A statistical model for synthesis of detailed facial geometry Detailed surface geometry contributes greatly to the visual realism of 3D face models. However, acquiring high-resolution face geometry is often tedious and expensive. Consequently, most face models used in games, virtual reality, or computer vision look unrealistically smooth. In this paper, we introduce a new statistical technique for the analysis and synthesis of small three-dimensional facial features, such as wrinkles and pores. We acquire high-resolution face geometry for people across a wide range of ages, genders, and races. For each scan, we separate the skin surface details from a smooth base mesh using displaced subdivision surfaces. Then, we analyze the resulting displacement maps using the texture analysis/synthesis framework of Heeger and Bergen, adapted to capture statistics that vary spatially across a face. Finally, we use the extracted statistics to synthesize plausible detail on face meshes of arbitrary subjects. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in several applications, including analysis of facial texture in subjects with different ages and genders, interpolation between high-resolution face scans, adding detail to low-resolution face scans, and adjusting the apparent age of faces. In all cases, we are able to re-produce fine geometric details consistent with those observed in high resolution scans.

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


Development of an Autonomous Distributed Control System for Optical Packet and Circuit Integrated Networks In this paper, we describe an autonomous distributed control system that we have been developing for an optical packet and circuit integrated network, and we experimentally evaluate its performance. Colored (i.e., multi-wavelength) optical packet-switched links transfer both control signals for circuit switching (e.g., signaling and routing) and best-effort packet data. We successfully transmitted high-definition uncompressed real-time video signals on two lightpaths established by our control system without degradation of video quality, simultaneously with other optical packet data transferred on the same optical fibers. Our developed control system not only achieved autonomous distributed signaling and routing but also has a function that can adjust wavelength resources for optical packet and circuit switching autonomously in each link at each node. Controllers achieved lightpath establishment within approximately 360 ms and dynamic resource adjustment within approximately 454 ms, in the best possible case in our experimental setup.

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

fiber optics communications
multiplexing
optical communications


Fun and Games: Player Profiles This paper presents findings about player preferences regarding characteristics of gaming experiences. It describes a quantitative investigation employing a survey with 27 items as a basis to categorise players in profiles, and it shows how the fun factors represented by the survey items relate to each other. The survey was applied to 634 students in Florianpolis (Brazil). A factorial analysis method was used to understand how the fun factors are associated with one other in the players opinions, and it generated six dimensions of fun, every one of which can be described as a way to have fun: (1) Improvement, (2) Distinction, (3) Immersion, (4) Decoration, (5) Empathy, and (6) Grotesque. A cluster analysis method was used to divide players into eight profiles, every one of which describes the preferences of a group of players who declared to have fun with similar aspects. The profiles were named as: (1) Competitive and Enthusiastic; (2) Competitive and Selfish; (3) Competitive and Overcoming; (4) Immersed in the Beauty; (5) Immersed and Selfish; (6) Distracted and Uninterested; (7) Quitters; and, (8) Friendly and Overcoming. The results are a useful source to reflect on game design and fun, and to consider topics such as violence, verisimilitude, distraction, socialization, as well as the multiplicity of modes of engagement with digital game.

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


Analyzing operational risk-reward trade-offs for start-ups We model the advertising and inventory decisions of a start-up. We develop a novel methodology to track variance as well as expected rewards of the operational decisions. We call this methodology Variance Retentive Stochastic Dynamic Programming. We develop a heuristic (RiskTrackr) to construct risk-reward efficient frontiers.

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

variance retentive stochastic programming


Identity-based deniable authentication for ad hoc networks Deniable authentication is an important security requirement for ad hoc networks. However, all known identity-based deniable authentication (IBDA) protocols are lack of formal security proof which is very important for cryptographic protocol design. In this paper, we propose a non-interactive IBDA protocol using bilinear pairings. Our protocol admits formal security proof in the random oracle model under the bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption. Our protocol is faster than all known IBDA protocols of its type. In addition, our protocol supports batch verification that can speed up the verification of authenticators. This characteristic makes our protocol useful in ad hoc networks.

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

ad hoc networks
deniable authentication
bilinear pairings
random oracle model


Lossless trace compression The tremendous storage space required for a useful data base of program traces has prompted a search for trace reduction techniques. In this paper, we discuss a range of information-lossless address and instruction trace compression schemes that can reduce both storage space and access time by an order of magnitude or more, without discarding either references or interreference timing information from the original trace. The PDATS family of trace compression techniques achieves trace coding densities of about six references per byte. This family of techniques is now in use as the standard in the NMSU TraceBase, an extensive trace archive that has been established for use by the international research and teaching community.

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


Diffusion tensor-based fast marching for modeling human brain connectivity network Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is an effective modality in studying the connectivity of the brain. To eliminate possible biases caused by fiber extraction approaches due to low spatial resolution of DTI and the number of fibers obtained, the fast marching (FM) algorithm based on the whole diffusion tensor information is proposed to model and study the brain connectivity network. Our observation is that the connectivity extracted from the whole tensor field would be more robust and reliable for constructing brain connectivity network using DTI data. To construct the connectivity network, in this paper, the arrival time map and the velocity map generated by the FM algorithm are combined to define the connectivity strength among different brain regions. The conventional fiber tracking-based and the proposed tensor-based FM connectivity methods are compared, and the results indicate that the connectivity features obtained using the FM-based method agree better with the neuromorphical studies of the human brain.

O O B 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 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

brain connectivity analysis
fiber tracking
tractography


vertical handover management scheme using multiple tcp connections for heterogeneous networks Although mobile nodes will handle vertical handovers to achieve transparent mobility in the heterogeneous network, the communication quality will be drastically degraded. We proposed vertical handover management scheme that solves all of the issues. In this paper, to verify the effectiveness of the scheme in a real environment, we implement it and show a demonstration.

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

vertical handover management
multiple tcp connections

cross-layer
seamless and efficient handover


Multimedia Applications and Security in MapReduce: Opportunities and Challenges Cloud computing has recently attracted great attention, both commercially and academically. MapReduce is a popular programming model for distributed storage and computation in the cloud. In this paper, we survey cloud-based multimedia applications, identifying the open issues and challenges which arise when MapReduce is used for cloud computing. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

cloud computing
multimedia
mapreduce
security


Internal states on equality algebras This paper investigates properties of equality algebras introduced by Jenei as a possible algebraic semantic for fuzzy type theory. We define and study the pointed equality algebras and its subclass of compatible pointed equality algebras. We introduce and investigate the internal states and the state-morphism operators on equality algebras and on their corresponding BCK-meet-semilattices. We prove that any internal state (state-morphism) on an equality algebra is also an internal state (state-morphism) on its corresponding BCK-meet-semilattice, and we prove the converse for the case of linearly ordered equality algebras. Another main result consists of proving that any state-morphism on a linearly ordered equality algebra is an internal state on it. We show that any internal state on a linearly ordered BCK-meet-semilattice satisfying the distributivity condition is also an internal state on its corresponding equality algebra and a state-morphism on a BCK-meet-semilattice satisfying the distributivity condition is also a state-morphism on its corresponding equality algebra.

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

bck-algebra
meet-semilattice
pointed equality algebra
compatible equality algebra
state-morphism operator


Distributed Data Replenishment We propose a distributed data replenishment mechanism for some distributed peer-to-peer-based storage systems that automates the process of maintaining a sufficient level of data redundancy to ensure the availability of data in presence of peer departures and failures. The dynamics of peers entering and leaving the network are modeled as a stochastic process. A novel analytical time-backward technique is proposed to bound the expected time for a piece of data to remain in P2P systems. Both theoretical and simulation results are in agreement, indicating that the data replenishment via random linear network coding (RLNC) outperforms other popular strategies. Specifically, we show that the expected time for a piece of data to remain in a P2P system, the longer the better, is exponential in the number of peers used to store the data for the RLNC-based strategy, while they are quadratic for other strategies.

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


knowledge management for context-aware, policy-based ubiquitous computing systems Ubiquitous computing systems depend on a distributed intelligence that relates the context of the task being performed to the available system resources and services. Currently, this is hampered by the problems inherent in heterogeneous devices and technologies used to manage network resources and services, and the associated lack of a network language lingua franca that all systems can use and understand. This paper describes a new approach for representing, using and managing knowledge for ubiquitous computing systems, based on a novel combination of extracting knowledge from models and ontologies to form such a lingua franca. An extensible context model is used to select applicable policies to govern system behaviour; as context changes, policies change, which in turn causes system behaviour to change accordingly.

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

ubiquitous computing
knowledge management

context awareness
policy-based management


Path Space Regularization for Holistic and Robust Light Transport We propose a simple yet powerful regularization framework for robust light transport simulation. It builds on top of existing unbiased methods and resorts to a consistent estimation using regularization only for paths which cannot be sampled in an unbiased way. To introduce as little bias as possible, we selectively regularize individual interactions along paths, and also derive the regularization consistency conditions. Our approach is compatible with the majority of unbiased methods, e. g. (bidirectional) path tracing and Metropolis light transport (MLT), and only a simple modification is required to adapt existing renderers. We compare to recent unbiased and consistent methods and show examples of scenes with difficult light paths, where regularization is required to account for all illumination features. When coupled with MLT we are able to sample all phenomena, like recent consistent methods, while achieving superior convergence.

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

global illumination
markov chain monte-carlo


Integrating generations with advanced reference counting garbage collectors We propose the use of generations with modern reference counting. A reference counting collector is well suited to collect the old generation, containing a large fraction of live objects that are modified infrequently. Such a collector can be combined with a tracing collector to collect the young generation, typically containing a small fraction of live objects. We have designed such a collector appropriate for running on a multiprocessor. As our building blocks, we used the sliding-views on-the-fly collectors. We have implemented the new collector on the Jikes Research Java Virtual Machine (Jikes RVM) and compared it with the concurrent reference counting collector supplied with the Jikes RVM package. Our measurements demonstrate short pause times, retaining those of the original on-the-fly collectors and a gain in application throughput time. It turns out that a modern reference counting collector may benefit from the use of generations. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

runtime systems
memory management
garbage collection
generational garbage collection


On the use of visual motion in particle filter tracking Particle filtering is now established as one of the most popular methods for visual tracking. Within this framework, a basic assumption is that the data are temporally independent given the sequence of object states. In this paper, we argue that in general the data are correlated, and that modeling such dependency should improve tracking robustness. Besides, the choice of using the transition prior as proposal distribution is also often made. Thus, the current observation data is not taken into account in the generation of the new samples, requesting the noise process of the prior to be large enough to handle abrupt trajectory changes between the previous image data and the new one. Therefore, many particles are either wasted in low likelihood area, resulting in a low efficiency of the sampling, or, more importantly, propagated on near distractor regions of the image, resulting in tracking failures. In this paper, we propose to handle both issues using motion. Explicit motion measurements are used to drive the sampling process towards the new interesting regions of the image, while implicit motion measurements are introduced in the likelihood evaluation to model the data correlation term. The proposed model allows to handle abrupt motion changes and to filter out visual distractors when tracking objects with generic models based on shape or color distribution representations. Experimental results compared against the CONDENSATION algorithm have demonstrated superior tracking performance.

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

sequence
visual motion
particle filter
condensation

object tracking
estimation
sequential monte-carlo


Numerical model for two-bolted joints subjected to compressive loading This paper deals with the dimensioning of two-bolted assemblies made up from joint prismatic subassemblies subjected to fatigue compressive loads coplanar with the screw axis. The presented study is complementary to a previous study relative to tension loading [A. Daidie, J. Chakhari, A. Zghal, Numerical model for bolted T-stubs with two bolt rows, Struct. Eng. Mech. 26 (3) (2007) 343361]. However, one should note that the two loading cases are not similar since an additional influential corner contact problem occurs in the case of compressive loading. The main development in this paper relative to the previous study [A. Daidie, J. Chakhari, A. Zghal, Numerical model for bolted T-stubs with two bolt rows, Struct. Eng. Mech. 26 (3) (2007) 343361] is taking into consideration this complex corner contact problem. In this framework, the local deformation between the subassemblies and the corner of the supporting structure is formulated and a non-linear expression of a constrained displacement is established. Moreover, the evolution of the contact zone under the compressive loading, which is not similar in the case of tension loading, is taken into consideration. Consequently, a new extended numerical model for compressive loading is established from unidirectional finite elements and validated by 3D finite element simulations. An algorithm which updates the contact stiffness matrix and sets out forces and displacements at each node of the subassembly is developed using C language program. Finally, a statistical software method is used as in the case of tensile loading. It is important to note that in the case of compressive loading, this statistical software method is not only used to establish the effect of the joint parameters, but also to identify and tune up parameters relative to the complex problem of the corner contact.

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

bolted joints
structures modelling
contact non-linearity


Comment on Support vector machine for classification based on fuzzy training data by A.-B. Ji, J.-H. Pang, H.-J. Qiu [Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 34953498] This paper comments on the recently published work dealing with support vector machine for classification based on fuzzy data [Ji, A.-B., Pang, J.-H., & Qiu, H.-J. (2010). Support vector machine for classification based on fuzzy training data. Expert Systems with Applications 37(4), 34953498]. The authors have claimed that their proposed program is a classical convex quadratic program. But, we show that their proposed program is neither convex nor classical quadratic. Then, we propose a convex program by using the similar strategy proposed by Ji et al. (2010).

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


Performance of the ensemble Kalman filter outside of existing wells for a channelized reservoir The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) appears to give good results for matching production data at existing wells. However, the predictive power of these models outside of the existing wells is much more uncertain. In this paper, for a channelized reservoir for five different cases with different levels of information the production history is matched using the EnKF. The predictive power of the resulting model is tested for the existing wells and for new wells. The results show a consistent improvement for the predictions at the existing wells after assimilation of the production data, but not for prediction of production at new well locations. The latter depended on the settings of the problem and prior information used. The results also showed that the fit during the history match was not always a good predictor for predictive capabilities of the history match model. This suggests that some form of validation outside of observed wells is essential.

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

ensemble kalman filter
channelized reservoir

assisted history matching
uncertainty quantification
multiple point statistics
fluvial deposits


The dynamics of an elastic hopping hoop This paper discusses the motion of a hoop which is loaded with a heavy particle fixed to the rim and which is rolling in a vertical plane. In contrast to previous analyses, the hoop is not rigid; the elasticity in the system produces results that are in agreement with previously reported observations of hopping hula-hoops. The main result of this analysis is the identification of the conditions that are required for hopping to occur after a rotation through less than 90degrees after starting with the particle at the highest point. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


opportunities for actuated tangible interfaces to improve protein study We outline strategies for actuated tangible user interfaces (TUIs) to improve the study of proteins. Current protein study tools miss fundamental biology concepts because graphical and symbolic interfaces do not allow users to intuitively manipulate complex physical forms. Actuated, tangible tools may enhance understanding at all levels of protein study. To advance TUI awareness of protein study, we present an overview of protein concepts and current protein study tools. Thirty-six protein researchers, engineers, professors and students recommend design guidelines for tangible interfaces in protein study, and we outline research directions for TUIs to improve protein study at all educational levels.

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

tangible user interface
education
actuation


point rendering of non-manifold surfaces with features We are concerned with producing high quality images of implicit surfaces, in particular those with non-manifold features. In this work we present a point based technique that improves the rendering of non-manifold implicit surfaces by using point and gradient information to prune plotting nodes resulting from using octree spatial subdivision based on the natural interval extension of the surface's function. The use of intervals guarantees that no parts of the surfaces are missed in the view volume and the combination of point and gradient sampling preserves this feature while greatly enhacing the quality of point based rendering of implicit surfaces. We also sucessfully render non-manifold features of implicit surfaces such as rays and thin sections. We illustrate the technique with a number of example surfaces.

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


A novel reordering write buffer to improve write performance of log-structured file systems This paper presents a novel reordering write buffer which improves the performance of Log-structured File Systems (LFS). While LFS has a good write performance, high garbage-collection overhead degrades its performance under high disk space utilization. Previous research concentrated on how to improve the efficiency of the garbage collector after data is written to disk. We propose a new method that reduces the amount of work the garbage collector would do before data reaches disk. By classifying active and inactive data in memory into different segment buffers and then writing them to different disk segments, we force the disk segments to form a bimodal distribution. Most data blocks in active segments are quickly invalidated, while inactive segments remain mostly intact. Simulation results based on a wide range of both real-world and synthetic traces show that our method significantly reduces the garbage collection overhead, slashing the overall write cost of LFS by up to 53 percent, improving the write performance of LFS by up to 26 percent, and the overall system performance by up to 21 percent.

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

log-structured file systems
storage systems


Doppler ultrasound wall removal based on the spatial correlation of wavelet coefficients In medical Doppler ultrasound systems, a high-pass filter is commonly used to reject echoes from the vessel wall. However, this leads to the loss of the information from the low velocity blood flow. Here a spatially selective noise filtration algorithm cooperating with a threshold denoising based on wavelets coefficients is applied to estimate the wall clutter. Then the blood flow signal is extracted by subtracting the wall clutter from the mixed signal. Experiments on computer simulated signals with various clutter-to-blood power ratios indicate that this method achieves a lower mean relative error of spectrum than the high-pass filtering and other two previously published separation methods based on the recursive principle component analysis and the irregular sampling and iterative reconstruction, respectively. The method also performs well when applied to in vivo carotid signals. All results suggest that this approach can be implemented as a clutter rejection filter in Doppler ultrasound instruments.

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

doppler ultrasound
wall removal
threshold denoising
spatial correlation


Evaluation of probabilistic queries over imprecise data in constantly-evolving environments Sensors are often employed to monitor continuously changing entities like locations of moving objects and temperature. The sensor readings are reported to a database system, and are subsequently used to answer queries. Due to continuous changes in these values and limited resources (e.g., network bandwidth and battery power), the database may not be able to keep track of the actual values of the entities. Queries that use these old values may produce incorrect answers. However, if the degree of uncertainty between the actual data value and the database value is limited, one can place more confidence in the answers to the queries. More generally, query answers can be augmented with probabilistic guarantees of the validity of the answers. In this paper, we study probabilistic query evaluation based on uncertain data. A classification of queries is made based upon the nature of the result set. For each class, we develop algorithms for computing probabilistic answers, and provide efficient indexing and numeric solutions. We address the important issue of measuring the quality of the answers to these queries, and provide algorithms for efficiently pulling data from relevant sensors or moving objects in order to improve the quality of the executing queries. Extensive experiments are performed to examine the effectiveness of several data update policies. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

data uncertainty
constantly-evolving environments
query quality
entropy
data caching


understanding and modeling pedestrian mobility of train-station scenarios This work presents the observations of pedestrian mobility characteristics based on the traces collected in a train station; provides a mobility model using these observations.

O O O O O 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


An anytime assignment algorithm: From local task swapping to global optimality The assignment problem arises in multi-robot task-allocation scenarios. Inspired by existing techniques that employ task exchanges between robots, this paper introduces an algorithm for solving the assignment problem that has several appealing features for online, distributed robotics applications. The method may start with any initial matching and incrementally improve the current solution to reach the global optimum, producing valid assignments at any intermediate point. It is an any-time algorithm with a performance profile that is attractive: quality improves linearly with stages (or time). Additionally, the algorithm is comparatively straightforward to implement and is efficient both theoretically (complexity of \(O(n^3\lg n)\) is better than many widely used solvers) and practically (comparable to the fastest implementation, for up to hundreds of robots/tasks). The algorithm generalizes swap primitives used by existing task exchange methods already used in the robotics community but, uniquely, is able to obtain global optimality via communication with only a subset of robots during each stage. We present a centralized version of the algorithm and two decentralized variants that trade between computational and communication complexity. The centralized version turns out to be a computational improvement and reinterpretation of the little-known method of BalinskiGomory proposed half a century ago. Thus, deeper understanding of the relationship between approximate swap-based techniquesdeveloped by roboticistsand combinatorial optimization techniques, e.g., the Hungarian and Auction algorithmsdeveloped by operations researchers but used extensively by roboticistsis uncovered.

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

multi-robot task allocation
decentralized assignment
anytime algorithms


On Minimum Reload Cost Paths, Tours, and Flows The concept of reload cost, that is of a cost incurred when two consecutive arcs along a path are of different types, naturally arises in a variety of applications related to transportation, telecommunication, and energy networks. Previous work on reload costs is devoted to the problem of finding a spanning tree of minimum reload cost diameter (with no arc costs) or of minimum reload cost. In this article, we investigate the complexity and approximability of the problems of finding optimum paths, tours, and flows under a general cost model including reload costs as well as regular arc costs. Some of these problems, such as shortest paths and minimum cost flows, turn out to be polynomially solvable while others, such as minimum shortest path tree and minimum unsplittable multicommodity flows, are NP-hard to approximate within any polynomial-time computable function. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 57(3), 254-260 2011

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

network optimization
extended reload cost model
computational complexity


Natural scene text detection with multi-layer segmentation and higher order conditional random field based analysis ? The contrasts in RGB channels are integrated to segment image into multi layers. The multi-layer segmentation is implemented with a graph cuts based model. A higher order CRF based connected component analysis is used.

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

scene text detection
graph cuts
higher order crf


Operations research practice on logistics management in Taiwan: An academic view The opinions of logistics educators in Taiwan on OR practices in the domestic logistics industry are explored in this research. In this study, questionnaires were given to 42 pre-screened educators at 10 logistics departments and graduate institutes. According to the 37 valid returned questionnaires, 70% of the responding educators believe the major source of OR techniques in Taiwans logistics industry originates from individual employee training, while 92% believe OR is not widely used primarily because companies are unfamiliar with OR techniques. OR techniques were considered helpful in solving problems by 73%. Generally speaking, familiarity with OR techniques is not associated with implementation of OR techniques by educators. Additionally, logistics educators express concern about insufficient training for logistics students in Taiwan. However, they are optimistic about the logistics industrys willingness to more actively adopt OR techniques in Taiwan in the next two years.

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


Interference Mitigation Through Limited Receiver Cooperation Interference is a major issue limiting the performance in wireless networks. Cooperation among receivers can help mitigate interference by forming distributed MIMO systems. The rate at which receivers cooperate, however, is limited in most scenarios. How much interference can one bit of receiver cooperation mitigate? In this paper, we study the two-user Gaussian interference channel with conferencing decoders to answer this question in a simple setting. We identify two regions regarding the gain from receiver cooperation: linear and saturation regions. In the linear region, receiver cooperation is efficient and provides a degrees-of-freedom gain, which is either one cooperation bit buys one over-the-air bit or two cooperation bits buy one over-the-air bit. In the saturation region, receiver cooperation is inefficient and provides a power gain, which is bounded regardless of the rate at which receivers cooperate. The conclusion is drawn from the characterization of capacity region to within two bits/s/Hz, regardless of channel parameters. The proposed strategy consists of two parts: 1) the transmission scheme, where superposition encoding with a simple power split is employed and 2) the cooperative protocol, where one receiver quantize-bin-and-forwards its received signal and the other after receiving the side information decode-bin-and-forwards its received signal.

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 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 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

capacity to within a bounded gap
distributed mimo system
interference management


A note on permutations and rank aggregation In this brief note we consider rank aggregation, a popular method in voting theory, social choice, business decisions, etc. Mathematically the problem is to find a permutation-viewed as a vector-that minimizes the sum of the l(1)-distances to a given family of permutations. The problem may be solved as an assignment problem and we establish several properties of optimal solutions in this problem. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


mapping search relevance to social networks This paper explores how information contained in the structure of the social graph can improve search result relevance on social networking websites. Traditional approaches to search include scoring documents for relevance based on a set of keywords or using the link structure across documents to infer quality and relevance. These approaches attempt to optimally match keywords to documents with little or no information about the searcher and no information about his network. This study analyzes 3.8M profile search queries from a large social networking site in conjunction with the tie structure of a 21M member social graph. The key finding is that a measure of social distance, when used in conjunction with standard search relevance methods, improves the ordering of profiles in search results.

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 B I O O O O O O O O O

social search
community analysis
social network analysis


Some refinements of rough k-means clustering Lingras et at. proposed a rough cluster algorithm and successfully applied it to web mining. In this paper we analyze their algorithm with respect to its objective function, numerical stability, the stability of the clusters and others. Based on this analysis a refined rough cluster algorithm is presented. The refined algorithm is applied to synthetic, forest and microarray gene expression data. (c) 2006 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

cluster algorithms
rough k-means
soft computing
data analysis
forest data
bioinformatics data


Taming Hardware Event Samples for Precise and Versatile Feedback Directed Optimizations Feedback-directed optimization (FDO) is effective in improving application runtime performance, but has not been widely adopted due to the tedious dual-compilation model, the difficulties in generating representative training data sets, and the high runtime overhead of profile collection. The use of hardware-event sampling overcomes these drawbacks by providing a lightweight approach to collect execution profiles in the production environment, which naturally consumes representative input. Yet, hardware event samples are typically not precise at the instruction or basic-block granularity. These inaccuracies lead to missed performance when compared to instrumentation-based FDO. In this paper, we use Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU)-based sampling to collect the instruction frequency profiles. By collecting profiles using multiple events, and applying heuristics to predict the accuracy, we improve the accuracy of the profile. We also show how emerging techniques can be used to further improve the accuracy of the sample-based profile. Additionally, these emerging techniques are used to collect value profiles, as well as to assist a lightweight interprocedural optimizer. All these profiles are represented in a portable form, thus they can be used across different platforms. We demonstrate that sampling-based FDO can achieve an average of 92 percent of the performance gains obtained using instrumentation-based exact profiles for both SPEC CINT2000 and CINT2006 benchmarks. The overhead of collection is only 0.93 percent on average, while compiler-based instrumentation incurs 2.0-351.5 percent overhead (and 10x overhead on an industrial web search application).

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

sample profile
feedback directed optimization
performance counter
last branch record


Discrete particle swarm optimization for high-order graph matching High-order graph matching aims at establishing correspondences between two sets of feature points using high-order constraints. It is usually formulated as an NP-hard problem of maximizing an objective function. This paper introduces a discrete particle swarm optimization algorithm for resolving high-order graph matching problems, which incorporates several re-defined operations, a problem-specific initialization method based on heuristic information, and a problem-specific local search procedure. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on both synthetic and real-world datasets. Its outstanding performance is validated in comparison with three state-of-the-art approaches.

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 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

high-order graph matching
evolutionary algorithm


The structure of continuous uni-norms The concept of uni-norm. aggregation operators (uni-norms) was introduced by Yager and Rybalov to unify and generalize the t-norms and t-conorms. Considering that uni-norms continuous on [0, 1](2) must be t-norms or t-conorms, we concentrate our attention on uni-norms continuous in (0, 1)(2) in this paper. We mainly investigate their properties, representation and structure. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


undergraduate research experiences in data mining The new interdisciplinary field of Data Mining emerged in the early 1990s as a response to the profusion of digital data generated in numerous fields such as biology, chemistry, astronomy, advertising, banking and finance, retail market, stock market, and the WWW. In this paper, I describe an undergraduate course in Data Mining offered at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in Spring of 2007 as a CSCI-317-upper-division "Topics in Computer Science"- course, entitled "Data Intelligence." One of the main objectives of the course was to engage students in experimental computing research through a number of carefully planned research activities resulting in better understanding of the course contents and deeper insights into the challenges faced by the data mining community.

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

pattern recognition
machine learning
undergraduate course design


A single tri-axial accelerometer-based real-time personal life log system capable of human activity recognition and exercise information generation Recording a personal life log (PLL) of daily activities in a ubiquitous environment is an emerging application of information technology. In this work, we present a single tri-axial accelerometer-based PLL system capable of human activity recognition and exercise information generation. Our PLL system exhibits two main functions: activity recognition and exercise information generation. For activity recognition, the system first recognizes a state of daily activities based on the statistical and spectral features of the accelerometer signals. An activity within the recognized state is then recognized using a set of augmented features, including autoregressive coefficients, signal magnitude area, and tilt angle, via linear discriminant analysis and hierarchical artificial neural networks. Upon the recognition of each activity, the system further estimates exercise information that includes energy expenditure based on metabolic equivalents, stride length, step count, walking distance, and walking speed. Our PLL system operates in real-time, and the life log information it generates is archived in a daily log database. We have validated our PLL system for six daily activities (i.e., lying, standing, walking, going-upstairs, going-downstairs, and driving) via subject-independent and subject-dependent recognition on a total of twenty subjects, achieving an average recognition accuracy of 94.43 and 96.61%, respectively. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of a portable real-time PLL system that could be used for u-lifecare and u-healthcare services in the near future.

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

personal life log
activity recognition
exercise information
accelerometer


Simulation optimization with qualitative variables and structural model changes: A genetic algorithm approach In many common simulation optimization methods the structure of the system stays the same and only the set of values for certain parameters of the system such as the number of machines in a station or the in-process inventory is varied from one evaluation to the next. The methodology described in this paper is a simulation-optimization process where the qualitative variables and the structure of the system are the subjects of optimization. Here, the optimum response sought is a function of design and operation characteristics of the system such as the type of machines to use, dispatching rules, sequence of processing operations, etc. In the methodology developed here simulation models are automatically generated through an object-oriented process and are evaluated for various candidate configurations of the system. These candidates are suggested by a Genetic Algorithm (GA) that automatically guides the system towards better solutions. After simulating the alternatives, the results are returned to the GA to be utilized in selection of the next generation of configurations to be evaluated. This process continues until a satisfactory solution is obtained for the system.

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

optimization
simulation
qualitative variables


Clinical decision-support for diagnosing stress-related disorders by applying psychophysiological medical knowledge to an instance-based learning system An important procedure in diagnosing stress-related disorders caused by dysfunction in the interaction of the heart with breathing, i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), is to analyse the breathing first and then the heart rate. Analysing these measurements is a time-consuming task for the diagnosing clinician. A decision-support system in this area would reduce the analysis task of the clinician and enable him/her to give more attention to the patient. We have created a decision-support system which contains a signal classifier and a pattern identifier. The system performs an analysis of the physiological time series concerned which would otherwise be performed manually by the clinician. The signal-classifier, HR3Modul, classifies heart-rate patterns by analysing both cardio- and pulmonary signals, i.e., physiological time series. HR3Modul uses case-based reasoning (CBR), using a wavelet-based method for retrieving features from the signals. The system searches for familiar shapes in the signals by comparing them with shapes already stored. We have applied a best fit scheme for handling signals of different lengths, as the length of a breath is highly dynamic. We also apply automatic weighting to the features to obtain a more autonomous system. The classified heart signals indicate if a patient may be suffering from a stress-related disorder and the nature of the disorder. These classified signals are thereafter sent to the second subsystem, the pattern-identifier. The pattern-identifier analyses the classified signals and searches for familiar patterns by identifying sequences in the classified signals. The identified sequences give clinicians a more complete analysis of the measurements, providing them with a better basis for diagnosis. We have shown that a case-based classifier with a wavelet feature extractor and automatic weighting is a viable option for building a decision-support system for the psychophysiological domain, as it is at par, or even outperforms other retrieval techniques and is less complex.

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

decision support
case-based classification
wavelet retrieval
knowledge discovery


the case for research in game engine architecture This paper is a call for research in the field of game engine architecture and design, a more comprehensive and thorough understanding of which we consider to be essential for its development. We present a number of key aspects that may help to define the problem space and provide a catalogue of questions that we believe identify areas of interest for future investigation.

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

entertainment systems
game engine architecture


a geometry-based soft shadow volume algorithm using graphics hardware Most previous soft shadow algorithms have either suffered from aliasing, been too slow, or could only use a limited set of shadow casters and/or receivers. Therefore, we present a strengthened soft shadow volume algorithm that deals with these problems. Our critical improvements include robust penumbra wedge construction, geometry-based visibility computation, and also simplified computation through a four-dimensional texture lookup. This enables us to implement the algorithm using programmable graphics hardware, and it results in images that most often are indistinguishable from images created as the average of 1024 hard shadow images. Furthermore, our algorithm can use both arbitrary shadow casters and receivers. Also, one version of our algorithm completely avoids sampling artifacts which is rare for soft shadow algorithms. As a bonus, the four-dimensional texture lookup allows for small textured light sources, and, even video textures can be used as light sources. Our algorithm has been implemented in pure software, and also using the GeForce FX emulator with pixel shaders. Our software implementation renders soft shadows at 0.5--5 frames per second for the images in this paper. With actual hardware, we expect that our algorithm will render soft shadows in real time. An important performance measure is bandwidth usage. For the same image quality, an algorithm using the accumulated hard shadow images uses almost two orders of magnitude more bandwidth than our algorithm.

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

graphics hardware
pixel shaders
soft shadows


Management and analysis of unstructured construction data types Compared with structured data sources that are usually stored and analyzed in spreadsheets, relational databases, and single data tables, unstructured construction data sources such as text documents, site images, web pages, and project schedules have been less intensively studied due to additional challenges in data preparation, representation, and analysis. In this paper, our vision for data management and mining addressing such challenges are presented, together with related research results from previous work, as well as our recent developments of data mining on text-based, web-based, image-based, and network-based construction databases.

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


Nonlinear multiresolution signal decomposition schemes - Part II: morphological wavelets In its original form, the wavelet transform is a linear tool. However, it has been increasingly recognized that nonlinear extensions are possible. A major impulse to the development of nonlinear wavelet transforms has been given by the introduction of the lifting scheme by Sweldens, The aim of this paper, which is a sequel of a previous paper devoted exclusively to the pyramid transform, is to present an axiomatic framework encompassing most existing linear and nonlinear wavelet decompositions. Furthermore, it introduces some, thus far unknown, wavelets based on mathematical morphology, such as the morphological Haar wavelet, both in one and two dimensions. A general and flexible approach for the construction of nonlinear (morphological) wavelets is provided by the lifting scheme. This paper briefly discusses one example, the max-lifting scheme, which has the intriguing property that preserves local maxima in a signal over a range of scales, depending on how local or global these maxima are.

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

lifting scheme
mathematical morphology
multiresolution signal decomposition

coupled and uncoupled wavelet decomposition


a learner-centered approach to teaching ethics in computing This paper presents an approach to teaching Computer Ethics that blends the use of contemporary media, subscriptions to digests of current technology news, and reflective writing in a learner-centered strategy. This approach is designed to make use of activities and assignments that take advantage of (1) student interest in contemporary media (video and film) to provide motivation and context beyond historical case studies, (2) breaking news about technology and technology use in education to provide current real world context, and (3) reflective writing to stimulate thinking critically about the course content outside the classroom context. Digests published three times weekly provide a constant flow of current real-world issues that can be used for focused reflective writing. Contemporary media productions are viewed and then a writing assignment in a structured learning log is used to focus on ethical issues raised by the film. We present an example using a feature length film and subsequent learning log assignment.

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


A pattern-theoretic characterization of biological growth Mathematical and statistical modeling of biological growth is an important problem in medical diagnostics. Here, we seek tools to analyze changes in anatomical parts using images collected over time. We introduce a structured model, called Growth by Random Iterated Diffeomorphisms (GRID), that treats a cumulative growth deformation as a composition of several elementary deformations. Each elementary deformation applies to a small region by capturing deformation local to that region and is characterized by a seed and a radial deformation pattern around that seed. These GRID variables-seed locations and radial deformation patterns-are estimated from observed images in two steps: 1) estimate a cumulative deformation over an observation interval; 2) estimate GRID variables using maximum-likelihood criterion from this estimated cumulative deformation. We demonstrate this framework using an MRI image data of a rat's brain growth. For future statistical analysis, we propose a time-varying Poisson process for the seed placements and a random drawing from a predetermined catalog of deformations for the radial deformation patterns.

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

growth dynamics
growth models
growth patterns
random diffeomorphism


Low-power low-voltage class-AB linear OTA for HF filters with a large tuning range This letter presents a new low-voltage class-AB differential linear OTA. The proposed transconductor uses a novel scheme based on two cross-coupled class-AB pseudo-differential pairs biased by a Flipped Voltage Follower [ 1]. The transconductor has been designed using a 0.8 mum CMOS technology to operate at 2 V supply voltage with only 260 muW of quiescent power consumption. Simulation results show 90 MHz bandwidth with more than two decades of transconductance tuning range.

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


On (q+t,t)-arcs of type (0,2,t) In this paper we construct an infinite series of (q + t, t)-arcs of type ( 0, 2, t). We show that this construction includes the Korchmaros-Mazzocca arcs, and we gain new infinite series of examples, too.

O O O O O O O O O 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

sets without tangents
polynomials
power sums


Semidiscrete formulations for transient transport at small time steps Solutions of direct time-integration schemes for transient advection-diffusion-reaction problems that converge in time to conventional semidiscrete formulations may be polluted at small time steps by spurious spatial oscillations. This degradation is not an artifact of the time-marching scheme, but rather a property of the solution of the semidiscrete Galerkin approximation itself. An analogy to steady advection-diffusion-reaction problems with a modified reaction coefficient by the Rothe method of discretizing in time prior to spatial discretization provides an upper bound on the time step for the onset of spatial instability. Spatial stabilization removes this pathology, leading to stabilized implicit time-integration schemes that are free of spurious oscillations at small time steps. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


Adaptive security management of real-time storage applications over NAND based storage systems ? Establishing the model of security-critical storage applications based on security protection of NAND flash systems.. Deriving a dynamic model that captures the vulnerability and utilization constraints in NAND-based storage systems. Designing a feedback control loop to guarantee security performance and soft real-time requirements. Employing two PI controllers to achieve the utilization and vulnerability control in one framework.

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

nand flash memory
storage application
security-critical
real-time
scheduling


sensor placement and coordination via distributed multi-agent cooperative control This paper examines the problem of sensor placement and coordination to maximize the sensor utilization when monitoring different types of environments. Our assumption is that the sensors are mobile and each sensor can have more than one type of sensing capabilities which can be active or not at each specific moment. The goal is to maximize the amount of information collected from the environment, given the limited amount of resources that the total of the available sensors can provide, and at the same time to be fault tolerant in failures of individual sensors by using a decentralized approach that re-organizes their placement in case of failures. We tackle this problem by employing a decentralized multi-agent coordination framework using message passing and the Max-Sum algorithm for building and maintaining a common picture of the area to be monitored. We show that by representing each sensor as an independent agent which can take decisions individually and at the same time can affect the decisions of its neighbouring sensor-agents we can provide a robust and efficient system for the monitoring of life-critical environments such as assistive environments or governmental infrastructures.

B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-agent systems
mobile sensors
max-sum algorithm


Implementation and evaluation of the MSc course in health informatics in Greece Objectives: Health informatics is a well established and important multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary field that not only involves informatics but also medicine, nursing, engineering, biology and other-related subjects. The program has been organized on the basis of an inter-university approach with the participation of five Greek universities. The paper aims at providing a current description of the academic program and a preliminary evaluation of the implementation phase. Methods: The paper presents a case study of a curriculum implementation from the phase of curriculum development to the phase of implementation and evaluation. Due to the interdisciplinary character of the course appropriate procedures were undertaken to ensure that mixed backgrounds can assimilate the broad spectrum of the teaching material taught. In the first stages of the implementation international students mainly from Europe attended the course. In addition, local graduates provided an extra dimension to the multi-layered difficulties and challenges of such a course implementation. Results: The students registered in the course were from different backgrounds and disciplines. They were mainly from health sciences and engineering schools. The interdisciplinary arrangement of the course facilitated the proper exchange of thoughts, skills, and knowledge among and between students and teachers. Conclusions: The postgraduate course in health informatics at the University of Athens has now been running for more than fifteen consecutive years and is one of the first and longest standing courses in Europe. Continuous evaluation and adaptation is required to fit within the changing and evolving amazing field of biomedical and health informatics.

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

health and medical informatics education


A novel FPGA architecture and an integrated framework of CAD tools for implementing applications A complete system for the implementation of digital logic in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform is introduced. The novel power-efficient FPGA architecture was designed and simulated in STM 0.18 mu m CMOS technology. The detailed design and circuit characteristics of the Configurable Logic Block, the interconnection network, the switch box and the connection box were determined and evaluated in terms of energy, delay and area. A number of circuit-level low-power techniques were employed because power consumption was the primary concern. Additionally, a complete tool framework for the implementation of digital logic circuits in FPGA platforms is introduced. Having as input VHDL description of an application, the framework derives the reconfiguration bitstream of FPGA. The framework consists of: i) non-modified academic tools, ii) modified academic tools and iii) new tools. Furthermore, the framework can support a variety of FPGA architectures. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons with existing academic and commercial architectures and tools are provided, yielding promising results.

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

circuit design
rtl design
configuration bitstream


ODE: a tool for distributing object-oriented applications Object-oriented applications are increasingly being deployed in distributed computing environments. Technologies, such as Java RMI, and architectures, such as CORBA, DCOM, and Enterprise Java Beans, are facilitating and enhancing this trend. The performance and eventual success of these applications is dependent on distribution decisions made by the application designer. This decision is a complex one, involving a large number of alternatives and multiple conflicting criteria. Rigorous approaches for effective distribution of object-oriented applications are still lacking. This paper describes the implementation of a practical and effective approach for distributing object-oriented applications. A prototype decision support systemobject distribution environment (ODE)that implements the approach in the form of a user-friendly tool for the design of distributed object-oriented applications is described. ODE has been successfully used in the distribution of a real world distributed object-oriented system.

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

object distribution
distributed systems
decision support system
linear programming
multiple criteria optimization


Fault tolerance of hypercubes and folded hypercubes Let \(G = (V,E)\) be a connected graph. The conditional edge connectivity \(\lambda _\delta ^k(G)\) is the cardinality of the minimum edge cuts, if any, whose deletion disconnects \(G\) and each component of \(G - F\) has \(\delta \ge k\). We assume that \(F \subseteq E\) is an edge set, \(F\) is called edge extra-cut, if \(G - F\) is not connected and each component of \(G - F\) has more than \(k\) vertices. The edge extraconnectivity \(\lambda _\mathrm{e}^k(G)\) is the cardinality of the minimum edge extra-cuts. In this paper, we study the conditional edge connectivity and edge extraconnectivity of hypercubes and folded hypercubes.

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

conditional edge connectivity
edge extraconnectivity


Reuse of manufacturing knowledge to facilitate platform-based product realization Product platforming is a technique for exploiting commonality across a family of products. While utilizing a common platform can have many advantages when developing and manufacturing products, the approach places greater demands on collaboration, in particular the sharing and reuse of knowledge and information. Repositories are intended to facilitate information sharing across organizational groups and geographically distributed collaborators. A particular challenge in utilizing repositories is culling a search for the most appropriate information for the problem at hand. The Reuse Existing Unit for Shape and Efficiency (R.E.U.S.E.) method facilitates the search of information in a repository through three stages that consider similarity, efficiency, and configuration. Automated search and filter techniques are implemented with interaction with the user to effectively obtain the desired results. The similarity stud), uses thresholds to clarify different opportunities for reuse. The user can then select alternatives for further examination based on efficiency of satisfaction of desired characteristics. The degree of modification of the similar alternatives is reported to assist in the configuration of the new design. This method contributes to the field by (a) accounting for the variety of the product family during the reuse of existing process design information; (b) integrating an efficiency assessment for retrieval by considering characteristics beyond cost; and (c) addressing the search with a multicriteria method. The implementation of the R.E.U.S.E method is supported with an example of assembly line design for an air conditioner module in automobile production.

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

reuse
similarity
knowledge
manufacturing
assembly line


Precise rates in the law of the logarithm for negatively associated random variables ? Let {Xn;n?1} { X n ; n ? 1 } be a strictly stationary sequence of negatively associated random variables with mean zero and finite variance. Set S n = ? k = 1 n X k , Mn=maxk?n|Sk|,n?1 M n = max k ? n | S k | , n ? 1 . Suppose ? 2 = E X 1 2 + 2 ? k = 2 ? E X 1 X k . We study the precise rates of a kind of weighted infinite series of P { M n ? ? ? n log n } and P { | S n | ? ? ? n log n } as ??0 ? ? 0 , and P { M n ? ? ? ? 2 n 8 log n } as ??? ? ? ? . The results are related to the convergence rates of the law of the logarithm and the Chung type law of the logarithm.

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

the law of the logarithm
chung type law of the logarithm
negatively associated random variables

l2 l 2 convergence l2 l 2 l2 l 2 l 2
a.s. convergence


Antivirus security: naked during updates The security of modern computer systems heavily depends on security tools, especially on antivirus software solutions. In the anti-malware research community, development of techniques for evading detection by antivirus software is an active research area. This has led to malware that can bypass or subvert antivirus software. The common strategies deployed include the use of obfuscated code and staged malware whose first instance (usually installer such as dropper and downloader) is not detected by the antivirus software. Increasingly, most of the modern malware are staged ones in order for them to be not detected by antivirus solutions at the early stage of intrusion. The installers then determine the method for further intrusion including antivirus bypassing techniques. Some malware target boot and/or shutdown time when antivirus software may be inactive so that they can perform their malicious activities. However, there can be another time frame where antivirus solutions may be inactive, namely, during the time of update. All antivirus software share a unique characteristic that they must be updated at a very high frequency to provide up-to-date protection of their system. In this paper, we suggest a novel attack vector that targets antivirus updates and show practical examples of how a system and antivirus software itself can be compromised during the update of antivirus software. Local privilege escalation using this vulnerability is also described. We have investigated this design vulnerability with several of the major antivirus software products such as Avira, AVG, McAfee, Microsoft, and Symantec and found that they are vulnerable to this new attack vector. The paper also discusses possible solutions that can be used to mitigate the attack in the existing versions of the antivirus software as well as in the future ones. Copyright 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

security
antivirus
malware
vulnerability
local privilege escalation


collaboratory use by peripheral scientists Recent years have seen an increasing use of collaboratories in scientific work. It is hypothesized that by enabling scientists to reach remotely located data, instruments and experts, collaboratories will benefit peripheral scientists (e.g., scientists from developing countries and scientists from minority colleges in the U.S.) more than core scientists. However, previous studies on computer network use have shown mixed results regarding peripherality effects. Adopting a qualitative approach, this study intends to investigate cultural, political, and technical factors that influence collaboratory use by peripheral scientists.

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


Government records and records management: Law on the right to information in Turkey Operating of the laws on right to information is related to effective management of government records and information having social value. This article contains the relation of government records and records management considering the role of records management at institutions in execution of law on right to information in Turkey, and the evaluation of Turkish Law on the right to information that came into force in 2004 in view of records management and archival approaches.

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

government records
records management
turkish law on the right to information


a random number This pedagogical tip presents a physical means for generating a random number - that turns out to be not so random after all.

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

cs1/2
random numbers
computational science
algorithms


An Efficient Resource Allocation Scheme Using Particle Swarm Optimization Developing techniques for optimal allocation of limited resources to a set of activities has received increasing attention in recent years. In this paper, an efficient resource allocation scheme based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) is developed. Different from many existing evolutionary algorithms for solving resource allocation problems (RAPs), this PSO algorithm incorporates a novel representation of each particle in the population and a comprehensive learning strategy for the PSO search process. The novelty of this representation lies in that the position of each particle is represented by a pair of points, one on each side of the constraint hyper-plane in the problem space. The line joining these two points intersects the constraint hyper-plane and their intersection point indicates a feasible solution. With the evaluation value of the feasible solution used as the fitness value of the particle, such a representation provides an effective way to ensure the equality resource constraints in RAPs are met. Without the distraction of infeasible solutions, the particle thus searches the space smoothly. In addition, particles search for optimal solutions by learning from themselves and their neighborhood using the comprehensive learning strategy, helping prevent premature convergence and improve the solution quality for multimodal problems. This new algorithm is shown to be applicable to both single-objective and multiobjective RAPs, with performance validated by a number of benchmarks and by a real-world bed capacity planning problem. Experimental results verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

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

multiobjective resource allocation problem (morap)


Enhancing integrated earthquake simulation with high performance computing Integrated earthquake simulation (IES) is a seamless simulation of the three earthquake processes, namely, the earthquake hazard process, the earthquake disaster process and the anti-disaster action process. High performance computing (HPC) is essential if IES, or particularly, the simulation of the earthquake disaster process is applied to an urban area in which 104?6 structures are located. IES is enhanced with parallel computation, and its performance is examined, so that virtual earthquake disaster simulation will be made for a model of an actual city by inputting observed strong ground motion. It is shown that parallel IES has fairly good scalability even when advanced non-linear seismic structure analysis is used.

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

earthquake engineering
numerical simulation
software integration
software engineering
object oriented design


event-based modeling and processing of digital media Capture, processing, and assimilation of digital media-based information such as video, images, or audio requires a unified framework within which signal processing techniques and data modeling and retrieval approaches can act and interact. In this paper we present the rudiments of such a framework based on the notion of "events". This framework serves the dual roles of a conceptual data model as well as a prescriptive model that defines the requirements for appropriate signal processing. Amongst the key advantages of this framework, lies the fact that it fundamentally brings together the traditionally diverse disciplines of databases and (various areas of) digital signal processing. In addition to the conceptual event-based framework, we present a physical implementation of the event model. Our implementation specifically targets the problem of processing, storage, and querying of multimedia information related to indoor group- oriented activities such as meetings. Such multimedia information may comprise of video, image, audio, and text-based data. We use this application context to illustrate many of the practical challenges that are encountered in this area, our solutions to them, and the open problems that require research across databases, computer vision, audio processing, and multimedia.

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

requirements
framework
video
use
digital media
event
context
model
paper
computer vision
practical
audio
research
digital signal processing
storage
implementation
multimedia
retrieval
data
image
physical
signal processing
roles

challenge
activation
applications
imaging
informal
data models
meeting
text
process
queries
database


A blocked QR-decomposition for the parallel symmetric eigenvalue problem New parallel algorithm for the QR-decomposition of tall and skinny matrices (based on CholeskyQR). Reduced synchronization requirements, compared to the classic Householder QR-decomposition. Adaptive blocking during Householder vector generation, to guarantee numerical stability. Considerable speedups were achieved on a BlueGene/P and Power6 system.

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

qr-decomposition
eigenvalue and eigenvector computation
two-step tridiagonalization
parallelization


compiling cryptographic protocols for deployment on the web Cryptographic protocols are useful for trust engineering in Web transactions. The Cryptographic Protocol Programming Language (CPPL) provides a model wherein trust management annotations are attached to protocol actions, and are used to constrain the behavior of a protocol participant to be compatible with its own trust policy. The first implementation of CPPL generated stand-alone, single-session servers, making it unsuitable for deploying protocols on the Web. We describe a new compiler that uses a constraint-based analysis to produce multi-session server programs. The resulting programs run without persistent TCP connections for deployment on traditional Web servers. Most importantly, the compiler preserves existing proofs about the protocols. We present an enhanced version of the CPPL language, discuss the generation and use of constraints, show their use in the compiler, formalize the preservation of properties, present subtleties, and outline implementation details.

O B I 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 O O O O O 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 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


association of pre-pregnancy weight and weight gain with perinatal mortality Reducing infant mortality is one of the primary Millennium Development Goals 2015. A lot of effort has been made to reduce infant mortality but it remains high in most of the developing countries and the underdeveloped world. Perinatal Mortality is a cause of great emotional pain and social unrest. The main cause of pregnancy failure in the developed world is obesity but in the under-developed world the main cause remains malnutrition. However, their are a mix of factors that affect pregnancy failure in the developing countries. Pakistan has a very high infant mortality rate which stands at 78 deaths per 1000 births. The reasons for this are many including lack of proper healthcare. This is because of a severe shortage of healthcare professionals and specialists in Pakistan. The gap in healthcare may be overcome by leveraging IT to provide automated healthcare. In this paper, we show how machine learning may be used to predict perinatal failure. We examine the relationship between pre-pregnancy weight, weight gain during pregnancy and the body mass index (BMI) to investigate how they relate to foetal failure. We employ the K Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) technique to automatically differentiate between successful and failed pregnancies. Our method is able to predict the the outcome of a pregnancy with about 95\% accuracy.

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


A linearly implicit conservative scheme for the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equation The coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equation models several intersting physical phenomena. It presents a model equation for optical fiber with linear birefringence. In this paper, we present a linearly implicit conservative method to solve this equation. This method is second order accurate in space and time and conserves the energy exactly. Many numerical experiments have been conducted and have shown that this method is quite accurate and describe the interaction picture clearly. (c) 2006 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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coupled nonlinear shrodinger equation
linearly implicit scheme
finite difference method
solitons


Self-Adaptive Multimethod Search for Global Optimization in Real-Parameter Spaces Many different algorithms have been developed in the last few decades for solving complex real-world search and optimization problems. The main focus in this research has been on the development of a single universal genetic operator for population evolution that is always efficient for a diverse set of optimization problems. In this paper, we argue that significant advances to the field of evolutionary computation can be made if we embrace a concept of self-adaptive multimethod optimization in which multiple different search algorithms are run concurrently, and learn from each other through information, exchange using a common population of points. We present an evolutionary algorithm, entitled A Multialgorithm Genetically Adaptive Method for Single Objective Optimization (AMALGAM-SO), that implements this concept of self adaptive multimethod search. This method simultaneously merges the strengths of the covariance matrix adaptation (CMA) evolution strategy, genetic algorithm (GA), and particle swarm optimizer (PSO) for population evolution and implements a self-adaptive learning strategy to automatically tune the number of offspring these three individual algorithms are allowed to contribute during each generation. Benchmark results in 10, 30, and 50 dimensions using synthetic functions from the special session on real-parameter optimization of CEC 2005 show that AMALGAM-SO obtains similar efficiencies as existing algorithms on relatively simple unimodal problems, but is superior for more complex higher dimensional multimodal optimization problems. The new search method scales well with increasing number of dimensions, converges in the close proximity of the global minimum for functions with noise induced multimodality, and is designed to take full advantage of the power of distributed computer networks.

O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 estimation
elitism
genetic algorithms
nonlinear estimation


Pilot study of the development of a theory-based instrument to evaluate the communication process during multidisciplinary team conferences in rheumatology Coordinated teams with multidisciplinary team conferences are generally seen as a solution to the management of complex health conditions. However, problems regarding the process of communication during team conferences are reported, such as the absence of a common language or viewpoint and the exchange of irrelevant or repeated information. To determine the outcome of interventions aimed at improving communication during team conferences, a reliable and valid assessment method is needed. To investigate the feasibility of a theory-based measurement instrument for assessing the process of the communication during multidisciplinary team conferences in rheumatology. An observation instrument was developed based on communication theory. The instrument distinguishes three types of communication: (I) grounding activities, (II) coordination of non-team activities, and (III) coordination of team activities. To assess the process of communication during team conferences in a rheumatology clinic with inpatient and day patient facilities, team conferences were videotaped. To determine the inter-rater reliability, in 20 conferences concerning 10 patients with rheumatoid arthritis admitted to the inpatient unit, the instrument was applied by two investigators independently. Content validity was determined by analysing and comparing the results of initial and follow-up team conferences of 25 consecutive patients with rheumatoid arthritis admitted to the day patient unit (Wilcoxon signed rank test). The inter-rater reliability was excellent with the intra-class correlation coefficients being >0.98 for both types I and III communications in 10 initial and 10 follow-up conferences (type II was not observed). An analysis of an additional 25 initial and 86 follow-up team conferences showed that time spent on grounding (type I) made up the greater part of the contents of communication (87% S.D. 14 and 60% S.D. 29 in initial and follow-up conferences, respectively), which is significantly more compared to time spent on co-ordination (p<0.001 and 0.02 for categories II and III, respectively). Moreover, significantly less time spent was spent on grounding in follow-up as compared to initial team conferences, whereas the time spent on coordination (type III) increased (both p-values <0.001). This theory-based measurement instrument for describing and evaluating the communication process during team conferences proved to be reliable and valid in this pilot study. Its usefulness to detect changes in the communication process, e.g. after implementing systems for re-structuring team conferences mediated by ICT applications, should be further examined.

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

team conferences
communication process
theory
measurement instrument

information and communication technology (ict)