augmenting user interfaces with adaptive speech commands We present a system that augments any unmodified Java application with an adaptive speech interface. The augmented system learns to associate spoken words and utterances with interface actions such as button clicks. Speech learning is constantly active and searches for correlations between what the user says and does. Training the interface is seamlessly integrated with using the interface. As the user performs normal actions, she may optionally verbally describe what she is doing. By using a phoneme recognizer, the interface is able to quickly learn new speech commands. Speech commands are chosen by the user and can be recognized robustly due to accurate phonetic modelling of the user's utterances and the small size of the vocabulary learned for a single application. After only a few examples, speech commands can replace mouse clicks. In effect, selected interface functions migrate from keyboard and mouse to speech. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by augmenting jfig, a drawing application, where speech commands save the user from the distraction of having to use a tool palette.

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

machine learning
user modelling
robust speech interfaces
phoneme recognition


Stochastic single vehicle routing with a predefined customer sequence and multiple depot returns We study the routing of a single vehicle that delivers multiple products under stochastic demand. Specifically, we investigate two practical variations of this problem: (i) The case in which each product type is stored in its dedicated compartment in the vehicle, and (ii) the case in which all products are stored together in the vehicles single compartment. Suitable dynamic programming algorithms are proposed to determine the minimum expected (routing) cost for each case. Furthermore, the optimal routing policy is derived by developing appropriate theorems. The efficiency of the algorithms is studied by solving large problem sets.

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

logistics
stochastic vehicle routing
multiple product delivery


The hypervolume under the ROC hypersurface of "near-guessing" and "near-perfect" observers in N-class classification tasks We express the performance of the N-class "guessing" observer in terms of the N-2 - N conditional probabilities which make up an N-class receiver operating characteristic (ROC) space, in a formulation in which sensitivities are eliminated in constructing the ROC space (equivalent to using false-negative fraction and false-positive fraction in a two-class task). We then show that the "guessing" observer's performance in terms of these conditional probabilities is completely described by a degenerate hypersurface with only N - I degrees of freedom (as opposed to the N-2 - N - 1 required, in general, to achieve a true hypersurface in such a ROC space). It readily follows that the hypervolume under such a degenerate hypersurface must be zero when N > 2. We then consider a "near-guessing" task; that is, a task in which the N underlying data probability density functions (pdfs) are nearly identical, controlled by N - 1 parameters which may vary continuously to zero (at which point the pdfs become identical). With this approach, we show that the hypervolume under the ROC hypersurface of an observer in an N-class classification task tends continuously to zero as the underlying data pdfs converge continuously to identity (a "guessing" task). The hypervolume under the ROC hypersurface of a "perfect" ideal observer (in a task in which the N data pdfs never overlap) is also found to be zero in the ROC space formulation under consideration. This suggests that hypervolume may not be a useful performance metric in N-class classification tasks for N > 2, despite the utility of the area under the ROC curve for two-class tasks.

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

n-class classification
roc analysis
roc performance metrics


A topology control algorithm based on D-region fault tolerance In a wireless network, node failure due to either natural disasters or human intervention can cause network partitioning and other communication problems. For this reason, a wireless network should be fault tolerant. At present, most researchers use k-connectivity to measure fault tolerance, which requires the network to be connected after the failure of any up to k-1 nodes. However, wireless network node failures are usually spatially related, and particularly in military applications, nodes from the same limited area can fail together. As a metric of fault-tolerance, k-connectivity fails to capture the spatial relativity of faults and hardly satisfies the fault tolerance requirements of a wireless network design. In this paper, a new metric of fault-tolerance, termed D-region fault tolerance, is introduced to measure wireless network fault tolerance. A D-region fault tolerant network means that even after all the nodes have failed in a circular region with diameter D, it still remains connected. Based on D-region fault tolerance, we propose two fault-tolerant topology control algorithms-the global region fault tolerance algorithm (GRFT) and the localized region fault tolerance algorithm (LRFT). It is theoretically proven that both algorithms are able to generate a network with D-region fault tolerance. Simulation results indicate that with the same fault tolerance capabilities, networks based on both GRFT and LRFT algorithms have a lower transmission radius and lower logical degree.

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

fault tolerance
spatial relativity
topology control


MPI support on the grid Grids as infrastructures offer access to computing, storage and other resources in a transparent way. The user does not have to be aware where and how the job is being executed. Grid clusters in particular are an interesting target for running computation-intensive calculations. Running MPI-parallel applications on such clusters is a logical approach that is of interest to both computer scientists and to engineers. This paper gives an overview of the issues connected to running MPI applications on a heterogenous Grid consisting of different clusters located at different sites within the Int.EU.Grid project. The role of a workload management system (WMS) for such a scenario, as well as important modifications that need to be made to a WMS oriented towards sequential batch jobs for better support of MPI applications and tools are discussed. In order to facilitate the adoption of MPI-parallel applications on heterogeneous Grids, the application developer should be made aware of performance problems, as well as MPI-standard issues within its code. Therefore tools for these issues are also supported within Int.EU.Grid. Also, the special case of running MPI applications on different clusters simultaneously as a more Grid-oriented computational approach is described.

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


Investigation on the multi-voids formation during electromigration degradation in dual damascene Cu lines The work described in the present paper is about electromigration induced void formation mechanisms in Cu lines. An unusual behavior observed on the electrical resistance of some samples suggests the presence of more than one void in the stressed lines. The scope of this paper is about the origin of these voids; mainly how they appear in the lines and how they affect the Cu lines reliability.

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


Supporting the Development of Accessible Web Applications The aim of this paper is to review the best known methodologies for web applications development as well as the existing supporting tools and techniques from an accessibility-centric perspective. To this end, a number of development methodologies with their respective characteristics are described: model-based methodologies, user-centred processes, usability engineering methodologies and accessibility engineering methodologies. Some of these methodologies are provided with specific supporting tools which facilitate the accomplishment of specified tasks. However, there are methodologies which are not supported by specific tools. Therefore, web developers must deal with diverse tools in order to perform the corresponding activities. In this context, the development of accessible web applications is even more difficult. This paper concludes that there is not currently a holistic development framework to be used throughout the whole development process. Our contribution relies on a set of tools that support the different phases of the process. Since these tools are developed upon a common methodological basis, a high rate of interoperability is obtained. This cohesion allows their integration in a comprehensive framework so that the development of accessible web applications is facilitated.

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

web accessibility
web engineering
development supporting tools


SoFA: An expert-driven, self-organization peer-to-peer semantic communities for network resource management According to the peer-to-peer (P2P) sociality, an expert-driven multi-semantic self-organized P2P semantic community model is built in this paper to resolve the two principle problems of P2P resource management, which are how to possess enormous number of high quality shared resource, how to find the resource quickly and accurately. The main contribution of this paper is: ? the autonomous peer (AP) model and Autonomic Semantic Community (ASC)model are build, ? one local domain-related trust and trusted evaluation is projected that bases on semantic similarity, history evaluation and time effect and it takes the requirement and owned resource two aspects into account to present one AP. ? an algorithm of fusing APslocal trust degree and self-evaluation is designed.? a procedure to collaboratively elect expert APe is proposed. ? Self-organized community formation algorithm SoFA and its communication mechanism are built. In SoFA, APs gather its communication information and according to it to evaluate itself and other APs locally, build and dynamically adjust local topology, elect the domain expert APe and then an expert-driven ASC is established. Experiment shows our domain trust evaluation and self-evaluation mechanism and SoFA could not only adaptively optimize network to improve the efficiency of service (resource) discovery but also base on the synthesized trust degree to find the free-riders, malice peers, low quality service peers and to keep them within limits.

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

autonomous peer
autonomic semantic community
trust


Variational Bayesian mixture of experts models and sensitivity analysis for nonlinear dynamical systems Bifurcating and piecewise continuous data analysed. A mixture of experts model used to identify splits in data. Probabilistic splits on multiple inputs can be accommodated by the model. Bayesian training of the model via variational Bayes. Bayesian sensitivity analysis relating uncertainty in inputs to uncertainty in output.

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

variational bayesian training
nonlinear bifurcating systems
model selection


Experimental Infections in Dogs with Ehrlichia canis Strain Borgo 89 This study attemps to clarify the virulence and the pathogenicity of the Borgo 89 strain of Ehrlichia canis isolated from a sick dog in Corsica (France). Four unscathed beagles were intravenously injected with an inoculum of leukocytes infected with the Borgo 89 strain and the animals were examined daily for clinical signs of disease, and blood samples were drawn at frequent intervals for biochemical and hematologic assessment. Serologic (IFI) and PCR assays were also carried out. The results at autopsy are presented in this paper, leading to the conclusion that the Borgo 89 strain has a pathogenicity comparable to that of the known strains. However, the discovery of a case of completely unapparent infection raises the question of a possible individual immunization whose origin remains unexplained

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

ehrlichia canis
dogs
experimental infections
france


A single-period inventory placement problem for a supply system with the satisficing objective Consider the inventory placement problem in an N-stage supply system facing a stochastic demand for a single planning period. Each stage is a stocking point holding some form of inventory (e.g., raw materials, subassemblies, product returns or finished products) that after a suitable transformation can satisfy demand. Stocking decisions are made before demand occurs. Unsatisfied demands are lost. The revenue, salvage value, ordering, transformation, and lost sales costs are proportional. There are fixed costs for utilizing stages for stock storage. The objective is to maximize the probability of achieving a given target profit level. We prove the existence of optimal stocking decisions where at most three stages receive nonzero stocks. We also characterize properties of the optimal stocking decisions and provide an O(N3) O ( N 3 ) algorithm for their computation. For the special case where all fixed costs are zero, the stages utilized do not depend on the demand distribution or the target level, and one can find optimal stocking decisions by performing a simple O(N2) O ( N 2 ) search and solving a single-variable optimization problem.

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


Novel Haar features for real-time hand gesture recognition using SVM Due to the effect of lighting and complex background, most visual hand gesture recognition systems work only under restricted environments. Here, we propose a robust system which consists of three modules: digital zoom, adaptive skin detection, and hand gesture recognition. The first module detects user face and zooms in so that the face and upper torus take the central part of the image. The second module utilizes the detected user facial color information to detect the other skin color regions like hands. The last module is the most important part for doing both static and dynamic hand gesture recognition. The region of interest next to the detected user face is for fist/waving hand gesture recognition. To classify the dynamic hand gestures under complex background, motion history image and four groups of novel Haar-like features are investigated to classify the dynamic up, down, left, and right hand gestures. A simple efficient algorithm using Support Vector Machine is developed. These defined hand gestures are intuitive and easy for user to control most home appliances. Five users doing 50 dynamic hand gestures at near, medium, and far distances, respectively, were tested under complex environments. Experimental results showed that the accuracy was 95.37% on average and the processing speed was 3.93ms per frame. An application integrated with the developed hand gesture recognition was also given to demonstrate the feasibility of proposed system.

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

gesture recognition
support vector machine

face detection
manmachine interface
pattern analysis


A Linear Precoding Technique for OFDM Systems with Cyclic Delay Diversity Cyclic delay diversity (CDD) is considered a simple approach to exploit the frequency diversity, to improve the system performance in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Also, the linear precoding technique can significantly improve the performance of communication systems by exploiting the channel state information (CSI). In order to achieve enhanced performance, we propose applying linear precoding to the conventional CDD-OFDM transmit diversity schemes over Rayleigh fading channels. The proposed scheme works effectively with the accurate CSI in time-division-duplex (TDD) OFDM systems with CDD, where the reciprocity is assumed instead of channel state feedback. For a BER of 10(-4) and the mobility of 3 km/h, simulation results show that a gain of 6 dB is achieved by the proposed scheme over both flat fading and Pedestrian A (Ped A) channels, compared to the conventional CDD-OFDM system. On the other hand, for a mobility of 120 km/h, a gain of 2.7 dB and 3.8 dB is achieved in flat fading and Vehicular A (Veh A) channels, respectively.

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

cyclic delay diversity
linear precoding
ofdm
reciprocity
tdd


A PCA-based watermarking scheme for tamper-proof of web pages This paper presents a novel watermarking scheme for tamper-proof of web pages. It overwhelms existing methods of watermarking and Hash in that it does not increase the file size. Experimental results are promising.

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

principal component analysis (pca)
watermark
hyper-text markup language (html)
web page
tamper-proof


Analysis and classification of compressed EMG signals by wavelet transform via alternative neural networks algorithms We propose intelligent methods for classifying three different muscle types, i.e. biceps, frontallis and abductor pollicis brevis muscles, with low computational complexity. For this aim, electromyogram (EMG) signals are recorded and modelled by using an auto-regressive (AR) model. As the size of the EMG signals is usually large, the computational complexity of artificial neural network (ANN) systems drastically increases. Therefore, in the proposed scheme EMG signals are pre-processed by using a wavelet transform and then they are modelled by employing an AR approach. The AR coefficients are used to train and test the ANNs. Experimental results show that the highest achieved classification accuracy is more than 95% in the case of EMG signals pre-processed by wavelet transform. The wavelet transform-based pre-processing significantly increases the performance rates compared to standard multilayer perceptron and general regression neural networks algorithms.

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

auto-regresive model
artificial neural networks
cross-validation


Partitioning sets of triples into small planes We study partitions of the set of all ((v)(3)) triples chosen from a v-set into pairwise disjoint planes with three points per line. Our partitions may contain copies of PG(2, 2) only (Fano partitions) or copies of AG(2, 3) only (affine partitions) or copies of some planes of each type (mixed partitions). We find necessary conditions for Fano or affine partitions to exist. Such partitions are already known in several cases: Fano partitions for v = 8 and affine partitions for v = 9 or 10. We construct such partitions for several sporadic orders, namely, Fano partitions for v = 14, 16, 22, 23, 28, and an affine partition for v = 18. Using these as starter partitions, we prove that Fano partitions exist for v = 7(n) + 1, 13(n) + 1, 27(n) + 1, and affine partitions for v = 8(n) + 1, 9(n) + 1, 17(n) + 1. In particular, both Fano and affine partitions exist for v = 3(6n) + 1. Using properties of 3-wise balanced designs, we extend these results to show that affine partitions also exist for v = 3(2n). Similarly, mixed partitions are shown to exist for v = 8(n), 9(n), 11(n) + 1.

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

triple systems
fano partitions
affine partitions


extensibility - a new approach for designing machine independent microprogramming languages This paper describes a new technique for designing high level machine independent microprogramming languages. In Section 1.0 we will discuss some design considerations for microprogramming languages and will review the previous efforts in the area of microprogramming languages. In Section 2.0, we will discuss extensible languages - what they are and why they are useful. Then in Section 3.0, we will show why an extensible microprogramming language resolves most of the difficulties inherent in designing a language for microprogramming. This section will also include a description of the language EMPL - our extensible microprogramming language. We will define its syntax, give some examples of how its extensible features can be used and finally will demonstrate the feasibility of constructing such a compiler.

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

review demonstrate extensibility examples paper language design


multi-party off-the-record messaging Most cryptographic algorithms provide a means for secret and authentic communication. However, under many circumstances, the ability to repudiate messages or deny a conversation is no less important than secrecy and authenticity. For whistleblowers, informants, political dissidents and journalists --- to name a few --- it is most important to have means for deniable conversation, where electronic communication must mimic face-to-face private meetings. Off-the-Record Messaging , proposed in 2004 by Borisov, Goldberg and Brewer, and its subsequent improvements, simulate private two-party meetings. Despite some attempts, the multi-party scenario remains unresolved. In this paper, we first identify the properties of multi-party private meetings. We illustrate the differences not only between the physical and electronic medium but also between two- and multi-party scenarios, which have important implications for the design of private chatrooms. We then propose a solution to multi-party off-the-record instant messaging that satisfies the above properties. Our solution is also composable with extensions that provide other properties, such as anonymity.

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


DISTRIBUTED QUANTUM COMPUTATION ARCHITECTURE USING SEMICONDUCTOR NANOPHOTONICS In a large-scale quantum computer, the cost of communications will dominate the performance and resource requirements, place many severe demands on the technology, and constrain the architecture. Unfortunately, fault-tolerant computers based entirely on photons with probabilistic gates, though equipped with "built-in" communication, have very large resource overheads; likewise, computers with reliable probabilistic gates between photons or quantum memories may lack sufficient communication resources in the presence of realistic optical losses. Here, we consider a compromise architecture, in which semiconductor spin qubits are coupled by bright laser pulses through nanophotonic waveguides and cavities using a combination of frequent probabilistic and sparse determinstic entanglement mechanisms. The large photonic resource requirements incurred by the use of probabilistic gates for quantum communication are mitigated in part by the potential high-speed operation of the semiconductor nanophotonic hardware. The system employs topological cluster-state quantum error correction for achieving fault-tolerance. Our results suggest that such an architecture/technology combination has the potential to scale to a system capable of attacking classically intractable computational problems.

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

distributed quantum computation
nanophotonics

topological fault tolerance
quantum multicomputer


Browsing on Small Displays by Transforming Web Pages into Hierarchically Structured Subpages We propose a new Web page transformation method to facilitate Web browsing on handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants ( PDAs). In our approach, an original Web page that does not fit on the screen is transformed into a set of subpages, each of which fits on the screen. This transformation is done through slicing the original page into page blocks iteratively, with several factors considered. These factors include the size of the screen, the size of each page block, the number of blocks in each transformed page, the depth of the tree hierarchy that the transformed pages form, as well as the semantic coherence between blocks. We call the tree hierarchy of the transformed pages an SP-tree. In an SP-tree, an internal node consists of a textually enhanced thumbnail image with hyperlinks, and a leaf node is a block extracted from a subpage of the original Web page. We adaptively adjust the fanout and the height of the SP-tree so that each thumbnail image is clear enough for users to read, while at the same time, the number of clicks needed to reach a leaf page is few. Through this transformation algorithm, we preserve the contextual information in the original Web page and reduce scrolling. We have implemented this transformation module on a proxy server and have conducted usability studies on its performance. Our system achieved a shorter task completion time compared with that of transformations from the Opera browser in nine of ten tasks. The average improvement on familiar pages was 44%. The average improvement on unfamiliar pages was 37%. Subjective responses were positive.

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


document quality indicators and corpus editions Corpus editions can only be useful to scholars when users know what to expect of the texts. We argue for text quality indicators, both general and domain-specific.

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

document design
reading
browsing
collection development
automatic linking


A model based method for retinal blood vessel detection Retinal blood vessels are important structures in ophthalmological images. Many detection methods are available, but the results are not always satisfactory. In this paper, we present a novel model based method for blood vessel detection in retinal images. It is based on a Laplace and thresholding segmentation step, followed by a classification step to improve performance. The last step assures incorporation of the inner part of large vessels with specular reflection. The method gives a sensitivity of 92% with a specificity of 91%. The method can be optimized for the specific properties of the blood vessels in the image and it allows for detection of vessels that appear to be split due to specular reflection.

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

blood vessel detection
specular reflection
laplace
thresholding

retinal nerve fiber layer
scanning laser polarimetry


Virtual Environments for Collaborative Innovation and Learning Networked technologies, especially social software applications, provide new affordances that facilitate collaborative creativity among staff members of organizations. This editorial paper gives an overview of the scope of this special issue which focuses on the design of virtual environments for collaborative innovation and learning.

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


event detection from flickr data through wavelet-based spatial analysis Detecting events from web resources has attracted increasing research interests in recent years. Our focus in this paper is to detect events from photos on Flickr, an Internet image community website. The results can be used to facilitate user searching and browsing photos by events. The problem is challenging considering: (1) Flickr data is noisy, because there are photos unrelated to real-world events; (2) It is not easy to capture the content of photos. This paper presents our effort in detecting events from Flickr photos by exploiting the tags supplied by users to annotate photos. In particular, the temporal and locational distributions of tag usage are analyzed in the first place, where a wavelet transform is employed to suppress noise. Then, we identify tags related with events, and further distinguish between tags of aperiodic events and those of periodic events. Afterwards, event-related tags are clustered such that each cluster, representing an event, consists of tags with similar temporal and locational distribution patterns as well as with similar associated photos. Finally, for each tag cluster, photos corresponding to the represented event are extracted. We evaluate the performance of our approach using a set of real data collected from Flickr. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach is effective in detecting events from the Flickr photo collection.

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


Link Scheduling Algorithms for Wireless Mesh Networks Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have the potential of being a cost effective solution to provide connectivity and coverage in both urban and rural areas. Typically, a WMN is a backbone network that carries high data rate traffic and employs Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) like access mechanisms. For a WMN to provide high throughput, the design of an efficient link scheduling algorithm is of paramount importance. Towards this end, we provide an overview of link scheduling algorithms in Spatial TDMA wireless mesh networks. These algorithms can be classified into three categories: those based only on a communication graph model of the network, those based on a communication graph model and Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) threshold conditions at receivers and those based on an SINR graph model of the network. We first outline a framework for modeling STDMA networks. We review representative research works and provide the description of an algorithm from each of these classes. We describe the relative merits and demerits of each class of algorithms and compare their performance via simulations. We conclude with a discussion on practical implementation of these algorithms and open research problems.

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


NCSWT: An integrated modeling and simulation tool for networked control systems Networked Control Systems (NCS) are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in a growing number of applications, such as groups of unmanned aerial vehicles and industrial control systems. The evaluation of NCS properties such as stability and performance is very important given that these systems are typically deployed in critical settings. This paper presents the Networked Control Systems Wind Tunnel (NCSWT), an integrated modeling and simulation tool for the evaluation of Networked Control Systems (NCS). NCSWT integrates Matlab/Simulink and ns-2 for modeling and simulation of NCS using the High Level Architecture (HLA) standard. The tool is composed of two parts, the design-time models and the run-time components. The design-time models use Model Integrated Computing (MIC) to define HLA-based model constructs such as federates representing the simulators and interactions representing the communication between the simulators. MIC techniques facilitate the modeling and design of complex systems by using abstractions defined in domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) to describe the systems. The design-time models represent the control system dynamics and networking system behaviors in order to facilitate the run-time simulation of a NCS. The run-time components represent the main software components and interfaces for the actual realization of a NCS simulation using the HLA framework. Our implementation of the NCSWT based on HLA guarantees accurate time synchronization and data communication. Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the tool as well as evaluate the impact of network effects on NCS.

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

modeling
simulation
networked control systems
hla


Local convergence of the Gauss-Newton method for injective-overdetermined systems of equations under a majorant condition A local convergence analysis of the Gauss-Newton method for solving injective-overdetermined systems of nonlinear equations under a majorant condition is provided. The convergence as well as results on its rate are established without a convexity hypothesis on the derivative of the majorant function. The optimal convergence radius, the biggest range for uniqueness of the solution along with some other special cases are also obtained. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Assessing the use of slicing-based visualizing techniques on the understanding of large metamodels Metamodels are cornerstones of various metamodeling activities. Such activities consist of, for instance, transforming models into code or comparing metamodels. These activities thus require a good understanding of a metamodel and/or its parts. Current metamodel editing tools are based on standard interactive visualization features, such as physical zooms. However, as soon as metamodels become large, navigating through large metamodels becomes a tedious task that hinders their understanding. So, a real need to support metamodel comprehension appears. In this work we promote the use of model slicing techniques to build interactive visualization tools for metamodels. Model slicing is a model comprehension technique inspired by program slicing. We show how the use of Kompren, a domain-specific language for defining model slicers, can ease the development of such interactive visualization features. We specifically make four main contributions. First, the proposed interactive visualization techniques permit users to focus on metamodel elements of interest, which aims at improving the understandability. Second, these proposed techniques are developed based on model slicing, a model comprehension technique that involves extracting a subset of model elements of interest. Third, we develop a metamodel visualizer, called Explen, embedding the proposed interactive visualization techniques. Fourth, we conducted experiments. showing that Explen significantly outperforms EcoreTools, in terms of time, correctness, and navigation effort, on metamodeling tasks. The results of the experiments, in favor of Explen, show that improving metamodel understanding can be done using slicing-based interactive navigation features.

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

model-driven engineering
class diagram
humancomputer interaction


Representation of the Choquet integral with the sigma-additive Mobius transform The Choquet integral with respect to a fuzzy measure (also called non-additive measure) will be represented through a sigma-additive measure in extending the domain of the functions to be integrated in a natural way. Two such methods to extend a measurable space (Omega,A), A an algebra, are well known for a long time. One is the Stone extension of (Omega, A) together with a finitely additive measure to a measure space with a-additive measure. The other is, for finite Omega, the extension of Omega to its powerset H = 2(Omega) and the additive representation of an arbitrary set function (or characteristic function of a cooperative game) v on A := 2(Omega) through its Mobius transform mu(r) on 2(H). Here a common model for both extensions is developed. As an application conditional expectation with respect to a probability measure is generalized now to fuzzy measures. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

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

fuzzy measure
choquet integral
cooperative game
mobius transform
conditional expectation


dynamic multi-cue tracking with detection responses association Multi-cue integration has proved successful at increasing the robustness of tracking algorithms and overcoming the failure cases of individual cue. But considering dynamic appearance of objects or clutter background, the integration based on constant weights may weaken the performance of this scheme. In this paper, we propose a dynamic weights update mechanism for multiple cues tracking with detection responses as supervision. We integrate multiple cues based on the observation hypotheses compared with detection association results and adjust the weights according to the approximation degree. The integration is adapted on-the-fly during tracking, in order to keep the tracker adaptive. The proposed method allows flexible combination of different cues and we select cues based on color and local feature for tracking. Experiments are carried out on 602 trajectories extracted from TRECVID 2008 event detection dataset which is recorded in an airport scenario. Comparison results prove the effectiveness of our method.

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

dynamic appearance
detection association


usable secure mailing lists with untrusted servers Mailing lists are a natural technology for supporting messaging in multi-party, cross-domain collaborative tasks. However, whenever sensitive information is exchanged on such lists, security becomes crucial. We have earlier developed a prototype secure mailing list solution called SELS (Secure Email List Services) based on proxy encryption techniques [20], which enables the transformation of cipher-text from one key to another without revealing the plain-text. Emails exchanged using SELS are ensured confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. This includes ensuring their confidentiality while in transit at the list server; a functionality that is uniquely supported by SELS through proxy re-encryption. In this work we describe our efforts in studying and enhancing the usability of the software system and our experiences in supporting a production environment that currently is used by more than 50 users in 11 organizations. As evidence of its deployability, SELS is compatible with common email clients including Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Emacs, and Mutt. As evidence of its usability, the software is being used by several national and international incident response teams.

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

usability study
e-mail list security
proxy re-encryption


Content information desired by Chinese users for effective use of information appliances Many studies have been conducted to determine how to present information on mobile phones in such a way as to enhance usability, but those studies have not considered what information users need for effective decision making. To investigate what users want from mobile phones, we carried out a content preparation study. A questionnaire was constructed based on prior results from website content research, traditional usability studies on consumer electronics, and extensive study on various types of mobile phones; it was completed by 375 Chinese industrial participants. The statistical results revealed nine major factors of mobile phone content: information relating to input/search, functions, operation, multimedia functions, stored files, phone calls, help/service, accessory functions, and messages. Also, users of different ages and genders evidenced different requirements for mobile phone content, especially concerning accessory and multimedia functions. This study suggests guidelines for mobile phone designers targeted at the Chinese market and provides a base for content study of other information appliances.

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

survey
factor analysis
information appliance


Receptive-Field Structure of Direction-Selective Ganglion Cells Projecting to the Goldfish Tectum Abstract: The receptive field of a direction-selective unit of any type consists of an excitatory center 3-5 in size, a near inhibitory surround and a far surround upon which illumination exerts an influence for both spontaneous activity and specific cell response.

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

direction-selective neurons
lateral inhibition
amacrine cells
horizontal cells
tectum opticum


Distribution-free vessel deployment for liner shipping Liner fleet deployment problem solved without requiring complete probability distributions. Proposed distribution-free model generalizes existing model. Proposed distribution-free model remains a mixed integer linear program. Proposed modeling approach has a very intuitive interpretation.

O O O O B I 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

transportation
container shipping
maritime transportation


Automated classification of cells in sub-epithelial connective tissue of oral sub-mucous fibrosisAn SVM based approach Quantitative evaluation of histopathological features is not only vital for precise characterization of any precancerous condition but also crucial in developing automated computer aided diagnostic system. In this study segmentation and classification of sub-epithelial connective tissue (SECT) cells except endothelial cells in oral mucosa of normal and OSF conditions has been reported. Segmentation has been carried out using multi-level thresholding and subsequently the cell population has been classified using support vector machine (SVM) based classifier. Moreover, the geometric features used here have been observed to be statistically significant, which enhance the statistical learning potential and classification accuracy of the classifier. Automated classification of SECT cells characterizes this precancerous condition very precisely in a quantitative manner and unveils the opportunity to understand OSF related changes in cell population having definite geometric properties. The paper presents an automated classification method for understanding the deviation of normal structural profile of oral mucosa during precancerous changes.

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

sub-epithelial connective tissue (sect)
oral sub-mucous fibrosis (osf)
multi-level thresholding
support vector machine (svm)


Fast and Accurate 3D Face Recognition In this paper we present a new robust approach for 3D face registration to an intrinsic coordinate system of the face. The intrinsic coordinate system is defined by the vertical symmetry plane through the nose, the tip of the nose and the slope of the bridge of the nose. In addition, we propose a 3D face classifier based on the fusion of many dependent region classifiers for overlapping face regions. The region classifiers use PCA-LDA for feature extraction and the likelihood ratio as a matching score. Fusion is realised using straightforward majority voting for the identification scenario. For verification, a voting approach is used as well and the decision is defined by comparing the number of votes to a threshold. Using the proposed registration method combined with a classifier consisting of 60 fused region classifiers we obtain a 99.0% identification rate on the all vs first identification test of the FRGC v2 data. A verification rate of 94.6% at FAR=0.1% was obtained for the all vs all verification test on the FRGC v2 data using fusion of 120 region classifiers. The first is the highest reported performance and the second is in the top-5 of best performing systems on these tests. In addition, our approach is much faster than other methods, taking only 2.5 seconds per image for registration and less than 0.1 ms per comparison. Because we apply feature extraction using PCA and LDA, the resulting template size is also very small: 6 kB for 60 region classifiers.

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

3d face recognition
registration
fusion
region classifiers
frgc


Stick textures for image-based rendering This paper presents a new data structure, called stick textures, to give a continuous and compact 3D representation of the scene displayed in depth images. A stick texture is constructed for each pixel of a depth image, composed of the interpolated pixels to fill the gaps between the pixel and its neighbour pixels covered by a same continuous surface. Thus, rendering sticks instead of pixels can save operations on hole-filling for acceleration, and produce high quality novel images with 3D details and view motion parallax displayed very well. In addition, stick textures are always short, and every stick texture can be rendered as a pixel. Therefore, stick textures have not a high storage requirement, and they can be easily integrated with existing image-based rendering methods to achieve high rendering efficiency, e.g., using GPUs for acceleration and conveniently handling large-scale scenes, even the scenes with multi-layered objects. Experimental results demonstrate the advantages of stick textures in image quality, rendering speed and storage requirement.

graphics data structures and data types
graphics processors
image-based rendering
object representation


Analysis of robustness in proactive scheduling: A graphical approach Scheduling environments are generally disturbed by different types of unforeseen events, such as machine breakdowns, unavailability of tools, and arrival of urgent orders. To maintain good performances when these perturbations occur, a schedule has to be robust. These last years, robustness has become an essential issue for scheduling problems. In the related literature, the robustness of schedules is generally evaluated in a quantitative manner, using different possible measures which usually quantify the capacity of a schedule to remain efficient in unexpected conditions. In this article, robustness is addressed from a more qualitative viewpoint. Flowshop scheduling problems are emphasized upon. Instead of evaluating scheduling using a measure, two graphical representations of scheduling solutions are proposed. They provide assistance to the decision maker in understanding the consequences of possible perturbations, so that a suited decision about which solution to choose can be made. The first type of plot shows the extent to which disruptions can be admitted without any consequences on the performance criterion. It also allows the identification of critical periods, where no disruption can be admitted. The second type of plot aims at representing the consequences of disruptions, of different possible length with different possible Occurrences, on the performance. An example, comparing two candidate solutions, of a flowshop problem, illustrates the benefits of this approach, which is complementary from a quantitative analysis, based on common robustness measures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A service oriented architecture-based approach for interdomain optical network services This work presents a service-oriented architecture for interdomain service provisioning in optical networks. The architecture introduces a service layer that concentrates all the interactions among domains necessary for service provisioning. A service layer is an alternative to the GMPLS (Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching) architecture, but without a rigid control plane as found in GMPLS. We start by defining a set of basic services to provide single end-to-end (e2e) interdomain connections. Then, more sophisticated services are created through the composition of these basic services. The interdomain Optical VPN (Virtual Private Network) service is considered in order to illustrate the composition of services. A prototype of the architecture was designed and implemented using Web services as the main technology. The architecture was evaluated in terms of speed, scalability, and bandwidth consumption necessary to establish e2e interdomain connections and Optical VPNs.

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

interdomain provisioning of services
soa


code coverage testing using hardware performance monitoring support Code coverage analysis, the process of finding code exercised by a particular set of test inputs, is an important component of software development and verification. Most traditional methods of implementing code coverage analysis tools are based on program instrumentation. These methods typically incur high overhead due to the insertion and execution of instrumentation code, and are not deployable in many software environments. Hardware-based sampling techniques attempt to lower overhead by leveraging existing Hardware Performance Monitoring (HPM) support for program counter (PC) sampling. While PC-sampling incurs lower levels of overhead, it does not provide complete coverage information. This paper extends the HPM approach in two ways. First, it utilizes the sampling of branch vectors which are supported on modern processors. Second, compiler analysis is performed on branch vectors to extend the amount of code coverage information derived from each sample. This paper shows that although HPM is generally used to guide performance improvement efforts, there is substantial promise in leveraging the HPM information for code debugging and verification. The combination of sampled branch vectors and compiler analysis can be used to attain upwards of 80\% of the actual code coverage.

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

code coverage
hardware performance monitoring


Semiparametric and nonparametric modeling for effect modification in matched studies This study describes a new graphical method for assessing and characterizing effect modification by a matching covariate in matched casecontrol studies. This method to understand effect modification is based on a semiparametric model using a varying coefficient model. The method allows for nonparametric relationships between effect modification and other covariates, or can be useful in suggesting parametric models. This method can be applied to examining effect modification by any ordered categorical or continuous covariates for which cases have been matched with controls. The method applies to effect modification when causality might be reasonably assumed. An example from veterinary medicine is used to demonstrate our approach. The simulation results show that this method, when based on linear, quadratic and nonparametric effect modification, can be more powerful than both a parametric multiplicative model fit and a fully nonparametric generalized additive model fit.

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

effect modification
matched casecontrol studies
varying coefficient model

conditional logistic regression
effect heterogeneity
local likelihood regression


the effects of walking, feedback and control method on pressure-based interaction This paper presents a study looking into the effects of walking and the use of visual and audio feedback on the application of pressure for linear targeting. Positional and Rate-based control methods are compared in order to determine which allows for more stable and accurate selections, both while sitting and mobile. Results suggest that Rate-based control is superior for both mobile (walking) and static (sitting) linear targeting, and that mobility significantly increases errors, selection time and subjective workload. The use of only audio feedback significantly increased errors and task time for Positional control and static Rate-based control, but not mobile Rate-based control. Despite this, the results still suggest that audio control of pressure interaction while walking is highly accurate and usable.

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

mobile interaction
pressure input
non-visual feedback


Robust planning of multisite refinery networks: Optimization under uncertainty This paper considers the problem of multisite integration and coordination strategies within a network of petroleum refineries under uncertainty and using robust optimization techniques. The framework of simultaneous analysis of process network integration, originally proposed by Al-Qahtani & Elkamel [Al-Qahtani, K., & Elkamel, A. (2008). Multisite facility network integration design and coordination: An application to the refining industry. Computers & Chemical Engineering. 32, 2198], is extended to account for uncertainty in model parameters. Robustness is analyzed based on both model robustness and solution robustness, where each measure is assigned a scaling factor to analyze the sensitivity of the refinery plan and integration network clue to variations. Parameters uncertainty considered include coefficients of the objective function and right-hand-side parameters in the inequality constraints. The proposed method makes use of the sample average approximation (SAA) method with statistical bounding techniques. The proposed model was tested on two industrial-scale studies of a single refinery and a network of complex refineries. Modeling uncertainty in the process parameters provided a practical perspective of this type of problems in the chemical industry where benefits not only appear in terms of economic considerations, but also in terms of process flexibility. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

planning under uncertainty
multisite coordination


Proximity in arrangements of algebraic sets Let X be an arrangement of n algebraic sets X-i in d-space, where the X-i are either parametrized or zero-sets of dimension 0 less than or equal to m(i) less than or equal to d - 1. We study a number of decompositions of d-space into connected regions in which the distance-squared function to X has certain invariances. Each region is contained in a single connected component of the complement of the bifurcation set B of the family of distance-squared functions or of certain subsets of B. The decompositions can be used in the following proximity problems: given some point, find the k nearest sets X-i in the arrangement, find the nearest point in X, or (assuming that X is compact) find the farthest point in X and hence the smallest enclosing (d + 1)-sphere. We give bounds on the complexity of the decompositions in terms of n, d, and the degrees and dimensions of the algebraic sets X-i.

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

k nearest points
voronoi regions
bifurcation sets
critical points
symbolic computation


Implementation of a Radix-4, Parallel Turbo Decoder and Enabling the Multi-Standard Support This paper presents a unified, radix-4 implementation of turbo decoder, covering multiple standards such as DVB, WiMAX, 3GPP-LTE and HSPA Evolution. The radix-4, parallel interleaver is the bottleneck while using the same turbo-decoding architecture for multiple standards. This paper covers the issues associated with design of radix-4 parallel interleaver to reach to flexible turbo-decoder architecture. Radix-4, parallel interleaver algorithms and their mapping on to hardware architecture is presented for multi-mode operations. The overheads associated with hardware multiplexing are found to be least significant. Other than flexibility for the turbo decoder implementation, the low silicon cost and low power aspects are also addressed by optimizing the storage scheme for branch metrics and extrinsic information. The proposed unified architecture for radix-4 turbo decoding consumes 0.65mm2 area in total in 65nm CMOS process. With 4 SISO blocks used in parallel and 6 iterations, it can achieve a throughput up to 173.3Mbps while consuming 570mW power in total. It provides a good trade-off between silicon cost, power consumption and throughput with silicon efficiency of 0.005mm2/Mbps and energy efficiency of 0.55nJ/b/iter.

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


Automatic Detection of White Matter Hyperintensities in Healthy Aging and Pathology Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Review White matter hyperintensities (WMH) are commonly seen in the brain of healthy elderly subjects and patients with several neurological and vascular disorders. A truly reliable and fully automated method for quantitative assessment of WMH on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has not yet been identified. In this paper, we review and compare the large number of automated approaches proposed for segmentation of WMH in the elderly and in patients with vascular risk factors. We conclude that, in order to avoid artifacts and exclude the several sources of bias that may influence the analysis, an optimal method should comprise a careful preprocessing of the images, be based on multimodal, complementary data, take into account spatial information about the lesions and correct for false positives. All these features should not exclude computational leanness and adaptability to available data.

O O O B I I O O B 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

automated segmentation
brain mri
vascular pathology
small vessel disease


Segmentation of specific speech signals from multi-dialog environment using SVM and wavelet In this paper, a novel multi-speaker segmentation technique is presented. This technique makes use of wavelets and support vector machines (SVMs) to segment specific speakers speech signals from multi-dialog environments. The proposed method first applies wavelets to determine the acoustical features such as subband power and pitch information from a given multi-dialog speech data. Then the multi-speaker segmentation of the given multi-dialog speech data can be accomplished by the use of a bottomup SVM over these acoustical features and additional parameters, such as frequency cepstral coefficients. A public audio database, Aurora-2, is used to evaluate the performances of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the accuracy of multi-speaker segmentation is 100% achieved in the combination of two speakers. And the segmental accuracy can achieve at least 94.12% and 85.93% for 4-speaker and 8-speaker conditions, respectively.

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

speech segmentation
support vector machine (svm)


An evaluation metric for image segmentation of multiple objects It is important to be able to evaluate the performance of image segmentation algorithms objectively. In this paper, we define a new error measure which quantifies the performance of an image segmentation algorithm for identifying multiple objects in an image. This error measure is based on object-by-object comparisons of a segmented image and a ground-truth (reference) image. it takes into account the size, shape, and position of each object. Compared to existing error measures, our proposed error measure works at the object level, and is sensitive to both over-segmentation and under-segmentation. Hence, it can serve as a useful tool for comparing image segmentation algorithms and for tuning the parameters of a segmentation algorithm. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

image segmentation
evaluation
error measure


An investigation of email processing from a risky decision making perspective The prevalence of cyber crimes has threatened the business model enabled by email. Users have to evaluate email related risks before forming their attitude and read intention toward commercial emails. Drawing on a seminal theoretical framework in risky decision making, we propose a research model that incorporates computer risk taking propensity and email risk perception as influential in cultivating commercial email attitude and read intention. The research model is empirically validated using survey data and the results provide significant support. This study contributes to the literature on email use by exploring the process of risky decision making and influence sources.

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

risky decision making
email
risk taking propensity
risk perception
read intention


Inter-patient distance metrics using SNOMED CT defining relationships Background Patient-based similarity metrics are important case-based reasoning tools which may assist with research and patient care applications. Ontology and information content. principles may be potentially helpful tools for similarity metric development. Methods. Patient cases from 1989 through 2003 from the Columbia University Medical Center data repository were converted to SNOMED CT concepts. Five metrics were implemented: (1) percent disagreement with data as an unstructured "bag of findings," (2) average links between concepts, (3) links weighted by information content with descendants, (4) links weighted by information content with term prevalence, and (5) path distance using descendants weighted by information content with descendants. Three physicians served as gold standard for 30 cases. Results. Expert inter-rater reliability was 0.91, with rank correlations between 0.61 and 0.81, representing upper-bound performance. Expert performance compared to metrics resulted in correlations of 0.27, 0.29, 0.30, 0.30, and 0.30, respectively. Using SNOMED axis Clinical Findings alone increased correlation to 0.37. Conclusion. Ontology principles and information content provide useful information for similarity metrics but currently fall short of expert performance. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

similarity metrics
ontology
information content

datamining
natural language processing
electronic medical records


Dry etch processes for the fabrication of EUV masks The absorber and buffer etching is a crucial step in the manufacture of EUV masks due to the stringent CD and reflectance requirements. Plasma etching of Cr layers, usually applied as an absorber for conventional masks, induces a resolution-limiting line width reduction. Therefore, new absorber materials for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) masks have to be evaluated. We investigated the etching behaviour of two different layer materials, TaN-I and TaN-II. Dense lines and contact holes down to 100 nm have been realized and an etch bias ?+5 nm per feature has been measured. The CD uniformity of lithography and absorber patterning was about 10 nm total range. In addition, etching processes for two different buffer materials, Cr and SiO2, have been developed. These dry etch processes for buffer and absorber layer etching have been successfully applied for EUV test mask fabrication. First results of reflectance measurements of patterned masks showed only a minimal reflectance loss due to mask making of ?1%.

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


design and implementation of a framework for creating portable and efficient packet-processing applications It is a common belief that using a virtual machine for portable executions of data-plane packet-processing applications would introduce too many penalties in terms of performance, because of the assumed overhead caused by the presence of a hardware abstraction layer. Even if common sense proves true in the case of general purpose virtual machines, such as the JVM and the CLR, it may be wrong in case of a special-purpose network-oriented virtual machine. This paper describes the architecture of a run-time environment and a compiler infrastructure for the Network Virtual Machine (NetVM), showing that the portability of packet-processing programs can be achieved without additional penalties even over heterogeneous platforms. Our implementation supports three different target architectures: one with a general purpose processor (Intel x86), one with a multi-core network processor (Cavium Octeon) and one with a systolic-array network processor (Xelerated X11), and shows that the NetVM model (i) is able to abstract such heterogeneous platforms and (ii) enables the exploitation of hardware functionalities provided by the specific architecture; finally, it demonstrates that the performances of NetVM programs compiled into native code are comparable to those obtained using commercial general purpose compilers.

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

high-speed packet processing
network code portability
network processors


Effect of emitter type and mounting configuration on spray coverage for solid set canopy delivery system Significantly greater spray coverage on upper-side of leaves than on under-side of leaves when using SSCD system. Emitters with 80 spray cone angle provided greater coverage and penetration compared to other emitters. Configuration-4 provided uniform canopy coverage but in upper third 0.8m high canopy region. Uniform canopy coverage could be achieved by installing additional emitters in configuration-4.

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

solid set delivery
spray emitter
orchard
chemical delivery
precision application


Measurement device for ankle joint kinematic and dynamic characterisation The paper describes a measurement device for obtaining the kinematic characterisation and isometric loading of ankle joints under different working conditions. Non-invasive, in vivo experiments can be conducted with this experimental apparatus, the potential of which could be usefully exploited in basic biomedical research, prosthesis design, clinical applications, sports medicine and rehabilitation. The device determines the 3D movement of the foot with respect to the shank and evaluates the torques and moments around the three articular axes in relation to any desired angular position of the ankle complex. When integrated with superficial electromyographic techniques and electrical stimulation, it allows the assessment of the functionality of the lower leg in both mechanical and myo-electrical terms. The paper reports the main mechanical and electronic features of the device (high linearity; maximum moment ranges +/-300Nm for flexion-extension, +/-35Nm for both pronation-supination and internal-external rotation; angular ranges: 1000 of dorsi-plantar flexion, +/-50degrees of internal-external rotation and prono-supination; linear ranges: +/-25mm along each axis). Results from a healthy volunteer, under voluntary or stimulated conditions, helped in testing its operatability, reliability,. robustness, repeatability and effectiveness. Preliminary simplified protocols have been also applied to 20 healthy volunteers, and the main results were 80.8+/-11.9degrees of internal-external rotation, 46.2+/-9.1degrees of prono-supination and 74.6+/-13.1degrees of flexion-extension. Torques and moments were normalised with respect to a body mass index of 30. The maximum plantar flexion moment (57.5+/-21.3 Nm) was measured with the foot at 150 of dorsal flexion; the maximum dorsal flexion moment (50.2+/-20.3Nm) was measured with the foot at 15degrees of plantar flexion.

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

foot-ankle kinematics
isometric contraction
ankle measurement device
in vivo muscle assessment


Generating new test instances by evolving in instance space Our confidence in the future performance of any algorithm, including optimization algorithms, depends on how carefully we select test instances so that the generalization of algorithm performance on future instances can be inferred. In recent work, we have established a methodology to generate a 2-d representation of the instance space, comprising a set of known test instances. This instance space shows the similarities and differences between the instances using measurable features or properties, and enables the performance of algorithms to be viewed across the instance space, where generalizations can be inferred. The power of this methodology is the insights that can be generated into algorithm strengths and weaknesses by examining the regions in instance space where strong performance can be expected. The representation of the instance space is dependent on the choice of test instances however. In this paper we present a methodology for generating new test instances with controllable properties, by filling observed gaps in the instance space. This enables the generation of rich new sets of test instances to support better the understanding of algorithm strengths and weaknesses. The methodology is demonstrated on graph colouring as a case study.

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

test instances
graph colouring
instance space


Learning Graph Matching As a fundamental problem in pattern recognition, graph matching has applications in a variety of fields, from computer vision to computational biology. In graph matching, patterns are modeled as graphs and pattern recognition amounts to finding a correspondence between the nodes of different graphs. Many formulations of this problem can be cast in general as a quadratic assignment problem, where a linear term in the objective function encodes node compatibility and a quadratic term encodes edge compatibility. The main research focus in this theme is about designing efficient algorithms for approximately solving the quadratic assignment problem since it is NP-hard. In this paper, we turn our attention to a different question: how to estimate compatibility functions such that the solution of the resulting graph matching problem best matches the expected solution that a human would manually provide. We present a method for learning graph matching: The training examples are pairs of graphs and the "labels" are matches between them. Our experimental results reveal that learning can substantially improve the performance of standard graph matching algorithms. In particular, we find that simple linear assignment with such a learning scheme outperforms Graduated Assignment with bistochastic normalization, a state-of-the-art quadratic assignment relaxation algorithm.

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

support vector machines
structured estimation
optimization


Retargetable cross compilation techniques - Comparison and analysis of GCC and Zephyr Both GCC and Zephyr are representative complier infrastructures. The paper explores the basic questions that need to be resolved to develop compilers for the support of multiple source languages and targetssquare analyses and compares their architectures and key retargetable cross compilation techniques, summarizes the merits and shortcomings, respectively, and draws a conclusion that the Zephyr infrastructure has the advantage over GCC to an extent.

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

compiler infrastructures
intermediate representations
machine descriptions


Modelling the Richards function using Evolutionary Algorithms on the effect of electrical conductivity of nutrient solution on zucchini growth in hydroponic culture The effect of two levels of electrical conductivity (EC) in two nutrient solutions was studied in a hydroponic cultivation of zucchini, during the growing period using the Richards function. The equations for each individual organ were fitted using Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and the improvement of parameters was defined through an innovative EA. So, by estimating the (near) optimal model of the growth of each individual organ, the proposed method manages to simulate the plant growth and how the two levels of EC in two different nutrient solutions affects it, as demonstrated by experimental results. The leaves were longer in the lower electrical conductivity. The length of the leaves and the growth rate of the older leaf were higher than those of the newer leaf in both nutrient solutions. The total soluble solids of fruits were more at the higher EC level.

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


Volunteers' involvement in online community based software development We sought to gain understanding Of Voluntary developers' involvement in open source software (OSS) projects. Data were collected from voluntary developers working on open source projects. Our findings indicated that a voluntary developer's involvement was very important to his or her performance and that involvement was dependent on individual motivations (personal software needs, reputation and skills gaining expectation, enjoyment in open source coding) and project community factors (leadership effectiveness, interpersonal relationship, community ideology). Our work contributes theoretically and empirically to the body of OSS research and has practical implications for OSS project management. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

open source software
involvement
online community
volunteers

motivation
software development performance


Exploring the diversity in cluster ensemble generation: Random sampling and random projection A novel cluster generation method using random sampling with nearest neighbor method. A dual random sampling method combining random sampling and random projection. A systematic empirical study of different cluster ensemble generation methods.

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

random sampling
random projection
ensemble generation


A lower bound for the length of nonuniform transmission line matching sections A lower bound for the length of a nonuniform transmission line section needed to match a given load impedance to a given real input impedance is derived. The bound depends not only on the load and input impedances, but also on the maximum and minimum permissible values of characteristic impedance within the nonuniform line. Several specific cases are presented to illustrate the tightness of the bounds.

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


A neural network-based tool for preventive control of voltage stability in multi-area power systems In this paper a neural network-based tool is proposed to provide on-line preventive control strategies capable to restore a multi-area power system to a secure operating point when a voltage instability condition is going to be reached. These strategies are, respectively, based on reactive power control actions, generating nodes voltagemagnitude control actions and load curtailment actions. After decomposing the power system into an appropriate number of areas, for each area a feed-forward neural network is trained to give as output to a defined set of inputs an area-based voltage-stability index. The voltage stability of the whole power system is characterised by the minimum value among the area indices. Thus, for a given operating condition, the most critical area is identified and remedial measures are considered only for a restricted region of the system. Since each net receives `internal' inputs and inputs from the remaining areas, it is shown that using the resulting neural network architecture appropriate algorithms can be developed to carry out on-line a preventive control strategy based on the above-mentioned types of control actions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is tested on the IEEE 118-busbar, 19-machine power system.

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


Peripheral and Central Interactions between the Renin-Angiotensin System and the Renal Sympathetic Nerves in Control of Renal Function Increases in renal sympathetic nerve activity (RSNA) regulate the functions of the nephron, the vasculature, and the renin-containing juxtaglomerular granular cells. As increased activity of the renin-angiotensin system can also influence nephron and vascular function, it is important to understand the interactions between RSNA and the renin-angiotensin system in the control of renal function. These interactions can be intrarenal, that is, the direct (via specific innervation) and indirect (via angiotensin II) contributions of increased RSNA to the regulation of renal function. The effects of increased RSNA on renal function are attenuated when the activity of the renin-angiotensin system is suppressed or antagonized with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin II-type AT1 receptor antagonists. The effects of intrarenal administration of angiotensin II are attenuated following renal denervation. These interactions can also be extrarenal, that is, in the central nervous system, wherein RSNA and its arterial baroreflex control are modulated by changes in activity of the renin-angiotensin system. In addition to the circumventricular organs, the permeable blood-brain barrier of which permits interactions with circulating angiotensin II, there are interactions at sites behind the blood-brain barrier that depend on the influence of local angiotensin II. The responses to central administration of angiotensin II type AT1 receptor antagonists, into the ventricular system or microinjected into the rostral ventrolateral medulla, are modulated by changes in activity of the renin-angiotensin system produced by physiological changes in dietary sodium intake. Similar modulation is observed in pathophysiological models wherein activity of both the renin-angiotensin and sympathetic nervous systems is increased (e.g., congestive heart failure). Thus, both renal and extrarenal sites of interaction between the renin-angiotensin system and RSNA are involved in influencing the neural control of renal function.

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

renal sympathetic nerves
renal function
angiotensin ii


Decomposition of interdependent task group for concurrent engineering In concurrent engineering, project tasks generally involve the establishment of multifunctional teams in which team members from different functional departments interact in every phase of development tasks-to design the products and processes concurrently. However, the increasing complexity of product development and design process often come up with large interdependent task groups due to the nature of the concurrent strategy. The large, size of interdependent task groups makes it difficult for team organization and thus. delays the project completion. This calls for the intention-of this research to develop an effective model to: (1). transform the binary task relationships into the quantifiable task coupling strengths; and (2) to decompose the large interdependent task group into smaller and manageable sub-groups. Design structure matrix (DSM); analytic hierarchy process and cluster analysis ace used to represent task relationships; quantify task couplings and decompose large size of task groups. Clustering performance between numerical DSM versus binary DSM is evaluated using a simulation experiment. The, experimental results show that the clustering performance of using numerical DSM is better than the use of binary DSM. The effectiveness of this model is then demonstrated by an illustrative example. The result shows that our proposed model is capable of decomposing the large coupling task group that helps team organization for concurrent engineering project. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

concurrent engineering
analytic hierarchy process
design structure matrix
cluster analysis


discount auctions for procuring heterogeneous items e-Procurement is an Internet based business process for sourcing direct or indirect materials. In this paper we propose an auction mechanism called as discount auctions for procuring multiple items. The bid from a supplier consists of individual costs for each of the items and a discount function, which specifies the discount over the number of items. We show that such a bid is more meaningful and cost effective in terms of bid preparation and communication in common procurement scenarios. The bid evaluation problem is modeled as a mixed integer linear program and various structures in the problem that can be exploited for developing algorithms are explored. A heuristic based on linear programming relaxation is proposed to determine a feasible solution to the problem and its closeness to optimality is studied with computational experiments.

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


Image Description with Local Patterns: An Application to Face Recognition In this paper, we propose a novel approach for presenting the local features of digital image using 1D Local Patterns by Multi-Scans (1DLPMS). We also consider the extentions and simplifications of the proposed approach into facial images analysis. The proposed approach consists of three steps. At the first step, the gray values of pixels in image are represented as a vector giving the local neighborhood intensity distrubutions of the pixels. Then, multi-scans are applied to capture different spatial information on the image with advantage of less computation than other traditional ways, such as Local Binary Patterns (LBP). The second step is encoding the local features based on different encoding rules using 1D local patterns. This transformation is expected to be less sensitive to illumination variations besides preserving the appearance of images embedded in the original gray scale. At the final step, Grouped 1D Local Patterns by Multi-Scans (G1DLPMS) is applied to make the proposed approach computationally simpler and easy to extend. Next, we further formulate boosted algorithm to extract the most discriminant local features. The evaluated results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the conventional approaches in terms of accuracy in applications of face recognition, gender estimation and facial expression.

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