Comparative study of accuracy and computation time for optimal network reconfiguration techniques via simulation The authors apply dynamic programming to optimal power system reconfiguration. They also examine the effect of study parameters, such as switch ordering, on performance. This work may help future engineers obtain maximum benefit from studies with minimal computation effort. The authors provide extensive test results, more than 100,000 trials.

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

power systems
energy efficiency
nonlinear system analysis


fast centrality approximation in modular networks Measuring the centrality of nodes in real-world networks has remained an important task in the technological, social, and biological network paradigms carrying implications on their analysis and applications. Exact inference of centrality values is infeasible in large networks due to the need to solve the all-pairs shortest path problem. We introduce a framework to approximate node centralities in real-world networks that are known to exhibit modularity, i.e., the presence of dense subgraphs or communities, which are themselves sparsely connected. We also propose a novel centrality measure known as Community Inbetweenness that ranks nodes based solely on community information. In a modular network of size n with ?n (1/2) evenly sized communities and m edges, our framework requires linear time O ( m ) and O ( ?nm ) time for the approximation of closeness and betweenness respectively. Utilizing a recently proposed linear time method in community detection, our approximation techniques are faster than traditional sampling algorithms, applicable in real-time distributed environments, and offer highly comparable results.

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

modularity
community detection
centrality


Understanding the limitations and improving the relevance of SPICE simulations in side-channel security evaluations Simulation is a very powerful tool for hardware designers. It generally allows the preliminary evaluation of a chips performance before its final tape out. As security against side-channel attacks is an increasingly important issue for cryptographic devices, simulation also becomes a desirable option for preliminary evaluation in this case. However, its relevance highly depends on the proper modeling of all the attack peculiarities. For example, several works in the literature directly exploit SPICE-like simulations without considering measurement peripherals. But the outcome of such analyses may be questionable, as witnessed by the recent results of Renauld et al. at CHES 2011, which showed how far the power traces of an AES S-box implemented using a dynamic and differential logic style fabricated in 65nm CMOS can lie from their post-layout simulations. One important difference was found in the linear dependencies between the (simulated and actual) traces and the S-box input/output bits. While simulations exhibited highly non-linear traces, actual measurements were much more linear. As linearity is a crucial parameter for the application of non-profiled side-channel attacks (which are only possible under the assumption of sufficiently linear leakages), this observation motivated us to study the reasons of such differences. Consequently, this work discusses the relevance of simulation in security evaluations, and highlights its dependency on the proper modeling of measurement setups. For this purpose, we present a generic approach to build an adequate model to represent measurement artifacts, based upon real data from equipment providers for our AES S-box case study. Next, we illustrate the transformation of simulated leakages, from highly non-linear to reasonably linear, exploiting our model and regression-based side-channel analysis. While improving the relevance of simulations in security evaluations, our results also raise doubts regarding the possibility to design dual-rail implementations with highly non-linear leakages.

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

formal verification of vlsi designs at netlist-level


Offering Data Confidentiality for Multimedia Overlay Multicast: Design and Analysis Application layer multicast (ALM) has been proposed to overcome current limitations in IP multicast for large-group multimedia communication. We address offering data confidentiality tailored for ALM. To achieve confidentiality, a node may need to continuously re-encrypt packets before forwarding them downstream. Furthermore, keys have to be changed whenever there is a membership change, leading to rekey processing overhead at the nodes. For a large and dynamic group, these reencryption and rekeying operations incur high processing overhead at the nodes. We propose and analyze a scalable scheme called Secure Overlay Multicast (SOM) which clusters ALM peers so as to localize rekeying within a cluster and to limit re-encryption at cluster boundaries, thereby minimizing the total nodal processing overhead. We describe the operations of SOM and compare its nodal processing overhead with two other basic approaches, namely, host-to-host encryption and whole group encryption. We also present a simplified analytic model for SOM and show that there exists an optimal cluster size to minimize the total nodal processing overhead. By comparing with a recently proposed ALM scheme (DT protocol), SOM achieves a substantial reduction in nodal processing overhead with similar network performance in terms of network stress and delay.

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

algorithms
experimentation
security
key management
multicast security
performance analysis


On the map: Nature and Science editorials Bibliometric mapping of scientific articles based on keywords and technical terms in abstracts is now frequently used to chart scientific fields. In contrast, no significant mapping has been applied to the full texts of non-specialist documents. Editorials in Nature and Science are such non-specialist documents, reflecting the views of the two most read scientific journals on science, technology and policy issues. We use the VOSviewer mapping software to chart the topics of these editorials. A term map and a document map are constructed and clusters are distinguished in both of them. The validity of the document clustering is verified by a manual analysis of a sample of the editorials. This analysis confirms the homogeneity of the clusters obtained by mapping and augments the latter with further detail. As a result, the analysis provides reliable information on the distribution of the editorials over topics, and on differences between the journals. The most striking difference is that Nature devotes more attention to internal science policy issues and Science more to the political influence of scientists.

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


A fuzzy-set approach to treat determinacy and consistency of linguistic terms in multi-criteria decision making A fuzzy-set-based approach is presented to describe linguistic information in multi-criteria decision making. After having introduced concepts of determinacy and consistency of linguistic terms, the understandable degree and consistence degree of linguistic terms are illustrated by these two concepts. A case study is demonstrated for the proposed decision-making model with an analytical conclusion of both advantages and disadvantages. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

multi-criteria decision making
fuzzy sets
determinacy of linguistic terms
consistency of linguistic terms


Tradeoff between latch and flop for min-period sequential circuit designs with crosstalk Latches are extensively used in high-performance sequential circuit designs to achieve high frequencies because of their good performance and time-borrowing feature. However, the amount of timing uncertainty due to crosstalk accumulated through latches could be larger than the benefit gained by time borrowing. In this paper, we show that the tradeoff between a latch and a flop can be leveraged in a sequential circuit design with crosstalk, so that the clock period is minimized by selecting a configuration of mixed latches and flops. A circular time representation is proposed to make coupling detection easier and more efficient. Experiments on our heuristic algorithm for finding an optimal configuration of mixed latches and flops showed promising results.

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

algorithms
circuit optimization
design automation
timing circuits
very large scale integration


New Techniques for Anonymous HIBE with Short Ciphertexts in Prime Order Groups Anonymous hierarchical identity based encryption (HIBE) is an extension of identity based encryption (IBE) that can use an arbitrary string like an e-mail address for a public key, and it additionally provide the anonymity of identity in ciphertexts. Using the anonymous HIBE schemes, it is possible to construct anonymous communication systems and public key encryption with keyword search. This paper presents an anonymous HIBE scheme with constant size ciphertexts under prime order symmetric bilinear groups, and shows that it is secure under the selective security model. Previous anonymous HIBE schemes were constructed to have linear size ciphertexts, to use composite order bilinear groups, or to use asymmetric bilinear groups that is a special type of bilinear groups. Our construction is the first efficient anonymous HIBE scheme that has constant size ciphertexts and that uses prime order symmetric bilinear groups. Compared to the previous scheme of composite order bilinear groups, ours is ten times faster. To achieve our construction, we first devise a novel cancelable random blinding technique. The random blinding property of our technique provides the anonymity of our construction, and the cancellation property of our technique enables decryption.

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

cryptography
provable security
hierarchical identity based encryption
bilinear pairing


Optimal fuzzy profit for price in fuzzy sense The fuzzy price function can be derived from a linear or a quadratic demand function and a linear cost function. In this article we find the optimal fuzzy profit using the fuzzy price function and linear cost function. The results are identical when the fuzzy case was reduced to the crisp case. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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


Efficient management of multi-linked negotiation based on a formalized model A Multi-linked negotiation problem occurs when an agent needs to negotiate with multiple other agents about different subjects (tasks, conflicts, or resource requirements), and the negotiation over one subject has influence on negotiations over other subjects. The solution of the multi-linked negotiations problem will become increasingly important for the next generation of advanced multi-agent systems. However, most current negotiation research looks only at a single negotiation and thus does not present techniques to manage and reason about multi-linked negotiations. In this paper, we first present a technique based on the use of a partial-order schedule and a measure of the schedule, called flexibility, which enables an agent to reason explicitly about the interactions among multiple negotiations. Next, we introduce a formalized model of the multi-linked negotiation problem. Based on this model, a heuristic search algorithm is developed for finding a near-optimal ordering of negotiation issues and their parameters. Using this algorithm, an agent can evaluate and compare different negotiation approaches and choose the best one. We show how an agent uses this technology to effectively manage interacting negotiation issues. Experimental work is presented which shows the efficiency of this approach.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 related negotiations
agent reasoning and control
conflict resolution
performance optimization


Level Sets In this paper we discuss some properties of the level sets of fuzzy sets, under some different points of view, in connection with the so called "representation theorems"

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


Progressive mesh metamorphosis This paper describes a new integrated scheme for metamorphosis between two closed manifold genus-0 polyhedral models. Spherical parameterizations of the source and target models are created first. To control the morphing, any number of feature vertex pairs is specified and a fold-over free warping method is used to align two spherical embeddings. Our method does not create a merged meta-mesh or execute re-meshing to construct a common connectivity for morphs. Alternatively, a scheme for the progressive connectivity transformation of two spherical parameterizations is employed to generate the intermediate meshes. A novel semi-overlay with a geomorph scheme is proposed to reduce the popping effects caused by the connectivity transformation. We demonstrate several examples of aesthetically pleasing morphing sequences using the proposed scheme. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

metamorphosis
connectivity transformation
warping
geomorph


Selecting a Methodology for Business Information Systems Development: Decision Model and Tool Support The paper presents a decision model and a tool that helps to find an information systems development methodology (ISDM) for a computer-based business information system (IS) that is suitable to a certain IS development project or an organisation dealing with IS development. The intention of the model is not only to suggest a certain ISDM, but also to propose the properties an ISDM should have to suite the project or the organisation. It is designed in a way that facilitates experimentation with different project, organisation and ISDM properties. Based on the model we created a tool that has been applied on several cases in which we validated the correctness of its recommendations and established that it can have a significant positive contribution in the process of ISDM selection and in the process of improvement of existing ISDM.

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

business information systems development


Triangular norm-based iterative compensatory operators Aggregation operators based on a fixed t-norm and on suitable transformations of processed data are introduced. A special attention is paid to the class of iterative compensatory operators containing also the classical arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means. Several properties of introduced operators are studied, e.g., the symmetry, the associativity, the idempotency, the anihilation, etc. Several examples are given, including continuous idempotent bisymmetric iterative compensatory operators with zero anihilator. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

aggregation operator
iterative aggregation operator
compensatory operator
iterative compensatory operator
triangular norm


Large vocabulary continuous speech recognition of an inflected language using stems and endings In this article, we focus on creating a large vocabulary speech recognition system for the Slovenian language. Currently, state-of-the-art recognition systems are able to use vocabularies with sizes of 20,000 to 100,000 words. These systems have mostly been developed for English, which belongs to a group of uninflectional languages. Slovenian, as a Slavic language, belongs to a group of inflectional languages. Its rich morphology presents a major problem in large vocabulary speech recognition. Compared to English, the Slovenian language requires a vocabulary approximately 10 times greater for the same degree of text coverage. Consequently, the difference in vocabulary size causes a high degree of OOV (out-of-vocabulary words). Therefore OOV words have a direct impact on recognizer efficiency. The characteristics of inflectional languages have been considered when developing a new search algorithm with a method for restricting the correct order of sub-word units, and to use separate language models based on sub-words. This search algorithm combines the properties of sub-word-based models (reduced OOV) and word-based models (the length of context). The algorithm also enables better search-space limitation for sub-word models. Using sub-word models, we increase recognizer accuracy and achieve a comparable search space to that of a standard word-based recognizer. Our methods were evaluated in experiments on a SNABI speech database.

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

large vocabulary continuous speech recognition


communication and management support in system development environments A System Development Support Environment that assists in communication and management tasks of software project members should aid the development of large, evolutionary computer systems. The environment proposed in this paper will include integrated capabilities for project management, system evaluation, documentation/help, and intelligent communication between designers/users, and either the system or other designers. The goal is to have the environment help collect, organize and disseminate information about a project, using a model of the underlying system. The work is based on the idea that people perform Communication Acts (ACTs) such as: questioning, griping, planning, requesting or informing, while interacting with a system, and that processing of these ACTs can be automated. A Taxonomy of simple ACTs has been created from initial, informal studies of system/user interaction. A knowledge-based synthesis approach is used to create an experimental environment to support a program synthesis (software) project [Phillips-81]. The environment design and framework, which is part of the author's Ph.D. thesis work in progress [Kedzierski-80], is discussed.

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

communication
help
framework
system development support
design
collect
project
model
paper
system development
informal
evaluation
management
software
systems
capabilities
environments
support
synthesis

software psychology
plan
intelligence
software engineering
developer
computation
knowledge
automation
organization
author
experimentation
users
project management
user interaction
taxonomies
artificial intelligence
process
knowledge-based systems
documentation
programming environments
knowledge representation
human-computer interfaces
integrability


Mixing local and global information for community detection in large networks We are investigating the emergence of a community structure in large online social networks such as Facebook. We propose a scalable method to maximize modularity in large networks. Our method uses global-level information but its scalability on large networks is comparable to that of local methods. Edge centralities were used to map network vertices onto points of a Euclidean space. Experiments on synthetic and real-world networks certify the accuracy of our method.

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

complex networks
social network analysis


CORRELATION COEFFICIENT BETWEEN GENERALIZED ATANASSOV'S INTUITIONISTIC FUZZY SETS Based on the geometrical representation of generalized Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy sets (GA-IFSs), we take into account all three parameters describing GA-IFSs, propose a method to calculate the correlation coefficient for GA-IFSs in a finite set and a probability space, respectively, and discuss some properties of correlation and correlation coefficient of GA-IFSs.

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

generalized atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy sets


L-Multialgebras and P-Fuzzy Congruences of Multialgebras We define and study L-multialgebra(also called L-hyperalgebras) and fuzzy congruences of multialgebras. First the notion of L-multialgebras is introduced and the notion of P-fuzzy relation on multialgebras is given, where P is any down directed ordered set. These notions will be applied to introduce the notions of P-fuzzy congruences and P-fuzzy strong congruences of multialgebras. Finally, the lattices of P-fuzzy and strong P-fuzzy congruence of multialgebras are constructed and basic properties of these lattices are investigated.

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

compatible and strong compatible relations


ontology-based learning content repurposing This paper investigates basic research issues that need to be addressed for developing an architecture that enables repurposing of learning objects in a flexible way. Currently, there are a number of Learning Object Content Models (e.g. the SCORM Content Aggregation Model) that define learning objects and their components in a more or less precise way. However, these models do not allow repurposing of fine-grained components (sentences, images). We developed an ontology-based solution for content repurposing. The ontology is a solid basis for an architecture that will enable on-the-fly access to learning object components and that will facilitate repurposing these components.

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

repurposing
learning objects
content models


A new approach of power electronic design using a nonlinear average model Purpose - The present work aims to explain how the nonlinear average model can be used in power electronic integration design as a behavioral model. Design/methodology/approach - The nonlinear average model is used in power electronic integration design as a behavioral model, where it is applied to a voltage source inverter based on IGBTs. This model was chosen because it takes into account the nonlinearity of the power semiconductor components and the wiring circuit effects, which can be formalized by the virtual delay concept. In addition, the nonlinear average model cannot distinguish between slow and quick variables and this is an important feature of the model convergence. Findings - The paper studies extensively the construction of the nonlinear average model algorithm theoretically. Detailed explanations of the application of this model to voltage source inverter design are provided. The study demonstrates how this model illustrates the effect of the nonlinearity of the power semiconductor components' characteristics on dynamic electrical quantities. It also predicts the effects due to wiring in the inverter circuit. Research limitations/implications - More simulations and experimental analysis are still necessary to improve the model's accuracy, by using other static characteristic approaches, and to validate the applicability of the model to different converter topologies. Practical implications - The paper formulates a simple nonlinear average model algorithm, discussing each step. This model was described by VHDL-AMS. On the one hand, it will assist theoretical and practical research on different topologies of power electronic converters, particularly in power integration systems design such as the integrated power electronics modules (IPEM). On the other hand, it will give designers a more precise behavioral model with a simpler design process. Originality/value - The nonlinear average model used in power electronic integration design as behavioral model is a novel approach. This model reduces computational costs significantly, takes physical effects into account and is easy to implement.

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

nonlinear average model
power electronic integration design
voltage source inverter

virtual switching delay
igbt
vhdl-ams
dtc
induction machine


interleaving media data for mpeg-4 presentations A composite multimedia presentation may be represented by a sequence of virtual media data packets. An algorithm is presented for ordering these virtual media data packets so as to minimize the initial delay required to transfer the composite stream from a media server to a client. This algorithm has been implemented as part of the IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4.

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


a statistical comparison of tag and query logs We investigate tag and query logs to see if the terms people use to annotate websites are similar to the ones they use to query for them. Over a set of URLs, we compare the distribution of tags used to annotate each URL with the distribution of query terms for clicks on the same URL. Understanding the relationship between the distributions is important to determine how useful tag data may be for improving search results and conversely, query data for improving tag prediction. In our study, we compare both term frequency distributions using vocabulary overlap and relative entropy. We also test statistically whether the term counts come from the same underlying distribution. Our results indicate that the vocabulary used for tagging and searching for content are similar but not identical. We further investigate the content of the websites to see which of the two distributions (tag or query) is most similar to the content of the annotated/searched URL. Finally, we analyze the similarity for different categories of URLs in our sample to see if the similarity between distributions is dependent on the topic of the website or the popularity of the URL.

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


Analytical strategies for large imaging genetic datasets: experiences from the IMAGEN study Large imaging genetic studies are becoming increasingly common in psychiatric research. In order to fully explore the collected information, analytical strategies that allow comprehensive investigations of the genetic and neural underpinnings of psychiatric disorders are needed. On the basis of our experience with the IMAGEN study, this review evaluates univariate and multivariate analytical strategies for exploring large imaging genetic datasets, with particular focus on reinforcement mechanisms in adolescents. Heritability estimates of functional and structural MRI endophenotypes are presented along with analytical strategies, ranging from those used in univariate candidate gene studies to genome-wide association studies. Finally, data reduction strategies are discussed at both the genotype level, in the form of expression SNPs and pathway analyses, and the phenotype level, as network analyses of neuroimaging data. Overall, imaging genetic studies have the potential to significantly contribute to our understanding of neurophysiological processes underlying human behavior. The analytical strategies presented here may aid in the comprehensive investigation of reinforcement and other neurobehavioral phenotypes.

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


Predecessor existence problems for finite discrete dynamical systems We study the predecessor existence problem for finite discrete dynamical systems. Given a finite discrete dynamical system S and a configuration C, the PREDECESSOR EXISTENCE (or PRE) problem is to determine whether there is a configuration C' such that S has a transition from C' to C. In addition to the decision version, we also study the following variants: the #-PREDECESSOR EXISTENCE (or #PRE) problem - counting the number of predecessors, the UNIQUE-PREDECESSOR EXISTENCE (or UPRE) problem - deciding whether there is a unique predecessor and the AMBIGUOUS-PREDECESSOR EXISTENCE (or APRE) problem - given a configuration C and a predecessor C' of C, deciding whether there is a different predecessor C" of C. General techniques are presented for simultaneously characterizing the computational complexity of the PRE problem and its three variants. Our hardness results are based on the concept of simultaneous reductions: single transformations that can be used to simultaneously prove the hardness of the different variants of the PRE problem for their respective complexity classes. Our easiness results are based on dynamic programming and they extend the previous results on PRE problem for one-dimensional cellular automata. The hardness results together with the easiness results provide a tight separation between easy and hard instances. Further, the results imply similar bounds for other classes of finite discrete dynamical systems including discrete Hopfield and recurrent neural networks, concurrent state machines, systolic networks and one- and two-dimensional cellular automata. Our results extend the earlier results of Green, Sutner and Orponen on the complexity of the predecessor existence problem and its variants. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

discrete dynamical systems
cellular automata
predecessor existence
computational complexity

data flow analysis
software and hardware verification


A

Fortran

program

to

solve

the

Hartree-Fock

equations

for

interacting

fermions

confined

in

harmonic

potentials

A

set

of

weakly

interacting

Fermions,

confined

by

a

harmonic

oscillator

potential,

and

interacting

with

each

other

via

a

contact

potential,

is

a

model

system

which

closely

represents

the

physics

of

a

dilute

gas

of

two-component

fermionic

atoms

confined

in

a

magneto-optic

trap.

In

the

present

work,

our

aim

is

to

present

a

Fortran

computer

program

which,

using

a

basis

set

expansion

technique,

solves

the

Hartree-Fock

(NF)

equations

for

Fermions

confined

by

a

three-dimensional

harmonic

oscillator

potential,

and

interacting

with

each

other

via

pair-wise

delta-function

potentials.

Additionally,

the

program

can

also

account

for

those

anharmonic

potentials

which

can

be

expressed

as

a

polynomial

in

the

position

operators

x,

y,

and

z.

Both

the

restricted-HF

(RHF),

and

the

unrestricted-HF

(UHF)

equations

can

be

solved

for

a

given

number

of

Fermions,

with

either

repulsive

or

attractive

interactions

among

them.

The

option

of

UHF

solutions

for

such

systems

also

allows

us

to

study

possible

magnetic

properties

of

the

physics

of

two-component

confined

atomic

Fermi

gases,

with

unbalanced

populations.

Using

our

code

we

also

demonstrate

that

such

a

system

exhibits

shell

structure,

and

follows

Hund's

rule.

Program

summary

Program

title:

trap.x

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

URL:

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen's

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

mostly

Fortran

Computer:

PCs-SUN,

HP

Alpha,

IBM

Operating

system:

Linux,

Solaris,

AIX

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

The

simplest

description

of

a

spin

trapped

system

at

the

mean

field

level

is

given

by

the

Hartree-Fock

method.

This

program

presents

an

efficient

approach

to

solving

these

equations.

Additionally,

this

program

can

solve

for

time-independent

Gross-Pitaevskii

and

Hartree-Fock

equations

for

bosonic

atoms

confined

in

a

harmonic

trap.

Thus

the

combined

program

can

handle

mean-field

equations

for

both

the

Fermi

and

the

Bose

particles.

Solution

method:

The

solutions

of

the

Hartree-Fock

equation

corresponding

to

the

Fermi

systems

in

atomic

traps

are

expanded

as

linear

combinations

of

simple-harmonic

oscillator

eigenfunctions.

Thus,

the

Hartree-Fock

equations

which

comprise

a

set

of

nonlinear

integro-differential

equations,

are

transformed

into

a

matrix

eigenvalue

problem.

Thereby,

solutions

are

obuuned

in

a

self-consistent

manner,

using

methods

of

computational

linear

algebra.

Running

time:

The

run

times

of

example

jobs

are

from

a

few

seconds

to

a

few

minutes.

For

jobs

involving

very

large

basis

sets.

the

run

time

can

extend

into

hours.

(C)

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

trapped fermi gases
hartree-fock equation
numerical solutions


A general fault tolerant linear quadratic control strategy under actuator outages In many applications, faults of interest are associated with a known set of hardware configurations. Indeed, actuator outages, sensor losses, and more generally, any kind of fault when the reconfiguration strategy is used, result in only a subset of components being available for achieving the system mission, and therefore the hardware configurations of interest are defined by the power set of the components whose faults are considered. Whatever the design objective (stability, disturbance attenuation, H(infinity) or H(2) optimality, etc.), a passive scheme designs one single control law that guarantees stability and performances for the set of all N configurations, while an active scheme designs N control laws, each of them being dedicated to one configuration. Considering the case of actuator outages, this article introduces a general frame where several controllers are designed, each of them being dedicated to a subset of faults. This frame includes the classical passive and active strategies, which are respectively associated with the single set of all faults and with N sets of single faults, and extends the reliable control strategy where only one subset of faults is considered. This approach is also applicable when all faults are not recoverable. Its performance evaluation and optimisation is carried out by setting a decision frame in which the trade-off between the Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) complexity and the probability to face a non-recoverable situation is explicitly addressed.

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

system reconfiguration
linear systems
feedback control


Using quad smoothness to efficiently control capacitydistortion of reversible data hiding One of the main uses of data hiding is to protect secret messages being transmitted on the Internet. Reversible data hiding can fully recover the original host image after extracting the secret message. It is especially suitable for applications where, after extracting the secret message, the quality of the recovered host image cannot be compromised, such as for medical or military image data. Many difference-expansion-based (DE-based) reversible data hiding methods have made use of a threshold value to control the stego-image's quality. Usually repeated trial and error is required to find a relatively good threshold with acceptable capacitydistortion behavior. This paper introduces a scheme that does not require a threshold value, such as is used in Alattar's quad-based reversible data hiding. It applies a prediction of quad of quads smoothness to determine the embedding sequence. The proposed scheme is shown to perform better than other DE-based schemes. Results showed that it has the ability of maintaining embedding quality at all capacity levels, especially when the embedding capacity is at low to medium levels.

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 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 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 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

difference expansion
steganography
capacitydistortion control


Frequency-response-shaped LMS adaptive filter A new LMS algorithm is introduced for improved performance when a sinusoidal input signal is corrupted by correlated noise. The algorithm is based on shaping the frequency response of the transversal filter. This shaping is performed on-line by the inclusion of an additional term similar to the leakage factor in the adaptation equation of leaky LMS. This new term, which involves the multiplication of the filter coefficient vector by a matrix, is calculated in an efficient manner using the FFT. The proposed adaptive filter is shown analytically to converge in the mean and mean-square sense. The filter is also analyzed in the steady state in order to show the frequency-response-shaping capability. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the frequency-response-shaped LMS (FRS-LMS) algorithm is very effective even for highly correlated noise.

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


Generalization of the imprint method to general surfaces of revolution for NC machining This paper presents a method of determining the shape of the surface swept by a generalized milling tool that follows a 5-axis tool path for machining curved surfaces. The method is a generalization of an earlier technique for toroidal tools that is based on identifying grazing points on the tool surface. We present a new proof that the points constructed by this earlier method are in fact grazing points, and we show that this previous method can be used to construct grazing points on (and only on) the sphere, the cone, and the torus. We then present a more general method that can compute grazing points on a general surface of revolution. The advantage of both methods is that they use simple, geometric formulas to compute grazing points.

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

5-axis machining
grazing curves
tool path verification


Optimizing deletion cost for secure multicast key management Multicast and broadcast are efficient ways to deliver messages to a group of recipients in a network. Due to the growing security concerns in various applications, messages are ofter encrypted with a secret group key. The key tree model which has been widely adopted maintains a set of keys in a tree structure so that in case of group member change, the group key can be updated in a secure and efficient way. In this paper, we focus on the updating cost incurred by member deletions. To implement a sequence of member deletions in any key tree, a certain number of encrypted messages need to be broadcast to accomplish the updates. Our goal is to identify the best key tree which can minimize the worst-case deletion cost (i.e., the amortized cost over n member deletions). We prove that there is an optimal tree in which each internal node has at most five children and each internal node with at least one non-leaf child has exactly three children. Based on these characterizations we present a dynamic programming algorithm that computes an optimal key tree in O(n(2)) time.

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


Development of discontinuous deformation analysis with displacement-dependent interface shear strength Discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) has been widely applied in simulations of discontinuous blocky systems. The behavior of a discontinuous blocky system is mainly governed by the strength of the interface joints. The MohrCoulomb joint failure criterion, adopted in the original DDA, is examined through a classic case of a single block on an inclined plane. It shows that when interface cohesion exists, the block may be unstable even if the interface strength is greater than the theoretical strength required for critical stability, as the cohesion has been improperly removed. Adopting relative displacement between contacted blocks as the criterion for the removal of cohesion will provide more accurate results. The development of DDA with displacement-dependent interface shear strength is presented in this paper. To implement and illustrate the modified algorithm, two examples of progressive landslide failure simulations are performed. Both systems exhibit a two-stage failure pattern: a relatively slow, downward progressive failure stage followed by a rapid, massive run out failure stage.

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

discontinuous deformation analysis
cohesion
landslide
progressive failure

shear strength reduction
slope stability


on monotone formulae with restricted depth We prove a hierarchy theorem for the representation of monotone Boolean functions by monotone formulae with restricted depth. Specifically, we show that there are functions with &pgr; k -formula of size n for which every &sgr; k -formula has size exp &ohgr;(n 1/(k?1) ). A similar lower bound applies to concrete functions such as transitive closure and clique. We also show that any function with a formula of size n (and any depth) has a &sgr; k -formula of size exp o(n 1/(k?1) ). Thus our hierarchy theorem is the best possible.

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


Type-Based Safe Resource Deallocation for Shared-Memory Concurrency We propose a type system to guarantee safe resource deallocation for shared-memory concurrent programs by extending the previous type system based on fractional ownerships. Here, safe resource deallocation means that memory cells, locks, or threads are not left allocated when a program terminates. Our framework supports (1) fork/join parallelism, (2) synchronization with locks, and (3) dynamically allocated memory cells and locks. The type system is proved to be sound. We also provide a type inference algorithm for the type system and a prototype implementation of the algorithm.

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

fractional ownerships
safe resource deallocation
type inference

theory
verification
fork/join parallelism
memory leak
race freedom
shared-memory concurrency
smt solver
type systems


Open and closed scopes for constrained genericity Constrained genericity is an extension of parametric polymorphism, that allows type parameters in polymorphic procedures to be constrained to have certain operations defined over them. It is realized in the Ada and Haskell programming languages, as exemplified by type classes in Haskell. Type classes only allow a single global scope for instances of type classes. This article introduces a type system and a semantics that allows both dynamic and static scoping of such operations to be mixed in a program. Applications include overcoming scoping problems with constrained genericity, enabling program optimizations, and programming with dynamic data structures, Type classes with "open" scope obey the usual semantics for Haskell type classes, based on call-site "type dictionaries". Type classes with "closed" scope use run-time type descriptions to dispatch to instances. The type system to support this combines operator kinds, refinement kinds and singleton kinds. The system is extended to allow overlapping specialized instance types, in order to support specialized representations for data structures (for example, arrays of integers, arrays of floats and arrays of boxed values). This extension requires the combination of both type dictionaries and run-time type information for type class dispatching. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

constrained genericity
refinement kinds
type classes


Exploring IT entrepreneurs' dynamic capabilities using Q-technique Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore the dynamic capabilities required of information technology (IT) entrepreneurs for facing globalized challenges. Design/methodology/approach - Using a methodological approach that combines Q-technique and questionnaire survey, the author collected 98 statements obtained from interviewing ten IT entrepreneurs. A total of 44 out of 98 critical statements were extracted as Q-samples based on purposive sampling. Subsequently, 20 experts used Q-technique in terms of the sample the 44 statements to generate a revised questionnaire to investigate 500 Taiwan IT-based companies. Findings - According to the responses of the 281 valid copies of questionnaire received, market-oriented sensitivity, the ability to absorb knowledge, social-networking capability, and the integrative ability to communicate and negotiate are the dynamic capabilities required of IT entrepreneurs. Research limitations/implications - As for the restrictions, the expansive nature of the IT industry prevented the author from addressing any specific sector of the industry, and no minimum capitalisation of IT companies was set for the sample-collecting process. Practical implications - The results can be used by IT entrepreneurs of SMEs in the self-assessment of capabilities and the development of dynamic capabilities during their start-up and growth phases. They can also be applied to nurturing successors and cultivating new entrepreneurs. Originality/value - This study clarifies the intrinsic dynamic capabilities of IT entrepreneurs, and identifies the required components of such capabilities and their priorities. The results can be used in managerial decision-making and personnel training, both of which help entrepreneurs in building competitive advantages.

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

dynamic capability
q-technique
entrepreneurialism


Light scattering properties in spatial planes for label free cells with different internal structures Label free cells properties of 2D scattering intensity spectra and 3D scattering images in different spatial fields and planes are studied according to three dimensional finite-difference time-domain simulation results. The correlation of intensity spectra and scattering images in different spatial regions are discussed with different cells nucleus size, nucleus off-center situations, small organelles existence and distribution. Compared the scattering information, the most sensitive spatial regions to cells structures changing are figured out which can be selected to improve label free cells distinguishing accuracy. The research results would be very important to fully discover cells spatial scattering features and provide more reliable sorting criterions for label free cells detection technologies.

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

dimensional finite-difference time domain


interpretation as driver for psychological creativity This paper describes some acts of psychological creativity as phenomena arising from changes to a situation, brought about through interpretation. It presents a way of representing a situation as a schema of concepts made up from perceptual dimensions. It shows the utility of concepts as being changed by the situation within which they are used. An example of this is described, in which the information within a concept is unchanged yet its use becomes different through salience weighting. A computational implemented example is presented as a generate-and-interpret model that produces country growth indicators and then interprets them and repeats this process. The situation, and the space of possible designs, is changed through the act of interpretation. It is suggested that interpretation can be a driver for changing situations -- something that looks like P-creativity to an outside observer.

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

situated cognition
situated design
p-creativity


Spatial consistency of neural firing regulates long-range local field potential synchronization: A computational study Local field potentials (LFPs) are thought to integrate neuronal processes within the range of a few millimeters of radius, which corresponds to the scale of multiple columns. In this study, the model of LFP in the visual cortex proposed by Mazzoni etal. (2008) was adapted to organize a network of two cortical areas, in which pyramidal neurons were divided into two sub-population modeling columns with spatially organized connections to neurons in other areas. Using the model enabled the relationship between neural firing and LFP to be evaluated, in addition to the LFP coherence between the two areas. Results showed that: (1) neurons in a particular sub-population generated the LFP in the area; (2) the spatial consistency of neural firing in the two areas was strongly correlated with LFP coherence; and (3) this consistency was capable of regulating LFP coherence in a lower frequency band, which was originally introduced to neurons in a particular sub-population. These results were derived from a winner-take-all operation in the columnar structure; thus, they are expected to be common in the cortex. It is suggested that the spatial consistency of neural firing is essential for regulating long-range LFP synchronization, which would facilitate neuronal integration processes over multiple cortical areas.

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

network model
cortical column
information transfer
long-range synchronization
electroencephalogram


A novel locally regularized automatic construction method for RBF neural models This paper investigates automatic construction of radial basis function (RBF) neural models for nonlinear dynamic systems. The main objective is to automatically and effectively produce a parsimonious RBF neural model that generalizes well. This is achieved by proposing a locally regularized automatic construction (LRAC) method which combines a recently proposed fast recursive algorithm (FRA) with the leave-one-out (LOO) cross-validation criterion. The new method offers distinctive advantages over existing approaches. Firstly, it uses an error criterion where the original model parameters are regularized, in contrast to orthogonal least square (OLS) based approaches where transformed model parameters are regularized. This enables the determination of the significance of each original candidate center and produces a compact neural model. Further, it can automatically determine the network size by the iteratively minimizing a LOO mean-square-error (MSE) without the need to specify any additional termination criterion. Finally, by defining a proper regression context, the whole network construction process can be concisely formulated and easily implemented with significantly reduced computation. An analysis of computational complexity confirms the efficiency of the proposed method, and simulation results reveal its effectiveness in comparison with alternative approaches for producing sparse RBF neural models.

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

radial basis function (rbf) neural networks


A local structural adaptive partial differential equation for image denoising In this paper, we propose a local and contextual controlled (LCC) fourth order partial differential equation (PDE) method for noise removal. First, a region based fourth order PDE is proposed, which conductance coefficients are chosen adaptively in terms of the domain type. Thus, the proposed method can preserve the advantages of forth order PDE and avoid leaving isolated black and white speckles. Furthermore, the region based fourth order PDE and two discontinuity measures are incorporated into a LCC fourth order PDE, where the joint use of the two discontinuity measures leads to a complementary effect for edge preservation. The proposed LCC fourth order PDE is tested on two typical images, including texture image and natural scene image, which show the superiority of the proposed method.

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

partial differential equations (pde)
local discontinuity
contextual discontinuity


A hybrid approach of HMM and grey model for age-dependent health prediction of engineering assets This paper presents a hybrid prognosis approach of age-dependent hidden Markov model (HMM) and grey model (GM) for prediction of engineering asset health. Age-dependent HMM allows modeling the time duration of the hidden states and therefore is capable of prognosis. The estimated state duration probability distributions can be used to predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of the assets. The previous HMM based prognosis method assumed that the transition probabilities are only state-dependent. That is, the probability of making transition to a less healthy state does not increase with the age. In the proposed method, in order to characterize a deteriorating asset, an aging factor that discounts the probabilities of staying at current state while increasing the probabilities of transitions to less healthy states will be introduced. After the estimation of the aging factor, a grey model is used to compute the expected residual life (ERL) by redefining the hazard rate. With the asset health prognosis, the behavior of the asset condition can be predicted. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

hidden markov model
hazard rate
aging factor
grey model
expected residual life


A quantitative analysis of 3-D coronary modeling from two or more projection images A method is introduced to examine the geometrical accuracy of the three-dimensional (3-D) representation of coronary arteries from multiple (two and more) calibrated two-dimensional (2-D) angiographic projections. When involving more then two projections, (multiprojection modeling) a novel procedure is presented that consists of fully automated centerline and width determination in all available projections based on the information provided by the semi-automated centerline detection in two initial calibrated projections. The accuracy of the 3-D coronary modeling approach is determined by a quantitative examination of the 3-D centerline point position and the 3-D cross sectional area of the reconstructed objects. The measurements are based on the analysis of calibrated phantom and calibrated coronary 2-D projection data. From this analysis a confidence region (alphadegrees approximate to [35degrees - 145degrees]) for the angular distance of two initial projection images is determined for which the modeling procedure is sufficiently accurate for the applied system. Within this angular border range the centerline position error is less then 0.8 mm, in terms of the Euclidean distance to a predefined ground truth. When involving more projections using our new procedure, experiments show that when the initial pair of projection images has an angular distance in the range alphadegrees approximate to [35degrees - 145degrees], the centerlines in all other projections (gamma = 0degrees - 180degrees) were indicated very precisely without any additional centering procedure. When involving additional projection images in the modeling procedure a more realistic shape of the structure can be provided. In case of the concave segment, however, the involvement of multiple projections does not necessarily provide a more realistic shape of the reconstructed structure.

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

angiography
3-d-modeling
3-d quantification


Adaptive Non-singular Terminal Sliding Mode Control for DC-DC Converters DC-DC converters have some inherent characteristics such as high nonlinearity and time-variation, which often result in some difficulties in designing control schemes. An adaptive non-singular terminal sliding mode control method is presented in this paper. Non-singular terminal sliding mode control is used to make the converter reach steady state within a limited time, and an adaptive law is integrated to the non-singular terminal sliding mode control scheme to make the proposed control method have adaptive ability to disturbances, and overcome the limitation on nonsingular terminal sliding mode control scheme caused by disturbance boundary value. Simulation results show the validity of this adaptive non-singular terminal sliding mode control approach.

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


A Framework for Computing the Privacy Scores of Users in Online Social Networks A large body of work has been devoted to address corporate-scale privacy concerns related to social networks. Most of this work focuses on how to share social networks owned by organizations without revealing the identities or the sensitive relationships of the users involved. Not much attention has been given to the privacy risk of users posed by their daily information-sharing activities. In this article, we approach the privacy issues raised in online social networks from the individual users' viewpoint: we propose a framework to compute the privacy score of a user. This score indicates the user's potential risk caused by his or her participation in the network. Our definition of privacy score satisfies the following intuitive properties: the more sensitive information a user discloses, the higher his or her privacy risk. Also, the more visible the disclosed information becomes in the network, the higher the privacy risk. We develop mathematical models to estimate both sensitivity and visibility of the information. We apply our methods to synthetic and real-world data and demonstrate their efficacy and practical utility.

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

item-response theory
expectation maximization
maximum-likelihood estimation
information propagation


New methods to improve convergence of sine fitting algorithms One of the recommended test methods in Analog to Digital testing standards is based on least square sine fitting algorithms. The parameter estimation provided by these algorithms is exposed to errors due to different causes. In particular convergence to local minimums of the error function is an open problem. In this paper we present new methods that improve results in sine wave parameter estimation when the frequency is unknown, assuring convergence even in the presence of saturation, noise or distortion. These new methods are also usable in other signal processing applications since they work without loss of quality when only one period of the input signal is acquired.

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


Neurally plausible, non-combinatorial iterative independent process analysis It has been shown recently that the identification of mixed hidden independent auto-regressive processes (independent process analysis, IPA), under certain conditions, can be free from combinatorial explosion. The key is that IPA can be reduced (i) to independent subspace analysis and then, via a novel decomposition technique called Separation Theorem, (ii) to independent component analysis. Here, we introduce an iterative scheme and its neural network representation that takes advantage of the reduction method and can accomplish the IPA task. Computer simulation illustrates the working of the algorithm.

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


Topology and evolution of the network of western classical music composers The expanding availability of high-quality, large-scale data from the realm of culture and the arts promises novel opportunities for understanding and harnessing the dynamics of the creation, collaboration, and dissemination processes - fundamentally network phenomena - of artistic works and styles. To this end, in this paper we explore the complex network of western classical composers constructed from a comprehensive CD (Compact Disc) recordings data that represent the centuries-old musical tradition using modern data analysis and modeling techniques. We start with the fundamental properties of the network such as the degree distribution and various centralities, and find how they correlate with composer attributes such as artistic styles and active periods, indicating their significance in the formation and evolution of the network. We also investigate the growth dynamics of the network, identifying superlinear preferential attachment as a major growth mechanism that implies a future of the musical landscape where an increasing concentration of recordings onto highly-recorded composers coexists with the diversity represented by the growth in the sheer number of recorded composers. Our work shows how the network framework married with data can be utilized to advance our understanding of the underlying principles of complexities in cultural systems.

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


Performance bottleneck of subsequence matching in time-series databases: Observation, solution, and performance evaluation Subsequence matching is an operation that finds subsequences whose changing patterns are similar to a given query sequence from time-series databases. This paper identifies a performance bottleneck in subsequence matching, and then proposes an effective method that substantially improves the performance of entire subsequence matching by resolving the performance bottleneck. First, we analyze the disk access and CPU processing times required during the index searching and post-processing steps of subsequence matching through preliminary experiments. Based on these results, we show that the post-processing step is a main performance bottleneck in subsequence matching. Then, we argue that the optimization of the post-processing step is a crucial issue overlooked in previous approaches. In order to resolve the performance bottleneck, we propose a simple yet highly effective method for expediting the post-processing step. By rearranging the order of candidate subsequences to be compared with a query sequence, our method completely eliminates the redundancies of disk accesses and CPU processing that occur in the post-processing step. Our method is fairly efficient, and does not incur any false dismissal. We quantitatively demonstrate the superiority of our method through extensive experimentation. The results show that our method produces a significantly faster post-processing step; When using a data set of real-world stock sequences, our method was 43.3696.75 times faster than previous methods, and when using data sets of large numbers of synthetic sequences, our method was 12.4826.95 times faster than previous methods. Also, the results show that our method reduces the weight of the post-processing step over entire subsequence matching from more than 97% to less than 67%. This implies that our method successfully resolves the performance bottleneck in subsequence matching. As a result, our method provides excellent performance in entire subsequence matching. Compared with previous methods, our method is 16.1732.64 times faster when using a data set of real-world stock sequences and 8.6414.29 times faster when using data sets of large numbers of synthetic sequences.

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

data mining
time-series databases
similar sequence matching


A simulation study on the confidence interval procedures of some mean cumulative function estimators Recurrence data are collected to study the recurrent events in biological, physical, and other systems. Quantities of interest include the mean cumulative number of events and the mean cumulative cost of the events. The mean cumulative function (MCF) can be estimated using non-parametric (NP) methods or by fitting parametric models, and many procedures have been suggested to construct the confidence intervals (CIs) for the MCF. This paper summarizes the results of a large simulation study that was designed to compare five CI procedures for both NP and parametric estimation. When performing parametric estimation, we assume the power law non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) model. Our results include the evaluation of these procedures when they are used for window-observation recurrence data where recurrence histories of some systems are available only in observation windows with gaps in between.

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

non-homogeneous poisson process
non-parametric estimation
recurrence data\vskip-1pc


Parabolic finite element equations in nonconvex polygonal domains Let Q be a bounded nonconvex polygonal domain in the plane. Consider the initial boundary value problem for the heat equation with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions and semidiscrete and fully discrete approximations of its solution by piece-wise linear finite elements in space. The purpose of this paper is to show that known results for the stationary, elliptic, case may be carried over to the time dependent parabolic case. A special feature in a polygonal domain is the presence of singularities in the solutions generated by the corners even when the forcing term is smooth. These cause a reduction of the convergence rate in the finite element method unless refinements are employed.

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

heat equation
nonconvex polygonal domain

reentrant corner
singularity
semidiscrete finite element method
fully discrete methods
order of convergence
refined meshes


A public key cryptosystem based on diophantine equations of degree increasing type In this paper we propose a new public key cryptosystem based on diophantine equations which we call of degree increasing type. We use an analogous method to the Algebraic Surface Cryptosystem (ASC) proposed by Akiyama, Goto and Miyake. There are two main differences between our cryptosystem and ASC. One of them is to twist a plaintext by using some modular arithmetic to increase the number of candidates of the plaintext in order to complicate finding the correct plaintext. Another difference is to use a polynomial of degree increasing type to recover the plaintext uniquely even if the plaintext was twisted. Although we have not been able to give a security proof, we give some discussions on how secure our cryptosystem is against known attacks including the ideal decomposition attack, which can break the one?wayness of ASC.

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

diophantine equation
post quantum cryptography
public key cryptography


(Non-)Succinctness of uniform interpolants of general terminologies in the description logic EL EL ? EL EL is a popular description logic, used as a core formalism in large existing knowledge bases. Uniform interpolants of knowledge bases are of high interest, e.g. in scenarios where a knowledge base is supposed to be partially reused. However, to the best of our knowledge no procedure has yet been proposed that computes uniform EL EL interpolants of general EL EL terminologies. Up to now, also the bound on the size of uniform EL EL interpolants has remained unknown. In this article, we propose an approach to computing a finite uniform interpolant for a general EL EL terminology if it exists. To this end, we develop a quadratic representation of EL EL TBoxes as regular tree grammars. Further, we show that, if a finite uniform EL EL interpolant exists, then there exists one that is at most triple exponential in the size of the original TBox, and that, in the worst case, no smaller interpolants exist, thereby establishing tight worst-case bounds on their size. Beyond showing these bounds, the notions and results established in this paper also provide useful insights for designing efficient ontology reformulation algorithms, for instance, within the context of module extraction.

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

ontologies
knowledge representation
automated reasoning
description logics
uniform interpolation
forgetting
el el el el el el el


Simultaneous multi-level RFID tag ownership & transfer in health care environments Authentication of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags takes several forms depending on the dictates of the considered scenario. For example, mutual authentication protocols are used in scenarios where both tag and reader need to authenticate each other. We consider and develop ownership transfer protocols for three scenarios in the health care domain that have not been addressed in extant literature. RFID-tagged items in a health care supply chain experience different levels of ownerships, often simultaneously, throughout their lifetime. We consider a scenario related to ownership of RFID tags in a health care supply chain, specifically the seamless incorporation by a third party logistics provider. Another scenario considered is where tags simultaneously possess a temporary and a permanent key for communicating with a temporary (e.g., rental customer) and a permanent (e.g., owner) user respectively. The third scenario considered is where there are several levels of ownership (e.g., primary owner, rental owner, sub-rental owner). We provide example cases in the health care domain where such scenarios are observed. We then present brief security analyses of the developed protocols.

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


Structuring persistent chat conversations: experimental results of the chatsistance tool This research targets persistency by introducing new features in Chatsistance, a persistent chat tool that employs speech act theory and an explicit referencing technique to structure the chat log, and by providing further options for retrieving information. Earlier theory is related to the linguistics and characteristics of user statements. The later technique shows the relation of artefacts in an interconnected context named explicit referencing. Although speech acts were previously used in the field of chat, it is the first time that this theory has been used for the purpose of enhancing persistency combined with an explicit referencing technique, which together provide a well-established structure that provides greater flexibility for the analysis of content. In this paper, we show how this structuring approach could be useful, by evaluating the results of previous experiments that have used Chatsistance.

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

structuring
persistent chat
speech act theory
explicit referencing
chatsistance


A Sort-based Deferred Shading Architecture for Decoupled Sampling Stochastic sampling in time and over the lens is essential to produce photo-realistic images, and it has the potential to revolutionize real-time graphics. In this paper, we take an architectural view of the problem and propose a novel hardware architecture for efficient shading in the context of stochastic rendering. We replace previous caching mechanisms by a sorting step to extract coherence, thereby ensuring that only non-occluded samples are shaded. The memory bandwidth is kept at a minimum by operating on tiles and using new buffer compression methods. Our architecture has several unique benefits not traditionally associated with deferred shading. First, shading is performed in primitive order, which enables late shading of vertex attributes and avoids the need to generate a G-buffer of pre-interpolated vertex attributes. Second, we support state changes, e.g., change of shaders and resources in the deferred shading pass, avoiding the need for a single uber-shader. We perform an extensive architectural simulation to quantify the benefits of our algorithm on real workloads.

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

tiled deferred shading
stochastic rasterization
graphics processors


Energy-aware adaptive routing for large-scale ad hoc networks: Protocol and performance analysis We propose and analyze an energy-aware traffic-adaptive routing strategy for large-scale mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Referred to as Energy-Aware GEolocation-aided Routing (EAGER), this protocol optimally blends proactive and reactive strategies for energy efficiency. Specifically, EAGER partitions the network into cells and performs intracell proactive routing and intercell reactive routing. The cell size and the transmission range are optimized analytically. By adjoining cells around hot spots and hot routes in the network, EAGER is capable of handling time-varying and spatially heterogeneous traffic conditions.

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

routing protocols
wireless communication


Current-mode CMOS-based decoder with redundantly represented 0 addend method for multiple-radix signed-digit number We discuss a new decoder for the multiple-valued signed-digit number, using a current-mode CMOS transistor-oriented circuit structure. In this paper, a new decoding method with the selective summation of a redundantly represented addend ''0 = [-1 r]'' is proposed, where r is the radix and the addend is applied to each digit with a negative value and any consecutively higher digit takes which has a value of 0. A newly designed literal linear circuit is realized, which has a current-switch function that makes independently the short path when each digit has a value of 0. Through the parallel connections of these current switches, the same addend signal at the lower digit is transmitted in a higher speed. The decoder circuit is tested by using the general circuit simulation software SPICE and the circuit characteristics of the selective summation of a redundantly represented 0 addend and the output results of the SD decoding operation were simulated. We also evaluated the decoder circuit in terms of the processing speed and the circuit size.

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

multiple-valued signed-digit number
current-mode cmos-based decoder
redundantly represented o addend method
bidirectional current-mode
threshold detector


broad-band tunable wavelength converter based on degenerate four-wave mixing in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber We experimentally investigated wavelength conversion of the coherent and incoherent signal based on degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HNPCF). In our experiment, the maximum conversion efficiencies of -11.23dB and -11.45dB, 3dB conversion bandwidths of 40.6nm and 38.06nm for coherent and incoherent signal are achieved in a 20m-long HNPCF, respectively

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

wavelength converter
photonic crystal fiber


Robust routing and channel allocation in multi-hop cognitive radio networks Jointly consider routing and spectrum selection is essentially and necessary in multi-hop cognitive radio networks. System cost and throughput are commonly used to evaluate performance of routing and spectrum selection schemes. Traditional methods mostly translate these metrics into a single objective function, and corresponding weights are allocated to each metric representing impact on the entire network performance. Optimal solutions of these approaches are sensitive to the weight settings which are usually hard to appropriately chosen. In this work, the task of routing and channel allocation is modeled as a two-objective optimization problem. Two conflicting metric functions system total throughput and total cost are optimized simultaneously, and a novel memetic algorithm which adopts a new neighborhood search procedure is proposed to solve this problem. Incorporated with robustness consideration on routing, a new robustness metric is also presented to work as a decision mechanism to ensure the robustness of the entire network. The aim of this task is to find the best compromise routing and channel allocation scheme on system throughput, cost and robustness among the feasible solution set. Simulation results demonstrate that the optimal solution set obtained by the memetic algorithm can clearly show the conflicting relationship of the system cost and throughput when choosing different routing and channel selection schemes. The best solution made by the additional robustness metric among these solutions can achieve the best performance of the cognitive radio network.

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

cognitive radio networks
multi-objective evolutionary algorithm


Adaptive reconstruction of free-form surfaces using Bernstein basis function networks Many computer graphics and computer-aided design (CAD) applications require mathematical models to be generated from measured coordinate data. The three-dimensional surface model of a complex object can be created by fitting the data with low-order parametric surface patches, and adjusting the control parameters such that the constituent patches meet seamlessly at their common boundaries. Most neural networks that are designed for function approximation produce a solution that is not easily transferable to CAD software. An adaptive technique to reconstruct a smooth surface from Bzier patches is presented in this paper. The approach utilizes a neural network that performs a weighted summation of Bernstein polynomial basis functions. The number of basis neurons is related to the degree of the Bernstein polynomials and is equivalent to the number of control parameters. Free-form surfaces are reconstructed by simultaneously updating networks that correspond to the separate patches. A smooth transition between adjacent Bzier surface patches is achieved by imposing positional and tangential continuity constraints on the weights during the adaptation process. The final weights of the various networks correspond to the control points of the stitched Bzier surface, and can therefore be used directly in many commercial CAD packages. This method has been used to create a closed surface by adaptively fitting two adjacent patches to synthetic range data and a complex open surface by fitting four patches to experimentally measured range data.

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

function approximation
bernstein polynomials
neural networks

surface reconstruction
parametric modeling
bernstein basis function network
bzier surfaces


Are main lines and mobile phones substitutes or complements? Evidence from Africa Many developed and developing countries have approached telecommunications reform by opening the market for mobile telephones to private participation and competition. One result of this strategy is the astounding worldwide growth in mobile communications, with developing countries accounting for the fastest growth. It is believed that mobile phones are complementary to fixed-line telephony in developed countries, but they appear to be substitutes for main lines in developing regions where access is low or non-existent. This paper examines the relationship between mobile and main-line telephones by accounting for reverse causality between them in an environment with low levels of development. The results suggest that mobile telephones act as a competitive force encouraging fixed-line providers to improve access. It is possible that mobile and main lines are sometimes substitutes, and at other times complements in consumption, even where fixed-line access is low.

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


Categorical perception of voicing, colors and facial expressions: A developmental study The aim of the present paper was to compare the development of perceptual categorization of voicing, colors and facial expressions in French-speaking children (from 6 to 8 years) and adults. Differences in both categorical perception, i.e. the correspondence between identification and discrimination performances, and in boundary precision, indexed by the steepness of the identification slope, were investigated. Whereas there was no significant effect of age on categorical perception, boundary precision increased with age, both for voicing and facial expressions though not for colors. These results suggest that the development of boundary precision arises from a general cognitive maturation across different perceptual domains. However, this is not without domain specific effects since we found (1) a correlation between the development of voicing perception and some reading performances and (2) an earlier maturation of boundary precision for colors compared to voicing and facial expressions. These comparative data indicate that whereas general cognitive maturation has some influence on the development of perceptual categorization, this is not without domain-specific effects, the structural complexity of the categories being one of them.

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

categorical perception
boundary precision
development
colors
facial expressions


Adaptive Fuzzy Output Feedback Control of MIMO Nonlinear Systems With Unknown Dead-Zone Inputs This paper is concerned with the problem of adaptive fuzzy tracking control for a class of multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) strict-feedback nonlinear systems with both unknown nonsymmetric dead-zone inputs and immeasurable states. In this research, fuzzy logic systems are utilized to evaluate the unknown nonlinear functions, and a fuzzy adaptive state observer is established to estimate the unmeasured states. Based on the information of the bounds of the dead-zone slopes as well as treating the time-varying inputs coefficients as a system uncertainty, a new adaptive fuzzy output feedback control approach is developed via the backstepping recursive design technique. It is shown that the proposed control approach can assure that all the signals of the resulting closed-loop system are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded. It is also shown that the observer and tracking errors converge to a small neighborhood of the origin by selecting appropriate design parameters. Simulation examples are also provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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

nonlinear multi-input multi-output (mimo) systems