Kinematic self retargeting A framework for human pose estimation This paper presents a model-based Cartesian control theoretic approach for estimating human pose from a set of key features points (key-points) detected using depth Images obtained from a time-of-flight imaging device The key-points represent positions of anatomical landmarks detected and tracked over time based on a probabilistic inferencing algorithm that is robust to partial occlusions and capable of resolving ambiguities in detection The detected key-points are subsequently kinematically self retargeted or mapped to the subject s own kinematic model in order to predict the pose of an articulated human model at the current state resolve ambiguities in key point detection and provide estimates of missing or intermittently occluded key-points Based on a standard kinematic and mesh model of a human constraints such as joint limit avoidance and self-penetration avoidance are enforced within the retargeting framework Effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated experimentally for upper and full-body pose reconstruction from a small set of detected key points On average the proposed algorithm runs at approximately 10 frames per second for the upper-body and 5 frames per second for whole body reconstruction on a standard 2 13 GHz laptop PC (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved

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 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

human pose estimation
key point detection

human body tracking
constrained inverse kinematics
model based human body tracking


Meshless thin-shell simulation based on global conformal parameterization This paper presents a new approach to the physically-based thin-shell simulation of point-sampled geometry via explicit, global conformal point-surface parameterization and meshless dynamics. The point-based global parameterization is founded upon the rigorous mathematics of Riemann surface theory and Hodge theory. The parameterization is globally conformal everywhere except for a minimum number of zero points. Within our parameterization framework, any well-sampled point surface is functionally equivalent to a manifold, enabling popular and powerful surface-based modeling and physically-based simulation tools to be readily adapted for point geometry processing and animation. In addition, we propose a meshless surface computational paradigm in which the partial differential equations (for dynamic physical simulation) can be applied and solved directly over point samples via Moving Least Squares (MLS) shape functions defined on the global parametric domain without explicit connectivity information. The global conformal parameterization provides a common domain to facilitate accurate meshless simulation and efficient discontinuity modeling for complex branching cracks. Through our experiments on thin-shell elastic deformation and fracture simulation, we demonstrate that our integrative method is very natural, and that it has great potential to further broaden the application scope of point-sampled geometry in graphics and relevant fields.

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

meshless method
physically-based simulation
point-based geometry
surface parameterization
thin-shell


Relationships between job skills and performance: A study of webmasters The main purpose of this study is to determine the mix of organizational and technical skills demanded of Webmasters, and the degree to which those skills influence job performance. The study is composed of two parts. First, a job-content analysis of 800 Webmaster positions is conducted in order to determine the mix of skills demanded of Webmasters by employers. Second, a survey of 232 Webmasters is conducted to test the relationships between those skills and job performance. The job-content analysis suggested that employers seek technical skills over organizational skills, and, in contrast, the survey results showed that Webmasters regard organizational skills as more important in performing their jobs. Structured equation modeling on the survey data showed that deficiency in both technical and organizational skills leads to lower job performance. Moreover, the effect of organizational skill deficiencies on job performance was found to be larger than that of technical skill deficiencies. For researchers, the establishment of an empirical link between job skills and job performance opens the field to further research in the skills of information systems personnel. For employers, the results suggest more attention should be paid to attracting organizational skills when recruiting information systems personnel, such as Webmasters.

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

organizational skills
technical skills
webmasters

electronic commerce
individual level performance
information systems skills
information systems staffing
internet
pls


Ranking top economics and finance journals using Microsoft academic search versus Google scholar: How does the new publish or perish option compare? Recently, Harzing's Publish or Perish software was updated to include Microsoft Academic Search as a second citation database search option for computing various citation-based metrics. This article explores the new search option by scoring 50 top economics and finance journals and comparing them with the results obtained using the original Google Scholar-based search option. The new database delivers significantly smaller scores for all metrics, but the rank correlations across the two databases for the h-index, g-index, AWCR, and e-index are significantly correlated, especially when the time frame is restricted to more recent years. Comparisons are also made to the Article Influence score from eigenfactor.org and to the RePEc h-index, both of which adjust for journal-level self-citations.

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


Extended Component Importance Measures Considering Aleatory and Epistemic Uncertainties We introduce extended component importance measures (Birnbaum importance, RAW, RRW, and Criticality importance) considering aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. The Dempster-Shafer theory, which is considered to be a less restricted extension of probability theory, is proposed as a framework for taking into account both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. The epistemic uncertainty defined in this paper is the total lack of knowledge of the component state. The objective is to translate this epistemic uncertainty to the epistemic uncertainty of system state, and to the epistemic uncertainty of importance measures of components. Affine arithmetic allows us to provide much tighter bounds in the computing process of interval bounds of importance measures, avoiding the error explosion problem. The efficiency of the proposed measures is demonstrated using a bridge system with different types of reliability data (aleatory uncertainty, epistemic uncertainty, and experts' judgments). The influence of the epistemic uncertainty on the components' rankings is described. Finally, a case study of a fire-detector system located in a production room is provided. A comparison between the proposed measures and the probabilistic importance measures using two-stage Monte Carlo simulations is also made.

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

affine arithmetic
epistemic uncertainty
importance measures

dempster-shafer theory
experts' judgments
pignistic reliability


Automatic Segmentation of Rotational X-Ray Images for Anatomic Intra-Procedural Surface Generation in Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Procedures Since the introduction of 3-D rotational X-ray imaging, protocols for 3-D rotational coronary artery imaging have become widely available in routine clinical practice. Intra-procedural cardiac imaging in a computed tomography (CT)-like fashion has been particularly compelling due to the reduction of clinical overhead and ability to characterize anatomy at the time of intervention. We previously introduced a clinically feasible approach for imaging the left atrium and pulmonary veins (LAPVs) with short contrast bolus injections and scan times of similar to 4-10 s. The resulting data have sufficient image quality for intra-procedural use during electro-anatomic mapping (EAM) and interventional guidance in atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation procedures. In this paper, we present a novel technique to intra-procedural surface generation which integrates fully-automated segmentation of the LAPVs for guidance in AF ablation interventions. Contrast-enhanced rotational X-ray angiography (3-D RA) acquisitions in combination with filtered-back-projection-based reconstruction allows for volumetric interrogation of LAPV anatomy in near-real-time. An automatic model-based segmentation algorithm allows for fast and accurate LAPV mesh generation despite the challenges posed by image quality; relative to pre-procedural cardiac CT/MR, 3-D RA images suffer from more artifacts and reduced signal-to-noise. We validate our integrated method by comparing 1) automatic and manual segmentations of intra-procedural 3-D RA data, 2) automatic segmentations of intra-procedural 3-D RA and pre-procedural CT/MR data, and 3) intra-procedural EAM point cloud data with automatic segmentations of 3-D RA and CT/MR data. Our validation results for automatically segmented intra-procedural 3-D RA data show average segmentation errors of 1) similar to 1.3 mm compared with manual 3-D RA segmentations 2) similar to 2.3 mm compared with automatic segmentation of pre-procedural CT/MR data and 3) similar to 2.1 mm compared with registered intra-procedural EAM point clouds. The overall experiments indicate that LAPV surfaces can be automatically segmented intra-procedurally from 3-D RA data with comparable quality relative to meshes derived from pre-procedural CT/MR.

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

automatic segmentation
interventional guidance
left atrium
pulmonary veins
reconstruction

cardiac electrophysiology
electro-anatomic mapping
image processing
image reconstruction
model-based segmentation
rotational x-ray
shape-constrained deformable models


A multistage system of microbial fed-batch fermentation and its parameter identification In fed-batch fermentation of glycerol bio-dissimilation to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PD) by Klebsiella pneumoniae, glycerol and alkali are fed into the reactor to provide nutrient and maintain a suitable environment for cells growth. Taking the feeding process as a time-continuous process, we present a nonlinear multistage dynamical system to formulate the fed-batch fermentation. In view of the big errors between experimental data and computational values, a parameter identification model is established. Finally, an improved Nelder-Mead simplex search method is developed to seek the unknown parameters in the model. Numerical simulations show that the multistage dynamical system can describe the fed-batch process better, compared with the previous results. (C) 2010 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

multistage dynamical system
parameter identification

optimization algorithm
fed-batch fermentation


Assessment of the QoE in Voice Services Based on the Self-Organizing Neural Network Structure The quality of the transmitted voice in the Voice over IP (VoIP) service should be investigated from the end-user perspective, by estimating perceptional metrics like Mean Opinion Score (MOS). The research methodology of that kind is a particular transfer of the specific technical parameters, related to the IP data transmission, to level of service acceptance by an end-user. The article presents the research results obtained by the simulation of the developed MOS estimation algorithm based on the modified neural Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) structure.

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

speech quality
self-organizing neural networks


On the foundations of vision modeling III. Noncommutative monoids of occlusive preimages A significant cue for visual perception is the occlusion pattern in 2-D retinal images, which helps humans or robots navigate successfully in the 3-D environments. There have been many works in the literature on the modeling and analysis of the occlusion phenomenon, most of which are from the analytical or statistical points of view. The current paper presents a new theory of occlusion based on the simple topological definitions of preimages and a binary operation on them called "occlu." We study numerous topological as well as algebraic structures of the resultant noncommutative preimage monoids (a monoid is a semigroup with identity). Some implications of the new theory in terms of real vision research are also addressed.

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

depth
topology
invariants
knot theory
diffeomorphism


FOSTERING MULTI-SCIENTIFIC USAGE IN THE IBERIAN PRODUCTION INFRASTRUCTURE In this article we present the strategies foreseen to foster the usage of the Iberian production infrastructure by regional scientific communities. The main focus is on describing the user support mechanisms implemented through a cooperative effort from the Portuguese and Spanish user support teams, and on the services and tools offered to the regional user communities for their use and customization, to foster VO production user activity within the Iberian region.

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


Delivering ancillary services with data centres Ancillary services are the mechanisms power grids use to address short-term variability in supply and demand as well as the impact of power plant or transmission line failures. Organizations providing such services can earn revenue or at least reduce their energy costs. This paper explores options for large data centres to reduce costs in this way. Simulation results are presented for a system that models the processing of a workload and the resulting energy use, focusing on the impact of providing specific types of ancillary services. Trace data recording the workload from three supercomputing facilities along with pricing information from a US-based electrical grid are used. Results presented show energy costs reduced by up to 12% with only a small impact on the quality of service provided to users of the data centre. Further reductions in energy costs are shown for data centres willing to cede more control over short-term energy consumption. The potential of ancillary services markets are compared against following-the-renewables approaches, using wind farm data to argue why providing ancillary services may be more effective than optimizing operations based on the production of local renewables.

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

electrical markets
smart grids
demand-response


Construction and visualisation of three-dimensional facial statistics This paper presents a new method for the construction of three-dimensional (3D) probabilistic facial averages and demonstrates the potential for applications in clinical craniofacial research and patient assessment. Averages are constructed from a database of registered laser-range scans and photographic images using feature based image warping. Facial features are extracted using a template of connected contours, adapted to each subject interactively using snakes. Each subject's images are warped to the average template shape and the mean depth, colour and covariance matrix is found at each point. Statistical comparison of individuals with an average or between two averages is visualised by converting the probabilities to a coloured texture map.

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

morphanalysis
three-dimensional medical imaging


MILP-Based Efficient Routing Method with Restricted Route Structure for 2-Layer Ball Grid Array Packages In this paper, we propose a renting method for 2-layer ball grid array packages that generates a routing pattern satisfying a design rule. In our proposed method, the routing structure on each layer is restricted while keeping most of feasible patterns to efficiently obtain a feasible routing pattern. A routing pattern that satisfies the design rule is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming. In experiments with seven data. we obtain a routing pattern such that satisfies the design rule within a practical time by using a mixed integer linear programming solver.

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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

monotonic
nearest via assignment
package routing
radiate


Young Bilinguals' Language Behaviour in Social Networking Sites: The Use of Welsh on Facebook Social networking sites feature significantly in the lives of many young people. Where these young people are bilingual, social networking sites may have an important role to play in terms of minority language use and in shaping perceptions of that language. Through a quantitative and qualitative study, this paper investigates the use of language in social networking sites by young Welsh speakers, focussing particularly on Facebook. Language choice and behaviour, factors influencing that behaviour, and attitudes towards use of the Welsh language in Information Technology are explored. The data suggests that there are a number of different factors at play, and that it is necessary to consider language behaviour in social networking sites in the context of offline language behaviour.

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

facebook
minority language use
young people


Cracked span length beam element for service load analysis of steel concrete composite bridges A cracked span length beam element proposed for steel concrete composite bridges. The element accounts for cracking in concrete slabs at a service load. A procedure is developed for the analysis of composite bridges using proposed elements. The procedure is validated by comparing with experimental and FEA results. The procedure would lead to a considerable reduction in the computational effort.

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

bridges
cracking
service load
steel concrete composite

finite element analysis
tension stiffening


A contribution and new heuristics for open shop scheduling This paper deals with open shops under makespan minimization. Encoding scheme plays a pivotal role in the success of any algorithm to solve a scheduling problem. Although the permutation list has many advantages (such as high adaptability to any operators, conceptual simplicity and ease of implementation), it suffers from a notorious inherent drawback, called redundancy. This serious drawback has made many researchers conclude that permutation list is ineffective for open shop scheduling. Therefore, they have turned toward the utilization of rank matrix encoding scheme to overcome this shortcoming at the expense of losing other advantages of permutation list. In this paper, we first pinpoint the origin of redundancy in the permutation list. We then analyze circumstances in which the redundancy occurs and afterwards present four efficient theorems to avoid this critical disadvantage. Regarding the theorems, we understand that redundancy is quite identifiable and also controllable. By introducing an alternative possibility to rank matrices of excluding redundancy, the solution space of open shops is significantly reduced. By reducing the search space, the probability of finding an excellent solution in reasonable computational time outstandingly soars. Finally, based on insertion and reinsertion operators we propose four constructive heuristics incorporating simple applications of the theorems. We evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed algorithms on three well-known benchmarks and against some other existing heuristics. All the results and analyses illustrate the authenticity and superiority of our theorems and proposed constructive heuristics.

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

scheduling
open shop
encoding scheme
permutation
redundancy
insertion and reinsertion operators


hierarchical and variational geometric modeling with wavelets This paper discusses how wavelet techniques may be applied to a variety of geometric modeling tools. In particular, wavelet decompositions are shown to be useful for hierarchical control point or least squares editing. In addition, direct curve and surface manipulation methods using an underlying geometric variational principle can be solved more efficiently by using a wavelet basis. Because the wavelet basis is hierarchical, iterative solution methods converge rapidly. Also, since the wavelet coefficients indicate the degree of detail in the solution, the number of basis functions needed to express the variational minimum can be reduced, avoiding unnecessary computation. An implementation of a curve and surface modeler based on these ideas is discussed and experimental results are reported.

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

point wavelet computation implementation direct manipulation paper control tools surface

hierarchic method experimentation edit variation least-squares model iter convergence


Progressive linear search for stereo matching and its application to interframe interpolation In this paper we present a stereo matching strategy that represents disparity as a linear piecewise function. The function is obtained by recursively subdividing intervals in corresponding scanline pairs. Each subdivision step delineates new intervals by explicitly searching for breaks of disparity. In contrast to most approaches, we do not assume a constant disparity within a region, but we define disparity values by a linear model. A disparity model provides strong constraints in the estimation problem giving spatial coherence. Parametric models are estimated by minimizing the similarity error via the Hough transform. A regularization cost is included during the subdivision process by considering disparity values between consecutive intervals. Experiments on synthetic and real images show that our adaptive matching strategy is capable of obtaining good detail with a small number of spurious points even if scanlines are processed independently and without using any postprocessing smoothing. We have successfully applied our matching results to create realistic image sequences using pixel-based interpolation. Occluded regions are identified by overlapping intervals and they are displayed by using a back-to-front strategy. (C) 2001 Academic Press.

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

stereo correspondence problem
model fitting
dynamic programming
image-based rendering
view interpolation
image synthesis


Information infrastructure for inter-organizational mental health services: An actor network theory analysis of psychiatric rehabilitation In the supply of mental health services to communities, data and information are managed not only by clinical organizations, but also by welfare state agencies and charities. The aim of this study is to use methods of analysis from actor network theory to identify organizational interventions necessary for the development of an information infrastructure for inter-organizational mental health services. Data was collected in a project aimed at developing an information system that supports inter-organizational psychiatric rehabilitation in a Swedish municipality. Three organizational interventions were identified: an integrated service policy defined by the national government, a common legal framework allowing sharing of high-level client data, and commissioned support for local inter-agency workspaces. It is concluded that organizational interventions must be regarded when configuring an information infrastructure for mental health services. Organizational interventions should also routinely be addressed in systems design methods to be used in inter-organizational settings.

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

information infrastructure
actor network theory

health informatics
inter-organizational health services
case study methods


A simulation study of cadaveric liver allocation with a single-score patient prioritization formula In this article, we present a simulation study on prioritizing patients for receiving scarce cadaveric liver donations. We propose a ranking formula that combines the four criteria commonly used for prioritizing wait-list liver transplant candidates. We apply the proposed ranking formula to evaluate several system outcomes in a liver-allocation simulation model. For each outcome, we identify promising schemes that outperform the currently implemented scheme by analysing the response surfaces constructed with a mixture design of simulation experiments on the four criteria. We also show that it is unlikely to have a scheme that reduces pretransplant mortality and improves other system outcomes simultaneously. Finally, we conduct sensitivity analyses on the two subjective scalars in the ranking formula. Overall, our simulation study shows that the proposed ranking formula and the mixture design approach allow us to systematically analyse patient prioritization in liver transplantation and allocation. Journal of Simulation (2013) 7, 109-125. doi:10.1057/jos.2012.21; published online 21 December 2012

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

simulation modeling
design of experiments
response surface


Modeling and experimental verification of a flexible rotor/AMB system Purpose - In this paper, the aim is to present a modeling strategy for a flexible rotor/active magnetic bearing (AMB) system with non-collocation. Special attention is paid to the vibration reduction and the stable passage through the first critical speed. Design/methodology/approach - The finite element method based on Euller-Bernoulli beam theory is applied in the formulation of the rotor model. Since rotor/AMB systems are complex mechatronic systems, reduced order approach is used in the control system design. This study applies the modal decomposition method and the modal truncation method, thus retaining the lower order bending modes. The obtained numerical results are compared with the measured open loop frequency responses and the existing differences are compensated in order to obtain accurate numerical model. Findings - Frequency response of the entire system model (flexible shaft, actuators, power amplifiers and sensors) with amplitudes expressed in rotor lateral displacements can be verified by the measured frequency responses. The deviations in the amplitude and phase diagrams are then successfully corrected using the appropriate model modifications. Practical implications - The results of this research find direct applications in flexible rotors supported by AMBs, e.g. high speed spindles, turbo molecular pumps, flywheel energy storage systems, etc. The presented procedure can be especially valuable in the design of model based controllers. Originality/value - An AMB system model is developed and presented in this paper, in conjunction with a systematic description of an efficient procedure for the elimination of the typical mismatches between the simulation and experiment. Firstly, rotor/AMB test rig is stabilized with an appropriately tuned PID controller and an open loop frequency response is obtained for such a system. This response is then compared to corresponding simulation results for which mismatches are identified and eliminated thus yielding an accurate model of the system.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O 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 magnetic bearing
rotor dynamics
flexible rotor
modelling
dynamics


PyPnetCDF: A high level framework for parallel access to netCDF files A Python tool for manipulating netCDF files in a parallel infrastructure is proposed. The parallel interface, PyPnetCDF, manages netCDF properties in a similar way to the serial version from ScientificPython, but hiding parallelism to the user. Implementations details and capabilities of the developed interfaces are given. Numerical experiments that show the friendly use of the interfaces and their behaviour compared with the native routines, are presented.

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

parallel distribution
dataset
performance
mpi
python interface


Thread transparency in information flow middleware Applications that process continuous information flows are challenging to write because the application programmer must deal with flow-specific concurrency and timing requirements, necessitating the explicit management of threads, synchronization, scheduling and timing. We believe that middleware can ease this burden,, but many middleware platforms do not match the structure of these applications, because they focus on control-flow centric interaction models such as remote method invocation. Indeed, they abstract away from the very things that the information-flow centric programmer must control. This paper describes Infopipes-a new high-level abstraction for information flow applications-and a middleware framework that supports them. Infopipes handle the complexities associated with control flow and multi-threading, relieving the programmer of these tasks. Starting from a high-level description of an information flow pipeline, the framework determines which parts of a pipeline require separate threads or coroutines, and handles synchronization transparently, to the application programmer. The framework, also gives the programmer the freedom to write or reuse components in a passive style, even though the configuration will actually require the use of a thread or coroutine. Conversely, it is possible to write a component using a thread and know that the thread will be eliminated if it is not needed in a pipeline. This allows the most appropriate programming model to be chosen for a-given task, and existing code to be reused, irrespective of its activity model. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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


Implementation of the pan-European academic research network: TEN-155 This paper addresses the implementation of a pan-European network to support co-operative research amongst European researchers: TEN-155. Predecessors to TEN-155 were TEN-34 and EuropaNet. TEN-155 supersedes these two networks not only in terms of capacity offered but also in terms of the Managed Bandwidth Service (MBS) offered. Besides providing a high speed IP service, the purpose of TEN-155 is also to support research in networking by providing an international test bed for advanced networking technologies (the Quantum Test Programme) and by providing VPNs, with dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth, for specific research projects in countries connected to TEN-155. This paper will illustrate the use of ATM technology to support the MBS and the Quantum Test Programme in co-existence with the standard best efforts IP service and experiences gained from offering a pan-European Managed Bandwidth Service.

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


The symmetric logarithmic image processing model In this paper, a new extension of logarithmic image processing (LIP) model, called Symmetric Logarithmic Image Processing (SLIP), is proposed. Inspired by the previously developed symmetric models, the SLIP model defines a vector space on a symmetric bounded set. The development is aimed at (1) maintaining the physical interpretation of the LIP model and (2) solving the potential out-of-range problem which the LIP model has. The SLIP model is also able to deal with transmitted and reflected light images. The advantage of the SLIP is demonstrated through an image enhancement application using the generalized unsharp masking algorithm.

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

logarithmic image processing model
vector space
unsharp masking


a spell checker and corrector for the native south african language, south sotho We describe a multithreaded, spell checking and correcting software application for the Windows platform, called eSpellingPro sa Sesotho sa Leboa . The application is specifically targeted to check South Sotho typed text for misspelled words, suggest correctly spelled words for the identified misspelled words and incorporate a degree of automatic correction of the incorrectly spelled words. The biggest motivation behind the development of this system, a custom spell checking and correcting application for this indigenous South African language, stemmed from evidence that had been gathered that suggested the average twenty year old South Sotho individual's spelling-skills had deteriorated. When considering the need to create error free documents, for example, a legal document in South Sotho, substandard spelling-skills could pose possible problems. Spell checking software does exist for the South Sotho language, but not for checking and correcting. Additionally, the system has the ability to translate South Sotho words into their Afrikaans and English equivalents, adding functionality. The application also has simple features of existing spell-checkers for example the ability to change the font, the font-size, to apply bold, italics or both to a word, underline a word, select all the text in the document and to print the document. Although South Sotho is not a language with high inflection, the application also checks for inflection, for example when the user enters two words as one. To accomplish faster checking, flagging and suggestion operations, multithreading was used in certain modules.

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

spelling corrector
spelling checker
language translation


Performance study of multiple route dynamic source routing protocols for mobile ad hoe networks Design and analysis of routing protocols are the key issues for a mobile ad hoc network (MANET). The Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol is one of the important on-demand routing protocols. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive analytic model for the performance study of the DSR protocol with multiple routes. Two performance metrics, called probability of a successful data transmission and probability that the multiple routes can support the next data transmission, are introduced. We derive both of the two probabilities for the general case over n multiple routes for the DSR protocol. These analytic results provide insights into the mechanics of the multiple DSR routing protocol. It is also useful for the design and implementation of the on-demand routing for MANET. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

ad hoc networks
multipath
on-demand routing


a multimodal interactive system to create and explore graph structures This work introduces a multimodal interactive system to create, edit and explore graph structures through direct manipulation operations. The system being designed is based on audio-haptic interaction, supported by visual feedback. A star life design and development cycle was undertaken. The main design choices and early implementation and evaluation results are illustrated.

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

blind users
multimodal interactive systems
haptic


Deductive rules in holographic reduced representation Holographic reduced representation is based on a suitable distributive coding of structured information in conceptual vectors, which elements satisfy normal distribution N(0,1/n). Existing applications of this approach concern various models of associative memory that exploit a simple algebraic operation of scalar product of distributed representations to measure an overlap between two structured concepts. This paper describes an inference process based on the rules modus ponens and modus tollens.

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


Evolutionary optimization for ranking how-to questions based on user-generated contents ? We propose an evolutionary optimization model for ranking how-to questions from the web. The approach combines evolutionary computation techniques and clustering methods. Experiments show promising results of evolutionary optimization to generate correct HOW-TO answers.

O O O O 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

community question-answering
question-answering systems
concept clustering
hpsg parsing


speech-based cursor control Speech recognition can be a powerful tool for individuals with physical disabilities that hinder their ability to use traditional input devices. State-of-the-art speech recognition systems typically provide mechanisms for both data entry and cursor control, but the researchers continue to investigate methods of improving these interactions. Numerous researchers are investigating methods to improve the underlying technologies that make speech recognition possible and others focus on understanding the difficulties users experience using dictation-oriented applications, but few researchers have investigated the issues involved in speech-based cursor control. In this article, we describe a study that investigates the efficacy of two variations of a standard speech-based cursor control mechanism. One employs the standard mouse cursor while the second provides a predictive cursor designed to help users compensate for the delays often associated with speech recognition. As expected, larger targets and shorter distances resulted in shorter target selection times while larger targets also resulted in fewer errors. Although there were no differences between the standard and predictive cursors, a relationship between the delays associated with spoken input, the speed at which the cursor moves, and the minimum size for targets that can be reliably selected emerged that can guide the application of similar speech-based cursor control mechanisms as well as future research.

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


Lukasiewicz ANN for local image processing One of the useful areas of the 2D image processing is called de-noising. When both original (ideal) and noisy images are available, the quality of de-noising is measurable. Our paper is focused to local 2D image processing using Lukasiewicz algebra with the square root function. The basic operators and functions in given algebra are first defined and then analyzed. The first result of the fuzzy logic function (FLF) analysis is its decomposition and realization as Lukasiewicz network (LN) with three types of processing nodes. The second result of FLF decomposition is the decomposed Lukasiewicz network (DLN) with dyadic preprocessing and two types of processing nodes. The decomposition chain, which begins with FLF and converts it to LN and then to DLN, terminates as Lukasiewicz artificial neural network (LANN) with dyadic preprocessing and only one type of processing node. Then the LANN is able to learn its integer weights in the ANN style. We are able to realize a set of individual FLF filters as LANN. Their preprocessing strategies are based on the pixel neighborhood, sorted list, Walsh list, and L-estimates. The quality of de-noising can be improved via compromise filtering. Two types of compromise de-noising filters are also realizable as LANN. One of them is called constrained referential neural network (CRNN). The other one is called dyadic weight neural network (DWNN). The compromise filters operate with the values from the set of individual filters. Both CRNN and DWNN are able to increase the quality of image processing as demonstrated on the biomedical MR image. All the calculations are realized in the Matlab environment.

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

lukasiewicz algebra
square root
neural network
local image processing


A systematic review of quasi-experiments in software engineering Experiments in which study units are assigned to experimental groups nonrandomly are called quasi-experiments. They allow investigations of causeeffect relations in settings in which randomization is inappropriate, impractical, or too costly. The procedure by which the nonrandom assignments are made might result in selection bias and other related internal validity problems. Selection bias is a systematic (not happening by chance) pre-experimental difference between the groups that could influence the results. By detecting the cause of the selection bias, and designing and analyzing the experiments accordingly, the effect of the bias may be reduced or eliminated. To investigate how quasi-experiments are performed in software engineering (SE), we conducted a systematic review of the experiments published in nine major SE journals and three conference proceedings in the decade 19932002. Among the 113 experiments detected, 35% were quasi-experiments. In addition to field experiments, we found several applications for quasi-experiments in SE. However, there seems to be little awareness of the precise nature of quasi-experiments and the potential for selection bias in them. The term quasi-experiment was used in only 10% of the articles reporting quasi-experiments; only half of the quasi-experiments measured a pretest score to control for selection bias, and only 8% reported a threat of selection bias. On average, larger effect sizes were seen in randomized than in quasi-experiments, which might be due to selection bias in the quasi-experiments. We conclude that quasi-experimentation is useful in many settings in SE, but their design and analysis must be improved (in ways described in this paper), to ensure that inferences made from this kind of experiment are valid.

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

randomization
field experiments
selection bias

quasi-experiments
empirical software engineering
effect size


Improving trust modeling through the limit of advisor network size and use of referrals This paper explores potential improvements to the trust modeling of agents in multi-agent systems when a social network of advisors is employed as part of the trust modeling, and in particular, examines means of optimizing the number of advisors that should be maintained in the social network. We propose three such improvements, two directly relating to the limit of advisor network size by either setting a maximum size for a buyer's advisor network or setting a minimum trustworthiness threshold for agents to be accepted into that advisor network, and a third which uses an advisor referral system in combination with one of the first two network-limiting techniques. We provide experimental results in defence of our approach for two distinct trust modeling systems, and show how these optimizations can improve, sometimes significantly, the accuracy of different trust models (in the context of electronic marketplaces). We believe that the proposed techniques will be very useful for trust researchers seeking to improve the accuracy of their own trust models by setting the size and composition of advisor networks. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

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

trust modeling
social network of advisors
referral
electronic marketplaces

buyer and seller agents
multi-agent systems


Fixed tree games with multilocated players This article introduces fixed tree games with multilocated players (FMP games), which are a generalization of standard fixed tree games. This generalization consists of allowing players to be located in more than one vertex. As a consequence, these players can choose among several ways of connection to the root. In this article we show that FMP games are balanced. Moreover, we prove that the core of an FMP game coincides with the core of a related submodular standard fixed tree game. We show how to find the nucleolus and we characterize the orders that provide marginal vectors in the core of an FMP game. Finally, we study the Shapley value and the average of the extreme points of the core. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


HypExp, a Mathematica package for expanding hypergeometric functions around integer-valued parameters We present the Mathematica package HypExp which allows to expand hypergeometric functions F-J(J-1) around integer parameters to arbitrary order. At this, we apply two methods, the first one being based on an integral representation, the second one on the nested sums approach. The expansion works for both symbolic argument z and unit argument.. We also implemented new classes of integrals that appear in the first method and that are, in part, yet unknown to Mathematica.

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 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


Group representations that resist random sampling We show that there exists a family of groups Gn and nontrivial irreducible representations ?n such that, for any constant t, the average of ?n over t uniformly random elements has operator norm 1 with probability approaching 1 as . More quantitatively, we show that there exist families of finite groups for which random elements are required to bound the norm of a typical representation below 1. This settles a conjecture of A. Wigderson. 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 47, 605614, 2015

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


Robust watermarking based on time-spread echo method with subband decomposition A robust watermarking scheme based on the time-spread echo method is proposed in this letter. The embedding process is achieved by subband decomposition of a host signal and by controlling the amount of distortion, i.e., power of watermark, of each subband according to the Signal to Mask Ratio (SMR) calculated from MPEG psychoacoustic model. The decoding performance and robustness of the proposed method were evaluated.

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

subband decomposition
signal to mask ratio

digital audio watermarking
time-spread echo


glm-ie: Generalised Linear Models Inference & Estimation Toolbox The glm-ie toolbox contains functionality for estimation and inference in generalised linear models over continuous-valued variables. Besides a variety of penalised least squares solvers for estimation, it offers inference based on (convex) variational bounds, on expectation propagation and on factorial mean field. Scalable and efficient inference in fully-connected undirected graphical models or Markov random fields with Gaussian and non-Gaussian potentials is achieved by casting all the computations as matrix vector multiplications. We provide a wide choice of penalty functions for estimation, potential functions for inference and matrix classes with lazy evaluation for convenient modelling. We designed the glm-ie package to be simple, generic and easily expansible. Most of the code is written in Matlab including some MEX files to be fully compatible to both Matlab 7.x and GNU Octave 3.3.x. Large scale probabilistic classification as well as sparse linear modelling can be performed in a common algorithmical framework by the glm-ie toolkit.

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

probabilistic regression and classification


Energy-saving in wireless sensor networks considering mobile sensor nodes, single and multi events Sensor networks are a sensing, computing and communication infrastructure that are able to observe and respond to phenomena in the natural environment and in our physical and cyber infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a sensor network with mobile and static sensor nodes setup for the purpose of collaboratively performing tasks like sensing a phenomenon or monitoring a region. We investigate how the sensor network performs in the case when the sensor nodes move. We compare the simulation results for two cases: the sensor network with stationary sensor nodes and multi mobile sensor nodes. The simulation results have shown that for the multi mobile sensors, the goodput is unstable. Also, the goodput of stationary sensors is better than multi mobile sensors. In case of consumed energy, the consumed energy of multi mobile sensors is better than stationary sensors. The RE of multi mobile sensors is better than stationary sensors. We also consider goodput and routing efficiency metrics to evalute the performance of WSN consider mobile events. The simulation results have shown that for single mobile event, the goodput is better than multi mobile events when the number of sensor nodes is higher. In case of boids model, the goodput of multi mobile events is better than single mobile event. In case of random model, the RE of single mobile event is belief than multi mobile events. The RE of multi mobile events is better than single mobile event in case of boids model.

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

wsn
multi mobile sensors
single mobile event
multi mobile events
goodput
routing efficiency


MGR: An information theory based hierarchical divisive clustering algorithm for categorical data Categorical data clustering has attracted much attention recently due to the fact that much of the data contained in todays databases is categorical in nature. While many algorithms for clustering categorical data have been proposed, some have low clustering accuracy while others have high computational complexity. This research proposes mean gain ratio (MGR), a new information theory based hierarchical divisive clustering algorithm for categorical data. MGR implements clustering from the attributes viewpoint which includes selecting a clustering attribute using mean gain ratio and selecting an equivalence class on the clustering attribute using entropy of clusters. It can be run with or without specifying the number of clusters while few existing clustering algorithms for categorical data can be run without specifying the number of clusters. Experimental results on nine University of California at Irvine (UCI) benchmark and ten synthetic data sets show that MGR performs better as compared to baseline algorithms in terms of its performance and efficiency of clustering.

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

clustering
categorical data
gain ratio
information theory


The effects of different experimental designs on parameter estimation in the kinetics of a reversible chemical reaction The common methods used by chemists to obtain the estimates of the kinetic rate constants are deterministic ones. The statistical methods, such as D-optimum design (DOD), can offer a better way to deal with this problem. But the kinetic model of a reversible reaction is nonlinear, the DOD is locally optimal at the value of the initial chosen parameters. The goal of this article is to try to put different experimental design techniques, i.e., uniform design (UD), orthogonal design (OD) and DOD into a common framework, and to attempt to gain some insight on when, where and which of these three experimental methods can be expected to work well. The extensive Monte Carlo experiments have been done in order to compare the performances of these methods. Thr results show that the DOD often gives the best performance, but it is easy to break down in estimation of parameters, when the initial parameters are far away from the true parameters. The OD also breaks down in some situations. The UD is the most stable, and it works well in all situations. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

experimental design
uniform design
orthogonal design


Optimal burn-in decision for products with an unimodal failure rate function Some lifetime distributions have an unimodal failure rate function, where a critical time separates the products operating life into an increasing failure rate (IFR) phase and a decreasing failure rate (DFR) phase. Consequently, the customer may encounter a risk of high failure both in DFR and in IFR phases during the early operating life of the products. Moreover, since the corresponding mean residual life (MRL) function has an upside-down unimodal shape, the goal of maximized MRL, which is considered in traditional burn-in decision related to bathtub-shaped failure rate model, cannot be achieved. Therefore, how to eliminate IFR phase economically determine the optimal burn-in time during DFR phase, and incorporate the MRL into consideration are essential to the burn-in decision for products with an unimodal failure rate function. In this paper, a minimum cost burn-in model is formulated to solve this decision issue. A lognormal distribution is used as an example to illustrate the proposed procedure and discuss the feasible range of parameters for conducting an effective burn-in.

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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

reliability
burn-in
constrained optimization


Fabrication of antireflection structure with antifouling-effect surface by ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography We fabricated the self-supporting AR structure film with antifouling effect. Photo-curable resin with antifouling function was used for UV-NIL. The master AR structure mold was made by the oxygen ion beam irradiation method and the transferred by UV-NIL. As a result, reflectance of 3% was obtained by the self-supporting AR structure film with antifouling effect.

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

oxygen ion beam
antireflection structure
ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography


A small-gain theorem with applications to input/output systems, incremental stability, detectability, and interconnections A general input-to-state stability (ISS)-type small-gain result is presented. It specializes to a small-gain theorem for ISS operators, and it also recovers the classical statement for ISS systems in state-space form. In addition, we highlight applications to incrementally stable systems, detectable systems, and to interconnections of stable 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

small gain
nonlinear systems
input-to-state stability
input-to-output stability
interconnected systems


Nanoscale imaging with a portable field emission scanning electron microscope Secondary electron images at low landing energies (below 50eV) are presented by a portable field emission scanning electron microscope. The results show that nanoscale images of resolution better than 20nm can be obtained on a nylon-fibre specimen at landing energies as low as 1eV. Preliminary simulation results predict that the image resolution should be much higher.

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

immersion electron lens
sem
landing energy


Establishment of spatial data infrastructure within the environmental sector in Slovak Republic Life quality improvement depends on our willingness to develop and on the accessibility of relevant and high quality information influencing our decisions. Spatial information plays an important role in this improvement process, because it allows information to be integrated from a variety of disciplines for various uses and users. Within the environmental sector of Slovakia we see that there is a great demand for the use of and access to spatial information. On the other hand, we are still facing problems connected with incompatibility, low accessibility, data gaps, duplicity of collection, insufficient access to metadata, varying standards and a low level of coordination. Fortunately things are getting better and the establishment of the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) defined by INSPIRE can bring solutions for these kind of problems. Therefore the team of the Department of Informatics at the Slovak Environmental Agency (SEA) with mutual cooperation of GIS specialists from other governmental institutions managed under the Ministry of the Environment (MoE) of the Slovak Republic (namely the Geological Survey of the Slovak Republic, the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, the Slovak Water Management Enterprise, the State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic, the Water Research Institute and the Slovak Caves Administration, the Slovak Museum of Nature Protection and Speleology) decided to develop a distributed geographically oriented system, which brings a new approach to the collection, administration, dissemination and publishing of spatial information. The old way of complicated mutual exchange among heterogeneous environments and platforms and difficult access for various users was going to be replaced by a new approach based on the principle of interoperability and standards.

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

spatial data infrastructure
environment
gis
inspire
metadata
interoperability


Fast factorization of Cartesian products of (directed) hypergraphs Cartesian products of graphs and hypergraphs have been studied since the 1960s. For (un)directed hypergraphs, unique prime factor decomposition (PFD) results with respect to the Cartesian product are known. However, there is still a lack of algorithms, that compute the PFD of directed hypergraphs with respect to the Cartesian product. In this contribution, we focus on the algorithmic aspects for determining the Cartesian prime factors of a finite, connected, directed hypergraph and present a first polynomial time algorithm to compute its PFD. In particular, the algorithm has time complexity O(|E||V|r2) O ( | E | | V | r 2 ) for hypergraphs H=(V,E) H = ( V , E ) , where the rank r is the maximum number of vertices contained in a hyperedge of H. If r is bounded, then this algorithm performs even in O(|E|log2?(|V|)) O ( | E | log 2 ? ( | V | ) ) time. Thus, our method additionally improves also the time complexity of PFD-algorithms designed for undirected hypergraphs that have time complexity O(|E||V|r6?6) O ( | E | | V | r 6 ? 6 ) , where ? is the maximum number of hyperedges a vertex is contained in.

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

directed hypergraph
cartesian product
prime factor decomposition


Experimental study of the response of efficient lighting technologies to complex voltage fluctuations Experimental study about modern lamps sensitivity to complex voltage fluctuations. Lamps were subjected to real voltage signals registered at different real scenarios. Not all energy-efficient lamps have a lower sensitivity than the incandescent lamp. Some lamps response depends on the complexity of the input voltage fluctuation. The gain curves of some lamps do not represent their behavior in real scenarios.

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

efficient lighting
voltage fluctuations
complexity


SMT-Directory: Efficient Load-Load Ordering for SMT Memory models like SC, TSO, and PC enforce load-load ordering, requiring that loads from any single thread appear to occur in program order to all other threads. Out-of-order execution can violate load-load ordering. Conventional multi-processors with out-of-order cores detect load-load ordering violations by snooping an age-ordered load queue on cache invalidations or evictions-events that act as proxies for the completion of remote stores. This mechanism becomes less efficient in an SMT processor, as every completing store must search the loads queue segments of all other threads. This inefficiency exists because store completions from other threads in the same core are not filtered by the cache and coherence protocol: thread 0 observes all of thread 1's stores, not only the first store to every cache line. SMT-Directory eliminates this overhead by implementing the filtering traditionally provided by the cache in the cache itself. SMT-Directory adds a per-thread "read" bit to every data cache line. When a load executes, it sets the bit corresponding to its thread. When a store completes and write to the cache, it checks the SMT-Directory bits of its cache line and searches the load queue segments only of those threads whose bits are set. As a result, local store completions trigger searches only for data that is actually shared.

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

simultaneous multithreading
consistency models
load-load ordering
load queue search
directory


extracting adaptation strategies for e-learning programs with xcs This paper investigates XCS performance on a scarce and noisy artificial and a real-world data set. The real-world data set is derived from an E-Learning study, in which motivation was correlated with the adaptation of difficulty. The artificial data set was generated to evaluate if XCS can be expected to mine information from the real-world data set. By adding sparsity and noise to the artificial data set, mimicking the properties of the real-world data set, we show that XCS can handle scarce and noisy data well. We furthermore show that the extracted structure contains problem-relevant information, and that revealed structures in the real-world data correspond to actual psychological learning theories. Thus, the contributions of the paper are twofold: (1) We show that XCS can mine highly scarce and noisy data; and (2) the results suggest that the current motivational state of the user may be utilized to adapt an E-Learning program for improving learning progress.

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

datamining
learning classifier systems
knowledge extraction


statistical acceleration for animated global illumination Global illumination provides important visual cues to an animation, however its computational expense limits its use in practice. In this paper, we present an easy to implement technique for accelerating the computation of indirect illumination for an animated sequence using stochastic ray tracing. We begin by computing a quick but noisy solution using a small number of sample rays at each sample location. The variation of these noisy solutions over time is then used to create a smooth basis. Finally, the noisy solutions are projected onto the smooth basis to produce the final solution. The resulting animation has greatly reduced spatial and temporal noise, and a computational cost roughly equivalent to the noisy, low sample computation.

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


Agent-Based Semantic Collaborative Search Next generation of the Web builds upon technologies such as Semantic Web and Intelligent Software Agents. These technologies aim at knowledge representation that allows both humans and software agents to understand and reason about the content on the Web. In this paper, we propose an agent-based approach for collaborative distributed semantic search of the Web resources. Our approach enables a human user to semantically describe his search interest to an agent. Depending on the interests of their users, the agents evolve their ontologies and create search concepts. Based on these search concepts, the agents coordinate and compose virtual communities. Within these communities, agents with similar interests interact to locate and share URLs relevant to search interests of their users. Through these interactions, shared vocabularies are cooperatively emerged by agents to communicate properly within the communities. Our empirical evaluations and analysis of the proposed approach show that our approach combines Semantic Web technologies and multi-agent systems in a novel way to enable users to find and share the URLs relevant to their search interests.

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

multiagent systems
semantic web
collaborative search


what can the 'ash cloud' tell us about older adults' technology adoption Older adults are often encouraged to try new technology by a specific motivator or 'trigger'. Recently, a surprising 'trigger' has emerged - the 'ash cloud' which caused large scale disruption for air travel across Europe earlier in 2010. Understanding why this unexpected event managed to motivate interest into technology where other efforts have failed may provide further insight for research looking at the digitally disinterested.

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

inclusion
digital economy
technology acceptance


An optimal shifting vector approach for efficient probabilistic design The application of reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) is hindered by the unbearable computational cost in the structure reliability evaluating process. This study proposes an optimal shifting vector (OSV) approach to enhance the efficiency of RBDO. In OSV, the idea of using an optimal shifting vector in the decoupled method and the notation of conducting reliability analysis in the super-sphere design space are proposed. The shifted limit state function, instead of the specific performance function, is used to identify the inverse most probable point (IMPP) and derive the optimal shifting vector for accelerating the optimization process. The super-sphere design space is applied to reduce the number of constraints and design variables for the novel reliability analysis model. OSV is very efficient for highly nonlinear problems, especially when the contour lines of the performance functions vary widely. The computation capability of the proposed method is demonstrated and compared to existing RBDO methods using four mathematical and engineering examples. The comparison results show that the proposed OSV approach is very efficient.

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

decoupled structure
reliability-based design


Flowshop scheduling of deteriorating jobs on dominating machines In this paper we consider the general, no-wait and no-idle permutation flowshop scheduling problem with deteriorating jobs, i.e., jobs whose processing times are increasing functions of their starting times. We assume a linear deterioration function with identical increasing rates for all the jobs and there are some dominating relationships between the machines. We show that the problems to minimize the makespan and the total completion time remain polynomially solvable when deterioration is considered, although these problems are more complicated than their classical counterparts without deterioration. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

scheduling
flowshop
deteriorating jobs
dominating machines


Cancer classification by gradient LDA technique using microarray gene expression data Cancer classification is one of the major applications of the microarray technology. When standard machine learning techniques are applied for cancer classification, they face the small sample size (SSS) problem of gene expression data. The SSS problem is inherited from large dimensionality of the feature space (due to large number of genes) compared to the small number of samples available. In order to overcome the SSS problem, the dimensionality of the feature space is reduced either through feature selection or through feature extraction. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a well-known technique for feature extraction-based dimensionality reduction. However, this technique cannot be applied for cancer classification because of the singularity of the within-class scatter matrix due to the SSS problem. In this paper, we use Gradient LDA technique which avoids the singularity problem associated with the within-class scatter matrix and shown its usefulness for cancer classification. The technique is applied on three gene expression datasets; namely, acute leukemia, small round blue-cell tumour (SRBCT) and lung adenocarcinoma. This technique achieves lower misclassification error as compared to several other previous techniques.

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

dimensionality reduction
cancer classification
feature selection
feature extraction

dna microarray
linear discriminant analysis (lda)
gradient lda (glda)


A model of neutrophil dynamics in response to inflammatory and cancer chemotherapy challenges A mathematical model of neutrophil and granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) dynamics is developed to capture the response of circulating neutrophil levels to inflammatory and anticancer drug challenges. Severe infection or trauma induces inflammation, leading to: (i) the recruitment of neutrophils to the site of infection; (ii) misdirected neutrophil recruitment to healthy tissue, which may cause tissue damage; and (iii) an increase in neutrophil production through the G-CSF signaling cascade. The model is calibrated using fast (endotoxin challenge) and slow (docetaxel chemotherapy) response data and used to examine neutrophil dynamics in response to different chemotherapy schedules and G-CSF mitigation of, or rescue from, neutropenia. The explicit incorporation of biology in this model provides a superior structure for use in designing and evaluating treatments aimed at modulating neutrophil dynamics in chemotherapy and responses to severe infection or trauma. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

inflammation
cancer chemotherapy
neutrophils

nonlinear dynamic modeling
biomedical systems
lps
g-csf


Development and evaluation of a novel system for monitoring harvest labor efficiency This paper introduces a real-time labor monitoring system (LMS) with the ability to track and record individual picker efficiency during manual harvest of specialty crops. This system utilizes existing commercial harvest equipment and integrates a digital weighing scale, RFID reader, computational unit, and a portable datalogger carried by pickers. The RFID reader, digital scale and computational unit are assembled on a common portable chassis. As pickers transfer fruit into a standard collection bin, the system reads the pickers ID (RFID tag) and the weight of fruit. Weight data can then be transmitted wirelessly to the pickers datalogger which records and displays the incremental and total weight of harvested fruit. An algorithm was developed in Matlab to record, process and store the data, as well as to transmit wirelessly the weight value to the wearable datalogger. System prototypes were assembled and field-tested for accuracy and reliability during commercial harvest of sweet cherries (Prunus avium L.) in the Pacific Northwest. The LMS reliably calculated the harvest rate, picking cost, weight of harvested fruit, number of harvested buckets, range in fruit weight per bucket, and mean fruit weight per bucket, in real time. The mean harvest rate (standard error) in a Chelan/Mazzard sweet cherry orchard trained to a steep leader architecture was 0.530.13kg/person/min. Harvest rate was similar for the same genotype trained to a steep leader (3 leaders) at 0.500.10kg/person/min and for harvest of Tieton/Gisela6 trees trained to a central leader architecture (0.530.15kg/person/min). When surveyed after using the LMS, every picker indicated a preference for knowing the exact weight of fruit they harvested compared with the current system of reimbursement per bucket or bin. Using the LMS, reliable data on worker efficiency can be collected with minimal interference with standard commercial practices.

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


Lightweight bytecode verification In this paper, we provide a theoretical foundation for and improvements to the existing bytecode verification technology, a critical component of the Java security model, for mobile code used with the Java "micro edition" (J2ME), which is intended for embedded computing devices. In Java, remotely loaded "bytecode" class files are required to be bytecode verified before execution, that is, to undergo a static type analysis that protects the platform's Java run-time system from so-called type confusion attacks such as pointer manipulation. The data flow analysis that performs the verification, however, is beyond the capacity of most embedded devices because of the memory requirements that the typical algorithm will need. We propose to take a proof-carrying code approach to data flow analysis in defining an alternative technique called "lightweight analysis" that uses the notion of a "certificate" to reanalyze a previously analyzed data flow problem, even on poorly resourced platforms. We formally prove that the technique provides the same guarantees as standard bytecode safety verification analysis, in particular that it is "tamper proof" in the sense that the guarantees provided by the analysis cannot be broken by crafting a "false" certificate or by altering the analyzed code. We show how the Java bytecode verifier fits into this framework for an important subset of the Java Virtual Machine; we also show how the resulting "lightweight bytecode verification" technique generalizes and simulates the J2ME verifier ( to be expected as Sun's J2ME "K-Virtual machine" verifier was directly based on an early version of this work), as well as Leroy's "on-card bytecode verifier," which is specifically targeted for Java Cards.

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

bytecode verification
data flow analysis


Combining OpenFlow and sFlow for an effective and scalable anomaly detection and mitigation mechanism on SDN environments Software Defined Networks (SDNs) based on the OpenFlow (OF) protocol export control-plane programmability of switched substrates. As a result, rich functionality in traffic management, load balancing, routing, firewall configuration, etc. that may pertain to specific flows they control, may be easily developed. In this paper we extend these functionalities with an efficient and scalable mechanism for performing anomaly detection and mitigation in SDN architectures. Flow statistics may reveal anomalies triggered by large scale malicious events (typically massive Distributed Denial of Service attacks) and subsequently assist networked resource owners/operators to raise mitigation policies against these threats. First, we demonstrate that OF statistics collection and processing overloads the centralized control plane, introducing scalability issues. Second, we propose a modular architecture for the separation of the data collection process from the SDN control plane with the employment of sFlow monitoring data. We then report experimental results that compare its performance against native OF approaches that use standard flow table statistics. Both alternatives are evaluated using an entropy-based method on high volume real network traffic data collected from a university campus network. The packet traces were fed to hardware and software OF devices in order to assess flow-based data-gathering and related anomaly detection options. We subsequently present experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed sFlow-based mechanism compared to the native OF approach, in terms of overhead imposed on usage of system resources. Finally, we conclude by demonstrating that once a network anomaly is detected and identified, the OF protocol can effectively mitigate it via flow table modifications.

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

software defined networking
attack mitigation


Adaptive image denoising and edge enhancement in scale-space using the wavelet transform This paper proposes a new method for image denoising with edge preservation and enhancement, based on image multi-resolution decomposition by a redundant wavelet transform. At each resolution, the coefficients associated with noise and the coefficients associated with edges are modeled by Gaussians, and a shrinkage function is assembled. The shrinkage functions are combined in consecutive resolutions, and geometric constraints are applied to preserve edges that are not isolated. Within the proposed framework, edge related coefficients may be enhanced and denoised simultaneously. Finally, the inverse wavelet transform is applied to the modified coefficients. This method is adaptive, and performs well for images contaminated by natural and artificial noise.

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

multiresolution analysis
wavelet shrinkage


Marginal reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo with application to motor unit number estimation Motor unit number estimation (MUNE) is a method which aims to provide a quantitative indicator of progression of diseases that lead to a loss of motor units, such as motor neurone disease. However the development of a reliable, repeatable and fast real-time MUNE method has proved elusive hitherto. Previously, a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) algorithm has been implemented to produce a posterior distribution for the number of motor units using a Bayesian hierarchical model that takes into account biological information about motor unit activation. However this approach can be unreliable for some datasets since it can suffer from poor cross-dimensional mixing. The focus is on improved inference by marginalising over latent variables to create the likelihood. More specifically, the emphasis is on how this marginalisation can improve the RJMCMC mixing and that alternative approaches that utilise the likelihood (e.g.DIC) can be investigated. For this model the marginalisation is over latent variables which, for a larger number of motor units, is an intractable summation over all combinations of a set of latent binary variables whose joint sample space increases exponentially with the number of motor units. A tractable and accurate approximation for this quantity is provided and also other approximations based on Monte Carlo estimates that can be incorporated into RJMCMC are investigated.

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

reversible jump markov chain monte carlo


Cell population balance and hybrid modeling of population dynamics for a single gene with feedback Latest research on biological systems is steadily shifting from isolated single cells to entire cell populations. The latter are inherently heterogeneous, and their modeling requires approaches that explicitly account for this property. A comprehensive such approach is the cell population balance (CPB), which, however, is computationally expensive and becomes intractable for multi-variable models. In this work, we demonstrate the use of model-reduction to efficiently simulate cell population heterogeneity in a genetic network of a single gene with feedback. Starting from a 4-species model, we use singular perturbation analysis to derive a single equation for the intracellular protein concentration. We subsequently incorporate this equation to a hybrid model consisting of a CPB for the cell volume, and a continuum equation for the protein concentration. We finally compare the results obtained with the hybrid model with those of the full CPB, demonstrating the accuracy and computational efficiency of the hybrid methodology. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

heterogeneity
cell population balance
hybrid model
singular perturbation


Temperature changes above the upper hive body reveal the annual development periods of honey bee colonies Determination of the annual development periods of honey bee colonies can help in synchronising the beekeepers activities with the developmental stage of individual bee colonies in apiaries. It is proposed to determine the development periods by measuring and analysing the ambient temperature and the temperature above the upper hive body. The temperature above the upper hive body is proportional to the energy which is released during bee colony activities. Throughout the year in 2000, measurements with interval of 15min of the temperature in 14 honey bee colonies was done in Latvia, in the Riga region. One sensor per colony was located above the upper hive body. The annual curve of the average day and night temperature was approximated by five linear pieces that possibly correspond to particular periods. Explicit transition points to the next period were determined. Five sequential periods have been proposed in the bee colonys development: (1) winter brood rearing, (2) spring brood rearing, (3) summer brood rearing, (4) autumn brood rearing and (5) autumn broodless period. These periods collectively form a hat-like annual profile. All brood rearing periods demonstrate high thermal discipline: the hive temperature follows linear dynamics in spite of fluctuations in the ambient temperature. A simple measurement system and criteria for automatic determination of transition from one period to another for apiary has been developed and tested. Thermal measurements above the upper hive body efficiently determine the transition from one period to another in the apiary. The computational system for the determination of developmental periods should be equipped with at least one ambient temperature sensor per apiary and one temperature sensor per observed bee colony.

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

honey bee
development periods
hive temperature
automatic determination