A computationally efficient method of identifying generic fuzzy models There is on-going interest in the application of adaptive fuzzy model-based predictive control techniques which attempt to formulate and solve the control problem when the systems are uncertain and non-linear. This paper proposes a computational efficient method to generate a generic fuzzy relational model that can be used to initialize the model used by the controller. The methodology used in this paper is to generate the generic model from computer simulations of a set of different designs by using the "ideal" training data. Methods of reducing the time required to generate the required training data, and transforming a low granularity fuzzy model into a model of higher granularity, are proposed. The generation of a generic model of a cooling coil subsystem of an HVAC system is used as an example to demonstrate how these techniques can successfully identify a generic fuzzy model that is suitable for use in an adaptive fuzzy controller. Results are presented, which show that the time required to identify a high granularity, generic model can be reduced significantly. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

fuzzy relations
fuzzy system models
fuzzy control
adaptive control
air-conditioning system


ABS: A Low-Cost Adaptive Controller for Prefetching in a Banked Shared Last-Level Cache Hardware data prefetch is a very well known technique for hiding memory latencies. However, in a multicore system fitted with a shared Last-Level Cache (LLC), prefetch induced by a core consumes common resources such as shared cache space and main memory bandwidth. This may degrade the performance of other cores and even the overall system performance unless the prefetch aggressiveness of each core is controlled from a system standpoint. On the other hand, LLCs in commercial chip multiprocessors are more and more frequently organized in independent banks. In this contribution, we target for the first time prefetch in a banked LLC organization and propose ABS, a low-cost controller with a hill-climbing approach that runs stand-alone at each LLC bank without requiring inter-bank communication. Using multiprogrammed SPEC2K6 workloads, our analysis shows that the mechanism improves both user-oriented metrics (Harmonic Mean of Speedups by 27% and Fairness by 11%) and system-oriented metrics (Weighted Speedup increases 22% and Memory Bandwidth Consumption decreases 14%) over an eight-core baseline system that uses aggressive sequential prefetch with a fixed degree. Similar conclusions can be drawn by varying the number of cores or the LLC size, when running parallel applications, or when other prefetch engines are controlled.

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


community-based ranking of the social web The rise of social interactions on the Web requires developing new methods of information organization and discovery. To that end, we propose a generative community-based probabilistic tagging model that can automatically uncover communities of users and their associated tags. We experimentally validate the quality of the discovered communities over the social bookmarking system Delicious. In comparison to an alternative generative model (Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), we find that the proposed community-based model improves the empirical likelihood of held-out test data and discovers more coherent interest-based communities. Based on the community-based probabilistic tagging model, we develop a novel community-based ranking model for effective community-based exploration of socially-tagged Web resources. We compare community-based ranking to three state-of-the-art retrieval models: (i) BM25; (ii) Cluster-based retrieval using K-means clustering; and (iii) LDA-based retrieval. We find that the proposed ranking model results in a significant improvement over these alternatives (from 7\% to 22\%) in the quality of retrieved pages.

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


competency matrices for peer assessment of individuals in team projects Assessing individual contributions on team projects and promoting the maturation of team knowledge skills in students is difficult. Traditional assessment tools score an individual over a set of categories that are loosely defined and lack well-defined expectations. Further, for curriculum in which team-based learning is a primary component, the traditional approach to assessment fails to provide visibility to the students as to how their team-knowledge skills should mature as they progress. In this paper we present a competency matrix based approach that defines expected performance for required team knowledge skills, where assessment is performed relative to the expectations for the current level of the student. This competency matrix not only provides guidance and clarification for students learning these skills as they mature in their academic careers but also provides a foundation for self and peer assessments. A comparison survey was distributed to students at various levels within the curriculum currently using a traditional assessment instrument. While the students recognized that the competency-based approach was more involved and time consuming, the results of that survey demonstrate that students have a stronger preference for the competency matrix approach. We also include a discussion of the benefits and difficulties associated with this model and future work.

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

team process
project-based learning
problem-based learning


Landmark

matching

via

large

deformation

diffeomorphisms

This

paper

describes

the

generation

of

large

deformation

diffeomorphisms

phi

Omega

for

landmark

matching

generated

as

solutions

to

the

transport

equation

d

phi(x,t)/dt

nu(phi(x,t),t),t

epsilon

and

x,

with

the

image

map

defined

as

phi(,

and

therefore

controlled

via

the

velocity

field

nu(.,

t),t

epsilon

Imagery

are

assumed

characterized

via

sets

of

landmarks

{x(n),

y(n),

n

N}.

The

optimal

diffeomorphic

match

is

constructed

to

minimize

a

running

smoothness

cost

parallel

to

L

nu

parallel

associated

with

a

linear

differential

operator

L

on

the

velocity

field

generating

the

diffeomorphism

while

simultaneously

minimizing

the

matching

end

point

condition

of

the

landmarks,

Both

inexact

and

exact

Landmark

matching

is

studied

here.

Given

noisy

landmarks

x(n)

matched

to

y(n)

measured

with

error

covariances

Sigma(n)

then

the

matching

problem

is

solved

generating

the

optimal

diffeomorphism

(x,

(x,t),

t)

dt

x

where

arg

min(nu(.))

integral(Omega)

parallel

to

L

nu(x,t)parallel

dx

dt

[yn-phi(xn,1)](T)Sigma(n)(-1)[yn-phi(x(n),1)].

Conditions

for

the

existence

of

solutions

in

the

space

of

diffeomorphisms

are

established,

with

a

gradient

algorithm

provided

for

generating

the

optimal

flow

solving

the

minimum

problem.

Results

on

matching

two-dimensional

and

three-dimensional

imagery

are

presented

in

the

the

macaque

monkey.

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

deformable templates
medical imaging
pattern theory


Multicenter Prevention Trial of Slowly Progressive Type 1 Diabetes with Small Dose of Insulin (the Tokyo Study) In 1996, we designed a randomized multicenter study to assess the effects of small doses of insulin on beta cell failure in slowly progressive type 1 diabetes (the Tokyo Study). We report here the preliminary results of this study. Glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 antibody (GADA)-positive patients were randomly divided into 2 groups

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


FEATURE SELECTION FOR HMM AND BLSTM BASED HANDWRITING RECOGNITION OF WHITEBOARD NOTES In this paper, we describe feature selection experiments for online handwriting recognition. We investigated a set of 25 online and pseudo-offline features to find out which features are important and which features may be redundant. To analyze the saliency of the features, we applied a sequential forward and a sequential backward search on the feature set. A hidden Markov model and a neural network based recognizer have been used as recognition engines. In our experiments, we obtained interesting results. Using a set of only five features, we achieved a performance similar to that of the reference system that uses all 25 features. The five selected features have a low correlation and have been the top choices during the first iterations of the forward search with both recognizers. Furthermore, for both recognizers, subsets have been identified that outperform the reference system with statistical significance. In order to assess the results more rigorously, we have compared our recognizer with the widely used commercial recognizer from Microsoft.

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

feature selection
sequential backward search

bidirectional long short-term memory network


BUSDM - an algorithm for the bottom-up search of departures from a model Searching for regions of the input space where a statistical model is inappropriate is useful in many applications. The study proposes an algorithm for finding local departures from a regression-type prediction model. The algorithm returns low-dimensional hypercubes where the average prediction error clearly departs from zero. The study describes the developed algorithm, and shows successful applications on the simulated and real data from the steel plate production. The algorithms that have been originally developed for searching regions of the high-response value from the input space are reviewed and considered as alternative methods for locating model departures. The proposed algorithm succeeds in locating the model departure regions better than the compared alternatives. The algorithm can be utilized in sequential follow-up of a model as time goes along and new data are observed.

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

local departure
discrepancy region
statistical model evaluation
regression model


Using job-shop scheduling tasks for evaluating collocated collaboration Researchers have begun to explore tools that allow multiple users to collaborate across multiple devices in collocated environments. These tools often allow users to simultaneously place and interact with information on shared displays. Unfortunately, there is a lack of experimental tasks to evaluate the effectiveness of these tools for information coordination in such scenarios. In this article, we introduce job-shop scheduling as a task that could be used to evaluate systems and interactions within computer-supported collaboration environments. We describe properties that make the task useful, as well as evaluation measures that may be used. We also present two experiments as case studies to illustrate the breadth of scenarios in which this task may be applied. The first experiment shows the differences when users interact with different communicative gesturing schemes, while the second demonstrates the benefits of shared visual information on large displays. We close by discussing the general applicability of the tasks.

O 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 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

job-shop scheduling task
computer-supported collaborative work
user study


proposition for a sequential accelerator in future general-purpose manycore processors and the problem of migration-induced cache misses As the number of transistors on a chip doubles with every technology generation, the number of on-chip cores also increases rapidly, making possible in a foreseeable future to design processors featuring hundreds of general-purpose cores. However, though a large number of cores speeds up parallel code sections, Amdahl's law requires speeding up sequential sections too. We argue that it will become possible to dedicate a substantial fraction of the chip area and power budget to achieve high sequential performance. Current general-purpose processors contain a handful of cores designed to be continuously active and run in parallel. This leads to power and thermal constraints that limit the core's performance. We propose removing these constraints with a sequential accelerator (SACC). A SACC consists of several cores designed for ultimate sequential performance. These cores cannot run continuously. A single core is active at any time, the rest of the cores are inactive and power-gated. We migrate the execution periodically to another core to spread heat generation uniformly over the whole SACC area, thus addressing the temperature issue. The SACC will be viable only if it yields significant sequential performance. Migration-induced cache misses may limit performance gains. We propose some solutions to mitigate this problem. We also investigate a migration method using thermal sensors, such that the migration interval depends on the ambient temperature and the migration penalty is negligible under normal thermal conditions.

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

temperature
power
manycore
cache misses
sequential performance


horizon occlusion culling for real-time rendering of hierarchical terrains We present a technique to perform occlusion culling for hierarchical terrains at run-time. The algorithm is simple to implement and requires minimal pre-processing and additional storage, yet leads to 2-4 times improvement in framerate for views with high degrees of occlusion. Our method is based on the well-known occlusion horizon algorithm. We show how to adapt the algorithm for use with hierarchical terrains. The occlusion horizon is constructed as the terrain is traversed in an approximate front to back ordering. Regions of the terrain are compared to the horizon to determine when they are completely occluded from the viewpoint. Culling these regions leads to significant savings in rendering.

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


Electron beam lithography on cylindrical roller We developed a nano-structure fabrication technology over a cylindrical roller using electron beam lithography (EBL) and a specimen rotation apparatus. The high-resolution patterning is done on a cylindrical roller specimen and it is achieved by controlling the thickness of photo-resistance (PR) and dosage of the electron beam (EB). We successfully obtained homogeneous arrays of one-third circle grating with a nano-scale width 100nm and a large area of 63.5mm square. Couples of the ITRI character marks were also fabricated. The stitching control was accurately derived using the in-house made two-axis rotation system, which provides the smallest stitching of about 1.6?m. The minimum feature size of 100nm over the cylindrical roller is demonstrated. Moreover, the Nicole template with ITRI character pattern on the cylindrical roller was also successfully made, of which thickness is about 80nm.

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

electron beam lithography
cylindrical roller


Automatic system for monitoring corrosion of steel in concrete Corrosion of embedded steel in concrete is the main deterioration mechanism in reinforced concrete structures. Electrochemical techniques are powerful tools for evaluating the steel behavior in cementitious materials in laboratory and in the field. However, the number and frequency of measurements, and their accuracy are always a challenge for researchers and engineers. In this project, a measurement unit and a flexible program has been developed with LabVIEW 6.1 to allow automated measurements using a variety of electrochemical techniques.

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

electrochemical test
reference electrode
graphite


Mix-zones optimal deployment for protecting location privacy in VANET A promising approach to protect drivers location privacy in vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) suggests vehicle changing pseudonyms in regions called mix-zones, where the adversary cannot eavesdrop the vehicular communication. How to deploy mix-zones in a large city is a challenge problem and has not been well addressed in previously reported works. In this paper, we propose a statistics-based metric for evaluating the effectiveness of a mix-zone and selecting mix-zone candidates in term of privacy requirement. Furthermore, a cost-efficient mix-zones deployment scheme is presented to guarantee that vehicles at any place could pass through an effective mix-zone in certain driving time, and the extra overhead time of adjusting routes to across the mix-zone is small. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed evaluation metric is viable under various traffic scenarios while the deployment plans generated by our scheme in a real-world map make drivers have more chances to pass through mix-zones on road.

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

vanet
location privacy
optimal deployment


Anti-periodic solutions for HCNNs with time-varying delays in the leakage terms In this paper, a class of high-order cellular neural networks model is considered with the introduction of time-varying delays in the leakage terms. By using differential inequality techniques, some very verifiable and practical delay-dependent criteria on the existence and global exponential stability of anti-periodic solution for the model are derived. Even for the model without leakage delays, the criteria are shown to be less conservative than many recent publications. Moreover, some examples and remarks are given to demonstrate the feasibility of our method.

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

high-order cellular neural networks
anti-periodic solution
time-varying delay
leakage term


Structure-activity relationships for a new family of sulfonylurea herbicides Acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS; EC 2.2.1.6) catalyzes the first common step in branched-chain amino acid biosynthesis. The enzyme is inhibited by several chemical classes of compounds and this inhibition is the basis of action of the sulfonylurea and imidazolinone herbicides. The commercial sulfonylureas contain a pyrimidine or a triazine ring that is substituted at both meta positions, thus obeying the initial rules proposed by Levitt. Here we assess the activity of 69 monosubstituted sulfonylurea analogs and related compounds as inhibitors of pure recombinant Arabidopsis thaliana AHAS and show that disubstitution is not absolutely essential as exemplified by our novel herbicide, monosulfuron (2-nitro-N-(4'-methyl-pyrimidin-2'-yl) phenyl-sulfonylurea), which has a pyrimidine ring with a single meta substituent. A subset of these compounds was tested for herbicidal activity and it was shown that their effect in vivo correlates well with their potency in vitro as AHAS inhibitors. Three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationships were developed using comparative molecular field analysis and comparative molecular similarity indices analysis. For the latter, the best result was obtained when steric, electrostatic, hydrophobic and H-bond acceptor factors were taken into consideration. The resulting fields were mapped on to the published crystal structure of the yeast enzyme and it was shown that the steric and hydrophobic fields are in good agreement with sulfonylurea-AHAS interaction geometry.

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

acetohydroxyacid synthase
arabidopsis thaliana
herbicide
sulfonylurea

3d-qsar
computational docking
rational drug design


Automatic Resumption of RTSP Sessions in Mobile Phones using JADE-LEAP Streaming is a technique used to transmit information over the network so that the emission from the server, its communication along the network and downloading and processing in the client occurs simultaneously without the need to keep in the memory of the client. This technique is very effective for the transmission of multimedia information (video) and is very suitable for mobile phones because there is no need to store the video in its memory that is limited (including data storage is still quite limited in mobile phones latest generation). Although the transmission speed of wireless networks has increased significantly, this technique is very effective because it hides the network latency. Furthermore, the different wireless communication technologies used by mobile phones today (mainly Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), Bluetooth and 3G) are very likely to suffer physical disconnections causing intermittent loss of video streaming session every time a phone lost wireless coverage for a certain amount of time and forces it to reconnect manually, with the consequent loss of effectiveness of the streaming technique (that is lost due to the masking effects of network latency hiding). This paper shows a solution to automatic recover streams of video loss and the server streaming session creating a new mechanism based on proxies implemented with software agents in the platform named Java Agent Development Framework-Lightweight Extensible Agent Platform (JADE-LEAP). As far as our knowledge, this is the first time JADE-LEAP is used for video streaming on mobile phones. Moreover, experimental results obtained are very promising due to its effectiveness and relevance to the different case studies we have tested.

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


Mathematical models of nutrient recycling and toxin production in a gradostat We discuss several gradostat models in which a microbial population excretes a dissolved toxin, which in some cases can get recycled back into the system as a nutrient source. Each mathematical model consists of six ordinary differential equations and represents the dynamics of harmful algal blooms in a two compartment gradostat, for example representing lakes with fringing coves. We examine three different modes of toxin production, related to the algal growth rate, mortality rate, and nutrient limitation, respectively. Local and global stability analysis of the equilibria predict that algal abundance and toxin concentration can be both washed out or both persist under different environmental conditions. All theoretical results are supported by a set of numerical simulations.

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


Texture mapping polygons using scanline mapping geometry This work presents a novel description of texture mapping polygons in a geometric view about scanlines and a simplified mapping function to improve the performance. The conventional perspective-correct mapping requires costly division operations. In this work, two concepts in perspective geometry, cross-ratio and vanishing point, are exploited to simplify the mapping function. We substitute the point at infinity on scanline into the cross-ratio equation, then obtain a simple description of perspective mapping in polygons. Our mapping function allows the spatial mapping of a pixel from a scanline on a screen plane to a texture plane taking only one division, one multiplication and three additions. The proposed algorithm speeds up the mapping process without losing any correctness. Experimental results indicate that the performance of proposed method is superior to other correct mapping methods.

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


regularized regression on image manifold for retrieval Recently, there have been considerable interests in geometric-based methods for image retrieval. These methods consider the image space as a smooth manifold and apply manifold learning techniques to find a Euclidean embedding. Thus, the Euclidean distances in the embedding space can be used as approximations to the geodesic distances on the manifold. A main advantage of these methods is that the relevance feedbacks during retrieval can be naturally incorporated into the system as prior information. In this paper, we consider the retrieval problem as a classification problem on manifold. Instead of learning a distance measure, we aim to learn a classification function on the image manifold. Considering efficiency is a key issue in image retrieval, especially on the Webscale, we propose a novel approach for image retrieval on manifold. This approach is based on a regularized linear regression framework. The local manifold structure and user-provided relevance feedbacks are incorporated into the image retrieval system through a Locality Preserving Regularizer . Extensive experiments are carried out on a large image database which demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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


Design of evolutionary algorithms - A statistical perspective This paper describes a statistical method that helps to find good parameter settings for evolutionary algorithms. The method builds a functional relationship between the algorithm's performance and its parameter values. This relationship-a statistical model-can be identified thanks to simulation data. Estimation and test procedures are used to evaluate the effect of parameter variation. In addition, good parameter settings can be investigated with a reduced number of experiments, Problem labeling can also be considered as a model variable and the method enables identifying classes of problems for which the algorithm behaves similarly. Defining such classes increases the quality of estimations without increasing the computational cost.

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

evolutionary algorithm
experimental design
gamma distribution
generalized linear model


template-based autonomous navigation in urban environments Autonomous navigation is a fundamental task in mobile robotics. In the last years, several approaches have been addressing the autonomous navigation in outdoor environments. Lately it has also been extended to robotic vehicles in urban environments. This paper focus in the road identification problem, which is an important capability to autonomous vehicle drive. Our approach is based on image processing, template matching classification, and finite state machines processing. The proposed system allows to train an image segmentation algorithm in order to identify navigable and non-navigable regions (inside/outside roads), generating as output the steering control for an Electric Autonomous Vehicle, that should stay following the road. Several experimental tests have been carried out under different environmental conditions to evaluate the proposed techniques.

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

urban environments
finite state machines
template matching

robotic vehicles navigation
trapezoidal algorithm


New strategies for reliability analysis of Programmable Logic Controllers Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) are widely used in industry. Reliable PLC systems are vital to many critical applications. The reliability analysis of PLC is special because the hardware component and embedded software are combined and operated in a specific manner. This paper presents a probabilistic modeling for PLC systems, which considers both the hardware and software components. Three analysis strategies are proposed for probabilistic evaluation of reliability characterization. The first method is an input-based analysis which considers the impact of errors from primary inputs. The second one is an action-based analysis. It extends the first method by considering the impact of software-based processing deviations on primary inputs. The third method is an action-traverse analysis. It computes the reliability characterization in a single topological traverse through the primary inputs during the software execution. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approaches when compared to fault tree analysis. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Answering software evolution questions: An empirical evaluation Developers often need to find answers to questions regarding the evolution of a system when working on its code base. While their information needs require data analysis pertaining to different repository types, the source code repository has a pivotal role for program comprehension tasks. However, the coarse-grained nature of the data stored by commit-based software configuration management systems often makes it challenging for a developer to search for an answer. We present Replay, an Eclipse plug-in that allows developers to explore the change history of a system by capturing the changes at a finer granularity level than commits, and by replaying the past changes chronologically inside the integrated development environment, with the source code at hand. We conducted a controlled experiment to empirically assess whether Replay outperforms a baseline (SVN client in Eclipse) on helping developers to answer common questions related to software evolution. The experiment shows that Replay leads to a decrease in completion time with respect to a set of software evolution comprehension tasks. We conclude that there are benefits in using Replay over the state of the practice tools for answering questions that require fine-grained change information and those related to recent changes.

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

software evolution
empirical evaluation
controlled experiment

software change history
mining software repositories


Free vibration analysis of non-uniform EulerBernoulli beams by means of Bernstein pseudospectral collocation The eigenvalue problem related to the free vibration of EulerBernoulli beams of variable cross-section is solved using a collocation technique based on Bernstein polynomials. The properties of the non-orthogonal Bernstein basis allow the construction of the pseudospectral stiffness matrix by recursive formulation and the straightforward enforcement of essential and natural boundary conditions. The approach is tested in benchmark problems of modal analysis, showing high accuracy and exponential convergence rates.

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

vibration
eulerbernoulli beams
bernstein polynomials
collocation


The effect of the distribution of measurement points around the node on the accuracy of interpolation of the digital terrain model Contemporary land information systems allow the generation of models of numerical surfaces by applying a number of interpolation algorithms. The appropriate selection of measurement points included in the calculations is one of the key factors influencing the quality and accuracy of interpolation. Properly selected points contribute to improving the accuracy of the generated surface models and to shortening the computation process. This paper analyzes the effect of the location and density of measurement points on the accuracy of interpolation surfaces in view of the morphological differentiation of the generated models.

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

digital terrain model
interpolation algorithms


Session Reliability of Web Systems under Heavy-Tailed Workloads: An Approach Based on Design and Analysis of Experiments While workload characterization and performance of web systems have been studied extensively, reliability has received much less attention. In this paper, we propose a framework for session reliability modeling which integrates the user view represented by the session layer and the system view represented by the service layer. A unique characteristic of the session layer is that, in addition to the user navigation patterns, it incorporates the session length in number of requests and allows us to account for heavy-tailed workloads shown to exist in real web systems. The service layer is focused on the request reliability as it is observed at the service provider side. It considers the multitier web server architecture and the way components interact in serving each request. Within this framework, we develop a session reliability model and solve it using simulation. Instead of the traditional one-factor-at-a-time sensitivity analysis, we use statistical design and analysis of experiments, which allow us to identify the factors and interactions that have statistically significant effect on session reliability. Our findings indicate that session reliability, which accounts for the distribution of failed requests within sessions, provides better representation of the user perceived quality than the request-based reliability.

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

statistical methods
modeling and prediction
web servers
internet applications


RNS architectures for the implementation of the 'diagonal function' The 'diagonal function' is a new tool for performing non-modular operations in the Residue Number System (RNS). It is defined from the RNS to the integers and exploits the geometrical disposal in multi-dimensional discrete spaces of integers in residue representations. This paper presents a new class of RNS architectures for the effective implementation of the 'diagonal function'. The architectures are general, since they do not impose constraints on the set of moduli, and flexible, since they can be best suited depending on specific system requirements. The superiority of the new architectures with respect to traditional approaches is shown in terms of waste of hardware and time delay. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

computer architecture
parallel processing


Return to the fetal gene program A hallmark of cardiac metabolism before birth is the predominance of carbohydrate use for energy provision. After birth, energy substrate metabolism rapidly switches to the oxidation of fatty acids. This switch accompanies the expression of adult isoforms of metabolic enzymes and other proteins. However, in a variety of pathophysiologic conditions, including hypoxia, ischemia, hypertrophy, atrophy, diabetes, and hypothyroidism, the postnatal heart returns to the fetal gene program. These adaptive mechanisms are also a feature of the failing heart muscle, where at a certain point this fetal-like reprogramming no longer suffices to support cardiac structure and function. We advance the hypothesis that in the postnatal heart, metabolic remodeling triggers the process through glycosylation of transcription factors, potentially protecting the stressed heart from irreversible functional impairment and programmed cell death. In other words, we propose a metabolic link to gene expression in the heart.

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

fetal heart
hibernating myocardium
heart failure
glucose


The inverse simulation approach: a focused review of methods and applications Inverse techniques for dynamic simulation models which allow determination of the time history of "inputs" needed to achieve a specified time history for a selected set of "outputs" have been receiving some attention in recent years within aerospace engineering and in other application areas, including automatic control. This paper provides a review of some currently available methods and algorithms which have received particular attention in the field of aircraft flight mechanics and surveys a number of typical applications. The potential of the inverse simulation approach for external validation of simulation models is given special consideration. (C) 2000 IMACS. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

aeronautical engineering
model validation


SMT-based scenario verification for hybrid systems Hybrid automata are a widely used framework to model complex critical systems, where continuous physical dynamics are combined with discrete transitions. The expressive power of Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solvers can be used to symbolically model networks of hybrid automata, using formulas in the theory of reals, and SAT-based verification algorithms, such as bounded model checking and k-induction, can be naturally lifted to the SMT case.

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

smt-based verification
network of hybrid automata
message sequence charts
k-induction


Novel HW Architecture Based on FPGAs Oriented to Solve the Eigen Problem A hardware solution is presented to obtain the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a real and symmetrical matrix using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Currently, this system is used to compute the eigenvalues and eigenvectors in covariance matrices for applications in digital image processing that make use of the principal component analysis (PCA) technique. The proposed solution in this paper is based on the Jacobi method, but in comparison with other related works, it presents a different architecture that remarkably improves execution time, while reducing the number of consumed resources of the FPGA.

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

cordic
eigenvalue
eigenvector
field-programmable gate array (fpga)


document dependent fusion in multimodal music retrieval In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal fusion framework, document dependent fusion (DDF), which derives the optimal combination strategy for each individual document in the fusion process. For each document, we derive a document weight vector by estimating the descriptive abilities of its different modalities. The document weight vector also enables our framework to be easily integrated with existing multimodal fusion schemes, and achieve a better combination strategy for each document given a query. Experiments are conducted on a 17174-song music database to compare the retrieval accuracy of traditional query independent fusion and query dependent fusion approaches, and that obtained after integrating DDF with them. Experimental results indicate that DDF can significantly improve the retrieval performance of current fusion approaches.

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

query dependent fusion
music
document dependent fusion


A toolset to support the construction and animation of formal specifications Model-based specification languages, in particular Z, have been widely used to provide a precise and unambiguous statement of the proposed system as perceived by the developer. However, for many complex specifications, developers cannot themselves be sure about the intended behaviour of the specification constructed. This paper reports on an approach and toolset that enables a developer to construct a Z specification using the wiZe editor, demonstrate its properties by transforming it into an executable form using the ZAL animation system, and explore its adequacy by animating a variety of scenarios. The application of the approach and toolset is demonstrated on a specification of a telephone network to illustrate that specification validation could be carried out incrementally during development through investigative scenarios to assess the adequacy of the specification. It is claimed that this interaction, when used in peer review or by the individual developer, can provide enhanced accessibility, a better understood and possibly an improved specification.

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


assigning program and data objects to scratchpad for energy reduction The number of embedded systems is increasing and a remarkablepercentage is designed as mobile applications.For the latter, the energy consumption is a limiting factorbecause of today's battery capacities. Besides the processor,memory accesses consume a high amount of energy.The use of additional less power hungry memorieslike caches or scratchpads is thus common.Caches incorporate the hardware control logic for movingdata in and out automatically. On the other hand, thislogic requires chip area and energy. A scratchpad memoryis much more energy efficient, but there is a need for softwarecontrol of its content.In this paper, an algorithm integrated into a compiler ispresented which analyses the application and selects programand data parts which are placed into the scratchpad.Comparisons against a cache solution show remarkable advantagesbetween 12\% and 43\% in energy consumption fordesigns of the same memory size.

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

use
reduction
paper
control
cache
energy consumption
size
energy
capacities
data
power
logic
hardware
algorithm
caches
embedded systems

applications
batteries
object
processor
contention
mobile application
memorialized
compilation
energy efficiency
integrability


Chemical modification and patterning of self assembled monolayers using scanning electron and ion-beam lithography We present chemical modification of self assembled monolayers (SAMs) using electron and ion-beam lithographies. We used thiolated polyethylene oxide (PEO) SAMs on gold to fabricate chemically contrasting patterns at the nanoscale. Patterned surfaces were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). Results showed a chemical modification of surfaces patterned by means of electron beam (e-beam) lithography and a removal of PEO SAMs on the areas treated with the ion beam. The chemical modification of PEO SAMs converted the non-fouling surfaces on fouling surfaces.

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 O O O O O 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

electron beam lithography
ion-beam lithography


Self-configuration single particle optimizer for DNA sequence compression This paper presents a novel self-configuration single particle optimizer (SCSPO) for DNA sequence compression. Particularly, SCSPO searches an optimal compression codebook of all unique repeat patterns and then DNA sequences are compressed by replacing the duplicate fragments with the indexes of the corresponding matched code vectors in the codebook. Featured with a crucial self-configuration process, SCSPO optimizes the codebook with no predefined parameter settings required. Experimental results on benchmark numerical functions and real-world DNA sequences demonstrate that SCSPO is capable of attaining better fitness value than many other PSO variants and the proposed DNA sequence compression algorithm based on SCSPO attains encouraging compression performance.

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


Point-based projective invariants The paper deals with features of a 2-D point set which are invariant with respect to a projective transform. First, projective invariants for five-point sets, which are simultaneously invariant to the projective transform and to permutation of the points, are derived. They are expressed as functions of five-point cross-ratios. Then, the invariants for more than five points are derived. The algorithm for searching the correspondence between the points of two 2-D point sets is presented. The algorithm is based on the comparison of two projective and permutation invariants of five-tuples of the points. The best-matched five tuples are then used for the computation of the projective transformation and that with the maximum of corresponding points is used. Stability and discriminability of the features and behavior of the searching algorithm are demonstrated by numerical experiments.

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

projective transform
projective invariants
permutation invariants

point set matching
point-based invariants
registration
control points


Indestructibility, measurability, and degrees of supercompactness Suppose that ? is indestructibly supercompact and there is a measurable cardinal ? > ?. It then follows that A1 = {? < ??? is measurable, ? is not a limit of measurable cardinals, and ? is not ?+ supercompact} is unbounded in ?. If in addition ? is 2? supercompact, then A2 = {? < ??? is measurable, ? is not a limit of measurable cardinals, and ? is ?+ supercompact} is unbounded in ? as well. The large cardinal hypotheses on ? are necessary, as we further demonstrate by constructing via forcing two distinct models in which either or . In each of these models, there is an indestructibly supercompact cardinal ?, and a restricted large cardinal structure above ?. If we weaken the indestructibility requirement on ? to indestructibility under partial orderings which are both ?-directed closed and (?+, ?)-distributive, then it is possible to construct a model containing a supercompact cardinal ? witnessing this degree of indestructibility in which every measurable cardinal ? < ? is (at least) ?+ supercompact.

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

nonreflecting stationary set of ordinals. msc (2010) 03e35


Patients and professionals in the information society: what might keep us awake in 2013 This commentary of Haux prognosis of the state of affairs in health care and information technology in the year 2013 argues the importance of standing up against the many high-tech, utopian dreams that are often associated with ICT in health care. Discussing many of the themes that Haux brings up, three issues are particularly focused upon: the importance of patient-centered care, the changing position of the professional in current health care, and the nature of health care information. In all these issues, cliches threaten to hide several real and possibly painful issues, which, if unaddressed, will hamper any real progress. In all these issues, moreover, medical informatics plays an important role, and is a core actor in the future shaping of our health care systems. This responsibility should not be taken lightly.

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

patient-centered care
total quality management
socio-technical approach
professional status
information nature of


Fixed-Interval Kalman Smoothing Algorithms in Singular StateSpace Systems Fixed-interval Bayesian smoothing in statespace systems has been addressed for a long time. However, as far as the measurement noise is concerned, only two cases have been addressed so far : the regular case, i.e., with positive definite covariance matrix; and the perfect measurement case, i.e., with zero measurement noise. In this paper we address the smoothing problem in the intermediate case where the measurement noise covariance is positive semi definite with arbitrary rank. We exploit the singularity of the model in order to transform the original statespace system into a pairwise Markov model with reduced state dimension. Finally, the a posteriori Markovianity of the reduced state enables us to propose a family of fixed-interval smoothing algorithms.

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


A polynomial dynamic system approach to software design for attractivity requirement Because of the widespread increasing application of Web services and autonomic computing, self-adaptive software is an area gaining increasing importance. Control theory provides a theoretical foundation for self-adaptive software. In this paper, we propose the use of the supervisory control theory of discrete event dynamic systems (DEDS) to provide a rigorous foundation for designing software for reactive systems. This paper focuses in particular on design of software with an attractivity requirement. It studies this problem using the polynomial dynamic system (PDS) model of DEDS. A necessary and sufficient condition for software existence and two algorithms for such software design are presented. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

discrete event dynamic systems
supervisory control theory

reactive software
polynomial dynamic systems
software cybernetics


investigating the relationship between qos and qoe in a mixed desktop/handheld gaming setting Innovative software and system development requires a multi-disciplinary approach where technical, objectively quantifiable Quality of Service aspects are integrated with and correlated to subjective Quality of Experience measures such as usability, user expectations and experiences. To date, QoS and QoE research has however mainly been carried out in an isolated manner. Their exact correlation consequently remains unclear. Using a collaborative multi-platform game as case study, we intend to investigate this relationship and hope to bridge the divide that currently exists between social, user-oriented research and technically-oriented application development by formulating recommendations and guidelines. To implement the QoS and QoE optimizations, we will rely on the NIProxy, a network proxy equipped with network traffic shaping and service provision functionality.

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


Robust mixture regression using the t t -distribution The traditional estimation of mixture regression models is based on the normal assumption of component errors and thus is sensitive to outliers or heavy-tailed errors. A robust mixture regression model based on the t t -distribution by extending the mixture of t t -distributions to the regression setting is proposed. However, this proposed new mixture regression model is still not robust to high leverage outliers. In order to overcome this, a modified version of the proposed method, which fits the mixture regression based on the t t -distribution to the data after adaptively trimming high leverage points, is also proposed. Furthermore, it is proposed to adaptively choose the degrees of freedom for the t t -distribution using profile likelihood. The proposed robust mixture regression estimate has high efficiency due to the adaptive choice of degrees of freedom.

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

em algorithm
robust regression
t t -distribution t t t t t


Real-time processing in client-server databases In this paper, we propose and experimentally evaluate the use of the client-server database paradigm for real-time processing. To date, the study of transaction processing with time constraints has mostly been restricted to centralized or "single-node" systems, Recently, client-server databases have exploited locality of data accesses in real-world applications to successfully provide reduced transaction response times. Our objective is to investigate the feasibility of real-time processing in a data-shipping client-server database architecture. We compare the efficiency of the proposed architecture with that of a centralized real-time database system. We discuss transaction scheduling issues in the two architectures and propose a new policy for scheduling transactions in the client-server environment, This policy assigns higher priorities to transactions that have a greater potential for successful completion through the use of locally available data. Through a detailed performance scalability study, we investigate the effects of client dataaccess locality and various updating workloads on transaction completion rates. Our experimental results show that real-time clientserver databases can provide significant performance gains over their centralized counterparts, These gains become evident when large numbers of clients (more than 40) are attached per server, even in the presence of high data contention.

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

client-server databases
real-time transaction processing
experimental performance evaluation


Cognitive enhancement in video game players: The role of video game genre We compare first-person shooter and real-time strategy video game players. Action video games provide differential benefits to cognition depending on genre. Real-time strategy players show superior performance on multiple object tracking. Game mechanics may determine occurrence of specific cognitive enhancements.

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

cognitive functions
executive functions
visual attention
task switching


Multicriteria decision support using rules that represent rough-graded preference relations The approach described in this paper aims to support multicriteria choice and ranking of actions when the input preference information acquired from the decision maker is a graded comprehensive pairwise comparison (or ranking) of reference actions. It is based on decision-rule preference model induced from a rough approximation of the graded comprehensive preference relation among the reference actions. The set of decision rules applied to a new set of actions provides a graded fuzzy preference relation, which can be exploited by weighted-fuzzy net flow score or lexicographic-fuzzy net flow score procedure to obtain a final recommendation in terms of the best choice or of the ranking.

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

multicriteria decision support
decision rules
ranking
choice


securely outsourcing linear algebra computations We give improved protocols for the secure and private outsourcing of linear algebra computations, that enable a client to securely outsource expensive algebraic computations (like the multiplication of large matrices) to a remote server, such that the server learns nothing about the customer's private input or the result of the computation, and any attempted corruption of the answer by the server is detected with high probability. The computational work performed at the client is linear in the size of its input and does not require the client to locally carry out any expensive encryptions of such input. The computational burden on the server is proportional to the time complexity of the current practically used algorithms for solving the algebraic problem (e.g., proportional to n 3 for multiplying two n x n matrices). The improvements we give are: (i) whereas the previous work required more than one remote server and assumed they do not collude, our solution works with a single server (but readily accommodates many, for improved performance); (ii) whereas the previous work required a server to carry out expensive cryptographic computations (e.g., homomorphic encryptions), our solution does not make use of any such expensive cryptographic primitives; and (iii) whereas in previous work collusion by the servers against the client revealed to them the client's inputs, our scheme is resistant to such collusion. As in previous work, we maintain the property that the scheme enables the client to detect any attempt by the server(s) at corruption of the answer, even when the attempt is collusive and coordinated among the servers.

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

privacy
cryptographic protocols
computational outsourcing


How do you define and measure research productivity? Productivity is the quintessential indicator of efficiency in any production system. It seems it has become a norm in bibliometrics to define research productivity as the number of publications per researcher, distinguishing it from impact. In this work we operationalize the economic concept of productivity for the specific context of research activity and show the limits of the commonly accepted definition. We propose then a measurable form of research productivity through the indicator Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS), in keeping with the microeconomic theory of production. We present the methodology for measure of FSS at various levels of analysis: individual, field, discipline, department, institution, region and nation. Finally, we compare the ranking lists of Italian universities by the two definitions of research productivity.

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


Quasi-Newton methods for implicit black-box FSI coupling In this paper we introduce a new multi-vector update quasi-Newton (MVQN) method for implicit coupling of partitioned, transient FSI solvers. The new quasi-Newton method facilitates the use of black-box field solvers and under certain circumstances can be demonstrated to provide Newton-like convergence behaviour for strongly coupled FSI benchmark problems. We demonstrate the superior convergence behaviour and robust nature of the MVQN method compared to other well known quasi-Newton coupling schemes, including the least squares reduced order modelling (IBQN-LS) scheme, the classical rank-1 update Broydens method and fixed point iterations with dynamic relaxation. The quasi-Newton methods are analysed on a suite of strongly coupled FSI problems, including but not limited to, internal, incompressible flow through a flexible tube where the solid density is an order of magnitude lower than the fluid density.

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

fluidstructure interactions
partitioned solver
black-box solver
quasi-newton methods


Iterative gradient projection algorithm for two-dimensional compressive sensing sparse image reconstruction A gradient based algorithm for 2D CS sparse image reconstruction is proposed. Images could not be divided into small blocks or stacked into a large vector. The algrotithm has a PSNR gain of 2dB with dramatic reduction of computation time.

O O O O O O B I 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


A priori trust inference with context-aware stereotypical deep learning We have proposed CAST, a new context-aware stereotypical trust model. We have considered a comprehensive set of seven context-aware stereotypes. We have applied a deep learning architecture to keep trust stereotyping robust. We have confirmed the effectiveness of CAST using a rich set of experiments.

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


Convergent modeling strategies to account for SAR on 3-aminopyridazines binding to m(1) muscarinic receptor The binding mode of 3-aminopyridazine analogues to the M1 muscarinic receptor has been studied by two complementary modeling strategies: the "active analog" approach and direct docking into a 3D model of the receptor. Modeling combined with SAR study: (i) accounts for the contribution to binding of both hydrophilic (Asp311, Asn617) and hydrophobic residues; (ii) illustrates the subtlety of ligand-receptor binding; (iii) highlights a binding site domain that might be responsible to partial or full agonism.

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

g-protein-coupled receptors
ligand-based alignment
protein-based alignment


Technologies for the Fast Set-Up of Automated Assembly Processes In this article, we describe technologies facilitating the set-up of automated assembly solutions which have been developed in the context of the IntellAct project (20112014). Tedious procedures are currently still required to establish such robot solutions. This hinders especially the automation of so called few-of-a-kind production. Therefore, most production of this kind is done manually and thus often performed in low-wage countries. In the IntellAct project, we have developed a set of methods which facilitate the set-up of a complex automatic assembly process, and here we present our work on tele-operation, dexterous grasping, pose estimation and learning of control strategies. The prototype developed in IntellAct is at a TRL4 (corresponding to demonstration in lab environment).

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


a live storage migration mechanism over wan and its performance evaluation Live migration of virtual machines is a key technology for the next generation of IaaS cloud services, contributing to dynamic portability and mobility of VM-based services among datacenters. The practical use of live migration, however, is still limited inside a single datacenter. In WAN environments, network latencies cause inevitable I/O performance degradation of remotely-shared storage between source and destination sites; which is required to continue disk access of VMs before/after live migration. In our previous work, we proposed a transparent, relocatable I/O mechanism for VM migration, which enables VM disk images to be completely migrated to remote nodes without any modification of virtual machine monitors. In this paper, we present detailed performance evaluation of the proposed system, emulating a realistic WAN environment between remote datacenters. Experiments showed the proposed system achieved feasible I/O performance for various workloads including I/O intensive applications. Its background copy mechanism efficiently prefetches not-yet-cached blocks by exploiting the available bandwidth of WAN, thereby minimizing temporary performance degradation of the migrating VM system.

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


improving the effectiveness of collaborative recommendation with ontology-based user profiles Collaborative recommendation is effective at representing a user's overall interests and tastes, and finding peer users that can provide good recommendations. However, it remains a challenge to make collaborative recommendation sensitive to a user's specific context and to the changing shape of user interests over time. Our approach to building context-sensitive collaborative recommendation is a hybrid one that incorporates semantic knowledge in the form of a domain ontology. User profiles are defined relative to the ontology, giving rise to an ontological user profile . In this paper, we describe how ontological user profiles are learned, incrementally updated, and used for collaborative recommendation. Using book rating data, we demonstrate that this recommendation algorithm offers improved coverage, diversity, personalization, and cold-start performance while at the same time enhancing recommendation accuracy.

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

collaborative filtering
recommender systems
ontology-based user profiles


Validation of average error rate over classifiers We examine methods to estimate the average and variance of test error rates over a set of classifiers. We begin with the process of drawing a classifier at random for each example. Given validation data, the average test error rate can be estimated as if validating a single classifier. Given the test example inputs, the variance can be computed exactly. Next, we consider the process of drawing a classifier at random and using it on all examples. Once again, the expected test error rate can be validated as if validating a single classifier. However, the variance must be estimated by validating all classifiers, which yields loose or uncertain bounds.

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 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


Automatic semantic annotation of real-world web images As the number of Web images is increasing at a rapid rate, searching them semantically presents a significant challenge. Many raw images are constantly uploaded with few meaningful direct annotations of semantic content, limiting their search and discovery. In this paper, we present a semantic annotation technique based on the use of image parametric dimensions and metadata. Using decision trees and rule induction, we develop a rule-based approach to formulate explicit annotations for images fully automatically, so that by the use of our method, a semantic query such as "sunset by the sea in autumn in New York" can be answered and indexed purely by machine. Our system is evaluated quantitatively using more than 100,000 Web images. Experimental results indicate that this approach is able to deliver a highly competent performance, attaining good recall and precision rates of sometimes over 80 percent. This approach enables a new degree of semantic richness to be automatically associated with images which previously could only be performed manually.

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

feature extraction
image annotation
image retrieval
image semantics
scene analysis


A global wiring paradigm for deep submicron design Global interconnect is commonly regarded as a key potential bottleneck to the advancing performance of high-speed integrated circuits. Our previous work has suggested that local interconnect effects can be managed through a deep submicron design hierarchy that uses 50 000 to 100 000 gate modules as primitive building blocks. The primary goal of this paper is to examine global interconnect effects, within such a design hierarchy, to determine if there are any significant roadblocks which will prevent National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (NTRS) performance expectations from being met. Specifically, the issues of global resistance-capacitance delay, signal time-of-flight, inductance. clock and power distribution, and noise are studied. Results indicate that, while global clock frequencies mill necessarily be lower than local clock speeds, NTRS expectations should be attainable to the 50-nm technology generation. Achieving these high clock speeds (10-GHz local clock) will be aided by the use of a newly proposed routing hierarchy which limits interconnect effects at each level of a design (local, isochronous, and global).

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

integrated circuit interconnections
integrated circuit modeling
ultra-large-scale integration


A congruence relation for sPBC In this paper we define a congruence relation for regular terms of sPBC (stochastic Petri Box Calculus), by means of which we identify those processes that have the same behaviour, not only in terms of the multiactions that they can perform, but also taking into account the stochastic information that they have associated. In order to define this equivalence relation we have to define an adequate semantics for the synchronization operator, as well as a new labelled transition system for regular terms of sPBC.

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

stochastic process algebras
operational semantics
stochastic petri nets


An improved ant colony optimization for constrained engineering design problems Purpose - The computational drawbacks of existing numerical methods have forced researchers to rely on heuristic algorithms. Heuristic methods are powerful in obtaining the solution of optimization problems. Although they are approximate methods (i.e. their solution are good, but not provably optimal), they do not require the derivatives of the objective function and constraints. Also, they use probabilistic transition rules instead of deterministic rules. The purpose of this paper is to present an improved ant colony optimization (IACO) for constrained engineering design problems. Design/methodology/approach - IACO has the capacity to handle continuous and discrete problems by using sub-optimization mechanism (SUM). SUM is based on the principles of finite element method working as a search-space updating technique. Also, SUM can reduce the size of pheromone matrices, decision vectors and the number of evaluations. Though TACO decreases pheromone updating operations as well as optimization time, the probability of finding an optimum solution is not reduced. Findings - Utilizing SUM in the ACO algorithm causes a decrease in the size of the pheromone vectors, size of the decision vector, size of the search space, the number of function evaluations, and finally the required optimization time. SUM performs as a search-space-updating rule, and it can exchange discrete-continuous search domain to each other. Originality/value - The suitability of using ACO for constrained engineering design problems is presented, and applied to optimal design of different engineering problems.

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

optimum design
civil engineering
programming and algorithm theory


Algorithms for the Bin Packing Problem with Conflicts We consider a particular bin packing problem in which some pairs of items may be in conflict and cannot be assigned to the same bin. The problem, denoted as the bin packing problem with conflicts, is of practical and theoretical interest because of its many real-world applications and because it generalizes both the bin packing problem and the vertex coloring problem. We present new lower bounds, upper bounds, and an exact approach, based on a set covering formulation solved through a branch-and-price algorithm. We investigate the behavior of the proposed procedures by means of extensive computational results on benchmark instances from the literature.

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

bin packing with conflicts
heuristics
branch and price


in search of targeted-complexity problems Currently available real-world problems do not cover the whole complexity space and, therefore, do not allow us to thoroughly test learner behavior on the border of its domain of competence. Thus, the necessity of developing a more suitable testing scenario arises. With this in mind, data complexity analysis has shown promise in characterizing difficulty of classification problems through a set of complexity descriptors which used in artificial data sets generation could supply the required framework to refine and design learners. This paper, then, proposes the use of instance selection based on an evolutionary multiobjective technique to generate data sets that meet specific characteristics established by such complexity descriptors. These artificial targeted-complexity problems, which capture the essence of real-world structures, may help to define a set of benchmarks that contributes to test the properties of learners and to improve them.

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


intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located and can send reminders and messages We present 'Quickies: Intelligent Sticky Notes', an attempt to bring one of the most useful inventions of the 20 th century into the digital age: the ubiquitous sticky notes. Sticky notes help us manage our-to-do lists, tag our objects and documents and capture short reminders or information that we may need in the near future. 'Quickies' enrich the experience of using sticky notes by allowing them to be tracked and managed more effectively. Quickies are stickies that have intelligence and the ability to remind us about the task we ought to perform or to provide us at the right time with the information we captured in the past. The project explores how the use of Artificial Intelligence, RFID, and ink recognition technologies can make it possible to create intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located, can send reminders and messages, and more broadly, can help us to seamlessly connect our physical and digital experiences.

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


Asymmetric bagging and random subspace for support vector machines-based relevance feedback in image retrieval Relevance feedback schemes based on support vector machines (SVM) have been widely used in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). However, the performance of SVM-based relevance feedback is often poor when the number of labeled positive feedback samples is small. This is mainly due to three reasons: 1) an SVM classifier is unstable on a small-sized training set, 2) SVM's optimal hyperplane may be biased when the positive feedback samples are much less than the negative feedback samples, and 3) overfitting happens because the number of feature dimensions is much higher than the size of the training set. In this paper, we develop a mechanism to overcome these problems. To address the first two problems, we propose an asymmetric bagging-based SVM(AB-SVM). For the third problem, we combine the random subspace method and SVM for relevance feedback, which is named random subspace SVM (RS-SVM). Finally, by integrating AB-SVM and RS-SVM, an asymmetric bagging and random subspace SVM (ABRS-SVM) is built to solve these three problems and further improve the relevance feedback performance.

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

relevance feedback
asymmetric bagging
random subspace
support vector machines

classifier committee learning
content-based image retrieval


Automatic point correspondence and registration based on linear structures A novel method to obtain point correspondence in pairs of images is presented. Our approach is based on automatically establishing correspondence between linear structures which appear in images using robust features such as orientation, width and curvature extracted from those structures. The extracted points can be used to register sets of images. The potential of the developed approach is demonstrated on mammographic images.

O O O O O O O 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

feature matching
image registration
medical imaging


3D geological modelling from boreholes, cross-sections and geological maps, application over former natural gas storages in coal mines In a wide range of applications involving geological modelling, geological data available at low cost usually consist of documents such as cross-sections or geological maps and punctual data like borehole logs or outcrop descriptions. In order to build accurate 3D geological models based on this information, it is necessary to develop a methodology that takes into account the variety of available data. Such models, of the geometry of geological bodies, should also be easy to edit and update to integrate new data. This kind of model should produce a consistent representation of subsurface geology that may be a support for modelling other subsoil characteristics such as hydrogeologic or geothermic properties of the geological bodies. This paper presents a methodology developed to process geological information in this context. The aims of this methodology are comprehensive data description, effective data validation and easier model updates. Thus, special attention has been given to data structures and processing flows. The adopted methodology is implemented on a system architecture formed by a geographic information system, a geomodeler and a database communicating by file transfers. An application of this methodology, to build a 3D geological model of the subsoil over former coalmines used to store natural gas, is then presented. This model integrates the geological information available and is representative of the geological context. It is a support to the environmental follow-up needed after the end of gas-storage operations.

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


Influence of injection level of charge carriers in nanostructured porous silicon on electroluminescence quantum efficiency This paper will investigate the electroluminescence characteristics of Al/porous silicon/monocrystalline silicon/Al sandwich-structures (Al/PS(c-Si)/Al) prepared on a base of nanostructured porous silicon by the method of electrochemical anodization of monocrystalline silicon wafers are reported. It will be concerned with the light emission mechanism of Al/PS(c-Si)/Al sandwich-structures at double injection of charge carriers.

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

porous silicon
electroluminescence
injection level


Quantitative analysis of a certified e-mail protocol in mobile environments: A probabilistic model checking approach Formal analysis techniques, such as probabilistic model checking, offer an effective mechanism for model-based performance and verification studies of communication systems behavior that can be abstractly described by a set of rules i.e., a protocol. This article presents an integrated approach for the quantitative analysis of the Certified E-mail Message Delivery (CEMD) protocol that provides security properties to electronic mail services. The proposed scheme employs a probabilistic model checking analysis and provides for the first time insights on the impact of CEMDs error tolerance on computational and transmission cost. It exploits an efficient combination of quantitative analysis and specific computational and communication parameters, i.e., the widely used Texas Instruments TMS320C55x Family operating in an High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) mobile environment, where multiple CEMD participants execute parallel sessions with high bit error rates (BERs). Furthermore, it offers a tool-assistant approach for the protocol designers and analysts towards the verification of their products under varying parameters. Finally, this analysis can be also utilized towards reliably addressing cost-related issues of certain communication protocols and deciding on their cost-dependent viability, taking into account limitations that are introduced by hardware specifications of mobile devices and noisy mobile environments.

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

probabilistic model checking
mobile environments


Real-time computer simulation workshops for the process control education of undergraduate chemical engineers Realistic workshops involving real-time simulation of chemical processes are introduced for an undergraduate process-control course in chemical engineering. The workshops are based on fundamental-process models of industrial unit operations and are designed for the "hands-on" learning of process control. These workshops can be used in a computer laboratory under all readily available commercial process simulation software, namely, HYSYS, Aspen Dynamics, and MATLAB. This paper reviews these workshops and how they are used for effective process control education of chemical engineers. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons. Inc.

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

process control
process simulation
education
chemical engineering


reliable data-center scale computations Neither of the two broad classes of fault models considered by traditional fault tolerance techniques --- crash and Byzantine faults --- suit the environment of systems that run in today's data centers. On the one hand, assuming Byzantine faults is considered overkill due to the assumption of a worst-case adversarial behavior, and the use of other techniques to guard against malicious attacks. On the other hand, the crash fault model is insufficient since it does not capture non-crash faults that may result from a variety of unexpected conditions that are commonplace in this setting. In this paper, we present the case for a more practical approach at handling non-crash (but non-adversarial) faults in data-center scale computations. In this context, we discuss how such problem can be tackled for an important class of data-center scale systems: systems for large-scale processing of data, with a particular focus on the Pig programming framework. Such an approach not only covers a significant fraction of the processing jobs that run in today's data centers, but is potentially applicable to a broader class of applications.

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

non-adversarial faults
data processing
data center
fault detection


Anonymizing mobility data using semantic cloaking The prevalence of mobile phones has led to an explosion in the amounts of human mobility data stored in the cloud. It has been shown that seemingly anonymized location datasets are highly susceptible for re-identification, and may not provide enough privacy protection. In this paper we quantitatively show how semantic cloaking , the application of semantic labeling to achieve anonymization, can improve the privacy of a mobility dataset for use cases where location coordinates can be replaced by semantic categories. We develop a semantic labeling framework, apply it and evaluate it using the dataset uniqueness (? ? ) measure. Our experiments show an improvement in uniqueness ranging between two- and twenty two-fold in comparison to the original, naively anonymized, dataset.

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

human mobility
semantic labeling
semantic cloaking

location privacy
k k -anonymity k k k k k


empirical evaluation of openccm for java-based distributed, real-time, and embedded systems Component technology can overcome many limitations of conventional Object Request Brokers (ORBs) in developing distributed, real-time, and embedded (DRE) applications. Component technology has particular advantages for building large-scale DRE systems. The CORBA Component Model (CCM) enables the composition and reuse of software components and the configuration of key non-functional aspects of DRE systems such as timing, fault-tolerance, and security. However, the CCM can introduce additional overhead to the runtime performance and code size of middleware. Hence, the overhead for using the CCM needs to be evaluated to determine if the CCM can be effectively employed in the design of high-reliability DRE applications. In this paper, we empirically evaluated the performance of OpenCCM, a Java-based implementation of the CCM standard, when configured with two Java ORBs: with ZEN, a real-time Java ORB, and with OpenORB, a desktop Java ORB. We measured throughput, latency, and jitter of method invocations for both ORBs configured with and without OpenCCM. We also measured the additional memory requirement introduced by the CCM implementation. We concluded that OpenCCM adds some overhead to both Java ORBs, affecting OpenORB's performance more than ZEN's. More development of the CCM may be necessary to bring its advantages to high-performance DRE systems.

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