Prediction of high-frequency electron paramagnetic resonance spectra of spin S=3/2, 5/2 systems By the use of the universal EPR simulation program created by the author, spin S = 3/2 and S = 5/2 systems are studied and their simulated EPR spectra at high frequencies (Q-band for 35 GHz and W-band for 95 GHz) are presented here. The mononuclear Fe3+ in rubredoxin, isolated from Pseudomonas oleovorans (which is an S = 5/2 system with D = 1.76 cm(-1) and E/D = 0.28), is extensively studied by EPR spectrum simulation at the Q-band, W-band, and ''Z''-band. The molybdenum- and iron-containing protein (MoFe protein), which has g values at g = 4.32, 3.65, and 2.01 (S = 3/2, D = 6.0 cm(-1), and E/D = 0.055) at the X-band, is also studied by EPR spectrum simulation at high frequencies. (C) 1997 by Elsevier Science Inc.

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

high frequency
high-spin
axial and rhombic
zero-field splitting parameters
kramers system


Watershed segmentation using prior shape and appearance knowledge Watershed transformation is a common technique for image segmentation. However, its use for automatic medical image segmentation has been limited particularly due to oversegmentation and sensitivity to noise. Employing prior shape knowledge has demonstrated robust improvements to medical image segmentation algorithms. We propose a novel method for enhancing watershed segmentation by utilizing prior shape and appearance knowledge. Our method iteratively aligns a shape histogram with the result of an improved k-means clustering algorithm of the watershed segments. Quantitative validation of magnetic resonance imaging segmentation results supports the robust nature of our method.

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

watershed transformation
prior shape knowledge
segmentation


Package Coupling Measurement in Object-Oriented Software The grouping of correlated classes into a package helps in better organization of modern object-oriented software. The quality of such packages needs to be measured so as to estimate their utilization. In this paper, new package coupling metrics are proposed, which also take into consideration the hierarchical structure of packages and direction of connections among package elements. The proposed measures have been validated theoretically as well as empirically using 18 packages taken from two open source software systems. The results obtained from this study show strong correlation between package coupling and understandability of the package which suggests that proposed metrics could be further used to represent other external software quality factors.

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

package coupling metrics understandability


Reflections on 25+ years of knowledge acquisition In this paper I give a short reflection on Knowledge Acquisition as a subfield of AI and Knowledge Engineering over the last 25 years or so. My major message is that knowledge modeling is an underrated but still important method to reduce the complexity problems that arise in constructing knowledge-based applications. Scale as apparent in the Semantic Web is another important parameter in recent developments in Knowledge Acquisition: it requires other techniques than those of the 1980s. Natural Language Processing is the most promising way forward, but also the most difficult source of the acquisition of formalized knowledge. I will argue that some of the lessons learned in building knowledge-based systems may carry over to reasoning in the Semantic Web and to knowledge acquisition from natural language web sources.

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

knowledge acquisition
knowledge engineering


New classes of quaternary cyclotomic sequence of length 2p(m) with high linear complexity In this paper, we introduce a new class of quaternary cyclotomic sequence over F-4 with period 2p(m). We prove that the constructed sequences possess high linear complexity. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

cryptography
quaternary sequence
generalized cyclotomic sequence


Multi-scenario modelling of uncertainty in stochastic chemical systems A method to model uncertainty on stochastic systems was developed. The method is based on the Chemical Master Equation. Uncertainty in an isomerization reaction and a gene regulation network was modelled. Effects were significant and dependent on the uncertain input and reaction system. The model was computationally more efficient than Kinetic Monte Carlo.

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

uncertainty
chemical master equation
monte carlo
gene regulation


Chamber for indirect calorimetry with accurate measurement and time discrimination of metabolic plateaus of over 20 min A robust algorithm for pull-calorimeters that provides a rapid response to changes in respiratory gas exchange has been implemented. Metabolic plateaus (over 20 min), such as that generated by steady treadmill exercise, can be measured accurately (<2.6% error for an energy expenditure level of 16.7 kJ min(-1)). The time resolution for changes between plateaus can be accurately found with 1 min discrimination. Implementation required only software changes but no structural or instrumentation changes to the chamber. The algorithm was based on the one developed for the push-calorimeter at the Sahlgrenska Hospital in Sweden. The method utilises published equations for the rate of O-2 consumption and CO2 production in the chamber, along with techniques for suppressing noise and identifying trends. Using the exact solution of the equations for steady state, the O-2 concentrations from the preceding 30 min period are fitted to two connected exponential segments, of variable length, using the least-squares method. The smoothed O-2 concentration and associated time derivative are then determined for the time point 15 min earlier and substituted into the respiration equations. The CO2 concentrations are subjected to the same analysis. The process is repeated every minute, and the newly computed rates of O-2 consumption and CO2 production, as well as metabolic rate, are then presented. Gas injection tests proved that the chamber can respond instantaneously to a change from one steady state of respiration to another and correctly averages repeated changes in respiration with periods less than 15 min (<1.4% error for simulated, alternating O-2 consumption levels of 0.81 min(-1) and 0.01 min(-1)). The successful integration of the algorithm into the Pennington chambers allows for traditional 24 h energy expenditure measurements and various metabolic experiments requiring rapid responses.

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

indirect calorimetry
metabolic rate
energy expenditure

fast-response calorimeter
respirometer
oxygen consumption


Backbone guided tabu search for solving the UBQP problem We propose a backbone-guided tabu search (BGTS) algorithm for the Unconstrained Binary Quadratic Programming (UBQP) problem that alternates between two phases: (1) a basic tabu search procedure to optimize the objective function as far as possible; (2) a strategy using the TS notion of strongly determined variables to alternately fix and free backbone components of the solutions which are estimated likely to share values in common with an optimal solution. Experimental results show that the proposed method is capable of finding the best-known solutions for 21 large random instances with 3000 to 7000 variables and boosts the performance of the basic TS in terms of both solution quality and computational efficiency.

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

tabu search
ubqp
strongly determined variables

backbone-guided search
variable fixing and freeing


Simulation-based optimal planning for material handling networks in mining A two-level hierarchical simulation-based framework is proposed for real-time planning in one of the largest coal mines in the world. At the coal mine, various decisions (e. g. truck locks, hopper-silo connections and silo blend values) have to be made to ship coal to customers via trains. To resolve machinery scheduling and train loading problems in an integrated manner, mathematical formulations are developed and embedded within the proposed hierarchical framework. At the upper level, the coal flow in the simulation model is directly from pits to trains and in the lower level a full simulation model of the coal mine is used for simulating the flow of coal from pits to hoppers via trucks, then from hoppers to silos and silos to loadouts via conveyors. In this work, Arena software is used for the simulation model: it retrieves real-time status and historical performance data from Microsoft SQL Server situated remotely at the coal mine. OptQuest software is used to resolve optimization problems. Finally, two types of experiments are conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed framework for the actual coal mine. Firstly, the bounds of the constraints in the upper level are varied to study the behavior of the total revenue in shift and revenue by train. Secondly, the effects of increasing variations in truck travel times, loading and dumping rates on machine utilization are studied at the lower level.

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

simulation-based optimization
hierarchical planning
coal mine scheduling problem
coal blending problem


MODELING THE SINOATRIAL NODE BY CELLULAR AUTOMATA WITH IRREGULAR TOPOLOGY The role of irregularity in intercellular connections is studied in the first natural human pacemaker called the sinoatrial node by modeling with the Greenberg-Hastings cellular automata. Facts from modern physiology about the sinoatrial node drive modeling. Heterogeneity between cell connections is reproduced by a rewiring procedure applied to a square lattice. The Greenberg-Hastings rule, representing the intrinsic cellular dynamics, is modified to imitate self-excitation of each pacemaker cell. Moreover, interactions with nearest neighbors are changed to heterogeneous ones by enhancing horizontal connections. Stationary states of the modeled system emerge as self-organized robust oscillatory states. Since the sinoatrial node role relies on a single cell cyclic activity, properties of single cells are studied. It appears that the strength and diversity of cellular oscillations depend directly on properties of intrinsic cellular dynamics. But these oscillations also depend on the underlying topology. Moderate nonuniformity of intercellular connections are found vital for proper function of the sinoatrial node, namely, for producing robust oscillatory states that are able to respond effectively to the autonomic system control.

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

greenberg-hastings model
watts-strogatz rewiring


Mining classification rules using rough sets and neural networks ? Classification is an important theme in data mining. Rough sets and neural networks are two common techniques applied to data mining problems. Integrating the advantages of two approaches, this paper presents a hybrid system to extract efficiently classification rules from decision table. Different from those previous works where rough sets were used only for accelerating or simplifying the process of using neural networks for mining knowledge from databases, in our system neural networks are served only as a tool to reduce the decision table and filter its noises while the final knowledge (rule set) is generated from the reduced decision table by rough sets. Therefore, our approach avoids the difficulty of extracting rules from a trained neural network and possesses the robustness which are lacking for rough set based approaches. The effectiveness of our approach was verified by the experiments comparing with traditional rough set and neural network approaches.

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

rough sets
neural networks
data mining
classification


A complete pattern recognition approach under Atanassovs intuitionistic fuzzy sets This research is aimed at developing a method for solving pattern recognition problems under the Atanassovs intuitionistic fuzzy sets based on similarity measures. First we proposed two similarity measures and then developed a method based on our similarity measures. We also proved that our method is able to solve the pattern recognition problems. Finally, a fault diagnosis example of the turbine vibration has been examined by our method. The example demonstrates that the proposed method cannot only diagnose the main faults of the turbine generator but also it can detect useful information for future trends and multi-fault analysis. In addition, for the convenience of computing and ranking processes, a computer interface decision support system is also developed to help decision maker make diagnoses more efficiently.

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

atanassovs intuitionistic fuzzy sets (aifss)


The Pairing of a Wavelet Basis With a Mildly Redundant Analysis via Subband Regression A distinction is usually made between wavelet bases and wavelet frames. The former are associated with a one-to-one representation of signals, which is somewhat constrained but most efficient computationally. The latter are over-complete, but they offer advantages in terms of flexibility (shape of the basis functions) and shift-invariance. In this paper, we propose a framework for improved wavelet analysis based on an appropriate pairing of a wavelet basis with a mildly redundant version of itself (frame). The processing is accomplished in four steps: 1) redundant wavelet analysis, 2) wavelet-domain processing, 3) projection of the results onto the wavelet basis, and 4) reconstruction of the signal from its nonredundant wavelet expansion. The wavelet analysis is pyramid-like and is obtained by simple modification of Mallat's filterbank algorithm (e.g., suppression of the down-sampling in the wavelet channels only). The key component of the method is the subband regression filter (Step 3) which computes a wavelet expansion that is maximally consistent in the least squares sense with the redundant wavelet analysis. We demonstrate that this approach significantly improves the performance of soft-threshold wavelet denoising with a moderate increase in computational cost. We also show that the analysis filters in the proposed framework can be adjusted for improved feature detection; in particular, a new quincunx Mexican-hat-like wavelet transform that is fully reversible and essentially behaves the (gamma/2)th Laplacian of a Gaussian.

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

fractals
isotropy
mexican-hat filter
pyramid
wavelets


Detection of daily living activities using a two-stage Markov model A supervised statistical model for detecting the activities of daily living (ADL) from sensor data streams is proposed in this paper. This method works in two stages aiming at capturing temporal intra-and inter-activity relationships. In the first stage each activity is modeled separately by a Markov model where sensors correspond to states. By modeling each sensor as a state we capture the absolute and relational temporal features within the activities. A novel data segmentation approach is proposed for accurate inferencing at the first stage. To boost the accuracy, a second stage consisting of a Hidden Markov Model is added that serves two purposes. Firstly, it acts as a corrective stage, as it learns the probability of each activity being incorrectly inferred by the first stage, so that they can be corrected at the second stage. Secondly, it introduces inter-activity transition information to capture possible time-dependent relationships between two contiguous activities. We applied our method to three smart house datasets. Comparison of the results to other traditional approaches for ADL identification shows competitive or better performance. The paper also proposes a deployment of our methodology using an agent-based architecture.

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


an imaginary friend that connects with the user's emotions In this paper we present a metaphor of an Imaginary Friend that walks along with the user. Due to a special bond with the user, the Imaginary Friend can see the emotions that the human companion is feeling glowing around her. As the user moves around she leaves behind emotion cookies that the Imaginary Friend will collect and treasure. In order to enable rich and playful interactions in the virtual-real continuum the implementation of the Imaginary Friend responds to motion, to the electrodermal activity and resorts to GPS coordinates. The Imaginary Friend was tested with several users to evaluate the connection between humans and this creature that lives in the border that separates imagination and reality.

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

electrodermal activity
imaginary friend
companion

affective wearables
pico projector
accelerometer


Demo abstract: towards extracting semantics by visualizing large traceroute datasets Many Internet mapping projects have used traceroute as a measurement primitive and have generated hundreds of millions of traceroute samples used, among many purposes, for network debugging, troubleshooting and Internet mapping. In this work, we advocate the use of visualization as a means to extract semantics from large sets of traceroute data collected from large-scale traceroute campaigns. Using subsets of these datasets consisting of all traceroutes traversing a particular Internet eXchange Point (IXP), we illustrate how visualization allows us to (1) examine existing large datasets in a different way and (2) present different views of the data that can provide new insights and lead to new questions.

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

traceroute measurements
edge bundling
00a66


(H(., .), eta)-accretive operators with an application for solving set-valued variational inclusions in Banach spaces In this paper, we introduce a new class of accretive operators-(H(., .), eta)-accretive operators, which generalize many existing monotone or accretive operators. The resolvent operator associated with an (H(., .), eta)-accretive operator is defined and its Lipschitz continuity is presented. By using the new resolvent operator technique, we also introduce and study a new class of set-valued variational inclusions involving (H(., .), eta)-accretive operators and construct a new algorithm for solving this class of set-valued variational inclusions. These results are new, and improve and generalize many known corresponding results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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 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

resolvent operator
variational inclusions
banach spaces

(h(., .), eta)-accretive operators
iterative algorithm


Discrete LQ optimal control with integral action: A simple controller on incremental form for MIMO systems A simple Linear Quadratic (LQ) optimal controller of velocity (incremental) form with approximately the same properties as a conventional PID controller of velocity form is presented, i.e. integral action. The proposed optimal controller is insensitive to slowly varying system and measurement trends and has the ability of stabilizing any linear dynamic system under weak assumptions such as the stabilizability of the system and the detectability of the system seen from the performance index.

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

mimo systems
optimal controller
integral action

pi controller
kalman filter
system identification


an integrated wireless sensing and mobile processing architecture for assisted living and healthcare applications In this paper we present a wireless solution for monitoring people in need of medical assistance. The application relies on the use of cell phones and inexpensive sensors and is best suited for the elderly and home-bound people. The main functions of the proposed architecture are: (1) Ability to collect signals through a wireless sensor network using protocols like ZigBee and Bluetooth (2) Optimized analysis of data through an adaptive architecture that allows efficient processing of data (3) Real-time alerts and notification. Implementing the above features results in an efficient health-monitoring system, providing an improved medical support for people in their homes and in assisted living environments.

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

elderly care
wireless sensors
measurement collection model
mobile applications


Analytic modeling of two-dimensional transient atmospheric pollutant dispersion by double GITT and Laplace Transform techniques An analytical solution for the transient two-dimensional atmospheric pollutant dispersion problem is presented. The approach used in this problem utilizes the double GITT (Generalized Integral Transform Technique), the Laplace Transform and the matrix diagonalization. Furthermore, mathematical filters are used due to the existence of non-homogeneous boundary conditions. The results we obtained are compared with experimental data for short range downwind dispersion utilizing two well-known experimental dispersion datasets (Copenhagen and Prairie Grass). It is shown that the present analytical approach give good results for downwind concentration except for receptors very close to the release points were any Eulerian approach based on K-closure is known to fail.

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

double gitt
analytical solution
laplace transform

atmospheric dispersion
advectiondiffusion equation


Multimedia event-based video indexing using time intervals We propose the time interval multimedia event (TIME) framework as a robust approach for classification of semantic events in multimodal video documents. The representation used in TIME extends the Allen temporal interval relations and allows for proper inclusion of context and synchronization of the heterogeneous information sources involved in multimodal video analysis. To demonstrate the viability of our approach, it was evaluated on the domains of soccer and news broadcasts. For automatic classification of semantic events, we compare three different machine learning techniques, i.c. C4.5 decision tree, maximum entropy, and support vector machine. The results show that semantic video indexing results significantly benefit from using the TIME framework.

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

multimodal integration
semantic event classification
statistical pattern recognition
time interval relations


Integration of a flat holonic form in an HLA environment Managers need to create and sustain internal systems and controls to ensure that their customer focused strategies are being implemented. Companies are currently in a spiral of permanent optimization. Accordingly, many companies turn to their core activity. In this framework, one notices the development of the concept of "industrial partnership". In this context and to control the customer-supplier relationships (CSR), we proposed a self-organized control model in which all partner entities (customers/suppliers) negotiate to guarantee good quality connections between customers and suppliers. This means meeting customer expectations as closely as possible and respecting supplier capacities. In this proposal, self-organized control is characterized more precisely by an organizational architecture of the flat holonic form type. This flat holonic form is based on the concept of autonomous control entity (ACE). The holonic architecture, the behaviour of an ACE, the interaction mechanisms between ACEs and the self-evaluation supplier process are presented, and then the modelling of ACEs using discrete event system specification (DEVS) is described. An implementation of the simulation of such a system was done via a distributed simulation environment high level architecture (HLA). A case study illustrating the proposed approach is presented.

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

discrete event system specification
high level architecture
flat holonic form
autonomous control entity

self-organized control
analytic hierarchy process


ROM-based computation: Quantum versus classical We introduce a model of computation based on read only memory (ROM), which allows us to compare the space-efficiency of reversible, error-free classical computation with reversible, error-free quantum computation. We show that a ROM-based quantum computer with one writable qubit is universal, whilst two writable bits are required for a universal classical ROM-based computer. We also comment on the time-efficiency advantages of quantum computation within this model.

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

quantum space complexity
reversible computation


Irrigation equipment selection to match spatial variability of soils An understanding of the variability of soil characteristics is required in the proper design of irrigation systems and their management. Such understanding comes from a geostatistical analysis of the sample data recorded in excavated pits. A case study is presented in which irrigation valve areas of about 1.3 ha were watered by above canopy sprinklers prior to 1980. These sprinklers covered an area 24 m x 22 m. The variation of readily available water for areas associated with individual sprinklers is not high within such irrigation valve areas, and the system management comprised irrigation shifts which grouped irrigation valve areas of similar readily available water values. Changes to subcanopy watering because of high salinity levels in the river involve much smaller areas, 3 m x 3 m, being watered by the new individual sprinklers. However, geostatistical analysis shows that the extra variation is not substantial, and there was no need for redesign of the irrigation valve areas. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


The effectiveness of advergames compared to television commercials and interactive commercials featuring advergames We compare advergames played on a PC to normal and interactive TV commercials. Results show that telepresence and involvement improve brand attitude. But there were no significant differences between the PC, TV, and iTV ad types. PC advergames are, therefore, viable replacements for TV commercials.

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

computer mediated communication (cmc)
advertising
online video


Cost-bounded argumentation The purpose of this paper is to present new computational techniques for probabilistic argumentation systems. It shows that instead of computing intractable large sets of arguments, it is also possible to find good approximations of the exact solutions in reasonable time. The technique presented is based on cost functions, which are used to measure the relevance of arguments. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

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

probabilistic argumentation systems
cost functions

approximate reasoning
degree of support
degree of possibility
belief functions
evidence theory


Parallel application-level behavioral attributes for performance and energy management of high-performance computing systems Run time variability of parallel applications continues to present significant challenges to their performance and energy efficiency in high-performance computing (HPC) systems. When run times are extended and unpredictable, application developers perceive this as a degradation of system (or subsystem) performance. Extended run times directly contribute to proportionally higher energy consumption, potentially negating efforts by applications, or the HPC system, to optimize energy consumption using low-level control techniques, such as dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS). Therefore, successful systemic management of application run time performance can result in less wasted energy, or even energy savings.

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

run time attributes
performance measurement


A minimum disclosure approach to authentication and privacy in RFID systems In this paper we present a novel approach to authentication and privacy in RFID systems based on the minimum disclosure property and in conformance to EPC Class-1 Gen-2 specifications. We present two security schemes that are suitable for both fixed reader and mobile/wireless reader environments, the mutual authentication and the collaborative authentication schemes respectively. Both schemes are suited to the computational constraints of EPC Class-1 Gen-2 passive RFID tags as only the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and pseudo random number generator (PRNG) functions that passive RFID tags are capable of are used. Detailed security analysis of both our schemes show that they offer robust security properties in terms of tag anonymity, tag untraceability and reader privacy while at the same time being robust to replay, tag impersonation and desynchronisation attacks. Simulations results are also presented to study the scalability of the schemes and its impact on authentication delay. In addition, Yeh et al. (2010) [20] proposed a security scheme for EPC Class-1 Gen-2 based mobile/wireless RFID systems. We show that this scheme has a security vulnerability and is not suitable for mobile/wireless RFID systems.

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


Basic considerations on AVS DRM architecture Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an important infrastructure for the digital media age. It is a part of the AVS (Audio and Video coding Standard) of China. AVS Trusted Decoder (ATD) that plays back digital media program according to rights conditions is the core of AVS DRM architecture. Adaptation layers are responsible for translating or negotiating between ATD and peripheral systems. The Packaging Adaptation Layer (PAL), Licensing Adaptation Layer (LAL) and Rendering Adaptation Layer (RAL) will help ATD to gain the interoperability in various DRM environments.

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


Semidefinite programming relaxations for semialgebraic problems A hierarchy of convex relaxations for semialgebraic problems is introduced. For questions reducible to a finite number of polynomial equalities and inequalities, it is shown how to construct a complete family of polynomially sized semidefinite programming conditions that prove infeasibility. The main tools employed are a semidefinite programming formulation of the sum of squares decomposition for multivariate polynomials, and some results from real algebraic geometry. The techniques provide a constructive approach for finding bounded degree solutions to the Positivstellensatz, and are illustrated with examples from diverse application fields.

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

semidefinite programming
real algebraic geometry

convex optimization
sums of squares
polynomial equations


Fast and accurate methods for predicting short-range constraints in protein models Protein modeling tools utilize many kinds of structural information that may be predicted from amino acid sequence of a target protein or obtained from experiments. Such data provide geometrical constraints in a modeling process. The main aim is to generate the best possible consensus structure. The quality of models strictly depends on the imposed conditions. In this work we present an algorithm, which predicts short-range distances between C alpha atoms as well as a set of short structural fragments that possibly share structural similarity with a query sequence. The only input of the method is a query sequence profile. The algorithm searches for short protein fragments with high sequence similarity. As a result a statistics of distances observed in the similar fragments is returned. The method can be used also as a scoring function or a short-range knowledge-based potential based on the computed statistics.

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

protein structure prediction
spatial restraints
comparative modeling
profile alignment


Optimization based conceptual design of reactive distillation for selectivity engineering Reactive distillation can be effectively used to enhance the selectivity of the desired product in a multi-reaction system. Due to complex interaction of reactions and distillation, identification of an appropriate reactive distillation configuration for the known performance targets has been a challenge. The objective of this contribution is to present an MINLP optimization technique that would assist one to identify a suitable configuration for selectivity maximization at conceptual design level. An illustrative example of industrially important reaction of dimerization of isobutene for maximizing the selectivity toward di-isobutene is considered. The results of the optimization are found to be in agreement with those obtained by performing independent simulation using ASPEN PLUS simulator. Thus, the work highlights the potential of an optimization based tool for conceptual design of reactive distillation that involves complex reaction systems. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

reactive distillation
selectivity
minlp optimization
dimerization


Differentiation and characterization of rat mammary fibroadenomas and 4T1 mouse carcinomas using quantitative ultrasound imaging Scatterer properties like the average effective scatterer diameter and acoustic concentration were determined in vivo using a quantitative ultrasound (QUS) technique from two tumor phenotypes grown in animal models. These tumor models included spontaneously occurring mammary fibroadenomas in rats and transplanted 4T1 mammary carcinomas in mice. The scatterer properties of average scatterer diameter and acoustic concentration were estimated using a Gaussian form factor from the backscattered. ultrasound measured from both types of tumors. QUS images of the tumors were constructed utilizing estimated scatterer properties from regions in the tumors. The QUS images showed a clear distinction between the two types of tumors and a statistically significant difference existed between their estimated scatterer properties. The average scatterer diameter and acoustic concentration for the mammary fibroadenomas were estimated to be 105 +/- 25 mum and -15.6 +/- 5 dB(mm(-3)), respectively. The average scatterer diameter and acoustic concentration for the carcinomas was estimated to be 28 +/- 4.6 mum and 10.6 +/- 6.9 dB(mm(-3)), respectively. The distinctions in the scattering properties are clearly seen in the QUS images of the tumors and indicate that QUS imaging can be useful in differentiating between different types of mammary tumors.

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

cancer detection
tissue characterization
ultrasound backscatter


Dynamic load balancing of plasma particle-in-cell simulations: The taskfarm alternative Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations frequently exhibit some degree of inhomogeneity in the distribution of particles. When running such codes in parallel, this inhomogeneity results in an imbalance of the particle-associated workload. As a remedy, plasma PIC simulations commonly make use of a dynamic domain decomposition that adjusts itself according to the momentary distribution of particles. We present and evaluate an alternative dynamic load-balancing method: a taskfarm-based scheme, where the total particle-associated work is traded among all processors according to their individual workload. It will be shown to be very efficient for simulations with highly inhomogeneous particle distributions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

ion thruster
plasma beam
pic simulation
parallel efficiency
mpi


Performance of 16 QAM-OFDM With New Null Subcarrier Shifting in an Intensity-Modulated Direct Detection System To reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OOFDM) signal, a novel null subcarrier shifting scheme is proposed in an intensity-modulated direct detection OFDM system. At the receiver, a constant subcarrier is used as the location information to implement demodulation accurately. Meanwhile, the computational complexity is degraded apparently by adopting the proposed scheme. The experimental results show that the PAPR reduction of the OFDM signal can reach about 2 dB at a complementary cumulative distribution function of 1 x 10(-4), and the receiver sensitivity after 100 km single-mode fiber transmission at the bit error rate (BER) of 1 x 10(-3) can be improved by about 1.5, 1.8, 2.1, and 2.6 dB when the launch power is 3, 5, 8, and 10 dBm, respectively.

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

direct detection
null subcarrier shifting

orthogonal frequency division multiplexing


Constructive root bound for k-ary rational input numbers Guaranteeing accuracy is the critical capability in exact geometric computation, an important paradigm for constructing robust geometric algorithms. Constructive root bounds is the fundamental technique needed to achieve such guaranteed accuracy. Current bounds are overly pessimistic in the presence of general rational input numbers. In this paper, we introduce a method which greatly improves the known bounds for k-ary rational input numbers. Since a majority of input numbers in scientific and engineering applications are either binary (k=2) or decimal (k= 10), our results could lead to a significant speedup for a large class of applications. We apply our method to two of the best available constructive root bounds, the BFMSS Bound and the Degree-Measure Bound. Implementation and experimental results based on the Core Library are reported. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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 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

constructive root bounds
exact geometric computation

robust numerical algorithms
k-ary rational numbers


design and implementation of the parallel multimedia file system based on message distribution The two-layered distributed clustered server architecture consisting of a control server and a group of storage servers has been widely used to support multimedia file systems. With this kind of the server architecture, it is easy to sustain disk load balancing and scalable disk bandwidth. However, it brings about the communication overhead between the control server and storage servers. Therefore, to reduce such overhead, media data should be transmitted from the storage servers to the users directly without the intervention of the control server. In addition, the file system must support the effective data placement and disk scheduling policies and should be designed to sustain portability and flexibility in any hardware or software environment to cope with rapidly developed hardware and software technologies. So, to fulfill such requirements described in the above statements, we designed and implemented a parallel file system named PMFS(Parallel Multimedia File System) and analyzed its performance by comparing it with PVFS(Parallel Virtual File System). As a result of our experimental simulation, we came to conclusion that the PMFS shows better performance than the PVFS does in real time data processing.

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

message distribution
multimedia
parallel file system


a distributed stand-in agent based algorithm for opportunistic resource allocation Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) are expected to form the basis of future mission critical applications such as combat and rescue operations. In this context, communication and computational tasks required by overlying applications will rely on the combined capabilities and resources provided by the underlying network nodes. This paper introduces an integrated FlexFeed/ A -globe technology and distributed algorithm for opportunistic resource allocation in resource-and policy-constrained mobile ad-hoc networks. The algorithm is based on agent negotiation for the bidding, contract and reservation of resources, relying primarily on the concept of remote presence. In the proposed algorithm, stand-in Agents technology is used to create a virtual, distributed co-ordination component for opportunistic resource allocation in mobile ad-hoc networks.

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

inaccessibility
defence applications
multi-agent systems
ad-hoc networks


efficient sequences of trials We introduce a problem called sequential trial optimization , a generalization of the well studied set cover problem with a new objective function. We give a simple algorithm that achieves a constant factor approximation to this problem. Sequential trial optimization naturally arises in heterogenous search environments such as peer to peer networks.

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

environments
factor
approximation
set cover
algorithm
search

network efficiency optimality peer-to-peer functional object general sequence


Analysis of meta-programs: An example Meta-programs are generic, incomplete, adaptable programs that are instantiated at construction time to meet specific requirements. Templates and generative techniques are examples of meta-programming techniques. Understanding of meta-programs is more difficult than understanding of concrete, executable programs. Static and dynamic analysis methods have been applied to ease understanding of programs - can similar methods be used for meta-programs? In our projects, we build meta-programs with a meta-programming technique called XVCL. Meta-programs in XVCL are organized into a hierarchy of meta-components from which the XVCL processor generates concrete, executable programs that meet specific requirements. We developed an automated system that analyzes XVCL meta-programs, and presents developers with information that helps them work with meta-programs more effectively. Our system conducts both static and dynamic analysis of a meta-program. An integral part of our solution is a query language, FQL in which we formulate questions about meta-program properties. An FQL query processor automatically answers a class of queries. The analysis method described in the paper is specific to XVCL. However, the principle of our approach can be applied to other meta-programming systems. We believe readers interested in meta-programming in general will find some of the lessons from our experiment interesting and useful.

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

meta-programs
program understanding
program analysis
program queries
debugging


Modelling the motion of a three-wheeled car In this work, a simple dynamical model is derived for the motion of a three-wheeled car. In the model derived here, the motion of the car is controlled by two torques, one, a pedaling torque, acting on the rear wheel, and the other, a steering torque acting on the two front wheels. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

three-wheeled car
nonholonomic constraints
nonlinear systems
steerable wheels


Stretch blow moulding of PET; structure development and constitutive model Microstructure of PET in stretch blow moulding is studied combining controlled tension followed by quenching, free-blow and ISBM. Due to quenching, observed final microstructure is often closer to a mesophase than to crystal. Texture is, for its part, controlled by the loading path. In fact stretching only induces appearance of an oriented precursor-phase that will become a crystal during cooling steps providing that this latter is slow enough. Microstructure evolution does not obey the classical nucleation growth schematic. This enlightens development of constitutive models demonstrating the irrelevance of the crystallinity ratio as parameter and of the Avrami-like approach as part of the model. One, model based on revisited network approach is suggested.

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

strain induced crystallisation
microstructure development


Agent learning in the multi-agent contracting system [MACS] This paper presents a Bayesian learning approach for a multi-agent system, called multi-agent contracting system [MACS]. The system learns to identify an appropriate agent to answer free-text queries and keyword searches for defense contracting. This research builds on past work by some of the authors by extending MACS to a truly intelligent multi-agent system with the ability to learn from and adapt to its environment. The efficacy of MACS is determined by analyzing the accuracy and degree of learning in the system. This is accomplished by testing the system against historical data.

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


Optimization of dual-speed TAM architectures for efficient modular testing of SOCs The increasing complexity of system-on-chip (SOC) integrated circuits has spurred the development of versatile automatic test equipment (ATE) that can simultaneously drive different channels at different data rates. Examples of such ATEs include the Agilent 93000 series tester based on port scalability and the test processor-per-pin architecture and the Tiger system from Teradyne. The number of tester channels with high data rates may be constrained in practice, however, due to ATE resource limitations, the power rating of the SOC, and scan frequency limits for the embedded cores. Therefore, we formulate the following optimization problem: Given two available data rates for the tester channels, an SOC-level test access mechanism (TAM) width W, an upper limit V (V < W) on the number of channels that can transport test data at the higher data rate, determine an SOC TAM architecture that minimizes the testing time. We present an efficient heuristic algorithm for TAM optimization that exploits port scalability of ATEs to reduce SOC testing time and test cost. We present experimental results for the ITC '02 SOC test benchmarks and investigate the impact of dual-speed TAM architectures on power consumption during testing for one of these benchmarks.

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

soc testing
test access mechanism
tam optimization

full-chip testing
test scheduling
dual-speed tam


Triplet-based spike timing dependent plasticity (TSTDP) modeling using VHDL-AMS Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity is one of the synaptic plasticity rules that plays an important role in learning and memory in the brain. There are two rules to describe STDP; the conventional one is pair-based STDP (PSTDP) and the other one is triplet-based STDP (TSTDP) that is a powerful synaptic plasticity rule and acts beyond the classical rule. Although PSTDP fails to reproduce some of the experimental observations, TSTDP is capable of reproducing them. In this paper, a VHDL-AMS based TSTDP model is presented which exhibits the behavioral model of triplet-based spike timing dependent plasticity. The proposed model is simulated using Ansoft Simplorer. This model has similar results to the mentioned experimental observations and is capable of being employed in different analog or digital implementations of neuromorphic systems.

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

spike timing dependent plasticity (stdp)


The Marriage of Bisimulations and Kripke Logical Relations There has been great progress in recent years on developing effective techniques for reasoning about program equivalence in ML-like languages-that is, languages that combine features like higher-order functions, recursive types, abstract types, and general mutable references. Two of the most prominent types of techniques to have emerged are bisimulations and Kripke logical relations (KLRs). While both approaches are powerful, their complementary advantages have led us and other researchers to wonder whether there is an essential tradeoff between them. Furthermore, both approaches seem to suffer from fundamental limitations if one is interested in scaling them to inter-language reasoning. In this paper, we propose relation transition systems (RTSs), which marry together some of the most appealing aspects of KLRs and bisimulations. In particular, RTSs show how bisimulations' support for reasoning about recursive features via coinduction can be synthesized with KLRs' support for reasoning about local state via state transition systems. Moreover, we have designed RTSs to avoid the limitations of KLRs and bisimulations that preclude their generalization to inter-language reasoning. Notably, unlike KLRs, RTSs are transitively composable.

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

languages
kripke logical relations
bisimulations
relation transition systems
recursive types
abstract types

theory
verification
contextual equivalence
higher-order state
transitivity
global vs. local knowledge


Simulations of a specific inhibitor of the dishevelled PDZ domain The dishevelled (Dvl) PDZ domain is believed to play an essential role in the canonical and noncanonical Wnt signaling pathways, which are involved in embryo development as well as in tumorigenesis. Also, it binds directly to frizzled (Fz) receptors. An organic molecule (NSC668036) from the National Cancer Institute small-molecule library has been identified to be able to bind to the Dvl PDZ domain. Molecular dynamics simulation was used to provide detailed analyses of the binding between them.

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

dishevelled pdz domain
molecular dynamics


Palmprint Recognition Based on Line and Slope Orientation Features In the field of palmprint recognition, the orientation information of the principal lines and winkles has long been considered the most dominant and reliable feature. Numerous studies have tried to extract the line orientation information. Among them, the orientation based coding methods such as robust line orientation code (RLOC) and binary orientation co-occurrence vector (BOCV) showed highly promising results. However, the orientation information of pixels that are not located on the palm lines could be greatly affected by the lighting conditions. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a new combined approach using both the line orientation and the slope orientation. When a palm image is hypothetically considered as a 3-D terrain, the principal lines and winkles are deep and shallow valleys on a palm landscape. If the previous line-based approaches focus only on the direction of valleys to investigate the palm landscape, this study focuses on the slope direction of local plains as well as the direction of valleys. The proposed method extracts two different orientation features according to the location of pixels and computes the feature distance between two images by a pixel-to-area matching method. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is superior to several state-of-the-art methods based on the line orientation coding.

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

palmprint recognition
line and slope orientation
orientation coding


ACOUSTIC VOWEL REDUCTION AS A FUNCTION OF SENTENCE ACCENT, WORD STRESS, AND WORD CLASS The effect of sentence accent, word stress, and word class (function words versus content words) on the acoustic properties of 9 Dutch vowels in fluent speech was investigated. A list of sentences was read aloud by 15 male speakers. Each sentence contained one syllable of interest. This could be a monosyllabic function word, an unstressed syllable of a content word, or a stressed syllable of a content word. The same syllable occurred in all three conditions. Sentence accent was manipulated with questions that preceded the sentences. A total number of 3465 vowels were segmented from the syllables and analysed. It was found that all three factors mentioned above had a significant effect both on the steady-state formant frequencies (F1 and F2) and on the duration of the vowels. Word stress and word class had a stronger effect on the vowels than sentence accent. A listening experiment showed the perceptual significance of the acoustic measurements. It appeared that spectral vowel reduction could be better interpreted as the result of an increased contextual assimilation than as the tendency to centralize. We also studied changes in the dynamics of the formant tracks due to the experimental conditions. It was found that formant tracks of reduced vowels became flatter which supports the view of an increased contextual assimilation. Three simple models of vowel reduction are discussed.

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

acoustic vowel reduction
sentence accent
word stress
word class
increased contextual assimilation


IMPROVING ORGANIZATIONAL COLLABORATION BASED ON DOCUMENT TAGGING CONCEPT During work processes many collaboration structures rely on documents sharing to feed information needs. To this share be effective involved parties have also to share some common understanding of the meanings of the information that is being exchanged. Personal and communities information and knowledge structures arc highly implicit and tends to be invisible to others. In this work we propose a classification of the user's personal electronic assets inspired in the evolving web 2.0 applications concepts: tagging and social bookmarking. By adopting this approach we may profile users/communities knowledge domains and by externalizing this information improve collaboration structures.

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


Upper bounds of the correlation functions of a class of binary zero-correlation-zone sequences The present letter describes the estimation of the upper bounds of the correlation functions of a class of zero-correlation-zone sequences constructed from an arbitrary Hadamard matrix.

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


SEMANTIC E-INK: KNOWLEDGE-BASED ASSISTANCE FOR MAKING MENTAL MODELS EXPLICIT In this paper we describe a system which assists knowledge workers in making notes of their thoughts and transferring them to the computer. Our system processes handwritten notes written down with a digital pen. These notes are processed in order to recognize and understand their meaning. To realize such systems, two novel processing stages are proposed for the first time in literature. The first stage is the inclusion of knowledge bases into the Handwriting Recognition (HWR) process, where we make use of a person's mental model. The second stage is the transition from pure HWR to understanding of the handwritten notes, i.e. the system extracts knowledge in form of ontologies. For both novel approaches we performed a set of experiments on various data. With the proposed techniques, the recognition rate of the HWR system as well as the performance of the information extraction system are significantly increased.

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

handwriting recognition
information extraction

obie
knowledge management
personal information model


Evaluation of Cancer-Preventive Agents and Strategies About five years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) initiated a new program, IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention, aimed at evaluating the evidence base for the cancer-preventive activity of various agents and strategies. To date (2001) 5 volumes have been published1. Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs, 2. Carotenoids, 3. Vitamin A, 4. Retinoids, and 5. Sunscreensand volume 6 (Weight Control and Physical Activity) is in press. Future volumes will include evaluations of breast cancer screening (vol. 7) and fruits and vegetables (vol. 8).

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

cancer prevention
vitamin a
physical activity

evidence-based evaluations
aspirin
?-carotene
sunscreens
overweight
obesity


connection availability and transient survivability analysis in wireless ad-hoc networks Network survivability performance provides an assessment of how well a network supports its functionalities in adverse conditions. This paper studies a wireless network survivability scenario, in which ad hoc routing failures occur due to node mobility, and it enhances and validates previously published results in the following manner: a) it analyses ad hoc connection availability with the use of a Markovian model, b) it amends a previously published evaluation of mobile ad hoc router "birth" and "death" rates, c) it validates theoretical results with simulations, and d) it uses a transient model to evaluate the impact of connection availability to higher application layers. The overall survivability model combines a steady-state analysis of the Markovian model and a transient analysis of packets queuing for access to the wireless medium. The main assumption for the Markovian model is that changes in the ad hoc routing status follow an exponential distribution with state transitory rates analogous to the number of available routers. These rates also depend on the network geometry and the node mobility model. Given a "random walk" mobility model, it is shown that the connection availability is independent of the node velocities. This is statistically verified by simulations reinforcing the validity of the theoretical Markovian assumption. The impact of link failures to the survivability of the system is studied by emulating the layers between the data traffic source and the wireless MAC protocol with a buffer and, thereafter, by evaluating the amount and duration of transitory buffer overflows. The presented survivability model could serve as groundwork for further research in ad hoc wireless networks, including ad hoc network performance analysis and QoS optimisation.

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

buffer transient analysis
ad hoc network modelling


Multisensor triplet Markov fields and theory of evidence Hidden Markov Fields (HMF) are widely applicable to various problems of image processing. In such models, the hidden process of interest X is a Markov field, which must be estimated from its observable noisy version Y. The success of HMF is due mainly to the fact that X remains Markov conditionally on the observed process, which facilitates different processing strategies such as Bayesian segmentation. Such models have been recently generalized to Pairwise Markov fields (PMF), which offer similar processing advantages and superior modeling capabilities. In this generalization, one directly assumes the Markovianity of the pair (X,Y). Afterwards, Triplet Markov fields (TMF) have been proposed, in which the distribution of (X,Y) is the marginal distribution of a Markov field (X,U,Y), where U is an auxiliary random field. So U can have different interpretations and, when the set of its values is not too complex, X can still be estimated from Y. The aim of this paper is to show some connections between TMF and the DempsterShafer theory of evidence. It is shown that TMF allow one to perform the DempsterShafer fusion in different general situations, possibly involving several sensors. As a consequence, Bayesian segmentation strategies remain applicable.

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

pairwise markov fields
triplet markov fields
dempstershafer fusion
theory of evidence

statistical unsupervised non-stationary image segmentation


Routing with minimum wire length in the dogleg-free Manhattan model is NP-complete The present article concentrates on the dogleg-free Manhattan model where horizontal and vertical wire segments are positioned on different sides of the board and each net (wire) has at most one horizontal segment. While the minimum width can be found in linear time in the single row routing, apparently there was no efficient algorithm to find the minimum wire length. We show that there is no hope to find such an algorithm because this problem is NP -complete even if each net has only two terminals. The results on dogleg-free Manhattan routing can be connected with other application areas related to interval graphs. In this paper we define the minimum value interval placement problem. There is given a set of weighted intervals and w rows and the intervals have to be placed without overlapping into rows so that the sum of the interval values, which is the value of a function of the weight and the row number assigned to the interval, is minimum. We show that this problem is NP -complete. This implies the NP -completeness of other problems including the minimum wire length routing and the sum coloring on interval graphs.

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

vlsi
np -complete problems
interval graph


RISK INDICATORS FOR COMPUTER SYSTEMS ASSISTED FINANCIAL EXAMINATION Financial examination is the most important link of financial supervision. In response to increased daily financial transactions, it has become an inexorable trend to apply processing, storage, statistical, and analytical functions of computer information systems and auditing software to assist financial examiners. Based on current computer-assisted financial examination conditions, Basel Accord II, and relevant auditing standards, this study reviews literature, and classifies the risk factors of computer-assisted implementation of financial examination tasks into various basic perspectives: internal, credit risks, operating risks, examination operations, computer-assisted, information system environment, management, and supervision perspectives. Then, by adopting the method of Ou Yang et al. [14], which integrate the DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) and ANP (Analytic Network Process) methods, this study discusses the cause-effect relationship and the relative importance among computer-assisted financial examination risk factors. The findings of this study suggest that, among all the computer-assisted financial examination risk factors, six indicators, including auditee's operational flow structure, internal auditing performance, selection of risk assessment model, client default risk management, possible errors in omissions in checking transaction tracks by the financial examiner, and lack of a computer-assisted auditing system, are the most important factors, accounting for 50.89% of the significance of all risk factor perspectives. When a financial supervisory unit uses a computer system to conduct financial examinations, experienced financial examiners conduct preliminary checks on the auditee's regulation compliance, organizational management structure, employee risk perception education, and VaR (Value at Risk) method of estimation; and then, the computer-assisted audit system is employed for effective auditing to enhance the quality of financial examination. Besides, strengthening hardware and software equipment, professional training of financial examiners, internal management, and supervision procedures would effectively reduce check risks, and considerably improve the quality of computer-assisted financial examinations.

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

computer-assisted audit techniques (caats)


A graphical approach to radio frequency quadrupole design The design of a radio frequency quadrupole, an important section of all ion accelerators, and the calculation of its beam dynamics properties can be achieved using the existing computational tools. These programs, originally designed in 1980s, show effects of aging in their user interfaces and in their output. The authors believe there is room for improvement in both design techniques using a graphical approach and in the amount of analytical calculations before going into CPU burning finite element analysis techniques. Additionally an emphasis on the graphical method of controlling the evolution of the relevant parameters using the drag-to-change paradigm is bound to be beneficial to the designer. A computer code, named DEMIRCI, has been written in C++ + + to demonstrate these ideas. This tool has been used in the design of Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK)s 1.5MeV proton beamline at Saraykoy Nuclear Research and Training Center (SANAEM). DEMIRCI starts with a simple analytical model, calculates the RFQ behavior and produces 3D design files that can be fed to a milling machine. The paper discusses the experience gained during design process of SANAEM Project Prometheus (SPP) RFQ and underlines some of DEMIRCIs capabilities.

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

experimental methods and instrumentation for elementary-particle and nuclear physics


A novel boundary element approach to time-harmonic dynamics of incremental nonlinear elasticity: The role of pre-stress on structural vibrations and dynamic shear banding A new boundary element technique is developed to analyze two-dimensional, time-harmonic, small-amplitude vibrations, superimposed upon a homogeneously pre-stressed, orthotropic and incompressible elastic solid. New expressions for the Greens functions for incremental applied tractions are obtained, in which static and dynamic contributions are uncoupled. The dynamic contributions are regular, whereas the static terms are strongly singular and are solved in closed-form expressions, particularly useful for numerical calculations. As a consequence of the static/dynamic de-coupling, these expressions turn out to be useful also for quasi-static deformation. The formulation is tested for different boundary value problems. These include a problem with certain boundary conditions investigated by Ryzhak in the static case, for which an analytic solution is proposed here in the time-harmonic regime. The effect of pre-stress is shown to strongly influence the vibrational response of elastic structures. It is shown that natural frequencies strongly decrease when pre-stress approaches quasi-static bifurcation loads and wave propagation speeds tend to vanish when the boundary of ellipticity is approached. Near this boundary (but still within the elliptic region) we observe a focussing of vibrations along plane waves parallel to the shear bands.

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

time-harmonic dynamics
non-linear elasticity


Model predictive control of a nonlinear unstable process In this work, conventional (fixed model) dynamic matrix control (DMC), and adaptive (variable model) DMC which combines on-line parameter estimation via a recursive least squares algorithm and control are carried out on a nonlinear, unstable process. The controlled process has multiple steady states one of which is unstable. The control around the unstable point using DMC is done in a cascade arrangement. In the inner loop the unstable process is stabilized with an analog proportional only controller. This stabilized process is then controlled by the outer loop DMC. With this configuration stable control is achieved with the conventional DMC; whereas the stability and the performance of the system with the adaptive DMC is found to be dependent on the controller parameters. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 B I O O O O O O O O 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


teaching multiple programming paradigms: a proposal for a paradigm general pseudocode Initial overexposure to the imperative programming paradigm can make it very difficult to introduce students to other paradigms, such as the functional, object oriented and logical paradigms. It is important that students be exposed to several programming paradigms early. Two techniques commonly used to accomplish this are a survey of languages approach and use of a language, such as Scheme, that overlaps several paradigms. We propose the use of a paradigm-general pseudocode that can then be translated into the most appropriate target language. This paper describes in detail the features and form of this pseudocode using familiar algorithms. This approach has been used successfully in an upper division class and we believe it can be refined and introduced earlier in the curriculum.

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

use language functional teaching general paper class scheme curriculum

program algorithm feature object-oriented student


deriving components from genericity There is a growing recognition that programming platforms should support the decomposition of programs into components: independent units of compiled code that are explicitly "linked" to form complete programs. This paper describes how to formulate a general component system for a nominally typed object-oriented language supporting first-class generic types simply by adding appropriate annotations and syntactic sugar. The fundamental semantic building blocks for constructing, type-checking and manipulating components are provided by the underlying first-class generic type system. To demonstrate the simplicity and utility of this approach to supporting components, we have designed and implemented an extension of Java called Component NextGen (CGen). CGen, which is based on the Sun Java 5.0 javac compiler, is backward-compatible with existing code and runs on current Java Virtual Machines.

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 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

custom class loader
first-class generics
signatures
modules
java implementation


A low-power ROM using single charge-sharing capacitor and hierarchical bit line This paper describes a low-power read-only memory (ROM) using a single charge-sharing capacitor (SCSC) and hierarchical bit line (HBL). The SCSC-ROM reduces the power consumption in bit lines. It lowers the swing voltage of bit lines to a minimal voltage by using a charge-sharing technique with a single capacitor. It implements the capacitor with dummy bit lines to improve noise immunity and to make it easier to design. Furthermore, the HBL saves power by reducing the capacitance and leakage current in bit lines. The SCSC-ROM also reduces the power consumption in control unit and predecoder by using the hierarchical word line decoder. The simulation result shows that the SCSC-ROM with 4 K x 32 bits consumes only 37% power of a conventional ROM. An SCSC-ROM chip is fabricated in a 0.25-mu m CMOS process. It consumes 8.2 mW at 240 MHz with 2.5 V.

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


Practical and Efficient Cryptographic Enforcement of Interval-Based Access Control Policies The enforcement of access control policies using cryptography has received considerable attention in recent years and the security of such enforcement schemes is increasingly well understood. Recent work in the area has considered the efficient enforcement of temporal and geo-spatial access control policies, and asymptotic results for the time and space complexity of efficient enforcement schemes have been obtained. However, for practical purposes, it is useful to have explicit bounds for the complexity of enforcement schemes. In this article we consider interval-based access control policies, of which temporal and geo-spatial access control policies are special cases. We define enforcement schemes for interval-based access control policies for which it is possible, in almost all cases, to obtain exact values for the schemes' complexity, thereby subsuming a substantial body of work in the literature. Moreover, our enforcement schemes are more practical than existing schemes, in the sense that they operate in the same way as standard cryptographic enforcement schemes, unlike other efficient schemes in the literature. The main difference between our approach and earlier work is that we develop techniques that are specific to the cryptographic enforcement of interval-based access control policies, rather than applying generic techniques that give rise to complex constructions and asymptotic bounds.

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

algorithms
interval-based access control
temporal access control
geo-spatial access control


A cryptographically t-private auction system We present a cryptographically t-private protocol for electronic auctions whose low resource demands make it viable for practical use. Our construction is based on Yao's garbled circuits and pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs). Our protocol involves a field of (t +1)(2) parties for the generation of the garbled circuit and permits an arbitrary large number of bidders. The computational requirements are low: Only t + 1 parties of the field have to use the PRNG, the remaining parties execute only primitive computations (XOR, permutations and sharing). The bidders have to stay active for one round of communication, independent of each other. Each bidder has to compute only t +1 XOR-operations. We present an implementation and evaluate its performance. The observed running time of our protocol is linear in the size of the auction circuit and the number of bidders and, as expected, grows quadratically in the parameter t. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

O O O O O O O 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

multiparty private computation
private auctions


Shape analysis with the `Boundary IntegralResonant Mode Expansion' method This paper proposes the applications of the Boundary IntegralResonant Mode Expansion (BIRME) method to the shape analysis problem, an approach originally implemented for the determination of modes of a cavity resonator. We explore its advantages for shape analysis and recognition of a BIRME based modal matching algorithm, where each shape is represented with a set of eigenfunctions, and solutions of the Helmholtz equation with Dirichlet boundary condition. These solutions correspond to the vibration modes of an elastic sheet of arbitrary shape and fixed boundary and show some advantages over previous approaches. It is demonstrated that the BIRME algorithm is particularly suitable for characterizing shapes with multiply connected boundaries and requires small cpu times.

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


Acyclic and star colorings of cographs ? An acyclic coloring of a graph is a proper vertex coloring such that the union of any two color classes induces a disjoint collection of trees. The more restricted notion of star coloring requires that the union of any two color classes induces a disjoint collection of stars. We prove that every acyclic coloring of a cograph is also a star coloring and give a linear-time algorithm for finding an optimal acyclic and star coloring of a cograph. If the graph is given in the form of a cotree, the algorithm runs in O(n) O ( n ) time. We also show that the acyclic chromatic number, the star chromatic number, the treewidth plus 1, and the pathwidth plus 1 are all equal for cographs.

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

acyclic coloring
star coloring
cograph
treewidth
pathwidth


Chaos in rainfall: variability, temporal scale and zeros A recent study on rainfall observed at the Leaf River basin reports that the presence of a large number of zeros in the data significantly underestimates the correlation dimension. The present study attempts to verify such a claim, by making predictions and comparing the results with the correlation dimensions. A nonlinear prediction method, which uses the concept of reconstruction of a single-variable series in a multi-dimensional phase space to represent the underlying dynamics, is employed. Correlation dimension analysis of only the non-zero rainfall series is also carried out for further verification. Rainfall data of four different temporal resolutions (or scales), i.e. daily, 2-day, 4-day and 8-day, are analyzed. The predictions for the finer-resolution (i.e. higher-resolution) rainfall are found to be better than those obtained for the coarser-resolution (i.e. lower-resolution) rainfall and seem to be consistent with the variability vs. predictability logic in a deterministic sense, i.e. higher prediction accuracy for data with lower correlation dimension and vice versa. An important implication of this result is that the presence of (a large number of) zeros in the rainfall data may not always result in an underestimation of the correlation dimension. The correlation dimensions estimated for the non-zero rainfall series are not significantly different when compared to those obtained for series including zero values, supporting the above. These results suggest that the low correlation dimensions for rainfall (in particular finer-resolution ones that commonly have a large number of zeros), as reported by past studies, could well be, or at least closer to, the actual dimensions of the rainfall processes studied.

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

chaos
correlation dimension
rainfall
scale
zeros


Distributed algorithmic mechanism design for scheduling on unrelated machines In classical mechanism design the outcome of the mechanism is computed by a trusted central party. In this paper, we consider the design of distributed mechanisms in which the outcome is computed by the agents themselves. We propose Distributed MinWork (DMW), a mechanism for solving the problem of scheduling on unrelated machines. We show that DMW is a faithful implementation of the MinWork mechanism, which was proposed by Nisan and Ronen in their seminal work (Nisan and Rouen (2001) [30]). We show that in addition to being faithful, DMW protects the anonymity of the losing agents and the privacy of their bids. Furthermore, we show that DMW is efficient as it has polynomial communication and computation costs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

algorithmic mechanism design
scheduling on unrelated machines

truthful mechanism
distributed computation


Lens-shaped surfaces and C-2 subdivision Lens-shaped surfaces (with vertices of valence 2) arise for example in automatic quad-remeshing. Applying standard Catmull-Clark subdivision rules to a vertex of valence 2, however, does not yield a C-1 surface in the limit. When correcting this flaw by adjusting the vertex rule, we discover a variant whose characteristic ring is z -> z(2). Since this conformal ring is of degree bi-2 rather than bi-3, it allows constructing a subdivision algorithm that works directly on the control net and generates C-2 limit surfaces of degree bi-4 for lens-shaped surfaces. To further improve shape, a number of re-meshing and re-construction options are discussed indicating that a careful approach pays off. Finally, we point out the analogy between characteristic configurations and the conformal maps z(4/n), cos z and e(z)

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

lens-shaped
c-2
subdivision surface
re-meshing
polar


improving query translation for cross-language information retrieval using statistical models Dictionaries have often been used for query translation in cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). However, we are faced with the problem of translation ambiguity, i.e. multiple translations are stored in a dictionary for a word. In addition, a word-by-word query translation is not precise enough. In this paper, we explore several methods to improve the previous dictionary-based query translation. First, as many as possible, noun phrases are recognized and translated as a whole by using statistical models and phrase translation patterns. Second, the best word translations are selected based on the cohesion of the translation words. Our experimental results on TREC English-Chinese CLIR collection show that these techniques result in significant improvements over the simple dictionary approaches, and achieve even better performance than a high-quality machine translation system.

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

precise translation cohesion dictionaries performance paper query

statistics
quality
method
systems
experimentation
ambiguities
machine translation
collect
cross language information retrieval
model
exploration
pattern


Accelerating generators of iterative methods for finding multiple roots of nonlinear equations ? Two accelerating generators that produce iterative root-finding methods of arbitrary order of convergence are presented. Primary attention is paid to algorithms for finding multiple roots of nonlinear functions and, in particular, of algebraic polynomials. First, two classes of algorithms for solving nonlinear equations are studied: those with a known order of multiplicity and others with no information on multiplicity. We also demonstrate the acceleration of iterative methods for the simultaneous approximations of multiple roots of algebraic polynomials. A discussion about the computational efficiency of the root-solvers considered and three numerical examples are given.

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

solving nonlinear equations
iterative methods
multiple roots

acceleration of convergence
simultaneous methods


towards domain-independent information extraction from web tables Traditionally, information extraction from web tables has focused on small, more or less homogeneous corpora, often based on assumptions about the use of

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

web page representation
web mining
visual analysis