Instrumented film-insert injection compression molding for lens encapsulation of liquid crystal displays New technique developed for lens encapsulation of thin and flexible LCDs. In process, pressure and thermal history collected with real-time instrumentation. Display substrate options characterized according to recorded thermal history. Using PEN substrate and post-process annealing found to be effective for part quality. Warpage reduced by application of process optimization technique.

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

film insert injection molding
lcd
thermoplastic polyurethane
lamination
thermal characterization


Software process improvement in a financial organization: An action research approach The project of a major financial company process evolution is presented. A research methodology is presented and used during the software process improvement (SPI). All phases, processes and addressed issues are illustrated. A survey method is conceived and applied to the members of the SPI project. All aspects of the success factors of the implementation are presented and analyzed.

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 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

systems development
software engineering
software process evaluation
software quality improvement


targeting ada95/dsa for distributed simulation of multiprotocol communication networks This paper describes the use of Ada95/DSA as middleware for modeling network's entities into distributed objects which can be used for both distributed execution and simulation without transformation of the model. First, general issues of simulation of network's entities are briefly presented. Then, the paper shows how DSA features are used to abstract these entities in a manner as they can be executed or simulated on a cluster of workstations. The DSA based model of distributed simulation is built on a combination of two kinds of classes: the first one support general purpose of distributed objects computing and the second deal with the development of distributed network elements. To illustrate the feasibility of this approach, a partial implementation of classes that have been used to model routers running a subset of border gateway protocol (BGP) is presented.

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

distributed networking protocols
distributed system annex
distributed objects engineering


Using scenario-based requirements to direct research on web macro tools ? Web macros automate the interactions of end users with web sites and related information systems. Though web macro recorders and players have grown in sophistication over the past decade, these tools cannot yet meet many tasks that people perform in daily life. Based on observations of browser users, we have compiled ten scenarios describing tasks that users would benefit from automating. Our analysis of these scenarios yields specific requirements that web macro tools should support if those tools are to be applicable to these real-life tasks. Our set of requirements constitutes a benchmark for evaluating tools, which we demonstrate by evaluating the Robofox, CoScripter, and iMacros tools.

O 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


A state of the art review on intimamedia thickness (IMT) measurement and wall segmentation techniques for carotid ultrasound Last 10 years have witnessed the growth of many computer applications for the segmentation of the vessel wall in ultrasound imaging. Epidemiological studies showed that the thickness of the major arteries is an early and effective marker of onset of cardiovascular diseases. Ultrasound imaging, being real-time, economic, reliable, safe, and now seems to become a standard in vascular assessment methodology. This review is an attempt to discuss the most performing methodologies that have been developed so far to perform computer-based segmentation and intimamedia thickness (IMT) measurement of the carotid arteries in ultrasound images. First we will present the rationale and the clinical relevance of computer-based measurements in clinical practice, followed by the challenges that one has to face when approaching the segmentation of ultrasound vascular images. The core of the paper is the presentation, discussion, benchmarking and evaluation of different segmentation techniques, including: edge-detection, active contours, dynamic programming, local statistics, Hough transform, statistical modeling, and integration of these approaches. Also, we will discuss and compare the different performance metrics that have been proposed and used to perform the validation. Best performing user-dependent techniques show an average IMT measurement error of about 1?m when compared to human tracings [57], whereas completely automated techniques show errors of about 10?m. The review ends with a discussion about the current standards in carotid wall segmentation and in an overview of the future perspectives, which may include the adoption of advanced and intelligent strategies to let the computer technique measure the IMT in the image portion where measurement is more reliable.

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

ultrasound imaging
segmentation
intimamedia thickness


Fifty years of scientific and technical information policy in France (1955-2005) Over the last fifty years, French public authorities have played a major role in developing a policy for scientific and technical information (STI) in France. Four distinct periods can be identified. During the first, from 1955 to 1973, policy was dominated by de Gaulle's concern to combat American hegemony and, since that time, STI policy has always been considered a part of French global politics. The second period from 1973 to 1982 saw the construction of the national STI infrastructure which was followed by a focus on content and database coordination up to 1993. Since that date, France's policy has been marked by the deregulation of telecommunications and the privatization of public services. The question addressed in this paper concerns the current role of public authorities in preparing French society for active participation in the knowledge society.

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

information policy
scientific and technical information
france


Investigating the Role of Body Shape on the Perception of Emotion In order to analyze the emotional content of motions portrayed by different characters, we created real and virtual replicas of an actor exhibiting six basic emotions: sadness, happiness, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust. In addition to the video of the real actor, his actions were applied to five virtual body shapes: a low- and high-resolution virtual counterpart, a cartoon-like character, a wooden mannequin, and a zombie-like character (Figures 1 and 2). In a point light condition, we also tested whether the absence of a body affected the perceived emotion of the movements. Participants were asked to rate the actions based on a list of 41 more complex emotions. We found that the perception of emotional actions is highly robust and to the most part independent of the character's body, so long as form is present. When motion alone is present, emotions were generally perceived as less intense than in the cases where form was present.

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

experimentation
human factors
graphics
motion capture


IL-6 Modulates Hyperglycemia-Induced Changes of Na+ Channel Beta-3 Subunit Expression by Schwann Cells Our data show the suppressive effect of hyperglycemia on expression of voltage-gated Na+ channel ?3 subunit by Schwann cells as well as the protection of ?3 expression by treatment with IL-6. Our findings have direct relevance for therapy of diabetic neuropathy.

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

schwann cell
il-6
na+ channel beta subunits
rat


a case for smaller class size with integrated lab for introductory computer science Prompted by changes in the numbers and demographics of students enrolled and being retained in computer science, the Department of Computer Science at NC State University is revising its undergraduate curriculum to better meet the needs of its students, and increase student attraction and retention. One set of changes concerns introductory computer science courses (CS1). This paper reports on a study conducted to assess the impact of class size and active learning in our CS1 courses. We find that smaller classes with integrated laboratories improve both learning and retention, as well as satisfaction of the students. Among other benefits, we found retention rates in small classes to be about 20\% better than large classes.

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

active learning
class size
introductory computer science

assessment
underrepresented groups
pipeline


Aging and Genome Maintenance Genomic instability in somatic cells has been implicated as a major stochastic mechanism of aging. Using a transgenic mouse model with chromosomally integrated lacZ mutational target genes, we found mutations to accumulate with age at an organ- and tissue-specific rate. Also the spectrum of age-accumulated mutations was found to differ greatly from organ to organ; while initially similar, mutation spectra of different tissues diverged significantly over the lifetime. To explain how genomic instability, which is inherently stochastic, can be a causal factor in aging, it is proposed that randomly induced mutations may adversely affect normal patterns of gene regulation, resulting in a mosaic of cells at various stages on a trajectory of degeneration, eventually resulting in cell death or neoplastic transformation. To directly address this question we demonstrate that it is now possible to analyze single cells, isolated from old and young tissues, for specific alterations in gene expression.

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


silhouette clipping Approximating detailed with coarse, texture-mapped meshes results in polygonal silhouettes. To eliminate this artifact, we introduce silhouette clipping, a framework for efficiently clipping the rendering of coarse geometry to the exact silhouette of the original model. The coarse mesh is obtained using progressive hulls, a novel representation with the nesting property required for proper clipping. We describe an improved technique for constructing texture and normal maps over this coarse mesh. Given a perspective view, silhouettes are efficiently extracted from the original mesh using a precomputed search tree. Within the tree, hierarchical culling is achieved using pairs of anchored cones. The extracted silhouette edges are used to set the hardware stencil buffer and alpha buffer, which in turn clip and antialias the rendered coarse geometry. Results demonstrate that silhouette clipping can produce renderings of similar quality to high-resolution meshes in less rendering time.

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

tree framework mesh quality geometry silhouette rendering maps demonstrate hardware model representation search

triangle decimation
level of detail algorithms
hierarchic
rendering algorithms
timing
normalization
buffers
texture mapping


Unsupervised tissue segmentation from dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging Design, implement, and validate an unsupervised method for tissue segmentation from dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). For each DCE-MRI acquisition, after a spatial registration phase, the time-varying intensity of each voxel is represented as a sparse linear combination of adaptive basis signals. Both the basis signals and the sparse coefficients are learned by minimizing a functional consisting of a data fidelity term and a sparsity inducing penalty. Tissue segmentation is then obtained by applying a standard clustering algorithm to the computed representation. Quantitative estimates on two real data sets are presented. In the first case, the overlap with expert annotation measured with the DICE metric is nearly 90% and thus 5% more accurate than state-of-the-art techniques. In the second case, assessment of the correlation between quantitative scores, obtained by the proposed method against imagery manually annotated by two experts, achieved a Pearson coefficient of 0.83 and 0.87, and a Spearman coefficient of 0.83 and 0.71, respectively. The sparse representation of DCE MRI signals obtained by means of adaptive dictionary learning techniques appears to be well-suited for unsupervised tissue segmentation and applicable to different clinical contexts with little effort.

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

dictionary learning
unsupervised tissue segmentation

dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging


OntoPipeliner: An ontology-based automatic semantic service pipeline generator The Web is a distributed environment rich with Web services going through continual metamorphosis; thus, sustaining semantic stability of service composition has become a major challenge. Automatic service composition enabled both by the use of ontologies that describe service domains and by user-specified constraints bound to the ontologies provides us candidate service pipelines at composition design time. The ontology-based languages for semantically describing web services, such as OWL-S, have been widely used. Though rich and comprehensive in their expressiveness, the use of these languages still leaves much of composition process manual. In this work, we present an ontology-based semantic web service composition system called OntoPipeliner. It employs a novel way of utilizing characteristics of Web services that reflect the classes and properties of domain ontologies and provides the ontology-guided constraints for automatic composition of services, in order to guide the user toward the best pipeline that meets the user requirements.

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

web service composition
automatic pipeline composition
ontology


A cumulant-based approach for direction finding in the presence of mutual coupling To estimate the direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) of non-Gaussian signals impinging on a uniform linear array (ULA) with unknown mutual coupling, a fourth-order cumulants (FOC)-based approach is presented. A series of FOC matrices are constructed by taking advantage of the banded symmetric Toeplitz structure of the mutual coupling matrix (MCM). It is shown that the DOAs can be estimated in a closed form based on these matrices. Compared with the conventional FOC-based method which only uses the middle subarray, the proposed approach makes use of the whole array and it is able to achieve better performance. Moreover, in the proposed approach the DOAs are determined by the eigenvalue decomposition instead of the exhaustive grid search and hence, it is computationally efficient. Finally, compared with the middle subarray method, the proposed one is applicable to scenarios with stronger mutual coupling. A number of numerical examples are provided to validate essential performance improvements achieved by means of the proposed approach.

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

direction-of-arrival (doa)
fourth-order cumulants (foc)


Depth potential function for folding pattern representation, registration and analysis Some surfaces present folding patterns formed by juxtapositions of ridges and valleys as, for example, the cortical surface of the human brain. The fundamental problem with ridges is to find a correspondence among and analyze the variability among them. Many techniques to achieve these goals exist but use scalar functions. Depth maps are used to efficiently project the geometry of folds into a scalar function in the case where a natural projection plane exists. However, in most cases of curved surfaces, there is no natural projection plane to represent folding patterns. This paper studies the problem of shape matching and analysis of folding patterns by extending the notion of depth maps when no natural projection plane exists. The novel depth measure is called a depth potential function. The depth potential function integrates the information known from the curvature of the surface into a point-of-view invariant representation. The main advantage of the depth potential function is that it is computed by solving a time independent Poisson equation. The Poisson equation endows our surface representation with a significant computational advantage that makes it orders of magnitude faster to compute compared with other available surface representations. The method described in this paper was validated using both synthetic surfaces and cortical surfaces of human brain acquired by magnetic resonance imaging. On average, the improvement in shape matching when using the depth potential was of 11%, which is considerable.

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

partial differential equation modeling
surface shape analysis
statistical studies
surface registration


MINIMUM SEPARATION IN WEIGHTED SUBDIVISIONS We present polynomial time results for computing a minimum separation between two regions in a planar weighted subdivision. Our results are based on a (more general) theorem that characterizes a class of functions for which optimal solutions arise on the boundary of the feasible domain. A direct consequence of this theorem is that a minimum separation goes through a vertex of the weighted subdivision. We also consider extensions and present results for the 3-D case and for a more general case of the 2-D separation problem , in which the separation (link) has associated an epsilon-width. Our results are the first nontrivial upper bounds for these problems. We also discuss simple approximation algorithms for the 2-D case and present a prune-and-search approach that can be used with either the continuous or the approximate solutions to speed up the computation. We have implemented a variant of the two region minimum separation algorithm based on the prune-and-search scheme.

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


Adaptive data class structure for efficient inter-vehicle communication To reduce the bandwidth needed for data transmission in an ad-hoc communication network, such as an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) inter-vehicle communication network, a broadcast scheme is proposed where the data to be transmitted is arranged into several classes. Each class contains more specific and detailed information. Since information to be transmitted often has a geographical relevance, the classes can be structured to represent this relationship. As data is routed through the ad-hoc network, the total amount of transmitted data is reduced by removing the data contained in one class on each hop. The class structure is adaptive so that in unforeseen situations the relative importance of transmitted data can be dynamically adjusted. Furthermore different manufacturers can implement different classes structures, and total length of data may be different. By computer simulation it was shown that in the proposed system the required bandwidth for transmission to achieve similar data reception rates to conventional nonstructured data schemes can be reduced to less than one third, resulting in a more efficient transmission scheme. In addition a packet structure similar to IP packets is proposed which will enable easily integration of multimedia transmissions into vehicle to vehicle communications.

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

ad-hoc networks
inter-vehicle communication
layers
structured data


Developing a B2B e-commerce implementation framework: A study of EDI implementation for procurement A case study was performed examining the electronic data interchange (EDI) implementation projects of four divisions of an aerospace company. By interviewing both partners in the relationship, a business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) implementation framework was developed. The framework provides guidelines for the type of e-business partnership to be pursued based on the volume of transactions (low vs. high) and complexity of transactions (simple vs. complex). Machine-to-machine B2B solutions should be pursued when the there is a high transaction volume of simple transactions. In other situations, potential B2B solutions include: e-business pull, partner access-extranet/push, or manual e-transmission.

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

electronic commerce (e-commerce)
electronic data interchange (edi)
interorganizational systems (ios)
adoption of it
partnerships


Euler polygonal method for metric dynamical systems ? Following some ideas developed for equations with a nonlinear differential, we consider the existence and uniqueness of solution for the metric dynamical system (F,x0) ( F , x 0 ) and we study the approximation, under appropriate hypotheses, of the unique solution using the Euler polygonal approximation method in relation with function F.

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


Hidden negative spatial autocorrelation Mostly lip service treatments of negative spatial autocorrelation (NSA) appear in the literature, although spatial scientists confront it in practice. NSA was detected serendipitously in recalcitrant empirical analyses containing a sizeable amount of global positive spatial autocorrelation (PSA) unaccounted for by standard spatial statistical models, and labeled hidden because conventional spatial statistical tools detected only PSA while giving absolutely not hint of NSA existing. The meaning of this phenomenon is explored empirically, with findings including: a better understanding of NSA, spatial filter model construction guidelines, effective illustrations of NSA, and how hidden NSA furnishes a diagnostic for model misspecification.

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

hidden negative spatial autocorrelation
negative spatial autocorrelation
spatial filter model


Finite element models of spot welds in structural dynamics: review and updating Spot welds are used extensively in the automotive industry to join panels, and car bodies contain many thousands of spot welds. Different finite element models of spot welds have been created for various types of analysis. When structures with many spot welds are analysed, these detailed models have too many degrees of freedom to be used in practice. Simple models that use few elements must be used instead. This paper reviews the spot weld models available in the literature. Model updating based on the measured vibration characteristics is then used to improve the accuracy of the most common coarse models of spot welds.

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

spot welds
structural dynamics
model updating

finite element analysis
automotive structures


mining frequent itemsets with partial enumeration In this paper, we present an algorithm of mining frequent itemsets using partial enumeration and the FP-growth function with reduced depth of recursion. The experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms the original FP-growth algorithm without partial enumeration for the databases with high density.

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

k -prefix partitioning
conditional databases


A theoretical study of continuous counter-current chromatography for adsorption isotherms with inflection points Continuous counter-current chromatographic processes have been increasingly applied in the last years. For chromatographic systems characterized by linear or Langmuir adsorption equilibria, there are nowadays reliable design rules available to decide whether a separation is feasible and which operating parameters should be used. For more complex equilibrium functions, theoretical methods are less developed. Mole realistic adsorption isotherms are frequently characterized by inflection points in their courses. A flexible model capable to quantify single solute and competitive adsorption isotherms is provided by statistical thermodynamics. In this work, second-order truncations of a statistical model involving inflection points are investigated The classical scanning technique is used to identify the region of applicable operating parameters. Then an alternative approach is suggested, which verifies the existence and shape of the suitable parameter region by infeasibility certificates. Using the True Moving Bed model, both approaches are compared for different feed concentrations, purity requirements and column efficiencies (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

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

inflection points of adsorption isotherms


Mechanical decision for a class of integral inequalities A class of integral inequalities is transformed into homogeneous symmetric polynomial inequalities beyond Tarski model, where the number of elements of the polynomial, say n, is also a variable and the coefficients are functions of n. This is closely associated with some open problems formulated recently by Yang et al. Using Timofte's dimension-decreasing method for symmetric polynomial inequalities, combined with the inequality-proving package BOTTEMA and a program of implementing the method known as successive difference substitution, we provide a procedure for deciding the nonnegativity of the corresponding polynomial inequality such that the original integral inequality is mechanically decidable; otherwise, a counterexample will be given. The effectiveness of the algorithm is illustrated by some more examples.

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

integral inequality
successive difference substitution
mechanical decision

symmetric polynomial inequality
timofte's dimension-decreasing method
inequality-proving package bottema


Enhanced link clustering with observations on ground truth to discover social circles Along with the development of internet, our personal online social networks become bigger and more jumbled than before, and it is necessary to provide a good way to organize them. Social networking sites allow users to manually categorize their friends into social circles (e.g., list on Facebook and Twitter), but it is laborious. The problem of social circles identifying is thus posed on a users ego network, while there are currently few efficient as well as effective methods to identify users social circles. In this paper, we propose a new method, named enhanced link clustering, for social circles identifying on ego networks. The proposed method integrates node profile and network structure by constructing an edge profile for each edge. Utilization of both node profile and network structure information makes the proposed method more effective. Taking edge similarity instead of node similarity to discriminate nodes into different circles allows us to detect overlapping circles. Moreover, we observe that nodes in one circle appear transitive similarity and some nodes are only densely connected, or share common properties. These observations make the process of edge clustering efficient. Experiments on several real datasets demonstrate that our method is much faster, and also more effective compared with maximization likelihood-like method, which has been proved to dominate most 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 B I I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

social circles identifying
edge clustering
ego network
node profile


Variable Input Delay CMOS Logic for Low Power Design We propose a new complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) gate design that has different delays along various input to output paths within the gate. The delays are accomplished by inserting selectively sized "permanently on" series transistors at the inputs of a logic gate. We demonstrate the use of the variable input delay CMOS gates for a totally glitch-free minimum dynamic power implementations of digital circuits. Applying a linear programming method to the c7552 benchmark circuit and using the gates described in this paper, we obtained a power saving of 58% over an unoptimized design. This power consumption was 18% lower than that for an alternative low power design using conventional CMOS gates. The optimized circuits had the same critical path delays as their original unoptimized versions. Since the overall delay was not allowed to increase, the glitch elimination with conventional gates required insertion of delay buffers on noncritical paths. The use of the variable input delay gates drastically reduced the required number of delay buffers.

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

dynamic power
linear programming
low power design

cmos delay devices
cmos logic gate design
design automation
digital integrated circuits


A novel differential evolution application to short-term electrical power generation scheduling This paper proposes a new way of applying a differential evolution algorithm to short-term electrical power generation scheduling. Traditionally, the problem is divided into two subproblems. An evolutionary algorithm, which works with binary decision variables, is applied to the first subproblem to find a low cost scheduling of power generators, satisfying some operational constraints. Then, the lambda-iteration method, is used to calculate the power generated by the online generators. In this study, the problem is treated as a whole for the first time in literature and an application of a real-valued differential evolution algorithm is proposed. This approach eliminates the use of an iterative local search technique such as lambda-iteration in all solution evaluations. Through comparisons with results from literature, it is shown that the proposed method achieves a similar solution quality to existing methods, without needing the time consuming lambda-iteration step. Finally, the new approach is applied to real-world data from the Turkish interconnected power network.

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 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


Simulated annealing for interface-constrained channel assignment in wireless mesh networks The channel assignment problem in wireless mesh networks is considered in this paper. Due to the limited number of radio interfaces that each node is equipped with, channel assignment must ensure that the interface constraint is obeyed, i.e., the number of different channels assigned to the links incident on a node must not exceed the number of interfaces the node is equipped with. However, interface constraint may be one of the causes that hinder the performance of some of the existing heuristics. In this paper, we use simulated annealing to solve the channel assignment problem in wireless mesh networks. We consider using two neighbor generating approaches that handle the interface constraint in different ways. The first approach generates random solutions that need not conform to the interface constraint. With the incorporation of a penalty function technique, the solutions gradually converge to feasible solutions. The second approach allows only feasible solutions to be generated during the simulated annealing process. Simulations are conducted that compare our proposed simulated annealing algorithms with a tabu-based algorithm under different network settings and traffic scenarios. The results show that our algorithms exhibit improved network performance over the tabu-based algorithm.

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

wireless mesh networks
channel assignment
interface constraint
simulated annealing


Justification logics, logics of knowledge, and conservativity Several justification logics have been created, starting with the logic LP, (Artemov, Bull Symbolic Logic 7(1): 1-36, 2001). These can be thought of as explicit versions of modal logics, or of logics of knowledge or belief, in which the unanalyzed necessity (knowledge, belief) operator has been replaced with a family of explicit justification terms. We begin by sketching the basics of justification logics and their relations with modal logics. Then we move to new material. Modal logics come in various strengths. For their corresponding justification logics, differing strength is reflected in different vocabularies. What we show here is that for justification logics corresponding to modal logics extending T, various familiar extensions are actually conservative with respect to each other. Our method of proof is very simple, and general enough to handle several justification logics not directly corresponding to distinct modal logics. Our methods do not, however, allow us to prove comparable results for justification logics corresponding to modal logics that do not extend T. That is, we are able to handle explicit logics of knowledge, but not explicit logics of belief. This remains open.

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

modal logic
logic of knowledge
justification logic


collective creation of games using free play technologies From the age of six children are developing important social skills, often through play. However, many children now spend most of their leisure time interacting through screens, rather than developing face-to-face social skills, which are also important for adult hood. Using augmented technologies to stimulate children in the collective creation of games could contribute to developing these social skills. Related work with augmented technologies for play does not take into consideration the evocative power of the objects to be augmented. We aim to identify objects, which are particularly evocative, and make them interactive through augmented technology. We will also draw on the basic rules of traditional folk games to create toys, which genuinely stimulate social skills. We present two early prototypes designed to investigate both the way in which children perceive feedback from different sensors and actuators and also their ability to construct their own games with those objects.

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

social skills
folk games
augmented technologies


Parametric-based brain Magnetic Resonance Elastography using a Rayleigh damping material model Rayleigh damping (RD) model is structurally non-identifiable with single frequency data without extensive a-priori information. We propose an alternative approach to overcome non-identifiability issue of the model. Parametric RD model was mooted in application to in vivo mechano brain imaging. Results indicate that parametric RD approach shows potential for diagnostic MRE imaging with single frequency data.

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 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

inverse problem methods
tissue characterisation
mechanical properties
medical imaging


An SSD-based accelerator for directory parsing in storage systems containing massive files Data explosion introduces new challenges to storage systems. In a file system for big data, a large number of directories and files exist, which are usually organized in a large tree. Parsing directories in a large tree is difficult. In this paper, we propose an accelerator, which helps file systems to fetch the metadata of files rapidly. Contributions of this work include two aspects. First, we propose an accelerator for directory parsing. The accelerator is actually an SSD-based (Solid State Drive-based) cache, which keeps the metadata of frequently or recently accessed files and directories. When a file is demanded, the accelerator attempts to obtain its metadata directly from SSD. If the metadata is kept in SSD, the file system can rapidly obtain the metadata. However, if the metadata is not in SSD, the accelerator consumes a long time to access SSD, but to no avail. In order to avoid non-beneficial SSD accesses, the accelerator predicts whether the metadata is kept by SSD before issuing a read request. Only if the metadata has a high probability of being kept in SSD, the accelerator issues a request to the SSD. The second contribution of this paper is a new bloom filter used to predict whether a piece of data is kept in SSD. Bloom filter is a space-efficient data structure supporting membership query. But, the standard bloom filter cannot support element deletion. Whereas, our accelerator is a cache, which evicts items periodically. The standard bloom filter is not suitable for our accelerator. In this work, we designed a new bloom filter with low overhead, which supports element deletion. The new bloom filter perfectly suits the proposed accelerator. With the prediction of our bloom filter, the accelerator can accelerate the process of directory parsing with nearly no negative impact. We evaluated the accelerator by using a prototype. Experimental results demonstrate that, the accelerator can speed up the directory parsing process by nearly four times compared with a file system without an accelerator.

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

ssd
directory parsing
cache
accelerator
file system


An automata-based approach to CSCW verification Software development for computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is a notoriously difficult task, involving often concurrent processes which are bound up with rigid timing constraints. To cope effectively with this difficulty, we propose in this paper the use of abstract finite-state models. The utility of these models is illustrated by encoding a CSCW system that we have built into finite-state automata, specifying in them a number of desired properties with temporal logic, and verifying these properties with model checking. By incorporating timing constraints into this process, we also gain insight into the usability of our system in real cooperative scenarios.

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

concurrency control
finite automata
synchronous collaboration
timed automata
usability evaluation


Design of compound libraries for fragment screening Approaches to the design of libraries for fragment screening are illustrated with reference to a 20 k generic fragment screening library and a 1.2 k generic NMR screening library. Tools and methods for library design that have been developed within AstraZeneca are described, including Foyfi fingerprints and the Flush program for neighborhood characterization. It will be shown how Flush and the BigPicker, which selects maximally diverse sets of compounds, are used to apply the Core and Layer method for library design. Approaches to partitioning libraries into cocktails are also described.

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

fragment screening
nmr screening
library design
neighborhood
foyfi
flush
bigpicker

fragment based
fragment based drug discovery
fragment based lead generation
fbdd
fblg
screening library
molecular complexity
molecular similarity
fingerprint
filter
leatherface
smarts
solubility


Finite element modelling of OSB webbed timber I-beams with interactions between openings Experiments were conducted on beams with openings spaced at different intervals along the web. It was observed that the OSB fractured from tension zones around an opening, with cracks developing diagonally towards the beam flanges. A beam would collapse when the cracks reached the flanges. Interactions between openings further reduced the load carrying capability of a beam and changed its failure pattern. Using ABAQUS, Finite element models were developed to simulate beam behaviour. Material nonlinearity, fracturing of OSB, crack propagation and beam failure were dealt with by a user subroutine. Good correlation was obtained between test and analytical results. Critical distances between openings were also investigated.

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

finite element
osb
timber
opening
nonlinearity


A novel key pre-distribution scheme for wireless distributed sensor networks A novel key pre-distribution scheme for sensor networks is proposed, which enables sensor nodes to communicate securely with each other using cryptographic techniques. The approach uses the rational normal curves in the projective space with the dimension n over the finite field F(q). Both secure connectivity and resilience of the resulting sensor networks are analyzed. By choosing the parameters q and n properly, this key pre-distribution scheme has some advantages over the previous known schemes. In addition, if the number of the rational normal curves in the scheme becomes too large for an application, the size may be reduced by choosing a part of the curves randomly. This reduction has, shown by our experiments, only minimal impact on secure connectivity and resilience of the resulting sensor network.

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

sensor network
projective space
finite field

key pre-distribution scheme
combinatorial design
rational normal curve


Hybrid state approach for modelling electrical and mechanical systems Many engineering systems contain discrete components or decision makers as well as continuous dynamical components. The variables in these systems can be quantitatively represented by discrete and continuous states. These states affect each other in the system. These types of complex systems can be modelled by hybrid state systems. In this study, a hybrid state approach is presented to model electrical and mechanical systems. Two representative examples, which can not be directly modelled by the nonlinear system approach, are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hybrid state approach in modelling. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

hybrid systems
discrete and continuous systems


A decidable characterization of the classes between lintime and exptime A language is defined by closure under safe iteration and under a new form of safe diagonalization that, unlike other forms of diagonalization used in literature to define sub-recursive hierarchies, is constructive and decidable. By counting the nesting levels of these schemes, an ordinal is assigned to each program. This yields a hierarchy T-alpha (alpha = 0. (c) 2005 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

computational complexity
implicit computational complexity
theory of computation


Bit-Swapping LFSR and Scan-Chain Ordering: A Novel Technique for Peak- and Average-Power Reduction in Scan-Based BIST This paper presents a novel low-transition linear feedback shift register (LFSR) that is based on some new observations about the output sequence of a conventional LFSR. The proposed design, called bit-swapping LFSR (BS-LFSR), is composed of an LFSR and a 2 x 1 multiplexer. When used to generate test patterns for scan-based built-in self-tests, it reduces the number of transitions that occur at the scan-chain input during scan shift operation by 50% when compared to those patterns produced by a conventional LFSR. Hence, it reduces the overall switching activity in the circuit under test during test applications. The BS-LFSR is combined with a scan-chain-ordering algorithm that orders the cells in a way that reduces the average and peak power (scan and capture) in the test cycle or while scanning out a response to a signature analyzer. These techniques have a substantial effect on average- and peak-power reductions with negligible effect on fault coverage or test application time. Experimental results on ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits show up to 65% and 55% reductions in average and peak power, 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

built-in self-test (bist)
linear feedback shift register (lfsr)
low-power test
pseudorandom pattern generator
scan-chain ordering
weighted switching activity (wsa)


Multiplane Video Stabilization This paper presents a novel video stabilization approach by leveraging the multiple planes structure of video scene to stabilize inter-frame motion. As opposed to previous stabilization procedure operating in a single plane, our approach primarily deals with multiplane videos and builds their multiple planes structure for performing stabilization in respective planes. Hence, a robust plane detection scheme is devised to detect multiple planes by classifying feature trajectories according to reprojection errors generated by plane induced homographies. Then, an improved planar stabilization technique is applied by conforming to the compensated homography in each plane. Finally, multiple stabilized planes are coherently fused by content-preserving image warps to obtain the output stabilized frames. Our approach does not need any stereo reconstruction, yet is able to produce commendable results due to awareness of multiple planes structure in the stabilization. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach to robust stabilization on multiplane videos.

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

3 [image processing and computer vision]: enhancementsmoothing


Optimization design of an axial-flow fan used for mining local-ventilation A nea calculation model for optimizing the operating performance of a fan is carried out on the analysis of the energy transmission of airflow inside the fan. The corresponding designing method appropriate for the engineering applications is also proposed. A new type of the axial-flow fan, named YBT-4.01, used for local-ventilation in coal mining has been designed with the aid of computer. It is shown from both the lab test and field use that the performance of the fan designed is improved considerably compared with the old one.

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

axial-flow fan
performance optimisation design
mining local ventilation
sumt method


large scale integration of senses for the semantic web Nowadays, the increasing amount of semantic data available on the Web leads to a new stage in the potential of Semantic Web applications. However, it also introduces new issues due to the heterogeneity of the available semantic resources. One of the most remarkable is redundancy, that is, the excess of different semantic descriptions, coming from different sources, to describe the same intended meaning. In this paper, we propose a technique to perform a large scale integration of senses (expressed as ontology terms), in order to cluster the most similar ones, when indexing large amounts of online semantic information. It can dramatically reduce the redundancy problem on the current Semantic Web. In order to make this objective feasible, we have studied the adaptability and scalability of our previous work on sense integration, to be translated to the much larger scenario of the Semantic Web. Our evaluation shows a good behaviour of these techniques when used in large scale experiments, then making feasible the proposed approach.

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


eXtended Cumulated Gain measures for the evaluation of content-oriented XML retrieval We propose and evaluate a family of measures, the eXtended Cumulated Gain (XCG) measures, for the evaluation of content-oriented XML retrieval approaches. Our aim is to provide an evaluation framework that allows the consideration of dependency among XML document components. In particular, two aspects of dependency are considered: (1) near-misses, which are document components that are structurally related to relevant components, such as a neighboring paragraph or container section, and (2) overlap, which regards the situation wherein the same text fragment is referenced multiple times, for example, when a paragraph and its container section are both retrieved. A further consideration is that the measures should be flexible enough so that different models of user behavior may be instantiated within. Both system- and user-oriented aspects are investigated and both recall and precision-like qualities are measured. We evaluate the reliability of the proposed measures based on the INEX 2004 test collection. For example, the effects of assessment variation and topic set size on evaluation stability are investigated, and the upper and lower bounds of expected error rates are established. The evaluation demonstrates that the XCG measures are stable and reliable, and in particular, that the novel measures of effort-precision and gain-recall (ep/gr) show comparable behavior to established IR measures like precision and recall.

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

xml retrieval
inex
evaluation
dependency
overlap
cumulated gain

performance measurement metrics near-miss


A framework for ranking uncertain distributed database Distribution and uncertainty are considered as the most important design issues in database applications nowadays. A lot of ranking or top-k query processing techniques are introduced to solve the problems of communication cost and centralized processing. On the other hand, many techniques are also developed for modeling and managing uncertain databases. Although these techniques were efficient, they didn't deal with distributed data uncertainty. This paper proposes a framework that deals with both data distribution and uncertainty based on ranking queries. Within the proposed framework, communication and computation-efficient algorithms are investigated for retrieving the top-k tuples from distributed sites. The main objective of these algorithms is to reduce the communication rounds utilized and amount of data transmitted while achieving efficient ranking. Experimental results show that both proposed techniques have a great impact in reducing communication cost. Both techniques are efficient but in different situations. The first one is efficient in the case of low number of sites while the other achieves better performance at higher number of sites.

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

uncertainty
database applications
ranking


The Utility of Google Scholar When Searching Geographical Literature: Comparison With Three Commercial Bibliographic Databases This study aims to highlight what benefits, if any, Google Scholar (GS) has for academic literature searches in the field of geography, compared to three commercial bibliographic databases: Web of Science (WoS), FRANCIS (multidisciplinary databases) and GeoRef (specialized in geosciences). This study focuses exclusively on evaluating the results, and not the features, of GS and the databases under examination. To ensure a valid comparison, identical bibliographic searches were applied using each of the four bibliographic tools. To exclude automatic variations of the ten keywords tested, they were placed between quotation marks and searched only in the title field of the respective search tools' interfaces. The results were limited to bibliographic references published from 2005 to 2009. In order to assess the repeatability of the results, the exact same process was repeated monthly between November 2010 and July 2011. Initially the whole set of results was analyzed, after which the search results for two keywords (selected since they yielded a manageable number of results) were studied in more detail. The results indicate that GS search results show a large degree of overlap with those of the other databases but, moreover, yield numerous unique hits, which should be useful to researchers in both the fields of human and physical geography. GS leads the other tools widely on number of results, independently of keyword, subfield, year of publication, or time of search.

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

geographical literature
google scholar
web of science
francis
georef


online focus groups used as an accessible participatory research method Participatory research methods are being used internationally to gather data on complex social, cultural, and political concerns that effect the use of technology [4]. Researchers have found it difficult to include people with disabilities in these studies [5, 6, 7]. The Accessible Learning Through Text-to-Speech Project will utilize online focus groups as a method of integrating people with disabilities into a participatory research project. The Alt-Learning Project will have three primary target populations; users of screen readers with vision, users of screen readers who are blind, and professionals responsible for the delivery of assistive technology. The online focus groups will allow the observation and collection of data as a participant would normally utilize their screen reader applications at home, school, or workplace.

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


interprocedual data flow testing As current trends in programming encourage a high degree of modularity, the number of procedure calls and returns executed in a module continues to grow. This increase in procedures mandates the efficient testing of the interactions among procedures. In this paper, we extend the utility of data flow testing to include the testing of data dependencies that exist across procedure boundaries. An interprocedural data flow analysis algorithm is first presented that enables the efficient computation of information detailing the locations of definitions and uses needed by an interprocedural data flow tester. To utilize this information, a technique to guide the selection and execution of test cases, that takes into account the various associations of names with definitions and uses across procedures, is also presented. The resulting interprocedural data flow tester handles global variables, reference parameters and recursive procedure calls, and is compatible with the current intraprocedural data flow testing techniques. The testing tool has been implemented on a Sun 3/50 Workstation.

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

data flow analysis
test
procedure
computation
module
tool
data
flow
account
algorithm
paper
utility
global

select
interaction
variability
program
efficiency
recursion
locatability
association
data dependence
definition
modular
informal


Agents in a nutshell - A very brief introduction Agent-based approaches are becoming increasingly important because of their generality, flexibility, modularity, and ability to take advantage of distributed resources. Agents are used in information retrieval, entertainment, coordinating multiple robots, and modeling economic systems. Agents can recommend music, tell stories, and interact with people. They are useful for reducing humans' work and information load in tasks such as medical monitoring and battlefield reasoning. Agents are already changing the way in which we gather information, manage investments, and conduct business. This article provides an introduction to agent issues, outlines motivations for using agent-based paradigms, and describes some of their current uses.

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

applications
web agents
monitoring agents
communities
cooperation
protocols
agent decision-making
problem solving


A semi-parametric approach for mixture models: Application to local false discovery rate estimation A procedure to estimate a two-component mixture model where one component is known is proposed. The unknown part is estimated with a weighted kernel function. The weights are defined in an adaptive way. The convergence to a unique solution of our estimation procedure is proven. The procedure is compared with two classical approaches using simulation. In addition, the results obtained are applied to multiple testing procedure in order to estimate the posterior population probabilities and the local false discovery rate.

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

false discovery rate
mixture model
multiple testing procedure


Asset and liability modelling for participating policies with guarantees We study the problem of asset and liability management of participating insurance policies with guarantees. We develop a scenario optimization model for integrative asset and liability management, analyze the tradeoffs in structuring such policies, and study alternative choices in funding them. The nonlinearly constrained optimization model can be linearized through closed form solutions of the dynamic equations. Thus large-scale problems are solved with standard methods. We report on an empirical analysis of policies offered by Italian insurers. The optimized model results are in general agreement with current industry practices. However, some inefficiencies are identified and potential improvements are highlighted.

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

risk management
assetliability management
insurance products with guarantee


A computational study of the effect of angles of attack on a double-cone type supersonic inlet with a bleeding system The flow characteristics of a supersonic inlet with a bleeding system under varying angles of attack are studied by computational 3D turbulent flow analysis. A compressible upwind flux difference-splitting Navier-Stokes method with the k-omega turbulence model is used to analyze the super inlet flowfields. The bleeding system successfully removes the low energy flow from the boundary layer near the throat. The bleeding system enables the supply of more uniform flow at the engine face compared to a supersonic inlet without a bleeding system at the expense of mass flow. More non-uniform flowfields are seen at the Aerodynamic Interface Plane when the angle of attack increases. These non-uniform flowfields at the supersonic engine face degrade engine performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

supersonic inlet
angle of attack
bleeding system


56 Gb/s OOK transmission in robust and bend-insensitive GGP 80-\(\upmu \)m ultra-large-core (ULC) MMF for lightpeak We demonstrate for the first time a recorded 56-Gb/s transmission in a new type robust and bend-insensitive glass-glass-polymer structured 80-\(\upmu \)m ultra-large-core multimode fiber (ULCMMF) using simple and single-polarization on-off-keying for Lightpeak. The LCMMF design is presented. Experimental results show that the ULCMMF could be a good choice for consumer applications in the near future.

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


Computing the throughput of Concatenation State Machines Concatenation State Machine (CSM) is a labeled directed AndOr graph representing a deterministic push-down transducer. In the high-performance version of CSM, labels associated to edges are words (rather than letters) over the input alphabet. The throughput of a path p is defined as the sum of the lengths of the labels of the path, divided by the number of edges of p. The throughput of a CSM M is defined as the infimum of the throughput of all accepting paths of M . In this paper we give an O ( n m log ( max ? min ? ) ) algorithm, computing an ?-approximation of the throughput of a CSM M, where n is the number of nodes, m is the number of edges, and max (min) is the maximum (respectively, minimum) of the lengths of the edge labels of M. While we have been interested in a particular case of an AndOr graph representing a transducer, we have actually solved the following problem: if a real weight function is defined on the edges of an AndOr graph G, we compute an ?-approximation of the infimum of the complete hyper-path mean weights of G. This problem, if restricted to digraphs, is strongly connected to the problem of finding the minimum cycle mean.

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

concatenation state machine
andor graph
minimum cycle mean


teacher responses to student gender differences The recent uncertainties in computer science (CS) enrollments have prompted computer science educators to seek ways to increase interest in CS, especially among women. Several current approaches to increasing gender balance in CS have been based on pre-college intervention, recruitment, and curriculum change. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which instructors respond differently - even unconsciously - to females and males in computer science learning environments, and whether these differences can affect achievement or interest in CS. Our study looks at early learners (fourth through sixth graders, where gender differences seem first to become more prominent) and their teachersin a summer enrichment program using robotics. We examine the ways teachers interact with groups of girls and of boys and the changes in attitude and achievement shown by the girls and boys during the summer programs. These observations help us understand the extent to which teachers can affect student interest in computing and can prepare us better to address the ways in which we can achieve CS gender balance.

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

single-sex instruction
teacher interaction


A clustering-based system to automate transfer function design for medical image visualization Finding good transfer functions for rendering medical volumes is difficult, non-intuitive, and time-consuming. We introduce a clustering-based framework for the automatic generation of transfer functions for volumetric data. The system first applies mean shift clustering to oversegment the volume boundaries according to their low-high (LH) values and their spatial coordinates, and then uses hierarchical clustering to group similar voxels. A transfer function is then automatically generated for each cluster such that the number of occlusions is reduced. The framework also allows for semi-automatic operation, where the user can vary the hierarchical clustering results or the transfer functions generated. The system improves the efficiency and effectiveness of visualizing medical images and is suitable for medical imaging applications.

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


The robustness of a Nash equilibrium simulation model: Game-theoretic approach using variable metric projection method This paper proposes a Nash equilibrium model that applies continuous time replicator dynamics to the analysis of oligopoly markets. The robustness of the proposed simple Nash equilibrium model under the simultaneous constraints of allocation of product and market share using a simulation method to derive an optimal solution for production decisions by rival firms in oligopoly markets is tested by changing profit and cost function parameters, as well as the initial production values and market shares of the firms examined in this study. The effects of differences in conjectural variation and initial allocation of market share on the convergent values are considered, particularly in the case of corner solutions. This approach facilitates the understanding of the robustness of attaining equilibrium in an oligopoly market. (C) 2010 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

nash equilibrium
replicator dynamics
oligopoly


An experimental study on the role of graphical information about hand movement when interacting with objects in virtual reality environments In this series of experiments, we investigated whether a crude representation of the hand that was extinguished at movement onset improved performance when compared to a no-feedback situation. Subjects performed simple reach to grasp movements in a virtual environment in two experiments. In Experiment 1, trials were blocked so that subjects were aware that a graphical representation of the hand would either be available throughout the movement (FA), be removed at movement onset (FAB), or not be available (NF). In Experiment 2, trials were randomized so that subjects were unaware of whether feedback would be available throughout the trial or removed at movement onset. Our results indicated that when subjects were aware of the availability of graphical feedback, the FAB condition improved performance compared to the NF condition. Furthermore, movement time was similar in the two feedback available conditions (FA, FAB). In contrast, for the randomized trial presentation, the positive influence of the FAB condition was diminished. These results suggest that visual feedback available prior to movement onset can be used to calibrate the proprioceptive system and improve performance over a no feedback situation. These results can be applied by designers of virtual environments to solve problems related to occlusion of important environmental information by the hand as users reach to grasp and manipulate objects. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

kinematic data
sensory information
empirical data
interaction


Monitoring milling quality of rice by image analysis Rough rice is milled to produce polished edible grain by first subjecting to dehusking or removal of hulls and then to the removal of brownish outer bran layer known as whitening. The control of whiteness (degree of milling) and percentage of broken kernels in milled rice is required to minimize the economic loss to the millers. Digital image analysis was used to determine the head rice yield (HRY), representing the proportion by weight of milled kernels with three quarters or more of their original length, and the whiteness of milled rice. Ten varieties of Thai rice were subjected to varying degrees of milling by adjusting the test duration from 0.5 to 2.5 min. Three-dimensional features (namely, length, perimeter and projected area) were extracted from the images of individual kernels in a milled sample and used to compute a characteristic dimension ratio (CDR) defined as the ratio of the sum of a particular dimensional feature of all head rice kernels to that of all kernels comprising head and broken rice in the sample. HRY and CDR were found to be related by power functions based on the above-mentioned dimensional features, with R2 more than 0.99 in all cases. The CDR based on the projected area of kernels in their natural rest position provided the best estimate of the HRY with the lowest root mean square error of 1.1% among all dimensional features studied. In case of the whiteness of milled samples, the values provided by a commercial whiteness meter and the mean of gray level distribution determined by image analysis correlated with an R2 value of 0.99. The results of this study showed that two-dimensional imaging of milled rice kernels could be used for making quantitative assessment of HRY and degree of milling for on-line monitoring and better control of the rice milling operation.

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

degree of rice milling
milled rice whiteness
rice quality determination
machine vision


Glutamine: fructose-6-phosphate amidotransferase (GFAT): homology modelling and designing of new inhibitors using pharmacophore and docking based hierarchical virtual screening protocol Glutamine: fructose-6-phosphate amidotransferase (GFAT), also termed GFPT1 and GFAT1, catalyzes the first committed step of the hexosamine biosynthesis pathway in mammals and consequently plays an important role in type 2 diabetes. In the present study, a combination of pharmacophore modelling, homology modelling, and molecular docking analysis was performed to design new glutamine competitive inhibitors of human GFAT, and to investigate important interaction details of inhibitor molecules. A pharmacophore model of GFAT inhibitors was developed, subsequently validated, and utilized for the screening by the PHASE database to identify new molecules. Afterwards, homology modelling was performed to construct the glutamine-binding site of the GFAT protein. The modelled active site was utilized to dock the studied molecules to investigate important receptor-ligand interactions and to scrutinize database-screened molecules on the basis of essential interactions. This systematic in silico protocol helped us to identify new molecules that would be explored for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and its complications.

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

gfat
pharmacophore
homology modelling
hierarchical virtual screening

diabetic complications
induced-fit docking


Localization of integrity constraints in mobile databases and specification in PRO-MOTION The well-developed traditional data management techniques need to be augmented with new approaches in order to continue to be effective in the mobile environment. In this paper, we focus on the challenge of maintaining integrity constraints in the presence of disconnections and expensive communication. Our approach of localization is to reformulate global constraints so as to enhance the autonomy of the mobile hosts in processing transactions. We show how this approach unifies techniques of maintaining replicated data with methods of enforcing polynomial inequalities. We also discuss how localization can be realized in PRO-MOTION, a flexible infrastructure for transaction processing in a mobile environment.

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

mobile databases
transaction processing
integrity constraints

disconnected operations
data consistency
caching and replication


A Kind of Steffensen Method and Its Third-order Variant For solving nonlinear equations, we suggest a kind of Steffensen method which still only uses two evaluations of the function and maintains second-order convergence. We also suggest a variant of the kind of Steffensen method which is still derivative free and uses four evaluations of the function to achieve cubic convergence. Their error equations and asymptotic convergence constants axe deduced. The numerical examples support the suggested methods.

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

nonlinear equations
steffensen method
convergence


Further improvement of periodic control approach for relaxed stabilization condition of discrete-time Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems In this paper. we present a new stabilization condition for discrete-time Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy systems. To this end, the previously developed periodic nonparallel distributed compensation (non-PDC) control law is extended to the more general one whose gain matrix has a block lower triangular matrix form. A distinguished feature of the proposed control law is that it uses a discrete-time feedback loop incorporating information from the previous states of the system. The resultant stabilization condition is represented in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). In addition, we show that the proposed condition includes the existing one based on the periodic control approach as a particular case. Finally, examples are given to show that the proposed condition provides less conservative results than those of the existing ones published in the literature. (C) 2011 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O

discrete-time takagi-sugeno (t-s) fuzzy systems

nonparallel distributed compensation (non-pdc)


Relevance feedback using adaptive clustering for image similarity retrieval Research has been devoted in recent years to relevance feedback as an effective solution to improve performance of image similarity search. However, few methods using the relevance feedback are currently available to perform relatively complex queries on large image databases. In the case of complex image queries, images with relevant concepts are often scattered across several visual regions in the feature space. This leads to adapting multiple regions to represent a query in the feature space. Therefore, it is necessary to handle disjunctive queries in the feature space. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive classification and cluster-merging method to find multiple regions and their arbitrary shapes of a complex image query. Our method achieves the same high retrieval quality regardless of the shapes of query regions since the measures used in our method are invariant under linear transformations. Extensive experiments show that the result of our method converges to the users true information need fast, and the retrieval quality of our method is about 22% in recall and 20% in precision better than that of the query expansion approach, and about 35% in recall and about 31% in precision better than that of the query point movement approach, in MARS.

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

image database
cluster-merging
dimension reduction
content-based image retrieval


Determination of the impact indicators of electromagnetic interferences on computer information systems The present article covers an influence of the impact of electromagnetic interferences on computer information systems whose purpose is to control transport supervision systems. The primary objective of transport supervision systems is to detect hazards to human life and health that occur in the process of transport: traveling of people and/or cargos. This process needs to be characterized by a high level of reliability and safety. The measure of the transport safety is the confidence that the elements of a transport process will remain intact during its realization with the exception of those changes that are the result of the natural processes of aging and wear. The railway environment is one of the most difficult environments concerning the provision of electromagnetic compatibility. Those electromagnetic interferences that are intended and not intended being generated in a rail area have an impact on the operation process of a transport supervision system.

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

electrical engineering
designing system
safe system
intelligent system
servicing process
system modeling
expert system
computer sciences
knowledge base
diagnostics information


Supplier selection: A hybrid model using DEA, decision tree and neural network As the most important responsibility of purchasing management, the problem of vendor evaluation and selection has always received a great deal of attention from practitioners and researchers. This management decision is a challenge due to the complexity and various criteria involved. This paper presents a hybrid model using data envelopment analysis (DEA), decision trees (DT) and neural networks (NNs) to assess supplier performance. The model consists of two modules: Module 1 applies DEA and classifies suppliers into efficient and inefficient clusters based on the resulting efficiency scores. Module 2 utilizes firm performance-related data to train DT, NNs model and apply the trained decision tree model to new suppliers. Our results yield a favorable classification and prediction accuracy rate.

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

supplier selection
classification
prediction

data envelopment analysis (dea)
decision tree (dt)
neural networks (nns)
data mining (dm)


Exploring the feasibility and accuracy of Latent Semantic Analysis based text mining techniques to detect similarity between patent documents and scientific publications In this study, we examine and validate the use of existing text mining techniques (based on the vector space model and latent semantic indexing) to detect similarities between patent documents and scientific publications. Clearly, experts involved in domain studies would benefit from techniques that allow similarity to be detectedand hence facilitate mapping, categorization and classification efforts. In addition, given current debates on the relevance and appropriateness of academic patenting, the ability to assess content-relatedness between sets of documentsin this case, patents and publicationsmight become relevant and useful. We list several options available to arrive at content based similarity measures. Different options of a vector space model and latent semantic indexing approach have been selected and applied to the publications and patents of a sample of academic inventors (n=6). We also validated the outcomes by using independently obtained validation scores of human raters. While we conclude that text mining techniques can be valuable for detecting similarities between patents and publications, our findings also indicate that the various options available to arrive at similarity measures vary considerably in terms of accuracy: some generally accepted text mining options, like dimensionality reduction and LSA, do not yield the best results when working with smaller document sets. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.

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

sciencetechnology linkages
patentpublication pairs
authorinventor relationships


New Understanding of Atherosclerosis (Clinically and Experimentally) with Evolving MRI Technology in Vivo Atherosclerosis and its thrombotic complications are the major cause of morbidity and mortality in industrialized countries. Despite advances in our understanding of the pathogenetic mechanisms and new treatment modalities, the absence of an adequate noninvasive method for early detection limits the prevention or treatment of patients with various degrees and localizations of atherothrombotic disease. High-resolution magnetic resonance (MR) has recently emerged as one of the most promising techniques for the noninvasive study of atherothrombotic disease. Most importantly, MR can be used to characterize plaque composition and monitor progression. Thus, MR opens new strategies, ranging from the screening of high-risk patients for early detection and treatment as well as the monitoring of target areas for pharmacological intervention.

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

atherothrombosis
magnetic resonance imaging


A hierarchical approach to dependability evaluation of distributed systems with replicated resources We propose a two-level hierarchical method for dependability evaluation of distributed systems with replicated programs and data fries. Since Markov modeling is limited only to each component in this method, state explosion can be circumvented successfully. Simulation results show that the method can accomplish evaluation even for large systems for which Markov modeling is not feasible.

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

distributed systems
dependability evaluation
replicated resources


Encode Locally, Discriminate Holistically: A Method Extracting Multi-resolution Features for Facial Age Estimation To combine the global and local aging information of face images, this paper proposes a feature extraction method which can extract multi-resolution discriminative local features in a holistic way for age estimation. By using 2DPCA on the left side of the block matrixes, the face images are firstly transformed into lower dimensional representation matrixes whose rows can be seen as block-wise image representations in different resolutions. Discriminate features are then extracted holistically for each of the resolutions by viewing each row as a sample. Based on the weak estimator on each of the resolutions, an ensemble is finally constructed to perform the age estimation task. Experimental results confirm the reliability of the proposed method compared with related methods.

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


Maintaining the point correspondence in the level set framework In this paper, we propose a completely Eulerian approach to maintain a point correspondence during a level set evolution. Our work is in the spirit of some recent methods (D. Adalsteinsson, J. Sethian, Transport and diffusion of material quantities on propagating interfaces via level set methods, Journal of Computational Physics 185(1) (2003) 271288; J.-J. Xu, H.-K. Zhao, An Eulerian formulation for solving partial differential equations along a moving interface, Journal of Scientific Computing 19 (2003) 573594) for handling interfacial data on moving level set interfaces. Our approach maintains an explicit backward correspondence from the evolving interface to the initial one, by advecting the initial point coordinates with the same velocity as the level set function. It leads to a system of coupled Eulerian partial differential equations. We describe in detail a robust numerical implementation of our approach, in accordance with the narrow band methodology. We show in a variety of numerical experiments that it can handle both normal and tangential velocities, large deformations, shocks, rarefactions and topological changes. The possible applications of our approach include scientific visualization, computer graphics and image processing.

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


Learning to detect moving shadows in dynamic environments We propose a novel adaptive technique for detecting moving shadows and distinguishing them from moving objects in video sequences. Most methods for detecting shadows work in a static setting with significant human input. To remove these limitations, we propose a more general semisupervised learning technique to tackle the problem. First, we exploit characteristic differences in color and edges in the video frames to come up with a set of features useful for classification. Second, we use a learning technique that employs Support Vector Machines and the co-training algorithm, which relies on a small set of humanlabeled data. We observe a surprising phenomenon that co-training can counter the effects of changing underlying probability distributions in the input space. From the standpoint of detecting shadows, once deployed, the proposed method can dynamically adapt to varying conditions without any manual intervention and performs better classification than previous methods on static and dynamic environments alike. The strengths of the proposed technique are the small quantity of human labeled data required and the ability to adapt automatically to changing scene conditions.

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

shadow detection
co-training
population drift