Minimally invasive registration for computer-assisted orthopedic surgery: combining tracked ultrasound and bone surface points via the P-IMLOP algorithm We present a registration method for computer-assisted total hip replacement (THR) surgery, which we demonstrate to improve the state of the art by both reducing the invasiveness of current methods and increasing registration accuracy. A critical element of computer-guided procedures is the determination of the spatial correspondence between the patient and a computational model of patient anatomy. The current method for establishing this correspondence in robot-assisted THR is to register points intraoperatively sampled by a tracked pointer from the exposed proximal femur and, via auxiliary incisions, from the distal femur.

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

oriented point registration
ultrasound-ct registration
computer-assisted orthopedic surgery
total hip replacement surgery


Exploratory studies on social spaces between humans and a mechanical-looking robot The results from two empirical studies of human-robot interaction are presented. The first study involved the subject approaching the static robot and the robot approaching the standing subject. In these trials a small majority of subjects preferred a distance corresponding to the 'personal zone' typically used by humans when talking to friends. However, a large minority of subjects got significantly closer, suggesting that they treated the robot differently from a person, and possibly did not view the robot as a social being. The second study involved a scenario where the robot fetched an object that the seated subject had requested, arriving from different approach directions. The results of this second trial indicated that most subjects disliked a frontal approach. Most subjects preferred to be approached from either the left or right side, with a small overall preference for a right approach by the robot. Implications for future work are discussed.

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

social robot
human-robot interaction
android and robot appearance


Quantum private comparison of equality protocol without a third party This paper presents a novel quantum private comparison protocol that uses EinsteinPodolskyRosen pairs. The proposed protocol allows two parties to secretly compare their information without exposing their actual contents. The technique of entanglement swapping enables the comparison to be achieved without the help of a third party. Moreover, because the proposed protocol employs one-step transmission and decoy photons, it is secure against the various quantum attacks in existence thus far.

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

entanglement swapping
quantum private comparison

einsteinpodolskyrosen pair
quantum cryptography


The artificial pancreas: current status and future prospects in the management of diabetes Recent advances in insulins, insulin pumps, continuous glucose-monitoring systems, and control algorithms have resulted in an acceleration of progress in the development of artificial pancreas devices. This review discusses progress in the development of external systems that are based on subcutaneous drug delivery and subcutaneous continuous glucose monitoring. There are two major system-level approaches to achieving closed-loop control of blood glucose in diabetic individuals. The unihormonal approach uses insulin to reduce blood glucose and relies on complex safety mitigation algorithms to reduce the risk of hypoglycemia. The bihormonal approach uses both insulin to lower blood glucose and glucagon to raise blood glucose, and also relies on complex algorithms to provide for safety of the user. There are several major strategies for the design of control algorithms and supervision control for application to the artificial pancreas: proportionalintegralderivative, model predictive control, fuzzy logic, and safety supervision designs. Advances in artificial pancreas research in the first decade of this century were based on the ongoing computer revolution and miniaturization of electronic technology. The advent of modern smartphones has created the ability to utilize smartphone technology as the engineering centerpiece of an artificial pancreas. With these advances, an artificial or bionic pancreas is within reach.

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

artificial pancreas
continuous glucose monitoring
insulin
algorithms


Local-moment nonparametric density estimation of pre-binned data Data-driven research is often hampered by privacy restrictions in the form of limited data sets or graphical representations without the benefit of raw data. Nonparametric techniques that circumvent these issues by using local moment information, thereby extending the piecewise-polynomial histograms, are developed. These methods utilize not only binned data counts, but also their conditional moments in order to better estimate the underlying density of the data. A particular polynomial spline density estimator can be found via penalized least-squares optimization with a roughness penalty. Two issues exist in regards to the original algorithm: (1) local moments for empty bins are undefined and (2) all moment information is treated equally, despite the fact that lower-order moments are more accurate than higher-order moments. Solutions to both issues are provided by using unconditional moments and incorporating a weight matrix into the optimization problem.

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

local bin moment method
polynomial spline histogram
locally adaptive polynomial function
confidentiality


MatGAT: An application that generates similarity/identity matrices using protein or DNA sequences The rapid increase in the amount of protein and DNA sequence information available has become almost overwhelming to researchers. So much information is now accessible that high-quality, functional gene analysis and categorization has become a major goal for many laboratories. To aid in this categorization, there is a need for non-commercial software that is able to both align sequences and also calculate pairwise levels of similarity/identity.

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

nucleic acid
alignment
pairwise analysis
similarity matrix


On the Feedback Capacity of the Fully Connected K-User Interference Channel The symmetric K-user interference channel with fully connected topology is considered, in which 1) each receiver suffers interference from all other (K - 1) transmitters, and 2) each transmitter has causal and noiseless feedback from its respective receiver. The number of generalized degrees of freedom (GDoF) is characterized in terms of alpha, where the interference-to-noise ratio (INR) is given by INR = SNR alpha. It is shown that the per-user GDoF of this network is the same as that of the two-user interference channel with feedback, except for alpha = 1, for which existence of feedback does not help in terms of GDoF. The coding scheme proposed for this network, termed cooperative interference alignment, is based on two key ingredients, namely, interference alignment and interference decoding. Moreover, an approximate characterization is provided for the symmetric feedback capacity of the network, when the and SNR are INR far apart from each other.

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

feedback capacity
interference alignment
interference channel


a systematic method for generating quality requirements spectrum Spectrum analysis for quality requirements is useful for measuring and tracking them, but current spectrum analysis largely depends on expertise of each analyst. Therefore, it takes a lot of efforts to perform the analysis and is hard to reuse experiences for such analysis. We introduce domain knowledge called term-characteristic map to improve current spectrum analysis for quality requirements. Through several experiments, we evaluated the improved method for spectrum analysis.

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

non-functional requirements
requirements analysis


An alternative definition for fuzzy interval orders The class of interval orders is one of the most studied classes of preference structures without incomparability in the theory of classical preference modelling. In this paper, we propose a generalization of the classical definition of interval order and strict interval order. We focus our attention on two important classes of interval orders and strict interval orders which are, respectively, defined by means of a strong De Morgan triplet and a min-max De Morgan triplet. (C) 2002 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 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 B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

strict interval order
ferrers property
min-max de morgan triplet


Improving robustness of P2P applications in mobile environments Mobile P2P networks possess particular characteristics which make accessibility of services deployed on peers a challenge. This has to be taken into account when considering robustness of applications that depend on successfully accessing a set of services. While ensuring robustness is traditionally handled through replication or redundancy, those solutions are not readily applicable to decentralized and dynamic networks. Instead, current solutions are based on efficient P2P structure maintenance or unstructured network search algorithms. A novel and alternative method proposed in this paper is based on the observation that some redundancy may exist between services offered on the network, a fact which could be used to recreate an unavailable service from services accessible to a peer. Instead of adding redundancy to the system, our solution exploits the already existing redundancy to improve robustness of mobile P2P applications. We model the interaction with services as finite-state transducers and propose a heuristic to obtain redundancy between any pair of services. Then, a set of algorithms that uses this inter-service redundancy to recreate the interaction with one service from the other is discussed. The computational cost is polynomial with respect to services size, and in practice, the non-redundant functionality and related control need to be implemented locally.

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

service accessibility
finite state transducers


Closed-form frequency estimator based on narrow-band approximation under noisy environment A new method for single sinusoidal frequency estimation in closed-form formula is proposed. Since sinusoidal signals are narrow-banded and white noise distribution is statistically equal in the whole spectrum, a narrow-band signal extracted from the Fourier transform of the original signal can be used to approximate the noise-corrupted sinusoidal signal. A concise closed-form formula is then deduced to estimate the frequency based on the narrow-band signal. Performance analysis and simulation results are presented, showing that the new algorithm has close performance to the CramerRao bound, especially under low SNRs. It is also demonstrated that the method can be easily generalized to multi-sinusoidal signals.

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

fourier transforms
narrow-band approximation


Genetic algorithms and finite element coupling for mechanical optimization Optimization of mechanical components is an important aspect of the engineering process; a well designed system will lead to money saving during the production phase and better machine life. On the other hand, optimization actions will increase the engineering investment. Consequently, and since computer time is inexpensive, an efficient design strategy will tend to transfer the effort from the staff to the computers. This paper presents an efficient design tool made to carry out this task: a new optimization model based on genetic algorithms is developed to work with commercial finite element software. The objective is to automate optimization of static criteria (stresses, weight, strength, etc.) with finite element models. In the proposed model, the process acts on two geometric aspects of the shape to be optimized: it controls the position of the vertices defining the edges of the volume and, in order to minimize stresses concentrations, it can add and define fillet between surfaces. The model is validated from some benchmark tests. An industrial application is presented: the genetic algorithmsfinite element model is employed to design the fillets at the crown-blade junctions of a hydroelectric turbine. The results show that the model converges to a very efficient solution without any engineer intervention.

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

genetic algorithms
finite element
hydroelectric turbine


Value-based argumentation frameworks as neural-symbolic learning systems While neural networks have been successfully used in a number of machine learning applications, logical languages have been the standard for the representation of argumentative reasoning. In this paper, we establish a relationship between neural networks and argumentation networks, combining reasoning and learning in the same argumentation framework. We do so by presenting a new neural argumentation algorithm, responsible for translating argumentation networks into standard neural networks. We then show a correspondence between the two networks. The algorithm works not only for acyclic argumentation networks, but also for circular networks, and it enables the accrual of arguments through learning as well as the parallel computation of arguments.

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

neural-symbolic systems
value-based argumentation frameworks
hybrid systems


Normal based subdivision scheme for curve design In this paper we propose a new kind of nonlinear and geometry driven subdivision scheme for curve interpolation. Instead of using linear combination of old vertexes, displacement vector for every new vertex is given by normal vectors at old vertexes. The normal vectors are computed adaptively for each time of subdivision, and the limit curve is G, smooth with wide ranges of free parameters. With this new scheme, normal vectors at selected vertexes can be interpolated efficiently. A shape preserving subdivision scheme with explicit choices of all free parameters is also presented. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

curve interpolation
normal based subdivision
shape preserving


Optimal control of a fed-batch bioreactor based upon an augmented recurrent neural network model The paper presents a structured approach to building neural network models for a fed batch bioreactor to allow the development of reactor optimal control policy. Since the ultimate interest in batch bioreactor control is on the end-of-batch product quality, accurate long range predictions are essential in developing optimal control policy. To address the long range prediction issue, an augmented recurrent neural network is used to build long range prediction models which can predict the product quality over the batch trajectory. The augmented recurrent neural network contains two recurrent neural networks in series and utilises available process knowledge to improve long range prediction accuracy. The first network predicts an important process state variable while the second network predicts the product quality variable. Based on the augmented neural network model, constrained optimisation techniques are used to find the optimal control policy. The proposed technique is applied to a simulated fed-batch bioreactor. The results obtained are shown to be comparable to those computed using a full phenomenological model which is usually difficult to obtain, demonstrating that the proposed approach can contribute to the optimal control of some batch processes where detailed mechanistic models are difficult or infeasible to develop.

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


An experimental study, about detection of bearing defects in inverter fed small induction motors by Concordia transform This paper describes an application about detection of bearing defects in inverter fed induction motors, using Concordia transform approach based algorithm. After introduction, brief information is given about bearing structure and type of bearing failures. Next section, Concordia transform theory is mentioned then, RBF neural network structure is summarized. After that, test system information is specified. This paper indicates that Concordia transform approach is a reliable tool to detect bearing faults in inverter fed small induction motors. The generality of the proposed methodology has been experimentally tested on a 1 HP squirrel-cage induction motor. At the end of the paper, an ANN algorithm is proposed that could detect the bearing faults automatically. The obtained results have 93.75% accuracy. This study suggests that proposed Concordia transform based fault detection algorithm could be integrated in an induction motor driver so, bearing condition of the induction motor could be observed while motor is working and bearing faults could be detect before they become serious.

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

induction motor
bearing faults
concordia transform
rbf neural network


Randi? index and coloring number of a graph ? The Randi? index of a graph G G , denoted by R(G) R ( G ) , is defined as the sum of 1 / d ( u ) d ( v ) for all edges uv u v of G G , where d(u) d ( u ) denotes the degree of a vertex u u in G G . The coloring number col(G) c o l ( G ) of a graph G G is the smallest number k k for which there exists a linear ordering of the vertices of G G such that each vertex is preceded by fewer than k k of its neighbors. It is well-known that ?(G)?col(G) ? ( G ) ? c o l ( G ) for any graph G G , where ?(G) ? ( G ) denotes the chromatic number of G G . In this note, we show that for any graph G G with at least one edge, col(G)?2R(G) c o l ( G ) ? 2 R ( G ) , with equality if and only if G G is a complete graph, possibly with some additional isolated vertices. This extends a theorem of Hansen and Vukicevi?.

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


evaluation and design trade-offs between circuit-switched and packet-switched nocs for application-specific socs NOC architectures have to deliver good latency-throughput performance in the face of very tight power and area budgets. However, the latency and the power consumption for transferring information down the transmitter stack, through the channel, and up the receiver stack might be unacceptably high. In this paper, we evaluate the designs of packet-switched and the proposed circuit-switched NOCs in detail, and we advocate using circuit-switched NOC as it is more attractive for application-specific SOC designs because of communication localization. We implement and synthesize the designs of packet-switched and circuit-switched NOCs, and we take multimedia applications as our case studies. The experimental results show that the area, latency and the energy consumption of packet-switched NOC are much larger than that of circuit-switched NOC.

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


An interoperable cloud-based scientific GATEWAY for NDVI time series analysis ? A scientific gateway for computing the NDVI time series data based on a distributed workflow using the WPS standard. An optimal NDVI times series geoprocessing services based on cloud infrastructures. Experimental results in the study area that include some part of the territory of Armenia.

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


Some human dimensions of computer virus creation and infection Infection of computer systems by destructive computer viruses is a commonplace occurrence. Consequently, an extensive literature exists concerning the technical means of virus prevention, detection and disinfection. By contrast, in this paper we consider the human dimensions and implications behind the invention and release of computer viruses. We examine and discuss some possible conscious motivations: these include political, commercial and malicious. However, the paper is also concerned with unconscious motivations and goes on to look at possible meanings for these disruptive activities from within a psychodynamic framework based on the work of Melanie Klein. The paper draws upon previously published information about viruses and their makers in order to furnish material for these discussions. Of equal import in understanding the effect that virus infection has upon computer users. A personal anecdote illustrates the disruption to peace of mind brought about simply by the fear of virus infection. We conclude that virus creation means different things for different perpetrators, but that generally it is a destructive act aimed at dismantling what is apparently 'whole' and satisfactory. This reflects the reality that human life involves a constant struggle with processes of destructiveness as well as creativity. Paradoxically, the orderly, constructed world may become stronger through the process of learning and defending against each new virus, but this strengthening of defences may itself inflame the problem. We conclude by considering some concrete consequences for computer users, and areas for future investigation. (C) 2000 Academic Press.

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


classifying tags using open content resources Tagging has emerged as a popular means to annotate on-line objects such as bookmarks, photos and videos. Tags vary in semantic meaning and can describe different aspects of a media object. Tags describe the content of the media as well as locations, dates, people and other associated meta-data. Being able to automatically classify tags into semantic categories allows us to understand better the way users annotate media objects and to build tools for viewing and browsing the media objects. In this paper we present a generic method for classifying tags using third party open content resources, such as Wikipedia and the Open Directory. Our method uses structural patterns that can be extracted from resource meta-data. We describe the implementation of our method on Wikipedia using WordNet categories as our classification schema and ground truth. Two structural patterns found in Wikipedia are used for training and classification: categories and templates. We apply our system to classifying Flickr tags. Compared to a WordNet baseline our method increases the coverage of the Flickr vocabulary by 115\%. We can classify many important entities that are not covered by WordNet, such as, London Eye, Big Island, Ronaldinho, geocaching and wii .

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

user-generated content
categorization
multimedia annotation


MFS with time-dependent fundamental solutions for unsteady Stokes equations This paper describes the applications of the method of fundamental solutions (MFS) for 2D and 3D unsteady Stokes equations. The desired solutions are represented by a series of unsteady Stokeslets, which are the time-dependent fundamental solutions of the unsteady Stokes equations. To obtain the unknown intensities of the fundamental solutions, the source points are properly located in the timespace domain and then the initial and boundary conditions at the timespace field points are collocated. In the time-marching process, the prescribed collocation procedure is applied in a timespace box with suitable time increment, thus the solutions are advanced in time. Numerical experiments of unsteady Stokes problems in 2D and 3D peanut-shaped domains with unsteady analytical solutions are carried out and the effects of time increments and source points on the solution accuracy are studied. The time evolution of history of numerical results shows good agreement with the analytical solutions, so it demonstrates that the proposed meshless numerical method with the concept of spacetime unification is a promising meshless numerical scheme to solve the unsteady Stokes equations. In the spirit of the method of fundamental solutions, the present meshless method is free from numerical integrations as well as singularities in the spatial variables.

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

method of fundamental solutions
unsteady stokes equations
unsteady stokeslets


learning to rank from bayesian decision inference Ranking is a key problem in many information retrieval (IR) applications, such as document retrieval and collaborative filtering. In this paper, we address the issue of learning to rank in document retrieval. Learning-based methods, such as RankNet, RankSVM, and RankBoost, try to create ranking functions automatically by using some training data. Recently, several learning to rank methods have been proposed to directly optimize the performance of IR applications in terms of various evaluation measures. They undoubtedly provide statistically significant improvements over conventional methods; however, from the viewpoint of decision-making, most of them do not minimize the Bayes risk of the IR system. In an attempt to fill this research gap, we propose a novel framework that directly optimizes the Bayes risk related to the ranking accuracy in terms of the IR evaluation measures. The results of experiments on the LETOR collections demonstrate that the framework outperforms several existing methods in most cases.

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


video quality assurance in multi-source streaming techniques In this paper we address the problem of designing a P2P system for distribution real-time video streams through the Internet. The main advantage of this approach is to use the available bandwidth unused by the set of machines connected to the network. The main difficulty is that these machines are typically highly dynamic, they continuously enter and leave the network. To deal with this problem, we explore a multi-source approach where the stream is decomposed into several flows sent by different peers to each client. To evaluate the impact of this approach on quality, we use PSQA, a recently proposed method that allows to obtain a good approximation of the quality as perceived by each client. In particular, we provide a variant of muti-source techniques using some redundancy in the signal, illustrating with real data how the methods allow to compensate efficiently the possible losses of frames due to peers leaving the system.

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

path diversity
quality-of-service
multi-source streaming
perceptual quality


Energy management for real-time embedded applications with compiler support Reducing device energy has become one of the most important challenges to embedded systems designers. Processors with dynamic voltage scaling permit trading performance for reduced energy consumption as a program executes. In this paper, we first present a novel hybrid scheme that uses dynamic voltage scaling to adjust the performance of embedded applications to reduce energy consumption while also meeting time constraints. Our fine-grained approach uses the compiler to insert power management hints in the application code. These hints convey path-specific runtime information about the program's progress to power management points invoked by the operating system that adjust processor performance. Second, we present an algorithm for inserting power management hints along different program paths. Finally, we experimentally evaluate our approach and show that significant energy reduction can be achieved. On two embedded applications, MPEG movie decoding and automatic target recognition, our scheme reduces energy by up to 79% over no power management and by up to 50% over static power management. We also experimentally demonstrate that our scheme achieves more energy savings compared to two purely compiler-directed schemes.

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

algorithms
experimentation
real-time
power management


Fuzzy and hard clustering analysis for thyroid disease Thyroid hormones produced by the thyroid gland help regulation of the body's metabolism. A variety of methods have been proposed in the literature for thyroid disease classification. As far as we know, clustering techniques have not been used in thyroid diseases data set so far. This paper proposes a comparison between hard and fuzzy clustering algorithms for thyroid diseases data set in order to find the optimal number of clusters. Different scalar validity measures are used in comparing the performances of the proposed clustering systems. To demonstrate the performance of each algorithm, the feature values that represent thyroid disease are used as input for the system. Several runs are carried out and recorded with a different number of clusters being specified for each run (between 2 and 11), so as to establish the optimum number of clusters. To find the optimal number of clusters, the so-called elbow criterion is applied. The experimental results revealed that for all algorithms, the elbow was located at c=3. The clustering results for all algorithms are then visualized by the Sammon mapping method to find a low-dimensional (normally 2D or 3D) representation of a set of points distributed in a high dimensional pattern space. At the end of this study, some recommendations are formulated to improve determining the actual number of clusters present in the data set.

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

k-means clustering
k-medoids clustering
fuzzy c-means
gustafsonkessel algorithm
gathgeva algorithm


The LIBOR model dynamics: Approximations, calibration and diagnostics In this paper we consider several parametric assumptions for the instantaneous covariance structure of the LIBOR market model, whose role in the modern interest-rate derivatives theory is becoming more and more central. We examine the impact of each different parameterization on the evolution of the term structure of volatilities in time, on terminal correlations and on the joint calibration to the caps and swaptions markets. We present a number of cases of calibration in the Euro market. In particular, we consider calibration via a parameterization establishing a controllable one to one correspondence between instantaneous covariance parameters and swaptions volatilities, and assess the benefits of smoothing the input swaption matrix before calibrating.

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

finance
pricing
stochastic processes
interest rate modeling


Nonlinear canonical correlation analysis by neural networks Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is widely used to extract the correlated patterns between two sets of variables. A nonlinear canonical correlation analysis (NLCCA) method is formulated here using three feedforward neural networks. The first network has a double-barreled architecture, and an unconventional cost function, which maximizes the correlation between the two output neurons (the canonical variates). The remaining two networks map from the canonical variates back to the original two sets of variables. Tested on data sets with correlated nonlinear structures, NLCCA showed that the underlying nonlinear structures could be retrieved accurately under moderately noisy conditions. After a mode had been retrieved, NLCCA was applied to the residual to successfully retrieve the next mode. When tested for prediction skills, the NLCCA outperformed the CCA when the two sets of variables contained correlated nonlinear structures.

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


Evolutionary algorithm-based fuzzy PD control of spillway gates of dams In this paper, an evolutionary algorithm (EA)-based fuzzy proportional-derivative (PD)-type controller is employed to reservoir control of dams with the purpose of operating spillway gates during any flood of any magnitude, which is not predictable beforehand. EA is used to evolve the main parameters of the fuzzy PD controller. The use of the EA, in conjunction with a systematic neighborhood structure for the determining of fuzzy rule-base parameters, leads to a significant improvement in the performance of the controller. The major objective of the controller is to achieve better system performance over the conventional control methods. In order to demonstrate the high performance of the presented method, we simulate the control system using different probable inflow hydrographs of various magnitudes. The simulation results indicate that the EA-based fuzzy PD controller not only performs an accurate and efficient solution, but also exhibits more desirable and reliable results than the conventional approaches.

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


The concept of security and trust in electronic payments The use of electronic communication channels to conduct businesses without the need for physical conduct or presence has already been established and accepted warmly. But the issue of paying electronically still remains risky and muddy. This article implicates the security and trust issues that are essential for every electronic payment mechanism in order to be accepted and established as a common medium of financial transactions.

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


a min-cost flow based detailed router for fpgas Routing for FPGAs has been a very challenging problem dueto the limitation of routing resources. Although the FPGArouting problem has been researched extensively, most algorithms route one net at a time, and it can cause the net-ordering problem.In this paper, we present a detailed routing algorithm forFPGAs based on min-cost flow computations. Using themin-cost flow approach, our algorithm routes all the netsconnected to a common logic module simultaneously. Ateach stage of the network flow computation, we guaranteeoptimal result in terms of routability and delay cost. For further improvement, we adopt an iterative re nement scheme based on the Lagrangian relaxation technique. The Lagrangian relaxation approach transforms the routing problem into a sequence of Lagrangian subproblems. At each iteration of the algorithm, Lagrangian subproblems are solvedby our min-cost flow based routing algorithm. Any violationof congestion constraints is reflected in the value of corresponding Lagrangian multiplier. The Lagrangian multipliers are incorporated into the cost of each routing rosource nodeand guide the router.Because our min-cost flow based algorithm minimizes costfunction while it maximizes the flow, our algorithm findscongestion-free routing solutions with minimum total delay.Comparison with VPR router shows that our router usesless or equal number of routing tracks with smaller criticalpath delay as well as total routing delay.

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

fpgas
value
computation
delay
router
paper
lagrangian relaxation
network flow
module
flow
routing
logic
algorithm
cost
sequence
congestion
scheme

order
fpga routing
timing
constraint
comparisons
transformation
min-cost flow algorithm
tracking
routing algorithm
resource
iter


U.S. Academic Library Spending, Staffing and Utilization during the Great Recession 20082010 The study analyzes the U.S. academic library spending, staffing and utilization trends during the great recession in the period 20082010. These trends are compared to similar trends during the period 19982008, one of the most robust economic periods in U.S. history. The data used in the study was from publicly available surveys from the National Center for Education Statistics. In general it was found that for both periods many similar trends persisted and were not significantly affected by macroeconomic conditions, and that U.S. academic libraries cannot be seen as a homogeneous group with similar investment and operating profiles. Between 2008 and 2010, growth among especially small to medium sized libraries has declined; while large libraries continue to expand their investments and grow, particularly in electronic services. The economic collapse that occurred in 2008 and the effects of which are still being distributed through the economy and society are having the same impact on all types and sizes of libraries, as many library trends are not influenced by the economic downturn of the period 20082010. The study describes the significant differences in the level and scope of spending, staffing, and utilization by size of library, and how the differences among small and large libraries became more accentuated in the period of the great recession.

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


Going around in circles Let ?>0 ? > 0 and let ? be a disk of sufficiently large radius R in the plane, i.e. , R?R(?) R ? R ( ? ) . We first show that the set of lattice points inside ? can be connected by a (possibly self-intersecting) spanning tour (Hamiltonian cycle) consisting of straight line edges such that the turning angle at each point on the tour is at most ?. This statement remains true for any large and evenly distributed point set (suitably defined) in a disk. This is the first result of this kind that suggests far-reaching generalizations to arbitrary regions with a smooth boundary. Our methods are constructive and lead to an efficient algorithm for computing such a tour. On the other hand, it is shown that such a result does not hold for convex regions without a smooth boundary.

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

robot path planning
geometric graph
integer lattice


improving tcp performance through explicit corruption and route failure notification (ecrfn) The Transport Control Protocol (TCP) was designed with fixed, wired networks in mind. As a result TCP performs suboptimal in networks with noisy links and changing paths, e.g., wireless multi-hop networks. The main reason is that TCP assumes packet loss indicates congestion. However, such fluttering networks drop a non negligible amount of packets because of corruption, route failures and disconnections. In this paper we introduce and evaluate the Explicit Corruption and Route Failure Notification (ECRFN) algorithm. ECRFN improves TCP performance in such environments. It treats all possible loss types and features a smart timing scheme in case of path disconnections. It employs an optional router enhancement and exploits common router messages.

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

loss differentiation algorithm (lda)
transport control protocol (tcp)
wireless mesh network (wmn)


A Novel Robust Adaptive-Fuzzy-Tracking Control for a Class of Nonlinear Multi-Input/Multi-Output Systems Robust adaptive-fuzzy-tracking control of a class of uncertain multi-input/multi-output nonlinear systems with coupled interconnections is considered in this paper. Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy systems are used to approximate the unknown system functions. A novel adaptive-control scheme is developed on the basis of the so-called "dynamic-surface control" and "minimal-learning parameters" techniques. The proposed scheme has following two key features. First, the number of parameters updated online for each subsystem is reduced to one, and both problems of "curse of dimension" for high-dimensional systems and "explosion of complexity" inherent in the conventional backstepping methods are circumvented. Second, the potential controller-singularity problem in some of the existing adaptive-control schemes with feedback-linearization techniques is overcome. It is shown via Lyapunov theory that all the signals in the closed-loop system are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results via two examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed scheme.

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

uncertain multi-input/multi-output (mimo) systems


Optimization of teacher volunteer transferring problems using greedy genetic algorithms This paper proposes a greedy GA to solve teacher volunteer transferring problems. The proposed GONSGA has better solution scalability than the other two methods. Real-world transferring cases are studied to verify the proposed approach. Compared to the official data, our approach obtains much better results.

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

combinational optimization
greedy search
genetic algorithm
neighborhood search


An integrated approach to linking economic valuation and catchment modelling An increased emphasis on integrated water management at a catchment scale has led to the development of numerous modelling tools. To support efficient decision making and to better target investment in management actions, such modelling tools need to link socioeconomic information with biophysical data. However, there is still limited experience in developing catchment models that consider environmental changes and economic values in a single framework. We describe a model development process where biophysical modelling is integrated with economic information on the non-market environmental costs and benefits of catchment management changes for a study of the George catchment in northeast Tasmania, Australia. An integrated assessment approach and Bayesian network modelling techniques were used to integrate knowledge about hydrological, ecological and economic systems. Rather than coupling existing information and models, synchronous data collection and model development ensured tailored information exchange between the different components. The approach is largely transferable to the development of integrated hydro-economic models in other river catchments. Our experiences highlight the challenges in synchronizing economic and scientific modelling. These include the selection of common attributes and definition of their levels suitable for the catchment modelling and economic valuation. The lessons from the model development process are useful for future studies that aim to integrate scientific and economic knowledge.

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

bayesian networks
catchment scale modelling
choice experiments
environmental values
integrated water resources management
knowledge integration


On dynamic signaling congestion mitigation by overlapping tracking area lists Mitigating signaling congestion of tracing user equipments (UEs), adaptively to the changes in UE location and mobility patterns is a challenging issue in mobility management of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. Signaling congestion usually occurs due to many UEs behaving in a similar manner, e.g., massive and simultaneous UE mobility in a train movement scenario. LTE networks allow the use of tracking area lists (TALs), each being a list containing multiple tracking areas (TAs). The overlapping TAL scheme has been previously used for signaling congestion mitigation for snapshot scenarios. For maintaining the improved performance over non-list-oriented TA configuration over time, an automatic dynamic configuration framework, which is a key aspect in Self-Organizing Network (SON), has been applied in this paper. We develop a linear programming model for optimal TAL configuration. Repetitively solving the model for different time intervals gives an evaluation framework on the performance of SON location management. Comprehensive numerical results are presented in this study using a large-scale realistic network scenario. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the SON dynamic framework in reducing the total signaling overhead of the network compared to the static TA. Moreover, the overlapping TAL scheme significantly improves the performance of the network in the tracking area update congested scenarios over the conventional TA configuration.

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

dynamic location management
self-organizing network
tracking area list


eye-gaze experiments for conversation monitoring Eye-tracking technology has recently been matured so that its use in studies dealing with unobtrusive and natural user experiments has become easier to conduct. Simultaneously, human computer interactions have become more conversational in style, and more challenging in that they require various human conversational strategies, such as giving feedback and managing turn-taking. In this paper, we focus on eye-gaze in order to investigate turn taking signals and conversation monitoring in naturally occurring dialogues. We seek to build models that deal with the important aspects of which interlocutor the speaker is talking to, and what kind of turn taking signals the partners elicit, and we report the first results of our eye-tracking experiments.

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

multiparty conversation
human-human interaction
eye-tracking


Continuous input nonlocal games We present a family of nonlocal games in which the inputs the players receive are continuous. We study three representative members of the family. For the first two a team sharing quantum correlations (entanglement) has an advantage over any team restricted to classical correlations. We conjecture that this is true for the third member of the family as well.

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

quantum games
nonlocality
bell inequalities


Localizing people in multi-view environment using height map reconstruction in real-time Our method is applicable in case of non-planar ground (height map is computed). Our method produces results comparable to SoA methods (for planar ground). Our method can run real-time (distributed implementation is also possible).

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-view localization
3d position
projection
real-time processing


Surface enhanced Raman scattering substrate based on gold-coated anodic porous alumina template We report the fabrication of large area SERS substrates based on anodic porous alumina template over which gold thin layer of 25nm was deposited. A specific design of honey-comb structure with the pore size/cell thickness of 60/40nm was attained by using the controlled electrolyte potential, time of etching and oxalic acid as an electrolytic solution. Cresyl violet and glycine molecules were deposited through chemisorption technique to verify the SERS substrate functionality. Numerical simulations in order to describe the realistic device were also carried out, finding consistency with the experimental results.

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

sers
cresyl violet
anodic porous alumina


Towards integrating hypermedia and information systems on the web Our overall research goal is to provide hypermedia functionality to information systems (IS) through the WWW with minimal or no change to the IS itself. We feel that the systems should be able to generate links dynamically using a mapping mechanism to generate the hypermedia constructs instead of the links being hard-coded. This paper provides a systematic procedure for analyzing IS and building mapping rules to supplement them with a rich layer of links and other navigation, structuring, and annotation tools, resulting in new ways to view and manage knowledge and information relationships.

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

hypermedia
information systems
mapping rules


How much is too little? Privacy and smart cards in Hong Kong and Ontario In this article, we analyze the notion of privacy - how it is conceptualized and implemented as a constitutive element of identity - in two different cultures: Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Ontario, Canada. By examining the two jurisdictions of Hong Kong and Ontario, we argue that, in addition to institutional structures, differing cultural notions of privacy affect the acceptance of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). For our comparison, we focus on one potentially privacy-invasive technology, smart cards, and discuss the factors that contribute to their adoption and use in the two regions selected, including one's conceptualization of digital identity and privacy, and the role of consultation and public debate.

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

privacy
technology
ontario
hong kong
consultation

anonymity
government
smart card
digital self


Effect of composition of post etch residues (PER) on their removal in choline chloridemalonic acid deep eutectic solvent (DES) system ? In back end of line (BEOL) processing of copper/dielectric stacks, the composition of the post etch residues (PER) affects their removal by wet chemical formulations. For the removal of PER composed mainly of copper oxides and fluorides, deep eutectic solvent (DES) systems composed of choline chloride (CC) and urea (U) or choline chloride (CC) and malonic acid (MA) have been shown to be very effective. This paper will discuss the applicability of CC/MA system with and without the addition of glacial acetic acid (HAc) for the removal of residues that exhibit both inorganic and organic character. Different types of residues were created by CF4/O2 plasma etching of deep UV (DUV) photoresist (PR) films on Cu. By varying the time of etching, post-etch residues of varying inorganic and organic composition were generated and characterized using XPS. The effectiveness of CC/MA and HAc/CC/MA systems in removing the prepared post etch residues was characterized by SEM, XPS and single frequency impedance measurements. The results indicate that HAc/CC/MA system is very effective in removing different types of residues.

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

post etch residue
per characterization
wet cleaning


An Optimal Trading Rule Under a Switchable Mean-Reversion Model This work provides an optimal trading rule that allows buying and selling an asset sequentially over time. The asset price follows a switchable mean-reversion model with a Markovian jump. Such a model can be applied to assets with a staircase price behavior and yet is simple enough to allow an analytic solution. The objective is to determine a sequence of trading times to maximize an overall return. The corresponding value functions are characterized by a set of quasi-variational inequalities. A closed-form solution is obtained under suitable conditions. The sequence of trading times can be given in terms of a set of threshold levels. Finally, numerical examples are given to demonstrate the results.

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

mean-reverting process
optimal stopping
quasi-variational inequalities


Double Delegation-Based Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for PCSs Many protocols have been proposed for solving the user authentication in portable communication system. One of the schemes is based on the delegation concept. Home Location Register (HLR) delegates Mobile Station (MS) to be authenticated by Visitor Location Register (VLR). The main drawback of the scheme is that the HLR is required during the online authentication phase between VLR and MS. In this paper, a double delegation-based authentication and key agreement protocol is proposed. The main advantage of our protocol is that this scheme requires only MS and VLR online. This protocol will thoroughly utilize the proxy signature features to facilitate the operation of this protocol while only requires two members (MS, VLR) to be online at the same time.

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


An adaptive mesh refinement of quadrilateral finite element meshes based upon a posteriori error estimation of quantities of interest: linear static response A posteriori error estimation in finite element analysis serves as an important guide to the meshing tool in an adaptive refinement process. However, the traditional posteriori error estimates, which are often defined in the energy or energy-type norms over the entire domain, provide users insufficient information regarding the accuracy of specific quantities in the solution. This paper describes an adaptive quadrilateral refinement process with a goal-oriented error estimation, in which a posteriori error is estimated with respect to the specified quantity of interest. A highlight of this paper is the demonstration of tools described in the paper used in a practical industrial environment. The performance of this process is demonstrated on several practical problems where the comparison is with the adaptive process based on the traditional error estimation.

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

adaptive refinement
a posteriori error estimation
finite element analysis


Emulating shared-memory Do-All algorithms in asynchronous message-passing systems ? A fundamental problem in distributed computing is performing a set of tasks despite failures and delays. Stated abstractly, the problem is to perform N N tasks using P P failure-prone processors. This paper studies the efficiency of emulating shared-memory task-performing algorithms on asynchronous message-passing processors with quantifiable message latency. Efficiency is measured in terms of work and communication, and the challenge is to obtain subquadratic work and message complexity. While prior solutions assumed synchrony and constant delays, the solutions given here yield subquadratic efficiency with asynchronous processors when the delays and failures are suitably constrained. The solutions replicate shared objects using a quorum system, provided it is not disabled. One algorithm has subquadratic work and communication when the delays and the number of processors, K K , owning object replicas, are O(P0.41) O ( P 0.41 ) . It tolerates ? K ? 1 2 ? crashes. It is also shown that there exists an algorithm that has subquadratic work and communication and that tolerates o(P) o ( P ) failures, provided message delays are sublinear.

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

distributed algorithm
fault-tolerance
quorums


SEMANTICS OF HIGHER-ORDER RECURSION SCHEMES Higher-order recursion schemes are recursive equations defining new operations from given ones called "terminals". Every such recursion scheme is proved to have a least interpreted semantics in every Scott's model of lambda-calculus in which the terminals are interpreted as continuous operations. For the uninterpreted semantics based on infinite lambda-terms we follow the idea of Fiore, Plotkin and Turi and work in the category of sets in context, which are presheaves on the category of finite sets. Fiore et al showed how to capture the type of variable binding in lambda-calculus by an endofunctor H-lambda and they explained simultaneous substitution of lambda-terms by proving that the presheaf of lambda-terms is an initial H-lambda-monoid. Here we work with the presheaf of rational infinite lambda-terms and prove that this is an initial iterative H-lambda-monoid. We conclude that every guarded higher-order recursion scheme has a unique uninterpreted solution in this monoid.

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

higher-order recursion schemes
infinite lambda-terms
rational tree


cutpoints for formal equivalence verification of embedded software Like hardware, embedded software faces stringent design constraints, undergoes extremely aggressive optimization, and therefore has a similar need for verifying the functional equivalence of two versions of a design, e.g., before and after an optimization. The concept of cutpoints was a breakthrough in the formal equivalence verification of combinational circuits and is the key enabling technology behind its successful commercialization. We introduce an analogous idea for formally verifying the equivalence of structurally similar, "combinational" software, i.e., software routines that compute a result and return/terminate, rather than executing indefinitely. We have implemented a proof-of-concept cutpoint approach in our prototype verification tool for the TI C6x family of VLIW DSPs, and our experiments show large improvements in runtime and memory usage.

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

equivalence checking
formal verification


A Relocation Planning Method for Railway Cars in Final Assembly Shop The authors propose a method to make a movement plan for relocation of the railway cars in preparation for the final assembly. It obtains solution through three steps. The first step is to extract the order constraints between the movements of the railway cars based on their locations before and after relocation. The second step is to introduce the movement which puts a railway car into another location temporarily, in order to avoid a deadlock in the movements. And the final step is to obtain the movement order for carrying out the relocation in the shortest time in accordance with the calculated order constraints by using the genetic algorithm (GA). The order constraints are resolved in advance and therefore the movement order can easily be decided by GA. As the result, the developed system takes time shorter than an expert for planning the relocation.

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

railway car
final assembly shop
relocation
genetic algorithm


Fault detection and precedent-free localization in numerically discretized thermal-fluid systems This paper uses the Growing Structure Multiple Model System (GSMMS) method for fault detection and precedent-free localization of unwanted heating anomalies in two different configurations of channel flow systems operated under dynamic conditions: (i) straight channel and (ii) straight channel with an internal flow disruptor. Unlike commonly used fault detection methods, the newly proposed approach does not require prior information regarding the fault location, fault severity or data emitted in the presence of a fault to build the model of that fault and recognize it. The new detection mechanism is based only on the models of normal behavior for various portions of the monitored system. The obtained results indicate that the detection and localization of the unwanted heating element (i.e., heat source) can be achieved through distributed GSMMS-based anomaly detection, with multiple anomaly detectors monitoring different parts of each configuration. The results also suggest that fault detection and localization are strongly related to a system's configuration and operational conditions. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Towards semantically enhanced Web service repositories The success of the Web services technology has brought topics as software reuse and discovery once again on the agenda of software engineers. While there are several efforts towards automating Web service discovery and composition, many developers still search for services via online Web service repositories and then combine them manually. However, from our analysis of these online repositories, it yields that, unlike traditional software libraries, they rely on little metadata to support service discovery. We believe that the major cause is the difficulty of automatically deriving metadata that would describe rapidly changing Web service collections. In this paper, we discuss the major shortcomings of state of the art Web service repositories and as a solution, we report on ongoing work and ideas on how to use techniques developed in the context of the Semantic Web (ontology learning, matching, metadata based presentation) to improve the current situation.

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

web services repositories
ontology mapping
reasoning
metadata presentation


computer based cognitive training for patients with mild cognitive impairment (mci) Brain activation through computer training of attention and executive function could stimulate brain plasticity in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Aim: The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a computer based training on visual spatial abilities, visual attention, executive function and visual memory, in MCI patients. Method: The participants were 59 MCI patients, age 68.08 (7.25), education 9.17 (3.93), and MMSE 27.73 (1.35), classified in one experimental (N=30) and one control group (N=29). The groups were matched in age (p= 0.60), education (p= 0.06), drugs (0.51) and gender (p= 0.52). The experimental group attended 20 weekly sessions in a period of 6 months, including tasks of visual attention, visual spatial abilities, visual memory, and executive function. The control group did not participate in any type of intervention and was in a waiting list. Neuropsychological assessment was performed at baseline and at the end of the training. Results: At baseline, there were no between groups differences in cognitive abilities. At the end of the training, between groups comparison yielded differences in favor of the experimental group in attention (p? 0.00), verbal fluency (p= 0.00), visual memory (p= 0.01), verbal memory (p=0.00) and learning through feedback (p=0.00). Within group analysis of the experimental group's performance has shown improvement in attention (p=0.00) and daily function (p=0.00). Controls have shown an improvement in perseverant responses and cognitive flexibility (p?0.00) and naming (p=0.02), and deterioration in abilities of attention (p?0.00). Conclusion: Computer cognitive training helped the experimental group to improve attention abilities and the improvement was generalized in verbal memory and in ADL as well.

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


A note on the two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling problem with uniform parallel machines We study the problem of minimizing the makespan in a two-stage assembly flow shop scheduling problem with uniform parallel machines. This problem is a generalization of the assembly flow shop problem with concurrent operations in the first stage and a single assembly operation in the second stage. We propose a heuristic with an absolute performance bound which becomes asymptotically optimal as the number of jobs becomes very large. We show that our results slightly improve earlier results for the simpler assembly flow shop problem (without uniform machines) and for the two-stage hybrid flow shop problem with uniform machines.

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

scheduling
flow shop
uniform machines
absolute performance bound


Predicting failure-proneness in an evolving software product line Previous work by researchers on 3years of early data for an Eclipse product has identified some predictors of failure-prone files that work well. Eclipse has also been used previously by researchers to study characteristics of product line software. The work reported here investigates whether classification-based prediction of failure-prone files improves as the product line evolves. This investigation first repeats, to the extent possible, the previous study and then extends it by including four more recent years of data, comparing the prominent predictors with the previous results. The research then looks at the data for three additional Eclipse products as they evolve over time. The analysis compares results from three different types of datasets with alternative data collection and prediction periods. Our experiments with a variety of learners show that the difference between the performance of J48, used in this work, and the other top learners is not statistically significant. Furthermore, new results show that the effectiveness of classification significantly depends on the data collection period and prediction period. The study identifies change metrics that are prominent predictors across all four releases of all four products in the product line for the three different types of datasets. From the product line perspective, prediction of failure-prone files for the four products studied in the Eclipse product line shows statistically significant improvement in accuracy but not in recall across releases. As the product line matures, the learner performance improves significantly for two of the three datasets, but not for prediction of post-release failure-prone files using only pre-release change data. This suggests that it may be difficult to detect failure-prone files in the evolving product line. At least in part, this may be due to the continuous change, even for commonalities and high-reuse variation components, which we previously have shown to exist.

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

software product lines
reuse
post-release defects
failure-prone files


CRYPTANALYSIS AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE SECURE QUANTUM SEALED-BID AUCTION WITH POSTCONFIRMATION In this paper, the cryptanalysis about the quantum sealed-bid auction, whose feature is that by introducing a postconfirmation mechanism the malicious bidders cannot collude with auctioneers, is given. We found that a malicious bidder can obtain the other bidders' bids with a probability of 0.854. Moreover, there will be a higher probability if some bidders collude to attack the other bidders' bids. To prevent such attacks, we propose an effective improvement by means of the hash function.

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

quantum sealed-bid auction
quantum communication
quantum cryptography


effects of wireless physical layer modeling in mobile ad hoc networks In most studies on mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), simulation models are used for the evaluation of devices and protocols. Typically, such simulations focus on the specific higher layer protocols that are being proposed, and tend to ignore details of models at other layers, particularly the interactions with physical layer models. In this paper, we present the set of factors at the physical layer that are relevant to the performance evaluations of higher layer protocols. Such factors include signal reception, path loss, fading, interference and noise computation, and preamble length. We start the discussion with the comparisions of physical layer models in ns-2 and GloMoSim, two commonly used simulators for MANET studies, and then quantify the impact of the preceding factors under typical scenarios used for the performance evaluation of wireless ad hoc routing protocols. Our experimental results show that the factors at the physical layer not only affect the absolute performance of a protocol, but because their impact on different protocols is non-uniform, it can even change the relative ranking among protocols for the same scenari

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

simulation
affect
computation
performance
paper
mobile ad hoc networks
evaluation
change
wireless
layer
physical
noise
interference
ranking

scenario
signaling
relevance
model
routing protocol
performance evaluation
interaction
experimentation
factor
device
relation
effect
ad-hoc


An Eulerian description of the streaming process in the lattice Boltzmann equation This paper presents a novel strategy for solving discrete Boltzmann equation (DBE) for simulation of fluid flows. This strategy splits the solution procedure into streaming and collision steps as in the lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) method. The streaming step can then be carried out by solving pure linear advection equations in an Eulerian framework. This offers two significant advantages over previous methods. First, the relationship between the relaxation parameter and the discretization of the collision term developed from the LBE method is directly applicable to the DBE method. The resulting DBE collision step remains local and poses no constraint on time step. Second, decoupling of the advection step from the collision step facilitates implicit discretization of the advection equation on arbitrary meshes. An implicit unstructured DBE method is constructed based on this strategy and is evaluated using several test cases of flow over a backward-facing step, lid-driven cavity flow, and flow past a circular cylinder. The speedup of convergence for some cases improves by a factor of about 20.

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


Apoptotic Non? Cells Suppress ? Cell AntigenReactive T Cells and Induce ? Cell AntigenSpecific Regulatory T Cells Steady-state cell apoptosis plays an important role in maintenance of self-tolerance. Based on this notion, the use of apoptotic cells to restore self-tolerance to ? cell antigens is a rational approach to type 1 diabetes (T1D) prevention. Our previous study demonstrated that transfusion of apoptotic ? cells induced immune tolerance to ? cell antigens in NOD mice. However, concerned about the limited ? cell source for future clinical applications, we attempted in the present study to develop a more practical approach for T1D prevention using apoptotic non? cells. We found that UVB-irradiation-induced apoptotic NOD splenic stromal cells significantly suppressed ? cell antigen-specific T cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, TCR-transgenic CD4+ T cells primed by the antigens to which they were specific in the presence of UVB-irradiated stromal cells were rendered unresponsive to the antigen restimulation, a result that was partially attributed to the induced IL-10-producing regulatory T cells. Of more interest, transfusion of UVB-irradiated stromal cells appeared to induce ? cell antigenresponding IL-10-producing regulatory T cells in vivo. Most importantly, transfusion of UVB-irradiated stromal cells effectively prevented T1D in NOD mice, which is consistent with these findings. This study suggests that it is possible to use apoptotic non? cells such as peripheral blood mononuclear cells to induce ? cell antigenspecific tolerance, thereby preventing T1D in humans.

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

type 1 diabetes
apoptosis
immune tolerance
regulatory t cells


Water content influence on thermal and volumetric properties of wheat starch gelatinization under 10 MPa A transitiometric in situ analysis of wheat starch aqueous suspensions heated over a temperature range from 285 K to 415 K under isobaric conditions of 10 MPa is presented. Measurements were performed at four selected water concentrations: 56.0%, 64.7%, 73.5%, and 82.4% weight/water. Thermal and volumetric properties and their water content dependencies have been determined for three successive starch phase transformations occurred during wheat starch gelatinization.

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


On global smoothness preservation by Bernstein operators We investigate the global smoothness preservation by Bernstein operators measured by second-order modulus of smoothness and give a partial answer for a conjecture raised by H. H. Gonska in 1998.

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

best constants
bernstein operator
second-order modulus


Spur-Reduction Frequency Synthesizer Exploiting Randomly Selected PFD This brief presents a low-spur phase-locked loop (PLL) system for wireless applications. The low-spur frequency synthesizer randomizes the periodic ripples on the control voltage of the voltage-controlled oscillator to reduce the reference spur at the output of the PLL. A novel random clock generator is presented to perform the random selection of the phase frequency detector control for the charge pump in locked state. The proposed frequency synthesizer was fabricated in a TSMC 0.18-mu m CMOS process. The proposed PLL achieved phase noise of -93 dBc/Hz with a 600-kHz offset frequency and reference spurs below -72 dBc.

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

low spur synthesizer
phase-locked loop (pll)
voltage-controlled oscillator (vco)


mining dependency relations for query expansion in passage retrieval Classical query expansion techniques such as the local context analysis (LCA) make use of term co-occurrence statistics to incorporate additional contextual terms for enhancing passage retrieval. However, relevant contextual terms do not always co-occur frequently with the query terms and vice versa. Hence the use of such methods often brings in noise, which leads to reduced precision. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of relationship analysis for natural language queries in passage retrieval. However, they found that without query expansion, the performance is not satisfactory for short queries. In this paper, we present two novel query expansion techniques that make use of dependency relation analysis to extract contextual terms and relations from external corpuses. The techniques are used to enhance the performance of density based and relation based passage retrieval frameworks respectively. We compare the performance of the resulting systems with LCA in a density based passage retrieval system (DBS) and a relation based system without any query expansion (RBS) using the factoid questions from the TREC-12 QA task. The results show that in terms of MRR scores, our relation based term expansion method with DBS outperforms the LCA by 9.81\%, while our relation expansion method outperforms RBS by 17.49\%.

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

task
statistics
use
analysis
query expansion
performance
context
paper
natural language
passage retrieval
mining
method
systems
queries
relation
noise
contextual
query

precise
framework
dependency parsing
relevance
locality
dependencies
relationships
extraction


Solving constrained combinatorial optimization problems via importance sampling in the grand canonical ensemble Combinatorial optimization problems are usually NP-hard. These problems are generally tackled by heuristic or branch-and-bound methods. The aim of this paper is to tackle constrained combinatorial optimization problems by importance Monte Carlo sampling. For this, we show that every constrained combinatorial optimization problem can be represented by a thermodynamical system in a suitable grand canonical ensemble given by the quantities of temperature, volume, and chemical potential. In order to find optimum solutions of the optimization problem, the grand canonical Monte Carlo method can be applied to the corresponding thermodynamical system. This method will amount to importance sampling, i.e. good feasible solutions of the optimization problem will be preferably sampled, provided that the intensive quantities of temperature and chemical potential are appropriately chosen. Our approach extends the standard importance sampling approach in the canonical ensemble to tackle unconstrained combinatorial optimization problems. The knapsack problem is considered as a prototype example.

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

combinatorial optimization
knapsack problem
grand canonical ensemble

statistical mechanics
monte carlo simulation


The Markov Model of Bean Optimization Algorithm and Its Convergence Analysis By simulating the self-adaptive phenomena of plants in nature, a novel evolutionary algorithm named Bean Optimization Algorithm (BOA) was proposed in 2008. BOA can be used for resolving complex optimization problems. As BOA is a new optimization algorithm, theoretical analysis of the algorithm is still very preliminary. Research on the state transfer process and the convergence behavior of BOA is of great significance for understanding it. In this paper, we build the Markov chain model of this algorithm and analyze the characters of this Markov chain. Then we analyze the transferring process of the bean memeplex status series and point out that the memeplex status series will enter the best status set. We also prove that this algorithm meets the requirement of global convergence criterion of random search algorithms. Finally we get the conclusion that BOA will make sure to get the global optimum.

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 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 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

bean optimization algorithm
markov chain
global convergence


Automatic band selection for wavelet reconstruction in the application of defect detection In this paper, we present a multiresolution approach for the inspection of local defects embedded in homogeneously textured surfaces. It is based on an efficient image restoration scheme using the wavelet transforms. By properly selecting the smooth subimage or the combination of detail subimages at different resolution levels for image reconstruction, the global repetitive texture pattern can be effectively removed and only local anomalies are preserved in the restored image. A wavelet band selection procedure is developed to automatically determine the best reconstruction parameters based on the energy distribution of wavelet coefficients. Experimental results show that the decomposed subimages and the number of resolution levels determined by the automatic band selection scheme are similar to the manual selection results, and the defects in a variety of real textures including machined surfaces, natural wood, sandpaper and textile fabrics are well detected.

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

surface inspection
textured image
wavelet transform


New devices for 3D pose estimation: Mantis eyes, agam paintings, sundials, and other space fiducials Several unconventional ideas for viewer/camera pose estimation are discussed. The methods proposed so far advocate the use of advanced image processing for identification and precise location of calibration objects in the images acquired, and base pose recovery on the identification of the viewing dependent deformations of these objects. We propose to more fully exploit the freedom in the design of "space fiducials" or calibration objects showing that we can build objects whose images directly encode, in easily identifiable gray-level/color or temporal patterns, the pose of their viewer. We also show how to construct high-precision fiducials, which can determine a viewing direction quite accurately when it is known to lie within a relatively narrow range.

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Energy-efficient and thermal-aware resource management for heterogeneous datacenters We study energy-, thermal- and performance-aware scheduling in heterogeneous datacenters. We present a heuristic for the placement problem of physical servers. We design a greedy framework for the online scheduling of applications. We propose a novel fuzzy-based priority rule to handle multiple conflicting objective. The proposed approaches are evaluated using extensive simulations.

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datacenter heterogeneity
server placement
cooling
multi-objective optimization


Improving program comprehension by combining code understanding with comment understanding Existing source code-based program comprehension approaches analyze either the code itself or the comments/identifiers but not both. In this research, we combine code understanding with comment and identifier understanding. This synergistic approach allows much deeper understanding of source code than is possible using either code or comments/identifiers alone. Our approach also allows comparing comments to their associated code to see whether they match or belong to the code. Our combined approach implements both our heuristic code understanding and the comment/identifier understanding within the same knowledge base inferencing engine. This inferencing engine is the same used by an earlier well tested, mature comment/identifier-based program understanding approach.

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

program comprehension
code understanding
comment understanding

knowledge-based system
heuristic approaches