An entropy approach to unintrusive targeted advertising on the Web This paper describes the formulation of a new model for unintrusive targeted advertising on the Web, extending the linear programming approach taken by Langheinrich et al. [M. Langheinrich, A. Nakamura, N. Abe, T. Kamba and Y. Koseki, Unintrusive customization techniques for Web advertising, in: Proc. of World Wide Web 8, 1999]. A feature of our model is that it avoids unrealistic solutions of the type which may show ads to only a too-narrow group of users. This is accomplished by using a statistically derived entropy maximization model, which incorporates a form of randomization in associating advertisements with targetable groups of users, as well as considering click-through probability. It is then shown that this nonlinear entropy model can be embedded in larger models for the purpose of optimal management of Web advertisement portfolios by agencies or brokerages.

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

electronic commerce
on-line advertising
optimization
statistics
equilibrium


Fractal tilings based on v-shaped prototiles We present a family of fractal tilings or f-tilings in which the curves defined by the boundaries are fractals. All of the tiles in any given tiling are similar to a single prototile that may be generally described as v-shaped. We carry out an analysis of the various allowed edge-to-edge f-tilings based on a bilaterally symmetric hexagonal v-shaped prototile. We also present examples of f-tilings in which these conditions are relaxed.

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

self-similar
self-similarity
fractal tiling
hexagon


Actuator fault detection and performance recovery with Kalman filter-based adaptive observer A novel Kalman filter-based adaptive observer for the sampled-data nonlinear time-varying system is proposed in this paper. With the high gain property of Kalman filter, it is applicable to a large variation of unknown parameters, which can be estimated optimally. Then a method of actuator fault detection is proposed. With the estimated faults, one can use the proposed input compensation method to solve actuator faults. Additionally, the optimal linearization technique is used to obtain the locally optimal linear model for a nonlinear system at each sampled state, so that the actuator fault detection and performance recovery of a sampled-data nonlinear time-varying system is accomplished. In this paper, we also introduce a prediction-based digital redesign method to develop the corresponding sampled-data controller.

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

fault detection
kalman filter
adaptive observer
digital redesign


A time-varying subband transform with projection-based reconstruction A novel class of time-varying subband transforms and its application in image coding are introduced. We construct the framework in which an analysis subband transform is chosen from a given set of analysis transforms and perfect reconstruction is achieved. To this end, we suggest the reconstruction method from the transformed coefficients by applying the theory of convex projections (POCS). We introduce convex sets for perfect reconstruction from the transformed vector. We further propose other convex sets which assure smoothness of plane regions for image coding applications. We show several image coding examples. The proposed coding method is an extension of conventional one with multiple block-based transforms. At each time instance (block), the transform to be applied is chosen from a given set of orthogonal subband transforms according to a certain criterion. Experimental results show that the use of multiple subband transforms leads to the improvement of coding performance compared to the use of single transform even though there exists side information.

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


Applications of genetic algorithms to optimal multilevel design of MPLS-based networks This paper proposes a design methodology based on the application of genetic algorithms (GA) to find a minimal-cost topological structure of MPLS-based networks. MPLS technology is currently deployed in designing the backbone infrastructure of service provider networks whereas other parts of the network are still operated using the traditional IP protocol. This makes the overall topological structure of MPLS-based networks naturally breaks into two prime sub-problems: access network design and backbone network design. The ultimate goal is to identify the locations of label-edge routers and label-switching routers, and to determine the interconnection links and their capacities to accommodate expected traffic demands. The locations of label edge routers depend on the demands of a given set of terminal networks which in turn affect the design of the backbone network. This problem is a highly constrained NP-hard optimization problem for which exact solution approaches do not scale well. We first present a multilevel design model that divides the optimal topology design into a set of linear programs. Then, we propose GA-based meta-heuristics for solving them. We also discuss the impact of encoding methods and genetic operators and parameters on the performance. Numerical results for the considered cases show that the proposed methodology is effective and gives optimal or close to optimal solutions as compared with the exact branch and bound method. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

network optimization
multiprotocol-labet switching


On topology preservation of mixed operators in triangular, square, and hexagonal grids A crucial issue in digital topology is to ensure topology preservation of binary image operators. Several sufficient conditions have already been proposed (i.e.,for operators that never change a white pixel to black one and a black pixel to a white one, respectively), however not much attention has been paid on mixed operators, which can modify both black and white pixels. In this paper, we intend to fill in this gap by presenting some sufficient criteria on the latter family of operators considering all the possible regular partitionings of the plane (i.e.,triangular, square, and hexagonal grids).

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


Antimagic labeling and canonical decomposition of graphs An antimagic labeling of a connected graph with in edges is an injective assignment of labels from {1,.... m} to the edges such that the sums of incident labels are distinct at distinct vertices. Hartsfield and Ringel conjectured that every connected graph other than K(2) has an antimagic labeling. We prove this for the classes of split graphs and graphs decomposable under the canonical decomposition introduced by Tyshkevich. As a consequence, we provide a sufficient condition on graph degree sequences to guarantee an antimagic labeling. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

antimagic labeling
canonical decomposition


A novel fingerprint matcher based on an ergodic 2-D Hidden Markov Model In this paper, a new approach for fingerprint ridge orientation field matching based on a novel HMM (Hidden Markov Model) is proposed. The proposed method comprises several steps. First steps are devoted to regular fingerprint preprocesses and ridge orientation estimation. Then, the fingerprint images are registered along a reference point. Next, the proposed HMM topology is applied to the predetermined fingerprint orientation field information around the reference point. The suggested HMM is of improved training abilities. After applying the proposed HMM to the ridge orientation field, the matching cells are produced. These cells consist of transition, observation and initial probability matrices which will be used in the matching procedure. The proposed matching method has been evaluated using some creditable fingerprint databases such as FVC2000 DB2_A, FVC2004 DB3_A and DB4_A. The evaluation results confirm higher efficiency, robustness and accuracy for the proposed method compared with the previously proposed matching ones.

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

ergodic topology
embedded hidden markov modeling (ehmm)
orientation field (of)


A Nonlinear Optimal Control Approach Based on the Control-Lyapunov Function for an AC/DC Converter Used in Electric Vehicles AC/DC converters used in electric vehicles generally consist of two stages: an input power factor correction (PFC) boost AC/DC stage that converts input AC voltage to an intermediate DC voltage and reduces input current harmonics injected to the grid, and a DC/DC converter that provides high-frequency galvanic isolation. Since there is a low-frequency ripple (second harmonic of the input ac line frequency) in the output voltage of the PFCAC/DC boost converter, the voltage loop in the conventional control system typically has a very low bandwidth to avoid distorting the input current waveform. This causes the conventional PFC controller to have slow dynamics against load variations. This paper presents a new control approach that regulates the input power of the converter instead of the output voltage by using an optimal nonlinear control approach based on the Control-Lyapunov Function (CFL). In this paper, it is shown that the proposed controller is able to eliminate the low bandwidth voltage control loop in the conventional PFC controller, thus allowing the front-end AC/DC boost PFC converter to operate with faster dynamic response than with the conventional controller approach. Experimental results from a 3 kW AC/DC converter are presented in the paper to validate the proposed control method and its superior performance.

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

ac/dc converter
ccm
control-lyapunov function
dc/dc converter
dcm
full-bridge converter
lie derivatives
nonlinear systems
power factor correction (pfc)
zero voltage switching (zvs)


Assessing informatics students satisfaction with a web-based courseware system This study assessed health informatics student satisfaction with two subsequent versions of Prometheus, a web-based courseware system. Prometheus versions 4 and 5 were assessed to gauge the effect of modifications to improve the usability of the system. The Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS, version 7.0) was administered at the end of fall semester 2001 (in which Prometheus version 4 was used) and again at the end of Spring 2002 (in which Prometheus version 5 was used). QUIS contains measures of user satisfaction of the overall system and 11 specific dimensions, including screen, terminology and system information, learning, system capabilities, manuals and online help, multimedia, and teleconferencing. In general, students had favorable judgments of Prometheus, and their satisfaction level remained relatively stable across the two versions. However, usability enhancements incorporated into version 5 produced no significant differences in student satisfaction ratings. The results of this study provide a benchmark for comparing the relative usability of alternative courseware systems and demonstrate the utility of user satisfaction surveys for assessing and improving courseware systems. With increases in the need for compliance education and the education of clinicians with just in time knowledge, courseware systems will become an integral part of the clinical information systems, increasing the importance of usability studies such as this one.

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

medical informatics
user-computer interface
world wide web
educational technology


Comparison of optical, electrical, and centrifugation techniques for haematocrit monitoring of dialysed patients Haematocrits were measured as a function of ultrafiltration in a simulated haemodialysis circuit using bovine blood (plasma conductivity 12 mS cm(-1)) and hypotonic (8. 6 mS cm(-1)) or hypertonic (16 mS cm(-1)) dialysates as well as in the absence of dialysate. A comparison was made between measurements by light absorption due to haemoglobin, by impedance in the blood line at 5 kHz using Hanai's model of blood conductivity, by conductivity measurements of blood samples at 1.2 kHz using a conductimeter, by centrifugation of blood samples and by calculations using fluid conservation. The validity of Hanai's model was verified to be satisfactory by direct blood and plasma conductivity measurements. In the absence of ionic transfer the impedance device underestimated the haematocrit by 5 to 7%. This underestimation reached 18% in the case of hypertonic dialysate, but this effect can be minimised if the haematocrit necessary for calibration is measured by centrifugation after 15 min of dialysate circulation when ionic balance is achieved. It was found that the optical method monitors haemoglobin concentration rather than red cell volume changes and is not affected by osmotic red cell swelling in the case of hypotonic dialysate. It can be concluded that the light absorption technique is both more accurate and more convenient to use than impedance.

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

haematocrit monitoring
haemodialysis
impedance
blood conductivity


A conceptual model for increasing utilization of dependable computer networks Previous fault-tolerance algorithms and systems did not pay sufficient attention to the issues of utilization and costbenefit analysis, that is, the fact that the processing capacity of backup computers is practically wasted whenever the rest of the network is functioning properly. This study develops and conceptually illustrates an algorithmic reconfiguration model that combines the mechanism of load balancing and fault tolerance in order to increase utilization of computer resources in a distributed multi-server and multi-tasking environment. The model is empirically tested in a network of computers controlling telecommunication hubs and compared to previous efforts to address this problem.

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

computer networks
fault tolerance
load balancing


Solving the natural wireless localization problem to optimality efficiently ? Considered a variation of the art gallery problem, the wireless localization problem deals with the placement of the smallest number of broadcasting antennas required to satisfy some property within a given polygon. The case dealt with here consists of antennas that propagate a unique key within a certain antenna-specific angle of broadcast, so that the set of keys received at any given point is sufficient to determine whether that point is inside or outside the polygon. To ascertain this localization property, a Boolean formula must be produced along with the placement of the antennas. In this paper, we present an exact algorithm based on integer linear programming for solving the NP NP -hard natural wireless localization problem. The efficiency of our algorithm is certified by experimental results comprising the solutions of 720 instances, including polygon with holes, of up to 1000 vertices, in less than fifteen minutes on a standard desktop computer.

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

exact algorithm
art gallery problem
wireless localization problem

computational geometry
integer programming


Identifying Contributors of DNA Mixtures by Means of Quantitative Information of STR Typing Estimating the weight of evidence in forensic genetics is often done in terms of a likelihood ratio, LR. The LR evaluates the probability of the observed evidence under competing hypotheses. Most often, probabilities used in the LR only consider the evidence from the genomic variation identified using polymorphic genetic markers. However, modern typing techniques supply additional quantitative data, which contain very important information about the observed evidence. This is particularly true for cases of DNA mixtures, where more than one individual has contributed to the observed biological stain. This article presents a method for including the quantitative information of short tandem repeat (STR) DNA mixtures in the LR. Also, an efficient algorithmic method for finding the best matching combination of DNA mixture profiles is derived and implemented in an on-line tool for two- and three-person DNA mixtures. Finally, we demonstrate for two-person mixtures how this best matching pair of profiles can be used in estimating the likelihood ratio using importance sampling. The reason for using importance sampling for estimating the likelihood ratio is the often vast number of combinations of profiles needed for the evaluation of the weight of evidence. Online tool is available at http://people.math.aau.dk/similar to tvede/dna/.

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

dna mixture
forensic genetics
importance sampling
str dna

finding best pair of matching profiles
greedy algorithm


Computing the Crosscap Number of a Knot Using Integer Programming and Normal Surfaces The crosscap number of a knot is an invariant describing the nonorientable surface of smallest genus that the knot bounds. Unlike knot genus (its orientable counterpart), crosscap numbers are difficult to compute and no general algorithm is known. We present three methods for computing crosscap number that offer varying trade-offs between precision and speed: (i) an algorithm based on Hilbert basis enumeration and (ii) an algorithm based on exact integer programming, both of which either compute the solution precisely or reduce it to two possible values, and (iii) a fast but limited precision integer programming algorithm that bounds the solution from above. The first two algorithms advance the theoretical state-of-the-art, but remain intractable for practical use. The third algorithm is fast and effective, which we show in a practical setting by making significant improvements to the current knowledge of crosscap numbers in knot tables. Our integer programming framework is general, with the potential for further applications in computational geometry and topology.

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

algorithms
crosscap number
integer programming
knot genus
normal surfaces


a stabilized discrete empirical interpolation method for model reduction of electrical, thermal, and microelectromechanical systems We present a few modifications that stabilize nonlinear reduced order models generated by discrete empirical interpolation methods. We combine a different approach to linearization with a multipoint stabilization technique. The examples used to demonstrate our method's effectiveness are a nonlinear transmission line, a micromachined switch, and a nonlinear thermal model for an RF amplifier.

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

model reduction
discrete empirical interpolation method
microelectromechanical systems


improvement of bounded-diameter mst instances with hybridization of multi-objective ea The Bounded Diameter (a.k.a Diameter Constraint) Minimum Spanning Tree (BDMST/DCMST) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem. In this work, we recast a few well-known heuristics, which are evolved for BDMST problem, to a Bi-Objective Minimum Spanning Tree (BO-MST) problem and then obtain Pareto fronts. On visualizing the Pareto fronts, it is observed that none of the heuristics provides the best solution across the complete range of the diameter. We have used a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) approach to improve the Pareto front for BOMST, which in turn provides better solution for BDMST instances. We observe that the MOEA provides improved Pareto front solutions across the complete range of the diameter over Pareto front solutions generated from individual heuristics.

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

heuristics
pareto front
bdmst problem
mst
evolutionary algorithm
combinatorial optimization

multi-objective optimization
edge list encoding


Assessing the replaceability of service protocols in mediated service interactions ? Given the inherent autonomy, heterogeneity, and continuous evolution of Web services, mismatches usually exist between service protocols and mediated interactions are a common style of service interactions. Given a requestor service and an interaction to be conducted, if the provider service is found unavailable, we need to identify the most suitable provider service from a set of functionally equivalent candidates to replace the original one. Current techniques analyzing protocol replaceability can compute a replacement degree that specifies how replaceable two protocols are, but they cannot determine whether or not, and under which conditions, the effects prescribed by the requestor can be achieved. To address this challenge we propose a technique called replaceability assessment in this paper where, according to the adaptation mechanisms of a certain adapter, this technique (i) provides a set of condition pairs that determine when one protocol can be replaced by another, and (ii) computes a replacement degree. The set of condition pairs and the replacement degree are two complementary criteria to be used by the requestor for identifying the most suitable provider service.

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

mediated service interaction
service protocol


An

elegant

algorithm

for

the

construction

of

suffix

arrays

The

suffix

array

is

a

data

structure

that

finds

numerous

applications

in

string

processing

problems

for

both

linguistic

texts

and

biological

data.

It

has

been

introduced

as

a

memory

efficient

alternative

for

suffix

trees.

The

suffix

array

consists

of

the

sorted

suffixes

of

a

string.

There

are

several

linear

time

suffix

array

construction

algorithms

(SACAs)

known

in

the

literature.

However,

one

of

the

fastest

algorithms

in

practice

has

a

worst

case

run

time

of

O

n

The

problem

of

designing

practically

and

theoretically

efficient

techniques

remains

open.

In

this

paper

we

present

an

elegant

algorithm

for

suffix

array

construction

which

takes

linear

time

with

high

probability;

the

probability

is

on

the

space

of

all

possible

inputs.

Our

algorithm

is

one

of

the

simplest

of

the

known

SACAs

and

it

opens

up

a

new

dimension

of

suffix

array

construction

that

has

not

been

explored

until

now.

Our

algorithm

is

easily

parallelizable.

We

offer

parallel

implementations

on

various

parallel

models

of

computing.

We

prove

a

lemma

on

the

-mers

of

a

random

string

which

might

find

independent

applications.

We

also

present

another

algorithm

that

utilizes

the

above

algorithm.

This

algorithm

is

called

RadixSA

and

has

a

worst

case

run

time

of

O

n

log

n

RadixSA

introduces

an

idea

that

may

find

independent

applications

as

a

speedup

technique

for

other

SACAs.

An

empirical

comparison

of

RadixSA

with

other

algorithms

on

various

datasets

reveals

that

our

algorithm

is

one

of

the

fastest

algorithms

to

date.

The

C++

source

code

is

freely

available

at

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

suffix array construction algorithm
parallel algorithm
high probability bounds


periodicity, complementarity and complexity of 2-adic fcsr combiner generators Feedback-with-carry shift registers (FCSRs) are nonlinear analogues of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs). Like the LFSRs, FCSRs are easy to implement and are important primitives in stream cipher design and pseudorandom number generation. In this paper, we investigate the properties of combiner generators that use two 2-adic feedback-with-carry shift registers as primitives. The combining function is simply the XOR function. This choice is motivated by an observation of Arnault and Berger on the high nonlinearity of the FCSR and that of Siegenthaler on the trade-off between resilience and correlation immunity of boolean functions. When the two FCSRs have odd prime power connection integers with 2 as a primitive root, we determine the exact period of the output sequence. We also prove that if the prime factors of the connection integers of the two FCSRs belong to different equivalence classes modulo 4, then the output sequence is symmetrically complementary. We use this fact to derive upper bounds on the linear complexity and the 2-adic complexity of the output sequence of the FCSR-combiner.

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

fcsr
feedback shift registers
linear complexity

stream ciphers
combiners
&ell
-sequences
2-adic complexity
pseudorandom number generators


A neural network based obstacle-navigation animat in a virtual environment Recently, much research has been done on the possibilities of autonomous robots navigating and performing obstacle avoidance. Vision is an important method of gathering information about obstacles and other objects within an environment. A virtual environment was created, in which an animat (virtual organism) navigates using a visual system comparable to that used by biological organisms. A spike-based neural network model was applied to learning. Various applicable rules on network topology were used, and examination was made of how well the animat learnt under varying sizes of visual input layer and intermediate processing layer. In addition, three different training regimes were applied and their different merits discussed. It was discovered that increasing layer size in general improved the performance of the animat, provided that the sizes of the input array and the processing arrays correspond. The learning curve of the animat over time was investigated, allowing an optimal training time to be determined. These findings allow an insight into how well such a system can perform and how its design and training may be optimized.

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

biologically plausible neural networks
reinforcement training


Influence analyses of nonlinear mixed-effects models Nonlinear mixed-effects models are very useful in analyzing repeated-measures data and have received a lot of attention in the field. In this paper, we propose a method to detect influential observations in such models, on the basis of the maximum likelihood estimates that are obtained by a stochastic approximation algorithm with Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The development utilizes the data augmentation technique that treats the random effects as missing data, and considers the conditional expectation of the complete-data log-likelihood function relating to an EM algorithm. Diagnostic measures are derived from the case-deletion approach and the local influence approach, and are approximated by a large sample of random effects that are simulated from the appropriate conditional distributions by a MetropolisHastings algorithm. Results obtained from two illustrative examples are reported.

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

local influence
missing data
metropolishastings algorithm


Identity matching using personal and social identity features Identity verification is essential in our mission to identify potential terrorists and criminals. It is not a trivial task because terrorists reportedly assume multiple identities using either fraudulent or legitimate means. A national identification card and biometrics technologies have been proposed as solutions to the identity problem. However, several studies show their inability to tackle the complex problem. We aim to develop data mining alternatives that can match identities referring to the same individual. Existing identity matching techniques based on data mining primarily rely on personal identity features. In this research, we propose a new identity matching technique that considers both personal identity features and social identity features. We define two groups of social identity features including social activities and social relations. The proposed technique is built upon a probabilistic relational model that utilizes a relational database structure to extract social identity features. Experiments show that the social activity features significantly improve the matching performance while the social relation features effectively reduce false positive and false negative decisions.

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

identity matching
probabilistic relational model


The role of oxidative stress in Rett syndrome: an overview The main cause of Rett syndrome (RTT), a pervasive development disorder almost exclusively affecting females, is a mutation in the methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2) gene. To date, no cure for RTT exists, although disease reversibility has been demonstrated in animal models. Emerging evidence from our and other laboratories indicates a potential role of oxidative stress (OS) in RTT. This review examines the current state of the knowledge on the role of OS in explaining the natural history, genotypephenotype correlation, and clinical heterogeneity of the human disease. Biochemical evidence of OS appears to be related to neurological symptom severity, mutation type, and clinical presentation. These findings pave the way for potential new genetic downstream therapeutic strategies aimed at improving patient quality of life. Further efforts in the near future are needed for investigating the yet unexplored black box between the MeCP2 gene mutation and subsequent OS derangement.

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


Structured Sparsity and Generalization We present a data dependent generalization bound for a large class of regularized algorithms which implement structured sparsity constraints. The bound can be applied to standard squared-norm regularization, the Lasso, the group Lasso, some versions of the group Lasso with overlapping groups, multiple kernel learning and other regularization schemes. In all these cases competitive results are obtained. A novel feature of our bound is that it can be applied in an infinite dimensional setting such as the Lasso in a separable Hilbert space or multiple kernel learning with a countable number of kernels.

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

empirical processes
rademacher average
sparse estimation


modeling contention of sparse-matrix-vector multiplication (smv) in three parallel programming paradigms We makes use of the LoPC model, which is inspired by both the LogP/PG and BSP models but accounts for contention for message processing resources in parallel programming models to derive a general estimate of execution cost. We carry out this cost estimate analysis for three dominate programming models: message passing, shared memory and distributed shared memory. We analyze a typical application SMV multiplication written in these programming models with irregular receiver-initiated synchronous communication. The LoPC estimate for this application is shown to be reasonably accurate when compared against measured values of runtime of actual empirical computations on an SGI O2000 multiprocessor machine.

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 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


Servomotor velocity tracking using adaptive fuzzy techniques This paper proposes a stable adaptive fuzzy controller applied to a servomotor for velocity tracking of time-varying references. The control law is composed of two parts. The first part comprises a Proportional controller plus feedforward compensation. An adaptive fuzzy compensator corresponds to the second part and counteracts the effects of nonlinear loads. The only a priori information about the servomotor parameters is a nominal value of the voltage input gain. A depart from current adaptive adaptive controllers is the fact that the proposed control law does not rely on a switching supervisor controller then avoiding chattering. Moreover, the desired thine varying reference feeds the membership functions instead of using the measured velocity, which is contaminated by noise. In this way, less measurement noise is injected to the closed loop system. The Lyapunov stability method allows concluding uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed loop system solutions. Experiments performed on a laboratory prototype allow comparing the proposed approach against a Proportional Integral controller endowed with feedforward compensation.

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

fuzzy systems
adaptive control
velocity control
servosystems
real-time control


The quadrupole microelectrode design on a multilayer biochip for dielectrophoretic trapping of single cells This paper introduces a new quadrupole microelectrode design for trapping mass loading of single cells using dielectrophoretic (DEP) force. The DEP force profiles generated by the pattern which represent trapping regions on the biochip platform, were studied using finite element software Comsol Multiphysics v3.5a. Arrays of the quadrupole microelectrode were patterned on a multilayer structure called sandwiched insulator with back contact (SIBC) biochip platform, fabricated using photolithography technique. This platform consists of a 10nm NickelChromium (NiCr) and 100nm Gold (Au) top electrode, 5?m thick SU-8 2005 insulation layer and a bottom layer of 10nm NiCr and 100nm Au called the back contact. Access to the back contact is achieved via a microcavity located at the center of the quadrupole microelectrode arrangement. Together, the DEP forces generated from the quadrupole microelectrode and the microcavities are used to anchor single cells and maintain cell positions. The quadrupole design was tested with polystyrene latex microbeads, and Ishikawa cancer cells suspended in media and flowed through microfluidic channels made from PDMS. Single cell trapping becomes evident when both quadrupole microelectrode and back contact are biased using AC potentials of different phases. Experiment results show that the quadrupole microelectrode trapped 22 percent of Ishikawa cancer cells and 17 percent of the polystyrene microbeads.

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

dielectrophoretic trapping
quadrupole microelectrode
multilayer biochip

single cells trapping
ishikawa cancer cell


A note on special strong differential superordinations using multiplier transformation In the present paper we establish several strong differential superordinations regarding the extended multiplier transformation I (m, lambda, l) : A(n zeta)(*) -> A(n zeta)(*), I (m, lambda, l) f (z, zeta) = z+Sigma(infinity)(j=n+1) (1+lambda(j-1)+l/l+1)(m) a(j)(zeta) z(j), z is an element of U, zeta is an element of (U) over bar, and A(n zeta)(*) = {f is an element of H(U x (U) over bar), f(z, zeta) = z + a(n+1)(zeta) z(n+1) + ..., z is an element of U, zeta is an element of (U) over bar} is the class of normalized analytic functions.

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

strong differential superordination
convex function
best subordinant
extended differential operator


spam filter evaluation with imprecise ground truth When trained and evaluated on accurately labeled datasets, online email spam filters are remarkably effective, achieving error rates an order of magnitude better than classifiers in similar applications. But labels acquired from user feedback or third-party adjudication exhibit higher error rates than the best filters -- even filters trained using the same source of labels. It is appropriate to use naturally occuring labels -- including errors -- as training data in evaluating spam filters. Erroneous labels are problematic, however, when used as ground truth to measure filter effectiveness. Any measurement of the filter's error rate will be augmented and perhaps masked by the label error rate. Using two natural sources of labels, we demonstrate automatic and semi-automatic methods that reduce the influence of labeling errors on evaluation, yielding substantially more precise measurements of true filter error rates.

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


Permutation test for incomplete paired data with application to cDNA microarray data A paired data set is common in microarray experiments, where the data are often incompletely observed for some pairs due to various technical reasons. In microarray paired data sets, it is of main interest to detect differentially expressed genes, which are usually identified by testing the equality of means of expressions within a pair. While much attention has been paid to testing mean equality with incomplete paired data in previous literature, the existing methods commonly assume the normality of data or rely on the large sample theory. In this paper, we propose a new test based on permutations, which is free from the normality assumption and large sample theory. We consider permutation statistics with linear mixtures of paired and unpaired samples as test statistics, and propose a procedure to find the optimal mixture that minimizes the conditional variances of the test statistics, given the observations. Simulations are conducted for numerical power comparisons between the proposed permutation tests and other existing methods. We apply the proposed method to find differentially expressed genes for a colorectal cancer study.

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

colorectal cancer
incomplete paired data
microarray data
permutation test


a design for adaptive web service evolution In this paper, we define the problem of simultaneously deploying multiple versions of a web service in the face of independently developed unsupervised clients. We then propose a solution in the form of a design technique called Chain of Adapters and argue that this approach strikes a good balance between the various requirements. The Chain of Adapters technique is particularly suitable for self-managed systems since it makes many version-related reconfiguration tasks safe, and thus subject to automation.

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

software evolution
web services
design patterns
backwards compatibility


Feature engineering for MEDLINE citation categorization with MeSH Research in biomedical text categorization has mostly used the bag-of-words representation. Other more sophisticated representations of text based on syntactic, semantic and argumentative properties have been less studied. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of different text representations of biomedical texts as features for reproducing the MeSH annotations of some of the most frequent MeSH headings. In addition to unigrams and bigrams, these features include noun phrases, citation meta-data, citation structure, and semantic annotation of the citations.

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


Adaptive and intelligent path discovery on-demand for wireless networks using service composition Route setup and discovery require low communication overhead in portable computing and wireless environments. We propose an adaptive and intelligent route discovery on-demand approach that introduces a service composition concept. Since service composition along a network is like a path in a multicast tree, path discovery can be regarded as service composition. Hence, a route-composition is proposed to combine existing services (paths) into candidate complex services (paths) called on-demand route compositions. The proposed route setup mechanism has the following characteristics: (1) on-demand route setup to avoid periodical multicast overhead for member discovery; (2) a directed service graph to represent a transparent route-composition; (3) candidate routes are found adaptively and intelligently; (4) the best route among candidate routes is determined by the max-flow and min-cut algorithm. The Simulation shows that for a newly joining multicast receiver, the proposed method can avoid periodical multicast-related control overhead for member discovery, and improve the throughput for multicast communication from 29% to 74% as compared with the nearest neighbor algorithm. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

route-composition discovery
multicast protocol
ad hoc networks
pervasive computing


Smeared shell modelling approach for structural analysis of heritage composite structures - An application to the Cutty Sark conservation This paper discusses the computational modelling used to simulate the structural behaviour of the historic ship Cutty Sark and her response to different load and new support conditions, various treatments and interventions as part of a major conservation programme. A novel modelling approach suitable to analyse quickly and at a global level complex heritage structures with composite shell-like nature such as the Cutty Sark is presented. This modelling approach is validated and applied to understand and analyse a number of structural assessment problems relevant to the conservation programme including plank removal procedures and the design of a new support structure. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

computational modelling
cutty sark
composite structures

computer aided conservation
ship modelling
smeared shell approach


modeling media access in embedded two-flow topologies of multi-hop wireless networks In this paper, we decompose a large- or small-scale multi-hop wireless network into embedded subgraphs, each consisting of four nodes and two flow pairs. We systematically study all twelve possible topologies that arise according to whether the different nodes are in radio range of each other. We show that under both a random spatial distribution of nodes and random waypoint mobility with shortest-path routing, a critical and highly probable scenario is a class in which the channel state shared by the two flows is not only incomplete (i.e., the graph is not fully connected), but there is also asymmetry in the state between the two flows. We develop an accurate analytical model validated by simulations to characterize the long-term unfairness that naturally arises when CSMA with two- or four-way handshake is employed as a random access protocol. Moreover, we show that another key class of topologies consists of incomplete but symmetric shared state. We show via modeling and simulations that in this case, the system achieves long-term fairness, yet endures significant durations in which one flow dominates channel access with many repeated transmissions before relinquishing the channel. The model predicts the time-scales of this unfairness as a function of system parameters such as the maximum retransmission limit.

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

wireless networks
media
scenario
mobility
random access
topologies
case
paper
access
model
fairness
spatial
csma
flow
graph
routing
class

analytical modeling
simulation
scale
timing
randomization
multi-hop wireless network
shortest path
sharing
systems
functional
csma/ca
distributed
critic
embedding


Approximation algorithm for maximum lifetime in wireless sensor networks with data aggregation We consider the problem of maximising the lifetime of sensor networks with data aggregation, which was previously investigated by Kalpakis et al. (2003). They propose an exact polynomial-time algorithm, which is however very slow, and faster heuristics, where an approximation ratio is not guaranteed. In this paper, we demonstrate an alternative approach based on the Garg and Konemann (1998) algorithm for packing linear programs, combined with the exact computation of minimum cost arborescence. For any epsilon > 0, our approach obtains a solution achieving at least 1 c times the optimum lifetime with significantly faster running time than that of the exact algorithm. The simulation result also shows that our algorithm achieves a solution that is within 0.02% of optimum and is not slower than the heuristics previously proposed by Kalpakis et al. (2003).

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

lifetime aggregation approximation optimum


The uniqueness of 1-systems of W-5(q) satisfying the BLT-property, with q odd In the symplectic polar space W-5(q) every 1-system which satisfies the BLT-property ( and then q is odd) defines a generalized quadrangle (GQ) of order (q(2), q(3)). In this paper, we show that this 1-system is unique, so that the onlyGQarising in this way is isomorphic to the classical GQ H( 4, q(2)), q odd.

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

blt-property
1-system
symplectic polarity


Reliability-based structural optimization with probability and convex set hybrid models For structural systems exhibiting both probabilistic and bounded uncertainties, it may be suitable to describe these uncertainties with probability and convex set models respectively in the design optimization problem. Based on the probabilistic and multi-ellipsoid convex set hybrid model, this paper presents a mathematical definition of reliability index for measuring the safety of structures in presence of parameter or load uncertainties. The optimization problem incorporating such reliability constraints is then mathematically formulated. By using the performance measure approach, the optimization problem is reformulated into a more tractable one. Moreover, the nested double-loop optimization problem is transformed into an approximate single-loop minimization problem by considering the optimality conditions and linearization of the limit-state function, which further facilitates efficient solution of the design problem. Numerical examples demonstrate the validity of the proposed formulation as well as the efficiency of the presented numerical techniques.

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

structural optimization
reliability
probability
convex set
hybrid model


Learning to improve reliability during system development Research, conducted in collaboration with a leading aerospace manufacturer, aimed to facilitate learning in order to improve the reliability of engineering systems during their development phase. In particular, the processes and mathematical models used during reliability growth testing were investigated to assess how they might be better used to support this improvement. This required both soft and hard OR approaches to be adopted. For example, information flows were mapped and reengineered in order to provide a basis for more effective data collection and feed-back to decision-makers. A new mathematical model that combines failure data with engineering judgement was developed to estimate reliability growth. The paper presents a case study describing the problem, the modelling conducted, the recommendations made and the actions implemented. The ways in which the researchers and the manufacturer learnt to improve both the modelling and the reliability growth testing process are reflected upon.

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


Designing cellular networks using a parallel hybrid metaheuristic on the computational grid Cellular network design is a major issue in mobile telecommunication systems. In this paper, a model of the problem in its full practical complexity, based on multiobjective constrained combinatorial optimization, has been investigated. We adopted the Pareto approach at resolution in order to compute a set of diversified non-dominated networks, thus removing the need for the designer to rank or weight objectives a priori. We designed and implemented a "ready-to-use" platform for radio network optimization that is flexible regarding both the modeling of the problem (adding, removing, updating new antagonist objectives and constraints) and the solution methods. It extends the "white-box" ParadisEO framework for metaheuristics applied to the resolution of mono/multi-objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems requiring both the use of advanced optimization methods and the exploitation of large-scale parallel and distributed environments. Specific coding scheme and genetic and neighborhood operators have been designed and embedded. On the other side, we make use of many generic features related to advanced intensification and diversification search techniques, hybridization of metaheuristics and grid computing for the distribution of the computations. They aim at improving the quality of networks and their robustness. They also allow, to speed-up the search and obtain results in a tractable time, and so efficiently solving large instances of the problem. Using three realistic benchmarks, the computed networks and speed-ups on different parallel and/or distributed architectures show the efficiency and the scalability of hierarchical parallel hybrid models. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

cellular network design
metaheuristics
grid computing

hybrid metaheuristics
parallel computing


Randomly walking through Wall Street Comparing lump-sum versus dollar-cost average investment strategies The daily closing values of the SEP 500 Index from January 1, 1926 through June 11, 1993, a total of 17,610 values, were entered into Mathematica, and the day-to-day percent changes were calculated. Using the Standard Mathematica Package Statistics 'ContinuousDistributions' and the built-in function NonLinearFit, procedures were developed to find the probability distribution that best models these daily changes. Although the log-normal distribution has been used traditionally, we found that a logistic distribution provides the best model, having a coefficient of determination 0.998. Using this model and Mathematica to simulate stock market performance we have found that, although the short-term changes in the stock market can often be explained by world events, longer-term behavior of the market can be modeled with accuracy. Simulations for time periods between 6 months and 10 years show that, although dollar-cost average investing has less volatility, the long-term investor can expect a higher return from a lump-sum investment. (C) 1999 IMACS/Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

dollar-cost averaging
lump-sum averaging


an architecture to provide adaptive, synchronized and multimodal human computer interaction In this paper we present a solution to compose synchronized multimodal computer human interaction with a pattern-oriented approach. The focus of this paper is how to synchronize the different modalities of interaction.In our application scenario the system consists of mobile agents and the user interface is generated from a dialog description language, which is XML-encoded. The generated User Interface is executed by one or more UI-engines, which can use one or more modalities like a text chat system, a speech-based system or a graphical, window-oriented user interface. The user interface is separated and also structured by so-called dialog moves which are suitable to be adapted to different UI-engines. The system supports more than one UI-engine at the same time which results in a possibly multimodal interaction. The interaction is synchronized by observing the events produced by the dialog moves of each UI-engine.The system is evaluated in a project called MAP 1 which deals with new human computer interaction methods in future mobile work environments.

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

scenario
human computer interaction
use
chat
human interaction
project
paper
interaction
environments
architecture
language
text
user interface
future
multimodal
mobile agents
adaptive

speech
applications
engine
synchronization
mobility
event
synchronisation
computation
timing
graphics
pattern
method
structure
systems
modal
multimodal interaction
dialog move
windows


Extent of type I and type II errors in editorial decisions: A case study on Angewandte Chemie International Edition Selection processes are never faultless. We investigate the predictive validity of the manuscript selection process at Angewandte Chemie International Edition (AC-IE), one of the prime chemistry journals worldwide, and conducted a citation analysis for manuscripts that were accepted by the journal or rejected but published elsewhere (n=1817). With the bibliometric data, we were able to calculate the extent of type I and type II errors of the selection decisions. We found that the decisions regarding 15% of the manuscripts show a type I error (accepted manuscripts that did not perform as well as or worse than the average rejected manuscript). Moreover, the decisions regarding 15% of the manuscripts are affected by a type II error (rejected manuscripts that performed equal to or above the average accepted manuscript).

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

manuscript selection process
predictive validity
type i error
type ii error


Deviations from linearity in statistical evaluation of linearity in assay validation Linearity and linear range are the key evaluations of the accuracy in assay validation. The average deviation from linearity (ADL) and the sum of squares of deviations from linearity (SSDL) have been proposed for assessment of the linearity. However, both ADL and SSDL do no consider the variability of the assay for evaluation of linearity. Therefore, we proposed the coefficient of variation of deviations from linearity (CVDL) as an alternative measure for the linearity assessment. For the inference of evaluation of linearity, we proposed testing procedures based on generalized pivotal quantities (GPQ) of ADL and CVDL for evaluation of linearity. The simulation studies were conducted to empirically investigate the size and power between the three methods. The simulation results show that all three methods adequately control size. However, the ADL method is uniformly more powerful than the other two methods. A numeric example illustrates the proposed methods. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

quantitative analytical laboratory methods


Comparison of GPU architectures for asynchronous communication with finite-differencing applications Graphical processing units (GPUs) are good data-parallel performance accelerators for solving regular mesh partial differential equations (PDEs) whereby low-latency communications and high compute to communications ratios can yield very high levels of computational efficiency. Finite-difference time-domain methods still play an important role for many PDE applications. Iterative multi-grid and multilevel algorithms can converge faster than ordinary finite-difference methods but can be much more difficult to parallelize with GPU memory constraints. We report on some practical algorithmic and data layout approaches and on performance data on a range of GPUs with CUDA. We focus on the use of multiple GPU devices with a single CPU host and the asynchronous CPU/GPU communications issues involved. We obtain more than two orders of magnitude of speedup over a comparable CPU core. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


Office workers' computer use patterns are associated with workplace stressors Daily computer use duration was, on average, 30 minutes longer for workers with high overcommitment and perceived stress. The number of short computer breaks was about 20% lower for workers with high effort and for workers with low reward. Workers with high compared to low effort had, after adjusting for age, a significantly shorter key strike duration. No effects of overcommitment, reward, and perceived stress on the pace of input device usage were found.

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


Efficient parallel resolution of the simplified transport equations in mixed-dual formulation A reactivity computation consists of computing the highest eigenvalue of a generalized eigenvalue problem, for which an inverse power algorithm is commonly used. Very fine modelizations are difficult to treat for our sequential solver, based on the simplified transport equations, in terms of memory consumption and computational time. A first implementation of a Lagrangian based domain decomposition method brings to a poor parallel efficiency because of an increase in the power iterations [1]. In order to obtain a high parallel efficiency, we improve the parallelization scheme by changing the location of the loop over the subdomains in the overall algorithm and by benefiting from the characteristics of the RaviartThomas finite element. The new parallel algorithm still allows us to locally adapt the numerical scheme (mesh, finite element order). However, it can be significantly optimized for the matching grid case. The good behavior of the new parallelization scheme is demonstrated for the matching grid case on several hundreds of nodes for computations based on a pin-by-pin discretization.

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

raviartthomas finite element
domain decomposition method

simplified transport equation
hpc
parallelism


challenges in the analysis of multimodal messaging New forms of computer-mediated communication are increasingly multimodal, providing capabilities for communicating with some combination of text, image, audio, and video. In this paper, we point to the need to develop better methods for studying multimodal communication -- more specifically, for studying thencommunicative role of and relationships among differentnmodalities within their increasingly complex, multimodal semioticnlandscapes. We present two challenges in the analysis of multimodal communication, point of view and unit of analysis, both encountered in the context of our study of the use of photo-enhanced instant messaging.

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

im
photo-enhanced instant messaging
mms
computer-mediated communication
multimodal analysis
multimedia messaging


Periodic Image Trajectories in EarthMoon Space The problem of identifying orbits that enclose both the Earth and the Moon in a predictable way has theoretical relevance as well as practical implications. In the context of the restricted three-body problem with primaries in circular orbits, periodic trajectories exist and have the property that a third body (e.g. a spacecraft) can describe them indefinitely. Several approaches have been employed in the past for the purpose of identifying similar orbits. In this work the theorem of image trajectories, proven five decades ago, is employed for determining periodic image trajectories in EarthMoon space. These trajectories exhibit two fundamental features: (i)counterclockwise departure from a perigee on the far side of the Earth, and (ii)counterclockwise arrival to aperiselenum on the far side of the Moon. An extensive, systematic numerical search is performed, with the use of a modified Poincar map, in conjunction with a numerical refinement process, and leads to a variety of periodic orbits, with various interesting features for possible future lunar missions.

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

image trajectories
periodic orbits
lunar missions

modified poincar maps
restricted three-body problem


Analyzing the behaviors of virtual cells (VCs) and traditional manufacturing systems: Ant colony optimization (ACO)-based metamodels The aim of this paper is two fold. First we investigate the three different types of systems, namely cellular layout (CL), process layout (PL) and virtual cells (VCs). VCs are addressed by using family-based scheduling rule, developed by a part allocation algorithm in a PL. Simulation is used to compare three types of systems under the performance metrics such as mean flow time and mean tardiness. Results indicate that VCs have better responsiveness in terms of the performance metrics. Second we develop a new ant colony optimization-based metamodels fed by existing simulation runs to represent the prospective simulation runs, which require a lot of time and effort. Regression metamodels, which allow us to obtain much faster results, are seen to be promising to estimate the systems behaviors.

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

simulation
ant colony optimization
metamodels


Undergraduate students' gender differences in IT skills and attitudes Abstract The worldwide concern about the gender gap in information technology and the lack of woman participation in computer science has been attributed to the different cultural influences to which boys and girls are subject. In The University of Hong Kong, girls achieved greater improvements in their computer skills than their male counterparts after completing one year of studies. Recognising their own progress has, in turn, boosted their confidence in using IT. The young women's estimates of their skill levels have doubled over the years from 1998 to 2000. Despite this recorded acceleration at the end of the academic years, girls were less confident of their abilities and possessed lower IT skill levels than boys before starting their university education, as found in surveys of freshmen's computer skills. This study compares the responses of student participants of the HKU/IBM Notebook Computer Programme, which started in 1998, in the self-reported IT skills and attitudes of male and female students, in surveys conducted both at the beginning and again at the end of the freshman year. It also examines the achievement scores of the IT Proficiency Tests and the Foundations to Information Technology courses administered for the student IT requirement for graduation.

B O B O O O O O B 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 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 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 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


Shapes of RNA Pseudoknot Structures In this article, we study abstract shapes of k-noncrossing, sigma-canonical RNA pseudoknot structures. We consider lv(k)(1)- and lv(k)(5)-shapes, which represent a generalization of the abstract pi- and pi-shapes of RNA secondary structures introduced by Giegerich et al. Using a novel approach, we compute the generating functions of lv(k)(1)- and lv(k)(5)-shapes as well as the generating functions of all lv(k)(1)- and lv(k)(5)-shapes induced by all k-noncrossing, sigma-canonical RNA structures for fixed n. By means of singularity analysis of the generating functions, we derive explicit asymptotic expressions For online Supplementary Material, see www.liebertonline.com.

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

sigma-canonical
generating function
k-noncrossing rna structure
shape


Concrete Column Recognition in Images and Videos The automated detection of structural elements (e.g., columns and beams) from visual data can be used to facilitate many construction and maintenance applications. The research in this area is under initial investigation. The existing methods solely rely on color and texture information, which makes them unable to identify each structural element if these elements connect each other and are made of the same material. The paper presents a novel method of automated concrete column detection from visual data. The method overcomes the limitation by combining columns' boundary information with their color and texture cues. It starts from recognizing long vertical lines in an image/video frame through edge detection and Hough transform. The bounding rectangle for each pair of lines is then constructed. When the rectangle resembles the shape of a column and the color and texture contained in the pair of lines are matched with one of the concrete samples in knowledge base, a concrete column surface is assumed to be located. This way, one concrete column in images/videos is detected. The method was tested using real images/videos. The results are compared with the manual detection ones to indicate the method's validity.

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

concrete columns
automatic identification systems
information technology


Speeding up incremental wrapper feature subset selection with Naive Bayes classifier This paper deals with the problem of wrapper feature subset selection (FSS) in classification-oriented datasets with a (very) large number of attributes. In high-dimensional datasets with thousands of variables, wrapper FSS becomes a laborious computational process because of the amount of CPU time it requires. In this paper we study how under certain circumstances the wrapper FSS process can be speeded up by embedding the classifier into the wrapper algorithm, instead of dealing with it as a black-box. Our proposal is based on the combination of the NB classifier (which is known to be largely beneficial for FSS) with incremental wrapper FSS algorithms. The merit of this approach is analyzed both theoretically and experimentally, and the results show an impressive speed-up for the embedded FSS process.

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

wrapper feature subset selection
naive bayes

incremental algorithms
high-dimensional data


Numerical modelling of welding The paper describes the application of the finite element method to predict the thermal, material and mechanical effects of welding; Computational Welding Mechanics (CWM). The most common numerical approach used in CWM is only described shortly. The paper focuses on different modelling aspects. The most important modelling issues are the models for heat input and material behaviour. Finally, some recent applications are reviewed and future developments are discussed.

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

finite elements
thermo-mechanics
buckling
cracking
optimisation


Chinese Workers and Labor Conditions from State Industry to Globalized Factories This article discusses administrative obstacles in China that hinder the full integration of the rural population into the mainstream of development during a period of rapid industrialization. The Chinese household registration only for urban residents with its golden contents of cradle-to-grave security has become a formidable stumbling block that perpetuates the status of rural migrants as second-class citizens in their own country. Rural migrant workers are excluded from certain types of jobs and are not eligible for many benefits that urbanites have, such as health, education, and unemployment protection. These workers must also pay a number of fees and work for lower minimum wages than the local residents. With a precarious legal existence in urban areas, they are easy prey to unscrupulous officials and employers. Because they are not allowed to form independent trade unions, their best option is to vote with their feet and leave the firms with the worst conditions; this is exactly what they did from 2004. Given this situation, the debate on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) took a new turn with not only nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) pushing it but with a wider range of employers and, of late, Chinese officials promoting their version of CSR. In the campaign to promote minimum labor standards, the norms set down in the Social Accountability 8000 were included in the CSR, recognizing the right to free collective bargaining and free trade unions but were excluded in the Chinese version even though the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements recognized these rights

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

china
wages
trade unions
csr
labor standards

migrant labor
work conditions
household registration system
labor laws


A finite state version of the Kraft-McMillan theorem The main result is a finite-state version of the Kraft McMillan theorem characterizing the generating sequence of a k-ary regular tree. The proof uses a new construction called the multiset construction, which is a version with multiplicities of the well-known subset construction of automata theory.

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

generating series
regular trees
nonnegative matrices


Performance evaluation of acceptance probability functions for multi-objective SA A probabilistic local search algorithm called simulated annealing (SA) is a useful approximate solution technique for multi-objective optimization problems. When we use SA to solve multi-objective optimization problems, we cannot use an acceptance probability function used for single objective optimization problems. Therefore, several types of acceptance probability functions for multi-objective SA have been previously proposed. In this paper, we introduce a parameterized acceptance probability function for multi-objective SA, which changes its type depending on the parameter, and investigate how the performance of the multi-objective SA depends on the type of acceptance probability function in two test problems. There are many real-life problems that are formulated as multi-objective optimization problems. However, large-scale problems of this type are often difficult to solve by specific conventional exact procedures. Simulated annealing (SA) is an efficient tool for finding useful approximate solutions to such problems. Several types of acceptance probability functions are available for multi-objective SA. In this paper, we investigate how the performance of the multi-objective SA depends on the type of acceptance probability function applied.

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

simulated annealing
acceptance probability function


task oriented visual interface for debugging timing problems in hardware design We describe a graphical toolkit for debugging timing problems in hardware design. The toolkit was developed as a part of the graphical user interface for a static timing analysis tool PrimeTime from Synopsys Inc. A static timing analysis tool identifies critical logical paths with timing violations in a circuit design without simulating the design, thereby dramatically shortening the time required for timing closure. The toolkit's visual organization of multiple graphical views of timing data helps the user manage the complexity of the data and the debugging 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

cognitive model of users
visual interface design
information visualization


Highly fault-tolerant cycle embeddings of hypercubes ? The hypercube Qn is one of the most popular networks. In this paper, we first prove that the n-dimensional hypercube is 2n?5 conditional fault-bipancyclic. That is, an injured hypercube with up to 2n?5 faulty links has a cycle of length l for every even 4?l?2n when each node of the hypercube is incident with at least two healthy links. In addition, if a certain node is incident with less than two healthy links, we show that an injured hypercube contains cycles of all even lengths except hamiltonian cycles with up to 2n?3 faulty links. Furthermore, the above two results are optimal. In conclusion, we find cycles of all possible lengths in injured hypercubes with up to 2n?5 faulty links under all possible fault distributions.

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

cycle embedding
bipancyclic
fault tolerance


Modelling spatial dynamics of cropping systems to assess agricultural practices at the catchment scale Assessing the environmental impacts of agricultural practices at the catchment scale increasingly involves the use of spatially distributed models that include cropping systems as input. Use of these models for diagnosis and evaluation requires large datasets at large spatial and temporal scales. The description of spatial dynamics of cropping systems at a fine resolution (i.e. field level) is particularly needed. As these data are scarce or not available, our objective was to propose a model that first reconstructs spatial dynamics of past cropping systems from available data, and second constructs alternative spatial cropping systems, corresponding to agricultural practice scenarios. Classification systems for farms and fertilisation practices were defined to classify farm-level organisation for crop-succession and crop management strategies, in particular nitrogen fertilisation. Winter cover crops and multiple strategies per crop at the farm level can be represented with this model. Cropping systems are modelled in three steps: we modelled crop cover succession in summer with Markov chains based on empirical data and in winter with rules based on expert agronomic knowledge; lastly a Knapsack-based algorithm was used to allocate a crop management system to fields with constraints on several crop management strategies per crop type. Results of a case study performed on the Frmeur catchment (western France) show that this model respects the main constraints for cropping system modelling to assess agricultural practices at the catchment scale. From a scenario discussed with stakeholders and regional authorities characterised by stable areas of summer crops, the decrease in bare soil area in winter and overall reduction in total nitrogen fertilisation for different types of crops and farms we demonstrate the models ability to simulate coherent cropping systems. Thus, if faced with a lack of data or knowledge about the local factors that drive changes in cropping systems, the model can construct the spatial dynamics of cropping systems, which can be used as input to distributed nitrate transfer models to assess agricultural practices at the catchment scale.

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

crop succession
stochastic modelling
knapsack algorithm


Room temperature wafer bonding of metal films using flattening by thermal imprint process We developed a new room temperature wafer bonding of metal films using flattening by thermal imprint process. Au film surfaces were successfully flattened with a 5MPa pressure at 200C for 600s. Developed room temperature bonding was effective when the bonding load is small and/or the Au films are relatively rough.

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

room-temperature wafer bonding
packaging of mems
flattening of metal


Current-mode CMOS multiplier/divider circuit operating in linear/saturation regions A CMOS current-mode analog multiplier/divider circuit is presented. It is suited to standard CMOS fabrication and can be successfully employed in a wide range of analog signal processing applications. Measurement results for a 0.5 mu m CMOS test chip prototype verify the approach employed. The circuit consumes 120 mu W using a single supply voltage of 1.5 V and requires a silicon area of 150 x 140 mu m.

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

analog multiplier/dividers
analog cmos circuits
analog integrated circuits


Application-Independent Testing of 3-D Field Programmable Gate Array Interconnect Faults 3-D integration has been touted as an approach to reducing the lengths of critical paths in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). A 3-D chip stacks a number of 2-D FPGA bare dies, interconnected by through-silicon vias (TSVs) and micro bumps, to attain a high packing density. However, the technology also introduces new types of defects, such as TSV void and microbump misalignment. Testing the interconnection faults becomes inevitable. In this paper, we present an automatic test pattern generator for open, short, and delay faults on 3-D FPGA interconnects by exploiting the regularity of switch matrix topology and forming repetitive paths with finite steps and with loop-back. The experimental results show that 12 test patterns (TPs) suffice to achieve 100% open fault coverage (FC). To detect all possible neighboring short faults, we need more than 40 TPs, whose number increases only slightly with the height of the 3-D FPGA. The TPs have high delay FC (96%) for 3-D FPGAs with the number of configurable logic blocks ranging from 50 x 50 x 2 to 50 x 50 x 6, demonstrating the scalability of our method.

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

field-programmable gate array (fpga) testing


Applying IsRewritten criterion on Buchberger algorithm Faugere's F(5) algorithm is one of the fastest algorithms to compute Grobner bases. It uses two criteria namely the F5 criterion and the IsRewritten criterion to detect the useless critical pairs (see Faugere (2002) [8]). The IsRewritten criterion has been used in the F(5) algorithm, but it has not been explicitly declared in the related paper. In this paper, we give first a complete proof for the IsRewritten criterion and then using a signature structure on Buchberger's algorithm, we apply this criterion on Buchberger's algorithm. We have implemented a new algorithm (based on the above results) in MAPLE to compute a Grobner basis of a general ideal and we evaluate its performance via some examples. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


A Fuzzy Knowledge Fusion Framework for Terms Conflict Resolution in Concurrent Engineering Due to the increased complexity of engineering products and design process, concurrent engineering practices still face enormous challenges. Design teams often provide the knowledge involving multiple disciplines in natural language at conceptual design stage. As a result, conflicts often arise during communications. To increase the efficiency of design process, it is necessary to avoid interpretation conflicts. This article presents a system framework to resolve terminology conflicts. First, a semantic hierarchical structure of knowledge is proposed. Knowledge is decomposed into terms and predicates. Second, a fuzzy knowledge fusion framework is proposed to identify and resolve terminology conflicts. The conflict is resolved by unifying the usage of terminologies. By using the fuzzy linguistic computational model based on extension principle to measure the similarity of terms, the terminology conflict problem is converted into a linguistic decision-making problem. Finally, the methodology is applied to a piece of automotive electronics knowledge. The best term to describe electronic control unit is identified.

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

knowledge fusion
concurrent engineering
fuzzy linguistic
conflict resolution


A set of visual feature descriptors and their combination in a low-level description scheme ? This paper reports about descriptors for basic visual information features, which have been developed in the context of the forthcoming MPEG-7 standard. The four basic features supported are color, texture, shape and motion. A search engine system has been developed which supports combinations of basic feature descriptors in a low-level description scheme for similarity-based retrieval of visual (image and video) data. All basic descriptors have been developed so that invariance against common transformations of visual material, e.g. filtering, contrast/color manipulation, resizing, etc., is achieved, and that they are fitted to human perception properties. Furthermore, descriptors have been designed to allow fast, coarse-to-fine search procedures. Elements described in this contribution have been proposed for the MPEG-7 standard. They are currently either included in the MPEG-7 Experimentation Model (XM) or investigated within core experiments, which are performed during the standard's development.

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

mpeg-7
image and video similarity
image and video feature description
multimedia database retrieval
color feature descriptors
texture feature descriptors
shape feature descriptors
motion feature descriptors


3-D analysis of projective textures using structural approaches This paper presents a new algorithm that obtains the surface orientation of the texture image using structural approaches. The proposed method has shown that structural information can be effectively used in three-dimensional (3-D) analysis of textures as well as description and segmentation. By examining Fourier power spectrum of the texture image, we determine the tilt of the textured surface. Then, 1-D projection information of the texture in the obtained tilt direction is used to compute the slant. Using the obtained information, we can compute a vanishing point, and rearrange the textured surface with the lines converging to the vanishing point and the lines perpendicular to the tilt. In the experimental results, we have ascertained the proposed method can make a precise 3-D analysis of structural textures. (C) 1999 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

texture image
surface orientation
vanishing point

shape from texture
texel
structural approach
rearrangement