Improved AdaBoost-based image retrieval with relevance feedback via paired feature learning Boost learning algorithm, such as AdaBoost, has been widely used in a variety of applications in multimedia and computer vision. Relevance feedback-based image retrieval has been formulated as a classification problem with a small number of training samples. Several machine learning techniques have been applied to this problem recently. In this paper, we propose a novel paired feature AdaBoost learning system for relevance feedback-based image retrieval. To facilitate density estimation in our feature learning method, we propose an ID3-like balance tree quantization method to preserve most discriminative information. By using paired feature combination, we map all training samples obtained in the relevance feedback process onto paired feature spaces and employ the AdaBoost algorithm to select a few feature pairs with best discrimination capabilities in the corresponding paired feature spaces. In the AdaBoost algorithm, we employ Bayesian classification to replace the traditional binary weak classifiers to enhance their classification power, thus producing a stronger classifier. Experimental results on content-based image retrieval (CBIR) show superior performance of the proposed system compared to some previous methods.

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

adaboost
image retrieval
relevance feedback
paired feature learning


A new equation of state and Fortran 77 program to calculate vaporliquid phase equilibria of CH4H2O system at low temperatures ? A new equation of state (EOS) and the corresponding computer program package VLEWM are developed to calculate vaporliquid phase equilibria and volumetric properties of CH4H2O system at low temperatures. The EOS can predict vaporliquid equilibria and volumetric properties of CH4H2O system accurately at temperatures 273 , and at pressures 0 . The program package VLEWM is written in FORTRAN 77. It provides two main functions: (1) to calculate the composition in vapor phase and liquid phase of CH4H2O system at equilibrium and (2) to judge the phase and to calculate molar volume of CH4H2O mixture.

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

ch4h2o system
vaporliquid phase equilibria
volumetric properties
equation of state


A hybrid Finite IntegrationFinite Volume Scheme A hybridized scheme for the numerical solution of transient electromagnetic field problems is presented. The scheme combines the Finite Integration Technique (FIT) and the Finite Volume Method (FVM) in order to profit from the computational efficiency of the FIT while taking advantage of the superior dispersive properties of the FVM. The scheme is based on the longitudinaltransverse (LT) splitting of the discrete curl operator. The FIT is employed for discretizing the two-dimensional subproblem while the one-dimensional problem is discretized according to the FVM. The scheme offers benefits for the simulation of multiscale setups, where the size of the computational domain along one preferred direction is electrically much larger than along the others. In such situations, the accumulation of dispersion errors within hundreds of thousands of time steps usually deteriorates the solution accuracy. The hybrid scheme is applied in combination with adaptive mesh refinement, yielding an efficient scheme for multiscale applications.

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


Return on security investment (ROSI) - A practical quantitative model Organizations need practical security benchmarking tools in order to plan effective security strategies. This paper explores a number of techniques that can be used to measure security within an organization. It proposes a new benchmarking methodology that produces results that tire Of strategic importance to both decision makers and technology implementers. The approach taken reflects a work-in-progress that is a combination of practical experience and direct research.

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

return on security investment
benchmarking

security strategy
security metrics
management
measurement
standardization
economics
algorithms


Modular Development of Product Service Systems Since the early 1990s, the driver in our economy has been changing from production of material goods to product-service offers based on knowledge and information. More and more researchers, institutes, and programs paid attention to product service systems (PSS) in the last decade because PSS integrates tangible artifact and intangible service to achieve sustainable, improve enterprise competitiveness, and meet customer needs better. In order to respond to the industrial trend towards PSS and guide enterprises to develop PSS, this article aims to propose a framework of modular development for PSS. After a brief review on PSS development, six dimensions of modular product-service were introduced which are the basis of modular development. The process of modular development was proposed which are divided into three parts by order: functional, product, and service modularizations. Functional modularization realizes the planning of product-service family and the design of interface dimension and collaboration dimension. Product modularization realizes the product dimension and production dimension. Service modularization realizes the service dimension and process dimension. Finally, a case study on PSS development was proposed according to the method of modular development.

B 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 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 B I 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 B I

product service systems
modular development
pss development


Scattering from a chirally coated DB elliptic cylinder An exact analytic solution to the problem of scattering of a plane electromagnetic wave from a chirally coated elliptic cylinder defined by a DB boundary has been obtained, by expanding the different electromagnetic fields associated with the problem in terms of suitable elliptic vector wave functions and a set of expansion coefficients. The incident field expansion coefficients are known, but the expansion coefficients associated with the fields scattered outside the coated cylinder and the fields transmitted inside the coating are unknown. These unknown coefficients are obtained by imposing appropriate boundary conditions at the two boundaries. Results have been presented as normalized bistatic and backscattering widths for a variety of admittances, permeabilities, and permittivities of the chiral materials used for the coating, to show their effects on scattering from the chirally coated cylinder.

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

chiral coating
mathieu function expansions


cell-based generalization of 3d building groups with outlier management In this paper, we present a technique that generalizes 3D building groups of virtual 3D city models according to a cell structure that is derived from infrastructure networks. In addition, the technique handles vegetation areas and outliers such as landmark buildings. Generalized 3D representations abstract from complex, detailed 3D city models and enable storage, analysis, exploration, and interaction at varying levels of scales. Our technique implements the cartographic generalization operators clustering, aggregation, and accentuation; it performs the generalization in four steps: 1) City model components are clustered based on the cell structure. 2) For each cell, the weighted average height is calculated, which is also used to automatically identify outliers. 3) Free space is subtracted from the cells such as in the case of outliers or vegetation areas. 4) The modified cells are extruded to building blocks; vegetation areas and outliers are modeled or, respectively, integrated separately. The paper demonstrates the application of the presented technique by a case study.

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

3d city models
cells
accentuation
outliers
aggregation
generalization
clustering


ATTACK PATTERN ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR MULTIAGENT INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEM The paper proposes the use of attack pattern ontology and formal framework for network traffic anomalies detection within a distributed multiagent Intrusion Detection System architecture. Our framework assumes ontology-based attack definition and distributed processing scheme with exchange of communicates between agents. The role of traffic anomalies detection was presented then it has been discussed how some specific values characterizing network communication can be used to detect network anomalies caused by security incidents (worm attack, virus spreading). Finally, it has been defined how to use the proposed techniques in distributed IDS using attack pattern ontology.

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


Nonlinear Landau damping in spherically symmetric Vlasov Poisson systems The Vlasov Poisson system is a partial differential equation widely used to describe collisionless plasma. It is formulated in a six-dimensional phase space, this prohibits a numerical solution on a complete phase space grid. In some applications, however, spherical symmetry is given, which introduces singularities into the Vlasov Poisson equation. We focus on such problems and propose a stable algorithm using accommodating boundaries. At first, the method is tested in the linear regime, where analytical solutions are available. Thereafter it is applied to large disturbances from equilibrium. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

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

vlasov poisson equation
accommodating boundaries
landau damping


Intra-axiom redundancies in SNOMED CT We present a method to automatically detect intra-axiom redundancies. In SNOMED CT, intra-axiom redundancies are continuously introduced and removed. In SNOMED CT, a consistent proportion of about 12 overlooked redundancies may result in suboptimal maintenance. Redundancy detection and elimination should be part of terminology maintenance.

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

automated auditing method
intra-axiom redundancies
owl 2 el
clinical terminology


Channels That Heat Up This paper considers an additive noise channel where the time-k noise variance is a weighted sum of the squared magnitudes of the previous channel inputs plus a constant. This channel model accounts for the dependence of the intrinsic thermal noise on the data due to the heat dissipation associated with the transmission of data in electronic circuits: the data determine the transmitted signal, which in turn heats up the circuit and thus influences the power of the thermal noise. The capacity of this channel (both with and without feedback) is studied at low transmit powers and at high transmit powers. At low transmit powers, the slope of the capacity-versus-power curve at zero is computed and it is shown that the heating-up effect is beneficial. At high transmit powers, conditions are determined under which the capacity is bounded, i.e., under which the capacity does not grow to infinity as the allowed average power tends to infinity.

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

capacity per unit cost
channel capacity
channels with memory
high signal-to-noise ratio (snr)
on-chip communication


INFORMATION-SYSTEMS STRATEGY AND IMPLEMENTATION - A CASE-STUDY OF A BUILDING SOCIETY The formation and implementation of strategy with respect to computer-based information systems (IS) are important issues in many contemporary organizations, including those in the financial services sector. This paper describes and analyzes an in-depth case study of the strategy formation and implementation process in one such organization, a medium-sized UK building society, and relates the process to its organizational and broader contexts; the organization is examined over a period of several years and under the contrasting leadership of two different chief executives. The case study is used to develop some general implications on IS strategy and implementation, which can be taken as themes for debate in any new situation. The paper provides an example of a more detailed perspective on processes in IS strategy and implementation than typically available in the literature. In addition, a new framework for further research in this area is developed, which directs the researcher toward exploring the dynamic interplay of strategic content, multilevel contexts, and cultural and political perspectives on the process of change.

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

human factors
management
change process
culture
multilevel context
politics


The Monge-Kantorovitch mass transfer and its computational fluid mechanics formulation This paper explains how computational fluid mechanics (CFM) concepts can be used to solve the Monge-Kantorovitch mass transfer type of problems (MKP). Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

monge-kantorovitch mass tranfer
wasserstein distance
pressureless potential flow


The simple model of cell prestress maintained by cell incompressibility Living cells are reinforced by polymer fibers (the so-called cytoskeleton) which ale responsible for their mechanical behaviour There are many evidences that these fibres are prestressed without an external load To include this prestress into mechanical models of living tissues is not an easy task We propose an approach in which the intracellular prestress is maintained by the incompressibility of cells. A simple illustrative structure is studied in older to determine the dependence of stiffness on the level of prestress Some macroscopic models of lime tissues with prestressed cells are formulated The results show a clear dependence of the macroscopic mechanical response on the level of prestress at microscale. The model exhibits some features of lime cells (prestress-induced stiffening. strain hardening) (C) 2009 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

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

constant cellular volume
soft tissue modeling
hyperelastic material


Automatic detection of follicular regions in H&E images using iterative shape index Follicular Lymphoma (FL) accounts for 2025% of non-Hodgkin lymphomas in the United States. The first step in grading FL is identifying follicles. Our paper discusses a novel technique to segment follicular regions in H&E stained images. The method is based on three successive steps: (1) region-based segmentation, (2) iterative shape index (concavity index) calculation, (3) and recursive watershed. A novel aspect of this method is the use of iterative Concavity Index (CI) to control the follicular splitting process in recursive watershed. CI takes into consideration the convex hull of the object and the closest area surrounding it. The mean Zijbendos similarity index (ZSI) final segmentation score on fifteen cases was 78.33%, with a standard deviation of 2.83.

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

active contour
morphological filtering
recursive concavity index
fourier descriptor
zijdenbos similarity index


Regularized tessellation density estimation with bootstrap aggregation and complexity penalization Locally adaptive density estimation presents challenges for parametric or non-parametric estimators. Several useful properties of tessellation density estimators (TDEs), such as low bias, scale invariance and sensitivity to local data morphology, make them an attractive alternative to standard kernel techniques. However, simple TDEs are discontinuous and produce highly unstable estimates due to their susceptibility to sampling noise. With the motivation of addressing these concerns, we propose applying TDEs within a bootstrap aggregation algorithm, and incorporating model selection with complexity penalization. We implement complexity reduction of the TDE via sub-sampling, and use information-theoretic criteria for model selection, which leads to an automatic and approximately ideal bias/variance compromise. The procedure yields a stabilized estimator that automatically adapts to the complexity of the generating distribution and the quantity of information at hand, and retains the highly desirable properties of the TDE. Simulation studies presented suggest a high degree of stability and sensitivity can be obtained using this approach.

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

tessellation
density estimation
bootstrap aggregation
kernel
model selection

regularization
voronoi
non-parametric
bagging
information criterion


Timestepping schemes for nonsmooth dynamics based on discontinuous Galerkin methods: Definition and outlook The contribution deals with timestepping schemes for nonsmooth dynamical systems. Traditionally, these schemes are locally of integration order one, both in non-impulsive and impulsive periods. This is inefficient for applications with infinitely many events but large non-impulsive phases like circuit breakers, valve trains or slider-crank mechanisms. To improve the behaviour during non-impulsive episodes, we start activities twofold. First, we include the classic schemes in time discontinuous Galerkin methods. Second, we split non-impulsive and impulsive force propagation. The correct mathematical setting is established with mollifier functions, Clenshaw-Curtis quadrature rules and an appropriate impact representation. The result is a Petrov-Galerkin distributional differential inclusion. It defines two Runge-Kutta collocation families and enables higher integration order during non-impulsive transition phases. As the framework contains the classic Moreau-Jean timestepping schemes for constant ansatz and test functions on velocity level, it can be considered as a consistent enhancement. An experimental convergence analysis with the bouncing ball example illustrates the capabilities. (C) 2012 IMACS. Published by 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 O O O O O 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 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

nonsmooth dynamics
time discontinuous galerkin methods
impact


Optimal inventory policies with non-stationary supply disruptions and advance supply information We consider the production/inventory problem of a manufacturer (or a retailer) under non-stationary and stochastic supply availability. Although supply availability is uncertain, the supplier would be able to predict her near future shortages and hence supply disruption to (some of) her customers based on factors such as her pipeline stock information, production schedule, seasonality, contractual obligations, and non-contractual preferences regarding other manufacturers. We consider the case where the information on the availability of supply for the near future, which we refer to as advance supply information (ASI), is provided by the supplier. The customer demand is deterministic but non-stationary over time, and the system costs consist of fixed ordering, holding and backorder costs. We consider an all-or-nothing type of supply availability structure and we show the optimality of a state-dependent (s,S) policy. For the case with no fixed ordering cost we prove various properties of the optimal order-up-to levels and provide a simple characterization of optimal order-up-to levels. For the model with fixed ordering cost, we propose a heuristic algorithm for finding a good ordering strategy. Finally, we numerically elaborate on the value of ASI and provide managerial insights.

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


3D simulation of tool machining This paper describes a 3D tool machining simulation system. The initial tool and the grinding wheels are integrated with the machine tool. The application reads and interprets the CNC program code that controls the machine, it computes the positions and the motion of components and it translates the sequence of machining operations into Boolean operations. The machining is computed for 2D sections and, later, a 3D model of the tool is reconstructed. The application is ready to yield tool visualization, it gives measurements on sections and it can show an interactive animation of the whole process. A novel aspect of the simulation is that it is able to deal with 6-axes machines, whereas most of previous work is limited to 3- and 4-axes machines. In addition, it allows to interrupt the machining process and to show partially machined tools. A major contribution is the fact that the Boolean operations are performed in 2D and the 3D model is reconstructed from the cross sections, which provides user control on the resolution of the operations at a low cost.

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

application packages
industrial machining
graphics data structures and data types


data integrity considerations in computer based accounting systems Over the past few years there has been a steady increase in the applications of computers to accounting functions. While computerized accounting systems enable one to store a large volume of data and process these data very rapidly, such systems also contribute to the complexity of data integrity problems. The purpose of this paper is to review several important considerations in developing and maintaining the integrity of data in computerized accounting systems. In order to establish a reasonable degree of confidence in data generated by an accounting system, the hardware, software, communications and human operating procedures must operate in concert. Integrity of data can be compromised in any one of the several phases of the life cycle of accounting data. The basic stages in this life cycle might be characterized as follows: 1. Measurement and classification 2. Transcription, validation and storage 3. Processing, updating and recovery

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

measurement review software applications order systems human data process hardware complexity paper

communication
procedure
computation
operability
account
update
data integrity
integrability


New calcium channel agonists as potential therapeutics in LambertEaton myasthenic syndrome and other neuromuscular diseases LambertEaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) causes neuromuscular weakness as a result of an autoimmune attack on the calcium channels that normally regulate chemical transmitter release at the neuromuscular junction. Currently there are limited treatment options for patients with this and other forms of neuromuscular weakness. A novel, first-in-class calcium channel agonist that is selective for the types of voltage-gated calcium channels that regulate transmitter release at neuromuscular synapses has recently been developed. This compound (GV-58) slows deactivation (closing) of the channel, resulting in a large increase in total calcium entry during motor nerve action potential activity. This new calcium channel agonist is currently being evaluated for the treatment of neuromuscular weakness. Potential applications include development as single therapeutics, or for combination treatments.

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

calcium channel
transmitter release
lamberteaton myasthenic syndrome


No Dimension-Independent Core-Sets for Containment Under Homothetics This paper deals with the containment problem under homothetics which has the minimal enclosing ball (MEB) problem as a prominent representative. We connect the problem to results in classic convex geometry and introduce a new series of radii, which we call core-radii. For the MEB problem, these radii have already been considered from a different point of view and sharp inequalities between them are known. In this paper sharp inequalities between core-radii for general containment under homothetics are obtained. Moreover, the presented inequalities are used to derive sharp upper bounds on the size of core-sets for containment under homothetics. In the MEB case, this yields a tight (dimension-independent) bound for the size of such core-sets. In the general case, we show that there are core-sets of size linear in the dimension and that this bound stays sharp even if the container is required to be symmetric.

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

core-sets
geometric inequalities
computational geometry
optimal containment
approximation algorithms
dimension reduction
k-center


collaborative, participative, and interactive modeling and simulation in systems engineering Traditionally, modeling and simulation is studied and seen as a disconnected service from systems engineering field. For a full integration of modeling and simulation into systems engineering practice, they should be "within the circle", i.e., within the system engineering life cycle, and applied in each phase of systems engineering (analysis, design, development, implementation, and training). In this paper, we discuss modeling and simulation as an integral to the systems engineering life cycle and in a close relation with the team of analysts, modelers, and developers on one hand and the end users of the system on the other. Thus, the approach we propose is of Collaborative, Participative , and Interactive Modeling and Simulation in Systems Engineering.

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

simulation in systems engineering
interactive modeling

collaborative modeling
cpi simulation
cpi modeling
participative simulation
collaborative simulation
participative modeling
enterprise simulation
enterprise modeling
business processes simulation
interactive simulation
business processes modeling


Direct Forcing for Lagrangian Rigid-Fluid Coupling We propose a novel boundary handling algorithm for particle-based fluids. Based on a predictor-corrector scheme for both velocity and position, one- and two-way coupling with rigid bodies can be realized. The proposed algorithm offers significant improvements over existing penalty-based approaches. Different slip conditions can be realized and nonpenetration is enforced. Direct forcing is employed to meet the desired boundary conditions and to ensure valid states after each simulation step. We have performed various experiments in 2D and 3D. They illustrate one- and two-way coupling of rigid bodies and fluids, the effects of hydrostatic and dynamic forces on a rigid body, as well as different slip conditions. Numerical experiments and performance measurements are provided.

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

physically-based simulation
fluid dynamics
smoothed particle hydrodynamics


Transformational change and business process reengineering (BPR): Lessons from the British and Dutch public sector Facilitated by electronic government, public agencies are looking for transformational change by making a radical improvement. At first glance, this development is similar to the business process re-engineering (BPR) movement in the private sector. While policy makers and practitioners in the public sector have branded their recent improvements as BPR, the academic and research community have thus far eluded from making any comparisons. This has left a vacuum in terms of understanding the complexity of the challenges facing e-Government re-engineering and resultant change in public agencies. The aim of this paper is to translate the BPR movement findings to the field of e-Government induced change in the public sector. BPR characteristics and challenges are derived using normative literature and compared with two cases of public sector transformation in the UK and Netherlands. The results of these cases show that e-Government-induced change requires a plan for a radical improvement which, in contrast to BPR, is obtained by incremental steps and has a high level of participation. The findings offer policy makers valuable insights into the complexities and possible strategies that may need to be followed in order to succeed in e-Government implementation.

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

e-government
change management
business process re-engineering
tqm


Wearable sensing to annotate meeting recordings We propose to use wearable computers and sensor systems to generate personal contextual annotations in audio visual recordings of meetings. In this paper, we argue that such annotations are essential and effective to allow the retrieval of relevant information from large audio-visual databases. The paper proposes several useful annotations that can be derived from cheap and unobtrusive sensors. It also describes a hardware platform designed to implement accelerometric activity recognition, outlines approaches to extract annotations and presents first experimental results.

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

meeting annotations
speaker segmentation


Reduced models for efficient simulation of spatially integrated outputs of one-dimensional substance transport models We examined under what circumstances the results of a large number of runs of the one-dimensional, physics-based SOIL/SOILN nitrate transport model can be combined into a reduced (or meta) model. We considered the total flow of nitrate from a given area and investigated when and how hidden linear structures can be extracted from the underlying model. The presence of such structures can justify the use of spatially aggregated inputs to compute spatially aggregated outputs. Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations showed that some linear structures emerged when the outputs for a long period of time were summed. Other linear structures appeared as relationships between two different components of the model outputs. However, different cropping systems respond differently to changes in anthropogenic or meteorological forcings. Therefore, we derived a reduced model of long-term leaching of nitrogen from the root zone in an agricultural area by combining each combination of soil type and cropping system. Reduced models can help make process-oriented models more transparent, and they are particularly suitable for incorporation into decision support systems.

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

reduced model
meta model
nitrate transport
linear structures

physics-based model
runoff
spatial integration


Extension of the FDTD Huygens subgridding to frequency dependent media A wide range of wireless system developments require knowledge of the distribution of electromagnetic fields from various sources in humans. As experimental assessment is ethically unacceptable, high-resolution numerical dosimetry is needed. The finite-difference time-domain method is the most appropriate due to its simplicity and versatility. Reduction in demands on computational resources can be achieved using subgridding techniques. This paper rigorously introduces frequency dependency to one of the most promising subgridding techniques, Huygens subgridding. The validity of the Huygens surface in lossy media, as well as on the physical interface, is intensively studied.

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

subgrid
finite-difference time-domain
debye media
uwb
numerical method


mstate: An R Package for the Analysis of Competing Risks and Multi-State Models Multi-state models are a very useful tool to answer a wide range of questions in survival analysis that cannot, or only in a more complicated way, be answered by classical models. They are suitable for both biomedical and other applications in which time-to-event variables are analyzed. However, they are still not frequently applied. So far, an important reason for this has been the lack of available software. To overcome this problem, we have developed the mstate package in R for the analysis of multi-state models. The package covers all steps of the analysis of multi-state models, from model building and data preparation to estimation and graphical representation of the results. It can be applied to non-and semi-parametric (Cox) models. The package is also suitable for competing risks models, as they are a special category of multi-state models. This article offers guidelines for the actual use of the software by means of an elaborate multi-state analysis of data describing post-transplant events of patients with blood cancer. The data have been provided by the EBMT (the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation). Special attention will be paid to the modeling of different covariate effects (the same for all transitions or transition-specific) and different baseline hazard assumptions (different for all transitions or equal for some).

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

competing risks
estimation
r
survival analysis


(symbolic) state-space inspection of a class of dynamic petri nets The design of dynamic or adaptable discrete-event systems needs for adequate modeling techniques in order to manage possible structural changes occurring during system's lifecycle. An usual approach is that of polluting design with details not concerning the (current) system behavior, rather its evolution. That hampers analysis, reuse and maintenance in general. A Petri net-based reflective layout based on classical Petri nets was recently proposed to support dynamic discrete-event system's design, and was applied to dynamic workflows. The basic idea is that keeping functional aspects separated from evolutionary ones, deploying evolution on the (current) system configuration when necessary, results in a clean formal model for dynamic systems. This model preserves the ability of verifying properties typical of classical Petri nets. As a first step toward the implementation of a discrete-event simulator, Reflective Petri nets are provided with a (symbolic) reduced state-transition graph.

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


automatic object segmentation from large scale 3d urban point clouds through manifold embedded mode seeking This paper presents a system that can automatically segment objects in large scale 3D point clouds obtained from urban ranging images. The system consists of three steps: The first one involves a ground detection process that can detect relatively complex terrain and separate it from other objects. The second step superpixelizes the remaining objects to speed up the segmentation process. In the final step, a manifold embedded mode seeking method is adopted to segment the point clouds. Even though the segmentation of urban objects is a challenging problem in terms of accuracy and problem scale, our system can efficiently generate very good segmentation results. The proposed manifold learning effectively improves the segmentation performance due to the fact that continuous artificial objects often have manifold-like structures.

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


An adaptive NS/ES-FEM approach for 2D contact problems using triangular elements An adaptive contact analysis approach is presented for 2D solid mechanics problems using only triangular elements and the subdomain parametric variational principle (SPVP). The present approach is implemented for the node-based smoothed FEM (or NS-FEM), the edge-based smoothed FEM (ES-FEM) and the standard FEM models with automatically adaptive refinement scheme. A modified Coulomb frictional contact model and its corresponding discrete equations are introduced. The global discretized system equations are then formulated in an incremental form with the aid of the basic boundary value equations for friction contact and the subdomain parametric variational principle. A simple adaptive refining scheme is presented, and the Voronoi vertices are taken as candidate points to become new nodes because of duality property between the Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulation. The present adaptive approach can properly simulate variable behaviors of a contact interface such as bonding/debonding, contacting/departing, and sticking/slipping. Several examples are presented to numerically validate the proposed approach via the comparison with reference solutions obtained by ABAQUS, and to investigate the effects of the various parameters used in the computations on the response of the contact system. The numerical results have demonstrated that the present adaptive contact analysis approach using the ES-FEM has higher accuracy and convergence rate in the strain energy than that using FEM and NS-FEM. However, the latter two methods can provide the lower and upper bound solution for the system strain energy, respectively.

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

contact
adaptive refinement
parametric variational principle

numerical method
finite element
gradient smoothing


Long-Term Population Cycles in Human Societies Human population dynamics are usually conceptualized as either boundless growth or growth to an equilibrium. The implicit assumption underlying these paradigms is that any feedback processes regulating population density, if they exist, operate on a fast-time-scale, and therefore we do not expect to observe population oscillations in human population numbers. This review asks, are population processes in historical and prehistorical human populations characterized by second-order feedback loops, that is, regulation involving lags? If yes, then the implications for forecasting future population change are obviouswhat may appear as inexplicable, exogenously driven reverses in population trends may actually be a result of feedbacks operating with substantial time lags. This survey of a variety of historical and archeological data indicates that slow oscillations in population numbers, with periods of roughly two to three centuries, are observed in a number of world regions and historical periods. Next, a potential explanation for this pattern, the demographic-structural theory, is discussed. Finally, the implications of these results for global population forecasts is discussed.

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


the minimum-rank gram matrix completion via modified fixed point continuation method The problem of computing a representation for a real polynomial as a sum of minimum number of squares of polynomials can be casted as finding a symmetric positive semidefinite real matrix of minimum rank subject to linear equality constraints. In this paper, we propose algorithms for solving the minimum-rank Gram matrix completion problem, and show the convergence of these algorithms. Our methods are based on the fixed point continuation method. We also use the Barzilai-Borwein technique and a specific linear combination of two previous iterates to accelerate the convergence of modified fixed point continuation algorithms. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms for computing approximate and exact rational sum of squares decompositions of polynomials with rational coefficients.

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 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 B I I O O O O O O

nuclear norm minimization
schur decomposition
fixed point iterative method


Partial redundancy elimination in SSA form The SSAPRE algorithm for performing partial redundancy elimination based entirely on SSA form is presented. The algorithm is formulated based on a new conceptual framework, the factored redundancy graph, for analyzing redundancy, and represents the first sparse approach to the classical problem of partial redundancy elimination. At the same time, it provides new perspectives on the problem and on methods for its solution. With the algorithm description, theorems and their proofs are given showing that the algorithm produces the best possible code by the criteria of computational optimality and lifetime optimality of the introduced temporaries. In addition to the base algorithm, a practical implementation of SSAPRE that exhibits additional compile-time efficiencies is described. In closing, measurement statistics are provided that characterize the instances of the partial redundancy problem from a set of benchmark programs and compare optimization time spent by an implementation of SSAPRE against a classical partial redundancy elimination implementation. The data lend insight into the nature of partial redundancy elimination and demonstrate the expediency of this new approach.

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

algorithms
theory
code motion
static single assignment form
common subexpressions
data flow analysis


Pathophysiology of Cerebral Malaria Cerebral malaria (CM), one of the most serious complications of Plasmodium falciparum infection, is characterized by the sequestration of infected erythrocytes (IEs) in cerebral microvascular beds. The precise mechanisms involved in the onset of neuropathology remain unknown, but parasite sequestration in the brain, metabolic disturbances, and host immune responses all play a role. Studies in a murine model of CM showed a potential role for host cells, especially platelets, in the pathogenesis of CM. Indeed, urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR; CD87) deficiency attenuates the severity of CM, most likely by its important role in platelet kinetics and trapping. These results led us to evaluate whether platelets have a role in the human disease. By immunostaining of brain samples from Malawian patients, we determined that the surface of platelet accumulation and the proportion of vessels filled with platelets were significantly higher in patients who died of CM than in those who died of other causes. We then investigated the role of platelets in IE cytoadhesion in vitro, using CD36-binding IE (IECD36) and CD36-deficient (CD36DEF) brain microvascular endothelial cells (ECs). Coincubation studies indicated that platelets can induce strong IECD36 binding to CD36DEF ECs and, conversely, can hide constitutively expressed falciparum receptors such as chondroitin sulfate A. Thus, platelets may provide an adhesion receptor to microvascular beds originally devoid of it. This novel mechanism of cytoadhesion may reorient the sequestration of different parasite phenotypes and play an important role in the pathogenesis of severe malaria.

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

cerebral malaria
cytoadhesion
host cells
platelets
pathogenesis


Parallel construction of optimal independent spanning trees on hypercubes ? The use of multiple independent spanning trees (ISTs) for data broadcasting in networks provides a number of advantages, including the increase of fault-tolerance and bandwidth. Thus, the designs of multiple ISTs on several classes of networks have been widely investigated. Tang et al. [S.-M. Tang, Y.-L. Wang, Y.-H. Leu, Optimal independent spanning trees on hypercubes, Journal of Information Science and Engineering 20 (2004) 143155] studied the problem of constructing k ISTs on k-dimensional hypercube Qk, and provided a recursive algorithm for their construction (i.e., for constructing k ISTs of Qk, it needs to build k?1 ISTs of Qk?1 in advance). This kind of construction forbids the possibility that the algorithm could be parallelized. In this paper, based on a simple concept called Hamming distance Latin square, we design a new algorithm for generating k ISTs of Qk. The newly proposed algorithm relies on a simple rule and is easy to be parallelized. As a result, we show that the ISTs we constructed are optimal in the sense that both the heights and the average path length of trees are minimized.

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

independent spanning trees
hypercubes
latin square
hamming distance


Learning via finitely many queries This work introduces a new query inference model that can access data and communicate with the teacher by asking finitely many Boolean queries in a language L. In this model the parameters of interest are the number of queries used and the expressive power of L. We study how the learning power varies with these parameters. Results suggest that this model may help studying query inference in a resource bounded environment.

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

inductive inference
machine learning
learning by example
learning via a teacher


hierarchical registers for scientific computers Simulations of scientific programs running on traditional scientific computer architectures show that execution with hundreds of registers can be more than twice as fast as execution with only eight registers. In addition, execution with a small number of fast registers and hundreds of slower registers can be as fast as execution with hundreds of fast registers. A hierarchical organization of fast and slow registers is presented, register-allocation strategies are discussed, and a novel, indirect, register-addressing mechanism is described .

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

program
hierarchic
computer architecture
register allocation
computation


Nonlinear finite element models for the embedded through-section FRP shear-strengthening method The embedded through-section (ETS) strengthening method is a promising technique recently developed to increase the shear strength of deficient reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The method uses an adhesive to bond fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars embedded through pre-drilled holes into the concrete core. The motivation for this work is the fact that a full understanding of the ETS technique can be achieved through finite element models. Two-dimensional finite element models have been developed to address the CFRP bar/concrete interfacial behavior of the ETS pull-out test. In the model, discrete truss elements are oriented above and below the CFRP bar to connect the bar to the two sides of the concrete. The CosenzaManfrediRealfonzo (CMR) bond stressslip model is used to represent the bond behavior. Numerical predictions show that the CFRP bar/concrete interfacial profiles are useful in determining the optimum lengths of the CFRP bars. The study has been extended to investigate FRP shear-strengthened beams using the ETS method by developing a three-dimensional finite element model. Nonlinear material behavior of the plain concrete, steel reinforcing bars and CFRP bars has been simulated using appropriate constitutive models. Results are presented in terms of ultimate load-carrying capacities, loaddeflection relationships, and axial strains in the CFRP bars. The numerical predictions are compared with experimental data, and very good agreement is obtained.

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

shear strengthening
numerical results
cfrp bar/concrete interfacial behavior


An efficient method of cast shadow removal using multiple features Features of images are often used for cast shadow removal. A technique based on using only a single feature cannot universally distinguish an object pixel from a shadow pixel of a video frame. On the other hand, the use of multiple features increases the computational cost of a shadow removal technique considerably. In this paper, an efficient yet simple method for cast shadow removal from video sequences with static background using multiple features is developed. The basic idea of the proposed technique is that a simultaneous use of a small number of multiple features, if chosen judiciously, can reduce the similarity between object and shadow pixels without an excessive increase in the computational cost. Using the features of gray levels, color composition, and gradients of foreground and background pixels, a method is devised to create a complete object mask. First, based on each of the three features, three individual shadow masks are constructed, from which three corresponding object masks are obtained through a simple subtraction operation. The object masks are then merged together to generate a single object mask. Each of the three shadow masks is created so as to cover as many shadow pixels as possible, even if it results in falsely including in them some of the object pixels. As a result, the subsequent object masks may lose some of these pixels. However, the object pixels missed by one of the object masks should be able to be recovered by at least one of the other two, since they are generated based on features complementary to the one used to construct the first one. The final object mask obtained through a logical OR operation of the three individual masks can, therefore, be expected to include most of the object pixels. The proposed method is applied to a number of video sequences. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method provides a mechanism for shadow removal that is superior to some of the recently proposed techniques without imparting an excessive computational cost.

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


Performance of Secondary Wireless Networks with Contention Control in TV White Spaces In this paper we study the spectrum coexistence of secondary wireless networks with contention control and TV services. We propose to use the carrier sensing threshold as a parameter to control the density of secondary transmitters and through that the generated secondary interference to the TV system. For the calculated threshold we propose a simple method to assess the data rate of the secondary system. Using this method one can study whether the secondary performance is limited due to the TV protection requirements or not. Also, the method can be used to study the trade-off between the secondary performance and the TV protection requirement.

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

contention control
secondary performance

interference control
secondary spectrum access


Application of artificial neural network (ANN)self-organizing map (SOM) for the categorization of water, soil and sediment quality in petrochemical regions The utilization of mathematical and computational tools for pollutant assessment frameworks has become increasingly valuable due to the capability to interpret integrated variable measurements. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are considered as dependable and inexpensive techniques for data interpretation and prediction. The self-organizing map (SOM) is an unsupervised ANN used for data training to classify and effectively recognize patterns embedded in the input data space. Application of SOMANN is useful for recognizing spatial patterns in contaminated zones by integrating chemical, physical, ecotoxicological and toxicokinetic variables in the identification of pollution sources and similarities in the quality of the samples. Water (n=11), soil (n=38) and sediment (n=54) samples from four areas in the Niger Delta (Nigeria) were classified based on their chemical, toxicological and physical variables applying the SOM. The results obtained in this study provided valuable assessment using the SOM visualization capabilities and highlighted zones of priority that might require additional investigations and also provide productive pathway for effective decision making and remedial actions.

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

water
soil
sediment
petrochemical
niger delta

self-organizing map
multivariate statistical techniques


The effect of competences on learning results an educational experience with a business simulator Business games are linked to develop competences that are becoming more useful in business education. Business games help participants develop team working. Competences that influence on the assessment of individual work are different from team working. Competences influencing participants satisfaction never coincide with students expectations. The competence Ability to innovate has a negative effect on learning results.

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

e-learning
generic competences
learning outcomes


ADMiRe: An algebraic data mining approach to system performance analysis Performance analysis of computing systems is an increasingly difficult task due to growing system complexity. Traditional tools rely on ad hoc procedures. With these, determining which of the manifold system and workload parameters to examine is often a lengthy and highly speculative process. The analysis is often incomplete and, therefore, prone to revealing faulty conclusions and not uncovering useful tuning knowledge. We address this problem by introducing a data mining approach called ADMiRe ( Analyzer for Data Mining Results). In this scheme, regression analysis is first applied to performance data to discover correlations between various system and workload parameters. The results of this analysis are summarized in sets of regression rules. The user can then formulate intuitive algebraic expressions to manipulate these sets of rules to capture critical information. To demonstrate this approach, we use ADMiRe to analyze an Oracle database system running the TPC- C ( Transaction Processing Performance Council) benchmark. The results generated by ADMiRe were confirmed by Oracle experts. We also show that by applying ADMiRe to Microsoft Internet Information Server performance data, we can improve system performance by 20 percent.

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

algorithms for data and knowledge management


Consultation system for determining the patients' readiness for weaning from long-term mechanical ventilation Determining the readiness of the patient for weaning from long-term mechanical ventilation with high degree of accuracy is a prerequisite for successful weaning attempt. A computer system for the determination of the moment for beginning the weaning process is proposed and realized as a program package WeaningMV. It is designed on the basis of four classification methods: stepwise discriminant analysis, stepwise logistic regression; intuitionistic fuzzy Voronoi diagrams and non-pulmonary weaning index, applied to 17 features (variables). The system is designed and preliminary tested on 151 patients with features in two classes "not ready for weaning" and "ready for weaning" and it has a high degree for sensitivity (0.99) and specificity (0.89). After the application of the system in the everyday physician's practice a set of 72 patients has been examined. For that set the sensitivity is 0.92 and the specificity 0.88. The system consults the medical team on the basis of objective processing of the information contained in the data and is suitable for use in the clinical practice as well as in the training of the respective specialists. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

consultation system
mechanical ventilation
weaning


Factors of characteristic words of irrational numbers Let P be an irrational number between 0 and 1. The characteristic word f(beta) of beta is defined to be the infinite word over {0, 1} whose nth letter is [(n + 1)beta] - [n beta], n >= 1. It is well known that, for each m >= 1, f (beta) has exactly m + 1 distinct factors of length m. In this paper, we shall develop a method to construct these factors. Under our construction, the 1-sets of these m + 1 factors x(0)((m)), x(1)((m)) x(m)((m)) are determined, these factors are increasing in the lexicographic order and their moments M(x(0)((m))), M(x(1)((m))),...,M(x(m)((m))) form an increasing sequence of m + 1 consecutive integers. Some known results about generating factors of f (beta) using the unbordered alpha-words and their conjugates turn out to be consequences of our main theorem. (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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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


Two-dimensional random projection ? As an alternative to adaptive nonlinear schemes for dimensionality reduction, linear random projection has recently proved to be a reliable means for high-dimensional data processing. Widespread application of conventional random projection in the context of image analysis is, however, mainly impeded by excessive computational and memory requirements. In this paper, a two-dimensional random projection scheme is considered as a remedy to this problem, and the associated key notion of concentration of measure is closely studied. It is then applied in the contexts of image classification and sparse image reconstruction. Finally, theoretical results are validated within a comprehensive set of experiments with synthetic and real images.

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 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 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

random projection
concentration of measure


Reduced-memory direct digital frequency synthesizer using parabolic initial guess Based on the parabolic approximation, which was recently introduced by the authors, a new architecture for sine-output direct digital frequency synthesizers has been developed. Due to using this approximation, and also considering several memory-reduction techniques, the proposed architecture is so designed that needs only 728 bits read-only memory for mapping a 12-bit phase address to 10-bit sine amplitude. The synthesizer has also been implemented and the experimental results show its desired operation and performance.

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 O O O O O

frequency synthesizers
parabolic approximation

direct digital frequency synthesis (dds)


Nodal ant colony optimization for solving profit based unit commitment problem for GENCOs This paper proposes a nodal ant colony optimization (NACO) technique to solve profit based unit commitment problem (PBUCP). Generation companies (GENCOs) in a competitive restructured power market, schedule their generators with an objective to maximize their own profit without any regard for system social benefit. Power and reserve prices become important factors in decision process. Ant colony optimization that mimics the behavior of ants foraging activities is suitably implemented to search the UCP search space. Here a search space consisting of optimal combination of binary nodes for unit ON/OFF status is represented for the movement of the ants to maintain good exploration and exploitation search capabilities. The proposed model help GENCOs to make decisions on the quantity of power and reserve that must be put up for sale in the markets and also to schedule generators in order to receive the maximum profit. The effectiveness of the proposed technique for PBUCP is validated on 10 and 36 generating unit systems available in the literature. NACO yields an increase of profit, greater than 1.5%, in comparison with the basic ACO, Muller method and hybrid LR-GA.

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

ant colony optimization and nodal ant colony optimization


Constructing a tree from homeomorphic subtrees, with applications to computational evolutionary biology We are given a set T = {T-1, T-2,..., T-k} of rooted binary trees, each T-i leaf-labeled by a subset L(T-i) subset of {1,2,..., n). If T is a tree on {1,2,..., n}, we let T\L denote the minimal subtree of T induced by the nodes of L: and all their ancestors. The consensus tree problem asks whether there exists a tree T* such that, for every i, T*\L(T-i) is homeomorphic to T-i. We present algorithms which test if a given set of trees has a consensus tree and if so, construct one. The deterministic algorithm takes time mini O(Nn (1/2)), O(N + n(2) log n)}, where N = Sigma(i)\Ti\, and uses linear space. The randomized algorithm takes time O(N log(3) n) and uses linear space. The previous best for this problem was a 1981 O(Nn) algorithm by Aho et al. Our faster deterministic algorithm uses a new efficient algorithm for the following interesting dynamic graph problem: Given a graph G with n nodes and m edges and a sequence of b batches of one or more edge deletions, then, after each batch, either find a new component that has just been created or determine that there is no such component. For this problem, we have a simple algorithm with running time O(n(2) log n + b(o) min{n(2), m log n}), where b(o) is the number of batches which do not result in a new component. For our particular application, b(o)less than or equal to 1. If all edges are deleted, then the best previously known deterministic algorithm requires time O(m*root n) to solve this problem. We also present two applications of these consensus tree algorithms which solve other problems in computational evolutionary biology.

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


A decision-tree model of balance scale development We present an alternative model of human cognitive development on the balance scale task. Study of this task has inspired a wide range of human and computational work. The task requires that children predict the outcome of placing a discrete number of weights at various distances on either side of a fulcrum. Our model, which features the symbolic learning algorithm C4.5 as a transition mechanism, exhibits regularities found in the human data including orderly stage progression, U-shaped development, and the torque difference effect. Unlike previous successful models of the task, the current. model uses a single free parameter, is not restricted in the size of the balance scale that it can accommodate, and does not require the assumption of a highly structured output representation or a training environment biased towards weight or distance information. The model makes a number of predictions differing from those of previous computational efforts.

O O O O B I O O O O O O O O B I O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 Hybrid Frame Concealment Algorithm for H.264/AVC In packet-based video transmissions, packets loss due to channel errors may result in the loss of the whole video frame. Recently, many error concealment algorithms have been proposed in order to combat channel errors; however, most of the existing algorithms can only deal with the loss of macroblocks and are not able to conceal the whole missing frame. In order to resolve this problem, in this paper, we have proposed a new hybrid motion vector extrapolation (HMVE) algorithm to recover the whole missing frame, and it is able to provide more accurate estimation for the motion vectors of the missing frame than other conventional methods. Simulation results show that it is highly effective and significantly outperforms other existing frame recovery methods.

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


vertical selection in the presence of unlabeled verticals Vertical aggregation is the task of incorporating results from specialized search engines or verticals (e.g., images, video, news) into Web search results. Vertical selection is the subtask of deciding, given a query, which verticals, if any, are relevant. State of the art approaches use machine learned models to predict which verticals are relevant to a query. When trained using a large set of labeled data, a machine learned vertical selection model outperforms baselines which require no training data. Unfortunately, whenever a new vertical is introduced, a costly new set of editorial data must be gathered. In this paper, we propose methods for reusing training data from a set of existing (source) verticals to learn a predictive model for a new (target) vertical. We study methods for learning robust, portable, and adaptive cross-vertical models. Experiments show the need to focus on different types of features when maximizing portability (the ability for a single model to make accurate predictions across multiple verticals) than when maximizing adaptability (the ability for a single model to make accurate predictions for a specific vertical). We demonstrate the efficacy of our methods through extensive experimentation for 11 verticals

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

distributed information retrieval
domain adaptation
query intent
vertical search


Collaborative note taking using PDAs Collaborative note taking enables students in a class to take notes on their Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and laptops and share them with their "study group" in real-time. Students also receive instructor's slides in real-time as they are displayed by the instructor. As the individual members of the group take notes pertaining to the slide being presented, their notes are automatically sent to all members of the group. The system has been used in actual practice for a graduate level course oil wireless mobile computing. In developing this system, special attention has been paid to the task of entering text on PDAs, efficient use of the screen real estate, dynamics among students, privacy and ease of use issues. We describe our system and report the findings of this user study.

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

personal digital assistants (pdas)
handheld devices
collaboration
note-taking
text entry on pdas
student collaboration


An analysis on effects of information security investments: a BSC perspective With the growing importance of information security due to the arrival of information society and the spread of the internet, information security is emerging as a tool to guarantee competitive advantage and is at the same time an indispensable requirement for stable business execution for companies and organizations. Additionally, the value of tangible and intangible assets that need to be protected as components of corporate assets are on the rise, where the importance of efficient and effective information asset management and information security investment is increasing for the organizations and companies managing them. However, despite an increase in the information security investment of an organization, there is a lack of systematic methodology pertaining to performance appraisals, which makes decision-making activities and determining means of improvement difficult. The existing financially focused information security investment is inadequate for systematic analyses and understanding due to the opportunity cost type characteristics of information security investment and the difficulty involved in presenting future strategic direction. This paper, considering the characteristics of the effects of information security investment, analyzes from a balanced score card perspective information security investment strategies and performance relationships. In short, critical success factors and key performance indicators are initially obtained from previous research related to information security investment, and the data collected through surveys at related companies and organizations are empirically analyzed utilizing the structural equation model.

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

balanced score card (bsc)
empirical analysis
structural equation model (sem)
critical success factors (csf)
key performance indicators (kpi)


A SECURE THRESHOLD PROXY SIGNATURE SCHEME Aiming at the security and performance problems existed in most threshold proxy signature (TPS) schemes, this paper presents a new TPS scheme based on bilinear pairings. In this work, the security level of the proposed TPS scheme has been significantly enhanced by using improved short signatures and interactive secret-sharing. Our analysis indicates that the proposed scheme achieves the six accepted security properties that are required for a strong-secure TPS scheme. It can also resist a severe attack against TPS, i.e., original signer changing attack.

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

threshold proxy signature
bilinear pairings
original signer changing attack


Secrecy in Multiagent Systems We introduce a general framework for reasoning about secrecy requirements in multiagent systems. Our definitions extend earlier definitions of secrecy and nondeducibility given by Shannon and Sutherland. Roughly speaking, one agent maintains secrecy with respect to another if the second agent cannot rule out any possibilities for the behavior or state of the first agent. We show that the framework can handle probability and nondeterminism in a clean way, is useful for reasoning about asynchronous systems as well as synchronous systems, and suggests generalizations of secrecy that may be useful for dealing with issues such as resource-bounded reasoning. We also show that a number of well-known attempts to characterize the absence of information flow are special cases of our definitions of secrecy.

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


Disparities in publication patterns by gender, race and ethnicity based on a survey of a random sample of authors Gender and racial disparities have greatly diminished in academia over the last 30years, but attrition rates among women and minority faculty still remain high. In this paper we examine gender and racial disparities in publishing, an activity that is important for career advancement, but has not been incorporated adequately into the debate on faculty attrition. We surveyed a random sample of 1,065 authors who contributed a peer-reviewed journal article indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) in 2005 and at least one other article during the period of 20012004 in four academic disciplines representing natural sciences (biochemistry and water resources) and social sciences (anthropology and economics). We then report on the relationships between demographic variables (gender and race/ethnicity) and career-related variables (academic rank, discipline, and h-index) of these authors. Our findings show that at every career level and within each discipline, women were under-represented in academic positions compared to men and an even lower percentage of women published at each academic level than were employed at that level. Further, we found that women had lower h-indices than men in all four disciplines surveyed. Societal and biological constraints may reduce womens ability to obtain research intensive positions and contribute to these gender disparities. Hispanics and blacks were underrepresented among individuals awarded with doctoral degrees, doctorate recipients employed in academia, and academics publishing in WoS as compared to their representation in the population. Whites, Asians, and Native Americans and Pacific Islanders were adequately or over-represented in each category. Additionally, blacks had lower h-indices than the other ethnic groups across the disciplines surveyed. Compared to women, attrition among blacks and Hispanics appears to occur earlier in their career development. Cumulative experiences with discrimination and stereotypes may partly explain higher attrition and lower publication productivity among blacks and Hispanics.

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

publication productivity
gender disparities

academic attrition
racial and ethnic disparities


Security Evaluation of GOST 28147-89 in View of International Standardisation GOST 28147-89 is a well-known 256-bit block cipher that is a plausible alternative for AES-256 and triple DES, which, however, has a much lower implementation cost. GOST is implemented in standard crypto libraries, such as OpenSSL and Crypto++, and is increasingly popular and is used also outside of its country of origin and on the Internet. In 2010, GOST was submitted to ISO 18033 to become a worldwide industrial encryption standard. Until 2011, researchers unanimously agreed that GOST could or should be very secure, which was summarized at CHES 2010 conference in these words: "despite considerable cryptanalytic efforts spent in the past 20 years, GOST is still not broken." Unhappily, it was recently discovered that GOST can be broken and is a deeply flawed cipher. One attack was already presented in February at FSE 2011. In this short paper, we describe another attack to illustrate the fact that there are now attacks on GOST, which require much less memory, and don't even require the so called 'reflection property' to hold, without which the recent attack from FSE 2011 wouldn't work. We are also aware of many substantially faster attacks and of some special, even weaker, cases. These will be published in appropriate peer-reviewed cryptography conferences but we must warn the ISO committees right now. More generally, our ambition is to do more than just point out that a major encryption standard is flawed. We would like to present and suggest a new general paradigm for effective symmetric cryptanalysis of so called "Algebraic Complexity Reduction." We also explain the precise concept of "Black-box Algebraic Complexity Reduction." This new paradigm builds on many already known attacks on symmetric ciphers, such as fixed point, slide, involution, cycling, and other self-similarity attacks, but the exact attacks we obtain could never be developed previously, because only in the most recent 5 years did it become possible to show the existence of an appropriate last step for many such attacks, which is a low data complexity software algebraic attack. This methodology leads to a large number of new attacks on GOST, cf. [12]. One example of such an attack is given in the present paper.

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

algebraic attacks
black-box reductions
block ciphers
feistel schemes
key scheduling
reflection attacks
self-similarity
single-key attacks
slide attacks


DSKmeans: A new kmeans-type approach to discriminative subspace clustering Most of kmeans-type clustering algorithms rely on only intra-cluster compactness, i.e. the dispersions of a cluster. Inter-cluster separation which is widely used in classification algorithms, however, is rarely considered in a clustering process. In this paper, we present a new discriminative subspace kmeans-type clustering algorithm (DSKmeans), which integrates the intra-cluster compactness and the inter-cluster separation simultaneously. Different to traditional weighting kmeans-type algorithms, a 3-order tensor is constructed to evaluate the importance of different features in order to integrate the aforementioned two types of information. First, a new objective function for clustering is designed. To optimize the objective function, the corresponding updating rules for the algorithm are then derived analytically. The properties and performance of DSKmeans are investigated on several numerical and categorical data sets. Experimental results corroborate that our proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art kmeans-type clustering algorithms with respects to four metrics: Accuracy, RandIndex, Fscore and Normal Mutual Information(NMI).

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

kmeans clustering
feature selection
3-order tensor
data mining


A game-theory analysis of charging stations selection by EV drivers We address the problem of Electric Vehicle (EV) drivers assistance through Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). Drivers of EVs that are low in battery may ask a navigation service for advice on which charging station to use and which route to take. A rational driver will follow the received advice, provided there is no better choice i.e., in game-theory terms, if such advice corresponds to a Nash-equilibrium strategy. Thus, we model the problem as a game: first we propose a congestion game, then a game with congestion-averse utilities, both admitting at least one pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. The former represents a practical scenario with a high level of realism, although at a high computational price. The latter neglects some features of the real-world scenario but it exhibits very low complexity, and is shown to provide results that, on average, differ by 16% from those obtained with the former approach. Furthermore, when drivers value the trip time most, the average per-EV performance yielded by the Nash equilibria and the one attained by solving a centralized optimization problem that minimizes the EV trip time differ by 15% at most. This is an important result, as minimizing this quantity implies reduced road traffic congestion and energy consumption, as well as higher user satisfaction.

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

game theory
electric vehicles
vehicular networks


Performance evaluation of product form cellular mobile communications networks This paper proposes and analyzes a queueing network model of a cellular mobile communications network including the multiway connection. This model is formulated as a queueing network with multiple call classes and state-dependent transition rates. As the performance measure a handover blocking probability is evaluated based on the product form equilibrium distribution and the constraint matrix whose elements consist of the mean arrival and service rates for individual cells. As a numerical example, an eight-cell cellular system is considered and blocking probabilities for a two-way handover between neighbouring cells are calculated for several network loads and constraint matrices. Since results represent the characteristics depending on individual cells or neighbouring cells, it can be emphasized that this model is useful for the control of QoS taking account of the spatial traffic. (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 B I 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

blocking probability
multiway connection
multiple call classes
constraint matrix


Asymptotic analysis of flooding in CSMA-based large scale ad-hoc wireless networks In this article, we study the asymptotic behavior of flooding in large scale wireless networks. Specifically, we derive an upper bound on the coverage of flooding when the number of nodes n in the network goes to infinity. We consider two different regimes of transmission radii: first, the case of constant transmission radius r where the percentage of covered nodes scales as for a constant K S > 0. In this case, as an important result, we observe that the percentage of covered nodes is upper bounded by a decreasing function, vanishing as the network size grows. Second, the case of vanishing r n (i.e., r decreases as n increases) is considered where it is shown in the literature that the minimum value of r n which maintains connectivity is . In this case, a coverage percentage of at most is expected for a constant value of , leading to an infinite number of covered nodes. In such case, the rate at which the network coverage is decreased can be controlled and be considerably reduced by a proper choice of network parameters ( ). Consequently, this result shows that flooding is a suitable strategy even for large networks.

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


transitional environments enhance distance perception in immersive virtual reality systems Several experiments have provided evidence that ego-centric distances are perceived as compressed in immersive virtual environments relative to the real world. The principal factors responsible for this phenomenon have remained largely unknown. However, recent experiments suggest that when the virtual environment (VE) is an exact replica of a user's real physical surroundings, the person's distance perception improves. Furthermore, it has been shown that when users start their virtual reality (VR) experience in such a virtual replica and then gradually transition to a different VE, their sense of presence in the actual virtual world increases significantly. In this case the virtual replica serves as a transitional environment between the real and virtual world. In this paper we examine whether a person's distance estimation skills can be transferred from a transitional environment to a different VE. We have conducted blind walking experiments to analyze if starting the VR experience in a transitional environment can improve a person's ability to estimate distances in an immersive VR system. We found that users significantly improve their distance estimation skills when they enter the virtual world via a transitional environment.

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

transitional environment
distance estimation
virtual reality


A model for measuring products assembly complexity Complexity is generally believed to be one of the main causes of the present difficulties in manufacturing systems. In this article, product assembly complexity is defined as the degree to which the individual parts/subassemblies contain physical attributes that cause difficulties during the handling and insertion processes in manual or automatic assembly. A product complexity model has been developed by incorporating the information amount and content, as well as the Design For Assembly (DFA) principles for assembled products into an earlier model that was designed for measuring complexity of machined parts. The new model is used to assess the assembly complexity of individual parts using an index for measuring the complexity. Individual indices for parts are aggregated to obtain an overall measure for total product assembly complexity. The new measure accounts for the different parts' assembly attributes as well as their number and variety. An automotive piston and a family of three-pin electric power plugs were used to demonstrate the proposed approach for automatic and manual assembly, respectively. The impact of assembly attributes on product assembly complexity was also tracked. The proposed metric is a useful decision support tool for designers to reduce potential product assembly complexity and associated cost.

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