Simulation Modeling for Analysis This article explores possibilities for designing and executing simulation models with specific analysis goals in mind, and shows that a tight coupling of the modeling and analysis phases in a simulation project can lead to dramatic improvements in the study results. Suggestions are made for how simulation analysis, considered in the explicit context of discrete-event simulation models, can create new opportunities for meaningful research and more efficient modeling. Modeling decisions can play a significant role in the performance of analytical procedures. How a simulation model is designed can enable, inhibit, or even invalidate analytical procedures and methodology research results.

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

discrete-event simulation
event graphs
experimental design


Inferences on the reliability in balanced and unbalanced one-way random models In this article, the hypothesis testing and interval estimation for the reliability parameter are considered in balanced and unbalanced one-way random models. The tests and confidence intervals for the reliability parameter are developed using the concepts of generalized p-value and generalized confidence interval. Furthermore, some simulation results are presented to compare the performances between the proposed approach and the existing approach. For balanced models, the simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can provide satisfactory coverage probabilities and performs better than the existing approaches across the wide array of scenarios, especially for small sample sizes. For unbalanced models, the simulation results show that the two proposed approaches perform more satisfactorily than the existing approach in most cases. Finally, the proposed approaches are illustrated using two real examples.

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

reliability parameter
generalized confidence interval

generalized p-value
coverage probability


New methods for testing linear separability If two sets are linearly separable (LS), then there exists a single layer perceptron feedforward neural network that classifies them. We propose three methods for testing linear separability. The first method is based on the notion of convex hull, the second on a halting upper bound for the perceptron learning algorithm, and the third one, called the class of linear separability algorithm, is based on the characterization of the set of points by which passes a hyperplane that linearly separates two classes. We also study the treatment of nonlinearly separable (NLS) classification problems. We propose two solutions for handling NLS problems. The first solution is an approximation of an NLS classification problem by means of an LS one. We prove that the problem of finding the best approximation is NP-complete. The second solution is an NLS to LS transformation algorithm which can be used for building a multilayer feedforward neural networks called the Recursive Deterministic Perceptron (RDP). This neural network model can be used for solving any two class classification problems even if the two classes are NLS. We prove that the construction of an RDP linearly separating two classes X and Y can be done in less than n steps where n is the cardinal of the set X?Y. The geometrical halting upper bound for the perceptron algorithm and the class of linear separability algorithm are the principal results of this paper.

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

linear separability
convex hull
perceptron


Flexible platform component design under uncertainty Incorporating flexibility into product platforms allows manufacturers to respond to changing market needs with a minimal increase in product family complexity and investment cost. To successfully design a flexible product platform, proper design of flexible platform components is critical. These components can be described as "cousin" parts as they are neither completely unique nor completely common among variants. In this paper, a multidisciplinary process for designing flexible product platform components is introduced, assuming the platform component is decided a priori. The design process starts with identification of uncertainties and generation of multiple design alternatives for embedding flexibility into the component. Design alternatives are then optimized for minimum cost, while satisfying the component performance requirements. The flexible designs are then evaluated for economic profitability under identified uncertainty, using Monte Carlo simulation. At the end, the most profitable flexible component design is selected. The proposed design process is demonstrated through a case study, in which different flexible designs are generated and optimized for an automotive floor pan, an essential element of most vehicle product platforms. Results suggest that the way in which the flexibility is incorporated in the component, production volume trends, and the degree of built-in flexibility are important factors to consider when designing flexible product platforms.

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

product platform
flexibility
uncertainty


Enhancement of fluoroscopic images with varying contrast A heuristic algorithm for enhancement of fluoroscopic images of varying contrast is proposed. The new technique aims at identifying a suitable type of enhancement for different locations in an image. The estimation relies on simple preliminary classification of image parts into one of the following types: uniform, sharp (with sufficient contrast), detail-containing (structure present) and unknown (for the cases where it is difficult to make a decision). Different smoothing techniques are applied locally in the different types of image parts. For those parts that are classified as detail-containing, probable object boundaries are identified and local sharpening is carried out to increase the contrast at these places. The adopted approach attempts to improve the quality of an image by reducing available noise and simultaneously increasing the contrast at probable object boundaries without increasing the overall dynamic range. In addition, it allows noise to be cleaned, that at some locations is stronger than the fine structure at other locations, whilst preserving the details.

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

image smoothing/enhancement
structure preservation


Dynamic View Management System for Query Prediction to View Materialization On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems based on data warehouses are the main systems for managerial decision making and must have a quick response time. Several algorithms have been presented to select the proper set of data and elicit suitable structured environments to handle the queries submitted to OLAP systems, which are called view selection algorithms to materialize. As users' requirements may change during run time, materialization must be viewed dynamically. In this work, the authors propose and operate a dynamic view management system to select and materialize views with new and improved architecture, which predicts incoming queries through association rule mining and three probabilistic reasoning approaches: Conditional probability, Bayes' rule, and Naive Bayes' rule. The proposed system is compared with DynaMat system and Hybrid system through two standard measures. Experimental results show that the proposed dynamic view selection system improves these measures. This system outperforms DynaMat and Hybrid for each type of query and each sequence of incoming queries.

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

olap
probabilistic reasoning approaches
view selection

data warehousing
dynamic view materialization
view prediction


SIMULTANEOUS EMBEDDING OF EMBEDDED PLANAR GRAPHS A simultaneous embedding with fixed edges (SEFE) of a set of k planar graphs G(1),..., G(k) on the same set of vertices is a set of k planar drawings of G(1),..., G(k), respectively, such that each vertex is placed on the same point in all the drawings and each edge is represented by the same Jordan curve in the drawings of all the graphs it belongs to. A simultaneous geometric embedding (SGE) is a SEFE in which the edges are represented by straight-line segments. Given k planar graphs G(1),..., G(k), deciding whether they admit a SEFE and whether they admit an SGE are NP-hard problems, for k >= 3 and for k >= 2, respectively. In sharp contrast with the NP-hardness of SEFE for three non-embedded planar graphs, we show that SEFE is quadratic-time solvable for three graphs with a fixed planar embedding. In sharp contrast with the NP-hardness of SEFE for three non-embedded planar graphs, we show that SEFE is quadratic-time solvable for three graphs with a fixed planar embedding. Furthermore, we show that, given k embedded planar graphs G(1),..., G(k), deciding whether a SEFE of G(1),..., G (k) exists and deciding whether an SGE of G(1),..., G(k) exists are NP-hard problems, for k >= 1 4 and k >= 1 3, respectively.

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


On the almighty wand We investigate decidability, complexity and expressive power issues for (first-order) separation logic with one record field (herein called SL) and its fragments. SL can specify properties about the memory heap of programs with singly-linked lists. Separation logic with two record fields is known to be undecidable by reduction of finite satisfiability for classical predicate logic with one binary relation. Surprisingly, we show that second-order logic is as expressive as SL and as a by-product we get undecidability of St.. This is refined by showing that SL without the separating conjunction is as expressive as SL, whence undecidable too. As a consequence, in SL the separating implication (also known as the magic wand) can simulate the separating conjunction. By contrast, we establish that SL without the magic wand is decidable, and we prove a non-elementary complexity by reduction from satisfiability for the first-order theory over finite words. This result is extended with a bounded use of the magic wand that appears in Hoare-style rules. As a generalization, it is shown that kSL, the separation logic over heaps with k >= 1 record fields, is equivalent to kSO, the second-order logic over heaps with k record fields. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

separation logic
expressive power
complexity


Anisotropy Preserving DTI Processing Statistical analysis of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data requires a computational framework that is both numerically tractable (to account for the high dimensional nature of the data) and geometric (to account for the nonlinear nature of diffusion tensors). Building upon earlier studies exploiting a Riemannian framework to address these challenges, the present paper proposes a novel metric and an accompanying computational framework for DTI data processing. The proposed approach grounds the signal processing operations in interpolating curves. Well-chosen interpolating curves are shown to provide a computational framework that is at the same time tractable and information relevant for DTI processing. In addition, and in contrast to earlier methods, it provides an interpolation method which preserves anisotropy, a central information carried by diffusion tensor data.

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

diffusion tensor mri
spectral decomposition
quaternions
riemannian manifold


Optimizing the dimensions of driver and power transistor in switching CMOS RF amplifiers Today, there is a trend towards integration of complex RF systems on a single die. The interaction between the different building blocks will cause a performance degradation of each individual building block. So, optimizing the performance of the total system is under discussion. When combining a CMOS power amplifier together with an up-conversion mixer, some pre-amplifier stages have to be placed between the mixer and the CMOS power transistor. How this stages have to be designed (sized) and how they affect the performance of the power amplifier, will be investigated in this paper.

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

driver stage
power added efficiency
sizing


Improving SDRAM access energy efficiency for low-power embedded systems DRAM ( dynamic random- access memory) energy consumption in low-power embedded systems can be very high, exceeding that of the data cache or even that of the processor. This paper presents and evaluates a scheme for reducing the energy consumption of SDRAM ( synchronous DRAM) memory access by a combination of techniques that take advantage of SDRAM energy efficiencies in bank and row access. This is achieved by using small, cachelike structures in the memory controller to prefetch an additional cache block( s) on SDRAM reads and to combine block writes to the same SDRAM row. The results quantify the SDRAM energy consumption of MiBench applications and demonstrate significant savings in SDRAM energy consumption, 23%, on average, and reduction in the energy- delay product, 44%, on average. The approach also improves performance: the CPI is reduced by 26%, on average.

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 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 B 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 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

design
fetch buffer
write-combining buffer
embedded processors and low power


An adaptive hierarchical domain decomposition method for parallel contact dynamics simulations of granular materials A fully parallel version of the contact dynamics (CD) method is presented in this paper. For large enough systems, 100% efficiency has been demonstrated for up to 256 processors using a hierarchical domain decomposition with dynamic load balancing. The iterative scheme to calculate the contact forces is left domain-wise sequential, with data exchange after each iteration step, which ensures its stability. The number of additional iterations required for convergence by the partially parallel updates at the domain boundaries becomes negligible with increasing number of particles, which allows for an effective parallelization. Compared to the sequential implementation, we found no influence of the parallelization on simulation results.

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

granular materials
hierarchical domain decomposition
load balancing


THE BIGGEST NEED: A NEW MODEL OF COMPUTATION The development of HPC systems capable of exascale performance will demand innovations in hardware architecture and system software as well as programming models and methods. The combination of a vast increase in scale of such systems combined with the emergence of heterogeneous multicore structures is forcing future systems to be organized and operate on principles very different from the conventional practices of the last two decades. The biggest need for achieving exascale computing is the development of a new model of computation that will provide the new paradigm exploiting the opportunities and addressing the challenges of the emerging technologies and advanced architectures that together will comprise future exascale systems. This brief paper discusses the need for a new model of computation and the properties such a model should embody.

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

high performance computing
message-passing model
asynchronous methods


Minimum d-blockers and d-transversals in graphs We consider a set V of elements and an optimization problem on V: the search for a maximum (or minimum) cardinality subset of V verifying a given property a"similar to. A d-transversal is a subset of V which intersects any optimum solution in at least d elements while a d-blocker is a subset of V whose removal deteriorates the value of an optimum solution by at least d. We present some general characteristics of these problems, we review some situations which have been studied (matchings, s-t paths and s-t cuts in graphs) and we study d-transversals and d-blockers of stable sets or vertex covers in bipartite and in split graphs.

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

transversal
blocker
cover
bipartite graph
split graph
s-t path
s-t cut
stable set
bilevel programming


Critical path scheduling parallel programs on an unbounded number of processors In this paper we present an efficient algorithm for compile-time scheduling and clustering of parallel programs onto parallel processing systems with distributed memory, which is called The Dynamic Critical Path Scheduling DCPS. The DCPS is superior to several other algorithms from the literature in terms of computational complexity, processors consumption and solution quality. DCPS has a time complexity of O(e + v logv), as opposed to DSC algorithm O((e+v) logv) which is the best known algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of DCPS over the DSC algorithm.

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

distributed computing
precedence task graphs
directed acyclic graphs dags
parallel scheduling


Transient analysis of a queue with system disasters and customer impatience A single server queue with Poisson arrivals and exponential service times is studied. The system suffers disastrous breakdowns at an exponential rate, resulting in the loss of all running and waiting customers. When the system is down, it undergoes a repair mechanism where the repair time follows an exponential distribution. During the repair time any new arrival is allowed to join the system, but the customers become impatient when the server is not available for a long time. In essence, each customer, upon arrival, activates an individual timer, which again follows an exponential distribution with parameter xi. If the system is not repaired before the customer's timer expires, the customer abandons the queue and never returns. The time-dependent system size probabilities are presented using generating functions and continued fractions.

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 B I

server breakdown
impatient customers
transient probabilities
confluent hypergeometric functions


A visual analysis of learning rule effects and variable importance for neural networks in data mining operations This study demonstrates two visual methodologies to support analysts using artificial neural networks (ANNs) in data mining operations. The first Part of the paper illustrates the differences and similarities between various learning rules that might be employed by ANN data miners. Since different learning rules lead to different connection weights and stability coefficients, a graphical representation of the data that provides a novel visual means of discerning these similarities and differences is demonstrated. The second part of this research demonstrates a methodology for ANN model variable interpretation that uses network connection weights. It uses empirical marketing data to optimize an ANN and response elasticity graphs are built for each ANN model variable by plotting the derivative of the network output with respect to each variable, while changing network input in equal increments across the range of inputs for each variable. Finally, this paper concludes that such an approach to ANN model interpretation can provide data miners with a rich interpretation of variable importance.

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

cybernetics
neural nets
data analysis
learning processes


Designing a Patient Education Framework via Use Case Analysis One of the challenges of developing patient education content in electronic form is to determine the information and interaction needs that motivate a patient to learn in the first place. We have found that use case analysis of patient education helps in clarifying the types of information and interaction required to educate a patient effectively. This paper presents a use case model for patient education as well as a Java-based framework that facilitates both the extension and updating of individually tailored, electronic patient education content. The framework defines an abstract interface that represents a particular panel of information, and provides a content manager that dynamically discovers and refreshes new panels as they are added or modified.

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


linux kernel integrity measurement using contextual inspection This paper introduces the Linux Kernel Integrity Monitor (LKIM) as an improvement over conventional methods of software integrity measurement. LKIM employs contextual inspection as a means to more completely characterize the operational integrity of a running kernel. In addition to cryptographically hashing static code and data in the kernel, dynamic data structures are examined to provide improved integrity measurement. The base approach examines structures that control the execution flow of the kernel through the use of function pointers as well as other data that affect the operation of the kernel. Such structures provide an efficient means of extending the kernel operations, but they are also a means of inserting malicious code without modifying the static parts. The LKIM implementation is discussed and initial performance data is presented to show that contextual inspection is practical

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


Managing redundancy in CAN-based networks supporting N-Version Programming Software is a major source of reliability degradation in dependable systems. One of the classical remedies is to provide software fault tolerance by using N-Version Programming (NVP). However, due to requirements on non-standard hardware and the need for changes and additions at all levels of the system, NVP solutions are costly, and have only been used in special cases. In a previous work, a low-cost architecture for NVP execution was developed. The key features of this architecture are the use of off-the-shelf components including communication standards and that the fault tolerance functionality, including voting, error detection, fault-masking, consistency management, and recovery, is moved into a separate redundancy management circuitry (one for each redundant computing node). In this article we present an improved design of that architecture, specifically resolving some potential inconsistencies that were not treated in detail in the original design. In particular, we present novel techniques for enforcing replica determinism. Our improved architecture is based on using the Controller Area Network (CAN). This choice goes beyond the obvious interest of using standards in order to reduce the cost, since all the rest of the architecture is designed to take full advantage of the CAN standard features, such as data consistency, in order to significantly reduce the complexity, the efficiency and the cost of the resultant system. Although initially developed for NVP, our redundancy management circuitry also supports other software replication techniques, such as active replication.

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

software fault tolerance
replica determinism

distributed computing
can protocol
n-version programming


Exploitation of unlabeled sequences in hidden Markov models This paper presents a method for effectively using unlabeled sequential data in the learning of hidden Markov models (HMMs). With the conventional approach, class labels for unlabeled data are assigned deterministically by HMMs learned from labeled data. Such labeling often becomes unreliable when the number of labeled data is small. We propose an extended Baum-Welch (EBW) algorithm in which the labeling is undertaken probabilistically and iteratively so that the labeled and unlabeled data likelihoods are improved. Unlike the conventional approach, the EBW algorithm guarantees convergence to a local maximum of the likelihood. Experimental results on gesture data and speech data show that when labeled training data are scarce, by using unlabeled data, the EBW algorithm improves the classification performance of HMMs more robustly than the conventional naive labeling (NIL) approach.

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

unlabeled data
sequential data
hidden markov models


Modified variational iteration method (nonlinear homogeneous initial value problem) The modified variational iteration method is applied for analytical treatment of nonlinear homogeneous initial value problem. The modified variational iteration method accelerates the convergence of the power series solution and reduces the size of work. A comparison between modified variational iteration method (MVIM) and variational iteration method (VIM) was made. The comparison enhances the use of the modified variational iteration method if we wish to obtain an approximate power series solution that converges faster to the closed form solution. The method is very simple and easy.

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

nonlinear initial value problem
modified variational iteration method


Simulation of microsatellite attitude using Kalman filtering in orbit results This paper describes the various steps of the design and the implementation of the new reduced model of the extended Kalman filter (EKF) for small Euler angles on the Algerian microsatellite (Alsat-1). A specific implementation of the EKF is proposed to extract attitude and body rate in a circular low earth orbit (LEO) with a boom deployed for passive pitch and roll stabilisation and active Y-momentum wheel plus Z-reaction wheel and magnetorquer control. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the implementation. The simulation results have been validated using MonteCarlo method. In-orbit test results are presented to evaluate the performance of the new reduced model of the EKF for small Euler angles during accurate Nadir-pointing control.

B 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 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 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

simulation
microsatellite
kalman filtering
control


Testing graphs for colorability properties Let P be a property of graphs. An E-test for P is a randomized algorithm which, given the ability to make queries whether a desired pair of vertices of an input graph G with n vertices are adjacent or not, distinguishes, with high probability, between the case of G satisfying P and the case that it has to be modified by adding and removing more than is an element of(''(2)) edges to make it satisfy P. The 2 property P is called testable if for every E there exists an E-test for P whose total number of queries is independent of the size of the input graph. Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Ron [Property testing and its connection to learning and approximation, J ACM 45 (1998), 653-750] showed that certain graph properties, like k-colorability, admit an c-test. In Alon, Fischer, Krivelevich, and Szegedy [Efficient testing of large graphs, Combinatorica 20 (2000), 451-476] a first step towards a logical characterization of the testable graph properties was made by proving that all first order properties of type "there exists for all" are testable, while there exist first-order graph properties of type "for all there exists" that are not testable. For proving the positive part, it was shown that all properties describable by a very general type of coloring problem are testable. While this result is tight from the standpoint of first order expressions, further steps towards the characterization of the testable graph properties can be taken by considering the coloring problem instead. It is proven here that other classes of graph properties, describable by various generalizations of the coloring notion used in Alon et al. [Combinatorica 20 (2000), 451-476], are testable, showing that this approach can broaden the understanding of the nature of the testable graph properties. The proof combines some generalizations of the methods used in Alon et al. with additional methods. (c) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


Early experiences with live migration of SR-IOV enabled InfiniBand We identified the challenges of live migration with SR-IOV InfiniBand (IB). We demonstrated an early prototype of live migration with SR-IOV IB. We demonstrated use cases of live migration of SR-IOV IB. We identified required IB hardware features to enable seamless live migration.

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

io virtualization
vm migration
sr-iov
architecture


a system for controlling led blink in wearable fashion Recently, gadgets and clothes using luminous equipments, which consist of wearable fashion, have attracted attention in many events such as fashion shows and exhibitions. Flicker patterns of these electronic equipments are sometimes controlled by microcomputers. By using a microcomputer, it is possible to use a complex pattern controlled by a program. However, it is difficult for a user to program his/her desired flicker pattern with a microcomputer. In this paper, we present a control system of flicker patterns focusing on LEDs. Our proposing system introduces the notion of the incremental programming for designing flicker patterns. Then, a long time pattern can be stored in a microcomputer by compressing a flicker pattern data. Moreover, we discuss the validity of this system through experiences in several events.

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

wearable computing
media art
development environment
programming method


Experimental parameter identification of a multi-scale musculoskeletal model controlled by electrical stimulation: application to patients with spinal cord injury We investigated the parameter identification of a multi-scale physiological model of skeletal muscle, based on Huxleys formulation. We focused particularly on the knee joint controlled by quadriceps muscles under electrical stimulation (ES) in subjects with a complete spinal cord injury. A noninvasive and in vivo identification protocol was thus applied through surface stimulation in nine subjects and through neural stimulation in one ES-implanted subject. The identification protocol included initial identification steps, which are adaptations of existing identification techniques to estimate most of the parameters of our model. Then we applied an original and safer identification protocol in dynamic conditions, which required resolution of a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem to identify the serial element stiffness of quadriceps. Each identification step and cross validation of the estimated model in dynamic condition were evaluated through a quadratic error criterion. The results highlighted good accuracy, the efficiency of the identification protocol and the ability of the estimated model to predict the subject-specific behavior of the musculoskeletal system. From the comparison of parameter values between subjects, we discussed and explored the inter-subject variability of parameters in order to select parameters that have to be identified in each patient.

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

muscle model
biomechanical model
simulation
paraplegia


Capacity aware Scalable Video Coding in P2P on Demand Streaming Systems Scalable video coding can handle peer heterogeneity of P2P streaming applications, but there is still a lack of comprehensive studies on how to use it to improve video playback quality. In this paper we propose a capacity aware scalable video coding mechanism for P2P on demand streaming system. The proposed mechanism includes capacity based neighbor selection, adaptive data scheduling and streaming layer adjustment, and can enable each peer to select appropriate streaming layers and acquire streaming chunks with proper sequence, along with choosing specific peers to provide them. Simulation results show that the presented mechanism can decrease the system's startup and playback delay, and increase the video playback quality as well as playback continuity, and thus it provides a better quality of experience for users.

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

p2p streaming
scalable video coding
data scheduling
neighbor selection


Fast Dimension-based Partitioning and Merging clustering algorithm This research introduces extremely fast and scalable clustering algorithm. The proposed algorithm detects automatically clusters number. Furthermore, this algorithm uses three insensitive tuning parameters.

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

subspace clustering
density-based clustering


Structured kernel quantile regression Quantile regression can provide more useful information on the conditional distribution of a response variable given covariates while classical regression provides informations on the conditional mean alone. In this paper, we propose a structured quantile estimation methodology in a nonparametric function estimation setup. Through the functional analysis of variance decomposition, the optimization of the proposed method can be solved using a series of quadratic and linear programmings. Our method automatically selects relevant covariates by adopting a lasso-type penalty. The performance of the proposed methodology is illustrated through numerical examples on both simulated and real data.

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

functional anova decomposition
lasso
linear program
quadratic program
62g08
62f07


Optimal benchmarking for active portfolio managers Within an agency theoretic framework adapted to the portfolio delegation issue, we show how to construct optimal benchmarks. In accordance with US regulations, the benchmark-adjusted compensation scheme is taken to be symmetric. The investors control consists in forcing the manager to adopt the appropriate benchmark so that his first-best optimum is attained. Solving simultaneously the managers and the investors dynamic optimization programs in a fairly general framework, we characterize the optimal benchmark. We then provide completely explicit solutions when the investors and the managers utility functions exhibit different CRRA parameters. We find that, even under optimal benchmarking, it is never optimal for the manager, and therefore for the investor, to follow exactly the benchmark, except in a very restrictive case. We finally assess by simulation the practical importance, in particular in terms of the investors welfare, of selecting a sub-optimal benchmark.

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 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

incentive fees
mutual funds
continuous time trading
martingale approach
principal-agent model


visible and controllable rfid tags Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags containing privacy-sensitive information are increasingly embedded into personal documents (e.g., passports and driver's licenses). The problem is that people are often unaware of the security and privacy risks associated with RFID, likely because the technology remains largely invisible and uncontrollable for the individual. To mitigate this problem, we developed a collection of novel yet simple and inexpensive alternative tag designs to make RFID visible and controllable. This video and demonstration illustrates these designs. For awareness, our tags provide visual, audible, or tactile feedback when in the range of an RFID reader. For control, people can allow or disallow access to the information on the tag by how they touch, orient, move, press, or illuminate the tag (for example, Figure 1 shows a tilt-sensitive RFID tag).

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


Rapid almost-complete broadcasting in faulty networks This paper Studies the problem of broadcasting in synchronous point-to-point networks, where one initiator owns a piece of information that has to be transmitted to all other vertices as fast as possible. The model of fractional dynamic faults with threshold is considered: in every step either a fixed number c(G)-1, where c(G) is the edge connectivity of the Communication graph, or a fraction alpha of sent messages can be lost depending on which quantity is larger. As the main result we show that in complete graphs and hypercubes it is possible to inform all hot a constant number of vertices, exhibiting only a logarithmic slowdown, i.e. in time O(D log n) where D is the diameter of the network and n is the number of vertices. Moreover, for complete graphs Under sonic additional conditions (sense of direction, or alpha < 0.55) the remaining constant number of vertices can be informed in the same time, i.e. O(log n). (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


A multistage perceptual quality assessment for compressed digital angiogram images This paper describes a multistage perceptual quality assessment (MPQA) model for compressed images. The motivation for the development of a perceptual quality assessment is to measure (in)visible differences between original and processed images. The MPQA produces visible distortion maps and quantitative error measures informed by considerations of the human visual system (HVS). Original and decompressed images are decomposed into different spatial frequency bands and orientations modeling the human cortex. Contrast errors are calculated for each frequency and orientation, and masked as a function of contrast sensitivity and background uncertainty. Spatially masked contrast error measurements are then made across frequency bands and orientations to produce a single perceptual distortion visibility map (PDVM). A perceptual quality rating (PQR) is calculated from the PDVM and transformed into a one to five scale, PQR(1-5), for direct comparison with the mean opinion score, generally used in subjective ratings. The proposed MPQA model is based on existing perceptual quality assessment models, while it is differentiated by the inclusion of contrast masking as a function of background uncertainty. A pilot study of clinical experiments on wavelet-compressed digital angiogram has been performed on a sample set of angiogram images to identify diagnostically acceptable reconstruction. Our results show that the PQR(1-5) of diagnostically acceptable lossy image reconstructions have better agreement with cardiologists' responses than objective error measurement methods, such as peak signal-to-noise ratio A Perceptual thresholding and CSF-based Uniform quantization (PCU) method is also proposed using the vision models presented in this paper. The vision models are implemented in the thresholding and quantization stages of a compression algorithm and shown to produce improved compression ratio performance with less visible distortion than that of the embedded zerotrees wavelet (EZWs).

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


low-power sub-threshold design of secure physical unclonable functions The unique and unpredictable nature of silicon enables the use of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) for chip identification and authentication. Since the function of PUFs depends on minute uncontrollable process variations, a low supply voltage can benefit PUFs by providing high sensitivity to variations and low power consumption as well. Motivated by this, we explore the feasibility of sub-threshold arbiter PUFs in 45nm CMOS technology. By modeling process variations and interconnect imbalance effects at the post-layout design level, we optimize the PUF supply voltage for the minimum power-delay product and investigate the trade-offs on PUF uniqueness and reliability. Moreover, we demonstrate that such a design optimization does not compromise the security of PUFs regarding modeling attacks and side-channel analysis attacks. Our final 64-stage sub-threshold PUF design only needs 418 gates and consumes 0.047 pJ energy per cycle, which is very promising for low-power wireless sensing and security 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

sub-threshold circuits
physical unclonable function
embedded system security
rfid


second workshop on software quality Software products are a critical and strategic asset in anorganizations' business. They are becoming larger, moresophisticated and more complex. The challenge is to developmore complicated software products within the constraints oftime and resources without the sacrifice of quality. Qualitystandards, methodologies and techniques have been continuallyproposed by researchers and used by software engineers in theindustry. The Second Workshop on Software Quality aims tobring together academic, industrial and commercial communitiesinterested in software quality topics to discuss the differenttechnologies being defined and used in the software quality area.

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

software quality assurance
software engineering
management


Bounded seas Traditional island grammars are difficult to define and are not flexible enough. Bounded seas a new technique of island parsing are composable, robust, reusable and easy to define. Bounded seas are specified using our extension of parsing expression grammars. Parsers utilizing bounded seas require less effort to define and provide both good precision and performance in the two performed case studies.

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

island parsing
parsing expression grammars


An energy aware fuzzy approach to unequal clustering in wireless sensor networks In order to gather information more efficiently in terms of energy consumption, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are partitioned into clusters. In clustered WSNs, each sensor node sends its collected data to the head of the cluster that it belongs to. The cluster-heads are responsible for aggregating the collected data and forwarding it to the base station through other cluster-heads in the network. This leads to a situation known as the hot spots problem where cluster-heads that are closer to the base station tend to die earlier because of the heavy traffic they relay. In order to solve this problem, unequal clustering algorithms generate clusters of different sizes. In WSNs that are clustered with unequal clustering, the clusters close to the base station have smaller sizes than clusters far from the base station. In this paper, a fuzzy energy-aware unequal clustering algorithm (EAUCF), that addresses the hot spots problem, is introduced. EAUCF aims to decrease the intra-cluster work of the cluster-heads that are either close to the base station or have low remaining battery power. A fuzzy logic approach is adopted in order to handle uncertainties in cluster-head radius estimation. The proposed algorithm is compared with some popular clustering algorithms in the literature, namely Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy, Cluster-Head Election Mechanism using Fuzzy Logic and Energy-Efficient Unequal Clustering. The experiment results show that EAUCF performs better than the other algorithms in terms of first node dies, half of the nodes alive and energy-efficiency metrics in all scenarios. Therefore, EAUCF is a stable and energy-efficient clustering algorithm to be utilized in any WSN application.

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

wireless sensor networks
fuzzy logic
clustering


using forum in an organizational learning context Information and Communication Technologies have a growing impact on long life learning. Organizational Learning is an increasingly important area of research that concerns the way organizations learn and thus augment their competitive advantage, innovativeness, and effectiveness. Within the project MEMORAe2.0, we are interested by the capitalization of knowledge in the context of an organization, but also by the externalization and capitalization of tacit knowledge that's why we use a forum in an organizational learning context. We developed the E-MEMORAe2.0 environment which is based on the concept of learning organizational memory.

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

organizational memory
organizational learning
forum


Hierarchical projection regression for online estimation of elbow joint angle using EMG signals Exoskeletons offer great facilities to the elderly and disabled people with respect to extending their moving ranges and reacting to certain physical activities. Electromyogram (EMG) signals, which are derived from the neuromuscular system, provide an important access to the human-robot interface. On one hand, EMG signals can be used for real-time estimation of the motion intention of human body, e.g., the current joint angle status. On the other hand, however, the process of the mass EMG data, which are captured instantaneously from skin surface, challenges the state-of-the-art technology. Because its non-stationary and randomness, it is difficult to extract the valuable and stable features from the raw EMG signals. This paper investigates into the learning process of high dimensional EMG signals with a hierarchical mechanism that projects the original data into a lower feature space to achieve a local refined mapping from the EMG signals to the motion states of the human body. This hierarchically projected regression algorithm constructs incrementally a tree-based knowledge library, whose components represent local regression models. The components will be retrieved online efficiently and contribute to the estimation of the motion states. A great number of experiments are carried out to evaluate the accuracy of this novel algorithm.

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

exoskeletons
hierarchical projection regression

electromyogram (emg) signals
k-means clustering
linear discriminant analysis


A faster algorithm for the resource allocation problem with convex cost functions We revisit the classical resource allocation problem with general convex objective functions, subject to an integer knapsack constraint. This class of problems is fundamental in discrete optimization and arises in a wide variety of applications. In this paper, we propose a novel polynomial-time divide-and-conquer algorithm (called the multi-phase algorithm) and prove that it has a computational complexity of O(nlog?nlog?N) O ( n log ? n log ? N ) , which outperforms the best known polynomial-time algorithm with O(n(log?N)2) O ( n ( log ? N ) 2 ) .

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

polynomial-time algorithms
complexity analysis
data structure
nonlinear combinatorial optimization


Jointly Optimized Spatial Prediction and Block Transform for Video and Image Coding This paper proposes a novel approach to jointly optimize spatial prediction and the choice of the subsequent transform in video and image compression. Under the assumption of a separable first-order Gauss-Markov model for the image signal, it is shown that the optimal Karhunen-Loeve Transform, given available partial boundary information, is well approximated by a close relative of the discrete sine transform (DST), with basis vectors that tend to vanish at the known boundary and maximize energy at the unknown boundary. The overall intraframe coding scheme thus switches between this variant of the DST named asymmetric DST (ADST), and traditional discrete cosine transform (DCT), depending on prediction direction and boundary information. The ADST is first compared with DCT in terms of coding gain under ideal model conditions and is demonstrated to provide significantly improved compression efficiency. The proposed adaptive prediction and transform scheme is then implemented within the H.264/AVC intra-mode framework and is experimentally shown to significantly outperform the standard intra coding mode. As an added benefit, it achieves substantial reduction in blocking artifacts due to the fact that the transform now adapts to the statistics of block edges. An integer version of this ADST is also proposed.

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

blocking artifact
discrete sine transform (dst)
intra-mode
spatial transform


Interoperability of cross-organizational workflows based on process-view for collaborative product development Collaborative product development (CPD) has been widely accepted as an advanced collaboration paradigm that combines geographically distributed product development teams to develop product collaboratively and efficiently. Interoperability of cross-organizational workflows is important for CPD to facilitate the successful execution of the whole product development process across enterprises boundaries. This article, describes a timed colored petri net (TCPN) and process-view combined approach to construct cross-organizational workflows, and a three models framework of 'TCPN workflow models - Process- view workflow models - Integrated process-view workflow model' is proposed to realize the interoperability of cross-organizational workflows for CPD. A multi-agent system PVMAS provides a mediated architecture for distributed workflow management systems interoperability among cooperative enterprises. Under this architecture, a service discovery algorithm is provided for discovering the most suitable services enterprises need, a TCPN algebra model and a character string mapping algorithm are proposed to automate the mapping from a TCPN workflow model to a process-view workflow model, and the synchronization points are designated in the integrated process-view workflow model to coordinate the execution of cross-organizational workflow instances. Finally, a case study of the collaborative development of a motorcycle is presented to verify the validity of our approach for cross-organizational workflows interoperability in CPD.

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

collaborative product development
timed colored petri net

cross-organizational workflows
process-view
multi-agent system


On inclusion-driven learning of Bayesian networks Two or more Bayesian network structures are Markov equivalent when the corresponding acyclic digraphs encode the same set of conditional independencies. Therefore, the search space of Bayesian network structures may be organized in equivalence classes, where each of them represents a different set of conditional independencies. The collection of sets of conditional independencies obeys a partial order, the so-called "inclusion order." This paper discusses in depth the role that the inclusion order plays in learning the structure of Bayesian networks. In particular, this role involves the way a learning algorithm traverses the search space. We introduce a condition for traversal operators, the inclusion boundary condition, which, when it is satisfied, guarantees that the search strategy can avoid local maxima. This is proved under the assumptions that the data is sampled from a probability distribution which is faithful to an acyclic digraph, and the length of the sample is unbounded. The previous discussion leads to the design of a new traversal operator and two new learning algorithms in the context of heuristic search and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. We carry out a set of experiments with synthetic and real-world data that show empirically the benefit of striving for the inclusion order when learning Bayesian networks from data.

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

graphical markov model inclusion
structure learning


A Decoupled Local Memory Allocator Compilers use software-controlled local memories to provide fast, predictable, and power-efficient access to critical data. We show that the local memory allocation for straight-line, or linearized programs is equivalent to a weighted interval-graph coloring problem. This problem is new when allowing a color interval to "wrap around," and we call it the submarine-building problem. This graph-theoretical decision problem differs slightly from the classical ship-building problem, and exhibits very interesting and unusual complexity properties. We demonstrate that the submarine-building problem is NP-complete, while it is solvable in linear time for not-so-proper interval graphs, an extension of the the class of proper interval graphs. We propose a clustering heuristic to approximate any interval graph into a not-so-proper interval graph, decoupling spill code generation from local memory assignment. We apply this heuristic to a large number of randomly generated interval graphs reproducing the statistical features of standard local memory allocation benchmarks, comparing with state-of-the-art heuristics.

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

algorithms
performance
scratchpad memory
memory allocation
compiler


Spectral efficiency of distributed MIMO code division multiple access systems over multipath fading channels Distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is a new architecture for next generation wireless communication systems with distributed multiple antennas. In this paper, an uplink model for multiuser distributed MIMO systems with wideband code-division multiple-access (CDMA) technology is presented. We focus on the case where there is no channel state information at the transmitter, but channel state information is assumed at the receiver. The spectral efficiency of the uplink system with single-user detectors at the base stations under multipath fading channels is investigated carefully. Two cases with different assumptions of interference knowledge are studied in detail. The spreading sequences of the CDMA systems are assumed to employ loosely synchronized (LS) spreading sequences and random spreading sequences respectively. LS spreading sequences exhibit a so-called interference free window (IFW), where both the auto-correlation and cross-correlation of the codes become zero. Therefore LS sequences have the promise of mitigating the effects of inter symbol interference (ISI) and multiple access interference (MAI) in multipath fading channels. It is shown by numerical results that the uplink spectral efficiency of the distributed MIMO-CDMA system using LS sequences can significantly outperform that of the system using random spreading sequences. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

multiple-input multiple-output (mimo) systems


LINKING TEMPORAL FIRST ORDER LOGIC AND HIDDEN MARKOV MODELS WITH ABSTRACT EVENTS In previous work,we introduced a novel concept of a generalised event,an abstract event, which we define as a change of state of abstract predicates that represent knowledge about the surrounding world. Abstract predicates are defined by formulae in temporal first-order logic (Abstract Event Specification Language (AESL))whose leaf predicates represent low-level sensor-derived knowledge. Abstract events are detected by Rete Networks structured as a deductive knowledge-base. Current Abstract Event detectors can not express sufficiently well certain high-level situations,such activity derived from user trajectories. In this work we introduce a novel type of abstract event detector,a hidden Markov Model detector (hMM-detector). hMM-detectors are implemented as pattern recognition engines that use several stochastic models,hidden Markov Models (hMMs),in order to classify observed activities to the most likely activity class. We link hMM-detectors with AESL by specifying a new AESL operator for defining hMM-based Abstract Events, thus increasing AESL's expressive power. We describe the experimental evaluation of the above work that was carried out at the University of Cambridge. hMM-Detectors were trained and tested with real data from the Active BAT location system. We evaluate the expressiveness of the enhanced AESL by discussing three case studies in healthcare that relate to continuous monitoring of elderly or injured patients. We demonstrate that AESL can be used in order to improve the dependability of continuous monitoring of patients and the provision of high-quality healthcare.

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

middleware
pervasive computing
movement recognition
first-order-logic


A group arousal analysis based on the movement synchronization of audiences Recent years have witnessed the rapid growth of performing arts in Korea as well as worldwide. Advances in performing arts technologies have allowed for a shift from one-way performances to interactive ones. The audiences arousal is one of the most important features in interactive performances. An audience consists of a group of people responding collectively to a stimulus. Here arousal is a critical factor influencing audience satisfaction and can be measured based on the audiences behavior. The total group arousal of an audience is formed by exchanging emotional effects with surroundings. In this regard, empirical approaches are not sufficient in comparison to various theoretical approaches to group arousal. Previous studies have generally evaluated group arousal by the sum of group members emotions recognized from their faces, gestures, or voice. However, it is not easy to apply real-time data from individuals to performing arts. In addition, it is difficult to set sensors for audiences to retrieve human data. In this regard, this paper proposes a method for empirically measuring group arousal based on the rapid movement synchronization of a given group. In the proposed method, the extent to which each members movement response is synchronized with differential images and histograms is measured first, and then group arousal is calculated by the degree of this synchronization. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated through an experiment by setting a threshold for deciding whether there is a response to a stimulus. The experimental results for 15 groups indicate the accuracy of the proposed method to be 82%.

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

group arousal
audience
movement synchronization


SUSY

Les

Houches

Accord

I/O

made

easy

A

library

for

reading

and

writing

data

in

the

SUSY

Les

Houches

Accord

format

is

presented.

The

implementation

is

in

native

Fortran

The

data

are

contained

in

a

single

array

conveniently

indexed

by

preprocessor

statements.

Program

summary

Program

title:

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

URL:

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library.

Queen's

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Fortran

Computer.

For

the

build

process,

a

Fortran

compiler

in

a

Unixish

environment

(make,

shell)

are

required

Operating

system:

Linux,

Mac

OS,

Windows

(Cygwin),

Unix

RAM:

The

SLHA

Record

is

currently

bytes

long

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

Exchange

of

SUSY

parameters

and

decay

information

in

an

ASCII

file

format.

Solution

method:

The

provides

routines

for

reading

and

writing

files

in

the

SUSY

Les

Houches

Accord

format,

a

common

interchange

format

for

SUSY

parameters

and

decay

data.

Restrictions:

The

fixed-sized

array

that

holds

the

data

necessarily

limits

the

amount

of

decay

data

that

can

be

stored.

This

limit

can

be

enlarged

by

editing

and

re-running

the

program.

Unusual

features:

Data

are

transported

in

a

single

"double

complex"

array

in

Fortran,

indexed

through

preprocessor

macros.

This

is

about

the

simplest

conceivable

container

and

needs

neither

dynamic

memory

allocation

nor

Fortran

extension

like

structures.

Running

time:

Both

reading

and

writing

a

SLHA

file

are

typically

in

the

range

of

a

few

milliseconds.

(C)

Elsevier

B.V.

All

rights

reserved.

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

susy models
exchange of data
interfacing


Error estimation in a balanced norm for a convection-diffusion problem with two different boundary layers The \(\varepsilon \)-weighted energy norm is the natural norm for singularly perturbed convection-diffusion problems with exponential layers. But, this norm is too weak to recognise features of characteristic layers. We present an error analysis in a differently weighted energy norma balanced normthat overcomes this drawback.

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


REWRITING P SYSTEMS WITH CONDITIONAL COMMUNICATION: IMPROVED HIERARCHIES We consider here a variant of rewriting P systems [1], where communication is controlled by tire contents of the strings, not by the evolution rules used for obtaining these strings. Some new characterizations of recursively enumerable languages are obtained by means of P systems with a small number of membranes, which improves some of the known results from [1] and [4].

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

membrane computing
recursively enumerable language


Disconjugacy and C-disfocality of second-order self-adjoint difference equation The disconjugacy and the C-disfocality of the second-order self-adjoint difference equation Lu(t) = Delta[p(t)Delta u(t - 1)] + q(t)u(t) = 0, are discussed in this paper, where p(t) is nonzero with same sign on N(a + 1, b + 2) and q(t) is real valued on N(a + 1, b + 1). Some sufficient conditions are obtained explicitly in terms of coefficients, which can be easily verified. These results generalize some known ones in the literature. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


combining source-to-source transformations and processor instruction set extensions for the automated design-space exploration of embedded systems Industry's demand for flexible embedded solutions providing high performance and short time-to-market has led to the development of configurable and extensible processors. These pre-verified application-specific processors build on proven baseline cores while allowing for some degree of customization through user-defined instruction set extensions (ISE) implemented as functional units in an extended micro-architecture. The traditional design flow for ISE is based on plain C sources of the target application and, after some ISE identification and synthesis stages, a modified source file is produced with explicit handles to the new machine instructions. Further code optimization is left to the compiler. In this paper we develop a novel approach, namely the combined exploration of source-level transformations and ISE identification. We have combined automated code transformation and ISE generators to explore the potential benefits of such a combination. This applies up to 50 transformations from a selection of 70, and synthesizes ISEs for the resulting code. The resulting performance has been measured on 26 applications from the SNU-RT and UTDSP benchmarks. We show that the instruction extensions generated by automated tools are heavily influenced by source code structure. Our results demonstrate that a combination of source-level transformations and instruction set extensions can yield average performance improvements of 47\%. This out performs instruction set extensions when applied in isolation, and in extreme cases yields a speedup of 2.85.

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

design space exploration
source-level transformations
customizable processors
instruction set extension
asips
compilers


A STUDY OF HIGH FILL EMBANKMENT CHAIN EFFECT OF THE DISEASE FEATURE This paper reveals the chain rule of road diseases, and through the analysis of three types of chain effects in common diseases of high embankment-their form and characteristics, discusses the law of diseases on the basis of chain mechanism analysis and prevention and control technology, so as to proposes the application of broken chains principle.

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


From source code to runtime behaviour: Software metrics help to select the computer architecture The decision which hardware platform to use for a certain application is an important problem in computer architecture. This paper reports on a study where a data-mining approach is used for this decision. It relies purely on source-code characteristics, to avoid potentially expensive programme executions. One challenge in this context is that one cannot infer how often functions that are part of the application are typically executed. The main insight of this study is twofold: (a) Source-code characteristics are sufficient nevertheless. (b) Linking individual functions with the runtime behaviour of the programme as a whole yields good predictions. In other words, while individual data objects from the training set may be quite inaccurate, the resulting model is not.

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

data mining
performance prediction
source-code metrics
control-flow graphs


Continuous estimation of systolic blood pressure using the pulse arrival time and intermittent calibration A continuous noninvasive method of systolic blood pressure estimation is described. Systolic blood pressure is estimated by combining two separately obtained components: a higher frequency component obtained by extracting a specific frequency band of pulse arrival time and a lower frequency component obtained from the intermittently acquired systolic blood pressure measurements with an auscultatory or oscillometric system. The pulse arrival time was determined by the time interval from ORS apex in electrocardiogram to the onset of photoplethysmogram in a fingertip beat-by-beat via an oximetric sensor. The method was examined in 20 patients during cardiovascular surgery. The estimated values of systolic blood pressure were compared with those measured invasively using a radial arterial catheter. The results showed that the correlation coefficients between estimated values and invasively obtained systolic blood pressure reached 0.97 +/- 0.02 (mean +/- SD), and the error remained within +/- 10% in 97.8% of the monitoring period. By using a system with automatic cuff inflation and deflation to acquire intermittent systolic blood pressure values, this method can be applicable for the continuous noninvasive monitoring of systolic blood pressure.

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

photoplethysmogram
pulse arrival time
systolic blood pressure


Designing efficient Hough Transform by noise-level shaping A large number of techniques have been proposed for acceleration of the Hough Transform, because the transformation is computationally very expensive in general. It is known that the sampling interval in parameter space is strongly related to the computation cost. The precision of the transformation and the processing speed are in a trade-off relationship. No fair comparison of the processing speed between various methods was performed in all previous works, because no criterion had been given for the sampling interval of parameter, and because the precision of parameter was not equal between methods. At the beginning of our research, we derive the relationship between the sampling interval and the precision of parameter. Then we derive a framework for comparing computation cost under equal condition for precision of parameter, regarding the total number of sampling points of a parameter as the computation cost. We define the transformation error in the Hough Transform, and the error is regarded as transformation noise. In this paper we also propose a design method called "Noise-level Shaping," by which we can set the transformation noise to an arbitrarily level. The level of the noise is varied according to the value of a parameter. Noise-level Shaping makes it possible for us to find the efficient parameterization and to find the efficient sampling interval in a specific application of the Hough Transform.

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

hough transform
sampling interval
transformation noise


Massively parallel networks for edge localization and contour integration - adaptable relaxation approach The paper describes a new adaptive neural network for edge-based pattern extraction problems. In the model, each neuron represents an edge with continuous state variables describing its location and orientation. The post-synaptic distribution is dependent on the state variables. Each neuron adjusts its state to increase its membrane potential, which results in highly adaptive dynamics of the synaptic weight distribution. The network allocates multiple neurons with different orientation modes for each edge. The strategy allows accurate modeling of multi-modal distributions at key-points such as corners and junctions. As a result, the network delineates edges at sub-pixel accuracy while preserving key-points. It is also capable of processing a sequence of images and following moving objects. The network is extended for contour integration and key-point detection tasks. The paper presents experiments conducted on both synthetic and non-synthetic data to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

vision
feature extraction
adaptive system


hardware-efficient propagate partial sad architecture for variable block size motion estimation in h.264/avc One hardware efficient and high speed architecture for variableblock size motion estimation in H.264 is presented in this paper. Through compressing the propagated data and optimizing theprocessing element and adder tree circuits in pipeline, this architecture gets more hardware efficient datapath logic. Compared with the original Propagate Partial SAD structure, 12.1\% hardware cost can be saved. With TSMC 0.18?m CMOS 1P6M standard celllibrary, the maximum clock speed of this design is 227MHz in worstwork conditions (1.62V, 125C). With the 48x32 search range, the maximum throughput of our design is 147786 MB/S, which can be used in the real-time encoding of VGA resolution frame with 4 reference frames at 30Hz.

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


Robustness of fuzzy reasoning via logically equivalence measure ? In this paper, we discuss robustness of fuzzy reasoning. After proposing the definition of perturbation of fuzzy sets based on some logic-oriented equivalence measure, we present robustness results for various fuzzy logic connectives, fuzzy implication operators, inference rules and fuzzy reasoning machines, and discuss the relations between the robustness of fuzzy reasoning and that of fuzzy conjunction and implication operators. The robustness results are presented in terms of ?-equalities of fuzzy sets based on some logic-oriented equivalence measure, and the maximum of ? (which ensures the corresponding ?-equality holds) is derived.

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

fuzzy sets
fuzzy reasoning
logically equivalence

robustness of fuzzy reasoning
?-equality


Hot-carrier reliability study of second and first impact ionization degradation in 0.15-?m channel-length N-MOSFETS The hot-carrier degradation induced by first- and second-impact ionization events is compared in advanced N-MOSFETs used for digital applications with a 3.2-nm gate-oxide thickness. Results show that the substrate enhanced electron injection (SEEI) mechanism is still increased in 0.15-?m channel length devices with p-pockets and shallow drain junctions with a measured much higher injection efficiency than that in older technologies. The enhancement of the gate current originates from tunneling contributions and from the secondaryprimary-hot electron currents at low energy. The induced damage is explained solely by the interface trap generation and mobility reduction in 3.2-nm thick gate-oxide devices. The difference between first and second hot-carrier damage is related to the extension of the degraded region toward the source. This is in contrast to thicker gate-oxide N-devices where the SEEI effect is weak and where the electron trapping extends from the gate-drain overlap region toward the source in addition to the generated interface traps.

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

impact ionization
substrate enhanced electron injection
interface trap generation
electron trapping


The complexity of manipulative attacks in nearly single-peaked electorates ? Many electoral control and manipulation problemswhich we will refer to in general as manipulative actions problemsare NP-hard in the general case. It has recently been noted that many of these problems fall into polynomial time if the electorate is single-peaked, i.e., is polarized along some axis/issue. However, real-world electorates are not truly single-peaked. There are usually some mavericks, and so real-world electorates tend merely to be nearly single-peaked. This paper studies the complexity of manipulative-action algorithms for elections over nearly single-peaked electorates. We do this for many notions of nearness and for a broad range of election systems. We provide instances where even one maverick jumps the manipulative-action complexity up to NP-hardness, but we also provide many instances where some number of mavericks can be tolerated without increasing the manipulative-action complexity.

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

algorithms and complexity
computational social choice
election control/manipulation
multiagent systems
nearly single-peaked preferences


A semi-parametric test based on a quasi-likelihood approach for comparing the estimated spectra of two neural spike trains ? In this work, we provide a semi-parametric approach for testing the hypothesis that the spectra of two neural spike trains are equal. Estimates of the spectra are obtained by taking the Fourier transforms of the cumulant functions using convergence factors for smoothing. A quasi-likelihood ratio test for comparing different hypotheses is applied since the estimates are asymptotically Normal with constant variances. An illustrative example is presented where the information transferred to the spinal cord from the muscle spindle, under the influence of two stimuli can be separated into two parts 019 and 19120Hz. The dependence on the frequency in both parts is of a quadratic form.

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

spectral density function (sdf)
convergence factor
asymptotic normality
quasi-likelihood ratio test
neurophysiological example


3-D model-based vehicle tracking This paper aims at tracking vehicles from monocular intensity image sequences and presents an efficient and robust approach to three-dimensional (3-D) model-based vehicle tracking. Under the weak perspective assumption and the ground-plane constraint, the movements of model projection in the two-dimensional image plane can be decomposed into two motions: translation and rotation. They are the results of the corresponding movements of 3-D translation on the ground plane (GP) and rotation around the normal of the GP, which can be determined separately. A new metric based on point-to-line segment distance is proposed to evaluate the similarity between an image region and an instantiation of a 3-D vehicle model under a given pose. Based on this, we provide an efficient pose refinement method to refine the vehicle's pose parameters. An improved EKF is also proposed to track and to predict vehicle motion with a precise kinematics model. Experimental results with both indoor and outdoor data show that the algorithm obtains desirable performance even under severe occlusion and clutter.

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

model-based vision
occlusion reasoning
tracking filter
traffic surveillance


A finite difference approach with velocity interfacial conditions for multiscale computations of crystalline solids We propose a class of velocity interfacial conditions and formulate a finite difference approach for multiscale computations of crystalline solids with relatively strong nonlinearity and large deformation. Full atomistic computations are performed in a selected small subdomain only. With a coarse grid cast over the whole domain and the coarse scale dynamics computed by finite difference schemes, we perform a fast average of the fine scale solution in the atomistic subdomain to force agreement between scales. During each coarse scale time step, we adopt a linear wave approximation around the interface, with the wave speed updated using the coarse grid information. We then develop a class of velocity interfacial conditions with different order of accuracy. The interfacial conditions are straightforward to formulate, easy to implement, and effective for reflection reduction in crystalline solids with strong nonlinearity. The nice features are demonstrated through numerical tests.

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


Visualization of FE-data, interactively and on video This article presents a computational environment for visualization of FE-data and video production. The general ways to visualize FE-data are discussed and software suitable for building visualization applications are described. The pitfalls and considerations to be taken in video production are pointed out and described. The procedure in video editing is exemplified for one system.Two applications of animations are described. One has been developed to get a deeper insight and understanding of how a 3D mesh generator works. The other is a presentation of results from a time-stepping procedure of a wave propagation problem on video. The tools we have chosen for our visualization system are AVS (Application Visualization System) from AVS/UNIRAS, and Video Machine from FAST.

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


a simulation study of xcp-b performance in wireless multi-hop networks XCP-b proposes a modification to the XCP router algorithm that computes the spare bandwidth. The modification removes the need for an XCP router to know the exact capacity of the channel, making it possible to use the XCP-b variant in transmission media where the capacity is hard to measure. An example of this kind of medium is the IEEE 802.11. Previous work shows that XCP-b behaves well in single-hop wireless networks and that it outperforms TCP in terms of fairness, queuing delay, stability and efficiency when the bandwidth delay product of the network grows. In this paper we extend the validation and evaluation of XCP-b to the case of multi-hop wireless networks, both stand-alone and as access networks to other wired networks. The results show that XCP-b maintains its fundamental characteristics in wireless multi-hop scenarios, such as stable throughput and low standing queues, while distributing the bandwidth fairly and using the available capacity efficiently. The simulations also show that XCP-b produces congestion window values that are closer than TCP to the theoretical upper-bound which maximizes spatial reuse.

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

congestion control
wireless multi-hop
mesh
dynamic bandwidth


A m-fold-decimation-based technique for model validation using a single system output data set Using simulation to support making decisions imposes that models are thoroughly validated. We discuss widely adopted techniques for testing the validity of simulation results against real observations, as various techniques may be employed depending on the statistical features and the number of the available system/model data sets. Confidence-interval-based comparison provides certain advantages, but cannot be employed when a single system output data set is available. We propose an effective validation technique, performing confidence-interval-based comparison using a single system data set and multiple model data sets. The system data set is considered as a discrete signal and in-fold decimation is used, according to signal processing theory, fulfilling the essential requirements C imposed to retain the statistical features of the original data set. We have evaluated both the effectiveness and the applicability of this technique, and thus have experimented with various data sets (both test and real-world). Results and conclusions are discussed to indicate the potential of the technique. (C) 2004 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

modelling and simulation
comparison techniques


PARALLEL COMBINATORIAL ALGORITHMS FOR MULTI-SETS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS In this paper we extend some well-known notions of combinatorics on multi-sets such as iterative permutation, multi-subset, iterative combination and then construct new efficient algorithms for generating all iterative permutations, multi-subsets and iterative combinations of a multi-set. Applying the parallelizing method based on output decomposition we parallelize the algorithms. Furthermore, we use these algorithms to solve an optimal problem of work arrangement and an extended knapsack one.

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

iterative combination
iterative permutation