On the monotonicity of single input type fuzzy reasoning methods Yubazaki et al. have proposed "single input rule modules connected type fuzzy reasoning method" (SIRMs method, for short) whose final output is obtained by summarizing the product of the importance degrees and the inference results from single input fuzzy rule module. Another type of single input type fuzzy reasoning method proposed by Hayashi et al. (we call it "Single Input Connected fuzzy reasoning method" (SIC method, for short) in this paper) uses rule modules to each input item as well as SIRMs method. We expect that inference results of SIRMs method and SIC method have monotonicity if the antecedent parts and consequent parts of fuzzy rules in SIRMs rule modules have monotonicity. However, this paper points out that even if fuzzy rules in SIRMs rule modules have monotonicity, the inference results do not necessarily have monotonicity. Moreover, it clarifies the conditions for the monotonicity of inference results by SIRMs method and SIC method.

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

single input rule modules (sirms)
fuzzy sets


Surfactant Protein D Binds Genomic DNA and Apoptotic Cells, and Enhances Their Clearance, in Vivo Collectins, such as surfactant protein D (SP-D), bind apoptotic cells; however, the ligands that they recognize on these cells are unknown. We hypothesized that SP-D binds to the DNA present on these cells. We show that SP-D binds and aggregates mouse alveolar macrophage DNA effectively. Alveolar macrophages of SP-D(?/?) mice contained more nicked DNA than those of SP-A(?/?) and wild type mice. Our results also suggest that carbohydrate recognition domains of SP-D may recognize DNA present on the apoptotic cells. Therefore, cell-surface DNA could be a ligand for recognition of apoptotic cells by collectins.

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

surfactant protein d
alveolar macrophages


A Hormone-Based Controller for Evaluation-Minimal Evolution in Decentrally Controlled Systems One of the main challenges in automatic controller synthesis is to develop methods that can successfully be applied Lot complex tasks. The difficulty is increased even more in the case of settings with multiple interacting agents. We apply the artificial homeostatic hormone system (AHHS) approach, which is inspired by the signaling network of unicellular organisms, to control a system of several independently acting agents decentrally. The approach is designed for evaluation-minimal, artificial evolution in order to be applicable to complex modular robotics scenarios. The performance of AHHS controllers is compared with ncuroevolution of augmenting topologies (NEAT) in the coupled inverted pendulums benchmark. AHHS controllers are found to be better for multimodular settings. We analyze the evolved controllers with regard to the usage of sensory inputs and the emerging oscillations, and we give a nonlinear dynamics interpretation. The generalization of evolved controllers to initial conditions far from the original conditions is investigated and found to be good. Similarly, the performance of controllers scales well even with module numbers different from the original domain the controller was evolved for. Two reference implementations of a similar controller approach are reported and shown to have shortcomings. We discuss the related work and conclude by summarizing the main contributions of our work.

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

inspiration by signaling networks of unicellular organisms


Neuro-flight controllers for aircraft using Minimal Resource Allocating Networks (MRAN) This paper presents the application of the recently developed Minimal Resource Allocating Network (MRAN) for aircraft flight control, with special emphasis on its robustness and fault tolerance properties. MRAN is a dynamic Radial Basis Function network (RBFN) incorporating a growing and pruning strategy resulting in a compact network structure. For the aircraft control application presented here, a simple scheme in which MRAN aids a conventional controller using a feedback error learning mechanism is presented. The robustness and the fault tolerant nature of the neuro controller is illustrated using a F8 fighter aircraft model in an autopilot mode. The objective of the controller is to follow the velocity and pitch rate pilot commands under large parameter variations and sudden changes in actuator time constants. Simulation results demonstrate the satisfactory performance of the MRAN neuro-flight controller even under these faulty conditions.

O O 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

minimal resource allocating network (mran) radial basis function network (rbfn)


profile-driven energy reduction in network-on-chips Reducing energy consumption of a Network-on-Chip (NoC) is a critical design goal, especially for power-constrained embedded systems.In response, prior research has proposed several circuit/architectural level mechanisms to reduce NoC power consumption. This paper considers the problem from a different perspective and demonstrates that compiler analysis can be very helpful for enhancing the effectiveness of a hardware-based link power management mechanism by increasing the duration of communication links' idle periods. The proposed profile-based approach achieves its goal by maximizing the communication link reuse through compiler-directed, static message re-routing. That is, it clusters the required data communications into a small set of communication links at any given time, which increases the idle periods for the remaining communication links in the network. This helps hardware shut down more communication links and their corresponding buffers to reduce leakage power. The current experimental evaluation, with twelve data-intensive embedded applications, shows that the proposed profile-driven compiler approach reduces leakage energy by more than 35\% (on average) as compared to a pure hardware-based link power management scheme.

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


A polynomial-time nuclear vector replacement algorithm for automated NMR resonance assignments High-throughput NMR structural biology can play an important role in structural genomics. We report an automated procedure for high-throughput NMR resonance assignment for a protein of known structure, or of a homologous structure. These assignments are a prerequisite for probing protein-protein interactions, protein-ligand binding, and dynamics by NMR. Assignments are also the starting point for structure determination and refinement. A new algorithm, called Nuclear Vector Replacement (NVR) is introduced to compute assignments that optimally correlate experimentally measured NH residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) to a given a priori whole-protein 3D structural model. The algorithm requires only uniform (15)N-labeling of the protein and processes unassigned H(N-15) N HSQC spectra, H(N-15) N RDCs, and sparse H(N) -H(N) NOE's (d(NN)s), all of which can be acquired in a fraction of the time needed to record the traditional suite of experiments used to perform resonance assignments. NVR runs in minutes and efficiently assigns the (H(N), (15)N) backbone resonances as well as the d(NN)S of the 3D (15)N-NOESY spectrum, in O(n(3)) time. The algorithm is demonstrated on NMR data from a 76-residue protein, human uhiquitin, matched to four structures, including one mutant (homolog), determined either by x-ray crystallography or by different NMR experiments (without RDCs). NVR achieves an assignment accuracy of 92-100%. We further demonstrate the feasibility of our algorithm for different and larger proteins, using NMR data for hen lysozyme (129 residues, 97-100% accuracy) and streptococcal protein G (56 residues, 100% accuracy), matched to a variety of 3D structural models. Finally, we extend NVR to a second application, 3D structural homology detection, and demonstrate that NVR is able to identify structural homologies between proteins with remote amino acid sequences using a database of structural models.

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

automated nmr resonance assignments
structural homology detection
nuclear vector replacement
residual dipolar couplings
structural genomics

protein fold determination
molecular replacement


using the influence model to recognize functional roles in meetings In this paper, an influence model is used to recognize functional roles played during meetings. Previous works on the same corpus demonstrated a high recognition accuracy using SVMs with RBF kernels. In this paper, we discuss the problems of that approach, mainly over-fitting, the curse of dimensionality and the inability to generalize to different group configurations. We present results obtained with an influence modeling method that avoid these problems and ensures both greater robustness and generalization capability.

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

group interaction
support vector machines
intelligent environments


Constant-time sorting We present an algorithm for sorting an arbitrary number of arbitrary-length integers in constant time on a random access machine (RAM). The algorithm forms a Straight Line Program (SLP).

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


Some Qualitative Properties of the Solution to the Magnetohydrodynamic Equations for Nonlinear Bipolar Fluids In this article we study the long-time behaviour of a system of nonlinear Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) modelling the motion of incompressible, isothermal and conducting bipolar fluids in presence of magnetic field. We mainly prove the existence of a global attractor denoted by \(\mathcal{A}\) for the semigroup associated to the aforementioned system of nonlinear PDEs. We also show that this semigroup is uniformly differentiable on \(\mathcal{A}\). This fact enables us to go further and prove that the attractor \(\mathcal{A}\) is of finite-dimensional and we give an explicit bounds for its Hausdorff and fractal dimensions.

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


High temperature stability of ZrSiN diffusion barrier in Cu/Si contact system ZrSiN thin films were deposited on silicon substrates by radio frequency reactive magnetron sputtering (RFMS) technique. Subsequently, Cu films were sputtered on the ZrSiN thin films by direct current-pulse magnetron sputtering (DCPMS). The ZrSiN films and Cu/ZrSiN/Si contact systems were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM), four-point probe sheet resistance measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), respectively. It was found that the sheet resistances of Cu/ZrSiN/Si contact systems annealed in H2/N2 gas mixture were lower than those of as-deposited specimens even after annealing at 800 C for 1 h. ZrSiN thin film showed excellent barrier property so that the Cu/ZrSiN/Si contact systems keep the structures unchanged and Cu3Si phase could not be detected. Amorphous ZrSiN thin film was considered to be a promising candidate in Cu diffusion barrier due to its high thermal stability.

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


the dynamic factory pattern The Dynamic Factory pattern describes a factory that can create product instances based on concrete type definitions stored as external metadata. This facilitates adding new products to a system without having to modify code in the factory class.

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

creational patterns
factory objects
adaptive object-models


Implementation of Health Information Systems in Romania Objectives. The paper aimed to present and analyze the development of Healthcare Information Systems in Romania during the lost decade. The first part was dedicated to the analysis of a large national project, HMIS - Healthcare Management Information System, and the second to the current state of the hospital information systems and primary care systems. Methods. The approach of a "case study" was used. The description of the HMIS project comprised the objectives and its structure, implementation, results and lessons learned. This is followed by a classical short presentation of the current state at the hospital and primary care levels. Results. The very modest results of the HMIS project were critically analyzed, listing the 'failure factors' at various moments, both weak points of the project as well as the consequences of the structural-organizational changes within the Romanian healthcare system during the implementation. However, mainly positive results were registered in the lost years at lower levels, hospitals and primary care, which can also partially be interpreted as 'lesson learned'. Conclusions. There are several things to be learned from the Romanian experience. Healthcare information system analysis is quite complex. Obtaining better results requires several additional measures including better education and training, adopting standards and appropriate quality assessment tools.

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

healthcare information systems
system analysis
primary care systems


A rough membership neural network approach for fault classification in transmission lines ? Rough membership neural network (RMNN) approach is proposed for fault classification in transmission lines. Wavelet multi-resolution analysis (MRA) is utilized for selecting time domain features and time-frequency domain features. Rough neurons are used as input layer neurons and fuzzy neurons in hidden and output layer of the RMNNs. The effectiveness and accuracy of proposed approach is analyzed, compared with the back-propagation neural network (BPNN).

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

rough membership neural networks
feature extracting


Measurement and performance issues of transport protocols over 10 Gbps high-speed optical networks With the integration of IP and optical technology, a high-speed optical network (of the order of 10Gbps) has emerged to support international research cooperation such as massive scientific data transfer and next generation Internet related research. Therefore, it is critical to explore the issues of measurement and evaluation on the performance of transport protocols over 10 Gbps high-speed optical networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that presents a measurement study on a variety of networking environments. The objectives of this paper are as follows: (i) determine the suitability of TCP parameters such as jumbo Frame size, buffer sizes of a TCP sender and a receiver: (ii) evaluate TCP performance measurement tools and emulation tools over 10 Gbps high-speed optical networks; and (iii) compare performance of TCP variants with different metrics, such as throughput and fairness, by varying delays and randomized losses controlled with software emulators. The result shows that selection of emulation and performance measurement tools matters for the accurate measurement of TCP performance. The performance of TCP variants is highly impacted by the Linux TCP/IP stack tuning. Finally we present that overall and detailed performance, such as throughput and fairness, of each TCP variant is dependent on different network environments, such as packet loss rate and propagation delay. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

congestion control
transport protocol
high-speed networks
linux tcp/ip stack tuning


Beltway: Getting around garbage collection gridlock We present the design and implementation of a new garbage collection framework that significantly generalizes existing copying collectors. The Beltway framework exploits and separates object age and incrementality. It groups objects in one or more increments on queues called belts, collects belts independently, and collects increments on a belt in first-in-first-out order. We show that Beltway configurations, selected by command line options, act and pet-form the same as semi-space, generational, and older-first collectors, and encompass all previous copying collectors of which we are aware. The increasing reliance on garbage collected languages such as Java requires that the collector perform well. We show that the generality of Beltway enables us to design and implement new collectors that are robust to variations in heap size and improve total execution time over the best generational copying collectors of which we are aware by up to 40%, and on average by 5 to 10%, for small to moderate heap sizes. New garbage collection algorithms are rare, and yet we define not just one, but a new family of collectors that subsumes previous work. This generality enables us to explore a larger design space and build better collectors.

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

performance
copying collection
generational collection


Dynamics of large solid particles in bioconvective sedimentation Settling of one or two large solid particles in a bioconvection flow induced by gyrotactic motile microorganisins is investigated using a 2D numerical model. The results of varying the initial positions of large particles on the bioconvection flow pattern are investigated. The Chimera method is utilized to generate subgrids around the moving particles. It is demonstrated that the introduction of a single large particle displaces bioconvection plume and changes its shape. The introduction of two particles on the same side of the bioconvection plume further displaces the plume while the introduction of two particles oil opposite sides reduces this displacement. The influence of the bioconvection plume Oil the particles' settling paths and particles' settling velocities is investigated. 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O B 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 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

bioconvection
chimera method
large particles

motile microorganisms
moving boundary
streamfunction-vorticity formulation
subgrid
counter-propagating jets


A Monte Carlo simulation method for assessing biotransformation effects on groundwater fuel hydrocarbon plume lengths Biotransformation of dissolved groundwater hydrocarbon plumes emanating from leaking underground fuel tanks should, in principle, result in plume length stabilization over relatively short distances, thus diminishing the environmental risk. However, because the behavior of hydrocarbon plumes is usually poorly constrained at most leaking underground fuel tank sites in terms of release history, groundwater velocity, dispersion, as well as the biotransformation rate, demonstrating such a limitation in plume length is problematic. Biotransformation signatures in the aquifer geochemistry, most notably elevated bicarbonate, may offer a means of constraining the relationship between plume length and the mean biotransformation rate. In this study, modeled plume lengths and spatial bicarbonate differences among a population of synthetic hydrocarbon plumes, generated through Monte Carlo simulation of an analytical solute transport model, are compared to field observations from six underground storage tank (UST) sites at military bases in California. Simulation results indicate that the relationship between plume length and the distribution of bicarbonate is best explained by biotransformation rates that are consistent with ranges commonly reported in the literature. This finding suggests that bicarbonate can indeed provide an independent means for evaluating limitations in hydrocarbon plume length resulting from biotransformation.

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

analytical transport modeling
biodegradation
groundwater contamination
monte carlo analysis


Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis for river quality modelling Uncertainty analysis for model simulation is of growing importance in the field of water quality management. The importance of this concern is provided by recent public awareness over health risks from improper disposal of toxic wastes as well as by the continuing emphasis on risk assessment. The first step in the chain of risk assessment is the quantification of the error in predicting water quality. In each mathematical modelling application, different uncertainties are involved. The uncertainty sources can be classified into different categories (in this study, as model-input uncertainty, model-structure uncertainty, model-parameter uncertainty and measurement errors). These different types of uncertainty sources determine collectively the total uncertainty in the model results. in this paper, the relative contributions of uncertainties associated with each source are studied for the physico-chemical water quality modelling of a river in Belgium. This provides information as to where available modelling resources should be focused.

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

mathematical modelling
uncertainty analysis

physico-chemical water quality
sensitivity analysis


Iris recognition based on score level fusion by using SVM In conventional iris recognition methods, due to the difficulty of selecting one optimal wavelet filter for iris feature extraction, multiple wavelet filters (with different frequencies and kernel sizes) are adopted. However, this causes the processing time and the extracted feature size to increase. To overcome this problem, feature level fusion of the extracted iris features has been proposed, but this method requires a complicated dimension reduction procedure. Therefore, we propose a new iris recognition method based on score level fusion, using two Gabor wavelet filters and SVM (support vector machine). For score level fusion, we used the typical HD (Hamming distance) produced by a Gabor filter, which can easily be applied to conventional iris recognition systems. The proposed method has three novelties compared to previous works. First, when generating iris feature codes, we excluded detected eyelid, eyelash and SR (specular reflection) regions, which act as noise factors in iris feature extraction. Second, for enrollment, we checked the number of reliable iris feature codes that were not generated from the eyelid, eyelash and SR occluded regions. Only if the number of reliable codes exceeded in the predetermined threshold, we performed enrollment with high confidence, which reduced the FRR (false rejection rate). Third, two Gabor filters were used for local and global iris textures and the HDs calculated by those Gabor filters were fused by the SVM and the consequent authentication error was greatly reduced. Experimental results showed that the authentication error of the proposed method was much smaller than the authentication errors when using the single Gabor filter, the filter-bank, the score level and the decision level fusion methods.

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

iris recognition
score level fusion
support vector machine


A fuzzy framework for defining dynamic playlist generation heuristics We study a dynamic way of automatically generating sequences of songs in this paper Starting from a given seed song, a sequence is generated on-the-fly while listening to the music. During this process, the user can express his or her dislike for the currently played song by pressing a skip button. When the current song is finished or skipped, a heuristic is used to choose the next song to be played. We introduce fuzzy set theory as a formalism for defining such heuristics, because this allows us to make the definitions systematic, formal, and intuitively clear. By doing this, we obtain a general unified framework that includes all heuristics introduced previously by other authors. We compare these existing heuristics with several novel ones by means of extensive experimental evaluations. Moreover, we demonstrate that the presented formal framework can be used to easily generate variations of a heuristic that perform significantly better under specific circumstances. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

fuzzy connectives and aggregation operators


Refactoring OCL annotated UML class diagrams Refactoring of UML class diagrams is an emerging research topic and heavily inspired by refactoring of program code written in object-oriented implementation languages. Current class diagram refactoring techniques concentrate on the diagrammatic part but neglect OCL constraints that might become syntactically incorrect by changing the underlying class diagram. This paper formalizes the most important refactoring rules for class diagrams and classifies them with respect to their impact on attached OCL constraints. For refactoring rules that have an impact on OCL constraints, we formalize the necessary changes of the attached constraints. Our refactoring rules are specified in a graph-grammar inspired formalism. They have been implemented as QVT transformation rules. We finally discuss for our refactoring rules the problem of syntax preservation and show, by using the KeY-system, how this can be resolved.

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

imperative ocl
graph-transformations
syntax preserving refactoring rules
source code verification


How to construct identity-based signatures without the key escrow problem The inherent key escrow problem is one of the main reasons for the slow adoption of identity-based cryptography. The existing solution for mitigating the key escrow problem is by adopting multiple Private Key Generators (PKGs). Recently, there was a proposal that attempted to reduce the trust of the PKG by allowing a malicious PKG to be caught if he reveals the user's identity-based private key illegally. Nonetheless, the proposal does not consider that the PKG can simply decrypt the ciphertext instead of revealing the private key itself (in the case of identity-based encryption schemes). The aim of this paper is to present an escrow-free identity-based signature (IBS) scheme, in which the malicious PKG will be caught if it releases a signature on behalf of the user but signed by itself. We present a formal model to capture such a scheme and provide a concrete construction.

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

identity-based signatures
certificateless signatures
certificate-based signatures
self-certificated signatures


An efficient handover decision method based on frame retransmission and data rate for multi-rate WLANs To enhance the communication performance at handover between multi-rate WLANs, we propose a new handover decision method that can be applied to our previously reported handover management scheme, which handled a handover by utilizing two WLAN interfaces (IFs) through cross-layer collaboration between layer 2 and layer 4. It should be noted that we here propose a new handover decision scheme for traversing between multi-rate WLANs, while our previous decision scheme works only in fixed-rate WLANs. In this paper, to treat a handover between multi-rate WLANs, we employ two kinds of information: (1) the most frequently used data rate (MFDR) for assessing the stable communication performance of a multi-rate WLAN, and (2) the frame retransmission ratio (FRR) for assessing its exact communication performance. The MFDR enables us to estimate the area where we should start handover. If the MFDRs of two interfaces are same in the area, the FRR allows us to compare the wireless condition on the two interfaces precisely to give an optimal handover point. Through simulation experiments, we show that our proposed scheme certainly estimates an appropriate handover point as a result of multi-path transmission (s), thereby providing handover successfully. That is, the proposed method can determine handover at an optimal point depending on the various distances between access points, the mobile node (MN) velocity, and the MN moving pattern. Moreover, our proposed scheme prevents the redundant network load caused by multi-path transmission as much as possible, thereby providing the ideal TCP communication performance.

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

handover decision
most frequently used data rate
frame retransmission ratio


?-Isometry ? - Isometry based shape approximation for image content representation Shape approximation is usually a prerequisite step to image content analysis and understanding and has been well studied in the passed decades. However, those approaches show their deficiencies while facing the factors such as the representation efficiency, the variation of image scale and the initial estimation. To alleviate these issues, we propose a novel method for ?-isometry ? - isometry based shape approximation. We first analyze the descending property on approximating error and its relation with salient geometric features. After that, we approximate the polygonal shape and detect the feature point based on the ?-isometric ? - isometric construction. In the experiments, we employ traditional shape benchmarks, MPEG7 shape dataset, SQUID dataset and other real contours to evaluate the visual effects and quantitative performances of the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is not only robust to the initial estimation, but also outperforms the state-of-the-art methods with respect to the compactness and scale variability.

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

?-isometry ? - isometry ?-isometry ? - isometry ?-isometry ? - isometry ? - isometry


Safe metaclass composition using mixin-based inheritance In the context of meta-programming and reflective languages, classes are treated as full-fledged objects which are instances of other classes named metaclasses. Metaclasses have proved to be useful for defining new class properties. Examples of such properties are lazy memory allocation, multiple inheritance, having a single instance. A class with some property is obtained by instantiating a metaclass which implements the desired property. However, instantiation allows assigning to a class only properties defined by a single metaclass. A composition mechanism is needed to reuse properties defined by different metaclasses and assign them to a given class. This composition should be performed without breaking class-metaclass compatibility. The compatibility issue arises when a class is coupled to its metaclass. So, when composing metaclasses, we need to take care of such coupling to avoid run-time exceptions. In this paper, we explore the use of mixin-based inheritance to perform metaclass composition. Mixin-based inheritance is an interesting alternative to both single and multiple inheritance. As opposite to single inheritance, it allows reusing code among different class hierarchies. Contrary to multiple inheritance, it allows developers to explicitly specify the desired behavior through explicit linearizations. Our proposal is to define and compose reusable class properties by introducing mixins at the metaclass level. We demonstrate that this introduction can be done efficiently without altering compatibility.

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

metaclass reuse composition compatibility


The optimal Mexican hat wavelet filter de-noising method based on cross-validation method A new de-noising method based on parameter optimized Mexican hat wavelet was put forward in this paper. For the similar shape to the mechanical shock vibration signal, the Mexican hat wavelet is chosen as the mother wavelet and improved by the shape parameters optimization. The noise jamming in the raw vibration signals can be filtered by the continue wavelet transform (CWT) using the improved Mexican hat wavelet as the mother wavelet. The shape parameters of the Mexican hat wavelet are optimized by the cross-validation method (CVM). In the CWT process, the optimal scale factor is also obtained by the circle CVM. The useful components can be extracted by the CWT with the optimal shape parameters and scale factor. The experimental result shows that the proposed method can not only de-noise the useless noise effectively but also extract the fault feature availably.

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

wavelet transform
optimal mexican hat wavelet

wavelet de-noising
cross-validation method
fault diagnosis


A super-resolution reconstruction algorithm for hyperspectral images The spatial resolution of a hyperspectral image is often coarse because of the limitations of the imaging hardware. Super-resolution reconstruction (SRR) is a promising signal post-processing technique for hyperspectral image resolution enhancement. This paper proposes a maximum a posteriori (MAP) based multi-frame super-resolution algorithm for hyperspectral images. Principal component analysis (PCA) is utilized in both parts of the proposed algorithm: motion estimation and image reconstruction. A simultaneous motion estimation method with the first few principal components, which contain most of the information of a hyperspectral image, is proposed to reduce computational load and improve motion field accuracy. In the image reconstruction part, different image resolution enhancement techniques are applied to different groups of components, to reduce computational load and simultaneously remove noise. The proposed algorithm is tested on both synthetic images and real image sequences. The experimental results and comparative analyses verify the effectiveness of this algorithm.

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

hyperspectral image
motion estimation
pca


Noise benefits in joint detection and estimation problems ? We investigate noise benefits for joint detection and estimation systems. We obtain the optimal additive noise in Bayesian and NP detection frameworks. We formulate a linear programming (LP) problem to obtain the optimal additive noise. We specify cases in which additive noise can or cannot improve system performance.

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


Under the skin: short-range embedded wireless technology The number of computing, telecommunications and electronic devices in everyday life has been rapidly increasing over the past two decades. Typically, personal computers and related devices are connected with special cables, whilst wireless devices such as mobile phones use proprietary networks to communicate. Recently, technological developments have offered some new directions to such problems of connectivity by providing a convergence between wireless and computing technologies. Standards, such as Bluetooth, promise to allow unlimited connectivity between devices by embedding short-range wireless transceivers under the skin of products. The commercial potential of these technologies is enormous, ranging from the wireless office or home to in-vehicle connectivity and location-based advertising. This paper examines the range of technologies available for short-range embedded wireless interactivity. It explores some of the key areas of application of such devices, including in the home, the workplace, in-transit, and for public spaces. The paper also evaluates the key benefits and problems associated with these applications. It concludes with reflections on the future penetration of such technologies.

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

applications
standards
electronic devices


On the hardness of optimization in power-law graphs Our motivation for this work is the remarkable discovery that many large-scale real-world graphs ranging from Internet and World Wide Web to social and biological networks appear to exhibit a power-law distribution: the number of nodes y(i) of a given degree i is proportional to i(-beta) where beta > 0 is a constant that depends on the application domain. There is practical evidence that combinatorial optimization in power-law graphs is easier than in general graphs, prompting the basic theoretical question: Is combinatorial optimization in power-law graphs easy? Does the answer depend on the power-law exponent beta? Our main result is the proof that many classical NP-hard graph-theoretic optimization problems remain NP-hard on power-law graphs for certain values of beta. In particular, we show that some classical problems, such as CLIQUE and COLORING, remain NP-hard for all beta >= 1. Moreover, we show that all the problems that satisfy the so-called "optimal substructure property" remain NP-hard for all beta >= 0. This includes classical problems such as MINIMUM VERTEX COVER, MAXIMUM INDEPENDENT SET, and MINIMUM DOMINATING SET. Our proofs involve designing efficient algorithms for constructing graphs with prescribed degree sequences that are tractable with respect to various optimization problems. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

power-law graphs
graph optimization problems
np-hardness
graph construction algorithms


An abductive model of group support systems Few researchers have attempted to model group support system meeting behavior mathematically. Using Abductive Information Modeling (AIM), we show that group size and idea generation type are primary predictors of group process satisfaction. While similar to artificial neural networks, abduction frequently provides simpler models and yields weights for links among the model variables. Results show that the interrelationships among the model variables are non-linear.

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

group support systems
modeling
abduction


Design and implementation of a mediation system enabling secure communication among Critical Infrastructures Nowadays, the increase of interdependencies among different Critical Infrastructures (CI) makes it more and more difficult to protect without using a systemic approach that considers a single infrastructure as part of a complex system of infrastructures. A strong collaboration among CI owners is required to avoid, or at least to limit the propagation of failures from one infrastructure to another and to put CI in safety mode. The key element enabling this required cooperation is the possibility for them to exchange relevant information related to the status of their infrastructures and to the services provided. In this paper, we present a middleware solution that allows CIs sharing real-time information, enabling the design and implementation of fault mitigation strategies and mechanisms to prevent the cascading phenomena generated by the failure propagation from one infrastructure to another.

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

critical infrastructure
information sharing
web services
micie
secure mediation gateway


The new framework of applications: The Aladdin system The first CNN technology-based, high performance industrial visual computer called Aladdin is reported. The revolutionary device is the world premier of the ACE4k Cellular Visual Microprocessor (CVM) chip powering an industrial visual computer. One of the most important features of the Aladdin system is the image processing library. The library reduces algorithm development time, provides efficient codes, error free operation in binary, and accurate operation in grayscale nodes. Moreover the library provides an easy way to use the Aladdin system for those who are not familiar with the CNN technology.

O O O O O O O O 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 B I

cnn technology
cellular visual microprocessor


particle swarm optimization with triggered mutation and its implementation based on gpu A novel particle swarm optimization with triggered mutation (PSO-TM) is presented in this paper for better performance. First, a technique is designed to evaluate the "health" of swarm. When the swarm is successively "unhealthy" for a certain number of iterations, uniform mutation is applied to the position of each particle in a probabilistic way. If the mutations produce worse particles, the memorized previous positions are retrieved as current positions of these particles, hence the normal evolution process of the swarm will not be fiercely interrupted by such bad mutations. Experiments are conducted on 29 benchmark test functions to show the promising performance of our proposed PSOTM. The results show that the PSO-TM performs much better than the standard PSO on almost all of the 29 test functions, especially those multimodal, complex ones of hybrid composition. Besides, PSO-TM adds little computation complexity to the standard PSO, and runs almost equally fast. Furthermore, we have implemented PSO-TM based on Graphic Processing Unit(GPU) in parallel. Compared with the CPU-based standard PSO, the proposed PSO-TM can reach a speedup of 25, as well as an improved optimizing performance.

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

mutation
speedup
gpu
particle swarm optimization


Microstructure and texture analysis of narrow copper line versus widths and annealing for reliability improvement In this article, we focus on the possible influence of interconnect Cu microstructure on electromigration phenomenon. First three annealing conditions were applied on interconnects. Microstructure and texture of copper were characterized by Electron BackScattered Diffraction (EBSD). Then electromigration tests have been carried out on 70 and 150nm line widths of 45nm node technology. In both cases no significant difference was observed in term of reliability performance versus annealing conditions. On the contrary large difference is observed on Electron BackScattered Diffraction results. Then, a statistical approach was used to investigate local microstructure and texture of copper for 150nm line width. The results underline that morphological parameters of copper can vary versus annealing conditions but lead to similar reliability performances. We can thus conclude that these parameters are not in relationship with electromigration phenomena in these interconnects. On the other hand, high amount of misorientation has been highlighted as responsible of early failures.

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

copper interconnect reliability ebsd microstructure annealing


The relative generalized Hamming weight and the semilinear equivalence of codes Certain equivalent conditions are given for the semilinear equivalence of linear codes by using the relative generalized Hamming weight and the value function.

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

value function
semilinear equivalence
relative generalized hamming weight


Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use by Older Australians Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by Australians is substantial and increasing, but little is known about its use by the elderly. We here present the findings for the elderly cohort in our recently conducted national survey on CAM use by adult Australians. In May and June 2005, computer-assisted telephone interviews, using random-digit telephone dialing, were employed to gather data on CAM use in the last 12months. Of 1067 adult participants interviewed, 178 were 65 or older. More than half of these (57.8%; 95% CI, 50.7%64.9%) had used at least one of 17 common forms of CAM and 60.4% of the CAM users had consulted CAM practitioners. Clinical nutrition, chiropractic, massage therapy, meditation, and herbal medicine were the most common forms of CAM used by the elderly. A higher proportion of the elderly had always used both CAM and conventional medical treatments (37.9%) than had those aged 1834 (15.7%) and 3564 (26.9%). Elderly CAM users (60.2%) were more likely than younger users to discuss their use with their doctors. Of those who did not do so, 24.1% were not asked by their doctors and 16.0% considered that their doctor would disapprove. In conclusion, we found that a substantial proportion of older Australians use CAM. The elderly are also more likely than younger adults to discuss their use of CAM with their doctors, but doctors need to play a more active role in initiating such communication

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

complementary and alternative medicine
cam use
older australians


Recursive evaluation of time convolution integrals in the spectral boundary integral method for mode III dynamic fracture problems The shear crack, propagating spontaneously on a frictional interface, is a useful idealization of a natural earthquake. However, the corresponding boundary value problems are quite challenging in terms of required memory and processor power. While the huge computation amount is reduced by the spectral boundary integral method, the computation effort is still huge. In this paper, a recursive method for the evaluation of convolution integrals was tested in the spectral formulation of the boundary integral method applied to 2D anti-plane crack propagation problems. It is shown that analysis of a 2D anti-plane crack propagation problem involving Nt time steps, based on the recursive evaluation of convolution integrals, requires O(?Nt) computational resources for each Fourier mode (as opposed to O(Nt2) for a classical algorithm), where ? is a constant depending on the implementation of the method with typical values much less than Nt. Therefore, this recursive scheme renders feasible investigation of long deformational processes involving large surfaces and long periods of time, while preserving accuracy. The computation methodology implemented here can be extended easily to 3D cases where it can be employed for the simulation of complex spontaneously fault rupture problems which carry a high computational cost.

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

boundary integral method
recursive method

spectral method
dynamic fracture mechanics
anti-plane shear
elastodynamics


Towards the dissolution of the sorites paradox This paper tries to open a way of discussion on the existence of effective methods to determine on which cases the point of separation between P and not-P (suggested by Max Black) can be computed.

O O O O O 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

sorites and falakros paradoxes
fuzzy sets


A rate-constrained fast full-search algorithm based on block sum pyramid This paper presents a fast full-search algorithm (FSA) for rate-constrained motion estimation. The proposed algorithm, which is based on the block sum pyramid frame structure, successively eliminates unnecessary search positions according to rate-constrained criterion. This algorithm provides the identical estimation performance to a conventional FSA having rate constraint, while achieving considerable reduction in computation.

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


Robustness of structural reliability analyses to epistemic uncertainties Methods for the robust design of mechanical systems have the objective to reduce the variability in system performance with respect to uncertainties in the material and geometrical properties of a mechanical structure as well as in its interactions with its environment. Two types of uncertainty are encountered in practice, namely aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. Aleatory uncertainty is generally considered to be irreducible and results from statistical variations in the physical properties of components and interfaces. Epistemic uncertainties are due to a lack of accurate knowledge concerning the physical laws governing the behavior of a component or interface and can generally be reduced with a combination of more detailed modeling and experimental investigations. Epistemic uncertainties can be difficult to characterize due to simplifications in geometric and material field properties, and as such are rarely taken into account explicitly in reliability analysis. In the present work, we propose to examine the robustness of a classical reliability analysis with respect to both aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. The latter will be represented using a non-parametric approach in order to avoid a detailed characterization of the lack of knowledge present in the system. This then allows us to study in detail how the results of the reliability analysis vary as a function of the degree of lack of knowledge. The proposed methodology is illustrated using numerical simulations.

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

aleatory uncertainty
epistemic uncertainty
reliability
robustness


Collaborating in networked immersive spaces: as good as being there together? In this paper we present the results of a trial in which two participants collaborated on a puzzle-solving task in networked virtual environments. The task was a Rubik's cube type puzzle, and this meant that the two participants had to interact with the space and with each other very intensivelyand they did this successfully despite the limitation of the networked situation. We compare collaboration in networked immersive projection technology (IPT's) systems with previous results concerning collaboration in an IPT system linked with a desktop computer, and also with collaboration on the same task in the real world. Our findings show that the task performance in networked IPT's and in the real scenario are very similar to each otherwhereas IPT-to-desktop performance is much poorer. Results about participants experience of presence, co-presence and collaboration shed further light on these findings.

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

virtual environments
collaboration
presence

immersive projection technology systems
co-presence


blind speech separation combining doa estimation and assignment problem approaches In this paper, we propose an effective method for blind speech separation of convolutive mixtures in the frequency domain. The main difficulty in a frequency approach is the permutation problem. In the proposed method, we use two previous approaches to solve permutation ambiguity in the two-channel model: direction of arrival (DOA) estimation approach and assignment problem (AP) approach. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches, and integrate them to use the both advantages. Computer simulation experiments with speech data are presented to illustrate the proposed method.

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

assignment problem
permutation ambiguity
frequency domain
direction of arrival

blind source separation
independent component analysis


Efficient implementation of tunable ladder filters using multi-output current controlled conveyors A methodology to realize continuous-time current-mode tunable ladder filters of any order has been presented. This proposed technique individually simulates signal flow graph (SFG) of each branch element from passive filter prototype using only multi-output second generation current controlled conveyors (MCCCIIs) and grounded capacitors. This leads to simple structure, ease of design and suitability for IC fabrication. A third-order Butterworth low-pass filter, a third-order elliptic low-pass filter and a sixth-order Chebyshev band-pass filter are employed to demonstrate the proposed realization scheme. These simulated filters retain minimum requirement of passive and active elements and provide the filter corner frequency tunability. Moreover, the method allows an implementation of the elliptic filters by simply adding floating capacitors to all-pole filter structures.

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


Simplified numerical model for clarifying scaling behavior in the intermediate dispersion regime in homogeneous porous media The dispersion of solute in porous media shows a non-linear increase in the transition from diffusion to advection dominated dispersion as the flow velocity is raised. In the past, the behavior in this intermediate regime has been explained with a variety of models. We present and use a simplified numerical model which does not contain any turbulence, Taylor dispersion, or fractality. With it, we show that the non-linearity in the intermediate regime nevertheless occurs. Furthermore, we show that the intermediate regime can be regarded as a phase transition between random, diffusive transport at low flow velocity and ordered transport controlled by the geometry of the pore space at high flow velocities. This phase transition explains the first-order behavior in the intermediate regime. A new quantifier, the ratio of the amount of solute in dominantly advective versus dominantly diffusive pore channels, plays the role of order parameter of this phase transition. Taylor dispersion, often invoked to explain the supra-linear behavior of longitudinal dispersion in this regime, was found not to be of primary importance. The novel treatment of the intermediate regime paves the way for a more accurate description of dispersion as a function of flow velocity, spanning the whole range of Pclet numbers relevant to practical applications, such as ground water remediation.

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

flows through porous media
differential equations
phase transitions


A 2D finite-element scheme for fluidsolidacoustic interactions and its application to human phonation We present a recently developed approach for the modeling of fluidsolidacoustic interaction problems. For the efficient numerical solution of the coupled three-field problem we apply the finite-element method. The mechanical and the acoustic fields are approximated by a standard Galerkin scheme. A residual-based stabilization method is chosen for the fluid field. The interaction of the Eulerian fluid field with the Lagrangian mechanical field is based on the Arbitrary-LagrangianEulerian (ALE) method and is iteratively coupled in a strong sense. The solidacoustic interaction is based on continuum mechanics, and the fluidacoustic coupling on Lighthills analogy. The new steps of our scheme are verified through validation examples. Finally, a fluidsolidacoustic simulation of the human phonation process is presented based on a realistic model.

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

fluidsolidacoustic interaction
human phonation

fluidsolid interaction
aeroacoustics
finite-element method


Analysis of some greedy algorithms for the single-sink fixed-charge transportation problem The single-sink fixed-charge transportation problem (SSFCTP) consists of finding a minimum cost flow from a number of nodes to a single sink. Beside a cost proportional to the amount shipped, the flow cost encompass a fixed charge. The SSFCTP is an important subproblem of the well-known fixed-charge transportation problem. Nevertheless, just a few methods for solving this problem have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, some greedy heuristic solutions methods for the SSFCTP are investigated. It is shown that two greedy approaches for the SSFCTP known from the literature can be arbitrarily bad, whereas an approximation algorithm proposed in the literature for the binary min-knapsack problem has a guaranteed worst case bound if adapted accordingly to the case of the SSFCTP.

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

fixed-charge transportation problem
min-knapsack problem
worst-case analysis
approximation algorithms


a system-on-a-chip lock cache with task preemption support Intertask/interprocess synchronization overheads may be significant in a multiprocessor-shared memory System-on-a-Chip implementation. These overheads are observed in terms of lock latency, lock delay and memory bandwidth consumption in the system. It has been shown that a hardware solution brings a much better performance improvement than the synchronization algorithms developed in software [3]. Our previous work presented a SoC Lock Cache (SoCLC) hardware mechanism which resolves the Critical Section (CS) interactions among multiple processors and improves the performance criteria in terms of lock latency, lock delay and bandwidth consumption in a shared memory multi-processor SoC for short CSes [1]. This paper extends our previous work to support long CSes as well. This combined support involves modifications both in the RTOS kernel level facilities (such as support for preemptive versus non-preemptive synchronization, interrupt handling and RTOS initialization) and in the hardware mechanism. The worst-case simulation results of a database application model with client-server pair of tasks on a four-processor system showed that our mechanism achieved a 57\% improvement in lock latency, 14\% speed up in lock delay and a 35\% overall speedup in total execution time.

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

lock synchronization
multi-processor synchronization


Publishing deep web geographic data This article introduces a design process, called W-RayS, to describe Deep Web geographic data and to publish the descriptions both on the Web of Data and on the Surface Web. The article also outlines a toolkit that supports the process and discusses an experiment in which the toolkit was used to publish data stored in a large map server. Briefly, to describe geographic data in vector format, the designer should first specify views over the underlying geographic database that capture the basic characteristics of the geographic objects and their topological relationships represented in the vector data. The same idea is applied to raster data, but using a gazetteer or any other geographic database that covers the same area as the raster data. Then, the designer should map the view definitions to an RDF schema, following the Linked Data principles. The descriptions of the geographic data are therefore formalized as sets of RDF triples synthesized from the conventional data. To publish geographic data descriptions on the Web of Data, the designer may decide to materialize the RDF triples and store them in a repository or create a SPARQL endpoint to access the triples on demand. To publish geographic data descriptions on the Surface Web, W-RayS offers the designer tools to transform the RDF triples to natural language sentences, organized as static Web pages with embedded RDFa. The inclusion of RDFa preserves the structure of the data and allows more specific queries, processed by engines that analyze Web pages with RDFa.

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


Task migration in n-dimensional wormhole-routed mesh multicomputers In a mesh multicomputer, performing jobs needs to schedule submeshes according to some processor allocation scheme. In order to assign the incoming jobs to a free submesh, a task compaction scheme is needed to generate a larger contiguous free region. The overhead of compaction depends on the efficiency of the task migration scheme. In this paper, two simple task migration schemes are first proposed in n-dimensional mesh multicomputers with supporting dimension-ordered wormhole routing in one-port communication model. Then, a hybrid scheme which combines advantages of the two schemes is discussed. Finally, we evaluate the performance of all of these proposed approaches.

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 B I O O O O O O B I 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

mesh multicomputers
task migration
wormhole routing


Integrating TwoTowers and GreatSPN through a compact net semantics Stochastic process algebras (SPAs) and stochastic Petri nets (SPNs) are two well known formal methods for the functional and performance modeling and analysis of computer, communication and software systems. Starting from the mappings from process algebras to Petri nets proposed in the literature to provide a truly concurrent semantic framework to concurrent programming languages, in this paper, we define a new SPN semantics for SPAs in order to facilitate the integration and the cross-fertilization between the two formalisms. We then prove that our net semantics is correct via a retrievability result. Afterwards, we demonstrate that it improves on the previously proposed net semantics with respect to the size of the resulting SPNs and on the standard interleaving semantics because of the detection of system symmetries. Furthermore, we illustrate its usefulness by showing how to reinterpret at the SPA level the results efficiently obtainable at the SPN level. Finally, we describe the implementation of our net semantics that has been realized to integrate the extended Markovian process algebra with generativereactive synchronizations (EMPAgr) based software tool TwoTowers with the generalized stochastic Petri net based software tool GreatSPN.

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

petri nets semantics
software tools
stochastic process algebra


A faster algorithm for matching a set of patterns with variable length don't cares We present a simple and faster solution to the problem of matching a set of patterns with variable length don't cares. Given an alphabet Sigma, a pattern p is a word p(1)@p(2) ... @p(m), where pi is a string over E called a keyword and @ is not an element of Sigma is a symbol called a variable length don't care (VLDC) symbol. Pattern p matches a text t if t = u(0)p(1) u(1) ... u(m-1) p(m)u(m) for some u(0) ... u(m) is an element of Sigma*. The problem addressed in this paper is: given a set of patterns P and a text t, determine whether one of the patterns of P matches t. Kucherov and Rusinowitch (1997) [9] presented an algorithm that solves the problem in time 0 ((vertical bar t vertical bar + vertical bar P vertical bar) log vertical bar P vertical bar), where vertical bar P vertical bar is the total length of keywords in every pattern of P. We give a new algorithm based on Aho-Corasick automaton. It uses the solutions of Dynamic Marked Ancestor Problem of Chan et al. (2007) [5]. The algorithm takes O((vertical bar t vertical bar + parallel to P parallel to)log kappa/log log kappa) time, where parallel to P parallel to is the total number of keywords in every pattern of P, and kappa is the number of distinct keywords in P. The algorithm is faster and simpler than the previous approach. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

algorithms
string matching
variable length don't cares


DVR3D: a program suite for the calculation of rotation-vibration spectra of triatomic molecules The DVR3D program suite calculates energy levels, wavefunctions, and where appropriate dipole transition moments, for rotating and vibrating triatomic molecules. Potential energy and, where necessary, dipole surfaces must be provided. Expectation values of geometrically defined functions can be calculated, a feature which is particularly useful for fitting potential energy surfaces. The programs use an exact (within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation) Hamiltonian and offer a choice of Jacobi or Radau internal coordinates and several body-fixed axes. Rotationally excited states are treated using an efficient two-step algorithm. The programs uses a Discrete Variable Representation (DVR) based on Gauss-Jacobi and Gauss-Laguerre quadrature for all 3 internal coordinates and thus yields a fully point-wise representation of the wavefunctions. The vibrational step uses successive diagonalisation and truncation which is implemented for a number of possible coordinate orderings. The rotational, expectation value and transition dipole programs exploit the savings offered by performing integrals on a DVR grid. The new version has been rewritten in FORTRAN 90 to exploit the dynamic array allocations and the algorithm for dipole and spectra calculations have been substantially improved. New modules allow the z-axis to be embedded perpendicular to the plane of the molecule and for the calculation of expectation values.

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

molecular spectra
infrared
microwave
variational principle
born-oppenheimer approximation


A new two-level associative memory for efficient pattern restoration Pattern reconstruction or pattern restoration in the presence of noise is a main problem in pattern recognition. An essential feature of the noise acting on a pattern is its local nature. If a pattern is split into enough sub-patterns, a few of them will be less or more affected by noise, others will remain intact. In this paper, we propose a simple but effective methodology that exploits this fact for the efficient restoration of a pattern. A pattern is restored if enough of its sub-patterns are also restored. Since several patterns can share the same sub-patterns, the final decision is accomplished by means of a voting mechanism. Before deciding if a sub-pattern belongs to a pattern, sub-pattern restoration in the presence of noise is done by an associative memory. Numerical and real examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposal. Formal conditions under which the proposal guaranties perfect restoration of a pattern from an unaltered or and altered version of it are also given.

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

pattern reconstruction
pattern restoration

associative processing
pattern decomposition


Adaptive photo-response non-uniformity noise removal against image source attribution The main objective of image source anonymization is to protect the identity of the photographer against any attempts to identify the source camera device through PRNU noise analysis. One way of impeding image source attribution is to suppress the PRNU noise as much as possible. In this paper, we introduce an improvement on the existing adaptive photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU) denoising method against source camera identification. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method with substantial experimental analysis. We also provide anonymization benchmarks with other source anonymization techniques. The benchmarks' results show that the proposed method outperforms the adaptive PRNU denoising methods for various cameras including compact and smartphone in terms of speed and image quality. The experimental analysis also shows that it is possible to impede source camera identification by PRNU noise suppression even under extreme attack conditions.

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 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 B 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 B O O O O O O O

source camera attribution
sensor noise
counter forensics
privacy


Design and implementation of a comprehensive outpatient Results Manager Prior research has demonstrated that clinicians often fail to review and act upon outpatient test results in a timely and appropriate manner. To address this patient safety and quality of care issue, Partners Healthcare has developed a browser-based, provider-centric, comprehensive results management application to help clinic physicians review and act upon test results in a safe, reliable, and efficient manner. The application, called the Results Manager, incorporates extensive decision support features to classify the degree of abnormality for each result, presents guidelines to help clinicians manage abnormal results, allows clinicians to generate result letters to patients with predefined, context-sensitive templates and prompts physicians to set reminders for future testing. In this paper, we outline the design process and functionality of Results Manager. We also discuss its underlying architectural design, which revolves around a clinical event monitor and a rules engine, and the methodological challenges encountered in designing this application. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

results management
event monitor
patient safety


Fusion Approach for Prognostics Framework of Heritage Structure The Cutty Sark is undergoing major conservation to slow down the deterioration of the original Victorian fabric of the ship. While the conservation work being carried out is "state of the art," there is no evidence at present of the effectiveness of the conservation work over the next fifty years. A prognostics framework is being developed to monitor the "health" of the ship's iron structures to help ensure a 50 year life once conservation is completed, with only minor deterioration taking place over time. This paper presents the prognostics framework being developed, which encompasses four approaches: 1-Canary and Parrot devices, 2-Physics-of-Failure (PoF) models, 3-Precursor Monitoring and Data Trend Analysis, and 4-Bayesian Networks. "Canary" and "Parrot" devices have been designed to mimic the actual mechanisms that would lead to failure of the iron structures, with canary devices failing faster to act as an indicator of forthcoming failures, while parrot devices fail at the same rate as the structure under consideration. A PoF model based on a decrease of the corrosion rate over time is used to predict the remaining life of an iron structure. Mahalanobis Distance (MD) is used as a precursor monitoring technique to obtain a single comparison metric from multiple sensor data to represent anomalies detected in the system. Bayesian Network models are then used as a fusion technique, integrating remaining life predictions from PoF models with information of possible anomalies from MD analysis to provide a new prediction of remaining life. This paper describes why, and how the four approaches are used for diagnostic and prognostics purposes, and how they are integrated into the prognostics framework.

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

cutty sark
precursor monitoring
prognostics

bayesian networks
diagnostics
heritage structures
maintenance
physics-of-failure
structural health monitoring


On the use of compact polarimetry SAR for ship detection Quad-pol data are generally acknowledged as providing the highest performance in ship detection applications using SAR data. Yet quad-pol data have half the swath width of single and dual-pol data and are thus less useful for maritime surveillance, where wide area coverage is crucial. Compact polarimetry (CP) has been proposed as a compromise between swath width and polarization information. The circular-transmit-linear-receive (CTLR) CP data have certain engineering advantages over other CP configurations. CP data may be used to reconstruct a reduced quad-pol covariance matrix (termed pseudo-quad, or PQ, data) and the potential of these data in terrestrial applications has recently been demonstrated. We present some of the first results on the use of CTLR data and reconstructed quad-pol data for ship detection. We use Radarsat-2 fine-quad (FQ) data to examine 76 ships over a range of incidence angles and ship orientations at low to moderate wind speeds. We examined the ship detection performance of full quad-pol and full-PQ data; several dual-pol configurations suggested in the literature, HV and PQ HV and the raw CTLR data. We find that the ship detection performance of the PQ HV data is the strongest of all the detectors we examined, with performance that was comparable to quad-pol data. Other strong performers were HV and CTLR data.

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

compact polarimetry
synthetic aperture radar


On an improved correlation analysis of stream ciphers using multi-output Boolean functions and the related generalized notion of nonlinearity We investigate the security of n-bit to m-bit vectorial Boolean functions in stream ciphers. Such stream ciphers have higher throughput than those using single-bit output Boolean functions. However, as shown by Zhang and Chan at Crypto 2000, linear approximations based on composing the vector output with any Boolean functions have higher bias than those based on the usual correlation attack. In this paper, we introduce a new approach for analyzing vector Boolean functions called generalized correlation analysis. It is based on approximate equations which are linear in the input x but of free degree in the output z = F(x). The complexity for computing the generalized nonlinearity for this new attack is reduced from 2(2mxn+n) to 2(2n). Based on experimental results, we show that the new generalized correlation attack gives linear approximation with much higher bias than the Zhang-Chan and usual correlation attack. We confirm this with a theoretical upper bound for generalized nonlinearity, which is much lower than for the unrestricted nonlinearity (for Zhang-Chan's attack) and a fortiori for usual nonlinearity. We also prove a lower bound for generalized nonlinearity which allows us to construct vector Boolean functions with high generalized nonlinearity from bent and almost bent functions. We derive the generalized nonlinearity of some known secondary constructions for secure vector Boolean functions. Finally, we prove that if a vector Boolean function has high nonlinearity or even a high unrestricted nonlinearity, it cannot ensure that it will have high generalized nonlinearity.

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

vectorial boolean functions
unrestricted nonlinearity
generalized nonlinearity


Simultaneous switching noise reduction by resonant clock distribution networks We use an analytical method to investigate and compare the SSN in resonant clocking and conventional buffer-driven clocking. Using analysis (which is also supported by circuit simulations) we prove the superior noise performance of resonant clocking. We analyze the short-circuit power dissipation in the clocked elements in both kinds of networks. A thorough comparison is presented between resonant and conventional clocking from short-circuit power point of view.

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

emi
simultaneous switching noise (ssn)
sine-wave clock


GMPLS label space minimization through hypergraph layouts All-Optical Label Switching (AOLS) is a new technology that performs packet forwarding without any optical-electrical-optical conversions. In this paper, we study the problem of routing a set of requests in AOLS networks using GMPLS technology, with the aim of minimizing the number of labels required to ensure the forwarding. We first formalize the problem by associating to each routing strategy a logical hypergraph, called a hypergraph layout, whose hyperarcs are dipaths of the physical graph, called tunnels in GMPLS terminology. We define a cost function for the hypergraph layout, depending on its total length plus its total hop count. Minimizing the cost of the design of an AOLS network can then be expressed as finding a minimum cost hypergraph layout. We prove hardness results for the problem, namely for general directed networks we prove that it is NP-hard to find a C log n-approximation, where C is a positive constant and n is the number of nodes of the network. For symmetric directed networks, we prove that the problem is APX-hard. These hardness results hold even if the traffic instance is a partial broadcast. On the other hand, we provide approximation algorithms, in particular an O(log n)-approximation for symmetric directed networks. Finally, we focus on the case where the physical network is a directed path, providing a polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm for a fixed number k of sources running in O(n(k+2)) time. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

gmpls
hypergraph layout
approximation algorithms
dynamic programming


researching your institution's computer past The history of computing in educational institutions is relatively young, but quickly forgotten as computing students today have no concept of what it was like to use a computer back in the 1950-1990 time period. However, preserving one's own institution's computer past should be more than just a history lesson. It can be a way to connect present day students with their institution's own achievements and it can be a mechanism for recruiting young people into your institution. In any case telling the story of the people whose achievements may only be known by a few or even forgotten is something that needs to be preserved. This project spans both academic and administrative computing as well as the people involved including alumni, faculty, and staff. It is both an oral history and a documented history as it covers university events and the university's own internal use of computing. Presented in this paper are the methods of research used as well as ideas on how one might go about such a task at their institution. The final goals of this research are to produce a book with a companion website and host a computing history symposium. specific permission and/or a fee.

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


An efficient memetic algorithm for solving the job shop scheduling problem The job shop scheduling problem (JSP) is well known as one of the most complicated combinatorial optimization problems, and it is a NP-hard problem. Memetic algorithm (MA) which combines the global search and local search is a hybrid evolutionary algorithm. In this pal er, an efficient MA with a novel local search is proposed to solve the JSP. Within the local search, a systematic change of the neighborhood is carried out to avoid trapping into local optimal. And two neighborhood structures are designed by exchanging and inserting based on the critical path. The objective of minimizing makespan is considered while satisfying a number of hard constraints. The computational results obtained in experiments demonstrate that the efficiency of the proposed MA is significantly superior to the other reported approaches in the literature. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

job shop scheduling
memetic algorithm
local search


Generation of variable anatomical models for surgical training simulators The generation of variable surgical scenes is a key element for effective training with surgery simulators. Our current research aims at a high fidelity hysteroscopy simulator which challenges the trainee with a new surgical scene in every training session. We previously reported on methods able to generate a broad range of pathologies within an existing healthy organ model. This paper presents the methods necessary to produce variable models of the healthy organ. In order to build a database of uteri, a volunteer study was conducted. The segmentation was carried out interactively, also covering the establishment of an anatomically meaningful correspondence between the individual organs. The variability of the shape parameters has been characterized by principal component analysis. A new method has been developed and tested, allowing the derivation of realistic new instances based on the stochastic model and complying with non-linear shape constraints which are defined and interactively controlled by medical experts.

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

statistical shape analysis
surgical simulator
anatomy
uterus


A posteriori error estimation and adaptive mesh refinement for a multiscale operator decomposition approach to fluid-solid heat transfer We analyze analyze a multiscale operator decomposition finite element method for a conjugate heat transfer problem consisting of a fluid and a solid coupled through a common boundary. We derive accurate a posteriori error estimates that account for all sources of error, and in particular the transfer of error between fluid and solid domains. We use these estimates to guide adaptive mesh refinement. In addition, we provide compelling numerical evidence that the order of convergence of the operator decomposition method is limited by the accuracy of the transferred gradient information, and adapt a so-called boundary flux recovery method developed for elliptic problems in order to regain the optimal order of accuracy in an efficient manner. In an appendix, we provide an argument that explains the numerical results provided sufficient smoothness is assumed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

adaptive mesh refinement
conjugate heat transfer
finite element method
flux recovery
operator decomposition

adjoint problem
a posteriori error analysis
boundary flux correction
greens functions
multi-discretization methods
multiscale methods