exploiting syntactic structure of queries in a language modeling approach to ir Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques have been explored to enhance the performance of Information Retrieval (IR) methods with varied results. Most efforts in using NLP techniques have been to identify better index terms for representing documents. This use in the indexing phase of IR has implicit effect on retrieval performance. However, the explicit use of NLP techniques during the retrieval or information seeking phase has been restricted to interactive or dialogue systems. Recent advances in IR are based on using Statistical Language Models (SLM) to represent documents and ranking them based on their model generating a given user query. This paper presents a novel method for using NLP techniques on user queries, specifically, a syntactic parse of a query, in the statistical language modeling approach to IR. In the proposed method, named Concept Language Models , a query is viewed as a sequence of concepts and a concept as a sequence terms. The paper presents different approximations to estimate the concept and term probabilities and compute the query likelihood estimate for documents. Some empirical results on TREC test collections comparing Concept Language Models with smoothed N-gram language models are presented.

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

information retrieval
language models
natural language processing


syntenyvista Visualization of genome comparisons is an important research tool in biology, medicine and agricultural research. We present a new visualization system, SyntenyVista, which allows for interactive exploration of genome comparisons. It incorporates a novel feature called cartoon scaling designed to improve the user's ability to understand gene relationships. SyntenyVista is being deployed in the context of e-Science where it will provide an entry point to integrated data on genomes, animal models of disease, and disease genes.

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


Theory, Analysis and Applications of 2D Global Illumination We investigate global illumination in 2D and show how this simplified problem domain leads to practical insights for 3D rendering. We first derive a full theory of 2D light transport by introducing 2D analogs to radiometric quantities such as flux and radiance, and deriving a 2D rendering equation. We use our theory to show how to implement algorithms such as Monte Carlo raytracing, path tracing, irradiance caching, and photon mapping in 2D, and demonstrate that these algorithms can be analyzed more easily in this domain while still providing insights for 3D rendering. We apply our theory to develop several practical improvements to the irradiance caching algorithm. We perform a full second-order analysis of diffuse indirect illumination, first in 2D, and then in 3D by deriving the irradiance Hessian, and show how this leads to increased accuracy and performance for irradiance caching. We propose second-order Taylor expansion from cache points, which results in more accurate irradiance reconstruction. We also introduce a novel errormetric to guide cache point placement by analyzing the error produced by irradiance caching. Our error metric naturally supports anisotropic reconstruction and, in our preliminary study, resulted in an order of magnitude less error than the "split-sphere" heuristic when using the same number of cache points.

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

theory
algorithms
performance
global illumination
rendering
irradiance caching
hessian

gradient
irradiance gradients
taylor series


A fast tree-based algorithm for Compressed Sensing with sparse-tree prior ? A sparse-tree model is formulated and utilized as additional prior for signal recovery from a small number of measurements. A novel tree-based recovery algorithm, the Tree-based Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (TOMP) algorithm, is proposed to recover signals with sparse-tree priors. An implementation of the algorithm based on GramSchmidt process is presented in detail. The proposed method gives reconstruction quality comparable to more sophisticated algorithms at less computational cost.

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

compressed sensing
orthogonal matching pursuit

sparse-tree prior
tree structure
tree-based algorithm
greedy


Visualization of large data sets by mixing Tcl and C++ interfaces to the VTK library This article describes a technique to build applications for the visualization of large data sets using VTK library and components written in Tcl and C++. VTK is a software system for computer graphics, visualization and image processing. VTK library is written in C++ however it provides interfaces to the scripting languages Tcl, Python and Java. Though it is possible to write a whole VTK application in a scripting language like Tcl, it is more suitable, for efficiency reasons, to implement some functionality in a compiled language like C/C++ for instance. This article presents in through details how to access VTK objects from different languages and how to mix Tcl and C++ components in one application.

B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 processing
visualization
scripting language

large-scale data
multi-language programming


A comparison of illumination geometry-based methods for topographic correction of QuickBird images of an undulant area The high spatial resolution of QuickBird satellite images makes it possible to show spatial variability at fine details. However, the effect of topography-induced illumination variations become more evident, even in moderately sloped areas. Based on a high resolution (1m) digital elevation model generated with high-frequency real-time kinematic global position system measurements, this study assessed topographic effects on QuickBird images of an undulant area (with a maximum slope of 7.4) under different illumination and ground conditions. For land surfaces that were characterized by a non-Lambertian reflection, significant bidirectional variations in spectral radiances were found in all bands. The effectiveness of four illumination geometry-based topographic correction methods was evaluated. The results indicated that the empirical correction was the most effective method for all spectral bands in both solar and view directions, while the cosine correction gave the worst results. The C correction (in the solar direction) and the Minnaert correction reduced topographic effects, but not as effectively as the empirical correction. For the Lambertian, topographic effects were substantial only in the near infrared band in the solar direction. Bidirectional variations of spectral radiances in other bands and/or view directions were minimal and topographic corrections may not be necessary. None of these methods significantly changed the spatial variability of spectral radiances, although the histogram distributions were greatly modified by the cosine correction and the Minnaert correction.

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


Lossless and near-lossless compression of ECG signals with block-sorting techniques In this work, we investigate the lossless and near-lossless compression of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals with different block-sorting transformations. We show that transformations with smaller context depths are a better choice for ECG signal compression when speed and memory utilization are considered. Further, we show that compression results of our proposed technique is better than other well known techniques, such as bzip2, gzip, and the shorten waveform coder.

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

prediction
burrows wheeler transformation
ecg compression


The thermal stability of laser annealed contacts based on palladium The thermal stability of W/Pt/doping element/Pd and Pt/doping element/Pd ohmic contacts with Ge, Si, and Sn in the position of doping elements were investigated. Two stability tests were made, the first at 400C and the second at 195C. The obtained results were compared to the ageing of W(100 nm)/Au(80 nm)/Ge(40 nm) contact structures. The W/Au/Ge and Pt/Si/Pd contact metallizations had the best thermal stability at 400C. After annealing for 28 h their contact resistivity increased only by one order of magnitude. The second ageing test proves that our contact structures were stable at 195C. Their contact resistivity was not changed in the process of ageing after 4351 h. The morphology of annealed contacts was examined using scanning electron microscopy. The contact resistivity degradation is likely caused by doping element-GaAs interdiffusion.

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

gallium arsenide
ohmic contact
laser annealing


New bounds for the balloon popping problem We reconsider the balloon popping problem, an intriguing combinatorial problem introduced in order to bound the competitiveness of ascending auctions with anonymous bidders with respect to the best fixed-price scheme. Previous works show that the optimal solution for this problem is in the range (1.6595,2). We give a new lower bound of \(1.68\) and design an \(O(n^5)\) algorithm for computing upper bounds as a function of the number of bidders \(n\). Our algorithm provides an experimental evidence that the correct upper bound is a constant smaller than \(2\), thus disproving a currently believed conjecture, and can be used to test the validity of a new conjecture we propose, according to which the upper bound would decrease to \(\pi ^2/6+1/4\approx 1.8949\).

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

approximation algorithms
online algorithms
combinatorial optimization
auction theory


View invariant action recognition using weighted fundamental ratios ? In this paper, we fully investigate the concept of fundamental ratios, demonstrate their application and significance in view-invariant action recognition, and explore the importance of different body parts in action recognition. A moving plane observed by a fixed camera induces a fundamental matrix F between two frames, where the ratios among the elements in the upper left 22 submatrix are herein referred to as the fundamental ratios. We show that fundamental ratios are invariant to camera internal parameters and orientation, and hence can be used to identify similar motions of line segments from varying viewpoints. By representing the human body as a set of points, we decompose a body posture into a set of line segments. The similarity between two actions is therefore measured by the motion of line segments and hence by their associated fundamental ratios. We further investigate to what extent a body part plays a role in recognition of different actions and propose a generic method of assigning weights to different body points. Experiments are performed on three categories of data: the controlled CMU MoCap dataset, the partially controlled IXMAS data, and the more challenging uncontrolled UCF-CIL dataset collected on the internet. Extensive experiments are reported on testing (i) view-invariance, (ii) robustness to noisy localization of body points, (iii) effect of assigning different weights to different body points, (iv) effect of partial occlusion on recognition accuracy, and (v) determining how soon our method recognizes an action correctly from the starting point of the query video.

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

view invariance
pose transition
action alignment


Exploring fMRI data for periodic signal components We use a Bayesian framework to detect periodic components in fMRI data. The resulting detector is sensitive to periodic components with a flexible number of harmonics and with arbitrary amplitude and phases of the harmonics. It is possible to detect the correct number of harmonics in periodic signals even if the fundamental frequency is beyond the Nyquist frequency. We apply the signal detector to locate regions that are highly affected by periodic physiological artifacts, such as cardiac pulsation.

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

fmri
periodic signals
bayesian framework


ReinSel: A class-based mechanism for feature selection in ensemble of classifiers Classifier ensembles are systems composed of a set of individual classifiers structured in a parallel way and a combination module, which is responsible for providing the final output of the system. In the design of these systems, diversity is considered as one of the main aspects to be taken into account, since there is no gain in combining identical classification methods. One way of increasing diversity is to provide different datasets (patterns and/or attributes) for the individual classifiers. In this context, it is envisaged to use, for instance, feature selection methods in order to select subsets of attributes for the individual classifiers. In this paper, it is investigated the ReinSel method, which is a class-based feature selection method for ensemble systems. This method is inserted into the filter approach of feature selection methods and it chooses only the attributes that are important only for a specific class through the use of a reinforcement procedure.

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


Autonomous Low-Thrust Guidance: Application to SMART-1 and BepiColombo Several techniques have been developed to obtain optimum trajectories with low-thrust propulsion. However, few low-thrust guidance schemes have been investigated to fly the reference optimum trajectories. The guidance algorithm successfully employed in the DeepSpace1 mission was the first approximation through the presented guidance schemes, valid for various interplanetary low-thrust trajectories, independently of the optimization technique they result from. A method is presented to transform any given thrust profile to a thrust law defined by a finite set of control variables. This law allows the definition of a control vector to be optimized for the guidance purposes. Simulations were carried out to compare the performances of the algorithms to very different missions, such as SMART-1 and BepiColombo. The good performance of the enhanced guidance schemes prove the generic applicability of the algorithm. Parametric analysis allows the assessment of stability and robustness of the schemes and the sensitivity to certain parameters.

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

guidance algorithms
low-thrust
linear corrections
weighted line search
least squares
recursive minimization
thrust fitting
thrust discretization


The conductor interaction method Computers have increasingly become part of our everyday lives, with many activities either involving their direct use or being supported by one. This has prompted research into developing methods and mechanisms to assist humans in interacting with computers (human-computer interaction, or HCI). A number of HCI techniques have been developed over the years, some of which are quite old but continue to be used, and some more recent and still evolving. Many of these interaction techniques, however, are not natural in their use and typically require the user to learn a new means of interaction. Inconsistencies within these techniques and the restrictions they impose on user creativity can also make such interaction techniques difficult to use, especially for novice users. This article proposes an alternative interaction method, the conductor interaction method (CIM), which aims to provide a more natural and easier-to-learn interaction technique. This novel interaction method extends existing HCI methods by drawing upon techniques found in human-human interaction. It is argued that the use of a two-phased multimodal interaction mechanism, using gaze for selection and gesture for manipulation, incorporated within a metaphor-based environment, can provide a viable alternative for interacting with a computer (especially for novice users). Both the model and an implementation of the CIM within a system are presented in this article. This system formed the basis of a number of user studies that have been performed to assess the effectiveness of the CIM, the findings of which are discussed in this work.

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

design
experimentation
human factors
human-computer interaction
gaze- and gesture-based interfaces


Life-cycle economic analysis of distributed manufacturing with open-source 3-D printers The recent development of open-source 3-D printers makes scaling of distributed additive-based manufacturing of high-value objects technically feasible and offers the potential for widespread proliferation of mechatronics education and participation. These self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRaps) can manufacture approximately half of their own parts from sequential fused deposition of polymer feedstocks. RepRaps have been demonstrated for conventional prototyping and engineering, customizing scientific equipment, and appropriate technology-related manufacturing for sustainable development. However, in order for this technology to proliferate like 2-D electronic printers have, it must be economically viable for a typical household. This study reports on the life-cycle economic analysis (LCEA) of RepRap technology for an average US household. A new low-cost RepRap is described and the costs of materials and time to construct it are quantified. The economic costs of a selection of 20 open-source printable designs (representing less than 0.02% of those available), are typical of products that a household might purchase, are quantified for print time, energy, and filament consumption and compared to low and high Internet market prices for similar products without shipping costs. The results show that even making the extremely conservative assumption that the household would only use the printer to make the selected 20 products a year the avoided purchase cost savings would range from about $300 to $2000/year. Assuming the 25 h of necessary printing for the selected products is evenly distributed throughout the year these savings provide a simple payback time for the RepRap in 4 months to 2 years and provide an ROI between >200% and >40%. As both upgrades and the components that are most likely to wear out in the RepRap can be printed and thus the lifetime of the distributing manufacturing can be substantially increased the unavoidable conclusion from this study is that the RepRap is an economically attractive investment for the average US household already. It appears clear that as RepRaps improve in reliability, continue to decline in cost and both the number and assumed utility of open-source designs continues growing exponentially, open-source 3-D printers will become a mass-market mechatronic device. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

3-d printing
open-source hardware
additive-layer manufacturing
rapid prototyping


A new approach to dual channel speech enhancement based on gravitational search algorithm (GSA) This paper proposes novel heuristic algorithm called gravitational search algorithm (GSA) to speech enhancement. Stochastic and heuristic algorithms like particle swarm optimization (PSO) and some of its variants have been adapted to the field of speech enhancement in recent years. Although standard PSO (SPSO) finds good solutions, it suffers from the premature convergence by getting trapped into local optimum. In order to increase the diversity in search space and to improve the local searching capability, another recently developed heuristic algorithm GSA is proposed to speech enhancement in this paper. GSA is mainly constructed on the basis of law of gravity and the notion of mass interactions .The proposed algorithm is studied for real world noise condition called babble noise, at three different input SNR levels. To the best of our knowledge, there is no analysis about the intelligibility of enhanced speech using optimization techniques. In the present study, the proposed algorithm is compared with the standard PSO (SPSO) algorithm for dual channel speech enhancement, and the intelligibility analysis is also reported. Simulation results indicate that GSA-based algorithm outperforms the particle swarm optimization in adaptive noise cancellation with an improved speech quality and intelligibility.

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

particle swarm optimization
dual channel speech enhancement

stochastic-based optimization
gravitational search algorithm (gsa)
heuristic optimization


Developing healthcare rule-based expert systems: Case study of a heart failure telemonitoring system ? The use of expert systems to generate automated alerts and patient instructions based on telemonitoring data could enable increased self-care and improve clinical management. However, of great importance is the development of the rule set to ensure safe and clinically relevant alerts and instructions are sent. The purpose of this work was to develop a rule-based expert system for a heart failure mobile phone-based telemonitoring system, to evaluate the expert system, and to generalize the lessons learned from the development process for use in other healthcare applications. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 heart failure clinicians to inform the development of a draft heart failure rule set for alerts and patient instructions. The draft rule set was validated and refined with 9 additional interviews with heart failure clinicians. Finally, the clinical champion of the project vetted the rule set. The concerns voiced by the clinicians during the interviews were noted, and methods to mitigate these concerns were employed. The rule set was then evaluated as part of a 6-month randomized controlled trial of a mobile phone-based heart failure telemonitoring system (n=50 for each of the telemonitoring and control groups). The developed expert system generated alerts and instructions based on the patient's weight, blood pressure, heart rate, and symptoms. During the trial, 1620 alerts were generated, which led to various clinical actions including 105 medication changes/instructions. The findings from the trial indicated the rule set was associated with improved quality of life and self-care. A rule set was developed with extensive input by heart failure clinicians. The results from the trial indicated the rule set was associated with significantly increased self-care and improved the clinical management of heart failure. The developed rule set can be used as a basis for other heart failure telemonitoring systems, but should be validated and modified as necessary. In addition, the process used to develop the rule set can be generalized and applied to create robust and complete rule sets for other healthcare expert systems.

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


Influence of QRS complex detection errors on entropy algorithms. Application to heart rate variability discrimination Signal entropy measures such as Approximate Entropy (ApEn) and Sample Entropy (SampEn) are widely used in Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis and biomedical research. In this article, we analyze the influence of QRS detection errors on HRV results based on signal entropy measures. Specifically, we study the influence that QRS detection errors have on the discrimination power of ApEn and SampEn using the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST) database. The experiments assessed the discrimination capability of ApEn and SampEn under different levels of QRS detection errors. The results demonstrate that these measures are sensitive to the presence of ectopic peaks: from a successful classification rate of 100%, down to a 75% when spikes are present. The discriminating capability of the metrics degraded as the number of misdetections increased. For an error rate of 2% the segmentation failed in a 12.5% of the experiments, whereas for a 5% rate, it failed in a 25%.

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

heart rate variability
qrs detection
approximate entropy
sample entropy


On evaluating lossy acquisitions of the responses of material hierarchical structures to the applied stress Lossy acquisitions in time-domain are very much practical, especially, in the fields of solid material characterization and evaluation. These losses are constrained by the acquisition conditions not only involving instrumentation and physics of the measurements, subject to the initial state of status, but also the subsequent variations of these conditions. In this work, we developed two algorithms, the distinct and ensemble, of which the former is based on the direct counts of signal characteristic features used widely in acoustic emission applications; whereas, the latter takes into accounts the statistic ensemble of the acquisitions. The distinct algorithm is for its simplicity, the ensemble one is more comprehensive and informative. It was found that the lossiness is dependent strongly on the mentioned conditions. Furthermore, this work shows that early damage, a largely ignored issue by the community of mechanics, plays a significant role in the performance of a solid material.

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

acoustic emission
lossiness
statistic ensemble

amplitude spectrum
entropy
lossy acquisition


Autonomous mental development in high dimensional context and action spaces Autonomous Mental Development (AMD) of robots opened a new paradigm for developing machine intelligence, using neural network type of techniques and it fundamentally changed the way an intelligent machine is developed from manual to autonomous. The work presented here is a part of SAIL (Self-Organizing Autonomous Incremental Learner) project which deals with autonomous development of humanoid robot with vision, audition, manipulation and locomotion. The major issue addressed here is the challenge of high dimensional action space (510) in addition to the high dimensional context space (hundreds to thousands and beyond), typically required by an AMD machine. This is the first work that studies a high dimensional (numeric) action space in conjunction with a high dimensional perception (context state) space, under the AMD mode. Two new learning algorithms, Direct Update on Direction Cosines (DUDC) and High-Dimensional Conjugate Gradient Search (HCGS), are developed, implemented and tested. The convergence properties of both the algorithms and their targeted applications are discussed. Autonomous learning of speech production under reinforcement learning is studied as an example.

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

autonomous mental development
high dimensional


Crack analysis using an enriched MFS domain decomposition technique In this paper we consider the application of the method of fundamental solutions to solve crack problems. These problems present difficulties, which are not only related to the intrinsic singular nature of the problem, instead they are mainly related to the impossibility in choosing appropriate point sources to write the solution as a whole. In this paper we present: (1) a domain decomposition technique that allows to express a piecewise approximation of the solution using a method of fundamental solutions applied to each subdomain; (2) an enriched approximation whereby singular functions (fully representing the singular behaviour around the cracks or other sources of boundary singularities) are used. An application of the proposed techniques to the torsion of cracked components is carried out.

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

method of fundamental solutions
crack problems
domain decomposition


breathalyzing physio-cybertext This poster investigates the creative interplay between readerly intentionality and corporeality in 'physio-cybertext', exemplified by Kate Pullinger et al.'s The Breathing Wall . This gothic murder mystery uses the reader's respiratory system as driving force for disclosing essential referential meaning, or 'clues'. TBW deviates from - and thereby reconfirms metagenerically - the rules of the conventional thriller by leaving the solution of the mystery not only to the reader's intention-driven, cognitive engagement with the plot, but chiefly to his or her very physical condition. Drawing on Aarseth's (1997) 'text/machine' and notions of intentionality and physical situatedness, I introduce the concept of 'cybertextual retro-intentionalization'.

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

physical situatedness
intentionality
corporeality


An approach to testing conceptual schemas Conceptual schemas of information systems can be tested. The testing of conceptual schemas may be an important and practical means for their validation. We present a list of five kinds of tests that can be applied to conceptual schemas. Two of them require schemas comprising both the structural and the behavioral parts, but we show that it is possible and useful to test incomplete schema fragments, even if they consist of only a few entity and relationship types, integrity constraints and derivation rules. We present CSTL, a language for writing automated tests of executable schemas written in UML/OCL. CSTL includes language primitives for each of the above kinds of tests. CSTL follows the style of the modern xUnit testing frameworks. We describe a prototype implementation of a test processor, which includes a test manager and a test interpreter that coordinates the execution of the tests. Tests written in CSTL can be executed as many times as needed.

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

conceptual modeling
requirements validation
uml/ocl


On-road video delivery with integrated heterogeneous wireless networks We consider on-road video delivery using heterogeneous wireless networks, e.g., usage-limited 3G (or 4G) cellular networks and coverage-limited Wi-Fi networks consisting of scattered road-side Access Points (APs), in order to improve mobile user (passenger) experience of such video services. We address the following three fundamental, non-trivial issues and associated challenges: (1) how to dynamically allocate Wi-Fi bandwidth within each APs coverage; (2) how to dynamically allocate cellular bandwidth subject to data usage limits; and (3) how to jointly optimize the solutions to the former two issues. In particular, we focus on a new optimization problem called On-road Video Delivery (OVD) with integrated heterogeneous networks. Our whole objective is to maximize the system-wide User Experience Index (UEI), which is a performance metric used to evaluate the user experience of such on-road video services. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first that focuses on on-road video delivery with both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. We prove OVD to be NP-Complete and propose two efficient solutions to deal with the above issues. We also design an online version of one proposed algorithm by considering the dynamic arrival of users. The numerical results from large-scale simulations are also presented to evaluate their effectiveness.

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

user experience
heterogeneous wireless networks


Fast electrostatic force calculation on parallel computer clusters The fast multipole method (FMM) and smooth particle mesh Ewald (SPME) are well known fast algorithms to evaluate long range electrostatic interactions in molecular dynamics and other fields. FMM is a multi-scale method which reduces the computation cost by approximating the potential due to a group of particles at a large distance using few multipole functions. This algorithm scales like O(N) O ( N ) for N particles. SPME algorithm is an O(NlnN) O ( N ln N ) method which is based on an interpolation of the Fourier space part of the Ewald sum and evaluating the resulting convolutions using fast Fourier transform (FFT). Those algorithms suffer from relatively poor efficiency on large parallel machines especially for mid-size problems around hundreds of thousands of atoms. A variation of the FMM, called PWA, based on plane wave expansions is presented in this paper. A new parallelization strategy for PWA, which takes advantage of the specific form of this expansion, is described. Its parallel efficiency is compared with SPME through detail time measurements on two different computer clusters.

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

fast multipole method
particle mesh ewald
plane wave


Delay-Optimal Server Allocation in Multiqueue Multiserver Systems With Time-Varying Connectivities This paper considers the problem of optimal server allocation in a time-slotted system with N statistically symmetric queues and K servers when the arrivals and channels are stochastic and time-varying. In this setting, we identify two classes of "desirable" policies with potentially competing goals of maximizing instantaneous throughput versus balancing the load. Via an example, we show that these goals, in general, can be incompatible, implying an empty intersection between the two classes of policies. On the other hand, we establish the existence of a policy achieving both goals when the connectivities between each queue and each server are random and either "ON" or "OFF." We use dynamic programming (DP) and properties of the value function to establish the delay optimality of a policy, which, at each time-slot, simultaneously maximizes the instantaneous throughput and balances the queues.

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

orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (ofdma)


optimal loop parallelization for maximizing iteration-level parallelism This paper solves the open problem of extracting the maximal number of iterations from a loop that can be executed in parallel on chip multiprocessors. Our algorithm solves it optimally by migrating the weights of parallelism-inhibiting dependences on dependence cycles in two phases. First, we model dependence migration with retiming and formulate this classic loop parallelization into a graph optimization problem, i.e., one of finding retiming values for its nodes so that the minimum non-zero edge weight in the graph is maximized. We present our algorithm in three stages with each being built incrementally on the preceding one. Second, the optimal code for a loop is generated from the retimed graph of the loop found in the first phase. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our optimal algorithm by comparing with a number of representative non-optimal algorithms using a set of benchmarks frequently used in prior work.

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

data dependence graph
iteration-level parallelism
loop transformation


Enhancing Intelligent Knowledge Systems Using Organization-Centered Agent Models Many construction industry-specific, agent-based applications have been deployed to enhance knowledge systems. These applications are generally agent-centered multi-agent systems (ACMAS). Interaction between ACMAS agents is designed around the internal mental states of an agent and the relationship between these states and its overall behavior. Communication in this approach comprises speech acts whose meaning can be described in terms of the mental states of an agent. This interaction protocol makes it difficult for agents that have been implemented using different approaches to communicate. This paper reviews the potential for addressing this limitation through using organization-centered multi-agent systems (OCMAS) in which agent interaction is designed around macro-level concepts such as organizations, groups, communities, and roles. Although the use of organizational metaphors in agent-based application is still in its infancy, there are some emerging modeling tools that can be used to advance the existing agent-based applications into open MASs that exhibit the dynamic and flexible characteristics of open, distributed systems. The paper illustrates this potential by using a proof of concept based on decision support requirements for highway maintenance management. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000195. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.

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

multi-agent systems
organizational abstraction


Interlayer Bit Allocation for Scalable Video Coding In this paper, we present a theoretical analysis of the distortion in multilayer coding structures. Specifically, we analyze the prediction structure used to achieve temporal, spatial, and quality scalability of scalable video coding (SVC) and show that the average peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of SVC is a weighted combination of the bit rates assigned to all the streams. Our analysis utilizes the end user's preference for certain resolutions. We also propose a rate-distortion (R-D) optimization algorithm and compare its performance with that of a state-of-the-art scalable bit allocation algorithm. The reported experiment results demonstrate that the R-D algorithm significantly outperforms the compared approach in terms of the average PSNR.

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

h.264/svc
rate allocation
scalable video coding (svc)


Prior reliability assessments based on coherent imprecise probabilities The paper describes an approach to obtaining prior imprecise reliability values of components and systems. The mathematical basis of the approach is the theory of coherent imprecise probabilities. The procedure of prior imprecise probability elicitation is based on analogical reasoning, and two cases of precise and imprecise reliabilities of prototypes are considered. Cases of combining different reliability judgements for the same component are analyzed. The remainder of the paper is devoted to imprecise reliability assessments of different system structures: components in parallel, in series and in series-parallel. The formulae obtained allow getting the lower and upper probabilities without the assumption of conditional independence. What we can expect from the use of this new tool is briefly discussed.

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

reliability assessments
coherent imprecise probabilities


A second order algorithm for orthogonal projection onto curves and surfaces In this paper we analyze an algorithm which solves the point projection and the "inversion" problems for parametric curves and surfaces. It consists of a geometric second order iteration which converges faster than existing first order methods, and whose sensitivity to the choice of initial values is small. Applications include the ICP algorithm for shape registration. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Profiling user-trigger dependence for Android malware detection ? As mobile computing becomes an integral part of the modern user experience, malicious applications have infiltrated open marketplaces for mobile platforms. Malware apps stealthily launch operations to retrieve sensitive user or device data or abuse system resources. We describe a highly accurate classification approach for detecting malicious Android apps. Our method statically extracts a data-flow feature on how user inputs trigger sensitive API invocations, a property referred to as the user-trigger dependence. Our evaluation with 1433 malware apps and 2684 free popular apps gives a classification accuracy (2.1% false negative rate and 2.0% false positive rate) that is better than, or at least competitive against, the state-of-the-art. Our method also discovers new malicious apps in the Google Play market that cannot be detected by virus scanning tools. Our thesis in this mobile app classification work is to advocate the approach of benign property enforcement, i.e., extracting unique behavioral properties from benign programs and designing corresponding classification policies.

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

user-intention
static program analysis
android malware
user-trigger dependence


dynamic run-time architecture techniques for enabling continuous optimization Future computer systems will integrate tens of multithreaded processor cores on a single chip die, resulting in hundreds of concurrent program threads sharing system resources. These designs will be the cornerstone of improving throughput in high-performance computing and server environments. However, to date, appropriate systems software (operating system, run-time system, and compiler) technologies for these emerging machines have not been adequately explored. Future processors will require sophisticated hardware monitoring units to continuously feed back resource utilization information to allow the operating system to make optimal thread co-scheduling decisions and also to software that continuously optimizes the program itselfNevertheless, in order to continually and automatically adapt systems resources to program behaviors and application needs, specific run-time information must be collected to adequately enable dynamic code optimization and operating system scheduling. Generally, run-time optimization is limited by the time required to collect profiles, the time required to perform optimization, and the inherent benefits of any optimization or decisions. Initial techniques for effectively utilizing run-time information for dynamic optimization and informed thread scheduling in future multithreaded architectures are presented

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

profiling
multithreading
performance counters


Relationships between geometry and kinematic characteristics in the temporomandibular joint Motions of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) involve both translation and rotation; however, there may be substantial variations from one human to another, and these variations present significant difficulties when designing TMJ prostheses. The disc-condyle glides along the temporal bone and the condyle centre describe a curve that depends on the individual morphology. This study analyses disc-condyle rotatory and translatory displacements moving all along the temporal bone facets which are mainly composed of two areas: the articular tubercle slope (ATS) and the preglenoid plane separated by the articular tubercle crest. Displacements were quantified using 3D video analysis, and this technique was computer-assisted. From a population of 32 volunteers, we were able to establish a correlation between the kinematic characteristics of the joint and the disc-condyle trajectories. This study quantifies the geometrical characteristics of the ATS and their inter-individual variations, which are useful in TMJ prosthesis design.

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

kinematic characteristics
articular tubercle slope
prosthesis

preponderance coefficient
kinematic standardisation


West Nile Virus Infection in Birds and Mammals West Nile virus (WNV) was found throughout New York State in year 2000. The epicenter was located in New York City with a high level of activity in the immediately surrounding counties, including Rockland, Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk. During 2000, WNV testing was performed by the Wadsworth Center on 3,687 dead birds, representing 153 species, 46 families, and 18 orders. There were 1,203 WNV-positive birds, representing 63 species, 30 families and 14 orders. The percentage of WNV-positive birds was 33% for all birds tested throughout the state, with no significant difference in infection rates in migratory versus resident birds, although significantly more resident birds were submitted for testing. The highest apparent mortality for the entire season was observed in American crows in Staten Island, a location that also showed the highest minimal infection rate in Culex pipiens complex mosquitoes. Studies examining tissue tropism of WNV in corvids and noncorvids from the epicenter and from remote locations indicated that the kidney was the most consistently infected tissue in birds, regardless of level of infection. The brain was the next most consistently positive tissue. The differences in infection among the tissues were most apparent when low levels of virus were present. Experimental mouse inoculation demonstrated a classical flavivirus infection pattern.

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

west nile virus
tissue tropism
birds
mammals


Automated, highly-accurate, bug assignment using machine learning and tossing graphs Empirical studies indicate that automating the bug assignment process has the potential to significantly reduce software evolution effort and costs. Prior work has used machine learning techniques to automate bug assignment but has employed a narrow band of tools which can be ineffective in large, long-lived software projects. To redress this situation, in this paper we employ a comprehensive set of machine learning tools and a probabilistic graph-based model (bug tossing graphs) that lead to highly-accurate predictions, and lay the foundation for the next generation of machine learning-based bug assignment. Our work is the first to examine the impact of multiple machine learning dimensions (classifiers, attributes, and training history) along with bug tossing graphs on prediction accuracy in bug assignment. We validate our approach on Mozilla and Eclipse, covering 856,259 bug reports and 21 cumulative years of development. We demonstrate that our techniques can achieve up to 86.09% prediction accuracy in bug assignment and significantly reduce tossing path lengths. We show that for our data sets the Nave Bayes classifier coupled with productcomponent features, tossing graphs and incremental learning performs best. Next, we perform an ablative analysis by unilaterally varying classifiers, features, and learning model to show their relative importance of on bug assignment accuracy. Finally, we propose optimization techniques that achieve high prediction accuracy while reducing training and prediction time.

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

bug assignment
bug tossing
machine learning
empirical studies


An optimal control problem for a two-prey and one-predator model with diffusion An optimal control problem is studied for a reactiondiffusion system that models an ecosystem composed by one predator and two prey populations. One proposed to maximize the total density of the three populations. To do this, one proves the existence of an optimal solution and one establishes first and second order optimality conditions. Several numerical simulations performed in both one-dimensional and two-dimensional isolated environments and using different Holling type functional responses support the theoretical results.

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

bangbang control
first order optimality conditions
holling type functional response


L-2-L-infinity fuzzy control for Markov jump systems with neutral time-delays The L-2-L-infinity fuzzy control problem is considered for nonlinear stochastic Markov jump systems with neutral time-delays. By means of Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models, the fuzzy controller systems and the overall closed-loop fuzzy dynamics are constructed. A sufficient condition is firstly established on the stochastic stability using stochastic Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional. Then in terms of linear matrix inequalities techniques, the sufficient conditions on the existence of mode-dependent state feedback L-2-L-infinity fuzzy controller are presented and proved respectively for constant and time varying case. Finally, the design problems are formulated as optimization algorithms. Simulation results are exploited to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed techniques. (C) 2013 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

markov jump systems
linear matrix inequalities

neutral time-delays
takagi-sugeno fuzzy models
l-2-l-infinity fuzzy control


The twisting force of aged consumers when opening a jar Many people experience difficulty when opening a vacuum-sealed jar. Yet solutions to the problem continue to be tool-based rather than exploring the possibility of innovative changes in product packaging. Improvement depends on gaining knowledge of the capabilities of users, and of using that knowledge as a base for product innovation. To establish such a base we took a sample of 750 subjects and asked them two questions about how they opened jars at home. We then carried out torque measurements using a force transducer shaped like a jam jar. We reached the conclusion that if opening torque was reduced to 2Nm then 97.6% of users between 50 and 94 years of age and 100% of 2030 year old users would have no difficulty opening a jar.

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


Solve least absolute value regression problems using modified goal programming techniques Least absolute value (LAV) regression methods have been widely applied in estimating regression equations. However, most of the current LAV methods are based on the original goal program developed over four decades. On the basis of a modified goal program, this study reformulates the LAV problem using a markedly lower number of deviational variables than used in the current LAV methods. Numerical results indicate that for the regression problems with hundreds of observations, this novel method can save more than 1/3 of the CPU time compared to current LAV methods.

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

goal programming
least absolute value regression


The COMPLEX methodology for UML/MARTE Modeling and design space exploration of embedded systems The design of embedded systems is being challenged by their growing complexity and tight performance requirements. This paper presents the COMPLEX UML/MARTE Design Space Exploration methodology, an approach based on a novel combination of Model Driven Engineering (MDE), Electronic System Level (ESL) and design exploration technologies. The proposed framework enables capturing the set of possible design solutions, that is, the design space, in an abstract, standard and graphical way by relying on UML and the standard MARTE profile. From that UML/MARTE based model, the automated generation framework proposed produces an executable, configurable and fast performance model which includes functional code of the application components. This generated model integrates an XML-based interface for communication with the tool which steers the exploration. This way, the DSE loop iterations are efficiently performed, without user intervention, avoiding slow manual editions, or regeneration of the performance model. The novel DSE suited modelling features of the methodology are shown in detail. The paper also presents the performance model generation framework, including the enhancements with regard the previous simulation and estimation technology, and the exploration technology. The paper uses an EFR vocoder system example for showing the methodology and for demonstrative results.

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


Global convergence of Oja's PCA learning algorithm with a non-zero-approaching adaptive learning rate A non-zero-approaching adaptive learning rate is proposed to guarantee the global convergence of Oja's principal component analysis (PCA) learning algorithm. Most of the existing adaptive learning rates for Oja's PCA learning algorithm are required to approach zero as the learning step increases. However, this is not practical in many applications due to the computational round-off limitations and tracking requirements, The proposed adaptive leaming rate overcomes this shortcoming. The learning rate converges to a positive constant, thus it increases the evolution rate as the learning step increases. This is different from learning rates which approach zero which slow the convergence considerably and increasingly with time. Rigorous mathematical proofs for global convergence of Oja's algorithm with the proposed learning rate are given in detail via studying the convergence of an equivalent deterministic discrete time (DDT) system. Extensive simulations are carried out to illustrate and verify the theory derived. Simulation results show that this adaptive learning rate is more suitable for Oja's PCA algorithm to be used in an online leaming situation. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

principal component analysis (pca)
oja's pca learning algorithm
deterministic discrete time system


dependability evaluation of complex systems with timenet This paper presents recent changes to TimeNET, a software tool for the modeling and performability evaluation using stochastic Petri nets. A rare-event simulation module has been implemented for colored stochastic Petri nets to efficiently evaluate dependability measures of complex dynamic fault-tolerant systems.

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

colored stochastic petri nets
dependability evaluation
software tool


An integrated computational fluid dynamics-process model of natural circulation steam generation in a coal-fired power plant A semi-detailed 1D process model for steam generation in a natural circulation boiler (thermosyphon loop) is linked to a detailed 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the coal-fired furnace. The CFD model has been validated against typical data from a 500 MW(e) subcritical power plant. The heat flux distribution data from the CFD model are regressed into a function of height and used to drive the process model. The complex physics occurring in the furnace are coupled with the thermosyphon steam loop, resulting in circulation flows of around 4 times the feed flow. The steam side heat transfer coefficients are predicted in the process model and so the overall heat transfer coefficient for use in the CFD simulation can be re-evaluated as a function of height. The recalculated heat flux distribution is almost identical to the original, because the dominant resistance to heat flow is on the furnace side. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Genetic-based modeling of uplift capacity of suction caissons In this study, classical tree-based genetic programming (TGP) and its recent variants, namely linear genetic programming (LGP) and gene expression programming (GEP) are utilized to develop new prediction equations for the uplift capacity of suction caissons. The uplift capacity is formulated in terms of several inflecting variables. An experimental database obtained from the literature is employed to develop the models. Further, a conventional statistical analysis is performed to benchmark the proposed models. Sensitivity and parametric analyses are conducted to verify the results. TGP, LGP and GEP are found to be effective methods for evaluating the horizontal, vertical and inclined uplift capacity of suction caissons. The TGP, LGP and GEP models reach a prediction performance better than or comparable with the models found in the literature.

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

linear genetic programming
gene expression programming
suction caissons
uplift capacity

standard genetic programming
formulation


Views as first-class citizens in object-oriented databases Extensibility and dynamic schema evolution are among the attractive features that lead to the wide acceptance of the object-oriented paradigm. Not knowing all class hierarchy details should not prevent a user from introducing new classes when necessary. Naive or professional users may define new classes either by using class definition constructs or as views. However, improper placement of such classes leads to a flat hierarchy with many things duplicated. To overcome this problem, we automated the process in order to help the user find the most appropriate position with respect to her class in the hierarchy regardless of her knowledge of the hierarchy. The system must be responsible for the proper placement of new classes because only the system has complete knowledge of the details of the class hierarchy, especially in a dynamic environment where changes are very frequent. In other published work, we proved that to define a view it is enough to have the set of objects that qualify to be in a view in addition to having message expressions (possible paths) that lead to desired values within those objects. Here, we go further to map a view that is intended to be persistent into a class. Then we investigate the proper position of that class in the hierarchy. To achieve this, we consider current characteristics of a new class in order to derive its relationship with other existing classes in the hierarchy. Another advantage of the presented model is that views that generate new objects are still updatable simply because we based the creation of new objects on existing identities. In other words, an object participates inside view objects by its identity regardless of which particular values from that object are of interest to the view. Values are reachable via message expressions, not violating encapsulation. This way, actual values are present in only one place and can be updated.

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


a performance analysis of distributed qos negotiation during session establishment In order to achieve guaranteed services, we need to negotiate network resources providing the required quality of services(QoS). For this reason, the common set-up process of servicesession is divided into three phases. At first, the application specifies its QoS requirements, then, the QoS parameters at IP level and MAC level are successively specified and finally the network applies the negotiated QoS configuration. In this paper, we propose to negotiate at the same time the QoS parameters at both levels. An optimization of this approach has also been discussed. This optimization focuses on distributing negotiated QoS parameters between several entities located in different hierarchical levels. The assignment of parameters is dynamically configured. Therefore, this paper proposes a performance model to compare the new combined-distributed negotiation process with the negotiation processes applied in UMTS Release 5 (R5) [4]during session establishment. Numerical results show that the proposed approach is more scalable on the network side than the UMTS approach.

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


Assessment of non-Fickian subgrid-scale models for passive scalar in a channel flow In order to assess new subgrid-scale (SGS) models for a passive scalar, several large eddy simulations of a turbulent channel flow with passive scalar, for various Prandtl numbers ranging from 0.1 to 2.0 are carried out. These models are not based on the classical Fickian approximation and do not necessarily induce an alignment between the SGS beat flux vector and the gradient of the resolved temperature. Five SGS models are investigated on two grids. To validate the simulations, statistical quantities such as mean temperature, temperature variance and turbulent heat flux are compared with available data obtained by direct numerical simulation (DNS). The SGS dissipation is computed for different models in order to analyse its behaviour. The turbulence structures based on instantaneous velocity and temperature are described to study the correlations between these two fields. Among the assessed models, those consisting in Fickian and non-Fickian parts seem to be full of promise. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

large eddy simulation (les)
subgrid-scale (sgs) model


Extraction, selection and ranking of Field Association (FA) Terms from domain-specific corpora for building a comprehensive FA terms dictionary Field Association (FA) Terms-words or phrases that serve to identify document fields are effective in document classification, similar file retrieval and passage retrieval. But the problem lies in the lack of an effective method to extract and select relevant FA Terms to build a comprehensive dictionary of FA Terms. This paper presents a new method to extract, select and rank FA Terms from domain-specific corpora using part-of-speech (POS) pattern rules, corpora comparison and modified tf-idf weighting. Experimental evaluation on 21 fields using 306 MB of domain-specific corpora obtained from English Wikipedia dumps selected up to 2,517 FA Terms (single and compound) per field at precision and recall of 74-97 and 65-98. This is better than the traditional methods. The FA Terms dictionary constructed using this method achieved an average accuracy of 97.6% in identifying the fields of 10,077 test documents collected from Wikipedia, Reuters RCV1 corpus and 20 Newsgroup data set.

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

field association (fa) terms
terms weighting and selection
terminology extraction
information retrieval


wimax uplink video streaming behavior IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) uplink behavior is a relatively neglected area of investigation, but emerging interactive multimedia services have highlighted the need for closer investigation of uplink issues. In this simulation study of uplink queue management, video streaming by TFRC was found to offer advantages. However, temporal behavior of the queuing disciplines exhibits oscillations in buffer occupancy with build-up of delay during video streaming. The study offers a strategy to cope in these circumstances based on video frame type inspection.

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


Gait recognition using description of shape synthesized by planar homography In the gait recognition, dependency to the walking direction is serious problem because most features obtained from gait sequences for recognition vary with dependent to the walking direction. To extract steady features from the gait sequence in this case, it is noticeable approach to synthesize gait sequences to the canonical-viewed ones. However, even though the synthesized gait is used for the feature extraction, it is required to describe the gait sufficiently for robust recognition. Therefore, the target of this paper is to find a method to reduce the directional dependency, and then apply adequate description for the gait sequences to recognize the gait, which includes a few distortion caused by synthesizing method. To overcome the problem of directional dependency, we propose a synthesis method to compose gait sequences to the canonical-viewed ones based on the planar homography, which is estimated by only using the given gait sequence with simple operation.

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

view synthesis
shape sequence descriptor
biometrics


A comparison of two approaches to utilizing XML in para metric databases for temporal data The parametric data model captures an object. in terms of a single tuple. This feature eliminates unnecessary self-join operations to combine tuples scattered in a temporal relation. Despite this advantage, this model is relatively difficult to implement on top of relational databases because the sizes of attributes are unfixed. Since data boundaries are not problematic in XML, XML can be an elegant solution to implement parametric databases for temporal data. There are two approaches to implementing parametric databases using XML: (1) a native XML database with XQuery engine, and (2) an XML storage with a temporal query language. To determine which approach is appropriate in parametric databases, we consider four questions: the effectiveness of XML in modeling temporal data, the applicability of XML query languages, the user-friendliness of the query languages, and system performances of two approaches. By evaluating the four questions, we show that the latter approach is more appropriate to utilizing XML in parametric databases. (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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

parametric database
temporal database
database comparison
xml utilization


Dynamic association rule mining using Genetic Algorithms A large volume of transaction data is generated everyday in a number of applications. These dynamic data sets have immense potential for reflecting changes in customer behaviour patterns. One of the strategies of data mining is association rule discovery which correlates the occurrence of certain attributes in the database leading to the identification of large data itemsets. This paper seeks to generate large itemsets in a dynamic transaction database using the principles of Genetic Algorithms. Intra Transactions, Inter Transactions and Distributed Transactions are considered for mining Association Rules. Further, we analyze the time complexities of single scan technique DMARG (Dynamic Mining of Association Rules using Genetic Algorithms), with Fast UPdate (FUP) algorithm for intra transactions and E-Apriori for inter transactions. Our study shows that the algorithm DMARG outperforms both FUP and E-Apriori in terms of execution time and scalability, without compromising the quality or completeness of rules generated.

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

data mining
association rule mining
genetic algorithms


A sound and complete algorithm for distributed commerce transactions In a multi-party transaction (also called a distributed commerce transaction) agents face risks from dealing with untrusted agents. These risks are compounded in the face of deadlines, e.g,, an agent may fail to deliver purchased goods by the time the goods are needed. We characterize the risks, and present a distributed algorithm that mitigates these risks, by using pairwise exchanges and trusted intermediaries. The algorithm generates a safe sequence of actions that completes a commerce transaction without risk, if such a sequence exists. We show that the algorithm is sound (produces only safe multi-agent action sequences) and complete (finds a safe sequence whenever one exists). The initial restriction of guaranteeing safety even when none of the principals trusts another can be relaxed in some cases, so we show how to handle principals that do trust each other and interact directly rather than through a trusted intermediary.

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

distributed commerce transactions
deadlines
trust
trusted intermediaries


A fast blind multiple access interference reduction in DS/CDMA systems based on adaptive projected subgradient method This paper presents a novel blind multiple access interference (MAI) suppression filter in DS/CDMA systems. The filter is adaptively updated by parallel projections onto a series of convex sets. These sets are defined based on the received signal as well as a priori knowledge about the desired user's signature. In order to achieve fast convergence and good performance at steady state, the adaptive projected subgradient method (Yamada et al., 2003) is applied. The proposed scheme also jointly estimates the desired signal amplitude and the filter coefficients based on an approximation of an EM type algorithm, following the original idea proposed by Park and Doherty, 1997. Simulation results highlight the fast convergence behavior and good performance at steady state of the proposed scheme.

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

ds/cdma
multiple access interference (mai)
interference suppression
blind detection


Comparing General-Purpose and Domain-Specific Languages: An Empirical Study Many domain-specific languages, that try to bring feasible alternatives for existing solutions while simplifying programming work, have come up in recent years. Although, these little languages seem to be easy to use, there is an open issue whether they bring advantages in comparison to the application libraries, which are the most commonly used implementation approach. In this work, we present an experiment, which was carried out to compare such a domain-specific language with a comparable application library. The experiment was conducted with 36 programmers, who have answered a questionnaire on both implementation approaches. The questionnaire is more than 100 pages long. For a domain-specific language and the application library, the same problem domain has been used - construction of graphical user interfaces. In terms of a domain-specific language, XAML has been used and C# Forms for the application library. A cognitive dimension framework has been used for a comparison between XAML and C# Forms.

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

domain-specific languages
general-purpose languages
program comprehension
empirical software engineering


Enumeration methods for repeatedly solving multidimensional knapsack sub-problems In order to solve large Multidimensional Knapsack problems we examine a technique which decomposes a problem instance into two parts. The first part is solved using a traditional technique, such as Dynamic Programming, to reduce the number of variables in the problem by creating a single variable with many non-dominated states. In the second part the remaining variables are determined by an algorithm that repeatedly enumerates them with different constraint and objective requirements. The constraint and objective requirements are imposed by the various non-dominated states of the variable created in the first part of this technique. The main advantage of this approach is that when memory requirements prevent traditional techniques solving a problem instance. the enumeration provides a much less mernory-intensive method, enabling a solution to be found. Two approaches are proposed for repeatedly enumerating a 0/1 Multidimensional Knapsack problem. It is demonstrated how these enumeration methods, in conjunction with the Modular Approach, were used to find the optimal solutions to a number of 500-variable. 5-constraint Multi-dimensional Knapsack problem instances proposed in the literature. The exact solutions to these instances were previously unknown.

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


a testability measure for hierarchical design environments In this paper a new approach is proposed to compute testability of a combinational circuit in a hierarchical design environment. The testability of a circuit is first computed at the functional level using the Walsh expression of the functional block, and its complexity is linear with respect to the number of functional blocks. The functional level testability measure is then used to compute the testability at the gate/switch level. Our extensive simulation results show that the testability measure of the proposed method reflects closely to the actual testability measure (both at the functional level and the gate level) when the granularity of a functional block is much higher than that of primitive gates.

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

walsh expression
simulation
combinational circuit
testability measure
hierarchical design environments
functional level

walsh functions
logic testing
design for testability
logic cad
combinational circuits
circuit cad
gate/switch level


Comparison of strategy learning methods in Farmer-Pest problem for various complexity environments without delays In this paper effectiveness of several agent strategy learning algorithms is compared in a new multi-agent Farmer Pest learning environment. Learning is often utilized by multi-agent systems which can deal with complex problems by means of their decentralized approach. With a number of learning methods available, a need for their comparison arises. This is why we designed and implemented new multidimensional Farmer Pest problem domain, which is suitable for benchmarking learning algorithms. This paper presents comparison results for reinforcement learning (SARSA) and supervised learning (Naive Bayes, C4.5 and Ripper). These algorithms are tested on configurations with various complexity with not delayed rewards. The results show that algorithm performances depend highly on the environment configuration and various conditions favor different learning algorithms. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

supervised learning
reinforcement learning


Cooperative multi-agent-based supervisory control and data-acquisition system A method is described for improving cooperation in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that uses multi-agent (MA) intelligent field terminals (IFTs). The MA function of each IFT evaluates the control conditions of the overall system and the conditions of the other IFTs. To shorten the turn-around time for data transfer among IFTs, the conflicts that occur when the data processed by different IFTs is inconsistent or irregular are cooperatively and autonomously resolved by predictive agents incorporated into each IFT. Experimental results showed that this method not only provides adequate control but also reduces the load on the network and the turn-around time when the number of IFTs is less than 30.

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

intelligent field terminal
multi-agent
predictive agent
conflict


a methodology for modeling the effects of systematic within-die interconnect and device variation on circuit performance We present a methodology to study the impact of spatial pattern dependent variation on circuit performance and implement the technique in a CAD framework. We investigate the effects of interconnect CMP and poly CD device variation on interconnect delay and clock skew in both aluminum and copper interconnect technology. Our results indicate that interconnect CMP variation strongly affects interconnect delay, while poly CD variation has a large impact on clock skew in a 1 GHz design. Given this circuit impact, CAD tools in the future must account for such systematic within-die variations.

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

clock skew
spatial
framework
methodology
device
variation
design
performance
delay
interconnect
account
future
tools
pattern

dependencies affect technologies model effect circuits


BiSNET: A biologically-inspired middleware architecture for self-managing wireless sensor networks This paper describes BiSNET (Biologically-inspired architecture for Sensor NETworks), a middleware architecture that addresses several key issues in multi-modal wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) such as autonomy, scalability, adaptability, self-healing and simplicity. Based on the observation that various biological systems have developed mechanisms to overcome these issues, BiSNET follows certain biological principles such as decentralization, food gathering/storage and natural selection to design MWSN applications. In BiSNET, each application consists of multiple software agents, which operate on the BiSNET middleware platform in individual sensor nodes, and each agent exploits certain biologically-inspired mechanisms such as energy exchange, pheromone emission, replication, migration and death. This is analogous to a bee colony (application) consisting of multiple bees (agents). This paper describes the biologically-inspired mechanisms in BiSNET, and evaluates their impacts on the autonomy, scalability, adaptability, self-healing and simplicity of MWSNs. Simulation results show that BiSNET allows sensor nodes (agents and platforms) to be scalable with respect to network size, autonomously adapt their sleep periods for power efficiency and responsiveness of data collection, adaptively aggregate data from different types of sensor nodes, and collectively self-heal (i.e., detect and eliminate) false positive sensor data. The BiSNET platform is implemented simple in its design and lightweight in its memory footprint.

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

middleware support for self-managing sensor network applications


Secure Transmission With Multiple Antennas-Part II: The MIMOME Wiretap Channel The capacity of the Gaussian wiretap channel model is analyzed when there are multiple antennas at the sender, intended receiver and eavesdropper. The associated channel matrices are fixed and known to all the terminals. A computable characterization of the secrecy capacity is established as the saddle point solution to a minimax problem. The converse is based on a Sato-type argument used in other broadcast settings, and the coding theorem is based on Gaussian wiretap codebooks. At high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the secrecy capacity is shown to be attained by simultaneously diagonalizing the channel matrices via the generalized singular value decomposition, and independently coding across the resulting parallel channels. The associated capacity is expressed in terms of the corresponding generalized singular values. It is shown that a semi-blind "masked" multi-input multi-output (MIMO) transmission strategy that sends information along directions in which there is gain to the intended receiver, and synthetic noise along directions in which there is not, can be arbitrarily far from capacity in this regime. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the secrecy capacity to be zero are provided, which simplify in the limit of many antennas when the entries of the channel matrices are independent and identically distributed. The resulting scaling laws establish that to prevent secure communication, the eavesdropper needs three times as many antennas as the sender and intended receiver have jointly, and that the optimum division of antennas between sender and intended receiver is in the ratio of 2:1.

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

broadcast channel
cryptography
mimo wiretap channel


Virtual organization for open innovation: Semantic web based inter-organizational team formation Companies and research institutes are always threatened by rapid technological developments and corporate M&A. They are trying to secure a sustainable competitive advantage using outside knowledge and expertise under open innovation to overcome these shortcomings. As a quantitative and systematical method of selecting virtual team members for open innovation, we present a virtual team formation model and a prototype to verify its efficiency. The test scenario shows how to form a virtual team through internal and external human resources when developing a new product.

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

virtual team formation model
open innovation

knowledge and collaboration
social network


Clustering with Bregman divergences A wide variety of distortion functions, such as squared Euclidean distance, Mahalanobis distance, Itakura-Saito distance and relative entropy, have been used for clustering. In this paper, we propose and analyze parametric hard and soft clustering algorithms based on a large class of distortion functions known as Bregman divergences. The proposed algorithms unify centroid-based parametric clustering approaches, such as classical kmeans, the Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) algorithm and information-theoretic clustering, which arise by special choices of the Bregman divergence. The algorithms maintain the simplicity and scalability of the classical kmeans algorithm, while generalizing the method to a large class of clustering loss functions. This is achieved by first posing the hard clustering problem in terms of minimizing the loss in Bregman information, a quantity motivated by rate distortion theory, and then deriving an iterative algorithm that monotonically decreases this loss. In addition, we show that there is a bijection between regular exponential families and a large class of Bregman divergences, that we call regular Bregman divergences. This result enables the development of an alternative interpretation of an efficient EM scheme for learning mixtures of exponential family distributions, and leads to a simple soft clustering algorithm for regular Bregman divergences. Finally, we discuss the connection between rate distortion theory and Bregman clustering and present an information theoretic analysis of Bregman clustering algorithms in terms of a trade-off between compression and loss in Bregman information.

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

clustering
bregman divergences
bregman information
exponential families

expectation maximization
information theory


Discriminative anatomy detection: Classification vs regression We present a survey of methods for detecting one or more anatomies. Leveraging the anatomical context embedded in the medical image is the key. Discriminative learning methods are effective for appearance modeling. Classification-based and regression-based methods are compared. Different search strategies and their computational complexities are presented.

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

anatomy detection
discriminative learning
anatomical context

multiple object detection
multiple landmark detection
search strategy