Evolutionary test environment for automatic structural testing Testing is the most significant analytic quality assurance measure for software. Systematic design of test cases is crucial for the test quality. Structure-oriented test methods, which define test cases on the basis of the internal program structures, are widely used. A promising approach for the automation of structural test case design is evolutionary testing. Evolutionary testing searches test data that fulfil a given structural test criteria by means of evolutionary computation. In this work, an evolutionary test environment has been developed that performs fully automatic test data generation for most structural test methods. The introduction of an approximation level for fitness evaluation of generated test data and the definition of an efficient test strategy for processing test goals, increases the performance of evolutionary testing considerably.

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

structural test
evolutionary test
evolutionary computation


power grid correction using sensitivity analysis under an rc model Verifying an RC model of the power grid requires one to check if the steady state voltage drops on all the nodes of the grid do not exceed a certain threshold. We propose an approach to correct the grid, in case some voltage drops violate the threshold condition, by making minor changes to the original design. Previous work has been done in [1] on the DC model of the grid and this paper deals with the transient model. Rather than directly reducing the steady state voltage drops below the threshold we work on reducing the first time step voltage drops. The method uses current constraints proposed in [2] to find the first time step voltage drop whose distance to the corresponding threshold is the largest. It then tries to estimate it as a function of the metal widths on the grid. A non-linear optimization problem is then formulated and the required metal line width changes that reduce the first time step voltage drops by a sufficient amount are then determined. The reduction of the first time step voltage drop by that amount will make the steady state voltage drops of all the nodes less than the threshold.

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


On the class of lambda-statistically convergent difference sequences of fuzzy numbers In this study, we introduce the sets [V, lambda, p](Delta)(F), [C, 1, p](Delta)(F) and examine their relations with the classes of S-lambda(Delta, F) and S-mu(Delta, F)of sequences for the sequences (lambda(n)) and (mu(n)), 0 < p < infinity and difference sequences of fuzzy numbers.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 number
difference sequence
statistical convergence


remote physiological monitoring of first responders with intermittent network connectivity First responders have been observed to be at increased risk of cardio-vascular diseases compared to the general population. A high percentage of cardiac events have been found to occur during missions. Continuous physiological monitoring during missions can be effective in reducing the number of fatalities. Real-time physiological data such as ECG can be collected using body-worn sensors. This sensor data can be processed on the body itself or can be communicated over an ad hoc wireless network to the incident command center located nearby. First responder missions often take place inside building structures where network connectivity is intermittent. Intermittent connectivity can lead to loss of critical physiological data or delay in that information reaching the base station. Hence, some amount of local processing is needed in order to limit the amount of data that is communicated. In this paper, we introduce a novel Hidden Markov Model based classifier for myocardial infarction detection. The classifier fidelity can be adapted based on the processing power available. We present a peer-to-peer networking protocol for communication over disrupted networks. A low fidelity classifier is used to perform local processing and assign priorities to the data based on its criticality. It is complemented by a disruption-aware epidemic forwarding protocol for transferring first responder's physiological data to the base station. We show that with prioritized epidemic forwarding and buffer eviction policy, packet delivery ratio for abnormal data increases and the latency associated with abnormal packets reaching the destination decreases.

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

machine learning
hidden markov models
receiver operating characteristics


Numerical modelling of nanoparticle deposition in the nasal cavity and the tracheobronchial airway Recent advances in nanotechnology have seen the manufacture of engineered nanoparticles for many commercial and medical applications such as targeted drug delivery and gene therapy. Transport of nanoparticles is mainly attributed to the Brownian force which increases as the nanoparticle decreases to 1 nm. This paper first verifies a Lagrangian Brownian model found in the commercial computational fluid dynamics software Fluent before applying the model to the nasal cavity and the tracheobronchial (TB) airway tree with a focus on drug delivery. The average radial dispersion of the nanoparticles was 9x greater for the user-defined function model over the Fluent in-built model. Deposition in the nasal cavity was high for very small nanoparticles. The particle diameter range in which the deposition drops from 80 to 18% is between 1 and 10 nm. From 10 to 150 nm, however, there is only a small change in the deposition curve from 18 to 15%. A similar deposition curve profile was found for the TB airway.

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

nanoparticle
nasal cavity
airway
deposition


Robust and efficient adaptive direct lighting estimation Hemispherical integrals are important for the estimation of direct lighting which has a major impact on the results of global illumination. This work proposes the population Monte Carlo hemispherical integral (PMC-HI) sampler to improve the efficiency of direct lighting estimation. The sampler is unbiased and derived from the population Monte Carlo framework which works on a population of samples and learns to be a better sampling function over iterations. Information found in one iteration can be used to guide subsequent iterations by distributing more samples to important sampling techniques to focus more efforts on the sampling sub-domains which have larger contributions to the hemispherical integrals. In addition, a cone sampling strategy is also proposed to enhance the success rate when complex occlusions exist. The images rendered with PMC-HI are compared against those rendered with multiple importance sampling (Veach and Guibas In: SIGGRAPH 95, pp 419428, 1995), adaptive light sample distributions (Donikian et al. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 12(3):353364, 2006), and multidimensional hemispherical adaptive sampling (Hachisuka et al. ACM Trans Graph 27(3):33:133:10, 2008). Our PMC-HI sampler can improve rendering efficiency.

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


Visual scanning as a reference framework for interactive representation design When designing a representation, the designer implicitly formulates a sequence of visual tasks required to understand and use the representation effectively. This paper aims at making the sequence of visual tasks explicit in order to help designers elicit their design choices. In particular, we present a set of concepts to systematically analyse what a user must theoretically do to decipher representations. The analysis consists of a decomposition of the activity of scanning into elementary visualization operations. We show how the analysis applies to various existing representations, and how expected benefits can be expressed in terms of elementary operations. The set of elementary operations form the basis of a shared language for representation designers. The decomposition highlights the challenges encountered by a user when deciphering a representation and helps designers to exhibit possible flaws in their design, justify their choices, and compare designs. We also show that interaction with a representation can be considered as facilitation to perform the elementary operations.

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


Analytical model of 6H-SiC MOSFET An analytical model of 6H-SiC inversion channel MOSFET is developed incorporating the influence of incomplete dopant ionization. The charge sheet approach is used to evaluate the drain current, transconductance and drain conductance. Maximun transconductance of 46 ?S is obtained for Vds=50 mV at a gate voltage of 2.3 V. An explicit analytical expression is also developed which relate the transconductance with interface trap density. It is observed that interface state density has an effect of lowering the transconductance. Some of the results obtained are verified with the experimental data. The interface trap density effects on other device characteristics has also been discussed.

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


path selection algorithms in homogeneous mobile ad hoc networks Because of connectivity richness in mobile ad hoc networks, multiple paths often exist between a source and a destination. Since many applications require uninterrupted connectivity of a session, the ability to find long-living paths can be very useful. In this paper, we propose three path-selection algorithms and evaluate their performance in a homogeneous network based on two criteria: 1) the selected path is the most likely to meet a target residual path lifetime requirement, and 2) the selected path has the longest residual path lifetime among all the available paths. We also introduce two performance metrics to compare the proposed algorithms among themselves and with a baseline random-selection algorithm. All three algorithms demonstrate comparable performance in satisfying the first criterion, although the first algorithm performs consistently better than the other two for both criteria. As the path-set size increases, the proposed algorithms yield greater performance gain over the baseline algorithm. Furthermore, we show that these algorithms perform better in a higher mobility environment than when the mobility is low.

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

path selection
ad hoc networks
mobility
path lifetime


Towards implementation of a nickel silicide process for CMOS technologies In this paper, we review some of the advantages and disadvantages of nickel silicide as a material for the electrical contacts to the source, drain and gate of current and future CMOS devices. We first present some of the limitations imposed on the current cobalt silicide process because of the constant scaling, of the introduction of new substrate geometries (i.e. thin silicon on insulator) and of the modifications to the substrate material (i.e. SiGe). We then discuss the advantages of NiSi and for each of the CoSi2 limitations, we point out why Ni is believed to be superior from the point of view of material properties, miscibility of phases and formation mechanisms. Discussion follows on the expected limitations of NiSi and some of the possible solutions to palliate these limitations.

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

diffusion
metal rich phase
agglomeration
film stability


Foreground prediction for bilayer segmentation of videos Given a segmentation result (an alpha matte or a binary mask) of the former frame, foreground prediction is a process of estimating the probability that each pixel in the current frame belongs to the foreground. It plays a very important role in bilayer segmentation of videos, especially videos with non-static backgrounds. In this paper, a new foreground prediction algorithm which is called opacity propagation is proposed. It can propagate the opacity values of the former frame to the current frame by minimizing a cost function that is constructed by assuming the spatiotemporally local color smoothness of the video. Optical flow and probability density estimation based on a local color model are employed to find the corresponding pixels of two adjacent frames. An OPSIC (opacity propagation with sudden illumination changes) algorithm is also proposed which is an improvement of our proposed opacity propagation algorithm because it adds a simple color transformation model. As far as we know, this is the first algorithm that can predict the foreground accurately when the illumination changes suddenly. The opacity map (OM) generated by the opacity propagation algorithm is usually more accurate than the previously used probability map (PM). The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.

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

bilayer segmentation
foreground prediction
opacity propagation
sudden illumination changes
opsic


Rough approximations on a complete completely distributive lattice with applications to generalized rough sets The generalizations of rough sets considered with respect to similarity relation, covers and fuzzy relations, are main research topics of rough set theory. However, these generalizations have shown less connection among each other and have not been brought into a unified framework, which has limited the in-depth research and application of rough set theory. In this paper the complete completely distributive (CCD) lattice is selected as the mathematical foundation on which definitions of lower and upper approximations that form the basic concepts of rough set theory are proposed. These definitions result from the concept of cover introduced on a CCD lattice and improve the approximations of the existing crisp generalizations of rough sets with respect to similarity relation and covers. When T-similarity relation is considered, the existing fuzzy rough sets are the special cases of our proposed approximations on a CCD lattice. Thus these generalizations of rough sets are brought into a unified framework, and a wider mathematical foundation for rough set theory is established.

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


Cross-ambiguity function domain multipath channel parameter estimation A new array signal processing technique is proposed to estimate the direction-of-arrivals (DOAs), time delays, Doppler shifts and amplitudes of a known waveform impinging on an array of antennas from several distinct paths. The proposed technique detects the presence of multipath components by integrating cross-ambiguity functions (CAF) of array outputs, hence, it is called as the cross-ambiguity function direction finding (CAF-DF). The performance of the CAF-DF technique is compared with the space-alternating generalized expectationmaximization (SAGE) and the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) techniques as well as the CramrRao lower bound. The CAF-DF technique is found to be superior in terms of root-mean-squared-error (rMSE) to the SAGE and MUSIC techniques.

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

space-alternating generalized expectationmaximization (sage) algorithm


Confidence transformation for combining classifiers This paper investigates a number of confidence transformation methods for measurement-level combination of classifiers. Each confidence transformation method is the combination of a scaling function and an activation function. The activation functions correspond to different types of confidences: likelihood (exponential), log-likelihood, sigmoid, and the evidence combination of sigmoid measures. The sigmoid and evidence measures serve as approximates to class probabilities. The scaling functions are derived by Gaussian density modeling, logistic regression with variable inputs, etc. We test the confidence transformation methods in handwritten digit recognition by combining variable sets of classifiers: neural classifiers only, distance classifiers only, strong classifiers, and mixed strong/weak classifiers. The results show that confidence transformation is efficient to improve the combination performance in all the settings. The normalization of class probabilities to unity of sum is shown to be detrimental to the combination performance. Comparing the scaling functions, the Gaussian method and the logistic regression perform well in most cases. Regarding the confidence types, the sigmoid and evidence measures perform well in most cases, and the evidence measure generally outperforms the sigmoid measure. We also show that the confidence transformation methods are highly robust to the validation sample size in parameter estimation.

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

confidence transformation
evidence combination
logistic regression

classifier combination
gaussian modeling
pattern classification


Unifying business objects and system dynamics as a paradigm for developing decision support systems Due to the market-driven nature of modern organisations, it is important that they can easily adapt to changing business needs. In order to be able to do so, organisations need to employ information systems that exhibit the important characteristic of adaptability. Change, however, is risky because it encompasses unpredictable behaviours. Organisations, in order to minimise this risk, employ decision support systems (DSS) techniques that enable predictions to be made. This paper describes a simulation methodology, based on the combination of business objects and system dynamics that assists organisations in predicting future behaviours. The methodology eliminates the need for duplicate models of enterprise operation and simulation, and introduces a framework that enables the unification of the two in a single model.

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

system dynamics
business objects
simulation


Chaotic particle swarm optimization based robust load flow A reliable load flow algorithm based on chaotic particle swarm optimization (CPSO) technique has been developed. To obtain optimum solution efficiently and accurately, an innovative formula for adaptive inertia weight factor (AIWF) has been introduced. Novel formulae for constriction factors have been designed for the load flow problems which are also adaptive. In addition to that, chaotic local search (CLS) is used with PSO to get rid of the local optima. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first report of applying CPSO to solve load flow problems. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been tested on different standard and ill-conditioned test systems. The proposed method shows its robustness under critical conditions when conventional load flow methods fail.

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

chaotic particle swarm optimization
load flow
critical conditions


web composition with wcag in mind Accessibility should be a part of the Web design process instead of being a post-design repair process. Thus, it should be more integrated within the internal authoring tools' mechanism of generating new accessible Web contents. Web pages are usually composed of small pieces of HTML code which, dynamically nested and combined, generate full Web pages. This Web composition, specially when creating Web pages from data extracted from heterogeneous or external sources, should have accessibility into account in order to guarantee that the final page being constructed is accessible. This paper presents the set of rules that, in a Web composition process, a design tool must follow in order to create accessible Web pages. These rules are formalized with W3C standards like XPath and XQuery expressions. We also present WSLS as an accessibility enabled authoring tool that makes this task feasible, and focus in how this tool incorporates accessibility into the process of generating new Web contents.

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


Natural Language Processing (Almost) from Scratch We propose a unified neural network architecture and learning algorithm that can be applied to various natural language processing tasks including part-of-speech tagging, chunking, named entity recognition, and semantic role labeling. This versatility is achieved by trying to avoid task-specific engineering and therefore disregarding a lot of prior knowledge. Instead of exploiting man-made input features carefully optimized for each task, our system learns internal representations on the basis of vast amounts of mostly unlabeled training data. This work is then used as a basis for building a freely available tagging system with good performance and minimal computational requirements.

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


Likelihood and objective Bayesian modeling of acidity and major ions in rainfall using a bivariate pseudo-Gamma distribution Modeling the acidity in rainfall at certain locations is a complex task because of different environmental conditions for different rainfall regimes and the large variability in the covariates involved. In this paper, concentration of acidity and major ions in the rainfall in UK is analyzed by assuming a bivariate pseudo-Gamma distribution. The model parameters are estimated by using the maximum likelihood method and the goodness of fit is checked. Furthermore, the non-informative Jeffreys prior for the distribution parameters is derived and a hybrid Gibbs sampling strategy is proposed to sample the corresponding posterior for conducting an objective Bayesian analysis. Finally, related quantities such as the deposition flux density are derived where the general pattern of the observed data appears to follow the fitted densities closely.

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

acidity and major ions
bayesian analysis
jeffreys prior
maximum likelihood


The fabrication of three-dimensional nano-structures by defocused electron beam energy We demonstrate a novel method to fabricate three-dimensional structure with various shapes using defocused electron beam lithography (DEBL) for optical elements. In this study, we experimentally analyzed the relationship between the shape profiles of exposed patterns and defocusing length by varying parameters for e-beam lithography. Through these experiments, we found out that the shape profiles of exposed patterns depended on the defocusing length at the specific conditions in the e-beam lithography. This is due to the fact that the distribution and intensity of electron beam energy are changed by the defocusing length degree in the DEBL. These results allow the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) structures with various shapes for optical elements by varying the defocusing length under the proper conditions of e-beam lithography. Based on these results, we can fabricate the 3D patterns with hemispherical shape for nano lens array and nano cone shape for SERS (surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy) and optical diffraction grating patterns with nano scale depth and width.

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

defocused electron beam lithography (debl)


Fixed parameter algorithms for one-sided crossing minimization revisited ? We exhibit a small problem kernel for the one-sided crossing minimization problem. This problem plays an important role in graph drawing algorithms based on the Sugiyama layering approach. Moreover, we improve on the search tree algorithm developed in [V. Dujmovi?, S. Whitesides, An efficient fixed parameter tractable algorithm for 1-sided crossing minimization, Algorithmica 40 (2004) 1531] and derive an O(k1.4656+kn2) O ( 1.4656 k + k n 2 ) algorithm for this problem, where k upperbounds the number of tolerated edge crossings in the drawings of an n-vertex graph.

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

2-layer drawings
fpt fpt fpt fpt fpt fpt fpt
parameterized algorithms


Sigma-Delta (Sigma Delta) quantization and finite frames The K-level Sigma-Delta (Sigma Delta) scheme with step size 6 is introduced as a technique for quantizing finite frame expansions for R-d. Error estimates for various quantized frame expansions are derived, and, in particular, it is shown that Sigma Delta quantization of a unit-norm finite frame expansion in R-d achieves approximation error parallel to x - (x) over bar parallel to <= (delta d)(2N) (sigma(F,p) + 1) where N is the frame size, and the frame variation sigma(F, p) is a quantity which reflects the dependence of the E A scheme on the frame. Here parallel to center dot parallel to is the d-dimensional Euclidean 2-norm. Lower bounds and refined upper bounds are derived for certain specific cases. As a direct consequence of these error bounds one is able to bound the mean squared error (MSE) by an order of 1/N-2. When dealing with sufficiently redundant frame expansions, this represents a significant improvement over classical pulse-code modulation (PCM) quantization, which only has MSE of order 1 IN under certain nonrigorous statistical assumptions. Sigma Delta also achieves the optimal MSE order for PCM with consistent reconstruction.

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


Position/force control of manipulator based on force measurement and its application to gear deburring Robotic gear deburring is a relatively difficult task because traditional position/force control laws are not suitable due to the complicated geometry and inevitable system positioning error. A position/force control algorithm based on force measurement is investigated for unknown gear profile detection and tracking, and its further application to the deburring process. A PID type fuzzy logic controller is applied to deal with the non-linear contact force control problem, and a velocity compensated position control method is utilized to obtain a faster response. Experimental results are provided to verify the efficiency of the proposed control method.

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


Giving context to accounting numbers: The role of news coverage Accounting numbers such as earnings per share are an important information source that conveys the value of firms. Previous studies on the return-earnings relation have confirmed that stock prices react to the information content in accounting numbers. However, other information sources such as financial news may also contain value-relevant information and affect investors' reaction to earnings announcements. We quantify news coverage about S&P 500 companies in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) before earnings announcements and model its interaction with the return-earnings relation. Our empirical results show that news coverage decreases the information content of unexpected earnings and thus leads to a lower earnings response coefficient (ERC) for firms with higher news coverage. Statistically significant interaction between news coverage and unexpected earnings was observed. News coverage does not impact cumulated abnormal returns directly. We further document that this finding is not driven by firm size. The results suggest that financial news may play an important role in conveying value-related information to the markets.

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

earnings response coefficient (erc)
event study
news coverage effect
information content of earnings


Femtocell based green power consumption methods for mobile network This paper presents the analytical models of power consumption in macrocell, microcell, picocell and femtocell based networks. Five case studies are presented in this paper where macrocells, microcells, picocells and femtocells are deployed based on the number of mobile subscribers present in a region, mobile user traffic in that region and the area of the region where cellular coverage has to be provided. A comparative study is performed between the power consumption by the base stations in each of these five cases and that of the only macrocell based network. The simulation results demonstrate that using each of these five strategies the power consumption by the base stations can be minimized than that of only macrocell based network. Based on the power consumption by the base stations in these five schemes, we have categorized the networks into five classes, A, B, C, D and E, each of which contains cells of different types to reduce power consumption to achieve green cellular network.

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


WAVE-CUSUM: Improving CUSUM performance in network anomaly detection by means of wavelet analysis The increasing number of network attacks causes growing problems for network operators and users. Thus, detecting anomalous traffic is of primary interest in IP networks management and many detection techniques, able to promptly reveal and identify network attacks, mainly detecting Heavy Changes in the network traffic, have been proposed. Among these, one of the most promising approach is based on the use of the CUSUM (CUmulative SUM). Nonetheless, CUSUM performance is strongly affected by its sensitivity to the presence of seasonal trends in the considered data. For this reason, in this paper we propose a novel detection method based on the idea of performing a pre-processing stage of the data by means of wavelets, aimed at filtering out such trends, before applying the CUSUM algorithm. The performance analysis, presented in the paper, demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed method, focusing on the performance improvements due to the pre-processing stage.

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

network anomaly detection
cusum
wavelet analysis

network security
intrusion detection system


Iterative and multigrid methods in the finite element solution of incompressible and turbulent fluid flow Multigrid and iterative methods are used to reduce the solution time of the matrix equations which arise from the finite element (FE) discretisation of the time-independent equations of motion of the incompressible fluid in turbulent motion. Incompressible flow is solved by using the method of reduce interpolation for the pressure to satisfy the Brezzi-Babuska condition. The k-l model is used to complete the turbulence closure problem. The non-symmetric iterative matrix methods examined are the methods of least squares conjugate gradient (LSCG), biconjugate gradient (BCG), conjugate gradient squared (CGS), and the biconjugate gradient squared stabilised (BCGSTAB). The multigrid algorithm applied is based on the FAS algorithm of Brandt, and uses two and three levels of grids with a 'V-cycling' schedule. These methods are all compared to the non-symmetric frontal solver. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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 B 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 B I O O O O O O O O

biconjugated gradient squared stabilized


Time-difference-of-arrival estimation for noncircular signals using information theory This paper addresses the time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) estimation problem for a noncircular source, which is usually encountered in the context of radio communications. To exploit the second-order statistics (SOS) noncircularity of such signals, an information-theoretical measure is employed in designing the new TDOA estimator. While the classical cross-correlation (CC) method uses only the correlation measure of a source, the proposed method simultaneously uses both the correlation and conjugate correlation measures of a source. Since the SOS of a noncircular signal is not only determined by the correlation function but also by the conjugate correlation function, the proposed method utilizes the SOS information of a noncircular signal more comprehensively than the popular CC method. Simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the new algorithm compared to the CC algorithm.

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


secure group communications using key graphs Many emerging applications (e.g., teleconference, real-time information services, pay per view, distributed interactive simulation, and collaborative work) are based upon a group communications model, i.e., they require packet delivery from one or more authorized senders to a very large number of authorized receivers. As a result, securing group communications (i.e., providing confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of messages delivered between group members) will become a critical networking issue.In this paper, we present a novel solution to the scalability problem of group/multicast key management. We formalize the notion of a secure group as a triple ( U,K,R ) where U denotes a set of users, K a set of keys held by the users, and R a user-key relation. We then introduce key graphs to specify secure groups. For a special class of key graphs, we present three strategies for securely distributing rekey messages after a join/leave, and specify protocols for joining and leaving a secure group. The rekeying strategies and join/leave protocols are implemented in a prototype group key server we have built. We present measurement results from experiments and discuss performance comparisons. We show that our group key management service, using any of the three rekeying strategies, is scalable to large groups with frequent joins and leaves. In particular, the average measured processing time per join/leave increases linearly with the logarithm of group size.

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

rekeying
group key management
confidentiality
group communications

multicast
key distribution
security
privacy


A multi-layer metadata schema for digital folklore collections Digital folklore collections are valuable sources for studying the cultural and oral tradition of a country. The main difficulty in managing such collections is material heterogeneity (handwritten texts, photographs, 3D objects, sound recordings etc.) that imposes different digitization, description and maintenance practices. A multi-layer metadata model for the description of a digital folklore collection is presented. The proposed metadata policy considers a collection as a hierarchy of entities and combines different metadata schemas for the management of each entity. The metadata model integrates elements from different metadata schemas ensuring efficient information recovery from all structural levels. Furthermore, interoperability between the used metadata schemas is discussed and a Topic Maps model is presented as an approach for developing mappings.

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


Mothers' Attachment Insecurity and Diabetes-Related Autoantibodies in Their Infants Abstract: Psychological stress may, via hormonal levels, increase insulin resistance. The aim of this study was to investigate whether mothers' attachment insecurity is associated with the induction or progression of diabetes-related autoimmunity in early childhood. Adult attachment interviews were conducted with 18 mothers of infants who were positive, and 32 mothers of infants who were negative, for glutamic acid decarboxylase, selected from ABIS, a large prospective population-based project. The proportion of children with insecure mothers was larger, but not significantly so, in the autoantibody-positive group than in the negative group. If an association exists between maternal attachment insecurity and diabetes-related autoimmunity during infancy, it does not appear to be strong.

O B I O O O 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 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

psychosocial factors
type 1 diabetes
beta cell autoantibodies


Web image retrieval using majority-based ranking approach Web image retrieval has characteristics different from typical content-based image retrieval; web images have associated textual cues. However, a web image retrieval system often yields undesirable results, because it uses limited text information such as surrounding text, URLs, and image filenames. In this paper, we propose a new approach to retrieval, which uses the image content of retrieved results without relying on assistance from the user. Our basic hypothesis is that more popular images have a higher probability of being the ones that the user wishes to retrieve. According to this hypothesis, we propose a retrieval approach that is based on a majority of the images under consideration. We define four methods for finding the visual features of majority of images; (1) majority-first method, (2) centroid-of-all method, (3) centroid-of-top K method, and (4) centroid-of-largest-cluster method. In addition, we implement a graph/picture classifier for improving the effectiveness of web image retrieval. We evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of both our methods and conventional ones by using precision and recall graphs. Experimental results show that the proposed methods are more effective than conventional keyword-based retrieval methods.

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 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 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

content-based image retrieval
image clustering
image ranking
graph/picture classifier


Acoustic scattering solver based on single level FMM for multi-GPU systems In this paper, we present a heterogeneous parallel solver of a high frequency single level Fast Multipole Method (FMM) for the Helmholtz equation applied to acoustic scattering. The developed solution uses multiple GPUs to tackle the compute bound steps of the FMM (aggregation, disaggregation, and near interactions) while the CPU handles a memory bound step (translation) using OpenMP. The proposed solver performance is measured on a workstation with two GPUs (NVIDIA GTX 480) and is compared with that of a distributed memory solver run on a cluster of 32 nodes (HP BL465c) with an Infiniband network. Some energy efficiency results are also presented in this work.

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


Artificial neural network modelling to predict cuticle cracking in greenhouse peppers and tomatoes Cuticle cracking in pepper and tomato fruit was studied in relation to fruit development and modelled with respect to environmental and cultural conditions. All data were collected over a 26-week period from seven commercial greenhouses in British Columbia, Canada. In terms of fruit development, cuticle cracking began one week after the period of maximum fruit growth rate in pepper and progressed the most rapidly over the next two weeks. In tomato, cracking started two weeks after the time of maximum fruit growth rate, increasing steadily thereafter until harvest. Feed-forward artificial neural networks were used to relate cuticle cracking to greenhouse and crop conditions. The incidence of cuticle cracking was initially related to over 20 input variables averaged over one or four weeks prior to the date of cracking assessment. All models were developed using a portion of the data and validated with the remainder. For each dataset, 30 models were analyzed at a time, from which the best models were chosen on the basis of a suitable architecture with a high R2 value and a low root mean square error when tested against the validation set using a 10-fold crossvalidation procedure. Sensitivity analysis was used to determine the relative importance of each input and to reduce the number of inputs. The best week-1 and week-4 models for pepper consisted of nine inputs, with R2 values of 0.71 and 0.70, respectively. Day and night temperature, day-time CO2, day and night relative humidity, radiation and growing media were inputs held in common by both models. Growing media and cultivar were also important in the week-1 models while EC and week of the year (time) were important in the week-4 models. The best week-1 and week-4 models for tomato also used nine inputs, with R2 values of 0.70 and 0.64, respectively. In this case, week of the year, day and night relative humidity, day and night temperature, yield and the number of leaves were common to both models. Fruit size and fruit mass were also important in the week-1 models, while daytime C02 and radiation were important in the week-4 models. The study shows that artificial neural networks can be used to predict cuticle cracking in greenhouse peppers and tomatoes up to four weeks in advance of harvest. Crown Copyright (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

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

artificial neural networks
cuticle cracking
greenhouse
pepper
tomato


A comparative study of energy/power consumption in parallel decimal multipliers Decimal multiplication is a frequent operation with inherent complexity in implementation. Commercial and financial applications require working with decimal numbers while it has been shown that if we convert decimal number to binary ones, this will negatively influence the preciseness required for these applications. Existing research works on parallel decimal multipliers have mainly focused on latency and area as two major factors to be improved. However, energy/power consumption is another prominent issue in today?s digital systems. While the energy consumption of parallel decimal multipliers has not been addressed in previous works, in this paper we present a comparative study of parallel decimal multipliers, considering energy/power consumption, leakage and dynamic power consumption, beside latency and area. This study can provide some guidelines for EDA tools and hardware designers to choose proper multiplier based on given applications and design constraints. All designs in were implemented using VHDL and synthesized in Design-Compiler toolbox with TSMC 45nm technology file.

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

decimal multiplication
energy consumption
power consumption


Goal-directed reasoning for specification-based data structure repair Software errors and hardware failures can cause data structures in running programs to violate key data structure consistency properties. As a result of this violation, the program may produce unacceptable results or even fail. We present a new data structure repair system. This system accepts a specification of data structure consistency properties stated in terms of an abstract set- and relation- based model of the data structures in the running program. It then automatically generates a repair algorithm that, during the execution of the program, detects and repairs any violations of these constraints. The goal is to enable the program to continue to execute acceptably in the face of otherwise crippling data structure corruption errors. We have applied our system to repair inconsistent data structures in five applications: CTAS ( an air traffic control system), AbiWord ( an open source word processing program), Freeciv ( an interactive multiplayer game), a parallel x86 emulator, and a simplified Linux file system. Our results indicate that the generated repair algorithms can effectively repair inconsistent data structures in these applications to enable the applications to continue to operate successfully in cases where the original application would have failed. Without repair, all of the applications fail.

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

testing and debugging
language constructs and features


Mining frequent patterns from univariate uncertain data In this paper, we propose a new algorithm called U2P-Miner for mining frequent U2 patterns from univariate uncertain data, where each attribute in a transaction is associated with a quantitative interval and a probability density function. The algorithm is implemented in two phases. First, we construct a U2P-tree that compresses the information in the target database. Then, we use the U2P-tree to discover frequent U2 patterns. Potential frequent U2 patterns are derived by combining base intervals and verified by traversing the U2P-tree. We also develop two techniques to speed up the mining process. Since the proposed method is based on a tree-traversing strategy, it is both efficient and scalable. Our experimental results demonstrate that the U2P-Miner algorithm outperforms three widely used algorithms, namely, the modified Apriori, modified H-mine, and modified depth-first backtracking algorithms.

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


SPEECH ENHANCEMENT USING SUBBAND INTERMITTENT ADAPTION A sub-band multisensor structure using intermittent adaption is proposed for speech enhancement. The convergence of the proposed method is compared with conventional LMS and frequency domain LMS and a dramatic increase in convergence rate is shown using both simulated and real data. Preliminary investigation of sub-band filter order is also reported.

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


Dejean's conjecture holds for n >= 30 We extend Carpi's results by showing that Dejean's conjecture holds for n >= 30. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

repetitive threshold
fractional power
dejean's conjecture


An IMS-based network architecture for WiMAX-UMTS and WiMAX-WLAN interworking The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) seems to be the technology that will prevail in Next Generation Networks (NGNs), since the interworking environment and the service flexibility that this technology offers to the currently deployed wireless broadband technologies makes it appealing to users, service developers and network operators. In this paper we propose a heterogeneous network model based on the IMS that integrates the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies and provides guaranteed QoS. We present the complete signalling flow concerning the authorization, registration, session set up and vertical handoff processes, as well as, an analytic model for cost analysis of the proposed architecture. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


A resource portfolio model for equipment investment and allocation of semiconductor testing industry Profitable but risky semiconductor testing market has led companies in the industry to carefully seek to maximize their profits by developing a proper resource portfolio plan for simultaneously deploying resources and selecting the most profitable orders. Various important factors, such as resource investment alternatives, trade-offs between the price and speed of equipment and capital time value, further increase the complexity of the simultaneous resource portfolio problem. This study develops a simultaneous resource portfolio decision model as a non-linear integer programming, and proposes a genetic algorithm to solve it efficiently. The proposed method is employed in the context of semiconductor testing industry to support decisions regarding equipment investment alternatives (including new equipment procurement, rent and transfer by outsourcing, and phasing outing) for simultaneous resources (such as testers and handlers) and task allocation. Experiments have showed that our approach, in contrast to an optimal solution tool, obtains a near-optimal solution in a relatively short computing time.

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 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

production
capacity planning and allocation
genetic algorithms


Higher-order schemes with CIP method and adaptive Soroban grid towards mesh-free scheme A new class of body-fitted grid system that can keep the third-order accuracy in time and space is proposed with the help of the CIP (constrained interpolation profile/cubic interpolated propagation) method. The grid system consists of the straight lines and grid points moving along these lines like abacus Soroban in Japanese. The length of each line and the number of grid points in each line can be different. The CIP scheme is suitable to this mesh system and the calculation of large CFL (>10) at locally refined mesh is easily performed. Mesh generation and searching of upstream departure point are very simple and almost mesh-free treatment is possible. Adaptive grid movement and local mesh refinement are demonstrated.

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

third-order scheme
numerical algorithm
curvilinear coordinate
mesh free
semi-lagrangian schemes


Reflex conditioning: a new strategy for improving motor function after spinal cord injury Spinal reflex conditioning changes reflex size, induces spinal cord plasticity, and modifies locomotion. Appropriate reflex conditioning can improve walking in rats after spinal cord injury (SCI). Reflex conditioning offers a new therapeutic strategy for restoring function in people with SCI. This approach can address the specific deficits of individuals with SCI by targeting specific reflex pathways for increased or decreased responsiveness. In addition, once clinically significant regeneration can be achieved, reflex conditioning could provide a means of reeducating the newly (and probably imperfectly) reconnected spinal cord.

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

spinal cord injury
reflex conditioning
plasticity
locomotion

h-reflex
learning and memory
rehabilitation


Bayesian evolutionary hypergraph learning for predicting cancer clinical outcomes We propose a new prognostic prediction model based on a Bayesian evolutionary learning. The evolutionary hypergraph classifiers identify higher-order prognostic biomarkers. The proposed Bayesian evolutionary learning effectively handles a complex search space. The performance of hypergraph classifiers outperforms other classification models.

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

clinical outcome prediction
hypergraph classifier
cancer genomic data


Data mining in mobile ECG based biometric identification This paper investigates the robustness of performing biometric identification in a mobile environment using electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. We implemented our proposed biometric sample extraction technique to test the usability across classifiers. Subjects in MIT-BIH Normal Sinus Rhythm Database (NSRDB) were used to validate the reliability and stability of the subject recognition methods. Discriminatory features extracted from the experimentations were later applied to different classifiers for performance measures based on the complexity of our proposed sample extraction method when compared to other related algorithms, the total execution time (TET) applied on different classifiers in various mobile devices and the classification accuracies when applied to various classification techniques. Experimentation results showed that our method simplifies biometric identification process by obtaining reduced computational complexity when compared to other related algorithms. This is evident when TET values were significantly low on mobile devices as compared to a non-mobile device while maintaining high accuracy rates ranging from 98.30% to 99.07% in different classifiers. Therefore, these outcomes support the usability of ECG based biometric identification in a mobile environment.

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


Evaluating the influence of E-marketing on hotel performance by DEA and grey entropy This study evaluated the hotels websites in Taiwan from an Internet marketing perspective. Content analysis was used to analyze and compare the marketing practice on Internet. DEA and grey entropy were used to analyze the impact of Internet marketing on hotel performance. The result showed that Internet marketing can affect the operating performance of tourist hotels. Hoteliers should adopt a more strategic Internet approach to increase business success.

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

e-marketing
data envelopment analysis (dea)


Effect of a surface pre-treatment on graphene growth using a SiC substrate This study reports surface pre-treatment techniques for the formation of a high-quality graphene layer on a SiC surface. It is demonstrated that silicon passivation of SiC surface using a silane flow and subsequent sacrificial oxidation can significantly improve the surface condition of a graphene layer on SiC by ensuring much fewer carbon dumps and wrinkles, reducing the electrical resistance, and providing smoother surface roughness and a larger domain size. The effect of in situ cleaning by a SF6 treatment before graphitization was also studied. It was found that in situ cleaning using SF6 gas can be a simple and effective means of improving the quality of a graphene layer grown on SiC. The results of this study suggest that a surface treatment before graphitization is the key to synthesize high-quality epitaxial graphene layer.

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

surface passivation
silane treatment
sulfur hexafluoride (sf6)


On the efficiency of fluid simulation of networks Performance evaluation of computer networks through traditional packet-level simulation is becoming increasingly difficult as networks grow in size along different dimensions. Due to its higher level of abstraction, fluid simulation is a promising approach for evaluating large-scale network models. In this paper we focus on evaluating and comparing the computational effort required for fluid- and packet-level simulation. To measure the computational effort required by a simulation approach, we introduce the concept of "simulation event rate", a measure that is both analytically tractable and adequate. We identify the fundamental factors that contribute to the simulation event rate in fluid- and packet-level simulations and provide an analytical characterization of the simulation event rate for specific network models. Among such factors, we identify the "ripple effect" as a significant contributor to the computational effort required by fluid simulation. We also show that the parameter space of a given network model can be divided into different regions where one simulation technique is more efficient than the other. In particular, we consider a realistic large-scale network and demonstrate how the computational effort depends on simulation parameters. Finally, we show that flow aggregation can effectively reduce the impact of the ripple effect and that the ripple effect has less impact when simulating the WFQ scheduling policy. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


how did you specify your test suite Although testing is central to debugging and software certification, there is no adequate language to specify test suites over source code. Such a language should be simple and concise in daily use, feature a precise semantics, and of course, it has to facilitate suitable engines to compute test suites and assess the coverage achieved by a test suite. This paper introduces the language FQL designed to fit these purposes. We achieve the necessary expressive power by a natural extension of regular expressions which matches test suites rather than individual executions. To evaluate the language, we show for a list of informal requirements how to express them in FQL. Moreover, we present a test case generation engine for C programs and perform practical experiments with the sample specifications.

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


strategies for effective integration of software engineering concepts and techniques into the undergraduate computer science curriculum This paper discusses various strategies for introducing and reinforcing software engineering principles in the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. These strategies are based on a set of standards for internal/external documentation and organization of software which may be implemented quickly and inexpensively without a complete overhaul of courses. This provides a flexible framework for the development of a wide variety of carefully-planned programming assignments/projects.

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

framework
organization
software
strategies
computer science curriculum
paper
documentation

program
developer
intern
assignment
concept
standardization
project
flexibility
effect
software engineering
completeness
integrability


Examining knowledge contribution from the perspective of an online identity in blogging communities Knowledge contribution is one of the essential factors behind the success of blogging communities (BCs). This research studies knowledge contribution behavior in a BC from the perspective of knowledge contributors and their characteristics using the lens of social identity theory. Social identity theory asserts that individuals are fundamentally motivated to present or communicate their identities in everyday social life through behavior. A similar line of reasoning can be used to argue that members of a BC would also be motivated to communicate their online identities through their behavior, that is, through knowledge contribution in the BC. Specifically, this study conceptualized the online identity and examined the effects of its personal (online kindness, online social skills, and online creativity) and social aspects (BC involvement) on knowledge contribution. The data was collected using an online survey from the members of Cyworld, a popular BC in South Korea and a few other countries (members from South Korea were included in this study). The results indicate that both the personal and social aspects of online identity and their interactions significantly influenced knowledge contribution. Based on the findings, this study offers suggestions to organizers of BCs to enhance the knowledge contribution from their members.

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

knowledge contribution
online identity
social identity theory


workshop on emerging trends in software metrics (wetsom 2010) The Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Metrics aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners to discuss the progress of software metrics. The motivation for this workshop is the low impact that software metrics has on current software development. The goals of this workshop are to critically examine the evidence for the effectiveness of existing metrics and to identify new directions for development of software metrics.

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


Bottom-up generation of hypermedia documents Creating hypermedia documents for educational or informational purposes is a time and money consuming task. However, automation, especially for maintaining or adapting large hypermedia documents (e.g. a web site), is a must. This paper presents an approach for the bottom-up generation of hypermedia documents. The main idea is to start with a set of mediaobjects (text, images, video, etc.), select the most appropriate ones, sequence them to build a tree-like structure, integrate them into a set of screen pages, and finally convert each screen page into a single HTML file. Maintaining the resulting document is very easy because it only requires extending or modifying the pool of mediaobjects available and regenerating the document.

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

dynamic documents
multimedia teachware
authoring environments


Learning automata based classifier In this paper a new classifier has been designed based on the learning automata. This classifier can efficiently approximate the decision hyperplanes in the feature space without need to know the class distributions and the a priori probabilities. The performance of the proposed classifier has been tested on different kinds of benchmarks with nonlinear, overlapping class boundaries and different feature space dimensions. Extensive experimental results on these data sets are provided to show that the performance of the proposed classifier is comparable to, sometimes better than multi-layer perceptron, k-nearest neighbor classifier, genetic classifier, and particle swarm classifier. Also the comparative results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison to similar researches. Furthermore the effect of the number of training points on the performance of the designed classifier is investigated. It is found that as the number of training data increases, the performance of the classifier tends to the performance of Bayes classifier which is an optimal one.

B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 common operator for FFT and FEC decoding In the Software Radio context, the parametrization is becoming an important topic especially when it comes to multi-standard designs. This paper capitalizes on the common operator technique to present new common structures for the FFT and FEC decoding algorithms. A key benefit of exhibiting common operators is the regular architecture it brings when implemented in a Common Operator Bank (COB). This regularity makes the architecture open to future function mapping and adapted to accommodated silicon technology variability through dependable design.

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

parametrization
common operator
fft
software radio


Cost estimation of machined parts within an aerospace supply chain A generic, hierarchical, and multifidelity unit cost of acquisition estimating methodology for outside production machined parts is presented. The originality of the work lies with the method's inherent capability of being able to generate multilevel and multifidelity cost relations for large volumes of parts utilizing process, supply chain costing data, and varying degrees of part design definition information. Estimates can be generated throughout the life cycle of a part using different grades of the combined information available. Considering design development for a given part, additional design definition may be used as it becomes available within the developed method to improve the quality of the resulting estimate. Via a process of analogous classification, parts are classified into groups of increasing similarity using design-based descriptors. A parametric estimating method is then applied to each subgroup of the machined part classification tree in the direction of improved classification, using a relationship which links design variables to manufacturing cycle time may be generated. A rate cost reflective of the supply chain is then applied to the cycle time estimate for a given part to arrive at an estimate of make cost which is then totalled with the material and treatments cost components respectively to give an overall estimate of unit acquisition cost. Both the rate charge applied and the treatments cost calculated for a given procured part is derived via the use of ratio analysis.

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

cost engineering
manufacturing cost estimating
aerospace procurement


Subjects and Objects: Metaphysics, Biology, Consciousness, and Cognition Over the past half-century, the Freeman laboratory has accumulated a large volume of data and a correspondingly extensive interpretive framework centered around an alternative perspective on brain function, that of dynamical systems. The purpose of this paper is first briefly to summarise this work, and bring it into dialogue with other perspectives. The contents of consciousness are seen as an inevitably sparse sample of events in the perceptionaction cycle. The paper proceeds to an attempt to elucidate the contents of this sparse sample. A critical concept is that of selfhood, and how it presents itself phenomenologically. It is argued that our experience of selfhood is an artifact of the necessity of preservation of subject/object relations. As this part of metaphysics has been badly misunderstood, we scrutinise it at some length in quantum mechanics, biology, and cognition. It is argued that Pattee's approach, while valuable, tends to premature closure on these issues. The paper then proceeds to outline a view on how selfhood is best considered wrt the immune response. This is interrelated with phenomenology, and some data are adduced to support this central hypothesis. Finally, consequences for the social sciences in general are hinted at.

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


Three-dimensional registration and fusion of ultrasound and MRI using major vessels as fiducial markers This paper describes fusion of three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data sets, without the assistance of external fiducial markers or external position sensors. Fusion of these two modalities combines real-time 3-D ultrasound scans of soft tissue with the larger anatomical framework from MRI. The complementary information available from multiple imaging modalities warrants the development of robust fusion capabilities. We describe the data acquisition, specialized algorithms, and results for 3-D fused data from phantom studies and in vivo studies of the normal human vasculature and musculoskeletal systems.

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


Health outcomes and related effects of using social media in chronic disease management: A literature review and analysis of affordances ? Examines health outcomes, effects and affordances of social media in chronic disease. Psychosocial benefits seen via an ability to foster support and share information. Evidence supporting impact on physical condition is less apparent. Affordances include: identity, flexibility, structure, narration, adaptation. Further research needed of affordances to inform evidence-based clinical guidelines.

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

chronic disease
social media
health outcomes
affordances


A decision tree-based attribute weighting filter for naive Bayes The naive Bayes classifier continues to be a popular learning algorithm for data mining applications due to its simplicity and linear run-time. Many enhancements to the basic algorithm have been proposed to help mitigate its primary weakness the assumption that attributes are independent given the class. All of them improve the performance of naive Bayes at the expense (to a greater or lesser degree) of execution time and/or simplicity of the final model. In this paper we present a simple filter method for setting attribute weights for use with naive Bayes. Experimental results show that naive Bayes with attribute weights rarely degrades the quality of the model compared to standard naive Bayes and, in many cases, improves it dramatically. The main advantages of this method compared to other approaches for improving naive Bayes is its run-time complexity and the fact that it maintains the simplicity of the final model.

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


Features and models for human activity recognition Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is aimed at identifying current subject task performed by a person as a result of analyzing data from wearable sensors. HAR is a very challenging task that has been applied in different areas such as rehabilitation and localization. During the past ten years, plenty of models, number of sensors and sensor placements, and feature transformations have been reported for this task. From this bunch of previous ideas, what seems to be clear is that the very specific applications drive to the selection of the best choices for each case. Present research is focused on early diagnosis of stroke, what involves reducing the feature space of gathered data and subsequent HAR, among other tasks. In this study, an Information Correlation Coefficient (ICC) analysis was carried out followed by a wrapper Feature Selection (FS) method on the reduced input space. Additionally, a novel HAR method is proposed for this specific problem of stroke early diagnosing, comprising an adaptation of the well-known Genetic Fuzzy Finite State Machine (GFFSM) method. To the best of the author?s knowledge, this is the very first analysis of the feature space concerning all the previously published feature transformations on raw acceleration data. The main contributions of this study are the optimization of the sample rate, selection of the best feature subset, and learning of a suitable HAR method based on GFFSM to be applied to the HAR problem.

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

human activity recognition
genetic fuzzy finite state machine
feature selection
information correlation coefficient


Self-calibration of environmental camera for mobile robot navigation An environmental camera is a camera embedded in a working environment to provide vision guidance to a mobile robot. In the setup of such robot systems, the relative position and orientation between the mobile robot and the environmental camera are parameters that must unavoidably be calibrated. Traditionally, because the configuration of the robot system is task-driven, these kinds of external parameters of the camera are measured separately and should be measured each time a task is to be performed. In this paper, a method is proposed for the robot system in which calibration of the environmental camera is rendered by the robot system itself on the spot after a system is set up. Specific kinds of motion patterns of the mobile robot, which are called test motions, have been explored for calibration. The calibration approach is based upon executing certain selected test motions on the mobile robot and then using the camera to observe the robot. According to a comparison of odometry and sensing data, the external parameters of the camera can be calibrated. Furthermore, an evaluation index (virtual sensing error) has been developed for the selection and optimization of test motions to obtain good calibration performance. All the test motion patterns are computed offline in advance and saved in a database, which greatly shorten the calibration time. Simulations and experiments verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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

environmental camera
test motion
virtual sensing error


first international workshop on software research and climate change This workshop will explore the contributions that software research can make to the challenge of climate change. Software is a critical enabling technology in nearly all aspects of climate change, from the computational models used by climate scientists to improve our understanding of the impact of human activities on earth systems, through to the information and control systems needed to build an effective carbon-neutral society. The intent of the workshop is to explore how software research can contribute to this challenge, to build a community of researchers interested in responding to the challenge, and to map out a research agenda.

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

inter-disciplinary research
computational thinking
green it
global warming


On the Non-existance of Rotation-Symmetric von Neumann Neighbor Number-Conserving Cellular Automata of Which the State Number is Less than Four A number-conserving cellular automaton (NCCA) is a cellular automaton such that all states of cells are represented by integers and the total number of its configuration is conserved throughout its computing process. In constrast to normal cellular automata, there are infinitely many assignments of states for NCCAs with a constant state number. As for von Neumann neighbor(radius one) NCCAs with rotation-symmetry, a local function can be represented by summation of four binary functions. In this paper, we show that the minimum size of state set of rotation-symmetric von Neumann neighbor NCCA is 5 by using this representation.

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


Option pricing bounds with standard risk aversion preferences For a theoretical valuation of a financial option, various models have been proposed that require specific hypotheses regarding both the stochastic process driving the price behaviour of the underlying security and market efficiency. When some of these assumptions are removed, we obtain an uncertainty interval for the option price. Up to now, the most restrictive intervals for option prices have been obtained using the decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA) rule in a state-preference approach. Precautionary saving entails the concept of prudence; in particular, decreasing absolute prudence is a necessary and sufficient condition that guarantees that the saving of wealthier people is less sensitive to the risk associated to future incomes. If this condition is coupled with the DARA assumption we obtain standard risk aversion (SRA), which guarantees on the one hand that introducing a zero-mean background risk to wealth makes people less willing to accept another independent risk and on the other hand that an increase in the risk of the returns distribution of an asset reduces the demand for this asset. The main idea of this contribution is to apply decreasing absolute prudence and SRA rules in a state-preference context in order to obtain efficient bounds for the value of European-style options portfolio strategies. Lower and upper bounds for the options portfolio value are obtained by solving non-linear optimization problems. The numerical experiments carried out show the efficiency of the technique proposed.

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


Morphologically constrained GRFs: Applications to texture synthesis and analysis A new class of Gibbs random fields (GRFs) is proposed capable of modeling geometrical constraints in images by means of mathematical morphology. The proposed models, known as morphologically constrained GRFs, model images by means of their size density. Since the size density is a multiresolution statistical summary morphologically constrained GRFs explicitly incorporate multiresolution information into image modeling. Important properties are studied and their implication to texture synthesis and analysis is discussed. For morphologically constrained GRFs to be useful in practice, it is important that an efficient technique is available for fitting these models to real data. It is shown that, at low enough temperatures and under a natural condition, the maximum-likelihood estimator of the morphologically constrained GRF parameters can be approximated by means of an important tool of mathematical morphology known as the pattern spectrum. Therefore, statistical inference can he easily implemented by means of mathematical morphology. This allows the design of a, computationally simple morphological Bayes classifier which produces excellent results in classifying natural textures.

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

gibbs random fields
mathematical morphology
size density
statistical inference
texture synthesis and analysis

metropolis algorithm
monte carlo simulation
morphological constraints


Incident Detection in Heavy Traffics in Tunnels by the Interlayer Feedback Algorithm In this paper, we developed video surveillance system to detect incidents from heavy traffics in tunnels. Incidents in tunnels may cause additional accidents or fires that may result in fatal disaster. Therefore, it is important to detect incidents as soon as possible to manage the traffics inside the tunnels by the officers. Generally, video images in the tunnels suffer from heavy occlusion due to the low position of camera settings. In particular, the problem of heavy occlusions would be more serious in the urban tunnels due to their heavy traffics. We developed a tracking algorithm to segment vehicles and estimate the precise vehicle trajectories against the heavy occlusions. Utilizing this tracking algorithm, dedicated algorithm to detect incidents from the traffic images was developed. For the experiments, video streams of three cameras for 6months were investigated, and 32 incidents were examined to evaluate the developed algorithm.

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


A multi-resolution area-based technique for automatic multi-modal image registration To allow remotely sensed datasets to be used for data fusion, either to gain additional insight into the scene or for change detection, reliable spatial referencing is required. With modern remote sensing systems, reliable registration can be gained by applying an orbital model for spaceborne data or through the use of global positioning (GPS) and inertial navigation (INS) systems in the case of airborne data. Whilst, individually, these datasets appear well registered when compared to a second dataset from another source (e.g., optical to LiDAR or optical to radar) the resulting images may still be several pixels out of alignment. Manual registration techniques are often slow and labour intensive and although an improvement in registration is gained, there can still be some misalignment of the datasets. This paper outlines an approach for automatic image-to-image registration where a topologically regular grid of tie points was imposed within the overlapping region of the images. To ensure topological consistency, tie points were stored within a network structure inspired from Kohonens self-organising networks [24]. The network was used to constrain the motion of the tie points in a manner similar to Kohonens original method. Using multiple resolutions, through an image pyramid, the network structure was formed at each resolution level where connections between the resolution levels allowed tie point movements to be propagated within and to all levels. Experiments were carried out using a range of manually registered multi-modal remotely sensed datasets where known linear and non-linear transformations were introduced against which our algorithms performance was tested. For single modality tests with no introduced transformation a mean error of 0.011 pixels was identified increasing to 3.46 pixels using multi-modal image data. Following the introduction of a series of translations a mean error of 4.98 pixels was achieve across all image pairs while a mean error of 7.12 pixels was identified for a series of non-linear transformations. Experiments using optical reflectance and height data were also conducted to compare the manually and automatically produced results where it was found the automatic results out performed the manual results. Some limitations of the network data structure were identified when dealing with very large errors but overall the algorithm produced results similar to, and in some cases an improvement over, that of a manual operator. We have also positively compared our method to methods from two other software packages: ITK and ITT ENVI.

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

image registration
remote sensing
network


Effective compressive strength of strut in CFRP-strengthened reinforced concrete deep beams following ACI 318-11 Strut-and-tie model (STM) has been recommended by many codes and standards as a rational model for discontinuity regions in structural members. STM has been adopted in ACI building code for analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) deep beams since 2002. However, STM recommended by ACI 318-11 is only applicable for analysis of ordinary RC deep beams. This paper aims to develop the STM for CFRP strengthened RC deep beams through the strut effectiveness factor recommended by ACI 318-11. Two sets of RC deep beams were cast and tested in this research. Each set consisted of six simply-supported specimens loaded in four-point bending. The first set had no CFRP strengthening while the second was strengthened by means of CFRP sheets using two-side wet lay-up system. Each set consisted of six RC deep beams with shear span to effective depth ratio of 0.75, 1.00, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, and 2.00. The value of strut effectiveness factor recommended by ACI 318-11 is modified using a proposed empirical relationship in this research. The empirical relationship is established based on shear span to effective depth ratio.

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

shear failure
d-region
cfrp-strengthening
deep beam


Prioritized motionforce control of constrained fully-actuated robots: Task Space Inverse Dynamics Multi-task motion and force control of fully-actuated robots with strict priorities. Show operational-space inverse dynamics=inverse kinematics+inverse dynamics. Same results of operational-space inverse dynamics but 2.6 times faster. Use only NewtonEuler algorithm (no need to compute the mass matrix of the robot). Review of state-of-the-art control frameworks with comparison through simulations.

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

inverse dynamics
force control
task space

prioritized control
hierarchical control
operational space