Understanding Perceived Trust to Reduce Regret Trust is fundamental for promoting the use of online services, such as e-commerce or e-health. Understanding how users perceive trust online is a precondition to create trustworthy marketplaces. In this article, we present a domain-independent general trust perception model that helps us to understand how users make online trust decisions and how we can help them in making the right decisions, which minimize future regret. We also present the results of a user study describing the weight that different factors in the model (e.g., security, look&feel, and privacy) have on perceived trust. The study identifies the existence of a positive correlation between the user's knowledge and the importance placed on factors such as security and privacy. This indicates that the impact factors as security and privacy have on perceived trust is higher in users with higher knowledge.

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


Studying endocytosis in space and time by means of temporal Boolean models Endocytosis is a process by which cells carry traffic from the extracellular space into various intracellular compartments. Visualization of fluorescently tagged clathrin proteins (mediators of endocytosis) allows us to image endocytosis in real time. When imaging the plasma membrane, areas of fluorescence generated by different endocytic processes overlap spatially and temporally, forming random clumps. Here, a sequence of segmented clathrin spots is considered a realization of a non-isotropic 3D Boolean model. Estimates of the intensity, the mean perimeter and the density function of the durations of endocytic events are obtained.

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 B 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 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

total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (tirfm)


Semioticians Make Strange Bedfellows! Or, Once Again: Is Language a Primary Modelling System? Like other sciences, biosemiotics also has its time-honoured archive, consisting of writings by those who have been invented and revered as ancestors of the discipline. One such example is Jakob von Uexkll. As to the people who invented him, they are either, to paraphrase a French clich, agents du cosmopolitisme smiotique like Thomas Sebeok, or de jure and de facto progenitor like Thure von Uexkll. In the archive is the special issue of Semiotica 42. 1 (1982) edited by the late Sebeok and introduced by Thure von Uexkll. It is in the opening essay that Thure von UexkIl tries to restore Jakob von Uexklls role as a precursor of semiotics by negotiating the Elder with Saussure and the linguistics-oriented semiology in his wake. However, semiotic mapping, in the strictly disciplinary sense, of Jakob von Uexkll is no easy task because he knew neither Peirce nor Saussure and did not use their terminology (Thure von Uexkll 1982,2). Because Thure prefers to call the Elders science general semiotics (Thure von Uexkll 1982), this paper begins by assessing Thure von Uexklls semiotic configuration of Jakob, probe into the force and limits of the linguistic analogy, revisit the already time-honoured debate on the primary and secondary modelling systems, which was made famous by the Moscow-Tartu semioticians in the early 1970s, but severely criticized by Sebeok and his followers. The paper engages Sebeok from several fronts, directed first at his relegation of the Saussurian linguistic model, then at his critique of the Primary Modelling System, and finally at his reservation about evolutionism in light of the current debate on gene/meme co-evolution.

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

biosemiotics
linguistic model
jakob von uexkll
thure von uexkll

ferdinand de saussure
juri lotman
the primary/secondary modelling systems
evolution


A diagrammatic approach to investigate interval relations This paper describes several diagrammatic tools developed by the author for representing the space of intervals and especially interval relations. The basic tool is a two-dimensional, diagrammatic representation of space of intervals, called an MR-diagram. A diagrammatic notation based on it, called a W-diagram, is the main tool for representing arrangement (or Allen's) interval relations. Other auxiliary diagrams, like conjunction and lattice diagrams, are also introduced. All these diagrammatic tools are evaluated by their application to various representational and reasoning tasks of interval relations research, producing also certain new results in the field. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

interval relations
diagrammatic representation
diagrammatic notation

interval algebra
time intervals
interval diagrams
diagrammatic reasoning


a flower analogy of e-commerce infrastructure development in malaysia and singapore This paper identifies and relates important e-commerce development components using flower analogy. This paper also highlights the importance of maintenance on each component, known as maintenance culture, which is much the same way as nurturing and growing a beautiful and healthy flower. Finally, the paper evaluates the development of e-commerce in Malaysia and Singapore based on the flower analogy. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the balanced growth of each vital component to achieve successful deployment of e-commerce in developing countries.

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 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

e-commerce framework
e-commerce
e-commerce model


Evaluation of salient point techniques In image retrieval, global features related to color or texture are commonly used to describe the image content. The problem with this approach is that these global features cannot capture all parts of the image having different characteristics. Therefore, local computation of image information is necessary. By using salient points to represent local information, more discriminative features can be computed. In this paper, we compare a wavelet-based salient point extraction algorithm with two corner detectors using the criteria: repeatability rate and information content. We also show that extracting color and texture information in the locations given by our salient points provides significantly improved results in terms of retrieval accuracy, computational complexity, and storage space of feature vectors as compared to global feature approaches.

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

salient points
information content
repeatability rate


construction of portfolio optimization system using genetic network programming with control nodes Many evolutionary computation methods applied to the financial field have been reported. A new evolutionary method named "Genetic Network Programming" (GNP) has been developed and applied to the stock market recently. In this paper a portfolio optimization system based on Genetic Network Programming with control nodes is presented, which makes use of the information from Technical Indices and Candlestick Chart. The proposed optimization system, consisting of technical analysis rules, are trained to generate trading advice. The experimental results on the Japanese stock market show that the proposed optimization system using GNP with control nodes outperforms other traditional models and Buy&Hold method in terms of both accuracy and efficiency, and its effectiveness has been confirmed.

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

portfolio optimization
genetic network programming


supporting multi-point interaction in visual workspaces Multi-point interaction tasks involve the manipulation of several mutually-dependent control points in a visual workspace -- for example, adjusting a selection rectangle in a drawing application. Multi-point interactions place conflicting requirements on the interface: the system must display objects at sufficient scale for detailed manipulation, but it must also provide an efficient means of navigating from one control point to another. Current interfaces lack any explicit support for tasks that combine these two requirements, forcing users to carry out sequences of zoom and pan actions. In this paper, we describe three novel mechanisms for view control that explicitly support multi-point interactions with a single mouse, and preserve both visibility and scale for multiple regions of interest. We carried out a study to compare two of the designs against standard zoom and pan techniques, and found that task completion time was significantly reduced with the new approaches. The study shows the potential of interfaces that combine support for both scale and navigation.

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


Incorporating transfer reliability into equilibrium analysis of railway passenger flow Passengers transfer route choice behavior is one of the prominent research topics in the field of railway transportation. Existing traffic assignment approaches do not properly account for passengers expectation for transfer reliability. In this study, the transfer reliability is explicitly defined and a multi-class user equilibrium model is established, given which passengers choose the minimal-cost path based on their expected reliability thresholds. In particular, a path-based traffic assignment algorithm which combines a k-shortest path algorithm and the method of successive averages is proposed. The validity of the proposed approach is verified by an illustrative example. Using the proposed modeling approach, it is possible to determine the passengers collective route choice behavior based on the user equilibrium pattern. Moreover, the railway timetables can be evaluated and optimized based on the cost-based level of service estimation.

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

transportation
reliability
equilibrium analysis


IN-Tune: An in-situ non-invasive performance tuning tool for multi-threaded Linux on symmetric multiprocessing Pentium workstations This paper documents the design and implementation of the IN-Tune software tool suite, which enables a user to collect real-time code and hardware profiling information on Intel-based symmetric multiprocessors running the Linux operating system, IN-Tune provides a virtually non-invasive tool for performance analysis and tuning of programs. Unlike other analysis tools, IN-Tune isolates data with respect to individual threads. It also utilizes performance monitoring hardware registers to permit instrumentation of individual threads as they run in-situ, thus collecting data with appropriate considerations for a multiprocessor environment. Data can be sampled using two different mechanisms. First, the user can collect data by making calls to the system upon the occurrence of specific software events. Secondly, data can be collected at a fixed, fine grain (e.g. 1-10 microseconds) interval using either software or hardware interrupts, To allow observation of codes for which source code modification is impractical or impossible, a 'shell' task is created which permits monitoring without code modification. Although this work deals with Intel processors and Linux, the widespread availability of performance monitoring registers in modern processors makes this work widely applicable. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

performance profiling
pentium performance counters
multithreading
computer performance


Time-Resolved Fluorescence Imaging of Islet Cell Autoantibodies Time-resolved fluorescence of lanthanide chelates has been widely used in bioanalytical assays. Long fluorescence time, large Stokes shift, and minute fading out of the fluorescence over years are major advantages of the lanthanides over the conventional fluorescent dyes. We have now applied time-resolved fluorescence imaging (TRFI) also for measurement of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM)-related islet cell autoantibodies (ICA). Retaining the accuracy of conventional ICA, TRFI has over 10 times better signal-to-noise ratio than the conventional fluorochromes. The technology allows objective determination of fluorescence intensity with the camera and computer software, and serial dilutions for obtaining the antibody titer in autoantibody-positive samples are unnecessary.We now describe the TRFI as a method and its application for measurement of ICA

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

type 1 diabetes
islet cell autoantibodies
lanthanides

children
time-resolved fluorescence imaging


Looking back at dense linear algebra software Growing gap of processormemory communication affects linear algebra software. CPU/GPU hybridization creates challenging design combinations for legacy libraries. Loop restructuring methods include vectorization, chaining, blocking, and tiling. Scheduling techniques cover bulk-synchronous, SPMD, asynchronous, and dataflow. The effects of increased parallelism on numerical properties are briefly discussed.

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

decompositional approach
parallel algorithms


On entropy of fuzzy sets In this paper we deal with the entropy of fuzzy sets. We first review several defined entropies of fuzzy sets and then propose a new one. Some comparisons are made with some existing entropies to show the effectiveness of the proposed one.

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


Are predefined decoy sets of ligand poses able to quantify scoring function accuracy? Due to the large number of different docking programs and scoring functions available, researchers are faced with the problem of selecting the most suitable one when starting a structure-based drug discovery project. To guide the decision process, several studies comparing different docking and scoring approaches have been published. In the context of comparing scoring function performance, it is common practice to use a predefined, computer-generated set of ligand poses (decoys) and to reevaluate their score using the set of scoring functions to be compared. But are predefined decoy sets able to unambiguously evaluate and rank different scoring functions with respect to pose prediction performance? This question arose when the pose prediction performance of our piecewise linear potential derived scoring functions (Korb et al. in J Chem Inf Model 49:84-96, 2009) was assessed on a standard decoy set (Cheng et al. in J Chem Inf Model 49:1079-1093, 2009). While they showed excellent pose identification performance when they were used for rescoring of the predefined decoy conformations, a pronounced degradation in performance could be observed when they were directly applied in docking calculations using the same test set. This implies that on a discrete set of ligand poses only the rescoring performance can be evaluated. For comparing the pose prediction performance in a more rigorous manner, the search space of each scoring function has to be sampled extensively as done in the docking calculations performed here. We were able to identify relative strengths and weaknesses of three scoring functions (ChemPLP, GoldScore, and Astex Statistical Potential) by analyzing the performance for subsets of the complexes grouped by different properties of the active site. However, reasons for the overall poor performance of all three functions on this test set compared to other test sets of similar size could not be identified.

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

ranking
conformational space
sampling
active-site properties


Crop rotation model for contract farming with constraints on similar profits We study smallholder farmers ask to have similar profits with the other farmers in addition to the maximal profits. We propose an intelligent algorithm to find the optimal rotation scheduling for the model. Significant savings can be obtained with an optimal crop scheduling for all farmers.

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


Searching worst cases of a one-variable function using lattice reduction We propose a new algorithm to find worst cases for the correct rounding of a mathematical function of one variable. We first reduce this problem to the real small value problem-i.e., for polynomials with real coefficients. Then, we show that this second problem can be solved efficiently by extending Coppersmith's work on the integer small value problem-for polynomials with integer coefficients-using lattice reduction. For floating-point numbers with a mantissa less than N and a polynomial approximation of degree d, our algorithm finds all worst cases at distance less than Nd2/2d+1 from a machine number in time O(Nd+1/2d+1epsilon). For d = 2, a detailed study improves on the O(N2/3+epsilon) complexity from Lefevre's algorithm to O(N4/7+epsilon). For larger d, our algorithm can be used to check that there exist no worst cases at distance less than N-k in time O(N1/2+epsilon).

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 arithmetic
multiple precision arithmetic
special function approximations


Synaptic noise as a means of implementing weight-perturbation learning Weight-perturbation (WP) algorithms for Supervised and/or reinforcement learning offer improved biological plausibility over backpropagation because of their reduced Circuitry requirements for realization in neural hardware. This paper explores the hypothesis that biological synaptic noise might serve as the substrate by which weight perturbation is implemented. We explore the basic synaptic noise hypothesis (BSNH), which embodies the weakest assumptions about the underlying neural circuitry required to implement WP algorithms. This paper identifies relevant biological constraints consistent with the BSNH, taxonomizes existing WP algorithms with regard to consistency with those constraints. and proposes a new WP algorithm that is fully consistent with the constraints. By comparing the learning effectiveness of these algorithms via simulation Studies, it is found that all of the algorithms can support traditional neural network learning tasks and have similar generalization characteristics, although the results suggest a trade-off between learning efficiency and biological accuracy.

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

synaptic noise
weight perturbation
backpropagation

stochastic error descent
parallel learning


A DE-based approach to no-wait flow-shop scheduling This paper proposes an effective hybrid differential evolution (HDE) for the no-wait flow-shop scheduling problem (FSSP) with the makespan criterion, which is a typical NP-hard combinational optimization problem. Firstly, a largest-order-value (LOV) rule is presented to transform individuals in DE from real vectors to job permutations so that the DE can be applied for solving FSSPs. Secondly, the DE-based parallel evolution mechanism and framework is applied to perform effective exploration, and a simple but efficient local search developed according to the landscape of FSSP is applied to emphasize problem-dependent local exploitation. Thirdly, a speed-up evaluation method and a fast Insert-based neighborhood examining method are developed based on the properties of the no-wait FSSPs. Due to the hybridization of DE-based evolutionary search and problem-dependent local search as well as the utilization of the speed-up evaluation and fast neighborhood examining, the no-wait FSSPs can be solved efficiently and effectively. Simulations and comparisons based on well-known benchmarks demonstrate the efficiency, effectiveness, and robustness of the proposed HDE. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

no-wait flow-shop scheduling
hybrid algorithm
speed-up evaluation method
exploration and exploitation


Fitting State Space Models with EViews This paper demonstrates how state space models can be fitted in EViews. We first briefly introduce EViews as an econometric software package. Next we fit a local level model to the Nile data. We then show how a multivariate "latent risk" model can be developed, making use of the EViews programming environment. We conclude by summarizing the possibilities and limitations of the software package when it comes to state space modeling.

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

kalman filter
state space methods
unobserved components


A characterization of PQI interval orders We provide an answer to an open problem concerning the representation of preferences by intervals. Given a finite set of elements and three relations on this set (indifference, weak preference and strict preference), necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for representing the elements of the set by intervals in such a way that (1) two elements are indifferent when the interval associated to one of them is included in the interval associated to the other; (2) an element is weakly preferred to another when the interval of the first is more to the right than the interval of the other, but the two intervals have a non-empty intersection; (3) an element is strictly preferred to another when the interval of the first is more to the right than the interval of the other and their intersection is empty.

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

intervals
interval orders
indifference
weak preference
strict preference


An efficient algorithm for rank and subspace tracking Traditionally, the singular value decomposition (SVD) has been used in rank and subspace tracking methods. However, the SVD is computationally costly, especially when the problem is recursive in nature and the size of the matrix is large. The truncated ULV decomposition (TULV) is an alternative to the SVD. It provides a good approximation to subspaces for the data matrix and can be modified quickly to reflect changes in the data. It also reveals the rank of the matrix. This paper presents a TULV updating algorithm. The algorithm is most efficient when the matrix is of low rank. Numerical results are presented that illustrate the accuracy of the algorithm. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

singular value decomposition
subspace tracking
ulv decomposition

modifying decompositions
rank estimation


A comparative study of feature extraction methods and their application to P-RBF NNs in face recognition problem This study is concerned with a design of a face recognition algorithm realized based on feature extraction with the aid of the 2-directional 2-dimensional linear discriminant analysis referred to as (2D)2LDA. The 2DLDA algorithm yields high accuracy, but comes with an unresolved problem of handling large feature matrices present in face recognition problems. The proposed (2D)2LDA algorithm is computationally more efficient and produces more powerful discrimination decision. The proposed P-RBF NNs is used as a recognition module. The architecture of this module consists of three functional components. The coefficients of the P-RBF NNs model are obtained by fuzzy inference method forming the inference part of fuzzy rules. The essential design parameters (including learning rate, momentum, fuzzification coefficient, and the feature selection mechanism) of the networks are optimized by means of differential evolution (DE). The experimental results reported for benchmark face datasets the Yale, ORL database, and IC&CI dataset demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of (2D)2LDA algorithm compared with other pre-processing approaches such as LPP, 2D-PCA, 2D-LPP, SR, PCA, (2D)2PCA and fusion of PCA-LDA. The experimental results show that (2D)2LDA based P-RBF NNs achieves higher performance than being reported by other 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

(2d)2lda (two-directional two-dimensional linear discriminant analysis)

p-rbf nns (polynomial-based radial basis function neural networks)


3D shape retrieval by Poisson histogram Defining a compact and robust shape descriptor is the most important issue in 3D shape retrieval. This paper proposes a new shape descriptor called Poisson histogram, which can capture shape structure feature very well. Moreover, it is robust under different geometry processing and has low feature dimension for efficient indexing. Poisson histogram can be defined by the following two steps. Firstly, we use Poisson equation to define a 3D shape signature. Secondly, we derive a histogram-based shape descriptor by accumulating the values of the defined signature in bins. To verify the performance of Poisson histogram, we perform an experimental comparison on McGill database of 3D shapes. Results show that Poisson histogram is better than several existing histogram-based shape descriptors both in retrieving accuracy and retrieving efficiency.

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

3d shape retrieval
shape descriptor
poisson histogram


Quasi-minimal degrees for degree spectra We prove the following properties of quasi-minimal degrees for the degree spectrum of a structure. There are uncountably many quasi-minimal degrees for every degree spectrum. The first jump spectrum of every structure consists exactly of the enumeration jumps of the quasi-minimal degrees for the degree spectrum. Every element of the first jump spectrum could be represented as the join of two quasi-minimal degrees for the degree spectrum.

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

enumeration degrees
forcing
quasi-minimal degrees


Design and dynamic simulation of minimal metallo-proteins Ab initio in silico design of proteins and enzymes has emerged as a powerful tool to design application-tailored proteins and catalysts for a wide range of applications. Several enzymes exploit the unique features of metal cofactors to achieve catalytic activity otherwise unattainable through the use of only natural amino acid residues. One of the major bottlenecks in ab initio design of novel proteins relies on long-range and epistatic effects that severely limit the possibility of a rational design. Within this framework there is an ongoing effort to reduce protein length and complexity to unlock the full potential of in silico protein design. In this work we specifically address this problem designing and investigating the dynamic features of 10 in silico designed minimal metallo-proteins. In particular, in this paper we investigate whether and to what extent it is possible to design a minimal metallo-enzyme made of only residues involved in metal binding. In this research we address these questions by investigating the ability of 10 different "mini-proteins" with a length shorter than 15 residues. Molecular dynamics studies clearly show that it is possible to design a minimal protein able to bind a metal atom with the correct geometry. It is noteworthy that designed mini-proteins cannot achieve the formation of a canonical hydrophobic core, rather the metal ion provides a "metal core" around which the entire protein is organized. This opens the possibility of designing synthetic enzymes composed of only functional residues organized around a "metal core" which acts as both structural and functional determinat.

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

copper
minimal metallo-proteins
structural bioinformatics


generation of run-time environments Attribute grammars have been used for many years for automated compiler construction. Attribute grammars support the description of semantic analysis, code generation and some code optimization in a formal declarative style. Other tools support the automation of lexical analysis and parsing. However, there is one large part of compiler construction that is missing from our toolkit: run-time environments. This paper introduces an extension of attribute grammars that supports the generation of run-time environments. The extension also supports the generation of interpreters, symbolic debugging tools, and other execution-time facilities. /

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

generation
environments
analysis
support
paper
code optimization
toolkit
automation
attribute grammars
debugging
tools
parsing

formalism
interpretation
semantic analysis
compilation
extensibility
timing
code generation
grammar


Context-based naming in information bases In information bases following semantic and object-oriented data models, logical names are used for the external identification of objects. Yet the naming schemes employed are not "natural" enough and several problems often arise: logical names can be ambiguous, excessively long, unrelated to or unable to follow the changes of the environment of the named object. In natural language, similar problems are resolved by the context within which words are used. An approach to introducing a notion of context in an information base is to provide structuring mechanisms for decomposing it into possibly overlapping parts. This paper focuses on developing a context mechanism for an information base and, in particular, exploiting this mechanism for naming purposes. Rules are developed for generating meaningful names for objects by taking their context into account. This context-based naming enhances name readability, resolves name ambiguities, saves a lot of redundant name substrings, and it localizes and thus facilitates consistency checking, query processing and update operations. In modeling, it supports systematic naming of objects, and thus enhances cooperation between the designers and the end-users in the sense that the contents of the information base are more understandable by both of them.

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


A surface remeshing technique for a Lagrangian description of 3D two-fluid flow problems Classical Lagrangian schemes applied to update the front position between two immiscible incompressible fluids have been long recognized to provide a sharp representation of the interface. However, the main drawback of these approaches is the progressive distortion in the distribution of the markers used to identify the material front. To avoid this problem, a 3D interface remeshing algorithm is proposed in this work. In addition, the remeshed front is enforced to preserve the global volume. These aspects are incorporated in an existing fluid dynamics formulation for the analysis of two-fluid flows problems. The resulting formulation, called as the 3D-moving Lagrangian interface remeshing technique, is applied in the numerical analysis of two-fluid flow problems. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 fluid mechanics
two-fluid flows
moving interfaces
lagrangian interface description
fixed mesh flow formulation


Frequency of Occurrence Analysis Attack and its Countermeasure This paper addresses a newly discovered security threat named Frequency of Occurrence Analysis (FOA) attack in searchmetics password authentication scheme. A countermeasure technique that utilises Metaheuristic Randomisation Algorithm (MRA) is proposed to address the FOA attack. The proposed algorithm is presented and an offline FOA attack simulation tool is developed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method In addition, a shoulder surfing testing is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of mitigating shoulder surfing attack. The experiment results show that MRA is able to prevent FOA and mitigate shoulder surfing attacks. Moreover, the proposed method is able to provide larger password space compare to the benchmarking scheme.

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

picture-based password
graphical authentication


Consultation system for determining the patients readiness for weaning from long-term mechanical ventilation Determining the readiness of the patient for weaning from long-term mechanical ventilation with high degree of accuracy is a prerequisite for successful weaning attempt. A computer system for the determination of the moment for beginning the weaning process is proposed and realized as a program package WeaningMV. It is designed on the basis of four classification methods: stepwise discriminant analysis, stepwise logistic regression; intuitionistic fuzzy Voronoi diagrams and non-pulmonary weaning index, applied to 17 features (variables). The system is designed and preliminary tested on 151 patients with features in two classes not ready for weaning and ready for weaning and it has a high degree for sensitivity (0.99) and specificity (0.89). After the application of the system in the everyday physician's practice a set of 72 patients has been examined. For that set the sensitivity is 0.92 and the specificity 0.88. The system consults the medical team on the basis of objective processing of the information contained in the data and is suitable for use in the clinical practice as well as in the training of the respective specialists.

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

consultation system
mechanical ventilation
weaning


The ill-conditioning of infinite element stiffness matrices In this paper, a method for improving the conditioning of infinite element stiffness matrices is proposed and examined for one-dimensional and two-dimensional infinite elements. This method is a preconditioning technique which is based on a Gram-Schmidt-like transformation induced by general sesquilinear forms. Although the preconditioning method can be applied to many types of infinite elements, it will be applied to improve the conditioning of the popular multipole infinite element. The paper is concluded with numerical examples demonstrating improved conditioning and convergence properties of the preconditioned multipole infinite element. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

unbounded domain problems
ill-conditioning


RNA multiple structural alignment with longest common subsequences In this paper, we present a new model for RNA multiple sequence structural alignment based on the longest common subsequence. We consider both the off-line and on-line cases. For the off-line case, i.e., when the longest common subsequence is given as a linear graph with n vertices, we first present a polynomial O(n(2)) time algorithm to compute its maximum nested loop. We then consider a slightly different problem-the Maximum Loop Chain problem and present an algorithm which runs in O(n(5)) time. For the on-line case, i.e., given m RNA sequences of lengths n, compute the longest common subsequence of them such that this subsequence either induces a maximum nested loop or the maximum number of matches, we present efficient algorithms using dynamic programming when m is small.

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

longest common subsequence
dynamic programming


An efficient cut-based algorithm on minimizing the number of L-shaped channels for safe routing ordering Because definition of L-shaped channels in a floorplan graph breaks all the cyclic precedence constraints in a building block layout, routing space in a layout can be fully separated and defined as straight and L-shaped channels to guarantee a safe routing ordering. However, L-shaped channel routing is more difficult than straight channel routing. Hence, it is necessary for the completion of detailed routing to minimize the number of L-shaped-channels in channel definition of a floorplan graph. In this paper, based on a geometrical topology of a floorplan graph and precedence relations in a channel precedence graph, cuts in a floorplan graph are classified into S-cuts, redundant L-cuts, balanced L-cuts, nonminimal L-cuts, noncritical L-cuts and critical L-cuts. An efficient cut-based algorithm on minimizing the number of L-shaped channels in channel definition of a floorplan graph is proposed, and the time complexity of our cut-based algorithm is proved to be in O(n) time, where n is the number of line segments in a floorplan graph. Finally, several examples have been tested on Dal's algorithm [5], Cai's algorithm [15] and our cut-based algorithm, respectively. The experimental results show that our cut-based algorithm defines fewer L-shaped channels in a floorplan graph than Dai's algorithm and Cai's algorithm to guarantee a safe routing ordering.

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


Strategic integration in UK manufacturing companies This paper discusses the results of two pieces of empirical work which investigated strategic integration in a sample of UK manufacturing companies. Although there have been calls for improved links between marketing and manufacturing, the results show that, in practice, the strategic link between these two functions is still weak. However, this problem is considered by companies as primarily an infrastructural one, with cross-functional teams, bi-directional communication and the sharing of common goals viewed as key elements of functional integration.

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

marketing manufacturing integration empirical


Model checking real-time value-passing systems In this paper, to model check real-time value-passing systems, a formal language Timed Symbolic Transition Graph and a logic system named Timed Predicate mu- Calculus are proposed. An algorithm is presented which is local in that it generates and investigates the reachable state space in top-down fashion and maintains the partition for time evaluations as coarse as possible while on-the-fly instantiating data variables. It can deal with not only data variables with finite value domain, but also the so called data independent variables with infinite value domain. To authors knowledge, this is the first algorithm for model checking timed systems containing value-passing features.

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

real-time
value-passing
timed predicate mu-calculus


Metamorphoses through lie group action We formally analyze a computational problem which has important applications in image understanding and shape analysis. The problem can be summarized as follows. Starting from a group action on a Riemannian manifold M, we introduce a modification of the metric by partly expressing displacements on M as an effect of the action of some group element. The study of this new structure relates to evolutions on M under the combined effect of the action and of residual displacements, called metamorphoses. This can and has been applied to image processing problems, providing in particular diffeomorphic matching algorithms for pattern recognition.

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

groups of diffeomorphisms
infinite-dimensional shape spaces
geodesics
shape recognition
image registration


evaluation on fpga of triple rail logic robustness against dpa and dema Side channel attacks are known to be efficient techniques to retrieve secret data. In this context, this paper concerns the evaluation of the robustness of triple rail logic against power and electromagnetic analyses on FPGA devices. More precisely, it aims at demonstrating that the basic concepts behind triple rail logic are valid and may provide interesting design guidelines to get DPA resistant circuits which are also more robust against DEMA.

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

side-channel attacks
dema logic style
des
cpa


SNR Scalability Based on Matching Pursuits In this paper, SNR scalable representations of video signals are studied. The investigated codecs are well suited for communications applications because they are all based on backward motion-compensated predictive coding, which provides the necessary low-delay property. In a very-low bit rate context (VLBR), the matching pursuits (MP) signal representation algorithm is used to represent the displaced frame difference (DFD) of each layer of a multilevel decomposition of the video signal. A number of conventional prediction schemes that can be generalized to any DFD representation technique are considered. They are compared with an original and MP specific DFD prediction method. Two scenari have been considered. In the first scenario, an enhancement layer is built on a base layer that has been encoded using a classical, i.e., nonscalable scheme. In that case, all methods appear to be comparable. In the second scenario, the fact that the base layer is used as a reference for an enhancement layer is taken into account to build it. In that case, the proposed MP prediction method clearly outperforms all other conventional approaches. Additional lessons can be drawn from this work. The same motion vectors can be used in both SNR layers, and the DFD prediction between layers improves coding efficiency. Moreover, the MP representation of the signal enable us to measure the predictability of the high SNR layer DFD from the low SNR layer DFD, i.e., to quantify the part of the low SNR layer information that also belongs to the high SNR layer.

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


Fractal boundaries of basin of attraction of Newton-Raphson method in helicopter trim A key problem in helicopter aeroelastic analysis is the enormous computational time required for a numerical solution of the nonlinear system of algebraic equations required for trim, particularly when free wake models are used. Trim requires calculation of the main rotor and tail rotor controls and the vehicle attitude which leads to the six steady forces and moments about the helicopter center of gravity to be zero. An appropriate initial estimate of the trim state is needed for successful helicopter trim. This study aims to determine the control inputs that can have considerable effect on the convergence of trim solution in the aeroelastic analysis of helicopter rotors by investigating the basin of attraction of the nonlinear equations (set of initial guess points from which the nonlinear equations converge). It is illustrated that the three main rotor pitch controls of collective pitch, longitudinal cyclic pitch and lateral cyclic pitch have a significant contribution to the convergence of the trim solution. Trajectories of the Newton iterates are shown and some ideas for accelerating the convergence of a trim solution in the aeroelastic analysis of helicopters are proposed. It is found that the basins of attraction can have fractal boundaries. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

fractals
newton-raphson method
system of nonlinear algebraic equations


SMT-Based Bounded Model Checking for Embedded ANSI-C Software Propositional bounded model checking has been applied successfully to verify embedded software, but remains limited by increasing propositional formula sizes and the loss of high-level information during the translation preventing potential optimizations to reduce the state space to be explored. These limitations can be overcome by encoding high-level information in theories richer than propositional logic and using SMT solvers for the generated verification conditions. Here, we propose the application of different background theories and SMT solvers to the verification of embedded software written in ANSI-C in order to improve scalability and precision in a completely automatic way. We have modified and extended the encodings from previous SMT-based bounded model checkers to provide more accurate support for variables of finite bit width, bit-vector operations, arrays, structures, unions, and pointers. We have integrated the CVC3, Boolector, and Z3 solvers with the CBMC front-end and evaluated them using both standard software model checking benchmarks and typical embedded software applications from telecommunications, control systems, and medical devices. The experiments show that our ESBMC model checker can analyze larger problems than existing tools and substantially reduce the verification time.

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


Equal-order finite elements with local projection stabilization for the DarcyBrinkman equations For the DarcyBrinkman equations, which model porous media flow, we present an equal-order H1-conforming finite element method for approximating velocity and pressure based on a local projection stabilization technique. The method is stable and accurate uniformly with respect to the coefficients of the viscosity and the zeroth order term in the momentum equation. We prove a priori error estimates in a mesh-dependent norm as well as in the L2-norm for velocity and pressure. In particular, we obtain optimal order of convergence in L2 for the pressure in the Darcy case with vanishing viscosity and for the velocity in the general case with a positive viscosity coefficient. Numerical results for different values of the coefficients in the DarcyBrinkman model are presented which confirm the theoretical results and indicate nearly optimal order also in cases which are not covered by the theory.

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

porous media flow
darcybrinkman equations
local projection stabilization


Ensemble modeling of transport and dispersion simulations guided by machine learning hypotheses generation In this article an approach is presented where machine learning classifiers are used to drive an ensemble modeling method of multiple atmospheric transport and dispersion simulations. The goal is to achieve a higher spread of the results with a lower number of ensemble simulations. Symbolic machine learning algorithms are used to define choices for the variation of meteorological input data, model parameters, model physics, based on their combined effects on the final dispersion calculations (i.e., construction of ensembles). The methodology uses an iterative approach with the aim to identify ensemble members leading to a more balanced distribution of results. The methodology is tested using real meteorological data from Istanbul, Turkey, simulating atmospheric releases along the Bosphorus channel. In an extensive evaluation, different settings of the approach are compared in a series of experiments. The results indicate that the desired effect of more balanced results of the ensemble members can be achieved by the approach.

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

ensemble modeling
machine learning
transport and dispersion simulations


Optical Amplifiers Placement in WDM Mesh Networks for Optical Multicasting Service Support The problem of placing optical amplifiers (OAs) in wavelength-routing mesh networks has been studied in the literature in two contexts: network provisioning [1] and connections provisioning [2]. In this paper, we introduce optimal and heuristic solutions for the network provisioning problem. The solution is based on constructing a multicast forest for each multicast connection with the goal of minimizing the total number of OAs needed in the network, hence reducing its cost. The optimal solution is formulated as a mixed integer linear program (MILP). On the other hand, the heuristic solution is obtained by dividing the problem into subproblems and solving them separately while taking the interdependency between these subproblems into consideration. The results obtained from both solutions are compared and they are found to be a good match.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 amplifiers placement problem
all-optical multicasting
power aware multicasting


Simple precoding algorithms using GramSchmidt orthonormalization process for multiuser relay communications with optimized power allocation This paper proposes a new simple precoding solution based on the GramSchmidt orthonormalization to be used at the relay station of a multirelay wireless networks where the different mobile stations belong to the same network, in order to mitigate the multiuser interference at each mobile station. The strength of this method is that it only requires the knowledge of all channel impulse responses from a given relay to all the mobile stations. In other words, to compute its precoding vectors, each relay does not need to know the channel impulse responses of the channels of other relays. Unlike the centralized reference method where each mobile station benefits from the same diversity gain, using this algorithm, some mobile stations will improve their diversity gain at the cost of a loss in the diversity gain of other users. This constitutes a simple solution to supply different qualities of service in the case of a multiservices network. Furthermore, this work proposes an optimized power allocation between the relays. Analytical and accurate performance analyses for the different studied contexts are provided.

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

cooperative diversity gain
gramschmidt algorithm
multiuser interference mitigation
expectation maximization
power allocation optimization


Optimizing Instruction Scheduling through Combined In-Order and O-O-O Execution in SMT Processors The resource sharing nature of Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) processors and the presence of long latency instructions from concurrent threads make the instruction scheduling window (IW), which is a primary shared component among key pipeline structures in SMT, a performance bottleneck. Due to the tight constraints on its physical size, the IW faces more severe pressure to handle the instructions from various threads while attempting to avoid resource monopolization by some low-ILP threads. It is particularly challenging to optimize the efficiency and fairness in IW utilization to fulfill the affordable performance by SMT under the shadow of long latency instructions. Most of the existing optimization, schemes in SMT processors rely on the fetch policy to control the instructions that are allowed to enter the pipeline, while little effort is put to control the long latency instructions that are already located in the IW. In this paper, we propose streamline buffers to handle the long latency instructions that have already entered the pipeline and clog the IW, while the controlling fetch policies take time to react. Each streamline buffer extracts from IW and holds a chain of instructions from a thread that are stalled by dependency on a long latency load. When the load value returns, the streamline buffer then serves these instructions directly to in-order execution, avoiding any instruction replay. This is done in supplement to the conventional IW that serves in parallel the other instructions for out-of-order (o-o-o) execution, Analysis of SPEC2000 integer and FP benchmarks reveals that instructions dependent on long latency loads, typically have their first source operand ready within 5 percent-15 percent of their total wait time in the IW. Our scheme is able to utilize this asymmetry in source operands' ready time to achieve a complexity effective design. As compared to the baseline SMT architecture, our design when working in conjunction with earlier proposed ICOUNT.2.8 fetch policy for 4-threads effectively reduces the IW full rate by 9.4 percent (11 percent for 2-thread), improves average IPC for MIXED workloads by 9.6 percent (8 percent for MEM workloads and 4.4 percent for CPU workloads), and fairness by 7.56 percent (7.24 percent for 2-thread). Similar enhancements are observed when run in conjunction with an RR.2.8 fetch policy. Further, our scheme when combined with DCRA improves the performance on the average by 21.7 percent, while DCRA improves by 16.3 percent when run alone.

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

instruction scheduling window (iw)
simultaneous multithreading (smt)
resource contention
instruction streamlining


Action recognition in still images by learning spatial interest regions from videos ? This paper addresses the problem of human action recognition in still images. This paper proposes a novel approach to learn interest regions from videos. This paper builds a Bayesian framework using learned interest regions and image local features for classification. This paper achieves high recognition rates compared to conventional image classification techniques.

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

non-negative matrix factorization
pose estimation
optical flow


efficient and secure keys management for wireless mobile communications This paper presents an efficient algorithm for the secure group key management of mobile users. The most promising protocols to deal with group key management are those based on logical key hierarchy (LKH). The LKH model reduces to logarithmic size the resources needed: computation time, message exchanged, and memory space. In the framework of the LKH model, we present a new protocol LKH++ that outperforms the other proposed solutions in the literature. Such performance improvements are obtained exploiting both the properties of one-way hash functions and the information that the users already share in the LKH model. In particular, when a user eviction occurs in LKH++, each remaining user autonomously constructs a new key along the path from the evicted user to the root as a function of a specific logical child key. Therefore, the center can carry on the re-keying phase by distributing only a subset of the new keys and by reducing the number of communications to the users. When a join occurs, a minimal information is broadcast, while most of the communications are unicast toward just the joining user. The proposed LKH++ protocol establishes a group communication of n users requiring to unicast (( n -1)log n )/2 keys, while standard algorithms require to deliver n log n keys. Such a solution allows the users to form promptly a new group if the wireless ad hoc network should be reconfigured. Moreover, the proposed extension to deal with mass leave and mass join allows a considerable savings in the messages sent by the center, as well as in the computations required by both the center and the users. Finally, the LKH++ protocol enhances the reliability of the key management due to the reduced number of communications needed in the re-keying phase.

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

key generation
secure multicast
distributed algorithms
backward secrecy
key management protocol
network dynamics management
forward secrecy
cryptography
collusion
key distribution
wireless communications


ON MAXIMIZING WELFARE WHEN UTILITY FUNCTIONS ARE SUBADDITIVE We consider the problem of maximizing welfare when allocating m items to n players with subadditive utility functions. Our main result is a way of rounding any fractional solution to a linear programming relaxation to this problem so as to give a feasible solution of welfare at least 1/2 that of the value of the fractional solution. This approximation ratio of 1/2 is an improvement over an Omega(1/log m) ratio of Dobzinski, Nisan, and Schapira [Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (Baltimore, MD), ACM, New York, 2005, pp. 610-618]. We also show an approximation ratio of 1-1/e when utility functions are fractionally subadditive. A result similar to this last result was previously obtained by Dobzinski and Schapira [Proceedings of the 17th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (Miami, FL), SIAM, Philadelphia, 2006, pp. 1064-1073], but via a different rounding technique that requires the use of a so-called "XOS oracle." The randomized rounding techniques that we use are oblivious in the sense that they only use the primal solution to the linear program relaxation, but have no access to the actual utility functions of the players.

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

combinatorial auctions
approximation algorithms


Encode Locally, Discriminate Holistically: A Method Extracting Multi-resolution Features for Facial Age Estimation To combine the global and local aging information of face images, this paper proposes a feature extraction method which can extract multi-resolution discriminative local features in a holistic way for age estimation. By using 2DPCA on the left side of the block matrixes, the face images are firstly transformed into lower dimensional representation matrixes whose rows can be seen as block-wise image representations in different resolutions. Discriminate features are then extracted holistically for each of the resolutions by viewing each row as a sample. Based on the weak estimator on each of the resolutions, an ensemble is finally constructed to perform the age estimation task. Experimental results confirm the reliability of the proposed method compared with related methods.

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


Psychosocial causes and consequences of pathological gaming Pathological use of computer and video games has been associated with indicators of psychosocial well-being, such as loneliness, low self-esteem, low social competence, and low life satisfaction. However, few studies have decisively demonstrated whether these indicators of psychosocial well-being are causes or consequences of pathological gaming. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a two-wave panel study among 851 Dutch adolescents (543 gamers). Causal relations were analyzed using autoregressive structural equation models. These analyses indicated that social competence, self-esteem, and loneliness were significant predictors of pathological gaming six months later. Thus, lower psychosocial well-being can be considered an antecedent of pathological gaming among adolescent gamers. Our analyses further indicated that loneliness was also a consequence of pathological gaming. This suggests that displacement of real-world social interaction resulting from pathological use of video games may deteriorate existing relationships, which could explain the increase in adolescent gamers feelings of loneliness.

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

game addiction
psychosocial well-being
longitudinal
youth


Modeling spatio-temporal constraints for multimedia objects The presentation of multimedia data is not only characterized by precise temporal constraints; also spatial constraints must be taken into account. An important requirement in multimedia systems is thus the integrated modeling of spatio-temporal constraints. Moreover, it is important to devise methods for checking the consistency of the specified constraints. In this paper, we first propose a spatio-temporal object graph (STOG) model that provides an integrated and graphical representation of spatio-temporal constraints. Second, we investigate consistency conditions between spatial and temporal constraints expressed in the STOG model. Then, we present a prototype system implementing the proposed model. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

multimedia scenario models
spatio-temporal constraints
multimedia presentation
consistency checking


Head tracking using stereo Head tracking is an important primitive for smart environments and perceptual user interfaces where the poses and movements of body parts need to be determined. Most previous solutions to this problem are based on intensity images and, as a result, suffer from a host of problems including sensitivity to background clutter and lighting variations. Our approach avoids these pitfalls by using stereo depth data together with a simple human-torso model to create a head-tracking system that is both fast and robust. We use stereo datal to derive a depth model of the background that is then employed to provide accurate foreground segmentation. We then use directed local edge detectors on the foreground to find occluding edges that are used as features to fit to a torso model. Once we have the model parameters, the location and orientation of the head can be easily estimated. A useful side effect from using stereo data is the ability to track head movement through a room in three dimensions. Experimental results on real image sequences are given.

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

security
surveillance
human motion
human-computer interaction


Social Propagation: Boosting Social Annotations for Web Mining This paper is concerned with the problem of boosting social annotations using propagation, which is also called social propagation. In particular, we focus on propagating social annotations of web pages (e.g., annotations in Del.icio.us). Social annotations are novel resources and valuable in many web applications, including web search and browsing. Although they are developing fast, social annotations of web pages cover only a small proportion (< 0.1%) of the World Wide Web. To alleviate the low coverage of annotations, a general propagation model based on Random Surfer is proposed. Specifically, four steps are included, namely basic propagation, multiple-annotation propagation, multiple-link-type propagation, and constraint-guided propagation. The model is evaluated on a dataset of 40,422 web pages randomly sampled from 100 most popular English sites and ten famous academic sites. Each page's annotations are obtained by querying the history interface of Del.icio.us. Experimental results show that the proposed model is very effective in increasing the coverage of annotations while still preserving novel properties of social annotations. Applications of propagated annotations on web search and classification further verify the effectiveness of the model.

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


Anti-periodic mild solutions to semilinear fractional differential equations In this paper, by using the \(\alpha \)-resolvent family theory, Banach contraction mapping principle and Schauders fixed point theorem, we investigate the existence of anti-periodic mild solutions to the semilinear fractional differential equations \(D^{\alpha }_{t}u(t) = Au(t) +f(t,u(t)),\ t\in R,1 \le \alpha \le 2 \) and \(D^{\alpha }_{t}u(t) = Au(t) +f(t,u(t),u'(t)),\ t\in R,1 < \alpha < 2\), where \(A : D(A)\subset X \rightarrow X\) is the infinitesimal generator of an \(\alpha \)-resolvent family defined on a Banach space \(X\) and \(f\) is a suitable function. Furthermore, an example is given to illustrate our results.

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


Improved field emission characteristics of screen-printed CNT-FED cathode by interfusing Fe/Ni nano-grains Carbon nanotube (CNT) cathode with and without interfusing nano-metal particles was prepared using screen-printing technology. For the good electric conductivity of metal, the turn-on electric field of the Fe/Ni and CNT composite film (Fe/CNT film) decreases to 1.42V/?m comparing with the usual CNT film of 2.45V/?m, and the emission current increases from 60?A to 440?A at an applied electric field of 2.3V/?m. Furthermore, the field enhancement factor ? increases from 1721 to 3242. By characterizing the prepared samples via X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), it is found that carbide Fe3C phase is formed in Fe/CNT film, and the metal particles are filled in the interspaces of CNTs. It is evaluated that benefiting from good electrical conductivity and chemical inertness of metal carbide, Fe/CNT film achieves high emission characteristics and emission uniformity.

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

carbon nanotube
field emission
carbide
uniformity


Evaluating the retrieval effectiveness of web search engines using a representative query sample Search engine retrieval effectiveness studies are usually small scale, using only limited query samples. Furthermore, queries are selected by the researchers. We address these issues by taking a random representative sample of 1,000 informational and 1,000 navigational queries from a major German search engine and comparing Google's and Bing's results based on this sample. Jurors were found through crowdsourcing, and data were collected using specialized software, the Relevance Assessment Tool (RAT). We found that although Google outperforms Bing in both query types, the difference in the performance for informational queries was rather low. However, for navigational queries, Google found the correct answer in 95.3% of cases, whereas Bing only found the correct answer 76.6% of the time. We conclude that search engine performance on navigational queries is of great importance, because users in this case can clearly identify queries that have returned correct results. So, performance on this query type may contribute to explaining user satisfaction with search engines.

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


Explicit coordination to prevent congestion in data center networks Large cluster-based cloud computing platforms increasingly use commodity Ethernet technologies, such as Gigabit Ethernet, 10GigE, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), for intra-cluster communication. Traffic congestion can become a performance concern in the Ethernet due to consolidation of data, storage, and control traffic over a common layer-2 fabric, as well as consolidation of multiple virtual machines (VMs) over less physical hardware. Even as networking vendors race to develop switch-level hardware support for congestion management, we make the case that virtualization has opened up a complementary set of opportunities to reduce or even eliminate network congestion in cloud computing clusters. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a system called XCo, that performs explicit coordination of network transmissions over a shared Ethernet fabric to proactively prevent network congestion. XCo is a software-only distributed solution executing only in the end-nodes. A central controller uses explicit permissions to temporally separate (at millisecond granularity) the transmissions from competing senders through congested links. XCo is fully transparent to applications, presently deployable, and independent of any switch-level hardware support. We present a detailed evaluation of our XCo prototype across a number of network congestion scenarios, and demonstrate that XCo significantly improves network performance during periods of congestion. We also evaluate the behavior of XCo for large topologies using NS3 simulations.

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


Interference effect of two equal-sized square cylinders in tandem arrangement: With planar shear flow Numerical simulations have been performed for flow past two equal-sized square cylinders in tandem arrangement subjected to incoming planar shear flow. Effect of L/d ratio and the shear parameter has been studied. The range of L/d ratio (ratio of center-to-center distance (L) to cylinder width (d)) is varied from 2 to 7 and the non-dimensional shear parameter (K) is varied from 0.0 to 0.4 in steps of 0.1. For all the cases the Reynolds number (Re) based on centerline velocity and cylinder width is fixed at 100. The results are compared with that of isolated square cylinder with uniform flow. Strouhal number decreases with increasing shear parameter. There are more than one shedding frequency at high shear parameters and L/d ratios. The mean drag coefficient is decreased with shear parameter and lesser than. that of the single cylinder. The root mean square (RMS) value of both lift and drag coefficients is higher for the downstream cylinder for all values of shear parameter. With increasing L/d ratio, for both lift and drag, the RMS value increases and then decreases for upstream cylinder, whereas it continuously increases for the downstream cylinder. The stagnation point is moved towards the top leading edge with increasing shear. The critical L/d ratio, which is defined as the distance between two cylinders, beyond which the vortex shedding from the upstream cylinder occurs, decreases with increasing shear parameter. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

shear parameter
tandem arrangement
square cylinders

laminar vortex shedding
incompressible flow
two-dimensional


Faster algorithms for subgraph isomorphism of k-connected partial k-trees The problem of determining whether a k-connected partial k-tree is isomorphic to a subgraph of another partial k-tree is shown to be solvable in time O (n(k+2)). The presented time-bounds considerably improve the corresponding bounds known in the literature. They rely in part on a new characterization of width-k tree-decomposition of k-connected partial k-trees.

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

partial k-tree
k-connected graph
time complexity


Tools for browsing a TV situation comedy based on content specific attributes This paper presents general purpose video analysis and annotation tools, which combine high-level and low-level information, and which learn through user interaction and feedback. The use of these tools is illustrated through the construction of two video browsers, which allow a user to fast forward (or rewind) to Frames, shots, or scenes containing a particular character, characters, or other labeled content. The two browsers developed in this work are: (1) a basic video browser, which exploits relations between high-level scripting information and closed captions, and (2) an advanced video browser, which augments the basic browser with annotations gained from applying machine learning. The learner helps the system adapt to different peoples' labelings by accepting positive and negative examples of labeled content from a user, and relating these to low-level color and texture features extracted from the digitized video. This learning happens interactively, and is used to infer labels on data the user has not yet seen. The labeled data may then be browsed or retrieved from the database in real time. An evaluation of the learning performance shows that a combination of low-level color signal features outperforms several other combinations of signal features in learning character labels in an episode of the TV situation comedy. Seinfeld. We discuss several issues that arise in the combination of low-level and high-level information. and illustrate solutions to these issues within the context of browsing television sitcoms.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 learning
video pattern recognition
video annotation
society of models
foureyes
content-based retrieval


Net-based force-directed macrocell placement for wirelength optimization We propose a net-based hierarchical macrocell placement such that "net placement" dictates the cell placement. The proposed approach has four phases. 1) Net clustering and net-level floorplanning phase: A weighted net dependency graph is built from the input register-transfer-level netlist. Clusters of nets are then formed by clique partitioning and a net-cluster level floorplan is obtained by simulated annealing. The floorplan defines the regions where the nets in each cluster must be routed. 2) Force-directed net placement phase: A force-directed net placement is performed which yields a coarse net-level placement without consideration for the cell placement. 3) Iterative net terminal and cell placement phase: A force-directed net and cell placement is performed iteratively. The terminals of a net are free to move under the influence of forces in the quest for optimal wire length. The cells with high net length cost may "jump" out of local minima by ignoring the rejection forces. The overlaps are reduced by employing electrostatic rejection forces. 4) Overlap Removal and input/output I/O pin assignment phase: Overlap removal is performed by a grid-based heuristic. I/O pin assignment is performed by minimum-weight bipartite matching. Placements generated by the proposed approach are compared with those generated by Cadence Silicon Ensemble and the O-tree floorplanning algorithm. On average, the proposed approach improves both the total wire length and longest wire length by 18.9% and 28.3%, respectively, with an average penalty of 5.6% area overhead.

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

force-directed method
net length minimization
soft macrocells


From Hippocratic databases to secure tropos: A computer-aided re-engineering approach Privacy protection is a growing concern in the market place. Yet, privacy requirements and mechanisms are usually retro-fitted into a pre-existing design which may not be able to accommodate them due to potential conflicts with functional requirements. We propose a procedure for automatically extracting privacy requirements from data bases supporting access control mechanisms for personal data (hereafter Hippoc ratic databases) and representing them in the Secure Tropos framework where tools are available for checking the correctness and consistency of privacy requirements. The procedure is illustrated with a case study.

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

security engineering
is re-engineering
agent-oriented technologies


specifications, not meta-models In a model-driven development, software engineers will have to manage multiple artifacts expressed in several languages. Current meta-modelling and concrete syntax standards fail to adequately preserve a link between artifacts and the languages in which they are expressed, potentially leading to inconsistencies and misunderstandings both in the production and reuse of artifacts. Standards such as XMI and JMI permit the meta-model of an artifact to be accessed. However, such meta-models primarily define the syntax of a language. A full semantic definition requires a supporting document, the language specification, which is typically not explicitly referenced. In this paper we argue that the role of meta-models and specifications should be combined to eliminate this ambiguity. We describe the possible impact on OMG standards and standardisation processes that this would have. We present an open-source project that implements this philosophy, and a case-study in which a domain-specific language is used to express service-level agreements, the legalistic nature of which imposes strong requirements for semantic accessibility.

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Managing requirements uncertainty with partial models Models are good at expressing information that is known but do not typically have support for representing what information a modeler does not know at a particular phase in the software development process. Partial models address this by being able to precisely represent uncertainty about model content. In previous work, we developed a general approach for defining partial models and using them to reason about design models containing uncertainty. In this paper, we show how to apply our approach to managing uncertainty in requirements by providing support for uncertainty capture, elaboration, and change. In particular, we address the problem of specifying uncertainty within a requirements model, refining a model as uncertainty reduces, providing meaning to traceability relations between models containing uncertainty, and propagating uncertainty-reducing changes between related models. We describe the implementation of uncertainty management within the Model Management Tool Framework and illustrate our approach using two examples.

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An application of a discrete wavelet transform and a back-propagation neural network algorithm for fault diagnosis on single-circuit transmission line This article proposes an application of the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and back-propagation neural networks (BPNN) for fault diagnosis on single-circuit transmission line. ATP/EMTP is used to simulate fault signals. The mother wavelet daubechies4 (db4) is used to decompose the high-frequency component of these signals. In addition, characteristics of the fault current at various fault inception angles, fault locations and faulty phases are detailed. The DWT is employed in extracting the high frequency component contained in the fault currents, and the coefficients of the first scale from the DWT that can detect fault are investigated, and the decision algorithm is constructed based on the BPNN. The results show that the proposed technique provides satisfactory results.

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discrete wavelet transform
transmission line
fault diagnosis

back-propagation neural networks
fault location


serious video game effectiveness Given the interactive media characteristics and intrinsically motivating appeal, computer games are often praised for their potential and value in education.allHowever, comprehensive research testing these assumptions is still missing. Preliminary comparative studies on the learning effects of games versus traditional media have shown some promise. In this paper, we describe a comparative study that thoroughly investigates the effects of interactivity and media richness on science learning among college students. We also discuss important results and implications yielded from comparisons among four conditions in our experiment (game, replay, hypertext and text).

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computer games
text
learning effects
interactivity
media richness
hypertext
replay

motivation
entertainment-education
education
digital media
serious games


Real emission and virtual exchange of gravitons and unparticles in PYTHIA8 Models with large extra dimensions as well as unparticle models could give rise to new phenomena at collider experiments due to real emission or virtual exchange of gravitons or unparticles. In this paper we present the common implementation of these processes in the Monte Carlo generator PYTHIA8, using relations between the parameters of the two models. The program offers several options related to the treatment of the UV region of the effective theories, including the possibility of using a form factor for the running gravitational coupling. Characteristic results obtained with PYTHIA8 have been used to validate the implementations as well as to illustrate the key features and effects of the model parameters. The results presented in this paper are focused on mono-jet, di-photon and di-lepton final states at the LHC. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Disjunctive modeling for optimal control of hybrid systems In this contribution. a novel approach for the modeling and numerical optimal control of hybrid (discrete-continuous dynamic) systems based on a disjunctive problem formulation is proposed. It is shown that a disjunctive model representation, which constitutes an alternative to mixed-integer model formulations, provides a very flexible, intuitive and effective way to formulate hybrid (discrete-continuous dynamic) optimization problems. The structure and properties of the disjunctive process models can be exploited for an efficient and robust numerical solution by applying generalized disjunctive programming techniques. The proposed modeling and optimization approach will be illustrated by means of optimal control of hybrid systems embedding linear discrete-continuous dynamic models. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

hybrid systems
optimal control
generalized disjunctive programming

discrete-continuous dynamic systems
convex hull method
big-m method


Epidemiological Survey of Ehrlichia canis and Related Species Infection in Dogs in Eastern Sudan The infection rates of Ehrlichia canis and related species in dogs in eastern Sudan were examined using molecular methods. Among 78 dogs examined, 63 (80.8%), 19 (24.4%), and 26 (33.3%) were positive for E. canis, Anaplasma platys, Mycoplasma haemocanis, and Candidatus Mycoplasma haemoparvum, respectively. Among these, 30 dogs were single-positiv

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ehrlichia canis
anaplasma platys
mycoplasma haemocanis
candidatus mycoplasma haemoparvum