a java execution simulator This paper describes JES, a Java Execution Simulator that allows users to explore how a Java program executes. This interactive simulator displays a representation of a Java program and animates the running of the program. Instructors can use JES to demonstrate how data is moved when variables are assigned, when parameters are passed, and when values are returned by a method. JES is useful for comparing how primitive and object values are manipulated. The simulator also demonstrates scope rules, object creation, inheritance and polymorphism. While the simulator only supports variables of type double and object and does not support conditionals or looping, it allows users to write general Java programs that might be used as examples in the first weeks of a CS 1 course. JES also has support for arrays of doubles and objects. The simulator is written in Java and can be run as an application or an applet. Support for the simulator includes a simple mechanism for quickly running the simulator on a program developed with a standard Java development system.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 common genetic encoding for both direct and indirect encodings of networks In this paper we present a Common Genetic Encoding (CGE) for networks that can be applied to both direct and indirect encoding methods. As a direct encoding method, CGE allows the implicit evaluation of an encoded phenotype without the need to decode the phenotype from the genotype. On the other hand, one can easily decode the structure of a phenotype network, since its topology is implicitly encoded in the genotype's gene-order. Furthermore, we illustrate how CGE can be used for the indirect encoding of networks. CGE has useful properties that makes it suitable for evolving neural networks. A formal definition of the encoding is given, and some of the important properties of the encoding are proven such as its closure under mutation operators, its completeness in representing any phenotype network, and the existence of an algorithm that can evaluate any given phenotype without running into an infinite loop.

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


Drift-resistant SNR scalable video coding We address the problem of enhancement layer drift estimation for fine granular scalable video. An optimal per-pixel drift estimation algorithm is introduced. The encoder assumes that there is some truncation of the enhancement layer, which does not allow the enhancement layer reference to be properly reconstructed, and the encoder recursively estimates the associated drift and chooses coding modes accordingly. The approach yields performance gains of about 1 dB across low to medium rates. In addition, we investigate dual frame prediction, for both base and enhancement layer, with pulsed-quality allocation in the base layer.

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

bitplane coding
fine granularity scalability
h.264
h.26l
multiple frame prediction
pulsed quality
video compression


Block Krylov subspace methods for the computation of structural response to turbulent wind In this paper the numerical computation of the dynamic response to turbulent wind excitations of slender structures is addressed. A numerical procedure capable to effectively estimate the three-dimensional structural behavior is proposed, based on a direct frequency domain approach. A probabilistic description of the wind velocity field, accounting for the correlation between the turbulence components, is combined to a linearized fluidstructure interaction model, under the quasi-steady hypothesis. We propose robust implementations of multiple right-hand side and multiple shift Krylov subspace methods with deflation of basis vectors, which allow us to efficiently analyze the dynamic response for a wide range of frequency values and wind time histories. Numerical experiments are reported with data stemming from real structure modeling.

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

frequency domain analysis
iterative nonsymmetric solvers
block methods
deflation techniques


Exploring factors that influence knowledge sharing behavior via weblogs Knowledge sharing is seen as one of the essential processes for knowledge management. A growing number of professionals have started weblogging, and use this tool to share their ideas. It is important to explore ways to encourage individuals to contribute personal knowledge and to assist community members to share their expertise. Through the lens of sharing culture, we explore the factors that facilitate voluntary knowledge sharing in a virtual community. Specifically, the use of three categories associated with a sharing culture fairness, identification and openness is considered as a linear combination, which means that enjoying helping and usefulness/relevancy thereafter promote knowledge sharing behavior. To test the theoretical model, we survey 442 members of three online communities. In addition to the positive effects of fairness and openness on community sharing culture, we also find that enjoying helping, sharing culture and usefulness/relevancy are strongly linked to member knowledge sharing behavior. This paper offers a new perspective on the mechanisms related to the sharing culture construct, which in turn facilitates weblog knowledge sharing behaviors and yields important implications for understanding knowledge sharing behavior in online communities.

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


Real-time interaction with a humanoid avatar in an immersive table tennis simulation In this paper, we report on the realization of an immersive table tennis simulation. After describing the hardware necessities of our system, we give insight into different aspects of the simulation. In particular, the developed methods for collision detection and physical simulation are presented. The design of the virtual opponent is of crucial importance to realize an enjoyable game. Therefore, we report on the implemented game strategy and the animation of the opponent. Since table tennis is one of the fastest sports, the synchronization of the human player's movements and the visual output on the projection wall is a very challenging problem to solve. To overcome the latencies in our system, we designed a prediction method that allows high speed interaction with our application.

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

games and infotainment
distributed/network graphics
interaction techniques
virtual reality


The role of dendritic spine morphology in the compartmentalization and delivery of surface receptors Since AMPA receptors are major molecular players in both short- and long-term plasticity, it is important to identify the time-scales of and factors affecting the lateral diffusion of AMPARs on the dendrite surface. Using a mathematical model, we study how the dendritic spine morphology affects two processes: (1) compartmentalization of the surface receptors in a single spine to retain local chemistry and (2) the delivery of receptors to the post-synaptic density (PSD) of spines via lateral diffusion following insertion onto the dendrite shaft. Computing the mean first passage time (MFPT) of surface receptors on a sample of real spine morphologies revealed that a constricted neck and bulbous head serve to compartmentalize receptors, consistent with previous works. The residence time of a Brownian diffusing receptor on the membrane of a single spine was computed to be ? 5 s. We found that the location of the PSD corresponds to the location at which the maximum MFPT occurs, the position that maximizes the residence time of a diffusing receptor. Meanwhile, the same geometric features of the spine that compartmentalize receptors inhibit the recruitment of AMPARs via lateral diffusion from dendrite insertion sites. Spines with narrow necks will trap a smaller fraction of diffusing receptors in the their PSD when considering competition for receptors between the spines, suggesting that ideal geometrical features involve a tradeoff depending on the intent of compartmentalizing the current receptor pool or recruiting new AMPARs in the PSD. The ultimate distribution of receptors among the spine PSDs by lateral diffusion from the dendrite shaft is an interplay between the insertion location and the shape and locations of both the spines and their PSDs. The time-scale for delivery of receptors to the PSD of spines via lateral diffusion was computed to be ? 60 s.

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

ampa receptors
surface receptors
mean first passage time


Incremental threshold learning for classifier selection Threshold-based classifier is a simple yet powerful pattern classification tool, which has been frequently used in applications of object detection and recognition. A threshold-based classifier is usually associated with a unique one-dimensional feature. A properly selected threshold and a binary sign corresponding to the feature govern the classifier. However, the learning process is usually done in a batch manner. The batch algorithms are not suitable for sequentially incoming data because of the limitation of storage and prohibitive computation cost. To deal with sequentially incoming data, this paper proposes an incremental algorithm for incrementally learning the threshold-based classifiers. The proposed method can not only incrementally model the features but also estimate the threshold and training error in a close form. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is evaluated in the applications of gender recognition, face detection, and human detection.

O 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

incremental learning
threshold-based classifier
classifier fusion
pattern recognition


Micro patterns in Java code Micro patterns are similar to design patterns, except that micro patterns stand at a lower. closer to the implementation, level of abstraction. Micro patterns are also unique in that they are mechanically recognizable, since each such pattern can be expressed as a formal condition on the structure of a class. This paper presents a catalog of 27 micro-patterns defined on JAVA classes and interfaces. The catalog captures a wide spectrum of common programming practices, including a particular and (intentionally restricted) use of inheritance, immutability I data management and wrapping, restricted creation, and emulation of procedural-, modular-, and even functional- programming paradigms with object oriented constructs. Together, the patterns present a set of prototypes after which a large portion Of all JAVA classes and interfaces are modeled. We provide empirical indication that this portion is as high as 75%. A statistical analysis of occurrences of micro patterns in a large software corpus, spanning some 70,000 JAVA classes drawn from a rich set of application domains, shows, with high confidence level that the use of these patterns is not random. These results indicate consciousness and discernible design decisions, which are sustained in the software evolution. With high confidence level, we can also show that the use of these patterns is tied to the specification, or the purpose, that the software realizes. The traceability, abundance and the statistical significance of micro pattern occurrence raise the hope of using the classification of software into these patterns for a more founded appreciation of its design and code quality.

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 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 B O O O

object-oriented programming
program analysis
design patterns
implementation patterns


The tangential differential operator applied to a stress boundary integral equation for plate bending including the shear deformation effect Boundary integral equations (BIEs) for stresses are widely used in elastic and inelastic analyses, and those for tractions are essential in fracture mechanics problems. The existence of strong singularities in the fundamental solution kernels of BIEs for stresses at boundary points and for traction forces requires additional care in numerical implementations with respect to that employed for a displacement BIE. The use of the tangential differential operator (TDO) in conjunction with integration by parts is one way to reduce the order of strong singularities in these fundamental solution kernels when Kelvin-type fundamental solutions are used. Two formulations for stress and traction BIEs using the TDO are presented in this study. The TDO and integration by parts were employed in the first formulation only to reduce the strong singularity without changing other fundamental solution kernels. In the second formulation, the TDO was applied to all fundamental solution kernels involving the multiplication of generalized displacements to reduce the singularities, and the resulting kernels were combinations of those from the displacement BIE. Finally, plate problems were solved with both traction BIEs employing the TDO instead of the displacement BIEs to evaluate the accuracy of these formulations.

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

stress boundary integral equation
tangential differential operator

reissner's plate
hipersingularity reduction


Utilization of SOMA and differential evolution for robust stabilization of chaotic Logistic equation This paper deals with the utilization of two evolutionary algorithms Self-Organizing Migrating Algorithm (SOMA) and Differential Evolution (DE) for the optimization of the control of chaos. This paper is aimed at an explanation on how to use evolutionary algorithms (EAs) and how to properly define the advanced targeting cost function (CF) securing fast, precise and mainly robust stabilization of selected chaotic system on a desired state for any initial conditions. The role of EA here is as a powerful tool for an optimal tuning of control technique input parameters. As a model of deterministic chaotic system, the one-dimensional discrete Logistic equation was used. The four canonical strategies of SOMA and six canonical strategies of DE were utilized. For each EA strategy, repeated simulations were conducted to outline the effectiveness and robustness of used method and targeting CF securing robust solution. Satisfactory results obtained by both heuristic and the two proposed cost functions are compared with previous research, given by different cost function designs.

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

chaos
control
optimization
evolutionary algorithms
differential evolution
soma


Analyzing terror campaigns on the internet: Technical sophistication, content richness, and Web interactivity Terrorists and extremists are increasingly utilizing Internet technology to enhance their ability to influence the outside world. Due to the lack of multi-lingual and multimedia terrorist/extremist collections and advanced analytical methodologies, our empirical understanding of their Internet usage is still very limited. To address this research gap, we explore an integrated approach for identifying and collecting terrorist/extremist Web contents. We also propose a Dark Web Attribute System (DWAS) to enable quantitative Dark Web content analysis from three perspectives: technical sophistication, content richness, and Web interactivity. Using the proposed methodology, we identified and examined the Internet usage of major Middle Eastern terrorist/extremist groups. More than 200,000 multimedia Web documents were collected from 86 Middle Eastern multi-lingual terrorist/extremist Web sites. In our comparison of terrorist/extremist Web sites to US government Web sites, we found that terrorists/extremist groups exhibited similar levels of Web knowledge as US government agencies. Moreover, terrorists/extremists had a strong emphasis on multimedia usage and their Web sites employed significantly more sophisticated multimedia technologies than government Web sites. We also found that the terrorists/extremist groups are as effective as the US government agencies in terms of supporting communications and interaction using Web technologies. Advanced Internet-based communication tools such as online forums and chat rooms are used much more frequently in terrorist/extremist Web sites than government Web sites. Based on our case study results, we believe that the DWAS is an effective tool to analyse the technical sophistication of terrorist/extremist groups Internet usage and could contribute to an evidence-based understanding of the applications of Web technologies in the global terrorism phenomena.

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

web usage analysis
web collection building


On the arithmetical complexity of Sturmian words Using the geometric dual technique by Berstel and Pocchiola, we give a uniform O(n(3)) upper bound for the arithmetical complexity of a Sturmian word. We also give explicit expressions for the arithmetical complexity of Sturmian words of slope between 1/3 and 2/3 (in particular, of the Fibonacci word). In this case, the difference between the genuine arithmetical complexity function and our upper bound is bounded, and ultimately 2-periodic. In fact, our formula is valid not only for Sturmian words but for rotation words from a wider class. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

arithmetical complexity
sturmian word
fibonacci word

infinite word
subword complexity
rotation word


CBRISK: Colored Binary Robust Invariant Scalable Keypoints BRISK (Binary Robust Invariant Scalable Keypoints) works dramatically faster than well-established algorithms (SIFT and SURF) while maintaining matching performance. However BRISK relies on intensity, color information in the image is ignored. In view of the importance of color information in vision applications, we propose CBRISK, a novel method for taking into account color information during keypoint detection and description. Instead of grayscale intensity image, the proposed approach detects keypoints in the photometric invariant color space. On the basis of binary intensity BRISK (original BRISK) descriptor, the proposed approach embeds binary invariant color presentation in the CBRISK descriptors. Experimental results show that CBRISK is more discriminative and robust than BRISK with respect to photometric variation.

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


Seamless warping of diffusion tensor fields To warp diffusion tensor fields accurately, tensors must be reoriented in the space to which the tensors are warped based on both the local deformation field and the orientation of the underlying fibers in the original image. Existing algorithms for warping tensors typically use forward mapping deformations in an attempt to ensure that the local deformations in the warped image remains true to the orientation of the underlying fibers; forward mapping, however, can also create "seams" or gaps and consequently artifacts in the warped image by failing to define accurately the voxels in the template space where the magnitude A the deformation is large (e.g., IJacobianj > 1). Backward mapping, in contrast, defines voxels in the template space by napping them back to locations in the original imaging space. backward mapping allows every voxel in the template space to be defined without the creation of seams, including voxels in which the deformation is extensive. Backward mapping, however, cannot reorient tensors in the template space because information about the directional orientation of fiber tracts is contained in the wiginal, unwarped imaging space only, and backward mapping alone cannot transfer that information to the template space. To combine the advantages of forward and backward mapping, we propose a novel method for the spatial normalization of diffusion tensor (DT) fields that uses a bijection (a bidirectional mapping with one-to-one correspondences between image spaces) to warp DT datasets seamlessly from one imaging space to another. Once the bijection has been achieved and tensors have been correctly relocated to the template space, we can appropriately reorient tensors in the template space using a warping method based on Procrustean estimation.

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

diffusion tensor image (dti)
dti warping


User-generated contents and reasoning-based personalization: Ingredients for a novel model of mobile TV During the last years, we have witnessed the boom of the digital market due to the proliferation of emergent audiovisual services and the increasing number of broadband networks. In this scenario, users insistently demand innovative services for exchanging and sharing their own audiovisual contents. In order to meet these needs, in this paper we propose a system that broadcasts user-generated audiovisual contents for handheld devices in a mobile network based on the DVB-H broadcasting standard. Besides, our system offers diverse added-value services to these new active users, such as: (i) multi modal access (via Web or by client applications running locally in handheld devices) to digital contents, (ii) exploitation of return channels to transmit interactive contents that enhance the user's experience, and (iii) annotation, sharing and personalized distribution of audiovisual contents. To achieve these goals, our system adopts well-known technologies for broadcasting and semantic annotation of audiovisual contents, as well as emergent technology from the so-called Web 2.0. A prototype of our system has been experimentally evaluated with a group of students from the University of Vigo, who were enthusiastic about the personalization capabilities offered by our TV system for a mobile setting. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Registration of 3D Ultrasound Through an Air-Tissue Boundary In this study, we evaluated a new method for registering three-dimensional ultrasound (3DUS) data to external coordinate systems. First, 3DUS was registered to the stereo endoscope of a da Vinci Surgical System by placing a registration tool against an air-tissue boundary so that the 3DUS could image ultrasound fiducials while the stereo endoscope could image camera markers on the same tool. The common points were used to solve the registration between the 3DUS and camera coordinate systems. The target registration error (TRE) when imaging through a polyvinyl chloride ( PVC) tissue phantom ranged from 3.85 +/- 1.76 mm to 1.82 +/- 1.03 mm using one to four registration tool positions. TRE when imaging through an ex vivo liver tissue sample ranged from 2.36 +/- 1.01 mm to 1.51 +/- 0.70 mm using one to four registration tool positions. Second, using a similar method, 3DUS was registered to the kinematic coordinate system of a da Vinci Surgical System by using the da Vinci surgical manipulators to identify common points on an air-tissue boundary. TRE when imaging through a PVC tissue phantom was 0.95 +/- 0.38 mm. This registration method is simpler and potentially more accurate than methods using commercial motion tracking systems. This method may be useful in the future in augmented reality systems for laparoscopic and robotic-assisted surgery.

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

endoscopy
medical robotics
prostate
surgical guidance/navigation
virtual/augmented reality


A Study on the Effectiveness of SNMP OID Compression Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a popular management protocol. It uses fully distinguished ID for every object sent or received in a message contributing to redundancy. Compression algorithms are proposed to eliminate such redundancies. This paper presents an analysis to understand the effectiveness of such compression algorithms. This analysis provides some interesting results and requirements for OID compression algorithms in general. This paper also presents an algorithm that makes use of the results of this analysis.

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


Astronomical image restoration using an improved anisotropic diffusion Images secured from an astronomical telescope usually suffer from blur and from interference that scientists refer to as noise. Therefore, good image restoration technique has become an important tool in astronomical observation. In this paper, we propose a modified anisotropic diffusion scheme to tackle the problem of image restoration in astronomy, especially in the case of nebula images. In such images, a mass of stars may be extremely bright but also may be spread randomly in dark space, and the shape of the nebula may therefore appear obscure. To restore the original appearance of a nebula, noisy stars must be filtered out and the detailed structure of the nebula must be well enhanced. The classical PeronaMalik anisotropic diffusion model that only considers gradient information cannot filter out noisy stars from the nebula image. In this study, we propose a modified anisotropic diffusion model that incorporates both gradient and gray-level variance information to remove sparking stars of various sizes and brightness in a nebula image. Experimental results from a number of astronomical nebula images have shown that the proposed anisotropic diffusion scheme can effectively remove noisy stars and maintain the shape of nebula in this particular case.

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

astronomical image restoration
nebula image
anisotropic diffusion


Improved pilot-aided optical carrier phase recovery using average processing for pilot phase estimation We propose and numerically investigate an improved pilot-aided (PA) optical carrier phase recovery (CPR) method using average processing for pilot phase estimation in order to suppress the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise in PA coherent transmission systems. Extensive simulations for 28Gbuad QPSK systems are implemented. The performance of proposed PA-CPR with averaging is comprehensively investigated and compared with PA-CPR without averaging and Viterbi & Viterbi phase estimation (VVPE). Results show that, PA-CPR with averaging can significantly improve the performance of PA-CPR without averaging, and the best averaging length in the average operation is determined by trading off between ASE noise and laser phase noise (PN). By comparing the optical-signal-to-noise-ratio (OSNR) penalties at bit error rate (BER) of 110?3using PA-CPR without averaging, PA-CPR with averaging and VVPE, the advantage of PA-CPR with averaging is further confirmed. Quantitatively, the tolerable linewidth-symbol-duration products (?fT) at 1-dB OSNR penalty by using PA-CPR without averaging, VVPE, and PA-CPR with averaging are 610?5, 1.210?4, and 510?4, respectively.

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

coherent optical communication
pilot-aided


A Multilayer Cost Model for Metro/Core Networks A capital expenditure model is a key requirement to evaluate multilayer (ML) metro and core network architectures. Based on the Internet protocol/multiprotocol label switching (IP/MPLS), MPLS-transport profile, optical transport network and WDM technology, a detailed capital expenditure model developed by researchers from system vendors and network operators is introduced. Besides current equipment and corresponding prices for the different layers, it also contains predictions for technology evolution and pricing until 2018. We show how to determine the price of an ML node by constructing it from components specified in the cost model. We use the model in a case study where we benchmark the price of an integrated IP/MPLS/WDM solution.

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


Decision making for facility layout problem solutions In this study, facility layout problems, solution requirements and decision analysis are summarized. Decision making steps of a common layout problem is given. Then developed approaches for the solutions are revised and analyzed according to their decision-making structures. The modular structure of a decisionmaking support system for a layout problem is outlined, then an example decision making approach is carried out for a problem. The study is concluded with describing relations between decision-making strategy and success of the problem solution. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Information Theoretic Analysis of Proactive Routing Overhead in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks This paper considers basic bounds on the overhead of link-state protocols in mobile ad hoc networks. Hierarchical protocols are known for their good scalability properties, and hence this paper considers a two-level hierarchical protocol. In such protocols, nodes need to keep track of shortest path information, link states and cluster membership. Two types of overheads are considered; the memory needed to store routing-related information, including link-states and cluster membership, and the control messages that need to be exchanged to keep track of the changes in the network. Memory overhead is important practically for dimensioning network nodes, while message routing overhead is important since it reduces the effective capacity of the network to carry user data (vis-a-vis control data). The scalability properties of the message routing overhead are analyzed for different modes of network scaling. Practical implications, such as optimal cluster size, average/fixed memory requirement and routing protocol parameter selections are discussed.

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

computer networks
entropy
information rates
source coding


The truss-like discrete element method in fracture and damage mechanics Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to further develop the truss-like discrete element method (DEM) in order to make it suitable to deal with damage and fracture problems. Design/methodology/approach - Finite and boundary elements are the best developed methods in the field of numerical fracture and damage mechanics. However, these methods are based on a continuum approach, and thus, the modelling of crack nucleation and propagation could be sometimes a cumbersome task. Besides, discrete methods possess the natural ability to introduce discontinuities in a very direct and intuitive way by simply breaking the link between their discrete components. Within this context, the present work extends the capabilities of a truss-like DEM via the introduction of three novel features: a tri-linear elasto-plastic constitutive law; a methodology for crack discretization and the computation of stress intensity factors; and a methodology for the computation of the stress field components from the unixial discrete-element results. Findings - Obtained results show the suitability and the performance of the proposed methodologies to solve static and dynamic crack problems (including crack propagation) in brittle and elasto-plastic materials. Computed results are in good agreement with experimental and numerical results reported in the bibliography. Research limitations/implications - This paper demonstrates the versatility of the truss-like DEM to deal with damage mechanics problems. The approach used in this work can be extended to the implementation of time-dependent damage mechanisms. Besides, the capabilities of the discrete approach could be exploited by coupling the truss-like DEM to finite and boundary element methods. Coupling strategies would allow using the DEM to model the regions of the problem where crack nucleation and propagation occurs, while finite or boundary elements are used to model the undamaged regions. Originality/value - The scope of the truss-like DEM has been extended. New procedures have been introduced to deal with elastoplastic-crack problems and to improve the post processing of the stress results.

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

damage mechanics
stress intensity factors

truss-like discrete element method
fracture mechanics
elastoplastic analysis
numerical analysis


Spatial autocorrelation of West Nile virus vector mosquito abundance in a seasonally wet suburban environment The objective of this study is to quantify and model spatial dependence in mosquito vector populations and develop predictions for unsampled locations using geostatistics. Mosquito control program trap sites are often located too far apart to detect spatial dependence but the results show that integration of spatial data over time for Cx. pipiens-restuans and according to meteorological conditions for Ae. vexans enables spatial analysis of sparse sample data. This study shows that mosquito abundance is spatially correlated and that spatial dependence differs between Cx. pipiens-restuans and Ae. vexans mosquitoes.

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 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

geostatistics
spatial autocorrelation
west nile virus

classification and regression trees (cart)


Full-Swing Gate Diffusion Input logic-Case-study of low-power CLA adder design Full Swing Gate Diffusion Input (FS-GDI) methodology is presented. The proposed methodology is applied to a 40 nm Carry Look Ahead Adder (CIA). The CIA is implemented mainly using GDI full-swing F1 and F2 gates, which are the counterparts of standard CMOS NAND and NOR gates. A 16-bit GDI CIA was designed in a 40 nm low power TSMC process. The CIA, implemented according to the proposed methodology, presents full functionality and robustness under global and local process variations at wide range of supply voltages. Simulation results show 2 x area reduction, 5 x improvement in dynamic energy dissipation and 4 x decrease in leakage, with a slight (24%) degradation in performance, when compared to the CMOS CIA. Advanced design metrics of GDI cells, such as minimum energy point (MEP) operation and minimum leakage vector (MLV), are discussed. (C) 2013 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

alternative logic family
carry look ahead (cla) adder
full-swing gdi
gate difusion input (gdi)


Nonlinear harmonic identification of breathing cracks in beams A method for the identification of breathing cracks in beams is detailed through FE simulation. Sub- and super-harmonics of the dynamic response are used as damage indicators. The method is effective for very small cracks. The performance is improved by considering several modes with different modal curvature. The robustness of the method, evaluated through a Monte Carlo simulation, is quite strong.

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

damage detection
crack identification
nonlinear dynamics
cracked beam model


impact of voip codecs on the energy consumption of portable devices In this paper we investigate the influence of the codecs into the energy consumption of VoIP applications. These applications are increasingly extended among users of battery- dependent devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. We provide a methodology to compare the energy efficiency of different VoIP codecs for a given device. This allows users and developers to minimize the energy consumption by codec selection, and introduces a new variable into the QoS-bandwidth balance that has traditionally lead the codec selection in VoIP applications. Our results show that the codec can have a significant impact on the energy consumption attributable to the VoIP software of the portable device.

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


interactive shadows It is often difficult in computer graphics applications to understand spatial relationships between objects in a 3D scene or effect changes to those objects without specialized visualization and manipulation techniques. We present a set of three-dimensional tools (widgets) called shadows that not only provide valuable perceptual cues about the spatial relationships between objects, but also provide a direct manipulation interface to constrained transformation techniques. These shadow widgets provide two advances over previous techniques. First, they provide high correlation between their own geometric feedback and their effects on the objects they control. Second, unlike some other 3D widgets, they do not obscure the objects they control.

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

spatial
direct manipulation
applications
visualization
relationships
shadow
correlation
3d
feedback
manipulation
effect
control
computer graphics
tools

interaction
object
widget
interfaces
interactive systems
change
3d widgets


modular data storage with anvil Databases have achieved orders-of-magnitude performance improvements by changing the layout of stored data -- for instance, by arranging data in columns or compressing it before storage. These improvements have been implemented in monolithic new engines, however, making it difficult to experiment with feature combinations or extensions. We present Anvil, a modular and extensible toolkit for building database back ends. Anvil's storage modules, called dTables, have much finer granularity than prior work. For example, some dTables specialize in writing data, while others provide optimized read-only formats. This specialization makes both kinds of dTable simple to write and understand. Unifying dTables implement more comprehensive functionality by layering over other dTables -- for instance, building a read/write store from read-only tables and a writable journal, or building a general-purpose store from optimized special-purpose stores. The dTable design leads to a flexible system powerful enough to implement many database storage layouts. Our prototype implementation of Anvil performs up to 5.5 times faster than an existing B-tree-based database back end on conventional workloads, and can easily be customized for further gains on specific data and workloads.

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


Hierarchy and equivalence of multi-letter quantum finite automata Multi-letter quantum finite automata (QFAs) are a new one-way QFA model proposed recently by Belovs, Rosmanis, and Smotrovs [A. Belovs, A. Rosmanis, J. Smotrovs, Multi-letter reversible and quantum finite automata, in: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory, DLT'2007, Harrachov, Czech Republic, in: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4588, Springer, Berlin, 2007, pp. 60-71], and they showed that multi-letter QFAs can accept with no error some regular languages ((a + b)*b) that are unacceptable by the one-way QFAs. In this paper, we continue to study multi-letter QFAs. We mainly focus on two issues: (1) we show that (k + 1)-letter QFAs are computationally more powerful than k-letter QFAs, that is, (k + 1)-letter QFAs can accept some regular languages that are unacceptable by any Wetter QFA, A comparison with the one-way QFAs is made by some examples; (2) e prove that a k(1)-letter FA A(1) and another k(2)-letter QFA A(2) are equivalent. if and only if, they are (n(1) +n(2))(4) +k-1-equivalent, and the time complexity of determining the equivalence of two multi-letter QFAs using this method is O(n(12) +k(2) n(4) +kn(8)), where n(1) and n(2) are the numbers of states of A(1) and A(2), respectively, and k = max(k(1), k(2)). Some other issues are addressed for further consideration. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

quantum finite automata
equivalence
hierarchy

quantum computing
multi-letter finite automata


On systematic methods to remove redundant monitors from liveness-enforcing net supervisors Petri nets based deadlock prevention for flexible manufacturing systems has received much attention over the past decade, primarily due to the seminal work of Ezpeleta et al. in 1995. A Petri net based deadlock prevention mechanism is usually implemented by adding monitors or control places to a plant Petri net model such that liveness can be enforced. The significance of this methodology lies in that both a plant model and its supervisor are in a same formalism-Petri nets. Due to the inherent complexity of Petri nets, in theory, the number of additional monitors that have to been added to achieve liveness-enforcement purpose for an uncontrolled plant model is exponential with respect to the size of the model. This paper first proposes a systematic method to minimize the number of additional monitors in a liveness-enforcing Petri net supervisor such that the resultant net system has the same permissive behavior while liveness can still be preserved. Furthermore, for the liveness-enforcing Petri net supervisors of flexible manufacturing systems, which have some particular property, an algorithm is developed such that more permissive liveness-enforcing Petri net supervisors can be obtained after liveness-restrictive monitor removal. Compared with the existing techniques of eliminating redundant monitors in the literature, the complete state enumeration of a supervisor is avoided, which implies the high computational efficiency of the methods in this paper. Flexible manufacturing examples are used to demonstrate the proposed approaches. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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

flexible manufacturing system
implicit place
liveness-restrictive place
liveness-enforcing supervisor


An examination of citation circles for social sciences journals in Eastern European countries This study aims to explore the effects of both journal self citations and mutual citations within a group of journals on the increase in the impact factors (IFs) for social sciences journals published in Eastern Europe. We found that the practice of mutual citations is prevalent among the new journals, a trend that raises questions about possible manipulation of the IF and potential isolation of the recent journals from the international network of scholarly communication.

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

impact factor
self-citations
intra-citations


A new regional clustering approach for mobile telecommunications policy in China China has traditionally identified three groups of regions. The traditional regional classification seems too simple. A clustering approach shows that the 31 provinces can be classified into six groups. This new approach could be utilized for better mobile telecommunications policy.

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

regional clustering
mobile telecommunications
china

innovation coefficient
imitation coefficient
cluster analysis


Estimation of the population mean and median using truncation-based ranked set samples In this paper, a new sampling method is suggested, namely truncation-based ranked set samples (TBRSS) for estimating the population mean and median. The suggested method is compared with the simple random sampling (SRS), ranked set sampling (RSS), extreme ranked set sampling (ERSS) and median-ranked set sampling (MRSS) methods. It is shown that for estimating the population mean when the underlying distribution is symmetric, TBRSS estimator is unbiased and it is more efficient than the SRS estimator based on the same number of measured units. For asymmetric distributions considered in this study, TBRSS estimator is more efficient than the SRS for all considered distributions except for exponential distribution when the selection coefficient gets large. When compared with ERSS and MRSS methods, TBRSS performs well with respect to ERSS for all considered distributions except for U(0, 1) distribution, while TBRSS efficiency is higher than that of MRSS for U(0, 1) distribution. For estimating the population median, the TBRSS estimators have higher efficiencies when compared with SRS and ERSS. A real data set is used to illustrate the suggested method.

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

ranked set sampling
simple random sampling
estimation

extreme ranked set sampling
median-ranked set sampling
symmetric distribution
asymmetric distribution


Sleep quality, social well-being, gender, and inflammation: an integrative analysis in a national sample Social isolation and poor sleep quality are independent predictors of poor health outcomes and increased biological risk for disease. We previously found in a small sample of older women that the presence of social ties compensated for poor sleep in associations with the inflammatory protein interleukin 6 (IL-6). The current study extended those findings to a national sample of middle-aged and older men and women. Using both subjective and objective sleep assessments, we found that in men, but not in women, social engagement moderated the association of subjective sleep complaints with both IL-6 and the soluble adhesion molecule E-selectin. Social engagement also moderated the link between sleep efficiencyassessed by actigraphyand IL-6 levels in men, but not in women. These results extend our previous work and bolster the suggestion that positive psychological functioning may compensate for other risk factors in predicting advantageous profiles of biological risk in aging adults.

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


Quantification of Smoothing Requirement for 3D Optic Flow Calculation of Volumetric Images Complexities of dynamic volumetric imaging challenge the available computer vision techniques on a number of different fronts. This paper examines the relationship between the estimation accuracy and required amount of smoothness for a general solution from a robust statistics perspective. We show that a (surprisingly) small amount of local smoothing is required to satisfy both the necessary and sufficient conditions for accurate optic flow estimation. This notion is called "just enough" smoothing, and its proper implementation has a profound effect on the preservation of local information in processing 3D dynamic scans. To demonstrate the effect of "just enough" smoothing, a robust 3D optic flow method with quantized local smoothing is presented, and the effect of local smoothing on the accuracy of motion estimation in dynamic lung CT images is examined using both synthetic and real image sequences with ground truth.

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


Intelligent decoupling control of power plant main steam pressure and power output An intelligent decoupling control strategy has been proposed and successfully applied to a 300MW boilerturbine unit, i.e. Unit 1 of Yuanbaoshan Power Plant in China. For the strong couplings between control loops of main steam pressure and power output, a new design for decoupler aimed at decoupling for set-points and unmeasured pulverized coal disturbance of the system at the same time is presented. For the variation of operating condition and slowly varying dynamics, an intelligent control scheme has been developed by integrating fuzzy reasoning with adaptive control and auto-tuning techniques. Satisfactory industrial application results show that such a control system has enhanced adaptability and robustness to the complex process, and better control performance and high economic benefit have been obtained.

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

decoupling control
intelligent control
fuzzy reasoning
industrial application

power plant control
adaptive control and auto-tuning


The demeter system for automated harvesting (Reprinted from Proceedings of the American Nuclear Society: 8th International Topical Meeting on Robotics Remote Systems, Pittsburgh, PA, April 25-29, 1999.) Automation of agricultural harvesting equipment in the near term appears both economically viable and technically feasible. This paper describes the Demeter system for automated harvesting. Demeter is a computer-controlled speedrowing machine, equipped with a pair of video cameras and a global positioning sensor for navigation. Demeter is capable of planning harvesting operations for an entire field, and then executing its plan by cutting crop rows, turning to cut successive rows, repositioning itself in the field, and detecting unexpected obstacles. In August of 1997, the Demeter system autonomously harvested 40 hectares (100 acres) of crop in a continuous run (excluding stops for refueling). During 1998, the Demeter system harvested in excess of 48.5 hectares (120 acres) of crop, cutting in a variety of fields.

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

agriculture
gps
image segmentation
mobile robots
vision guidance


A reconfigurable robot platform In this paper, we present a reconfigurable robot platform based on OPEN-R, a standard for robot entertainment systems. Reconfigurability is attained by the use of the OPEN-R standard which enables a hot plug-in capability through a set of definitions for mechanical, electrical, and software interface protocols. In order to verify the reconfiguration capability, we have developed a fully autonomous robot with four legs and a head. Each leg has three degrees of freedom. We were able to easily reconfigure it into a wheel-based mobile robot with a plug-and-play feature. The reconfigurable robot platform will provide us with greater freedom in terms of robot style, and it will provide a broader range of application fields, especially for the robot entertainment systems.

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

reconfigurable robot platform
robot entertainment

open-r
wheel-based robot
quadruped robot


The Future of Colon Cancer Prevention Chemoprevention science is in flux owing to rapid advances in postgenomic technology. We have witnessed enormous advances in the areas of early detection and molecular profiling of colorectal carcinogenesis; however, unique interpretive and technologic challenges persist. Neoplastic hallmarks must be iteratively tested and validated as markers of risk, targets for intervention, and/or markers of response in order to expedite the development of preventive interventions. In this review, we highlight several of the technologies that are revolutionizing our understanding of carcinogenesis and our approach to colorectal cancer prevention.

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

nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (nsaid)


Laws of Attraction: From Perceived Forces to Conceptual Similarity Many of the pressing questions in information visualization deal with how exactly a user reads a collection of visual marks as information about relationships between entities. Previous research has suggested that people see parts of a visualization as objects, and may metaphorically interpret apparent physical relationships between these objects as suggestive of data relationships. We explored this hypothesis in detail in a series of user experiments. Inspired by the concept of implied dynamics in psychology, we first studied whether perceived gravity acting on a mark in a scatterplot can lead to errors in a participant's recall of the mark's position. The results of this study suggested that such position errors exist, but may be more strongly influenced by attraction between marks. We hypothesized that such apparent attraction may be influenced by elements used to suggest relationship between objects, such as connecting lines, grouping elements, and visual similarity. We further studied what visual elements are most likely to cause this attraction effect, and whether the elements that best predicted attraction errors were also those which suggested conceptual relationships most strongly. Our findings show a correlation between attraction errors and intuitions about relatedness, pointing towards a possible mechanism by which the perception of visual marks becomes an interpretation of data relationships.

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

perceptual cognition
visualization models
laboratory studies
cognition theory


Design guidelines for releasing silicon nanowire arrays by liquid and vapor phase hydrofluoric acid Silicon nanowires of various geometries are fabricated using top-down approach starting from silicon-on-insulator substrate. Arrays of nanowires presenting widths from 25 up to 100nm regularly spaced by 50nm up to 1?m are patterned and released. A comparison of various release methodologies, based on scanning electron microscopy images, namely wet release in hydrofluoric acid 5% with rinse in water or iso-propanol followed by drying by evaporation in air or using a critical point dryer, and dry release using vapor phase hydrofluoric acid is presented. Forces acting on suspended wires during release are calculated. Increase of successful release length by increasing spacing between the wires is observed for both wet and vapor phase hydrofluoric acid release techniques. Maximum detachment length of 9?m is achieved for 50100nm2 array of nanowires spaced by 1?m using vapor phase hydrofluoric acid etching method.

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

capillary force
critical point drying (cpd)
hydrogen bridging
liquid hydrofluoric acid (hf)
silicon-on-insulator (soi)
stiction
suspended silicon nanowires
van der waals force
vapor phase hydrofluoric acid (vhf)


Numerical study of helicopter bladevortex mechanism of interaction using large-eddy simulation A novel approach, large-eddy simulation, is proposed for the numerical investigation of helicopter bladevortex mechanism of interaction. The novel approach overcomes all the issues, posed by the other CFD approaches, associated with the vortex dissipation due to the turbulence modeling (RANS, URANS) and computational limitations of DNS. The influence of vertical miss distance and vortex core size on the helicopter bladevortex mechanism of interaction is subject of investigation. It was observed that the magnitude of the aerodynamic coefficients decreases with the increase of vertical miss distance and the decrease of vortex core size.

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

helicopter bladevortex interaction
large-eddy simulation
smagorinsky model


A metaheuristic approach to the optimal definition of molecule-fixed axes in rovibrational Hamiltonians We develop an algorithmic, metaheuristic approach to the definition of molecule-fixed axes orientation in molecules of arbitrary size. The goal is to simplify the treatment of overall rotation and rotationvibration interaction in rovibrational Hamiltonians. Considering the kinetic elements of the rovibrational Hamiltonian, given by the G matrix, we select the optimal orientation of molecule-fixed axes minimizing specific G matrix elements. To such an end, we develop a global minimization method based in a hybrid Simulated Annealing+Powell's Annealing + Powell's local minimization. The parameters of the method are calibrated using a set of non-rigid molecules: Acetaldehyde, glycolaldehyde, methyl formate and ethyl methyl ether. The results show that the principal axes of inertia do not give the simplest form to the pure rotational contribution. However, minimization of the G matrix rotational element does. Finally, we observe that in the cases considered it is not possible to nullify all the rotationvibration coupling elements, since the torsional motions are coupled with the overall rotation. However, the treatment yields the optimal solution. The methodology proposed allows also to simplify simultaneously the pure rotational+rotationvibration rotational + rotationvibration coupling elements in rovibrational Hamiltonians.

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

rovibrational hamiltonian
rotationvibration coupling
g matrix


Languages of logic and their applications Concerning the logical description languages, in the past 4050 years many authors have introduced a number of structurally very different first-order languages. Some of these languages follow the structure of a given future model, other ones have been prepared for the description of an arbitrary model. Other variations of the first-order languages do not follow the whole structure of any model: they have been prepared only for the relations definable over the universe in order to be able to prove the generalizations of a number of difficult logical results. The semantics of the first-order languages is based on the interpretation of their extralogical symbols by a suitable model. In some cases, in the interpretation all possible models can be in focus, but there are cases when the models over a special universe are regarded. The naming problem of the universe element of the model arises at this stage. The efforts for solving this problem lead to different approaches. Here, we present the most important language definitions and some characteristic semantics. We investigate the different approaches and conclude that they do not indicate essential differences. In fact, they have been only motivated by seeking for an easier way to achieve the just fixed target. Moreover, we try to point out the suitability connections of languages and semantics definitions.

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


The theory and experiments of designing cooperative intelligent systems In this paper, we identify the business problems that lend themselves to the design of cooperative intelligent systems and empirically demonstrate the design and application of a multi-agent intelligent system for production scheduling. Our experiments suggest that a multi-agent system where agents coordinate their actions generally performs better than a multi-agent system where agents do not coordinate their actions.

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

genetic algorithms
distributed artificial intelligence
learning
multi-agent systems


AN INFERENCE-ENABLED ACCESS CONTROL MODEL FOR RDF ONTOLOGY Although RDF ontologies are expressed based on XML syntax, existing methods to protect XML documents are not suitable for securing RDF ontologies. The graph style and inference feature of RDF ontologies demands new methods for access control. Driven by this goal, this paper proposes a query-oriented model for RDF ontology access control. The model adopts the concept of ontology view to rewrite user queries. In our approach, ontology views de. ne accessible ontology concepts and instances a user can visit, and enables a controlled inference capability for the user. The design of the views guarantees that the views are free of conflict. Based on that, the paper describes algorithms for rewriting queries according to different views, and provides a system architecture along with an implemented prototype. In the evaluation, the system exhibits a promising result in terms of effectiveness and soundness.

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


An adaptable navigation strategy for Virtual Microscopy from mobile platforms The JPEG2000 standard is very suitable to access and interact with WSIs. The decoding strategy allows a granular, independent and efficient decompression. Index files enable a fast access to specific JPEG2000 data regardless the WSI size. This architecture permits to adapt content to user, device and network bandwidth. This model exploits the client resources and lightens the server loading.

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

whole slide images
visualization
mobile devices
telepathology


Multifocus image fusion and denoising: A variational approach In this letter we propose a variational approach for concurrent image fusion and denoising of multifocus images, based on error estimation theory and Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). In real world scenarios the assumption that the inputs of an image fusion process contain only useful information, pertinent to the desired fused output, does not hold true more often than not. Thus, the image fusion problem needs to be addressed from a more complex, fusion-denoising point of view, in order to provide a fused result of greater quality. The novelty of our approach consists in defining an image geometry-driven, anisotropic fusion model, numerically expressed using an anisotropy-reinforcing discretization scheme that further increases the anisotropic behavior of the proposed fusion paradigm. The preliminary experimental analysis shows that robust anisotropic denoising can be attained in parallel with efficient image fusion, thus bringing two paramount image processing tasks into complete synergy. One immediate application of the proposed method is fusion of multifocus, noise-corrupted images.

B I I 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 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 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

multifocus image fusion
denoising
partial differential equations

variational model
image enhancement
image restoration


The scale invariants of pseudo-Zernike moments The definition of pseudo-Zernike moments has a form of projection of the image intensity function onto the pseudo-Zernike polynomials, and they are defined using a polar coordinate representation of the image space. Hence, they are commonly used in recognition tasks requiring rotation invariance. However, this coordinate representation does not easily yield a scale invariant function because it is difficult to extract a common scale factor from the radial polynomials. As a result, vision applications generally resort to image normalisation method or using a combination of scale invariants of geometric orradial moments to achieve the corresponding invariants of pseudo-Zernike moments. In this paper, we present a mathematical framework to derive a new set of scale invariants of pseudo-Zernike moments based on pseudo-Zernike polynomials. They are algebraically obtained by eliminating the scale factor contained in the scaled pseudo-Zernike moments. They remain unchanged under equal-shape expansion, contraction and reflection of theoriginal image. They can be directly computed from any scaled image without prior knowledge of the normalisation parameters, or assistance of geometric or radial moments. Their performance is experimentally verified using a set of Chinese and Latin characters. In addition, a comparison of computational speed between the proposed descriptors and the present methods is also presented.

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

image normalisation
radial moments
scale invariants

geometric moments
pseudo-zernike moments


A polynomial parametrization of torus knots For every odd integer N we give explicit construction of a polynomial curve C(t) = (x(t), y(t)), where deg x = 3, deg y = N + 1 + 2[N/4] that has exactly N crossing points C(t(i)) = C(s(i)) whose parameters satisfy s(1) < ... < s(N) < t(1) < ... < t(N). Our proof makes use of the theory of Stieltjes series and Pade approximants. This allows us an explicit polynomial parametrization of the torus knot K(2,2n+1) with degree (3, 3n + 1, 3n + 2).

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


A group-based load balance scheme for software distributed shared memory systems Load balance is an important issue for the performance of software distributed shared memory (DSM) systems. One solution of addressing this issue is exploiting dynamic thread migration. In order to reduce the data consistency communication increased by thread migration, an effective load balance scheme must carefully choose threads and destination nodes for workload migration. In this paper, a group-based load balance scheme is proposed to resolve this problem. The main characteristic of this scheme is to classify the overloaded nodes and the lightly loaded nodes into a sender group and a receiver group, and then consider all the threads of the sender group and all the nodes of the receiver group for each decision. The experimental results show that the group-based scheme reduces more communication than the previous schemes. Besides, this paper also resolves the problem of the high costs caused by group-based schemes. Therefore, the performance of the test programs is effectively enhanced after minimizing the communication increased by thread migration.

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


A Numerical model based on the mixed interface-tracking/interface-capturing technique (MITICT) for flows with fluid-solid and fluid-fluid interfaces We propose a numerical model for computation of flow problems that involve both fluid-solid and fluid-fluid interfaces. The model is based on the mixed interface-tracking/interface-capturing technique (MITICT), which was introduced earlier for problems that involve both fluid-solid interfaces that are accurately tracked with a moving mesh method and fluid-fluid interfaces that are too complex to track and therefore treated with an interface-capturing technique. In our numerical model, fluid-solid interfaces are handled with the moving Lagrangian interface technique (MLIT) and fluid-fluid interfaces with the edge-tracked interface locator technique (ETILT). The mixed technique is tested in computation of a fluid-particle interaction problem in the presence of a fluid-fluid interface impacted by the particle. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

fluid-solid interface
fluid-fluid interface
fluid-particle interaction


THE ROLE OF THE VELOCITY DISTRIBUTION IN THE DSMC PRESSURE BOUNDARY CONDITION FOR GAS MIXTURES A prescribed pressure is the most common flow boundary condition used in flow simulations. In the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, boundary pressure is controlled by the number flux of the simulating molecules entering the domain. In the conventional DSMC algorithm, this number flux is calculated iteratively using sampled values of velocity and number density by means of an expression derived from the Maxwell distribution function. It is known that this procedure does not work well for low speed flows which are of interest in most micro-flow applications and the statistical scatter of the DSMC results is generally stated to be the main reason. However, the Maxwell distribution used in the pressure boundary treatment is valid for equilibrium conditions, and therefore, current implementations of the DSMC pressure boundary treatment are limited to boundaries with sufficiently small rarefaction erects. This is not the case for some practical problems in which highly rarefied flows through the boundaries lead to considerable nonequilibrium effects. In this study, an expression for the species number flux is derived using the Chapman-Enskog velocity distribution to improve the pressure boundary condition. The resulting algorithm is then used for modeling a micro-channel binary gas mixture flow with prescribed pressure boundary conditions.

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

dsmc
pressure boundary condition
gas mixture


2-and 8-alkynyladenosines: conformational studies and docking to human adenosine A(3) receptor can explain their different biological behavior Adenosine (Ado) derivatives substituted at the, C2 position with an alkynyl chain are endowed with high affinity for A(1), A(2A) and A(3) human adenosine receptors, while being less active at the low affinity A(2B) subtype. On the other hand, the introduction of an alkynyl chain at the C8 position of adenosine is detrimental for the affinity and potency at A,, A(2A), and A(2B) receptors, while is more tolerated by the A3 receptor. The evaluation of the stimulation of [S-35]GTPgammaS binding revealed that 2-alkynyladenosines behave as adenosine receptors agonists while, on the contrary, 8-alkynyladenosines behave as antagonists. With this work we demonstrated, by means of an NMR-based and a computational conformational analysis, that 8-alkynyladenosines, differently from 2-alkynyladenosines, cannot adopt the sugar-base anti conformation required for adenosine receptor activation. Furthermore, using the recently reported X-ray crystal structure of bovine rhodopsin as template, we built a 3D model of the seven transmembrane domains of the human adenosine A(3) receptor with the homology modeling. After identification of the binding site we carried out docking experiments, demonstrating that the two class of molecules have different binding modes that explain their different degree of affinity and the shift of their activity from agonism to antagonism. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

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

adenosine receptors
homology modeling
docking
conformational analysis


The impact of cost uncertainty on the location of a distribution center The location of a distribution center (DC) is a key consideration for the design of supply chain networks. When deciding on it, firms usually allow for transportation costs, but not supplier prices. We consider simultaneously the location of a DC and the choice of suppliers offering different, possibly random, prices for a single product. A buying firm attempts to minimize the sum of the price charged by a chosen supplier, and inbound and outbound transportation costs. No costs are incurred for switching suppliers. We first derive a closed-form optimal location for the case of a demand-populated unit line between two suppliers offering deterministic prices. We then let one of the two suppliers offer a random price. If the price follows a symmetric and unimodal distribution, the optimal location is closer to the supplier with a lower mean price. We also show the dominance of high variability: the buyer can decrease the total cost more for higher price variability for any location. The dominance result holds for normal, uniform, and gamma distributions. We propose an extended model with more than two suppliers on a plane and show that the dominance result still holds. From numerical examples for a line and a plane, we observe that an optimal location gets closer to the center of gravity of demands as the variability of any suppliers price increases.

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

logistics
sourcing
supply chain management


Generalisation log for managing and utilising a multi-representation spatial database in map production ? This paper describes a data model for logging map generalisation process information to facilitate data authentication and update propagation in a multi-representation spatial database environment. Generalisation is modelled as a directed acyclic diagram of prioritised generalisation process instances, which is further divided into independent operations as the atomic functional unit for generalisation. Generalisation parameter values and the roles of features in operations are stored. The full generalisation history of each feature may be traced for data authentication and quality analysis, or for update propagation. This model also includes the design of a feature versioning mechanism. In addition, OSGenLog, a set of platform-independent APIs to create generalisation logs, has been implemented in Gothic object-oriented database management system.

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

update propagation
map generalisation
spatial database


Modelling net radiation at surface using "in situ" netpyrradiometer measurements with artificial neural networks The knowledge of net radiation at the surface is of fundamental importance because it defines the total amount of energy available for the physical and biological processes such as evapotranspiration, air and soil warming. It is measured with net radiometers, but, the radiometers are expensive sensors, difficult to handle, that require constant care and also involve periodic calibration. This paper presents a methodology based on neural networks in order to replace the use of net radiometers (expensive tools) by modeling the relationships between the net radiation and meteorological variables measured in meteorological stations. Two different data sets (acquired at different locations) have been used in order to train and validate the developed artificial neural model. The statistical results (low root mean square errors and mean absolute error) show that the proposed methodology is suitable to estimate net radiation at surface from common meteorological variables, therefore, can be used as a substitute for net radiometers. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Interior-point methods for Cartesian P-*(kappa)-linear complementarity problems over symmetric cones based on the eligible kernel functions An interior-point method (IPM) for Cartesian P-*(kappa)-linear complementarity problems over symmetric cones (SCLCP) is analysed and the complexity results are presented. The Cartesian P-*(kappa)-SCLCPs have been recently introduced as the generalization of the more commonly known and more widely used monotone-SCLCPs. The IPM is based on the barrier functions that are defined by a large class of univariate functions called eligible kernel functions, which have recently been successfully used to design new IPMs for various optimization problems. Eligible barrier (kernel) functions are used in calculating the Nesterov-Todd search directions and the default step-size which lead to very good complexity results for the method. For some specific eligible kernel functions, we match the best-known iteration bound for the long-step methods while for the short-step methods the best iteration bound is matched for all cases.

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

euclidean jordan algebras and symmetric cones


Graph grammar-driven parallel partial differential equation solver The paper presents an extension of the composite programmable graph grammar (CP-graph grammar) suitable for modeling the parallel direct solver algorithm utilized by the hp finite element method (hp-FEM). In the proposed graph grammar model, the computational mesh is represented by a CP-graph. The presented graph grammar models the solver algorithm by a set of graph grammar productions. The graph grammar model makes it possible to examine the concurrency of the algorithm by analyzing the interdependence between the atomic tasks, tasks and super-tasks. The atomic tasks correspond to the graph grammar productions, representing basic undividable parts of the algorithms. The level of atomic tasks models the concurrency for the shared memory architectures. On the other hand, the tasks correspond to the groups of atomic tasks with predefined inter-task communication channels. They constitute the grain for the decomposition of the parallel algorithm for the distributed memory architecture. Finally, the super-tasks correspond to a group of tasks resulting from the execution of load balancing algorithm. The solver algorithm is tested on distributed memory linux cluster for up to 192 processors. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


role of professional associations in preparing, recruiting, and retaining computing professionals The purpose of this preliminary study is to investigate an under-explored topic, specifically, the role of professional associations in preparing, recruiting, and retaining computing professionals. Drawing on relevant literature, we identified a comprehensive list of services that should be provided by professional associations in order to prepare, recruit, and retain professionals. Then we assessed several computing professional associations to determine whether they offer those identified services. Our findings show that ACM has better coverage of services, followed by IEEE-CS, AITP, and AIS. This study indicates that computing professional associations have considerable influences on higher educational institutes by establishing curriculum guidelines to prepare professionals, on organizations by organizing career fairs and placement websites to recruit professionals, and on retention by providing professional development opportunities. We propose that more research is needed to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of computing professional associations and to identify unique ways they can influence preparation, recruitment, and retention of computing professionals.

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computing professionals
computing professional associations
aitp
ais
acm

recruiting professionals
preparing professionals
ieee-cs
retaining professionals


Variation in the use of online clinical evidence: a qualitative analysis Objective: To investigate factors influencing variations in clinicians use of an online evidence retrieval system. Setting: Public hospitals in New South Wales, Australia. Method: Web log analysis demonstrated considerable variation in rates of evidence use by clinicians at different hospitals. Focus groups and interviews were held with 61 staff from three hospitals, two with high rates of use and one with a low rate of use, to explore variation in evidence use. Results: Differences between hospitals and professional groups (doctors, nurses and allied health) use of online evidence could be explained by organizational, professional and cultural factors. These included the presence of champions, organizational cultures which supported evidence-based practice (EBP), and database searching skills of individual clinicians. Staff shortages, ease of access and time taken to use the online evidence system were cited as barriers to use at the low use site, but no objective differences in these measures were found between the high and low use sites. Conclusion: Social and cultural factors were found to be better discriminators of high and low evidence use than technical factors.

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evaluation
online resources
health informatics


an analysis of packet sampling in the frequency domain Packet sampling techniques introduce measurement errors that should be carefully handled in order to correctly characterize the network behavior. In the literature several works have studied the statistical properties of packet sampling and the way it should be inverted to recover the original network measurements. Here we take the new direction of studying the spectral properties of packet sampled traffic. A novel technique to model the impact of packet sampling is proposed based on a theoretical analysis of network traffic in the frequency domain. Moreover, a real-time algorithm is also presented to detect the spectrum portion of the network traffic that can be restored once packet sampling has been applied. Preliminary experimental results are reported to validate the proposed approach.

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A critical feature extraction by kernel PCA in stock trading model This paper presents a kernel-based principal component analysis (kernel PCA) to extract critical features for improving the performance of a stock trading model. The feature extraction method is one of the techniques to solve dimensionality reduction problems (DRP). The kernel PCA is a feature extraction approach which has been applied to data transformation from known variables to capture critical information. The kernel PCA is a kernel-based data mapping tool that has characteristics of both principal component analysis and non-linear mapping. The feature selection method is another DRP technique that selects only a small set of features from known variables, but these features still indicate possible collinearity problems that fail to reflect clear information. However, most feature extraction methods use a variable mapping application to eliminate noisy and collinear variables. In this research, we use the kernel-PCA method in a stock trading model to transform stock technical indices (TI) which allows features of smaller dimension to be formed. The kernel-PCA method has been applied to various stocks and sliding window testing methods using both half-year and 1-year testing strategies. The experimental results show that the proposed method generates more profits than other DRP methods on the America stock market. This stock trading model is very practical for real-world application, and it can be implemented in a real-time environment.

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

kernel pca
feature extraction
dimensionality reduction
stock trading model


Least squares variational approach to the convective mixing height estimation problem A least squares variational approach is suggested to estimate the atmospheric mixed layer depth (or mixing height) under convective conditions from the vertical profile of virtual potential temperature. This method was implemented as a software application that could be a very useful tool to estimate the mixing height parameter required in air pollution modeling studies. The software was used to estimate Mexico City mixing heights from the atmospheric sounding data between January to May of 1993 and 1994, and the monthly statistics evolution of the 11:00z and 23:00z mixing height values is presented for this period. The estimations produced by this method for the afternoon mixing height were found in a good agreement with the daily maximum value calculated with the dry adiabatic temperature method.

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atmospheric soundings
mexico city statistics