Multicriteria fuzzy classification procedure PROCFTN: methodology and medical application In this paper, we introduce a new classification procedure for assigning objects to predefined classes, named PROCFTN. This procedure is based on a fuzzy scoring function for choosing a subset of prototypes, which represent the closest resemblance with an object to be assigned. It then applies the majority-voting rule to assign an object to a class. We also present a medical application of this procedure as an aid to assist the diagnosis of central nervous system tumours. The results are compared with those obtained by other classification methods, reported on the same data set, including decision tree, production rules, neural network, k nearest neighbor, multilayer perceptron and logistic regression. Our results are very encouraging and show that the multicriteria decision analysis approach can be successfully used to help medical diagnosis. Crown Copyright (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

classification
scoring function
medical diagnosis

multicriteria decision aid
fuzzy sets
fuzzy binary relations
astrocytic tumour


Unitary torus model for conical mirror based catadioptric system ? We propose a new model for conical mirror based catadioptric systems. Definition of the unitary torus to model this non-central system. Definition of the conical fundamental matrix. Motion computation across two views from the conical fundamental matrix. The proposal is illustrated with simulations and real experiments.

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

imaging geometry
omnidirectional camera
non-central catadioptric system
epipolar geometry


Binary partition tree as an efficient representation for image processing, segmentation, and information retrieval This paper discusses the interest of binary partition trees as a region-oriented image representation, Binary partition trees concentrate in a compact and structured representation a set of meaningful regions that can be extracted from an image, They offer a multiscale representation of the image and define a translation invariant 2-connectivity rule among regions, As shown in this paper, this representation can be used for a large number of processing peals such as filtering, segmentation, information retrieval and visual browsing. Furthermore, the processing of the tree representation leads to very efficient algorithms, Finally, for some applications, it may be interesting to compute the binary partition tree once and to store it for subsequent use for various applications, In this context, the last section of the paper will show that the amount of bits necessary to encode a binary partition tree remains moderate.

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

browsing
information retrieval
partition tree
segmentation

connected operators
mathematical morphology
nonlinear filtering
object recognition
pruning strategy
region adjacency graphs


Educational software to design shafts and analyze them by FEM in this article, an educational computer application to dimension shafts is presented, Safety factors according to several classic theories can be obtained by indicating shaft dimensions and particular discontinuities, as grooves or holes. Specifying the desired security factor, necessary dimensions can be calculated. one of the advantages of the educational software developed is that text files created by it can be directly imported to the FEM software ANSYS so as to analyze stress distribution of the shaft. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals. Inc.

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


Specifying and animating facial signals for discourse in embodied conversational agents People highlight the intended interpretation of their utterances within a larger discourse by a diverse set of non-verbal signals. These signals represent a key challenge for animated conversational agents because they are pervasive, variable, and need to be coordinated judiciously in an effective contribution to conversation. In this paper, we describe a freely available cross-platform real-time facial animation system, RUTH, that animates such high-level signals in synchrony with speech and lip movements. RUTH adopts an open, layered architecture in which fine-grained features of the animation can be derived by rule from inferred linguistic structure, allowing us to use RUTH, in conjunction with annotation of observed discourse, to investigate the meaningful high-level elements of conversational facial movement for American English speakers. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

facial animation
embodied conversational agents


A 1.5 approximation algorithm for embedding hyperedges in a cycle The problem of Minimum Congestion Hypergraph Embedding in a Cycle (MCHEC) is to embed the hyperedges of a hypergraph as adjacent paths around a cycle, such that the maximum congestion over any physical link in the cycle is minimized. The problem is NP-complete in general, but solvable in polynomial time when all hyperedges contain exactly two vertices. In this paper, we first formulate the problem as an Integer Linear Program (ILP). Then, a solution with approximation bound of 1: 5(opt + 1) is presented by using a clockwise (2/3)-rounding algorithm, where opt denotes the optimal value of maximum congestion. To our knowledge, this is the best approximation bound known for the MCHEC problem.

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

integer linear programming
lp-relaxation
np-complete


Particle filter based information-theoretic active sensing This work addresses the task of active sensing, or information-seeking control of mobile sensor platforms. Formulation of a control objective in terms of information gain allows mobile sensors to be both autonomous and easily reconfigurable to include a variety of sensor and target models. Tracking a moving target using a camera mounted on a fixed-wing unmanned aircraft is considered, but the control formulation is not specific to this choice of sensor or estimation task. A control formulation is developed which minimizes the entropy of an estimate distribution over a receding horizon subject to stochastic non-linear models for both the target motion and sensors. Previous similar work has been restricted to either a stationary target, a horizon of length one, or Gaussian estimates. The prediction of conditional entropy is shown to be inherently complex, and a computationally efficient sequential Monte Carlo method is developed. The entropy prediction depends on this Monte Carlo method as well as a novel approach for entropy calculation in the context of particle filtering. These methods are verified through simulation and post-processing of experimental flight data.

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

particle filter
active sensing
unmanned aircraft


analysis of pre-computed partition top method for range top-k queries in olap data cubes In decision support systems, having knowledge on the top k values is more informative and crucial than the maximum value. Unfortunately, the naive method involves high computational cost and the existing methods for range-max query are inefficient if applied directly. In this paper, we propose a Pre-computed Partition Top method (PPT) to partition the data cube and pre-store a number of top values for improving query performance. The main focus of this study is to find the optimum values for two parameters, i.e., the partition factor ( b ) and the number of pre-stored values ( r ), through analytical approach. A cost function based on Poisson distribution is used for the analysis. The analytical results obtained are verified against simulation results. It is shown that the PPT method outperforms other alternative methods significantly when proper b and r are used.

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 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


A characterization of interval-valued residuated lattices As is well-known, residuated lattices (RLs) on the unit interval correspond to left-continuous t-norms. Thus far, a similar characterization has not been found for RLs on the set of intervals of [0, 1], or more generally, of a bounded lattice L. In this paper, we show that the open problem can be solved if it is restricted, making only a few simple and intuitive assumptions, to the class of interval-valued residuated lattices (IVRLs). More specifically, we derive a full characterization of product and implication in IVRLs in terms of their counterparts on the base RL To this aim, we use triangle algebras, a recently introduced variety of RLs that serves as an equational representation of IVRLs. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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


Institutionalization of software product line: An empirical investigation of key organizational factors A good fit between the person and the organization is essential in a better organizational performance. This is even more crucial in case of institutionalization of a software product line practice within an organization. Employees participation, organizational behavior and management contemplation play a vital role in successfully institutionalizing software product lines in a company. Organizational dimension has been weighted as one of the critical dimensions in software product line theory and practice. A comprehensive empirical investigation to study the impact of some organizational factors on the performance of software product line practice is presented in this work. This is the first study to empirically investigate and demonstrate the relationships between some of the key organizational factors and software product line performance of an organization. The results of this investigation provide empirical evidence and further support the theoretical foundations that in order to institutionalize software product lines within an organization, organizational factors play an important role.

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

software product line
organizational behavior

empirical software engineering
organizational theory
organizational management


Impending brain informatics research from web intelligence perspective Web Intelligence (WI)-based portal techniques (e.g. the wisdom Web, data mining, multi-agent, and data/knowledge grids) will provide a new powerful platform for Brain Sciences. New understanding and discovery of the human intelligence models in Brain Sciences (e.g. cognitive science, neuroscience, brain informatics) will yield new WI research and development. In this paper, we briefly investigate three high-impact research issues as well as present a case study, to demonstrate the potentials of Brain Informatics (BI) research from WI perspective.

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

brain informatics (bi)
web intelligence (wi)
data mining centric multi-layer grid
multi-aspect data analysis


Building a virtual framework for networked reconfigurable hardware and software objects A virtual framework that uses both hardware and software reconfigurable objects is presented. The new framework supports both networked hardware and software reconfiguration. In such a virtual framework, the networked reconfiguration users only need to develop a single service description targeted on a single hardware and software platform. The service is able to write once, and run everywhere. That facilitates the new service deployment and maintenance. We present the components, design flow and implementation aspects of the virtual framework.

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

platform-independence
computer architecture
design methodology


Accurate and efficient evaluation of failure probability for partial different equations with random input data Several computational challenges arise when evaluating the failure probability of a given system in the context of risk prediction or reliability analysis. When the dimension of the uncertainties becomes high, well established direct numerical methods can not be employed because of the curse-of-dimensionality. Many surrogate models have been proposed with the aim of reducing computational effort. However, most of them fail in computing an accurate failure probability when the limit state surface defined by the failure event in the probability space lacks smoothness. In addition, for a stochastic system modeled by partial differential equations (PDEs) with random input, only a limited number of the underlying PDEs (order of a few tens) are affordable to solve in practice due to the considerable computational effort, therefore preventing the application of many numerical methods especially for high dimensional random inputs. In this work we develop hybrid and goal-oriented adaptive reduced basis methods to tackle these challenges by accurately and efficiently computing the failure probability of a stochastic PDE. The curse-of-dimensionality is significantly alleviated by reduced basis approximation whose bases are constructed by goal-oriented adaptation. Moreover, an accurate evaluation of the failure probability for PDE system with solution of low regularity in probability space is guaranteed by the certified a posteriori error bound for the output approximation error. At the end of this paper we suitably extend our proposed method to deal with more general PDE models. Finally we perform several numerical experiments to illustrate its computational accuracy and efficiency.

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 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

partial differential equations
random input data

failure probability evaluation
model order reduction
reduced basis method
goal-oriented adaptation


How Personal Task Management Differs across Individuals ? Summarizes individual differences in PTM by grouping people into three groups: DIYers, make-doers, & adopters. Assesses generalizability & extends the understanding of the above categorization. Extends the understanding of the above user categories. Individuals show varying tendencies toward adopting, make-doing, and DIYing in PTM. Offers implications for the design of personalizable PTM tools.

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

personal task management
individual differences


Implementation of h-infinity control algorithms for sensor-constrained mechatronic systems. using low-cost microcontrollers This paper introduces a novel method which is intended to assist in the design and implementation of optimal H-infinity (H.) algorithms in low-cost mechatronic applications. The particular problem considered is position control in a situation where there are both sensor-related uncertainties (caused by low-resolution sensors) and limited computational resources. The first part of the method presented in this paper describes how to design the H.. algorithm based on dynamic features of the sensor. The second part of the method involves finding a suitable numerical controller representation in order to reduce memory and CPU load. Evaluation of the method is based on empirical studies using three industrial sensors employed in a sub-acted robot. Results for a classic proportional integral derivative (PID) controller are included, in order to provide, comparisons with the H-infinity approach. In the empirical evaluation, the PID implementation shows marginal stability when the low-resolution sensor is employed; by contrast, the H. implementation is found to remain stable in the same circumstances.

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

proportional integral derivative (pid) controller


Mixture design applied to the formulation of hydrotropes for liquid detergents In a previous study, we presented a new method for preparing a mixture of sodium toluenesulfonates (STS), sodium xylenesulfonates (SXS), sodium benzenesulfonate (SBS) and Na2SO4 by sulfonating the BTX fraction of a Tunisian natural gas. Such mixtures can be used as a hydrotrope agent for concentrated liquid detergents. In the present work, we performed a mixture design in order to study the effect of each of these four components on the clear point and the viscosity of a liquid detergent, and therefore, to determine the conditions allowing to improve the effectiveness of the hydrotrope. Twenty-eight combinations of the 4 components out of 51 candidate points are selected by the Nemrod-W software according to the D-optimal criterion to fit two polynomial models. The statistical study shows that the fitted models were adequate to describe the clear point and the viscosity responses. Optimal conditions allowing to lower the two responses are then looking for by examining the response surface both as a contour plot, and as three-dimensional surface plot and the response trace. We prove that Na2SO4 exhibits a harmful negative effect, while SXS and STS exhibit, respectively, a strong and moderate positive effect on both clear point and viscosity responses. As expected, SBS has a harmful effect on the two responses but the magnitude of this effect is lesser than that predicted by the preliminary experiments carried out with SBS alone. This phenomenon is explained by the formation of heteroassociation between SBS, STS and SXS similar to what is found in surfactants. The effectiveness of the hydrotrope, obtained by sulfonation of the BTX fraction of the Tunisian natural gas, is really improved by removing sulfates either by adding lime to precipitate gypsum, or isopropanol to reduce the solubility of Na2SO4. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

mixture design
detergent
hydrotrope
btx
clear point
viscosity


Open Innovation in an Enterprise 3.0 framework: Three case studies Nowadays, especially after the recent financial downturn, companies are looking for much more efficient and creative business processes. They need to place better solutions in the market in a less time with less cost. There is a general intuition that communication and collaboration, especially mixed with Web 2.0 approach within companies and ecosystems, can boost the innovation process with positive impacts on business indicators. Open Innovation within an Enterprise 2.0 context is a one of the most chosen paradigm for improving the innovation processes of enterprises, based on the collaborative creation and development of ideas and products. The key feature of this new paradigm is that the knowledge is exploited in a collaborative way flowing not only among internal sources, i.e. R&D departments, but also among external ones as other employees, customers, partners, etc. In this paper we show how an ontology-based analysis of plain text can provide a semantic contextualization of content support tasks, such as finding semantic distance between contents, and can help in creating relations between people with shared knowledge and interests. Along this paper we will present the results obtained by the adoption of this technology in a large corporate environment like Bankinter, a financial institution, Telefonica I+D, an international telecommunication firm and Repsol, a major oil company in Spain.

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

enterprise 2.0
semantic web
semantic technologies


Bio-inspired deployment of software over distributed systems This paper presents a middleware system for multi-agents on a distributed system as a general test-bed for bio-inspired approaches. The middleware is unique to other approaches, including distributed object systems, because it can maintain and migrate a dynamic federation of multiple agents on different computers. It enables each agent to explicitly define its own deployment policy as a relocation between the agent and another agent. This paper describes a prototype implementation of the middleware built on a Java-based mobile agent system and its practical applications that illustrates the utility and effectiveness of the approach in real distributed systems.

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


MSO logics for weighted timed automata We aim to generalize Buchi's fundamental theorem on the coincidence of recognizable and MSO-definable languages to a weighted timed setting. For this, we investigate weighted timed automata and show how we can extend Wilke's relative distance logic with weights taken from an arbitrary semiring. We show that every formula in our logic can effectively be transformed into a weighted timed automaton, and vice versa. The results indicate the robustness of weighted timed automata and may also be used for specification purposes.

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


Preventing cancer by targeting abnormally expressed self-antigens: MUC1 vaccines for prevention of epithelial adenocarcinomas Prophylactic vaccines based on tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) have elicited concerns due to their potential toxicity. Because TAAs are considered self-antigens, the prediction is that such vaccines will induce autoimmunity. While this has been observed in melanoma, where an antitumor immune response leads to vitiligo, autoimmunity has almost never been seen following vaccination with numerous other TAAs. We hypothesized that antigen choice determines outcome and have been working to identify TAAs whose expression differs between normal and tumor tissue, and thus could elicit antitumor immunity without autoimmunity. Studies on the epithelial TAA MUC1 have revealed that, compared to MUC1 on normal cells, tumors, premalignant lesions, and noncancerous pathologies affecting epithelial cells express abnormal MUC1, which is not a self-antigen but rather an abnormal disease-associated antigen (DAA). This distinction, which can be made for many known TAAs, has broad implications for the design and acceptance of preventative cancer vaccines.

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

immunosurveillance
tumor immunology
tumor antigens


Type dependencies for logic programs using ACI-unification This paper presents a new notion of typing for logic programs which generalizes the notion of directional types. The generation of tl pe dependencies for a logic program is fully automatic with respect to a given domain of types. The analysis method is based on a novel combination of program abstraction and ACI-unification which is shown to be correct and optimal. Type dependencies are obtained by abstracting programs, replacing concrete terms by their types, and evaluating the meaning of the abstract programs using a standard semantics for logic programs enhanced by ACI-unification. This approach is generic and can be used with any standard semantics. The method is both theoretically clean and easy to implement using general purpose tools. The proposed domain of types is condensing which means that analyses can be carried out in both top-down or bottom-up frameworks with no loss of precision for goal-independent analyses. The proposed method has been fully implemented within a bottom-up approach and the experimental results are promising. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


On the asymptotic performance of threshold-based acquisition systems in multipath fading channels The asymptotic performance of timing. acquisition systems having fixed dwell time in multipath fading channels is investigated. The detrimental effect of the multipath channel fading on the acquisition performance is isolated by considering the asymptotic performance as the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) increases. It is found that for any threshold such that the average probability of false alarm is less than a given tolerance, the channel fading results in a lower bound on the asymptotic average probability of miss which is nontrivial for a variety of fading scenarios. A threshold-based direct-sequence spread-spectrum signal acquisition system is considered and it is found that the detrimental effect of channel fading on asymptotic acquisition performance, albeit nontrivial, is not very significant. The asymptotic acquisition performance of two threshold-based acquisition schemes for ultra-wideband (UWB) signals with time-hopping (TH) spreading are also evaluated and compared. For both schemes, the detrimental effect of the channel fading on the asymptotic acquisition performance turns out to be significant.

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

acquisition
asymptotic performance
fading channels

code-division multiple access (cdma)
ultra-wideband (uwb)


Choquet boundaries and efficiency This research paper is devoted to establish the coincidence between Choquet boundaries and a new type of approximate efficient points sets in ordered Hausdorff locally convex spaces, being based on the first result established by us concerning such a property as this for Pareto-type efficient points sets and the corresponding Choquet boundaries of non-empty compact sets, with respect to appropriate convex cones of real, increasing and continuous functions. Thus, the main result represents a strong connection between two great fields of mathematics: The Axiomatic Theory of Potential and Vector Optimization. The present study contains also important relationships concerning strong optimization and approximate efficiency, interesting examples, pertinent remarks and some open 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 B I O O O O O O O O

choquet boundary
altomare projection
full nuclear cone


The software accessibility of human-computer interfacesISO Technical Specification 16071 This paper describes the recently published Technical Specification ISO 16071 from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), along with the process through which the document has been developed. ISO TS 16071 contains guidelines on designing accessible software. This paper also relates the activities within ISO to other ongoing standardisation activities, within, for example, W3C and ETSI. Scope, contents, guidelines and the definition of accessibility in ISO 16071 are discussed in relation to other definitions. Finally, the process of turning the technical specification (TS) into an international standard (IS) is discussed.

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

iso 16071
standardisation
technical specification

ansi/hfes
international standards organisation
w3cwai guidelines


Electromagnetic system navigating tunneling robots This paper describes a newly developed navigation system for tunneling robots. The system consists of a remote position-determination technique and an automatic direction control technique. The position of a robot traveling underground is measured by our proposed magnetic sensor sheet which is spread over the ground above the construction site. The sensor sheet contains an array of magnetometer boards which are especially designed to be 1.3mm thick and highly sensitive. Each magnetometer in the sheet is a planar coil made using a printed-circuit-board photofabrication process and includes built-in amplifier and filter circuits. Using the measured values, the robot direction controller generates control commands through an optimal regulator and a state observer with a Kalman filter. Experiments proved that the system determines the robot position accurately and constructs tunnels precisely.

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

magnetometer
kalman filter
optimal regulator


An agent based approach for exception handling in e-procurement management E-procurement has become an important function of enterprise information systems. The process of e-procurement includes the automatic definition of product requirements, search and selection for suppliers, negotiation and contracting with suppliers. However, the adoption of e-procurement encounters various exceptions from internal and external environments such as sharply increased demand, delivery delay and inventory failure. In this paper, we have proposed an agent and Web service based architecture for exception handling in e-procurement. Agent technology is applied to deal with the complex, dynamic, and distributed e-procurement process, while Web service technology is applied to provide scalability and interoperability. In this architecture, different tasks in the e-procurement process, such as searching, negotiating, supplier selection, contracting, monitoring, and exception handling, are assigned to different agents, which are wrapped as Web services. A set of rules for detecting and handling the exceptions is defined based on a basic inventory model and a genetic algorithm is utilized for supplier selection. To evaluate our exception handling approach, we have developed a prototype system, through which a simulation has been conducted to verify the effectiveness of our approach. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


interface grammars for modular software model checking We propose an interface specification language based on grammars for modular software model checking. In our interface specification language, component interfaces are specified as context free grammars. An interface grammar for a component specifies the sequences of method invocations that are allowed by that component. Using interface grammars one can specify nested call sequences that cannot be specified using interface specification formalisms that rely on finite state machines. Moreover, our interface grammars allow specification of semantic predicates and actions, which are Java code segments that can be used to express additional interface constraints. We have built an interface compiler that takes the interface grammar for a component as input and generates a stub for that component. The resulting stub is a table-driven parser generated from the input interface grammar. Invocation of a method within the component becomes the lookahead symbol for the stub/parser. The stub/parser uses a parser stack, the lookahead, and a parse table to guide the parsing. The semantic predicates and semantic actions that appear in the right hand sides of the production rules are executed when they appear at the top of the stack. We conducted a case study by writing an interface grammar for the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) persistence interface. Using our interface compiler we automatically generated an EJB stub using the EJB interface grammar. We used the JPF model checker to check EJB clients using this automatically generated EJB stub. Our results show that EJB clients can be verified efficiently using our approach.

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

parser
enterprise
input
specification language
context
software model checking
modular
interfaces
model
writing
grammar
component
interface grammars
persistence
method
semantic
code
rules
parsing

modular verification
constraint
state machine
model checking
product
case studies
formalism
segmentation
compilation
sequence
action


Effect of flow disturbances remaining at the beginning of diastole on intraventricular diastolic flow and colour M-mode Doppler echocardiograms A computational model of the fluid dynamics of intraventricular flow was used to investigate the importance of the effects of flow disturbances existing within the left ventricle (LV) at the onset of diastole on a diastolic flow field. The simulation started with a quiescent flow state; it continued for a number of cardiac cycles to obtain a cyclically repeatable flow. After the flow became periodic, the initial diastolic flow was not quiescent. flow disturbances, remnants of a systolic flow, were present within the LV. Nevertheless, they faded away during an acceleration phase of diastole and almost ceased by the end of this phase. Consequently, a flow field during a deceleration phase of diastole, characterised by the formation of a vortex ring, was hardly affected by the initial flow disturbances. The propagation velocity of a colour M-mode Doppler echocardiogram obtained by scanning velocity along the LV long axis was 0.58 m s(-1) in the case where diastolic flow was initially quiescent and 0.56 m s(-1) in the case where flow disturbances existed at the beginning of diastole. These results indicated that the colour M-mode Doppler echocardiographic technique captures flow dynamics produced purely by ventricular expansion, with little influence from initial diastolic flow disturbances.

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

blood flow
computational fluid dynamics
colour m-mode doppler echocardiogram
systole


A multi-criteria methodology to evaluate the optimal location of a multifunctional railway portal on the railway network Multifunctional railway portals improves safety of a railway infrastructure. TCCS monitors real time convoys transits, to detect specific faults. Proposed AHP approach evaluates locations to install a TCCS on a railway sections. Main criteria to assess ranking of eligible sites-Track layout, safety, technical feat.

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

optimal location problem
multicriteria decision problems
analytic hierarchy process (ahp)
dangerous goods transport


The effects of light-induced reduction of the photosystem II reaction center Accumulation of reduced pheophytin a (Pheo-D1) in photosystem II reaction center (PSII RC) under illumination at low redox potential is accompanied by changes in absorbance and circular dichroism spectra. The temperature dependences of these spectral changes have the potential to distinguish between changes caused by the excitonic interaction and temperature-dependent processes. We observed a conformational change in the PSII RC protein part and changes in the spatial positions of the PSII RC pigments of the active D1 branch upon reduction of Pheo-D1 only in the case of high temperature (298 K) dynamics. The resulting absorption difference spectra of PSII RC models equilibrated at temperatures of 77 K and 298 K were highly consistent with our previous experiments in which light-induced bleaching of the PSII RC absorbance spectrum was observable only at 298 K. These results support our previous hypothesis that Pheo-D1 does not interact excitonically with the other chlorins of the PSII RC, since the reduced form of Pheo-D1 causes absorption spectra bleaching only due to temperature-dependent processes.

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

photosystem ii
reaction center
pheophytin
absorption spectra


Zonal methods for the parallel execution of range-limited N-body simulations Particle simulations in fields ranging from biochemistry to astrophysics require the evaluation of interactions between all pairs of particles separated by less than some fixed interaction radius. The applicability of such simulations is often limited by the time required for calculation, but the use of massive parallelism to accelerate these computations is typically limited by inter-processor communication requirements. Recently, Snir [M. Snir, A note on N-body computations with cutoffs, Theor. Comput. Syst. 37 (2004) 295-318] and Shaw [D.E. Shaw, A fast, scalable method for the parallel evaluation of distance-limited pairwise particle interactions, J. Comput. Chem. 26 (2005) 1318-1328] independently introduced two distinct methods that offer asymptotic reductions in the amount of data transferred between processors. In the present paper, we show that these schemes represent special cases of a more general class of methods, and introduce several new algorithms in this class that offer practical advantages over all previously described methods for a wide range of problem parameters. We also show that several of these algorithms approach an approximate lower bound on inter-processor data transfer. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

molecular simulation
molecular dynamics
parallel computing
n-body problem


Performance analysis of direct N-body algorithms for astrophysical simulations on distributed systems We discuss the performance of direct summation codes used in the simulation of astrophysical stellar systems on highly distributed architectures. These codes compute the gravitational interaction among stars in an exact way and have an O(N2) scaling with the number of particles. They can be applied to a variety of astrophysical problems, like the evolution of star clusters, the dynamics of black holes, the formation of planetary systems, and cosmological simulations. The simulation of realistic star clusters with sufficiently high accuracy cannot be performed on a single workstation but may be possible on parallel computers or grids. We have implemented two parallel schemes for a direct N-body code and we study their performance on general purpose parallel computers and large computational grids. We present the results of timing analyzes conducted on the different architectures and compare them with the predictions from theoretical models. We conclude that the simulation of star clusters with up to a million particles will be possible on large distributed computers in the next decade. Simulating entire galaxies however will in addition require new hybrid methods to speedup the calculation.

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


Three dimensional experimental and numerical multiscale analysis of a fatigue crack A full three dimensional study of a fatigue crack in cast iron is presented. This analysis involves combining various tools, namely, Synchrotron X-ray microtomography of an in situ experiment, image acquisition and treatment, 3D volume correlation to measure 3D displacement fields, extraction of the crack geometry, eXtended Digital Volume Correlation to account for the crack displacement discontinuity, crack modeling in an elastic material exploiting the actual crack geometry, and finally estimation of stress intensity factors. All these different tasks are based on specific multiscale approaches.

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

x-ray microtomography
multiscale analyses
sif estimates
level sets
multi-grid
x-fem


A PGM framework for recursive modeling of players in simple sequential Bayesian games We consider the situation where two agents try to solve each their own task in a common environment. In particular, we study simple sequential Bayesian games with unlimited time horizon where two players share a visible scene, but where the tasks (termed assignments) of the players are private information. We present an influence diagram framework for representing simple type of games, where each player holds private information. The framework is used to model the analysis depth and time horizon of the opponent and to determine an optimal policy under various assumptions on analysis depth of the opponent. Not surprisingly, the framework turns out to have severe complexity problems even in simple scenarios due to the size of the relevant past. We propose two approaches for approximation. One approach is to use Limited Memory Influence Diagrams (LIMIDs) in which we convert the influence diagram into a set of Bayesian networks and perform single policy update. The other approach is information enhancement, where it is assumed that the opponent in a few moves will know your assignment. Empirical results are presented using a simple board game. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

sequential bayesian games
influence diagrams
limids

multiple agents
recursive modeling method


The design of the CADE-13 ATP system competition Running a competition for automated theorem proving (ATP) systems is a difficult and arguable venture. However, the potential benefits of such an event by far outweigh the controversial aspects. The motivations for running the CADE-13 ATP System Competition were to contribute to the evaluation of ATP systems, to stimulate ATP research and system development, and to expose ATP systems to researchers both within and outside the ATP community. This article identifies and discusses the issues that determine the nature of such a competition. Choices and motivated decisions for the CADE-13 competition, with respect to the issues, are given.

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

automated theorem proving
competition
design


BioOntoVerb: A top level ontology based framework to populate biomedical ontologies from texts The Semantic Web can be conceived as an extension of the current Web where information is given well-defined meaning. In this scenario ontologies are crucial since they provide meaning and facilitate the search for contents and information. Ontology population is a knowledge acquisition activity used to transform data sources into instance data. The instantiation of ontologies with new knowledge is an important step towards the provision of valuable ontology-based services. In this paper, we present a methodology to be used for ontology population. For it, top level ontologies that define the basic semantic relations in biomedical domains are mapped onto semantic role labelling resources, where every semantic role defines the role of a verbal argument in the event expressed by the verb. The modular architecture employed in our work gives the system a high versatility, as resources have been developed separately and they can be easily adapted to most biomedical domain ontologies.

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

biomedical ontologies
semantic web
ontology population
semantic role
knowledge acquisition


Incompressible SPH method based on Rankine source solution for violent water wave simulation With wide applications, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method (abbreviated as SPH) has become an important numerical tool for solving complex flows, in particular those with a rapidly moving free surface. For such problems, the incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ISPH) has been shown to yield better and more stable pressure time histories than the traditional SPH by many papers in literature. However, the existing ISPH method directly approximates the second order derivatives of the functions to be solved by using the Poisson equation. The order of accuracy of the method becomes low, especially when particles are distributed in a disorderly manner, which generally happens for modelling violent water waves. This paper introduces a new formulation using the Rankine source solution. In the new approach to the ISPH, the Poisson equation is first transformed into another form that does not include any derivative of the functions to be solved, and as a result, does not need to numerically approximate derivatives. The advantage of the new approach without need of numerical approximation of derivatives is obvious, potentially leading to a more robust numerical method. The newly formulated method is tested by simulating various water waves, and its convergent behaviours are numerically studied in this paper. Its results are compared with experimental data in some cases and reasonably good agreement is achieved. More importantly, numerical results clearly show that the newly developed method does need less number of particles and so less computational costs to achieve the similar level of accuracy, or to produce more accurate results with the same number of particles compared with the traditional SPH and existing ISPH when it is applied to modelling water waves.

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

meshless method
isph_r
free surface flow
wave impact


Restricted and Swap Common Superstring: A Multivariate Algorithmic Perspective In several areas, for example in bioinformatics and in AI planning, the Shortest Common Superstring problem (SCS) and variants thereof have been successfully applied for string comparison. In this paper we consider two variants of SCS recently introduced, namely Restricted Common Superstring (RCS) and Swapped Common Superstring (SRCS). In RCS we are given a set \(S\) of strings and a multiset \(\mathcal {M}\) of symbols, and we look for an ordering \(\mathcal {M}_o\) of \(\mathcal {M}\) such that the number of input strings which are substrings of \(\mathcal {M}_o\) is maximized. In SRCS we are given a set \(S\) of strings and a text \(\mathcal {T}\), and we look for a swap ordering \(\mathcal {T}_o\) of \(\mathcal {T}\) (an ordering of \(\mathcal {T}\) obtained by swapping only some pairs of adjacent symbols) such that the number of input strings which are substrings of \(\mathcal {T}_o\) is maximized. In this paper we propose a multivariate algorithmic analysis of the complexity of the two problems, aiming at determining how different parameters influence the complexity of the two problems. We consider as interesting parameters the size of the solutions (that is the number of input strings contained in the computed superstring), the maximum length of the given input strings, the size of the alphabet over which the input strings range. First, we give two fixed-parameter algorithms, where the parameter is the size of the solution, for SRCS and lRCS (the RCS problem restricted to strings of length bounded by a parameter \(\ell \)). Furthermore, we complement these results by showing that SRCS and lRCS do not admit a polynomial kernel unless \(NP \subseteq coNP/Poly\). Then, we show that SRCS is APX-hard even when the input strings have length bounded by a constant (equal to \(10\)) or are over a binary alphabet.

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

shortest common superstring
string comparison
algorithms


Background Adjustment for DNA Microarrays Using a Database of Microarray Experiments DNA microarrays have become an indispensable technique in biomedical research. The raw measurements from microarrays undergo a number of preprocessing steps before the data are converted to the genomic level for further analysis. Background adjustment is an important step in preprocessing. Estimating background noise has been challenging because background levels vary a lot from probe to probe, yet there are limited observations on each probe. Most current methods have used the empirical Bayes approach to borrow information across probes on the same array. These approaches shrink the background estimate for either the entire sample or probes sharing similar sequence structures. In this article, we present a solution that is truly probe specific by using a database of large number of microarray experiments. Information is borrowed across samples and background noise is estimated for each probe individually. The ability to obtain probe specific background distributions allows us to extend the dynamic range of gene expression levels. We illustrate the improvement in detecting gene expression variation on two datasets: a Latin Square spike-in experiment from Affymetrix and an Estrogen Receptor experiment with biological replicates. An R package dbRMA implementing our method can be obtained from the authors.

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

background adjustment
gene expression
preprocessing


Designing interaction protocols using noughts and crosses type games Interaction management is concerned with the protocols that govern structured interactive activities among multiple users or agents in networked collaborative environments. It is an important aspect of networked software in many application domains such as online meetings, online groupware and online games. However, there is limited support in most programming languages and programming environments for implementing interaction management. High-level features, such as interaction protocols and management policies, are usually hard coded by skilled network programmers, who are often scarce in many applications such as e-learning. In this paper, we present an abstraction of various collaborative applications in the form of the noughts and crosses game and its variations. We examine the needs in these games for programming interaction protocols, and propose a comprehensive collection of program constructs for supporting interaction. We report our efforts for incorporating these new constructs into JACIE (Java-based Authoring language for Collaborative Interactive Environments), an existing scripting language designed to support rapid prototyping and implementation of collaborative applications. We demonstrate, through variations of the noughts and crosses game and an on-line bridge game, the usefulness of these language constructs.

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

collaborative applications
interaction protocols
rapid prototyping

net-centric computing
authoring tools
scripting languages


SAMAC: A Cross-Layer Communication Protocol for Sensor Networks with Sectored Antennas Wireless sensor networks have been used to gather data and information in many diverse application settings. The capacity of such networks remains a fundamental obstacle toward the adaptation of sensor network systems for advanced applications that require higher data rates and throughput. In this paper, we explore potential benefits of integrating directional antennas into wireless sensor networks. While the usage of directional antennas has been investigated in the past for ad hoc networks, their usage in sensor networks bring both opportunities as well as challenges. In this paper, Sectored-Antenna Medium Access Control (SAMAC), an integrated cross-layer protocol that provides the communication mechanisms for sensor network to fully utilize sectored antennas, is introduced. Simulation studies show that SAMAC delivers high energy efficiency and predictable delay performance with graceful degradation in performance with increased load.

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

sensor networks
sectored antennas
directional antennas

scheduling
cross-layer protocols
tdma
csma/ca


The relative distance of key point based iris recognition Iris recognition has received increasing attention in recent years as a reliable approach to human identification. This paper makes an attempt to analyze the local feature structure of iris texture information based on the relative distance of key points. When preprocessed, the annular iris is normalized into a rectangular block. Multi-channel 2-D Gabor filters are used to capture the iris texture. In every filtered sub-image, we extract the points that can represent the local texture most effectively in each channel. The barycenter of these points in each channel is called the key point and a group of key points are obtained. Then, the distance between the center of key points of each sub-image and every key point is called relative distance, which is regarded as the iris feature vector. Iris feature matching is based on the Euclidean distance. Experimental results on public and private databases show that the performance of the proposed method is encouraging.

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

iris recognition
key point
relative distance


Business Process Outsourcing: an event study on the nature of processes and firm valuation Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is a phenomenon that is rapidly increasing in both incidence and importance. This study empirically examines the value proposition of BPO with respect to the nature of the processes being outsourced. Using the event study methodology, we employ the value chain (VC) position and existing ownership of a business process as our primary independent variables, and the stock abnormal return in response to the BPO announcement as the dependent performance variable in our research model. The study was conducted on 298 BPO announcements from 1998 to 2005. Results support the argument that outsourcing is valuable for both primary and supportive business processes. However, we found that BPO announcements on primary processes yield higher abnormal returns than supportive processes. Although existing process ownership was not found to be a powerful differentiator for BPO performance, its interaction with VC position provides important insights into the timing of outsourcing. The evidence suggests that internal cultivation of processes is important for BPO success, particularly when BPO is applied to primary processes. European Journal of Information Systems (2009) 18, 442-457. doi: 10.1057/ejis.2009.38

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

business process outsourcing
value chain
process ownership
event study


A computational study on the quadratic knapsack problem with multiple constraints The quadratic knapsack problem (QKP) has been the subject of considerable research in recent years. Despite notable advances in special purpose solution methodologies for QKP, this problem class remains very difficult to solve. With the exception of special cases, the state-of-the-art is limited to addressing problems of a few hundred variables and a single knapsack constraint. In this paper we provide a comparison of quadratic and linear representations of QKP based on test problems with multiple knapsack constraints and up to eight hundred variables. For the linear representations, three standard linearizations are investigated. Both the quadratic and linear models are solved by standard branch-and-cut optimizers available via CPLEX. Our results show that the linear models perform well on small problem instances but for larger problems the quadratic model outperforms the linear models tested both in terms of solution quality and solution time by a wide margin. Moreover, our results demonstrate that QKP instances larger than those previously addressed in the literature as well as instances with multiple constraints can be successfully and efficiently solved by branch and cut methodologies.

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

0-1 quadratic programming
mixed integer quadratic program
branch-and-cut
linearization


scaling replica maintenance in intermittently synchronized mobile databases To avoid the high cost of continuous connectivity, a class of mobile applications employs replicas of shared data that are periodically updated. Updates to these replicas are typically performed on a client-by-client basis--that is, the server individually computes and transmits updates to each client--limiting scalability. By basing updates on replica groups (instead of clients), however, update generation complexity is no longer bound by client population size. Clients then download updates of pertinent groups. Proper group design reduces redundancies in server processing, disk usage and bandwidth usage, and dimininishes the tie between the complexity of updating replicas and the size of the client population. In this paper, we expand on previous work done on group design, include a detailed I/O cost model for update generation, and propose a heuristic-based greedy algorithm for group computation. Experimental results with an adapted commercial replication system demonstrate a significant increase in overall scalability over the client-centric approach.

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

intermittent synchronization
distributed databases


On fuzzification of some concepts of graphs In this paper, we will be interested by the extension of the concepts of internal stability, external stability, not external domination and some of their combination to fuzzy graphs. Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logical operators are used as basis tools to model these concepts. (C) 1999 Published by 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 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

fuzzy operators
non dominated fuzzy sets
fuzzy kernels
fuzzy g-kernel


Linearised euclidean shortening flow of curve geometry The geometry of a space curve is described in terms of a Euclidean invariant frame field, metric, connection, torsion and curvature. Here the torsion and curvature of the connection quantify the curve geometry. In order to retain a stable and reproducible description of that geometry, such that it is slightly affected by non-uniform protrusions of the curve, a linearised Euclidean shortening flow is proposed. (Semi)-discretised versions of the flow subsequently physically realise a concise and exact (semi-)discrete curve geometry. Imposing special ordering relations the torsion and curvature in the curve geometry can be retrieved on a multi-scale basis not only for simply closed planar curves but also for open, branching, intersecting and space curves of non-trivial knot type. In the context of the shortening flows we revisit the maximum principle, the semi-group property and the comparison principle normally required in scale-space theories. We show that our linearised flow satisfies an adapted maximum principle, and that its Green's functions possess a semi-group property. We argue that the comparison principle in the case of knots can obstruct topological changes being in contradiction with the required curve simplification principle. Our linearised flow paradigm is not hampered by this drawback; all non-symmetric knots tend to trivial ones being infinitely small circles in a plane. Finally, the differential and integral geometry of the multi-scale representation of the curve geometry under the flow is quantified by endowing the scale-space of curves with an appropriate connection, and calculating related torsion and curvature aspects. This multi-scale modern geometric analysis forms therewith an alternative for curve description methods based on entropy scale-space theories.

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

frame field
metric
connection
torsion
curvature

linearised shortening flow
scale-space
similarity jet


An FPGA based coprocessor for GLCM and Haralick texture features and their application in prostate cancer classification Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), one of the best known tool for texture analysis, estimates image properties related to second-order statistics. These image properties commonly known as Haralick texture features can be used for image classification, image segmentation, and remote sensing applications. However, their computations are highly intensive especially for very large images such as medical ones. Therefore, methods to accelerate their computations are highly desired. This paper proposes the use of programmable hardware to accelerate the calculation of GLCM and Haralick texture features. Further, as an example of the speedup offered by programmable logic, a multispectral computer vision system for automatic diagnosis of prostatic cancer has been implemented. The performance is then compared against a microprocessor based solution.

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

fpgas
multispectral images
medical image classification


supervised reranking for web image search Visual search reranking that aims to improve the text-based image search with the help from visual content analysis has rapidly grown into a hot research topic. The interestingness of the topic stems mainly from the fact that the search reranking is an unsupervised process and therefore has the potential to scale better than its main alternative, namely the search based on offline-learned semantic concepts. However, the unsupervised nature of the reranking paradigm also makes it suffer from problems, the main of which can be identified as the difficulty to optimally determine the role of visual modality over different application scenarios. Inspired by the success of the "learning-to-rank" idea proposed in the field of information retrieval, we propose in this paper the "learning-to-rerank" paradigm, which derives the reranking function in a supervised fashion from the human-labeled training data. Although supervised learning is introduced, our approach does not suffer from scalability issues since a unified reranking model is learned that can be applied to all queries. In other words, a query-independent reranking model will be learned for all queries using query-dependent reranking features. The query-dependent reranking feature extraction is challenging since the textual query and the visual documents have different representation. In this paper, 11 lightweight reranking features are proposed by representing the textual query using visual context and pseudo relevant images from the initial search result. The experiments performed on two representative Web image datasets demonstrate that the proposed learning-to-rerank algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art unsupervised reranking methods, which makes the learning-to-rerank paradigm a promising alternative for robust and reliable Web-scale image search.

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

supervised reranking
visual search reranking


New Crosstalk Avoidance Codes Based on a Novel Pattern Classification The crosstalk delay associated with global on-chip interconnects becomes more severe in deep submicrometer technology, and hence can greatly affect the overall system performance. Based on a delay model proposed by Sotiriadis et al., transition patterns over a bus can be classified according to their delays. Using this classification, crosstalk avoidance codes (CACs) have been proposed to alleviate the crosstalk delays by restricting the transition patterns on a bus. In this paper, we first propose a new classification of transition patterns, and then devise a new family of CACs based on this classification. In comparison to the previous classification, our classification has more classes and the delays of its classes do not overlap, both leading to more accurate control of delays. Our new family of CACs includes some previously proposed codes as well as new codes with reduced delays and improved throughput. Thus, this new family of CACs provides a wider variety of tradeoffs between bus delay and efficiency. Finally, since our analytical approach to the classification and CACs treats the technology-dependent parameters as variables, our approach can be easily adapted to a wide variety of technologies.

O B I I 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 B 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 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

crosstalk avoidance codes
delay
interconnects


LPFML: A WK XML schema for linear and integer programming T here are numerous modeling systems for generating linear programs and numerous solvers for optimizing them. However, it is often impossible for modelers to combine their preferred modeling system with their preferred solver. Current modeling systems use their own proprietary model-instance formats that various solvers have been adapted to recognize. The existence of all of these formats suggests that one way to encourage modeling-system and solver compatibility is to use a standard representation of a problem instance. Such a standard must be simple to manipulate and validate, be able to express instance-specific and vendor-specific information, and promote the integration of optimization software with other software. In this paper we present LPFML, an XML Schema for representing linear-programming (LP) instances. In addition, we provide open-source C++ libraries that simplify the exchange of problem-instance and solution information between modeling systems and solvers. We show how our system is used to enable previously unavailable language-solver connections and how our design improves on the state of the art under three different scenarios relevant to communication between solvers and modeling systems.

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 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


High-order algorithms for vascular flow modelling This paper presents the development of spectral/hp high-order elements for vascular flows with particular attention to surface reconstruction and high-order mesh generation. Using ideas from computer visualization we apply a technique of constructing smooth implicit functions to reconstruct incomplete sectional imaging data from magnetic resonance imaging. Using this as a starting point we outline techniques to discretize and computationally solve the Newtonian flow within these geometries using high-order spectral/hp element methods. Finally we demonstrate the application of these ideas to anatomically correct and model distal bypass grafts. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 mean-value performance analysis of a new multiprocessor architecture This paper presents a preliminary performance analysis of a new large-scale multiprocessor: the Wisconsin Multicube . A key characteristic of the machine is that it is based on shared buses and a snooping cache coherence protocol. The organization of the shared buses and shared memory is unique and non-hierarchical. The two-dimensional version of the architecture is envisioned as scaling to 1024 processors. We develop an approximate mean-value analysis of bus interference for the proposed cache coherence protocol. The model includes FCFS scheduling at the bus queues with deterministic bus access times, and asynchronous memory write-backs and invalidation requests. We use our model to investigate the feasibility of the multiprocessor, and to study some initial system design issues. Our results indicate that a 1024-processor system can operate at 75 - 95\% of its peak processing power, if the mean time between cache misses is larger than 1000 bus cycles (i.e. 50 microseconds for 20 MHz buses; 25 microseconds for 40 MHz buses). This miss rate is not unreasonable for the cache sizes specified in the design, which are comparable to main memory sizes in existing multiprocessors. We also present results which address the issues of optimal cache block size, optimal size of the two-dimensional Multicube, the effect of broadcast invalidations on system performance, and the viability of several hardware techniques for reducing the latency for remote memory requests.

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

scheduling
use
analysis
performance
design
paper
model
access
cache coherence
shared memory
organization
cache
latency
broadcast
size
architecture
mean
power
version
hardware
effect
multiprocessor
interference

value
scale
large-scale
approximation
addressing
timing
queue
writing
sharing
processor
hierarchic
systems
system design
optimality
asynchronicity
process
memorialized
performance analysis
blocking


The variants of the harmony search algorithm: an overview The harmony search (HS) algorithm is a relatively new population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. It imitates the music improvisation process where musicians improvise their instruments' pitch by searching for a perfect state of harmony. Since the emergence of this algorithm in 2001, it attracted many researchers from various fields especially those working on solving optimization problems. Consequently, this algorithm guided researchers to improve on its performance to be in line with the requirements of the applications being developed. These improvements primarily cover two aspects: (1) improvements in terms of parameters setting, and (2) improvements in terms of hybridizing HS components with other metaheuristic algorithms. This paper presents an overview of these aspects, with a goal of providing useful references to fundamental concepts accessible to the broad community of optimization practitioners.

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

harmony search
metaheuristic optimization


an empirical study of optimizations in yogi Though verification tools are finding industrial use, the utility of engineering optimizations that make them scalable and usable is not widely known. Despite the fact that several optimizations are part of folklore in the communities that develop these tools, no rigorous evaluation of these optimizations has been done before. We describe and evaluate several engineering optimizations implemented in the Yogi property checking tool, including techniques to pick an initial abstraction, heuristics to pick predicates for refinement, optimizations for interprocedural analysis, and optimizations for testing. We believe that our empirical evaluation gives the verification community useful information about which optimizations they could implement in their tools, and what gains they can realistically expect from these optimizations.

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

software model checking
directed testing
abstraction refinement


Stochastic iteration for non-diffuse global illumination This paper presents a single-pass, view-dependent method to solve the rendering equation, using a stochastic iterational scheme where the transport operator is selected randomly in each it ration. The requirements of convergence are given for the general case. To demonstrate the basic idea a very simple, continuous random transport operator is examined, which gives back the light tracing algorithm incorporating Russian roulette. Then, a new mixed continuous and finite-element based iteration method is proposed, which uses ray-bundles to transfer the radiance in a single random direction. The resulting algorithm is fast, it provides initial results in seconds and accurate solutions in minutes and does not suffer from the error accumulation problem and the high memory demand of other finite-element and hierarchical approaches.

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

global radiance
monte-carlo integration
light-tracing
global ray-bundle tracing


An expert system using rough sets theory for aided conceptual design of ship's engine room automation More and more complicated conceptual design of ship's engine room (CDSER) heavily depends oil designers' engineering knowledge and existing ship data. To achieve intelligent design at the initial ship design stage, many researchers have made much significant progress in this field, however, most of them only focused oil how to find tile similar constructed ships. At present, how to utilize these existing data remains all untouched topic. In order to make good use of the existing data and reduce the dependence oil designers' experience, a novel system named Expert System for Aided Conceptual Design of Ship's Engine Room Automation (ESACD), is elaborated ill this study. With the support of the constructed Ship Data Warehouse System, two core subsystems Configuration Selection Assistant (CSA) and Design Scheme Decision Assistant (DSDA) are included in ESACD. A promising approach integrating Fuzzy c-means algorithm (FCM) and Rough Sets Theory (RST) to extract configuration rules from the stored data is adopted in CSA. According to engineers' proposals, RST is utilized to reason knowledge in incomplete scheme information systems for getting design scheme rules in DSDA, which are useful suggestions for engineers to get better schemes at this stage. Finally, tile validity and necessity of this interactive expert system are demonstrated through the CDSER of a new 50,000 DWT Handymax bulk carrier. It is proved that ESACD call efficiently facilitate rapid and intelligent design ill CDSER, and reduce the cost of a new ship design. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

conceptual design of ship's engine room (cdser)


A novel approach to smart multi-cell radio resource management based on load gradient calculations This paper presents a novel methodology for capturing the coupling between the different cells in both the uplink and downlink directions in a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) scenario. It is based on the definition and computation of the gradient of the uplink cell load factor and the downlink transmitted power, which are the two main parameters that reflect the actual cell load in the two link directions. The paper shows that the gradient is able to capture the relevant information about the spatial distribution of traffic, which has an impact on cell performance. The proposed methodology is also used as the basis for defining and evaluating new Radio Resource Management (RRM) strategies that operate at a multi-cell level.

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

cellular systems
spatial traffic distribution


Kernels, regularization and differential equations Many common machine learning methods such as support vector machines or Gaussian process inference make use of positive definite kernels, reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, Gaussian processes, and regularization operators. In this work these objects are presented in a general, unifying framework and interrelations are highlighted. With this in mind we then show how linear stochastic differential equation models can be incorporated naturally into the kernel framework. And vice versa, many kernel machines can be interpreted in terms of differential equations. We focus especially on ordinary differential equations, also known as dynamical systems, and it is shown that standard kernel inference algorithms are equivalent to Kalman filter methods based on such models. In order not to cloud qualitative insights with heavy mathematical machinery, we restrict ourselves to finite domains, implying that differential equations are treated via their corresponding finite difference equations.

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

positive definite kernel
reproducing kernel hilbert space


An integrated model for the latency and steady-state throughput of TCP connections Most TCP connections in today's Internet transfer data on the order of only a few kilobytes. Such TCP transfers are very short and spend most of their time in the slow start phase. Thus the underlying assumptions made by steady-state models cease to hold, making them unsuitable for modeling finite flows. In this paper, we propose an accurate model for estimating the transfer times of TCP flows of arbitrary size. Our model gives a more accurate estimation of the transfer times than those predicted by Cardwell et al. [Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM, Tel Aviv, Israel, March 2000, pp. 1742-1751], which extends the steady-state analysis of Padhye et al. [IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking 8 (2) (2000) 133] to model finite flows. The main features of our work are the modeling of timeouts and slow start phases which occur anywhere during the transfer and a more accurate model for the evolution of the cwnd in the slow start phase. Additionally, the proposed model can also model the steady-state throughput of TCP connections. The model is verified using web based measurements of real life TCP connections. We also introduce an empirical model which allows a better "feel" of TCP latency and the nature of its dependence on loss probabilities and window limitation. Finally, the paper investigates the effect on window limitation and packet size on TCP latency. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.

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


A method for representing 3D tree objects using chain coding We describe a method for representing 3D (three-dimensional) tree objects by means of a chain code. These 3D tree objects correspond to natural existing 3D tree structures, such as: blood vessels, plants, live trees, and so on. Thus, trees are digitalized and represented by a notation called the unique tree descriptor. The unique tree descriptor is invariant under translation and rotation. Furthermore, this descriptor is starting vertex normalized via the unique path in the tree. Also, it is possible to obtain the mirror image of any tree with ease. This unique tree descriptor preserves the shape of trees (and the shape of their branches), allows us to know their geometrical and topological properties. To determine if two 3D tree objects have the same shape, it is only necessary to see if their descriptors are equal. In this manner, graph comparisons and tree searches are eliminated. Also, the proposed tree descriptor is a good tool for storing of 3D tree objects. Finally, in order to prove our method for representing 3D tree objects, we obtain some tree descriptors of objects on real images.

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

3d tree objects
3d tree structures
unique tree descriptor
chain coding

3d discrete branches
3d tree representation


A fast binary feedback-based distributed adaptive carrier synchronisation for transmission among clusters of disconnected IoT nodes in smart spaces We propose a transmission scheme among groups of disconnected IoT devices in a smart space. In particular, we propose the use of a local random search implementation to speed up the synchronisation of carriers for distributed adaptive transmit beamforming. We achieve a sharp bound on the asymptotic carrier synchronisation time which is significantly lower than for previously proposed carrier synchronisation processes. Also, we consider the impact of environmental conditions in smart spaces on this synchronisation process in simulations and a case study.

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

smart spaces
transmission scheme
carrier synchronisation


Circulant preconditioners for indefinite Toeplitz systems In recent papers circulant preconditioners were proposed for ill-conditioned Hermitian Toeplitz matrices generated by 2pi-periodic continuous functions with zeros of even order. It was show that the spectra of the preconditioned matrices are uniformly bounded except for a finite number of outliers and therefore the conjugate gradient method, when applied to solving these circulant preconditioned systems, converges very quickly. I this paper, we consider indefinite Toeplitz matrices generated by 2pi-periodic continuous functions with zeros of odd order. In particular, we show that the singular values of the preconditioned matrices are essentially bounded. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the fast convergence of CGNE, MINRES and QMR methods.

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


Effects of Melatonin in Age-Related Macular Degeneration Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe visual loss in aged people. Melatonin has been shown to have the capacity to control eye pigmentation and thereby regulate the amount of light reaching the photoreceptors, to scavenge hydroxyradicals and to protect retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells from oxidative damage. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that the physiological decrease of melatonin in aged people may be an important factor in RPE dysfunction, which is a well known cause for initiation of AMD. Our purpose is to explore a new approach to prevent or treat AMD. We began case control study with a follow-up of 6 to 24 months. One hundred patients with AMD were diagnosed and 3 mg melatonin was given orally each night at bedtime for at least 3 months. Both dry and wet forms of AMD were included. Fifty-five patients were followed for more than 6 months. At 6 months of treatment, the visual acuity had been kept stable in general. Though the follow up time is not long, this result is already better than the otherwise estimated natural course.1,2 The change of the fundus picture was remarkable. Only 8 eyes showed more retinal bleeding and 6 eyes more retinal exudates. The majority had reduced pathologic macular changes. We conclude that the daily use of 3 mg melatonin seems to protect the retina and to delay macular degeneration. No significant side effects were observed.

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

aging
fundus disease
age-related macular degeneration
macula


an analysis of the channel utilization for call admission control in voice over wlan In this paper, we present an analytical method for effectively evaluating the channel utilization of voice calls in voice over WLAN systems. The method is under realistic assumptions general enough to deal with various cases of mixed traffic sources and transmission conditions. The accuracy and effectiveness of our method are validated through experiments. The method provided a basis for a prototype call-admission-control system for VoWLAN, in an attempt to enable an operational VoWLAN system with quality-of-service support.

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

voice over wlan
call admission control
channel utilization