A microphone array-based 3-D N-best search method for recognizing multiple sound sources This paper describes a method for hands-free speech recognition, and particularly for the simultaneous recognition of multiple sound sources. The method is based on the 3-D Viterbi search, i.e., extended to the 3-D N-best search method enabling the recognition of multiple sound sources. The baseline system integrates two existing technologies - 3-D Viterbi search and conventional N-best search - into a complete system. Previously, the first evaluation of the 3-D N-best search-based system showed that new ideas are necessary to develop a system for the simultaneous recognition of multiple sound source,;. It found two factors that play important roles in the performance of the system, namely the different likelihood ranges of the sound sources and the direction-based separation of the hypotheses. In order to solve these problems, we implemented a likelihood normalization and a path distance-based clustering technique into the baseline 3-D N-best search-based system. The performance of our system was evaluated through experiments on simulated data for the case of two talkers. The experiments showed significant, improvements by implementing the above two techniques. The best results were obtained by implementing the two techniques and using a microphone array composed of 32 channels. More specifically. the Word Accuracy for the two talkers was higher than 80% and the Simultaneous Word Accuracy (where both sources are correctly recognized simultaneously) was higher than 70%, which are very promising results.

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


Multiobjective Groundwater Management Using Evolutionary Algorithms Sustainable management of groundwater resources is of crucial importance for regions where freshwater supply is naturally limited. Long-term planning of groundwater usage requires computer-based decision support tools: on the one hand, they must be able to predict I he complex system dynamics with sufficient accuracy, on the other, they must: allow exploring management scenarios with respect: to different criteria such as sustainability, cost, etc. In this paper, we present a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm for groundwater management that optimizes the placement and the operation of pumping facilities over time, while considering multiple neighboring regions which are economically independent. The algorithm helps in investigating the cost tradeoffs; between the different regions by providing an approximation of the Pareto-optimal set, and its capabilities are demonstrated on a three-region problem. The application of the proposed methodology can also serve as a benchmark problem as shown in this paper. The corresponding implementation is freely available as a precompiled module at http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/pisa.

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

groundwater management
multiobjective evolutionary algorithm

benchmark application
economic externalities
pareto set approximation
pisa


Analysis of the traded volume drivers of the Iberian power futures market A comprehensive assessment of the liquidity development in the Iberian power futures market managed by OMIP (Operador do Mercado Ibrico de Energia, Plo Portugus) in its first 4years of existence is performed. This market started on July 2006. A regression model tracking the evolution of the traded volumes in the continuous market is built as a function of 12 potential liquidity drivers. The only significant drivers are the traded volumes in OMIP compulsory auctions, the traded volumes in the Over The Counter (OTC) market, and the OTC cleared volumes in OMIP clearing house (OMIClear). Furthermore, the enrollment of financial members shows strong correlation with the traded volumes in the continuous market. OMIP liquidity is still far from the levels reached by the most mature European markets (Nord Pool and EEX). The market operator and its clearing house could develop efficient marketing actions to attract new entrants active in the spot market (energy intensive industries, suppliers, and small producers) as well as volumes from the opaque OTC market, and to improve the performance of existing illiquid products. An active dialogue with all the stakeholders (market participants, spot market operator, and supervisory authorities) will help to implement such actions.

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

electricity sector
energy regulation
market supervision


A distribution-index-based discretizer for decision-making with symbolic AI approaches When symbolic AI approaches are applied to handle continuous valued attributes, there is a requirement to transform the continuous attribute values to symbolic data. In this paper, a novel distribution-index-based discretizer is proposed for such a transformation. Based on definitions of dichotomic entropy and a compound distributional index, a simple criterion is applied to discretize continuous attributes adaptively. The dichotomic entropy indicates the homogeneity degree of the decision value distribution, and is applied to determine the best splitting point. The compound distributional index combines both the homogeneity degrees of attribute value distributions and the decision value distribution, and is applied to determine which interval should be split further; thus, a potentially improved solution of the discretization problem can be found efficiently. Based on multiple reducts in rough set theory, a multiknowledge approach can attain high decision accuracy for information systems with a large number of attributes and missing values. In this paper, our discretizer is combined with the multiknowledge approach to further improve decision accuracy for information systems with continuous attributes. Experimental results on benchmark data sets show that the new discretizer can improve not only the multiknowledge approach, but also the naive Bayes classifier and the C5.0 tree.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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
machine learning
information theory
decision support


Ultra-Wideband \(4\times 4\) Butler Matrix Employing Trapezoidal-Shaped Microstrip-Slot Technique A design of compact and inexpensive two-layer ultra-wideband (UWB) \(4~\times ~4\) butler matrix beam-forming network employing trapezoidal-shaped microstrip-slot technique is presented in this paper. The proposed design uses multi-layer technology that allows having compact size and broad bandwidth. The proposed \(4\times 4\) butler matrix configuration consists of four couplers and two phase shifters without using crossovers. Both couplers and phase shifters use trapezoidal-shaped broadside coupled patches and a rectangular slot created in a common ground plane of two Rogers duroid RT5880 dielectric substrates. The simulations and experimental results show a good performance in terms of transmission magnitudes and phases with good return losses and isolation characteristics across the entire UWB frequency range. To demonstrate the functionality of the designed butler matrix, four identical tapered slot antenna (TSA) elements are connected to four output ports of the butler matrix and the radiation pattern characteristics are simulated, presented and discussed.

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

microstrip printed circuit board (pcb) technology


Adaptive Bloom Filter: A space-efficient counting algorithm for unpredictable network traffic The Bloom Filter (BF), a space-and-time-efficient hash-coding method, is used as one of the fundamental modules in several network processing algorithms and applications such as route lookups, cache hits, packet classification, per-flow state management or network monitoring. BF is a simple space-efficient randomized data structure used to represent a data set in order to support membership queries. However, BF generates false positives, and cannot count the number of distinct elements. A counting Bloom Filter (CBF) can count the number of distinct elements, but CBF needs more space than BF. We propose an alternative data structure of CBF, and we called this structure an Adaptive Bloom Filter (ABF). Although ABF uses the same-sized bit-vector used in BF, the number of hash functions employed by ABF is dynamically changed to record the number of appearances of a each key element. Considering the hash collisions, the multiplicity of a each key element on ABF can be estimated from the number of hash functions used to decode the membership of the each key element. Although ABF can realize the same functionality as CBF, ABF requires the same memory size as BF. We describe the construction of ABF and IABF (Improved ABF), and provide a mathematical analysis and simulation using Zipf's distribution. Finally, we show that ABF can be used for an unpredictable data set such as real network traffic.

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


Asymptotics of aeroelastic modes and basis property of mode shapes for aircraft wing model In this paper, we announce our recent results on the asymptotic and spectral analysis of the model of an aircraft wing in a subsonic air flow. This model has been developed in the Flight Systems Research Center of UCLA and is presented in the works by Balakrishnan. The model is governed by a system of two coupled integro-differential equations and a two-parameter family of boundary conditions modeling the action of the self-straining actuators. The differential parts of the above equations form a coupled linear hyperbolic system; the integral parts are of the convolution type. We provide the spectral asymptotics for the eigenfrequencies of the system (or aeroelastic modes) and the asymptotical approximations for the corresponding eigenfunctions (or the mode shapes). Based on the asymptotical results, we (a) state that the set of the mode shapes is complete in the energy space; (b) construct a system which is biorthogonal to the set of the mode shapes in the case when there might be multiple aeroelastic modes; and (c) show that the mode shapes form a Riesz basis in the energy space.

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


Why and how can human-related measures support software development processes? ? In this paper we discuss why and how measures related to human aspects should be incorporated into software development processes. This perspective is based on the vast evidence that human aspects are the source of the majority of problems associated with software development projects. Having said that, we do not blame the humans involved in software development processes; rather, we suggest that human-related measures might be one means by which human aspects of software development processes can be supported.

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

software engineering
software measures
process measurement


Image warping for retargeting garments among arbitrary poses We address the problem of warping 2D images of garments onto target mannequins of arbitrary poses. The motivation for this work is to enable an online shopper to drag and drop selected articles of clothing onto a single mannequin to configure and visualize outfits. Such a capability requires each garment to be available in a pose that is consistent with the target mannequin. A2D deformation system is proposed, which enables a designer to quickly deform images of clothing onto a target shape with both fine and coarse controls over the deformation. This system has retargeted thousands of images for retailers to establish virtual dressing rooms for their online customers.

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

shape deformation
moving least squares
as-rigid-as-possible shape manipulation


Acceleration techniques for synthesis and analysis of time-domain models of interconnects using FDTD method This report describes an acceleration technique to synthesize time-domain macromodels of interconnects using FDTD method. In FDTD calculation, the characteristic impedance of the interconnect is inserted into every terminal in order to damp quickly the transient waveforms. Additionally, an efficient technique for analyzing the macromodels is proposed. We demonstrate the efficiency of this method with examples.

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

circuit simulation
time-domain macromodel


A top-down information theoretic word clustering algorithm for phrase recognition We propose an efficient KL-based word clustering algorithm for large-scale text collection. The word clusters were adopted as features to enhance the sequential taggers. The use of word clusters improves the prediction power (using statistical significant tests).

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-scale word clustering
phrase chunking
support vector machine


Using SWET-QUM to Compare the Quality in Use of Semantic Web Exploration Tools In order to make Semantic Web tools more appealing to lay-users, a key factor is their Quality in Use, the quality of the user experience when interacting with them. To assess and motivate the improvement of the quality in use, it is necessary to have a quality model that guides its evaluation and facilitates comparability. The proposal is based on the international standard ISO/IEC 25010:2011 and focuses on Semantic Web exploration tools, those that make it possible for lay-users to browse and visualise it. The model is applied to compare the three main Semantic Web exploration tools that feature facets and the pivoting operation. The analysis assesses that the work being carried out with one of them, as part of a User-Centred Development process with iterative user evaluations, outperforms the other two tools.

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

quality
user experience
evaluation
semantic web


Locally adaptive perceptual compression for color images The main idea in perceptual image compression is to remove the perceptual redundancy for representing images at the lowest possible bit rate without introducing perceivable distortion. A certain amount of perceptual redundancy is inherent in the color image since human eyes are not perfect sensors for discriminating small differences in color signals. Effectively exploiting the perceptual redundancy will help to improve the coding efficiency of compressing color images. In this paper, a locally adaptive perceptual compression scheme for color images is proposed. The scheme is based on the design of an adaptive quantizer for compressing color images with the nearly lossless visual quality at a low bit rate. An effective way to achieve the nearly lossless visual quality is to shape the quantization error as a part of perceptual redundancy while compressing color images. This method is to control the adaptive quantization stage by the perceptual redundancy of the color image. In this paper, the perceptual redundancy in the form of the noise detection threshold associated with each coefficient in each subband of three color components of the color image is derived based on the finding of perceptually indistinguishable regions of color stimuli in the uniform color space and various masking effects of human visual perception. The quantizer step size for the target coefficient in each color component is adaptively adjusted by the associated noise detection threshold to make sure that the resulting quantization error is not perceivable. Simulation results show that the compression performance of the proposed scheme using the adaptively coefficient-wise quantization is better than that using the band-wise quantization. The nearly lossless visual quality of the reconstructed image can be achieved by the proposed scheme at lower entropy.

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

perceptual image compression
quantization error
noise detection threshold


Spatial stress and strain distributions of viscoelastic layers in oscillatory shear One of the standard experimental probes of a viscoelastic material is to measure the response of a layer trapped between parallel surfaces, imposing either periodic stress or strain at one boundary and measuring the other. The relative phase between stress and strain yields solid-like and liquid-like properties, called the storage and loss moduli. respectively, which are then captured over a range of imposed frequencies. Rarely are the full spatial distributions of shear and normal stresses considered, primarily because they cannot be measured except at boundaries and the information was not deemed of particular interest in theoretical studies. Likewise. strain distributions throughout the layer were traditionally ignored except in a classical protocol of Ferry. Adler and Sawyer, based on snapshots of standing shear waves. Recent investigations of thin lung mucus layers exposed to oscillatory stress (breathing) and strain (coordinated cilia), however, suggest that the wide range of healthy conditions and environmental or disease assaults lead to conditions that are quite disparate from the "surface loading" and "gap loading" conditions that characterize classical rheometers. In this article, we extend our previous linear and nonlinear models of boundary stresses in controlled oscillatory strain to the entire layer. To illustrate non-intuitive heterogeneous responses, we characterize experimental conditions and material parameter ranges where the maximum stresses migrate into the channel interior. (C) 2010 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

rheology
upper convected maxwell
giesekus


Design and implementation of a Byzantine fault tolerance framework for Web services ? Many Web services are expected to run with high degree of security and dependability. To achieve this goal, it is essential to use a Web services compatible framework that tolerates not only crash faults, but Byzantine faults as well, due to the untrusted communication environment in which the Web services operate. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of such a framework, called BFT-WS. BFT-WS is designed to operate on top of the standard SOAP messaging framework for maximum interoperability. It is implemented as a pluggable module within the Axis2 architecture, as such, it requires minimum changes to the Web applications. The core fault tolerance mechanisms used in BFT-WS are based on the well-known Castro and Liskovs BFT algorithm for optimal efficiency. Our performance measurements confirm that BFT-WS incurs only moderate runtime overhead considering the complexity of the mechanisms.

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

byzantine fault tolerance
web services
soap


Modeling short-lived TCP connections with open multiclass queuing networks In this paper we develop an open multiclass queuing network model to describe the behavior of short-lived TCP connections sharing a common IP network. The queuing network model is paired with a simple model of the IP network, and the two models are solved through an iterative procedure. The combined models need as inputs only the primitive network parameters, and they produce estimates of the packet loss probability, the round trip time, the TCP connection throughput, and of the average TCP connection completion time (that is, of the average time necessary to transfer a file with given size over a TCP connection). We derive models for both TCP-Tahoe and TCP-NewReno. The Tahoe model is presented in detail, while the NewReno, model is presented describing differences with respect to Tahoe. Results are shown for both models. The analytical performance predictions are validated against detailed simulation experiments in realistic networking scenarios, proving that the proposed modeling approach is accurate. (C) 2003 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

queuing models
tcp performance
short-lived connections
transfer latency


Analysis of nuclei textures of fine needle aspirated cytology images for breast cancer diagnosis using Complex Daubechies wavelets Breast cancer is the most frequent cause of cancer induced death among women in the world. Diagnosis of this cancer can be done through radiological, surgical, and pathological assessments of breast tissue samples. A common test for detection of this cancer involves visual microscopic inspection of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) samples of breast tissue. The result of analysis on this sample by a cyto-pathologist is crucial for the breast cancer patient. For the assessment of malignancy, the chromatin texture patterns of the cell nuclei are essential. Wavelet transforms have been shown to be good tools for extracting information about texture. In this paper, it has been investigated whether complex wavelets can provide better performance than the more common real valued wavelet transform. The features extracted through the wavelets are used as input to a k-nn classifier. The correct classification results are obtained as 93.9% for the complex wavelets and 70.3% for the real wavelets.

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

microscopic fnac image
complex wavelet transform
texture analysis
multivariate classifier


A diagrammatic reasoning system for the description logic ALC ALC Diagrammatic reasoning is a tradition of visual logic that allows sentences that are equivalent to first order logic to be written in a visual or structural form: usually for improved usability. A calculus for the diagram can then be defined that allows well-formed formulas to be derived. This calculus is intended in the analog of logical inference. Description logics (DLs) have become a popular knowledge representation and processing language. DLs correspond to decidable fragments of first order logic; their notation is in the style of symbolic, variable-free formulas. Moreover, DLs are equipped with table au theorem provers that are proven to be sound and complete. Although DLs have roots in diagrammatic languages (such as semantic networks), they are elaborated in a purely symbolic manner. This paper discusses how DLs can be equivalently represented in terms of a diagrammatic reasoning system. First, existing diagrammatic reasoning systems, namely spider- and constraint diagrams, as well as existential and conceptual graphs, are investigated to determine if they are compatible with DLs. It turns out that Peirce's existential graphs are better suited for this purpose than the alternatives we examine. The paper then redevelops the DL ALC ALC , which is the smallest propositional DL, by means of labeled trees, and provides a diagrammatic representation for these trees in the style of Peircean graphs. We provide a calculus based on C.S. Peirce's calculus for existential graphs and prove the soundness and completeness of the calculus. The calculus acts on labeled trees, but can be best understood as a diagrammatic calculus whose rules modify the Peircean-style representation of ALC ALC .

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

description logics
constraint diagrams
conceptual graphs
existential graphs
logic
calculus


Algorithms for fuzzy segmentation Fuzzy segmentation is an effective way of segmenting out objects in pictures containing both random noise and shading. This is illustrated both on mathematically created pictures and on some obtained from medical imaging. A theory of fuzzy segmentation is presented. To perform fuzzy segmentation, a 'connectedness map' needs to be produced. It is demonstrated that greedy algorithms for creating such a connectedness map are faster than the previously used dynamic programming technique. Once the connectedness map is created, segmentation is completed by a simple thresholding of the connectedness map. This approach is efficacious in instances where simple thresholding of the original picture fails.

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

dynamic programming
greedy algorithms
thresholding

fuzzy pattern recognition
medical imaging, segmentation


closed-loop adaptive voltage scaling controller for standard-cell asics The paper describes a closed-loop controller for adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) where the supply voltage to a standard-cell ASIC is dynamically adjusted to the minimum value required for the desired system speed. The controller includes a clock generator that provides a low-jitter clock to the ASIC at all steady-state operating points and through transients. To speed up the voltage transient response to step changes in clock frequency, the controller is based on a multiple-tap resettable delay line. A chip including the AVS controller and a dual 16-bit MAC application has been fabricated in a standard 0.5 &mgr; CMOS process. The area taken by the AVS controller is 0.12 mm 2 . Experimental results demonstrate operation over the application clock frequency range from 80 kHz to 20 MHz, and a 38&mgr;s transient response for a step change in speed from standby to maximum throughput 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 B 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 B O O O O B O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O B O O O O O O B O

value delay throughput response paper change clock process demonstrate

point
applications
design methodology
generation
standardization
voltage-scaling
dc-dc converter
control
energy-efficient
adapt
standard-cell
experimentation
systems
variable-voltage
delay-line
operability
circuit design
jitter
low-power


a zoomtree interface for searching genealogical information Genealogical information systems (GIS) typically contain large amounts of information about families and relationships between family members. Most existing GIS have textual, form-based interfaces for searching and browsing family information. These interfaces do not support dynamic browsing and manipulation of family trees. This paper discusses the design and development of a novel interface, called ZoomTree, for WINGIS (the GIS developed at UPE), to facilitate dynamic exploration and browsing of family tree information.

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

zoomable user interfaces
information visualisation


A layered United States Universal Service Fund for an everything-over-IP world ? Support through the United States Federal Universal Service Fund for high-cost areas has been principally defined in terms of telephone service. Fund growth due to increases in wireless lines and implicit support for broadband infrastructure has created an untenable situation, and fundamental reform is expected. The cause underlying this growth is convergence between the telephone network, wireless networks, the Internet, and cable networks. This convergence will pose additional serious long-term challenges to the fund. This paper proposes a restructuring of the high-cost funds based on a layered model. Both contributions and distributions are focused on network infrastructure, without distinction between voice and broadband. The proposal uses a new definition of communication services to guarantee technology neutrality, and includes service area reform and cost efficiency measures. This layered approach repositions the fund for future converged networks.

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


Comparing functionality of software systems: An ontological approach Organizations can reduce the costs and enhance the quality of required software by adapting existing software systems. Software adaptation decisions often involve comparing alternatives on two criteria: (1) how well a system meets users' requirements and (2) the effort required for adapting the system. These criteria reflect two points of view of users and of developers. Common to both views is the notion of functionality, which software developers have traditionally used for effort estimation utilizing concepts such as function points. However, users involved in selecting systems are not necessarily familiar with such concepts. We propose an approach for comparing software functionality from users' point of view. The approach employs ontological concepts to define functionality in terms of system behaviors. To evaluate whether or not the approach is also usable by software developers, we conducted an exploratory experiment. In the experiment, software engineering students ranked descriptions of software systems on the amount of changes needed to adapt the systems to given requirements. The results demonstrated that the ontological approach was usable after a short training and provided results comparable to ranking done by expert software developers. We also compared the ontological approach to a method which employed function point concepts. The results showed no statistically significant differences in performance, but there seemed to be an advantage to the ontological approach for cases that were difficult to analyze. Moreover, it took less time to apply the ontological approach than the function point-based approach, and the difference was statistically significant.

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

software comparison
variability management
ontologies
requirements engineering
development effort estimation
function point analysis


Separating models of learning from correlated and uncorrelated data We consider a natural framework of learning from correlated data, in which successive examples used for learning are generated according to a random walk over the space of possible examples. A recent paper by Bshouty et al. (2003) shows that the class of polynomial-size DNF formulas is efficiently learnable in this random walk model; this result suggests that the Random Walk model is more powerful than comparable standard models of learning from independent examples, in which similarly efficient DNF learning algorithms are not known. We give strong evidence that the Random Walk model is indeed more powerful than the standard model, by showing that if any cryptographic one-way function exists (a universally held belief in cryptography), then there is a class of functions that can be learned efficiently in the Random Walk setting but not in the standard setting where all examples are independent.

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

random walks
uniform distribution learning
cryptographic hardness
pac learning


An analytical literature review of the available techniques for the protection of micro-grids A review of the available techniques for the protection of micro-grids. A comparative analysis of the proposed techniques. Some conclusions and suggestions for the protection of micro-grids in the future.

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

micro-grid
protection schemes
grid-connected mode
islanded mode
dg units


Application of DEA in analyzing a bank's operating performance This article takes 117 branches of a certain bank in Taiwan in 2006 as the research subject and introduces data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the operating performances of business units of this bank to provide the reference for a bank's managers in determining operation strategies. The result indicates that, in overall technical efficiency, the case bank has many inefficient branches distinctly: the average overall technical efficiency of branches is 54.8% and the average pure technical efficiency of branches is 67%, which is probably because of lower loan-to-deposit ratio, leading to excessive input waste. The average scale efficiency of the case bank during the sample period is 82%. The ratio of resource waste due to technical inefficiency is 45.2%, of which 55.03% is due to pure technical inefficiency. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

data envelopment analysis (dea)
financial institution


Flexuraltorsional coupled vibration of thin-walled composite beams with channel sections Free vibration of a thin-walled laminated composite beam is studied. A general analytical model applicable to the dynamic behavior of a thin-walled channel section composite is developed. This model is based on the classical lamination theory, and accounts for the coupling of flexural and torsional modes for arbitrary laminate stacking sequence configuration, i.e. unsymmetric as well as symmetric, and various boundary conditions. A displacement-based one-dimensional finite element model is developed to predict natural frequencies and corresponding vibration modes for a thin-walled composite beam. Equations of motion are derived from the Hamilton's principle. Numerical results are obtained for thin-walled composites addressing the effects of fiber angle, modulus ratio, and boundary conditions on the vibration frequencies and mode shapes of the composites.

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

thin-walled composite
flexuraltorsional vibration


Element-free Galerkin method for thermosolutal convection and macrosegregation In the present work, the element-free Galerkin (EFG) method is applied to a continuum solidification model that calculates thermosolutal convection and macrosegregation during dendritic solidification of multicomponent alloys. Simulations for directional solidification of a binary Pb-Sn alloy and a Ni-base quaternary alloy have been performed in a rectangular two-dimensional domain. In both calculations, the alloy melt is cooled from below and the growth of the mushy zone is followed in time. The formation of macrosegregation defects known as 'freckles' has been successfully simulated using the meshless EFG method. A varying degree of sensitivity of results to the number and distribution of meshfree particles was obtained. The potential of the method for a broader range of solidification models is discussed. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

dendritic solidification
thermosolutal convection
freckles
macrosegregation

element-free galerkin method
projection method


Improving the syllable-synchronous network search algorithm for word decoding in continuous Chinese speech recognition The previously proposed syllable-synchronous network search (SSNS) algorithm plays a very important role in the word decoding of the continuous Chinese speech recognition and achieves satisfying performance. Several related key factors that may affect the overall word decoding effect are carefully studied in this paper, including the perfecting of the vocabulary, the big-discount Turing re-estimating of the N-Gram probabilities, and the managing of the searching path buffers. Based on these discussions, corresponding approaches to improving the SSNS algorithm are proposed. Compared with the previous version of SSNS algorithm, the new version decreases the Chinese character error rate (CCER) in the word decoding by 42.1% across a database consisting of a large number of testing sentences (syllable strings).

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

large-vocabulary continuous chinese speech recognition


Digital steganography utilizing features of JPEG images This paper proposes a new steganographic method utilizing features of JPEG compression. The method embeds secret information using the number of zeroes in a block of quantized DCT coefficients in minimum coding units (MCU) of JPEG images. In the method, we can embed secret information into JPEG images with degradation like that by JPEG compression. Furthermore, the method causes little change of the histogram of quantized DCT coefficients, so it is hard to perceive secret information embedded by the method. The method mainly modifies boundaries between zero and non-zero DCT coefficients, so we can use the low frequency side of DCT coefficients for another steganographic method.

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


An element-based displacement preconditioner for linear elasticity problems Finite element analysis of problems in structural and geotechnical engineering results in linear systems where the unknowns are displacements and rotations at nodes. Although the solution of these systems can be carried out using either direct or iterative methods, in practice the matrices involved are usually very large and sparse (particularly for 3D problems) so an iterative approach is often advantageous in terms of both computational time and memory requirements. This memory saving can be further enhanced if the method used does not require assembly of the full coefficient matrix during the solution procedure. One disadvantage of iterative methods is the need to apply preconditioning to improve convergence. In this paper, we review a range of established element-based preconditioning methods for linear elastic problems and compare their performance with a new method based on preconditioning with element displacement components. This new method appears to offer a significant improvement in performance.

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

finite elements
iterative solvers
geotechnics
structures


Stabilization analysis and modified KdV equation of lattice models with consideration of relative current In this paper, the lattice model which depends not only on the difference of the optimal current and the local current but also on the relative current is presented and analyzed in detail. We derive the stability condition of the extended model by considering a small perturbation around the homogeneous flow solution with finding that the improvement in the stability of the traffic flow is obtained by taking into account the relative current, which is also confirmed by direct simulations. Moreover , from the nonlinear analysis to the extended models, the relative current dependence of the propagating kink solutions for traffic jam is obtained by deriving the modified KdV equation near the critical point by using the reductive perturbation method.

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

traffic flow
lattice model
relative current


demonstrating cognitive packet network resilience to worm attacks The need for network stability and reliability has led to the growth of autonomic networks that can provide more stable and more reliable communications via on-line measurement, learning and adaptation. A promising architecture is the Cognitive Packet Network (CPN) that rapidly adapts to varying network conditions and user requirements using QoS driven reinforcement learning algorithms that drive the routing control. Contrary to conventional mechanisms, the users rather than the nodes, control the routing by specifying their desired QoS requirements (QoS Goals), such as Minimum Delay, Maximum Bandwidth, Minimum Cost, etc., and the network then routes each user's traffic individually based on their specific needs and on a "glocal" view. In CPN the user has the ability to explore the network for its own needs, and evaluate its own impact on the network as a whole and vice-versa, and then take appropriate decisions. CPN routing has been evaluated extensively under normal operating conditions and has proven to be very adaptive to network changes such as congestion. Here we show how CPN can respond and survive to catastrophic node failures caused by the spread of network worms. This survival is based on two complementary approaches that are run concurrently: one the one hand, each user attempts to concurrently and adaptively avoid paths which are infected, and secondly patching algorithms are continuously run to repair the network. Experiments show that this approach assures the stability of network communications throughout the course of an attack.

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

cognitive packet network
network worms
reliability


Dealing With Parallax in Shape-From-Focus We propose a new method that extends the capability of shape-from-focus (SFF) to estimate the depth profile of 3-D objects in the presence of structure-dependent pixel motion. Existing SFF techniques work under the constraint that there is no parallax in the captured stack of frames. However, in off-the-shelf cameras, there can be appreciable pixel motion among the observations when there is relative motion between the object and the camera. In such a scenario, the depth estimates will be erroneous if the parallax effect is not factored in. Our degradation model accounts for pixel migration effects in the observations due to parallax resulting in a generalization of the SFF technique. We show that pixel motion and defocus blur therein are tightly coupled to the underlying shape of the 3-D object. Simultaneous reconstruction of the underlying 3-D structure and the all-in-focus image is carried out within an optimization framework using local image operations. The proposed method when tested on many examples, both synthetic and real, is very effective and delivers state-of-the-art performance.

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

focus measure
markov random fields
perspective projection
shape-from-focus
telecentricity


an architecture of services for session management and contents adaptation in ubiquitous medical environments Advances in wireless technologies and mobile devices have made possible a wide range of efficient and powerful healthcare environments. Ubiquitous computing concepts meet healthcare principles, enabling physicians to connect to and use healthcare systems almost anytime, anywhere. This paper proposes a service architecture based on a context-aware middleware, which provides session management and content adaptation for ubiquitous medicine environments. By using simple applications on top of the proposed middleware services, associated physicians join a network of services, so called UHS (Ubiquitous Health Services) that provide ubiquitous access for its users from any point of the network, with different kinds of devices.

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

medical work
ubiquity
application roaming


Workers' propensity to telecommute: An empirical study Today's telecommuting workforce encompasses all categories of workers including managers, professionals and other knowledge workers. While organizations have the choice of mandating telecommuting or offering it as an option, individuals also have the choice of participating or not when telecommuting is optional. This research investigated whether individual factors, such as age, skills, identification with organization, or job category influenced these individuals' decisions to telecommute or not. A survey of telecommuters and non-telecommuters was conducted in two large work groups working for a high technology organization. Job category and gender showed a significant difference between telecommuters and non-telecommuters. Age, years with organization, and computer skills did not show significant differences. Reasons provided by respondents for opting not to telecommute are discussed. In addition, a comparison of perceived productivity, performance, sense of personal control, and satisfaction between telecommuters and non-telecommuters was performed. Differences were found between telecommuters and non-telecommuters in their ratings of personal control and productivity. The paper concludes with suggestions for practitioners and recommendations for future research.

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

distributed work
individual characteristics
telecommuting outcomes
telecommuting objectives


Dynamic subgraph connectivity with geometric applications Inspired by dynamic connectivity applications in computational geometry, we consider a problem we call dynamic subgraph connectivity: design a data structure for an undirected graph G = ( V, E) and a subset of vertices S subset of V to support insertions/deletions in S and connectivity queries ( are two vertices connected?) in the subgraph induced by S. We develop the first sublinear, fully dynamic method for this problem for general sparse graphs, using a combination of several simple ideas. Our method requires (O) over tilde(| E|(4 omega)/((3 omega+3))) = O(|E|(0.94)) amortized update time, and (O) over tilde(| E|(1/3)) query time, after (O) over tilde(| E|((5 omega+1)/(3 omega+3))) preprocessing time, where omega is the matrix multiplication exponent and (O) over tilde hides polylogarithmic factors.

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

data structures
dynamic graph algorithms


An integration of WordNet and fuzzy association rule mining for multi-label document clustering With the rapid growth of text documents, document clustering has become one of the main techniques for organizing large amount of documents into a small number of meaningful clusters. However, there still exist several challenges for document clustering, such as high dimensionality, scalability, accuracy, meaningful cluster labels, overlapping clusters, and extracting semantics from texts. In order to improve the quality of document clustering results, we propose an effective Fuzzy-based Multi-label Document Clustering (FMDC) approach that integrates fuzzy association rule mining with an existing ontology WordNet to alleviate these problems. In our approach, the key terms will be extracted from the document set, and the initial representation of all documents is further enriched by using hypernyms of WordNet in order to exploit the semantic relations between terms. Then, a fuzzy association rule mining algorithm for texts is employed to discover a set of highly-related fuzzy frequent itemsets, which contain key terms to be regarded as the labels of the candidate clusters. Finally, each document is dispatched into more than one target cluster by referring to these candidate clusters, and then the highly similar target clusters are merged. We conducted experiments to evaluate the performance based on Classic, Re0, R8, and WebKB datasets. The experimental results proved that our approach outperforms the influential document clustering methods with higher accuracy. Therefore, our approach not only provides more general and meaningful labels for documents, but also effectively generates overlapping clusters.

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

fuzzy association rule mining
document clustering
wordnet
frequent itemsets


Imitating human playing styles in Super Mario Bros We describe and compare several methods for generating game character controllers that mimic the playing style of a particular human player, or of a population of human players, across video game levels. Similarity in playing style is measured through an evaluation framework, that compares the play trace of one or several human players with the punctuated play trace of an AI player. The methods that are compared are either hand-coded, direct (based on supervised learning) or indirect (based on maximising a similarity measure). We find that a method based on neuroevolution performs best both in terms of the instrumental similarity measure and in phenomenological evaluation by human spectators. A version of the classic platform game Super Mario Bros is used as the testbed game in this study but the methods are applicable to other games that are based on character movement in space.

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

game ai
dynamic scripting
imitation learning
behaviour cloning
behaviour imitation


Swarm intelligence routing approach in networked robots Robot swarm combined with wireless communication has been a key driving force in recent few years and has currently expanded to wireless multihop networks, which include ad hoc radio networks, sensor networks, wireless mesh networks, etc. The aim of this paper is to propose an approach which introduces a polynomial time approximation path navigation algorithm and constructs dynamic state-dependent navigation policies. The proposed algorithm uses an inductive approach based on trial/error paradigm combined with swarm adaptive approaches to optimize simultaneously two criteria: cumulative cost path and end-to-end delay path. The approach samples, estimates, and builds the model of pertinent aspects of the environment. It uses a model that combines both a stochastic planned prenavigation for the exploration phase and a deterministic approach for the backward phase. To show the robustness and performances of the proposed approach, simulation scenario is built through the specification of the interested network topology and involved network traffic between robots. For this, this approach has been compared to traditional optimal path routing policy.

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

networked robots
robot swarm
adaptive approaches

irregular traffic
quality of service based routing


shot boundary detection and key frame extraction using salient region detection and structural similarity In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for shot boundary detection and key frame extraction from video sequences. Saliency maps representing the attended regions are produced from the color and luminance features of the video frames. Introducing a novel signal fidelity measurement -saliency based structural similarity index- the similarity of the maps is measured. Based on the similarities, shot boundaries and key frames are determined. Proposed algorithm is tested on neurosurgical videos and precision and recall performances are measured. Experimental results validate effectiveness of the proposed shot boundary detection and key frame extraction algorithm. Moreover, the algorithm is robust to dissolving digital video effects used in shot transition.

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

structural similarity
key frame extraction
shot boundary detection


A note on an experimental study of DSS and forecasting exponential growth Many managers need to make forecasts of variables that are growing rapidly. Business variables that increase or decrease exponentially are common in turbulent and complex markets, and misjudging the exponential nature of these variables in an important decision could have major adverse consequences for an organization. This paper reports on an experiment that investigated the use of DSS in an exponential decision task. It found that the use of a simple DSS significantly improved decision performance. This study forms the start of a series of investigations into DSS and complexity.

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


On the relation between context-free grammars and parsing expression grammars We present new formalizations of CFGs and PEGs, based on natural semantics. We discuss the correspondence between the languages of CFGs and PEGs. We show transformations from classes of CFGs to equivalent PEGs. Transformations of LL(1) LL ( 1 ) , strong-LL(k) LL ( k ) and LL-regular grammars are presented. The transformations preserve the structure of the original grammars.

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

parsing expression grammars
natural semantics

ll(k) ll ( k ) ll(k) ll ( k ) ll(k) ll ( k ) ll ( k )


Introducing computers and the Internet to older users: findings from the Care OnLine project This paper reports the findings from a two-year pilot project called Care OnLine (COL). The COL project has introduced computers and the Internet into the homes of 50 elderly and vulnerable volunteers and provided shared Internet access at five shared schemes housing older people across the Market Harbrorough district of Leicestershire. A specific web portal was designed that was geared towards older and vulnerable people and provided information about the different services available to them, as well as links to a variety of websites. All the volunteers were provided with training in using computers and the Internet, and were interviewed regarding their experiences. Findings related to their attitudes towards, and experiences of, computers and the Internet are reported. The impact of having access to computers and the Internet on the volunteers lives and some lessons learnt from providing such a scheme are also discussed.

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

computer
internet scheme
training and support


efficient support of delay and rate guarantees in an internet In this paper, we investigate some issues related to the efficient provision of end-to-end delay guarantees in the context of the Guaranteed (G) Services framework [16]. First, we consider the impact of reshaping traffic within the network on the end-to-end delay, the end-to-end jitter, as well as per-hop buffer requirements. This leads us to examine a class of traffic disciplines that use reshaping at each hop, namely rate-controlled disciplines. In this case, it is known that it is advantageous to use the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduling policy at the link scheduler [8]. For this service discipline, we determine the appropriate values of the parameters that have to be exported, as specified in [16]. Subsequently, with the help of an example, we illustrate how the G service traffic will typically underutilize the network, regardless of the scheduling policy used. We then define a Guaranteed Rate (GR) service, that is synergetic with the G service framework and makes use of this unutilized bandwidth to provide rate guarantees to flows. We outline some of the details of the GR service and explain how it can be supported in conjunction with the G service in an efficient manner.

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

requirements network help framework scheduling policy use values delay context bandwidth support service jitter case internet paper traffic class


Power-Constrained Contrast Enhancement for Emissive Displays Based on Histogram Equalization A power-constrained contrast-enhancement algorithm for emissive displays based on histogram equalization (HE) is proposed in this paper. We first propose a log-based histogram modification scheme to reduce overstretching artifacts of the conventional HE technique. Then, we develop a power-consumption model for emissive displays and formulate an objective function that consists of the histogram-equalizing term and the power term. By minimizing the objective function based on the convex optimization theory, the proposed algorithm achieves contrast enhancement and power saving simultaneously. Moreover, we extend the proposed algorithm to enhance video sequences, as well as still images. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reduce power consumption significantly while improving image contrast and perceptual quality.

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

histogram equalization (he)
histogram modification (hm)
image enhancement
low-power image processing


Enhancing reliability in IEC/ISA FieldBus The aim of the paper is to discuss and evaluate the impact of the occurrence of faults on the IEC/ISA FieldBus protocol. This communication system was conceived to be used mainly in process control environment, where robustness to the occurrence of faults is an important requirement. After a survey of the FieldBus protocol's main features, certain types of fault are defined, the occurrence of which may be critical for the communication system. The paper then presents the results of research conducted by the authors to see whether the current protocol is capable of recovering these types of fault. These results show that some types of fault cannot be recovered by the IEC/ISA FieldBus protocol. For this reason, a fault recovery model is presented. It is made up of functional blocks and procedures to be adopted at the System and Network Management Layer of the FieldBus communication stack. The paper concludes by presenting an evaluation of the fault recovery mechanisms proposed, demonstrating their effectiveness. This will be done from two different points of view. For each kind of fault that cannot be recovered by the current fault recovery mechanisms, it will be demonstrated that the proposed fault recovery model is able to recover the fault. This is not enough to evaluate the fault recovery mechanisms, but it is very important to see the effects of the occurrence of a fault on the control processes using the FieldBus communication system. Some of these effects may be the loss of critical information, errors in the reconstruction of analog sampled signals, and so on. An efficient fault recovery model must limit the effects of faults on the control processes as far as possible. The proposed fault recovery model will be evaluated in the paper according to this aim.

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

fieldbus communication protocol
performance evaluation


DuoWave: Mitigating the curse of dimensionality for uncertain data The curse of dimensionality has been a vexatious obstacle in processing queries on multidimensional data. This problem is more serious with uncertain data: an uncertain object's value may spread extensively in the data space with varying probability distribution. In this paper, we attack this challenging problem and propose a technique called DuoWave for indexing uncertain multidimensional objects under a commonly used data model. We propose efficient algorithms to process range queries, the most popular filtering paradigm for many multidimensional queries on uncertain data. Extensive experiments show that DuoWave significantly outperforms state-of-the-art techniques. Moreover, DuoWave can also be exploited for a number of other query types on uncertain data.

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


improved ber performance in intra-chip rf/wireless interconnect systems Increasing operating frequency of current and future VLSI systems is putting physical constraint on hard-wired metal interconnect. Several revolutionary approaches to interconnect have been proposed. One of the most feasible approaches is RF/wireless interconnects. This paper evaluates the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of a coherent binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) with linear and systematic channel coding in an intra-chip RF/wireless interconnect system. The results indicate that for a certain range of received signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio, channel coding improves the performance of the RF/wireless interconnect system. Digital implementation of the encoder and decoder circuit block is also shown.

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

rf interconnect
intra-chip channel
interleaver
error control coding
wireless interconnect


Wavelet domain signal deconvolution with singularity-preserving regularization In this paper, we consider a wavelet based singularity-preserving regularization scheme for use in signal deconvolution problems. The inverse problem of finding solutions with singularities to discrete Fredholm integral equations of the first kind arises in many applied fields, e.g. in Geophysics. This equation is usually an ill-posed problem when it is considered in a Hilbert space framework, requiring regularization techniques to control arbitrary error amplifications and to get adequate solutions. Thus, considering the joint detection-estimation character this kind of signal deconvolution problems have, we introduce two novel algorithms which involve two principal steps at each iteration: (a) detecting the positions of the singularities by a nonlinear projection selection operator based on the estimation of Lipschitz regularity using the discrete dyadic wavelet transform; and (b) estimating the amplitudes of these singularities by obtaining a regularized solution of the original equation using the a priori knowledge and the above approximation. Some simulation examples serve to appreciate the high performance of the proposed techniques in this kind of problems. (C) 2002 IMACS. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

discrete ill-posed problems
pocs method
wavelets
edge detection
spiky deconvolution


Narrow band region-based active contours and surfaces for 2D and 3D segmentation We describe a narrow band region approach for deformable curves and surfaces in the perspective of 2D and 3D image segmentation. Basically, we develop a region energy involving a fixed-width band around the curve or surface. Classical region-based methods, like the ChanVese model, often make strong assumptions on the intensity distributions of the searched object and background. In order to be less restrictive, our energy achieves a trade-off between local features of gradient-like terms and global region features. Relying on the theory of parallel curves and surfaces, we perform a mathematical derivation to express the region energy in a curvature-based form allowing efficient computation on explicit models. We introduce two different region terms, each one being dedicated to a particular configuration of the target object. Evolution of deformable models is performed by means of energy minimization using gradient descent. We provide both explicit and implicit implementations. The explicit models are a parametric snake in 2D and a triangular mesh in 3D, whereas the implicit models are based on the level set framework, regardless of the dimension. Experiments are carried out on MRI and CT medical images, in 2D and 3D, as well as 2D color photographs.

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

narrow band region energy
deformable model
active contour
active surface
level sets


Normalization Method of Gradient Vector in Frequency Domain Steepest Descent Type Adaptive Algorithm In this paper, we propose a normalization method dividing the gradient vector by the sum of the diagonal and two adjoining elements of the matrix expressing the correlation between the components of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the reference signal used for the identification of unknown system. The proposed method can thereby improve the estimation speed of coefficients of adaptive filter.

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 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

frequency domain
adaptive algorithm
discrete fourier transform

normalization of gradient vector
linear convolution


Knowledge management technology and the reproduction of knowledge work practices Organizations seeking ways to manage their knowledge assets are increasingly turning to information technology for solutions. As knowledge management systems are being developed and implemented, it behooves both practitioners and researchers to learn from the successes and failures of more established types of information systems including MIS and DSS. According to the Standish Group, the implementation success rate for these systems runs at around 30%. Many argue that these low success rates are, in part, attributable to technologists lack of understanding of the situated work practices of the systems user communities. This has lead to increasing calls for research on work practice in the field of Information Systems. Unfortunately, it is not always clear what is meant by work practice. Furthermore, the consideration of work practice outside of its circuit of reproduction can be misleading. By circuits of reproduction we mean the reciprocal relationships through which practice creates and recreates the objectified social structures and conditions in which it occurs. In this paper, we adopt Bourdieu's Theory of Practice to illuminate work practices and their circuits of reproduction. Relying on data that were collected during an eight-month ethnography of knowledge work practices in a US-based, Fortune 500 manufacturing firm, we focus on the situated gatekeeping practices of a group of competitive intelligence analysts and explore how their situated practices were at odds with the generalized gatekeeping practices embedded in a knowledge management technology whose implementation they themselves were advocating. We argue that their inability to see this incongruence until very late in the pilot implementation is associated with an understanding of their work practices in isolation, i.e. outside of their circuits of reproduction.

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

competitive intelligence
theory of practice
ethnography


The Utility of Evolving Simulated Robot Morphology Increases with Task Complexity for Object Manipulation Embodied artificial intelligence argues that the body and brain play equally important roles in the generation of adaptive behavior. An increasingly common approach therefore is to evolve an agent's morphology along with its control in the hope that evolution will find a good coupled system. In order for embodied artificial intelligence to gain credibility within the robotics and cognitive science communities, however, it is necessary to amass evidence not only for how to co-optimize morphology and control of adaptive machines, but why. This work provides two new lines of evidence for why this co- optimization is useful: Here we show that for an object manipulation task in which a simulated robot must accomplish one, two, or three objectives simultaneously, subjugating more aspects of the robot's morphology to selective pressure allows for the evolution of better robots as the number of objectives increases. In addition, for robots that successfully evolved to accomplish all of their objectives, those composed of evolved rather than fixed morphologies generalized better to previously unseen environmental conditions.

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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

evolutionary robotics
embodied cognition
robot shaping
multi-objective optimization


An intelligent slope disaster prediction and monitoring system based on WSN and ANP This paper integrates wireless sensor network and analytic network process method to evaluate the weight of disaster factors. By using the proposed disaster prediction model, we design and implement the Portrait-based Disaster Alerting System. The proposed prediction model achieves more accurate disaster determination than the traditional method.

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

analytic network process
disaster prediction model

wireless sensor networks
portrait-based disaster alerting system


Graph-based algorithms for ranking researchers: not all swans are white! Scientific importance ranking has long been an important research topic in scientometrics. Many indices based on citation counts have been proposed. In recent years, several graph-based ranking algorithms have been studied and claimed to be reasonable and effective. However, most current researches fall short of a concrete view of what these graph-based ranking algorithms bring to bibliometric analysis. In this paper, we make a comparative study of state-of-the-art graph-based algorithms using the APS (American Physical Society) dataset. We focus on ranking researchers. Some interesting findings are made. Firstly, simple citation-based indices like citation count can return surprisingly better results than many cutting-edge graph-based ranking algorithms. Secondly, how we define researcher importance may have tremendous impacts on ranking performance. Thirdly, some ranking methods which at the first glance are totally different have high rank correlations. Finally, the data of which time period are chosen for ranking greatly influence ranking performance but still remains open for further study. We also try to give explanations to a large part of the above findings. The results of this study open a third eye on the current research status of bibliometric analysis.

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

scientometrics
researcher importance
citation count
american physical society

graph-based ranking
recommendation intensity


Utilising urban context recognition and machine learning to improve the generalisation of buildings The introduction of automated generalisation procedures in map production systems requires that generalisation systems are capable of processing large amounts of map data in acceptable time and that cartographic quality is similar to traditional map products. With respect to these requirements, we examine two complementary approaches that should improve generalisation systems currently in use by national topographic mapping agencies. Our focus is particularly on self-evaluating systems, taking as an example those systems that build on the multi-agent paradigm. The first approach aims to improve the cartographic quality by utilising cartographic expert knowledge relating to spatial context. More specifically, we introduce expert rules for the selection of generalisation operations based on a classification of buildings into five urban structure types, including inner city, urban, suburban, rural, and industrial and commercial areas. The second approach aims to utilise machine learning techniques to extract heuristics that allow us to reduce the search space and hence the time in which a good cartographical solution is reached. Both approaches are tested individually and in combination for the generalisation of buildings from map scale 1:5000 to the target map scale of 1:25000. Our experiments show improvements in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. We provide evidence that both approaches complement each other and that a combination of expert and machine learnt rules give better results than the individual approaches. Both approaches are sufficiently general to be applicable to other forms of self-evaluating, constraint-based systems than multi-agent systems, and to other feature classes than buildings. Problems have been identified resulting from difficulties to formalise cartographic quality by means of constraints for the control of the generalisation process.

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

map generalisation
building generalisation
data enrichment
self-evaluating systems
multi-agent systems


The Expected Write Deficiency of Index-Less Indexed Flash Codes The expected write deficiency of the index-less indexed flash codes (ILIFC) is studied. ILIFC is a coding scheme for flash memory, and consists of two stages with different coding techniques. This study investigates the write deficiency of the first stage of ILIFC, and shows that omitting the second stage of ILIFC can be a practical option for realizing flash codes with good average performance. To discuss the expected write deficiency of ILIFC, a random walk model is introduced as a formalization of the behavior of ILIFC. Based on the random walk model, two different techniques are developed to estimate the expected write deficiency. One technique requires some computation, but gives very precise estimation of the write deficiency. The other technique gives a closed-form formula of the write deficiency under a certain asymptotic scenario.

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

flash code
index-less indexed flash code


Reduced order modeling in nonlinear homogenization: A comparative study Two nonlinear reduced order homogenization methods are described: pRBMOR and NUTFA. Both methods are based on the framework of the transformation field analysis (TFA). A comparison of advantages and disadvantages of the two methodologies is presented. Numerical 2D and 3D examples considering complex load paths are provided. Both approaches accurately predict the mechanical response of nonlinear composites.

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

nonuniform transformation field analysis (ntfa)

non uniform transformation field analysis (nutfa)

potential-based reduced basis model order reduction (prbmor)


An Effective Distributed Model for Power System Transient Stability Analysis The modern power systems consist of many interconnected synchronous generators having different inertia constants, connected with large transmission network and ever increasing demand for power exchange. The size of the power system grows exponentially due to increase in power demand. The data required for various power system applications have been stored in different formats in a heterogeneous environment. The power system applications themselves have been developed and deployed in different platforms and language paradigms. Interoperability between power system applications becomes a major issue because of the heterogeneous nature. The main aim of the paper is to develop a generalized distributed model for carrying out power system stability analysis. The more flexible and loosely coupled JAX-RPC model has been developed for representing transient stability analysis in large interconnected power systems. The proposed model includes Pre-Fault, During-Fault, Post-Fault and Swing Curve services which are accessible to the remote power system clients when the system is subjected to large disturbances. A generalized XML based model for data representation has also been proposed for exchanging data in order to enhance the interoperability between legacy power system applications. The performance measure, Round Trip Time (RTT) is estimated for different power systems using the proposed JAX-RPC model and compared with the results obtained using traditional client-server and Java RMI models.

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

jax-rpc
power systems stability
soap
wsdl


Steps to a Semiotics of Being The following points, which represent a path to a semiotics of being, are pertinent to various sub-fields at the conjunction of semiotics of nature (biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, zoosemiotics) and semiotics of culturesemioethics and existential semiotics included. 1) Semiotics of being entails inquiry at all levels of biological organization, albeit, wherever there are individuals, with emphasis on the living qua individuals (integrated biological individualism). 2) An Umwelt is the public aspect (cf. the Innenwelt, the private aspect) of a phenomenal/experienced world that is organism-specific (rather than species-specific) and ultimately refers to an existential realm. 3) Existential universals at work on Earth include seeking out the edible, dwelling in a medium, holding a phenomenal world (possibly an Umwelt) and being endowed with life, and consequently being mortal. 4) Human Umwelten include speechless Umwelten, spoken Umwelten and alphabetic Umwelten. 5) An Uexkllian phenomenologystating that semiotic states represent the general class to which all mental/cognitive states belongcan draw on the works of the phenomenologists David Abram and Ted Toadvine (The notion of semiotic states is treated in Tnnessen 2009a: 6263. For an introduction to eco-phenomenology, see Brown and Toadvine (eds.) 2003). 6) A task for such a phenomenology is to portray the natural history of the phenomenal world. 7) An imperative task in our contemporary world of faltering biological diversity is that of Umwelt mapping, i.e. a mapping of ontological niches. 8) The ecological crisis is an ontological crisis with historical roots in humankinds domestication of animals and plants, which can be taken as archetypical for our attempted planet-scale taming of the wild. 9) The process of globalization is expressed by correlated trends of depletion of semiotic diversity and semiotic diversification. 10) Semiotic economy is a field which task it is to map the human ontological niche insofar as its semiotic relations are of an economic nature. All ten points will be commented (explicitly or implicitly) in due time.

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

perception
value
semiotic causation
umwelt terminology


Coupling discontinuous Galerkin discretizations using mortar finite elements for advectiondiffusionreaction problems We investigate DGDG domain decomposition coupling using mortar finite elements to approximate the solution to general second-order partial differential equations. We weakly impose an inflow boundary condition on the inflow part of the interface and the Dirichlet boundary condition on the elliptic part of the interface via Lagrange multipliers. We obtain the matching condition by imposing the continuity of the total flux through the interface and the continuity of the solution on the elliptic parts of the interface. The diffusion coefficient is allowed to be degenerate and the mortar interface couples efficiently the multiphysics problems. The (discrete) problem is solvable in each subdomain in terms of Lagrange multipliers and the resulting algorithm is easily parallelizable. The subdomain grids need not match and the mortar grid may be much coarser, giving a two-scale method. Convergence results in terms of the fine subdomain scale h h and the coarse mortar scale H H are then established. A non-overlapping parallelizable domain decomposition algorithm (Arbogast etal., 2007) reduces the coupled system to an interface mortar problem. The properties of the interface operator are discussed.

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

discontinuous galerkin methods
mortar finite element
interface problem
sipg
nipg
iipg


A DFT controller for instruction-based functional test This paper presents a DFT controller called as a TCU (Test Control Unit). which considerably improves the efficiency of the instruction-based functional test. Internal program/data buses are completely controllable and observable by the TCU during the test cycle. Diverse test modes of the TCU call increase the test efficiency and also provide complete access to program/data memories for functional test.

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


design, discussion, and dissent in open bug reports While studies have considered computer-mediated decision-making in several domains, few have considered the unique challenges posed in software design. To address this gap, a qualitative study of 100 contentious open source bug reports was performed. The results suggest that the immeasurability of many software qualities and conflicts between achieving original design intent and serving changing user needs led to a high reliance on anecdote, speculation, and generalization. The visual presentation of threaded discussions aggravated these problems making it difficult to view design proposals and comparative critiques. The results raise several new questions about the interaction between authority and evidence in online design discussions.

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

change requests
bugzilla
design rationale


Writing and executing ODP computational viewpoint specifications using Maude The Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is a joint standardization effort by ITU-T and ISO/IEC for the specification of large open distributed systems. RM-ODP is becoming increasingly relevant now because the size and complexity of large distributed systems is challenging current software engineering methods and tools, and because international standards have become key to achieve the required interoperability between the different parties and organizations involved in the design and development of complex systems. RM-ODP defines five viewpoints for decomposing the design activity into separate areas of concern. One of the RM-ODP viewpoints, the computational viewpoint, focuses on the basic functionality of the system and its environment, independently of its distribution. Although several notations have been proposed to model the ODP computational viewpoint, either they are not expressive enough to faithfully represent all its concepts, or they tend to suffer from a lack of formal support. In this paper we introduce the use of Maude as a formal notation for writing and executing ODP computational viewpoint specifications. Maude is an executable rewriting logic language specially well suited for the specification of object-oriented open and distributed systems. We show how Maude offers a simple, natural, and accurate way of modeling the ODP computational viewpoint concepts, allows the execution of the specifications produced, and offers good tool support for reasoning about them.

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

rewriting logic
maude
odp computational viewpoint


Introducing keytagging, a novel technique for the protection of medical image-based tests Associates information to the image without any distortion. Enables authentication, traceability, private captioning, tamper control and location. High robustness (NHD?0.3%) to medical image processing for capacities ?1kb. Compatible with JPEG2000 and DICOM. Able to perform information association-retrieval in 30, 90ms.

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


Building medium-vocabulary isolated-word Lithuanian HMM speech recognition system In this paper, the opening work on the development of a Lithuanian HMM speech recognition system is described. The triphone single-Gaussian HMM speech recognition system based on Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) was developed using HTK toolkit. Hidden Markov model's parameters were estimated from phone-level hand-annotated Lithuanian speech corpus. The system was evaluated on a speaker-independent similar to 750 distinct isolated-word recognition task. Though the speaker adaptation and language modeling techniques were not used, the system was performing at 20% word error rate.

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

hidden markov modeling (hmm)
hand-annotated speech corpora