Innovations in health care services: The CAALYX system This paper describes proposed health care services innovations, provided by a system called CAALYX (Complete Ambient Assisted Living eXperiment). CAALYX aimed to provide healthcare innovation by extending the state-of-the-art in tele-healthcare, by focusing on increasing the confidence of elderly people living autonomously, by building on the knowledge base of the most common disorders and respective characteristic vital sign changes for this age group. A review of the state-of-the-art on health care services was carried out. Then, extensive research was conducted on the particular needs of the elderly in relation to home health services that, if offered to them, could improve their day life by giving them greater confidence and autonomy. To achieve this, we addressed issues associated with the gathering of clinical data and interpretation of these data, as well as possibilities of automatically triggering appropriate clinical measures. Considering this initial work we started the identification of initiatives, ongoing works and technologies that could be used for the development of the system. After that, the implementation of CAALYX was done. The innovation in CAALYX system considers three main areas of contribution: (i) The Roaming Monitoring System that is used to collect information on the well-being of the elderly users; (ii) The Home Monitoring System that is aimed at helping the elders independently living at home being implemented by a device (a personal computer or a set top box) that supports the connection of sensors and video cameras that may be used for monitoring and for interaction with the elder; (iii) The Central Care Service and Monitoring System that is implemented by a Caretaker System where attention and care services are provided to elders, where actors as Caretakers, Doctors and Relatives are logically linked to elders. Innovations in each of these areas are presented here. The ageing European society is placing an added burden on future generations, as the elderly-to-working-age-people ratio is set to steadily increase in the future. Nowadays, quality of life and fitness allows for most older persons to have an active life well into their eighties. Furthermore, many older persons prefer to live in their own house and choose their own lifestyle. The CAALYX system can have a clear impact in increasing older persons autonomy, by ensuring that they do not need to leave their preferred environment in order to be properly monitored and taken care of.

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

elderly healthcare
sensor network
personal area network
location-based system
fall and mobility sensor
caretaker site
home system
observation patterns
ehealth
einclusion


Shor's discrete logarithm quantum algorithm for elliptic curves We show in some detail how to implement Shor's efficient quantum algorithm for discrete logarithms for the particular case of elliptic curve groups. It turns out that for this problem a smaller quantum computer can solve problems further beyond current computing than for integer factorisation. A 160 bit elliptic curve cryptographic key could be broken on a quantum computer using around 1000 qubits while factoring the security-wise equivalent 1024 bit RSA modulus would require about 2000 qubits. In this paper we only consider elliptic curves over GF(p) and not yet the equally important ones over GF(2(n)) or other finite fields. The main technical difficulty is to implement Euclid's gcd algorithm to compute multiplicative inverses modulo p. As the runtime of Euclid's algorithm depends on the input, one difficulty encountered is the "quantum halting problem".

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


delayed password disclosure We present a new authentication protocol called Delayed Password Disclosure. Based on the traditional user name and password paradigm, the protocol's goal is aimed at reducing the effectiveness of phishing/spoofing attacks that are becoming increasingly problematic for Internet users. This is done by providing the user with dynamic feedback while password entry occurs. While this is a process that would normally be frowned upon by the cryptographic community, we argue that it may result in more effective security than that offered by currently proposed "cryptographically acceptable" alternatives. While the protocol cannot prevent partial disclosure of one's password to the phisher, it does provide a user with the tools necessary to recognizean on going phishing attack, and prevent the disclosure of his/her entire password, providing graceful security degradation.

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

user interfaces
decisional
password authenticated key exchange
static diffie-hellman
doppelganger
oblivious transfer


Generalized Nash Bargaining Solution for bandwidth allocation For over a decade, the Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS) concept from cooperative game theory has been used in networks to share resources fairly. Due to its many appealing properties, it has recently been used for assigning bandwidth in a general topology network between applications that have linear utility functions. In this paper, we use this concept for allocating the bandwidth between applications with general concave utilities. Our framework includes in fact several other fairness criteria, such as the max-min criteria. We study the impact of concavity on the allocation and present computational methods for obtaining fair allocations in a general topology, based on a dual Lagrangian approach and on Semi-Definite Programming. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

nash bargaining
bandwidth allocation
fairness


An improved differential evolution algorithm for vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries and time windows The vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries and time windows (VRP-SPDTW) is the problem of optimally integrating forward (good distribution) and reverse logistics (returning materials) for cost saving and environmental protection. We constructed a general mixed integer programming model of VRP-SPDTW. The model contained some classical vehicle routing problems as special cases. We proposed an improved differential evolution algorithm (IDE) for solving this problem. In the algorithm, we firstly adopted the novel decimal coding to construct an initial population, then used some improved differential evolution operators unlike the existing algorithm, and in mutation operation, we used an integer order criterion based on natural number coding method. We introduced a penalty technical to publish the infeasible solution. In addition, in the crossover operation, we designed a self-adapting crossover probability that varied with iteration. We did some numerical experiments, and the results showed that the proposed method is effective for solving VRP-SPDTW.

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

distribution management
vrp-spdtw
improved differential evolution (ide)
optimization


A minimax distribution free procedure for mixed inventory model involving variable lead time with fuzzy demand In a recent paper, Ouyang and Wu applied the minimax decision approach to solve a continuous review mixed inventory model in which the lead time demand distribution information is unknown but the annual demand is fixed and given. However, in the practical situation, the annual demand probably incurs disturbance due to various uncertainties. In this article, we attempt to modify Ouyang and Wu's model by considering two fuzziness of annual demand (i.e., fuzzy number of annual demand and statistic-fuzzy number of annual demand) and to investigate a computing schema for the continuous review inventory model in the fuzzy sense. We give an algorithm procedure to obtain the optimal ordering strategy for each case. In most of the early literature dealing with inventory problems, either using deterministic or probabilistic models, lead time is viewed as a prescribed constant or a stochastic variable. Recently, some researchers (e.g., Liao and Shyu, Ben-Daya and Raouf, and Ouyang and Wu) incorporated the crashing lead time idea to continuous review inventory models, in which the annual demand is given and fixed. However, in the real situation, the annual demand will probably have a little disturbance due to various uncertainties. The purpose of this article is to modify the Ouyang and Wu's model to accommodate this reality, specifically, we apply the fuzzy set concepts to deal with the uncertain annual demand. We first consider a case where the annual demand is treated as the triangular fuzzy number. Then, we employ the statistical method to construct a confidence interval for the annual demand, and through it to establish the corresponding fuzzy number (namely, the statistic-fuzzy number). For each fuzzy case, we investigate a computing schema for the new model and develop an algorithm to find the optimal ordering strategy.

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

inventory
minimax distribution free procedure

membership function
extension principle
fuzzy total cost


New trends in building numerical programs This manuscript focuses the attention on the possibility that some basic programs for solving numerical problems have to be revised. The fundamental case of linear system solution and related concepts is proposed as example of the different ways to approach a problem using object-oriented programming and procedural approaches. The different points of view shows that the traditional approach adopted to deem the conditioning of a system as well as all existing programs to solve linear systems need to be revised. A brief discussion deals with the possibility of parallelizing programs for personal computers and with interaction of parallel computing and object-oriented programming. (c) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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

object-oriented programming
condition number


Extracting Chemical Reactions from Thai Text for Semantics-Based Information Retrieval Based on sliding-window rule application and extraction filtering, we present a framework for extracting multi-slot frames describing chemical reactions from Thai free text with unknown target-phrase boundaries. A supervised rule learning algorithm is employed for automatic construction of pattern-based extraction rules from hand-tagged training phrases. A filtering method is devised for removal of incorrect extraction results based on features observed from text portions appearing between adjacent slot fillers in source documents. Extracted reaction frames are represented as concept expressions in description logics and are used as metadata for document indexing. A document knowledge base supporting semantics-based information retrieval is constructed by integrating document metadata with domain-specific ontologies.

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

information extraction
semantics-based information retrieval
ontology
automated reasoning


On the eigenvectors of p-Laplacian Spectral analysis approaches have been actively studied in machine learning and data mining areas, due to their generality, efficiency, and rich theoretical foundations. As a natural non-linear generalization of Graph Laplacian, p-Laplacian has recently been proposed, which interpolates between a relaxation of normalized cut and the Cheeger cut. However, the relaxation can only be applied to two-class cases. In this paper, we propose full eigenvector analysis of p-Laplacian and obtain a natural global embedding for multi-class clustering problems, instead of using greedy search strategy implemented by previous researchers. An efficient gradient descend optimization approach is introduced to obtain the p-Laplacian embedding space, which is guaranteed to converge to feasible local solutions. Empirical results suggest that the greedy search method often fails in many real-world applications with non-trivial data structures, but our approach consistently gets robust clustering results. Visualizations of experimental results also indicate our embedding space preserves the local smooth manifold structures existing in real-world data.

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

graph laplacian
clustering
cheeger cut
normalized cut


Registration of a 3D mouse brain atlas with brain microstructure data The brain tissue scanner http://research.cs.tamu.edu/bnl/ is being used to explore the topology and geometry of mouse brain architecture at two levels: its gross anatomy and its microstructure. Aligned volume data set acquisition using this instrument is described. A 3D atlas of mouse brain partitions the gross anatomical structures of brain by a solid model. When registered with the microstructure data, the model serves to organize and index the microstructure data. Volume element partitioning of the mouse brain data can provide a common coordinate framework for visualization and morphological modeling of neurons and can serve as containers to grow synthetic neurons.

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


Order reduction of general nonlinear DAE systems by automatic tearing The object-oriented approach to modelling has recently made possible to build models of large-scale real systems. However, the resulting system of equations is generally a nonlinear DAE (Differential Algebraic Equations) system of large dimension, which must be reduced in some way to make it tractable for numerical solutions. A way to do this is automatic symbolic tearing, which aims at splitting the DAE system into two parts: a core consisting of a reduced implicit DAE system and a set of explicit assignments. The problem is here dealt with by a graph theoretic approach, first proving the NP-completeness in the general case, then formulating the problem with reference to a bipartite graph and finally defining an efficient and flexible algorithm for automatic tearing. It is also shown how the proposed algorithm can easily incorporate both general and domain-specific heuristic rules, and can also be used to deal with equations in vector form. The application to serial multibody systems is considered as a significant example.

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

object-oriented modelling
model reduction
graph theory


A dynamic and automatic traffic light control expert system for solving the road congestion problem Traffic congestion is a severe problem in many modern cities around the world. To solve the problem, we have proposed a framework for a dynamic and automatic traffic light control expert system combined with a simulation model, which is composed of six submodels coded in Arena to help analyze the traffic problem. The model adopts interarrival time and interdeparture time to simulate the arrival and leaving number of cars on roads. In the experiment, each submodel represents a road that has three intersections. The simulation results physically prove the efficiency of the traffic system in an urban area, because the average waiting time of cars at every intersection is sharply dropped when the red light duration is 65s and the green light time duration is 125s. Meanwhile, further analysis also shows if we keep the interarrival time of roads A, B, and C, and change that of roads D, E, and F from 1.7 to 3.4s and the interdeparture times at the three intersections on roads A, B, and C are equal to 0.6s, the total performance of the simulation model is the best. Finally, according to the data collected from RFID readers and the best, second and third best traffic light durations generated from the simulation model, the automatic and dynamic traffic light control expert system can control how long traffic signals should be for traffic improvement.

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

traffic light control expert system
traffic congestion

simulation system
radio frequency identification


Reduced-order subscales for POD models In this work the Reduced-Order Subscales for Proper Orthogonal Decomposition models are presented. The basic idea consists in splitting the full-order solution into the part which can be captured by the reduced-order model and the part which cannot, the subscales, for which a model is required. The proposed model for the subscales is defined as a linear function of the solution of the reduced-order model. The coefficients of this linear function are obtained by comparing the solution of the full-order model with the solution of the reduced-order model for the same initial conditions, which, for convenience, are evaluated in the snapshots used to train the original reduced-order-model. The difference between both solutions are the subscales, for which a model can be built using a least-squares procedure. The subscales are then introduced as a correction in the reduced-order model, resulting in an important improvement in accuracy. The enhanced reduced-order model is tested in several numerical examples. These practical cases show that the use of the subscales leads to more accurate solutions, successfully corrects errors introduced by hyper-reduction, and allows to solve complex flow problems using a reduced number of degrees of freedom.

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

reduced-order models
variational multiscale
fluid dynamics
low dimensional modeling


A new noise-compensated estimation scheme for multichannel autoregressive signals from noisy observations In many engineering applications concerning the recovery of signals from noisy observations, a common approach consists in adopting autoregressive (AR) models. This paper is concerned with not only the estimation of multichannel autoregressive (MAR) model parameters but also the recovery of signals. A new noise compensated parameter estimation scheme is introduced in this paper. It contains an advanced least square vector (ALSV) algorithm which not only keeps the advantage of blindly estimating the MAR parameters and the variance-covariance matrix of observation noises, but also aims at ensuring the variance-covariance matrix to be symmetric in each iterative procedure. Moreover, the estimation of variance-covariance matrix of input noise is proposed, and then we form an optimal filtering to recover the signals. In the numerical simulations, the estimation performance of the ALSV estimation algorithm significantly outperforms that of other existed methods. Moreover, the optimal filtering based on the ALSV algorithm leads to more accurate recovery of the true signals.

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

multichannel autoregressive signals
parameter estimation

symmetric property
variance-covariance matrix


a peer-to-peer middleware platform for fault-tolerant, qos, real-time computing In this paper we present the architecture of RTP M , a middleware framework aimed at supporting the development and management of information systems for high-speed public transportation systems. The framework is based on a peer-to-peer overlay infrastructure with the main focus being on providing a scalable, resilient, reconfigurable, highly available platform for real-time and QoS computing.

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


Social Cognition, Artefacts, and Stigmergy Revisited: Concepts of Coordination A number of different coordination concepts have been developed to explain how individual activities are coordinated on a social level, and the variety of concepts shows there is an interest in many domains to find such explanations. Stigmergy being one of them, has come to be increasingly applied on various kinds of human activities. In other domains we find other concepts for explaining how environmental resources contribute to work activities or how people use them to structure their work. This paper discusses different coordination concepts, including stigmergy, articulation work, coordination mechanisms, triggers, placeholders, and entry points. The first three concepts are explicitly concerned with coordination among several agents, while the last three instead concern individual activities, but arguably they can be extended to the social level. They also bring an explicitly cognitive dimension to coordination, which is not as salient in the former concepts. The concepts discussed here do have some similarities, but also important differences. They may not be interchangeable, but they could complement each other, or contribute to further elaboration of existing concepts. The stigmergic sign, e.g., could usefully be developed to recognise qualitative differences in its role as a coordination mechanism.

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

stigmergy
articulation work
coordination mechanisms
triggers
placeholders
entry points


Properties of total domination edge-critical graphs A set S S of vertices in a graph G G is a total dominating set of G G if every vertex of G G is adjacent to some vertex in S S . The minimum cardinality of a total dominating set of G G is the total domination number ?t(G) ? t ( G ) of G G . The graph G G is total domination edge critical if for every edge e e in the complement of G G , ?t(G+e)<?t(G) ? t ( G + e ) < ? t ( G ) . We call such graphs ?tEC ? t E C . Properties of ?tEC ? t E C graphs are established.

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


Information governancea view from the NHS In this paper, a range of issues influencing and affecting NHS1 information governance policy and practice will be considered. The expansion of electronic information services within the NHS and with its other information partners has reinforced the need for effective security and confidentiality arrangements to apply at multiple levels and in a variety of different business contexts. Added to these, the need to consistently address issues of data protection, records management and data quality, has resulted in a NHS information governance initiative. This initiative is intended to provide approved tools, methods and guidance that may be applied consistently throughout the NHS and that will be underpinned through appropriate support and helpdesk services. This paper emphasises the need to consider a range of applicable topics when determining a responsible and extensible approach to the governance of information collected, used and shared by healthcare organisations.

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


Evaluation of flexibility for the effective change management of manufacturing organizations In this paper, we propose selected flexibility measures which can quantify flexibility and eventually integrate it into the change management processes of manufacturing organizations, aiming to increase effectiveness and competitiveness of the European industry. These measures can be utilized either stand-alone or integrated into a change management system to influence the change direction. A classification model supporting flexibility-related aspects is also discussed. A case study presenting a recommended integration of flexibility into a change management process is described. Additionally, a service-oriented architecture on IT level that can be adopted in order to combine the flexibility calculation with the change management is presented. The final objective is to investigate the integration of quantified flexibility indicators into the change management processes of a manufacturing organization.

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


Spherical DCB-Spline Surfaces with Hierarchical and Adaptive Knot Insertion This paper develops a novel surface fitting scheme for automatically reconstructing a genus-0 object into a continuous parametric spline surface. A key contribution for making such a fitting method both practical and accurate is our spherical generalization of the Delaunay configuration B-spline (DCB-spline), a new non-tensor-product spline. In this framework, we efficiently compute Delaunay configurations on sphere by the union of two planar Delaunay configurations. Also, we develop a hierarchical and adaptive method that progressively improves the fitting quality by new knot-insertion strategies guided by surface geometry and fitting error. Within our framework, a genus-0 model can be converted to a single spherical spline representation whose root mean square error is tightly bounded within a user-specified tolerance. The reconstructed continuous representation has many attractive properties such as global smoothness and no auxiliary knots. We conduct several experiments to demonstrate the efficacy of our new approach for reverse engineering and shape modeling.

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

spherical splines
knot placement
non-tensor-product b-splines


Nonlinear observer design for the slow states of a singularly perturbed system The present work proposes a new approach to the nonlinear observer design problem in the presence of two-time-scale multiplicity. In particular, nonlinear processes are considered that exhibit fast and unmeasurable slow dynamic modes, and the latter need to be accurately reconstructed through the use of a state observer. The proposed observer is designed on the basis of the reduced-order process dynamics that evolve on the system's slow manifold, and the dynamic behavior of the estimation error is analyzed and mathematically characterized in the presence of the unmodeled fast process dynamics. It is shown, that within the proposed nonlinear observer design framework, the observation error generated by neglecting the fast process dynamics is of order O(is an element of), where is an element of is the perturbation parameter and a measure of the relative speed/time-constant of the fast and the slow component of the process dynamics. Furthermore, the analysis conducted establishes robustness of the proposed observer design method with respect to fast unmodeled process dynamics. Finally, the performance of the proposed method and the convergence properties of the reduced-order nonlinear observer designed are evaluated in an illustrative biological reactor example. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


the ruby intermediate language Ruby is a popular, dynamic scripting language that aims to "feel natural to programmers" and give users the "freedom to choose" among many different ways of doing the same thing. While this arguably makes programming in Ruby easier, it makes it hard to build analysis and transformation tools that operate on Ruby source code. In this paper, we present the Ruby Intermediate Language (RIL), a Ruby front-end and intermediate representation that addresses these. RIL includes an extensible GLR parser for Ruby, and an automatic translation into an easy-to-analyze intermediate form. This translation eliminates redundant language constructs, unravels the often subtle ordering among side effecting operations, and makes implicit interpreter operations explicit. We also describe several additional useful features of RIL, such as a dynamic instrumentation library for profiling source code and a dataflow analysis engine. We demonstrate the usefulness of RIL by presenting a static and dynamic analysis to eliminate null pointer errors in Ruby programs. We hope that RIL's features will enable others to more easily build analysis tools for Ruby, and that our design will inspire the of similar frameworks for other dynamic languages.

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


Kinematics analysis of a novel all-attitude flight simulator To overcome the kinematic singularity limitation of simulator, which is unavoidable in a three-axis architecture, an all-attitude flight simulator in a four-axis architecture is proposed. The simulator can always provide 3DOF motion by applying redundant manipulator mechanism. For direct kinematics of the manipulator, a dual-Euler method is adopted to solve the expressions of attitude angles; thus computation singularity of all-attitude angles is overcome. For inverse kinematics of the manipulator, pseudo-inverse gradient projection method is used to obtain optimal velocity solution. Then, based on dynamic control method, optimal position solution is obtained. The proposed inverse kinematics algorithm can achieve desired attitudes, as well as can avoid kinematics singularity and axis angle limits. The simulation results show that the kinematic performance of the four-axis all-attitude flight simulator is superior to that of a three-axis simulator.

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

flight simulator
kinematic singularity
direct kinematics
inverse kinematics


A retrospective analysis of oxygen concentrator maintenance needs and costs in a low-resource setting: experience from The Gambia Oxygen is an essential medicine for the treatment of pneumonia, the leading cause of death in children under five worldwide. Yet, providing a sufficient and reliable supply of oxygen is a major challenge for many health facilities in the developing world, particularly in paediatric care units. The cost-effectiveness of oxygen concentrators versus compressed gas cylinders as a source of oxygen in low-resource health facilities has been demonstrated, but evidence of their long-term functionality is scarce. The Biomedical Engineering Department at the Medical Research Council Unit in The Gambia manages and maintains 27 oxygen concentrators at several sites across the country, and has kept electronic records of all preventive maintenance checks and repairs on these devices since 2006. Through a retrospective analysis of these maintenance records, the objective of this study was to assess the long-term reliability and maintenance needs of oxygen concentrators in a low-income setting with biomedical engineering technologist support. We found that the majority of concentrator repairs are low-cost and require a low experience level to complete. We estimate that the useful lifespan of oxygen concentrators in low-resource settings could reasonably exceed 7years provided a system is in place for routine preventive maintenance. We conclude the paper with additional insights on the broader support ecosystem required to manage and maintain oxygen concentrators in low-resource settings.

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 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

clinical engineering
medical equipment management
equipment maintenance
developing countries


Measurement and simulation of a droplet population in a turbulent flow field The interaction of a disperse droplet population (spray) in a turbulent flow field has been investigated by combining wind tunnel experiments with simulations based on a population balance system. The behavior of the droplets is modeled numerically by a population balance equation. Velocities of the air and of the droplets are determined by non-intrusive measurements. A direct discretization of the 4D equation for the droplet size distribution is used in the simulations. Important components of the numerical algorithm are a variational multiscale method for turbulence modeling, stabilized finite difference schemes for the 4D equation and a pre-processing approach to evaluate the collision integrals. The simulations of this system accurately predict the modifications of the droplet size distribution from the inlet to the outlet of the measurement section. Since the employed configuration is simple and considering that all measurement data are freely available thanks to an internet-based repository, the considered experiment is proposed as a benchmark problem for the simulation of disperse two-phase turbulent flows. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

disperse droplet population
variational multiscale method

two-phase turbulent flow
non-intrusive measurements
population balance systems


dual contouring of hermite data This paper describes a new method for contouring a signed grid whose edges are tagged by Hermite data (i.e; exact intersection points and normals). This method avoids the need to explicitly identify and process "features" as required in previous Hermite contouring methods. Using a new, numerically stable representation for quadratic error functions, we develop an octree-based method for simplifying contours produced by this method. We next extend our contouring method to these simplied octrees. This new method imposes no constraints on the octree (such as being a restricted octree) and requires no "crack patching". We conclude with a simple test for preserving the topology of the contour during simplification.

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

intersection
simplification
method
grid
test
process
data
representation
contouring
paper
octree
quadratic error functions

point
topologies
constraint
feature
crack prevention
normalization
polyhedral simplification
errors
implicit functions
patch


Incremental Information Extraction Using Relational Databases Information extraction systems are traditionally implemented as a pipeline of special-purpose processing modules targeting the extraction of a particular kind of information. A major drawback of such an approach is that whenever a new extraction goal emerges or a module is improved, extraction has to be reapplied from scratch to the entire text corpus even though only a small part of the corpus might be affected. In this paper, we describe a novel approach for information extraction in which extraction needs are expressed in the form of database queries, which are evaluated and optimized by database systems. Using database queries for information extraction enables generic extraction and minimizes reprocessing of data by performing incremental extraction to identify which part of the data is affected by the change of components or goals. Furthermore, our approach provides automated query generation components so that casual users do not have to learn the query language in order to perform extraction. To demonstrate the feasibility of our incremental extraction approach, we performed experiments to highlight two important aspects of an information extraction system: efficiency and quality of extraction results. Our experiments show that in the event of deployment of a new module, our incremental extraction approach reduces the processing time by 89.64 percent as compared to a traditional pipeline approach. By applying our methods to a corpus of 17 million biomedical abstracts, our experiments show that the query performance is efficient for real-time applications. Our experiments also revealed that our approach achieves high quality extraction results.

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

text mining
query languages
information storage and retrieval


Simplification techniques for maps in simplicial topology This paper offers an algorithmic solution to the problem of obtaining "economical" formulae for some maps in Simplicial Topology, having, in principle, a high computational cost in their evaluation. In particular, maps of this kind are used for defining cohomology operations at the cochain level. As an example, we obtain explicit combinatorial descriptions of Steenrod kth powers exclusively in terms of face operators. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

simplicial sets
face and degeneracy operators


Function approximation with decomposed fuzzy systems If the number of input signals increases, a fuzzy system gets increasingly intractable for two reasons. On the one hand the knowledge acquisition suffers increasingly from the knowledge engineering bottleneck. On the other hand, computational and memory demands of fuzzy systems increase strongly, thus suffering from the curse of dimensionality. The first problem is classically addressed by learning techniques, the second by decomposing the fuzzy system. The NetFAN-approach (Network of Fuzzy Adaptive Nodes) combines decomposition with learning in order to apply fuzzy techniques to more complex applications. Different ways to decompose a fuzzy system are discussed in this paper. For the favorite decomposition principle, it is shown to be an universal function approximator, despite decomposition. The real-world example of controlling a pneumatic positioning system finally demonstrates the applicability and benefits of this type of hierarchical decomposition, namely a significantly reduced number of rules. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

function approximation
decomposed fuzzy systems

hierarchical fuzzy systems
adaptive control
pneumatic robot


An empirical investigation into user navigation of digital video using the VCR-like control set There has been an almost explosive growth in digital video in recent years. The convention for enabling users to navigate digital video is the Video Cassette Recorder-like (VCR-like) control set, which is dictated by the proliferation of media players that embody it, including Windows Media Player and QuickTime. However, there is a dearth of research seeking to understand how users relate to this control set and how useful it actually is in practice. This paper details our empirical investigation of the issue. A digital video navigation system with a VCR-like control set was developed and subsequently used by a large sample of users (n=200 n = 200 ), who were required to complete a number of goal-directed navigational tasks. Each user's navigational activity was tracked and recorded automatically by the system. Analysis of the navigational data revealed a range of results concerning how the VCR-like control set both enhanced and limited the user's ability to locate sequences of interest, including a number of searching and browsing strategies that were exploited by the users.

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

digital video
user navigation
browsing
searching
media players


A new method of mining data streams using harmony search Incremental learning has been used extensively for data stream classification. Most attention on the data stream classification paid on non-evolutionary methods. In this paper, we introduce new incremental learning algorithms based on harmony search. We first propose a new classification algorithm for the classification of batch data called harmony-based classifier and then give its incremental version for classification of data streams called incremental harmony-based classifier. Finally, we improve it to reduce its computational overhead in absence of drifts and increase its robustness in presence of noise. This improved version is called improved incremental harmony-based classifier. The proposed methods are evaluated on some real world and synthetic data sets. Experimental results show that the proposed batch classifier outperforms some batch classifiers and also the proposed incremental methods can effectively address the issues usually encountered in the data stream environments. Improved incremental harmony-based classifier has significantly better speed and accuracy on capturing concept drifts than the non-incremental harmony based method and its accuracy is comparable to non-evolutionary algorithms. The experimental results also show the robustness of improved incremental harmony-based classifier.

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

data stream
classification
harmony search


Determining order-up-to levels under periodic review for compound binomial (intermittent) demand We propose a new method for determining order-up-to levels for intermittent demand items in a periodic review system. Contrary to existing methods, we exploit the intermittent character of demand by modelling lead time demand as a compound binomial process. In an extensive numerical study using Royal Air Force (RAF) data, we show that the proposed method is much better than existing methods at approximating target service levels and also improves inventory-service efficiency. Furthermore, the proposed method can be applied for both cost and service oriented systems, and is easy to implement.

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

compound binomial (intermittent) demand
periodic stock control
empirical investigation


A contribution to vision-based autonomous helicopter flight in urban environments A navigation strategy that exploits the optic flow and inertial information to continuously avoid collisions with both lateral and frontal obstacles has been used to control a simulated helicopter flying autonomously in a textured urban environment. Experimental results demonstrate that the corresponding controller generates cautious behavior, whereby the helicopter tends to stay in the middle of narrow corridors, while its forward velocity is automatically reduced when the obstacle density increases. When confronted with a frontal obstacle, the controller is also able to generate a tight U-turn that ensures the UAVs survival. The paper provides comparisons with related work, and discusses the applicability of the approach to real platforms.

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


Sketch guided solid texturing ? Compared to 2D textures, solid textures can represent not only the bounding surfaces, but also their interiors. Existing solid texture synthesis methods pay little attention to the generation of conforming textures that capture geometric structures or reflect the artists design intentions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to synthesizing solid textures using 2D exemplars. The generated textures locally agree with a tensor field derived from user sketching curves. We use a deterministic approach and only a small portion of the voxels needs to be synthesized on demand. Correction is fundamental in deterministic texture synthesis. We propose a history windows representation, which is general enough to unifiedly represent various previous correction schemes, and a dual grid scheme based on it to significantly reduce the dependent voxels while still producing high quality results. Experiments demonstrate that our method produces significantly improved solid textures with a small amount of user interaction.

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


Continuous simulation for design flood estimation - a review Developments of systems for continuous simulation of streamflow are traced from manual systems in the middle of the 20th century to present day computer-based systems. A profusion of different systems from very simple to very complex are in use. Systems in operational use in UK/Europe, USA, South Africa and Australia are reviewed. There are several different runoff generation processes used in these systems such as saturation overland flow, subsurface stormflow and infiltration excess. These processes demonstrate different approaches to hydrological modelling in different areas. Other differences include the use of processes such as snowmelt and transmission loss that are significant in some areas but not in others. A feature of many modem systems is the use of stochastic rainfall generators that allow for very long streamflow sequences to be generated from which long-term flood statistics can be extracted. Only a few studies have compared continuous simulation with other methods of design flood estimation, and no significant studies have been made comparing different continuous simulation systems. Most of the available systems use recorded streamflow data for calibration and there is little information available for the use of continuous simulation systems on ungauged catchments. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

hydrological modelling
continuous simulation


Comparison of global and local response surface techniques in reliability-based optimization of composite structures This paper discusses the development and application of two alternative strategies, in the form of global and sequential local response surface (RS) techniques, for the solution of reliability-based optimization (RBO) problems. The problem of a thin-walled composite circular cylinder under axial buckling instability is used as a demonstrative example. In this case, the global technique uses a single second-order RS model to estimate the axial buckling load over the entire feasible design space (FDS), whereas the local technique uses multiple first-order RS models, with each applied to a small subregion of the FDS. Alternative methods for the calculation of unknown coefficients in each RS model are explored prior to the solution of the optimization problem. The example RBO problem is formulated as a function of 23 uncorrelated random variables that include material properties, the thickness and orientation angle of each ply, the diameter and length of the cylinder, as well as the applied load. The mean values of the 8 ply thicknesses are treated as independent design variables. While the coefficients of variation of all random variables are held fixed, the standard deviations of the ply thicknesses can vary during the optimization process as a result of changes in the design variables. The structural reliability analysis is based on the first-order reliability method with the reliability index treated as the design constraint. In addition to the probabilistic sensitivity analysis of the reliability index, the results of the RBO problem are presented for different combinations of cylinder length and diameter and laminate ply patterns. The two strategies are found to produce similar results in terms of accuracy, with the sequential local RS technique having a considerably better computational 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

reliability-based optimization
response surface technique
first-order reliability method
axial buckling of cylindrical shells


coherent parallel c Coherent Parallel C (CPC) is an extension of C for parallelism. The extensions are not simply parallel for loops; instead, a data parallel programming model is adopted. This means that one has an entire process for each data object. An example of an object is one mesh point in a finite element solver. How the processes are actually distributed on a parallel machine is transparentthe user is to imagine that an entire processor in a distributed-memory environment is dedicated to each process. This simplifies programming tremendously: complex if statements associated with domain boundaries disappear; problems which do not exactly match the machine size and irregular boundaries are all handled transparently. The usual communication calls are not seen at all at the user level. Variables of other processes (which may or may not be on another processor) are merely accessed (global memory). The first pass of the CPC compiler schedules the necessary communications in an efficient, coherent manner. Processes in CPC are insulated from one another and interact in a deterministic manner. This allows tractable debugging. Standard C I/O is provided, with simple extensions for parallelism. We currently have a CPC runtime system implemented on an NCUBE and have started implementing a true compiler for the language. CPC is not specific to distributed memory machines. Implementation of this language on other architectures is naturalfor example, there seems to be no fundamental problem with CPC on shared-memory parallel computers.

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

communication
runtime system
point
mesh
object
user
processor
parallel
language
size
implementation
data
process
distributed
debugging
global
finite element

scheduling
efficiency
examples
association
standardization
extensibility
program modelling
coherence
shared memory
variability
program
environments
transparency
architecture
matching
memorialized
compilation
data parallelism
parallel computation
complexity


Tiered Memory: An Iso-Power Memory Architecture to Address the Memory Power Wall Moore's Law improvement in transistor density is driving a rapid increase in the number of cores per processor. DRAM device capacity and energy efficiency are increasing at a slower pace, so the importance of DRAM power is increasing. This problem presents system designers with two nominal options when designing future systems: 1) decrease off-chip memory capacity and bandwidth per core or 2) increase the fraction of system power allocated to main memory. Reducing capacity and bandwidth leads to imbalanced systems with poor processor utilization for noncache-resident applications, so designers have chosen to increase DRAM power budget. This choice has been viable to date, but is fast running into a memory power wall. To address the looming memory power wall problem, we propose a novel iso-power tiered memory architecture that supports 2 -3X more memory capacity for the same power budget as traditional designs by aggressively exploiting low-power DRAM modes. We employ two "tiers" of DRAM, a "hot" tier with active DRAM and a "cold" tier in which DRAM is placed in self-refresh mode. The DRAM capacity of each tier is adjusted dynamically based on aggregate workload requirements and the most frequently accessed data are migrated to the "hot" tier. This design allows larger memory capacities at a fixed power budget while mitigating the performance impact of using low-power DRAM modes. We target our solution at server consolidation scenarios where physical memory capacity is typically the primary factor limiting the number of virtual machines a server can support. Using iso-power tiered memory, we can run 3x as many virtual machines, achieving a 250 percent improvement in average aggregate performance, compared to a conventional memory design with the same power budget.

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

memory power management
dram memory systems
dram low power modes
virtual machine consolidation
dram data allocation


A Survey of Requirements Specification in Model-Driven Development of Web Applications Model-driven development has become more and more important in the last few years. In the context of web application development, many web Engineering methods that propose model-driven development processes have appeared. However, earlier stages of these processes are seldom considered and few of these methods rigorously face the problems of specifying web application requirements and translating them into the proper conceptual model. However, it is widely recognized that requirements engineering activities are essential to obtain quality software products. This article surveys Model-driven web engineering methods in a comparative study and analyzes the techniques proposed for specifying functional, data and navigational requirements as well as the mechanisms provided for automatically translating these requirements into conceptual models. Our main goal is to provide a critical view of the support that is provided by these methods for handling web application requirements in order to show their current limitations and strengths.

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

requirements engineering
web engineering
web applications
survey

design
management
model-driven development


Quantitative support for UX methods identification: how can multiple criteria decision making help? This paper presents views on how quantitative multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches may be applied to certain aspects of user experience design and evaluation (D&E) methods identification, emphasizing its strengths and weaknesses for this task. Often D&E methods need to be applied in contexts different of those they had been applied before and as such must be transferred to those new contexts. This work presents a model for the quantitative method matching step of the transfer process, describes how different MCDM methods can be applied to this task, and discusses the results of an experience that tried to apply a couple of MCDM procedures to method selection.

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

usability evaluation methods identification


Compression of AVHRR images by wavelet packets AVHRR is an imager flying on polar meteorological satellites that, due to its spatial resolution (about 1 km at Nadir view), produces a huge amount of data. A method based on the wavelet packet transform is devised to compress AVHRR images. The method is driven by the compression error (application dependent), so that different types of images have the same quality. The best basis wavelet packet is chosen by L1 norm criterion that was found to be the most suited for the problem at hand. Ability of the compression method to preserve most fine structures of the images even at the highest resolution is demonstrated based on some examples. Comparison with wavelet algorithms is performed.

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


Improving fairness in a WRED-based DiffServ network: A fluid-flow approach The DiffServ architecture has been proposed as a scalable approach for upgrading the Internet, adding service differentiation functionalities. However, several aspects of this architecture still have to be analyzed and solved. For this reason, network designers need to be provided with tools which are able to estimate the average behavior of a DiffServ network with a high level of accuracy and in a short time. In this paper a fluid-flow model of a DiffServ network supporting Assured Forwarding Per-Hop Behavior (PHB) and loaded with TO flows is proposed. At the edge of the network, two rate three color markers (TRTCM) are employed as profile meters, while within the network core routers implement a Weighted RED (WRED) buffer management mechanism. In order to demonstrate the high accuracy of the proposed model, a comparison between model and simulation results is performed, taking into account not just a bottleneck link, but a complex network topology. The proposed analytical framework is then used to analyze the impact of several factors on the fair sharing of network resources between traffic aggregates with the same traffic profile, and to achieve some guidelines for WRED parameter settings with the aim of reducing unfairness. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


an efficient synchronization mechanism for mirrored game architectures Existing online multiplayer games typically use a client-server model, which introduces a single bottleneck and point of failure to the game. Distributed multiplayer games remove the bottleneck, but require special synchronization mechanisms to provide a consistent game for all players. Current synchronization methods have been borrowed from distributed military simulations and are not optimized for the requirements of fast-paced multiplayer games. In this paper we present a new synchronization mechanism, trailing state synchronization (TSS), which is designed around the requirements of distributed first-person shooter games.We look at TSS in the environment of a mirrored game architecture, which is a hybrid between traditional centralized architectures and the more scalable peer-to-peer architectures. Mirrored architectures allow for improved performance compared to client-server architectures while at the same time allowing for a greater degree of centralized administration than peer-to-peer architectures.

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

requirements point use synchronization game performance games model paper online failure architecture distributed hybrid

consistency
system architectures
efficiency
simulation
scalability
peer-to-peer
centrality
timing
administrator
client-server
method
environments
multiplayer game
game platforms


Time-order error and scalar variance in a computational model of human timing: simulations and predictions This work introduces a computational model of human temporal discrimination mechanism the Clock-Counter Timing Network. It is an artificial neural network implementation of a timing mechanism based on the informational architecture of the popular Scalar Timing Model.

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

timing
temporal discrimination
neural network
scalar variance


Real-Time Tracking with Online Constrained Compressive Learning In object tracking, a recent trend is using "Tracking by Detection" technique which trains a discriminative online classifier to detect objects from background. However, the incorrect updating of the online classifier and insufficient features used during the online learning often lead to the drift problems. In this work we propose an online random fern classifier with a simple but effective compressive feature in a framework integrating the online classifier, the optical-flow tracker and an update model. The compressive feature is a random projection from highly dimensional multi-scale image feature space to a low-dimensional representation by a sparse measurement matrix, which is expect to contain more information. An update model is proposed to detect tracker failure, correct tracker result and constrain the updating of online classifier, thus reducing the chance of wrong updating in online training. Our method runs at real-time and the experimental results show performance improvement compared to other state-of-the-art approaches on several challenging video clips.

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

object tracking
online learning
random fern


Input-output structure and growth in China The fast and steady economic growth in China during the 1990s has attracted much international attention. Using the three most recent Chinese input-output tables, this paper investigates industry structure and inter-industry relationships and the relationship of both to economic growth. The input-output tables contain intermediate demand and final demand for six broad industries, namely, Agriculture, Industry, Construction, Transportation, Post and Telecommunications, Services, and Others, for 1992, 1995 and 1997, which enables computing of input-output coefficients for three time periods. As direct and indirect input-output coefficients characterise industry structure during a particular time period, changes over time reflect the patterns in industry structure evolvement. Furthermore, output growth in a particular industry can be analysed from two different sources, namely the changes in input-output coefficients that reflect technological change, and the change in final demand. This paper sheds light on four different issues over the five-year period from 1992 to 1997: (1) Was growth driven by technological changes or final demand increases? (2) As a result of the interdependence of industries, how did an increase in final demand in one industry affect growth in another? (3) How has the bottleneck of an insufficient capability in the transportation, post and telecommunications sectors to cope with demands from other sectors been affected during this period? (4) Has the industry structure of the economy been shifting in conformity with traditional growth theory, namely, with a decline in the agricultural sector and a rise in the modern industrial sector? (C) 2003 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

input-output coefficients
decomposition
inter-industry relationship


Artificial neural networks for the cost estimation of stamping dies Although artificial neural networks (ANN) are more known in the field of image recognition and forecasting, cost estimation has become another emerging area in recent years. In this study, the establishment of an intelligent system was attempted for forecasting the total cost of sheet metal stamping dies. In this context, where the cost of stamping dies is estimated with a conventional approach which has been applied in the company up to now, the ANN and multiple regression analysis and the performance of the three cost-estimation models are examined. The examinations are based on the data of previous costs and use a number of critical criteria which are decided by experienced tool makers and engineers from every level of the organization of the seven companies which produce stamping dies. The comparative study reveals that the ANN system outperforms the traditional linear regression analysis model and conventional approach used for cost estimation. Thus, it is possible for firms which produce stamping dies to obtain a fairly accurate prediction with an ANN model and determined criteria.

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


The Software Reliability Model Based on Fractals Fractals are mathematical or natural objects that are made of parts similar to the whole in certain ways. In this paper a software reliability forecasting method of software failure is proposed based on predictability of fractal time series. The empirical failure data (three data sets of Musa's) are used to demonstrate the performance of the reliability prediction. Compared with other methods, our method is effective.

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

reliability
fractals
prediction
software failure


Signaling Pathways Involved in Proteinase-Activated Receptor1-Induced Proinflammatory and Profibrotic Mediator Release Following Lung Injury The proteinase-activated receptors (PAR1 to 4) represent important novel therapeutic targets in fibroproliferative lung disorders, linking signals from coagulation proteinases to the production of proinflammatory and profibrotic mediators, in response to lung injury. This review focuses on the current understanding of cytokine and chemokine release downstream of PAR1 activation in the context of fibroproliferative lung disease, with an emphasis on the induction of the chemokine CCL2/MCP-1

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

proteinase-activated receptor (par)
ccl2
pulmonary fibrosis


Pervasive authentication and authorization infrastructures for mobile users Network and device heterogeneity, nomadic mobility, intermittent connectivity and, more generally, extremely dynamic operating conditions, are major challenges in the design of security infrastructures for pervasive computing. Yet, in a ubiquitous computing environment, limitations of traditional solutions for authentication and authorization can be overcome with a pervasive public key infrastructure (pervasive-PKI). This choice allows the validation of credentials of users roaming between heterogeneous networks, even when global connectivity is lost and some services are temporarily unreachable. Proof-of-concept implementations and testbed validation results demonstrate that strong security can be achieved for users and applications through the combination of traditional PKI services with a number of enhancements like: (i) dynamic and collaborative trust model, (ii) use of attribute certificates for privilege management, and (iii) modular architecture enabling nomadic mobility and enhanced with reconfiguration capabilities.

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

ubiquitous computing
authentication
authorization
trust


Global extensional assertions and local integrity constraints in federated schemata Integrated access to multiple data sources requires a homogeneous interface provided by a federated schema. Such a federated schema should correctly reflect the semantics of the component schemata of which it is composed. Since the semantics of a database schema is also determined by a set of semantic integrity constraints, a correct schema integration has to deal with integrity constraints existing in the different component schemata. Traditionally, most schema integration approaches solely concentrate on the structural integration of given database schemata. Local integrity constraints are often simply neglected. Their relationship to global extensional assertions, which form the basic integration constraints, are even ignored completely. In this paper, we discuss the impact of global extensional assertions and local integrity constraints on federated schemata. In particular, we point out the correspondence between local integrity constraints and global extensional assertions. The knowledge about the correspondences between the given integrity constraints and extensional assertions can then be utilized for an augmented schema integration process. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

global extensional assertions
local integrity constraints
federated schema
schema integration


Watermarking digital 3-d volumes in the discrete Fourier transform domain In this paper, a robust blind watermarking method for 3-D volumes is presented. A bivalued watermark is embedded in the Fourier transform magnitude of the 3-D volume. The Fourier domain has been selected because of its scaling and rotation invariance. Furthermore, in order to decrease the detection time, a special symmetry of the watermark is exploited. The proposed method is proven to be resistant to 3-D lowpass filtering, noise addition, scaling, translation, cropping and rotation. Experimental results prove the robustness of this method against the above-mentioned attacks.

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


The need to know the history of the use of digital patient data, in particular the EHR The purpose of this article is to explore the need for the possibility to reconstruct electronic medical data, in particular the electronic health record (EHR) as they have been or could have been presented to a specified health care professional at a specified moment in the past. The approach taken is that first the need for such functionality is discussed with attention to the differences between electronic records and paper records in this respect. Next the architectural and technical consequences of the implementation of the functionality are considered. The article concludes that such functionality is needed for medical audit, self assessment and handling of complaints. It further concludes that it is far from easy to implement the functionality. If the health care community underwrites the need for such functionality this will have a significant impact on the architecture of medical information systems and the (distributed) EHR. It is recommended that the professional associations and the governments, in collaboration with WHO, take a position on the need to be able to reconstruct the contents of the EHR. IMIA could take the lead in that process.

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

data preservation
data presentation
tracing access


Simplifying Character Skins with Analytic Error Metrics Traditionally, levels of detail (LOD) for animated characters are computed from a single pose. Later techniques refined this approach by considering a set of sample poses and evaluating a more representative error metric. A recent approach to the character animation problem, animation space, (AS) provides a framework for measuring error analytically. The work presented here uses the animation-space framework to derive two new techniques to improve the quality of LOD approximations. First, we use an animation-space distance metric within a progressive mesh-based LOD scheme, giving results that are reasonable across a range of poses, without requiring that the pose space be sampled. Second, we simplify individual vertices by reducing the number of bones that influence them, using a constrained least-squares optimization. This influence simplification is combined with the progressive mesh to form a single stream of simplifications. Influence simplification reduces the geometric error by up to an order of magnitude, and allows models to be simplified further than is possible with only a progressive mesh. Quantitative (geometric error metrics) and qualititative (user perceptual) experiments confirm that these new extensions provide significant improvements in quality over traditional, naive simplification; and while there is naturally some impact on the speed of the off-line simplification process, it is not prohibitive.

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


Patch Release Behaviors of Software Vendors in Response to Vulnerabilities: An Empirical Analysis Software vulnerabilities have become a serious concern because unpatched software runs the risk of being exploited by hackers. There is a need for software vendors to make software patches available in a timely manner for vulnerabilities in their products. We develop a survival analysis model of software vendors' patch release behavior and test it using a data set compiled from the National Vulnerability Database, United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, and vendor Web sites. This model helps to understand how factors specific to vulnerabilities, patches, software vendors, and software affect the patch release behavior of software vendors based on their cost structure. This study also analyzes the impact of the presence of multiple vendors and type of vendor on the patch release behavior of software vendors. Our results indicate that vulnerabilities with high confidentiality impact or high integrity impact are patched faster than vulnerabilities with high availability impact. Interesting differences in the patch release behavior of software vendors based on software type (new release versus update) and type of vendor (open source versus proprietary) are found. Our results illustrate that when there are legislative pressures, vendors react faster in patching vulnerabilities. Thus, appropriate regulations can be an important policy tool to influence vendor behavior toward socially desirable security outcomes.

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

patch quality
patch release time
patch types
software vendor types
software vulnerability characteristics


Batch statistical processing of H-1 NMR-derived urinary spectral data Multivariate statistical batch processing (BP) analysis of H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) urine spectra was employed to establish time-dependent metabolic variations in animals treated with the model hepatotoxin hydrazine. Hydrazine was administered orally to rats (at 90 mg kg(-1)), and urine samples were collected from dosed rats and matched control animals (n = 5 per group) at time points up to 168 h post-dose. Urine samples were analysed via H-1 NMR spectroscopy and partial least squares-based batch processing analysis, treating each rat as an individual batch comprising a series of timed urine samples. A model defining the mean urine profile was established for the control group, and samples obtained from hydrazine-treated animals were assessed using this model. Time-dependent deviations from the control model were evident in all hydrazine-treated animals, and hepatotoxicity was manifested by increased urinary excretion of taurine, creatine, 2-aminoadipate, citrulline and beta-alanine together with depletion of urinary levels of citrate, succinate and hippurate. The experiment was repeated at six different pharmaceutical centres in order to assess the robustness of the technology and to establish the natural variability in the data. Results were consistent across the data for all centres. BP plots showed a characteristic pattern for each toxin, allowing the time points at which there were maximum metabolic differences to be determined and providing a means of visualizing the net toxin-induced metabolic movement of urinary metabolism. BP may prove to be a powerful metabonomic tool in defining time-dependent metabolic consequences of toxicity and is an efficient means of visualizing inter-animal variations in response as well as defining multivariate statistical limits of normality in terms of biofluid composition. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

batch processing
hydrazine
hepatotoxicity
rat

metabonomics
nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy


Multimodal page classification in administrative document image streams In this paper, we present a page classification application in a banking workflow. The proposed architecture represents administrative document images by merging visual and textual descriptions. The visual description is based on a hierarchical representation of the pixel intensity distribution. The textual description uses latent semantic analysis to represent document content as a mixture of topics. Several off-the-shelf classifiers and different strategies for combining visual and textual cues have been evaluated. A final step uses an \(n\)-gram model of the page stream allowing a finer-grained classification of pages. The proposed method has been tested in a real large-scale environment and we report results on a dataset of 70,000 pages.

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

digital mail room
visual and textual document description


Orthogonal Polar V Transforms and application to shape retrieval ? We proposed a novel orthogonal rotation-invariant moments (ORIMs) named as PVTs. The computation of the PVTs is significantly simpler compared with traditional ORIMs. The PVTs achieve very good results in shape retrieval.

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 B O

v-system
orthogonal piecewise polynomial
rotation-invariant
multi-scale features
low computational complexity
perspective distortion


A profiling method by PCB hooking and its application for memory fault detection in embedded system operational test Context: An operational test means a system test that examines whether or not all software or hardware components comply with the requirements given to a system which is deployed in an operational environment. Objective: It is a necessary lightweight-profiling method for embedded systems with severe resource restrictions to conduct operational testing. Method: We focus on the Process Control Block as the optimal location to monitor the execution of all processes. We propose a profiling method to collect the runtime execution information of the processes without interrupting the system's operational environment by hacking the Process Control Block information. Based on the proposed method applied to detect runtime memory faults, we develop the operational testing tool AMOS v1.0 which is currently being used in the automobile industry. Results: An industrial field study on 23 models of car-infotainment systems revealed a total 01 519 memory faults while only slowing down the system by 0.084-0132x. We conducted a comparative analysis on representative runtime memory fault detection tools. This analysis result shows our proposed method that has relatively low overhead meets the requirements for operational testing, while other methods failed to satisfy the operational test conditions. Conclusion: We conclude that a lightweight-profiling method for embedded system operational testing can be built around the Process Control Block. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

operational test
profiling method
pcb hooking
runtime memory fault
embedded system


Logistics information systems adoption: an empirical investigation in Brazil Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the level of logistics information systems (LIS) adoption in manufacturing companies is influenced by organizational profile variables, such as the company's size, the nature of its operations and their subsectors. Design/methodology/approach - A review of the mainstream literature on US was carried out to identify the factors influencing the adoption of such information systems and also some research gaps. The empirical study's strategy is based on a survey research in Brazilian manufacturing firms from the capital goods industry. Data collected were analyzed through Kruskall-Wallis and Mann Whitney's non-parametric tests. Findings - The analysis indicates that characteristics such as the size of companies and the nature of their operations influence the levels of LIS adoption, whilst comparisons regarding the subsectors appeared to be of little influence. Originality/value - This is the first known study to examine the influence of organizational profiles such as size, nature of operations and subsector on the level of US adoption in manufacturing companies. Moreover, it is unique in portraying the Brazilian scenario on this topic and addressing the adoption of seven types of LIS in a single study.

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

distribution management
manufacturing systems


A formal specification framework for object-oriented distributed systems In this paper, we present the Concurrent Object-Oriented Petri Nets (CO-OPN/2) formalism devised to support the specification of large distributed systems. Our approach is based on two underlying formalisms: order-sorted algebra and algebraic Petri nets. With respect to the lack of structuring capabilities of Petri nets, CO-OPN/2 has adopted the object-oriented paradigm. In this hybrid approach (model- and property-oriented), classes of objects are described by means of algebraic Petri nets, while data structures are expressed by order-sorted algebraic specifications. An original feature is the sophisticated synchronization mechanism. This mechanism allows to involve many partners in a synchronization and to describe the synchronization policy. A typical example of distributed systems, namely the Transit Node, is used throughout this paper to introduce our formalism and the concrete specification language associated with it. By successive refinements of the components of the example, we present, informally, most of the notions of CO-OPN/2. We also give some insights about the coordination layer, Context and Objects Interface Language (COIL), which is built on top of CO-OPN/2. This coordination layer is used for the description of the concrete distributed architecture of the system. Together, CO-OPN/2 and COIL provide a complete formal framework for the specification of distributed systems.

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

distributed systems
algebraic petri nets
algebraic specifications

formal specifications
object-orientation
concurrency
refinement
subtyping


Web-based pattern learning for named entity translation in Korean-Chinese cross-language information retrieval Named entity (NE) translation plays an important role in many applications, such as information retrieval and machine translation, In this paper, we focus on translating NEs from Korean to Chinese in order to improve Korean-Chinese cross-language information retrieval (KCIR). The ideographic nature of Chinese makes NE translation difficult because one syllable may map to several Chinese characters. We propose a hybrid NE translation system. First, we integrate two online databases to extend the coverage of our bilingual dictionaries. We use Wikipedia as a translation tool based on the inter-language links between the Korean edition and the Chinese or English editions. We also use Naver.com's people search engine to find a query name's Chinese or English translation. The second component of our system is able to learn Korean-Chinese (K-C), Korean-English (K-E), and English-Chinese (E-C) translation patterns from the web. These patterns can be used to extract K-C, K-E and E-C pairs from Google snippets. We found KCIR performance using this hybrid configuration over five times better than that a dictionary-based configuration using only Naver people search. Mean average precision was as high as 0.3385 and recall reached 0.7578. Our method can handle Chinese, Japanese. Korean. and non-CJK NE translation and improve performance of KCIR substantially. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

korean-chinese cross-language information retrieval


Repacking on demand for hierarchical cellular networks In mobile telecommunications operation, radio channels are scarce resources and should be carefully assigned. One possibility is to deploy the hierarchical cellular network (HCN). This paper studies a HCN channel assignment scheme called repacking on demand (RoD). RoD was originally proposed for wireless local loop networks. We expend this work to accommodate mobile HCN. A simulation model is proposed to study the performance of HCN with RoD and some previously proposed schemes. Our study quantitatively indicates that RoD may significantly outperform the previous proposed schemes.

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

channel assignment
hierarchical cellular network
repacking on demand