Methods used for the development of neural networks for the prediction of water resource variables in river systems: Current status and future directions Over the past 15 years, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been used increasingly for prediction and forecasting in water resources and environmental engineering. However, despite this high level of research activity, methods for developing ANN models are not yet well established. In this paper, the steps in the development of ANN models are outlined and taxonomies of approaches are introduced for each of these steps. In order to obtain a snapshot of current practice, ANN development methods are assessed based on these taxonomies for 210 journal papers that were published from 1999 to 2007 and focus on the prediction of water resource variables in river systems. The results obtained indicate that the vast majority of studies focus on flow prediction, with very few applications to water quality. Methods used for determining model inputs, appropriate data subsets and the best model structure are generally obtained in an ad-hoc fashion and require further attention. Although multilayer perceptrons are still the most popular model architecture, other model architectures are also used extensively. In relation to model calibration, gradient based methods are used almost exclusively. In conclusion, despite a significant amount of research activity on the use of ANNs for prediction and forecasting of water resources variables in river systems, little of this is focused on methodological issues. Consequently, there is still a need for the development of robust ANN model development approaches.

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

artificial neural networks
water resources
river systems
forecasting
prediction
model development


Many-to-many location-routing with inter-hub transport and multi-commodity pickup-and-delivery We introduce an extension of the many-to-many location-routing problem. We provide a test set and perform an extensive computational study. A mixed-integer linear model is developed. A fix-and-optimize heuristic and a genetic algorithm are developed.

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

location-routing
inter-hub transport
multi-commodity pickup-and-delivery
mixed-integer linear programming
fix-and-optimize


Direction selectivity of simple cells in the primary visual cortex: Comparison of two alternative mathematical models. I: Response to drifting gratings Two models of a single hypercolumn in the primary visual cortex are presented, and used for the analysis of direction selectivity in simple cells. The two models differ as to the arrangement of inhibitory connections: in the first (antiphase model) inhibition is in phase opposition with excitation, but with a similar orientation tuning; in the second (in-phase model), inhibition is in phase with excitation, but with broader orientation tuning. Simulation results, performed by using drifting gratings with different orientations, and different spatial and temporal frequencies, show that both models are able to explain the origin of direction preference of simple cells.

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

primary visual cortex
direction selectivity
inhibition


Feature Selection for Gene Expression Using Model-Based Entropy Gene expression data usually contain a large number of genes but a small number of samples. Feature selection for gene expression data aims at finding a set of genes that best discriminate biological samples of different types. Using machine learning techniques, traditional gene selection based on empirical mutual information suffers the data sparseness issue due to the small number of samples. To overcome the sparseness issue, we propose a model-based approach to estimate the entropy of class variables on the model, instead of on the data themselves. Here, we use multivariate normal distributions to fit the data, because multivariate normal distributions have maximum entropy among all real-valued distributions with a specified mean and standard deviation and are widely used to approximate various distributions. Given that the data follow a multivariate normal distribution, since the conditional distribution of class variables given the selected features is a normal distribution, its entropy can be computed with the log-determinant of its covariance matrix. Because of the large number of genes, the computation of all possible log-determinants is not efficient. We propose several algorithms to largely reduce the computational cost. The experiments on seven gene data sets and the comparison with other five approaches show the accuracy of the multivariate Gaussian generative model for feature selection, and the efficiency of our algorithms.

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

feature selection
multivariate gaussian generative model
entropy


On a hybrid data cloning method and its application in generalized linear mixed models The data cloning method is a new computational tool for computing maximum likelihood estimates in complex statistical models such as mixed models. This method is synthesized with integrated nested Laplace approximation to compute maximum likelihood estimates efficiently via a fast implementation in generalized linear mixed models. Asymptotic behavior of the hybrid data cloning method is discussed. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated through a simulation study and real examples. It is shown that the proposed method performs well and rightly justifies the theory. Supplemental materials for this article are available online.

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

data cloning
generalized linear mixed models
integrated nested laplace approximation


Periodic solutions for a class of higher-order Cohen-Grossberg type neural networks with delays Sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence and global attractivity, of periodic solutions of a class of higher-order Cohen-Grossberg type neural networks with delays. The proof is based on Gaines and Mawhin's continuation theorem of coincidence degree theory, the Lyapunov functional and a nonsingular M-matrix. One example is exploited to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed criteria. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

global attractivity
coincidence degree
lyapunov functional
delays

higher-order cohen-grossberg neural networks


A hierarchical nonparametric Bayesian approach for medical images and gene expressions classification Lately, the enormous generation of databases in almost every aspect of life has created a great demand for new powerful tools for turning data into useful information. Therefore, researchers were encouraged to explore and develop new machine learning ideas and methods. Mixture models are one of the machine learning techniques receiving considerable attention due to their ability to handle efficiently and effectively multidimensional data. In this paper, we represent a solution for two challenging issues: modeling non-Gaussian data and determining the set of relevant features in the data. The problem of modeling non-Gaussian data largely present in several computer vision, image processing, medical, and Bioinformatics applications is accomplished by the development of a generative infinite Gamma mixture model. The Gamma is chosen for its ability to handle long-tailed distributions, which allows it to have a good approximation to data with outliers. The proposed model, which can be viewed as a Dirichlet process mixture of Gamma distributions, takes into account the feature selection problem by determining a set of relevant features for each data cluster which provides better interpretability and generalization capabilities. We propose then an efficient algorithm to learn this infinite models parameters by estimating all its posterior quantities of interest using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations. Thus, our algorithm is able to perform model selection, parameter learning, and feature selection simultaneously in a single step for the Gamma Mixture model. Furthermore, we show how the model can be used, while comparing it with other popular models in the literature, in two challenging applications namely medical images and gene expressions classification.

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

gamma distribution
nonparametric bayes
gibbs sampling
mammography
gene expression


Combined data-driven and event-driven scheduling technique for fast distributed cosimulation Fast distributed cosimulation is a challenging problem for the embedded system design. The main theme of this paper is to increase the simulation speed by reducing the frequency of intersimulator communications, reducing the active duration of simulators, and utilizing the parallelism of component simulators. Those enhancements are accomplished by the proposed virtual synchronization technique, which combines event-driven and data-driven simulation methods. Experimental results show that the proposed technique can boost the cosimulation speed significantly compared with the previous conservative approaches.

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

distributed simulation
time accurate simulation


Theoretical estimation of retinal oxygenation in chronic diabetic retinopathy A model for retinal oxygenation estimates ischemia associated with diabetes. The model employs diffusion, saturable consumption, and a nonlinear transport. The models results reinforces the need for tighter glycemic control. A new extension includes vasodilation as a feedback response to ischemia.

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 B O O O O O O

diabetes mellitus
computer model
progressive ischemia


Comparing three global parametric and local non-parametric models to simulate land use change in diverse areas of the world Developed a framework to classify data mining tools. Local non-parametric models (LNPM) were more interpretable than a global parametric model (GPM). A GPM outperformed two LNPMs for a short time interval and for coarse resolution data. Three models obtained similar accuracies in a longer time interval and for fine resolution data.

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

binary land use change simulation
local non-parametric model
spatial and temporal comparison


4-D pattern structure features by three stages clustering algorithm for image analysis and classification An approach for decomposition of visual image by clustering, pattern analysis and classification by structure features is considered. Hierarchical clusters such as rectangles, closed regions and integrated areas are objects of investigation. By hierarchically constructed fragments, the 4-D pattern structure features are formulated. To reduce the clustering algorithm complexity, the scanning area approach is proposed. The results of pattern analysis and classification by structure features for some images are presented.

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

visual pattern
hierarchical tree
rolling-up algorithm
rectangle
closed region
integrated area
4d structural features
indexing and retrieval


bypass and insertion algorithms for exclusive last-level caches Inclusive last-level caches (LLCs) waste precious silicon estate due to cross-level replication of cache blocks. As the industry moves toward cache hierarchies with larger inner levels, this wasted cache space leads to bigger performance losses compared to exclusive LLCs. However, exclusive LLCs make the design of replacement policies more challenging. While in an inclusive LLC a block can gather a filtered access history, this is not possible in an exclusive design because the block is de-allocated from the LLC on a hit. As a result, the popular least-recently-used replacement policy and its approximations are rendered ineffective and proper choice of insertion ages of cache blocks becomes even more important in exclusive designs. On the other hand, it is not necessary to fill every block into an exclusive LLC. This is known as selective cache bypassing and is not possible to implement in an inclusive LLC because that would violate inclusion. This paper explores insertion and bypass algorithms for exclusive LLCs. Our detailed execution-driven simulation results show that a combination of our best insertion and bypass policies delivers an improvement of up to 61.2\% and on average (geometric mean) 3.4\% in terms of instructions retired per cycle (IPC) for 97 single-threaded dynamic instruction traces spanning selected SPEC 2006 and server applications, running on a 2 MB 16-way exclusive LLC compared to a baseline exclusive design in the presence of well-tuned multi-stream hardware prefetchers. The corresponding improvements in throughput for 35 4-way multi-programmed workloads running with an 8 MB 16-way shared exclusive LLC are 20.6\% (maximum) and 2.5\% (geometric mean).

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

exclusive last-level cache
insertion policy
bypass policy


A high-performance active digital library We describe Javaflow and Paraflow, the client and server parts of a digital library, providing high-performance data-retrieval and data-mining services, with emphasis on user interface as well as computing efficiency. Paraflow is a component model for high-performance computing, implemented as a thin layer on Message Passing Interface (MPI); it controls a heterogeneous metacomputer, allowing groups of processes (services) to work collectively and communicate with each other by parallel messaging links (channels). Javaflow is a straightforward, intuitive, loosely coupled component model for Java applets, allowing them to be combined into a GUI that can run on a thin client from a standing start. Javaflow controls Paraflow through a well-exposed text interface which is carried by authenticated telnet, while the output of the computation can be web-pages, files, or high-speed graphics. As an example, we discuss the SARA remote-sensing library, which provides public retrieval of multichannel images of the Earth, as well as private, authenticated access to a variety of image-processing services running on parallel supercomputers.

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


Detection of frauds and other non-technical losses in a power utility using Pearson coefficient, Bayesian networks and decision trees For the electrical sector, minimizing non-technical losses is a very important task because it has a high impact in the company profits. Thus, this paper describes some new advances for the detection of non-technical losses in the customers of one of the most important power utilities of Spain and Latin America: Endesa Company. The study is within the framework of the MIDAS project that is being developed at the Electronic Technology Department of the University of Seville with the funding of this company. The advances presented in this article have an objective of detecting customers with anomalous drops in their consumed energy (the most-frequent symptom of a non-technical loss in a customer) by means of a windowed analysis with the use of the Pearson coefficient. On the other hand, besides Bayesian networks, decision trees have been used for detecting other types of patterns of non-technical loss. The algorithms have been tested with real customers of the database of Endesa Company. Currently, the system is in operation.

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

non-technical loss
data mining
pearson correlation coefficient
decision tree
bayesian network


Parallel-machine scheduling with simple linear deterioration to minimize total completion time We consider the parallel-machine scheduling problem in which the processing time of a job is a simple linear increasing function of its starting time. The objective is to minimize the total completion time. We give a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the case with m identical machines, where m is fixed. This study solves an open problem that has been posed in the literature for ten years.

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

parallel-machine scheduling
deteriorating jobs


Analog hardware implementation of continuous-time adaptive filter structures We have implemented a four-tap adaptive filter in a continuous-time analog VLSI circuit. Since an ideal delay is impossible to implement in continuous-time hardware, we implemented the delay line as a cascade of lowpass filters (called the gamma filter). Since many years of research in our lab has shown that the gamma filter outperforms the ideal delay line for a wide range of applications, the gamma filter should not be considered merely a crude approximation of the ideal delay line. We show measured results from an analog chip that solves the problem of system identification-identifying an unknown linear circuit from its input/output relationship. Furthermore, we believe that a cascade of all-pass filters (called the Laguerre filter) will potentially outperform the gamma. We have built an adaptive Laguerre filter and show that its measured convergence rate is superior to that of the gamma. Finally, rather than perform gradient descent on a multimodal error function to determine a single optimal time constant, we propose multi-scale realizations of these delay line structures.

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

generalized feedforward transversal filter


A Modified Short and Fukunaga Metric based on the attribute independence assumption It is well known that the naive Bayesian classifier assumes the attribute independence given the class. According to our observation, some distance functions also assume the attribute independence, such as Value Difference Metric (VDM). Short and Fukunaga Metric (SFM) is another widely used distance function, which does not assume the attribute independence. In this paper, we investigate the attribute independence assumption in VDM, and propose a Modified Short and Fukunaga Metric (MSFM) based on the attribute independence assumption. We find that MSFM is surprisingly similar to VDM. In fact, based on some assumptions, our MSFM can be regarded as a logarithmic modification of VDM. That is to say, in some sense, a logarithmic modification of SFM is equivalent to a logarithmic modification of VDM. Our experimental results on a large number of UCI benchmark datasets show that MSFM significantly outperforms SFM and SF2LOG (another improved version of SFM), and almost ties VDM.

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

attribute independence assumption
short and fukunaga metric
value difference metric


Model-driven Development for Adapting Question Answering Systems to Restricted Domains A Question Answering (QA) system must provide concise answers from large collections of documents to questions stated by the user in natural language. However, although many QA systems for open domain exist, its adaptation for restricted domains (such as those of healthcare, agriculture, transportation, or science) is a far from trivial task. The principal problem is that domain experts ask more precise questions (and expect more precise answers), including specific terminology, and this is costly to integrate into a QA system. To overcome this drawback, this paper presents an innovative approach based on model-driven software development. It uses restricted-domain resources to automatically and effortlessly adapt open-domain QA systems in order to make them useful in restricted-domain scenarios. Finally, a set of experiments has been carried out to show the approach's applicability.

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


Heuristic Discovery of Role-Based Trust Chains in Peer-to-Peer Networks Credential chains are needed in trusted peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, where trust delegation must be established between each pair of peers at specific role level. Role-based trust is refined from the coarse-grained trust model used in most P2P reputation systems. This paper offers a novel heuristic-weighting approach to selecting the most likely path to construct a role-based trust chain. We apply history-sensitive heuristics to measure the path complexity and to assess the chaining efficiency. Our method discovers successive edges of a trust chain, adaptively, to match with the demands in any given P2P application. New heuristic chaining algorithms are developed for backward, forward, and bidirectional discovery of trust chains. Our heuristic chain discovery scheme shortens the search time, reduces the memory requirement, and enhances the chaining accuracy in scalable P2P networks. Consider a trust graph over N credentials and M distinct role nodes. Our heuristic trust-chain discovery algorithms require O(N(2)logN) search time and O(M) memory space, if the secondary heuristics are generated offline in advance. These are improved from O(N(3)) search time and O(NM) space required in nonheuristic discovery algorithms developed by Li et al. [12]. Our analytical results are verified by extensive simulation experiments over typical classes of role- based trust graphs.

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

peer-to-peer networks
role-based credentials
heuristic semantics
internet applications


Precision of the CAESAR scan-extracted measurements Three-dimensional (3D) body scanners are increasingly used to derive 1D body dimensions from 3D whole body scans for instance, as input for clothing grading systems to make made-to-measure clothing or for width and depth dimensions of a seated workstation. In this study, the precision of the scanner-derived 1D dimensions from the CAESAR survey, a multinational anthropometric survey, was investigated. Two combinations of scanning teams with 3D whole body scanners were compared, one called the US Team and the other the Dutch Team. Twenty subjects were measured three times by one scanner and one team, and three times by the other combination. The subjects were marked prior to scanning using small dots, and the linear distances between the dots were calculated after processing the scans. The mean absolute difference (MAD) of the repetitions was calculated and this was compared to reported acceptable errors in manual measurements from the US Army's ANSUR survey when similar measurements were available. In addition, the coefficient of variation (CV) was calculated for all measurements. The results indicate that the CAESAR scan-extracted measurements are highly reproducible; for most measures the MAD is less than 5mm. In addition, more than 93% of the MAD values for CAESAR are significantly smaller than the ANSUR survey acceptable errors. Therefore, it is concluded that the type of scan-extracted measures used in CAESAR are as good as or better than comparable manual measurements. Scan-extracted measurements that do not use markers or are not straight-line distances are not represented here and additional studies would be needed to verify their precision.

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


SPECIFICATION AND VERIFICATION OF DYNAMICS IN AGENT MODELS Within many domains, among which biological, cognitive, and social areas, multiple interacting processes occur among agents with dynamics that are hard to handle. This paper presents the predicate logical Temporal Trace Language (TTL) for the formal specification and analysis of dynamic properties of agents and multi-agent systems. This language supports the specification of both qualitative and quantitative aspects, and therefore subsumes specification languages based on differential equations and qualitative, logical approaches. A software environment has been developed for TTL, which supports editing TTL properties and enables the formal verification of properties against a set of traces. The TTL environment proved its value in a number of projects within different biological, cognitive and social domains.

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

specification language
verification tools
agent model


Accelerated Degradation Tests Applied to Software Aging Experiments In the past ten years, the software aging phenomenon has been systematically researched, and recognized by both academic, and industry communities as an important obstacle to achieving dependable software systems. One of its main effects is the depletion of operating system resources, causing system performance degradation or crash/hang failures in running applications. When conducting experimental studies to evaluate the operational reliability of systems suffering from software aging, long periods of runtime are required to observe system failures. Focusing on this problem, we present a systematic approach to accelerate the software aging manifestation to reduce the experimentation time, and to estimate the lifetime distribution of the investigated system. First, we introduce the concept of "aging factor" that offers a fine control of the aging effects at the experimental level. The aging factors are estimated via sensitivity analyses based on the statistical design of experiments. Aging factors are then used together with the method of accelerated degradation test to estimate the lifetime distribution of the system under test at various stress levels. This approach requires us to estimate a relationship model between stress levels and aging degradation. Such models are called stress-accelerated aging relationships. Finally, the estimated relationship models enable us to estimate the lifetime distribution under use condition. The proposed approach is used in estimating the lifetime distribution of a web server with software aging symptoms. The main result is the reduction of the experimental time by a factor close to 685 in comparison with experiments executed without the use of our technique.

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

accelerated degradation tests
design of experiments
software aging


Signal reconstruction, modeling and simulation of a vehicle full-scale crash test based on Morlet wavelets Creating a mathematical model of a vehicle crash is a task which involves considerations and analysis of different areas which need to be addressed because of the mathematical complexity of a crash event representation. Therefore, to simplify the analysis and enhance the modeling process, in this paper a novel wavelet-based approach is introduced to reproduce acceleration pulse of a vehicle involved in a crash event. The acceleration of a colliding vehicle is measured in its center of gravitythis crash pulse contains detailed information about vehicle behavior throughout a collision. Three types of signal analysis are elaborated here: time domain analysis (i.e. description of kinematics of a vehicle in time domain), the frequency analysis (identification of the parameters of the crash pulse in frequency domain), and the timefrequency analysis, which comprises those techniques that study a signal in both the time and frequency domains simultaneously, using Morlet wavelet properties. Determination of time of occurrence of particular frequency components included in the measured acceleration pulse and further analysis of the obtained scalegram are based on the reproduction of each crash pulse component, according to the frequencies identified in the acceleration signal. Finally, by using the superposition principle, those major signal components are combined, yielding the reproduced crash pulse. The comparative analysis between the current method's outcome, the responses of models established previously by using different approach and the behavior of a real car is performed and reliability of the actual methods and tools is evaluated.

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

multiresolution analysis
signal reproduction
vehicle crash modeling


software testing research and software engineering education Software testing research has not kept up with modern software system designs and applications, and software engineering education falls short of providing students with the type of knowledge and training that other engineering specialties require. Testing researchers should pay more attention to areas that are currently relevant for practicing software developers, such as embedded systems, mobile devices, safety-critical systems and other modern paradigms, in order to provide usable results and techniques for practitioners. We identify a number of skills that every software engineering student and faculty should have learned, and also propose that education for future software engineers should include significant exposure to real systems, preferably through hands-on training via internships at software-producing firms.

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

industrial internship
software engineering training


Identification of epilepsy stages from ECoG using genetic programming classifiers Objective: Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder, for which a great deal of research has been devoted to analyze and characterize brain activity during seizures. While this can be done by a human expert, automatic methods still lag behind. This paper analyzes neural activity captured with Electrocorticogram (ECoG), recorded through intracranial implants from Kindling model test subjects. The goal is to automatically identify the main seizure stages: Pre-Ictal, Ictal and Post-Ictal. While visually differentiating each stage can be done by an expert if the complete time-series is available, the goal here is to automatically identify the corresponding stage of short signal segments. Methods and materials: The proposal is to pose the above task as a supervised classification problem and derive a mapping function that classifies each signal segment. Given the complexity of the signal patterns, it is difficult to a priori choose any particular classifier. Therefore, Genetic Programming (GP), a population based meta-heuristic for automatic program induction, is used to automatically search for the mapping functions. Two GP-based classifiers are used and extensively evaluated. The signals from epileptic seizures are obtained using the Kindling model of elicited epilepsy in rodent test subjects, for which a seizure was elicited and recorded on four separate days. Results: Results show that signal segments from a single seizure can be used to derive accurate classifiers that generalize when tested on different signals from the same subject; i.e., GP can automatically produce accurate mapping functions for intra-subject classification. A large number of experiments are performed with the GP classifiers achieving good performance based on standard performance metrics. Moreover, a proof-of-concept real-world prototype is presented, where a GP classifier is transferred and hard-coded on an embedded system using a digital-to-analogue converter and a field programmable gate array, achieving a low average classification error of 14.55%, sensitivity values between 0.65 and 0.97, and specificity values between 0.86 and 0.94. Conclusions: The proposed approach achieves good results for stage identification, particularly when compared with previous works that focus on this task. The results show that the problem of intra-class classification can be solved with a low error, and high sensitivity and specificity. Moreover, the limitations of the approach are identified and good operating configurations can be proposed based on the results.

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


Kinetics of the C49C54 transformation by micro-Raman imaging The kinetics of the C49C54 phase transition was analysed in TiSi2 thin films obtained by reacting a Ti layer deposited on amorphous silicon. The C54 fraction was determined in the temperature range 680720C by electrical measurements and by micro-Raman spectroscopy. The Raman spectra were acquired by scanning large silicide areas (10050 ?m) and images showing the evolution of the C54 grains at different times and temperatures were obtained. The transformed fraction, the density and size distribution of the C54 grains were measured, and a detailed discussion of the errors associated with the micro-Raman technique is presented. The data indicate that the nucleation rate is not constant and the JohnsonMehlAvrami model cannot describe this transition.

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


Differential cryptanalysis of PRESENT-like cipher In 2011, Borghoff et al. introduced a slender-set differential cryptanalysis on PRESENT-like ciphers with key-dependent S-boxes. Borghoffs differential attack mainly divides into two parts: data collection phase and S-box recovery phase. In this paper, we investigate different attacks on PRESENT-like cipher with secret S-boxes and public S-boxes. For PRESENT-like cipher with secret S-boxes, we introduce two new cryptanalytic techniques, and use them to recover the secret S-boxes more efficiently. Our first new idea is that we present a new method of data collection based on the method of optimal distinguisher for collecting information efficiently. Another new technique is that we propose a method of constructing the entire correct slender-sets instead of checking the correctness of slender-sets in the S-box recovery phase. In particular, we implemented a successful attack on the cipher Maya in practice. In our experiments, the correct S-boxes can be recovered with \(2^{26}\) data complexity and \(2^{22.4}\) time complexity at a success rate of 100% based on 200 independent trials. Furthermore, we propose a new method of recovering the secret key of PRESENT-like cipher with public S-boxes with lower data and time complexity. To the 12-round PRESENT-80, the experiments show that we can recover the entire 80-bit secret key with \(2^{34.9}\) data and \(2^{38.9}\) time complexity. To the 22-round \(\mathrm{PRINT}_\mathrm{CIPHER}\), experiments show that we can recover the entire 80-bit secret key with \(2^{37.5}\) data complexity and \(2^{41.5}\) time complexity. To the best of our knowledge, our attack is the best known differential attacks on PRESENT and \(\mathrm{PRINT}_\mathrm{CIPHER}\) in practice.

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


Generalized polar decompositions on Lie groups with involutive automorphisms The polar decomposition, a well-known algorithm for decomposing real matrices as the product of a positive semidefinite matrix and an orthogonal matrix, is intimately related to involutive automorphisms of Lie groups and the subspace decomposition they induce. Such generalized polar decompositions, depending on the choice of the involutive automorphism or, always exist near the identity although frequently they can be extended to larger portions of the underlying group. In this paper, first of all we provide an alternative proof to the local existence and uniqueness result of the generalized polar decomposition. What is new in our approach is that we derive differential equations obeyed by the two factors and solve them analytically, thereby providing explicit Lie-algebra recurrence relations for the coefficients of the series expansion. Second. we discuss additional properties of the two factors. In particular, when sigma is a Cartan involution, we prove that the subgroup factor obeys similar optimality properties to the orthogonal polar factor in the classical matrix setting both locally and globally, under suitable assumptions on the Lie group G.

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

lie group
polar decomposition
generalized polar decompositions
involutive automorphism

cartan decomposition
iwasawa decomposition


Completeness of type assignment systems with intersection, union, and type quantifiers This paper develops type assignment systems with intersection and union types, and type quantifiers. We show that the known system for these types is not semantically complete. However, the following two hold for a certain class of typing statements, called stable statements, which include all statements without type quantifier: (1) the validity of stable statements for Kripke models is equivalent to that for standard models, (2) if we add two axioms expressing the distributive laws of intersection over union and existential-type quantifier, then the resulting system is complete for Kripke models. As a consequence, the known system with the axioms for distributive laws is complete for standard models if we restrict statements to stable ones. All the results are obtained in a systematic way with sequent-style formulations of type assignment and the cut-elimination property for them. (C) 2002 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 B I O O O O O O O O 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

lambda calculus
type systems
sequent calculus
cut-elimination


An approach to solve contradiction problems for the safety integration in innovative design process Improving product behavioral performance in design process needs an innovative approach to integrate simultaneously most of the trades (safety, reliability, maintainability, etc.). Currently, safety integration is done in the latest phase of design process, to respect safety directives. This late integration causes some contradictions between productivity and safety. These contradictions could be related to technical and organizational problems. This paper proposes an innovative approach that aims to eliminate these contradictions in order to improve product performance in the use situations. This approach is based on 4 steps: systemic safety integration using Working situation model, taking into account the requirements of safety directives and standards; identifying the contradiction resulting from designer's choices and finally resolving these contradictions using adapted methods like TRIZ. An application case is outlined in off-set industry, to show the applicability and usefulness of our approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

innovative design
safety
productivity
contradictions


Fuzzy and hard clustering analysis for thyroid disease Thyroid hormones produced by the thyroid gland help regulation of the body's metabolism. A variety of methods have been proposed in the literature for thyroid disease classification. As far as we know, clustering techniques have not been used in thyroid diseases data set so far. This paper proposes a comparison between hard and fuzzy clustering algorithms for thyroid diseases data set in order to find the optimal number of clusters. Different scalar validity measures are used in comparing the performances of the proposed clustering systems. To demonstrate the performance of each algorithm, the feature values that represent thyroid disease are used as input for the system. Several runs are carried out and recorded with a different number of clusters being specified for each run (between 2 and 11), so as to establish the optimum number of clusters. To find the optimal number of clusters, the so-called elbow criterion is applied. The experimental results revealed that for all algorithms, the elbow was located at c=3. The clustering results for all algorithms are then visualized by the Sammon mapping method to find a low-dimensional (normally 2D or 3D) representation of a set of points distributed in a high dimensional pattern space. At the end of this study, some recommendations are formulated to improve determining the actual number of clusters present in the data set.

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

k-means clustering
k-medoids clustering
fuzzy c-means
gustafsonkessel algorithm
gathgeva algorithm


Minimizing the mean delay of quorum-based mutual exclusion schemes Achieving mutual exclusion is one of the most fundamental problems in distributed computing. The use of coteries is a well-known approach to this problem. A coterie is a special set of pair-wise intersecting node groups called quorums. The communication delay incurred in a quorum-based mutual exclusion scheme depends critically on the coterie adopted, and thus it is important to find a coterie with small delay. Recently, two related measures called max-delay and mean-delay have been introduced. The former measure represents the largest delay among all nodes, while the latter is the arithmetic mean of the delays. In a previous paper, we have proposed a polynomial-time algorithm to find max-delay optimal coteries, but there has been no algorithm to find mean-delay optimal coteries. In this paper, the first algorithm that finds mean-delay optimal coteries in general topology networks is proposed. This algorithm employs the branch-and-bound method to effectively explore the search space. Although its running time can be exponential, it is shown that the algorithm is applicable to moderate-sized networks through experiments.

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

quorums
coteries
communication delay
mutual exclusion


ASTRA.BAS: a program in QuickBasic 4.5 for exploring rose diagrams, circular histograms and some alternatives ? Rose diagrams and other circular (angular) histograms are arbitrary with respect to class width and starting position and a researcher's choices can dramatically influence the results. To give researchers as much flexibility as possible in exploring periodic and orientation datasets, besides drawing standard circular histograms, ASTRA.BAS automatically draws rose diagrams at all combinations of class widths and starting positions and it also offers some new alternative depictions, including `corona' and `mean-deviation' dot diagrams. It also examines the possibility of summing all possible rose diagrams as a means of producing a unique and non-arbitrary depiction of orientation data.

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

orientation diagrams
paleocurrents
circular data
corona diagrams
graphic methods
data processing


A quadrature based method for evaluating exponential-type functions for exponential methods We present a quadrature-based method to evaluate exponential-like operators required by different kinds of exponential integrators. The method approximates these operators by means of a quadrature formula that converges like O(e (-cK) ), with K the number of quadrature nodes, and it is useful when solving parabolic equations. The approach allows also the evaluation of the associated scalar mappings. The method is based on numerical inversion of sectorial Laplace transforms. Several numerical illustrations are provided to test the algorithm, including examples with a mass matrix and the application of the method inside the MATLAB package EXP4, an adaptive solver based on an exponential Runge-Kutta method.

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


Mining and Explaining Relationships in Wikipedia Mining and explaining relationships between concepts are challenging tasks in the field of knowledge search. We propose a new approach for the tasks using disjoint paths formed by links in Wikipedia. Disjoint paths are easy to understand and do not contain redundant information. To achieve this approach, we propose a naive method, as well as a generalized flow based method, and a technique for mining more disjoint paths using the generalized flow based method. We also apply the approach to classification of relationships. Our experiments reveal that the generalized flow based method can mine many disjoint paths important for understanding a relationship, and the classification is effective for explaining relationships.

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

link analysis
generalized max-flow
wikipedia mining


Exploiting reference images for image splicing verification At the moment, image forgery in the mainstream media has become common. The degree of manipulation is facilitated by image editing software. Hence, there are many outstanding images which have no provenance information or certainty of authenticity. Therefore, constructing a scientific and automatic way for evaluating image authenticity is an important task. In spite of having outstanding performance, all the image forensics schemes developed so far have not provided verifiable information about source of tampering. This paper aims to propose a different kind of scheme, by exploiting a group of similar images, to verify the source of tampering. We begin with slightly modifying Robert's detector to enhance the detection results. The usage of membership function used to classify the suspicious region from the authentic one is introduced as well. Inspired by the image registration concept, we exploit the correlation-based alignment method to automatically identify the spliced region in any fragment of the reference images. Although the scheme is applicable under particular conditions, the efficacy of the proposed scheme on revealing the source of spliced regions is considerable. We anticipate this scheme to be the first concrete technique toward appropriate tools which are necessary for exposing digital image forgeries. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

image alignment
edge detection
interpolation


Computer-aided stereotactic functional neurosurgery enhanced by the use of the multiple brain atlas database This paper introduces a computer-aided atlas-based functional neurosurgery methodology and describes NeuroPlanner, a software system which supports it. NeuroPlanner provides four groups of functions: 1) data-related For data reading, interpolation, reformatting, and image processing; 2) atlas-related for multiple atlases reading, atlas-to-data global and local registrations, two-way anatomical indexing, and multiple labeling in two and three dimensions; 3) atlas-data exploration-related for three-dimensional (3-D) display and real-time manipulation of cerebral structures, continuous navigation, two-dimensional (2-D), triplanar, 3-D presentations, and 2-D interaction in four views; and 4) neurosurgery-related for targeting, trajectory planning, mensuration, simulating the insertion of microelectrode, and simulating therapeutic lesioning, All operations, excluding atlas and data reading, are real time. The combined anatomical index of the multiple brain atlas database containing complementary 2-D and 3-D atlases has about 1000 structures per hemisphere, and over 400 sulcal patterns. Neurosurgical planning with mutually preregistered multiple brain atlases in all three orthogonal orientations is novel. The approach is validated with 24 intraoperative and postoperative datasets For thalamotomies, thalamic stimulations, pallidotomies, and pallidal stimulations. Its potential benefits include increased accuracy of target definition, reduced time of the surgical procedure by decreasing the number of tracts, facilitated planning of more sophisticated trajectories, lowered cost by reducing the number of microelectrodes used, reduced surgical complications, and the extra degree of confidence given to the neurosurgeon.

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

brain atlases
stereotactic functional neurosurgery

mri
pallidotomy
schaltenbrand-wahren atlas
talairach-tournoux atlas
thalamotomy


Multiple periodic solutions in delayed Gause-type ratio-dependent predator-prey systems with non-monotonic numerical responses By using a continuation theorem based on coincidence degree theory, we establish easily verifiable criteria for the existence of multiple periodic solutions in delayed Gause-type ratio-dependent predator-prey systems with numerical responses. As corollaries, some applications are listed. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

predator-prey system
ratio-dependent
non-monotonic numerical response
periodic solution


Preconditioning for modal discontinuous Galerkin methods for unsteady 3D NavierStokes equations We compare different block preconditioners in the context of parallel time adaptive higher order implicit time integration using Jacobian-free NewtonKrylov (JFNK) solvers for discontinuous Galerkin (DG) discretizations of the three dimensional time dependent NavierStokes equations. A special emphasis of this work is the performance for a relative high number of processors, i.e. with a low number of elements on the processor. For high order DG discretizations, a particular problem that needs to be addressed is the size of the blocks in the Jacobian. Thus, we propose a new class of preconditioners that exploits the hierarchy of modal basis functions and introduces a flexible order of the off-diagonal Jacobian blocks. While the standard preconditioners block Jacobi (no off-blocks) and full symmetric GaussSeidel (full off-blocks) are included as special cases, the reduction of the off-block order results in the new scheme ROBO-SGS. This allows us to investigate the impact of the preconditioners sparsity pattern with respect to the computational performance. Since the number of iterations is not well suited to judge the efficiency of a preconditioner, we additionally consider CPU time for the comparisons. We found that both block Jacobi and ROBO-SGS have good overall performance and good strong parallel scaling behavior.

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

discontinuous galerkin
navierstokes
preconditioning

unsteady flows
implicit methods
three dimensional problems


Enhancement of photolithography resolution by fractional Fourier domain filtering A new spatial filtering technique is proposed for improving image contrast and depth of focus in projection photolithography. The technique is based on fractional Fourier domain filtering. Unlike the current pupil filtering method, the fractional filter can be placed at any location along the projection optical path other than the pupil plane. The theory of partial coherent diffraction combined with fractional Fourier domain filtering is presented. Phase filters for contact hole and line-space patterns have been designed. Computer simulation of complete imaging process including fractional Fourier domain filtering have been carried out. The simulation has demonstrated that the new filtering technique can significantly improve image fidelity, reduce the optical proximity effect and increase the depth of focus. Because of the flexibility in filter location, it is predicted to be easier to implement in a practical optical lithography system.

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

resolution enhancement
fractional fourier transform


EVACUATION MODEL FOR EMERGENCY VEHICLES IN HIGHWAYS In this paper, we propose a cellular automaton model for the evacuation of an emergency vehicle (EV) in highways. To facilitate the evacuation of the EV, some additional lane-changing rules (pull over of ordinary vehicles) are introduced in a two-lane cellular automata model for traffic flow in highway. We find that this pulling over of ordinary vehicles promotes a faster moving of the EV in traffic flow and minimize the EV's impact on the overall traffic.

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 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 B O O O O O O O O O B

traffic
cellular automata
emergency vehicle
pull over


A new variable length NLMS adaptive algorithm The Fractional Tap-length Normalized Least Mean-Square (FT-NLMS) adaptive algorithm, a member of the variable tap-length LMS algorithms family, has attracted attention recently due to its robustness and low computational complexity compared with existing variable tap-length algorithms. The parameter ? in the FT-NLMS algorithm controls convergence speed and bias from the optimum tap-length, which necessitates a compromise between them due to its fixed value. Therefore, a well adjusted time-varying ?(n) ? ( n ) can provide both fast convergence speed and small steady state bias. In this paper, a new robust variable ?(n) ? ( n ) FT-NLMS is proposed that ensures a large value of ?(n) ? ( n ) when the algorithm is far from the optimum with ?(n) ? ( n ) decreasing as the adaptive filter approaches the optimum even in the presence of uncorrelated noise disturbance. Transient and steady state performance analysis of the proposed algorithm will be presented, where expressions for the algorithm steady state excess Mean-Square Error (MSE), steady state tap-length of the adaptive filter, and steady state E{?(?)} E { ? ( ? ) } are derived. Simulation examples are presented in different experimental conditions, which will demonstrate the advantages of the proposed algorithm over existing variable tap-length NLMS algorithms. Moreover, simulation results will show that the derived theoretical expressions can predict very well the actual behavior of the proposed algorithm.

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

adaptive filtering
nlms algorithm
variable length filter


A Systems Thinking Approach to Cost Growth in DoD Weapon Systems This paper presents a systems thinking approach to cost growth estimation for the Department of Defense weapon system life cycle costing. The research herein clarifies the effects of human behaviors, time delays, inaccurate expectations of cost growth behavior and other factors, offering improved conceptualization of the impact of abstract variables on cost growth. Methods of research include analysis of numerical data, statistical findings by research and development groups (RAND), Department of Defense system acquisition reports, and application of the developed model to a relevant program. A systems thinking approach to cost growth behavior analysis provides decision-makers with a holistic understanding of cause, effect and reaction in order to more realistically estimate cost growth. This paper provides a foundation for such an approach.

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 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

department of defense (dod) weapon system


A library of training images for fluvial and deepwater reservoirs and associated code Geostatistical algorithms that consider multiple-point statistics are becoming increasingly popular. These methods allow for the reproduction of complicated features beyond the commonly implemented variogram. In practice, it is not possible to infer many multiple-point statistics directly from the available data; therefore, it is common to borrow statistics from training images. A library of training images is developed for fluvial and deepwater depositional settings. These training images are based on object-based models, surface-based models and pseudo-genetic process mimicking (event-based) models. The training images represent a range of net-to-gross fractions and depositional styles. Associated code provides the ability to modify, format and tailor the training images and to extract multiple-point statistics. The training image library provides a source for multiple-point statistics, can be used in comparative flow studies and as an aid in scenario-based uncertainty studies. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

reservoir characterization
geostatistics
multiple-point statistics


balanced binary trees for id management and load balance in distributed hash tables We present a low-cost, decentralized algorithm for ID management in distributed hash tables (DHTs) managed by a dynamic set of hosts. Each host is assigned an ID in the unit interval [0, 1). At any time, the set of IDs splits the interval into disjoint partitions. Hosts do not possess global knowledge of other IDs in the system. The challenge then is to design an efficient decentralized algorithm that maintains roughly equi-sized partitions, in the face of arrivals, departures and changes in the average number of hosts.Our ID management algorithm is the first to enjoy all of the following properties: (a) both arrivals and departures of hosts are handled, (b) departure of a host causes at most one existing host to change its ID, (c) the ratio of the largest to the smallest partition is at most 4, with high probability, and (d) the expected cost per arrival/departure is ?( R + log n ) messages, where n denotes the current number of participants, and R denotes the cost of routing one message in the DHT. In fact, our algorithm is independent of the topology of the overlay network used for routing.Variations of our algorithm diminish the ratio between the largest and the smallest partition to (1 + ?), for any ? > 0, albeit at the cost of re-assigning the IDs of O (1/?) existing hosts per arrival/departure. Ours is the first algorithm that allows such fine-tuning.Finally, our ID management algorithm enables (a) estimation of the total number of hosts in the system by making only local measurements, and (b) emulation of a variety of deterministic and randomized families of routing topologies, in a straightforward fashion. Among these families are several networks that require O (log n /log k ) routing hops in an n -node network with k links per node.

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

peer to peer
binary tree
p2p
distributed hash table


Prefix computations on symmetric multiprocessors We introduce a new prefix computation algorithm on linked lists which builds upon the sparse ruling set approach of Reid-Miller and Blelloch. Besides being somewhat simpler and requiring nearly half the number of memory accesses, we can bound our complexity with high probability instead of merely on average. Moreover, whereas Reid-Miller and Blelloch targeted their algorithm for implementation on a vector multiprocessor architecture, we develop our algorithm for implementation on the symmetric multiprocessor architecture (SMP). These symmetric multiprocessors dominate the high-end server market and are currently the primary candidate for constructing large scale multiprocessor systems. Our prefix computation algorithm was implemented in C using POSIX threads and run on four symmetric multiprocessors: the HP-Convex Exemplar (S-Class), the IBM SP-2 (High Node), the SGI Power Challenge, and the DEC AlphaServer. We ran our code using a variety of benchmarks which we identified to examine the dependence of our algorithm on memory access patterns. For some problems, our algorithm actually matched or exceeded the performance of the standard sequential solution using only a single thread. Moreover, in spite of the fact that the processors must compete for access to main memory, our algorithm still achieved scalable performance with up to 16 processors, which was the largest platform available to us, (C) 2001 Academic Press.

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 B I O O O O O O O O O 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

prefix computations
symmetric multiprocessors

parallel algorithms
list ranking
parallel performance


Field and field-circuit models of electrical machines Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop and systemize the 3D finite element (FE) description of electromagnetic field in electrical machines. Design/methodology/approach - 3D FE models of electrical machines are considered. The model consists of FE equations for the magnetic field, equations describing eddy currents and equations, which describe the currents in the machine windings. The FE equations are further coupled by the electromagnetic torque to the differential equation of motion. In the presented field-circuit model, the flux linkages with the windings are expressed by two components. Attention is paid to the description of machine winding. Both scalar and vector potential formulations are analysed. The FE equations are derived by using the notation of circuit theory. The methods of movement simulation and torque calculation in FE models are discussed. Findings - Proposed circuit description of electromagnetic field in electrical machines conforms to the applied method of electric and magnetic circuit analysis. The advantage of the presented description is that the equations of field model can be easy associated with the other equations of the electric drive system. Originality/value - The applied analogies between the FE formulation and the equivalent magnetic and electric network, models help formulate efficient field models of electrical machines. The developed models after coupling to the models of supply and control system can be successfully used in the analysis and design electric drives.

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

electric machines
finite element analysis
magnetic fields
modelling


A Distributed Power Management Design Based on MOST Networks MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transport) protocol is a high-speed multimedia bus protocol. The system can make more and more media devices in the car automatically collaborate, sharing of audio, video and other data, but its own power consumption has not been a better optimization. In the paper, depending on the network management and the notification mechanism, a distributed power management solutions was designed that the slave nodes can sleep independently and the master node manages the network state, and the wake-up mechanisms in the sleep state were proposed. A mathematical modeling and analysis of MOST networks power were built in MATLAB. This program takes full advantage of MOST network protocol for the intelligent management. Simulation results shown that, with the increasing number of nodes in MOST, energy saving become more effective. More than 20% power saved can be achieved with distributed power management solution in 8-node MOST.

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


Assessing a novel application of web-based technology to support implementation of school wellness policies and prevent obesity Childhood obesity is one of the most pressing public health concerns in the United States. Because schools are a critical site to promote wellness and prevent obesity, extensive policy and legislative efforts have focused on school-based food services, nutrition education, physical education, and overall physical activity. Unfortunately, research indicates that most of these policies prove ineffective due to insufficient implementation. A small number of web-based programs have emerged that are designed to support the implementation of school wellness policies. The purpose of the current study is to present and interpret findings from an evaluation of the web-based portion of a program implemented throughout the state of Pennsylvania. In total, 192 registered users completed a survey designed to evaluate their utilization and perceptions of the web-based features of the Health eTools for Schools program. Participants represented the following stakeholder groups: school nurses, teachers, wellness coordinators, administrators, and food service directors. Findings indicate the web-based portion of the Health eTools for Schools program is comprehensive, well-designed, and has the potential to support implementation of school wellness policies geared toward obesity prevention. At present, the web-based features are most effective in providing school nurses with tools and resources to execute their roles related to obesity prevention. Applications supporting other groups such as teachers and food service directors require further development to be equally effective. The number of programs with this focus is likely to increase and further research is needed to address other aspects of these programs as well as their impact on student level outcomes such as eating habits, body mass index, physical activity levels, and physical fitness.

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


Mixtures of equispaced normal distributions and their use for testing symmetry with univariate data Given a random sample of observations, mixtures of normal densities are often used to estimate the unknown continuous distribution from which the data come. The use of this semi-parametric framework is proposed for testing symmetry about an unknown value. More precisely, it is shown how the null hypothesis of symmetry may be formulated in terms of a normal mixture model, with weights about the center of symmetry constrained to be equal one another. The resulting model is nested in a more general unconstrained one, with the same number of mixture components and free weights. Therefore, after having maximized the constrained and unconstrained log-likelihoods, by means of the ExpectationMaximization algorithm, symmetry is tested against skewness through a likelihood ratio statistic with p p -value computed by using a parametric bootstrap method. The behavior of this mixture-based test is studied through a Monte Carlo simulation, where the proposed test is compared with the traditional one, based on the third standardized moment, and with the non-parametric triples test. An illustrative example is also given which is based on real data.

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

bootstrap method
expectationmaximization algorithm
skewness


Local Scalar Trust Metrics with a Fuzzy Adjustment Method The interactions between people who do not know each other have been greatly increased with the on-going increase of people's cyberspace activities. In this situation, there exist potential risk factors such as the possibility of fraud, so we need a method to reduce or eliminate those risk factors. Concerning this necessity, rating systems are widely used, and many trust metrics calculated from rate values that people give to each other are proposed to help them make decisions. However, the trust metrics decrease the accuracy, and this is caused by the different rating scales and ranges of each person. So, we propose a fuzzy adjustment method to solve this problem. It is possible to catch the exact meaning of the trust value that each person selects through applying fuzzy sets, which improve the accuracy of the trust metric calculated from the trust values. We have applied our fuzzy adjustment method to the TidalTrust algorithm, a representative algorithm for calculating the local scalar trust metric, and we performed an experimental evaluation with four data sets and three evaluation methods.

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


incremental clustering for profile maintenance in information gathering web agents User profiles are the central component of most personalized Web information agents. They consist of a set of models representing the various topics of interest to the user. Often the agent learns the user's preferences from examples of documents deemed relevant to the user. The topic of the document can either be supplied by the user (active modeling), or it must be guessed by the agent (passive modeling), which is more convenient but is expected to diminish the agent's accuracy. We present an empirical study assessing the trade-offs in passive versus active document classification. We compare a manual profile maintenance technique in which the user supplies the document topic, and two incremental clustering methods (greedy and the doubling algorithm) for automated maintenance of the user profile components. The study is performed using our SurfAgent, a testbed information gathering Web agent. Our evaluation methodology exploits the strong parallel between Web information agents and text filtering; we use text filtering benchmarks from the information retrieval community (TREC disk \#5) to simulate user behavior and thus speed up data collection, exert additional experimental control and improve the objectivity of our results.

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


coordination in open and dynamic environments with tucson semantic tuple centres With the goal of addressing open and dynamic scenarios like the Web, in this paper we introduce a semantic-oriented extension of the tuple space model. In our model, each tuple space is equipped with the ontological description of the coordination domain (e.g. expressed in W3C's OWL language). Tuples represent individuals of the domain along with their properties, and retrieval templates correspond to queries used to check whether an individual is the instance of an ontological concept (as typical in Description Logics, the logic of semantic reasoning). Differently from existing approaches in literature, we obtain a model that is fully expressive -- compared to OWL -- with a smooth extension of the standard syntactic setting of tuple spaces, namely, by an intuitive extension of the language for tuples and tuple templates. We discuss an incarnation of this model in the TuCSoN coordination model and infrastructure.

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 B O O O O

semantic tuple space computing
semantic web
pervasive computing
respect
semantic tuple centre
description logic
coordination infrastructure


the push3 execution stack and the evolution of control The Push programming language was developed for use in genetic and evolutionary computation systems, as the representation within which evolving programs are expressed. It has been used in the production of several significant results, including results that were awarded a gold medal in the Human Competitive Results competition at GECCO-2004. One of Push's attractive features in this context is its transparent support for the expression and evolution of modular architectures and complex control structures, achieved through explicit code self-manipulation. The latest version of Push, Push3, enhances this feature by permitting explicit manipulation of an execution stack that contains the expressions that are queued for execution in the interpreter. This paper provides a brief introduction to Push and to execution stack manipulation in Push3. It then presents a series of examples in which Push3 was used with a simple genetic programming system (PushGP) to evolve programs with non-trivial control structures.

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

reversing a list
sorting
parity
iteration
stack-based genetic programming
fibonacci sequence
combinators
exponentiation
factorial
recursion


On the learnability of recursively enumerable languages from good examples The present paper investigates identification of indexed families L Of recursively enumerable languages from good examples. We distinguish class-presenting learning from good examples (the good examples have to be generated with respect to a hypothesis space having the same range as L) and class-comprising learning from good examples (the good examples have to be selected with respect to a hypothesis space comprising the range of L). A learner is required to learn a target language on every finite superset of the good examples for it, If the learners first and only conjecture is correct then the underlying learning model is referred to as finite identification from good examples and if the learner makes a finite number of incorrect conjectures before always outputting a correct one, the model is referred to as limit identification from good examples. In the context of class-preserving learning, it is shown that the learning power of finite and limit identification from good text examples coincide. When class comprising learning From good text examples is concerned, limit identification is strictly more powerful than finite learning, Furthermore, if learning from good informant examples is considered, limit identification is superior to finite identification in the class presenting as well as in the class-comprising case. Finally, we relate the models of learning from good examples to one another as well as to the standard learning models in the context of Gold-style language learning. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B,V. All rights reserved.

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

inductive inference
computational learning theory


developing the immersive learning environment by integrating the interactive video and ubiquitous technologies Nowadays information technologies have becoming part of our daily life and provide lots of practical applications in various domains. E-Learning is one of the most significant IT products and brings us a flexible learning environment. But if we want to make it more practicable for people to do the learning activities anytime and anywhere, to integrate advanced ubiquitous technologies will be an essence to realize an immersive learning environment. Furthermore, with the gradual improvement of Game-Based Learning domain, it could provide more useful learning strategies with game elements in order to attract learners to enjoy the learning activities. Accordingly, in this paper, we utilized the technologies in interactive video, GPS (Global Positioning System) and GIS (Geographic Information System) to develop the Ubiquitous Video Game-Based Learning environment. Learners could utilize UMPC platform to do the game-based learning activities anytime and anywhere. And we also demonstrated an example "The historical of Tamkang University" course content to explain the gaming scenario in our learning environment. We hope the learning environment could be more practical for learners/instructors when using the game-based learning environment.

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

game design
gbl
pervasive game
ubiquitous computing


Upscreening of LED COTS for space science applications A failure analysis was performed on a clear COTS LED that allows direct visibility up to the epitaxy interface The analysis highlighted a number of technological weaknesses Specific short upscreening tests were successfully applied to these components

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


Cross layer multicarrier MIMO cognitive cooperation scheme for wireless hybrid ad hoc networks The special multi-scenario of the topology in the wireless hybrid ad hoc networks is studied in this paper. A new performance evaluation link cognitive cooperation air time metric (LCCATM) and a novel cross layer multicarrier MIMO cognitive cooperation scheme are proposed. The proposed scheme integrated the attributes both of the new performance evaluation of the cooperative diversity and the attributes of the topology space. With the help of the proposed scheme, the cooperative ability of the networks is not only cognitive, but also topology aware. The average achievable sum rates and the outage probability of the networks are all examined with the cross layer constraints. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can enhance the average rate performance and make the outage probability stable. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

cross layer
cognitive cooperation
multicarrier mimo
hybrid ad hoc networks


Effects of size, humidity, and aging on particle removal from Si wafers The effects of particle size, humidity, and aging time on particle removal from silicon wafers were investigated with a laser shock wave at a constant removal force. Particle adhesion force, shock wave cleaning force, and the removal moment ratio were calculated and related to particle removal efficiency (PRE). The presence of capillary forces and particle deformation significantly increased the adhesion force. In order to control the humidity and magnitude of deformation, humidity and aging time were varied during particle removal tests. PRE decreased rapidly for particle sizes below 1?m as the humidity and contact area increase. The calculations of removal moment ratios agreed well with the experimental observations. Both humidity and process time should be controlled to avoid the aging of particles and to achieve high PRE for particles smaller than 1?m.

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

particle removal
particle size
humidity
aging
pre

laser shock wave cleaning
lsc
particle removal efficiency


Simultaneous Dual Level Creation for Games Recent research has shown that it is possible to design fitness functions, based on dynamic programming, that allow evolutionary computation to automatically generate level maps for games. In this study levels with multiple types of barriers are automatically designed. The levels are designed under the assumption that there are two agent types and that at least one agent type may ignore one type of barrier. A specification of multiple types of barriers thus creates two mazes, one for each agent type, that coexist in the same space. The design of these dual mazes is accomplished using different fitness functions for two mazes simultaneously. For example, this permits a level with a single long winding path for and agent that cannot walk through one type of barrier coexisting with a low-diameter maze with more complex connectivity for an agent that cannot cross another type of barrier. This study explores two representations for game levels with multiple barrier types using four different pairs of fitness functions. The system is shown to be able to design dual mazes whose properties depend substantially on both the choice of fitness function and representation used.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 computation
dynamic programming

search based procedural content generation


how sensitive is your personal information? The sensitivity of personal information is one of the most important factors in determining the individual's perception of privacy. A "gradation" of sensitivity of personal information can be used in many applications, such as deciding the security level that controls access to data and developing a measure of trust when self-disclosing personal information. This paper introduces a theoretical analysis of personal information sensitivity and defines its scope and puts forward possible methods of gradation. A methodology is proposed that can be used for developing a classification scheme of personal information.

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

privacy
personal information
sensitivity