Building a data-mining grid for multiple human brain data analysis E-science is about global collaboration in key areas of science such as cognitive science and brain science, and the next generation of infrastructure such as the Wisdom Web and Knowledge Grids. As a case study, we investigate human multiperception mechanism by cooperatively using various psychological experiments, physiological measurements, and data mining techniques for developing artificial systems which match human ability in specific aspects. In particular, we observe fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and EEG (electroencephalogram) brain activations from the viewpoint of peculiarity oriented mining and propose a way of peculiarity oriented mining for knowledge discovery in multiple human brain data. Based on such experience and needs, we concentrate on the architectural aspect of a brain-informatics portal from the perspective of the Wisdom Web and Knowledge Grids. We describe how to build a data-mining grid on the Wisdom Web for multiaspect human brain data analysis. The proposed methodology attempts to change the perspective of cognitive scientists from a single type of experimental data analysis toward a holistic view at a long-term, global field of vision.

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

the wisdom web
peculiarity oriented mining
multiaspect human brain data analysis

the data-mining grid
brain-informatics portals


lessons from a class on handheld augmented reality game design This paper describes the structure, format, and outcome of an experimental class in Handheld Augmented Reality Game Design conducted as an inter-institutional collaboration between the Georgia Institute of Technology and Savannah College of Art and Design. It analyzes several unique elements of the class, especially the need for rapid prototyping of multiple games when exploring game design using novel game technology, and highlights important issues regarding interdisciplinary collaboration and mobile augmented reality gaming. The paper also discusses several approaches taken by students in completing class assignments, which suggest viable design strategies for the creation of future handheld augmented reality experiences.

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

game design
rapid prototyping
collaboration


A scalable CNN architecture and its application to short exposure stellar images processing on a HPRC A CNN-based algorithm for short exposure image processing and an application-specific computing architecture developed to accelerate its execution are presented. Algorithm is based on a flexible and scalable Cellular Neural Networks (CNN) architecture specifically designed to optimize the projection of CNN kernels on a programmable circuit. The objective of the proposed algorithm is to minimize the adverse effect that atmospheric disturbance has on the images obtained by terrestrial telescopes. Algorithm main features are that it can be adapted to the detection of several astronomical objects and it supports multi-stellar images. The implementation platform made use of a High Performance Reconfigurable Computer (HPRC) combining general purpose standard microprocessors with custom hardware accelerators based on FPGAs, to speed up execution time. The hardware/software partitioning and co-design process have been carried out using high level design tools, instead of traditional Hardware Description Languages (HDLs). Results are presented in terms of circuit area/speed, processing performance and output quality.

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


Towards simulating urban canyon circulations with a 2D lattice Boltzmann model The Lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is a novel fluid modelling technique developed from cellular automata. Instead of numerically solving the continuum NavierStokes equations, it simulates the interactions of mesoscopic particle populations p? using discrete speeds and positions to obtain the macroscopic velocity, density and temperature fields. Localised at neighbouring grid nodes, the method handles complex geometries and multiple fluids more easily than traditional continuum CFD methods.Rothman and Zaleski (Lattice-Gas Cellular Automata: Simple Models of Complex Hydrodynamics (1997) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) discuss LB method theory and development in more detail. To demonstrate the power of the technique, a 2D LB model is first used to perform urban canyon configuration studies at Reynolds number Re=100 for Height to Width (H/W) ratios from 0.125 to 2. Then, thermal lid driven cavity simulations for Re=100 and Rayleigh number Ra=2000 are performed for different locations of a relatively hot wall. The simulated flow fields appear qualitatively consistent with physical flows observed in wind tunnel and field studies, and indicate that LB methods generate results comparable to traditional CFD methods for the selected flow situations.

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


Strategic learning from expository animations: Short- and mid-term effects In an experimental study, we investigated whether making use of a cognitive learning strategy (1) improves learning from different expository animations, (2) leads to an acquisition of knowledge which is available beyond the learning period, and (3) equally benefits students with low and high cognitive ability alike. A total of 152 sixth graders participated in the study: 69 students learned from an animation about the dances of honeybees and 83 students learned from an animation about sailing. With respect to both animations, the students who made use of the learning strategy significantly outperformed the students who had to write a summary. Effect sizes are medium to large. The beneficial effects of the learning strategy were also verified one week after the learning took place. The results of this study do not support the assumption that students with low and high cognitive ability benefit differently from the strategy. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


The connections between general and reproductive senescence and the evolutionary basis of menopause We consider the relationship between the factors responsible for the general biology of aging and those that specifically influence the aging of the reproductive system. To understand this relationship it is necessary to be clear about the evolutionary forces acting on both sets of factors. Only in this way can the correct causal connections be established. Of particular significance is the existence in some species of a distinct period of postreproductive life. This is most striking in the case of the human menopause, for which a particular combination of biological and sociobiological factors appear to be responsible.

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


Foundations for Modeling University Curricula in Terms of Multiple Learning Goal Sets It is important, but very challenging, to design degree programs, so that the sequence of learning activities, topics, and assessments over three to five years give an effective progression in learning of generic skills, discipline-specific learning goals and accreditation competencies. Our CUSP (Course and Unit of Study Portal) system tackles this challenge, by helping subject teachers define the curriculum of their subject, linking it to Faculty and institutional goals. The same information is available to students, enabling them to see how each subject relates to those goals. It then gives additional big-picture views of the degree for the academics responsible for the whole degree, including the ability to easily assess if a degree meets accreditation requirements. CUSP achieves this by exploiting a lightweight semantic mapping approach that gives a highly flexible and scalable way to map learning goals from multiple internal and external accrediting sources across the degree. We report its validation as used in a live university environment, across three diverse faculties, with 277 degrees and 7,810 subject sessions over a period of three years. Data from this evaluation indicates steady improvement in the documentation of the relationships between subjects, assessments, learning outcomes, and program level goals. This is driven by the reporting tools and visualizations provided by CUSP, which enable program designers and lecturers to identify parts of the curriculum that are unclear. This improved documentation of the curriculum enables more accurate and immediate quality reviews. Key contributions of this work are: a validated new approach for curriculum design that helps address the complexity of ensuring learners progressively develop generic skills; and a validated lightweight semantic mapping approach that can flexibly support visualizing the curriculum against multiple sets of learning goal frameworks.

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

curriculum mapping
graduate attributes
learner model


Issues and strategies for integrating HCI in masters level MIS and e-commerce programs Humancomputer interaction (HCI) is an important knowledge component for graduate management information systems (MIS) and E-commerce (EC) programs. HCI topics, such as user-centered design and usability testing, have begun to receive increasing attention in MIS/EC curricula because of their importance in the development of Web-based solutions. This paper discusses issues and approaches for integrating HCI topics into masters level MIS/EC programs. Research on HCI topics related to MIS provides a theoretical foundation for student learning. By bridging research with these curricula, researchers are challenged to examine how HCI approaches can improve user acceptance of new systems. A case study illustrates how HCI topics can be taught as a stand-alone course or incorporated in existing MIS/EC courses. Drawing from the case study, the paper also addresses pedagogical challenges regarding student skill sets, learning outcomes, innovative pedagogies, tools and technology, and HCI issues for advanced IS/EC topics.

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

humancomputer interaction (hci)
e-commerce
masters curriculum
user-centered design


Locating mobile agents in a wide distributed environment Finding the position of a mobile agent in a wide distributed system still represents an open research issue. The various existing mobile agent platforms implement ad hoc naming and location policies, studied to address the requirements of the design choices made. This paper proposes a naming scheme and a location protocol of general validity for mobile agents able to effectively meet all the typical requirements of mobile agent environments and, thus, easy to integrate into different platforms. The paper identifies the main characteristics which an agent naming scheme and a location protocol of general validity should have, and suggests some properties and parameters to be taken into account to evaluate the effectiveness of naming schemes and location protocols. Then, we propose a "human readable" agent naming scheme based on the distributed environment outlined in MASIF, and a suitable location finding protocol called the Search-By-Path-Chase. Both of them are compared with some of the solutions already provided, using the properties and the parameters suggested. The performances are finally evaluated by means of a set of measurements.

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

location protocols
naming
mobile agents
masif


Effective stretching strategies for paraxial lightwave propagation simulations Stretching computation strategies, including the hyperbolic exponential fittings along the lens interface, stretching transformations in z- and r-directions are discussed in this paper. The resulted adapted finite difference schemes are not only simple in structure, but also highly effective and efficient in the solution of paraxial Helmholtz equations for light beam propagation simulations and high performance lens designs. Cylindrically symmetric lens domains are assumed. Simulation results are given to illustrate the aforementioned numerical strategies with laboratory applications. Detailed algorithmic structures are given for immediate programming implementations and for similar lightwave propagation computation issues.

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

hyperbolic exponential fittings
stretching transformations

light beam propagations
paraxial differential equations
uniform and nonuniform grids
finite difference approximations


Parallel computation of continuous Petri nets based on hypergraph partitioning Continuous Petri net can be used for performance analysis or static analysis. The analysis is based on solving the associated ordinary differential equations. This paper presents a method to parallel compute these differential equations. We first map the Petri net to a hypergraph, and then partition the hypergraph to minimize interprocessor communication while maintaining a good load balance; Based on the partition result, we divide the differential equations into several blocks; Finally, we design a parallel computing algorithm to compute these equations. Software hMETIS is used to partition the hypergraph, and software SUNDIALS is used to support the parallel computing of differential equations. Gas station problem and dining philosopher problem have been used to demonstrate the feasibility, accuracy, and scalability of our method.

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

continuous petri net
hypergraph
parallel computing


Multi-view human movement recognition based on fuzzy distances and linear discriminant analysis In this paper, a novel multi-view human movement recognition method is presented. A novel representation of multi-view human movement videos is proposed that is based on learning basic multi-view human movement primitives, called multi-view dynemes. The movement video is represented in a new feature space (called dyneme space) using these multi-view dynemes, thus producing a time invariant multi-view movement representation. Fuzzy distances from the multi-view dynemes are used to represent the human body postures in the dyneme space. Three variants of Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) are evaluated to achieve a discriminant movement representation in a low dimensionality space. The view identification problem is solved either by using a circular block shift procedure followed by the evaluation of the minimum Euclidean distance from any dyneme, or by exploiting the circular shift invariance property of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). The discriminant movement representation combined with camera viewpoint identification and a nearest centroid classification step leads to a high human movement classification accuracy.

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

activity recognition
multi-view dynemes
fuzzy vector quantization


Topological material layout in plates for vibration suppression and wave propagation control We propose a topological material layout method to design elastic plates with optimized properties for vibration suppression and guided transport of vibration energy. The gradient-based optimization algorithm is based on a finite element model of the plate vibrations obtained using the Mindlin plate theory coupled with analytical sensitivity analysis using the adjoint method and an iterative design update procedure based on a mathematical programming tool. We demonstrate the capability of the method by designing bi-material plates that, when subjected to harmonic excitation, either effectively suppress the overall vibration level or alternatively transport energy in predefined paths in the plates, including the realization of a ring wave device.

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

topology design
energy transport
vibration response


Modified repeated median filters We discuss moving window techniques for fast extraction of a signal composed of monotonic trends and abrupt shifts from a noisy time series with irrelevant spikes. Running medians remove spikes and preserve shifts, but they deteriorate in trend periods. Modified trimmed mean filters use a robust scale estimate such as the median absolute deviation about the median (MAD) to select an adaptive amount of trimming. Application of robust regression, particularly of the repeated median, has been suggested for improving upon the median in trend periods. We combine these ideas and construct modified filters based on the repeated median offering better shift preservation. All these filters are compared w.r.t. fundamental analytical properties and in basic data situations. An algorithm for the update of the MAD running in time O(log n) for window width n is presented as well.

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

signal extraction
robust filtering
drifts
jumps
outliers
computational geometry
update algorithm


Efficient measurement of continuous space shortest distance around barriers There are many different metrics used to estimate proximity between locations. These metrics are good in some situations and not so good in others, depending on permissible movement behavior. A complicating issue for general metrics to accurately reflect proximity is the presence of obstacles and barriers prohibiting certain directions of movement. This paper develops a continuous space-based technique for deriving a guaranteed shortest path between two locations that avoids barriers. The problem is formalized mathematically. A solution approach is presented that relies on geographic information system (GIS) functionality to exploit spatial knowledge, making it accessible for use in various kinds of spatial analyses. Results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the solution approach and demonstrate potential for general integration across a range of spatial analysis contexts. The contribution of the paper lies in the formal specification of the problem and an efficient GIS-based solution technique.

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

optimization
convex hull
euclidean distance


The Conditional Diagnosability of k-Ary n-Cubes under the Comparison Diagnosis Model Processor fault diagnosis plays an important role in measuring the reliability of multiprocessor systems and diagnosing many well-known interconnection networks. Conditional diagnosability is a novel measure of diagnosability that adds the additional condition that any faulty set cannot contain all of the neighbors of any vertex in a system. This study investigates some topological properties of k-ary n-cubes, where k >= 4 and n >= 4, and shows that the conditional diagnosability of k-ary n-cubes under the comparison diagnosis model is 6n - 5.

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

comparison diagnosis model
conditional diagnosability
diagnosability
interconnection networks


designing logic circuits for probabilistic computation in the presence of noise As Si CMOS devices are scaled down into the nanoscale regime, current computer architecture approaches are reaching their practical limits. Future nano-architectures will confront devices and interconnections with a large number of inherent defects, which motivates the search for new architectural paradigms. In this paper, we examine probabilistic-based design methodologies for nanoscale computer architectures based onMarkov random fields (MRF). The MRF approach can express arbitrary logic circuits and the logic operation is achieved by maximizing the probability of correct state configurations in the logic network depending on the interaction of neighboring circuit nodes. The computation proceeds via probabilistic propagation of states through the circuit. Crucially, the MRF logic can be implemented in modified CMOS-based circuitry that trades off circuit area and operation speed for the crucial fault tolerance and noise immunity. This paper builds on the recent demonstration that significant immunity to faulty individual devices or dynamically occurring signal errors can be achieved by the propagation of state probabilities over an MRF network. In particular, we are interested in CMOS-based circuits that work reliably at very low supply voltages ( V DD =0.1-0.2 V), where standard CMOS would fail due to thermal and crosstalk noise, and transistor threshold variation. In this paper, we present results for simulated probabilistic test circuits for elementary logic components and well as small circuits taken from the MCNC91 benchmark suite and we show greatly improved noise immunity operating at very low V DD . The MRF framework extends to all levels of a design, where formally optimum probabilistic computation can be implemented as a natural element of the processing structure.

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

probabilistic computing
nanodevices
markov random fields
subthreshold operation
reliability
emerging technologies


Privacy preserving collaborative filtering for SaaS enabling PaaS clouds Recommender systems use, amongst others, a mechanism called collaborative filtering (CF) to predict the rating that a user will give to an item given the ratings of other items provided by other users. While reasonably accurate CF can be achieved with various well-known techniques, preserving the privacy of rating data from individual users poses a significant challenge. Several privacy preserving schemes have, so far, been proposed in prior work. However, while these schemes are theoretically feasible, there are many practical implementation difficulties on real world public cloud computing platforms. In this paper, we present our implementation experience and experimental results on two public Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enabling Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) clouds: the Google App Engine for Java (GAE/J) and the Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk (AWS EBS).a

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

collaborative filtering
privacy
cloud computing


Capacitance matrix technique for avoiding spurious eigenmodes in the solution of hydrodynamic stability problems by Chebyshev collocation method We present a simple technique for avoiding physically spurious eigenmodes that often occur in the solution of hydrodynamic stability problems by the Chebyshev collocation method. The method is demonstrated on the solution of the OrrSommerfeld equation for plane Poiseuille flow. Following the standard approach, the original fourth-order differential equation is factorised into two second-order equations using a vorticity-type auxiliary variable with unknown boundary values which are then eliminated by a capacitance matrix approach. However the elimination is constrained by the conservation of the structure of matrix eigenvalue problem, it can be done in two basically different ways. A straightforward application of the method results in a couple of physically spurious eigenvalues which are either huge or close to zero depending on the way the vorticity boundary conditions are eliminated. The zero eigenvalues can be shifted to any prescribed value and thus removed by a slight modification of the second approach.

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

chebyshev collocation method
hydrodynamic stability


Effect of product mix on multi-product pull control A simulation technique provides less computation especially for searching for optimal settings of complex assembly lines. Product mix influences pull performance. S-KAP uses the least authorisation cards. S-KAP frees PAC resulting in rapid response to product mix variations. BK-CONWIP has better product mix flexibility than its alternatives (GKCS and EKCS).

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

healthcare manufacturing
pull production control strategies
kanban allocation policies
multi-product systems
assembly line


The Design of an Environment for Monitoring and Controlling Remote Sensor Networks In this work we present the design of jWebDust, a software environment for monitoring and controlling sensor networks via a web interface. Our software architecture provides a range of services that allow to create customized applications with minimum implementation effort that are easy to administrate. We present its open architecture, the most important design decisions, and discuss its distinct features and functionalities. jWebDust will allow heterogeneous components to operate in the same sensor network, and the integrated management and control of multiple such networks by defining web-based mechanisms to visualize the network state, the results of queries, and a means to inject queries in the network.

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

multiple sensor networks
virtual sensor networks
tinyos
java


Development of a Web-based Multi-criteria Spatial Decision Support System for the assessment of environmental sustainability of dairy farms Design and development of Web Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System. Incorporation of ELECTRE TRI method into GIS software, in a full integration. Interaction with a Web-based MCDA Algorithms Server to solve multicriteria method. Environmental sustainability analysis of dairy farms using Web MC-SDSS.

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

multicriteria decision aid
geographic information systems
spatial decision support systems
web mcda algorithm server


Decentralized Cooperative SLAM for Sparsely-Communicating Robot Networks: A Centralized-Equivalent Approach Communication between robots is key to performance in cooperative multi-robot systems. In practice, communication connections for information exchange between all robots are not always guaranteed, which adds difficulty in performing state estimation. This paper examines the decentralized cooperative simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem, in which each robot is required to estimate the map and all robot states under a sparsely-communicating and dynamic network. We show how the exact, centralized-equivalent estimate can be obtained by all robots in the network in a decentralized manner even when the network is never fully connected. Furthermore, a robot only needs to consider its own knowledge of the network topology in order to detect when the centralized-equivalent estimate is obtainable. Our approach is validated through more than 250 min of hardware experiments using a team of real robots. The resulting estimates are compared against accurate groundtruth data for all robot poses and landmark positions. In addition, we examined the effects of communication range limit on our algorithm's performance.

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

networked robots
decentralized state estimation
finite sensing and communication
autonomous agents


Using clustering coefficient to construct weighted networks for supervised link prediction Link prediction problem has drawn much attention in the analysis of complex networks. A lot of previous works are devoted for performing link prediction both on weighted and un-weighted networks. Clustering coefficient is a well-studied attribute in graph theory. It measures the degree to which nodes in a graph tend to cluster together. In this paper, we apply normalized clustering coefficient as a weighting scheme to construct weighted networks for supervised link prediction. Unlike the weighting approaches used in some existing literatures which have to consider properties outside the scope of network topology, we take only the topological properties into consideration. Several proximity metrics like Common Neighbors, Jaccards coefficient and AdamicAdar coefficient are chosen as predictor attributes. Learning algorithms like Nave Bayes, J48 and SVM available in the WEKA environment are used to perform binary classification experiments on the constructed networks. Both weighted and un-weighted versions of networks are used and experimental results show that the proposed weighting approach could bring benefits to link prediction.

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

complex networks
link prediction
clustering coefficient


The Existence of Concatenated Codes List-Decodable up to the Hamming Bound It is proven that binary linear concatenated codes with an outer algebraic code (specifically, a folded Reed-Solomon code) and independently and randomly chosen linear inner codes achieve, with high probability, the optimal tradeoff between rate and list-decoding radius. In particular, for any 0 0, there exist concatenated codes of rate at least 0 = 2.

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

code concatenation
folded reed-solomon codes
list decoding
list recovery
random codes


Analysis of nursing records of cardiac-surgery patients based on the nursing process and focusing on nursing outcomes This study analyzed what nurses wrote in narrative nursing notes for cardiac-surgery patients. The nursing notes of 46 patients were analyzed based on the nursing process. Eight patterns were extracted according to different combinations of nursing process components, of which an assessment alone was the most frequent nursing phrase (45.8%), followed by assessment or diagnosis-intervention-outcome (25.9%). The content of the nursing notes was also classified into 15 categories, of which nursing outcomes were recorded more frequently in nursing care driven mainly by physician's order such as disease-related symptom management, insomnia care, respiratory care, and pain control, than in independent nursing care such as education and emotional care. A survey on the attitudes of nurses toward the nursing record revealed that they do not document nursing outcomes as much as they think they do. The main reasons for this discrepancy were insufficient time for recording and lack of knowledge about why, how, and what to evaluate. Even though there is room for improvement, nursing notes represent a useful resource for determining nursing contributions to patient outcomes.

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

nursing documentation
nursing outcome
icnp
outcomes research
cardiac-surgery


Opportunities and challenges for Ge CMOS Control of interfacing field on Ge is a key (Invited Paper) Ge CMOS is very attractive for the post size-scaled Si-CMOS. However, we have to tackle a number of challenges with regard to materials and their interface control. In this paper, we discuss gate stack formation and source/drain engineering, as well as their implications for the performance of n- and p-MOSFETs. Because the Ge interface is significantly degraded by the GeO desorption occurring at a relatively low temperature (?500C), it is very hard to control Ge gate stack formation by a simple thermal budget control. In addition, strong Fermi-level pinning at the Ge/metal interface is a big problem in source/drain engineering. After discussing ways to control this desorption and Fermi-level pinning at the interface in both p-FETs and n-FETs, we discuss our current status of both electron and hole mobilities.

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


Adaptive scanning - a proposal how to scan theoretical predictions over a multi-dimensional parameter space efficiently A method is presented to exploit adaptive integration algorithms using importance sampling, like VEGAS, for the task of scanning theoretical predictions depending on a multi-dimensional parameter space. Usually, a parameter scan is performed with emphasis on certain features of a theoretical prediction. Adaptive integration algorithms are well-suited to perform this task very efficiently. Predictions which depend on parameter spaces with many dimensions call for such an adaptive scanning algorithm. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Synthetic hybrid indicators based on scientific collaboration to quantify and evaluate individual research results Governmental initiatives around scientific policy have progressively raised collaboration to priority status. In this context, a need has arisen to broaden the traditional approach to the analysis and study of research results by descending to the group or even the individual scale and supplementing the output-, productivity-, visibility- and impact-based focus with new measures that emphasize collaboration from the vantage of structural analysis. To this end, the present paper proposes new hybrid indicators for the analysis and evaluation of individual research results, popularity and prestige, that combine bibliometric and structural aspects. A case study was conducted of the nine most productive departments in Carlos III University of Madrid. The findings showed hybridization to be a tool sensitive to traditional indicators, but also to the new demands of modern science as a self-organized system of interaction among individuals, furnishing information on researchers environments and the behaviour and attitudes adopted within those environments.

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

scientific collaboration
hybrid indicators


Enabling a Paging Mechanism in Network-Based Localized Mobility Management Networks Proxy Mobile IPv6, which surmounts limitations of host-based mobility protocols, provides an efficient network-based mobility service in wireless mobile networks. In Proxy Mobile IPv6, new mobility entities such as the mobile access gateway and the local mobility anchor have been introduced. These mobility entities eliminate the burden of implementing host-based mobility stack and signaling cost concentrated to mobile hosts. However, there has been no attempt to apply paging technologies, which can also reduce the signaling cost focusing to the local mobility anchor, into Proxy Mobile IPv6. In this paper, we propose a paging mechanism for Proxy Mobile IPv6 to enable an efficient mobility management that reduces the location update signaling cost for the mobile hosts in the idle mode. The results of performance analysis are presented to demonstrate that the proposed paging mechanism provides the reduced signaling cost compared to Proxy Mobile IPv6 and improves the scalability by supporting large numbers of mobile hosts with the decreased signaling cost under various system parameters.

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


A spline wavelet finite element formulation of thin plate bending The wavelet scaling functions of spline wavelets are used to construct the displacement interpolation functions of triangular and rectangular thin plate elements. The displacement shape functions are then expressed by spline wavelet functions. A spline wavelet finite element formulation of thin plate bending is developed by using the virtual work principle. Two numerical examples have shown that the bending deflections and moments of thin plates agree well with those obtained by the differential equations and conventional elements. It is demonstrated that the current spline wavelet finite element method (FEM) can achieve a high numerical accuracy and converges fast. The proposed spline wavelet finite element formulation has a wide range of applicability since it is developed in the same way like conventional displacement-based FEM.

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

wavelet
finite element method
spline
thin plate


Can a personal website be useful as an information source to assess individual scientists? The case of European highly cited researchers The web is not only the main scholarly communication tool but also an important source of additional information about the individual researchers, their scientific and academic activities and their formally and informally published results. The aim of this study is to investigate whether successful scientists use their personal websites to disseminate their work and career details and to know which specific contents are provided on those sites, in order to check if they could be used in research evaluation. The presence of the highly cited researchers working at European institutions were analysed, a group clearly biased towards senior male researchers working in large countries (United Kingdom and Germany). Results show that about two thirds of them have a personal website, specially the scientists from Denmark, Israel and the United Kingdom. The most frequent disciplines in those websites are economics, mathematics, computer sciences and space sciences, which probably reflect the success of open access subject repositories like RepEc, Arxiv or CiteSeerX. Other pieces of information analysed from the websites include personal and contact data, past experience and description of expertise, current activities and lists of the authors scientific papers. Indicators derived from most of these items can be used for developing a portfolio with evaluation purposes, but the overall availability of them in the population analysed is not representative enough by now for achieving that objective. Reasons for that insufficient coverage and suggestions for improvement are discussed.

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

highly cited researchers
personal website
indicators


An Intelligent Inference System for Robot Hand Optimal Grasp Preshaping This paper presents a novel Intelligent Inference System (IIS) for the determination of an optimum preshape for multifingered robot hand grasping, given object under a manipulation task. The IIS is formed as hybrid agent architecture, by the synthesis of object properties, manipulation task characteristics, grasp space partitioning, low-level kinematical analysis, evaluation of contact wrench patterns via fuzzy approximate reasoning and ANN structure for incremental learning. The IIS is implemented in software with a robot hand simulation.

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

robot hand
grasp preshaping
intelligent inference system

dexterous manipulation
preshape estimation


Neural network ensemble with probabilistic fusion and its application to gait recognition The recognition of a person from his (or her) gait is a relatively new and promising research direction in biometrics since it is noninvasive and human friendly. Gait recognition, however, has the weakness that it is not reliable compared with other biometrics. To increase reliability, we applied a neural network ensemble with probabilistic fusion to the gait recognition problem. To improve recognition accuracy, we define belief as the posterior probability of the pattern and combine the component neural networks of the ensemble based on the belief. Experiments are performed with the NLPR and SOTON databases, and the effectiveness of the proposed method for gait recognition is demonstrated.

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

neural network ensemble
belief
gait recognition


Supporting geographical measures through a new visualization metaphor in spatial OLAP Pivot tables are the de-facto standard paradigm for the visualization of data in the context of multidimensional OLAP analysis. However it is recognized that they are not suited, in their original definition, to support spatio-temporal data analysis (and in particular geographical measures). In this paper, we propose the GeOlaPivot Table, a visual metaphor intended as an extension of the pivot tables specifically conceived to assist decision makers in analyzing geographical measures in spatial data warehouses. In order to show the analysis capabilities of our metaphor we describe it using an example concerning the supervision of infectious diseases in Italy. This approach represents a first effort in adapting advanced geovisualization techniques to SOLAP ones, in order to create a specific visual paradigm for Spatial OLAP able to effectively support and fully exploit spatial multidimensional analysis process. Moreover, we present an architecture for a web-based environment able to support geographical measures in SOLAP analyses exploiting the GeOlaPivot Table visual metaphor.

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 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

data visualization
spatial decision support systems
human computer interaction.


Effect of noisy estimation on turbo-coded modulation over flat Rayleigh fading channels The effects of noisy estimates of fading on turbo-coded modulation are studied in the presence of flat Rayleigh fading, and the channel capacity of the system is calculated to determine the limit above which no reliable transmission is guaranteed. This limit is then compared to the signal-to-noise ratio required for a turbo-coded modulation, scheme to achieve a bit-error-rate of 10(-5). Numerical results are obtained, especially for QAM signals. Our results show that even slightly noisy estimates significantly degrade the theoretical limits related to channel capacities, and that an effective use of capacity-approaching codes can lower the sensitivity to noisy estimates, though noise that exceeds a certain threshold cannot be offset by the performance improvement associated with error-correcting 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 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

flat-rayleigh fading channel
noisy channel estimate
turbo-coded modulation


On fortune telling for health informatics This paper examines the paper of Haux et al. in this issue of this journal. It gives some background on specifics of the German health care system, which underlie the theses and prognoses proposed by Haux et al. In analogy to a forecast of the future of health informatics, which is now 10 years old, I then suggest that these attempts meet two types of challenges: that of overestimating the positive effects of recent advances, which later are found not to scale up; and that of blind spots with respect to unforeseen significant advances. The attempt to find indications of such in the projections of Haux et al. leads, among other, to the conclusion that the projections of direct linkages between patients and care providers may be overoptimistic. As to wheather the deviating opinions matter in the end, it is concluded that the technology advances may require less attention that the restructuring of the health care system required to take advantage of the advances of technology.

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

german health care system
health care
health informatics


Detecting mismatches among experts' ontologies acquired through knowledge elicitation We have constructed a set of ontologies modelled on conceptual structures elicited from several domain experts. Protocols were collected from various experts, who advise on the selection/specification and purchase of personal computers. These protocols were analysed from the perspective of both the processes and the domain knowledge to reflect each expert's inherent conceptualisation of the domain. We are particularly interested in analysing discrepancies within and among such experts' ontologies, and have identified a range of ontology mismatches. A systematic approach to the analysis has been developed; subsequently, we shall develop software tools to support this process.

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

knowledge elicitation
ontology mismatches


Multiple objective genetic algorithms for path-planning optimization in autonomous mobile robots This paper describes the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) for the problem of offline point-to-point autonomous mobile robot path planning. The problem consists of generating "valid" paths or trajectories, for an Holonomic Robot to use to move from a starting position to a destination across a flat map of a terrain, represented by a two-dimensional grid, with obstacles and dangerous ground that the Robot must evade. This means that the GA optimizes possible paths based on two criteria: length and difficulty. First, we decided to use a conventional GA to evaluate its ability to solve this problem (using only one criteria for optimization). Due to the fact that we also wanted to optimize paths under two criteria or objectives, then we extended the conventional GA to implement the ideas of Pareto optimality, making it a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA). We describe useful performance measures and simulation results of the conventional GA and of the MOGA that show that both types of GAs are effective tools for solving the point-to-point path-planning problem.

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

multiple objective optimization
autonomous robots


Classifying inputs and outputs in data envelopment analysis In conventional data envelopment analysis it is assumed that the input versus output status of each of the chosen performance measures is known. In some situations, however, certain performance measures can play either input or output roles. We refer to these performance measures as flexible measures. This paper presents a modification of the standard constant returns to scale DEA model to accommodate such flexible measures. Both an individual DMU model and an aggregate model are suggested as methodologies for deriving the most appropriate designations for flexible measures. We illustrate the application of these models in two practical problem settings.

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

variable status
flexible inputs
flexible outputs
efficiency


Neural Networks and Wireless Communications Modeling This paper presents a free software tool that supports the next-generation Mobile Communications, through the automatic generation of models of components and electronic devices based on neural networks. This tool enables the creation, training, validation and simulation of the model directly from measurements made on devices of interest, using an interface totally oriented to non-experts in neural models. The resulting model can be exported automatically to a traditional circuit simulator to test different scenarios.

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

wireless communications
modeling
simulation
neural networks


modeling the effects of timing parameters on virus propagation In this paper, we investigate epidemiological models to reason about computer viral propagation. We extend the classical homogeneous models to incorporate two timing parameters: Infection delay and user vigilance. We show that these timing parameters greatly influence the propagation of viral epidemics, and that the explicit treatment of these parameters gives rise to a more realistic and accurate propagation model. We validate the new model with simulation analysis.

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

influence simulation analysis delay timing virus model paper user propagation

security
anti-virus
computation
computer virus
effect
epidemiology


Computing multiscale curve and surface skeletons of genus 0 shapes using a global importance measure We present a practical algorithm for computing robust multiscale curve and surface skeletons of 3D objects of genus zero. Based on a model that follows an advection principle, we assign to each point on the skeleton a part of the object surface, called the collapse. The size of the collapse is used as a uniform importance measure for the curve and surface skeleton, so that both can be simplified by imposing a single threshold on this intuitive measure. The simplified skeletons are connected by default, without special precautions, due to the monotonicity of the importance measure. The skeletons possess additional desirable properties: They are centered, robust to noise, hierarchical, and provide a natural skeleton-to-boundary mapping. We present a voxel-based algorithm that is straightforward to implement and simple to use. We illustrate our method on several realistic 3D objects.

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


Imprecise correlated activity in self-organizing maps of spiking neurons How neurons communicate with each other to form effective circuits providing support to functional features of the nervous system is currently under debate. While many experts argue the existence of sparse neural codes based either on oscillations, neural assemblies or synchronous fire chains, other studies defend the necessity of a precise inter-neural communication to arrange efficient neural codes. As it has been demonstrated in neurophysiological studies, in the visual pathway between the retina and the visual cortex of mammals, the correlated activity among neurons becomes less precise as a direct consequence of an increase in the variability of synaptic transmission latencies. Although it is difficult to measure the influence of this reduction of correlated firing precision on the self-organization of cortical maps, it does not preclude the emergence of receptive fields and orientation selectivity maps. This is in close agreement with authors who consider that codes for neural communication are sparse. In this article, integrate-and-fire neural networks are simulated to analyze how changes in the precision of correlated firing among neurons affect self-organization. We observe how by keeping these changes within biologically realistic ranges, orientation selectivity maps can emerge and the features of neuronal receptive fields are significantly affected.

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


On the expressiveness of second-order spider diagrams ? We have developed and formalised second-order spider diagrams. We have defined the language defined by a second-order spider diagrams. Second-order spider diagrams are shown to encode any regular language. Second-order spider diagrams are therefore at least as expressive as monadic-second order logic.

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


Interface properties of annealed and nitrided HTO layers Non-contact measurements of interface state density and oxide charge were compared to surface recombination velocity measurements for their ability to provide a characterization of oxidesilicon interfaces. High-temperature deposited oxide (HTO) layers were used as the test vehicles. Both techniques are shown to agree quite well with each other and with the traditional capacitancevoltage technique. From the point-of-view of process characterization, interface state density is very high in as-deposited films, it is strongly reduced by annealing or nitridation and it is increased again by reoxidation. SIMS nitrogen profiles show that in nitrided HTO layers interface state density is strongly related to nitrogen concentration at the oxidesilicon interface.

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

interface states
high-temperature deposited oxides


Evaluation of copy number variation detection for a SNP array platform Copy Number Variations (CNVs) are usually inferred from Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) arrays by use of some software packages based on given algorithms. However, there is no clear understanding of the performance of these software packages; it is therefore difficult to select one or several software packages for CNV detection based on the SNP array platform.

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

cgh
comparison
performance test
reproducibility test
success rate
birdsuite
dchip
gtc
penncnv


Self-stabilizing 2(m)-clock for unidirectional rings of odd size In this paper, we propose a self-stabilizing K-clock protocol for unidirectional rings with odd size, where K = 2(m) and m is any positive integer. Besides the variable for maintaining the clock, the proposed protocol only requires one additional bit. The worst-case stabilizing time is O(K.n(2)), where n is the ring size.

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

clock synchronization
distributed systems
fault-tolerance
self-stabilization


APPLICATION OF A JAVA-BASED FRAMEWORK TO PARALLEL SIMULATION OF LARGE-SCALE SYSTEMS Large-scale systems, such as computer and telecommunication networks, complex control systems and many others, operate in inherently parallel environments. It follows that there are many opportunities to admit parallelism into both the algorithm of control implementation and simulation of the system operation considered. The paper addresses issues associated with the application of parallel discrete event simulation (PDES). We discuss the PDES terminology and methodology. Particular attention is paid to the software environment CSA&S/PV (Complex Systems Analysis & Simulation-Parallel Version), which provides a framework for simulation experiments performed on parallel computers. CSA&S/PV was applied to investigate several real-life problems. The case studies are presented for both computer and water networks.

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

parallel computations
large-scale systems
computer systems
computer-aided system design


Neural networks-based adaptive bidding with the contract net protocol in multi-robot systems This paper investigates the effectiveness of using the Contract Net Protocol, an auction type system, for controlling task allocation among a group of robots, and presents and evaluates a strategy of using Artificial Neural Networks to formulate adaptive bids within the framework of the Contract Net Protocol. The robots were used in a foraging environment and showed that excellent communication among robots leads to a need for a social control mechanism for managing the robots, such as the Contract Net Protocol. The experiments also confirmed that a moderate benefit can be gained by using adaptive bidding within the framework of the Contract Net Protocol.

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

contract net
neural networks
adaptive bidding

auctions
multi-robot systems
applied artificial intelligence


Generalizing the h- and g-indices We introduce two new measures of the performance of a scientist. One measure, referred to as the h? h ? -index, generalizes the well-known h -index or Hirsch index. The other measure, referred to as the g? g ? -index, generalizes the closely related g -index. We analyze theoretically the relationship between the h? h ? - and g? g ? -indices on the one hand and some simple measures of scientific performance on the other hand. We also study the behavior of the h? h ? - and g? g ? -indices empirically. Some advantages of the h? h ? - and g? g ? -indices over the h- and g-indices are pointed out.

O O O O O O O O O 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

h-index
h? h ? -index h? h ? h? h ? h ?
g-index
g? g ? -index g? g ? g? g ? g ?


Stability degree of switches with finite buffers and non-negligible round-trip time? ? We answer the question on how much memory a packet switch/router needs; more specifically, we propose a systematic method that is simple, rigorous and general for determining the absolute lower bound of packet buffering required by practical switching systems. Accordingly, we introduce a deterministic traffic scenario that stresses the global stability property of finite output queues and demonstrate its usefulness by dimensioning the internal buffer capacity of two popular CIOQ switches.

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


A rubber sheeting algorithm for non-rectangular maps Inherent errors in the conversion process (from maps to digital information) cause variations in the location of common boundary lines between adjacent maps. In order to eliminate these discrepancies and define a continuous database, the popular practice is to adjust the map's boundaries. Preventing relative distortions between the map boundaries (which get altered) and the content of the map necessitates correcting and geometrically improving the map's contents - a process known as "rubber sheeting". The paper presents a new method for rubber sheeting, which is not dependent on the shape of the closed polygon circumscribing the map (to be improved), or on the number of points defining its perimeter. The method also covers the various possible relations between maps, such as adjacent maps, a map included completely within another map, a group of maps, etc. The algorithm is based on a non-rectangular bilinear interpolation over the entire area of the map. It determines systematic and random corrections, and subdivides the maps into separate influencing zones as a function of the map perimeter's shape. The process ensures homogeneity in each map by itself, and, therefore, continuity over an entire database. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

edge matching
geographic information systems (gis)
automated mapping
map transformation
seamless database


Modeling and segmentation of floating foreground and background in videos We propose an on-line algorithm to segment foreground from background in videos captured by a moving camera. In our algorithm, temporal model propagation and spatial model composition are combined to generate foreground and background models, and likelihood maps are computed based on the models. After that, an energy minimization technique is applied to the likelihood maps for segmentation. In the temporal step, block-wise models are transferred from the previous frame using motion information, and pixel-wise foreground/background likelihoods and labels in the current frame are estimated using the models. In the spatial step, another block-wise foreground/background models are constructed based on the models and labels given by the temporal step, and the corresponding per-pixel likelihoods are also generated. A graph-cut algorithm performs segmentation based on the foreground/background likelihood maps, and the segmentation result is employed to update the motion of each segment in a block; the temporal model propagation and the spatial model composition step are re-evaluated based on the updated motions, by which the iterative procedure is implemented. We tested our framework with various challenging videos involving large camera and object motions, significant background changes and clutters.

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

foreground/background segmentation
motion estimation
kernel density estimation
graph-cut


soft kinetic data structures We introduce the framework of soft kinetic data structures (SKDS) . A soft kinetic data structure is an approximate data structure that can be used to answer queries on a set of moving objects with unpredictable motion. We analyze the quality of a soft kinetic data structure by giving a competitive analysis with respect to the dynamics of the system. We illustrate our approach by presenting soft kinetic data structures for maintaining classical data structures: sorted arrays, balanced search trees, heaps, and range trees. We also describe soft kinetic data structures for maintaining the Euclidean minimum spanning trees.

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

framework
quality
competitive analysis
data structures
trees
queries
motion
search

present
systems
minimum spanning tree
approximation
dynamic
moving object


Global exponential stability of a class of memristor-based recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays The paper analyzes a general memristor-based recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays (DRNNs). The dynamic analysis in the paper employs results from the theory of differential equations with discontinuous right-hand side as introduced by Filippov, and some new conditions concerning global exponential stability are obtained. In addition, these conditions do not require the activation functions to be differentiable, the connection weight matrices to be symmetric and the delay functions to be differentiable, our results are mild and more general. Finally, numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of our results.

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

global exponential stability
recurrent neural networks


How large should ensembles of classifiers be? We propose to determine the size of a parallel ensemble by estimating the minimum number of classifiers that are required to obtain stable aggregate predictions. Assuming that majority voting is used, a statistical description of the convergence of the ensemble prediction to its asymptotic (infinite size) limit is given. The analysis of the voting process shows that for most test instances the ensemble prediction stabilizes after only a few classifiers are polled. By contrast, a small but non-negligible fraction of these instances require large numbers of classifier queries to reach stable predictions. Specifically, the fraction of instances whose stable predictions require more than T classifiers for T?1 T ? 1 has a universal form and is proportional to T?1/2 T ? 1 / 2 . The ensemble size is determined as the minimum number of classifiers that are needed to estimate the infinite ensemble prediction at an average confidence level ? ? , close to one. This approach differs from previous proposals, which are based on determining the size for which the prediction error (not the predictions themselves) stabilizes. In particular, it does not require estimates of the generalization performance of the ensemble, which can be unreliable. It has general validity because it is based solely on the statistical description of the convergence of majority voting to its asymptotic limit. Extensive experiments using representative parallel ensembles (bagging and random forest) illustrate the application of the proposed framework in a wide range of classification problems. These experiments show that the optimal ensemble size is very sensitive to the particular classification problem considered.

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

ensemble learning
asymptotic ensemble prediction


Intelligent agents as innovations This paper explores the treatment of intelligent agents as innovations. Past writings in the area of intelligent agents focus on the technical merits and internal workings of agent-based solutions. By adopting a perspective on agents from an innovations point of view, a new and novel description of agents is put forth in terms of their degrees of innovativeness, competitive implications, and perceived characteristics. To facilitate this description, a series of innovation-based theoretical models are utilized as a lens of analysis, namely Kleinschmidt and Coopers (J Prod Innovation Manage 8:240251, 1991) market and technological newness map, Abernathy and Clarks (Res Policy 14:322, 1985) competitive implications framework, and Moore and Benbasats (Inf Syst Res 2:192222, 1991) list of perceived innovating characteristics. Together, these models provide a theoretical foundation by which to describe intelligent agents, yielding new insights and perceptions on this relatively new form of software application.

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


Orthogonality considerations for library searching Nth-order data Identification of chemicals from multi-order( Nth-order) instruments is typically carried out with only first-order Library searches. Simultaneous library searches for all orders of Nth-order data enhances identification of chemicals. Three methods are presented for simultaneous Nth-order Library searches based on measuring the angle between the unknown and reference chemicals present in a library. The first method, called first-order Limited (FOL), consists of unfolding Nth-order data to first-order and using the standard dot product function to compute the angle. The second approach, second-order limited (SOL), unfolds Nth-order data to second-order and uses singular value decomposition to obtain the angle. The third method, Nth-order (NO), computes the angle directly without unfolding. Performance evaluations show the advantages of SOL in search time for large libraries while FOL and NO appear to have a higher degree of selectivity. The methods of FOL and NO are shown to be the same measures but NO has a computational advantage. Computer memory usage for all three methods is also addressed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Soliton-like dispersion-free optical transmission based on optical time-domain fractional Fourier transform In the present article, implementation of the optical time-domain fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) is achieved and a new method for soliton-like dispersion-free optical transmission is proposed. With this method, the pulses' envelope will keep unchanged and non-broadened after transmission under the combined effects of chromatic dispersion and self-phase modulation in the fiber link without any dispersion compensation. Numerical analysis shows how a pulse evolves for different orders of FRFT.

O O O O O O O O B I I 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 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

fractional fourier transform
chromatic dispersion


MPiTOUGH2: A parallel parameter estimation framework for hydrological and hydrogeophysical applications We present a parallel joint hydrogeophysical parameter estimation framework specifically relevant for a class of inverse modeling applications where a large number of simulations of multi-phase, multi-component flow and transport through porous media impose exceedingly large computing demands. A modified LevenbergMarquardt minimization algorithm provides for a robust and efficient calibration of complex models. The optimization framework is based on the parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis tool iTOUGH2, which we have parallelized using the Message Passing Interface in order to address the main computational burden of assessing parameter sensitivities. An underlying layer of hydrological and geophysical forward simulation operators use domain decomposition and parallel iterative Krylov solver techniques. The geophysical forward simulation operators originate from parallel algorithms for electrical and electromagnetic data types that have proven successful in solving large-scale imaging problems arising in geothermal as well as oil and gas exploration applications. We have pursued a consequent merge of the hydrological optimization framework with the geophysical component in order to maximize the efficiencies of the Message Passing Interface. The method offers new possibilities by combining hydrological data with geophysical measurements that involve, for example, time-harmonic electromagnetic fields. We first show improved model resolution capabilities on a synthetic joint inversion example where controlled-source electromagnetic observations are combined with hydrological data simulated from a conservative tracer injection experiment. Next, the method is applied to a 3-D joint inversion of field data from a CO2 injection experiment, where the required multi-phase, multi-component flow and transport simulations are highly computationally demanding. Overall improved data fits are achieved for both CO2 gas mole fractions and observed relative changes in electrical conductivity derived from geophysical measurements.

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

hydrogeophysics
parallel computing
gaussnewton optimization
co2 sequestration


Michell cantilevers constructed within a half strip. Tabulation of selected benchmark results The paper delivers the benchmark results for the Michell cantilevers constructed within a half strip, for selected values of the sigma (T) /sigma (C) ratio, sigma (T) , sigma (C) being the admissible stresses in tension and compression, respectively.

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

michell structures
minimum weight design
topology optimization
trusses


Immunity-based hybrid learning methods for approximator structure and parameter adjustment From the point of view of information processing the immune system is a highly parallel and distributed intelligent system which has learning, memory, and associative retrieval capabilities. In this paper we present two immunity-based hybrid learning approaches for function approximation (or regression) problems that involve adjusting the structure and parameters of spatially localized models (e.g., radial basis function networks). The number and centers of the receptive fields for local models are specified by immunity-based structure adaptation algorithms, while the parameters of the local models, which enter in a linear fashion, are tuned separately using a least-squares method. The effectiveness of the procedure is demonstrated through a nonlinear function approximation problem and a nonlinear dynamical system modeling problem. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

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

radial basis function neural networks
artificial immune systems


Adoption of Internet shopping: the role of consumer innovativeness The projected sales potential for Internet commerce indicates that businesses must understand those consumer characteristics that will Influence consumer adoption of this medium tor shopping. An empirical study conducted here (n = 403) investigates the extent to which open-processing (more general innovativeness) and domain-specific Innovativeness explain the conditions under which consumers move from general Internet usage to a product purchase via the Internet. The results of our study find that generally higher amounts of Internet use (for non-shopping activities) are associated with an increased amount of Internet product purchases. Importantly, however, this relationship is moderated by domain-specific but not general Innovativeness. Implications for business practice and academic research are provided.

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


Averting the privacy risks of smart metering by local data preprocessing More and more renewable sources are integrated into electric power grids worldwide. Their high generation dynamics, however, require power grid operators to monitor electricity generation and demand at a fine temporal resolution. Even small mismatches between supply and demand can impact the power grids stability, and thus ultimately lead to blackouts. As a result, smart metering equipment has been widely deployed to collect real-time information about the current grid load and forward it to utilities in a timely manner. Numerous research works have shown that power consumption data can, however, reveal the nature of used appliances and their mode of operation at high accuracy. This effectively puts user privacy at risk. In this manuscript, we investigate to which extent the local preprocessing of power data can mitigate this risk. We thus compare the efficacy of different preprocessing steps to eliminate characteristic consumption patterns from the data. Our evaluation shows that a combination of these preprocessing steps can provide a balanced trade-off that is in the interests of both users (privacy protection) and utilities (accurate and timely reporting).

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 B I O O O O O O


Attributed goal-oriented analysis method for selecting alternatives of software requirements During software requirements analysis, developers and stakeholders have many alternatives of requirements to be achieved and should make decisions to select an alternative out of them. There are two significant points to be considered for supporting these decision making processes in requirements analysis; 1) dependencies among alternatives and 2) evaluation based on multi-criteria and their trade-off. This paper proposes the technique to address the above two issues by using an extended version of goal-oriented analysis. In goal-oriented analysis, elicited goals and their dependencies are represented with an AND-OR acyclic directed graph. We use this technique to model the dependencies of the alternatives. Furthermore we associate attribute values and their propagation rules with nodes and edges in a goal graph in order to evaluate the alternatives with them. The attributes and their calculation rules greatly depend on the characteristics of a development project. Thus, in our approach, we select and use the attributes and their rules that can be appropriate for the project. TOPSIS method is adopted to show alternatives and their resulting attribute values.

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

requirements analysis
decision making
topsis method

goal-oriented analysis
attribute grammar
attributed graph


Novel auxiliary error compensation design for the adaptive neural control of a constrained flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle This paper investigates the design of auxiliary error compensation for adaptive neural control of the longitudinal dynamics of a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (FAHV) with magnitude constraints on actuators. The control objective pursued is to steer velocity and altitude to follow their respective reference trajectories in the presence of actuator saturation and system uncertainties. To guarantee the exploited controllers robustness with respect to parametric uncertainties, neural network (NN) is applied to approximate the lumped uncertainty of each subsystem of FAHV model. Different from the traditional parameter updating technique, in this paper, the minimal-learning-parameter (MLP) scheme is introduced to estimate the norm rather than the elements of NNs weight vector while the computational load is reduced. The special contribution is that novel auxiliary systems are developed to compensate both the tracking errors and desired control laws, based on which the explored controller can still provide effective tracking of velocity and altitude commands when the actuators are saturated. Finally, numerical simulations are performed to illustrate the command tracking performance of the proposed strategy.

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 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 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

adaptive neural control
actuator saturation

flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (fahv)


Interference Channels With Rate-Limited Feedback We consider the two-user interference channel with rate-limited feedback. Related prior works focus on the case where feedback links have infinite capacity, while no research has been done for the rate-limited feedback problem. Several new challenges arise due to the capacity limitations of the feedback links, both in deriving inner bounds and outer bounds. We study this problem under three different interference models: the El Gamal-Costa deterministic model, the linear deterministic model, and the Gaussian model. For the first two models, we develop an achievable scheme that employs three techniques: Han-Kobayashi message splitting, quantize-and-binning, and decode-and-forward. We also derive new outer bounds for all three models and we show the optimality of our scheme under the linear deterministic model. In the Gaussian case, we propose a transmission strategy that incorporates lattice codes, inspired by the ideas developed in the first two models. For symmetric channel gains, we prove that the gap between the achievable sum rate of the proposed scheme and our new outer bounds is bounded by a constant number of bits, independent of the channel gains.

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

el gamal-costa deterministic model
gaussian interference channel (ic)
multiuser information theory
rate-limited feedback


Optimisation and evaluation of an asynchronous transfer mode teleradiology co-operative system: the experience of the EMERALD and the BONAPARTE projects This paper describes the work carried out to optimise and evaluate in clinical routine a multimedia telemedicine application for co-operative imaging diagnosis. This research has been attained within the framework of two European research projects, namely the EMERALD [1] and the BONAPARTE [2]. A user-centred telemedicine application was developed on an existing advanced broadband multimedia teleradiology platform to exploit the possibilities offered by Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology to support real-time teleconsultation services for medical imaging. The evaluation of this telemedicine system in both projects has been performed with the aim of (1) characterising and optimising the ATM teleradiology platform, minimising the bandwidth requirements without degrading the quality of service offered to users and (2) evaluating the telemedicine system usability to improve the fulfilment of user's needs. The assessment outcomes have provided insights into technical limitations of broadband multimedia technologies for an optimum usage of a teleradiology co-operative diagnosis systems and the organisational difficulties and limitations involved in setting-up these new advanced telemedicine services to achieve the expected clinical benefits.

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

teleradiology
asynchronous transfer mode
usability


Feature-based elimination: Model and empirical comparison Experimental and verbal protocol research suggest that consumers appear to use noncompensatory screening strategies to remove alternatives and simplify complex choice situations prior to making a choice. Existing multi-phased choice models assume that the consumer initially evaluates each alternative to determine whether it should pass the first-stage screen and enter the choice set. The feature-based elimination model proposed in this study allows the consumer to avoid processing information for each alternative when forming the choice set. The consumer is assumed to apply a sequence of noncompensatory screens, similar to the elimination-by-aspects strategy, to form the choice set. An empirical application of the model demonstrates that cross-sectional heterogeneity in screening strategies can also be accommodated. One finding from this application is that heterogeneity in screening strategies may be at least as prevalent as heterogeneity in preferences. A comprehensive empirical comparison of the proposed model with existing two-stage models for scanner panel data shows that the model performs at least as well as all existing models and substantially better than most. The empirical performance of the model, coupled with its theoretical appeal and consistency with actual accounts of decision making in complex situations, make the proposed model an appealing alternative to existing multi-phased choice 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

multi-phase choice models
consideration sets
brand choice models


Classifying slate tile quality using automated learning techniques Slate classification has typically been performed manually by an expert on the basis of an assessment of standard defects that characterize the quality of the slate. We describe an innovative and objective approach to automated classification that eliminates subjectivity and human error. The slate is classified using machine learning techniques based on numeric variables obtained from 2D-3D images captured by a linear 2D camera and a 3D laser scanner, which provide the necessary information on the slate. With a view of obtaining an optimally efficient classification model, we implemented supervised machine learning techniques (support vector machines and multi-layer perceptron neural networks) and non-supervised techniques (cluster analysis and self-organizing maps). The results obtained in our research demonstrate that the error for automated classification was lower than for manual classification. Automated classification also removes the subjectivity implied by manual quality control in the slate classification process. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

slate classification
support vector machines
cluster

multi-layer perceptron
self organizing maps


Bandwidth-Scalable Stereo Audio Coding Based on a Layered Structure In this paper, we propose a bandwidth-scalable stereo audio coding method based on a layered structure. The proposed stereo coding method encodes super-wideband (SWB) stereo signals and is able to decode either wideband (WB) stereo signals or SWB stereo signals, depending on the network congestion. The performance of the proposed stereo coding method is then compared with that of a conventional stereo coding method that separately decodes WB or SWB stereo signals, in terms of subjective quality, algorithmic delay, and Computational complexity. Experimental results show that when stereo audio signals sampled at a rate of 32 kHz are compressed to 64 kbit/s, the proposed method provides significantly better audio quality with a 64-sample shorter algorithmic delay, and comparable computational complexity.

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

bandwidth-scalable audio coding
parametric stereo
super-wideband stereo audio coding


authentication of currency notes through printing technique verification An image analysis based pattern classification method is proposed to authentic the printing process used in printing different texts on currency notes. Features suitable for doing this are selected and then studied to detect fraudulent samples based on the printing method. This classification is done by using Support Vector Machines and Neural Nets. The discriminatory power of the selected features in authenticating the printing process is tested using the Linear Discriminate Analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed framework provides a highly accurate framework for authenticating the printing process in bank notes.

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

security paper documents
printing processes
banknotes
computational forensic