RefModPM: A Conceptual Reference Model for Project Management Information Systems Project management information systems have changed considerably in the last decade. Today they go far beyond traditional scheduling as well as resource management. These systems have become comprehensive information systems (IS) that support the entire life cycle of projects, project programmes and project portfolios. In this context, project-oriented organizations face a new challenge: the design, implementation and operation of such information systems has become increasingly complex, since numerous processes have to be considered, diverse stakeholder interests taken into account and corresponding software systems selected. The reference model for project management IS (RefModPM) presented here addresses these challenges and aims to support corresponding implementation projects. This article introduces RefModPM by discussing its construction process and evaluation, as well as providing an overview of its architecture and presenting one part of the reference model in detail.

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

standards
project life cycle
information system architecture
referenzmodell
projektmanagement
normen
projektlebenszyklus
informationssystemarchitektur


selecting hierarchical clustering cut points for web person-name disambiguation Hierarchical clustering is often used to cluster person-names referring to the same entities. Since the correct number of clusters for a given person-name is not known a priori, some way of deciding where to cut the resulting dendrogram to balance risks of over- or under-clustering is needed. This paper reports on experiments in which outcome-specific and result-set measures are used to learn a global similarity threshold. Results on the Web People Search (WePS)-2 task indicate that approximately 85\% of the optimal F1 measure can be achieved on held-out data.

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 O O O O O O O


Online critical clearing time estimation using an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) ANFIS is implemented for transient stability assessment for the first time. GUI in MATLAB is applied for critical clearing time estimation. Variation of load & fault location is simulated and tested. Classical model and detailed model for generators are used for testing.

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

transient stability assessment
critical clearing time
classical model
detailed model


A new metaheuristic based approach for the design of sensor networks The optimal design of sensor networks consists in selecting the type, number and location of sensors that provide the required quantity and quality of process information by optimizing an appropriate objective function. The problem is multimodal and involves many binary variables, therefore a huge combinatorial optimization problem results. In this work, the design is solved using a metaheuristic based approach. A strategy that combines the advantages of Tabu Search and Estimation of Distribution Algorithms is presented, which is able to solve high scale designs since it can be implemented to run in parallel. Application results of the methodology to the optimal selection of instruments for networks of incremental size are provided. (C) 2013 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 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 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

combinatorial optimization
estimation of distribution algorithms
tabu search


Using the artificial neural network model for modeling the performance of the counter flow vortex tube In this study, the effect of the nozzle number and the inlet pressure on the heating and cooling performance of the counter flow type vortex tube has been modeled with artificial neural networks (ANN) by using the experimentally obtained data. ANN has been designed by Pithiya software. In the developed system output parameter temperature gradient between the cold and hot outlets (?T) has been determined using inlet parameters such as the inlet pressure (Pinlet), nozzle number (N), and cold mass fraction (?c). The back-propagation learning algorithm with variant which is LevenbergMarquardt (LM) and Fermi transfer function have been used in the network. In addition, the statistical validity of the developed model has been determined by using the coefficient of determination (R2), the root means square error (RMSE) and the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). R2, RMSE and MAPE have been determined for ?T as 0.9947, 0.188224, and 0.0460, respectively.

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 B I O O O O O O O B O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 comparison of techniques for measuring sensemaking and learning within participant-generated summaries While it is easy to identify whether someone has found a piece of information during a search task, it is much harder to measure how much someone has learned during the search process. Searchers who are learning often exhibit exploratory behaviors, and so current research is often focused on improving support for exploratory search. Consequently, we need effective measures of learning to demonstrate better support for exploratory search. Some approaches, such as quizzes, measure recall when learning from a fixed source of information. This research, however, focuses on techniques for measuring open-ended learning, which often involve analyzing handwritten summaries produced by participants after a task. There are two common techniques for analyzing such summaries: (a) counting facts and statements and (b) judging topic coverage. Both of these techniques, however, can be easily confounded by simple variables such as summary length. This article presents a new technique that measures depth of learning within written summaries based on Bloom's taxonomy (B.S. Bloom & M.D. Engelhart, 1956). This technique was generated using grounded theory and is designed to be less susceptible to such confounding variables. Together, these three categories of measure were compared by applying them to a large collection of written summaries produced in a task-based study, and our results provide insights into each of their strengths and weaknesses. Both fact-to-statement ratio and our own measure of depth of learning were effective while being less affected by confounding variables. Recommendations and clear areas of future work are provided to help continued research into supporting sensemaking and learning.

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


XRD and DFT-modelized structures of a pteridine-2,4(1H,3H)-dithione/N,N '-dimethylformamide H-bonded cluster (2:2). MO study of the coordination ability The title compound, C6H4N4S2 center dot C3H7NO, crystallizes in the monoclinic space group C 2/c with a = 26.673(5), b = 5.397(1), c = 16.522(3) , beta = 95.49(3)A degrees, Z = 8, R = 0.0461 for 1891 reflections with I > 2 sigma(I) and 174 parameters (4 restraints). Single pteridine-2,4(1 H,3 H)-dithione and dimethylformamide molecules are packed via N-H center dot center dot center dot O and N-H center dot center dot center dot N hydrogen bonds into centrosymmetric clusters containing two molecules of each class; these are roughly planar and placed into two different sets of planes -both containing the [-1,0,2] direction- mutually angled by 77.8A degrees. Despite the distance between two neighbor planes in each set is ca. 3.4 , the analysis of pi,pi-stacking interactions shows too large slippage distance between aromatic rings from contiguous planes. Additional sigma-pi interactions between S2, S4 and O1S atoms and pyrazine or pyrimidine rings from adjacent molecules are present. The structure for the cluster [DTLM-DMF](2) has been simulated by using the density functionals B1B95 (6-31 G(d) and 6-31+G(d) basis sets) and M06-2X (6-31 G(d) basis set). As a result, the M06-2X/6-31 G(d) approach provides the best agreement with the experimental XRD data. For a better evaluation of the intermolecular interactions, the superposition of two dimeric adducts [DTLM-DMF](2) has been modelized. The binding capability of DTLM ligand was simulated on systems containing two metal-binding modes to palladium (N5-S4 and N1-S2) with different chelate size. The analysis of the frontier orbitals points out that the link with the metallic centers will take place through the sulfur atoms.

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

ab initio methods
crystal structure
lumazine
pteridine


An efficient graph-based recognizer for hand-drawn symbols We describe a trainable, multi-stroke symbol recognizer for pen-based user interfaces. The approach is insensitive to orientation, non-uniform scaling, and drawing order. Symbols are represented internally as attributed relational graphs describing both the geometry and topology of the symbols. Symbol definitions are statistical models, which makes the approach robust to variations common in hand-drawn shapes. Symbol recognition requires finding the definition symbol whose attributed relational graph best matches that of the unknown symbol. Much of the power of the approach derives from the particular set of attributes used, and our metrics for measuring similarity between graphs. One challenge addressed in the current work is how to perform the graph matching efficiently. We present five approximate matching techniques: stochastic matching, which is based on stochastic search; error-driven matching, which uses local matching errors to drive the solution to an optimal match; greedy matching, which uses greedy search; hybrid matching, which uses exhaustive search for small problems and stochastic matching for larger ones; and sort matching, which relies on geometric information to accelerate the matching. Finally, we present the results of a user study, and discuss the tradeoffs between the various matching techniques.

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

pen computing
sketch understanding
pattern recognition
graph isomorphism


a benchmark of nonstop sql on the debit credit transaction NonStop SQL is an implementation of ANSI SQL on Tandem Computer Systems Debit Credit is a widely used industry-standard transaction. This paper summarizes a benchmark of NonStop SQL which demonstrated linear growth of throughout from 14 to 208 Debit Credit transactions per second as the hardware grew from 2 to 32 processors. The benchmark also compared the performance of NonStop SQL to the performance of a record-at a time file system interface

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

systems benchmark performance sql implementation hardware paper transaction

processor
industrial
computation
standardization
timing
file systems
records


A visual analysis/synthesis feedback loop for accurate face tracking We propose a novel approach for face tracking, resulting in a visual feedback loop: instead of trying to adapt a more or less realistic artificial face model to an individual, we construct from precise range data a specific texture and wireframe face model, whose realism allows the analysis and synthesis modules to visually cooperate in the image plane, by directly using 2D patterns synthesized by the face model. Unlike other feedback loops found in the literature, we do not explicitly handle the 3D complex geometric data of the face model, to make real-time manipulations possible. Our main contribution is a complete face tracking and pose estimation framework, with few assumptions about the face rigid motion (allowing large rotations out of the image plane), and without marks or makeup on the user's face. Our framework feeds the feature-tracking procedure with synthesized facial patterns, controlled by an extended Kalman filter. Within this framework, we present original and efficient geometric and photometric modelling techniques, and a reformulation of a block-matching algorithm to make it match synthesized patterns with real images, and avoid background areas during the matching. We also offer some numerical evaluations, assessing the validity of our algorithms, and new developments in the context of facial animation. Our face-tracking algorithm may be used to recover the 3D position and orientation of a real face and generate a MPEG-4 animation stream to reproduce the rigid motion of the face with a synthetic face model. It may also serve as a pre-processing step for further facial expression analysis algorithms, since it locates the position of the facial features in the image plane, and gives precise 3D information to take into account the possible coupling between pose and expressions of the analysed facial images.

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

analysis/synthesis cooperation
face modelling
face cloning
virtual teleconferencing
mpeg-4


Generalized predictive binary shape coding using polygon approximation This paper introduces a new binary shape coding technique called generalized predictive shape coding (GPSC) to encode the boundary of a visual object compactly by using a vertex-based approach. GPSC consists of a contour pixel matching algorithm and a motion-compliant contour coding algorithm. The contour pixel matching algorithm utilizes the knowledge of previously decoded contours by using a uniform translational model for silhouette motion, and generalizes polygon approximation for lossless and lossy motion estimation by adjusting a tolerance parameter dmax. To represent motion-compliant regions with minimum information in the transmitted bitstream, we develop a reference index-based coding scheme to represent the 2D positions of the matched segments using 1D reference contour indices. Finally, we encode the mismatched segments by sending residual polygons until the distortion is less than dmax. While GPSC realizes polygon approximation exactly at every encoding stage, we can guarantee quality of service because the peak distortion is no greater than dmax, and we improve coding efficiency as long as a silhouette complies with the model. The tolerance parameter dmax can be assigned to each contour to smooth the transmitted data rate, which is especially useful for constant bandwidth channels. Compared with non-predictive approaches, simulation using MPEG-4 sequences demonstrates that GPSC not only improves objective gain but also enhances visual quality based on MPEG-4 subjective tests. The significance of GPSC is that it provides a generic framework for seamlessly extending conventional vertex coding schemes into the temporal domain yet it retains the advantages of existing polygon-based algorithms for visual content description while furnishing better geometric compression.

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

contour coding
contour pixel matching
predictive shape coding
vertex coding

video coding
chain coding
contour motion estimation
contour representation


Cellular automata PRNG: maximal performance and minimal space FPGA implementations The consumption of random numbers is universal to the execution of genetic algorithms (GA). In addition to being used in crossover and mutation subroutines, many GA require virtual environments, randomized tournament selections, and Monte Carlo simulations to provide input for fitness functions. As our research aims at implementing GA in reprogrammable hardware (specifically, an FPGA), we have looked for compact and effective means of producing random numbers. Some cellular automata (CA) are especially well suited to this purpose. Since they are essentially Boolean logic operators, CA can be compactly implemented in hardware. In addition, some CA perform outstandingly as pseudo-random number generators (PRNG). Through experiments with several one- and two-dimensional CA, varying array size, seeding methods, and neighborhood geometries, we have identified several efficient means of producing CA PRNGs that perform exceptionally well compared to well-known PRNGs. After describing our implementations, we report their performance on standard statistical tests for randomness, and discuss tradeoffs between required hardware space and PRNG performance.

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

autoplectic behavior
random number generation
fips-140
evolvable hardware


The impact of initial consumer trust on intentions to transact with a web site: a trust building model This paper develops and tests a model of consumer trust in an electronic commerce vendor. Building consumer trust is a strategic imperative for web-based vendors because trust strongly influences consumer intentions to transact with unfamiliar vendors via the web. Trust allows consumers to overcome perceptions of risk and uncertainty, and to engage in the following three behaviors that are critical to the realization of a web-based vendor's strategic objectives: following advice offered by the web vendor, sharing personal information with the vendor, and purchasing from the vendor's web site. Trust in the vendor is defined as a multi-dimensional construct with two inter-related componentstrusting beliefs (perceptions of the competence, benevolence, and integrity of the vendor), and trusting intentionswillingness to depend (that is, a decision to make oneself vulnerable to the vendor). Three factors are proposed for building consumer trust in the vendor: structural assurance (that is, consumer perceptions of the safety of the web environment), perceived web vendor reputation, and perceived web site quality. The model is tested in the context of a hypothetical web site offering legal advice. All three factors significantly influenced consumer trust in the web vendor. That is, these factors, especially web site quality and reputation, are powerful levers that vendors can use to build consumer trust, in order to overcome the negative perceptions people often have about the safety of the web environment. The study also demonstrates that perceived Internet risk negatively affects consumer intentions to transact with a web-based vendor.

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

trust building model
building consumer trust
uncertainty


Exploring feedback and student characteristics relevant for personalizing feedback strategies Personalized tutoring feedback is a powerful method that expert human tutors apply when helping students to optimize their learning. Thus, research on tutoring feedback strategies tailoring feedback according to important factors of the learning process has been recognized as a promising issue in the field of computer-based adaptive educational technologies. Our paper seeks to contribute to this area of research by addressing the following aspects: First, to investigate how students' gender, prior knowledge, and motivational characteristics relate to learning outcomes (knowledge gain and changes in motivation). Second, to investigate the impact of these student characteristics on how tutoring feedback strategies varying in content (procedural vs. conceptual) and specificity (concise hints vs. elaborated explanations) of tutoring feedback messages affect students' learning and motivation. Third, to explore the influence of the feedback parameters and student characteristics on students' immediate post-feedback behaviour (skipping vs. trying to accomplish a task, and failing vs. succeeding in providing a correct answer). To address these issues, detailed log-file analyses of an experimental study have been conducted. In this study, 124 sixth and seventh graders have been exposed to various tutoring feedback strategies while working on multi-trial error correction tasks in the domain of fraction arithmetic. The web-based intelligent learning environment ActiveMath was used to present the fraction tasks and trace students' progress and activities. The results reveal that gender is an important factor for feedback efficiency: Male students achieve significantly lower knowledge gains than female students under all tutoring feedback conditions (particularly, under feedback strategies starting with a conceptual hint). Moreover, perceived competence declines from pre- to post-test significantly more for boys than for girls. Yet, the decline in perceived competence is not accompanied by a decline in intrinsic motivation, which, instead, increases significantly from pre- to post-test. With regard to the post-feedback behaviour, the results indicate that students skip further attempts more frequently after conceptual than after procedural feedback messages. (C) 2013 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 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 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 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

intelligent tutoring system
evaluation of cal systems


Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation ? Colour has the potential to elicit emotions or behaviors, yet there is little research in which colour treatments in website design are systematically tested. Little is known about how colour affects trust or satisfaction on the part of the viewer. Although the Internet is increasingly global, few systematic studies have been undertaken in which the impact of colour on culturally diverse viewers is investigated in website design. In this research three website colour treatments are tested across three culturally distinct viewer groups for their impact on user trust, satisfaction, and e-loyalty. To gather data, a rich multi-method approach is used including eye-tracking, a survey, and interviews. Results reveal that website colour appeal is a significant determinant for website trust and satisfaction with differences noted across cultures. The findings have practical value for web marketers and interface designers concerning effective colour use in website development.

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


Complexity results for the horizontal bar packing problem This paper deals with the packing of a grid by horizontal bars while respecting given orthogonal projections and several constraints of distance between the consecutive bars. We show that packing Under a maximal or uniform distance is an NP-complete problem. We also give a polynomial time algorithm to solve the packing problem under a minimal distance. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

discrete tomography
reconstructing problems
computational complexity
algorithms


Linear latent variable models: the lava-package An R package for specifying and estimating linear latent variable models is presented. The philosophy of the implementation is to separate the model specification from the actual data, which leads to a dynamic and easy way of modeling complex hierarchical structures. Several advanced features are implemented including robust standard errors for clustered correlated data, multigroup analyses, non-linear parameter constraints, inference with incomplete data, maximum likelihood estimation with censored and binary observations, and instrumental variable estimators. In addition an extensive simulation interface covering a broad range of non-linear generalized structural equation models is described. The model and software are demonstrated in data of measurements of the serotonin transporter in the human brain.

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

latent variable model
structural equation model
seasonality
sert


Kriging metamodeling in simulation: A review This article reviews Kriging (also called spatial correlation modeling). It presents the basic Kriging assumptions and formulascontrasting Kriging and classic linear regression metamodels. Furthermore, it extends Kriging to random simulation, and discusses bootstrapping to estimate the variance of the Kriging predictor. Besides classic one-shot statistical designs such as Latin Hypercube Sampling, it reviews sequentialized and customized designs for sensitivity analysis and optimization. It ends with topics for future research.

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

metamodel
response surface
interpolation
design


A dynamic access control model The proposed dynamic access control model is based on description logic (DL) augmented with a default (delta) and an exception (epsilon) operator to capture context features. Currently, this model has an expressivity almost comparable to OrBAC system (OrBAC (Organization Based Access Control) has been formalized in first order logic), all features needed for real attribution of authorization, i.e., assigning authorization to a user according to its role in an organization in a given context. A notable difference of our model is the allowing of composed context, the addition of new context and the deduction of new authorization depending on context.

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

orbac model
dynamic context
defaults and exceptions
nonmonotonic reasonner


Proactive policies for the stochastic resource-constrained project scheduling problem The resource-constrained project scheduling problem involves the determination of a schedule of the project activities, satisfying the precedence and resource constraints while minimizing the project duration. In practice, activity durations may be subject to variability. We propose a stochastic methodology for the determination of a project execution policy and a vector of predictive activity starting times with the objective of minimizing a cost function that consists of the weighted expected activity starting time deviations and the penalties or bonuses associated with late or early project completion. In a computational experiment, we show that our procedure greatly outperforms existing algorithms described in the literature.

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

proactive scheduling
execution policies
stochastic rcpsp


Efficient algorithms for consensus string problems minimizing both distance sum and radius The consensus (string) problem is finding a representative string, called a consensus, of a given set S of strings. In this paper we deal with consensus problems considering both distance sum and radius, where the distance sum is the sum of (Hamming) distances from the strings in S to the consensus and the radius is the longest (Hamming) distance from the strings in S to the consensus. Although there have been results considering either distance sum or radius, there have been no results considering both, to the best of our knowledge. We present the first algorithms for two consensus problems considering both distance sum and radius for three strings: one problem is to find an optimal consensus minimizing both distance sum and radius. The other problem is to find a bounded consensus such that the distance sum is at most s and the radius is at most r for given constants s and r. Our algorithms are based on characterization of the lower bounds of distance sum and radius, and thus they solve the problems efficiently. Both algorithms run in linear time. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Tutorial: Data access With an explosion of data on the web, consistent data access to diverse data sources has become a challenging task. In this tutorial will present topics of interest to database researchers and developers building: interoperable middle-ware,gateways, distributed heterogeneous query processors, federated databases, data source wrappers, mediators, and DBMS extensions. All of these require access to diverse information through common data access abstractions, powerful APIs, and common data exchange formats. With the emergence of the web, database applications are being run over the intranet and the extranet. This tutorial presents an overview of existing and emerging data access technologies. We will concentrate on some of the technical challenges that have to be addressed to enable uniform data access across various platforms and some of the issues that went into the design of these data access strategies.

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


Combining multiple class distribution modified subsamples in a single tree This work describes the Consolidated Tree Construction (CTC) algorithm: a single tree is built based on a set of subsamples. This way the explaining capacity of the classifier is not lost even if many subsamples are used. We show how CTC algorithm can use undersampling to change class distribution without loss of information, building more accurate classifiers than C4.5.

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

decision tree
sampling
comprehensibility
c4.5


Algebraic tools for the construction of colored flows with boundary constraints We give a linear time algorithm which, given a simply connected figure of the plane divided into cells, whose boundary is crossed by some colored inputs and outputs, produces non-intersecting directed flow lines which match inputs and outputs according to the colors, in such a way that each edge of any cell is crossed by at most one line. The main tool is the notion of height function, previously introduced for tilings. It appears as an extension of the notion of potential of a flow in a planar graph.

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


connectivity of mobile ad hoc sensor networks for vehicles Reasonable network models are abstracted from the mobile ad hoc sensor network for the real road traffic system, and the connectivity of one-dimension (1-D) and two-dimension (2-D) networks are discussed separately by percolation theory. In the two-dimension (2-D) network, a novel connectivity strategy, the point-based coverage strategy, is introduced. Then through simulation experiments reasonable transmission radiuses of wireless nodes in real traffic network are obtained.

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


A new approach to morphing 2D affine IFS fractals The objective of this paper is metamorphosis of 2D affine IFS attractors, which is done in a correct manner. The criteria of correctness can be described in brief as follows. First of all, the topology of intermediate shapes generated via morphing should not be sensitive to affine deformations of the key shapesthe property we call affine stability of morphing. Secondly, intermediate shapes should not be less similar to the key ones as the latter are to each other. In a special case, when the key shapes are affine images of each other, the criterion above states that every intermediate shape has to be affine similar to the key ones. Although the postulates are obvious, no prior method of blending fractals satisfies them in general. In contrast, the approach presented in this paper obeys all the conditions. Another problem we focus on is blending fractals specified by IFSs of different numbers of maps, and we propose a number of solutions. To satisfy all the conditions we face in this paper among others moment matrices of IFS invariant measures, the SO(2) Procrustes problem, and numerical stability of the process of morphing. We also introduce a number of new notions, including IFS similarity equivalence classes, the IFS canonical form, the IFS morphing space, and the special SVD. Finally, we point out other possible applications of the presented ideas and indicate open problems.

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

iterated function system
moments
the procrustes problem
the singular value decomposition


Impacts of Radio-Identification on Cryo-Conservation Centers This article deals with the use of discrete-event simulation as a decision support tool for estimating the impact of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technologies on processes and activities of biological sample storage areas (called biobanks). We first give a detailed description of biobank flows and identify subprocesses improved using RFID technologies. Several indicators, such as inventory reliability and human resource utilization, are compared and discussed for different scenarios involving the use of different RFID technologies. A special emphasis is put on the so-called rewarehousing activity, which RFID makes possible and which consists in reassigning tubes to empty places when boxes are emptied. For this particular activity, optimization algorithms are developed and embedded in the simulator. This study shows the potential use of RFID in biobanks and the value of simulation for estimating and optimizing its introduction in such complex socio-technical systems.

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


A generalization of the adaptive rejection sampling algorithm Rejection sampling is a well-known method to generate random samples from arbitrary target probability distributions. It demands the design of a suitable proposal probability density function (pdf) from which candidate samples can be drawn. These samples are either accepted or rejected depending on a test involving the ratio of the target and proposal densities. The adaptive rejection sampling method is an efficient algorithm to sample from a log-concave target density, that attains high acceptance rates by improving the proposal density whenever a sample is rejected. In this paper we introduce a generalized adaptive rejection sampling procedure that can be applied with a broad class of target probability distributions, possibly non-log-concave and exhibiting multiple modes. The proposed technique yields a sequence of proposal densities that converge toward the target pdf, thus achieving very high acceptance rates. We provide a simple numerical example to illustrate the basic use of the proposed technique, together with a more elaborate positioning application using real data.

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

adaptive rejection sampling
gibbs sampling
monte carlo integration
sensor networks
target localization


Enhancing universal access: deaf and hard of hearing people on social networking sites Despite numerous studies into the online activities of deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) users, there has been limited research into their experiences on social networking sites (SNSs), a domain where psychology and computer science intersects. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how one can enhance universal access for D/HH users on the example of SNSs. A model for examining the experiences and preferences of D/HH users of SNSs has been proposed. The model consists of three identity-relevant aspects: (1) belonging to online Deaf communities, (2) communication affinity/preferences for sign and/or written language, and (3) the stigma associated with hearing loss. Based on these aspects, a questionnaire was developed and applied to a study with 46 participants. The findings revealed that the motivation to communicate on SNSs is positively associated with identification with online Deaf communities, an affinity for communication in written language and an affinity/preference for communication in sign language. Better reading comprehension skills, crucial for written communication, are associated with less stigmatic experiences with regard to hearing loss. The model and the findings of this study can help improve understanding D/HH users online social interactions and can be used for educational purposes. It may contribute to the discussion of integrating SNSs as communication tools in personal learning environments, which can be an advantage for universal access.

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

social networking sites
deaf
hard of hearing
communication
motivation


User satisfaction with business-to-employee portals: conceptualization and scale development The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate the business-to-employee portal user satisfaction (B2EPUS) measure. Five sequential stages of scale development were undertaken to achieve this purpose: conceptual model development, item generation, content validation, exploratory study, and confirmatory study. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five dimensions of the B2EPUS, namely Usefulness, Confidentiality, Ease of Use, Convenience of Access, and Portal Design as the dimensions of the construct. Competing model analysis indicates that the second-order factor model is the better fitting for the B2EPUS construct. The theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as directions for future research are discussed in the concluding sections of this paper.

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


active wireless sensing for rapid information retrieval in sensor networks Most existing information extraction schemes in sensor networks rely on in-network processing that requires information routing and coordination between sensor nodes and incurs a corresponding overhead in delay and energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a viable alternative Active Wireless Sensing (AWS) in which a Wireless Information Retriever (WIR)queries a select ensemble of nodes to obtain desired information in a rapid and energy-efficient manner. AWS has two primary attributes: i) the sensor nodes are "dumb" in that they have limited computational ability, and ii) the WIR is computationally powerful, is equipped with an antenna array, and directly interrogates the sensor ensemble with wideband space-time waveforms. AWS is inspired by an intimate connection with communication over multipath channels: the sensor nodes act as active scatterers and produce a multipath response to the WIR's interrogation signals. We develop the basic communication architecture in AWS and explore various signaling and reception strategies at the WIR, and encoding strategies at the sensors. The basic communication architecture is quite flexible and can cater to a variety of information retrieval tasks. In particular, we illustrate the framework in two extreme information retrieval tasks: high-rate information retrieval corresponding to distributed independent sensor measurements, and low-rate retrieval corresponding to localized correlated measurements. A low-complexity interference suppression technique is proposed for significantly increasing the capacity and reliability of high-rate information retrieval. Performance analysis reveals a fundamental rate versus reliability tradeoff in AWS and is illustrated with accompanying simulation results.

O B I O O O O O B I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 neuro-computational intelligence analysis of the global consumer software piracy rates Software piracy represents a major damage to the moral fabric associated with the respect of intellectual property. The rate of software piracy appears to be increasing globally, suggesting that additional research that uses new approaches is necessary to evaluate the problem. The study remedies previous econometric and methodological shortcomings by applying Bayesian, robust and evolutionary computation robust regression algorithms to formally test empirical literature on software piracy. To gain further insights into software piracy at the global level, the study also uses five neuro-computational intelligence methodologies: multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLP), probabilistic neural network (PNN), radial basis function neural network (RBF), generalized regression neural network (GRNN) and Kohonens self-organizing maps (SOM) to classify, predict and cluster software piracy rates among 102 nations. At the empirical level, this research shows that software piracy is significantly affected by the wealth of nation as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), the nations expenditure on research and development and the nations judicial efficiency. At the methodological level, this research shows that neuro-computational models outperform traditional statistical techniques such as regression analysis, discriminant analysis and cluster analysis in predicting, classifying and clustering software piracy rates due to their robustness and flexibility of modeling algorithms.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 software piracy
ethical behavior
neural networks
bayesian regression
evolutionary computation models


Challenges of wireless communications - IMT-2000 and beyond Mobile radio and Internet communications services are penetrating our society at all exponential rate of growth. The Internet is the most important driving force towards establishing a multimedia society. Mobile communication systems add an important capability to our communications society, i.e., mobility. The third generation mobile communications system called IMT-2000 is expected to play an important role in this soon-to-arrive multimedia society. Wideband mobile services based on IMT-2000 will soon become a reality (early 2001). First, we look at the trends of wireless access technologies, centering on IMT2000. Wideband direct sequence code division multiple access (W-CDMA) will be a major component of a global IMT-2000 standard. Their, we address advanced wireless techniques, i.e., interference cancellation and employing an adaptive antenna array. which can enhance W-CDMA at a later date. Finally, requirements are discussed for future wireless techniques that will support a fully mobile multimedia communications society.

O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 communications systems
imt-2000
ds-cdma


A visual LISP program for voxelizing AutoCAD solid models Acad2Vox converts arbitrary AutoCAD 3D-solids to 3D grid data. It follows a novel, CAD-oriented and efficient voxelization strategy. Multiple AutoCAD versions are supported.

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

solid model
region-of-interest
geostatistics
sgems


Cost-Aware Cooperative Resource Provisioning for Heterogeneous Workloads in Data Centers Recent cost analysis shows that the server cost still dominates the total cost of high-scale data centers or cloud systems. In this paper, we argue for a new twist on the classical resource provisioning problem: heterogeneous workloads are a fact of life in large-scale data centers, and current resource provisioning solutions do not act upon this heterogeneity. Our contributions are threefold: first, we propose a cooperative resource provisioning solution, and take advantage of differences of heterogeneous workloads so as to decrease their peak resources consumption under competitive conditions; second, for four typical heterogeneous workloads: parallel batch jobs, web servers, search engines, and MapReduce jobs, we build an agile system PhoenixCloud that enables cooperative resource provisioning; and third, we perform a comprehensive evaluation for both real and synthetic workload traces. Our experiments show that our solution could save the server cost aggressively with respect to the noncooperative solutions that are widely used in state-of-the-practice hosting data centers or cloud systems: for example, EC2, which leverages the statistical multiplexing technique, or RightScale, which roughly implements the elastic resource provisioning technique proposed in related state-of-the-art work.

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

data centers
cloud
cooperative resource provisioning
statistical multiplexing
cost
heterogeneous workloads


Configuring policies in public health applications Public health is a complex practice due to the requirements of different jurisdictions. These requirements present a challenging environment in which to develop public health applications; software must be flexible in order to adapt to the complexities of different jurisdictions. One approach is to integrate policy management. Policies that define the rules governing an application can be created, modified, or deleted based on the deployment of that application. This paper describes a software architecture and expert system implementation of a policy manager designed to address jurisdictional requirements in public health applications. We define our policy requirements and policy model, the components of the architecture, and how the architecture has been used to implement our policy manager. Finally, we present examples of how the policy manager has configured policies used in three public health applications.

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

policy management
expert system
public health


An adaptive updating protocol for reducing moving object database workload In the last decade, spatio-temporal database research focuses on the design of effective and efficient indexing structures in support of location-based queries such as predictive range queries and nearest neighbor queries. While a variety of indexing techniques have been proposed to accelerate the processing of updates and queries, not much attention has been paid to the updating protocol, which is another important factor affecting the system performance. In this paper, we propose a generic and adaptive updating protocol for moving object databases with less number of updates between objects and the database server, thereby reducing the overall workload of the system. In contrast to the approach adopted by most conventional moving object database systems where the exact locations and velocities last disclosed are used to predict their motions, we propose the concept of Spatio-temporal safe region to approximate possible future locations. Spatio-temporal safe regions provide larger space of tolerance for moving objects, freeing them from location and velocity updates as long as the errors remain predictable in the database. To answer predictive queries accurately, the server is allowed to probe the latest status of objects when their safe regions are inadequate in returning the exact query results. Spatio-temporal safe regions are calculated and optimized by the database server with two contradictory objectives: reducing update workload while guaranteeing query accuracy and efficiency. To achieve this, we propose a cost model that estimates the composition of active and passive updates based on historical motion records and query distribution. More system performance improvements can be obtained by cutting more updates from the clients, when the users of system are comfortable with incomplete but accuracy bounded query results. We have conducted extensive experiments to evaluate our proposal on a variety of popular indexing structures. The results confirm the viability, robustness, accuracy and efficiency of our proposed protocol.

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


Aging, Emotion, and Evolution Ample empirical evidence shows that basic cognitive processes integral to learning and memory suffer with age. Explanations for age-related loss typically cite the absence of evolutionary selection pressures during the postreproductive years, which consequently failed to optimize functioning during old age. In this paper, we suggest that evolutionary pressures did operate at older ages and that an evolutionary account is entirely consistent with the pattern of findings currently available in the psychological literature on aging. Cognitive loss is limited primarily to new learning, yet integrated world knowledge increases with age. In addition, socioemotional regulation improves with age, which is associated with increased investment in emotionally meaningful others (most notably kin). In this chapter, we argue that this profile of late-life characteristics contributes to the reproductive success of kin. We consider how the uniquely human ability to monitor place in the life cycle and the consequent motivational shifts that occur when boundaries in time are perceived contribute to the adaptive value of long life. Finally, we suggest that joint consideration of evolutionary theory and life-span psychology can lead to fruitful advances in the understanding of human aging.

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

aging
evolutionary theory
cognitive loss
socioemotional regulation


Extension of the constrained particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimal operation of multi-reservoirs system Three constrained PSO algorithms for the optimal multi-reservoir operation. Algorithms are based on excluding the infeasible region of the search space. Methods are used to solve two benchmark problems of Four and Ten reservoir systems. Methods shown to be very effective, efficient and insensitive to PSO parameters.

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

explicit constraints
multi-reservoir problems


Apolipoprotein E and Alzheimer's Disease A Role in Amyloid Catabolism It has been shown over the past few years that apolipoprotein E (apoE) plays a central role in the brain response to injury and neurodegeneration in mammalian species. The coordinated expression of apoE and its different receptors, the so-called LDL receptor family, appears to regulate the transport of cholesterol and phospholipids during the early and middle phases of the reinnervation in the adult mammalian brain. As neurons undergo dendritic remodelling and synaptogenesis using cholesterol internalization through the apoE/LDL receptor pathway, they progressively shut down 3,3-hydroxymethylglutaryl-Coenzyme A (HMG CoA) reductase activity, the rate-limiting enzyme in the synthesis of cholesterol. These results suggest that cholesterol delivery and synthesis in the brain are tightly regulated through an apoE-dependent mechanism. The discovery that the apolipoprotein e4 allele is strongly linked to both sporadic and familial late- onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) has raised the possibility that a dysfunction of lipid transport could explain the poor compensatory synaptogenesis reported by several independent research groups in the brain of AD subjects. Recently, it has been shown that alterations of cholesterol homeostasis in the brain by exogenous administration of dietary cholesterol, or through inhibition of cholesterol synthesis, markedly affect beta amyloid production (140 and 142) and deposition and significantly impair amyloid precursor protein (APP) metabolism. In vivo, it has been shown that breeding of APP-overexpressing mice with apoE knockout mice completely abolishes amyloid plaque deposition in the brain of hybrid animals, without affecting beta amyloid steady state levels. Conversely, introduction of the human apoE3 and apoE4 genes in APP- overexpressing mice drastically reduced beta amyloid deposition in the brain of hybrid mice, confirming the proposed biological role of apoE in the clearance of extracellular beta amyloid. These results indicate that lipid homeostasis is controlled in large part by the apoE lipoprotein transport system in the extracellular space, whereas alterations in intracellular lipid homeostasis markedly affect APP processing, beta amyloid production and plaque formation in vivo. The convergence of the so- called amyloid cascade hypothesis (Hardy et al., 1992) and of the apoE/lipid recycling cascade model (Poirier, 1994) is consistent with the notion that alterations in lipid homeostasis could serve as the common denominator for apoE and beta amyloid dysfunctions in Alzheimer's disease. It is also interesting to note that lipid homeostasis is also a central feature of one of the most important neurotransmitter systems in the brain

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

cholesterol
apolipoprotein e
beta amyloid


Improved one-to-all broadcasting algorithms on faulty SIMD hypercubes Consider an n-dimensional SIMD hypercube H-n with [3n/2] - 1 faulty nodes. With n + 3 log(n - 1) + 7, n + 2 log(n - 1) + 9, n + log(n - 1) + O(log log(n - 1)), n + log(n - 1) + 12, and n + 19 steps, this paper presents some one-to-all broadcasting algorithms on the faulty SIMD H-n. The sequence of dimensions used for broadcasting in each algorithm is the same regardless of which node is the source. The proposed one-to-all broadcasting algorithms can tolerate [n/2] more faulty nodes than Raghavendra. and Sridhar's algorithms (J. Parallel Distrb. Comput. 35 (1996) 57) although 8 extra steps are needed. The fault-tolerance improvement of this paper is about 50%. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.

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

fault tolerance
light-occupied dimension
one-to-all broadcasting
parallel algorithm


Automatic reconstruction of 3D objects using a mobile camera A method for the automatic reconstruction of 3D objects from multiple camera views for 3D multimedia applications is presented. Conventional 3D reconstruction techniques use equipment that restrict the flexibility of the user. In order to increase this flexibility, the presented method uses a simple measurement environment that consists of a new calibration pattern placed below the object. This allows simultaneous acquisition of object and pattern, and ensures that each view can be calibrated individually. From these calibrated camera views, a textured 3D wireframe model is estimated using a shape-from-silhouette approach and texture mapping of the original camera views. Experiments with this system have confirmed a significant gain in flexibility for the user and a drastic reduction in costs of technical equipment while at the same time maintaining model quality comparable to conventional reconstruction techniques. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

multiple views
shape-from-silhouette
triangle mesh
camera calibration


Using orthogonal projection approach (OPA) for rank-deficient reaction processes Orthogonal projection approach (OPA) has been used for monitoring batch processes. However, because of the mass balance constraints between the reactants and products in a chemical reaction, standard OPA will fail if rank-deficiency occurs. The effect of the rank-deficiency on using OPA for process reaction data sets is discussed, and a new automatic approach for resolution of rank-deficiency data sets by OPA is proposed for batch control. The method is demonstrated for an industrial batch data set. (c) 2005 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

batch process
orthogonal projection approach (opa)
rank-deficiency


Reconstruction of multi-view compressed imaging using weighted total variation This paper concentrates on the problem of image reconstruction from compressed sensing (CS) measurements in multi-view compressed imaging systems, where each view is acquired independently by CS technique. In order to take advantage of both the inter-view correlation and the spatial prior information in multi-view image sets, a weighted total variation (TV) regularized model, which combines the TV norm of a target view and the TV norm of the corresponding residual, is proposed. To efficiently solve the weighted TV regularization constrained problem, novel algorithms are presented for both the anisotropy TV and the isotropy TV cases. Given the multi-view CS measurements, a sliding window-based recovery framework is also developed to work with the weighted TV-based reconstruction algorithms and produce high-quality results. We show by experiments that the proposed methods greatly outperform the straight forward reconstruction which applies view by view image reconstruction independently, and also have significant advantages over other benchmark methods.

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

compressed sensing
weighted total variation


New results on the stability of fuzzy cellular neural networks with time-varying leakage delays In this paper, fuzzy cellular neural networks with time-varying delays in the leakage terms are studied. Without assuming the boundedness on the activation functions, some sufficient conditions for the existence, uniqueness and global exponential stability of equilibrium point are established by using the fixed point theorem and constructing suitable Lyapunov functional, which are new, and they improve previously known results. Moreover, an example is given to demonstrate the feasibility of our method.

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

fuzzy cellular neural network
time-varying delay
leakage term


Bayesian modelling strategies for spatially varying regression coefficients: A multivariate perspective for multiple outcomes The modelling of spatially varying regression effects for multivariate mortality count outcomes is investigated. Alternative approaches to spatial regression heterogeneity are considered: the multivariate normal conditional autoregressive (MCAR) model is contrasted with a flexible set of priors based on the multiple membership approach. These include spatial factor priors and a non-parametric approach based on the Dirichlet process. A case study considers varying regression effects for a bivariate suicide outcome, namely male and female suicides in 354 English local authorities with social deprivation, social fragmentation and rurality as predictors.

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

spatially varying regression effects
suicide

multiple members model
conditional autoregressive priors
multivariate response


Damage identification by response surface based model updating using D-optimal design Statistical tools, as well as mathematical ones, have been widely adopted and their performance has been shown in different engineering problems where randomicity usually exists. In the realm of engineering, merging statistical analysis into structural evaluation and assessment will be a tendency in the future. As a combination of mathematical and statistical techniques, response surface methodology has been successfully applied to design optimization, response prediction and model validation. This methodology provides explicit functions to represent the relationships between the inputs and outputs of a physical system, which is also a desirable advantage in damage identification. However, so far little research has been carried out in applying the response surface methodology to structural damage identification. This paper presents a damage identification method achieved by response surface based model updating using D-optimal designs. Compared with some common designs constructing response surfaces, D-optimal designs generally require a minimum number of numerical samples and this merit is quite desirable when analysts cannot obtain enough samples. In this study, firstly D-optimal designs are used to establish response surface models for screening out non-significant updating parameters and then first-order response surface models are constructed to substitute for finite element models in predicting the dynamic responses of an intact or damaged physical system. Three case studies of a numerical beam, a tested reinforced concrete frame and a tested full-scale bridge have been used to verify the proposed method. Physical properties such as Youngs modulus and section inertias were chosen as the input features and modal frequency was the only response feature. It has been observed that the proposed method gives enough accuracy in damage prediction of not only the numerical but also the real-world structures with single and multiple damage scenarios, and the first-order response surface models based on the D-optimal criterion are adequate for such damage identification purposes.

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

response surface modeling
d-optimal designs
parameter screening


Remote sensing as a tool for agricultural statistics: a case study of area frame sampling methodology in Hellas The 10-year Monitoring Agriculture with Remote Sensing (MARS) project, launched by EU in 1989, initiated several studies with the aim of providing technical support to the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) and helping the Member States Administrations to improve and industrialise their methods using remote sensing technology. One of the main targets of the project is to provide the framework for implementation of this technology assessing the use of high resolution satellite images as part of the measures to be taken by the national governments to improve the ground survey estimates based on an area frame rather than a holding-based approach. The area frame methodology is primary used for crop area, and yield or production estimates. The statistical units (the segments) of an area frame are directly bound to a stratified geographical region, the limits of which are known in advance. Thus, the elements of the population (the frame) are also known. Since the population is stratified no segment may be shared by two or more strata. Samples are obtained by dividing a region into blocks of equal (square) shape and repeating a pattern of elements across the region. In this context, two-dimensional systematic aligned sampling methodology, with a distance threshold in a stratified area frame on a square grid, is developed. The main purpose of this paper is to review the area frame of square segments methodology when it is applied in combination with satellite imagery (also known as supervised classification), and to provide the main features that appear when it is used in agricultural statistical surveys. Further, it is to report results of area estimates obtained from the implementation of this fast acquisition statistical data methodology, using Landsat-tm images in certain cultivated Hellenic areas, particularly productive in soft and durum wheat, maize, cereals, sugar beets, cotton, tobacco, olives trees and vines. Although the results show that there is some improvement in using the supervised classification methodology, a revised stratification methodology is proposed and a new sample is extracted for the Hellenic regions of Macedonia and Thrace, using no satellite data. The new classification is simpler, easier and less costly to implement than the one that is in current use. The developed regression model provided more accurate and viable acreage estimates than a previously applied model, and it may be extended to all cultivated Hellenic regions. Finally, the acreage, yield and production estimates obtained from the supervised classification methodology are compared with those obtained from the rapid estimates methodology which was also developed in the framework of the MARS project and is reviewed here. This comparison shows a noticeable agreement in the results obtained.

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

remote sensing
area frame sampling
agricultural statistics


An investigation into the mechanisms limiting the safe operating area of a LIGBT in DI and DELDI technologies The Forward Bias Safe Operating Areas (FBSOA) of 500V LIGBTs in the Dielectric Isolation (DI) and the Double Epitaxial Layer Dielectric Isolation (DELDI) technologies are investigated by detailed numerical calculations. The FBSOA of a DELDI LIGBT is found to be wider than its DI counterpart. The factors limiting the sustaining voltage in the on-state have been identified. A shallow floating P-layer incorporated under the gate extension results in a significant improvement of the SOA in both the technologies.

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

double epitaxial layer dielectric isolation

lateral insulated gate bipolar transistors


3LGM(2)-Modeling to support management of health information systems Objective: Both regional health information systems (rHIS) and hospital information systems (HIS) need systematic information management. Due to their complexity information management needs a thorough description or model of the managed information system. Methods: The three layer graph-based meta-model (3LGM(2)) and the 3LGM(2) tool provide means for effectively describing and modeling HIS by hospital functions, application systems and physical data processing components. The 3LGM(2) tool has been used to model parts of the information system of the health care system of the German federal state Saxony and of the Leipzig University Medical Centre. Results: Experiences showed, that 3LGM(2) is suitable for supporting information management even in rHIS. We explain some benefits for information management in regional as well as local settings. Conclusions: Acceptance of the 3LGM(2) depends strictly on its integration in management structures on the institutional, regional, and even national or European level. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

hospital information systems
health information systems
information management

systems integration
organizational models
3lgm(2)
information systems modeling


Identification of oversaturated intersections using high-resolution traffic signal data Conceptually, an oversaturated traffic intersection is defined as one where traffic demand exceeds the capacity. Such a definition, however, cannot be applied directly to identify oversaturated intersections because measuring traffic demand under congested conditions is not an easy task, particularly with fixed-location sensors. In this paper, we circumvent this issue by quantifying the detrimental effects of oversaturation on signal operations, both temporally and spatially. The detrimental effect is characterized temporally by a residual queue at the end of a cycle, which will require a portion of green time in the next cycle; or spatially by a spill-over from downstream traffic whereby usable green time is reduced because of the downstream blockage. The oversaturation severity index (OSI), in either the temporal dimension (T-OSI) or the spatial dimension (S-OSI) can then be measured using high-resolution traffic signal data by calculating the ratio between the unusable green time due to detrimental effects and the total available green time in a cycle. To quantify the T-OSI, in this paper, we adopt a shockwave-based queue estimation algorithm to estimate the residual queue length. S-OSI can be identified by a phenomenon denoted as Queue-Over-Detector (QOD), which is the condition when high occupancy on a detector is caused by downstream congestion. We believe that the persistence duration and the spatial extent with OSI greater than zero provide an important indicator for measuring traffic network performance so that corresponding congestion mitigation strategies can be prepared. The proposed algorithms for identifying oversaturated intersections and quantifying the oversaturation severity index have been field-tested using traffic signal data from a major arterial in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.

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

traffic signal systems
oversaturation severity index (osi)
shockwave
queue-over-detector (qod)


How can supply networks increase firm value? A causal framework to structure the answer The recent literature in the field of supply chain management emphasizes the role of inter-organizational networks and the integration of vertical reproduction networks (supply chains) in particular as a key factor for value creation. However, the literature includes little empirical evidence. This situation suggests the need to appraise investments in such networks or supply chains carefully. How can a decision maker reliably assess the effect of investing in inter-organizational network arrangements on firm value? This article takes up this issue and suggests a framework consisting of five components to help answer the question. The task of the framework is to support the structuring and revelation of the causal chain between investments in the network on the one hand and the effect of these investments on firm value on the other hand. The article develops and explains the framework in detail and later on relates extant literature to its components. A finding of this article is that potential causal chains from changes in a supply chain or supply network to firm value can be quite long and hypothetical.

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

networks
causal framework
value creation

supply chain integration
interfirm relationships
cause-and-effect-relationships
value-based management


verification strategy for integration 3g baseband soc The verification strategy of the second generation Motorola tri-processors baseband chip for the 3G wireless phone market is presented. The next generation of wireless phones supports multiple wireless protocols, high data bandwidth and a full range of multi-media applications running on an open OS. The baseband chip provides the integrated processing platform for such terminals. Baseband chips are among the most complex System on Chip (SoC) of this industry.The verification strategy to integrate such highly complex SoC is multi-fold and adaptive: hierarchical across the different abstraction levels with special emphasis on verification corners related to the abstraction level.The SoC architecture validation and optimization step should occur very early-on in the design cycle but require high level modeling methodology to capture the complete hardware and mission critical use cases and deliver quantitative data on the architecture. Adaptive verification scenarios are discussed across the abstraction levels and the SoC hierarchy, from stand-alone IP verification, through sub platforms and to the SoC level. A collection of metrics are presented and illustrate the efforts required to verify such complex SoC. We conclude with proposals and opportunities to enhance the SoC verification strategies based on the lessons learned.

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

3g baseband
verification
architecture
soc


Enabling community-driven information integration through clustering It has become widely recognized that user feedback can play a fundamental role in facilitating information integration tasks, e.g., the construction of integration schema and the specification of schema mappings. While promising, existing proposals make the assumption that the users providing feedback expect the same results from the integration system. In practice, however, different users may anticipate different results, due, e.g., to their preferences or application of interest, in which case the feedback they provide may be conflicting, thereby deteriorating the quality of the services provided by the integration system. In this paper, we present clustering strategies for grouping information integration users into groups of users with similar expectations as to the results delivered by the integration system. As well as grouping information integration users, we show that clustering results can be used as inputs to a wide range of functionalities that are relevant in the context of crowd-driven information integration. Specifically, we show that clustering can be used to identify feedback of relevance to a given user by exploiting the feedback provided by other users in the same cluster. We report on evaluation exercises that assess the effectiveness of the clustering strategies we propose, and showcase the benefits community- and crowd-driven information integration can derive from clustering.

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

user feedback
information integration
clustering


tackling component interoperability in quantum chemistry software The Common Component Architecture (CCA) offers an environment that allows scientific packages to dynamically interact with each other through components. Conceptually, a computation can be constructed with plug-and-play components from any componentized scientific package; however, providing such plug-and-play components from scientific packages requires more than componentizing functions/subroutines of interest, especially for large-scale scientific packages with a long development history. In this paper, we present our efforts to construct components for the integral evaluation - a fundamental sub-problem of quantum chemistry computations - that conform to the CCA specification. The goal is to enable fine-grained interoperability between three quantum chemistry packages, GAMESS, NWChem, and MPQC, via CCA integral components. The structures of these packages are quite different and require different approaches to construct and exploit CCA components. We focus on one of the three packages, GAMESS, delineating the structure of the integral computation in GAMESS, followed by our approaches to its component development. Then we use GAMESS as the driver to interoperate with integral components from another package, MPQC, and discuss the possible solutions for interoperability problems along with preliminary results.

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


Low-voltage CMOS rail-to-rail V-I converters This paper presents two CMOS low-voltage rail-to-rail voltage-to-current converters (V-I converter) which could be used as basic building blocks to construct low-voltage current-mode analog VLSI circuits. In each of the circuits, an N-type V-I converter cell is connected in parallel with its P-type counterpart to achieve common-mode rail-to-rail operation. A linear differential relationship of the N-type V-I converter, or its P-type complement, is obtained using a new class-AB linearization technique, In the first rail-to-rail V-I converter circuit, a constant transconductance is achieved through the use of two maximum-current selecting circuits and an output subtraction stage, In the second circuit, a constant transconductance value is obtained by manipulating the DC bias currents of N- and P-type V-I converter cells. Both of the circuits can operate from rail to rail with a power supply of 3V, or less depending on the VLSI technology and the DC bias current level.

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

low voltage
rail-to-rail
voltage-to-current converter
v-i converter
ota


Deterministic and stochastic models of enzymatic networks - applications to pharmaceutical research The intracellular transducing device consists of complex networks of enzymatic reactions. Unfortunately, the mathematical models commonly used to describe them are still unsatisfactory and unreliable, even at the level of reproducing simple reaction schemes. The improvement of mathematical models is necessary and can follow different approaches still poorly employed, such as the modeling of spatial structures and phenomena, time delays, stochastic perturbations, only to cite the most relevant ones. In this paper we show some recent results related to the total quasi-steady-state approximation (tQSSA), in a deterministic scenario. Moreover, we show some possible applications of the tQSSA in a stochastic scheme. (c) 2007 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

michaelis-menten kinetics
quasi-steady-state approximation
deterministic and stochastic processes
protein-protein interactions


image annotation based on recommendation model In this paper, a novel approach based on recommendation model is proposed for automatic image annotation. For any to-be-annotated image, we first select some related images with tags from training dataset according to their visual similarity. And then we estimate the initial ratings for tags of the training images based on tag ranking method and construct a rating matrix. We also construct a trust matrix based on visual similarity with a k-NN strategy. Then a recommendation model is built on both matrices to rank candidate tags for the target image. The proposed approach is evaluated using two benchmark image datasets, and experimental results have indicated its effectiveness.

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


Unified Dictionary Learning and Region Tagging with Hierarchical Sparse Representation Image patterns at different spatial levels are well organized, such as regions within one image and feature points within one region. These classes of spatial structures are hierarchical in nature. The appropriate integration and utilization of such relationship are important to improve the performance of region tagging. Inspired by the recent advances of sparse coding methods, we propose an approach, called Unified Dictionary Learning and Region Tagging with Hierarchical Sparse Representation. This approach consists of two steps: region representation and region reconstruction. In the first step, rather than using the l(1)-norm as it is commonly done in sparse coding, we add a hierarchical structure to the process of sparse coding and form a framework of tree-guided dictionary learning. In this framework, the hierarchical structures among feature points, regions, and images are encoded by forming a tree-guided multi-task learning process. With the learned dictionary, we obtain a better representation of training and testing regions. In the second step, we propose to use a sub-hierarchical structure to guide the sparse reconstruction for testing regions, i.e., the structure between regions and images. Thanks to this hierarchy, the obtained reconstruction coefficients are more discriminate. Finally, tags are propagated to testing regions by the learned reconstruction coefficients. Extensive experiments on three public benchmark image data sets demonstrate that the proposed approach has better performance of region tagging than the current state of the art methods. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

sparse coding
region tagging
sparse reconstruction

unified hierarchical structure
tree-guided dictionary learning


Towards a general neural controller for quadrupedal locomotion Our study aims at the design and implementation of a general controller for quadruped locomotion, allowing the robot to use the whole range of quadrupedal gaits (i.e.from low speed walking to fast running). A general legged locomotion controller must integrate both posture control and rhythmic motion control and have the ability to shift continuously from one control method to the other according to locomotion speed. We are developing such a general quadrupedal locomotion controller by using a neural model involving a CPG (Central Pattern Generator) utilizing ground reaction force sensory feedback. We used a biologically faithful musculoskeletal model with a spine and hind legs, and computationally simulated stable stepping motion at various speeds using the neuro-mechanical system combining the neural controller and the musculoskeletal model. We compared the changes of the most important locomotion characteristics (stepping period, duty ratio and support length) according to speed in our simulations with the data on real cat walking. We found similar tendencies for all of them. In particular, the swing period was approximately constant while the stance period decreased with speed, resulting in a decreasing stepping period and duty ratio. Moreover, the support length increased with speed due to the posterior extreme position that shifted progressively caudally, while the anterior extreme position was approximately constant. This indicates that we succeeded in reproducing to some extent the motion of a cat from the kinematical point of view, even though we used a 2D bipedal model. We expect that such computational models will become essential tools for legged locomotion neuroscience in the future.

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

quadruped
neural controller
cpg
rhythmic motion
posture


Occlusion analysis: Learning and utilising depth maps in object tracking Complex scenes such as underground stations and malls are composed of static occlusion structures such as walls, entrances, columns, turnstiles and barriers. Unless this occlusion landscape is made explicit such structures can defeat the process of tracking individuals through the scene. This paper describes a method of generating the probability density functions for the depth of the scene at each pixel from a training set of detected blobs, i.e., observations of detected moving people. As the results are necessarily noisy, a regularization process is employed to recover the most self-consistent scene depth structure. An occlusion reasoning framework is proposed to enable object tracking methodologies to make effective use of the recovered depth.

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