One Step Forward: Linking Wireless Self-Organizing Network Validation Techniques with Formal Testing Approaches Wireless self-organizing networks (WSONs) have attracted considerable attention from the network research community; however, the key for their success is the rigorous validation of the properties of the network protocols. Applications of risk or those demanding precision (like alert-based systems) require a rigorous and reliable validation of deployed network protocols. While the main goal is to ensure the reliability of the protocols, validation techniques also allow the establishment of their correctness regarding the related protocols' requirements. Nevertheless, even if different communities have carried out intensive research activities on the validation domain, WSONs still raise new issues for and challenging constraints to these communities. We thus, advocate the use of complementary techniques coming from different research communities to efficiently address the validation of WSON protocols. The goal of this tutorial is to present a comprehensive review of the literature on protocol engineering techniques and to discuss difficulties imposed by the characteristics of WSONs on the protocol engineering community. Following the formal and nonformal classification of techniques, we provide a discussion about components and similarities of existing protocol validation approaches. We also investigate how to take advantage of such similarities to obtain complementary techniques and outline new challenges.

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

algorithms
verification
performance
wireless self-organizing networks


Waveguide mode solver based on Neumann-to-Dirichlet operators and boundary integral equations For optical waveguides with high index-contrast and sharp corners, existing full-vectorial mode solvers including those based on boundary integral equations typically have only second or third order of accuracy. In this paper, a new full-vectorial waveguide mode solver is developed based on a new formulation of boundary integral equations and the so-called Neumann-to-Dirichlet operators for sub-domains of constant refractive index. The method uses the normal derivatives of the two transverse magnetic field components as the basic unknown functions, and it offers higher order of accuracy where the order depends on a parameter used in a graded mesh for handling the corners. The method relies on a standard Nystrom method for discretizing integral operators and it does not require analytic properties of the electromagnetic field (which are singular) at the corners. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

optical waveguide
boundary integral equation
neumann-to-dirichlet operator


Adaptively entropy-based weighting classifiers in combination using DempsterShafer theory for word sense disambiguation ? In this paper we introduce an evidential reasoning based framework for weighted combination of classifiers for word sense disambiguation (WSD). Within this framework, we propose a new way of defining adaptively weights of individual classifiers based on ambiguity measures associated with their decisions with respect to each particular pattern under classification, where the ambiguity measure is defined by Shannons entropy. We then apply the discounting-and-combination scheme in DempsterShafer theory of evidence to derive a consensus decision for the classification task at hand. Experimentally, we conduct two scenarios of combining classifiers with the discussed method of weighting. In the first scenario, each individual classifier corresponds to a well-known learning algorithm and all of them use the same representation of context regarding the target word to be disambiguated, while in the second scenario the same learning algorithm applied to individual classifiers but each of them uses a distinct representation of the target word. These experimental scenarios are tested on English lexical samples of Senseval-2 and Senseval-3 resulting in an improvement in overall accuracy.

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

computational linguistics
classifier combination
dempsters rule of combination


Performance evaluation of ad hoc routing protocols for military communications Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are of much interest to both the research community and the military because of the potential to establish a communication network in any situation that involves emergencies. Examples are search-and-rescue operations, military deployment in hostile environments, and several types of police operations. One critical open issue is how to route messages considering the characteristics of these networks. The nodes act as routers in an environment without a fixed infrastructure, the nodes are mobile, the wireless medium has its own limitations compared to wired networks, and existing routing protocols cannot be employed, at least without modifications. Over the last few years, a number of routing protocols have been proposed and enhanced to address the issue of routing in MANETs. It is not clear how those different protocols perform under different environments. One protocol may be the best in one network configuration but the worst in another. This article provides an analysis and performance evaluation of those protocols that may be suitable for military communications. The evaluation is conducted in two phases. In the first phase, we compare the protocols based on qualitative metrics to locate those that may fit our evaluation criteria. In the second phase, we evaluate the selected protocols from the first phase based on quantitative metrics in a mobility scenario that reflects tactical military movements. The results disclose that there is no routing protocol in the current stage without modifications that can provide efficient routing to any size of network, regardless of the number of nodes and the network load and mobility. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

ad hoc wireless networks
manet
network simulator (ns-2)


Functional networks models for rapid characterization of thin films: An application to ultrathin polycrystalline silicon germanium films Functional network predictive model for film characterization is constructed. 154 experimental data sets were used for training and testing. It accurately predicts poly-SiGe film thickness, resistivity and deposition rate. The models can be used to proactively control film properties.

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


light stemming approaches for the french, portuguese, german and hungarian languages This paper describes and evaluates various general stemming approaches for the French, Portuguese (Brazilian), German and Hungarian languages. Based on the CLEF test-collections, we demonstrate that light stemmers for the French, Portuguese and Hungarian languages perform well, and reasonably well for the German language. Variations in mean average precision among the different stemming approaches are also evaluated and sometimes they are found statistically significant.

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

stemmer
natural language processing
stemming for french


PIV and LDA measurements of secondary flow in a meandering channel for overbank flow Secondary flow in a compound meandering channel with straight floodplain banks for overbank was investigated by a visualization method and velocity measurement using three-component laser Doppler anemometor (LDA). The secondary flow in a cross section was visualized by the neutral buoyant tracer method with a submergible video camera. Secondary flow vectors in a cross section were obtained by using PIV software with captured frames from video source through PC and also by LDA measurements. From the comparison of the PIV and LDA results, it is found that PIV data show good agreement in quality with LDA measurements when the secondary flow is strong and stable as shown in this paper.

B 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 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

visualization of secondary flow
lda measurement


exploiting concurrency in a dbms implementation for production systems An important aspect of integration of AI and DBMS technology is identifying functional similarities in database processing and reasoning with rules. In this paper, we focus on applying concurrency techniques to rule-based production systems. We tailor DBMS concurrent execution to a production system environment and investigate the resulting concurrent execution strategies for productions. This research is in conjunction with a novel DBMS mechanism for testing if the left hand side conditions of productions are satisfied. This set-oriented mechanism uses a special data structure implemented using relational tables. To demonstrate the equivalence of a serial and a concurrent (interleaved) execution strategy, for a set of productions, we assume a locking scheme to enforce serializability and specify what locks must be obtained. We define a logical commit point for a production. After this point the execution of a production is independent of all other (executing) productions. We compare the number of possible serial and parallel execution schedules.

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

point serializability tailor tables paper dbms reasoning aspect research strategies systems parallel functional implementation concurrency demonstrate commit database rules locking scheme

scheduling
data structures
product
technologies
environments
test
process
relation
integrability


From simple structure to sparse components: a review The article begins with a review of the main approaches for interpretation the results from principal component analysis (PCA) during the last 5060 years. The simple structure approach is compared to the modern approach of sparse PCA where interpretable solutions are directly obtained. It is shown that their goals are identical but they differ by the way they are realized. Next, the most popular and influential methods for sparse PCA are briefly reviewed. In the remaining part of the paper, a new approach to define sparse PCA is introduced. Several alternative definitions are considered and illustrated on a well-known data set. Finally, it is demonstrated, how one of these possible versions of sparse PCA can be used as a sparse alternative to the classical rotation methods.

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

constrained optimization on matrix manifolds


a lifespan-aware reliability scheme for raid-based flash storage Due to the ever-growing capacity of flash memory along with its good properties such as low-power consumption and high performance, flash-based SSDs (solid state disks) are anticipated to be used in the storage of high-end server systems. However, the reliability problem of flash devices is becoming increasingly serious. The number of P/E (program/erase) cycles allowed to each flash block is too small, especially less than 10,000 for MLC (multi-level cell) flash memory. Furthermore, the bit error rate of flash memory becomes rapidly high as the number of P/E cycles increases. To relieve these problems, we present a lifespan-aware reliability scheme, which adopts RAID technologies together with ECCs (error correction codes). First, our scheme dynamically manages the size of striping group to cope with the increasing error rates of flash memory as the number of P/E cycles increases. Second, we use a device-aware log block mapping scheme, which uses different reliability policies for data blocks and log blocks by taking advantage of the characteristics of each block type. Third, we use small amount of storage class memory (SCM) to save parity blocks temporarily. By absorbing frequent updates of parity into SCM, we can extend the lifespan of flash memory. Simulation experiments show that our scheme obtains high reliability with minimum space overhead as well as improved I/O performances compared to traditional RAID-5.

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

ssd (solid state drive)
ftl (flash translation layer)
nand flash memory


Fast Image Recovery Using Variable Splitting and Constrained Optimization We propose a new fast algorithm for solving one of the standard formulations of image restoration and reconstruction which consists of an unconstrained optimization problem where the objective includes an data-fidelity term and a nonsmooth regularizer. This formulation allows both wavelet-based (with orthogonal or frame-based representations) regularization or total-variation regularization. Our approach is based on a variable splitting to obtain an equivalent constrained optimization formulation, which is then addressed with an augmented Lagrangian method. The proposed algorithm is an instance of the so-called alternating direction method of multipliers, for which convergence has been proved. Experiments on a set of image restoration and reconstruction benchmark problems show that the proposed algorithm is faster than the current state of the art methods.

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

augmented lagrangian
image restoration
variable splitting

compressive sensing
convex optimization
image reconstruction
inverse problems
total variation
wavelets


Multi-class supervised classification of electrical borehole wall images using texture features Electrical borehole wall images represent micro-resistivity measurements at the borehole wall. The lithology reconstruction is often based on visual interpretation done by geologists. This analysis is very time-consuming and subjective. Different geologists may interpret the data differently. In this work, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) in combination with texture features is used for an automated lithology reconstruction of ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) borehole 1203A drilled during Leg 197. Six rock groups are identified by their textural properties in resistivity data obtained by a Formation MircoScanner (FMS). Although discriminant analysis can be used for multi-class classification, non-optimal decision criteria for certain groups could emerge. For this reason, we use a combination of 2-class (binary) classifiers to increase the overall classification accuracy. The generalization ability of the combined classifiers is evaluated and optimized on a testing dataset where a classification rate of more than 80% for each of the six rock groups is achieved. The combined, trained classifiers are then applied on the whole dataset obtaining a statistical reconstruction of the logged formation. Compared to a single multi-class classifier the combined binary classifiers show better classification results for certain rock groups and more stable results in larger intervals of equal rock type.

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

lithology reconstruction
discriminant analysis
texture features

micro-resistivity data
multi-class classification
binary classifier


Performance evaluation of turbo code over impulsive noise channel Performance of turbo codes over an impulsive noise channel is analyzed by extending an evaluation method over AWGN channels. Burst noise generation is considered with respect to the noise model by applying a hidden Markov model (HMM). A bound calculation method is derived by using a combined trellis which consists of code trellis and HMM trellis. In the simulation, an iterative decoder using the combined trellis into each component decoder is proposed. By using this method, the simulation results show the expectation of the coincidence with the calculated bounds at larger E-b/N-0 for various conditions. Search results of optimum component code using proposed bound are shown.

O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 force threshold-based position controller for legged locomotion Taking inspiration from local leg feedback control loops present in animal legs, a force threshold-based position (FTP) controller is presented to aid with legged locomotion over irregular terrain. The algorithm uses pre-planned position trajectories and force feedback to either elevate or depress the foot. The FTP controller isolates the control of each leg to use only localized feedback, which can result in greater responsiveness to the terrain when compared to a centralized controller arbitrating all of the joint positions in a high degree of freedom system. The controller is robust to terrain elevations without using visual sensors, a priori terrain information, inertial sensing or inter-leg communication. Results of the FTP controller applied to a hexapod system in simulation and on an experimental system are shown in this paper. The algorithm also has the potential for expansion to bipeds, quadrupeds and other biologically-inspired forms.

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

hexapod-walking biologically-inspired force-feedback local-leg-control uneven-terrain


Building access control models with attribute exploration The use of lattice-based access control models has been somewhat restricted by their complexity. We argue that attribute exploration from formal concept analysis can help create lattice models of manageable size, while making it possible for the system designer to better understand dependencies between different security categories in the domain and, thus, providing certain guarantees for the relevance of the constructed model to a particular application. In this paper, we introduce the method through an example.

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

mandatory access control models
lattice-based access control models
concept lattices
implications


Maximal Recovery Network Coding Under Topology Constraint Network coding (NC) within wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be viewed as the mapping of efficient channel codes to the data generated within the network. In particular, this perspective of code-on-network-graphs (CNG) can be exploited to map source data generated within WSN (of size K) to a variable nodes subset in low-density parity check (LDPC) codes. The resulting fixed size symbol stream when transmitted through the network suffers erasures. At sink, an average of z source symbols can be recovered by employing belief propagation decoding. In this paper, we determine CNG code ensembles that achieve maximal recovery (z/K) for different erasure rates and network topological constraints corresponding to node transmission range. An analytic framework to predict code performance under transmission range constraints is developed. Additionally, necessary condition for code stability was derived using fixed-point stability analysis. Optimal solutions for a WSN with 1000 nodes are determined using differential evolution algorithm. We outline a distributed algorithm for generating a sequence of encoded symbols adhering to the designed code ensemble. The performance of the designed CNG code is demonstrated to be superior to random NC and growth code based ensembles, as well as resilient to network size and inter-connectivity variations.

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

low-density parity check (ldpc) codes
network channel coding
network coding (nc)
partial recovery
wireless sensor networks (wsn)


An interactive bi-objective shortest path approach: searching for unsupported nondominated solutions In many network routing problems several conflicting objectives must be considered. Even for the bi-objective shortest path problem, generating and presenting the whole set of nondominated solutions (paths) to a decision maker, in general, is not effective because the number of these paths can be very large. Interactive procedures are adequate to overcome these drawbacks. Current et al. [1] proposed an interactive approach based on a NISE-like procedure to search for nondominated supported solutions and using auxiliar constrained shortest path problems to carry out the search inside the duality gaps. In this paper we propose a new interactive approach to search for unsupported nondominated solutions (lying inside duality gaps) based on a k-shortest path procedure. Both approaches are compared. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Performance analysis of carousel systems with double shuttle This paper deals with automated carousel systems which have been widely used in various industrial applications. We attempt to measure analytically the effects of double shuttle of the storage/retrieval machine on the throughput of standard and double carousel systems. For the double carousel system, a retrieval sequencing rule is proposed which utilizes the characteristics of two independently rotating sub-carousels. And then the expected four command cycle time models are developed under the proposed rule. Through sensitivity studies, we compare the performance of the two carousel systems working on the four command cycles with those on the dual command cycles. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

double carousel
double shuttle
four command cycle


an answer to a user's plea? An era of consumer awareness and power is upon us. Although the great Silent Majority of computer system users (or consumers) may not be aware of it yet, the dawn of their era of awareness and power is near! With the development of multiaccess computer systems and networks of computers, the user is beginning to get the opportunity to employ his choice of system to execute his programs. Even now, some fortunate users are no longer constrained to use the possibly inefficient services of the neighborhood computer monopoly, their organization's local computer center. They are able to run their programs at installations that give them the most for their money, merely by punching the buttons of their telephone. As this era dawns, directors of inefficient computer centers must be wary lest their empires wither from lack of users. But alas, the poor user! A few problems must be solved even as his era dawns! How does he know that computing at his local computer centre costs too much? How can he determine which system gives him the biggest bang for his buck?

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

network program organization service install developer locality computation


Influence of thoracic sympathectomy on cardiac induced oscillations in tissue blood volume The photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal, which measures cardiac-induced changes in tissue blood volume by light transmission measurements, shows spontaneous fluctuations. In this study, PPG was simultaneously measured in the right and left index fingers of 16 patients undergoing thoracic sympathectomy, and, from each PPG pulse, the amplitude of the pulse (AM) and its maximum (BL) were determined. The parameter AM/BL is proportional to the cardiac-induced blood volume increase, which depends on the arterial wall compliance. AM/BL increased after the thoracic sympathectomy treatment (for male patients, from 2.60 +/- 1.49% to 4.81 +/- 1.21%), as sympathetic denervation decreases arterial tonus in skin. The very low-frequency (VLF) fluctuations of BL or AM showed high correlation (0.90 +/- 0.11 and 0.92 +/- 0.07, respectively) between the right and left hands before the thoracic sympathectomy, and a significant decrease in the right-left correlation coefficient (to 0.54 +/- 0.22 and 0.76 +/- 0.20, respectively) after the operation. The standard deviation of the BL or AM VLF fluctuations also reduced after the treatment, indicating sympathetic mediation of the VLF PPG fluctuations. The study also shows that the analysis of the PPG signal and the VLF fluctuations of the PPG parameters enable the assessment of the change in sympathetic nervous system activity after thoracic sympathectomy.

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

sympathetic nervous system
thoracic sympathectomy


A two-stage hybrid flowshop scheduling problem with a function constraint and unrelated alternative machines This article addresses a two-stage hybrid flowshop scheduling problem with unrelated alternative machines. The problem to be studied has m unrelated alternative machines at the first machine center followed by a second machine center with a common processing machine in the system. The objective is to minimize the makespan of the system. For the processing of any job, it is assumed that the operation can be partially substituted by other machines in the first center, depending on its machining constraints. Such scheduling problems occur in certain practical applications such as semiconductors, electronics manufacturing, airplane engine production, and petrochemical production. We demonstrate that the addressed problem is NP-hard and then provide some heuristic algorithms to solve the problem efficiently. The experimental results show that the combination of the modified Johnson's rule and the First-Fit rule provides the best solutions within all proposed heuristics. Scope and purpose A survey of the scheduling literature reveals that although a lot of research focusing on FSm1,m2 has been done, no study has taken the functional constraint and unrelated alternative machines cases into account simultaneously. However, such scheduling problems occur in certain practical manufacturing environments such as semiconductors, electronics manufacturing, airplane engine production, and petrochemical production. Hence, the purpose of this report is to propose some efficient heuristics for solving the FSm1,m2 problem. For the addressed problem, first, we demonstrate that the problem belongs to an NP case; then, 16 heuristics are provided for dealing with the problem. The computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of the heuristics.

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

hybrid flowshop scheduling
unrelated alternative machines


identification via location-profiling in gsm networks As devices move within a cellular network, they register their new location with cell base stations to allow for the correct forwarding of data. We show it is possible to identify a mobile user from these records and a pre-existing location profile, based on previous movement. Two different identification processes are studied, and their performances are evaluated on real cell location traces. The best of those allows for the identification of around 80\% of users. We also study the misidentified users and characterise them using hierarchical clustering techniques. Our findings highlight the difficulty of anonymizing location data, and firmly establish they are personally identifiable.

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

identification
location profile
cellular network


Wireless sensing and identification based on radar cross section variability measurement of passive electromagnetic sensors In this paper, we present the wireless measurement of various physical quantities from the analysis of the radar cross section variability of passive electromagnetic sensors. The technique uses a millimeter frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar for both remote sensing and wireless identification of sensors. Long reading ranges (up to some decameters) are reached at the expense of poor measurement resolution (typically 10%). A review of recent experimental results is reported for illustration purposes.

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

wireless sensor network
passive sensor
backscattering
frequency modulation
fmcw radar
millimeter wave
chipless rfid


Analyzing the capabilities of crowdsourcing services for text summarization This paper presents a detailed analysis of the use of crowdsourcing services for the Text Summarization task in the context of the tourist domain. In particular, our aim is to retrieve relevant information about a place or an object pictured in an image in order to provide a short summary which will be of great help for a tourist. For tackling this task, we proposed a broad set of experiments using crowdsourcing services that could be useful as a reference for others who want to rely also on crowdsourcing. From the analysis carried out through our experimental setup and the results obtained, we can conclude that although crowdsourcing services were not good to simply gather gold-standard summaries (i.e., from the results obtained for experiments 1, 2 and 4), the encouraging results obtained in the third and sixth experiments motivate us to strongly believe that they can be successfully employed for finding some patterns of behaviour humans have when generating summaries, and for validating and checking other tasks. Furthermore, this analysis serves as a guideline for the types of experiments that might or might not work when using crowdsourcing in the context of text summarization.

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

text summarization
crowdsourcing services

information retrieval
crowdflower
mechanical turk


Robust exponential stability criteria of uncertain stochastic systems with time-varying delays This article investigates the problem of delay-dependent exponential stability in mean square for continuous-time linear stochastic systems with structured uncertainties and time-varying delays. By applying descriptor model transformation of the systems, a new type of Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is constructed, and by introducing some free weighting matrices, some new delay-dependent and delay-independent stability criteria are derived respectively in terms of an LMI algorithm. The new stability criteria are less conservative than existing results. Numerical examples demonstrate that the new criteria are effective and are an improvement over existing results.

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

stochastic systems
exponential stability in mean square

time-varying delays
linear matrix inequality


Cellular automata computations and secret key cryptography In this paper, cellular automata (CAs) are used to design a symmetric key cryptography system based on Vernam cipher. CAs are applied to generate a pseudo-random numbers sequence (PNS) which is used during the encryption process. The quality of PNSs highly depends on the set of applied CA rules. Rules of radius r=1 and 2 for nonuniform one-dimensional CAs have been considered. A new set of rules has been discovered using an evolutionary technique called cellular programming. This set provides very high quality encryption, and the system is very resistant to attempts of breaking the cryptography key.

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

cellular automata
cellular programming
symmetric key cryptography
vernam cipher


The complete proof on the optimal ordering policy under cash discount and trade credit Huang ((2005), 'Buyer's Optimal Ordering Policy and Payment Policy under Supplier Credit', International Journal of Systems Science, 36, 801-807) investigates the buyer's optimal ordering policy and payment policy under supplier credit. His inventory model is correct and interesting. Basically, he uses an algebraic method to locate the optimal solution of the annual total relevant cost TRC(T) and ignores the role of the functional behaviour of TRC(T) in locating the optimal solution of it. However, as argued in this article, Huang needs to explore the functional behaviour of TRC(T) to justify his solution. So, from the viewpoint of logic, the proof about Theorem 1 in Huang has some shortcomings such that the validity of Theorem 1 in Huang is questionable. The main purpose of this article is to remove and correct those shortcomings in Huang and present the complete proofs for Huang.

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 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


A survey of digital forensic investigator decision processes and measurement of decisions based on enhanced preview This work focuses on two studies: a survey of digital forensic investigators' investigation and decision processes, and a study of the accuracy of decisions to exclude an exhibit from receiving further in-depth analysis based on an enhanced preview. This study describes the surveyed investigators' generalized investigation process model in terms of the investigators' decisions, including social considerations. It is shown that decision-making based on a less in-depth enhanced preview of exhibits helped to accurately exclude unrelated exhibits before receiving an in-depth analysis while always including exhibits that contained relevant suspect data in child exploitation material investigations.

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


Fuzzy arithmetic based on dimension-adaptive sparse grids: A case study of a large-scale finite element model under uncertain parameters Fuzzy arithmetic provides a powerful tool to introduce uncertainty into mathematical models. With Zadeh's extension principle, one can obtain a fuzzy-valued extension of any real-valued objective function. An efficient and accurate approach to computing expensive multivariate functions of fuzzy numbers is given by fuzzy arithmetic based on sparse grids. In many cases, not all uncertain input parameters carry equal weight, or the objective model exhibits separable structure. These characteristics can be exploited by dimension-adaptive algorithms. As a result, the treatment of even higher-dimensional problems becomes possible. This is demonstrated in this paper by a case study involving two large-scale finite element models in vibration engineering that are subjected to fuzzy-valued input data.

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

fuzzy numbers
extension principle
sparse grids

computing fuzzy functions
uncertainty modeling


Empowering recommender systems using trust and argumentation We investigate integration of fuzzy and argumentation based trust in reasoning. As the acceptance of the arguments increases, so does users trust in the system. The approach can be implemented for any recommendation application. It can resolve conflicts in opinions about a product and improve recommendations. The proposed approach generates more accurate, relevant and novel recommendations.

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

recommendation trust argumentation reasoning


A new approach to fuzzy regression models with application to business cycle analysis Recently, fuzzy regression analysis has been largely applied in the modeling of economic or financial data. However, those data often exhibit certain kinds of linguistic terms, for instance: very good, a little reclining or stable, in the business cycle or the growth rate of GDP, etc. The goal of this paper is to construct a fuzzy regression model by fuzzy parameters estimation using the fuzzy samples. It deals with imprecise measurement of observed variables, fuzzy least square estimation and nonparametric methods. This is different from the assumptions as well as the estimation techniques of the classical analysis. Empirical results demonstrate that our new approach is efficient and more realistic than the traditional regression analysis. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

O O O O B I O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 parameter
triangular membership function
h-cut
methods of least square


Design and optimization of distributed sensing coverage in wireless sensor networks For many sensor network applications, such as military surveillance, it is necessary to provide full sensing coverage to a security-sensitive area while, at the same time, minimizing energy consumption and extending system lifetime by leveraging the redundant deployment of sensor nodes. In this paper, we propose a surveillance service for sensor networks based on a distributed energy-efficient sensing coverage protocol. In the protocol, each node is able to dynamically decide a schedule for itself to guarantee a certain degree-of-coverage (DOC) with average energy consumption inversely proportional to the node density. Several optimizations and extensions are proposed to enhance the basic design with a better load-balance feature and a longer network lifetime. We consider and address the impact of the target size and the unbalanced initial energy capacity of individual nodes to the network lifetime. Several practical issues such as the localization error, irregular sensing range, and unreliable communication links are addressed as well. Simulation shows that our protocol extends system lift-time significantly with low energy consumption. It outperforms other state-of-the-art schemes by as much as 50% reduction in energy consumption and as much as 130% increase in the half- life of the network.

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

algorithms
performance
energy conservation


natural language processing technologies for developing a language learning environment So far, Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) comes in many different flavors. Our research work focuses on developing an integrated e-learning environment that allows improving language skills in specific contexts. Integrated e-learning environment means that it is a Web-based solution that performs language learning tasks using common working environments like, for instance, Web browsers or Email clients. It should be accessible on different platforms, even on mobile devices. Natural Language Processing (NLP) forms the technological basis for developing such a learning framework. The paper gives an overview of the state-of-the-art in this area. Therefore, on the one hand, it explains creation processes for NLP resources and gives an overview of corpora. On the other hand, it describes existing NLP standards. Based on our requirements, the paper gives special attention to the evaluation and comparison of toolkits that can suitably support the planned implementation. An outlook at the end points out necessary developments in e-learning to keep in mind.

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

computer-assisted language learning
integrated e-learning
semantic web technologies
learning of foreign languages


Kinematic synthesis of a four-link mechanism with rolling contacts for motion and function generation In this paper, the kinematic synthesis of a four-link mechanism with rolling contacts is investigated. This mechanism comprises a two-fingered gripper and a grasped object. The synthesis equations used for motion generation and function generation are established. The number of free choices in design variables for the kinematic synthesis is also discussed. Furthermore, the optimization-based numerical technique is applied to solve the design equations. The optimized solutions are illustrated to discuss the kinematic states of the mechanism. It is also shown that the optimization-based method is effective in finding the admissible synthesis solution of the mechanism. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

rolling contacts
motion generation
function generation


Designing online auctions with past performance information We investigate the value of past performance information in the context of keyword advertising auctions, where advertisers differ both in valuation-per-click and in the numbers of clicks they can generate (their performance). We focus on weighted unit-price-contract (UPC) auctions, in which bidders bid unit prices and pay accordingly if they win, and their bids are weighted by factors based on their own past performance. We characterize the efficient and the revenue-maximizing weighting factors and apply our framework to study Yahoo!'s and Google's auction designs, each of which can be viewed as a special case of weighted UPC auctions.

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

search engine
google
multi-dimensional values


a tuplespace event model for mashups Inter-widget communication is essential for enterprise mashup applications. To implement it, current mashup platforms use the publish/subscribe pattern. However, the way publish/subscribe is used in these platforms requires a lot of manual wiring between widgets. In this paper, we propose a new Unified Widget Event Model (UWEM), which is conceptually an extension of Linda tuplespaces. UWEM separates event publishers and subscribers in space, time, and reference. Using the Keyboard-Level Model (KLM) we show that UWEM requires fewer operations to build typical mashups than conventional mashup platforms. We have implemented UWEM in a popular enterprise mashup framework, and performed an empirical study that compares UWEM with the established approach for creating mashups. The study confirms the KLM predictions, and shows that UWEM is significantly more efficient than the established approach.

O B B I 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 B B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O 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 class of bottleneck expansion problems In this paper we consider how to increase the capacities of the elements in a set E efficiently so that the capacity of a given family of subsets of E can be increased to the maximum extent while the total cost for the increment of capacity is within a given budget bound. We transform this problem into finding the minimum weight element of when the weight of each element of E is a linear function of a single parameter and propose an algorithm for solving this problem. We further discuss the problem for some special cases. Especially, when E is the edge set of a network and the family consists of all spanning trees, we give a strongly polynomial algorithm. There are many capacity expansion problems in real life. For example, a transportation network may need to increase the flow capacity, and a production system may need to enhance its productive ability. It is quite often that the capacity of a scheme is decided by its bottleneck capacity, i.e. the capacity of the weakest part, and people need to choose from all possible schemes the one with the largest bottleneck capacity. Mathematically, this is a maxmin problem. Capacity expansion is unavoidably related to the available budget. So, we need to consider how to use the limited budget to expand the bottleneck capacity to the largest extent. The purpose of the paper is to give a general method for a class of bottleneck expansion problems which is easy to use and obtains solutions in polynomial time.

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

bottleneck problem
inverse optimization problem
minimum-weight element problem
parametric linear programming


Sample-based estimation of correlation ratio with polynomial approximation Sensitivity analysis has become a natural step in the uncertainty analysis framework. As there is no general sensitivity measure that would capture all information on impact of input factors on model output, analysts tend to combine various measures to obtain a broader image of interactions between different modes. This article concentrates on the correlation ratio, demonstrates methods for calculating this quantity efficiently and accurately, and compares the results. A new method inspired by artificial intelligence techniques emerges as outperforming the familiar methods.

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 B I O O O 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 New Fair Non-repudiation Protocol for Secure Negotiation and Contract Signing The participation of an e-notary, acting as an on-line Trusted Third Party is required in some scenarios, such as Business to Business, Intellectual Property Rights contracting, or even as a legal requirement, in contract signing is frequently necessary. This e-notary gives validity to the contract or performs some tasks related to the contract, e. g. contract registration. In the abovementioned contracting scenarios, two important additional features are needed: the negotiation of the e-contract and confidentiality. However, until now, e-contract signing protocols have not considered these issues as an essential part of the protocol. In this paper, we present a new protocol which is designed to make negotiation and contract signing processes secure and confidential. Moreover, compared to other previous proposals based on an on-line Trusted Third Party, this protocol reduces the e-notary's workload. Finally, we describe how the protocol is being used to achieve agreements on the rights of copyrighted works.

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

fair exchange
contract signing protocol
intellectual property rights contracts


Simulation study of the cardiovascular functional status in hypertensive situation An extended cardiovascular model was established based on our previous work to study the consequences of physiological or pathological changes to the homeostatic functions of the cardiovascular system. To study hemodynamic changes in hypertensive situations, the impacts of cardiovascular parameter variations (peripheral vascular resistance, arterial vessel wall stiffness and baroreflex gain) upon hemodynamics and the short-term regulation of the cardiovascular system were investigated. For the purpose of analyzing baroregulation function, the short-term regulation of arterial pressure in response to moderate dynamic exercise for normotensive and hypertensive cases was studied through computer simulation and clinical experiments. The simulation results agree well with clinical data. The results of this work suggest that the model presented in this paper provides a useful tool to investigate the functional status of cardiovascular system in normal or pathological conditions.

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

cardiovascular system
hemodynamics
baroregulation


enhanced hierarchical classification via isotonic smoothing Hierarchical topic taxonomies have proliferated on the World Wide Web [5, 18], and exploiting the output space decompositions they induce in automated classification systems is an active area of research. In many domains, classifiers learned on a hierarchy of classes have been shown to outperform those learned on a flat set of classes. In this paper we argue that the hierarchical arrangement of classes leads to intuitive relationships between the corresponding classifiers' output scores, and that enforcing these relationships as a post-processing step after classification can improve its accuracy. We formulate the task of smoothing classifier outputs as a regularized isotonic tree regression problem, and present a dynamic programming based method that solves it optimally. This new problem generalizes the classic isotonic tree regression problem, and both, the new formulation and algorithm, might be of independent interest. In our empirical analysis of two real-world text classification scenarios, we show that our approach to smoothing classifier outputs results in improved classification accuracy.

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

hierarchical classification
dynamic programming

regularized isotonic regression
taxonomy


Power-saving mechanisms for energy efficient IEEE 802.16e/m Efforts to reduce CO2 emission regarded as a main reason of the green house effect are widely performed in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. In particular, as fast growing mobile communications services consume more energy, there are wide efforts to increase energy efficiency in the area of Mobile Station (MS), radio Base Stations (BS), network controllers, and core networks. User's concern, however, is more focused on optimization of energy efficiency in MS with limited battery capacity, because MS consumes much energy for wide broadband data services in data-centric communications services with 4G technology rather than legacy voice-centric communications services. The key idea of power saving mechanism (PSM) in MS is to operate sleep-mode that the MS turns down main elements when there is no data to receive/transmit in order to save battery power. With legacy voice-centric communication services, traffic pattern is rather simple and well-known so that the sleep-mode of PSM is well operated. However, in 4G technology for various data-centric services power saving mechanism should be adaptive to changing traffic condition in order to achieve optimal energy efficiency. Thus, holistic perspective for power saving techniques is needed in consideration of characteristics of services and QoS constraints, multiple applications support, remained battery power, handover process, Multicast Broadcast Service (MBS) support, and so on. This paper surveys various power saving mechanisms proposed for IEEE 802.16e/m. We first present the basic operating mechanism of PSM and research issues for performance enhancement. Based on their limitations and potentials, we then review several proposals of PSM for IEEE 802.16m, an evolutional technology of IEEE 802.16e. It will be interesting for readers to observe that once PSM was standardized in IEEE 802.16e, many new ideas have been proposed to improve the performance of the original PSM, and some of them are survived and adopted to new standard technique in the advanced IEEE 802.16m.

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

ieee 802.16e/m
power-saving mechanism
sleep-mode


Crime hotspot mapping using the crime related factors-a spatial data mining approach The technique of Hotspot Mapping is widely used in analysing the spatial characteristics of crimes. The spatial distribution of crime is considered to be related with a variety of socio-economic and crime opportunity factors. But existing methods usually focus on the target crime density as input without utilizing these related factors. In this study, we introduce a new crime hotspot mapping tool-Hotspot Optimization Tool (HOT). HOT is an application of spatial data miming to the field of hotspot mapping. The key component of HOT is the Geospatial Discriminative Patterns (GDPatterns) concept, which can capture the differences between two classes in a spatial dataset. Experiments are done using a real world dataset from a northeastern city in the United States and the pros and cons of utilizing related factors in hotspot mapping are discussed. Comparison studies with the Hot Spot Analysis tool implemented by Esri ArcMap 10.1 validate that HOT is capable of accurately mapping crime hotspots.

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

hotspot optimization tool
geospatial discriminative pattern


Charge transport in high-? stacks for charge-trapping memory applications: A modeling perspective (invited) Charge trapping (CT) memories could be a promising technology option for further NAND Flash scaling. The assessment of the scalability limits and ultimate performances of this technology demands for the comprehensive understanding of the physical mechanisms governing device operation and reliability, which requires accurate physics-based models reproducing the electrical device characteristics. The basic features of the models presented in the literature for CT memory devices are reviewed, underlining their similarities and differences, and highlighting their importance in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the physical mechanisms responsible for CT device operation and reliability. A physical model describing the charge transport in nitride and high-? stacks is also presented, which allows gaining further insights into reliability issues related to charge localization and high-? tunnel and blocking dielectrics, like the effects of the blocking alumina layer and the band-gap engineered tunnel dielectrics on the TANOS device retention.

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

charge-trapping devices
high-? dielectrics
device physics
device modeling


Equilibria of Perceptrons for Simple Contingency Problems The contingency between cues and outcomes is fundamentally important to theories of causal reasoning and to theories of associative learning. Researchers have computed the equilibria of Rescorla-Wagner models for a variety of contingency problems, and have used these equilibria to identify situations in which the Rescorla-Wagner model is consistent, or inconsistent, with normative models of contingency. Mathematical analyses that directly compare artificial neural networks to contingency theory have not been performed, because of the assumed equivalence between the Rescorla-Wagner learning rule and the delta rule training of artificial neural networks. However, recent results indicate that this equivalence is not as straightforward as typically assumed, suggesting a strong need for mathematical accounts of how networks deal with contingency problems. One such analysis is presented here, where it is proven that the structure of the equilibrium for a simple network trained on a basic contingency problem is quite different from the structure of the equilibrium for a Rescorla-Wagner model faced with the same problem. However, these structural differences lead to functionally equivalent behavior. The implications of this result for the relationships between associative learning, contingency theory, and connectionism are discussed.

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

artificial neural networks
associative learning
contingency


heuristics for dependency conjectures in proteomic signaling pathways A key issue in the study of protein signaling networks is understanding the relationships among proteins in the network. Understanding these relationships in the context of a network is one of the major challenges for modern biology [2, 6]. In the laboratory a time series of protein modification measurements is taken in order that relationships among the activations can be conjectured. Laubenbacher and Stigler [5] have developed an algorithm to make conjectures concerning gene expression. Their algorithm analyses the relations as variables in polynomials, using techniques based in computational algebra. This paper focuses on heuristics for applying their method to conjecture dependencies between proteins in signal transduction networks.

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

glycolysis regulation
proteomics
computational biology


using model checking with symbolic execution to verify parallel numerical programs We present a method to verify the correctness of parallel programs that perform complex numerical computations, including computations involving floating-point arithmetic. The method requires that a sequential version of the program be provided, to serve as the specification for the parallel one. The key idea is to use model checking, together with symbolic execution, to establish the equivalence of the two programs.

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

program
use
method
parallel
correctness
version
symbolic execution
model checking

parallel programming
spin
high performance computing
message passing interface
mpi
finite state verification
numerical program
complexity
concurrency
floating-point


Comprehensive study of mixed eccentricity fault diagnosis in induction motors using signature analysis Modeling and simulation studies of an induction motor always help in identifying the parameter to characterize the asymmetrical fault in the machine. Hence in this paper, an air gap eccentric induction motor is modeled using multiple coupled circuit approach and 2D-Modified Winding Function Theory. The machine model is simulated under different eccentricity conditions to obtain the motor current spectra, power spectra and power factor spectra to detect the eccentricity related frequency components and the results are compared. All these analysis are based on the variation in the amplitude of mixed eccentricity related frequency component in these parameters with the variation in the level of eccentricity in the machine. A new fault severity detection method based on co-variance analysis is presented to predict the degree of deterioration in the health of the machine due to air gap eccentricity from the installation stage.

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

eigen value
modified winding function theory
motor current signature analysis (mcsa)
psd analysis


predicting the volume of comments on online news stories On-line news agents provide commenting facilities for readers to express their views with regard to news stories. The number of user supplied comments on a news article may be indicative of its importance or impact. We report on exploratory work that predicts the comment volume of news articles prior to publication using five feature sets. We address the prediction task as a two stage classification task: a binary classification identifies articles with the potential to receive comments, and a second binary classification receives the output from the first step to label articles "low" or "high" comment volume. The results show solid performance for the former task, while performance degrades for the latter.

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


providing time- and space- efficient procedure calls for asynchronous software thread integration Asynchronous Software Thread Integration (ASTI) provides fine-grain concurrency in real-time threads by statically scheduling (integrating) code from primary threads into secondary threads, reducing the context switching needed and allowing recovery of fine-grain idle time. Unlike STI, ASTI allows asynchronous thread progress.Current ASTI techniques do not support procedure calls in the secondary thread because they lead to timing conflicts during static scheduling. ASTI requires knowing the secondary thread's instruction execution schedule to guide placement of real-time instructions from the primary thread. A secondary thread procedure called from multiple sites will have ambiguous timing at compile time.In this paper we remove this constraint using both procedure inlining and cloning. We present a formal approach to choosing a subset of calls to inline and to remove the timing conflicts in the remaining call sites in an efficient fashion. Excessive inlining and cloning both lead to code size explosion, while poor choices in timing conflict elimination slow program execution. The cloned threads show a significant speedup when compared to non-cloned versions yet have low code expansion. The techniques presented here have been implemented in our post-pass compiler Thrint and demonstrated on a benchmark suite of secondary threads representative of low-end embedded systems.

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

fine-grain concurrency
hardware to software migration


A Hybrid Speech Emotion Recognition System Based on Spectral and Prosodic Features In this paper, we present a hybrid speech emotion recognition system exploiting both spectral and prosodic features in speech. For capturing the emotional information in the spectral domain, we propose a new spectral feature extraction method by applying a novel non-uniform subband processing, instead of the mel-frequency subbands used in Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC). For prosodic features, a set of features that are closely correlated with speech emotional states are selected. In the proposed hybrid emotion recognition system, due to the inherently different characteristics of these two kinds of features (e.g., data size), the newly extracted spectral features are modeled by Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and the selected prosodic features are modeled by Support Vector Machine (SVM). The final result of the proposed emotion recognition system is obtained by combining the results from these two subsystems. Experimental results show that (1) the proposed non-uniform spectral features are more effective than the traditional MFCC features for emotion recognition; (2) the proposed hybrid emotion recognition system using both spectral and prosodic features yields the relative recognition error reduction rate of 17.0% over the traditional recognition systems using only the spectral features, and 62.3% over those using only the prosodic features.

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

speech emotion recognition
spectral feature

non-uniform subband processing
prosodic feature


Finding multiple global optima for unconstrained discrete location problems We consider a class of problems where a given number p of facility locations must be selected from a set of s potential locations so as to optimize a pre-determined fitness function. There exist outstanding location problems in this class, such as the p-median, max-covering, MAXCAP, and MAXPROFIT problems. These location problems may contain more than a single global optimal solution. Obtaining multiple global optimal solutions allows us to consider other characteristics in the process of selecting the preferred solution. In [B. Pelegrin, J. Redondo, P. Fernandez, I. Garcia, and P. Ortigosa, GASUB: Finding global optima to discrete location problems by a genetic-like algorithm, J. Glob. Optim. 38 (2007), pp. 249-264], a new 'multimodal' algorithm (gasub) was presented for solving the previously mentioned location problems. In the paper, the algorithm was fine-tuned to obtain a single global optimum (with 100% success) as fast as possible, and it was compared with two widely used techniques, that is, the standard optimizer Xpress-MP [Xpress-MP, Dashoptimization, 2004.] and the Multi Start Heuristic. In this paper, we propose a new set of parameter values so that gasub can explore the space more deeply and consequently find several alternative global optimal solutions. Moreover, two coarse-grain parallelizations of gasub are presented, cggasub and cggasub_mo. cggasub is able to reduce the computational time of gasub where solutions of the same quality are generated, while cggasub_mo finds more alternative global optima than the sequential version and spending similar computational time in the process. gasub, with the new parameter setting and also the parallel algorithms, will be evaluated using a comprehensive computational set of experiments. Additionally, some criteria can also be used to select one of the known global optimal solutions when several alternatives optimize the corresponding objective function.

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

global optimization
evolutionary computing
multimodal genetic algorithms


A theoretical study on the hydrolysis mechanism of carbon disulfide The hydrolysis mechanism of CS2 was studied using density functional theory. By analyzing the structures of the reactant, transition states, intermediates, and products, it can be concluded that the hydrolysis of CS2 occurs via two mechanisms, one of which is a two-step mechanism (CS2 first reacts with an H2O, leading to the formation of the intermediate COS, then COS reacts with another H2O, resulting in the formation of H2S and CO2). The other is a one-step mechanism, where CS2 reacts with two H2O molecules continuously, leading to the formation of H2S and CO2. By analyzing the thermodynamics and the change in the kinetic function, it can be concluded that the rate-determining step involves H and OH in H2O attacking S and C in CS2, respectively, causing the C=S double bond to change into a single bond. The two mechanisms are competitive. When performing the hydrolysis of CS2 with a catalyst, the optimal temperature is below 252 degrees C.

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


The development and initial testing of the Internet Consequences Scales (ICONS) The Internet has become a tool for everyday use in the lives of many people; however, little is known about the consequences of using the Internet on the well-being of individuals. This article describes the development of the Internet Consequences Scale (ICONS), a tool to measure the physical, behavioral, economic, and psychosocial consequences of Internet use. Content validity was established using a panel of experts in Internet communications, and construct validity was established using a confirmatory factor analysis. Reliability of the ICONS was established statistically using Cronbach's alpha. The result was a 44-item tool containing four subscales to measure the consequences of Internet use.

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

internet consequences scale
instrument development


Image Contrast Enhancement by Global and Local Adjustment of Gray Levels Various contrast enhancement methods such as histogram equalization (HE) and local contrast enhancement (LCE) have been developed to increase the visibility and details of a degraded image. We propose an image contrast enhancement method based on the global and local adjustment of gray levels by combining HE with LCE methods. For the optimal combination of both, we introduce a discrete entropy. Evaluation of our experimental results shows that the proposed method outperforms both the HE and LCE methods.

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

contrast enhancement
histogram equalization


Fuzzy control of an underactuated robot with a fuzzy microcontroller In this work the position control of a planar underactuated manipulator with two revolute joints is considered. A dynamic model of the system is presented and a fuzzy control strategy is proposed. Fuzzy logic allows empirical rules to be translated into a control algorithm. A fuzzy microcontroller is adopted for the practical implementation of the system. The results of several experiments are presented and discussed.

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

underactuated robots
non-holonomic systems
nonlinear systems control


A case study in embedded systems design: An Engine Control Unit A number of techniques and software tools for embedded system design have been recently proposed. However, the current practice in the designer community is heavily based on manual techniques and on past experience rather than on a rigorous approach to design. To advance the state of the art it is important to address a number of relevant design problems and solve them to demonstrate the power of the new approaches. We chose an industrial example in automotive electronics to validate our design methodology: an existing commercially available Engine Control Unit. We discuss in detail the specification, the implementation philosophy, and the architectural trade-off analysis. We analyze the results obtained with our approach and compare them with the existing design underlining the advantages offered by a systematic approach to embedded system design in terms of performance and design time.

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

hardware/software co-design
hardware/software co-simulation
architecture selection and mapping
automotive applications


A study of the effect of term proximity on query expansion Query expansion terms are often used to enhance original query formulations in document retrieval. Such terms are usually selected from the entire documents or from windows or passages surrounding query term occurrences. Arguably, the semantic relatedness between terms weakens with the increase in the distance separating them. In this paper we report a study that was conducted to systematically evaluate different distance functions for selecting query expansion terms. We propose a distance factor that can be effectively combined with the statistical term association measure of mutual information for selecting query expansion terms. Evaluation of the TREC collection shows that distance-weighted mutual information is more effective than mutual information alone in selecting terms for query expansion.

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

query expansion
term proximity
mutual information


A SEVA soft sensor method based on self-calibration model and uncertainty description algorithm Soft sensors are widely used to estimate process variables that are difficult to measure online. However, due to poor quality of input data and deterioration of prediction model as time passes, soft sensors make poor performance. We have been constructing a principal component analysis (PCA) model before performing a prediction. Furthermore, the just-in-time (JIT) learning model has been improved and served as prediction model for self validating (SEVA) soft sensors. The proposed soft sensor not only carries out internal quality assessment but also generates multiple types of output data, including the prediction values (PV), input sensor status (ISS), validated measurement (VM), output sensor status (OSS) and the uncertainty values (UV) which represent the credibility of soft sensors' output. The effectiveness of the proposed SEVA soft sensors is demonstrated through a case study of a wastewater treatment process. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Compact and adaptive spatial pyramids for scene recognition Most successful approaches on scene recognition tend to efficiently combine global image features with spatial local appearance and shape cues. On the other hand, less attention has been devoted for studying spatial texture features within scenes. Our method is based on the insight that scenes can be seen as a composition of micro-texture patterns. This paper analyzes the role of texture along with its spatial layout for scene recognition. However, one main drawback of the resulting spatial representation is its huge dimensionality. Hence, we propose a technique that addresses this problem by presenting a compact Spatial Pyramid (SP) representation. The basis of our compact representation, namely, Compact Adaptive Spatial Pyramid (CASP) consists of a two-stages compression strategy. This strategy is based on the Agglomerative Information Bottleneck (AIB) theory for (i) compressing the least informative SP features, and, (ii) automatically learning the most appropriate shape for each category. Our method exceeds the state-of-the-art results on several challenging scene recognition data sets. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

scene recognition
spatial pyramids
texture

dimensionality reduction
agglomerative information theory


Design of on-line algorithms using hitting times Random walks are well known for playing a crucial role in the design of randomized off-line as well as on-line algorithms. In this work we prove some basic identities for ergodic Markov chains (e.g., an interesting characterization of reversibility in Markov chains is obtained in terms of first passage times). Besides providing new insight into random walks on weighted graphs, we show how these identities give us a way of designing competitive randomized on-line algorithms for certain well-known problems.

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

random walk
graph
markov chain
competitive ratio
first passage time
m-matrices


DYNAMIC BACKGROUND SUBTRACTION BASED ON LOCAL DEPENDENCY HISTOGRAM Traditional background subtraction methods perform poorly when scenes contain dynamic backgrounds such as waving tree branches, spouting fountain, illumination changes, camera jitters, etc. In this paper, from the view of spatial context, we present a novel and effective dynamic background method with three contributions. First, we present a novel local dependency descriptor, called local dependency histogram (LDH), to effectively model the spatial dependencies between a pixel and its neighboring pixels. The spatial dependencies contain substantial evidence for differentiating dynamic background regions from moving objects of interest. Second, based on the proposed LDH, an effective approach to dynamic background subtraction is proposed, in which each pixel is modeled as a group of weighted LDHs. Labeling a pixel as foreground or background is done by comparing the LDH computed in current frame against its model LDHs. The model LDHs are adaptively updated by the current LDH. Finally, unlike traditional approaches using a fixed threshold to judge whether a pixel matches to its model, an adaptive thresholding technique is also proposed. Experimental results on a diverse set of dynamic scenes validate that the proposed method significantly outperforms traditional methods for dynamic background subtraction.

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

dynamic background
background subtraction
spatial dependencies
adaptive thresholding


Segmentation of kidney from ultrasound images based on texture and shape priors This paper presents a novel texture and shape priors based method for kidney segmentation in ultrasound (US) images. Texture features are extracted by applying a bank of Gabor filters on test images through a two-sided convolution strategy. The texture model is constructed via estimating the parameters of a set of mixtures of half-planed Gaussians using the expectation-maximization method. Through this texture model, the texture similarities of areas around the segmenting curve are measured in the inside and outside regions, respectively. We also present an iterative segmentation framework to combine the texture measures into the parametric shape model proposed by Leventon and Faugeras. Segmentation is implemented by calculating the parameters of the shape model to minimize a novel energy function. The goal of this energy function is to partition the test image into two regions, the inside one with high texture similarity and low texture variance, and the outside one with high texture variance. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated through experimental results on both natural images and US data compared with other image segmentation methods and manual segmentation.

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

texture and shape prior
ultrasound image processing


data consistency for p2p collaborative editing Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are very efficient for distributing content. We want to use this potential to allow not only distribution but collaborative editing of this content. Existing collaborative editing systems are centralised or depend on the number of sites. Such systems cannot scale when deployed on P2P networks. In this paper, we propose a new model for building a collaborative editing system. This model is fully decentralised and does not depend on the number of sites.

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 B I O O O O O O O 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

concurrency control
cscw
optimistic replication


Extension of the VIKOR method for group decision making with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy information The aim of this paper is to extend the VIKOR method for multiple attribute group decision making in interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy environment, in which all the preference information provided by the decision-makers is presented as interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices where each of the elements is characterized by interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number, and the information about attribute weights is partially known, which is an important research field in decision science and operation research. First, we use the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid geometric operator to aggregate all individual interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices provided by the decision-makers into the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix, and then we use the score function to calculate the score of each attribute value and construct the score matrix of the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix. From the score matrix and the given attribute weight information, we establish an optimization model to determine the weights of attributes, and then determine the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution and interval-valued intuitionistic negative-ideal solution. We use the different distances to calculate the particular measure of closeness of each alternative to the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution. According to values of the particular measure, we rank the alternatives and then select the most desirable one(s). Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.

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

multiple attribute group decision making (magdm)

interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number (ivifn)


Multiobjective regression modifications for collinearity In this work we develop a new multivariate technique to produce regressions with interpretable coefficients that are close to and of the same signs as the pairwise regression coefficients. Using a multiobjective approach to incorporate multiple and pairwise regressions into one objective we reduce this technique to an eigenproblem that represents a hybrid between regression and principal component analyses. We show that our approach corresponds to a specific scheme of ridge regression with a total matrix added to the matrix of correlations. One of the main goals of multiple regression modeling is to assess the importance of predictor variables in determining the prediction. However, in practical applications inference about the coefficients of regression can be difficult because real data is correlated and multicollinearity causes instability in the coefficients. In this paper we present a new technique to create a regression model that maintains the interpretability of the coefficients. We show with real data that it is possible to generate a model with coefficients that are similar to easily interpretable pairwise relations of predictors with the dependent variable, and this model is similar to the regular multiple regression model in predictive ability.

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

multiobjective optimization
principal component analysis
net effects


Efficient block-wise temporally consistent contour extraction in image sequences In this paper we investigate the problem of temporally consistent consecutive contour extraction in image sequences, including both single and multiple boundaries. By formulating this problem in the form of an optimal surface detection in 3D volume, we are able to resort to a graph-theoretic approach for exact solution. In order to cope with the high computational complexity caused by the potential unboundedness in time (i.e., an image sequence can be arbitrarily long) and heavy noise, we propose three approximate block-wise variants to accelerate the solution process. The effectiveness and efficiency of our approach is exemplarily demonstrated on simulated data and real ultrasound data for arterial wall detection. It is shown that the approximate variants dramatically reduce the computation time without loss of solution quality.

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

temporal consistency
graph search
block-wise approximation


Terminating constraint set satisfiability and simplification algorithms for context-dependent overloading Algorithms for constraint set satisfiability and simplification of Haskell type class constraints are used during type inference in order to allow the inference of more accurate types and to detect ambiguity. Unfortunately, both constraint set satisfiability and simplification are in general undecidable, and the use of these algorithms may cause non-termination of type inference. This paper presents algorithms for these problems that terminate on any given input, based on the use of a criterion that is tested on each recursive step. The use of this criterion eliminates the need of imposing syntactic conditions on Haskell type class and instance declarations in order to guarantee termination of type inference in the presence of multi-parameter type classes, and allows program compilation without the need of compiler flags for lifting such restrictions. Undecidability of the problems implies the existence of instances for which the algorithm incorrectly reports unsatisfiability, but we are not aware of any practical example where this occurs.

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

haskell
constraint set satisfiability
termination