A fast and memory-efficient Discrete Focal Stack Transform for plenoptic sensors Plenoptic cameras are a new type of sensors that capture the four-dimensional lightfield of a scene. Processing the recorded lightfield, they extend the capabilities of current commercial cameras. Conventional cameras obtain photographs focusing at a determined depth. This photograph can be described through a projection of the four-dimensional lightfield onto two spatial dimensions. The collection of such images is the focal stack of the scene. The focal stack can be used to select an image refocused at a certain depth, to recover 3D information or to obtain all-in-focus images. There are several approaches to the computation of the focal stack. In this paper we propose a new technique to compute the focal stack by means of its frequency decomposition that can be seen as an extension of the Discrete Focal Stack Transform (DFST). This new approach decreases the computational complexity of the DFST maintaining an efficient memory use. Experimental results are provided to show the validity of the technique and its extension to 3D processing and all-in-focus image computation is also studied.

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

computational photography
plenoptic sensor
multiview stereo. 3dtv


Managing information systems for health services in a developing country: a case study using a contextualist framework Investments in information technology (IT) have been escalating in the health sector in both developed and developing countries. However, the failure rate of applications is of concern especially for countries with scarce resources. There is insufficient understanding of factors that lead to such failures in developing countries. A case study of implementing a computerised information system (IS) for health services in the Philippines is analysed using a contextualist framework. Factors that led to the failure included ambiguity in the organisation and in responsibility for the project, lack of capacity to undertake large information systems development projects and inability to retain appropriate staff. However, when the historical and contextual issues were revealed and the interplay between the content, process and context of the change was analysed it was revealed that the content of the IS was not responsive to the changes in the wider health system. The case study confirms the need to analyse and understand organisational, environmental and cultural issues in adopting models and procedures used elsewhere when managing information systems in developing countries.

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

information technology
health services
developing countries


an extensible, lightweight architecture for adaptive j2ee applications Server applications with adaptive behaviors can adapt their functionality in response to environmental changes, and significantly reduce the on-going costs of system deployment and administration. However, developing adaptive server applications is challenging due to the complexity of server technologies and highly dynamic application environments. This paper presents an architecture framework, known as the Adaptive Server Framework (ASF). ASF provides a clear separation between the implementation of adaptive behaviors and the server application business logic. This means a server application can be cost effectively extended with programmable adaptive features through the definition and implementation of control components defined in ASF. Furthermore, ASF is a lightweight architecture in that it incurs low CPU overhead and memory usage. We demonstrate the effectiveness of ASF through a case study, in which a server application dynamically determines the resolution and quality to scale an image based on the load of the server and network connection speed. The experimental evaluation demonstrates the performance gains possible by adaptive behaviors and the low overhead introduced by ASF.

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

adaptation
software architecture
component


Very high-order compact finite difference schemes on non-uniform grids for incompressible Navier-Stokes equations This article presents a family of very high-order non-uniform grid compact finite difference schemes with spatial orders of accuracy ranging from 4th to 20th for the incompressible Navier Stokes equations. The high-order compact schemes on non-uniform grids developed in Shukla and Zhong [R.K. Shukla, X. Zhong, Derivation of high-order compact finite difference schemes for non-uniform grid using polynomial interpolation, J. Comput. Phys. 204 (2005) 404] for linear model equations are extended to the full Navier-Stokes equations in the vorticity and streamfunction formulation. Two methods for the solution of Helmholtz and Poisson equations using high-order compact schemes on non-uniform grids are developed. The schemes are constructed so that they maintain a high-order of accuracy not only in the interior but also at the boundary. Second-order semi-implicit temporal discretization is achieved through an implicit Backward Differentiation scheme for the linear viscous terms and an explicit Adam-Bashforth scheme for the non-linear convective terms. The boundary values of vorticity are determined using an influence matrix technique. The resulting discretized system with boundary closures of the same high-order as the interior is shown to be stable, when applied to the two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, provided enough grid points are clustered at the boundary. The resolution characteristics of the high-order compact finite difference schemes are illustrated through their application to the one-dimensional linear wave equation and the two-dimensional driven cavity flow. Comparisons with the benchmark solutions for the two-dimensional driven cavity flow, thermal convection in a square box and flow past an impulsively started cylinder show that the high-order compact schemes are stable and produce extremely accurate results on a stretched grid with more points clustered at the boundary. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

high-order methods
viscous incompressible flow


Emergence of un-correlated common-mode oscillations in the sensory cortex Simultaneous EEG recordings from various cortical areas indicate the presence of common-mode, spatially coherent oscillations. These oscillations are characterized by a common wave form with a spatially distributed pattern of amplitude modulation (AM). We observe highly reproducible AM patterns across spatially separated channels within various areas, yet the temporal correlations between the channels are low. In the framework of the present research, a nonlinear, spatially distributed dynamical model of neuronal populations (KIII) is used for the interpretation of the observed spatial coherence. The theoretical findings are in good agreement with experiments performed with chronically implanted rabbits.

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

spatio-temporal eeg
chaotic self-organization
kiii model


Optimization and coordination of SVC-based supplementary controllers and PSSs to improve power system stability using a genetic algorithm In this paper, a lead-lag structure is proposed as a main damping controller for a static VAR. compensator (S VC) to diminish power system oscillations. To confirm the transient performance of the proposed controller, it was compared to a proportional integral derivative (PID) damping controller. Power system stability improvement was thoroughly examined using these supplementary damping controllers as well as a power system. stabilizer (PSS). The generic algorithm, (CA) is well liked in the academic environment due to its immediate perceptiveness, ease of performance, and ability to impressively solve highly nonlinear objectives. Thus, the CA optimization technique was applied to solve an optimization problem, and to achieve optimal parameters of the SVC-based supplementary damping controllers and PSS. The coordinated design problem of these devices was formulated as an optimization problem, to reduce power system. oscillations. The transient performance of the damping controllers and PSS were evaluated under a, severe disturbance for a single-machine infinite bus (SMIB) and multimachine power system. The nonlinear simulation results of the SMIB power system suggest that power system stability was increasingly improved using the coordinated design of the SVC-based lead-lag controller and PS'S, rather than the coordinated design of the SVC-based P ID controller and PSS. Furthermore, the interarea and local modes of the oscillations were superiorly damped using the proposed controller in the multimachine power system.

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

pss
power system stability
coordinated design
pid damping controller

svc
lead-lag damping controller
ga optimization technique


Planning the location and rating of distributed energy storage in LV networks using a genetic algorithm with simulated annealing To fix voltage rise in LV networks, DNOs traditionally reinforce LV networks. We show that the severity of the voltage problem depends on the penetration of PV. A new planning tool is produced for locating and sizing energy storage in networks. Storage is shown to be cheaper than reinforcement depending on the PV penetration. We use the tool to show that small single phase storage reduces rating/capacity.

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

distributed storage and generation
power distribution planning
genetic algorithms


Mapping Trigger Conditions onto Trigger Units during Post-silicon Validation and Debugging On-chip trigger units are employed for detecting events of interest during post-silicon validation and debugging. Their implementation constrains the trigger conditions that can be programmed at runtime. It is often the case that some trigger events of interest, which were not accounted for during design time, cannot be detected due to the constraints imposed by the hardware implementation of the trigger units. To address this issue, we present architectural features that can be included into the trigger units and discuss the algorithmic approach for automatically mapping trigger conditions onto the trigger units.

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


buzz-based recommender system In this paper, we describe a buzz-based recommender system based on a large source of queries in an eCommerce application. The system detects bursts in query trends. These bursts are linked to external entities like news and inventory information to find the queries currently in-demand which we refer to as buzz queries. The system follows the paradigm of limited quantity merchandising, in the sense that on a per-day basis the system shows recommendations around a single buzz query with the intent of increasing user curiosity, and improving activity and stickiness on the site. A semantic neighborhood of the chosen buzz query is selected and appropriate recommendations are made on products that relate to this neighborhood.

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


Test data compression and decompression based on internal scan chains and Golomb coding We present a data compression method and decompression architecture for testing embedded cores in a system-on-a-chip (SOC). The proposed approach makes effective use of Golomb coding and the internal scan chain(s) of the core under test and provides significantly better results than a recent compression method that uses Golomb coding and a separate cyclical scan register (CSR). The major advantages of Golomb coding of test data include very high compression, analytically predictable compression results, and a low-cost and scalable on-chip decoder. The use of the internal scan chain for decompression obviates the need for a CSR, thereby reducing hardware overhead considerably. In addition, the novel interleaving decompression architecture allows multiple cores in an SOC to be tested concurrently using a single ATE I/O channel. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by applying it to the ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits.

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

automatic test equipment (ate)
embedded core testing
precomputed test sets
response vectors
system-on-a-chip testing
test set encoding
testing time
variable-to-variable-length codes


optimal sleep transistor synthesis under timing and area constraints Leakage power reduction in nano-CMOS designs has gained tremendous interest both in academia and industry. Many techniques have been proposed in the literature for leakage power reduction and one of the prominent techniques for leakage power reduction is the use of sleep transistors as power-gating elements to cut-off sub-threshold leakage current in circuits when they are in stand-by mode. Although sleep transistor insertion is very effective in cutting-off leakage, it also incurs timing, area and routing overhead. Since most of the sleep transistor insertion methodologies do post layout insertion, care should be taken such that there is minimal perturbation of the original layout. Over design of sleep transistors cells and sub-optimal sleep transistor placement must be avoided to achieve final design closure. Since the sleep transistor area plays an important and prominent role in this aspect, it necessitates for optimal sleep transistor sizing and synthesis technique under area constraints. In this paper, we first provide a methodology for optimal sleep transistor synthesis under given area constraints. We then apply our technique to the general timing and area constraint driven row-based power-gating methodology proposed in [13] and show how optimal low leakage designs with constraints on timing and area can be designed.

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

standard cell
row-based
power-gating
clustering


a framework for comparing task performance in real and virtual scenes In this paper, we describe a framework for comparing task performance in real and virtual environments. Realistic graphics, rear projection, haptics and rapid prototyping are used to match the virtual scene to the real scene. We describe some preliminary placement tasks which were evaluated using eye-tracking and discuss our future plans for this framework.

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

task performance
real and virtual environments


A scalable algorithm to order and annotate continuous observations reveals the metastable states visited by dynamical systems Advances in IT infrastructure have enabled the generation and storage of very large data sets describing complex systems continuously in time. These can derive from both simulations and measurements. Analysis of such data requires the availability of scalable algorithms. In this contribution, we propose a scalable algorithm that partitions instantaneous observations (snapshots) of a complex system into kinetically distinct sets (termed basins). To do so, we use a combination of ordering snapshots employing the methods only essential parameter, i.e. , a definition of pairwise distance, and annotating the resultant sequence, the so-called progress index, in different ways. Specifically, we propose a combination of cut-based and structural annotations with the former responsible for the kinetic grouping and the latter for diagnostics and interpretation. The method is applied to an illustrative test case, and the scaling of an approximate version is demonstrated to be O(NlogN) O ( N log N ) with N N being the number of snapshots. Two real-world data sets from river hydrology measurements and protein folding simulations are then used to highlight the utility of the method in finding basins for complex systems. Both limitations and benefits of the approach are discussed along with routes for future research.

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

trajectory analysis
minimum spanning tree
free energy basins


WorSE: A Workbench for Model-based Security Engineering We propose a tool-supported approach to enhance the quality of security policies. For this goal, a Workbench for Model-based Security Engineering has been developed. It implements a uniform method to engineer policy-specific security models. It allows for detailed model analysis based on this uniform calculus. It implements a novel method for heuristic safety analysis of access control models.

O O 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

security policy engineering
model safety analysis
information flow analysis
security model checking


Current feedback operational amplifier based oscillators This paper demonstrates the practicality of the current feedback operational amplifier (CFOA) in realizing grounded capacitor (or grounded resistor) oscillator circuits. The paper begins with a description of the minimum passive component oscillators, using one or two CFOAs. Next, two new single CFOA oscillators with independent control on the condition of oscillation are generated from the single CFOA minimum component oscillator. Three new oscillator circuits using two CFOAs are introduced. Grounded capacitor and grounded resistor oscillators using three CFOAs with independent control on the condition of oscillation and on the frequency of oscillation are also included. The proposed grounded component oscillators are suitable for VLSI implementation. PSpice simulations and experimental results demonstrating the performance of some of the proposed oscillators are given.

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


Simulation of service-oriented systems for Mobile Ad hoc Networks The simulation of distributed systems that implement a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) imposes a set of requirements on their simulation models. These models must replicate the interactions that characterise the SOA operational paradigm and the role of the entities that support an SOA. When those interactions occur over Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), simulation models must accurately reproduce the effects that mobility and other networking factors have on the system. This paper presents the architecture of a simulation environment for MANET-interconnected Service-Oriented Systems. The simulation environment combines the realistic SOA support provided by OSGi with the network simulation capabilities of ns-2. The application-layer elements of the simulation models built for this environment are also SOA implementations, thus promoting structural model validity. This approach provides the opportunity of utilising elements or prototypes from the modelled systems as part of the simulation model, promoting its continuity. In addition, it takes advantage of the benefits that SOA has brought to field of Modelling and Simulation.

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

service-oriented architecture (soa)
mobile ad hoc networks (manet)
ns-2


Adaptive wavelet thresholding for image denoising and compression The first part of this paper proposes an adaptive, data-driven threshold for image denoising via wavelet soft-thresholding, The threshold is derived in a Bayesian framework, and the prior used on the wavelet coefficients is the generalized Gaussian distribution (GGD) widely used in image processing applications, The proposed threshold is simple and closed-form, and it is adaptive to each subband because it depends on data-driven estimates of the parameters. Experimental results show that the proposed method, called BayesShrink, is typically within 5% of the MSE of the best soft-thresholding benchmark with the image assumed known, It also outperforms Donoho and Johnstone's SureShrink most of the time. The second part of the paper attempts to further validate recent claims that lossy compression can be used for denoising, The BayesShrink threshold can aid in the parameter selection of a coder designed with the intention of denoising, and thus achieving simultaneous denoising and compression. Specifically, the zero-zone in the quantization step of compression is analogous to the threshold value in the thresholding function. The remaining coder design parameters are chosen based on a criterion derived from Rissanen's minimum description length (MDL) principle, Experiments show that this compression method does indeed remove noise significantly, especially for large noise power, However, it introduces quantization noise and should he used only if bitrate were an additional concern to denoising.

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

adaptive method
image compression
image restoration


debugging distributed c programs by real time reply Bugnet is a portable Unix system designed to debug C programs distributed within a local area network. A graphics interface allows the user of a Sun workstation to manage process groups and monitor process interactions very conveniently. Bugnet gives information about interprocess communication, I/O events, and execution traces for each component process. It allows the user to detect an error visually, to roll global program state back to a time before the error, and to replay events almost exactly as they previously occurred. Current work on Bugnet is making the implementation easier to port, seeing if replay accuracy can be improved by minor adjustments in the Unix process scheduler, linking it with Unix dbx to control individual processes, and determining useful tools for filtering of long event strings and for detecting errors. The Bugnet project is testing how well existing multiprocess C programs can be debugged without special hardware features that make porting difficult. An initial version is running on a network of Suns. It currently reproduces real time execution sequences with an accuracy of 0.01 to 0.10 seconds.

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

network communication traces event project graphics filtering replay errors strings control linking user component program accuracy implementation process version hardware distributed monitor debugging tools global

scheduling portability interfaces timing group real-time informal management locality interaction systems test feature sequence


An analytic approach to the asymptotic variance of trie statistics and related structures We develop analytic tools for the asymptotics of general trie statistics, which are particularly advantageous for clarifying the asymptotic variance. Many concrete examples are discussed for which new Fourier expansions are given. The tools are also useful for other splitting processes with an underlying binomial distribution. We specially highlight Philippe Flajolet's contribution in the analysis of these random structures.

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

digital trees
binomial splitting process
mellin transform
periodic fluctuations
contention resolution algorithms


Object-oriented biomedical system modelingThe Rationale A short tutorial and a rationale for Object-Oriented Biomedical (Continuous) System Modelling (OOBSM) are given. The paper investigates and defines what is needed in order to make the work with complex bio-medical and pathophysiological models easier, less error prone and conceptually clearer than is possible by using the existing modelling techniques. It also contains a specification of what is required in order to make such models and corresponding knowledge communicable among different research groups and in order to use such models as components in even more complex models. The work shows that hitherto available continuous system modelling languages and tools are less suitable for the construction of complex, interdisciplinary, multilevel, hierarchical models and model components and that those modelling languages do not allow for easy exchange and communication of the model knowledge between different research groups and sites. It concludes that object-oriented and distributed objects methodologies are both feasible and suitable for such modelling.

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

continuous system modelling
model components
hierarchical models

object-oriented modelling
biomedical system modelling
knowledge representation
knowledge communication
knowledge encapsulation


On the quest for optimal rule learning heuristics The primary goal of the research reported in this paper is to identify what criteria are responsible for the good performance of a heuristic rule evaluation function in a greedy top-down covering algorithm. We first argue that search heuristics for inductive rule learning algorithms typically trade off consistency and coverage, and we investigate this trade-off by determining optimal parameter settings for five different parametrized heuristics. In order to avoid biasing our study by known functional families, we also investigate the potential of using metalearning for obtaining alternative rule learning heuristics. The key results of this experimental study are not only practical default values for commonly used heuristics and a broad comparative evaluation of known and novel rule learning heuristics, but we also gain theoretical insights into factors that are responsible for a good performance. For example, we observe that consistency should be weighted more heavily than coverage, presumably because a lack of coverage can later be corrected by learning additional rules.

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

inductive rule learning
heuristics
metalearning


An approach to extracting trunk from an image Rendering realistic trees is quite important for simulating a 3D natural scene. Separating the trunk from its background is the first step toward the 3D model construction of the tree. In this paper, a three-phase algorithm is developed to extract the trunk structure of the tree and hence segment the trunk from the image. Some experiments were conducted and results confirmed the feasibility of proposed algorithm.

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

trunk extraction
trunk segmentation
tree segmentation
tree detection


Disulfide connectivity prediction based on structural information without a prior knowledge of the bonding state of cysteines Previous studies predicted the disulfide bonding patterns of cysteines using a prior knowledge of their bonding states. In this study, we propose a method that is based on the ensemble support vector machine (SVM), with the structural features of cysteines extracted without any prior knowledge of their bonding states. This method is useful for improving the predictive performance of disulfide bonding patterns. For comparison, the proposed method was tested with the same dataset SPX that was adopted in previous studies. The experimental results demonstrate that bridge classification and disulfide connectivity predictions achieve 96.5% and 89.2% accuracy, respectively, using the ensemble SVM model, which outperforms the traditional method (51.5% and 51.0%, respectively) and the model that is based on a single-kernel SVM classifier (94.6% and 84.4%, respectively). For protein chain and residue classifications, the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of ensemble and single-kernel SVM approaches are better than those of the traditional methods. The predictive performances of the ensemble SVM and single-kernel models are identical, indicating that the ensemble model can converge to the single-kernel model for some applications.

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

disulfide bonding pattern
multiple trajectory search
ensemble classifier


A parallel network emulation method for evaluating the correctness and performance of applications Network emulation system constructs a virtual network environment which has the characteristics of controllable and repeatable network conditions. This makes it possible to predict the correctness and performance of proposed new technology before deploying to Internet. In this paper we present a methodology for evaluating the correctness and performance of applications based on the PARNEM, a parallel discrete event network emulator. PARNEM employs a BSP based real-time event scheduling engine, provides flexible interactive mechanism and facilitates legacy network models reuse. PARNEM allows detailed and accurate study of application behavior. Comprehensive case studies covering bottleneck bandwidth measurement and distributed cooperative web caching system demonstrate that network emulation technology opens a wide range of new opportunities for examining the behavior of applications.

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

performance evaluation
time synchronization


diconic addition of failsafe fault-tolerance We present a divide-and-conquer method, called DiConic, for automatic addition of failsafe fault-tolerance to distributed programs, where a failsafe program guarantees to meet its safety specification even when faults occur. Specifically, instead of adding fault-tolerance to a program as a whole, we separately revise program actions so that the entire program becomes failsafe fault-tolerant. Our DiConic algorithm has the potential to utilize the processing power of a large number of machines working in parallel, thereby enabling automatic addition of failsafe fault-tolerance to distributed programs with a large number of processes. We formulate our DiConic synthesis algorithm in terms of the satisfiability problem and demonstrate our approach for the Byzantine Generals problem and an industrial application.

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

formal methods
divide and conquer
addition of fault-tolerance


Application of neural networks and Kano's method to content recommendation in web personalization As customers become more skilled in the use of internet, many companies have gradually established their websites with more and more enormous information to get future competition in electronic commerce (EC). However, the miscellaneous information often brings the users at a loss. Web personalization provides a solution to improvement of information overloading on websites. The objective of web personalization is to give users a website they want or need, and thus knowing the needs of users is an important task for content recommendation in web personalization. In this article, we propose a hybrid approach for this task. The proposed approach trains the artificial neural networks to group users into different clusters, and applies the well-established Kano's method to extracting the implicit needs from users in different clusters. Finally, a real case of tour and travel websites applying the approach is presented to demonstrate the improvement of information overloading. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

artificial neural networks
information overloading
web personalization


Multi-objective optimization with a max-t t -norm fuzzy relational equation constraint In this paper, we consider minimizing multiple linear objective functions under a max-t t -norm fuzzy relational equation constraint. Since the feasible domain of a maxArchimedean t t -norm relational equation constraint is generally nonconvex, traditional mathematical programming techniques may have difficulty in yielding efficient solutions for such problems. In this paper, we apply the two-phase approach, utilizing the min operator and the average operator to aggregate those objectives, to yield an efficient solution. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the procedure.

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

multi-objective optimization
max-t t -norm t t t t t
two-phase approach


The effect of a Pro(28)Thr point mutation on the local structure and stability of human galactokinase enzyme-a theoretical study Galactokinase is responsible for the phosphorylation of alpha-d-galactose, which is an important step in the metabolism of the latter. Malfunctioning of galactokinase due to a single point mutation causes cataracts and, in serious cases, blindness. This paper reports a study of the Pro(28)Thr point mutation using a variety of theories including molecular dynamics (MD), MM-PBSA/GBSA calculations and AIM analysis. Altered H-bonding networks were detected based on geometric and electron density criteria that resulted in local unfolding of the beta-sheet secondary structure. Another consequence was the decrease in stability (5-7 kcal mol(-1)) around this region, as confirmed by Delta G(bind) calculations for the extracted part of the whole system. Local unfolding was verified by several other MD simulations performed with different duration, initial velocities and force field. Based on the results, we propose a possible mechanism for the unfolding caused by the Pro(28)Thr point mutation.

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

human galactokinase
molecular dynamics
aim
local unfolding


Unmanned aerial vehicle-aided communications system for disaster recovery After natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornados and fires, providing emergency management schemes which mainly rely on communications systems is essential for rescue operations. To establish an emergency communications system during unforeseen events such as natural disasters, we propose the use of a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The proposed system is a post-disaster solution and can be used whenever and wherever required. Each UAV in the team has an onboard computer which runs three main subsystems responsible for end-to-end communication, formation control and autonomous navigation. The onboard computer and the low-level controller of the UAV cooperate to accomplish the objective of providing local communications infrastructure. In this study, the subsystems running on each UAV are explained and evaluated by simulation studies and field tests using an autonomous helicopter. While the simulation studies address the efficiency of the end-to-end communication subsystem, the field tests evaluate the accuracy of the navigation subsystem. The results of the field tests and the simulation studies show that the proposed system can be successfully used in case of disasters to establish an emergency communications system.

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

communication systems
aircraft navigation
distributed control


Nonparametric fuzzy regression - k-NN and kernel smoothing techniques Fuzzy regression without predefined functional form, or nonparametric fuzzy regression, is investigated. The two most basic nonparametric regression techniques in statistics, namely, k-nearest neighbor smoothing and kernel smoothing, are fuzzified and analyzed. Algorithms are proposed to obtain the best smoothing parameters based on the minimization of cross-validation criteria. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

nonparametric fuzzy regression
kernel smoothing


A laminate parametrization technique for discrete ply-angle problems with manufacturing constraints In this paper we present a novel laminate parametrization technique for layered composite structures that can handle problems in which the ply angles are limited to a discrete set. In the proposed technique, the classical laminate stiffnesses are expressed as a linear combination of the discrete options and design-variable weights. An exact penalty function is employed to drive the solution toward discrete 0-1 designs. The proposed technique can be used as either an alternative or an enhancement to SIMP-type methods such as discrete material optimization (DMO). Unlike mixed-integer approaches, our laminate parametrization technique is well suited for gradient-based design optimization. The proposed laminate parametrization is demonstrated on the compliance design of laminated plates and the buckling design of a laminated stiffened panel. The results demonstrate that the approach is an effective alternative to DMO methods.

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

laminate parametrization
manufacturing constraints


CONSERT: Constructing optimal name-based routing tables Name-based routing belongs to a routing category different from address-based routing, it is usually adopted by content-oriented networks [Sharma etal., 2014, Koponen etal., 2007, Rajahalme etal.,2011, Thaler etal.,1998, Hwang etal., 2010, Gritter etal., 2001, Chawathe etal., 2000, Caesar etal., 2006, Carzaniga etal., 2004, Koponen etal., 2007, Hwang etal., 2009 Singla etal., 2010, Detti etal., 2011, Jain etal., 2011 Xu etal., 2013, Katsaros etal., 2012. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]and[16]] e.g., the recently proposed Named Data Networking (NDN). It populates routers with name-based routing tables, which are composed of name prefixes and their corresponding next hop(s). Name-based routing tables are believed to have much larger size than IP routing tables, because of the large amount of name prefixes and the unbounded length of each prefix. This paper presents CONSERTan algorithm that, given an arbitrary name-based routing table as input, computes a routing table with the minimal number of prefixes, while keeping equivalent forwarding behavior. The optimal routing table also supports incremental update. We formulate the CONSERT algorithm and prove its optimality with an induction method. Evaluation results show that, CONSERT can reduce 18 to 45% prefixes in the synthetic routing tables depending on the distribution of the next hops, and meanwhile improve the lookup performance by more than 20%. Prior efforts usually focus on compact data structures and lookup algorithms so as to reduce memory consumption and expedite lookup speed of the routing table, while CONSERT compresses the routing table from another perspective: it removes the inherent redundancy in the routing table. Therefore, CONSERT is orthogonal to these prior efforts, thus the combination of CONSERT and a prior compressing method would further optimize the memory consumption and lookup speed of the routing table. E.g., we can first adopt CONSERT to achieve the optimal routing table, and afterwards apply NameFilter [Wang etal.,2013. [17], a two-stage-Bloom-filter method, to that optimal table. This combination diminishes the memory consumption of the routing table data structure by roughly 88%, and increases the lookup throughput by around 17% simultaneously. The joint method outperforms each individual method in terms of memory savings and absolute lookup throughout increase.

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


IDD: A supervised interval distance-based method for discretization This paper introduces a new method for supervised discretization based on interval distances by using a novel concept of neighborhood in the target's space. The proposed method takes into consideration the order of the class attribute, when this exists, so that it can be used with ordinal discrete classes as well as continuous classes, in the case of regression problems. The method has proved to be very efficient in terms of accuracy and faster than the most commonly supervised discretization methods used in the literature. It is illustrated through several examples, and a comparison with other standard discretization methods is performed for three public data sets by using two different learning tasks: a decision tree algorithm and SVM for regression.

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

supervised discretization
interval distances


symbolic analysis of network security policies using rewrite systems First designed to enable private networks to be opened up to the outside world in a secure way, the growing complexity of organizations make firewalls indispensable to control information flow within a company. The central role they hold in the security of the organization information make their management a critical task and that is why for years many works have focused on checking and analyzing firewalls. The composition of firewalls, taking into account routing rules, has nevertheless often been neglected. In this paper, we propose to specify all components of a firewall, ie filtering and translation rules, as a rewrite system. We show that such specifications allow us to handle usual problems such as comparison, structural analysis and query analysis. We also propose a formal way to describe the composition of firewalls (including routing) in order to build a whole network security policy. The properties of the obtained rewrite system are strongly related to the properties of the specified networks and thus, classical theoretical and practical tools can be used to obtain relevant security properties of the security policies.

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

security policies
rewrite systems
firewalls


Three-dimensional packings with rotations We present approximation algorithms for the three-dimensional strip packing problem, and the three-dimensional bin packing problem. We consider orthogonal packings where 90 degrees rotations are allowed. The algorithms we show for these problems have asymptotic performance bounds 2.64, and 4.89, respectively. These algorithms are for the more general case in which the bounded dimensions of the bin given in the input are not necessarily equal (that is, we consider bins for which the length. the width and the height are not necessarily equal). Moreover, we show that these problems-in the general version-are as hard to approximate as the corresponding oriented version. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 for collision avoidance and autonomous driving The Navlab group at Carnegie Mellon University has a long history of development of automated vehicles and intelligent systems for driver assistance. The earlier work of the group concentrated on road following, cross-country driving, and obstacle detection. The new focus is on short-range sensing, to look all around the vehicle for safe driving. The current system uses video sensing, laser rangefinders, a novel light-stripe rangefinder, software to process each sensor individually, a map-based fusion system, and a probability based predictive model. The complete system has been demonstrated on the Navlab I I vehicle for monitoring the environment of a vehicle driving through a cluttered urban environment, detecting and tracking fixed objects, moving objects, pedestrians, curbs, and roads. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

short-range surround sensing
optical flow
triangulation laser sensor
curb detection
lidar object detection
sensor fusion
collision prediction


A low-cost and calibration-free gaze estimator for soft biometrics: An explorative study ? An explorative study about gaze as soft-biometrics. A calibration free gaze estimator. Gaze estimation from low-cost devices. A non-invasive approach for gaze estimation. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation in real environments.

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

free gaze estimation
head pose estimation
pupil detection
soft-biometrics


Taxonomy development and assessment of global information technology outsourcing decisions Purpose - This paper seeks to provide taxonomy and assessment methodologies for executives of global conglomerates with a selection of variables which can help them evaluate outsourcing decisions. Design/methodology/approach - A range of established theories, which addressed outsourcing decisions, are identified. The major determinants of global outsourcing were then formulated into an integrated model. Each of the variables identified was validated using multiple theories. Finally, a weighted score index was used to demonstrate how the variables can be used to evaluate outsourcing decisions. Findings - It provides an over-view of outsourcing theories about the variety of major reasons and their associated determinants as well as attributes that are relevant to decision-makers. It showed that the individual theories can be integrated into a global taxonomy. This taxonomy can be assessed using a weighted-index because the inputs and computation processes contain realistic qualitative and quantitative information. Research limitations/implications - It is an assessment methodology that requires input and judgment from a variety of experts. Persons having such expertise may be fairly costly and difficult to find. Practical implications - A very simple, yet comprehensive, and useful taxonomy for executives making outsourcing decisions. The assessment index is a proven methodology that is used by business consultants for a variety of related applications involving decision choices. Originality/value - This paper fulfills the need for a more comprehensive view and a systematic approach to the assessment of outsourcing decisions. The index of attributes identified and the evaluation technique proposed are a practical approach.

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


Segmentation of tongue muscles from super-resolution magnetic resonance images The first attempt to segment tongue muscles from in vivo MR images is presented. The focus is on segmenting the genioglossus and inferior longitudinalis muscles. The game-theoretic approach is applied for landmark-based segmentation. The database will be publicly released for objective method comparison.

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

human tongue
game theory
magnetic resonance imaging
atlasing


Framework for user acceptance: Clustering for fine-grained results In an attempt to uncover intra-group behavior similarities, we developed an open multi-level framework for understanding the process of technology acceptance by its users. We partitioned our population into groups by clustering at several levels and then for each level it was divided into subgroups with a measurement layer added to uncover subgroup influence. Thus, by intersecting the resulting clusters of the set of models, the population was divided into subgroups that have similarities in the factors measured by the cluster layer models. Subsequently we tested our framework in a university hospital setting; personality and prior technology background models were used in clustering via the Five Factor Model and the Technology Readiness Index. UTAUT was used in the measurement layer. Our hypothesis that the subgroups have differing degrees of explained variance and different predictors was confirmed. Our framework was open, because any model that results in a taxonomy of the population can be used to obtain meaningful clusters.

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 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 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


Navigation of interactive sonifications and visualisations of time-series data using multi-touch computing This paper discusses interaction design for interactive sonification and visualisation of data in multi-touch contexts. Interaction design for data analysis is becoming increasingly important as data becomes more openly available. We discuss how navigation issues such as zooming, selection, arrangement and playback of data relate to both the auditory and visual modality in different ways, and how they may be linked through the modality of touch and gestural interaction. For this purpose we introduce a user interface for exploring and interacting with representations of time-series data simultaneously in both the visual and auditory modalities.

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


Wikis in enterprise settings: a survey The wiki technology is increasingly being used in corporate environments to facilitate a broad range of tasks. This survey examines the use of wikis on a variety of organisational tasks that include the codification of explicit and tacit organisational knowledge and the formulation of corporate communities of practice, as well as more specific processes such as the collaborative information systems development, the interactions of the enterprise with third parties, management activities and organisational response in crisis situations. For each one of the aforementioned corporate functions, the study examines the findings of related research literature to highlight the advantages and concerns raised by the wiki usage and to identify specific solutions addressing them. Finally, based on the above findings, the study discusses various aspects of the wiki usage in the enterprise and identifies trends and future research directions on the field.

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

enterprise wikis
corporate wikis
wiki research


Red tides prediction system using fuzzy reasoning and the ensemble method A red tide is a temporary natural phenomenon in which harmful algal blooms (HABs) can lead to fin fish and shellfish dying en masse. For example, HABs can damage sea farming on the coast of South Korea, and generally have a bad influence on the coastal environment and sea ecosystem. Prediction of red tide blooms, which consists of a categorical type and a numerical type, can minimize the mitigation cost of HAB disasters and the suffering caused by the damage from red tide events. The first type of prediction has high precision but it represents a simple binary result, and the second can predict how much harm an algal increase causes, but its prediction has lower accuracy than the results of the categorical type. To enhance the automatic forecast of red tide, this paper proposes a red tide prediction method that uses fuzzy reasoning and the ensemble method to obtain prediction results for the categorical and numerical types. The proposed method improves the precision of categorical prediction because the ensemble classifier is enhanced by optimal data of the proposed preprocessing. The method forecasts a numerical prediction, such as the increasing density of red tide algae, using the fuzzy reasoning by which the accuracy of numerical results is improved by the proposed post-processing. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a better red tide prediction performance than other single classifiers.

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

red tides prediction
fuzzy reasoning
ensemble method
harmful algal blooms


Large-time behaviour of solutions to the equations of one-dimensional nonlinear thermoviscoelasticity with memory This paper is concerned with the large-time behaviour of globally defined smooth solutions of the initial-boundary value problem for the one-dimensional nonlinear thermoviscoelasticity system with memory.

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

global smooth solution
materials with memory


A multilevel input system with force-sensitive elements Force-sensitive multilevel input elements are introduced as the basic building blocks for compact-size input devices in mobile environments. Compared with switch-type keys, multilevel elements can decrease the number of keys on a keyboard while maintaining the input capacity. A multilevel input mechanism using force-sensitive sensor pads is demonstrated in a three-level three-element tactile chording system with multimodal feedback. Two schemes are introduced to segment the output range of the sensor into levels. For relatively unpracticed users, the scheme based on maximum finger forces gives an average error rate of 20.2% and an input time of 2.24 s for a chord of three inputs. Reclassification of the experimental data using Gaussian segmentation shows that significant improvement of the performance can be expected. (C) 2001 Academic Press.

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 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 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

user interface
input device
force sensitive


data visualization sliders Computer sliders are a generic user input mechanism for specifying a numeric value from a range. For data visualization, the effectiveness of sliders may be increased by using the space inside the slider as an interactive color scale, a barplot for discrete data, and a density plot for continuous data. The idea is to show the selected values in relation to the data and its distribution. Furthermore, the selection mechanism may be generalized using a painting metaphor to specify arbitrary, disconnected intervals while maintaining an intuitive user-interface.

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

data visualization
value
selection
color
scale
input
user
values
space
data
relation
generic

information visualization
metaphors
general
thresholding
interaction
interval
paint
user interface
distributed
high interaction
dynamic graphics
continuation
effect


Semi-explicit Solution and Fast Minimization Scheme for an Energy with a"" (1)-Fitting and Tikhonov-Like Regularization Regularized energies with a"" (1)-fitting have attracted a considerable interest in the recent years and numerous aspects of the problem have been studied, mainly to solve various problems arising in image processing. In this paper we focus on a rather simple form where the regularization term is a quadratic functional applied on the first-order differences between neighboring pixels. We derive a semi-explicit expression for the minimizers of this energy which shows that the solution is an affine function in the neighborhood of each data set. We then describe the volumes of data for which the same system of affine equations leads to the minimum of the relevant energy. Our analysis involves an intermediate result on random matrices constructed from truncated neighborhood sets. We also put in evidence some drawbacks due to the a"" (1)-fitting. A fast, simple and exact optimization method is proposed. By way of application, we separate impulse noise from Gaussian noise in a degraded image.

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

non-smooth analysis
l(1) data-fitting
image denoising
signal denoising
tikhonov regularization
impulsive noise
nonsmooth optimization
numerical methods


A variant of inductive counting We present a new version of the inductive counting, accepting the complement of an NSPACE(s(n)) language nondeterministically in space O(s(n)), independent of whether s(n)greater than or equal to log n, but using an additional ''one-way pebble" - a movable marker placed on the input tape. This reduces the space used by inductive counting to log n + O(s(n)) bits on the binary work tape and gives the weakest known nondeterministic device accepting a co-NSPACE(o(log n)) language. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

computational complexity
space complexity
sublogarithmic space


Temperature distribution in steel during hot rolling: pseudo-bond graph view In hot rolling, a metal is given its final shape by plastically deforming the original stock. In this present work, the above mentioned deformation process is modelled, i.e., temperature, flow stress at each point in and around the deformation zone. A viable bond graph model has been developed to study the essential dynamics inside the material. Low-carbon steel has been considered and the modelling is described for single-pass hot rolling.

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

pseudo-bond graph
thermal analysis
steel rolling mill
modelling and simulation
discretization


Capacity Bounds in Random Wireless Networks We consider a receiving node, located at the origin, and a Poisson point process (PPP) that models the locations of the desired transmitter as well as the interferers. Interference is known to be non-Gaussian in this scenario. The capacity bounds for additive non-Gaussian channels depend not only on the power of interference (i.e., up to second order statistics) but also on its entropy power which is influenced by higher order statistics as well. Therefore, a complete statistical characterization of interference is required to obtain the capacity bounds. While the statistics of sum of signal and interference is known in closed form, the statistics of interference highly depends on the location of the desired transmitter. In this paper, we show that there is a tradeoff between entropy power of interference on the one hand and signal and interference power on the other hand which have conflicting effects on the channel capacity. We obtain closed form results for the cumulants of the interference, when the desired transmitter node is an arbitrary neighbor of the receiver. We show that to find the cumulants, joint statistics of distances in the PPP will be required which we obtain in closed form. Using the cumulants, we approximate the interference entropy power and obtain bounds on the capacity of the channel between an arbitrary transmitter and the receiver. Our results provide insight and shed light on the capacity of links in a Poisson network. In particular, we show that, in a Poisson network, the closest hop is not necessarily the highest capacity link.

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


CoNVEX: copy number variation estimation in exome sequencing data using HMM One of the main types of genetic variations in cancer is Copy Number Variations (CNV). Whole exome sequenicng (WES) is a popular alternative to whole genome sequencing (WGS) to study disease specific genomic variations. However, finding CNV in Cancer samples using WES data has not been fully explored.

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

cnv detection
cancer genome
targeted resequencing
whole exome sequencing
hidden markov models
discrete wavelet transform


analogy considered harmful The computer is like a typewriter. The computer is like a filing cabinet. The computer is a personal servant ready to obey your every command. It is often claimed (e.g., Carroll and Thomas [3], Rumelhart and Norman [7]) that the best way to introduce a new user to a computer system is to draw an analogy between the computer and some situation familiar to the user. Given the analogy, the new user can draw upon his knowledge about the familiar situation in order to reason about the workings of the mysterious new computer system. For example, if the new user wants to understand about how the computer file system works, he need only think about how an office filing cabinet works and then carry over this same way of thinking to the computer file system.

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

situated
examples
systems
drawing
file systems
personality
computation
analog


Risking trust in a public key infrastructure: old techniques of managing risk applied to new technology Installing a public key infrastructure (PKI) can change in the security model of an IT operation in several ways. This article gives a layman's overview of what exactly a PKI is, and how one can be built and operated safely and securely. First, the PKI must be designed using the familiar principles of risk management, rather than trust management. Next, although it is not widely appreciated, digital signatures are not equivalent to traditional signatures, and understanding this difference is crucial to understanding how a PKI needs to be audited. Lastly, I will show that for a PKI to provide ongoing security, the principles of compromisecontainment and regular auditing must be adhered to.

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

digital signature
digital certificate
certification authority
trusted third party
cryptography
certification practice statement


A fixed-point theorem and applications to problems on sets with convex sections and to Nash equilibria A new fixed-point theorem for a family of maps defined on product spaces is obtained. The new result requires the functions involved to satisfy the local intersection properties. Previous results required the functions to have the open lower sections which are more restrictive conditions. New properties of multivalued maps are provided and applied to prove the new fixed-point theorem. Applications to problems on sets with convex sections and to the existence of Nash equilibria for a family of continuous functions are given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

sets with convex sections
nash equilibria


On Stability Delay Bounds of Simple Input-delayed Linear and Non-linear Systems: Computational Results This paper deals with the problem of delay size stability analysis of single input-delayed linear and nonlinear systems. Conventional reduction, reduction linked by sliding mode, and linear memoryless control approaches are used for simple input-delayed systems to obtain the stability conditions. Several first order examples are investigated systematically to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the advanced stability analysis techniques including Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals, Newton-Leibniz formula, and a newly addressed Lagrange mean value theorem. Numerical comparative results show the usefulness and effectiveness of the advanced delay size analysis techniques proposed in this paper.

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

input-delayed systems
reduction method
sliding mode control
lyapunov-krasovskii functional


The Ackermann approach for modal logic, correspondence theory and second-order reduction The problem of eliminating second-order quantification over predicate symbols is in general undecidable. Since an application of second-order quantifier elimination is correspondence theory in modal logic, understanding when second-order quantifier elimination methods succeed is an important problem that sheds light on the kinds of axioms that are equivalent to first-order correspondence properties and can be used to obtain complete axiomatizations for modal logics. This paper introduces a substitution-rewrite approach based on Ackermann's Lemma to second-order quantifier elimination in modal logic. Compared to related approaches, the approach includes a number of enhancements: The quantified symbols that need to be eliminated can be flexibly specified. The inference rules are restricted by orderings compatible with the elimination order, which provides more control and reduces non-determinism in derivations thereby increasing the efficiency and success rate. The approach is equipped with a powerful notion of redundancy, allowing for the flexible definition of practical simplification and optimization techniques. We present correctness, termination and canonicity results, and consider two applications: (i) computing first-order frame correspondence properties for modal axioms and rules, and (ii) rewriting second-order modal problems to equivalent simpler forms. The approach allows us to define and characterize two new classes of formulae, which are elementary and canonical, and subsume the class of Sahlqvist formulae and the class of monadic inductive formulae. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

second-order quantifier elimination
ackermann lemma
substitution method
axiom and rule reductions


Compressed histograms with arbitrary bucket layouts for selectivity estimation Selectivity estimation is an important step of query optimization in a database management system, and multi-dimensional histogram techniques have proved promising for selectivity estimation. Recent multi-dimensional histogram techniques such as GenHist and STHoles use an arbitrary bucket layout. This layout has the advantage of requiring a smaller number of buckets to model tuple densities than those required by the traditional grid or recursive layouts. However, the arbitrary bucket layout brings an inherent disadvantage of requiring more memory to store each bucket location information. This diminishes the advantage of requiring fewer buckets and, therefore, has an adverse effect on the resulting selectivity estimation accuracy. To our knowledge, however, no existing histogram-based technique with arbitrary layout addresses this issue. In this paper, we introduce the idea of bucket location compression and then demonstrate its effectiveness for improving selectivity estimation accuracy by proposing the STHoles+ technique. STHoles+ extends STHoles by quantizing each coordinate of a bucket relative to the coordinate of the smallest enclosing bucket. This quantization increases the number of histogram buckets that can be stored in the histogram. Our quantization scheme allows STHoles+ to trade precision of histogram bucket locations for storing more buckets. Experimental results show that STHoles+ outperforms STHoles on various data distributions, query distributions, and other factors such as available memory size, quantization resolution, and dimensionality of the data space.

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


Facial expression transfer method based on frequency analysis The subtle expression changes are salient in the frequency domain. A local expression deformation transfer method based on frequency analysis. Dynamic expression synthesis for the source subject using expression manifold. A unified framework automatic dynamic expression transfer method.

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

warping technique
facial feature location
frequency domain analysis


EAF: Energy-aware adaptive free viewpoint video wireless transmission By transmitting views captured using two adjacent cameras in texture plus depth format, any middle view in between could be synthesized with depth image based rendering (DIBR) technique. This provides users with continuous viewing angles for selection and is a key technology for a number of emerging applications such as free viewpoint TV. How to deliver the free viewpoint video contents to clients is one fundamental problem for these applications and the challenges exist in the large bandwidth requirement and frequent change of network environments. Source encoding rates could be varied to fit different network conditions by changing frame rates, with extra battery life consumption due to skipped frames? interpolation before synthesizing the requested middle view. Note that battery development is lagging behind mobile devices? function and computation capability development. How to trade off the source encoding rate reduction and extra energy consumption has not been formally solved as far as we understand. In this paper, we proposed EAF: an energy-aware adaptive free viewpoint video wireless transmission system, where we jointly considered the source encoding rate reduction and extra energy consumption with network constraints. Simulation results showed that the proposed scheme advantages over competing schemes significantly in typical network scenarios.

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

multi-view
multimedia
energy aware
video streaming


Implementation of a plasticity bond model for reinforced concrete This study examines numerical integration schemes for incremental, elastoplastic interface characterizations. The motivating problem is modeling bond of reinforcing bars to concrete in finite element analyses. Five first order accurate numerical integration schemes are examined. Four algorithms use backward Euler integration, but the iterative methods for solving the resulting nonlinear systems of equations (i.e., the plastic correctors) differ. A proposed algorithm minimizes the number of nonlinear equations that are solved numerically; for the bond model usually only one nonlinear equation is solved numerically. The algorithm is comparatively robust with respect to local convergence for arbitrary interface displacements.

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

reinforced concrete
bond model
plasticity
interface


Joint Reconstruction of Image and Motion in Gated Positron Emission Tomography We present a novel intrinsic method for joint reconstruction of both image and motion in positron emission tomography (PET). Intrinsic motion compensation methods exclusively work on the measured data, without any external motion measurements. Most of these methods separate image from motion estimation: They use deformable image registration/optical flow techniques in order to estimate the motion from individually reconstructed gates. Then, the image is estimated based on this motion information. With these methods, a main problem lies in the motion estimation step, which is based on the noisy gated frames. The more noise is present, the more inaccurate the image registration becomes. As we show both visually and quantitatively, joint reconstruction using a simple deformation field motion model can compete with state-of-the-art image registration methods which use robust multilevel B-spline motion models.

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

gating
positron emission tomography (pet)


The dynamics of two entangled qubits exposed to classical noise: role of spatial and temporal noise correlations We investigate the decay of two-qubit entanglement caused by the influence of classical noise. We consider the whole spectrum of cases ranging from independent to fully correlated noise affecting each qubit. We take into account different spatial symmetries of noises, and the regimes of noise autocorrelation time. The latter can be either much shorter than the characteristic qubit decoherence time (Markovian decoherence), or much longer (approaching the quasi-static bath limit). We express the entanglement of two-qubit states in terms of expectation values of spherical tensor operators which allows for transparent insight into the role of the symmetry of both the two-qubit state and the noise for entanglement dynamics.

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

two-qubit entanglement
correlated noises


Optimization of artificial neural networks for prediction of the unit cell parameters in orthorhombic perovskites. Comparison with multiple linear regression The unit cell parameters (a, b, c) of orthorhombic perovskites (of A(2+)B(4+)O(3) and A(3+)B(3+)O(3) type) were predicted both using multiple linear regression analysis (MLR) and two types of artificial neural networks (ANN). In these analyses, 70 compounds of above perovskite type were included: 47 in calibration set and 23 in test set, which were randomly chosen. In multiple linear regression, the unit cell parameters of 47 perovskites were expressed as bilinear function of the effective ionic radii of A and B cations, and then, using the obtained regression equation, the unit cell parameters of 23 perovskites were calculated and compared with the experimental data. Predictions using the same sets and the same dependent and independent variables were also done by feed-forward and cascade-forward ANN. The two different ANN models were compared to MLR model by F-test using their root mean square error (RMSEP). Although the two models give excellent results, it could be concluded that ANN have significantly better prediction abilities compared to MLR. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


CHERUB: power consumption aware cluster resource management This paper presents an evaluation of ACPI energy saving modes, and deduces the design and implementation of an energy saving daemon for clusters called cherub. The design of the cherub daemon is modular and extensible. Since the only requirement is a central approach for resource management, cherub is suited for Server Load Balancing (SLB) clusters managed by dispatchers like Linux Virtual Server (LVS), as well as for High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters. Our experimental results show that cherub's scheduling algorithm works well, i.e. it will save energy, if possible, and avoids state-flapping.

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


ExOR: Opportunistic multi-hop routing for wireless networks This paper describes ExOR, an integrated routing and MAC protocol that increases the throughput of large unicast transfers in multi-hop wireless networks. ExOR chooses each hop of a packet's route after the transmission for that hop, so that the choice can reflect which intermediate nodes actually received the transmission. This deferred choice gives each transmission multiple opportunities to make progress. As a result ExOR can use long radio links with high loss rates, which would be avoided by traditional routing. ExOR increases a connection's throughput while using no more network capacity than traditional routing. ExOR's design faces the following challenges. The nodes that receive each packet must agree on their identities and choose one forwarder. The agreement protocol must have low overhead, but must also be robust enough that it rarely forwards a packet zero times or more than once. Finally, ExOR must choose the forwarder with the lowest remaining cost to the ultimate destination. Measurements of an implementation on a 38-node 802.11b test-bed show that ExOR increases throughput for most node pairs when compared with traditional routing. For pairs between which traditional routing uses one or two hops, ExOR's robust acknowledgments prevent unnecessary retransmissions, increasing throughput by nearly 35%. For more distant pairs, ExOR takes advantage of the choice of forwarders to provide throughput gains of a factor of two to four.

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


Reducing message-length variations in resource-constrained embedded systems implemented using the Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol is widely used in low-cost embedded systems. CAN uses Non Return to Zero (NRZ) coding and includes a bit-stuffing mechanism. Whilst providing an effective mechanism for clock synchronization, the bit-stuffing mechanism causes the CAN frame length to become (in part) a complex function of the data contents: variations in frame length can have a detrimental impact on the real-time behaviour of systems employing this protocol. In this paper, two software-based mechanisms for reducing the impact of CAN bit stuffing are considered and compared. The first approach considered is a modified version of a technique described elsewhere (e.g. Nolte et al. [T. Nolte, H.A. Hansson, C. Norstrm, Minimizing CAN response-time jitter by message manipulation, in: Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2002), San Jose, California, 2002]). The second approach considered is a form of software bit stuffing (SBS). In both cases, not only the impact on message-length variations is addressed but also the implementation costs (including CPU and memory requirements) involved in creating practical implementation of each technique on a range of appropriate hardware platforms. It is concluded that the SBS technique is more effective in the reduction of message-length variations, but at the cost of an increase in CPU time and memory overheads and a reduction in the available data bandwidth. The choice of the most appropriate technique will, therefore, depend on the application requirements and the available resources.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 embedded system
shared-clock scheduler
timing jitter


Transition from traditional to ICT-enhanced learning environments in undergraduate chemistry courses This paper describes a three-year study conducted among chemistry instructors (professors and teaching assistants) at a post-secondary institution. The goal was to explore the integration process of information and communication technologies (ICT) into traditional teaching. Four undergraduate chemistry courses incorporated a course website, an electronic forum, computerized visualizations, and Web-based projects, into their curriculum. The learning technologies were integrated to enhance inquiry-based learning, visualizations, and knowledge sharing. The current study investigated chemistry instructors' perceptions toward ICT and their activities while practicing the newly introduced technologies. The findings showed that integrating new practices is a phase-dependent process that consists of promises as well as complexities. Four transition steps were found to characterize the integration of ICT-learning environments: non-active, support-dependant, partial-independant, and total-independant. Findings indicated that the transition from traditional to ICT-enhanced learning environments involves ambivalent feelings and dichotomy among instructors. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

improving classroom teaching
post-secondary education
visualization
teaching/learning strategies


experiences teaching data structures with java This paper describes our experiences incorporating Java in a Data Structures course. We describe the features of Java that made for a more interesting course, the difficulties that we encountered, and compare Java to the prior languages used in this course, Ada and C++. All in all, we found Java to be a reasonable, but not overwhelming better, alternative. Our students were particularly happy with the experiment.

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


Detecting emotional state of a child in a conversational computer game ? The automatic recognition of users communicative style within a spoken dialog system framework, including the affective aspects, has received increased attention in the past few years. For dialog systems, it is important to know not only what was said but also how something was communicated, so that the system can engage the user in a richer and more natural interaction. This paper addresses the problem of automatically detecting frustration, politeness, and neutral attitudes from a childs speech communication cues, elicited in spontaneous dialog interactions with computer characters. Several information sources such as acoustic, lexical, and contextual features, as well as, their combinations are used for this purpose. The study is based on a Wizard-of-Oz dialog corpus of 103 children, 714 years of age, playing a voice activated computer game. Three-way classification experiments, as well as, pairwise classification between polite vs. others and frustrated vs. others were performed. Experimental results show that lexical information has more discriminative power than acoustic and contextual cues for detection of politeness, whereas context and acoustic features perform best for frustration detection. Furthermore, the fusion of acoustic, lexical and contextual information provided significantly better classification results. Results also showed that classification performance varies with age and gender. Specifically, for the politeness detection task, higher classification accuracy was achieved for females and 1011 years-olds, compared to males and other age groups, respectively.

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

emotion recognition
spoken dialog systems
children speech
spontaneous speech
natural emotions
childcomputer interaction
feature extraction


A simple method to design dielectric resonator-based filters and diplexers using implicit space mapping technique We present the design of a six pole Chebyshev filter and a cascaded quadruple dielectric resonator (DR) filter using space mapping technique. Implicit space mapping technique is used throughout and the design emerges within few iterations in both the cases. Finite element method based HFSS is used in constructing the fine model and Agilent ADS is used in constructing the coarse model. Fine details such as tuning screws are included in the fine model. The same technique is also applied to a DR-based diplexer and is explained. In all the cases, the results obtained with the hardware match well with the analyzed results. The same procedure can be applied in designing much more complex structures such as multiplexers. 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:204216, 2014.

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

dielectric resonator
filter
diplexer
space mapping


ON THE EXPRESSIVENESS AND COMPLEXITY OF ATL ATL is a temporal logic geared towards the specification and verification of properties in multi-agents systems. It allows to reason on the existence of strategies for coalitions of agents in order to enforce a given property. In this paper, we first precisely characterize the complexity of ATL model-checking over Alternating Transition Systems and Concurrent Game Structures when the number of agents is not fixed. We prove that it is Delta(P)(2)- and Delta(P)(3)-complete, depending on the underlying multi-agent model (ATS and CGS resp.). We also consider the same problems for some extensions of ATL. We then consider expressiveness issues. We show how ATS and CGS are related and provide translations between these models w.r.t. alternating bisimulation. We also prove that the standard definition of ATL (built on modalities "Next", "Always" and "Until") cannot express the duals of its modalities: it is necessary to explicitely add the modality "Release".

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