Pathomx: an interactive workflow-based tool for the analysis of metabolomic data Metabolomics is a systems approach to the analysis of cellular processes through small-molecule metabolite profiling. Standardisation of sample handling and acquisition approaches has contributed to reproducibility. However, the development of robust methods for the analysis of metabolomic data is a work-in-progress. The tools that do exist are often not well integrated, requiring manual data handling and custom scripting on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, existing tools often require experience with programming environments such as MATLAB or R to use, limiting accessibility. Here we present Pathomx, a workflow-based tool for the processing, analysis and visualisation of metabolomic and associated data in an intuitive and extensible environment.

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


On the relation between -Hessians and second-order epi-derivatives We consider second-order objects for a convex function defined as the maximum of a finite number of C2-functions. Variational analysis yields explicit formul for the second-order epi-derivatives of such max-functions. Another second-order object can be defined by means of a space decomposition that allows us to identify a subspace on which a Lagrangian related to a max-function is smooth. This decomposition yields an explicit expression for the so-called -Hessian of the function, defined as the Hessian of the related Lagrangian. We show that the second-order epi-derivative relative to the -subspace and the -Hessian are equivalent second-order objects. Thus, the -Lagrangian of a max-function captures the function's second-order epi-differential behavior with ordinary second derivatives.

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

second-order epi-derivatives
-hessians
epigraphical and pointwise convergence


A relational learning method for pattern and object recognition In this paper we consider how shape (including patterns and objects) can be encoded in terms of a relational learning method which simultaneously derives features, their attribute ranges and the dependencies which best describe their specific shapes. To illustrate this approach we consider two problems in the context of pattern and object recognition. First, the problem of determining what constitutes `features' or `parts' of patterns? Second, the problem of what constitutes acceptable variations of shape in a recognition process? In the former case we examine polyhedral approximations to 3D objects while in the latter case we explore range-based objects defined by surfaces of arbitrary shape and form. The results demonstrate the robustness and explanatory power of the approach.

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

pattern recognition
recognition by parts
shape variations


arguing for gaining access to information This paper presents a protocol for agents engaged in argumentation over access to information sources. Obtaining relevant information is essential for agents engaged in autonomous, goal-directed behavior, but access to such information is usually controlled by other autonomous agents having their own goals. Because these various goals may be in conflict with one another, rational interactions between the two agents may take the form of a dialog, in which requests for information are successively issued, considered, justified and criticized. Even when the agents involved in such discussions agree on all the arguments for and the arguments against granting access to some information source, they may still disagree on their preferences between these arguments. To represent such situations, we design a protocol for dialogs between two autonomous agents for seeking and granting authorization to access some information source. This protocol is based on an argumentation dialog where agents handle specific preferences and acceptability over arguments.

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


Lightpath Rerouting Strategies in WDM All-Optical Networks Under Scheduled and Random Traffic In WDM all-optical networks without wavelength conversion, traffic rerouting is motivated either by an optimization of resource utilization or by network sur-vivability. In this paper, we use rerouting to optimize network resources allocation in order to set up an incoming lightpath demand to be blocked for lack of resources. Rerouting aims at reassigning the wavelength and/or the path of one or several established connections in order to free enough wavelengths to satisfy the incoming demand. Rerouting refers implicitly to dynamic traffic. In most previous studies related to rerouting, only random (dynamic) traffic is considered. In this paper, we propose a new lightpath rerouting scheme considering three types of traffic demands, referred to as permanent lightpath demands (PLDs), scheduled lightpath demands (SLDs), and random lightpath demands (RLDs). PLDs are static, whereas SLDs and RLDs are dynamic. SLDs are preplanned, whereas RLDs are stochastic. PLDs may be seen as a particular case of SLDs. PLDs and SLDs correspond to guaranteed services, whereas RLDs correspond to best-effort services. Thus, PLDs and SLDs cannot be rerouted. We here describe two new routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) strategies applying rerouting. Both strategies assume that PLDs are routed offline during the network planning phase. The first strategy computes the RWA for SLDs and RLDs on the fly. The second strategy proceeds in two separate phases. It first computes offline the RWA for SLDs before considering RLDs on the fly on the remaining network resources. Our rerouting schemes aim at minimizing the number of RLDs or the number of optical channels to be rerouted. Through numerical examples and experimental simulations, we outline that routing SLDs offline and RLDs online instead of routing SLDs and RLDs online enables lower rejection ratios. We also compare our proposed rerouting algorithms with other approaches from the literature in terms of complexity.

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

permanent lightpath demands
scheduled lightpath demands
random lightpath demands
lightpath rerouting

all-optical wdm networks
routing and wavelength assignment (rwa)
combinatorial optimization
traffic differentiation
traffic engineering


Heuristic Degradation Test Plans for Reliability Demonstration Reliability demonstration is an important task in the product development process. The commonly used reliability demonstration test methods include bogey test, life test, and degradation test, among which the degradation test is known to be most efficient. However, its application in industry is still limited primarily due to the lack of appropriate test plans. This paper presents heuristic reliability demonstration test plans for the products whose performance characteristics can be modeled with the Weibull distribution. In particular, the paper describes degradation models, test method, test termination rules, and the calculation of reliability and confidence interval from degradation data. The paper delineates test plan models, which are solved for optimal sample size and test time using the proposed heuristic algorithm. The algorithm results in the lowest test cost and the shortest test time for the products that are expected to pass or fail the test at a high degree of confidence. A case study is presented to illustrate the proposed method, and shows that the heuristic test plan reduced the test time, and cost by 27%, and 29%, respectively. The paper also numerically compares the three test methods, and concludes that the degradation test method is most efficient in terms of test time, cost, and sample size.

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

degradation test
heuristic test plan
reliability demonstration
sample size


Concept similarity in formal concept analysis: An information content approach Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is revealing interesting in supporting difficult activities that are becoming fundamental in the development of the Semantic Web. Assessing concept similarity is one of such activities since it allows the identification of different concepts that are semantically close. In this paper, a method for measuring the similarity of FCA concepts is presented, which is a refinement of a previous proposal of the author. The refinement consists in determining the similarity of concept descriptors (attributes) by using the information content approach, rather than relying on human domain expertise. The information content approach which has been adopted allows a higher correlation with human judgement than other proposals for evaluating concept similarity in a taxonomy defined in the literature. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

formal concept analysis
semantic web
information content


Implementing stochastic preplanned restoration with proportional weighted path choice in IP/GMPLS/WDM networks IP over WDM networking and related GMPLS standards, appear to be attractive solutions for today's and future Internet applications due to their ability to handle multiple traffic flows independently of one another, and reserve wavelengths to carry a large number of aggregated flows. Another advantage of these solutions is the simplified IP over WDM stack, that provides all the vital network functionalities, including network reliability. The paper investigates the use of the stochastic preplanned restoration scheme with proportional weighted path choice (SPR-PW) to design reliable and efficient IP/GMPLS/WDM networks. Upon the disruption of a primary flow determined by a link failure, one of the associated preplanned secondary paths is readily selected by the SPR-PW scheme to continue the flow transmission. The selection of the secondary path is performed on a probabilistic base, without requiring time-consuming coordination among the restoration attempts of the disrupted flows. As a result of this stochastic selection, the SPR-PW scheme has the potential to yield short recovery times. In addition, the SPR-PW required signaling, upon and before the failure occurrence, is limited, which makes SPR-PW a scheme suitable for highly dynamic traffic scenarios, in which flows are subject to frequent changes. The paper describes the SPR-PW scheme as it is applied to cope with physical link failures, depicts a possible implementation of such a scheme using standard IP/GMPLS signaling capabilities, and numerically demonstrates two properties of the SPR-PW scheme, i.e., low blocking probability and short restoration times.

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

generalized multi-protocol label switching (gmpls)


Applications of a neural network to watermarking capacity of digital image This paper presents a blind watermarking algorithm based on the Hopfield neural network. The watermarking capacity of this algorithm is discussed. According to the research, the attraction basin of neural network determines the watermarking capacity.

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

basin of attraction
digital watermarking


Parallel skyline queries over uncertain data streams in cloud computing environments Skyline query processing over uncertain data streams has attracted considerable attention recently, due to its importance in helping users make intelligent decisions on complex data. Nevertheless, existing studies only focus on retrieving the skylines over data streams in a centralised environment typically with one processor, which limits the scalability and cannot meet the requirement for massive data analysis. Cloud computing provides unprecedentedly opportunities for supporting massive data management, which can be well adapted to the parallel skyline queries. In this paper, we extensively study the parallel skyline query problem over uncertain data streams in cloud computing environments. Particularly, three parallel models SPM, APM, and DPM are proposed to address the problem based on the sliding window partitioning. Additionally, an adaptive sliding granularity adjustment strategy and a load balance strategy are proposed to further optimise the queries. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposals.

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

uncertain data
data streams
skyline query
cloud computing
data management


A unified multimedia and semantic perspective for data retrieval in the semantic web ? In recent years, the emerging diffusion of peer-to-peer networks is going beyond the single-domain paradigm like, for instance, the mono-thematic file sharing one (e.g. Napster for music). Peers are more and more heterogeneous data sources which need to share data with commercial, educational, and/or collaboration purposes, just to mention a few. Moreover, in current information processing applications data cannot be meaningfully searched by precise database queries that would return exact matches (e.g. when dealing with multimedia, proteomic, statistical data). In this paper we move a step towards multi-domain multi-type data sharing systems by introducing an advanced technological infrastructure which enables users to meet these new emerging needs. A fundamental issue in this context is data heterogeneity, which is pervasive and intrinsically present both at intensional level where, due to peers autonomy, different semantic descriptions of the available information are provided, and at extensional level, where multiple data types can coexist, also including content-based searchable data types such as multimedia data. Our proposal relies on a Peer Data Management Systems (PDMS) framework to present innovative network organization and query routing mechanisms which exploit both peers data description and data content to achieve effective and efficient network management and data retrieval in such a context. The validity of our proposal is demonstrated by an absolutely satisfactory experimental evaluation on a real setting.

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

pdms
network organization
query routing
multimedia data


Parkinsons Disease tremor classification A comparison between Support Vector Machines and neural networks Deep Brain Stimulation has been used in the study of and for treating Parkinsons Disease (PD) tremor symptoms since the 1980s. In the research reported here we have carried out a comparative analysis to classify tremor onset based on intraoperative microelectrode recordings of a PD patients brain Local Field Potential (LFP) signals. In particular, we compared the performance of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) with two well known artificial neural network classifiers, namely a Multiple Layer Perceptron (MLP) and a Radial Basis Function Network (RBN). The results show that in this study, using specifically PD data, the SVM provided an overall better classification rate achieving an accuracy of 81% recognition.

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

radial basis neural network
multiple layer perception


An inductive construction of minimally rigid bodyhinge simple graphs A d-dimensional bodyhinge framework is a collection of d-dimensional rigid bodies connected by hinges , where a hinge is a (d?2) ( d ? 2 ) -dimensional affine subspace, i.e., pin-joints in 2-space, line-hinges in 3-space, plane-hinges in 4-space and etc. Bodies are allowed to move continuously in Rd R d so that the relative motion of any two bodies connected by a hinge is a rotation around it and the framework is called rigid if every motion provides a framework isometric to the original one. A bodyhinge framework is expressed as a pair (G,p) ( G , p ) of a multigraph G=(V,E) G = ( V , E ) and a mapping p from e?E e ? E to a (d?2) ( d ? 2 ) -dimensional affine subspace p(e) p ( e ) in Rd R d . Namely, v?V v ? V corresponds to a body and uv?E u v ? E corresponds to a hinge p(uv) p ( u v ) which joins the two bodies corresponding to u and v. Then, G is said to be realized as a bodyhinge framework (G,p) ( G , p ) in Rd R d , and is called a bodyhinge graph. It is known [9]and[12] that the infinitesimal rigidity of a generic bodyhinge framework (G,p) ( G , p ) is determined only by its underlying graph G. So, a graph G is called (minimally) rigid if G can be realized as a (minimally) infinitesimally rigid bodyhinge framework in d-dimension. In this paper, we shall present an inductive construction for minimally rigid bodyhinge simple graphs in d -dimension with d?3 d ? 3 .

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

bodyhinge framework
bodyhinge graph
infinitesimal rigidity


A comparison of two entropy stable discontinuous Galerkin spectral element approximations for the shallow water equations with non-constant topography In this work, we compare and contrast two provably entropy stable and high-order accurate nodal discontinuous Galerkin spectral element methods applied to the one dimensional shallow water equations for problems with non-constant bottom topography. Of particular importance for numerical approximations of the shallow water equations is the well-balanced property. The well-balanced property is an attribute that a numerical approximation can preserve a steady-state solution of constant water height in the presence of a bottom topography. Numerical tests are performed to explore similarities and differences in the two high-order schemes.

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

entropy stable
discontinuous galerkin
shallow water equations

skew-symmetric
well-balanced
method comparison


Bidirectional elastic image registration using B-spline affine transformation A registration scheme termed as B-spline affine transformation (BSAT) is presented in this study to elastically align two images. We define an affine transformation instead of the traditional translation at each control point. Mathematically, BSAT is a generalized form of the affine transformation and the traditional B-spline transformation (BST). In order to improve the performance of the iterative closest point (ICP) method in registering two homologous shapes but with large deformation, a bidirectional instead of the traditional unidirectional objective/cost function is proposed. In implementation, the objective function is formulated as a sparse linear equation problem, and a sub-division strategy is used to achieve a reasonable efficiency in registration. The performance of the developed scheme was assessed using both two-dimensional (2D) synthesized dataset and three-dimensional (3D) volumetric computed tomography (CT) data. Our experiments showed that the proposed B-spline affine model could obtain reasonable registration accuracy.

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

b-spline registration
affine registration
spline affine registration
sparse linear equations


fast delaunay stripification 2D and 2.5D triangulations belong nowadays among the most often types of geometric object description in computer graphics. a frequent application is, e.g., terrain modeling. Therefore the problem of fast visualization of this type of data is often solved. One possible approach is the reduction of data duplicities by using triangle strips.This paper describes a new stripification algorithm for models, based on Delaunay triangulation using incremental insertion algorithm with DAG. As far as we know, this is the first algorithm which is able to create triangle strips within construction of triangulation and so enables continuous visualization of the models.

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

visualization
delaunay triangulation
triangle strips
computer graphics


Use of generalized Smith boundary for loads having non-vanishing time average This paper describes the numerical simulation of the far field problems with loads having non-vanishing time average encountered in some dynamic problems, such as the foundation for a transmission line tower when the cables on one side snap and pile driving analysis, by using the modified generalized Smith boundary. This is obtained by the simplification of the boundary conditions of the generalized Smith boundary, by performing the reinitiating and update process of the constant velocities and constant stress conditions for each time step through only one layer of finite elements. The theory is simplified, hence allowing a substantial gain in memory space and also machine time. Furthermore, the spurious reflections are cancelled for each time step calculation. This transmitting boundary is implemented with a mixed time marching algorithm, i.e. implicit/explicit for the interior domain and explicit for the boundary nodes, and its performance is verified for loads having non-vanishing time average. Obtained results are compared to the viscous boundary and the algorithm of extrapolation solutions, and are found satisfactory as the curves for two-dimensional problems oscillate continuously around the static value, leading thus to a reliable simulation of this kind of loading.

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 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

loads having non-vanishing time average
dynamics
wave propagation


Application of the multi-level time-harmonic fast multipole BEM to 3-D visco-elastodynamics This article extends previous work by the authors on the single- and multi-domain time-harmonic elastodynamic multi-level fast multipole BEM formulations to the case of weakly dissipative viscoelastic media. The underlying boundary integral equation and fast multipole formulations are formally identical to that of elastodynamics, except that the wavenumbers are complex-valued due to attenuation. Attention is focused on evaluating the multipole decomposition of the viscoelastodynamic fundamental solution. A damping-dependent modification of the selection rule for the multipole truncation parameter, required by the presence of complex wavenumbers, is proposed. It is empirically adjusted so as to maintain a constant accuracy over the damping range of interest in the approximation of the fundamental solution, and validated on numerical tests focusing on the evaluation of the latter. The proposed modification is then assessed on 3D single-region and multi-region visco-elastodynamic examples for which exact solutions are known. Finally, the multi-region formulation is applied to the problem of a wave propagating in a semi-infinite medium with a lossy semi-spherical inclusion (seismic wave in alluvial basin). These examples involve problem sizes of up to about 3105 boundary unknowns.

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

fast multipole method
visco-elastodynamics
multi-domain
bebe coupling


Chemical-Reaction-Inspired Metaheuristic for Optimization We encounter optimization problems in our daily lives and in various research domains. Some of them are so hard that we can, at best, approximate the best solutions with (meta-) heuristic methods. However, the huge number of optimization problems and the small number of generally acknowledged methods mean that more metaheuristics are needed to fill the gap. We propose a new metaheuristic, called chemical reaction optimization (CRO), to solve optimization problems. It mimics the interactions of molecules in a chemical reaction to reach a low energy stable state. We tested the performance of CRO with three nondeterministic polynomial-time hard combinatorial optimization problems. Two of them were traditional benchmark problems and the other was a real-world problem. Simulation results showed that CRO is very competitive with the few existing successful metaheuristics, having outperformed them in some cases, and CRO achieved the best performance in the real-world problem. Moreover, with the No-Free-Lunch theorem, CRO must have equal performance as the others on average, but it can outperform all other metaheuristics when matched to the right problem type. Therefore, it provides a new approach for solving optimization problems. CRO may potentially solve those problems which may not be solvable with the few generally acknowledged approaches.

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

nature-inspired algorithms
optimization methods


Numerically efficient Green's function for planar, structures on multilayered dielectric in cylindrical enclosure A convenient form of spatial-domain Green's function for a point charge in multilayered dielectric medium enclosed by a conducting cylinder of circular cross-section is presented in this paper. Green's function expression is obtained by solving Poisson differential equation in cylindrical coordinates and applying analogies with multistep electrical transmission fines. Convergence of the proposed expression obtained in the form of a double infinite sum is investigated and compared with triple-sum solution for the same problem obtained by standard variable separation method. The numerical investigation has shown that the proposed expression has much faster convergence than the standard solution. Also, contrary to the variable separation method, increasing the number of dielectric layers is not an obstacle in determining, of proposed Green's functions, as it is shown for the three layers dielectric structure.

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


An Experiment for Estimating Accurate States in Distributed Power Systems This letter presents an experiment for estimating accurate state in distributed power systems. This letter employs a technique that combines a projected Jacobi method with a parallel dual-type method to solve the distributed state estimation with constraints problems. Via numerous tests, this letter demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed method on the IEEE 118-bus with four subsystems in a PC network.

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

parallel dual-type method
ieee 118-bus with four subsystems


Effects of Carnitine on Thyroid Hormone Action Abstract: By experiments on cells (neurons, hepatocytes, and fibroblasts) that are targets for thyroid hormones and a randomized clinical trial on iatrogenic hyperthyroidism, we validated the concept that l-carnitine is a peripheral antagonist of thyroid hormone action. In particular, l-carnitine inhibits both triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) entry into the cell nuclei. This is relevant because thyroid hormone action is mainly mediated by specific nuclear receptors. In the randomized trial, we showed that 2 and 4 grams per day of oral l-carnitine are capable of reversing hyperthyroid symptoms (and biochemical changes in the hyperthyroid direction) as well as preventing (or minimizing) the appearance of hyperthyroid symptoms (or biochemical changes in the hyperthyroid direction). It is noteworthy that some biochemical parameters (thyrotropin and urine hydroxyproline) were refractory to the l-carnitine inhibition of thyroid hormone action, while osteocalcin changed in the hyperthyroid direction, but with a beneficial end result on bone. A very recent clinical observation proved the usefulness of l-carnitine in the most serious form of hyperthyroidism: thyroid storm. Since hyperthyroidism impoverishes the tissue deposits of carnitine, there is a rationale for using l-carnitine at least in certain clinical settings.

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


Fuzzy logic techniques for blotch feature evaluation in dermoscopy images Blotches, also called structureless areas, are critical in differentiating malignant melanoma from benign lesions in dermoscopy skin lesion images. In this paper, fuzzy logic techniques are investigated for the automatic detection of blotch features for malignant melanoma discrimination. Four fuzzy sets representative of blotch size and relative and absolute blotch colors are used to extract blotchy areas from a set of dermoscopy skin lesion images. Five previously reported blotch features are computed from the extracted blotches as well as four new features. Using a neural network classifier, malignant melanoma discrimination results are optimized over the range of possible alpha-cuts and compared with results using crisp blotch features. Features computed from blotches using the fuzzy logic techniques based on three plane relative color and blotch size yield the highest diagnostic accuracy of 81.2%.

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

dermoscopy
fuzzy logic
malignant melanoma
neural network


A QoS-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme for multi-hop WiFi-based long distance networks In this paper, we propose a QoS-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme to mitigate congestion problem in gateway-based multi-hop WiFi-based long distance networks and thereby enhance QoS guarantees for real-time traffic. It presents a dynamic slot scheduling scheme which efficiently distributes the unused TDMA time slots among the needy nodes. The distribution process is carried out in a hierarchical manner through the use of parent-child relationship of a tree topology. By doing so, end-to-end performance of real-time traffic is enhanced manifold. Furthermore, the proposed protocol provides assured packet forwarding for already admitted flows by allowing transmission of nodes according to the capacity of ancestral links. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol achieves a significant performance improvement in terms of throughput and delay of real-time traffic.

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 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

quality of service (qos)
real-time traffic
tdma mac


Approximate linear response for slow variables of dynamics with explicit time scale separation Many real-world numerical models are notorious for the time scale separation of different subsets of variables and the inclusion of random processes. The existing algorithms of linear response to external forcing are vulnerable to the time scale separation due to increased response errors at fast scales. Here we develop the approximate linear response algorithm for slow variables in a two-scale dynamical system with explicit separation of slow and fast variables, which has improved numerical stability and reduced computational expense.

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

fluctuationdissipation theorem
multiscale dynamics


Evaluation of simple performance measures for tuning SVM hyperparameters Choosing optimal hyperparameter values for support vector machines is an important step in SVM design. This is usually done by minimizing either an estimate of generalization error or some other related performance measure. In this paper, we empirically study the usefulness of several simple performance measures that are inexpensive to compute (in the sense that they do not require expensive matrix operations involving the kernel matrix). The results point out which of these measures are adequate functionals for tuning SVM hyperparameters. For SVMs with L1 soft-margin formulation, none of the simple measures yields a performance uniformly as good as k-fold cross validation; Joachims Xi-Alpha bound and the GACV of Wahba et al. come next and perform reasonably well. For SVMs with L2 soft-margin formulation, the radius margin bound gives a very good prediction of optimal hyperparameter values.

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

model selection
generalization error bound


Asymmetric Fragile Watermarking Using a Number Theoretic Transform we propose an asymmetric fragile watermarking technique that uses a number theoretic transform (NTT). Signature data is extracted front a watermarked image by determining correlation functions that are computed using the NTT. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by simulated detection of altering.

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

number theoretic transform
fragile watermarking

asymmetric watermarking
image authentication


Polynomials, fragments of temporal logic and the variety DA over traces We show that some language-theoretic and logical characterizations of recognizable word languages whose syntactic monoid is in the variety DA also hold over traces. To this end we give algebraic characterizations for the language operations of generating the polynomial closure and generating the unambiguous polynomial closure over traces. We also show that there exist natural fragments of local temporal logic that describe this class of languages corresponding to DA. All characterizations are known to hold for words. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Mathematical aspects of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic - Some reflections after 40 years The paper considers some of the main trends of the development of mathematical fuzzy logic and of formalized fuzzy set theory which came out in the history of fuzzy sets, and which aim to give solid theoretical foundations for fuzzy set theory. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

mathematical fuzzy logic
fuzzy set theory

universes of fuzzy sets
categories of fuzzy sets


Genetic programming for credit scoring: The case of Egyptian public sector banks Credit scoring has been widely investigated in the area of finance, in general, and banking sectors, in particular. Recently, genetic programming (GP) has attracted attention in both academic and empirical fields, especially for credit problems. The primary aim of this paper is to investigate the ability of GP, which was proposed as an extension of genetic algorithms and was inspired by the Darwinian evolution theory, in the analysis of credit scoring models in Egyptian public sector banks. The secondary aim is to compare GP with probit analysis (PA), a successful alternative to logistic regression, and weight of evidence (WOE) measure, the later a neglected technique in published research. Two evaluation criteria are used in this paper, namely, average correct classification (ACC) rate criterion and estimated misclassification cost (EMC) criterion with different misclassification cost (MC) ratios, in order to evaluate the capabilities of the credit scoring models. Results so far revealed that GP has the highest ACC rate and the lowest EMC. However, surprisingly, there is a clear rule for the WOE measure under EMC with higher MC ratios. In addition, an analysis of the dataset using Kohonen maps is undertaken to provide additional visual insights into cluster groupings.

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

genetic programming
credit scoring
weight of evidence
egyptian public sector banks


interactive example-based urban layout synthesis We present an interactive system for synthesizing urban layouts by example. Our method simultaneously performs both a structure-based synthesis and an image-based synthesis to generate a complete urban layout with a plausible street network and with aerial-view imagery. Our approach uses the structure and image data of real-world urban areas and a synthesis algorithm to provide several high-level operations to easily and interactively generate complex layouts by example. The user can create new urban layouts by a sequence of operations such as join, expand, and blend without being concerned about low-level structural details. Further, the ability to blend example urban layout fragments provides a powerful way to generate new synthetic content. We demonstrate our system by creating urban layouts using example fragments from several real-world cities, each ranging from hundreds to thousands of city blocks and parcels.

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

content-aware image editing
texture and image synthesis
example-based
procedural modeling


DOUBLE sigma-CONVERGENCE LACUNARY STATISTICAL SEQUENCES In this paper we introduce two notions of a-convergence for double sequences namely, a-statistically P-convergence and lacunary or-statistically P-convergence. These concepts are used to present multidimensional inclusion theorems.

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


Interdisciplinarity and the intellectual base of literature studies: citation analysis of highly cited monographs This article studies interdisciplinarity and the intellectual base of 34 literature journals using citation data from Web of Science. Data from two time periods, 19781987 and 19982007 were compared to reveal changes in the interdisciplinary citing of monographs. The study extends the analysis to non-source publications; using the classification of monographs to show changes in the intellectual base. There is support for increased interdisciplinary citing of sources, especially to the social sciences, and changes in the intellectual base reflect this. The results are explained using theories on the intellectual and social organization of scientific fields and the use of bibliometric methods on the humanities is discussed. The article demonstrates how citation analysis can provide insights into the communication patterns and intellectual structure of scholarly fields in the arts and humanities.

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

citation analysis
humanities
interdisciplinarity
intellectual structure
literature studies


How to construct a product of a-frames It is shown how, under certain circumstances and within Bishop-style constructive mathematics, one can construct a product of two a-frames (the structures underlying the constructive theory of apartness on frames).

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

a-frame
product lattice
decent. msc (2010) 03f60
06d22


advanced hands-on training for distributed and outsourced software engineering Today's software projects are often distributed across multiple locations. This distribution poses new challenges produced by the cooperation across different countries, times zones, and cultures. Software engineering courses have to prepare students accordingly. This paper reports an experience on teaching a distributed software engineering course. In this course, students develop software in collaboration with five universities located in Italy, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, and Ukraine. The projects allow students to face the difficulties of developing software in a globalized context, and provide a practical experience on distributed software engineering. We describe the major obstacles on organizing such a course, and we suggest best practices to achieve successful outcome.

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

teaching
distributed software engineering


Upper bounds to the clique width of graphs ? Hierarchical decompositions of graphs are interesting for algorithmic purposes. Many NP complete problems have linear complexity on graphs with tree-decompositions of bounded width. We investigate alternate hierarchical decompositions that apply to wider classes of graphs and still enjoy good algorithmic properties. These decompositions are motivated and inspired by the study of vertex-replacement context-free graph grammars. The complexity measure of graphs associated with these decompositions is called clique width. In this paper we bound the clique width of a graph in terms of its tree width on the one hand, and of the clique width of its edge complement on the other.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 graph decompositions
modular decomposition
tree decompositions
algorithms
monadic second-order logic


Identification enhancement of auditory evoked potentials in EEG by epoch concatenation and temporal decorrelation Event-related potentials (ERP) recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) are brain responses following an external stimulus, e.g., a sound or an image. They are used in fundamental cognitive research and neurological and psychiatric clinical research. ERPs are weaker than spontaneous brain activity and therefore it is difficult or even impossible to identify an ERP in the brain activity following an individual stimulus. For this reason, a blind source separation method relying on statistical information is proposed for the isolation of ERP after auditory stimulation. In this paper it is suggested to integrate epoch concatenation into the popular temporal decorrelation algorithm SOBI/TDSEP relying on time shifted correlations. With the proposed epoch concatenation temporal decorrelation (ecTD) algorithm a component representing the auditory evoked potential (AEP) is found in electroencephalographic data from an auditory stimulation experiment lasting 3min. The ecTD result is compared with the averaged AEP and it is superior to the result from the SOBI/TDSEP algorithm. Furthermore the ecTD processing leads to significant increases in the signal-to-noise ratio (shape SNR) of the AEP and reduces the computation time by 50% if compared to the SOBI/TDSEP calculation. It can be concluded that data concatenation in combination with temporal decorrelation is useful for isolating and improving the properties of an AEP especially in a short duration stimulation experiment.

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

eeg
blind source separation
epoch concatenation
temporal decorrelation


Improved Ordinary Measure and Image Entropy Theory based intelligent Copy Detection Method Nowadays, more and more multimedia websites appear in social network. It brings some security problems, such as privacy, piracy, disclosure of sensitive contents and so on. Aiming at copyright protection, the copy detection technology of multimedia contents becomes a hot topic. In our previous work, a new computer-based copyright control system used to detect the media has been proposed. Based on this system, this paper proposes an improved media feature matching measure and an entropy based copy detection method. The Levenshtein Distance was used to enhance the matching degree when using for feature matching measure in copy detection. For entropy based copy detection, we make a fusion of the two features of entropy matrix of the entropy feature we extracted. Firstly, we extract the entropy matrix of the image and normalize it. Then, we make a fusion of the eigenvalue feature and the transfer matrix feature of the entropy matrix. The fused features will be used for image copy detection. The experiments show that compared to use these two kinds of features for image detection singly, using feature fusion matching method is apparent robustness and effectiveness. The fused feature has a high detection for copy images which have been received some attacks such as noise, compression, zoom, rotation and so on. Comparing with referred methods, the method proposed is more intelligent and can be achieved good performance.

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


node-disjointness-based multipath routing for mobile ad hoc networks Mobile ad hoc networks are characterized by the use of wireless links with limited bandwidth, dynamically varying network topology and multi-hop connectivity. AODV and DSR are the two most widely studied on-demand ad hoc routing protocols. Previous work has shown some limitations of the two protocols: whenever there is a link break on the active route, each of the two routing protocols has to invoke a route discovery process. This leads to increase in both delay and control overhead as well as decrease in packet delivery ratio. To alleviate these problems, we modify and extend AODV to include the path accumulation feature of DSR in route request/reply packets so that lower route overhead is employed to discover multiple node-disjoint routing paths. The extended AODV is called Node-Disjointness-Based Multipath Routing Protocol (NDMR), which has two novel aspects compared to the other on-demand multipath protocols: it reduces routing overhead dramatically and achieves multiple node-disjoint routing paths. Simulation results show that performance of NDMR is much better than that of AODV and DSR.

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


Spontaneous spin polarization in GaAs/AlGaAs split-gate heterostructures The spontaneous spin polarization of a quantum point contact (QPC) formed by the lateral confinement of a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas in a GaAs/AlGaAs split-gate heterostructure is investigated. We present self-consistent calculations of the electronic structure of the QPC using the spin-polarized density functional formalism of Kohn and Sham. Spin polarization occurs at low electron densities and exchange potential is found to be the dominant mechanism driving the local polarization within the QPC. We compute the conductance using the cascading scattering matrix approach and observe the conductance anomaly at ?0.7 (2e2/h).

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 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

quantum point contact
exchange potential


Allocation of risk capital on an internal market We propose an internal sequential auction for the allocation of risk capital. The allocation is optimal if division managers have no diverging interests. With empire-building preferences, agency costs are offset by auction proceeds. Depending on the model parameters, total agency costs can become negative.

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

finance
or in banking
risk management
auctions/bidding


Using shape analysis to reduce finite-state models of concurrent Java programs Finite-state verification (e.g., model checking) provides a powerful means to detect concurrency errors, which are often subtle and difficult to reproduce. Nevertheless, widespread use of this technology by developers is unlikely until tools provide automated support for extracting the required finite-state models directly from program source. Unfortunately, the dynamic features of modern languages such as Java complicate the construction of compact finite-state models for verification. In this article, we show how shape analysis, which has traditionally been used for computing alias information in optimizers, can be used to greatly reduce the size of finite-state models of concurrent Java programs' by determining which heap-allocated variables are accessible only by a single thread, and which shared variables are protected by locks. We also provide several other state-space reductions based on the semantics of Java monitors. A prototype implementation of the reductions demonstrates their effectiveness.

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

concurrent systems
finite-state verification
model extraction
modeling
state-space reductions


simulation and analysis of pdu traffic bundled under packet alloying Packet Alloying, a technique for the optimized bundling of packets, is proposed. It produces aggregations that preserve the internal Protocol Data Unit (PDU) format, allowing the resulting packets to be subjected to further bundling or compression by conventional techniques. Using logs from vignettes simulated by the OneSAF Testbed Baseline (OTB), a simulator is used to analyze PDU traffic over a wireless flying Local Area Network aboard airplanes, including a satellite and a ground station. Applying Packet Alloying during the simulation of an example vignette, a reduction in the magnitude of negative slack time from -75 to -9 seconds for the worst spike was achieved. Contributions of this research include the formalization of a selective PDU bundling scheme, and the study of different predictive algorithms for the next PDU. These results demonstrate the validity of packet optimizations for distributed simulation environments and other possible applications such as TCP/IP transmissions.

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

dis protocol
network traffic
bandwidth simulation


Cipher feedback mode under go-back-N and selective-reject protocols in error channels ABSTRACT To produce ciphertexts, two modes of encryption are appliedblock ciphers, which encrypt a fixed size block of plaintext at a time, and stream ciphers, which encrypt stream data, one or more bits at a time. As one of stream ciphers, the cipher feedback (CFB) mode is implemented by a block cipher via multiple stages, and in each stage, 1bit or a number of bits of plaintext are encrypted at a time. Throughout this paper, the study will focus upon the error performance of the stream-based CFB under two sliding-window protocols, go-back-N and selective-reject, in an error channel in terms of throughput. We model the performance of the CFB in terms of application-level throughput and derive the number of stages needed to achieve the optimal throughput, under a given error rate in an error channel. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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 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


A damped semismooth Newton method for mixed linear complementarity problems The mixed linear complementarity problem is reformulated as a non-smooth equation by the use of the median operator. On the basis of slant differentiability, a damped semismooth Newton method for solving the non-smooth equation is presented. Both monotone and finite termination properties of the proposed method are proved.

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

semismooth newton method
complementarity problem

non-smooth equation
monotone convergence


Transmission-Efficient Broadcast Encryption Scheme with Personalized Messages Broadcast encryption scheme with personalized messages (BEPM) is a new primitive that allows a broadcaster to encrypt both a common message and individual messages. BEPM is necessary in applications where individual messages include information related to user's privacy. Recently, Fujii et al. suggested a BEPM that is extended from a public key broadcast encryption (PKBE) scheme by Boneh, Gentry, and Waters. In this paper, we point out that 1) Conditional Access System using Fujii et al's BEPM should be revised in a way that decryption algorithm takes as input public key as well, and 2) performance analysis of Fujii et al.'s BEPM should be done depending on whether the public key is transmitted along with ciphertext or stored into user's device. Finally, we propose a new BEPM that is transmission-efficient, while preserving 0(1) user storage cost. Our construction is based on a PKBE scheme suggested by Park, Kim, Sung, and Lee, which is also considered as being one of the best PKBE schemes.

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

broadcast encryption
conditional access system
personalized messages


Generating domain representations using a relationship model ? Domain analysis (DA) techniques are more and more applied in information science, software engineering and even knowledge management, to help in the creation of a controlled vocabulary to represent, index and retrieve every kind of information. The main limitation of DA expansion is related with the enormous human resources investment these techniques demand. This paper presents a particular technology to perform computer based (semi) Automatic Domain Analysis (ADA) based on a relationships information representation model called RSHP. The proposed technology is presented, describing its different stages and algorithms. Finally, experimental results obtained when the methodology was applied to the Software Reuse domain are presented.

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


Robustness and power of analysis of covariance applied to data distorted from normality by floor effects: Non-homogeneous regression slopes We investigate through computer simulations the robustness and power of two group analysis of covariance tests applied to small samples distorted from normality by floor effects when the regression slopes are non-homogeneous. We consider four parametric analysis of covariance tests that vary according to the treatment of the homogeneity of regression slopes and two t tests on the dependent variable and on difference scores. Under the null hypothesis of no difference in means, we estimated actual significance levels by comparing observed test statistics to appropriate values from the F and t distributions for nominal significance levels of 0.10, 0.05, 0.02 and 0.01. We estimated power by similar comparisons under various alternative hypotheses. We found that the traditional or textbook approach which first tests for homogeneity of slopes and then tests for equality of treatment means only if slopes are homogeneous, the model which assumes homogeneous regression slopes and the two t-tests are generally robust when the sample sizes are equal. The hierarchical approach, which tests for non-homogeneity in the regression slopes and fits a separate slopes model if found significant, and the separate slopes model are consistently liberal. When the sample sizes are unequal, only the traditional approach and the t test on the dependent variable maintain robustness. For equal sample sizes, the model which assumes homogeneous regression slopes and the two t-tests produce good power. The traditional approach, while conservative, produces good power particularly when the sample sizes are small. For unequal sample sizes, the t test on the dependent variable produces higher power than the traditional approach. The remaining ANCOVA tests and the t test on the difference scores are not robust in the presence of distributions distorted by floor effects and non-homogeneity of regression slopes when the sample sizes are unequal.

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


Self adaptive routing for dynamic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks Cognitive radio technology inherently possesses self adaptivity. In order to design self adaptive mobile cognitive radio networks, routing is one of the key challenging issues to be addressed. In this paper, a novel self adaptive routing (SAR) algorithm for multi-hop cognitive radio ad hoc networks is proposed. The proposed routing algorithm incorporates with routing metrics and autonomous distributed adaptive transmission range control mechanism to provide self adaptivity. SAR aims to choose optimal routes at the outset of routing and aims to retain optimal route by the use of route adaptation and route preservation. SAR is compared with previously suggested algorithms to indicate performance differences. Extensive experimental evaluations are performed in the ns2 simulator. It is shown that the SAR provides better adaptability to the environment than the previously suggested algorithms and maximizes throughput, minimizes end-to-end delay in a number of realistic scenarios and significantly improves routing performance.

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


Mechanisms for Collaboration: A Design and Evaluation Framework for Multi-User Interfaces Multi-user interfaces are said to provide "natural" interaction in supporting collaboration, compared to individual and noncolocated technologies. We identify three mechanisms accounting for the success of such interfaces: high awareness of others' actions and intentions, high control over the interface, and high availability of background information. We challenge the idea that interaction over such interfaces is necessarily "natural" and argue that everyday interaction involves constraints on awareness, control, and availability. These constraints help people interact more smoothly. We draw from social developmental psychology to characterize the design of multi-user interfaces in terms of how constraints on these mechanisms can be best used to promote collaboration. We use this framework of mechanisms and constraints to explain the successes and failures of existing designs, then apply it to three case studies of design, and finally derive from them a set of questions to consider when designing and analysing multi-user interfaces for collaboration.

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


Collaboration on Social Network Sites: Amateurs, Professionals and Celebrities Amateurs are found in arts, sports, or entertainment, where they are linked with professional counterparts and inspired by celebrities. Despite the growing number of CSCW studies in amateur and professional domains, little is known about how technologies facilitate collaboration between these groups. Drawing from a 1.5-year field study in the domain of bodybuilding, this paper describes the collaboration between and within amateurs, professionals, and celebrities on social network sites. Social network sites help individuals to improve their performance in competitions, extend their support network, and gain recognition for their achievements. The findings show that amateurs benefit the most from online collaboration, whereas collaboration shifts from social network sites to offline settings as individuals develop further in their professional careers. This shift from online to offline settings constitutes a novel finding, which extends previous work on social network sites that has looked at groups of amateurs and professionals in isolation. As a contribution to practice, we highlight design factors that address this shift to offline settings and foster collaboration between and within groups.

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

amateurs
bodybuilding
celebrities
collaboration
professionals
social network sites


Multi-party encryption (MPE): secure communications in delay tolerant networks Mobile ad hoc networks are a subset of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) composed of several mobile devices. These dynamic environments make conventional security algorithms unreliable; nodes located far apart from each other may not have access (available) to each others public keys or have doubt on the validity of public-keys, making secure message exchange difficult. Furthermore, ad hoc networks are likely to be highly compromised and therefore may be untrusted. Other security methods, such as identity-based encryption and Kerberos, rely on requesting key data from a trusted third party, which can be unavailable or compromised in a DTN like environment. The purpose of this paper is to introduce two security overlay networks capable of delivering messages securely, preventing both eavesdropping and alteration of messages. The first algorithm, Chaining, uses multiple midpoints to re-encrypt the message for the destination node. The second, Fragmenting, separates the message key into pieces that are routed and secured independently from each other. Both techniques improve security in hostile environments; under test conditions, Chaining reduces the number of messages intercepted by 90%, and Fragmenting by 83%. This improvement has a performance trade-off, however, reducing the delivery ratio by 63% in both algorithms.

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

chaining encryption
threshold encryption
fragmented keys


guard channel allocation in integrated voice/data mobile networks with guard channel sharing scheme Guard channel sharing scheme, which the data traffic can use parts of the residual channels of voice guard channels on condition that the handoff requests have higher priority over data packets, has been evidenced that outperforms than conventional dedicated data guard channel scheme in integrated voice/data mobile networks. In this paper, we investigate a guard channel allocation scheme based on the guard channel sharing scheme that can jointly provide dynamic allocation of both voice and data guard channels in order to improve channel utilization and consequently keep the different services' QoS requirements as possible. The proposed scheme is convergent quickly and easy in implementation. Simulations are used to evaluate the performance which includes new call blocking/ handoff call force terminating probabilities, and average data packet delay of the system.

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

sdgc
channel alloction
integraged voice/data networks


Remark on Finite-time filtering for discrete-time linear impulsive systems ? The finite-time filtering problem for discrete-time linear impulsive systems has been investigated by Xu and Sun (2012) [1]. This paper finds that Theorem 2 in Xu and Sun (2012) [1] lacks some conditions via a numerical example and gives a complete conclusion. But some conditions in this complete conclusion are coupled. In order to avoid coupling, two feasible conclusions are given.

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

finite-time filtering
finite-time stability
impulsive system
discrete-time system


Algebraic properties and topological properties of the quotient space of fuzzy numbers based on Mare equivalence relation In this paper, we obtain some algebraic properties and topological properties of the quotient space of fuzzy numbers with respect to the equivalence relation defined by Mare: every fuzzy number has only one Mare core and equivalent fuzzy numbers have the same Mare core; in addition, equivalence classes of fuzzy numbers can be only expressed as the sum of its Mare core and the set of symmetric fuzzy numbers, which shows the notable difference between the equivalence classes of fuzzy numbers and the cosets of the normal subgroup in a group. Based on these results, we introduce a new concept of convergence under which the quotient space is complete. As an application of the main results, it is shown that if we identify every fuzzy number with the corresponding equivalence class, there would be more differentiable fuzzy functions than what is found in the literature.

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


A learning technique for a general purpose optimizer The goal of the machine learning method implemented in this article is to broaden the region of operability of an adaptive control system by switching multiple controller models. The learning system determines a separate set of control parameter values, for optimal performance under given operating conditions, and stores them in memory. In this way, the controller is able to operate effectively over the whole environment. The basic scheme implements a single neuron, the perceptron, which approximates the process model and then directly computes the control signals. An example application is also described of an innovative sensing method, which has been developed to replace leaf sensors in plant propagation chambers, by emulating the sensor in software. Such chambers present critical situations for control because of the high humidity levels required, which makes direct sensing methods unsuitable. The proposed method enhanced the reliability of the control system and eliminated the need for costly electronic leaf sensors and the associated need for great care and frequent calibration. The method in principle combines ordinary measurements of ambient temperature, humidity and radiation, to calculate the controls of the humidification process in mist or fog propagation chambers. The performance surface was studied and a modification of the searching algorithm has improved the learning rate significantly. The method is applicable to any system whose performance can be defined and measured by simulation or experiment.

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

perceptron
mist
fog
adaptive control
plant propagation


Trajectory Control of a Quadrotor Subject to 2D Wind Disturbances The paper addresses the flight control of a quad-rotor subject to two dimensional unknown static/varying wind disturbances. A model separation is proposed to simplify the control of the six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) nonlinear dynamics of the flying robot. Such approach allows to deal with quad-rotor's 3D-motion via two subsystems: dynamic (altitude and MAV-relative forward velocity) and kinematic (nonholonomic-like navigation) subsystems. In terms of control, a hierarchical control is used as the overall control structure to stabilize the kinematic underactuaded subsystem. A control strategy based on sliding-mode and adaptive control techniques is proposed to deal with slow and fast time-varying wind conditions, respectively. This choice not only provides well tracking control but also improves the estimation of unknown disturbance. The backstepping technique is used to stabilize the inner-loop heading dynamics, such recursive design takes into account a constrained heading rate. Promising simulations results show the validity of the proposed control strategy while tracking a time-parameterized straight-line and sinusoidal trajectory.

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

sliding-mode control
wind-tolerant flight
trajectory tracking


Software architecture decomposition using attributes Software architectural design has an enormous effect on downstream software artifacts. Decomposition of function for the final system is one of the critical steps in software architectural design. The Process of decomposition is typically conducted by designers based on their intuition and past experiences, which may not be robust sometimes. This paper presents a study of applying the clustering technique to support system decomposition based on requirements and their attributes. The approach can support system decomposition based on requirements and their attributes. The approach can support the architectural design process by grouping closely related requirements to form a subsystem or module. In this paper, we demonstrate our experiments in applying the approach to an industrial communication protocol software system and comparing several clustering algorithms. The result obtained from WPGMA (weighted pair-group method using arithmetic averages) shows closer resemblance than other clustering methods to the one developed by the designer.

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

software architecture
requirements
attributes
decomposition
clustering


Approximate modeling for high order non.-linear functions using small sample sets Having high learning accuracies, neural networks are widely applied for solving function approximation problems. Nevertheless, it is difficult to train a neural network to recognize a non-linear function using a small training sample set. Because the errors between real values and estimated values are significant and almost impossible to figure out using insufficient samples. This study develops an algorithm combining segmentation technique and artificial samples to overcome this situation. The strategy is to shorten the model range to minimize the total estimation error. Another supportive strategy known as artificial samples generation is also employed to fill information gaps. At the end of this research, the results of the computational examples indicate that learning accuracy can be significantly improved using the proposed method involving a very small data set. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


An autonomic cloud environment for hosting ECG data analysis services Advances in sensor technology, personal mobile devices, wireless broadband communications, and Cloud computing are enabling real-time collection and dissemination of personal health data to patients and health-care professionals anytime and from anywhere. Personal mobile devices, such as PDAs and mobile phones, are becoming more powerful in terms of processing capabilities and information management and play a major role in peoples daily lives. This technological advancement has led us to design a real-time health monitoring and analysis system that is Scalable and Economical for people who require frequent monitoring of their health. In this paper, we focus on the design aspects of an autonomic Cloud environment that collects peoples health data and disseminates them to a Cloud-based information repository and facilitates analysis on the data using software services hosted in the Cloud. To evaluate the software design we have developed a prototype system that we use as an experimental testbed on a specific use case, namely, the collection of electrocardiogram (ECG) data obtained at real-time from volunteers to perform basic ECG beat analysis.

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


Comprehensibility of universal healthcare symbols for wayfinding inhealthcare facilities Tested 14 universal healthcare symbols in the United States, Korea, and Turkey. Some signs comprehended in all three countries with high percentages. Significant difference of comprehension with Pharmacy sign across countries. Age had significant relationships with some sign comprehensions.

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

symbol comprehension
universal healthcare symbol


Behavioural evidence for separating components within visuo-spatial working memory Several different sources of evidence support the idea that visuo-spatial working memory can be segregated into separate cognitive subsystems. However, the nature of these systems remains unclear. Recently we reported data from neurological patients suggesting that information about visual appearance is retained in a different subsystem from information about spatial location. In this paper we report latency data from neurologically intact participants showing an experimental double dissociation between memory for appearance and memory for location. This was achieved by use of a selective dual task interference technique. This pattern provides evidence supporting the segregation of visuo-spatial memory between two systems, one of which supports memory for stimulus appearance and the other which supports memory for spatial location.

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


An innovative method based on satellite image analysis to check fault in a PV system leadacid battery A new approach to identify the faults in PV systems battery was explored. The simulation results of the estimation of the solar radiation using GISTEL model were reached. An algorithm for checking the battery faults is proposed.

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

leadacid battery
gistel model
pv systems

estimation of solar radiation
faults checking


Particle yoyos and their quark structures Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate such fundamental concepts as mass, charge, and quark structure of the general systemic yoyo model so that this model could be more widely applied in studies of various scientific disciplines. Design/methodology/approach - Laboratory experiments well documented in quantum mechanics and particle physics are employed as supporting evidence. Findings - A yoyo model explanation for Stern-Gerlach experiment is provided. The yoyo structures of an electron and a positron are established. Other than illustrating how a radioactive element is decayed, the paper provides an argument for why n-quark yoyos can theoretically exist in the physical world, for any natural number n. Originality/value - The paper shows how some properties of the general systemic yoyo model can be established and how some of these very properties can be employed to deepen the understanding of the elementary particles studied in particle physics.

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


A model for the receptive field of retinal ganglion cells Most retina ganglion cells have centersurround receptive fields, where the center may be either ON or OFF while the surround is the opposite. We clarify the functional roles of the receptive field structure, on the basis of the modern theory of natural data processing. It is suggested that the retina shares the principal mechanism and performance of image processing with a video codec in computers, where the antagonism in spatial or temporal receptive fields originates from the orthogonality condition between linear filters for optimal coding of visual signals. We also reveal what visual information is multiplexed across the discharges of an ensemble of ganglion cells. Our theory makes it possible to predict the cross-correlations between ganglion cell spikes, which are optimized for LGN cells to respond accurately and quickly to their receptive fields.

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

receptive field model
visual information processing
sensory system


Voluntary Facial Activations Regulate Physiological Arousal and Subjective Experiences During Virtual Social Stimulation Exposure to distressing computer-generated stimuli and feedback of physiological changes during exposure have been effective in the treatment of anxiety disorders (e. g., social phobia). Here we studied voluntary facial activations as a method for regulating more spontaneous physiological changes during virtual social stimulation. Twenty-four participants with a low or high level of social anxiety activated either the corrugator supercilii (used in frowning) or the zygomaticus major (used in smiling) facial muscle to keep a female or a male computer character walking towards them. The more socially anxious participants had a higher level of skin conductance throughout the trials as compared to less anxious participants. Within both groups, short-term skin conductance responses were enhanced both during and after facial activations; and corrugator supercilii activations facilitated longer term electrodermal relaxation. Zygomaticus major activations had opposite effects on subjective emotional ratings of the less and the more socially anxious. In sum, voluntary facial activations were effective in regulating emotional arousal during virtual social exposure. Corrugator supercilii activation was found an especially promising method for facilitating autonomic relaxation.

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

experimentation
human factors
affective computing
virtual characters
facial muscles
electrodermal activity


Aiming strategy error analysis and verification of a billiard training system A low cost training system is proposed for regular billiard game tutoring. We describe the elements to construct an interactive computer system which helps train billiard players in enhancing their skills. Most research on computer billiard has focused on creating highly competitive billiard playing programs, based on various search algorithms. Game playing strategies are embedded into these programs to beat the toughest human players. None of them is designed to reveal these information and help increase the public players skills. This lack of interactivity foundations makes most billiard playing programs inadequate as billiard tutors too. Our computer system is designed to combine with a visual guide interface to instruct users for a reliable strike. The system makes use of a vision system for cue ball, object ball locations and cue stick tracking. A least square error calibration process correlates the real world and the virtual world pool ball coordinates for a precise guidance line calculation. Users are able to adjust the cue stick on the pool table according to the visual guidance line instruction displayed on a PC monitor. Analysis found that a tolerance angle around the ideal visual line for the object ball to slide into a pocket decide the difficulties of a strike. This value further depends on the distance from pocket to the object, the distance from object to the cue ball, and the angle between these two vectors. Simulation results of tolerance angles as function of the angle variation between cue, object ball and pocket and distance variation between pocket and object ball are conducted. Players with different proficiency level were selected for the experiment. The result indicates that all players benefit from our proposed visual guide system in enhancing their skills. All exhibit enhanced hit-in rate both in maximum values and average values, while the low skill player shows the maximum enhancement in skill with the help of our system. The maximum hit in rate increases about 20.45% while average hit in rate increases about 38.76%. The experiment result as evaluated in hit-in rate has shown a consistent pattern with that of the analysis. The hit-in rate is thus tightly connected with the analyzed tolerance angles to sink object balls into a target pocket. These prove the efficiency of our system, and the analysis results can be used for an efficient game playing strategy.

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

vision tracking
strike strategy error analysis
system integration
augmented reality


Forecasting stock indices with wavelet domain kernel partial least square regressions Financial time series are nonlinear and non-stationary. Most financial phenomena cannot be clearly characterized in time domain. Therefore, traditional time domain models are not very effective in financial forecasting. To address the problem, this study combines wavelet analysis with kernel partial least square (PLS) regressions for stock index forecasting. Wavelet transformation maps time domain inputs to time-frequency (or wavelet) domain, where financial characteristics can be clearly identified. Because of the high dimensionality and heavy multi-collinearity of the input data, a wavelet domain kernel PLS regressor is employed to create the most efficient subspace that maintains maximum covariance between inputs and outputs, and to perform final forecasting. Empirical results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms traditional neural networks, support vector machines, GARCH models, and has significantly reduced the forecasting errors.

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

kernel method
support vector machine
hybrid model
time series forecasting


type-safe distributed programming for ocaml Existing ML-like languages guarantee type-safety, ensuring memory safety and protecting the invariants of abstract types, but only within single executions of single programs. Distributed programming is becoming ever more important, and should benefit even more from such guarantees. In previous work on theoretical calculi and the Acute prototype language we outlined techniques to provide them for simple languages.In this paper we put these ideas into practice, describing the HashCaml extension to the OCaml bytecode compiler, which supports type-safe and abstraction-safe marshalling, together with related naming constructs. Our contribution is threefold: (1) We show how to define globally meaningful runtime type names for key OCaml type constructs that were not covered in our previous work, dealing with the generativity issues involved: user-defined variant and record types, substructures, functors, arbitrary ascription, separate compilation, and external C functions. (2) We support marshalling within polymorphic functions by type-passing, requiring us to build compositional runtime type names and revisit the OCaml relaxed value restriction. We show that with typed marshalling one must fall back to the SML97 value restriction. (3) We show how the above can be implemented with reasonable performance as an unintrusive modification to the existing OCaml language, implementation, and standard libraries. An alpha release of HashCaml, capable of bootstrapping itself, is available, along with an example type-safe distributed communication library written in the language.

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


On Intrinsic Complexity of Nash Equilibrium Problems and Bilevel Optimization In this article we study generalized Nash equilibrium problems (GNEP) and bilevel optimization side by side. This perspective comes from the crucial fact that both problems heavily depend on parametric issues. Observing the intrinsic complexity of GNEP and bilevel optimization, we emphasize that it originates from unavoidable degeneracies occurring in parametric optimization. Under intrinsic complexity, we understand the involved geometrical complexity of Nash equilibria and bilevel feasible sets, such as the appearance of kinks and boundary points, non-closedness, discontinuity and bifurcation effects. The main goal is to illustrate the complexity of those problems originating from parametric optimization and singularity theory. By taking the study of singularities in parametric optimization into account, the structural analysis of Nash equilibria and bilevel feasible sets is performed. For GNEPs, the number of players common constraints becomes crucial. Infact, for GNEPs without common constraints and for classical NEPs we show thatgenericallyall Nash equilibria are jointly nondegenerate KarushKuhnTucker points. Consequently, they are isolated. However, in presence of common constraints Nash equilibria will constitute a higher dimensional set. In bilevel optimization, we describe the global structure of the bilevel feasible set in case of a one-dimensional leaders variable. We point out that the typical discontinuities of the leaders objective function will be caused by followers singularities. The latter phenomenon occurs independently of the viewpoint of the optimistic or pessimistic approach. In case of higher dimensions, optimistic and pessimistic approaches are discussed with respect to possible bifurcation of the followers solutions.

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

bilevel optimization
parametric optimization
singularities
bilevel feasible set