Effect of the substrate orientation on the self-organisation of (InGa)As/GaAs quantum dots The optical and microscopic properties of highly strained In0.5Ga0.5As/GaAs heterostructures grown on (100), (311)A and (311)B-oriented substrates have been investigated by means of photoluminescence and atomic force microscopy, respectively. Samples grown on (100) show a clear transition in their photoluminescence spectra at a critical value of L due to the self-assembling of quantum dots. On the other hand, the same structures grown on (311) show a quite smooth evolution of the luminescence properties with L. The microscopic measurements indicate that these differences are associated with the morphology of dots formed on (311) substrates. Finally, in order to assess the device potential of (311)B (InGa)As dots, we have studied the properties of edge-emitting lasers by extending the well-known technology for (100) to the (311)B devices.

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

heterostructures
microscopy
quantum dots
photoluminescence spectra


ESTABLISHING LOGICAL RULES FROM EMPIRICAL DATA We review a method of generating logical rules, or axioms, from empirical data. This method, using closed set properties of formal concept analysis, has been previously described and tested on rather large sets of deterministic data. Inspite of the fact that formal concept techniques have been used to prune frequent set data mining results, frequency and/or statistical significance are totally irrelevant to this method. It is strictly logical and deterministic. The contribution of this paper is a completely new extension of this method to create implications involving numeric inequalities. That is, numerical in equalities such as "age > 39" can be treated as logical predicates that have been extracted from the data itself and not postulated apriori.

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

closure
numeric inequality
concept lattice
logical implication


Reduced Reward-punishment editing for building ensembles of classifiers In this work a novel technique for building ensemble of classifiers is presented. The proposed approaches are based on a Reduced Reward-punishment editing approach for selecting several subsets of patterns, which are subsequently used to train different classifiers. The basic idea of the Reduced Reward-punishment editing algorithm is to reward patterns that contribute to a correct classification and to punish those that provide a wrong one. We propose ensembles based on the perturbation of patterns; in particular we propose a baggingbased algorithm and two variants of recent feature transform based ensemble methods (Rotation Forest and Input Decimated Ensemble). In our variants the different subsets of patterns find by the Reward-punishment editing are used to create a different subspace projection (the Principal Component Analysis and the Independent Component Analysis are tested in this work). These feature transformations are applied to the whole dataset and a classifier Di is trained using these transformed patterns. To combine the set of classifiers obtained the sum rule is used. Experiments carried out on several classification problems show the superiority of this method with respect to other well known state-of-the-art approaches for building ensembles of classifiers. @ 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

ensembles of classifiers
rotation forest
editing


Evaluation methods and requirements for the stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold in a single-mode fiber This paper presents an experimental discussion of methods for evaluating the input power limitation caused by stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a single-mode fiber, and known as the SBS threshold. We consider five different evaluation methods including the traditional approach, which considers the input power at which the reflected power is the same as transmitted power. We show that two evaluation methods, which consider the second derivative of the reflected power and the change in the transmitted power characteristics, well describe analogue transmission characteristics by taking account of the input power dependence of the carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR). We also show that the SBS threshold can be evaluated practically by considering a 4% level change in the reflected power against the input power in terms of harmonization with the CNR. We also discuss the evaluation conditions required for an accurate SBS threshold measurement. We clarify the requirements for both the uncertainty in the reflected power and the input power interval in data acquisition.

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

stimulated brillouin scattering
sbs threshold
cnr
analogue transmission


A fractal concentration-area method for assigning a color palette for image representation Displaying the remotely sensed image with a proper color palette is the first task in any kind of image processing and pattern recognition in GIS and image processing environments. The purpose of displaying the image should be not only to provide a visual representation of the variance of the image, although this has been the primary objective of most conventional methods, but also the color palette should reflect real-world features on the ground which must be the primary objective of employing remotely sensed data. Although most conventional methods focus only on the first purpose of image representation, the concentration-area (C-A plot) fractal method proposed in this paper aims to meet both purposes on the basis of pixel values and pixel value frequency distribution as well as spatial and geometrical properties of image patterns. The C-A method can be used to establish power-law relationships between the area A(greater than or equal tos) with the pixel values greater than s and the pixel value s itself after plotting these values on log-log paper. A number of straight-line segments can be manually or automatically fitted to the points on the log-log paper, each representing a power-law relationship between the area A and the cutoff pixel value for s in a particular range. These straight-line segments can yield a group of cutoff values on the basis of which the image can be classified into discrete classes or zones. These zones usually correspond to the real-world features on the ground. A Windows program has been prepared in ActiveX format for implementing the C-A method and integrating it into other GIS and image processing systems. A case study of Landsat TM band 5 has been used to demonstrate the application of the method and the flexibility of the computer program. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Content-based trademark retrieval system using a visually salient feature The ever-increasing number of registered trademarks has created greater demand for an automatic trademark retrieval system. In this paper, we present a method for such a system based on the image content, using a shape feature. Zernike moments of an image are used for a feature set. To retrieve similarly shaped trademarks quickly, we introduced the concept of a `visually salient feature' that dominantly affects the global shape of the trademarks. Experiments have been conducted on a database of 3000 trademark images. The retrieval speed was very fast and similar-shaped trademark retrieval results were very promising.

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

content-based
image database
image retrieval
zernike moment


Skeleton-based intrinsic symmetry detection on point clouds ? We propose an intrinsic symmetry detection algorithm over imperfect point clouds by leveraging recent advances in curve skeleton extraction from point clouds. We employ the electors voting scheme where the symmetry electors are pruned with a cascade of symmetry filters. Our method works with raw scans as well as the low quality point clouds captured by Microsoft Kinect. We apply our method to repair incomplete scans based on the detected intrinsic symmetries.

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

symmetry detection
skeleton
point clouds


A 2k kernel for the cluster editing problem The CLUSTER EDITING problem is a decision problem that, for a graph G and a parameter k, determines if one can apply at most k edge insertion/deletion operations on G so that the resulting graph becomes a union of disjoint cliques. The problem has attracted much attention because of its applications in a variety of areas. In this paper, we present a polynomial-time kernelization algorithm for the problem that produces a kernel of size bounded by 2k. More precisely, we develop an O(mn)-time algorithm that, on a graph G of n vertices and m edges and a parameter k, produces a graph G' and a parameter k' such that k' <= k, that G' has at most 2k' vertices, and that (G, k) is a yes-instance if and only if (G', k') is a yes-instance of the CLUSTER EDITING problem. This improves the previously best kernel of size 4k for the problem. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

np-hard problem
parameterized computation
critical clique


A new ILS algorithm for parallel machine scheduling problems This paper addresses the non-preemptive scheduling problem of scheduling jobs on identical parallel machines to minimize the maximum completion time or makespan. The problem has been proved to be NP-hard in the strong sense. The NP-hardness of the problem motivates us to develop a new methodology to obtain near-optimal solutions. We formulate the problem as an integer programming and then propose a new iterated local search (ILS) algorithm based on a variable number of cyclic exchanges to solve it. The properties of the solutions are derived and the results are used to improve the computational efficiency of our algorithm. Computational experiments show that the cyclic exchange neighborhood embedded in an iterated local search framework is effective for solving the scheduling problems with up to 1000 jobs and 40 machines within a reasonable amount of computation time.

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

parallel machine scheduling
iterated local search
cyclic exchange neighborhood


Shaping opportunistic networks This paper deals with the problem of identifying and managing overlay topologies in opportunistic networks. To make this possible, we define the concept of "link" in an opportunistic network, which cannot be represented as a simple communication connection between two nodes at a given instant (as in classic MANETs). Rather, links represent contacts among nodes arising during a (non-instantaneous) time interval. With this definition in view, opportunistic networks can be seen as evolving graphs. The interesting thing is that it becomes possible to control the way nodes manage contacts and build overlays based on some desired overlay topology. This is an important result, since the statistical characteristics of the topology allow estimating the ability of the opportunistic network to spread contents. An experimental assessment based on a trace-driven simulation employing different types of datasets (ranging from urban dense networks to very sparse ones) confirms the viability of the proposed approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

opportunistic networks
overlay topologies


On the inherent property of the decision boundary in complex-valued neural networks This paper shows the differences between the real-valued neural network and the complex-valued neural network by analyzing their fundamental properties from the view of architectures. The main results may be summarized as follows: (a) A single complex-valued neuron with n-inputs is equivalent to two real-valued neurons with 2n-inputs which have a restriction on a set of weight parameters. (b) The decision boundary of a single complex-valued neuron consists of two hypersurfaces which intersect orthogonally. (c) The decision boundary of a three-layered complex-valued neural network has the orthogonal structure. (d) The orthogonality of the decision boundary in the three-layered Complex-BP network can improve its generalization ability. (e) The average of the learning speed of the Complex-BP is several times faster than that of the Real-BP, and the standard deviation of the learning speed of the Complex-BP is smaller than that of the Real-BP.

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

complex numbers
complex-valued neural networks


Optimal design of a fluorescence oxygen sensing probe based on multimode optical fibers In this paper, a theoretical model of a multimode optical fiber based fluorescence sensor was proposed and established with the aims to optimize specific physical parameters of the sensor including the refractive index of the fluorescent matrix, external diameter and the length of sensing fiber probe which were calculated using the beam propagation method. The plane wave at wavelengths of 395 or 505nm was used as the excitation light source. The excitation light power in the coating layer was calculated to obtain more excitation fluorescence. The change of fluorescence intensity with structural differences of the parameters was analyzed. The theoretical results showed that for a pure silica fiber using a matrix of higher refractive index (>1.458) material was effective in improving fluorescence performance. The optimized external diameter of the sensing fiber probe was found to be >206?m with a 200m fiber core diameter when the refractive index of the sensing layer is 1.49. Increasing the thickness of the sensing layer increased the level of fluorescence excitation. The fluorescence intensity excited by 395nm light is stronger than that of light at 505nm.

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

multimode optical fiber
fluorescence
sensing fiber probe
beam propagation method


semantics of dynamic structure event-based systems This paper presents the semantics of the Heterogeneous Flow System Specification (HFSS). HFSS is a modular formalism able to describe hierarchical event-based systems with a time-varying structure. While using a traditional representation of discrete event systems it introduces the concept of generalized sampling to achieve a description of continuous signals on digital computers. Sampling is treated as a first order concept being explicitly supported. While push event-based systems can be formalized by discrete event systems, sampling is consider here as a formalization of pull event-based systems. We introduce the new concepts of basic and network HFSS components to describe the semantics of the corresponding HFSS models.

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


LIPSIN: Line Speed Publish/Subscribe Inter-Networking A large fraction of today's Internet applications are internally publish/subscribe in nature; the current architecture makes it cumbersome and inept to support them. In essence, supporting efficient publish/subscribe requires data-oriented naming, efficient multicast, and in-network caching. Deployment of native IP-based multicast has failed, and overlay-based multicast systems are inherently inefficient. We surmise that scalable and efficient publish/subscribe will require substantial architectural changes, such as moving from endpoint-oriented systems to information-centric architectures. In this paper, we propose a novel multicast forwarding fabric, suitable for large-scale topic-based publish/subscribe. Due to very simple forwarding decisions and small forwarding tables, the fabric may be more energy efficient than the currently used ones. To understand the limitations and potential, we provide efficiency and scalability analysis via simulations and early measurements from our two implementations. We show that the system scales up to metropolitan WAN sizes, and we discuss how to interconnect separate networks.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O B O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B B O O O O O O O O O O B O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 method for increasing expressivity of Gene Ontology annotations using a compositional approach The Gene Ontology project integrates data about the function of gene products across a diverse range of organisms, allowing the transfer of knowledge from model organisms to humans, and enabling computational analyses for interpretation of high-throughput experimental and clinical data. The core data structure is the annotation, an association between a gene product and a term from one of the three ontologies comprising the GO. Historically, it has not been possible to provide additional information about the context of a GO term, such as the target gene or the location of a molecular function. This has limited the specificity of knowledge that can be expressed by GO annotations.

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

functional annotation
annotation extension
manual curation


Magnitude Sensitive Competitive Learning This paper presents a new neural method for unsupervised learning denoted as Magnitude Sensitive Competitive Learning (MSCL), which has the property of distributing the unit centroids following any magnitude calculated from the unit parameters or the input data inside its Voronoi region. This controlled behavior permits it to outperform standard Competitive Learning algorithms that only tend to concentrate neurons according to the input data density, when other kind of data information processing is desired. Some examples applying different target functions show the MSCL possibilities in several applications as data-series interpolation, surface modelling from 3D point clouds and color quantization (CQ).

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 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 B I O O O O O B I O

competitive learning
surface modelling
color quantization
interpolation


the video paper multimedia playback system Video Paper is a prototype system for multimedia browsing, analysis, and replay. Key frames extracted from a video recording are printed on paper together with bar codes that allow for random access and replay. A transcript for the audio track can also be shown so that users can read what was said, thus making the document a stand-alone representation for the contents of the multimedia recording. The Video Paper system has been used for several applications, including the analysis of recorded meetings, broadcast news, oral histories and personal recordings. This demonstration will show how the Video Paper system was applied to these domains and the various replay systems that were developed, including a self-contained portable implementation on a PDA and a fixed implementation on desktop PC.

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

paper-based multimedia browsing
retrieval


The PLS model space revisited Pell, Ramos and Manne (PRM) in a recent article in this journal claim that the 'conventional' PLS algorithm with orthogonal scores has an inherent inconsistency in that it uses different model spaces for calculating the prediction model coefficients and for calculating the X-space model and it's residuals [1]. We disagree with PRM. All PLS model scores, residuals, coefficients, etc., obtained by the conventional PLS algorithm do come from the same underlying latent variable (LV) model, and not from different models or model spaces as PRM suggest. PRM have simply posed a different model with different assumptions and obtained slightly different results, as should have been expected. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

partial least squares
latent variable regression


Intrinsic statistics on riemannian manifolds: Basic tools for geometric measurements In medical image analysis and high level computer vision, there is an intensive use of geometric features like orientations, lines, and geometric transformations ranging from simple ones (orientations, lines, rigid body or affine transformations, etc.) to very complex ones like curves, surfaces, or general diffeomorphic transformations. The measurement of such geometric primitives is generally noisy in real applications and we need to use statistics either to reduce the uncertainty (estimation), to compare observations, or to test hypotheses. Unfortunately, even simple geometric primitives often belong to manifolds that are not vector spaces. In previous works [1, 2], we investigated invariance requirements to build some statistical tools on transformation groups and homogeneous manifolds that avoids paradoxes. In this paper, we consider finite dimensional manifolds with a Riemannian metric as the basic structure. Based on this metric, we develop the notions of mean value and covariance matrix of a random element, normal law, Mahalanobis distance and chi(2) law. We provide a new proof of the characterization of Riemannian centers of mass and an original gradient descent algorithm to efficiently compute them. The notion of Normal law we propose is based on the maximization of the entropy knowing the mean and covariance of the distribution. The resulting family of pdfs spans the whole range from uniform (on compact manifolds) to the point mass distribution. Moreover, we were able to provide tractable approximations (with their limits) for small variances which show that we can effectively implement and work with these definitions.

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

statistics
riemannian manifolds
covariance

geometry
frechet mean
computing on manifolds


One set of pliers for more tasks in installation work: the effects on (dis)comfort and productivity In installation work, the physical workload is high. Awkward postures, heavy lifting and repetitive movements are often seen. To improve aspects of the work situation, frequently used pliers were redesigned to make them suitable for more cutting tasks. In this study these multitask pliers are evaluated in comparison to the originally used pliers in a field study and a laboratory study. For the field study 26 subjects participated divided into two groups according to their type of work. Ten subjects participated in the laboratory study. The multitask plier appeared to result in more comfort during working, more relaxed working and more satisfaction. No differences in productivity were found. In conclusion, the multitask pliers can replace the originally used pliers and are suitable for more tasks than the original pliers. The installation workers have to carry less pliers by using the multitask pliers.

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 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


Document clustering using nonnegative matrix factorization ? A methodology for automatically identifying and clustering semantic features or topics in a heterogeneous text collection is presented. Textual data is encoded using a low rank nonnegative matrix factorization algorithm to retain natural data nonnegativity, thereby eliminating the need to use subtractive basis vector and encoding calculations present in other techniques such as principal component analysis for semantic feature abstraction. Existing techniques for nonnegative matrix factorization are reviewed and a new hybrid technique for nonnegative matrix factorization is proposed. Performance evaluations of the proposed method are conducted on a few benchmark text collections used in standard topic detection studies.

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

text mining
conjugate gradient
constrained least squares


Goal-oriented adaptivity using unconventional error representations for the 1D Helmholtz equation ? In this work, the error of a given output functional is represented using bilinear forms that are different from those given by the adjoint problem. These representations can be employed to design novel h h , p p , and hp h p energy-norm and goal-oriented adaptive algorithms. Numerical results in 1D show that, for wave propagation problems, the advantages of this new representation are notorious when selecting the Laplace equation as the dual problem. Specifically, the computed upper bounds of the new error representation are sharper than the classical ones used in both energy-norm and goal-oriented adaptive methods, especially when the dispersion (pollution) error is significant.

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

goal-oriented adaptivity
finite element methods


Exact hypothesis tests for log-linear models with exactLoglinTest This manuscript overviews exact testing of goodness of fit for log-linear models using the R package exactLoglinTest. This package evaluates model fit for Poisson log-linear models by conditioning on minimal sufficient statistics to remove nuisance parameters. A Monte Carlo algorithm is proposed to estimate P values from the resulting conditional distribution. In particular, this package implements a sequentially rounded normal approximation and importance sampling to approximate probabilities from the conditional distribution. Usually, this results in a high percentage of valid samples. However, in instances where this is not the case, a Metropolis Hastings algorithm can be implemented that makes more localized jumps within the reference set. The manuscript details how some conditional tests for binomial logit models can also be viewed as conditional Poisson log-linear models and hence can be performed via exactLoglinTest. A diverse battery of examples is considered to highlight use, features and extensions of the software. Notably, potential extensions to evaluating disclosure risk are also considered.

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

poisson models
hypothesis testing
fisher's exact test


A mortar based contact formulation for non-linear dynamics using dual Lagrange multipliers Many existing algorithms for the analysis of large deformation contact problems use a so-called node-to-segment approach to discretize the contact interface between dissimilar meshes. It is well known, that this discretization strategy may lead to problems like loss of convergence or jumps in the contact forces. Additionally it is popular to use penalty methods to satisfy the contact constraints. This necessitates a user defined penalty parameter the choice of which is somehow arbitrary, problem dependent and might influence the accuracy of the analysis. In this work, a frictionless segment-to-segment contact formulation is presented that does not require any user defined parameter to handle the non-linearity of the contact conditions. The approach is based on the mortar method enforcing the compatibility condition along the contact interface in a weak integral sense. The application of dual spaces for the interpolation of the Lagrange multiplier allows for a nodal decoupling of the contact constraints. A local basis transformation in combination with a primaldual active set strategy enables the exact enforcement of the contact constraints via prescribed incremental boundary conditions. Due to the biorthogonality condition of the basis functions the Lagrange multipliers can be locally eliminated. A static condensation leads to a reduced system of equations to be solved solely for the unknown nodal displacements. Thus the size of the system of equations remains constant during the whole calculation. The discrete Lagrange multipliers, representing the contact pressure, can be easily recovered from the displacements in a variationally consistent way. For the analysis of dynamic contact problems the proposed contact description is combined with the implicit Generalized Energy-Momentum Method. Several numerical examples illustrate the performance of the suggested contact formulation.

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

active set strategy
dual lagrange multipliers

mortar finite element method
implicit dynamic contact
large deformations


homogeneity analysis of power consumption for information security purposes Due to increasing popularity of mobile devices, detection of unknown mobile attack types stays up-to-date, but existing mobile security software aims at detecting known attacks. Offered method of anomaly detection in mobile devices behavior is based on power consumption homogeneity analysis. This method allows to detect deviations in normal behavior for anomalies of any type (anomalous network activity, anomalous computing resources' usage etc.), because power consumption is the universal characteristic, which depends on any system activity.

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

anomaly detection
mobile security
power consumption


A time-splitting Galerkin finite element method for the DaveyStewartson equations ? In this paper, we propose a time-splitting Galerkin method to investigate the evolution of the DaveyStewartson equations. Using time-splitting, we split the nonlinear equations into two subequations: a linear equation and a nonlinear equation. The nonlinear equation is directly solved and the linear equation is approximated by Galerkin finite element. The error norms and conservation variables of four numerical experiments illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of our numerical scheme.

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

daveystewartson equations
galerkin finite element method


Structure and electronic properties of Alq3 derivatives with electron acceptor/donor groups at the C4 positions of the quinolate ligands: a theoretical study The molecular structures of the ground (S(0)) and first singlet excited (S(1)) states of Alq3 derivatives in which pyrazolyl and 3-methylpyrazolyl groups are substituted at the C4 positions of the 8-hydroxyquinolate ligands as electron acceptors, and piperidinyl and N-methylpiperazinyl groups are substituted at the same positions as electron donors, have been optimized using the B3LYP/6-31G* and CIS/6-31G* methods, respectively. In order to analyze the electronic transitions in these derivatives, the frontier molecular orbital characteristics were analyzed systematically, and it was found that the highest occupied molecular orbital is localized on the A ligand while the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital is localized on the B ligand in their ground states, similar to what is seen for mer-Alq3. The absorption and emission spectra were evaluated at the TD-PBE0/6-31G* level, and it was observed that electron acceptor substitution causes a red-shift in the emission spectra, which is also seen experimentally. The reorganization energies were calculated at the B3LYP/6-31G* level and the results show that acceptor/donor substitution has a significant effect on the intrinsic charge mobilities of these derivatives as compared to mer-Alq3.

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

oled
gap energy
optical properties
reorganization energy


On guaranteed smooth scheduling for input-queued switches. Input-queued switches are used extensively in the design of high-speed routers. As switch speeds and sizes increase, the design of the switch scheduler becomes a primary challenge, because the time interval for the matching computations needed for determining switch configurations becomes very small. Possible alternatives in scheduler design include increasing the scheduling interval by using envelopes [19], and using a frame-based scheduler that guarantees fixed rates between input-output pairs. However, both these alternatives have significant jitter drawbacks: the jitter increases with the envelope size in the first alternative, and previously-known methods do not guarantee tight jitter bounds in the second. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach to switch scheduling. Traffic with tight jitter constraints is first scheduled using a frame-based scheduler that achieves low jitter bounds. Jitter-insensitive traffic is later scheduled using an envelope-based scheduler. The main contribution of this paper is a scheduler design for generating low-jitter schedules. The scheduler uses a rate matrix decomposition designed for low jitter and different from the minimum-bandwidth Birkhoff-Von Neumann (BV) decomposition. In addition to generating low-jitter schedules, this decomposition in the worst case yields fewer switch configuration matrices (O(n)) than the BV decomposition (O(n(2))), and so requires far less high-speed switch memory. We develop an efficient algorithm for decomposing the rate matrix and for scheduling the permutation matrices. We prove that our low-jitter algorithm has an O(log n) factor bound on its bandwidth consumption in comparison to the minimum-bandwidth BV decomposition. Experimentally, we find that the bandwidth increase in practice is much lower than the theoretical bound. We also prove several related performance bounds for our scheduler. Finally, we propose a practical algorithm for bandwidth-guaranteed algorithm, and show how our findings could even be extended to systems with large tuning time.

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


Ligand-specific scoring functions: improved ranking of docking solutions Molecular docking is a powerful computational method that has been widely used in many biomolecular studies to predict geometry of a protein-ligand complex. However, while its conformational search algorithms are usually able to generate correct conformation of a ligand in the binding site, the scoring methods often fail to discriminate it among many false variants. We propose to treat this problem by applying more precise ligand-specific scoring filters to re-rank docking solutions. In this way specific features of interactions between protein and different types of compounds can be implicitly taken into account. New scoring functions were constructed including hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic and hydrophilic complementarity terms. These scoring functions also discriminate ligands by the size of the molecule, the total hydrophobicity, and the number of peptide bonds for peptide ligands. Weighting coefficients of the scoring functions were adjusted using a training set of 60 protein-ligand complexes. The proposed method was then tested on the results of docking obtained for an additional 70 complexes. In both cases the success rate was 5-8% better compared to the standard functions implemented in popular docking software.

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

protein-ligand interactions
molecular hydrophobicity potential
hydrogen bond


Energy aware computing through probabilistic switching: A study of limits The main result in this paper establishes the energy savings derived by using probabilistic AND as well as NOT gates constructed from an idealized switch that produces a probabilistic bit (PBIT). A probabilistic switch produces the desired value as an output that is 0 or 1 with probability p, represented as a PBIT, and, hence, can produce the wrong output value with a probability of (1 - p). In contrast with a probabilistic switch, a conventional deterministic switch produces a BIT whose value is always correct. Our switch-based gate constructions are a particular case of a systematic methodology developed here for building energy-aware networks for computing, using PBITs. Interesting examples of such networks include AND, OR, and NOT gates (or, as functions, Boolean conjunction, disjunction, and negation, respectively). To quantify the energy savings, novel measures of "technology independent" energy complexity are also introduced here - these measures parallel conventional machine-independent notions of computational complexity such as the algorithm's running time and space. Networks of switches can be related to Turing machines and to Boolean circuits, both of which are widely known and well-understood models of computation. Our gate and network constructions lend substance to the following thesis (established for the first time by this author [1], [2], [3]): The mathematical technique referred to as randomization yielding probabilistic algorithms results in energy savings through a physical interpretation based on statistical thermodynamics and, hence, can serve as a basis for energy-aware computing. While the estimates of the energy saved through PBIT-based probabilistic computing switches and networks developed here rely on the constructs and thermodynamic models due to Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Planck, this work has also led to the innovation of probabilistic CMOS-based devices and computing frameworks. Thus, for completeness, the relationship between the physical models on which this work is based and the electrical domain of CMOS-based switching will be discussed.

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

energy-aware systems
low-power design
probabilistic computation


Future clinical uses of neurophysiological biomarkers to predict and monitor treatment response for schizophrenia Advances in psychiatric neuroscience have transformed our understanding of impaired and spared brain functions in psychotic illnesses. Despite substantial progress, few (if any) laboratory tests have graduated to clinics to inform diagnoses, guide treatments, and monitor treatment response. Providers must rely on careful behavioral observation and interview techniques to make inferences about patients inner experiences and then secondary deductions about impacted neural systems. Development of more effective treatments has also been hindered by a lack of translational quantitative biomarkers that can span the brainbehavior treatment knowledge gap. Here, we describe an example of a simple, low-cost, and translatable electroencephalography (EEG) measure that offers promise for improving our understanding and treatment of psychotic illnesses: mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN is sensitive to and/or predicts response to some pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions and accounts for substantial portions of variance in clinical, cognitive, and psychosocial functioning in schizophrenia (SZ). This measure has recently been validated for use in large-scale multisite clinical studies of SZ. Finally, MMN greatly improves our ability to forecast which individuals at high clinical risk actually develop a psychotic illness. These attributes suggest that MMN can contribute to personalized biomarker-guided treatment strategies aimed at ameliorating or even preventing the onset of psychosis.

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

biomarker
cognitive remediation
neurocognition


Variable mesh difference schemes for solving a nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a linear damping term This paper describes moving variable mesh finite difference schemes to numerically solve the nonlinear Schrodinger equation including the effects of damping and nonhomogeneity in the propagation media. These schemes have accurately predicted the location of the peak of the soliton compared to the uniform mesh, for the case in which the exact solution is known. Numerical results are presented when damping and nonhomogeneous effects are included, and in the absence of these effects the results were verified with the available exact solution. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

variable mesh
difference schemes
schrodinger equation
damping term


Lightweight Wireless Web Service Communication Through Enhanced Caching Mechanisms Reducing the size of the wirelessly transmitted data during the invocation of third-party Web services is a worthwhile goal of many mobile application developers. Among many adaptation mechanisms that can be used for the mediation of such Web service invocations, the automated enhancement of caching mechanisms is a promising approach that can spare the re-transmission of entire content fields of the exchanged messages. However, it is usually impeded by technological constraints and by various other factors, such as the inherent risk of using responses that are not fresh, i.e., are not up-to-date. This paper presents the roadmap, the most important technical and algorithmic details, and a thorough evaluation of the first solution for generically and automatically enriching the communication with any third-party Web service in a way that cached responses can be exploited while a freshness of 100% is maintained.

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


Dependability evaluation of an air traffic control computing system As air traffic over France is growing rapidly, the existing air traffic control (ATC) system has to evolve to satisfy the increasing demand. The selection of the new automated computing system (denoted CAUTRA) is based, among other things, on dependability evaluation. This paper is devoted to the dependability evaluation of the CAUTRA, however, emphasis is put on a subset: the regional control center (RCC). Starting from the analysis of the impact of CAUTRA failures on air traffic safety, five levels of service degradation are defined for the global system grading the effects of these failures on the service delivered to the controllers to ensure traffic safety. The RCC failure modes leading to these degradation levels are then defined and evaluated using stochastic Petri nets. The modeling approach consists in modeling the system as a set of modules interconnected via coupling mechanisms. The system model is constructed in several steps according to an incremental approach. Each step integrates the failure and recovery assumptions of an additional component and updates the model of the previous step by accounting for the impact of the new component on the behavior of those already included in the model. The application of this approach to the CAUTRA allowed us to analyze several configurations of the CAUTRA architecture and to identify improvement areas to minimize the impact of CAUTRA failures on air traffic safety.

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

stochastic petri nets
air traffic control
air traffic safety

dependability modeling
markov chains
safety analysis


General results on the decomposition of transitive fuzzy relations We study the transitivity of fuzzy preference relations, often considered as a fundamental property providing coherence to a decision process. We consider the transitivity of fuzzy relations w.r.t. conjunctors, a general class of binary operations on the unit interval encompassing the class of triangular norms usually considered for this purpose. Having fixed the transitivity of a large preference relation w.r.t. such a conjunctor, we investigate the transitivity of the strict preference and indifference relations of any fuzzy preference structure generated from this large preference relation by means of an (indifference) generator. This study leads to the discovery of two families of conjunctors providing a full characterization of this transitivity. Although the expressions of these conjunctors appear to be quite cumbersome, they reduce to more readily used analytical expressions when we focus our attention on the particular case when the transitivity of the large preference relation is expressed w.r.t. one of the three basic triangular norms (the minimum, the product and the Aukasiewicz triangular norm) while at the same time the generator used for decomposing this large preference relation is also one of these triangular norms. During our discourse, we pay ample attention to the Frank family of triangular norms/copulas.

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

transitivity
conjunctor
indifference generator

fuzzy preference relation
frank family of t-norms


micro power management of active 802.11 interfaces Wireless interfaces are major power consumers on mobile systems. Considerable research has improved the energy efficiency of elongated idle periods or created more elongated idle periods in wireless interfaces, often requiring cooperation from applications or the network infrastructure. With increasing wireless mobile data, it has become critical to improve the energy efficiency of active wireless interfaces. In this work, we present micro power management (?PM), a solution inspired by the mismatch between the high performance of state-of-the-art 802.11 interfaces and the modest data rate requirements by many popular network applications. ?PM enables an 802.11 interface to enter unreachable power-saving modes even between MAC frames, without noticeable impact on the traffic flow. To control data loss, ?PM leverages the retransmission mechanism in 802.11 and controls frame delay to adapt to demanded network throughput with minimal cooperation from the access point. Based on a theoretical framework, we employ simulation to systematically investigate an effective and efficient implementation of ?PM. We have built a prototype ?PM on an open-access wireless hardware platform. Measurements show that more than 30\% power reduction for the wireless transceiver can be achieved with ?PM for various applications without perceptible quality degradation.

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

network
requirements
framework
point
applications
quality
platform
efficiency
simulation
delay
reduction
throughput
interfaces
access
infrastructure
traffic
control
minimal
wireless
research
power management
prototype
implementation
cooperation
data
flow
power
hardware

measurement
energy-efficient wireless
activation
802.11
mobility
high-performance
art
mobile system
perception
power-save
critic
effect
energy efficiency


Binary bat algorithm Bat algorithm (BA) is one of the recently proposed heuristic algorithms imitating the echolocation behavior of bats to perform global optimization. The superior performance of this algorithm has been proven among the other most well-known algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). However, the original version of this algorithm is suitable for continuous problems, so it cannot be applied to binary problems directly. In this paper, a binary version of this algorithm is proposed. A comparative study with binary PSO and GA over twenty-two benchmark functions is conducted to draw a conclusion. Furthermore, Wilcoxons rank-sum nonparametric statistical test was carried out at 5% significance level to judge whether the results of the proposed algorithm differ from those of the other algorithms in a statistically significant way. The results prove that the proposed binary bat algorithm (BBA) is able to significantly outperform others on majority of the benchmark functions. In addition, there is a real application of the proposed method in optical engineering called optical buffer design at the end of the paper. The results of the real application also evidence the superior performance of BBA in practice.

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

bat algorithm
optical buffer design
optimization

discrete evolutionary algorithms
binary optimization
discrete optimization
bio-inspired algorithm


Data consistency in intermittently connected distributed systems Mobile computing introduces a new form of distributed computation in which communication is most often intermittent, low-bandwidth, or expensive, thus providing only weak connectivity. In this paper, we present a replication scheme tailored for such environments. Bounded inconsistency is defined by allowing controlled deviation among copies located at weakly connected sites. A dual database interface is proposed that in addition to read and write operations with the usual semantics supports weak read and write operations. In contrast to the usual read and write operations that read consistent values and perform permanent updates, weak operations access only local and potentially inconsistent copies and perform updates that are only conditionally committed. Exploiting weak operations supports disconnected operation since mobile clients can employ them to continue to operate even white disconnected. The extended database interface coupled with bounded inconsistency offers a flexible mechanism for adapting replica consistency to the networking conditions by appropriately balancing the use of weak and normal operations. Adjusting the degree of divergence among copies provides additional support for adaptivity. We present transaction-oriented correctness criteria for the proposed schemes, introduce corresponding serializability-based methods, and outline protocols for their implementation. Then, some practical examples of their applicability are provided. The performance of the scheme is evaluated for a range of networking conditions and varying percentages of weak transactions by using an analytical model developed for this purpose.

O B O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 computing
replication
consistency
disconnected operation

concurrency control
transaction management
adaptability


Strongly rigid tensegrity graphs on the line Tensegrity frameworks are defined on a set of points in Rd R d and consist of bars, cables, and struts, which provide upper and/or lower bounds for the distance between their endpoints. The graph of the framework, in which edges are labeled as bars, cables, and struts, is called a tensegrity graph. It is said to be strongly rigid in Rd R d if every generic realization in Rd R d as a tensegrity framework is infinitesimally rigid. In this note we show that it is NP-hard to test whether a given tensegrity graph is strongly rigid in R1 R 1 .

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


High aspect ratio micro/nano machining with proton beam writing on aqueous developable easily stripped negative chemically-amplified resists Proton beam writing (PBW) is a new direct-writing process that uses a focused beam of MeV protons to pattern resist material at nano dimensions. PBW has the unique ability to maintain a straight path through 50?m thick resist films, and is suitable for high aspect ratio micro(nano)-machining. TADEP resist is a new promising high aspect ratio chemically-amplified resist that can be developed in aqueous base developer and has the capability of stripping in conventional stripping schemes. By employing PBW on TADEP resist patterns with 280nm linewidth and a thickness of 12?m have been resolved showing an aspect ratio of 42. Following Ni electroplating of the TADEP features, Ni structures of height 0.8?m and spacing of 167nm, produced in 2?m thick TADEP, were demonstrated indicating the easy stripping characteristics of the TADEP resist.

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

micromachining
nanomachining
resist stripping


Codebook hardware implementation on FPGA for background subtraction Object detection and tracking are main tasks in video surveillance systems. Extracting the background is an intensive task with high computational cost. This work proposes a hardware computing engine to perform background subtraction on low-cost field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), focused on resource-limited environments. Our approach is based on the codebook algorithm and offers very low accuracy degradation. We have analyzed resource consumption and performance trade-offs in Spartan-3 FPGAs by Xilinx. In addition, an accuracy evaluation with standard benchmark sequences has been performed, obtaining better results than previous hardware approaches. The implementation is able to segment objects in sequences with resolution \(768\times 576\) at 50fps using a robust and accurate approach, and an estimated power consumption of 5.13W.

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

field programmable gate arrays
video surveillance

fixed-point arithmetic
real-time image processing


Methodology for sustainability strategic planning and management Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework that intends to help organisations achieve the sustainability goal by means of a methodology that integrates sustainability in both the planning and management tasks of the organisation and that serves as a base for the implementation of an information system aligned with the business strategy. Design/methodology/approach - After an exhaustive review of literature about corporate social responsibility, strategic planning of organisations and balanced scorecards (BSCs), a methodology has been developed that describes the process of designing and implementing a sustainability BSC for sustainability strategic planning and management. Findings - The methodology can be easily implemented at companies with a minimum of computer resources, but managers play a key role in its success, since they are the responsible for providing the necessary environment for overcoming such an important change. Research limitations/implications - The methodology has only been applied once and their results will only be able to be analysed after a long time. Meanwhile, more implementations have to be performed to test and improve the different steps und tools until the methodology can be considered definitive. Practical implications - The methodology could be used by many organisations, improving their social and environmental performance and contributing to their sustainability and the sustainability of all of their stakeholders, specially for society as a whole. Readers of this paper could see a practical application of methodology and its viability by means of the case. Originality/value - An innovative structure for BSCs which has been developed having in mind the sustainability since the beginning, but not justly adding environmental and social variables to a model designed with economical purposes.

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

strategic planning
corporate social responsibility

balanced scorecard
information systems
sustainable development


Load sensitive topology control: Towards minimum energy consumption in dense ad hoc sensor networks ? Sensor networks are usually composed of tiny and resource constraint devices, which make energy conservation a vital concern of their design and deployment. Reducing energy consumption has been addressed through different aspects till now. Topology Control (TC) is a well-known approach which tries to determine transmission ranges of nodes to optimize their energy utilization while keeping some network properties like connectivity. However, in current TC schemes, the transmission range of each node is mostly accounted as the exclusive estimator for its energy consumption while ignoring the amount of data it sends or relays. In this paper, we deliberately reformulate the problem of topology control, regarding both network load and transmission range parameters. Our approach is particularly formulated for dense sensor networks with one or more base stations. The problem is considered in three different environmental conditions and then, proper mathematical relations are presented to find the optimum solutions. Finally, we show the advantages of our proposal through experiments.

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

energy conservation
topology control
transmission range


Grouped variable importance with random forests and application to multiple functional data analysis The selection of grouped variables using the random forest algorithm is considered. First a new importance measure adapted for groups of variables is proposed. Theoretical insights into this criterion are given for additive regression models. Second, an original method for selecting functional variables based on the grouped variable importance measure is developed. Using a wavelet basis, it is proposed to regroup all of the wavelet coefficients for a given functional variable and use a wrapper selection algorithm with these groups. Various other groupings which take advantage of the frequency and time localization of the wavelet basis are proposed. An extensive simulation study is performed to illustrate the use of the grouped importance measure in this context. The method is applied to a real life problem coming from aviation safety.

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

group permutation importance measure
group variable selection


On the advantages of combining differential algorithms and log-polar vision for detection of self-motion from a mobile robot This paper describes the design and implementation on programmable hardware (FPGAs) of an algorithm for the detection of self-mobile objects as seen from a mobile robot. In this context, 'self-mobile' refers to those objects that change in the image plane due to their own movement, and not to the movement of the camera on board of the mobile robot. The method consists on adapting the original algorithm from Chen and Nandhakumar [A simple scheme for motion boundary detection, in: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 1994] by using foveal images obtained with a special camera whose optical axis points towards the direction of advance. It is shown that the use of log-polar geometry simplifies the original formulation and highly reduces the volume of data to be treated. Limitations of the algorithm due to the differential nature of the approach are discussed, relating them with the parameters of the system. Experiments are shown in which a self-mobile object is detected in several conditions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

motion detection
log-polar vision
visual navigation
reconfigurable hardware architectures


Toward a formal theory of socioculture A yin-yang information-based theory of social change Purpose - This paper aims to initiate a new, formal theory of sociocultural physics. Design/methodology/approach - Its intended scope is limited to predicting either long-term, large-scale or short-term, small-scale sociocultural events. The theory that the authors develop, called sociohistory, links three independent but relatable approaches: part of Sorokin's epistemological theory of sociocultural dynamics, Frieden's epistemological theory of extreme physical information (EPI), and Yolles's social viable systems (SVS) theory. Findings - Although not all of Sorokin's ideas are universally accepted, a subset of them is found to be extremely useful for describing the conceptual context of complex systems. This includes how sociocultural processes link closely into political processes. Research limitations/implications - The theory that develops helps explain how opposing, cultural enantiomers or yin-yang forces (represented, for instance, by the polar mindsets represented in Islamic fundamentalism and global enterprise) can result in violent conflict, or in either viable or non-viable social communities. The informations I and J of EPI theory are regarded, respectively, as sensate and ideational enantiomers. Originality/value - While the resulting sociocultural physics is in its infancy, an illustrative application to the developmental dynamics of post-colonial Iran demonstrates its potential utility.

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


Towards more reliable and secure source routing in mobile ad hoc and sensor networks Routing protocols in mobile ad hoc and sensor networks discover a multi-hop route between source and destination nodes. A highly reliable path is an important component for enhancing the security of communication. This paper presents RAS: a Reliable routing protocol for enhanced reliability and security of communication in mobile Ad hoc and Sensor networks. Enhanced reliability and security are achieved by the maintenance of a reliability factor by the nodes, which is increased when nodes participate successfully in data transmissions. This is determined through the use of positive and passive acknowledgements. Additional optimizations are included in order to increase the efficiency and performance of the network. Simulation experiments are performed in order to verify the operation of the proposed protocol and evaluate its performance. The results show an improvement in the reliability of the discovered path with the proper choice of certain important reliability parameters.

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

wireless networks
quality ofservice (qos)
mobile ad hoc networks (manets)
wireless sensor networks (wsns)


Digital panning shot generator from photographs Panning in photography is known as the rotation of the camera horizontally. It refers to a technique whereby one follows a moving subject and takes a photo with a slow shutter speed. This creates a blurred background, while retaining sharpness in the subject. Panning shot is widely used in sports activities because it dramatically emphasizes the movement of the subject. However, it is not easy for amateur photographers to take plausible panning shots. This paper represents a digital algorithm to automatically generate panning shots using two photographs taken consecutively in time. The presented algorithm makes even novice photographers take professional panning shots very easily.

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

object segmentation
motion estimation
motion blur


A CSCW Requirements Engineering CASE Tool: Development and usability evaluation Six metrics were used to measure effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Facial expression analysis was used to assess users satisfaction throughout the test. The evaluation of tool was reported by applying the ISO/IEC 25062:2006. We found some flaws in the tool, despite its good usability figures. The lessons learnt are presented to help in other usability assessment studies.

O B B I 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

usability evaluation
case tool
requirements engineering
cscw


Curvature-guided adaptive T T -spline surface fitting ? We present an adaptive T T -spline fitting algorithm, with several new components. We propose a curvature-guided fitting strategy to effectively capture model features. We introduce a process for faithful re-parameterization. We present a process for re-placing the initial structure of the spline surface.

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

t t -splines t t t t t
curvature
re-parameterization
knot re-placement


The unambiguity of segmented morphisms ? This paper studies the ambiguity of morphisms in free monoids. A morphism ? ? is said to be ambiguous with respect to a string ? ? if there exists a morphism ? ? which differs from ? ? for a symbol occurring in ? ? , but nevertheless satisfies ?(?)=?(?) ? ( ? ) = ? ( ? ) ; if there is no such ? ? then ? ? is called unambiguous. Motivated by the recent initial paper on the ambiguity of morphisms, we introduce the definition of a so-called segmented morphism ?n ? n , which, for any n?N n ? N , maps every symbol in an infinite alphabet onto a word that consists of n n distinct factors in a b + a , where a and b are different letters. For every n n , we consider the set U(?n) U ( ? n ) of those finite strings over an infinite alphabet with respect to which ?n ? n is unambiguous, and we comprehensively describe its relation to any U(?m) U ( ? m ) , m?n m ? n . Thus, our work features the first approach to a characterisation of sets of strings with respect to which certain fixed morphisms are unambiguous, and it leads to fairly counter-intuitive insights into the relations between such sets. Furthermore, it shows that, among the widely used homogeneous morphisms, most segmented morphisms are optimal in terms of being unambiguous for a preferably large set of strings. Finally, our paper yields several major improvements of crucial techniques previously used for research on the ambiguity of morphisms.

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

combinatorics on words
pattern languages


A two-parameter weighted Lindley distribution and its applications to survival data A two-parameter weighted Lindley distribution is proposed for modeling survival data. The proposed distribution has the property that the hazard rate (mean residual life) function exhibits bathtub (upside-down bathtub) or increasing (decreasing) shapes. Simulation studies are conducted to investigate the performance of the maximum likelihood estimators and the asymptotic confidence intervals of the parameters. Applications of the proposed model to real survival data are presented. (C) 2010 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

lindley distribution
mean residual life function


Lattice Machine Classification based on Contextual Probability In this paper we review Lattice Machine, a learning paradigm that "learns" by generalising data in a consistent, conservative and parsimonious way, and has the advantage of being able to provide additional reliability information for any classification. More specifically, we review the related concepts such as hyper tuple and hyper relation, the three generalising criteria (equilabelledness, maximality, and supportedness) as well as the modelling and classifying algorithms. In an attempt to find a better method for classification in Lattice Machine, we consider the contextual probability which was originally proposed as a measure for approximate reasoning when there is insufficient data. It was later found to be a probability function that has the same classification ability as the data generating probability called primary probability. It was also found to be an alternative way of estimating the primary probability without much model assumption. Consequently, a contextual probability based Bayes classifier can be designed. In this paper we present a new classifier that utilises the Lattice Machine model and generalises the contextual probability based Bayes classifier. We interpret the model as a dense set of data points in the data space and then apply the contextual probability based Bayes classifier. A theorem is presented that allows efficient estimation of the contextual probability based on this interpretation. The proposed classifier is illustrated by examples.

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

lattice machine
contextual probability
classification


mining adaptively frequent closed unlabeled rooted trees in data streams Closed patterns are powerful representatives of frequent patterns, since they eliminate redundant information. We propose a new approach for mining closed unlabeled rooted trees adaptively from data streams that change over time. Our approach is based on an efficient representation of trees and a low complexity notion of relaxed closed trees, and leads to an on-line strategy and an adaptive sliding window technique for dealing with changes over time. More precisely, we first present a general methodology to identify closed patterns in a data stream, using Galois Lattice Theory. Using this methodology, we then develop three closed tree mining algorithms: an incremental one IncTreeNat, a sliding-window based one, WinTreeNat, and finally one that mines closed trees adaptively from data streams, AdaTreeNat. To the best of our knowledge this is the first work on mining frequent closed trees in streaming data varying with time. We give a first experimental evaluation of the proposed algorithms.

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


Solving a linear model of nonfatal risk behavior and injuries in school children A calculating method and computer program have been developed for solving an overdetermined system of linear equations. It was applied for calculation of group risk exposure of school children (1015 years) to nonfatal injuries in sport recreation and playing (SRP). Interviewed non-injured school children were separated into non-overlapping groups of risky behavior. Data on interviewed non-injured and non-interviewed injured children were put into a linear system of equations consisting of a 43 matrix scheme. Each equation represents children of the same age and sex and consists of the percentage of interviewed children grouped into high medium or low risk behavior and of the percentage of injured children. Four methods of calculating the matrix system were evaluated and the best implemented as a new developed computer program. The resulting linear group risk factors enable the prediction of behavior outcome. Data on interviewed injured children were compared with the results obtained. The validation procedure is proposed by testing the sensitivity and robustness of the method.

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

risky behavior
linear model
school children
injuries


Lower bounds for Bayes error estimation We give a short proof of the following result. Let (X,Y) be any distribution on N x {0, 1}, and let (X-1,Y-1),...,(X-n,Y-n) be an i.i.d. sample drawn from this distribution. In discrimination. the Bayes error L* = inf(g)P{g(X) not equal Y} is crucial importance. Here we show that without further conditions on the distribution of (X,Y), no rate-of-convergence results can be obtained. Let phi(n)(X-1,Y-1,...,X-n,Y-n) be an estimate of the Bayes error, and let {phi(n)(.)} be a sequence of such estimates. For any sequence {a(n)} of positive numbers converging to zero, a distribution of (X,Y) may be found such that E{\L* - phi(n)(X-1,Y-1,...,X-n, Y-n)\} greater than or equal to a(n) infinitely often.

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 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 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

statistical pattern recognition
nonparametric estimation
rates of convergence


Stability of Navier-Stokes discretizations on collocated meshes of high anisotropy and the performance of algebraic multigrid solvers A numerical instability is identified in Navier-Stokes discretizations on meshes of high anisotropy. The instability occurs under conditions of low Reynolds number (and in the Stokes limit) for collocated-mesh discretizations based on physical (momentum) interpolation schemes. It is responsible for the poor performance reported for some algebraic multigrid solvers (previously attributed to possible deficiencies in the solvers). The problem may be alleviated by not employing uniformly anisotropic meshes. A graded stretching/compaction that leaves part of the domain spanned by elements of moderate aspect ratio can provide sufficient velocity-pressure coupling to stabilize the system. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

navier-stokes
physical interpolation
fully coupled solutions


Inverse control of discrete-time multivariable systems The inverse control of discrete-time single-input/single-output linear systems is extended to multivariable systems. The extension considered is far from being trivial when a multivariable system possesses interactions and multiple delays, leading to ill-conditioning or even singularity of the problem. A feedback control algorithm suggested is based on decoupling and compensating the plant by preceding it with the inverse controller. The inverse controller is derived by using the regularization of the pseudoinverse of the plant convolution matrix. In this way a regularized multivariable control with a minimum norm is provided. A numerical example of the inverse control of a distillation column is presented.

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

multivariable systems
pseudoinverse
distillation column


Measuring the reliability of knowledge management Instrument development and validation Purpose - As a way of assessing the ability of organizations to discover and manage unexpected failures in organizational capabilities of knowledge management (KM), this study aims to develop a measurement instrument that involves the five reliability dimensions of preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify interpretations, sensitivity to operations, commitment to resilience, and deference to expertise. Design/methodology/approach - To generate measurement items, previous research related to organizational reliability, high reliability theory, mindfulness, and required organizational capabilities of KM was reviewed. The measurement instrument was then verified in terms of reliability and validity, empirically using data from 240 companies in North America. Internal consistency of measurements, measurement item reliability, and construct reliability were examined to ensure the reliability of the instrument. Based on confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modelling, construct validity was also tested. Findings - The reliability evaluation instrument for KM suggested in this study was constructed with four dimensions, preoccupation with failure in KM, sensitivity to KM operations, commitment to resilience in KM, and deference to expertise. The related measurement items were also identified. Practical implications - This instrument is useful for researchers and executives looking for appropriate outcomes through the implementation of KM initiatives. Furthermore, the study provides a starting point for further research on KM reliability. Originality/value - To date, while many of the KM success or failure studies have relied on developing success factors or organizational capability requirements, few studies have been conducted to identify evaluation measures that can assess the cognitive infrastructure that enables simultaneous adaptive learning and provides organizational reliability infrastructure through the management of unwanted, unanticipated, and unexplainable failures in KM-required capabilities.

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

knowledge management
organizational capability
structural equation modelling
high reliability theory
measurement

technology infrastructure
organizational mindfulness
testing and instruments


A balanced output CMOS OTA with wide linear current tunable range A new CMOS-based balanced output operational transconductance amplifier (BOTA) with very wide linear current tunable range is proposed in this paper. The design technique is achieved by the combination of a fully differential transconductor and an electronically variable current gain stage. The transconductance gain of the proposed BOTA can be linearly tuned by an external bias current for more than 4 decades, with less than 4% nonlinearity for the linear input-voltage range of about 0.2Vpeak. The OTA is designed in 0.5?m AMIS technology. The performance of the proposed circuit is discussed and confirmed through application example and PSPICE simulation results.

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

balanced output operational transconductance amplifier (bota)


Numerical comparison of Riemann solvers for astrophysical hydrodynamics The idea of this work is to compare a new positive and entropy stable approximate Riemann solver by Francois Bouchut with a state-of the-art algorithm for astrophysical fluid dynamics. We implemented the new Riemann solver into an astrophysical PPM-code. the Prometheus code, and also made a version with a different, more theoretically grounded higher order algorithm than PPM. We present shock tube tests, two-dimensional instability tests and forced turbulence simulations in three dimensions. We find subtle differences between the codes in the shock tube tests, and in the statistics of the turbulence simulations. The new Riemann solver increases the computational speed without significant loss of accuracy. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

euler equations
compressible turbulenm
godunov methods


Automated classification of landforms on Mars We propose a numerical method for classification and characterization of landforms on Mars. The method provides an alternative to manual geomorphic mapping of the Martian surface. Digital elevation data is used to calculate several topographic attributes for each pixel in a landscape. Unsupervised classification, based on the self-organizing map technique, divides all pixels into mutually exclusive and exhaustive landform classes on the basis of similarity between attribute vectors. The results are displayed as a thematic map of landforms and statistics of attributes are used to assign semantic meaning to the classes. This method is used to produce a geomorphic map of the Terra Cimmeria region on Mars. We assess the quality of the automated classification and discuss differences between results of automated and manual mappings. Potential applications of our method, including crater counting, landscape feature search, and large scale quantitative comparisons of Martian surface morphology, are identified and evaluated.

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

landform classification
self-organizing maps
digital topography models
automated techniques


Alternate motion-compensated prediction for error resilient video coding Since the quality of compressed video is vulnerable to errors, video transmission over unreliable Internet is very challenging today. Two-Hypothesis Motion-Compensated Prediction (THMCP) has been shown to have Error Resilience (ER) capability for video transmission, where each macroblock is predicted from its previous two frames. In this paper, we propose a novel ER approach named Alternate Motion-Compensated Prediction (AMCP). In addition to two-hypothesis prediction, one-hypothesis prediction is alternately used. We use some schemes to determine which kind of prediction should be used, so that in some cases of loss, the propagated error can be first decreased to some extent before it spreads to the subsequent frames. As a result, the expected converged error is less than that obtained from THMCP with fixed weights (THMCPF). Both analysis and simulation results are given to show that AMCP performs better than THMCPF, in terms of both compression efficiency and ER capability.

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


Probabilities in the OWA operator We analyze the use of the probability in the ordered weighted average (OWA). We introduce the probabilistic OWA (POWA) operator. It is an aggregation operator that provides a parameterized family of aggregation operators between the minimum and the maximum that considers the degree of importance that the probability and the OWA operator have in the aggregation. We study some of its main properties and particular cases. We also study the construction of interval and fuzzy numbers with POWA operators. We study the applicability of the POWA operator and we see that it is very broad because all the previous studies that use the probability can be revised with this new approach. We develop an application in a group decision making problem regarding investment selection.

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

owa operator
probability
aggregation operators
decision making


Automated handwashing assistance for persons with dementia using video and a partially observable Markov decision process This paper presents a real-time vision-based system to assist a person with dementia wash their hands. The system uses only video inputs, and assistance is given as either verbal or visual prompts, or through the enlistment of a human caregivers help. The system combines a Bayesian sequential estimation framework for tracking hands and towel, with a decision-theoretic framework for computing policies of action. The decision making system is a partially observable Markov decision process, or POMDP. Decision policies dictating system actions are computed in the POMDP using a point-based approximate solution technique. The tracking and decision making systems are coupled using a heuristic method for temporally segmenting the input video stream based on the continuity of the belief state. A key element of the system is the ability to estimate and adapt to user psychological states, such as awareness and responsiveness. We evaluate the system in three ways. First, we evaluate the hand-tracking system by comparing its outputs to manual annotations and to a simple hand-detection method. Second, we test the POMDP solution methods in simulation, and show that our policies have higher expected return than five other heuristic methods. Third, we report results from a ten-week trial with seven persons moderate-to-severe dementia in a long-term care facility in Toronto, Canada. The subjects washed their hands once a day, with assistance given by our automated system, or by a human caregiver, in alternating two-week periods. We give two detailed case study analyses of the system working during trials, and then show agreement between the system and independent human raters of the same trials.

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

assistive technology
decision theory
human tracking
particle filters
behavior monitoring
user trials