Prescribed learning of r.e. classes This work extends studies of Angluin, Lange and Zeugmann on the dependence of learning on the hypothesis space chosen for the language class in the case of learning uniformly recursive language classes. The concepts of class-comprising (where the learner can choose a uniformly recursively enumerable superclass as the hypothesis space) and class-preserving (where the learner has to choose a uniformly recursively enumerable hypothesis space of the same class) are formulated in their study. In subsequent investigations, uniformly recursively enumerable hypothesis spaces have been considered. In the present work, we extend the above works by considering the question of whether learners can be effectively synthesized from a given hypothesis space in the context of learning uniformly recursively enumerable language classes. in our study, we introduce the concepts of prescribed learning (where there must be a learner for every uniformly recursively enumerable hypothesis space of the same class) and uniform learning (like prescribed, but the learner has to be synthesized effectively from an index of the hypothesis space). It is shown that while for explanatory learning, these four types of learnability coincide, some or all are different for other learning criteria. For example, for conservative learning, all four types are different. Several results are obtained for vacillatory and behaviourally correct learning; three of the four types can be separated, however the relation between prescribed and uniform learning remains open. It is also shown that every (not necessarily uniformly recursively enumerable) behaviourally correct learnable class has a prudent learner, that is, a learner using a hypothesis space such that the learner learns every set in the hypothesis space. Moreover the prudent learner can be effectively built from any learner for the class. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

inductive inference
formal languages
recursion theory


Minimum communication cost reordering for parallel sparse Cholesky factorization In this paper, we consider the problem of reducing the communication cost for the parallel factorization of a sparse symmetric positive definite matrix on a distributed-memory multiprocessor. We define a parallel communication cost function and show that, with a contrived example, simply minimizing the height of the elimination tree is ineffective for exploiting minimum communication cost and the discrepancy may grow infinitely. We propose an algorithm to find an ordering such that the communication cost to complete the parallel Cholesky factorization is minimum among all equivalent reorderings. Our algorithm consumes O(nlogn+m) in time, where n is the number of nodes and m the sum of all maximal clique sizes in the filled graph.

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

communication cost
parallel factorization
elimination tree

distributed-memory multiprocessor
sparse matrix
equivalent reordering


A Methodology for Testing CPU Emulators A CPU emulator is a software system that simulates a hardware CPU. Emulators are widely used by computer scientists for various kind of activities (e.g., debugging, profiling, and malware analysis). Although no theoretical limitation prevents developing an emulator that faithfully emulates a physical CPU, writing a fully featured emulator is a very challenging and error prone task. Modern CISC architectures have a very rich instruction set, some instructions lack proper specifications, and others may have undefined effects in corner cases. This article presents a testing methodology specific for CPU emulators, based on fuzzing. The emulator is "stressed" with specially crafted test cases, to verify whether the CPU is properly emulated or not. Improper behaviors of the emulator are detected by running the same test case concurrently on the emulated and on the physical CPUs and by comparing the state of the two after the execution. Differences in the final state testify defects in the code of the emulator. We implemented this methodology in a prototype (named as EmuFuzzer), analyzed five state-of-the-art IA-32 emulators (QEMU, Valgrind, Pin, BOCHS, and JPC), and found several defects in each of them, some of which can prevent proper execution of programs.

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

reliability
verification
software testing
emulation
automatic test generation


Hierarchical cellular network design with channel allocation ? The design of a cellular network is a complex process that encompasses the selection and configuration of cell sites and the supporting network infrastructure. This investigation presents a net revenue maximizing model that can assist network designers in the design and configuration of a cellular system. The integer programming model takes as given a set of candidate cell locations with corresponding costs, the amount of available bandwidth, the maximum demand for service in each geographical area, and the revenue potential in each customer area. Based on these data, the model determines the size and location of cells, and the specific channels to be allocated to each cell. To solve problem instances, a maximal clique cut procedure is developed in order to efficiently generate tight upper bounds. A lower bound is constructed by solving the discrete optimization model with some of the discrete variables fixed. Computational experiments on 72 problem instances demonstrate the computational viability of our new procedure.

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

telecommunications
facilities planning and design


The effects of sequential combinations of virtual experience, direct experience, and indirect experience: the moderating roles of need for touch and product involvement This study explored the effects of sequential combinations of consumer experiences. Four kinds of sequential combinations of consumer experiences were designed: exposing to escapist virtual experience preceding direct experience (VEescapist ? DE), exposing to education virtual experience preceding direct experience (VEeducation ? DE), exposing to escapist virtual experience preceding indirect experience (VEescapist ? IDE), and exposing to education virtual experience preceding indirect experience (VEeducation ? IDE). The results indicated that VEescapist ? IDE produces the highest product knowledge and brand attitude; VEescapist ? DE produces the lowest perceived risk. Additionally, the moderating roles of need for touch and product involvement also explored. For the high need for touch, VEescapist ? IDE produces the highest product knowledge and VEescapist ? DE produces the lowest perceived risk; for the high product involvement, VEescapist ? IDE produces the highest product knowledge and brand attitude and VEescapist ? DE produces the lowest perceived risk.

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


A Phenomenological Study on Threshold Improvement via Spatial Coupling Kudekar et al. proved an interesting result in low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes: The belief-propagation (BP) threshold is boosted to the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) threshold by spatial coupling. Furthermore, the authors showed that the BP threshold for code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems is improved up to the optimal one via spatial coupling. In this letter, a phenomenological model for elucidating the essence of these phenomenon, called threshold improvement, is proposed. The main result implies that threshold improvement occurs for spatially-coupled general graphical models.

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

threshold saturation
belief propagation (bp)
dynamical systems


Tree-based generation of languages of fractals The notion of P-interpreted top-down tree generators is introduced, combining the nondeterministic nature of grammars as known from formal language theory with the infinite refinement of pictures studied in fractal geometry. (C) 2001 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 B O O O O O O O O O

picture language
tree language
infinite tree


A closest vector problem arising in radiation therapy planning In this paper we consider the following closest vector problem. We are given a set of 0-1 vectors, the generators, an integer vector, the target vector, and a nonnegative integer C. Among all vectors that can be written as nonnegative integer linear combinations of the generators, we seek a vector whose l(infinity)-distance to the target vector does not exceed C, and whose l(1)-distance to the target vector is minimum. First, we observe that the problem can be solved in polynomial time provided the generators form a totally unimodular matrix. Second, we prove that this problem is NP-hard to approximate within an O(d) additive error, where d denotes the dimension of the ambient vector space. Third, we obtain a polynomial time algorithm that either proves that the given instance has no feasible solution, or returns a vector whose l(infinity)-distance to the target vector is within an O(root dlnd) additive error of C and whose l(1)-distance to the target vector is within an O(d root dlnd) additive error of the optimum. This is achieved by randomly rounding an optimal solution to a natural LP relaxation. The closest vector problem arises in the elaboration of radiation therapy plans. In this context, the target is a nonnegative integer matrix and the generators are certain 0-1 matrices whose rows satisfy the consecutive ones property. Here we begin by considering the version of the problem in which the set of generators comprises all those matrices that have on each nonzero row a number of ones that is at least a certain constant. This set of generators encodes the so-called minimum separation constraint. We conclude by giving further results on the approximability of the problem in the context of radiation therapy.

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

closest vector problem
consecutive ones property
radiation therapy
minimum separation constraint


Microscopic spin model for the stock market with attractor bubbling on regular and small-world lattices A multi-agent spin model for changes of prices in the stock market based on the Ising-like cellular automaton with interactions between traders randomly varying in time is investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The structure of interactions has topology of a small-world network obtained from regular two-dimensional square lattices with various coordination numbers by randomly cutting and rewiring edges. Simulations of the model on regular lattices do not yield time series of logarithmic price returns with statistical properties comparable wit h the empirical ones. In contrast, in the c as e of networks wit h a certain degree of randomness for a wide range of parameters the time series of the logarithmic price returns exhibit intermittent bursting typical of volatility clustering. Also the tails of distributions of returns obey a power scaling law wit h exponents comparable to those obtained fro m the empirical data.

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

econophysics
microscopic models of financial markets
complex networks.


An extended iterative format for the progressive-iteration approximation Progressive-iteration approximation (PIA) is a new data fitting technique developed recently for blending curves and surfaces. Taking the given data points as the initial control points, PIA constructs a series of fitting curves (surfaces) by adjusting the control points iteratively, while the limit curve (surface) interpolates the data points. More importantly, progressive-iteration approximation has the local property, that is, the limit curve (surface) can interpolate a subset of data points by just adjusting a part of corresponding control points, and remaining others unchanged. However, the current PIA format requires that the number of the control points equals that of the data points, thus making the PIA technique inappropriate to fitting large scale data points. To overcome this drawback, in this paper, we develop an extended PIA (EPIA) format, which allows that the number of the control points is less than that of the given data points. Moreover, since the main computations of EPIA are independent, they can be performed in parallel efficiently, with storage requirement O(n), where n is the number of the control points. Therefore, due to its local property and parallel computing capability, the EPIA technique has great potential in large scale data fitting. Specifically, by the EPIA format, we develop an incremental data fitting algorithm in this paper. In addition, some examples are demonstrated in this paper, all implemented by the parallel computing toolbox of Matlab, and run on a PC with a four-core CPU. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

progressive-iteration approximation
progressive interpolation
geometric design


Switched-resistor: A new family of sampled-data circuits This paper introduces switched-resistor circuits as a new family of current-mode sampled-data circuits with improved accuracy and linearity. Advantages of the switched-resistor circuits for high-speed and low-voltage applications are demonstrated. A switched-resistor biquad band-pass filter with a quality factor of 10 and clock frequency of 100MHz, fabricated in a 0.18 ? m CMOS process, is also presented. The filter consumes 9mW from 1.8V supply.

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

sampled-data systems
switched circuits
current-mode circuits
band-pass filters


rendering from compressed high dynamic range textures on programmable graphics hardware High dynamic range (HDR) images are increasingly employed in games and interactive applications for accurate rendering and illumination. One disadvantage of HDR images is their large data size; unfortunately, even though solutions have been proposed for future hardware, commodity graphics hardware today does not provide any native compression for HDR textures. In this paper, we perform extensive study of possible methods for supporting compressed HDR textures on commodity graphics hardware. A desirable solution must be implementable on DX9 generation hardware, as well as meet the following requirements. First, the data size should be small and the reconstruction quality must be good. Second, the decompression must be efficient; in particular, bilinear/trilinear/anisotropic texture filtering ought to be performed via native texture hardware instead of custom pixel shader filtering. We present a solution that optimally meets these requirements. Our basic idea is to convert a HDR texture to a custom LUVW space followed by an encoding into a pair of 8-bit DXT textures. Since DXT format is supported on modern commodity graphics hardware, our approach has wide applicability. Our compression ratio is 3:1 for FP16 inputs, allowing applications to store 3 times the number of HDR texels in the same memory footprint. Our decompressor is efficient and can be implemented as a short pixel program. We leverage existing texturing hardware for fast decompression and native texture filtering, allowing HDR textures to be utilized just like traditional 8-bit DXT textures. Our reduced data size has a further advantage: it is even faster than rendering from uncompressed HDR textures due to our reduced texture memory access. Given the quality and efficiency, we believe our approach suitable for games and interactive applications.

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

game programming
texture compression
games & gpus
texturing techniques
high dynamic range image


a user browsing model to predict search engine click data from past observations. Search engine click logs provide an invaluable source of relevance information but this information is biased because we ignore which documents from the result list the users have actually seen before and after they clicked. Otherwise, we could estimate document relevance by simple counting. In this paper, we propose a set of assumptions on user browsing behavior that allows the estimation of the probability that a document is seen, thereby providing an unbiased estimate of document relevance. To train, test and compare our model to the best alternatives described in the Literature, we gather a large set of real data and proceed to an extensive cross-validation experiment. Our solution outperforms very significantly all previous models. As a side effect, we gain insight into the browsing behavior of users and we can compare it to the conclusions of an eye-tracking experiments by Joachims et al. [12]. In particular, our findings confirm that a user almost always see the document directly after a clicked document. They also explain why documents situated just after a very relevant document are clicked more often.

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

engine probability relevance model paper user predict situated users test behavior data effect

statistical model
estimates
user behavior
experience
browse
bias
informal
observability
training
search engines
eye tracking
clickthrough data
documentation


Adoption model of mobile-enabled systems in supply chain Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop an adoption model to identify the critical factors that affect firms' intention to adopt mobile enabled supply chain systems (mSCM) in retail industry. This study focuses on inter-organizational dimension since mSCM is an inter-organizational system that provides both inter- and intra-organizational linkages for firms across the supply chain. Design/methodology/approach - A survey method was used to test the proposed model. Data from this study were obtained from South Korean firms. Findings - Supply chain awareness was shown to be a strong predictor of both inter-organizational dependence and inter-organizational trust which positively affects firms' long-term relationship with their trading partners. Institutional pressures, long-term relationship, and top management support also had a significant influence firms' mSCM adoption intention. Research limitations/implications - First, only executives and managers in retail industry of South Korea were surveyed, thus, the results may not be generalized to retail industry in other countries. Second, the current study focuses on a firm's mSCM adoption intention rather than actual adoption. Practical implications - This study provides useful insights for practitioners to better manage institutional pressures and nurture long-term relationship in order to promote co-adoption of mSCM. Originality/value - This study provides useful insights for supply chain members on how to overcome barriers to adopting an innovation and to increase the chance of successfully adopting mSCM in the retail supply chain.

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

mobile enabled supply chain systems
supply chain awareness
institutional pressures
south korea

supply chain management
mobile communications
inter-organizational dependence
perceived operational benefits
retail service industries


Metabolic flux estimation - A self-adaptive evolutionary algorithm with singular value decomposition Metabolic flux analysis is important for metabolic system regulation and intracellular pathway identification. A popular approach for intracellular flux estimation involves using (13)C tracer experiments to label states that can be measured by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry or gas chromatography mass spectrometry. However, the bilinear balance equations derived from (13)C tracer experiments and the noisy measurements require a nonlinear optimization approach to obtain the optimal solution. In this paper, the flux quantification problem is formulated as an error-minimization problem with equality and inequality constraints through the (13)C balance and stoichiometric equations. The stoichiometric constraints are transformed to a null space by singular value decomposition. Self-adaptive evolutionary algorithms are then introduced for flux quantification. The performance of the evolutionary algorithm is compared with ordinary least squares estimation by the simulation of the central pentose phosphate pathway. The proposed algorithm is also applied to the central metabolism of Corynebacterium glutamicum under lysine-producing conditions. A comparison between the results from the proposed algorithm and data from the literature is given. The complexity of a metabolic system with bidirectional reactions is also investigated by analyzing the fluctuations in the flux estimates when available measurements are varied.

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

metabolic flux analysis
singular value decomposition

evolutionary computing
least squares method


Space-frequency quantization for image compression with directionlets The standard separable 2-D wavelet transform (WT) has recently achieved a great success in image processing because it provides a sparse representation of smooth images. However, it fails to efficiently capture 1-D discontinuities, like edges or contours. These features, being elongated and characterized by geometrical regularity along different directions, intersect and generate many large magnitude wavelet coefficients. Since contours are very important elements in the visual perception of images, to provide a good visual quality of compressed images, it is fundamental to preserve good reconstruction of these directional features. In our previous work, we proposed a construction of critically sampled perfect reconstruction transforms with directional vanishing moments imposed in the corresponding basis functions along different directions, called directionlets. In this paper, we show how to design and implement a novel efficient space-frequency quantization (SFQ) compression algorithm using directionlets. Our new compression method outperforms the standard SFQ in a rate-distortion sense, both in terms of mean-square error and visual quality, especially in the low-rate compression regime. We also show that our compression method, does not increase the order of computational complexity as compared to the standard SFQ algorithm.

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

directional transforms
directional vanishing moments (dvms)
image coding
image orientation analysis
image segmentation
multiresolution analysis
nonseparable transforms
wavelet transforms (wts)


Logistics node simulator as an enabler for supply chain development: innovative portainer simulator as the assessment tool for human factors in port cranes This paper focuses on the development of a new generation of interoperable simulators of micro activities in a logistics node; the proposed example focuses on a real-time full-scope virtual simulator of port activities able to simulate the activities of the whole port by having ships, cranes, trucks and containers interoperating in a federation. The technologies adopted in terms of architecture and installation were very effective in creating a mobile laboratory open to further extension by online interoperation with other simulators and with biomedical devices for assessing human capabilities within this framework. This approach allows us to face the existing challenges in extending the capabilities of a logistics node over their current capabilities limited by technological and human factors.

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

interoperable simulation
port simulation


Adaptive certainty-based classification for decomposition of EMG signals An adaptive certainty-based supervised classification approach for electromyographic (EMG) signal decomposition is presented and evaluated. Similarity criterion used for grouping motor unit potentials (MUPs) is based on a combination of MUP shapes and two modes of use of motor unit (MU) firing pattern information: passive and active. Performance of the developed classifier was evaluated using synthetic signals of known properties and real signals and compared with the performance of the certainty classifier (CC). Across the sets of simulated and real EMG signals used for comparison, the adaptive certainty classifier (ACC) had both better average performance and lower performance variability. For simulated signals of varying intensity, the ACC had an average correct classification rate (CC r ) of 83.7% with a mean absolute deviation (MAD) of 5.8% compared to 78.3 and 8.7%, respectively, for the CC. For simulated signals with varying amounts of shape and/or firing pattern variability, the ACC had a CC r of 79.7% with a MAD of 4.7% compared to 76.6 and 6.9%, respectively, for the CC. For real signals, the ACC had a CC r of 70.0% with a MAD of 6.3% compared to 64.9 and 6.4%, respectively, for the CC. The test results demonstrate that the ACC can manage both MUP shape variability as well as MU firing pattern variability. The ACC adapts to EMG signal characteristics to create dynamic data driven classification criteria so that the number of MUP assignments made reflects the signal complexity and the number of erroneous assignments is kept sufficiently low. The ability of the ACC to adjust to specific signal characteristics suggests that it can be successfully applied to a wide variety of EMG signals.

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

emg signal decomposition
supervised classification


System identification of evoked mechanomyogram from abductor pollicis brevis muscle in isometric contraction The purpose of this study is to verify the applicability of a sixth-order model to the mechanomyogram (MMG) system of the parallel-fibered muscle, which was identified from the MMG of the pennation muscle. The median nerve was stimulated, and an MMG and torque of the abductor pollicis brevis muscle were measured. The MMGs were detected with either a capacitor microphone or an acceleration sensor. The transfer functions between stimulation and the MMG and between stimulation and torque were identified by the singular value decomposition method. The torque and the MMG, which were detected with a capacitor microphone, DMMG, were approximated with a second- and a third-order model, respectively. The natural frequency of the torque, reflecting longitudinal mechanical characteristics, did not show a significant difference from that of the DMMG. The MMG detected with an acceleration sensor was approximated with a fourth-order model. The natural frequencies of the AMMG reflecting the muscle and subcutaneous tissue in the transverse direction were obtained. Both DMMG and AMMG have to be measured to investigate the model of the MMG system for parallel-fibered muscle. The MMG system of parallel-fibered muscle was also modeled with a sixth-order model.

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

mechanomyogram
system identification
abductor pollicis brevis muscle
acceleration


STONE: A streaming DDoS defense framework ? Design/development of STONE, defense framework for flooding DDoS attacks. Online DDoS attacks detection and mitigation. Implementation on state-of-the-art stream processing engine. STONE is able to handle legitimate traffic bursts such as flash crowds. Evaluation conducted with real legitimate/malicious data.

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

ddos detection
ddos mitigation
data streaming


managing the follow-me semantics to build large-scale pervasive applications In this paper, we present the concept of follow-me semantics of the large-scale pervasive application and discuss the features and services to its implementation based on the integration of three computing fields: mobile, context-aware and grid computing. We also discuss the adopted context-aware adaptation model, main feature embedded in both applications and middleware design, to allow the wide physical and logical mobility.

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

collaborative adaptation model
context aware adaptation
follow-me semantics
large-scale pervasive application


A computational tool for the probabilistic finite element analysis of an uncemented total hip replacement considering variability in bone-implant version angle In the present study, a probabilistic finite element tool was implemented to assess an uncemented total hip replacement including variability in bone-implant version angle. The Monte Carlo method was used with two different performance indicators: the bone maximum nodal von-Mises elastic strain and the bone volume (BV) percentage exceeding specified strain limits. Implant version, bone stiffness and load magnitude were the most sensitive parameters. The results were more consistent using percentage BV under specified limit strains as the performance indicator, even for a low number of simulations. The reliability of the computational tool was demonstrated through a comparison with previous studies, and the consistency of the results for all strain limits investigated.

O O O O O O B I 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 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

total hip replacement
finite element analysis


enabling creativity in capstone design Our two-quarter senior design class provides teams of students with loosely-defined real-world design projects of significant scope. With an emphasis on the open-ended nature of these design projects it is necessary to create an atmosphere conducive towards open-minded and unconstrained thinking. A number of activities and assignments have been designed for our students to enable creative thinking, especially in the early stages of the design process. These include: team-building exercises to elicit trust between teammates and build awareness of and respect for each others differences in backgrounds and expertise, mini Speed Design exercises to stimulate creative thinking under time constraints, and the development of Project Personas for students to "walk a mile" in their customers' shoes. All are integrated into the class at times apropos to the various stages of the design process.

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


photo2video To exploit rich content embedded in a single photograph, a system named Photo2Video was developed to automatically convert a photographic series into a video by simulating camera motions, set to incidental music of the user's choice. For a chosen photographic series, an appropriate camera motion pattern is selected for each photograph to generate a corresponding motion photograph clip . Then, the final output video is rendered by connecting a series of motion photograph clips with specific transitions, and aligning with the selected incidental music. Photo2Video provides a novel way to browse a series of images and can be regarded as a system exploring the new medium between photograph and video.

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

aligning video music exploit camera browse motion

contention
optimization
systems
transit
attention detection
image content analysis
integer programming
face detection
imaging
image clustering
audio segmentation
user
exploration
embedding


A systematic method for integrating product attributes within molecular synthesis The complete and efficient solution to the enumeration of candidate compounds and mixtures that meet specified consumer attributes is often a difficult mathematical programming problem. Most approaches to this problem involve the solution of a mixed integer non-linear program (MINLP) which may achieve only local optima solutions. In this paper a proof-of-concept study is presented to show that empirical models can be used in a reverse problem formulation to ensure a complete set of candidate compounds and mixtures are found subject to the predictive power of the model. The method utilizes a transformation of consumer attributes to properties described by the group contribution method and solves the reverse problem formulation using the property clustering technique. A case study in refrigerant design is used to highlight the method. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

reverse problem formulation
refrigerant design


1-soliton solution of the K (m, n) equation with generalized evolution and time-dependent damping and dispersion This paper obtains the 1-soliton solution of the K (m, n) equation with generalized evolution in the presence of linear damping. The dispersion and linear damping terms have time-dependent coefficients. An exact 1-soliton solution is obtained for this equation together with the constraint between these time-dependent coefficients for the solitons to exist. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

solitary waves
time-dependent coefficients


Low voltage low power CMOS current differencing buffered amplifier The major goal of this work is to present a new CMOS realization for the current differencing buffered amplifier (CDBA). A design technique based on flipped voltage follower current sources is preferred to obtain a high performance CDBA. The proposed circuit can operate with the minimum supply voltages of +/- 0.6 V. It also consumes less power than its counterparts that have been reported so far. Moreover, the proposed CDBA has good voltage and current gain accuracies. For the simulations, UMC 0.18 mu m CMOS process is used. The performance of the CDBA is verified with HSPICE. Finally, a second-order, allpass/notch filter configuration is proposed to show the performance and usefulness of the circuit. The results from HSPICE simulations are in remarkable agreement with the expected ones.

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

current differencing buffered amplifiers (cdba)


Intrusion detection using autonomous agents AAFID is a distributed intrusion detection architecture and system, developed in CERIAS at Purdue University. AAFID was the first architecture that proposed the use of autonomous agents for doing intrusion detection. With its prototype implementation, it constitutes a useful framework for the research and testing of intrusion detection algorithms and mechanisms. We describe the AAFID architecture and the existing prototype, as well as some design and implementation experiences and future research issues.

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

software agents
distributed systems
security
perl


Intrusion detection model based on selective packet sampling Recent experimental work by Androulidakis and Papavassiliou (IET Commun 2(3):399, 2008; IEEE Netw 23(1):6, 2009) has shown that it is possible to maintain a high level of network security while selectively inspecting packets for the existence of intrusive activity, thereby resulting in a minimal amount of processing overhead. In this paper, a statistical approach for the modeling of network intrusions as Markov processes is introduced. The theoretical findings presented here confirm the earlier experimental results of Androulidakis and Papavassiliou. A common notion about network intrusion detection systems is that every packet arriving into a network must be inspected in order to prevent intrusions. This investigation, together with the earlier experimental results, disproves that notion. Additional experimental testing of a corporate local area network is reported.

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

intrusion detection system
ip packets
markov process
birth and death model


Discovering approximate expressions of GPS geometric dilution of precision using genetic programming Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used extensively in various fields. Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) is an indicator showing how well the constellation of GPS satellites is organized geometrically, so as a reliability indicator presenting the GPS positioning accuracy. Traditional methods for calculating GPS GDOP need to solve the measurement equations where involve complicated matrix transformation and inversion. Some studies rephrase the calculation of GPS GDOP a regression problem and employ black-boxed machine learning methods for problem solving. However, the regression models obtained from such methods lack of expressivity for describing the relationships among variables. Making the structures of GDOP expressions visible is valuable because they can be further studied or tailored for specific GPS applications. This study employs the technique of genetic programming (GP) for the regression of GPS GDOP. The performance of GP working with various operators and parameter settings is studied and discussed. The experimental results show that GP generates precise models with better expressivity for GPS GDOP than other methods.

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

global positioning system (gps)
geometric dilution of precision (gdop)
genetic algorithm
white-boxed methods
soft computing


Markers of Oxidative Stress in Erythrocytes during Aging in Humans The correlation between antioxidant capacity and oxidative damage during aging has been reported in several tissues in different species; however, data on changes of oxidative stress markers in plasma and erythrocytes of healthy populations during aging are few and sometimes contradictory. Since antioxidant capacity of the plasma is related to dietary intake of antioxidants, it is important to study the correlation between antioxidant capacity of the plasma and markers of oxidative stress in different populations. In the present study we report the age-dependent alteration in erythrocyte malondialdehyde (MDA), intracellular-reduced glutathione (GSH), and membrane sulphydryl (SH) groups in the Indian population and also correlate these parameters with total plasma antioxidant potential. We show an age-dependent increase in erythrocyte MDA level and a decrease in GSH and membrane ?SH group concentration. The alterations in these parameters correlated significantly with total antioxidant capacity of the plasma. We observe a higher oxidative stress in the Indian population compared to values reported for European subjects emphasizing the need to establish age-dependent reference values for oxidative stress markers in different populations and in studies involving their role in different disease conditions

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


Combining belief functions based on distance of evidence A modified average method to combine belief function based on distance measures of evidence is proposed. The weight of each body of evidence (BOE) is taken into account. A numerical example is shown to illustrate the use of the proposed method to combine conflicting evidence. Some open issues are discussed in the final section.

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

decision-making
evidence theory
distance function


Optimal routing and wavelength assignment to minimize the number of SONET ADMs in WDM rings In this study, we consider the routing and wavelength assignment problem on SONET over WDM ring networks. Our problem is the minimum ADM (add-drop multiplexer) cost problem of minimizing the number of ADM equipment instead of the minimum wavelength problem. To deal with the complexity of the problem, we create a new mathematical formulation and suggest an efficient solution method based on the branch-and-price method. We exploit the structure of the ring network to develop an efficient algorithm and show the efficiency using computer simulations.

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

routing and wavelength assignment
wdm rings


A dedicated hardware architecture for real-time auto-focusing using an FPGA The auto-focus is a fundamental function of a camera system which is required to photograph a clear image of an object. To obtain the optimal focus of a specific region within an image, the sharpness of the region must be measured. Since the sharpness represents the difference between a pixel and its neighbors, multiple pixel references occur while evaluating each pixel. To compensate for the processing bottleneck caused by this repetitive memory reference, this paper presents a dedicated hardware architecture for real-time auto-focusing. The proposed system processes the incoming pixel simultaneously with its neighboring pixels based on its parallelized window processing architecture. In addition, the proposed system performs an adaptive thresholding-based sharpness function with multiple windows to achieve accuracy and robustness. The proposed system is compared to several conventional pixel-based auto-focusing systems under various environmental conditions.

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


KNOWLEDGE VALIDATION OF ENGINEERING EXPERT-SYSTEMS In this article, we examine the importance of validation and verification (V & V) for engineering expert systems. In particular, we examine the aspect of incorporating knowledge validation into the knowledge acquisition stage of expert system development cycle. We have developed a knowledge acquisition tool EMBODY for this purpose. A case study of using EMBODY to develop an expert system for TV troubleshooting is reported.

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

expert systems
knowledge validation
knowledge acquisition

verification and validation
knowledge charts


Interactive 3D reconstruction from multiple images: A primitive-based approach This paper proposes a fast and stable image-based modeling method which generates 3D models with high-quality face textures in a semi-automatic way. The modeler guides untrained users to quickly obtain 3D model data via several steps of simple user interface operations using predefined 3D primitives. The proposed method contains an iterative non-linear error minimization technique in the model estimation step with an error function based on finite line segments instead of infinite lines. The error corresponds to the difference between the observed structure and the predicted structure from current model parameters. Experimental results on real images validate the robustness and the accuracy of the algorithm.

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

image-based modeling
structure recovery
3d primitive
line segment


Application of the rate-based approach to three-phase distillation columns For more reliable modelling of multiphase separation equipments the nonequilibrium approach has been recently recognised as superior if compared with the traditional equilibrium stage concept. However, for general three phase (V-L-L) distillation processes in a tray column the interaction between two liquid phases, continuous and dispersed, must be modelled as equilibrium according to insufficient knowledge about transport phenomena at the liquid-liquid interface. On the other hand, for the mass and heat transfer between vapour phase and continuous liquid phase the rate-based (i.e, nonequilibrium) approach is more appropriate (Eckert, 1997). The combined model was implemented in the AspenTech SPEEDUP environment using the SPEEDUP problem oriented language together with user supplied FORTRAN routines, selected SPEEDUP unit modules and ASPEN PLUS physical property libraries (i.e. PROPERTIES PLUS). Comparison with results from the equilibrium model is provided in this contribution.

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

equilibrium model
mass and heat transfer
speedup

three-phase distillation column
nonequilibrium model
maxwell-stefan equations


Detection of voltage sag sources based on the angle and norm changes in the instantaneous current vector written in Clarkes components Methods for voltage sag source detection are discussed that use only line currents. Instantaneous current vector is introduced using Clarkes components. The proposed method is compared to the already known phasor-based method. Both methods are evaluated by numerical simulations, laboratory and field testing. The proposed method shows considerably higher effectiveness for transient events.

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

power quality
voltage sag (dip)
source location
instantaneous vector
instantaneous line currents


A 2-D geometric constraint solver using DOF-based graph reduction In this paper, we propose a new DOF-based graph reduction approach to geometric constraint solving. In the proposed approach, we incrementally solve a geometric constraint problem that is not ruler-and-compass constructible by incrementally identifying a set of constrained geometric entities with 3 DOF (degree of freedom) as a rigid body and determining the geometric entities in the rigid body using one of two solving procedures: algebraic procedure and numerical procedure, instead of solving it simultaneously using a numerical method. By solving a complex geometric constraint problem incrementally, the proposed method can maximize the efficiency and robustness of a geometric constraint solver.

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

rigid body
graph reduction
constraint solving


Numerical methods for interval and fuzzy number comparison based on the probabilistic approach and DempsterShafer theory There are many different methods for interval and fuzzy number comparison proposed in the literature which provide the results of comparison in the form of a real or Boolean value. In this paper, we use the DempsterShafer theory of evidence with its probabilistic interpretation to justify and construct the method which provides the result of comparison in the form of an interval or fuzzy number. The complete and consistent set of expressions for inequality and equality relations between intervals and fuzzy numbers has been obtained in the framework of the probabilistic approach. These relations make it possible to compare intervals and fuzzy numbers with real values and may be considered as an asymptotic limit of the results we obtain using the DempsterShafer theory. A natural fuzzy extension of the proposed approach is considered and discussed using some illustrative examples.

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

fuzzy number comparison
probabilistic approach
dempstershafer theory


An efficient basis conversion algorithm for composite fields with given representations We describe an efficient method for constructing the basis conversion matrix between two given finite field representations where one is composite. We are motivated by the fact that using certain representations, e.g., low-Hamming weight polynomial or composite field representations, permits arithmetic operations such as multiplication and inversion to be computed more efficiently. An earlier work by Paar defines the conversion problem and outlines an exponential time algorithm that requires an exhaustive search in the field. Another algorithm by Sunar et al. provides a polynomial time algorithm for the limited case where the second representation is constructed (rather than initially given). The algorithm we present facilitates existing factorization algorithms and provides a randomized polynomial time algorithm to solve the basis conversion problem where the two representations are initially given. We also adapt a fast trace-based factorization algorithm to work in the composite field setting which yields a subcubic complexity algorithm for the construction of the basis conversion matrix.

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

finite fields
change of basis
polynomial factorization


Non-extendible latin parallelepipeds We show that for each even m > 2 and n >= 4m - 2, there exists a latin (n x n x (n - M))-parallelepiped that cannot be extended to a latin (n x n x (n - m + 1))-parallelepiped. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

latin square
non-extendible latin parallelepiped
combinatorial problems
codes


Verification of multi-class recognition decision: A classification approach We investigate strategies to improve the utterance verification performance using a 2-class pattern classification approach, including: utilizing N-best candidate scores, modifying segmentation boundaries, applying background and out-of-vocabulary filler models, incorporating contexts, and minimizing verification errors via discriminative training. A connected-digit database recorded in a noisy, moving car with a hands-free microphone mounted on the sun-visor is used to evaluate the verification performance. The equal error rate (EER) of word verification is employed as the sole performance measure. All factors and their effects on the verification performance are presented in detail. The EER is reduced from 29%, using the standard likelihood ratio test, down to 21.4%, when all features are properly integrated.

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

discriminative training
word verification


A Virtualization Based Monitoring System for Mini-intrusive Live Forensics Digital evidences hold great significance for governing cybercrime. Unfortunately, previous acquisition tools were troubled by either the shortage of suspending the target systems running or the security of the acquisition tools themselves, thus the correctness and accuracy of their obtained evidences cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, we propose VAIL, a novel virtualization based monitoring system for mini-intrusive live forensics, which employs hardware assisted virtualization technique to gather integrated information from the native computer system. Meanwhile, the execution of the target system will not be interrupted and VAIL keeps immune to attacks from the target system. We have implemented a proof-of-concept prototype that has been validated with a Windows guest system. The experimental results show that VAIL can obtain comprehensive digital evidences from the target system as designed, including the CPU state, the physical memory content, and the I/O activities. And on average, VAIL only introduces 4.21% performance overhead to the target system, which proves that VAIL is practical in real commercial environments.

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

virtualization
monitoring system
live forensics


a game-theoretic investigation of selection methods in two-population coevolution We examine the dynamical and game-theoretic properties of several selection methods in the context of two-population coevolution. The methods we examine are fitness-proportional, linear rank, truncation, and (?,?)-ES selection. We use simple symmetric variable-sum games in an evolutionary game-theoretic framework. Our results indicate that linear rank, truncation, and (?,?)-ES selection are somewhat better-behaved in a two-population setting than in the one-population case analyzed by Ficici et al. [4]. These alternative selection methods maintain the Nash-equilibrium attractors found in proportional selection, but also add non-Nash attractors as well as regions of phase-space that lead to cyclic dynamics. Thus, these alternative selection methods do not properly implement the Nash-equilibrium solution concept.

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


Game semantics and linear CPS interpretation We present a semantic analysis of the "linearly used continuation-passing interpretation" of functional languages, based on game semantics. This consists of a category of games with a coherence condition on moves-yielding a fully complete model of an affine-type theory-and a syntax-independent and full embedding of a category of Hyland-Ong/Nickau-style "well-bracketed" games into it. We show that this embedding corresponds precisely to linear CPS interpretation in its action on a games model of call-by-value PCF, yielding a proof of full abstraction for the associated translation. We discuss extensions of the semantics to deal with recursive types, call-by-name evaluation, non-local jumps, and state. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Efficient computation of shortest absent words in a genomic sequence Analyzing sequence composition is a basic task in genomic research. In this paper, to efficiently compute shortest absent words in a genomic sequence, we present a linear-time algorithm, which firstly estimates the length of shortest absent words by probabilistic method, and then based on such estimation, finds out all shortest absent words in a genomic sequence. Our algorithm only needs to scan the genomic sequence once without the space requirements of index structures such as suffix trees and suffix arrays. Experimental results show that our algorithm uses only 1.5 minutes for the computation of shortest absent words in human genome, and therefore is more efficient than any other existing algorithms. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Kml: A package to cluster longitudinal data Cohort studies are becoming essential tools in epidemiological research. In these studies, measurements are not restricted to single variables but can be seen as trajectories. Thus, an important question concerns the existence of homogeneous patient trajectories. KmL is an R package providing an implementation of k-means designed to work specifically on longitudinal data. It provides several different techniques for dealing with missing values in trajectories (classical ones like linear interpolation or LOCF but also new ones like copyMean). It can run k-means with distances specifically designed for longitudinal data (like Frechet distance or any user-defined distance). Its graphical interface helps the user to choose the appropriate number of clusters when classic criteria are not efficient. It also provides an easy way to export graphical representations of the mean trajectories resulting from the clustering. Finally, it runs the algorithm several times, using various kinds of starting conditions and/or numbers of clusters to be sought, thus sparing the user a lot of manual re-sampling.

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

package presentation
k-means
cluster analysis
non-parametric algorithm


An individual-based, stochastic and spatial model to simulate the ramification of grass tillers and their distribution in swards Understanding the vegetation dynamics of a grass sward at fine-scale requires breaking the interplay between density-dependent processes and environmental variability. Simulation of one of these interacting processes may be a powerful tool. SISTAL is a spatially explicit, object-oriented model of the spatial distribution and spatio-temporal dynamics of individual grass tillers in cut swards. It focuses both on the spatial movement of existing tillers and on the birth and death of tillers. The time management is based on discrete events, and the system dynamics is computed with thermal time. The space management uses both a spatial grid and real coordinates. The paper exposes implementation choices that have been carefully selected: inputs and outputs; edge effects; implementation of the memory management and the handling of pseudo-parallelism. The simulation diary is described since it was found a very useful tool for verification. Essential results and comparisons with real observations allowing the validation of the model are presented.

O O B 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 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

object-oriented
discrete simulation
biology
ecology


The best keying protocol for sensor networks Many sensor networks (especially networks of mobile sensors or networks that are deployed to monitor crisis situations) are deployed in an arbitrary and unplanned fashion. Thus, any sensor in such a network can end up being adjacent to any other sensor in the network. To secure the communications between every pair of adjacent sensors in such a network, each sensor x x in the network needs to store n?1 n ? 1 symmetric keys that sensor x x shares with all the other sensors, where n n is an upper bound on the number of sensors in the network. This storage requirement of the keying protocol is rather severe, especially when n n is large and the available storage in each sensor is modest. Earlier efforts to redesign this keying protocol and reduce the number of keys to be stored in each sensor have produced protocols that are vulnerable to impersonation, eavesdropping, and collusion attacks. In this paper, we present a fully secure keying protocol where each sensor needs to store (n+1)/2 ( n + 1 ) / 2 keys, which is much less than the n?1 n ? 1 keys that need to be stored in each sensor in the original keying protocol. We also show that in any fully secure keying protocol, each sensor needs to store at least (n?1)/2 ( n ? 1 ) / 2 keys.

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

sensor network
collusion-proof
secure communication
lower bound
optimal keying
uniform keying


Genetic programming on graphics processing units The availability of low cost powerful parallel graphics cards has stimulated the port of Genetic Programming (GP) on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Our work focuses on the possibilities offered by Nvidia G80 GPUs when programmed in the CUDA language. In a first work we have showed that this setup allows to develop fine grain parallelization schemes to evaluate several GP programs in parallel, while obtaining speedups for usual training sets and program sizes. Here we present another parallelization scheme and optimizations about program representation and use of GPU fast memory. This increases the computation speed about three times faster, up to 4 billion GP operations per second. The code has been developed within the well known ECJ library and is open source.

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

genetic programming
graphics processing units


Charge-recovery computing on silicon Three decades ago, theoretical physicists suggested that the controlled recovery of charges could result in electronic circuitry whose power dissipation approaches thermodynamic limits, growing at a significantly slower pace than the fCV(2) rate for CMOS switching power. Early engineering research in this field, which became generally known as adiabatic computing, focused on the asymptotic energetics of computation, exploring VLSI designs that use reversible logic and adiabatic switching to preserve information and achieve nearly zero power dissipation as operating frequencies approach zero. Recent advances in CMOS VLSI design have taken us to real working chips that rely on controlled charge recovery to operate at substantially lower power dissipation levels than their conventional counterparts. Although their origins can be traced back to the early adiabatic circuits, these chargere-covering systems approach energy recycling from a more practical angle, shedding reversibility to achieve operating frequencies in the hundreds of MHz with relatively low overhead. Among other charge-recovery designs, researchers have demonstrated micro-controllers, standard-cell ASICs, SRAMs, LCD panel drivers, I/O drivers, and multi-GHz clock networks. In this paper, we present an overview of the field and focus on two chip designs that highlight some of the promising charge recovering techniques in practice.

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

energy-recovering circuits
resonant systems
energy efficient computing
voltage scaling


COCREATING IT VALUE: NEW CAPABILITIES AND METRICS FOR MULTIFIRM ENVIRONMENTS Most research on IT value has been from the vantage point of a single firm. Multifirm studies have largely been dyadic and emphasize transaction costs over cocreation of value. Contemporary environments involve IT investments being made by multiple companies in cooperative, platform-based, and relational arrangements where the objective is to cocreate value. If IT serves as a tool, an output. or is instrumental in generating this cocreated value, then it falls within the cocreation domain of this special issue. In this introductory article, we frame the discussion of cocreating IT value through four layers of relational arrangement between firms, describe the papers in the special issue with respect to this framework, and briefly describe an agenda for research in this important area.

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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

cocreation of value
multifirm environments

information technology value
it-based relationship value
it-based platforms


A domain decomposition method for pseudo-spectral electromagnetic simulations of plasmas Pseudo-spectral electromagnetic solvers (i.e. representing the fields in Fourier space) have extraordinary precision. In particular, Haber et al. presented in 1973 a pseudo-spectral solver that integrates analytically the solution over a finite time step, under the usual assumption that the source is constant over that time step. Yet, pseudo-spectral solvers have not been widely used, due in part to the difficulty for efficient parallelization owing to global communications associated with global FFTs on the entire computational domains. A method for the parallelization of electromagnetic pseudo-spectral solvers is proposed and tested on single electromagnetic pulses, and on Particle-In-Cell simulations of the wakefield formation in a laser plasma accelerator. The method takes advantage of the properties of the Discrete Fourier Transform, the linearity of Maxwells equations and the finite speed of light for limiting the communications of data within guard regions between neighboring computational domains. Although this requires a small approximation, test results show that no significant error is made on the test cases that have been presented. The proposed method opens the way to solvers combining the favorable parallel scaling of standard finite-difference methods with the accuracy advantages of pseudo-spectral methods.

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

electromagnetic
domain decomposition
parallel

particle-in-cell
spectral
fast fourier transform
fft


An adaptive refinement approach for topology optimization based on separated density field description This paper presents an adaptive density point refinement approach for continuum topology optimization on the basis of an analysis-mesh separated material density field description based on nodal design variables. The Shepard interpolants are used to construct a strictly range-restricted density field over the design domain with the density design variables defined on a density point grid. Since the density points are defined independent of the finite element mesh, it is easy to refine the density point grid without remeshing the finite element model. A refinement criterion is given to identify the gray transitional regions to be adaptively refined in the subsequent optimization iterations. With such a refinement scheme, the topology optimization can start from a relatively coarse density point grid but still yields a desired higher resolution of the structural boundaries in the final design. Because refinements are only performed when and where necessary, this method is able to improve the boundary description quality of the optimal result with much less design variables as compared with the case of global refinement, and therefore can greatly reduce the computational burden involved in the sensitivity analysis and optimization process. Moreover, the percentage of transitional regions in the final solutions can also be reduced. Compared with using a uniformly globally-dense density point arrangement, this approach can achieve similar optimal designs but with much less computational cost. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the present approach.

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

topology optimization
adaptive refinement
boundary description quality

nodal density
mesh-independent density interpolation
gray elements


Gradient descent optimization of smoothed information retrieval metrics Most ranking algorithms are based on the optimization of some loss functions, such as the pairwise loss. However, these loss functions are often different from the criteria that are adopted to measure the quality of the web page ranking results. To overcome this problem, we propose an algorithm which aims at directly optimizing popular measures such as the Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain and the Average Precision. The basic idea is to minimize a smooth approximation of these measures with gradient descent. Crucial to this kind of approach is the choice of the smoothing factor. We provide various theoretical analysis on that choice and propose an annealing algorithm to iteratively minimize a less and less smoothed approximation of the measure of interest. Results on the Letor benchmark datasets show that the proposed algorithm achieves state-of-the-art performances.

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


eye-mouse coordination patterns on web search results pages We analyzed the patterns of coordination between users' eye movements and mouse movements when scanning a web search results page, using data gathered from a study with 32 participants. We discovered 3 patterns of active mouse usage: following the eye vertically with the mouse, following the eye horizontally with the mouse, and using the mouse to mark a promising result.

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


An Empirical Assessment of IT Governance Transparency: Evidence from Commercial Banking We have developed an IT governance disclosure framework to examine how firms communicate their IT governance activities. Using this framework for a sample of 200 commercial banking firms, our empirical assessment indicates that differences in the level of disclosure are systematically related to differences in institutional settings. We also find that firms with relatively good corporate governance practices consider IT performance measurement matters to be highly important when informing and communicating with shareholders.

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

it governance
transparency
corporate governance
disclosure framework


Note on Jacobis method for approximating dominant roots In 1834 Jacobi gave a method for approximating dominant roots of a polynomial. In 2002 Mignotte and Stefanescu showed that Jacobis method works only when the dominant roots are simple. In this note, we show that Jacobis method can still be useful even when the dominant roots are not simple, if we use it for approximating the distinct dominant roots.

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


Decision fusion of horizontal and vertical trajectories for recognition of online Farsi subwords Online handwriting is formed by a combination of horizontal and vertical trajectories. If these trajectories are treated separately, new recognition methods are emerged. In contrast, one classifier is often used to recognize handwriting. In this work, some features for x(t) and y(t) signals were proposed and used to make two separate classifiers. After initial recognition by these classifiers, their results were fused for final recognition. Using HMM classifiers and simple product rule for decision fusion, the recognition results of 42 classes of Farsi subwords showed promising achievements.

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

online handwriting
farsi
horizontal and vertical trajectories
decision fusion


Generalized monosplines and inequalities for the remainder term of quadrature formulas In this paper we studied some quadrature formulas witch are obtained using connection between the monosplines and the quadrature formulas. For the remainder term we give some inequalities.

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

quadrature rule
numerical integration
error bounds


Power load identification ? The number and power of loads that pollute the electric network, from an electric point of view, are constantly increasing. For this reason this study aims to define a parameter to assess, in terms of distortion and unbalance, the quality of an electric network. Taking as a starting point the advantages and limitations of wavelet methods proposed in the literature, a new index useful to quantify the load characteristics is introduced. The efficiency of this index has been verified by computer simulations to assess the applicability of the method to three-phase systems using three-wire measurements based on the instantaneous power theory, in several typical situations.

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

wavelet transform
capacitor switching transients
power quality
emtp


Challenges and Directions in Formalizing the Semantics of Modeling Languages Developing software from models is a growing practice and there exist many model-based tools (e. g., editors, interpreters, debuggers, and simulators) for supporting model-driven engineering. Even though these tools facilitate the automation of software engineering tasks and activities, such tools are typically engineered manually. However, many of these tools have a common semantic foundation centered around an underlying modeling language, which would make it possible to automate their development if the modeling language specification were formalized. Even though there has been much work in formalizing programming languages, with many successful tools constructed using such formalisms, there has been little work in formalizing modeling languages for the purpose of automation. This paper discusses possible semantics-based approaches for the formalization of modeling languages and describes how this formalism may be used to automate the construction of modeling tools.

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


Bayesian analysis of GUHA hypotheses The LISp-Miner system for data mining and knowledge discovery uses the GUHA method to comb through a large data base and finds 2 2 contingency tables that satisfy a certain condition given by generalised quantifiers and thereby suggest the existence of possible relations between attributes. In this paper, we show how a more detailed interpretation of the data in the tables that were found by GUHA can be obtained using Bayesian statistical methods. Using a multinomial sampling model and Dirichlet prior, we derive posterior distributions for parameters that correspond to GUHA generalised quantifiers. Examples are presented illustrating the new Bayesian post-processing tools implemented in LISp-Miner. A statistical model for the analysis of contingency tables for data from two subpopulations is also presented.

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


A time series representation model for accurate and fast similarity detection Similarity search and detection is a central problem in time series data processing and management. Most approaches to this problem have been developed around the notion of dynamic time warping, whereas several dimensionality reduction techniques have been proposed to improve the efficiency of similarity searches. Due to the continuous increasing of sources of time series data and the cruciality of real-world applications that use such data, we believe there is a challenging demand for supporting similarity detection in time series in a both accurate and fast way. Our proposal is to define a concise yet feature-rich representation of time series, on which the dynamic time warping can be applied for effective and efficient similarity detection of time series. We present the Derivative time series Segment Approximation (DSA) representation model, which originally features derivative estimation, segmentation and segment approximation to provide both high sensitivity in capturing the main trends of time series and data compression. We extensively compare DSA with state-of-the-art similarity methods and dimensionality reduction techniques in clustering and classification frameworks. Experimental evidence from effectiveness and efficiency tests on various datasets shows that DSA is well-suited to support both accurate and fast similarity detection.

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

time series data
similarity detection
dimensionality reduction
clustering
classification


Assessing pollution risks to water supply intakes using geographical information systems (GIS) The process of pollution risk assessment requires the assimilation of data that are spatially variable in nature, making geographical information systems (GIS) an ideal tool for such assessments. Over half of Britain's drinking water is obtained from surface water abstractions, many of which are situated in upland areas. In order to optimise the quality of abstracted waters it is important to assess the possible risks of pollution upstream from the point of abstraction. This paper describes the use of the PC-based WINGS(TM) and MapInfo Professional(TM) geographical information systems in the evolution of a risk assessment methodology to assess catchment risk. The work illustrates how such technology can assist in environmental decision-making to optimise the quality of drinking water supplies and enhance treatment efficiencies. Examples are given showing how raster and vector-based data can be used within a GIS framework to produce maps indicating areas of potential hazard to water quality, and coupled with existing models to predict and quantify risk frequency and impact. GIS techniques are further utilised in the formulation of a raw water monitoring programme to assist in intake operation and land-use planning in the catchment. The availability of suitable digital data was found to be variable, and some problems encountered in their integration and implementation within the system framework were resolved. Comment is given on the suitability and relative performance of the two software packages in the assessment of catchment risk. The work was carried out on a medium specification desktop PC, and therefore has the potential to be utilised across the intranet of a large utility company. (C) 2000 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

geographical information systems (gis)
environmental risk assessment
desktop hazard mapping
drinking water quality
risk prediction


Learning from customer interaction: How merchants create price-level propositions for experience goods in hybrid market environments We build a game theory model on learning from hybrid market-interaction. We study learning effects that customers decisions have on merchants, and vice versa. When loyal customers learn the value proposition offline, they tend to shop online. The optimum price proposition for merchants of experience goods involves higher prices.

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 B I O O O B I O O O

learning from interaction
online customers
hybrid merchants


Bat echolocation processing using first-spike latency coding To perform echolocation, so-called FM-bats emit short pulses i.e.,with a duration of a few milliseconds, and analyse the echoes coming from their environment. One individual echo, due to its short duration, will cause neurons in the early auditory system to generate between 1 and 3 spikes only. Hence, we argue that it is advantageous for FM-bats to use spike-time rather that firing rate information. We present a simple spike-time model of the monaural and binaural pathways up to the midbrain, to show that spike-time information can indeed be processed by the known neural architecture. In particular, we show that a First Spike Latency (FSL) code, as provided by the auditory nerves, can represent both the monaural and binaural intensity cues induced by the head-related transfer function in the peripheral system. We also show that ascending centres enhance the cues conveyed by such an FSL code. Finally, we present experimental results, comparing the FSL code based model proposed here with a more classic firing rate code, and we show that first-spike latency is a more biologically plausible alternative.

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


WaLBerla: HPC software design for computational engineering simulations WaLBerla (Widely applicable Lattice-Boltzmann from Erlangen) is a massively parallel software framework supporting a wide range of physical phenomena. This article describes the software designs realizing the major goal of the framework, a good balance between expandability and scalable, highly optimized, hardware-dependent, special purpose kernels. To demonstrate our designs, we discuss the coupling of our Lattice-Boltzmann fluid flow solver and a method for fluid structure interaction. Additionally, we show a software design for heterogeneous computations on GPU and CPU utilizing optimized kernels. Finally, we estimate the software quality of the framework on the basis of software quality factors.

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

lattice-boltzmann method
mpi
software engineering


Organizational Ecology Success Factors in the Business: A Case Study at Fingerhut Inc. The proliferation, growth, decline, and re-growth of the high tech industry during the past several decades has allowed for the creation of new organizational concepts. One of these concepts finds its theoretical underpinnings in the areas of ecology and biology. This paper attempts to apply organizational ecology, particularly the well-known Verhulst-Pearl (VP) ecological logistic growth model, to the life cycle of e-commerce enterprises using Fingerhut Inc. as an example noting its successes and failures.

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

e-business
e-commerce
ecosystems
competitive advantage
order fulfillment


checking relational specifications with binary decision diagrams Checking a specification in a language based on sets and relations (such as Z) can be reduced to the problem of finding satisfying assignments, or models, of a relational formula. A new method for finding models using ordered binary decision diagrams (BDDs) is presented that appears to scale better than existing methods.Relational terms are replaced by matrices of boolean formulae. These formulae are then composed to give a boolean translation of the entire relational formula. Throughout, boolean formulae are represented with BDDs; from the resulting BDD, models are easily extracted.The performance of the BDD method is compared to our previous method based instead on explicit enumeration. The new method performs as well or better on most of our examples, but can also handle specifications that, until now, we have been unable to analyze.

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

translation
binary decision diagrams
method
examples
scale
language
performance


Connectivity preserving digitization of blurred binary images in 2D and 3D Connectivity and neighborhood are fundamental topological properties of objects in pictures. Since the input for any image analysis algorithm is a digital image, which does not need to have the same topological characteristics as the imaged real world, it is important to know, which shapes can be digitized without change of such topological properties. Most existing approaches do not take into account the unavoidable blurring in real image acquisition systems or use extremely simplified and thus unrealistic models of digitization with blurring. In some previous work we showed that certain shapes can be digitized topologically correctly with a square grid when some blurring with an arbitrary non-negative radially symmetric point spread function is involved. Now we extend this result to other common sampling grids in the two and even in the 3D space, including hexagonal, bcc and fcc grids.

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

r r -regular shape r r r r r
3d digitization
topology preservation
psf


Algorithm 931: An Algorithm and Software for Computing Multiplicity Structures at Zeros of Nonlinear Systems A Matlab implementation, MULTIPLICITY, of a numerical algorithm for computing the multiplicity structure of a nonlinear system at an isolated zero is presented. The software incorporates a newly developed equation-by- equation strategy that significantly improves the efficiency of the closedness subspace algorithm and substantially reduces the storage requirement. The equation-by-equation strategy is actually based on a variable-by-variable closedness subspace approach. As a result, the algorithm and software can handle much larger nonlinear systems and higher multiplicities than their predecessors, as shown in computational experiments on the included test suite of benchmark problems.

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