this paper were generated using this free product. At the least, Image is a marvelous data viewer which compliments workstation class systems. However, for many users, it may be sufficient for the entire interpretation process. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Precise asymptotics for the linear processes generated by associated random variables in Hilbert spaces ? ?? Let { ? k , k ? Z } be a strictly stationary associated sequence of random variables taking values in a real separable Hilbert space, and { a k ; k ? Z } be a sequence of bounded linear operators. For a linear process X k = ? i = ? ? ? a i ( ? k ? i ) , the precise probability and moment convergence rates of ? i = 1 n X i in some limit theorems are discussed.

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

convergence rates
hilbert space
linear processes


Optimal distortion embedding of complete binary trees into lines We study the problem of embedding an unweighted complete binary tree into a line with low distortion. Very recently, Mathieu and Papamanthou (2008) [9] showed that the inorder traversal of the complete binary tree of height h gives a line embedding of distortion O(2(h)), and conjectured that the current lower bound of Omega(2(h)/h) increases to Omega(2(h)), i.e., the upper bound of O(2(h)) is best possible. In this paper, we disprove their conjecture by providing a line embedding of the complete binary tree of height h with optimal distortion Theta(2(h)/h). (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

line embedding
distortion
complete binary tree


dynamic service quality and resource negotiation for high-availability service-oriented systems The principle goal of our research project is to improve the availability of service-oriented systems. This is especially important in systems that cross organizational boundaries. In this paper we outline the main research questions, our approach, which is based on appropriate redundancy strategies, and the progress achieved to date.

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


A data mining approach to identify cognitive NeuroRehabilitation Range in Traumatic Brain Injury patients A platform to search for data driven flow experiences in patients is introduced. Traumatic Brain Injury patients rehabilitation plans based on empirical clinical data. Zone of rehabilitation potential modeled using NeuroRehabilitation Range (NRR). Analytical and visual tools are introduced and validated to search data driven NRR. Obtained results lead to actual clinical NRR hypothesis reconsideration.

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


Boundary treatment for 2D elliptic mesh generation in complex geometries This paper presents a boundary treatment method for 2D elliptic mesh generation in complex geometries. Corresponding to NeumannDirichlet boundary conditions (sliding boundary conditions), the proposed method aims at achieving orthogonal and smooth nodal distribution along irregular boundaries. In this method, a three-lined auxiliary mesh is constructed which is composed of the boundary line, an auxiliary line generated on its inner side, and the reflection line of this auxiliary line. The movements of the boundary nodes are determined by solving this auxiliary mesh. The boundary nodes are further corrected and adjusted by a second-order parabolic interpolation method and a weighting parameter depending on the curvature of the boundary. The proposed method was demonstrated through examples, and applied to field cases with complex geometries. It has been shown that this method is stable and effective in producing high quality meshes.

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 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


Optimal placement of switches in a radial distribution network for reliability improvement The paper has solved multi-objective reliability optimization problem. Optimal allocation of remote control switches (RCSs) has been performed. Differential search algorithm (DS) is applied to solve the optimization problem. Performance of DS algorithm has been compared with PSO. Performance of DS algorithm is observed to be more encouraging.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O B I I O O O 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 search algorithm
remote control switches

multi-objective function
radial distribution system
repair time
restoration time


camera for the invisible I built a camera for exploring and experimenting with the urban environment. The camera doesn't sense light, but rather things that the eye can't see like CO2, temperature, wind, etc. I plan to try out this "camera for the invisible" with urban-explorers-to-be, guided by Duckworth's Piagetian-derived Critical Exploration methodology.

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

nature awareness experiment toolkit native explore constructionist


Supervised learning of Gaussian mixture models for visual vocabulary generation ? The creation of semantically relevant clusters is vital in bag-of-visual words models which are known to be very successful to achieve image classification tasks. Generally, unsupervised clustering algorithms, such as K-means, are employed to create such clusters from which visual dictionaries are deduced. K-means achieves a hard assignment by associating each image descriptor to the cluster with the nearest mean. By this way, the within-cluster sum of squares of distances is minimized. A limitation of this approach in the context of image classification is that it usually does not use any supervision that limits the discriminative power of the resulting visual words (typically the centroids of the clusters). More recently, some supervised dictionary creation methods based on both supervised information and data fitting were proposed leading to more discriminative visual words. But, none of them consider the uncertainty present at both image descriptor and cluster levels. In this paper, we propose a supervised learning algorithm based on a Gaussian mixture model which not only generalizes the K-means algorithm by allowing soft assignments, but also exploits supervised information to improve the discriminative power of the clusters. Technically, our algorithm aims at optimizing, using an EM-based approach, a convex combination of two criteria: the first one is unsupervised and based on the likelihood of the training data; the second is supervised and takes into account the purity of the clusters. We show on two well-known datasets that our method is able to create more relevant clusters by comparing its behavior with the state of the art dictionary creation 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

bags of visual words
supervised gaussian mixture model
dictionary generation
expectation-maximization algorithm


Templates-based portable just-in-time compiler Usage of the platform-neutral bytecode interpreters is often limited by their restricted performance. Just-in-time compilers effectively solve this problem. However they are hard to develop and retarget. This paper demonstrates that dynamic code generation from the templates created by a C compiler can be used to build a simple and highly-portable JIT compiler.

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

just-in-time compilation
bytecode interpretation
code inlining


Adaptive AT2 optimal algorithms on reconfigurable meshes ? Recently self-simulation algorithms have been developed to execute algorithms on a reconfigurable mesh (RM) of size smaller than recommended in those algorithms. Optimal slowdown, in self-simulation, has been achieved with the compromise that the resultant algorithms fail to remain AT2 optimal. In this paper, we introduce, for the first time, the idea of adaptive algorithm which runs on RM of variable sizes without compromising the AT2 optimality. We support our idea by developing adaptive algorithms for sorting items and computing the contour of maximal elements of a set of planar points on RM.

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


Software project managers and project success: An exploratory study Traditionally, a project should deliver agreed upon functionality on time and within budget. This study examines the mindset of software development project managers in regard to how they define a successful project in order to arrive at a richer perspective of success from the perspective of project managers. Senior management and members of the development team can gain a better understanding of the perspective of project managers regarding some of the aspects of their work and the project as a whole. Such understanding can facilitate better communication and cooperation among these groups. We investigated components of the developed system (project) in terms of some of the aspects of the delivered system (outcome/project) in order to place traditional measures of success in context with other organizational/managerial measures that have been suggested in the literature. We also investigated specific work-related items. These items have potential implications for the intrinsic motivation of the project manager. The consensus among the project managers who participated in our study indicated that delivering a system that meets customer/user requirements and works as intended through work that provides a sense quality and personal achievement are important aspects that lead to a project being considered a success.

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

software development
success
project manager


ISSUES IN COMPUTER AND NONCOMPUTER SUPPORTED GDSSS Considerable attention in recent years, especially in the US, has been paid to computer based Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS). These systems expect to capitalise on the benefits provided by computers and networks. These computer based GDSSs are heralded as being relatively new, however systems for supporting group decision making developed in the UK which use only manual methods and techniques have been available for much longer. This paper aims to examine these two types of group decision support system, and suggest a third type - that of the partially computer based system. The paper considers aspects of GDSS design such as location, flexibility of design, levels of participation in data capture, presentational difficulties, managing complexity of data, client control, and management of group dynamics. By so doing the paper aims to demonstrate that all three types of system can benefit from consideration of the other types, that each type has both positive and negative features, and that some combination of all of the types could provide groups with the best form of support.

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

group decision support systems
computers
group decision making


Person authentication from neural activity of face-specific visual self-representation In this paper, we propose a new biometric system based on the neurophysiological features of face-specific visual self representation in a human brain, which can be measured by ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG). First, we devise a novel stimulus presentation paradigm, using self-face and non-self-face images as stimuli for a person authentication system that can validate a person's identity by comparing the observed trait with those stored in the database (one-to-one matching). Unlike previous methods that considered the brain activities of the resting state, motor imagery, or visual evoked potentials, there are evidences that the proposed paradigm generates unique subject-specific brain-wave patterns in response to self- and non-self-face images from psychology and neurophysiology studies. Second, we devise a method for adaptive selection of EEG channels and time intervals for each subject in a discriminative manner. This makes the system immune to forgery since the selected EEG channels and time intervals for a client may not be consistent with those of imposters in terms of the latency and amplitude of the brain-waves. Based on our experimental results and analysis, it is believed that the proposed person authentication system can be considered as a new biometric authentication system.

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


stop-motion prototyping for tangible interfaces Stop-motion animation brings the constraints of the body, space and materials into video production. Building on the tradition of video prototyping for interaction design, stop motion is an effective technique for concept development in the design of Tangible User Interfaces. This paper presents a framework for stop-motion prototyping and the results of two workshops based on stop-motion techniques including pixillation, claymation and time-lapse photography. The process of stop-motion prototyping fosters collaboration, legibility and rapid iterative design in a physical context that can be useful to the early stages of tangible interaction design.

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

tangible user interfaces
claymation
pixillation
prototyping
animation


Spatial domain digital watermarking of multimedia objects for buyer authentication Most of the existing watermarking processes become vulnerable when the attacker knows the watermark insertion algorithm. This paper presents an invisible spatial domain watermark insertion algorithm for which we show that the watermark can be recovered even if the attacker tries to manipulate the watermark with the knowledge of the watermarking process. The process incorporates buyer specific watermarks within a single multimedia object, and the same multimedia object has different watermarks that differ from owner to owner. Therefore recovery of this watermark not only authenticates the particular owner of the multimedia object but also could be used to identify the buyer involved in the forging process. This is achieved after spatially dividing the multimedia signal randomly into a set of disjoint subsets (referred to as the image key) and then manipulating the intensity of these subsets differently depending on a buyer specific key. These buyer specific keys are generated using a secret permutation of error correcting codes so that exact keys are not known even with the knowledge of the error correcting scheme. During recovery process a manipulated buyer key (due to attack) is extracted from the knowledge of, the image key. The recovered buyer key is matched with the exact buyer key in the database utilizing the principles of error correction. The survival of the watermark is demonstrated for a wide range of transformations and forging attempts on multimedia objects both in spatial and frequency domains. We have shown that quantitatively our watermarking survives rewatermarking attack using the knowledge of the watermarking process more efficiently compared to a spread spectrum based technique. The efficacy of the process increases in scenarios in which there exist fewer numbers of buyer keys for a specific multimedia object. We have also shown that a minor variation of the watermark insertion process can survive a "Stirmark" attack. By making the image key and the intensity manipulation process specific for a buyer and with proper selection of error correcting codes, certain categories of collusion attacks can also be precluded.

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

buyer key
digital watermarking
image key


Property Pd,m and efficient design of reliable networks For d = 1 and m = 1, a graph has property Pd,m if there exist at least m vertex-disjoint paths of length at most d between each pair of vertices. Property Pd,m, which has a strong connection to wide diameter, is one way of measuring the reliability of a network. In this article, we first examine the relationship of Pd,m to other similar properties and then we prove several results regarding the extremal number for property Pd,m (the minimum number of edges needed for a graph to have the property). In particular, we find (i) the extremal number for graphs of certain orders when d = 2, (ii) several extremal graphs when d = 3, (iii) a new lower bound on the extremal number when d = 3, m = 3, and (iv) a new upper bound on the extremal number when d,m are even with d = 4k + 2(k = 1) and m = 4. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2012

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

property pd
container
menger path systems
disjoint paths


A fast quantum circuit for addition with few qubits We show how to construct a fast quantum circuit for computing the sum of two n-bit binary numbers with few qubits. The constructed circuit uses O(n/log n) ancillary qubits and its depth and size are O(log n) and O(n), respectively. The number of ancillary qubits is asymptotically less than that in Draper et al.'s quantum carry-lookahead adder, and the depth and size are asymptotically the same as those of Draper et al.'s. Moreover, we show that the circuit is useful for constructing an efficient quantum circuit for Shor's factoring algorithm.

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

quantum circuits
shor's factoring algorithm


A software engineering approach to ontology building Ontologies are the backbone of the Semantic Web, a semantic-aware version of the World Wide Web. The availability of large-scale high quality domain ontologies depends on effective and usable methodologies aimed at supporting the crucial process of ontology building. Ontology building exhibits a structural and logical complexity that is comparable to the production of software artefacts. This paper proposes an ontology building methodology that capitalizes the large experience drawn from a widely used standard in software engineering: the Unified Software Development Process or Unified Process (UP). In particular, we propose UP for ONtology (UPON) building, a methodology for ontology building derived from the UP. UPON is presented with the support of a practical example in the eBusiness domain. A comparative evaluation with other methodologies and the results of its adoption in the context of the Athena EU Integrated Project are also discussed.

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

knowledge representation formalism
knowledge representation method


Simple algebraic data types for C Adt is a simple tool in the spirit of Lex and Yacc that makes monomorphic algebraic data types, polymorphic built-in types like the list and an efficient form of pattern matching available in C programs. C programs built with ADTs typically use NULL pointers only to indicate don't care values, and not as sentinels. This reduces the scope for errors involving NULL pointers. The Adt tool generates runtime checks, which catch many of the remaining NULL pointer dereferences. The runtime checks may consume a significant amount of CPU time; hence they can be switched off once the program is suitably debugged. Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


A Mixed Reality Virtual Clothes Try-On System Virtual try-on of clothes has received much attention recently due to its commercial potential. It can be used for online shopping or intelligent recommendation to narrow down the selections to a few designs and sizes. In this paper, we present a mixed reality system for 3D virtual clothes try-on that enables a user to see herself wearing virtual clothes while looking at a mirror display, without taking off her actual clothes. The user can select various virtual clothes for trying-on. The system physically simulates the selected virtual clothes on the user's body in real-time and the user can see virtual clothes fitting on the her mirror image from various angles as she moves. The major contribution of this paper is that we automatically customize an invisible (or partially visible) avatar based on the user's body size and the skin color and use it for proper clothes fitting, alignment and clothes simulation in our virtual try-on system. We present three scenarios: i) virtual clothes on the avatar, ii) virtual clothes on the user's image and iii) virtual clothes on the avatar blended with the user's face image. We have conducted a user study to evaluate the effectiveness of these three solutions from the end user's perception of quality attributes, cognitive attributes and attitude towards using. The user study shows that among these three scenarios, the second one is most preferred by the users and for 50% of them the experience they had with our system was sufficient to make the purchase decision for the outfits they virtually tried-on.

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

skin color matching and real-time cloth simulation


Fast set-up asynchronous brain-switch based on detection of foot motor imagery in 1-channel EEG Bringing a BrainComputer Interface (BCI) out of the lab one of the main problems has to be solved: to shorten the training time. Finding a solution for this problem, the use of a BCI will be open not only for people who have no choice, e.g., persons in a locked-in state, or suffering from a degenerating nerve disease. By reducing the training time to a minimum, also healthy persons will make use of the system, e.g., for using this kind of control for games. For realizing such a control, the post-movement beta rebound occurring after brisk feet movement was used to set up a classifier. This classifier was then used in a cue-based motor imagery system. After classifier adaptation, a self-paced brain-switch based on brisk foot motor imagery (MI) was evaluated. Four out of six subjects showed that a post-movement beta rebound after feet MI and succeeded with a true positive rate between 69 and 89%, while the positive predictive value was between 75 and 93%.

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

electroencephalogram
motor execution
brain-switch


Approximate traveling wave solutions for coupled WhithamBroerKaup shallow water Homotopy Perturbation Method (HPM) was used for computing the Coupled WhithamBroerKaup Shallow Water. Then HPM solution verified against exact one and compared with another approximate solution, the Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM). The existent error of the methods computed and convergence of the HPM solution has presented. Results reveal that HPM is an effective and powerful in solving the non-linear systems in mechanic, analytically.

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

homotopy perturbation method
traveling wave
approximate solution

shallow water equation (swe)
coupled whithambroerkaup (wbk)
approximate long wave (alw)


Solving Maxwells equations in singular domains with a Nitsche type method In this paper, we propose and analyze a method derived from a Nitsche approach for handling boundary conditions in the Maxwell equations. Several years ago, the Nitsche method was introduced to impose weakly essential boundary conditions in the scalar Laplace operator. Then, it has been worked out more generally and transferred to continuity conditions. We propose here an extension to vector divcurl problems. This allows us to solve the Maxwell equations, particularly in domains with reentrant corners, where the solution can be singular. We formulate the method for both the electric and magnetic fields and report some numerical experiments.

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

maxwell equations
nitsche method
singular domains


A KD-Tree-Based Nearest Neighbor Search for Large Quantities of Data The discovery of nearest neighbors, without training in advance, has many applications, such as the formation of mosaic images, image matching, image retrieval and image stitching. When the quantity of data is huge and the number of dimensions is high, the efficient identification of a nearest neighbor (NN) is very important. This study proposes a variation of the KD-tree - the arbitrary KD-tree (KDA) - which is constructed without the need to evaluate variances. Multiple KDAs can be constructed efficiently and possess independent tree structures, when the amount of data is large. Upon testing, using extended synthetic databases and real-world SIFT data, this study concludes that the KDA method increases computational efficiency and produces satisfactory accuracy, when solving NN problems.

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

arbitrary kd-tree (kda)
feature point
kd-tree
nearest neighbor (nn)


A fuzzy topology associated with a fuzzy finite state machine Given a fuzzy finite state machine M = (Q, Sigma, mu), a fuzzy closure operator is defined which induces a Lowen-type fuzzy topology tau in Q. The concepts of separation of fuzzy subsystems and connectedness of fuzzy finite slate machines are developed. Some results on connectedness and weak connectedness of fuzzy subsystems are obtained. Characterizations of these concepts in terms of the fuzzy topology are also obtained. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

fuzzy finite state machine
fuzzy topology


Consolidation and deformation around stone columns: Comparison of theoretical and laboratory results A unit cell, i.e. only one stone column and its corresponding surrounding soil, is used to study the consolidation and deformation around end-bearing columns under distributed loads. The results of laboratory measurements are compared with analytical solutions and numerical simulations. The large amount of data available from the laboratory allows for a detailed comparison. The main soil responses, such as the equivalent coefficient of consolidation, the stress concentration factor and the settlement reduction are analysed using the different approaches. The soil improvement directly depends on the stress distribution between soil and column. Column yielding, and consequently the friction and dilatancy angles of the gravel control the final improvement. Therefore, only the analytical solutions that properly consider plastic strains in the column accurately predict the soil improvement. An issue that influences the stress distribution with time and as a result the consolidation process is the high small-strain stiffness of the column, which is not considered in the analytical solutions but has a small influence for high degrees of consolidation, and hence, for practical purposes.

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

radial consolidation
small scale test
analytical solution
finite element analysis


Motives of transfer pricing strategies - systemic analysis Purpose - The paper aims to explore the adoption attitudes of internal and external motivations by multinational enterprises (MNEs) concerning transfer pricing manipulation and to discuss on pricing strategies of MNEs under different motives of transfer pricing manipulation. Design/methodology/approach - The paper conducts literature reviews regarding motives of transfer pricing manipulation and then conducts questionnaire survey and expert interview to select and generalize the transfer pricing manipulation decision making. Analytic network process (ANP) is then applied to obtain factors' weights and model construction. Findings - The paper finds that tax minimization is no longer the focus of transfer pricing manipulation strategies of Taiwanese MNEs, and their real concerns are winning maximum economic profits, enhancing the competitiveness of the enterprise, and effectively repatriating profits to parent companies in order to facilitate greater economic profits. Research limitations/implications - It is found from the model that most of the transfer pricing manipulation motives are based on low-price strategies, which circumvent the exchange rate risks of low quotes. A possible reason is that current business operational patterns that have been limited to the electronic industry adopt the quantity-based pricing strategy of "narrow profit margin and large volume." However, the transfer pricing manipulation has great influence on the financial structures of the enterprises. The enterprises, as a result, must understand and reinforce the working of pricing transfer manipulation in the business development. Originality/value - The paper collects questionnaires and investigation results from experts and scholars and uses ANP to construct a complete pricing strategic decision-making model that may be taken by actual MNEs under different motives, in order to provide reference to MNEs when making transfer pricing manipulation strategies.

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

transfer pricing
decision making
pricing strategy


Inferring the biggest and best: A measurement model for applying recognition to evoke consideration sets and judge between multiple alternatives It has long been supposed that preference judgments between sets of to-be-considered possibilities are made by means of initially winnowing down the most promising-looking alternatives to form smaller consideration sets (Howard, 1963andWright and Barbour, 1977). In preference choices with >2 options, it is standard to assume that a consideration set, based upon some simple criterion, is established to reduce the options available. Inferential judgments, in contrast, have more frequently been investigated in situations in which only two possibilities need to be considered (e.g., which of these two cities is the larger?) Proponents of the fast and frugal approach to decision-making suggest that such judgments are also made on the basis of limited, simple criteria. For example, if only one of two cities is recognized and the task is to judge which city has the larger population, the recognition heuristic states that the recognized city should be selected. A multinomial processing tree model is outlined which provides the basis for estimating the extent to which recognition is used as a criterion in establishing a consideration set for inferential judgments between three possible options.

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


A new approach for handling forecasting problems using high-order fuzzy time series In recent years, some researchers used high-order fuzzy time series to deal with forecasting problems. In this paper, we present a new method for forecasting the enrollments of the University of Alabama based on the high-order fuzzy time series. The proposed method uses the so-called "second order differences" of the enrollments of the previous years to determine the trend of the forecasting. The proposed method gets a higher forecasting accuracy rate than the existing methods.

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

fuzzy time series
second order differences

fuzzy logical relationship
high-order fuzzy time series


Robust blind source separation algorithms using cumulants In this paper we propose a new approach to blind separation of independent source signals that, while avoiding the imposition of an orthogonal mixing matrix, is robust with respect to the existence of additive Gaussian noise in the mixture. We demonstrate that, for the wide class of source distributions with certain non-null cumulants and a pre-specified scaling, separation is always a saddle point of a cumulant-based cost function. We propose a quasi-Newton approach for determining this saddle point. This enables us to obtain a family of separation algorithms which, based on higher order statistics, yields unbiased estimates even in the presence of large Gaussian noise and has the interesting property of local isotropic convergence. Another family of algorithms that incorporates second-order statistics loses the former desirable convergence properties but it provides more precise estimates in the absence of noise. Extensive computer simulations confirm robustness and the excellent performance of the resulting algorithms.

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

independent component analysis
equivariant algorithms
newton methods
high order statistics


Using the Taguchi method for effective market segmentation This study proposes a clustering method based on Taguchi method for effective market segmentation. To select appropriate initial seeds, we propose the use of Taguchi method as the tools. This study compares the results of the proposed a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) for application to a real-world case of tea-beverage market segmentation. The results show that the proposed Taguchi method may improve segmentation performance.

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

self-organizing maps (som)
clustering analysis


A UNIFIED FRAMEWORK FOR BI(TRI)CONNECTIVITY AND CHORDAL AUGMENTATION For a connected non-complete graph, a vertex separator is a subset of vertices whose deletion increases the number of connected components and the vertex connectivity of the graph refers to the size of a minimum vertex separator. A graph with the vertex connectivity k is said to be k-vertex connected. Given a k-vertex connected graph C. vertex connectivity augmentation determines a smallest set of edges whose augmentation to G makes it (k D-vertex connected. In this paper, we report our study on connectivity augmentation in 1-connected graphs, 2-connected graphs, and k-connected chordal graphs. We first represent the graph under consideration using a "tree-like" graph. This tree is unique and explicitly captures the connectivity in of the graph. Using this tree, our proposed data structure maintains the set of equivalence classes based on an equivalence relation on the set of leaves of the tree. This partition determines a set of edges to be augmented to increase the connectivity of the graph by one Based on our data structure, we present a new combinatorial analysis and an elegant proof of correctness of our linear-time algorithm for an optimum connectivity augmentation. The novelty is in the data structure which is a unified framework for all three augmentations. As far as the run-time analysis is concerned, given the associated tree, our approach yields an augmentation set in linear time

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

biconnectivity augmentation
triconnectivity augmentation


Real-time video streaming over multipath in multi-hop wireless networks Given the limited wireless link throughput, high loss rate, and varying end-to-end delay, supporting video applications in multi-hop wireless networks becomes a challenging task. Path diversity exploits multiple routes for each session simultaneously, which achieves higher aggregated bandwidth and potentially decreases delay and packet loss. Unfortunately, for TCP-based video streaming, naive load splitting often results in inaccurate estimation of round trip time (RTT) and packet reordering. As a result, it can suffer from significant instability or even throughput reduction, which is also validated by our analysis and simulation in multi-hop wireless networks. To make real-time TCP-based streaming viable over multi-hop wireless networks, we propose a novel cross-layer design with a smart traffic split scheme, namely, multiple path retransmission (MPR). MPR differentiates the original data packets and the retransmitted packets and works with a novel QoS-aware multi-path routing protocol, QAOMDV, to distribute them separately. MPR does not suffer from the RTT underestimation and extra packet reordering, which ensures stable throughput improvement over single-path routing. Through extensive simulations, we further demonstrate that, as compared with state-of-the-art multi-path protocols, our MPR with QAOMDV noticeably enhances the TCP streaming throughput and reduces bandwidth fluctuation, with no obvious impact to fairness.

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