Reactive transport in surface sediments. I. Model complexity and software quality Analysis of three recent diagenetic model codes (OMEXDIA, CANDI and STEADYSED) revealed that codes have a rigid, static and problem-specific character, leaving little autonomy for the application user. The resulting lack of flexibility and extensibility, and the associated need for ground-level reprogramming, constitutes a major barrier for potential model users. Present codes have apparently passed a critical threshold of code complexity, above which code development becomes time-consuming and expensive using the present procedure-oriented techniques. We have explored the advantages of object-oriented technology and the concept of a problem-solving environment to improve the quality of software for reactive transport modelling. A general blueprint for an object-oriented code for modelling early diagenesis is presented. The MEDIA environment consists of a toolbox of building blocks (element, species and process objects), which can be combined freely by the user to construct new models (without the need for recompilation). An object-oriented database stores current objects and accommodates new user-defined building blocks. Altogether, it is advocated that by improving the software quality, one can substantially lower the threshold for using model codes as an integrated data-analysis tool.

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

reactive transport modelling
early diagenesis

object-oriented design
problem-solving environment
software quality assurance


Generalizing the advancing front method to composite surfaces in the context of meshing constraints topology ? A new automatic mesh generation algorithm over composite geometry. An extension of the advancing front method. Applied in the context of meshing constraints topology (virtual topology). Allows the automatic simplification (defeaturing) of CAD models.

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

advancing front
mesh generation
composite geometry
virtual topology
defeaturing


a formal basis for design process planning and management In this paper we present a design formalism that allows for a complete and general characterization of design disciplines and for a unified representation of arbitrarily complex design processes. This formalism has been used as the basis for the development of several prototype CAD meta-tools that offer effective design process planning and management services.

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

characterization formalism prototype design general paper representation management

plan
developer
service
complexity
effect
tools
design process
completeness


Forget the observer: the presence, the paradox and self -reference Purpose - The purpose is to offer a systemic perspective how our (understanding of) logic, language, and the world could be altered to create a new kind of science and communication. Design/methodology/approach - The whole experiment is composed as a self-referential pattern consisting of a series of language experiments and games similar to those to be found in Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", in Taoist epistemology like in the writings of Lao-tzu or Chuang-tzu, or in medieval theology such as in "The Cloud of Unknowing". Findings - Following the presented thought patterns, it can be shown that we are able to become aware of the ways in which the observer comes (we ourselves come) into being through language. The language experiments illustrate the ways in which our use of language defines our world and our perception of it. Research limitations/implications - The perspective itself can only be attained if one disregards conventional methods of reasoning such as disciplinary thinking. The language experiments offer a brief introduction to the way of thinking and perceiving they represent. In order to create a lasting effect on the mind, one either has to reread the experiment numerous times or develop similar patterns of thinking. Originality/value - The paper presents a new methodological approach to how we can think and act as its contents include the most fundamental matters of human nature such as time, space, identity, action, and non-action.

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


Reconstruction of intersecting curved solids from 2D orthographic views This paper presents a new approach to reconstruct curved solids composed of elementary volumes intersecting with one another from three-view engineering drawings. Intersection curves arising from two intersecting curved surfaces are mostly higher order spatial curves, which cannot be described exactly by 2D orthographic projections and normally represented as smooth curves passing through several key points or even simplified as arcs or lines. Approximated sketches of higher order intersection curves in 2D views result in the invalidation of existing methods that need the exact projection information as input. Based on some heuristic hints, our method is able to recover the complete and correct half-profiles of the intersecting elementary volumes using the least traces left by them, which ensure the correctness of solution solids constructed finally. Several examples are provided to show the validation of the described method.

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

intersecting curved solid
intersection curve
solid reconstruction


A note on the number of squares in a word Fraenkel and Simpson [A.S. Fraenkel, J. Simpson, How many squares can a string contain? J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 82 (1998) 112-120] proved that the number of squares in a word of length n is bounded by 2n. In this note we improve this bound to 2n - Theta (log n). Based on the numerical evidence, the conjectured bound is n. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Progress and challenge of artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI) is generally considered to be a subfield of computer science, that is concerned to attempt simulation, extension and expansion of human intelligence. Artificial intelligence has enjoyed tremendous success over the last fifty years. In this paper we only focus on visual perception, granular computing, agent computing, semantic grid. Human-level intelligence is the long-term goal of artificial intelligence. We should do joint research on basic theory and technology of intelligence by brain science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and others. A new cross discipline intelligence science is undergoing a rapid development. Future challenges are given in final section.

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

artificial intelligence
visual perception
agent computing
intelligence science


Reducing parasitic effects of actuation and sensing schemes for piezoelectric microelectromechanical resonators The co-integration of piezoelectric actuation and sensing capabilities on microelectromechanical system-based resonators can be a source of electrical cross-talk that, if not properly taken into account, may dramatically affect the interpretation of the devices output. In this paper, we identify three parasitic electrical effects pertaining to the most commonly used piezoelectric actuation and sensing schemes. To further investigate the impact of such parasitic effects, microcantilevers, bridges and membranes integrating a layer of solgel lead zirconate titanate (PZT) were fabricated and electrically characterized. Experimental results on the resonant characteristics were compared with simulations of the studied resonators equivalent electrical models. Methods for reducing the design-dependent parasitic electrical effects such as mutual capacitances of less than 10fF, electrical wiring or static capacitance mismatches of less than 20% of the integrated piezoelectric films are discussed.

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

piezoelectric mems
electrical modelling
associated electronics


Outcomes of effective explanations: Empowermg citizens through online advice Online advisory services are increasingly being adopted by modern service organisations as an effective way of interacting with their customers. However, despite their importance, our understanding of the value of online advisory services is limited, particularly in the e-government context. Systematic studies addressing design guidelines and best practices for online advisory tools are sparse. This study experimentally investigates the key role that effective online advisory tools play in generating a sense of empowerment among consumers in a government-citizen context. Our findings indicate that tools that have 'enhanced' explanatory facilities lead to both improved decision-process satisfaction and decision-advice transparency, in line with prior theory. Further, the study extends the theory on explanations and service design by showing that the higher levels of satisfaction and transparency flow on to empowerment effects, namely a higher sense of control and a lower perceived power distance. A further positive outcome is the improved perceptions of the service provider, in this case the government agency. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

online advisory service
online advisory systems
e-government
government service provider image


on the scale and performance of cooperative web proxy caching While algorithms for cooperative proxy caching have been widely studied, little is understood about cooperative-caching performance in the large-scale World Wide Web environment. This paper uses both trace-based analysis and analytic modelling to show the potential advantages and drawbacks of inter-proxy cooperation. With our traces, we evaluate quantitatively the performance-improvement potential of cooperation between 200 small-organization proxies within a university environment, and between two large-organization proxies handling 23,000 and 60,000 clients, respectively. With our model, we extend beyond these populations to project cooperative caching behavior in regions with millions of clients. Overall, we demonstrate that cooperative caching has performance benefits only within limited population bounds. We also use our model to examine the implications of future trends in Web-access behavior and traffic.

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

traces use scale proxy analysis web behavior performance cooperation project demonstrate model paper traffic future

organization
environments
region
large-scale
web accessibility
algorithm
caches
evaluation
world wide web


organic electronic device modeling at the nanoscale Electronic devices with nanoscale features (~ 100 nm or smaller) are becoming increasingly important in electronics technology. While nanoscale electronic devices comprise a variety of different material sets and structures, many of the nanoscale devices developed in the last decade employ organic materials. In this talk, we discuss the modeling of organic electronic thin film devices. In our approach, analysis of such devices begins on the molecular scale, and device level behavior is then derived from the combination of individual molecular properties and physical models of intermolecular interactions. We present a general purpose Monte Carlo simulator based on molecular-scale physical models and employ this simulator to analyze device behavior.

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

organic
device modeling
molecular
nanoscale


Intelligent memory manager: Reducing cache pollution due to memory management functions In this work, we show that data-intensive and frequently-used service functions such as memory allocation and de-allocation entangle with applications working set and become a major cause for cache misses. We present our technique that transfers the allocation and de-allocation functions executions from main CPU to a separate processor residing on chip with DRAM (Intelligent Memory Manager). The results manifested in the paper state that, 60% of the cache misses caused by the service functions are eliminated when using our technique. We believe that cache performance of applications in computer system is poor due to their indulgence for the service functions.

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

memory latency
intelligent memories
address ordered binary tree
segregated free lists


Detecting partnership in location-based and online social networks Existing approaches to identify the tie strength between users involve typically only one type of network. To date, no studies exist that investigate the intensity of social relations and in particular partnership between users across social networks. To fill this gap in the literature, we studied over 50 social proximity features to detect the tie strength of users defined as partnership in two different types of networks: location-based and online social networks. We compared user pairs in terms of partners and non-partners and found significant differences between those users. Following these observations, we evaluated the social proximity of users via supervised and unsupervised learning approaches and establish that location-based social networks have a great potential for the identification of a partner relationship. In particular, we established that location-based social networks and correspondingly induced features based on events attended by users could identify partnership with 0.922 AUC, while online social network data had a classification power of 0.892 AUC. When utilizing data from both types of networks, a partnership could be identified to a great extent with 0.946 AUC. This article is relevant for engineers, researchers and teachers who are interested in social network analysis and mining.

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 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

location-based social networks
partner detection
virtual worlds


Image matching with fuzzy moment descriptors The paper aims at designing a new methodology for matching of digital gray images using fuzzy membership-distance products, called moment descriptors. These descriptors are estimated for three common kinds of image attributes namely edge, shade and mixed range. The existing methods for matching of digital images, which are concerned with the comparison of the positions of directed edges, shades and mixed-range in an image with the same of another image, are often prone to error, due to noise and/or variation in illumination. Fuzzy moment descriptors being less sensitive to noise, makes the matching process invariant to the above stray external disturbances. Further, the normalisation and sorting of the moment vectors keep the matching process invariant to size and rotation of images.

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

image matching
edges
shades
mixed range
fuzzy moment descriptors


Numerical simulations of particle migration in a viscoelastic fluid subjected to shear flow Particle migration is a relevant transport mechanism whenever suspensions flow in channels with gap size comparable to particle dimensions (e.g. microfluidic devices). Several theoretical as well as experimental studies have been performed on this topic, showing that the occurring of this phenomenon and the migration direction are related to particle size, flow rate, and the nature of the suspending liquid. In this work we perform a systematic analysis on the migration of a single particle in a sheared viscoelastic fluid through 2D finite element simulations in a Couette planar geometry. To focus on the effects of viscoelasticity alone, inertia is neglected. The suspending medium is modeled as a Giesekus fluid. An ALE particle mover is combined with a DEVSS/SUPG formulation with a log-representation of the conformation tensor giving stable and convergent results up to high flow rates. To optimize the computational effort and reduce the remeshing and projection steps, needed as soon as the mesh becomes too distorted, a 'backprojection' of the flow fields is performed, through which the particle in fact moves along the cross-streamline direction only, and the mesh distortion is hence drastically reduced. Our results, in agreement with recent experimental data, show a migration towards the closest walls, regardless of the fluid and geometrical parameters. The phenomenon is enhanced by the fluid elasticity, the shear thinning and strong confinements, The migration velocity trends show the existence of a master curve governing the particle dynamics in the whole channel. Three different regimes experienced by the particle are recognized, related to the particle-wall distance. The existence of a unique migration behavior and its qualitative aspects do not change by varying the fluid parameters or the particle size. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

particle migration
microfluidic
viscoelasticity
numerical simulations


A Tangent Bundle Theory for Visual Curve Completion Visual curve completion is a fundamental perceptual mechanism that completes the missing parts (e. g., due to occlusion) between observed contour fragments. Previous research into the shape of completed curves has generally followed an "axiomatic" approach, where desired perceptual/geometrical properties are first defined as axioms, followed by mathematical investigation into curves that satisfy them. However, determining psychophysically such desired properties is difficult and researchers still debate what they should be in the first place. Instead, here we exploit the observation that curve completion is an early visual process to formalize the problem in the unit tangent bundle R-2 x S-1, which abstracts the primary visual cortex (V1) and facilitates exploration of basic principles from which perceptual properties are later derived rather than imposed. Exploring here the elementary principle of least action in V1, we show how the problem becomes one of finding minimum-length admissible curves in R-2 x S-1. We formalize the problem in variational terms, we analyze it theoretically, and we formulate practical algorithms for the reconstruction of these completed curves. We then explore their induced visual properties vis-a-vis popular perceptual axioms and show how our theory predicts many perceptual properties reported in the corresponding perceptual literature. Finally, we demonstrate a variety of curve completions and report comparisons to psychophysical data and other completion models.

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


Normalizing variables with too-frequent values using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test: A practical approach Many quantitative applications in business operations, environmental engineering, and production assume sufficient normality of data, which is often, demonstrated using tests of normality, such as the Kolmogorov deemed Smirnov test. A practical problem arises when a high proportion of a too-frequent value exists in data, in which case transformation to normality that passes tests for normality may be impossible. Analysts and researchers are therefore often concerned with the question: should we bother transforming the variable to normality? Or should we revert to other approaches not requiring a normal distribution? In this study, we find the critical number of the frequency of a single value for which there is no feasible transformation to normality within a given a of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The resultant decision table can guide the effort of analysts and researchers. (C) 2011 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

normalizing data
kolmogorov-smirnov
too-frequent data


Weighted Fairness and Correct Sizing of the Secondary Transit Queue in Resilient Packet Rings The IEEE 802.17 is a standardized ring topology network architecture, called the Resilient Packet Ring (RPR), to be used mainly in metropolitan and wide area networks. After a brief overview of the IEEE 802.17 RPR protocol, this article investigates the weighted fairness aspects as well as the requirements for sizing the secondary transit queue of IEEE 802.17 RPR stations (in the aggressive mode of operation). The analysis and suggested improvements presented in this article are then supported by performance evaluation results and theoretical calculations.

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


Typing or messaging? Modality effect on deception detection in computer-mediated communication Motivated by the practical significance of deception detection to both organizations and individuals and the recent surge of research interests in deception in computer-mediated communication (CMC), this study examines whether and how the modality of communication media can influence deception detection in CMC. The results of empirical evaluations revealed that the messaging and the chatting modalities were more conducive to deception detection than the typing modality, and the chatting modality is the most preferred for the process of deception detection. Additionally, the effect of message veracity was also investigated. The findings raise broader issues about media properties for deception detection.

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

deception detection
modality
veracity
process


modeling assembly instruction timing in superscalar architectures This paper proposes an original model of the execution time of assembly instructions in superscalar architectures. The approach is based on a rigorous mathematical model and provides a methodology and a toolset to perform data analysis and model tuning. The methodology also provides a framework for building new trace simulators for generic architectures. The results obtained show a good accuracy paired with a satisfactory computational efficiency.

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

assembly-level analysis
performance estimation


Automated sleep stage identification system based on timefrequency analysis of a single EEG channel and random forest classifier In this work, an efficient automated new approach for sleep stage identification based on the new standard of the American academy of sleep medicine (AASM) is presented. The propose approach employs timefrequency analysis and entropy measures for feature extraction from a single electroencephalograph (EEG) channel. Three timefrequency techniques were deployed for the analysis of the EEG signal: ChoiWilliams distribution (CWD), continuous wavelet transform (CWT), and HilbertHuang Transform (HHT). Polysomnographic recordings from sixteen subjects were used in this study and features were extracted from the timefrequency representation of the EEG signal using Renyi's entropy. The classification of the extracted features was done using random forest classifier. The performance of the new approach was tested by evaluating the accuracy and the kappa coefficient for the three timefrequency distributions: CWD, CWT, and HHT. The CWT timefrequency distribution outperformed the other two distributions and showed excellent performance with an accuracy of 0.83 and a kappa coefficient of 0.76.

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

automated sleep stage identification
timefrequency analysis
random forest classifier

choiwilliams distribution (cwd)
continuous wavelet transform (cwt)
hilberthuang transform (hht)


Storage-Based Intrusion Detection Storage-based intrusion detection consists of storage systems watching for and identifying data access patterns characteristic of system intrusions. Storage systems can spot several common intruder actions, such as adding backdoors, inserting Trojan horses, and tampering with audit logs. For example, examination of 18 real intrusion tools reveals that most (15) can be detected based on their changes to stored files. Further, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) embedded in a storage device continues to operate even after client operating systems are compromised. We describe and evaluate a prototype storage IDS, built into a disk emulator, to demonstrate both feasibility and efficiency of storage-based intrusion detection. In particular, both the performance overhead (< 1%) and memory required (1.62MB for 13995 rules) are minimal.

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


Location of zeros of polynomials In this paper, we obtain a result concerning the location of zeros of a polynomial p(z) = a(0) + a(1)z + a(2)z(2) + ... + a(n)z(n), where a(i)'s are complex coefficients and z is a complex variable. This result sharpens Cauchy's result, along with some of the other known results which were based on the classical Cauchy's work. Moreover, a MATLAB code is developed to construct polynomials, and compare the bounds obtained by our result with these known results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


topology knowledge range control for lifetime maximization in sensor networks with data aggregation Prolonging lifetime is a key challenge in wireless sensor networks comprising unattended, limited resource sensor nodes. Since sensor networks are usually large in size, simple and scalable routing schemes are essential. Geographical routing is attractive due to its simplicity and scalability. At the same time geographical routing is not efficient from the perspectives of energy consumption and energy balancing. By appropriately selecting topology knowledge range for the sensor nodes energy efficiency can be improved and energy usage of various sensor nodes can be more balanced, leading to longer network lifetime. Different from the former work on knowledge range control where the objective is to minimize the total energy consumption in the network, our work aims at lifetime maximization which needs a tradeoff between energy efficiency and balanced energy consumption. Further, we study the problem for the networks wherein data aggregation is carried out at the nodes. Data aggregation is a commonly used operation in several sensor network applications. While data aggregation reduces load in the network leading to improved lifetime, developing efficient solutions is not trivial. We develop Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations for the maximum lifetime knowledge range decision problem in networks with data aggregation, and then develop a scalable distributed protocol. We verify the effectiveness of this protocol through extensive simulations. We also study the impact of data aggregation on lifetime. We make several useful observations from the numerical results obtained from CPLEX and the simulation results.

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

position based routing
optimization
topology control


Clique Percolation Derenyi, Palla and Vicsek introduced the following dependent percolation model, in the context of finding communities in networks. Starting with a random graph G generated by some rule, form an auxiliary graph G' whose vertices are the k-cliques of G, in which two vertices are joined if the corresponding cliques share k - 1 vertices. They considered in particular the case where G = G(n, p), and found heuristically the threshold function p = p(n) above which a giant component appears in G'. Here we give a rigorous proof of this result, as well as many extensions. The model turns out to be very interesting due to the essential global dependence present in G'. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 35, 294-322, 2009

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


An application of AHP and sensitivity analysis for selecting the best slicing machine Wafer slicing is a complex manufacturing process, complicating efforts to monitor process stability and quality control effectively. This study discusses and develops a manufacturing quality yield model for forecasting 12 in. silicon wafer slicing based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework. Decision Makers can select evaluation outcomes to identify the most precise machine. Additionally, EWMA control chart is presented to demonstrate and verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed AHP-based algorithm. Finally, sensitivity analysis is performed to test the stability of the priority ranking. Therefore, this work illustrates how the AHP model would be implemented to help engineers determine the manufacturing process yield quickly and effectively. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

silicon wafer slicing
ewma
sensitivity analysis


Hardware Support for Accurate Per-Task Energy Metering in Multicore Systems Accurately determining the energy consumed by each task in a system will become of prominent importance in future multicore-based systems because it offers several benefits, including (i) better application energy/performance optimizations, (ii) improved energy-aware task scheduling, and (iii) energy-aware billing in data centers. Unfortunately, existing methods for energy metering in multicores fail to provide accurate energy estimates for each task when several tasks run simultaneously. This article makes a case for accurate Per-Task Energy Metering (PTEM) based on tracking the resource utilization and occupancy of each task. Different hardware implementations with different trade-offs between energy prediction accuracy and hardware-implementation complexity are proposed. Our evaluation shows that the energy consumed in a multicore by each task can be accurately measured. For a 32-core, 2-way, simultaneous multithreaded core setup, PTEM reduces the average accuracy error from more than 12% when our hardware support is not used to less than 4% when it is used. The maximum observed error for any task in the workload we used reduces from 58% down to 9% when our hardware support is used.

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

power modeling
per-task energy attribution
hardware counters
modeling and estimation
chip multiprocessors


Detection and analysis of gastrointestinal sounds in normal and small bowel obstructed rats This study is aimed at detecting gastrointestinal sounds (GIS) and correlating their characteristics with gastrointestinal (GI) conditions. The central hypotheses are that GIS generation depends on the motility patterns and the mechanical properties of the gut, and that changes in those result in measurable differences in GIS. An animal model which included both healthy rats and those with small bowel obstruction (SBO) was developed. The acoustic bursts of GIS were detected by amplitude thresholding the signal envelope. Three methods of envelope estimation were proposed and evaluated. Envelope estimation using a Hilbert transform was found to produce the best results in the current application. The duration and dominant frequency of each detected GIS event was estimated and clear differences between healthy and diseased rats were discovered. In the control state, GIS events were found to consistently be of relatively short duration (3-65ms). Although the majority of events in the SBO state had similar short duration, infrequent longer events were also detected and appeared to be pathognomonic. Long duration events (> 100ms) occurred in each of seven obstructed, but in none of 14 non-obstructed, cases (p<0.001). It is concluded that GIS analysis may prove useful in the non-invasive, rapid, and accurate diagnosis of SBO.

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

bowel sounds
rat
body acoustics
signal detection
signal characterisation


A model-based method for an online diagnostic knowledge-based system Fault diagnosis is very important for modern production technology and has received increasing theoretical and practical attention during the last few years. This paper presents a model-based diagnostic method for industrial systems. An online, real-time, deep knowledge based fault detection system has been developed by combining different development environments and tools. The system diagnoses, predicts and compensates faults by coupling symbolic and numerical data in a new environment suitable for the interaction of different sources of knowledge and has been successfully implemented and tested on a real hydraulic system.

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

expert systems
model based fault diagnosis
fault prediction
real time process


Multiscale active contours We propose a new multiscale image segmentation model, based on the active contour/snake model and the Polyakov action. The concept of scale, general issue in physics and signal processing, is introduced in the active contour model, which is a well-known image segmentation model that consists of evolving a contour in images toward the boundaries of objects. The Polyakov action, introduced in image processing by Sochen-Kimmel-Malladi in Sochen et al. (1998), provides an efficient mathematical framework to define a multiscale segmentation model because it generalizes the concept of harmonic maps embedded in higher-dimensional Riemannian manifolds such as multiscale images. Our multiscale segmentation model, unlike classical multiscale segmentations which work scale by scale to speed up the segmentation process, uses all scales simultaneously, i.e. the whole scale space, to introduce the geometry of multiscale images in the segmentation process. The extracted multiscale structures will be useful to efficiently improve the robustness and the performance of standard shape analysis techniques such as shape recognition and shape registration. Another advantage of our method is to use not only the Gaussian scale space but also many other multiscale spaces such as the Perona-Malik scale space, the curvature scale space or the Beltrami scale space. Finally, this multiscale segmentation technique is coupled with a multiscale edge detecting function based on the gradient vector flow model, which is able to extract convex and concave object boundaries independent of the initial condition. We apply our multiscale segmentation model on a synthetic image and a medical image.

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

active contour
scale space
multiscale segmentation
polyakov action
riemannian manifolds
gradient vector flow


Object-oriented biomedical system modelingThe Rationale A short tutorial and a rationale for Object-Oriented Biomedical (Continuous) System Modelling (OOBSM) are given. The paper investigates and defines what is needed in order to make the work with complex bio-medical and pathophysiological models easier, less error prone and conceptually clearer than is possible by using the existing modelling techniques. It also contains a specification of what is required in order to make such models and corresponding knowledge communicable among different research groups and in order to use such models as components in even more complex models. The work shows that hitherto available continuous system modelling languages and tools are less suitable for the construction of complex, interdisciplinary, multilevel, hierarchical models and model components and that those modelling languages do not allow for easy exchange and communication of the model knowledge between different research groups and sites. It concludes that object-oriented and distributed objects methodologies are both feasible and suitable for such modelling.

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

continuous system modelling
model components
hierarchical models

object-oriented modelling
biomedical system modelling
knowledge representation
knowledge communication
knowledge encapsulation


markov random field based binarization for hand-held devices captured document images In this paper, a novel Markov random fields (MRF) based binarization algorithm is proposed to segment foreground text from document images captured using hand-held devices (such as cell-phone or digital camera). In the MRF based framework, an edge potential feature is extracted to preserve the strokes of foreground text and to remove isolated noise and an intensity feature is used to smooth the entire document image. Prior to binarization, we use a nonlinear function to enhance the quality of document images which suffer from insufficient or uneven illumination. Experimental results show that our method outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches.

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


Multi-mass solvers for lattice QCD on GPUs Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) are more and more frequently used for lattice QCD calculations. Lattice studies often require computing the quark propagators for several masses. These systems can be solved using multi-shift solvers but these algorithms are memory intensive which limits the size of the problem that can be solved using GPUs. In this paper, we show how to efficiently use a memory-lean single-mass solver to solve multi-mass problems. We focus on the BiCGstab algorithm for Wilson fermions and show that the single-mass solver not only requires less memory but also outperforms the multi-shift variant by a factor of two.

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


quantifying adaptation parameters for information support of trauma teams Trauma centers are stressful, noisy and dynamic environments, with many people performing complex tasks, and with little in the way of information support. Information must be prioritized and filtered to avoid overload or loss. This work quantifies the information-selection parameters that will guide adaptive user interfaces for trauma teams.

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

cognitive work analysis
healthcare
teamwork
decision support
adaptive interfaces


Exponentially weighted moving average charts for detecting concept drift Classifying streaming data requires the development of methods which are computationally efficient and able to cope with changes in the underlying distribution of the stream, a phenomenon known in the literature as concept drift. We propose a new method for detecting concept drift which uses an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) chart to monitor the misclassification rate of an streaming classifier. Our approach is modular and can hence be run in parallel with any underlying classifier to provide an additional layer of concept drift detection. Moreover our method is computationally efficient with overhead O(1) and works in a fully online manner with no need to store data points in memory. Unlike many existing approaches to concept drift detection, our method allows the rate of false positive detections to be controlled and kept constant over time.

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

streaming classification
change detection


Chaotic phase synchronization and desynchronization in an oscillator network for object selection Object selection refers to the mechanism of extracting objects of interest while ignoring other objects and background in a given visual scene. It is a fundamental issue for many computer vision and image analysis techniques and it is still a challenging task to artificial visual systems. Chaotic phase synchronization takes place in cases involving almost identical dynamical systems and it means that the phase difference between the systems is kept bounded over the time, while their amplitudes remain chaotic and may be uncorrelated. Instead of complete synchronization, phase synchronization is believed to be a mechanism for neural integration in brain. In this paper, an object selection model is proposed. Oscillators in the network representing the salient object in a given scene are phase synchronized, while no phase synchronization occurs for background objects. In this way, the salient object can be extracted. In this model, a shift mechanism is also introduced to change attention from one object to another. Computer simulations show that the model produces some results similar to those observed in natural vision systems.

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

chaotic phase synchronization
object selection


Discovery of optimal factors in binary data via a novel method of matrix decomposition We present a novel method of decomposition of an n x m binary matrix I into a Boolean product A circle B of an n x k binary matrix A and a k x m binary matrix B with k as small as possible. Attempts to solve this problem are known from Boolean factor analysis where I is interpreted as an object-attribute matrix, A and B are interpreted as object-factor and factor-attribute matrices, and the aim is to find a decomposition with a small number k of factors. The method presented here is based on a theorem proved in this paper. It says that optimal decompositions, i.e. those with the least number of factors possible, are those where factors are formal concepts in the sense of formal concept analysis. Finding an optimal decomposition is an NP-hard problem. However, we present an approximation algorithm for finding optimal decompositions which is based on the insight provided by the theorem. The algorithm avoids the need to compute all formal concepts and significantly outperforms a greedy approximation algorithm for a set covering problem to which the problem of matrix decomposition is easily shown to be reducible. We present results of several experiments with various data sets including those from CIA World Factbook and UCI Machine Learning Repository. In addition, we present further geometric insight including description of transformations between the space of attributes and the space of factors. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

factor analysis
binary data
formal concept analysis

binary matrix decomposition
concept lattice


latency inflation with mpls-based traffic engineering While MPLS has been extensively deployed in recent years, little is known about its behavior in practice. We examine the performance of MPLS in Microsoft's online service network (MSN), a well-provisioned multi-continent production network connecting tens of data centers. Using detailed traces collected over a 2-month period, we find that many paths experience significantly inflated latencies. We correlate occurrences of latency inflation with routers, links, and DC-pairs. This analysis sheds light on the causes of latency inflation and suggests several avenues for alleviating the problem.

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


PWM Control Architecture With Constant Cycle Frequency Hopping and Phase Chopping for Spur-Free Operation in Buck Regulators This paper introduces a new Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) control scheme for buck regulators that combines phase chopping with frequency hopping to achieve spur-free operation while delivering low output noise floor with no subharmonics due to hopping. The proposed regulator hops between two, four, or eight switching frequencies, but chops their phases to fully eliminate spurs, even with only two frequencies. Peaking in the noise floor around the eliminated spurs is minimized by hopping as fast as every switching cycle, and by spacing the frequencies 0.5 MHz apart. This results in less than 1.7% drop in the regulator's efficiency and less than 4 mV increase in the voltage ripple. Implemented in standard 0.35-mu m CMOS technology, the proposed regulator's area and power overhead beyond conventional single-switching-frequency design is only 8% and 3%, respectively. With a spur-free spectrum and low noise floor across all frequencies, the proposed architecture can serve as a low-noise regulator for powering noise-sensitive loads without post linear regulation or additional passive filtering. Moreover, spur-free operation facilitates its integration in mixed-signal systems on chip without interfering with sensitive circuits that share the same substrate or power rails. The proposed architecture is also a good candidate for implementing class-D amplifiers, as it preserves the control loop's linearity.

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

dc to dc converters
pulse width modulation
spur-free regulators


On failure of the pruning technique in "error repair in shift-reduce parsers" A previous article presented a technique to compute the least-cost error repair by incrementally generating configurations that result from inserting and deleting tokens in a syntactically incorrect input. An additional mechanism to improve the run-time efficiency of this algorithm by pruning some of the configurations was discussed as well. In this communication we show that the pruning mechanism may lead to suboptimal repairs or may block all repairs. Certain grammatical errors in a common construct of the Java programming language also lead to the above kind of failure.

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


Multiagent coordination for controlling complex and unstable manufacturing processes We present a multiagent coordination technique to maintain throughput of a large-scale manufacturing system in the face of machine failures. Failures do not just deteriorate throughput of the system but also create and change bottlenecks in the system. Since loss of bottlenecks capacity degrades the overall system performance, the system should identify bottlenecks dynamically and keep their utilization at a high level. In our system, CABS, information about a machines urgency of jobs to fulfill demanded throughput and maintain its utilization is passed to upstream machines in the product routes. Upstream machines utilize this information to identify bottleneck machines and coordinate their actions to provide the bottlenecks with necessary and sufficient jobs for preventing their starvation and congestion. We empirically evaluate CABS and show its effectiveness using a benchmark problem of the semiconductor fabrication process in comparison with CONWIP, which is a well-known traditional manufacturing control method.

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

multiagent coordination
semiconductor fabrication


Information, ethics, and computers: The problem of autonomous moral agents In modern technical societies computers interact with human beings in ways that can affect moral rights and obligations. This has given rise to the question whether computers can act as autonomous moral agents. The answer to this question depends on many explicit and implicit definitions that touch on different philosophical areas such as anthropology and metaphysics. The approach chosen in this paper centres on the concept of information. Information is a multi-facetted notion which is hard to define comprehensively. However, the frequently used definition of information as data endowed with meaning can promote our understanding. It is argued that information in this sense is a necessary condition of cognitivist ethics. This is the basis for analysing computers and information processors regarding their status as possible moral agents. Computers have several characteristics that are desirable for moral agents. However, computers in their current form are unable to capture the meaning of information and therefore fail to reflect morality in anything but a most basic sense of the term. This shortcoming is discussed using the example of the Moral Turing Test. The paper ends with a consideration of which conditions computers would have to fulfil in order to be able to use information in such a way as to render them capable of acting morally and reflecting ethically.

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


A diffuse-interface immersed-boundary method for two-dimensional simulation of flows with moving contact lines on curved substrates We propose an approach to simulate flows with moving contact lines (MCLs) on curved substrates on a Cartesian mesh. The approach combines an immersed boundary method with a three-component diffuse-interface model and a characteristic MCL model. The immersed boundary method is able to accurately enforce the no-slip boundary condition at the solid surface, thereby circumventing the penetration of the gas and the liquid into the solid by convection. On the other hand, using the three-component diffuse-interface model can prevent the gas and liquid from infiltrating into the solid substrate through the diffusive fluxes during the interface evolution. A combination of these two methods appears to effectively conserve the mass of the phases in the computation. The characteristic MCL model not only allows the contact lines to move on the curved boundaries, but makes the gasliquid interface to intersect the solid object at an angle in consistence with the prescribed contact angle, even with the variation of surface tangent at the solid substrate. We examine the performance of the approach through a variety of numerical experiments. The mass conservation and interface shapes at equilibrium were tested through the simulation of drop spreading on a circular cylinder. The dynamic behaviors of moving contact lines were validated by simulating the droplet spreading on a flat substrate, and we compared the numerical results against theoretical predictions and previous experimental observations. The method was also applied to the simulations of flows with curved boundaries and moving contact lines, such as drop impact on a sphere and water entry of a sphere. Finally, we studied the penetration process of a two-dimensional drop into a porous substrate that consists of a cluster of circular cylinders.

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

moving contact lines
immersed boundary method

complex geometry
diffuse interface model
interfacial dynamics


children distinguish conventional from moral violations in interactions with a personified agent This paper describes the preliminary results of a study conducted to answer two questions: (1) Do children generalize their understanding of distinctions between conventional and moral violations in human-human interactions to human-agent interactions? and (2) Does the agent.s ability to make claims to its own rights influence children's judgments? A two condition, between-subjects study was conducted in which 60 eight and nine year-old children interacted with a personified agent and observed a researcher interacting with the same agent. A semi-structured interview was conducted to investigate the children.s judgments of the observed interactions. Results suggest that children do distinguish between conventional and moral violations in human-agent interactions and that the ability of the agent to make claims to its own rights significantly increases children.s likelihood of distinguishing the two violations.

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

moral development
social computing
user-centered design
personified software agent


Metamodels for variable importance decomposition with applications to probabilistic engineering design It is routine in probabilistic engineering design to conduct modeling studies to determine the influence of an input variable (or a combination) on the output variable(s). The output or the response can then be fine-tuned by changing the design parameters based on this information. However, simply fine-tuning the output to the desired or target value is not adequate. Robust design principles suggest that we not only study the mean response for a given input vector but also the variance in the output attributed to noise and other unaccounted factors. Given our desire to reduce variability in any process, it is also important to understand which of the input factors affect the variability in the output the most. Given the significant computational overhead associated with most Computer Aided Engineering models, it is becoming popular to conduct such analysis through surrogate models built using a variety of metamodeling techniques. In this regard, existing literature on metamodeling and sensitivity analysis techniques provides useful insights into the various scenarios that they suit the best. However, there has been a limitation of studies that simultaneously consider the combination of metamodeling and sensitivity analysis and the environments in which they operate the best. This paper aims at contributing to reduce this limitation by basing the study on multiple metrics and using two test problems. Two test functions have been used to build metamodels, using three popular metamodeling techniques: Kriging, Radial-Basis Function (RBF) networks, and Support Vector Machines (SVMs). The metamodels are then used for sensitivity analysis, using two popular sensitivity analysis methods, Fourier Amplitude Sensitivity Test (FAST) and Sobol, to determine the influence of variance in the input variables on the variance of the output variables. The advantages and disadvantages of the different metamodeling techniques, in combination with the sensitivity analysis methods, in determining the extent to which the variabilities in the input affect the variabilities in the output are analyzed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

probabilistic engineering design
metamodels
sensitivity analysis
fast
sobol
kriging


Hybrid fixed point theory for strictly monotone increasing multi-valued mappings with applications In this paper, a general hybrid fixed point theorem for the strict monotone increasing multi-valued mappings in ordered Banach spaces is proved via measure of noncompactness and it is further applied to perturbed functional nonconvex differential inclusions for proving the existence results for the extremal solutions under mixed Lipschitz, compactness and strict monotonic conditions.

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

ordered banach space
differential inclusion
existence theorem


Research topics in pictorial databases Pictures are natural and effective means of communication among people, computers, and robotics. A pictorial database is a collection of sharable pictorial data encoded in various formats. During the past several years, pictorial databases have attracted growing attention as an important component in building pictorial information systems as well as intelligent information systems. Eight research tasks are presented. They are comparing the numerical and the linguistic variable approaches, examining new linguistic hedges, studying the similarity of various similarity measures, investigating pictorial data compression techniques, performing pictorial data compression using array grammars, applying the entity-relationship (ER) model to picture description; further investigating the relationship hierarchy for picture representation using ER diagrams, and extracting pictorial knowledge from pictorial databases. The research results may have a major impact on the development of object-oriented pictorial databases.

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


strict polynomial-time in simulation and extraction The notion of efficient computation is usually identified in cryptography and complexity with probabilistic polynomial time. However, until recently, in order to obtain constant-round zero-knowledge proofs and proofs of knowledge (for NP ), one had to allow simulators and knowledge-extractors to run in time which is only polynomial on the average (i.e., expected polynomial time). Whether or not allowing expected polynomial-time is necessary for obtaining constant-round zero-knowledge proofs and proofs of knowledge, has been posed as an important open question. This question is interesting not only for its theoretical ramifications, but also because expected polynomial time simulation is not closed under composition. Therefore, in some cases security is not maintained when a protocol that utilizes expected polynomial time simulation (or extraction) is used as a part of a larger protocol.A partial answer to the question of the necessity (or non-necessity) of expected polynomial-time was provided recently by Barak, who gave the first constant-round zero-knowledge argument with a strict (in contrast to expected) polynomial-time simulator. His was also the first protocol that is not black-box zero-knowledge. That is, the simulator in his protocol utilizes the description of the code of the verifier in an essential way.In this paper, we completely resolve the question of expected polynomial-time in zero-knowledge arguments and arguments of knowledge. First, we show that there exist constant-round zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge with strict polynomial-time extractors . As in the simulator of Barak's zero-knowledge protocol, the extractor for our proof of knowledge is not black-box and uses the code of the prover in an essential way.On the negative side, we show that non-black-box techniques are essential to both strict polynomial-time simulation and extraction. That is, we show that no constant-round zero-knowledge argument (or proof) can have a strict polynomial-time black-box simulator. Similarly, we show that no constant-round zero-knowledge argument (or proof) of knowledge can have a strict polynomial-time black-box knowledge extractor. Thus, for constant-round black-box zero-knowledge arguments (resp., arguments of knowledge), it is imperative that the simulator (resp., extractor) be allowed to run in expected polynomial-time.

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

order simulation polynomial cryptography extraction code computation complexity paper knowledge argument


Honeynet games: a game theoretic approach to defending network monitors A honeynet is a portion of routed but otherwise unused address space that is instrumented for network traffic monitoring. It is an invaluable tool for understanding unwanted Internet traffic and malicious attacks. We formalize the problem of defending honeynets from systematic mapping (a serious threat to their viability) as a simple two-person game. The objective of the Attacker is to identify a honeynet with a minimum number of probes. The objective of the Defender is to maintain a honeynet for as long as possible before moving it to a new location within a larger address space. Using this game theoretic framework, we describe and prove optimal or near-optimal strategies for both the Attacker and the Defender. This is the first mathematically rigorous study of this increasingly important problem on honeynet defense. Our theoretical ideas provide the first formalism of the honeynet monitoring problem, illustrate the viability of network address shuffling, and inform the design of next generation honeynet defense systems.

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

network monitor and defence
two-person game
attacker-defender game


Metrics for Quantifying the Similarities and Differences between IFC Files Recently, several papers reported problems in data exchange using industry foundation classes (IFC). However, most comparisons were made based on a visual check, a manual count, and observation of properties that were selectively chosen. This study proposes a set of metrics for quantifying the similarities and differences between IFC files. The proposed metrics include the similarity rate, the matching rate, the globally unique identifier (GUID) preservation rate, the missing rate, and the addition rate. A long-term goal of this study is to develop a set of metrics for quantifying the information exchange rate between two IFC files. Automated identification of modified information versus newly generated information is an unsolved challenge. The proposed metrics were used in analyzing 88 IFC files generated from different systems to demonstrate the potential use of the proposed metrics. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000077. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.

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

ifc
similarity rate
matching rate
guid preservation rate
missing rate
addition rate


Three-dimensional analysis of a cohesive crack coupled with heat flux through the crack This paper presents an algorithm for coupling cohesive crack modeling with non-stationary heat flow. Firstly, the nonlinear system of equation, based on global formulations, for such a computational model is derived. The nonlinearity here comes from nonlinear relations in the crack. The relations refer to cohesion forces and to heat flux which both depend of crack opening and additionally are dependent of temperature difference between both sides of the crack. In the paper the discontinuities of displacement field and temperature field are both approximated using XFEM. All the analysis concerning crack surface is performed using local coordinate systems for each integration point. The local coordinate system is two-dimensional for both 2D and 3D analysis. The paper is illustrated with non-stationary thermo-mechanical examples for a domain with propagating crack.

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

fracture mechanics
concrete
thermoelasticity
crack heat flux


Monitoring large systems via statistical sampling As the trend in parallel systems scales toward petaflop performance tapped by advances in circuit density and by an increasingly available computational Grid, the development of efficient mechanisms for monitoring large systems becomes imperative. When computational components are coupled via dynamically shifting connections with various remote resources, the number of potential factors affecting system behavior is enormous. Yet the overhead of monitoring can be prohibitive. In this paper we present a new technique for monitoring large systems based on statistical sampling. Rather than monitoring each component, we select a statistically valid sample and measure the behavior of sample members. We describe the formal requirements of sample selection and verify the feasibility of our approach with experiments on large parallel systems and wide-area networks. Our results show that this technique can be a powerful tool to enable effective monitoring without incurring the large costs typically associated to exhaustive checking.

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 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


Compact high frequency true-time-delay beamformer using bidirectional reflectance of the fiber gratings A compact high frequency true time delay (TTD) beamformer using bidirectional reflectance of the fiber gratings (FGs) is proposed. The FGs can be a set of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) or chirped fiber gratings (CFGs). The number and the length of the time delay lines are greatly reduced compared to the previous systems. A phase array antennas system using this TTD beamformer has many advantages including being compact, low requirement on the bandwidth of the tunable laser source and working at high microwave frequency. The proof-of-concept experiment results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

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

fiber gratings
beamformer
true time delay


Studies on finite Sturmian words Several properties of finite Sturmian words are proved. The inverse of the RichommeSbold bijection between factor sets of given length of Sturmian sequences and left special Sturmian words is constructed (using circular factors of Christoffel words) and studied. The Labb bijection between Christoffel words and left special Sturmian words is introduced and studied. Factor sets are classified by two types: the two classes are characterized by conjugation and periodicity properties. The two classes are related to the Rauzy graph. A normal form for finite Sturmian words is given, following a result of de Luca and De Luca. Several classes of Sturmian words are characterized through this normal form: left or right special words, bispecial words, palindromes, central words. The normal form is used to derive a proof of the LipatovMignosi formula for the number of Sturmian words of given length; to produce a linear algorithm which checks if a word is Sturmian and which computes its normal form; to construct algorithmically the contraction and completion in various classes of Sturmian words; to compute the de Luca palindromic closure of any Sturmian word and prove that it is Sturmian. The completion is related to the de Luca palindromization function and it is shown that the sets of directive words of central words of even and odd length are rational group languages. Christoffel words are characterized in several ways: an extension of a result of Chuan; an extension of a result of DroubayPirillo, by counting circular factors; by counting Lyndon factors. A special Christoffel word is constructed having length a given Markoff number. A bivariate count of special Sturmian words is given, using ideas of Bdaride, Domenjoud, Jamet and Rmy. Open problems are given.

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

finite sturmian words
christoffel words
sturmian sequences
palindromes
special words
rauzy graph
conjugation
normal form
circular factors


Interconnection of heterogeneous knowledge bases and its application on Knowledge Grid Recently, the number of users who use search engines for not only retrieving Web pages but also understanding or learning an arbitrary concept has been increasing. However, it is difficult to understand and learn an arbitrary concept by using the existing search engines. This paper presents a method for the interconnection of heterogeneous knowledge bases on Knowledge Grid for knowledge sharing and provision. In this paper, for realizing the proposed method, we introduce two types of services-intra-operation services and inter-operation services-on Knowledge Grid. The system dynamically creates a semantic associative network that connects the user's interests and concepts, and provides correlation views that represent various relationships for connecting related resources. In addition, we employ a link-free browsing system by this method called correlation browsing, which represents the semantic association utilizing collective knowledge by connecting various knowledge bases. The current web browsing has two actions-browsing and jumping by static hyperlinks. It is difficult to understand the relationship between each page that is connected by static hyperlink. The system navigates the related contents while repeatedly switching between a content browsing mode and a correlation browsing mode. Therefore, a user can access various contents while understanding the relationships. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

interconnection of heterogeneous knowledge sites


A quadratic construction for Zielonka automata with acyclic communication structure Asynchronous automata are parallel compositions of finite-state processes synchronizing over shared variables. A deep theorem due to Zielonka says that every regular trace language can be recognized by a deterministic asynchronous automaton. The construction is rather involved and the most efficient variant produces automata which are exponential in the number of processes and polynomial in the size of the DFA. In this paper we show a simple, quadratic construction in the case where the synchronization actions are binary and define an acyclic communication graph. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


a mini-plop at oopsla '07 There has been recognition that the writers' workshop process is beneficial for the production of high quality papers ever since the first patterns conference or PLoP was held in 1994. In this OOP-SLA workshop, attendees will participate in a writers' workshop of their paper as well as writers' workshops for papers of other attendees in their group. Participants who do not have a paper to workshop are also invited. Everyone will be expected to read all the papers in their groups in advance. The organizers of this workshop were all involved in PLoP '06 and would like to con-tinue a close association between this important patterns activity and OOPSLA. Our hope is that the relationship will benefit both OOPSLA, by attracting authors of papers that are works-in-progress, and PLoP, by allowing authors who might not be able to attend PLoP to participate in the writers' workshop process.

O O O O 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 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

architecture
documentation
design
writers' workshops
bootcamp


The long road to semantic interoperability in support of public health: Experiences from two states While available, clinical data standards are rarely used in practice. We analyze policies for improving interoperability among health information systems. Existing policies focus on clinical providers and term translation, which is hard. A different strategy may lead to greater, upstream use of data standards. Improved use of data standards supports better health delivery and outcomes.

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

medical informatics
public health informatics
infectious disease reporting
public policy
meaningful use


WEIGHTED HALFSPACE DEPTH Generalised halfspace depth function is proposed. Basic properties of this depth function including the strong consistency are studied. We show, on several examples that our depth function may be considered to be more appropriate for nonsymetric distributions or for mixtures of distributions.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 depth
nonparametric multivariate analysis
strong consistency of depth
mixture of distributions


DYNAMIC DEPENDENCE ORDERING FOR ARCHIMEDEAN COPULAS AND DISTORTED COPULAS This paper proposes a general framework to compare the strength of the dependence in survival models, as time changes, L e. given remaining lifetimes X, to compare the dependence of X given X > t, and X given X > s, where s > t. More precisely, analytical results will be obtained in the case the survival copula of X is either Archimedean or a distorted copula. The case of a frailty based model will also be discussed in details.

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

archimedean copulas
dependence
distorted copulas
ordering


relative neighborhood graphs in three dimensions The relative neighborhood graph (RNG) of a set S of n points in R is a graph ( S, E ), where ( p, q ) &egr; E if and only if there is no point z &egr; S such that max { d(p, z), d(q,z) } < d(p,q) . We show that in R , RNG( S ) has O ( n 4/3 ) edges. We present a randomized algorithm that constructs RNG( S ) in expected time O ( n 3/2+&egr; ) assuming that the points of S are in general position. If the points of S are arbitrary, the expected running time is O ( n 7/4+&egr; ). These algorithms can be made deterministic without affecting their asymptotic running time.

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

timing
relation
randomized algorithm
posit


using agents for simulating and implementing petri nets This paper presents a software architecture for simulating and implementing Petri nets. It is based on object-oriented techniques and autonomous agents. Object-orientation enables the adaptation and extension of the software architecture with new or alternatively defined features. Agents allow to model a net as a set of autonomous, cooperating entities. The result is a flexible and extendible framework of reusable components for efficiently implementing a large family of Petri net classes.The execution can be performed on a mono-processor, a parallel or distributed system. This is the result of using the XENOOPS execution environments for parallel applications.

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

software architecture
framework
applications
environments
parallel
paper
model

processor
autonomous agent
agent
adapt
families
flexibility
extensibility
feature
object-oriented
reusability
autonomic
distributed systems
class
component


Algorithms for dynamic routing in all-optical networks In this paper, we have studied a number of algorithms for routing in all-optical wavelength routed networks. We have considered situations where a lightpath is dynamically created in response to a request for communication and the WDM channels constituting the lightpath are reclaimed when the communication is over. We have looked at two schemes for dynamic wavelength allocation. In the first scheme we have assumed the existence of a central agent to maintain a database of existing lightpaths where the central agent attempts to generate a new lightpath in response to a request for communication. In the second scheme, we attempt to generate a new lightpath using a distributed algorithm. In the first scheme we have exploited the existence of multiple paths between any pair of nodes in a network in order to reduce the blocking probability. For the second scheme, we have proposed three distributed strategies to determine, if possible, a lightpath when there is a request for communication. Each of these strategies have their advantages and disadvantages in terms of the expected blocking probability and the set-up time. We have studied the performances of both the schemes using Monte Carlo simulation.

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

wavelength routed optical network
dynamic lightpath assignment
all-optical networks


Measurement of enterprise knowledge by state characterization Enterprise production is becoming more and more knowledge oriented nowadays and knowledge management is playing a key role in making commercial profit and maintaining enterprise competence. Knowledge characterization and measurement are the bases of knowledge management, and this paper aims to develop a method for characterizing and measuring knowledge in a comprehensive and practical way. Knowledge in its static state is modelled as a vector, whose values vary with the situation, and changes in state are modelled as a finite state machine.

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

knowledge characterization
finite state machine
knowledge management


A priori mesh quality metric error analysis applied to a high-order finite element method Characterization of computational meshs quality prior to performing a numerical simulation is an important step in insuring that the result is valid. A highly distorted mesh can result in significant errors. It is therefore desirable to predict solution accuracy on a given mesh. The HiFi/SEL high-order finite element code is used to study the effects of various mesh distortions on solution quality of known analytic problems for spatial discretizations with different order of finite elements. The measured global error norms are compared to several mesh quality metrics by independently varying both the degree of the distortions and the order of the finite elements. It is found that the spatial spectral convergence rates are preserved for all considered distortion types, while the total error increases with the degree of distortion. For each distortion type, correlations between the measured solution error and the different mesh metrics are quantified, identifying the most appropriate overall mesh metric. The results show promise for future a priori computational mesh quality determination and improvement.

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


Methylglyoxal and Methylglyoxal-arginine Adducts Do Not Directly Inhibit Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Increased formation of the reactive dicarbonyl compound methylglyoxal (MGO) and MGO-derived advanced glycation end products (AGEs) seems to be implicated in endothelial dysfunction and the development of diabetic vascular complications. MGO reacts with arginine residues in proteins to generate the major glycated adducts 5-hydro-5-methylimidazolone (MG-H1) and argpyrimidine (AP). We investigated whether the free forms of these adducts contribute to vascular cell dysfunction by inhibition of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS). MG-H1 and AP were synthesized and purified by reversed-phase chromatography, and the conversion of labeled L-arginine to L-citrulline was used to monitor eNOS activity. In contrast to the endogenous eNOS inhibitor asymmetric dimethylarginine (half maximal inhibitory concentration, approximately 5?mol/L), pathophysiological concentrations of MGO and MG-H1 and AP did not inhibit eNOS activity. Although MGO-derived AGEs are implicated in the development of diabetic vascular complications, this study indicates that this is not mediated via direct inhibition of eNOS activity.

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

ages
methylglyoxal
glycation
asymmetric dimethylarginine
enos activity


Differential evolution applied for anticipatory load shedding with voltage stability considerations This paper presents an anticipatory load shedding methodology which determines optimum load shedding at selected buses under emergency based on voltage stability. Accurate load shedding saves loss of revenue to power utility in addition to avoiding voltage instability problem. The buses for load shedding have been selected based on the sensitivity of minimum eigenvalue of load flow Jacobian with respect to load shed. A computational algorithm for minimum load shedding has been developed using DE. The algorithm accounts inequality constraints not only in present operating condition but also for predicted next interval load. Developed algorithm has been implemented on IEEE 6-bus and 14-bus test systems. Results have been compared with those obtained using particle swarm optimization (PSO) and its variant based on statistical inference.

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

sensitivity
load shedding
voltage stability
minimum eigenvalue
differential evolution


Saliency detection using hierarchical manifold learning Saliency detection is critical to many applications in computer vision by eliminating redundant backgrounds. The saliency detection approaches can be divided into two categories, i.e., top-down and bottom-up. Among them, bottom-up models have attracted more attention due to their simple mechanisms. However, many existing bottom-up models are not robust to crowded backgrounds because of missing salient regions within feedforward frameworks which is often not effective for complex scenes. We tackle these problems by modifying and extending a bottom-up saliency detection model through three phases, (1) constructing a hierarchical sequence of images from the perspective of entropy, (2) estimated mid-level cues are used as feedback information, (3) subsequently generating saliency maps by global context and local uniqueness in a graph-based framework. We also compare the proposed bottom-up model with state-of-the-art approaches on two benchmark datasets to evaluate its saliency detection performance. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed bottom-up saliency detection approach is not only robust to both cluttered and clean scenes, but also able to obtain objects with different scales.

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

hierarchical sequence
entropy
saliency
manifold learning


Tolerating VLR and HLR failures in two-tier PCS networks One of the key issues in the design of personal communication service (PCS) systems is the efficient management of location information. The current IS-41 and GSM schemes use a two-tier system of home location register (HLR) and visitor location register (VLR) databases. In a two-tier system, the success of a call requires the HLR and the callee's current VLR to be failure-free. A VLR failure affects incoming calls to mobile hosts in the VLR's location area. Meanwhile, if the HLR fails, it cannot direct calls to a mobile host from other hosts that are not in the same location area. Thus, tolerating the failures of the VLRs and HLR is important. In this paper, we propose a scheme, which tolerates the failures of the VLRs and HLR at the same time, without adding or changing any hardware of the systems. Moreover, our proposed scheme has lower HLR access rate, which can reduce the cost and delay in updating and querying. Experimental results show that our scheme can improve the performance of updating and querying in comparison with the traditional two-tier scheme. Therefore, our scheme is not only fault-tolerant but also cost effective.

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

fault tolerant
location tracking
quorum system
legion