using an implicit min/max kd-tree for doing efficient terrain line of sight calculations The generation of accurate Line of Sight (LOS) visibility information consumes significant resources in large scale synthetic environments such as many-on-many serious games and battlefield simulators. Due to the importance of optimum utilisation of computing resources, a number of LOS algorithms are reported in the literature to either efficiently compute LOS information or reduce the impact of LOS queries on the run-time performance of synthetic environments. From the literature it is known that a k-dimensional tree (kd-tree) based raytracing approach, to calculating LOS information, is efficient. A new implicit min/max kd-tree algorithm is discussed for evaluating LOS queries on large scale spherical terrain. In particular the value of low resolution boundary information, in quickly evaluating the LOS query, is emphasised. The min/max algorithm is empirically compared to other LOS approaches that have either implicitly or explicitly used kd-trees to optimise LOS query evaluation. The min/max algorithm is shown to have comparable performance to these existing LOS algorithms for flat earth, but improved performance when the application domain is extended to spherical earth. An average of a factor 3.0 performance increase is experienced over that of the existing implicit and explicit max kd-tree algorithms on spherical earth. This is achieved by combining the existing kd-tree algorithm with the classic smooth-earth LOS obscuration test and from there the min in min/max kd-tree.

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


runtime analysis of the (1+1) evolutionary algorithm on strings over finite alphabets In this work, we investigate a (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm for optimizing functions over the space {0,..., r } n , where r is a positive integer. We show that for linear functions over {0,1,2} n , the expected runtime time of this algorithm is O( n log n ). This result generalizes an existing result on pseudo-Boolean functions and is derived using drift analysis. We also show that for large values of r , no upper bound for the runtime of the (1+1) Evolutionary Algorithm for linear function on {0,..., r } n can be obtained with this approach nor with any other approach based on drift analysis with weight-independent linear potential functions.

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

evolutionary algorithm
drift analysis
runtime analysis


A novel timing offset estimation method for direct-detection optical OFDM systems A novel timing offset estimation method for DDO-OFDM systems are proposed. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated in terms of mean and mean-square error (MSE) in one experimental system. The experimental results show that the proposed method has smaller MSE higher timing estimation accuracy.

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

orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ofdm)


fault-tolerance and reconfiguration of circulant graphs and hypercubes Several interconnection networks (such as rings, meshes and hypercubes) can be modeled as circulant graphs. As a result, methods previously developed for constructing fault-tolerant solutions of circulant graphs can also be applied to these networks. Among these methods, the one based on the idea of "offsets partitioning" is the most efficient (for circulant graphs). We review this method in this paper, and extend its applications to hypercubes. Moreover, we develop new algorithms to reconfigure circulant graphs and hypercubes. Our results show that the fault-tolerant solutions obtained, and the reconfiguration algorithms developed are efficient.

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

reconfiguration
circulant graphs
hypercubes
networks


A Continuous Implementation of a Second-Variation Optimal Control Method for Space Trajectory Problems The paper describes a continuous second-variation method to solve optimal control problems with terminal constraints where the control is defined on a closed set. The integration of matrix differential equations based on a second-order expansion of a Lagrangian provides linear updates of the control and a locally optimal feedback controller. The process involves a backward and a forward integration stage, which require storing trajectories. A method has been devised to store continuous solutions of ordinary differential equations and compute accurately the continuous expansion of the Lagrangian around a nominal trajectory. Thanks to the continuous approach, the method adapts implicitly the numerical time mesh and provides precise gradient iterates to find an optimal control. The method represents an evolution to the continuous case of discrete second-order techniques of optimal control. The novel method is demonstrated on bangbang optimal control problems, showing its suitability to identify automatically optimal switching points in the control without insight into the switching structure or a choice of the time mesh. A complex space trajectory problem is tackled to demonstrate the numerical robustness of the method to problems with different time scales.

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

calculus of variations
second order
space trajectory optimization
augmented lagrangian
continuous thrust


Plasma detection of NO by a catheter Nitric oxide (NO) released by endothelial cells in response to hemodynamic shear stress is a key controller molecule of the vascular functions and antiatherogenic mechanisms. Endothelial dysfunction is associated with increased cardiovascular events. Therefore, several indirect techniques have been employed to evaluate endothelial function or NO bioavailability. However, a growing body of evidences suggests limitations of the indirect methods for evaluation of NO bioavailability. In years, it has been considered that NO is immediately oxidized or inactivated in blood stream. However, recent studies suggest that NO remain active in blood stream, causing remote biological response. Therefore, measuring plasma NO concentration directly in the circulation will contribute to clarify the kinetics and physiological roles of NO and to evaluate endothelial function. In this article, the measurement of plasma NO concentration using a newly developed catheter-type NO sensor will be described.

O O O O O O O O O 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

nitric oxide (no)
endothelial cell
catheter-type no sensor


Innovative order types as success factors in stock exchange competition Through the worldwide integration of the financial markets, operators of the particular stock exchanges face an increasing competition. Oneif not the most importantalternative to assure their position during this competition is the functional expansion and refinement of their trading rules (market model). However, the design of a market model is a challenging task, due to complex interdependences of the different parts of the trading rules (structural parameters). Therefore a market model cannot be planned at the drawing table and directly afterwards be built up like a house. In order to avoid bad investments, it has to be analyzed carefully, if the new designed market model possesses the required characteristics and produces the desired market outcome. In order to work out this task a prototype implementation of the market model seems to be indispensable, since such a prototype allows for testing the model by game-theoretic experiments and by simulations. In this article, we discuss the benefits, which customers obtain from using the relative or the bracket order as two examples of a functional expansion of a market model. We further augmented the market engineering tool meet2trade to support this new, innovative order types.

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

order types
exchange competition
market engineering


Development of a mobile robotic system for working in the double-hulled structure of a ship ? Shipbuilding processes involve highly dangerous manual welding operations. Welding ship walls inside double-hulled structures presents a particularly hazardous environment for workers. This paper describes the Rail Runner X (RRX), a new robotic system that can move autonomously inside the walls of a double-hulled ship and automatically execute the required welding processes. The RRX robotic system is composed of a mobile platform and a welding robot consisting of a 3P3R serial manipulator. The robot is used to weld U-shaped trajectories located between two longitudinal stiffeners. The mobile platform enables traverse movements onto neighboring longitudinal stiffeners. The entire cross section of the robotic system is small enough to be placed inside the double-hulled structure via a conventional access hole from the outside shipyard floor. The overall engineering design process that led to the final robot solution developed is presented in this paper, including kinematic analysis data and experimental results for verifying the autonomous movement and welding performance.

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

mobile welding robotic system
double-hulled structure
robotics in hazardous fields
mechanism design


practical aggregation of semantical program properties for machine learning based optimization Iterative search combined with machine learning is a promising approach to design optimizing compilers harnessing the complexity of modern computing systems. While traversing a program optimization space, we collect characteristic feature vectors of the program, and use them to discover correlations across programs, target architectures, data sets, and performance. Predictive models can be derived from such correlations, effectively hiding the time-consuming feedback-directed optimization process from the application programmer. One key task of this approach, naturally assigned to compiler experts, is to design relevant features and implement scalable feature extractors, including statistical models that filter the most relevant information from millions of lines of code. This new task turns out to be a very challenging and tedious one from a compiler construction perspective. So far, only a limited set of ad-hoc, largely syntactical features have been devised. Yet machine learning is only able to discover correlations from information it is fed with: it is critical to select topical program features for a given optimization problem in order for this approach to succeed. We propose a general method for systematically generating numerical features from a program. This method puts no restrictions on how to logically and algebraically aggregate semantical properties into numerical features. We illustrate our method on the difficult problem of selecting the best possible combination of 88 available optimizations in GCC. We achieve 74\% of the potential speedup obtained through iterative compilation on a wide range of benchmarks and four different general-purpose and embedded architectures. Our work is particularly relevant to embedded system designers willing to quickly adapt the optimization heuristics of a mainstream compiler to their custom ISA, microarchitecture, benchmark suite and workload. Our method has been integrated with the publicly released MILEPOST GCC [14].

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

speedup
use
performance
design
program optimization
search
select
program
machine learning
method
workload
code
custom
process
programmer
task
order
benchmark
collect
general
microarchitecture
practical
systems
space
aggregate
data
heuristics
complexity
feature
compilation

applications
optimizing compiler
scalability
correlation
direct
timing
informal
combinational
optimality
feedback
critic
embedding
integrability
ad-hoc
statistics
computation
relevance
model
filtering
prediction model
vectorization
architecture
iter
embedded systems


A behavioral scene graph for rule enforcement in interactive virtual assembly sequence planning Most VR development toolkits are proprietary in nature, which make them difficult to interoperate across platforms. Interoperatibility involves synchronizing elements in addition to geometric data, such as object behavior and animation patterns. The commonly used method of data representation in virtual environment is by using a scenegraph structure. The scenegraph is not able to capture the manufacturing attributes and behavior of objects, such as rule enforcement and status information. This leads to the execution of infeasible operations in the Virtual environment. A Virtual Manufacturing Lattice (VML) structure is described here to address the identified limitations of the scenegraph structure for application in virtual manufacturing. The VML is a multiple hierarchy structure, with each node in the hierarchy representing the objects in the virtual environment. The VML is used to augment the scenegraph structure to encapsulate object characteristics at the node level. The nodes are represented by a 4-tuple structure (C,R,T,E) where C is the composition element used to represent object geometry, location and material properties, R is the precedence relationship element used to describe precedence rules between other nodes, T is the trajectory element used to describe motion parameters and interfacing with external subsystems, and E is the event control list used to describe the state of the object. The R and E elements of the 4-tuple are used in enforcing the rules in virtual assembly planning and prohibit the execution infeasible operations in the virtual environment. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

virtual manufacturing
scenegraph
assembly planning


A novel open CNC architecture based on STEP-NC data model and IEC 61499 function blocks Modern manufacturing industries demand computer numeric controllers, having higher level input languages than outdated G-code, and less proprietary vendor dependencies. IEC 61499 is a new standard for distributed measurement and control systems, that enables portability and interoperability of embedded controllers, along with the ease of their mapping to arbitrary distributed networking hardware configurations. This paper demonstrates that the IEC 61499 reference architecture can be successfully used to create a computer numeric controller, offering interoperability, portability, configurability, and distribution characteristics. The layered CNC-FB architecture is proposed, which simplifies the design of a CNC machine controller with the architecture layers responsible for data processing, data storage and execution. In combination with the object-oriented Model-View-Control design pattern, the CNC-FB architecture supports the design framework, in which simulation of the machining becomes natural and inherent part of the design process, with seamless transition from simulation to actual machining. The implemented controller was tested in both the model and on an actual milling machine.

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 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

iec 61499 standard
step-nc
distributed control systems


A self-reconfigurable adaptive FIR filter system on partial reconfiguration platform This paper presents a self-reconfigurable adaptive FIR filter system design using dynamic partial reconfiguration, which has flexibility, power efficiency, advantages of configuration time allowing dynamically inserting or removing adaptive FIR filter modules. This self-reconfigurable adaptive FIR filter is responsible for providing the best solution for realization and autonomous adaptation of FIR filters, and processes the optimal digital signal processing algorithms, which are the low-pass, band-pass and high-pass filter algorithms with various frequencies, for noise removal operations. The proposed stand-alone self-reconfigurable system using Xilinx Virtex4 FPGA and Compact-Flash memory shows the improvement of configuration time and flexibility by using the dynamic partial reconfiguration techniques.

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

partial reconfiguration
adaptive fir filter
fpga


the advantages of web service orchestration in perspective Governments from all over the world are looking for technologies to facilitate the coordination of their inter-agency processes in order to improve the service-delivery to their customers. Web Service Orchestration (WSO) technology supports the coordination of cross-departmental processes. The advantages of WSO for governments, however, are not very clear. As a result, governments hesitate to adopt orchestration technology.Advantages of WSO, as found in literature, have a narrow-focus, mainly concerning technological advantages. The advantages of Workflow Management (WFM), a related technology that has been around for years, are much broader. We found a large gap between the advantages that were found for WSO and WFM. We conducted a case study at a business counter to test whether the advantages of WSO and WFM as found in literature were also found for a practical application of WSO.

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


effects for cooperable and serializable threads Reasoning about the correctness of multithreaded programs is complicated by the potential for unexpected interference between threads. Previous work on controlling thread interference focused on verifying race freedom and/or atomicity. Unfortunately, race freedom is insufficient to prevent unintended thread interference. The notion of atomic blocks provides more semantic guarantees, but offers limited benefits for non-atomic code and it requires bi-modal sequential/multithreaded reasoning (depending on whether code is inside or outside an atomic block). This paper proposes an alternative strategy that uses yield annotations to control thread interference, and we present an effect system for verifying the correctness of these yield annotations. The effect system guarantees that for any preemptively-scheduled execution of a well-formed program, there is a corresponding cooperative execution with equivalent behavior in which context switches happen only at yield annotations. This effect system enables cooperative reasoning: the programmer can adopt the simplifying assumption of cooperative scheduling, even though the program still executes with preemptive scheduling and/or true concurrency on multicore processors. Unlike bimodal sequential/multithreaded reasoning, cooperative reasoning can be applied to all program code.

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


Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of Topics in Time-Stamped Documents We consider the problem of inferring and modeling topics in a sequence of documents with known publication dates. The documents at a given time are each characterized by a topic and the topics are drawn from a mixture model. The proposed model infers the change in the topic mixture weights as a function of time. The details of this general framework may take different forms, depending on the specifics of the model. For the examples considered here, we examine base measures based on independent multinomial-Dirichlet measures for representation of topic-dependent word counts. The form of the hierarchical model allows efficient variational Bayesian inference, of interest for large-scale problems. We demonstrate results and make comparisons to the model when the dynamic character is removed, and also compare to latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and Topics over Time (TOT). We consider a database of Neural Information Processing Systems papers as well as the US Presidential State of the Union addresses from 1790 to 2008.

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

hierarchical models
variational bayes
dirichlet process
text modeling


Workflow management and resource discovery for an intelligent grid A computational grid provides coordinated and transparent access to computing resources for grid users. Workflow management and resource discovery are two important functions of an intelligent grid. Workflow management refers to automatic workflow creation and coordinated workflow execution, and resource discovery facilitates resource allocation and claiming. In this paper we discuss workflow management and resource discovery in an intelligent grid environment.

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

grid computing
process coordination
planning
matchmaking


Exact performance of error estimators for discrete classifiers Discrete classification problems abound in pattern recognition and data mining applications. One of the most common discrete rules is the discrete histogram rule. This paper presents exact formulas for the computation of bias, variance, and RMS of the resubstitution and leave-one-out error estimators, for the discrete histogram rule. We also describe an algorithm to compute the exact probability distribution of resubstitution and leave-one-out, as well as their deviations from the true error rate. Using a parametric Zipf model, we compute the exact performance of resubstitution and leave-one-out, for varying expected true error, number of samples, and classifier complexity (number of bins). We compare this to approximate performance measures-computed by Monte-Carlo samplingof 10-repeated 4-fold cross-validation and the 0.632 bootstrap error estimator. Our results show that resubstitution is low-biased but much less variable than leave-one-out, and is effectively the superior error estimator between the two, provided classifier complexity is low. In addition, our results indicate that the overall performance of resubstitution, as measured by the RMS, can be substantially better than the 10-repeated 4-fold cross-validation estimator, and even comparable to the 0.632 bootstrap estimator, provided that classifier complexity is low and the expected error rates are moderate. In addition to the results discussed in the paper, we provide an extensive set of plots that can be accessed on a companion website, at the URL http://ee.tamu.edu/? ? edward/exact_discrete.

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

discrete classification
histogram rule
resubstitution
bootstrap

error estimation
leave-one-out
cross-validation


An artificial immune system based algorithm to solve unequal area facility layout problem This study introduces an artificial immune system (AIS) based algorithm to solve the unequal area facility layout problem (FLP) with flexible bay structure (FBS). The proposed clonal selection algorithm (CSA) has a new encoding and a novel procedure to cope with dummy departments that are introduced to fill the empty space in the facility area. The algorithm showed consistent performance for the 25 test problem cases studied. The problems with 100 and 125 were studied with FBS first time in the literature. CSA provided four new best FBS solutions and reached to sixteen best-so-far FBS solutions. Further, the two very large size test problems were solved first time using FBS representation, and results significantly improved the previous best known solutions. The overall results state that CSA with FBS representation was successful in 95.65% of the test problems when compared with the best-so-far FBS results and 90.90% compared with the best known solutions that have not used FBS representation.

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

artificial immune system
clonal selection algorithm
unequal area facility layout problem
flexible bay structure


complex events and actions to control cyber-physical systems Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are controlled complex technical systems. On one hand they do exist and behave in the physical world with their dedicated physical and technical rules. On the other hand they are controlled according to certain policies -- frequently by a "tandem" of control systems and human operators. Modern cars, aircrafts, power grids, production lines etc. are typical cyber-physical systems. The unprecedented technology development has enabled these systems to play an increasingly central role in modern societies. However, to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of CPS operations is always a challenging task since they are often heterogeneous, large-scale and very complex for conventional software systems. In this paper we propose a novel rule-based approach combining deductive and reactive rules to specify and describe CPS. Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules are used to detect situations of interest in CPS and issuing (complex) control actions, respectively. This allows us to focus on the "what" of CPS control (situation detection, reaction specification) and leaves the "how" to a well defined event and action engine. Whereas events are treated in CPS much the same as in other fields actions are quite different because they happen in the real world. We describe an approach to CPS actions which takes these important particularities into account. Another important issue is the integration of physical models into event and action processing. Temporal aspects play a central role here. Our approach enables us to control CPSs under both normal and exceptional conditions in a flexible and efficient way. In order to illustrate the basic features and expressivities of the proposed approach we consider realistic industrial situations.

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

system control
logic based control language
cyber physical systems
simulation integration


Exploring the relationship between receiving and offering online social support: A dual social support model Drawing on the taxonomy of social support and the transactional model of stress and coping, we proposed a dual social support model to study online social support exchange behaviors. Our model predicts that receiving problem-focused and emotion-focused support from others enhances coping resources; in turn, these coping resources are the primary drivers of the willingness to offer support to others. We empirically tested the proposed dual social support model using data collected from 212 users of online support communities. The results indicate that the problem- and emotion-focused mechanisms simultaneously, yet differentially, determine the willingness to offer support.

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

dual social support model
social support
willingness to offer support

community identification
online support community
self-efficacy


An efficient terminal and model order reduction algorithm The paper proposes an efficient terminal and model order reduction method for compact modeling of interconnect circuits with many terminals. The new method is inspired by the recently proposed terminal reduction method, SVDMOR [P. Feldmann, F. Liu, Sparse and efficient reduced order modeling of linear subcircuits with large number of terminals, in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), 2004, pp. 88-92]. But different from SVDMOR, the new method considers higher order moment information for terminal responses during the terminal reduction and separately applies singular value decomposition (SVD) on both input and output terminals for low-rank approximations. This is in contrast to the SVDMOR method where input and output terminal responses are approximated by SVD at the same time, which can lead to large errors when the numbers of inputs and outputs are quite different. We analyze the passivity requirements for SVD-based terminal and model order reduction and show that the combined passive terminal and MOR using SVD method will not lead an effective terminal reduction in general. Our experimental results show that the proposed ESVDMOR method outperforms the SVDMOR method in terms of accuracy for the same reduced model sizes when the numbers of input and output terminals are quite different. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

model order reduction
terminal reduction
interconnect


On the numerical damping of time integrators for coupled mechatronic systems The generalized-? time integrator is considered for the simulation of mechatronic systems. In this context, the fundamental concept of numerical damping is analysed for coupled sets of first and second-order differentialalgebraic equations. First, it appears that the algebraic variables do not influence the spectral properties of the dynamic variables. Second, we demonstrate that the coupling between the dynamic variables does not influence the high-frequency spectral response, so that the numerical damping can be determined as usual from elementary characteristic polynomials. Those results are exploited to assess the stability properties of the scheme and to select an algorithm with optimal damping properties.

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 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

generalized-? scheme
coupled problems
flexible multibody dynamics
mechatronics


On testing single connectedness in directed graphs and some related problems We give improved algorithms to test single-connectedness of a graph. An example shows our runtime bound is tight.

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

depth first search
unique paths
connectivity
np-complete


Anisotropic and piezoelectric materials fracture analysis by BEM A mixed boundary element approach for two-dimensional anisotropic and piezoelectric fracture mechanics problems is presented in this paper. The numerical approach is based on displacement and traction integral equations for external and crack boundaries, respectively. Integrals with strongly singular and hypersingular kernels are analytically transformed into weakly singular and regular integrals prior to any numerical evaluation. This is achieved by the simple election of an integration variable consistent with the material characteristic parameters. The generality of the method allows for the use of curved and quarter-point elements and the evaluation of stress and electric displacement intensity factors from nodal values next to the crack tip. Several crack problems in anisotropic and piezoelectric materials are solved. The obtained results are in good agreement with previous solutions for cases where these solutions exist. The present BE approach is more general and simple than previous procedures and has allowed for solution of a variety of crack problems including curved cracks in piezoelectric materials which had never been studied before.

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

boundary element method
piezoelectric solids
anisotropic solids
curved crack
quarter-point element


Algorithms for Joint Optimization of Stability and Diversity in Planning Combinatorial Libraries of Chimeric Proteins In engineering protein variants by constructing and screening combinatorial libraries of chimeric proteins, two complementary and competing goals are desired: the new proteins must be similar enough to the evolutionarily-selected wild-type proteins to be stably folded, and they must be different enough to display functional variation. We present here the first method, Staversity, to simultaneously optimize stability and diversity in selecting sets of breakpoint locations for site-directed recombination. Our goal is to uncover all "undominated'' breakpoint sets, for which no other breakpoint set is better in both factors. Our first algorithm finds the undominated sets serving as the vertices of the lower envelope of the two-dimensional (stability and diversity) convex hull containing all possible breakpoint sets. Our second algorithm identifies additional breakpoint sets in the concavities that are either undominated or dominated only by undiscovered breakpoint sets within a distance bound computed by the algorithm. Both algorithms are efficient, requiring only time polynomial in the numbers of residues and breakpoints, while characterizing a space defined by an exponential number of possible breakpoint sets. We applied Staversity to identify 2-10 breakpoint plans for different sets of parent proteins taken from the purE family, as well as for parent proteins TEM-1 and PSE-4 from the beta-lactamase family. The average normalized distance between our plans and the lower bound for optimal plans is around 2%. Our plans dominate most (60-90% on average for each parent set) of the plans found by other possible approaches, random sampling or explicit optimization for stability with implicit optimization for diversity. The identified breakpoint sets provide a compact representation of good plans, enabling a protein engineer to understand and account for the trade-offs between two key considerations in combinatorial chimeragenesis.

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

dynamic programming
experiment planning
protein engineering
site-directed recombination


Hotswapping Linux kernel modules Contemporary operating system kernels are able to improve their functionality by installing kernel extensions at runtime. However, when an existing kernel extension needs to be upgraded, it must be completely removed before the new kernel extension is installed. Consequently, the new kernel extension needs to be run from the beginning, which also influences the applications using this kernel extension. This work describes the design and implementation of a Linux module system that supports hotswapping, in which a module can be replaced while it is in use. Rather than completely removing the old module, the new module can inherit the state held by the old module so the dependent applications are not affected. For example, a Linux file system module can be hotswapped without unmounting the corresponding partitions and terminating the applications that use these partitions. The proposed system is implemented on Linux kernel 2.6.11. Existing modules can be loaded into the hotswap system without change and can be hotswapped by changing only a few lines. Additionally, the hotswap system does not impose any runtime overhead on module invocations.

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

hotswapping
linux kernel
module
operating system


An Estimation Method of Sound Source Orientation Using Eigenspace Variation of Spatial Correlation Matrix A method to estimate sound source orientation in a reverberant room using a microphone array is proposed. We extend the conventional modeling of a room transfer function based on the image method in order to take into account the directivity of a sound source. With this extension, a transfer function between a sound source and a listener (or a microphone) is described by the superposition of transfer functions from each image source to the listener multiplied by the source directivity; thus, the sound source orientation can be estimated by analyzing how the image sources are distributed (power distribution of image sources) from observed signals. We applied eigenvalue analysis to the spatial correlation matrix of the microphone array observation to obtain the power distribution of image sources. Bsed on the assumption that the spatial correlation matrix for each set of source position and orientation is known a priori, the variation of the eigenspace can be modeled. By comparing the eigenspace of observed signals and that of pre-learned models, we estimated the sound source orientation. Through experiments using seven microphones, the sound source orientation was estimated with high accuracy by increasing the reverberation time of a room.

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

microphone array
sound source orientation
transfer function
spatial correlation matrix


Weighted operators based on dissimilarity function ? This paper talks about weighted operators based on dissimilarity function and discusses the monotone non-decreasingness of these operators, i.e., it looks for conditions leading to aggregation operators. Moreover, the paper discusses the shift-invariance and weak monotone non-decreasingness of mentioned operators. It discusses minimization based operators A w , D , A g , D , where w w is a weighting vector, g g is a vector of weighting functions, and D is a dissimilarity function D(x,y)=(f(x)-f(y))2 D ( x , y ) = ( f ( x ) - f ( y ) ) 2 . Following Aw,D A w , D we recognize the class of arithmetic means, ordered weighted averaging OWA operators and their extensions. Operators Aw,D A w , D are monotone non-decreasing, and hence shift-invariant and weak monotone non-decreasing, too. By the operators Ag,D A g , D we introduce a generalization of the operators Aw,D A w , D . The operators Ag,D A g , D cover the class of mixture operators, quasi-mixture operators, and their extensions. In general, these operators need not be non-decreasing, nor shift-invariant, and hence nor weak monotone non-decreasing.

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 O O O O O O O O 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

aggregation operator
monotonicity
weak monotonicity


A fault-tolerant routing algorithm in HyperX topology based on unsafety vectors HyperX is a promising high-radix topology proposed by a group of researchers in HP laboratories. The topology offers numerous advantages of high-radix routers, among which are very low diameter and low average distance. Increasing degree of routers and growth of network size intensifies failure probability of routers. Thereby, the essence of a routing algorithm with fault-tolerance capability is inevitable. In this paper, for the first time, a fault-tolerant routing algorithm for HyperX topology is suggested. The proposed algorithm is based on the concept of unsafety vectors by which the unsafety degree of each node is calculated depending on its faulty neighbors. For each step of the routing, the node with the lowest number of faulty neighbors is selected. The neighbors are located along the path of message from source to destination. Furthermore, we analytically have induced some properties of the proposed algorithm. Yet, an applied example for step by step illustration of the functionality of the algorithm is given showing its efficient performance even in the presence of catastrophic failures. The performance of proposed routing algorithm is evaluated by the simulation results of various workloads signifying the accuracy and integrity of the suggested algorithm.

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

high-radix routers
fault-tolerant routing
performance evaluation


Rational homotopy theory for computing colorability of simplicial complexes We show that the vertex coloring problem for finite simplicial complexes can be translated into the algebraic homotopy problem of ellipticity for rational spaces. We follow the ideas of LechugaMurillo for the classical vertex coloring of graphs.

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


Construction of concept granule based on rough set and representation of knowledge-based complex system The isomorphic relationship between indiscernibility relation in rough set theory and nominal scale in formal concept analysis was studied in this paper, upon which the conceptual elements were constructed as the basic units of internal elements in a knowledge-based complex system. The nature of the association between conceptual elements was studied in this paper, where the definition and properties of association intensity were provided. Furthermore, concept granules were constructed by studying the mapping between conceptual elements. The general forms of expansion and aggregation of concept granules were also given. The theories in the study laid the foundation for evolutionary analysis of knowledge-based complex system, and offered a referential model to the studies on knowledge evolution of ontology engineering.

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

formal concept analysis
rough set
concept granule


approximations for the isoperimetric and spectral profile of graphs and related parameters The spectral profile of a graph is a natural generalization of the classical notion of its Rayleigh quotient. Roughly speaking, given a graph G, for each 0 G (?) minimizes the Rayleigh quotient (from the variational characterization) of the spectral gap of the Laplacian matrix of G over vectors with support at most ? over a suitable probability measure. Formally, the spectral profile ? G of a graph G is a function ? G : [0,1/2] -> R defined as: ? G (?) def= min x? R V d(supp(x))? ? (?g ij (x i -x j ) 2 )/(? i d i x i 2 ) where g ij is the weight of the edge (i,j) in the graph, d i is the degree of vertex i, and d(\supp(x)) is the fraction of edges incident on vertices within the support of vector x. While the notion of the spectral profile has numerous applications in Markov chain, it is also is closely tied to its isoperimetric profile of a graph. Specifically, the spectral profile is a relaxation for the problem of approximating edge expansion of small sets in graphs. In this work, we obtain an efficient algorithm that yields a log(1/?)-factor approximation for the value of ? G (?). By virtue of its connection to edge-expansion, we also obtain an algorithm for the problem of approximating edge expansion of small linear sized sets in a graph. This problem was recently shown to be intimately connected to the Unique Games Conjecture in [18]. Finally, we extend the techniques to obtain approximation algorithms with similar guarantees for restricted eigenvalue problems on diagonally dominant matrices.

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

graph expansion
approximation algorithm
small-set expansion
semidefinite programming
sparse principal component analysis


relating average and discounted costs for quantitative analysis of timed systems Quantitative analysis and controller synthesis problems for reactive real-time systems can be formalized as optimization problems on timed automata, timed games, and their probabilistic extensions. The limiting average cost and the discounted cost are two standard criteria for such optimization problems. In theory of finite-state probabilistic systems, a number of interesting results are available relating the optimal values according to these two different performance objectives. These results, however, do not directly apply to timed systems due to the infinite state-space of clock valuations. In this paper, we present some conditions under which the existence of the limit of optimal discounted cost objective implies the the existence of limiting average cost to the same value. Using these results we answer an open question posed by Fahrenberg and Larsen, and give simpler proofs of some known decidability results on (probabilistic) timed automata. We also show the determinacy and decidability of average-time games on timed automata, and expected average-time games on probabilistic timed automata.

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


Hiding sensitive knowledge without side effects Sensitive knowledge hiding in large transactional databases is one of the major goals of privacy preserving data mining. However, it is only recently that researchers were able to identify exact solutions for the hiding of knowledge, depicted in the form of sensitive frequent itemsets and their related association rules. Exact solutions allow for the hiding of vulnerable knowledge without any critical compromises, such as the hiding of nonsensitive patterns or the accidental uncovering of infrequent itemsets, amongst the frequent ones, in the sanitized outcome. In this paper, we highlight the process of border revision, which plays a significant role towards the identification of exact hiding solutions, and we provide efficient algorithms for the computation of the revised borders. Furthermore, we review two algorithms that identify exact hiding solutions, and we extend the functionality of one of them to effectively identify exact solutions for a wider range of problems (than its original counterpart). Following that, we introduce a novel framework for decomposition and parallel solving of hiding problems, which are handled by each of these approaches. This framework improves to a substantial degree the size of the problems that both algorithms can handle and significantly decreases their runtime. Through experimentation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches toward providing high quality knowledge hiding solutions.

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

association rule hiding
borders of frequent itemsets
parallelization


A Novel Technique for the Direct Determination of Multimode Equivalent Circuit Models for Substrate Integrated Waveguide Discontinuities A novel technique is presented for the automatic, self-consistent and direct determination of wide-band lumped-element equivalent circuit models (if substrate integrated waveguide discontinuities. This technique is based on the full-wave analysis of substrate integrated waveguide components by using the Boundary Integral-Resonant Mode Expansion method, which provides a generalized admittance matrix of the components in the form of a pole expansion in the frequency domain. This expression of the admittance matrix permits to directly identify the topology of a multimodal equivalent circuit and the values of its lumped elements, thus avoiding any initial guess or fitting procedure. The basic theory of the full-wave analysis method and the procedure for determining the equivalent circuit model are reported. The features of the proposed technique are detailed through the modeling of an iris-like discontinuity. Moreover, this technique is validated by modeling substrate integrated waveguide filters, whose frequency response is compared with numerical and experimental results. The proposed method can be adopted to obtain libraries of parametric models of substrate integrated waveguide discontinuities, which can be included in computer aided design tools. The multimodal parametric model of an iris-like discontinuity is presented and discussed. C 2008 Wiley Periodicals. Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 19: 423-433,2009.

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

equivalent circuit models
waveguide discontinuities

multiport circuits
substrate integrated waveguides


A model of the electrical behaviour of myelinated sensory nerve fibres based on human data Calculation of the response of human myelinated sensory nerve fibres to spinal cord stimulation initiated the development of a fibre model based on electrophysiological and morphometric data for human sensory nerve fibres. The model encompasses a mathematical description of the kinetics of the nodal membrane, and a non-linear fibre geometry. Fine tuning of only a few, not well-established parameters was performed by fitting the shape of a propagating action potential and its diameter-dependent propagation velocity. The quantitative behaviour of this model corresponds better to experimentally determined human fibre properties than other mammalian, nonhuman models do. Typical characteristics, such as the shape of the action potential, the propagation velocity and the strength-duration behaviour show a good fit with experimental data, The introduced diameter-dependent parameters did not result in a noticeable diameter dependency of action potential duration and refractory period. The presented model provides an improved tool to analyse the electrical behaviour of human myelinated sensory nerve fibres.

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

human nerve fibre
mathematical model
conduction velocity
chronaxie


AlterBBN:

A

program

for

calculating

the

BBN

abundances

of

the

elements

in

alternative

cosmologies

We

describe

AlterBBN,

a

public

C

program

for

evaluating

the

abundances

of

the

elements

generated

by

Big-Bang

Nucleosynthesis

(BBN).

This

program

enables

the

user

to

compute

the

abundances

of

the

elements

in

the

Standard

Model

of

cosmology,

and

additionally

provides

possibilities

to

alter

the

assumptions

of

the

cosmological

model

in

order

to

study

their

consequences

on

the

abundances

of

the

elements.

In

particular

the

baryon-to-photon

ratio,

the

effective

number

of

neutrinos

and

the

neutron

lifetime,

as

well

as

the

expansion

rate

and

the

entropy

content

of

the

Universe

during

BBN

can

be

modified

in

AlterBBN.

Such

features

allow

the

user

to

test

the

cosmological

models

by

confronting

them

to

BBN

constraints.

A

presentation

of

the

physics

of

BBN

and

the

features

of

AlterBBN

is

provided

here

under

the

form

of

a

manual.

Program

title:

AlterBBN

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen?s

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Gnu

General

Public

License

version

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

C

Standard

compliant)

Computer:

or

PC,

Mac

Operating

system:

Linux,

MacOS

RAM:

Mb

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

Calculation

of

the

abundances

of

the

elements

during

Big-Bang

Nucleosynthesis

(BBN).

Solution

method:

AlterBBN

computes

the

abundances

of

the

elements

by

integrating

the

BBN

differential

equations

thanks

to

a

second-order

RungeKutta

method,

obtaining

a

matrix

equation

from

implicit

differencing

and

solving

this

equation

using

Gaussian

elimination.

Unusual

features:

AlterBBN

includes

the

possibility

of

altering

the

underlying

cosmological

model

and

testing

the

influence

of

the

cosmological

assumptions

on

the

abundances

of

the

elements.

Uncertainties

can

be

evaluated

by

computing

the

abundances

of

the

elements

using

lower

or

higher

limits

of

the

nuclear

reaction

rates.

Running

time:

Compilation:

Less

than

minute.

Running:

Less

than

second.

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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 the semantic grid: Putting knowledge to work in design optimisation Modern computational Problem Solving Environments (PSEs) become more and more complex and knowledge intensive in terms of their integrated toolsets, in particular for engineering design search and optimization. Whether these toolsets can be assembled effectively to produce satisfactory results depends heavily on using the best domain practice and following decisions made by skilled engineers in practical situations. In this paper, a knowledge based approach is used to acquire this knowledge from existing sources and model it in a maintainable fashion. Ontologies are used to develop the conceptualization of a knowledge base. In order to reuse this knowledge to provide guidance at knowledge intensive points, we propose a knowledge based advisor, which can give a context- aware critique to guide users through effective operations of building domain workflows. The concept of a state panel is proposed to collect system state information, which is then reasoned about together with various task models in the JESS ( Java Expert System Shell) environment. Two reasoning strategies are designed for different advising styles. A multilayer and client-server style architecture is proposed to illustrate how this advisor can be deployed to make available its knowledge advising service to a real workflow construction PSE in a maintainable fashion. Throughout we use the example of these knowledge services in the context of design optimization in engineering.

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

knowledge engineering
ontology
xml
production rules
workflow planning


Small hydro power plant identification using NNARX structure A feedforward multi-layer perceptron neural network structure is developed to model the nonlinear dynamic relationship between input and output of a hydro power plant connected as single machine infinite bus system. Two independent second-order neural network nonlinear auto-regressive with exogenous signal models are used in the study. The structure selection of each independent model is based on various validation tests. The optimal brain surgeon pruning strategy adopted for optimizing the neural network structure. The network performance is studied for fixed and change in operating point.

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

single machine infinite bus
identification
neural network


Programming With Time Cyber-physical programming with Impromptu The act of computer programming is generally considered to be temporally removed from a computer program's execution. In this paper we discuss the idea of programming as an activity that takes place within the temporal bounds of a real-time computational process and its interactions with the physical world. We ground these ideas within the context of livecoding - a live audiovisual performance practice. We then describe how the development of the programming environment "Impromptu" has addressed our ideas of programming with time and the notion of the programmer as an agent in a cyber-physical system.

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

design
experimentation
languages
human factors
concurrency
cyber-physical systems


design of cooperative vehicle safety systems based on tight coupling of communication, computing and physical vehicle dynamics One of the main characteristics of a Cyber Physical System (CPS) is the tight coupling of the computing and communications aspects of the system with its physical dynamics. In this paper, we examine this characteristic for a cooperative vehicle safety (CVS) system, and identify how the design and operation of such CPSs should consider this tight coupling. In CVS systems, vehicles broadcast their physical state information over a shared wireless network to allow their neighbors to track them and predict possible collisions. The physical dynamics of vehicle movement and the required accuracy from tracking process dictate certain load on the network. The network performance is directly affected by the amount of offered load, and in turn directly affects the tracking process and its required load. The tight mutual dependence of physical dynamics of vehicle (physical component), estimation/tracking process and communication process (cyber components) require a new look at how such systems are designed and operated. We consider these factors and propose methods to simplify the design procedure for such tightly coupled systems. The method includes modeling the subcomponent of the CPS and devising interaction and control algorithms to operate them. The proposed methods are compared with methods based on separate design of components that deal with physical and cyber aspects. Through simulation experiments we show significant gains in performance when CPS design considerations are respected.

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

dsrc
cyber physical systems
vehicular adhoc network
estimation


A simple proof of the necessity of the failure detector Sigma to implement an atomic register in asynchronous message-passing systems This paper presents a simple proof that shows that the quorum failure detector class (denoted Sigma) is the weakest failure detector class required to implement all atomic read/write register in all asynchronous message-passing system prone to all arbitrary number of process crashes. This proof is based on a new reduction algorithm ill which all the variables are bounded. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

atomic register
weakest failure detector

concurrency
distributed algorithms
fault-tolerance
theory of computation
asynchronous message-passing system


Experiencing death: an insider's perspective For millennia, human beings have wondered what happens after death. What is the first-person experience of dying and being brought back to life? Technological advances in resuscitation science have now added an intriguing new chapter to the literature of out-of-body or near-death experiences by eliciting detailed and vivid accounts of those who have approached the threshold of death. Steve Paulson, executive producer and host of To the Best of Our Knowledge, moderated a discussion that included neurologist Kevin Nelson, neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, emergency medicine expert Sam Parnia, and orthopedic surgeon and drowning survivor Mary Neal; they share some remarkable stories and discuss how they analyze such experiences in light of their own backgrounds and training. The following is an edited transcript of the discussion from December 11, 2013, 7:008:30 PM, at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York City.

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

out-of body experiences
near-death experiences
clinical death
self


A comparative study on simulation vs. real time deployment in wireless sensor networks Increasing deployment density and shrinking size of wireless sensor nodes requires small equipped battery size. This means emerging wireless sensor nodes must compete for efficient energy utilization. Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols play a vital role in energy consumption of sensor node as it controls the radio activities. Customized or open source simulators play an important role to measure the performance effectiveness of MAC protocols based on the fact that they are flexible, reduce experimental overhead and cost. Nevertheless, these benefits come at the cost of results accuracy. In this paper, we investigate differences of the behaviour of our agent based S-MAC protocols in real deployment compared to the results produced using our custom based simulator, which ignores the lower layers effects such as packet collision and overhearing. We use network simulator 2 (ns2), an open source simulator, which provides a complete protocol stack. We further try to find and explain the rationale of the variance of results produced by real deployment and that of simulators.

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


Expert system for predicting unstable angina based on Bayesian networks The use of computer-based clinical decision support (CDS) tools is growing significantly in recent years. These tools help reduce waiting lists, minimise patient risks and, at the same time, optimise the cost health resources. In this paper, we present a CDS application that predicts the probability of having unstable angina based on clinical data. Due to the characteristics of the variables (mostly binary) a Bayesian network model was chosen to support the system. Bayesian-network model was constructed using a population of 1164 patients, and subsequently was validated with a population of 103 patients. The validation results, with a negative predictive value (NPV) of 91%, demonstrate its applicability to help clinicians. The final model was implemented as a web application that is currently been validated by clinician specialists. (C) 2013 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 Novel Reliability Evaluation Technique for Stochastic-Flow Manufacturing Networks With Multiple Production Lines This paper presents a novel technique to measure the performance of a stochastic-flow manufacturing network (SMN) which violates the so-called flow conservation law due to the failure rates of stations. We address the mission reliability, the probability of demand satisfaction, as a performance indicator for the SMN while considering both the stochastic capacities and the multiple production lines. First, we construct a manufacturing system as an SMN through a graphical transformation, and decompose the transformed SMN into several paths for further analysis. Subsequently, two algorithms for different scenarios are designed to generate all minimal capacity vectors that stations should provide to satisfy the given demand. The first scenario is for the SMN with identical production lines in parallel. The second scenario is for distinct production lines with common stations in the SMN. We derive the mission reliability in terms of minimal capacity vectors by applying the recursive sum of disjoint products (RSDP) algorithm. A decision making issue is also discussed to decide a reliable production strategy.

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

mission reliability
multiple production lines

different failure rates
reworking
stochastic-flow manufacturing network


A fixed-point characterization of a deontic logic of regular action We define a deontic logic of regular action as a characterization within a modal mu-calculus of action. First a semantics of deontic notions for regular action is given in terms of conditions on modal action structures, Then modal a-calculus formulas characterizing these conditions are constructed by closely following the structure of deterministic finite automatons for regular action.

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

ought-to-do norms
dynamic deontic logic
modal action logic
mu-calculus
regular actions
free choice permission


Tunneling spectroscopy of p-type doping in silicon from boron-containing molecular monolayer Boron-doping of silicon from molecular monolayer doping Tunneling spectroscopy analysis of the surface Surface doping from correlation with numerical simulations

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


KPS: a Web information mining algorithm The Web mostly contains semi-structured information. It is, however, not easy to search and extract structural data hidden in a Web page. Current practices address this problem by (1) syntax analysis (i.e. HTML tags); or (2) wrappers or user-defined declarative languages. The former is only suitable for highly structured Web sites and the latter is time-consuming and offers low scalability. Wrappers could handle tens, but certainly not thousands, of information sources. In this paper, we present a novel information mining algorithm, namely KPS, over semi-structured information on the Web. KPS employs keywords, patterns and/or samples to mine the desired information. Experimental results show that KPS is more efficient than existing Web extracting methods.

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

information extraction
information retrieval
web query
web databases


Designing supramolecular structures from models of cyclic peptide scaffolds with heterocyclic constraints Cyclic peptides containing oxazole and thiazole heterocycles have been examined for their capacity to be used as scaffolds in larger, more complex, protein-like structures. Both the macrocyclic scaffolds and the supramolecular structures derived therefrom have been visualised by molecular modelling techniques. These molecules are too symmetrical to examine structurally by NMR spectroscopy. The cyclic hexapeptide ([AaaThz]3, [AaaOxz]3) and cyclic octapeptide ([AaaThz]4, [AaaOxz]4) analogues are composed of dipeptide surrogates (Aaa: amino acid, Thz: thiazole, Oxz: oxazole) derived from intramolecular condensation of cysteine or serine/threonine side chains in dipeptides like AaaCys, AaaSer and AaaThr. The five-membered heterocyclic rings, like thiazole, oxazole and reduced analogues like thiazoline, thiazolidine and oxazoline have profound influences on the structures and bioactivities of cyclic peptides derived therefrom. This work suggests that such constrained cyclic peptides can be used as scaffolds to create a range of novel protein-like supramolecular structures (e.g. cylinders, troughs, cones, multi-loop structures, helix bundles) that are comparable in size, shape and composition to bioactive surfaces of proteins. They may therefore represent interesting starting points for the design of novel artificial proteins and artificial enzymes.

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

cyclic peptide
thiazole
oxazole
artificial enzymes

macrocycle peptidomimetic protein peptide


A study of self-propagating mal-packets in sensor networks: Attacks and defenses Since sensor applications are implemented in embedded computer systems, cyber attacks that compromise regular computer systems via exploiting memory-related vulnerabilities present similar threats to sensor networks. However, the paper shows that memory fault attacks in sensors are not the same as in regular computers due to sensors hardware and software architecture. In contrast to worm attacks, mal-code carried by exploiting packets cannot be executed in sensors built upon Harvard architecture. Therefore, the paper proposes a range of attack approaches to illustrate that a mal-packet, which only carries specially crafted data, can exploit memory-related vulnerabilities and utilize existing application code in a sensor to propagate itself without disrupting the sensors functionality. The paper shows that such a mal-packet can have as few as 17 bytes. A prototype of a 27-byte mal-packet has been implemented and tested in Mica2 sensors. Simulation shows that the propagation pattern of such a mal-packet in a sensor network is very different from worm propagation. Mal-packets can either quickly take over the whole network or hardly propagate under different traffic situations. The paper also develops two defense schemes (S2Guard and S2Shuffle) based on existing defense techniques to protect sensor applications. The analysis shows that they only incur a little overhead and can stop the propagation of mal-packets.

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

mal-packet
buffer overflow
code injection
control flow
sensor security


interactive news documents for digital television As different technologies emerge each day in the context of digital television, interaction functionalities are becoming crucial once users are already familiarized with the interaction on the web. Although digital television standards provide ways to interact with the content, more complex manipulations can be accomplished using the MPEG-J specification, which is part of the MPEG-4 standard. In this paper, we present a technique that aims at the generation of dynamic and interactive content from interactive sources like the web, enabling users, despite their limited interactivity with the content of TV, have access to fresh dynamic content that is generated in real time during the video's compilation. Although we have not explored the full potential of MPEG-J, we think that this work is the first step for more contributions in the area of digital and interactive television.

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

interactive digital television
mpeg-j
mpeg-4
xslt
xmt


A Six Sigma-based process to improve COTS component filtering Typically, COTS component evaluations embody a first stage intended to determine rapidly which products are suitable in a target context. This stage - called 'filtering" or "screening" - chooses a set of alternatives to be considered for identification and more detailed evaluation. For successful filtering processes, composers increasingly focus on closing the gap between required and offered functionality, hence reducing ambiguity of information for comparison. However, it is quite difficult to establish a framework for managing unstructured information at this early stage. In this paper, we introduce filtering immersed in a Six Sigma-based process, aiming at improving the filtering process itself as well as its deliverables. We illustrate the proposal by a case study.

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

cots (commercial off-the-shelf) components


Political Districting: from classical models to recent approaches The Political Districting problem has been studied since the 60s and many different models and techniques have been proposed with the aim of preventing districts manipulation which may favor some specific political party (gerrymandering). Avariety of Political Districting models and procedures was provided in the Operations Research literature, based on single- or multiple-objective optimization. Starting from the forerunning papers published in the 60s, this article reviews some selected optimization models and algorithms for Political Districting which gave rise to the main lines of research on this topic in the Operations Research literature of the last five decades.

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


mining people's trips from large scale geo-tagged photos Photo sharing is one of the most popular Web services. Photo sharing sites provide functions to add tags and geo-tags to photos to make photo organization easy. Considering that people take photos to record something that attracts them, geo-tagged photos are a rich data source that reflects people's memorable events associated with locations. In this paper, we focus on geo-tagged photos and propose a method to detect people's frequent trip patterns, i.e., typical sequences of visited cities and durations of stay as well as descriptive tags that characterize the trip patterns. Our method first segments photo collections into trips and categorizes them based on their trip themes, such as visiting landmarks or communing with nature. Our method mines frequent trip patterns for each trip theme category. We crawled 5.7 million geo-tagged photos and performed photo trip pattern mining. The experimental result shows that our method outperforms other baseline methods and can correctly segment photo collections into photo trips with an accuracy of 78\%. For trip categorization, our method can categorize about 80\% of trips using tags and titles of photos and visited cities as features. Finally, we illustrate interesting examples of trip patterns detected from our dataset and show an application with which users can search frequent trip patterns by querying a destination, visit duration, and trip theme on the trip.

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

trip classification
tag mining
geo-tagging


Asynchronous signal processing for brain-computer interfaces Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a way to monitor and treat neurological diseases. An important application of BCIs is the monitoring and treatment of epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures, symptomatic of abnormal, excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. BCIs contain an array of sensors that gather and transmit data under the constrains of low-power and minimal data transmission. Asynchronous sigma delta modulators (ASDMs) are considered an alternative to synchronous analog to digital conversion. ASDMs are non-linear feedback systems that enable time-encoding of analog signals, from which the signal can be reconstructed. An efficient reconstruction of time-encoded signals can be achieved using a prolate spheroidal waveform (PS W) projection. PSWs have finite time support and maximum energy concentration within a given bandwidth. The ASDM time-encoding is related to the duty-cycle modulation and demodulation, which shows that sampling is non-uniform. For transmission of data from BCI, we propose a modified orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique using chirp modulation. Our method generalizes the chirp modulation of binary streams with non-uniform symbol duration. Our theoretical results relate to recent continuous-time digital signal processing and compressive sampling theories.

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

asynchronous sigma delta modulators (asdm)


Possibility and necessity constraints and their defuzzificationA multi-item production-inventory scenario via optimal control theory In this paper, analogous to chance constraints, real-life necessity and possibility constraints in the context of a multi-item dynamic production-inventory control system are defined and defuzzified following fuzzy relations. Hence, a realistic multi-item production-inventory model with shortages and fuzzy constraints has been formulated and solved for optimal production with the objective of having minimum cost. Here, the rate of production is assumed to be a function of time and considered as a control variable. Also the present system produces some defective units along with the perfect ones and the rate of produced defective units is constant. Here demand of the good units is time dependent and known and the defective units are of no use. The space required per unit item, available storage space and investment capital are assumed to be imprecise. The space and budget constraints are of necessity and/or possibility types. The model is formulated as an optimal control problem and solved for optimum production function using Pontryagins optimal control policy, the KuhnTucker conditions and generalized reduced gradient (GRG) technique. The model is illustrated numerically and values of demand, optimal production function and stock level are presented in both tabular and graphical forms. The sensitivity of the cost functional due to the changes in confidence level of imprecise constraints is also presented.

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

necessity
possibility
production
optimal control


Enhanced homogenization technique for magnetomechanical systems using the generalized finite element method Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a homogenization approach to model mechanical structures with multiple scales and periodicity, as they occur, e.g. in power transformer windings, subjected to magnetic forces. Design/methodology/approach - The idea is based on the framework of generalized finite element methods (GFEM), where the normal polynomial finite element basis functions are enriched by problem dependent basis functions, which are, in this case, the eigenmodes of a quasi-periodic unit cell setup. These eigenmodes are used to enrich the standard polynomial basis functions of higher order on a coarse grid modeling the whole periodic structure. Findings - It is shown that heterogeneous magnetomechanical structures can be homogenized with the developed method, as demonstrated by homogenization of a transformer coil setup. Originality/value - An efficient homogenization procedure is proposed on the basis of the GFEM which is extended using a special set of enrichment functions, i.e. the mechanic eigenmodes of a generalized eigenvalue problem.

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

generalized finite element method
homogenization technique
magnetomechanical systems


Designing X charts for known autocorrelations and unknown marginal distribution In the design of the X control chart, both the sample size m of X and the control-limit factor k (the number of standard deviations from the center line) must be determined. We address this problem under the assumption that the quality characteristic follows an autocorrelated process with known covariance structure but unknown marginal distribution shape. We propose two methods for determining m and k, chosen to minimize the out-of-control ARL (average run length) while maintaining the in-control ARL at a specified value. Method 1 calculates the ARL values as if the sample means were independent normal random variables; Method 2 calculates the ARL values as if the sample means were an AR(1) process. Method 2 outperforms Method 1 when the correlation and mean shift are both high. We also modify Methods 1 and 2 with a minimum sample size of 30; the modification moves the in-control ARL closer to the specified value. Our numerical results show that the modified Method 2 performs better than two previous design procedures, especially when the correlation is high.

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


Numerical analysis of interfacial two-dimensional Stokes flow with discontinuous viscosity and variable surface tension A fluid model of the incompressible Stokes equations in two space dimensions is used to simulate the motion of a droplet boundary separating two fluids with unequal viscosity and variable surface tension. Our theoretical analysis leads to decoupled jump conditions that are used in constructing the numerical algorithm. Numerical results agree with others in the literature and include some new findings that may apply to processes similar to cell cleavage, The method developed here accurately preserves area for our test problems. Some interesting observations are obtained with different choices of the parameters. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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 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

discontinuous and non-smooth solution
immersed interface method
interface
jump condition
stokes equation


hierarchical model-based clustering of large datasets through fractionation and refractionation The goal of clustering is to identify distinct groups in a dataset. Compared to non-parametric clustering methods like complete linkage, hierarchical model-based clustering has the advantage of offering a way to estimate the number of groups present in the data. However, its computational cost is quadratic in the number of items to be clustered, and it is therefore not applicable to large problems. We review an idea called Fractionation, originally conceived by Cutting, Karger, Pedersen and Tukey for non-parametric hierarchical clustering of large datasets, and describe an adaptation of Fractionation to model-based clustering. A further extension, called Refractionation, leads to a procedure that can be successful even in the difficult situation where there are large numbers of small groups.

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


Quality of service challenges for wireless mobile ad hoc networks Wireless mobile ad hoc networks consist of mobile nodes interconnected by wireless multi-hop communication paths. Unlike conventional wireless networks, ad hoc networks have no fixed network infrastructure or administrative support. The topology of such networks changes dynamically as mobile nodes join or depart the network or radio links between nodes become unusable. Supporting appropriate quality of service for mobile ad hoc networks is a complex and difficult issue because of the dynamic nature of the network topology and generally imprecise network state information, and has become an intensely active area of research in the last few years. This paper** presents the basic concepts of quality of service support in ad hoc networks for unicast communication, reviews the major areas of current research and results, and addresses some new issues. The principal focus is on routing and security issues associated with quality of service support. The paper concludes with some observations on the open areas for further investigation. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

qos
combinatorial stability
secure routing
mac


An agent-based dynamic routing strategy for automated material handling systems An agent-based dynamic routing strategy for a generic automated material handling systems (AMHS) is developed. The strategy employs an agent-based paradigm by which the control points of a network of AMHS components are modelled as cooperating node agents. With the inherent features of route discovery, route selection and fault management of these node agents, their performance is investigated through simulation study. A generic AMHS network is modelled with a simulation tool that represents a highly flexible material handling system in a typical distribution centre where simulation studies are performed under normal and exception operating conditions. The performance of the proposed dynamic routing strategy is benchmarked with a number of static and dynamic routing strategies including the shortest distance, round robin, widest shortest route and shortest widest route strategies. The results of the simulation experiments are presented and their performance compared under a number of performance indices including the cycle time, utilization and ability to balance network loading.

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

dynamic routing
material handling
simulation