Deconstructing the Dogma Since the birth of molecular biology it has been generally assumed that most genetic information is transacted by proteins, and that RNA plays an intermediary role. This led to the subsidiary assumption that the vast tracts of noncoding sequences in the genomes of higher organisms are largely nonfunctional, despite the fact that they are transcribed. These assumptions have since become articles of faith, but they are not necessarily correct. I propose an alternative evolutionary history whereby developmental and cognitive complexity has arisen by constructing sophisticated RNA-based regulatory networks that interact with generic effector complexes to control gene expression patterns and the epigenetic trajectories of differentiation and development. Environmental information can also be conveyed into this regulatory system via RNA editing, especially in the brain. Moreover, the observations that RNA-directed epigenetic changes can be inherited raises the intriguing question: has evolution learnt how to learn?

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

introns
transcriptome
noncoding rna
transposons
exaptation
regulation
scaling
epigenetics
paramutation


The consistency of pressure-gradient approximations used in multi-dimensional shock hydrodynamics This paper presents a study of the consistency properties of the pressure-gradient approximation used in multi-dimensional finite-element shock hydrodynamics codes today. In specific, consideration is given to the so-called 'bent-element blues' problem associated with the pressure-gradient approximation when using the Q1Q0 element. On arbitrary grids comprised of distorted elements, the piecewise-constant representation of the pressure field leads to a low-order pressure-gradient approximation at the global (nodal) level. This results in spurious nodal forces that are not aligned with the pressure gradient. There are several side-effects of this behavior that include (a) incorrectly exciting physical modes in problems that exhibit unstable behavior, e.g. Rayleigh Taylor problems (both magnetic and hydrodynamic), (b) potentially seeding hourglass modes, and (c) exhibiting non-stationary behavior for steady-state problems. A series of commonly used pressure-gradient approximations are reviewed and evaluated based on linear consistency the ability of the approximation to annihilate constant terms and exactly reproduce a linear gradient. The deeper theoretical issues associated with the proper selection of function spaces for the finite-element hydro formulation are not discussed here. There are two gradient approximations that use piecewise-constant data and deliver a consistent pressure-gradient approximation on arbitrary grids. The first is the well-known least-squares gradient construction, and the second is a corrected gradient approximation that imposes linear consistency at the (global) nodal level. At the time of this writing, the corrected gradient approximation appears to be the most viable candidate for resolving the consistency issues associated with the Q1Q0 element technology. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

gradient approximation
shock hydrodynamics
linear consistency

lagrange-remap
finite element
least-squares


a process for incorporating heuristic evaluation into a software release This paper describes a process for incorporating heuristic evaluations into a software product release. The goal of the paper is to provide enough detail and results to other design teams to assist them in developing their own process for this activity.The process took place over approximately one year. In all, 124 projects were reviewed, involving 1414 web pages, and identifying 5817 defects. Data is not yet available about the exact number of defects fixed, but it is expected to be well over 2000, as described below.The heuristics used in this process included how well the various pages integrated, how easy it was to accomplish tasks, conformance to style guidelines, and consistency in design, terminology, and layout. Some user testing was done on some of the projects that went through these reviews; the reviews complimented that testing.

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

process improvement
user interface design
product design
design methods
usability testing and evaluation
usability research


information displays for managing shared files Within the workplace setting, people need to provide sufficient access to files to allow collaboration, without inadvertently exposing sensitive files. Evidence suggests that file sharing problems exist, and decrease security and interfere with collaboration. A potential solution for managing these problems is to present the user with clear information about file sharing settings and activities. Current file managers either hide the information or simply do not provide it. Using an awareness framework, we identified the core information that users need to be aware of for file sharing situations, performed two studies to determine how to best represent those concepts as labels and icons, and developed a prototype for a file manager that reveals file sharing activity. The results of these design activities can be adopted for other file sharing applications, improving their security and collaborative usability.

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


A Business-Oriented Management Framework for Mobile Communication Systems The incremental efforts needed to manage low-level radio access network decisions from a business-perspective have received little attention so far. This paper considers the influence of business-level indicators on network management decisions related to low-level network control mechanisms. It provides a formal understanding of all involved aspects, the representation of the adjustable parameters, and the network control mechanisms that enable the reconfiguration of access network entities from a business perspective (i.e., users information, operators goals). The effectiveness of our approach is validated through a simulation environment that we developed on OPNET.

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

mobility management
radio resource management
service management
business-oriented management


A loop-free shortest-path routing algorithm for dynamic networks ? ?? This work introduces Loop-Free Routing (LFR), a new loop-free distance-vector routing algorithm, which is able to update the shortest paths of a distributed network in fully dynamic scenarios. This work also provides an evaluation based on simulations of LFR and Diffuse Update ALgorithm (DUAL), one of the most popular loop-free distance-vector algorithms, which is part of CISCO?s widely used Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). The simulations are performed on dynamic scenarios based on both real-world and controlled instances. The simulations show that LFR is always the best choice in terms of memory requirements, while in terms of messages sent LFR outperforms DUAL on real-world networks, whereas DUAL is the best choice on controlled scenarios.

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

distributed networks
loop-free routing
shortest-path
dynamic algorithms


Achieving Anonymity via Clustering Publishing data for analysis from a table containing personal records, while maintaining individual privacy, is a problem of increasing importance today. The traditional approach of deidentifying records is to remove identifying fields such as social security number, name, etc. However, recent research has shown that a large fraction of the U. S. population can be identified using nonkey attributes (called quasi-identifiers) such as date of birth, gender, and zip code. The k-anonymity model protects privacy via requiring that nonkey attributes that leak information are suppressed or generalized so that, for every record in the modified table, there are at least k - 1 other records having exactly the same values for quasi-identifiers. We propose a new method for anonymizing data records, where quasi-identifiers of data records are first clustered and then cluster centers are published. To ensure privacy of the data records, we impose the constraint that each cluster must contain no fewer than a prespecified number of data records. This technique is more general since we have a much larger choice for cluster centers than k-anonymity. In many cases, it lets us release a lot more information without compromising privacy. We also provide constant factor approximation algorithms to come up with such a clustering. This is the first set of algorithms for the anonymization problem where the performance is independent of the anonymity parameter k. We further observe that a few outlier points can significantly increase the cost of anonymization. Hence, we extend our algorithms to allow an epsilon fraction of points to remain unclustered, that is, deleted from the anonymized publication. Thus, by not releasing a small fraction of the database records, we can ensure that the data published for analysis has less distortion and hence is more useful. Our approximation algorithms for new clustering objectives are of independent interest and could be applicable in other clustering scenarios as well.

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


Unsteady Flow Visualization at Part-Load Conditions of a Radial Diffuser Pump: by PIV and CFD The present study provides flow visualization on complex internal flows in a radial diffuser pump under part-load conditions by using the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code CFX-10 with Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) turbulence model. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements have been conducted to validate numerical results. The CFD results show good agreements with experimental ones on both the phase-averaged velocity fields and turbulence field. The detailed flow analysis shows that no separation occurs at 0.75Q(des) although a low-velocity zone develops on the rear impeller suction side. Steady flow separations are observed on the impeller suction sides at 0.5Q(des) but with different onsets and amounts. When reducing the flow rate to 0.25Q(des), CFD predicts different types of back flows in the impeller region, including steady leading edge separations, rotating vortex in the impeller wake region, and back flow on the impeller pressure side.

O B I O O O O O O O O O B O B O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O 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 network programming with parallel processing for association rule mining in large and dense databases Several methods of extracting association rules have been reported. A new evolutionary computation method named Genetic Network Programming (GNP) has also been developed recently and its efectiveness is shown for small datasets. However, it has not been tested for large datasets, particularly in datasets with a large number of attributes. The aim of this paper is to extract association rules from large and dense datasets using GNP considering a real world database with a huge number of attributes. We propose a new method where a large database is divided into many small datasets, then each GNP deals with one dataset having attributes with appropiate size, which was selected randomly from a large dataset and generated genetically. These GNPs are processed in parallel. We then propose some new genetic operations to improve the number of rules extracted and their quality as well. The proposed method improves remarkably on simulations. Fig. 1 shows the architecture of the proposed method. We use the CLIENT/SERVER model. CLIENT side carries out preprocessing of large database, assignment of files to each server, rule checking, and genetic operations on files. SERVER side carries out processing of each file using conventional GNP based mining method independently. The features and advantages of the proposed method are the following: Rule extraction is done in parallel. Each file generates its local pool of the rules. Files or datasets are treated as individuals in order to do new genetic operations over them and improve the rule extraction. Extracted rules are stored in a global pool. The rules are verified to avoid redundancy among them and it is assured that only new rules are stored.

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

association rules
parallel processing
genetic network programming


The embedding of an ordered groupoid into a poe-groupoid in terms of fuzzy sets In this paper we prove that if S is an ordered groupoid (resp. ordered semigroup), then the set F of all fuzzy subsets of S is a poe-groupoid (resp. poe-semigroup) and S is embedded in F. A poe-groupoid is an ordered groupoid having a greatest element e (i.e. e?a?a?S ).

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


The design of quasi-sliding mode control for a permanent magnet synchronous motor with unmatched uncertainties In this study, the concept of a quasi-sliding mode control (QSMC) is introduced for the robust control of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) system subjected to unmatched uncertainties, and even with input nonlinearity. On the basis of the new concept of QSMC, continuous control is obtained, to avoid the chattering phenomenon. As expected, the system state can be stabilized and driven into a predictable neighborhood of zero. Also, this approach only uses a single controller to achieve chaos control, which reduces the cost and complexity of implementation. The results of numerical simulations demonstrate the validity of the proposed QSMC design method.

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

unmatched uncertainties
chattering phenomenon
input nonlinearity


3D-QSAR analysis of cycloguanil derivatives as inhibitors of A16V+S108T mutant Plasmodium falciparum dihydrofolate reductase enzyme A three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (3D-QSAR) study was carried out on cycloguanil derivatives which are reported as growth inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum clone (T9/94 RC17) which harbors A16V + S108T mutant dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) enzyme. Comparative of Molecular Field Analysis (CoMFA) and Comparative of Molecular Similarity Indices Analysis (CoMSIA) were carried out to investigate the structural requirements for the activities of these compounds and to derive predictive models that may be used for designing novel PfDHFR enzyme inhibitors. The global minimum energy (within the search space) conformation of the most active compound (38) was obtained by using simulated annealing, and was subsequently used as a template to build the structures of the rest molecules used in the study. The CoMFA model gave statistically significant results with r(cv)(2) and r(ncv)(2) values of 0.654 and 0.951, respectively. The combination of steric, electrostatic and hydrophobic fields resulted in the best CoMSIA model with r(cv)(2) and r(ncv)(2) values of 0.669 and 0.907, respectively. The predictive abilities of the CoMFA and CoMSIA models were also evaluated using test compounds which gave r(pred)(2) values of 0.735 and 0.557, respectively. The results of bootstrapping analyses also confirmed that the generated models are robust and reliable. The models were graphically interpreted using CoMFA and CoMSIA contour plots. The structural regions responsible for the differences in anti-plasmodial activities were analyzed with respect to their electrostatic, steric and hydrophobic nature. The results obtained from this study could be used for rational design of potent inhibitors against A16V + S108T mutant PfDHFR enzyme. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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


DNA screening, pooling design and simplicial complex Pooling designs are used for DNA library screening. In this paper, we present a construction of pooling design with simplicial complex and establish some general results on the construction.

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

dna screening
pooling design
simplicial complex


semiautomatic evaluation of retrieval systems using document similarities Semiautomatic evaluation of retrieval systems using document similarities.

information retrieval
test collections
clustering


Esophageal disease and pathology The following on esophageal disease and pathology contains commentaries on the varied definitions of Barrett's esophagus (BE); the optimal biopsy strategy in BE; reliable biomarkers for progression to neoplasia in BE; and the role of bone marrow stem cells in the morphogenesis of Barrett's esophagus.

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

stem cells
biopsy strategy
progression
bone marrow

barrett's esophagus
goblet cells
practice guidelines
dysplasia
early detection research network
aneuploidy
p53
metaplasia
cancer stimulating cells


UNIT COMMITMENT WITH SECURITY ASSESSMENT USING CHAOTIC PSO ALGORITHM This paper proposes solving short-term unit commitment (UC) problems with security constraints by hybrid chaotic particle swarm optimization (CPSO). The objective of security-constrained UC (SC-UC) is to minimize the total generation cost, which is the sum of both transition cost and production cost of the scheduled combination units. The proposed CPSO method, which involves the chaotic map and the chaotic turbulence, can avoid premature convergence of PSO and escape local minima. Moreover, the proposed hybrid CPSO method has the ability of solving both the continuous and the discrete optimal programming problems. Two power systems are demonstrated for verifying the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method in solving SC-UC problems with constraints of a nonlinear generator and operation security assessment taken into consideration. The simulation results show that the proposed CPSO-based SC-UC method is indeed capable of obtaining efficiently high-quality UC solutions and enhancing the system security of UC operation.

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

unit commitment
particle swarm optimization
chaotic map


Joule expansion imaging techniques on microlectronic devices We have studied the electrically induced off-plane surface displacement on two microelectronic devices using scanning Joule expansion microscopy (SJEM). We present the experimental method and surface displacement results. We show that they can be successfully compared with surface displacement images obtained using an optical interferometry method. We also present thermal images using scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) technique to underline that SJEM is more adapted to higher frequency measurements. The performances of the three methods are compared.

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

microelectronic devices
joule expansion
displacement


On the impact of QoS-sensitivity on correlation structures This paper assesses the feasibility of detecting the existence of network users who are dissatisfied with degradations in quality-of-service (QoS) through traffic data analysis. The dynamics of the number of streams on a link are described using a Markov chain, including human user actions of canceling data transfers in congestion. The correlation length, the time until the autocorrelation function drops to a specified value, is mathematically expressed. Numerical results show that the cancellations considerably decrease the ratio of two correlation lengths measured at different traffic loads under three conditions. First, the link capacity is small and/or every stream consumes a large amount of bandwidth. Second, the maximum number of data streams is large. Third, the stream lifetime is at least 10 times longer than the human response time.

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


A single-item economic lot-sizing problem with a non-uniform resource: Approximation We study a generalization of the classical single-item capacitated economic lot-sizing problem to the case of a non-uniform resource usage for production. The general problem and several special cases are shown to be non-approximable with any polynomially computable relative error in polynomial time. An optimal dynamic programming algorithm and its approximate modification are presented for the general problem. Fully polynomial time approximation schemes are developed for two NP-hard special cases: (1) cost functions of total production are separable and holding and backlogging cost functions are linear with polynomially related slopes, and (2) all holding costs are equal to zero.

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

fully polynomial time approximation scheme


Modelling and control of an industrial PVC suspension polymerization reactor The modelling, parameter estimation and controllability analysis of an industrial batch PVC suspension polymerization reactor is described. A mathematical model is developed. in which the parameters of a simplified reactor kinetics expression are fitted using plant data. The resulting model can accurately predict the impact of initiator loading and coolant temperature on the operability of the reactor.

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

pvc suspension polymerization
controllability
parameter estimation

exothermic batch reactor control
disturbance rejection


A meshfree interpolation method for the numerical solution of the coupled nonlinear partial differential equations This paper formulates a simple classical radial basis functions (RBFs) collocation (Kansa) method for the numerical solution of the coupled Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equations, coupled Burgers equations, and quasi-nonlinear hyperbolic equations. Contrary to the mesh oriented methods such as the finite-difference and finite element methods, the new technique does not require mesh to discretize the problem domain, and a set of scattered nodes provided by initial data is required for realization of solution of the problem. Accuracy of the method is assessed in terms of the error norms L2,L? L 2 , L ? , number of nodes in the domain of influence, time step length, parameter free and parameter dependent RBFs. Numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the method for the three classes of partial differential equations (PDEs).

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

coupled kdv equations
nonlinear hyperbolic system
multiquadric (mq)
quintics


Modeling T cell receptor recognition of CD1-lipid and MR1-metabolite complexes T cell receptors (TCRs) can recognize diverse lipid and metabolite antigens presented by MHC-like molecules CD1 and MR1, and the molecular basis of many of these interactions has not been determined. Here we applied our protein docking algorithm TCRFlexDock, previously developed to perform docking of TCRs to peptide-MHC (pMHC) molecules, to predict the binding of ?? and ?? TCRs to CD1 and MR1, starting with the structures of the unbound molecules.

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


Student use of Facebook for organizing collaborative classroom activities Social network sites such as Facebook are often conceived of as purely social spaces; however, as these sites have evolved, so have the ways in which students are using them. In this study, we examine how undergraduate students use the social network site Facebook to engage in classroom-related collaborative activities (e.g., arranging study groups, learning about course processes) to show how Facebook may be used as an informal tool that students use to organize their classroom experiences, and explore the factors that predict type of use. Data from two surveys (N?=?302, N?=?214) are used to analyze how Facebook use, social and psychological factors, self-efficacy, and types of instructor-student communication on Facebook are related to positive and negative collaboration among students. We found that predictors of Facebook use for class organizing behaviors include self-efficacy and perceived motivation to communicate with others using the site. When placed in the context of social and psychological factors, Facebook intensity did not predict either positive or negative collaboration, suggesting that how students used the site, rather than how often they used the tool or how important they felt it was, affected their propensity to collaborate.

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


The meshless regular hybrid boundary node method for 2D linear elasticity The meshless Regular Hybrid Boundary Node Method (RHBNM) is a promising method for solving boundary value problems, and is further developed and numerically implemented for 2D linear elasticity in this paper. The present method is based on a modified functional and the Moving Least Squares (MLS) approximation, and exploits the meshless attributes of the MLS and the reduced dimensionality advantages of the BEM. As a result, the RHBNM is truly meshless, i.e. it only requires nodes constructed on the surface, and absolutely no cells are needed either for interpolation of the solution variables or for the boundary integration. All integrals can be easily evaluated over regular shaped domains and their boundaries. Numerical examples show that the high convergence rates with mesh refinement and the high accuracy with a small node number is achievable. The treatment of singularities and further integrations required for the computation of the unknown domain variables, as in the conventional BEM, can be avoided.

O B O B I I I O O O O O B 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 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 O O O O O O O O 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 wavelet-based method for extracting intermittent discontinuities observed in human motor behavior Human motor behavior often shows intermittent discontinuities even when people try to follow a continuously moving target. Although most previous studies revealed common characteristics of this motor intermittency using frequency analysis, this technique is not always appropriate because the nature of the intermittency is not stationary, i.e., the temporal intervals between the discontinuities may vary irregularly. In the present paper, we propose a novel method for extracting intermittent discontinuities using a continuous wavelet transform (CWT). This method is equivalent to the detection of peak of the jerk profile in principle, but it successfully and stably detects discontinuities using the amplitude and phase information of the complex wavelet transform. More specifically, the singularity point on the time-scale plane plays a key role in detecting the discontinuities. Another important feature is that the proposed method does not require parameter tuning because it is based on the nature of hand movement. In addition, this method does not contain any optimization process, which avoids explosive increase in computational cost for long time-series data. The performance of the proposed method was examined using an artificial trajectory composed of several primitive movements, and an actual hand trajectory in a continuous target-tracking task. The functional rationale of the proposed method is discussed.

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

motor intermittency
intermittent discontinuities

sub-movement
wavelet analysis
discontinuity detection


Path inequalities for the vehicle routing problem with time windows In this paper we introduce a new formulation of the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) involving only binary variables. The new formulation is based on the formulation of the asymmetric traveling salesman problem with time windows by Ascheuer et al. (Networks 36 (2000) 69-79) and has the advantage of avoiding additional variables and linking constraints. In the new formulation, time windows are modeled using path inequalities that eliminate time and capacity infeasible paths. We present a new class of strengthened path inequalities based on the polyhedral results obtained by Mak (Ph.D. Thesis, 2001) for a variant of the TSP. We study the VRPTW polytope and determine its dimension. We show that the lifted path inequalities are facet defining under certain assumptions. We also introduce precedence constraints in the context of the VRPTW. Computational experiments are performed with a branch and cut algorithm on the Solomon test problems with wide time windows. Based on results on 25-node problems, the outcome is promising compared to leading algorithms in the literature. In particular, we report a solution to a previously unsolved 50-node Solomon test problem R208. The conclusion is therefore that a polyhedral approach to the VRPTW is a viable alternative to the path formulation of Desrochers et al.

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

vehicle routing
time windows
branch and cut


Spike-frequency adaptation: Phenomenological model and experimental tests Spike-frequency adaptation is a common feature of neural dynamics. Here we present a low-dimensional phenomenological model whose parameters can be easily determined from experimental data. We test the model on intracellular recordings from auditory receptor neurons of locusts and demonstrate that the temporal variation of discharge rate is predicted with high accuracy. We relate the model to biophysical descriptions of adaptation in conductance-based models and analyze its implications for neural computation.

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

spike-frequency adaptation
neuron model
signal transmission
locust


Summarizing dynamic Social Tagging Systems We propose a method for summarizing an evolving multi-modal social network. The method offers an accurate overview of entities staying representative in time. We report on experiments with real data from the Bibsonomy social tagging system. Our results show how the method deals with the dynamics of social networks.

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

social network summarization
folksonomy
clustering
tensor-based clustering


Decision-tree induction to detect clinical mastitis with automatic milking This study explored the potential of using decision-tree induction to develop models for the detection of clinical mastitis with automatic milking. Sensor data (including electrical conductivity and colour) of over 711,000 quarter milkings were collected from December 2006 till August 2007 at six Dutch dairy herds milking automatically. Farmer recordings of quarter milkings with visible signs of mastitis were considered as gold standard positive cases (n=97), quarter milkings that were recorded as being visually normal as gold standard negatives (n=339). Randomly chosen quarter milkings that were not visually checked, that were outside a 2-week range before or after a gold standard positive case and that were not manually or automatically separated were added to end up with 3000 gold standard negatives. Decision trees, with varying confidence factors and cost matrices to study their effect on performance characteristics, were developed with the probability of having clinical mastitis for each quarter milking as output. Detection performance of decision trees was estimated using 10-fold cross-validation. Evaluated performance characteristics were the sensitivity and specificity, both calculated at a threshold value of 0.50 for the probability estimate for clinical mastitis. The transformed partial area under the curve was used to summarise the diagnostic ability of decision trees within a specified range of interest (specificity ?97%). Receiver operating characteristic curves visualized all combinations of sensitivity and specificity of decision trees within this range. Results showed that decision trees are easy to interpret when visualised. The lower the confidence factor, the smaller the decision trees: a cost insensitive decision tree with a confidence factor of 0.05 needed only eleven test nodes to classify all 3097 records with a sensitivity of 23.7% and a specificity of 99.2%. The decision tree with default parameter settings showed a transformed partial area under the curve value of 0.6420. By introducing costs for false negative classifications this value increased to 0.6476. At a specificity level of 99%, the decision tree with the highest transformed partial area under the curve value showed a sensitivity of 29.8%. Detection performances of the different decision trees were comparable with those of models currently used by automatic milking systems. As it was possible to achieve these results with the use of a rather simple decision tree algorithm, we believe that decision tree induction shows potential for detecting clinical mastitis with automatic milking.

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

robotic milking
data mining
automatic mastitis detection


Local Greedy Approximation for Scheduling in Multihop Wireless Networks In recent years, there has been a significant amount of work done in developing low-complexity scheduling schemes to achieve high performance in multihop wireless networks. A centralized suboptimal scheduling policy, called Greedy Maximal Scheduling (GMS) is a good candidate because its empirically observed performance is close to optimal in a variety of network settings. However, its distributed realization requires high complexity, which becomes a major obstacle for practical implementation. In this paper, we develop simple distributed greedy algorithms for scheduling in multihop wireless networks. We reduce the complexity by relaxing the global ordering requirement of GMS, up to near zero. Simulation results show that the new algorithms approximate the performance of GMS, and outperform the state-of-the-art distributed scheduling policies.

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

wireless scheduling
distributed system
greedy algorithm


Bloom filter-based workflow management to enable QoS guarantee in wireless sensor networks ? As a popular service composition technology, workflow has been successfully used in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to compose a set of atomic services for service-oriented WSN applications. However, in a resource-constrained WSN, the sensed data is usually inaccurate or even missing, and this affects the normal execution of atomic services and may result in the non-guaranteed workflow QoS. Because the implementation of workflows in WSNs is usually hierarchical, effective workflow management in a WSN should consider both aspects of atomic services and sensor nodes, though this has largely been overlooked in existing research. Hence, a dynamic QoS-oriented, effective and efficient hierarchical workflow management mechanism is necessary. In this paper, we propose a Bloom filter-based hierarchical workflow management model, which coordinates both the atomic service level and the node level for guaranteed workflow QoS. Through constructing the service-level counting Bloom filter (CBF) to maintain the set of normal atomic services, and constructing the node-level Bloom filter (BF) to maintain the set of attribute strings of the current working nodes, an effective and efficient QoS degradation locating can be realized. Furthermore, the corresponding adaptation mechanism for guaranteed QoS is also developed. The case study and experimental evaluations demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach in WSNs.

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

hierarchical workflow management
qos guarantee
bloom filter


Interpolation functions of feedforward neural networks Mathematical essence and structures of the feedforward neural networks are investigated in this paper. The interpolation mechanisms of the feedforward neural networks are explored. For example, the well-known result, namely, that a neural network is an universal approximator, can be concluded naturally from the interpolative representations. Finally, the learning algorithms of the feedforward neural networks are discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

fuzzy neural network
interpolation function
mathematical neuron
mathematical neural network


Image-Based Modeling of Unwrappable Facades In this paper, we propose an unwrappable representation for image-based facade modeling from multiple registered images. An unwrappable facade is represented by the mutually orthogonal baseline and profile. We first reconstruct semidense 3D points from images, then the baseline and profile are extracted from the point cloud to construct the base shape and compose the textures of the building from the images. Through our unwrapping process, the reconstructed 3D points and composed textures are further mapped to an unwrapped space that is parameterized by the baseline and profile. In doing so, the unwrapped space becomes equivalent to the planar space in which planar facade modeling techniques can be used to reconstruct the details of the buildings. Finally, the augmented details can be wrapped back to the original 3D space to generate the final model. This newly introduced unwrappable representation extends the state-of-the-art modeling for planar facades to a more general class of facades. We demonstrate the power of the unwrappable representation with a few examples in which the facade is not planar.

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


modeling noc traffic locality and energy consumption with rent's communication probability distribution In systems on chip, the energy consumed by the Network on Chip (NoC) depends heavily on the network traffic pattern. The higher the communication locality, the lower the energy consumption will be. In this paper, we use the Communication Probability Distribution (CPD) to model communication locality and energy consumption in NoC. Firstly, based on recent results showing that communication patterns of many parallel applications follow Rent's rule, we propose a Rent's rule [6] traffic generator. In this method, the probability of communication between cores is derived directly from Rent's rule, which results in CPDs displaying high locality. Next, we provide a model for predicting NoC energy consumption based on the CPD. The model was tested on two NoC systems and several workloads, including Rent's rule traffic, and obtained accurate results when compared to simulations. The results also show that Rent's rule traffic has lower energy consumption than commonly used synthetic workloads, due to its higher communication locality. Finally, we exploit the tunability of our traffic generator to study applications with different locality, analyzing the impact of the Rent's exponent on energy consumption.

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

communication probability distribution
energy consumption

synthetic traffic generation
rent's rule
networks on chip


Asymptotics for length and trajectory from cumulative chord piecewise-quarties We discuss the problem of estimating the trajectory of a regular curve gamma : [0, T] --> R-n and its length d(gamma) from an ordered sample of interpolation points Q(m) = {gamma(t(0)), gamma(t(1)),....,gamma(t(m))}, with tabular points t(i)'s unknown, coined as interpolation of unparameterized data. The respective convergence orders for estimating gamma and d(gamma) with cumulative chord piecewise-quartics are established for different types of unparameterized data including E-uniform and more-or-less uniform samplings. The latter extends previous results on cumulative chord piecewise-quadratics and piecewise-cubics. As shown herein, further acceleration on convergence orders with cumulative chord piecewise-quartics is achievable only for special samplings (e.g. for epsilon-uniform samplings). On the other hand, convergence rates for more-or-less uniform samplings coincide with those already established for cumulative chord piecewise-cubics. The results are experimentally confirmed to be sharp for m large and n = 2, 3. A good performance of cumulative chord piecewise-quartics extends also to sporadic data (m small) for which our asymptotical analysis does not apply directly.

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

cumulative chord piecewise-quartics
curve and length estimation
orders of approximation


Filtered backprojection algorithm can outperform iterative maximum likelihood expectation-maximization algorithm The iterative maximum-likelihood expectation-maximization (ML-EM) algorithm is an excellent algorithm for image reconstruction and usually provides better images than the filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm. However, a windowed FBP algorithm can outperform the ML-EM in certain occasions, when the least-squared difference from the true image, that is, the least-squared error (LSE), is used as the comparison criterion. Computer simulations were carried out for the two algorithms. For a given data set the best reconstruction (compared to the true image) from each algorithm was first obtained, and the two reconstructions are compared. The stopping iteration number of the ML-EM algorithm and the parameters of the windowed FBP algorithm were determined, so that they produced an image that was closest to the true image. However, to use the LSE criterion to compare algorithms, one must know the true image. How to select the optimal parameters when the true image is unknown is a practical open problem. For noisy Poisson projections, computer simulation results indicate that the ML-EM images are better than the regular FBP images, and the windowed FBP algorithm images are better than the ML-EM images. For the noiseless projections, the FBP algorithms outperform the ML-EM algorithm. The computer simulations reveal that the windowed FBP algorithm can provide a reconstruction that is closer to the true image than the ML-EM algorithm. 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 22, 114120, 2012

B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 reconstruction
filtered backprojection algorithm


Solving the Fm?block?Cmax problem using Bounded Dynamic Programming We present some results attained with two variants of Bounded Dynamic Programming algorithm to solve the Fm|block|Cmax problem using as an experimental data the well-known Taillard instances. We have improved the best known solutions for 17 of Taillard's instances, including the 10 instances from set 12.

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

blocking flow shop
scheduling
production
logistics
meta-heuristics


Development of a robot control method for curved seal extrusion for high productivity in an advanced Toyota production system Recent Japanese enterprises have been promoting global production to realize uniform quality worldwide and production at optimal locations for survival amid severe competition. The authors considered the necessity of including the above method in the strategic application of the Toyota production system (TPS), and clarifi. ed Advanced TPS as the global production by manufacturing technology. In the future, reformation of the production workshops transformed by robotics and IT will be necessary in order to keep the same quality worldwide and production at optimum locations. Thus manufacturing technology had to be improved for mass production by developing the latest robot control methods. So far, the authors have established a robot control method for global production called RCM- EPC. RCM- EPC contains a three- core robot control method with (i) locus and speed control of the external point (-LSC), (ii) simulation for optimizing the operation position (-SOP) and (iii) constant speed control for robot movement (-CSC). Furthermore robots are applied to several applications in order to improve productivity and achieve a high- quality appearance. In particular, the authors here introduce an up- to- date glass- integrated curved seal extrusion (CSE), which is a new technology for use in manufacturing: the automobile- window mole as an example for Toyota - one of the most advanced automotive manufacturing enterprises in the world. With the demonstration of a 50% reduction in manufacturing costs using Advanced TPS, the authors have achieved high productivity and quality assurance in global production.

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

curved seal extrusion (cse)
automobile-window mole


A critique of recently proposed buffer-sizing strategies Internet router buffers are used to accommodate packets that arrive in bursts and to maintain high utilization of the egress link. Such buffers can lead to large queueing delays. Recently, several papers have suggested that it may, under general circumstances, be possible to achieve high utilisation with small network buffers. In this paper we review these recommendations. A number of issues are reported that question the utility of these recommendations.

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

management
measurement
performance
link utilisation
buffer provisioning
tcp


The Homotopy analysis method for soling fuzzy system of linear equations In this paper, the Homotopy analysis method has been applied for solving Fuzzy system of linear equations (FSLE). Comparisons of the results obtained by the Homotopy analysis method (HAM) with that obtained by the Adomian decomposition method (ADM) and Jacobi iterative method suggest that both the ADM and Jacobi iterative method are special case of the HAM. The results reveal that HAM is very simple and effective. The numerical solutions are compared with the known analytical and some numerical solutions.

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

fuzzy system of linear equations
homotopy analysis method
adomian decomposition method


the effect of affective iconic realism on anonymous interactants' self-disclosure In this paper, we describe progress in research designed to explore the effect of the combination of avatars' visual fidelity and users' anticipated future interaction on self-disclosure in emotionally engaged and synchronous communication. We particularly aim at exploring ways to allow users' self-disclosure while securing their anonymity, even with minimal cues of a virtual human, when users anticipate future interaction. The research investigates users' self-disclosure through measuring their behaviors and feelings of social presence in several dimensions. Design and implementation of the stimulus materials and equipments are complete and data collection has begun.

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

anonymity
anticipated future interaction
social presence

contingency
embodied virtual agents
affective behavior
rapport
evaluation
nonverbal feedback
avatar realism
virtual humans
self-disclosure


A One-Layer Recurrent Neural Network for Real-Time Portfolio Optimization With Probability Criterion This paper presents a decision-making model described by a recurrent neural network for dynamic portfolio optimization. The portfolio-optimization problem is first converted into a constrained fractional programming problem. Since the objective function in the programming problem is not convex, the traditional optimization techniques are no longer applicable for solving this problem. Fortunately, the objective function in the fractional programming is pseudoconvex on the feasible region. It leads to a one-layer recurrent neural network modeled by means of a discontinuous dynamic system. To ensure the optimal solutions for portfolio optimization, the convergence of the proposed neural network is analyzed and proved. In fact, the neural network guarantees to get the optimal solutions for portfolio-investment advice if some mild conditions are satisfied. A numerical example with simulation results substantiates the effectiveness and illustrates the characteristics of the proposed neural network.

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

fractional programming
portfolio optimization

lyapunov function
pseudoconvex optimization
recurrent neural networks


emergent ad hoc sensor network connectivity in large-scale disaster zones We introduce a disaster-zone-monitoring web-based application. While using this application, the user may simulate different large-scale disaster zones. He may use tools to define a disaster zone and its communication requirements. The web application uses the Google Earth infrastructure and is publicly available to use online during the conference from every computer connected to the Internet. The evolving deployment of nodes will be updated each second to reflect the current state of the entities residing within the monitored zone. The user will be able to navigate through the disaster zone to inspect the dynamically changed environment, and to learn about node deployment and the current network connectivity and service availability. He could ask the system to find the number of agents required to be deployed and present this deployment. The user also will be able to define the budget limitations. Thus, the system will derive the number of agents, their deployment, and the resulting system utility. Given a system utility, the user can decide whether to adopt the deployment even though it does not guarantee full coverage, or to increase the budget to improve system utility.

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

agent deployment
management of sensor networks


Suppression of PPAR Transactivation Switches Cell Fate of Bone Marrow Stem Cells from Adipocytes into Osteoblasts Osteoblasts and adipocytes differentiate from common pleiotropic mesenchymal stem cells under transcriptional controls by numerous factors and multiple intracellular signalings. However, cellular signaling factors that determine cell fates of mensenchymal stem cells in bone marrow remain to be largely uncovered, though peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-? (PPAR-?) is well established as a prime inducer of adipogenesis. Here, we describe two signaling pathways that induce the cell fate decision into osteoblasts from adipocytes. One signaling is a TAK1/TAB1/NIK cascade activated by TNF-? and IL-1, and the activated NF-?B blocked the DNA binding of PPAR-?, attenuating the activated PPAR-mediated adipogenesis. The second signaling is the noncanonical Wnt pathway through CaMKII-TAK1/TAB2-NLK. Activated NLK by a noncanonical Wnt ligand (Wnt-5a) transrepresses PPAR transactivation through a histone methyltransferase, SETDB1. Wnt-5a induces phosphorylation of NLK, leading to the formation of a corepressor complex that inactivates PPAR function through histone H3-K9 methylation. Thus, two signaling pathways lead to an osteoblastic cell lineage decision from mesenchymal stem cells through two distinct modes of PPAR transrepression

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


Involvement of Sphingosine in Dexamethasone-Induced Thymocyte Apoptosis It is generally accepted that ceramide plays an essential role in apoptosis. In this study we suggest that in thymocytes, dexamethasone-induced apoptosis is mediated by sphingosine rather than ceramide, through the activation of an aSMase and a cerase in a caspase-dependent manner.

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


building adaptive distributed applications with middleware and aspects Middleware technologies allow the development of distributed applications without explicit knowledge of the networking involved. However, in the face of changing network and CPU conditions across the distributed system, these applications often will need to adapt their behavior to maintain an acceptable quality of service (QoS), which implies a knowledge of these conditions. This adaptation is neither part of the application logic nor part of the distribution middleware, and so represents a separate concern which needs to be addressed.This paper describes an aspect-based approach to programming QoS adaptive applications that separates the QoS and adaptation concerns from the functional and distribution concerns. To simplify aspect development for these applications, our approach integrates a domain-specific adaptation specification with a novel aspect language which includes distribution and adaptation-specific join points in its join point model. We compare and contrast this with existing aspect-oriented language approaches and illustrate our approach with an example distributed system application.

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

network point applications model knowledge paper aspect adapt technologies middleware behavior language functional logic distributed

examples
corba
developer
maintainability
distributed application
distributed systems
program
aspect orientation
adaptive quality of service
distributed objects
aspect-oriented programming
quality-of-service


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

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

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


CXCR3, Inflammation, and Autoimmune Diseases CXCR3 is a G proteincoupled, seven-transmembrane receptor that binds and is activated by the three IFN-?-inducible chemokines of the CXC family named CXCL9, CXCL10, and CXCL11. These chemokines are not constitutively expressed but are up-regulated in a proinflammatory cytokine milieu. Consequently, their major function is to selectively recruit immune cells at inflammation sites, but they also play a role in angiogenesis mechanisms. In the last few years, strong experimental and clinical evidence has been obtained supporting the idea that the CXCR3 pathway is involved in the development of autoimmune diseases, especially by creating local amplification loops of inflammation in target organs, thereby inducing worsening of clinical manifestations. This article briefly reviews what we know today about the nature and functions of CXCR3, with special emphasis on its involvement in two main rheumatic systemic autoimmune diseases, namely rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus.

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

ifn-?-induced chemokines
autoimmune disease


A new generalized p-value approach for testing equality of coefficients of variation in k normal populations A new generalized p-value method is proposed for testing the equality of coefficients of variation in k normal populations. Simulation studies show that the type I error probabilities are close to the nominal level. The proposed test is also compared with likelihood ratio test, modified Bennett's test and score test through Monte Carlo simulation, the results demonstrate that the generalized p-value method has satisfactory performance in terms of sizes and powers.

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

equality of coefficients of variation
likelihood ratio test
score test

generalized p-value
modified bennett's test


Inverted nanopyramid texturing for silicon solar cells using interference lithography Inverted nanopyramids were fabricated by interference lithography and KOH etching. The reflectivity of inverted nanopyramids below 10% over visible region. A 67% increase in efficiency was achieved by nanopyramid texturing.

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

inverted pyramid
sub-wavelength texturing
light trapping
anti-reflection


Multi-modal nonmonotonic logics of minimal knowledge In this paper we introduce multi-modal logics of minimal knowledge. Such a family of logics constitutes the first proposal in the field of epistemic nonmonotonic logic in which the three following aspects are simultaneously addressed: (1) the possibility of formalizing multiple agents through multiple modal operators; (2) the possibility of using first-order quantification in the modal language; (3) the possibility of formalizing nonmonotonic reasoning abilities for the agents modeled, based on the principle of minimal knowledge. We illustrate the expressive capabilities of multi-modal logics of minimal knowledge to provide a formal semantics to peer-to-peer data integration systems, which constitute one of the most recent and complex architectures for distributed information systems.

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

nonmonotonic modal logics
multi-modal logics
mknf


Analytical Solution of Covariance Evolution for Irregular LDPC Codes The scaling law developed by Amraoui et al. is a powerful technique to estimate the block erasure probabilities of finite-length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Solving a system of differential equations called covariance evolution, one can obtain the scaling parameter. However, the covariance evolution has not been analytically solved. In this paper, we present the analytical solution of the covariance evolution for irregular LDPC code ensembles.

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

binary erasure channel (bec)
low-density parity-check (ldpc) codes
peeling algorithm (pa)


An architecture to support scalable online personalization on the Web Online personalization is of great interest to e-companies. Virtually all personalization technologies are based on the idea of storing as much historical customer session data as possible. and then querying the data store as customers navigate through a web site. The holy grail of online personalization is an environment where fine-grained, detailed historical session data can be queried based on current online navigation patterns for use in formulating real-time responses. Unfortunately, as more consumers become e-shoppers. the user load and the amount of historical data continue to increase. causing scalability-related problems for almost all current personalization technologies. This paper chronicles the development of a real-time interaction management system through the integration of historical data and online visitation patterns of e-commerce site visitors. It describes the scientific underpinnings of the system as well as its architecture. Experimental evaluation of the system shows that the caching and storage techniques built into the system deliver performance that is orders of magnitude better than those derived from off-the-shelf database components.

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

dynamic look-ahead profile
web site and interaction model
behavior-based personalization
profile caching


associative techniques in the solution of data management problems This paper is concerned with the development of data management systems from an associative point of view. The design utilizes relational set theory applied to information systems. The basic notion involves the mathematical transformation of hierarchical structures of n-ary relations into associative normal form (ANF). This transformation preserves the information content while at the same time allowing the information to be manipulated by an associative memory in a more efficient manner than is possible on a random access memory. Among the advantages that can be realized from this system are the capability of handling many and varied data structures; substantially fewer pointers and directories; a reduction in storage space requirements; and a substantial decrease in query and update time.

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

point
random access
design
reduction
theory
paper
data management
pointers
data structures
systems
space
storage
update
query

efficiency
association
developer
associative processing
associative memories
storage and retrieval
timing
information system
normalization
informal
hierarchic
contention
memorialized
data
relation


a comparative web browser (cwb) for browsing and comparing web pages In this paper, we propose a new type of Web browser, called the Comparative Web Browser(CWB), which concurrently presents multiple Web pages in a way that enables the content of the Web pages to be automatically synchronized. The ability to view multiple Web pages at one time is useful when we wish to make a comparison on the Web, such as when we compare similar products or news articles from different newspapers. The CWB is characterized by (1) automatic content-based retrieval of passages from another Web page based on a passage of the Web page the user is reading, and (2) automatic transformation of a user's behavior (scrolling, clicking, or moving backward or forward) on a Web page into a series of behaviors on the other Web pages. The CWB tries to concurrently present "similar" passages from different Web pages, and for this purpose our CWB automatically navigates Web pages that contain passages similar to those of the initial Web page. Furthermore, we propose an enhancement to the CWB, which enables it to use linkage information to find related documents based on link structure.

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

news
structure
use
web page
web
behavior
forward
comparison
paper
user

content based retrieval
passage retrieval
contention
product
content synchronization
synchronization
scroll
web browser
browse
timing
documentation
read
informal
linking


Emotion encoding and interpretation in computer-mediated communication: Reasons for use As computer-mediated communication (CMC) is increasingly used to build and maintain relationships, the examination of channel choice for the development of these social ties becomes important to study. Using free response data from Riordan and Kreuz (submitted for publication), we examine reasons for choosing among face-to-face, asynchronous email, or synchronous instant message channels to transmit negatively or positively valenced emotional information. The most common reason for choosing face-to-face over channels of CMC was the ability to use more nonverbal cues. The most common reason for choosing a CMC channel over face-to-face was to shield oneself from the message recipient. Face-to-face was deemed more effective, more personal, more comfortable, and less permanent than CMC channels. Reasons differed significantly by valence and channel. We suggest that better knowledge of why people choose certain channels for different types of socio-emotional communication can help develop more comprehensive theories of CMC that account for different attributes of each channel in information transmission.

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 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

computer-mediated
face-to-face
instant messenger


TRACKING OF VORTICAL STRUCTURES IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL DECAYING HOMOGENEOUS ISOTROPIC TURBULENCE Direct numerical simulation of three-dimensional decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence with a resolution of 1283 is carried out using the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). The aim of this paper is to investigate the statistical characteristics of the obtained turbulent flow field and the behavior of the vortical structures. Most of the LBM simulations of decaying turbulence were mainly focused on the statistical results of the velocity field, however the characteristics of the coherent vortices and their time evolution are ignored. In this paper, the statistical properties of the velocity field as well as the extraction and tracking processes of individual vortices are considered. Results show that the present simulation could recover important features of turbulence such as isotropy, skewness, energy spectrum and elongated vortical structures. A vortex ring is identified in the flow field which can be considered as a sign for the existence of vortex rings in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. Forward and reverse tracking of individual vortical structures shows that vortex rings can be generated from the interaction and the overlapping of vortex tubes.

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

lattice boltzmann method
vortical structures


Care-o-bot II - Development of a next generation robotic home assistant Technical aids allow elderly and handicapped people to live independently and supported in their private homes for a longer time. As a contribution to such technological solutions, two demonstrator platforms for a robotic home assistant - called Care-O-bot - were designed and implemented at Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart. Whereas Care-O-bot I is only a mobile platform with a touch screen, Care-O-bot II is additionally equipped with adjustable walking supporters and a manipulator arm. It has the capability to navigate autonomously in indoor environments, be used as an intelligent walking support, and execute manipulation tasks. The control software of Care-O-bot II runs on two industrial PCs and a hand-held control panel. The walking aid module is based on sensors in the walking aid handles and on a dynamic model of conventional walking aids. In "direct mode", the user can move along freely with the robot whereas obstacles are detected and avoided. In "planned mode", he can specify a target and be lead there by the robotic assistant. Autonomous planning and execution of complex manipulation tasks is based on a symbolic planner and environmental information provided in a database. The user input ( graphical and speech input) is transferred to the task planner and adequate actions to solve the task ( sequence of motion and manipulation commands) are created. A new method for sensor based manipulation using a tilting laser scanner and camera integrated in the head of the robot has been implemented. Additional sensors in the robot hand increase the grasping capabilities. The walking aid has been tested with elderly users from an assisted living facility and a nursery home. Furthermore, the execution of fetch and carry tasks has been implemented and tested in a sample home environment.

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

robotic home assistant
walking aid
fetch and carry tasks

service robot
path planning
path modification
object manipulation
user interface
task planning


T-S fuzzy model adopted SLAM algorithm with linear programming based data association for mobile robots This paper describes a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model adopted solution to the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem with two-sensor data association (TSDA) method. Nonlinear process model and observation model are formulated as pseudolinear models and rewritten with a composite model whose local models are linear according to T-S fuzzy model. Combination of these local state estimates results in global state estimate. This paper introduces an extended TSDA (ETSDA) method for the SLAM problem in mobile robot navigation based on an interior point linear programming (LP) approach. Simulation results are given to demonstrate that the ETSDA method has low computational complexity and it is more accurate than the existing single-scan joint probabilistic data association method. The above system is implemented and simulated with Matlab to claim that the proposed method yet finds a better solution to the SLAM problem than the conventional extended Kalman filter-SLAM algorithm.

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

simultaneous localization and mapping
data association

pseudolinear model
fuzzy kalman filtering
t-s fuzzy model


Predicting web user behavior using learning-based ant colony optimization An ant colony optimization-based algorithm to predict web usage patterns is presented. Our methodology incorporates multiple data sources, such as web content and structure, as well as web usage. The model is based on a continuous learning strategy based on previous usage in which artificial ants try to fit their sessions with real usage through the modification of a text preference vector. Subsequently, trained ants are released onto a new web graph and the new artificial sessions are compared with real sessions, previously captured via web log processing. The main results of this work are related to an effective prediction of the aggregated patterns of real usage, reaching approximately 80%. In the second place, this approach allows the obtaining of a quantitative representation of the keywords that influence the navigational sessions.

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

web usage mining
multi-agent simulation
text preferences


On the complexity of the resolvent representation of some prime differential ideals We prove upper bounds on the order and degree of the polynomials involved in a resolvent representation of the prime differential ideal associated with a polynomial differential system for a particular class of ordinary first order algebraic-differential equations arising in control theory. We also exhibit a probabilistic algorithm which computes this resolvent representation within time polynomial in the natural syntactic parameters and the degree of a certain algebraic variety related to the input system. In addition, we give a probabilistic polynomial-time algorithm for the computation of the differential Hilbert function of the ideal. (C) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

resolvent representation
differential hilbert function

differential algebra
elimination theory
probabilistic algorithms
straight-line programs


e-Government process and incentives for online public financial information Purpose - The aim of this paper is to examine the extent of financial information made available by public administrations on their web sites and to discover whether this communications policy is influenced by the context in which the public entity operates. Design/methodology/approach - The study took as its reference the prior literature and distinguished three dimensions - information content, qualitative characteristics of information and accessibility - which were converted into a disclosure index that was used to assess government web sites. A multivariable linear regression analysis was performed in search of a relationship between seven external factors and the provision of public financial information online. Findings - The empirical research revealed that the sample municipalities were not fully aware of the potential importance of the internet in enabling the achievement of e-democracy initiatives as a tool of new public management. The factors previously found to-be important in paper-based reporting seem to have no influence on the public disclosure of financial information on the internet. Only the cost of debt and access to the internet in households seem to be relevant factors in the degree of financial information transparency achieved via the internet. Practical implications - The good practices by greater online public financial transparency could improve the image of governments and the confidence of citizens. Originality/value - This paper tries to encourage a benchmarking process disseminating best practices in online government financial information and identifying the key variables that promote this process.

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

democracy
incentives (psychology)
best practice
online operations
spain


KCRC-LCD: Discriminative kernel collaborative representation with locality constrained dictionary for visual categorization Propose a generalized KCRC-LCD framework with good performance and scalability. LCD can be nicely incorporated under the framework of KCRC through kernelization. A unified similarity measurement framework is considered to reduce metric biases. Conducted comprehensive experiments and analysis. The proposed framework is comparable or outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

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

crc collaborative representation classification

kcrc kernel collaborative representation classification

kcrc-lcd crc with locality constrained dictionary

kcrc-lcd kcrc with locality constrained dictionary

src sparse representation-based classification

ksrc kernel sparse representation-based classification

kpca kernel principle component analysis

kfda kernel fisher discriminant analysis

kcrc-identity kcrc with no dimensionality reduction

kcrc-kpca kcrc with kpca dimensionality reduction

crc-rls crc with regularized least square

kcrc-rls kernel crc with regularized least square


Finite element free flexural vibration analysis of arbitrary plates In the analysis of plates with arbitrary geometry, the isoparametric element is widely used because of its capability to model an arbitrary geometry successfully. But the isoparametric element tends to suffer from the problem of shear locking when applied to very thin plates which are common to many practical structures. Though techniques such as reduced integration or selective integration are used to avoid this effect, they do not necessarily guarantee the solution to the problem and they may lead to the generation of zero energy spurious mechanisms. In this paper a new approach for the analysis of plates of arbitrary shapes is used which successfully models the arbitrary shape of the plate like isoparametric element. But in this new element as the shear deformation is ignored by using Kirchhoff plate element all the above discrepancies inherent in the isoparametric element are completely avoided. Thus is developed for the first time a rectangular element through which a Kirchhoff plate of any arbitrary shape can be analysed.

B I 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 B I O O O 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

finite element
kirchhoff plate
free flexural vibration

curved boundary
mapping
coordinate transformation


moving from mailing lists to web-based discussion forums We report on some of our experience in using the WEB to promote the communication between students and teachers, focusing on the ongoing migration from mailing lists to Web-based discussion forums in our Department.

O O B I O O O O O O 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


Performance of structureequipment systems with a novel roll-n-cage isolation bearing In this the paper, the problem of mitigating the seismic response of sensitive equipments housed in building structures is addressed by isolating the structure with an innovative device referred to as roll-n-cage isolator. The device is described, characterized and represented by a hysteretic semi-physical mathematical model. A numerical performance assessment is performed by implementing the isolator in a building structure housing equipment in upper floors where accelerations are amplified and motions contain strong components at long periods. The numerical results show that the proposed isolator is efficient in substantially attenuating the structureequipment response under a wide variety of actual earthquakes while exhibiting robust performance for a wide range of structures.

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

base isolation
equipment isolation
roll-n-cage isolator
hysteresis
boucwen model
structureequipment seismic response


recognizing substrings of lr(k) languages in linear time LR parsing techniques have long been studied as efficient and powerful methods for processing context free languages. A linear time algorithm for recognizing languages representable by LR( k ) grammars has long been known. Recognizing substrings of a context-free language is at least as hard as recognizing full strings of the language, as the latter problem easily reduces to the former. In this paper we present a linear time algorithm for recognizing substrings of LR( k ) languages, thus showing that the substring recognition problem for these languages is no harder than the full string recognition problem. An interesting data structure, the Forest Structured Stack, allows the algorithm to track all possible parses of a substring without loosing the efficiency of the original LR parser. We present the algorithm, prove its correctness, analyze its complexity, and mention several applications that have been constructed.

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 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 Meta-Scheduler for the Par-Monad Composable Scheduling for the Heterogeneous Cloud Modern parallel computing hardware demands increasingly specialized attention to the details of scheduling and load balancing across heterogeneous execution resources that may include GPU and cloud environments, in addition to traditional CPUs. Many existing solutions address the challenges of particular resources, but do so in isolation, and in general do not compose within larger systems. We propose a general, composable abstraction for execution resources, along with a continuation-based meta-scheduler that harnesses those resources in the context of a deterministic parallel programming library for Haskell. We demonstrate performance benefits of combined CPU/GPU scheduling over either alone, and of combined multithreaded/distributed scheduling over existing distributed programming approaches for Haskell.

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

design languages work-stealing composability


Integrated Learning On the surface, higher education has served the nation well. An increasing percentage of adults have attended college. Information is widely and freely available to most citizens; the economy is steady; and technological developments appear to offer ever-increasing improvements in the quality of life. Looking just beneath the surface, though, one realizes that knowledge is fragmented, access to knowledge is not universal, and there are no guarantees that past successes will sustain the future. Thus, it is worth examining how higher learning has contributed to the general prosperity and how education might evolve to address society's evident problems. This essay discusses the core approach of liberal arts in the context of the valueand obstaclesof integration across the traditional disciplines. Critical to the natural sciences is a firm grounding in the central importance of rigorous evidence, while the humanities keep us rooted in the importance of human values. Seeking linkages and connections between these realms is the lively challenge of this conference. The details of curricular design will be of less interest at this juncture than locating the critical issues and discussing how education might serve the goal of unifying knowledge and learning.

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

integrated learning
higher education
liberal arts


Approximated CramrRao bound for estimating the mixing matrix in the two-sensor noisy Sparse Component Analysis (SCA) ? In this paper, we address theoretical limitations in estimating the mixing matrix in noisy Sparse Component Analysis (SCA) in the two-sensor case. We obtain the CramrRao Bound (CRB) error estimation of the mixing matrix based on the observation vector x=(x1,x2)T x = ( x 1 , x 2 ) T . Using the BernoulliGaussian (BG) sparse distribution for sources, and some reasonable approximations, the Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) is approximated by a diagonal matrix. Then, the effect of off-diagonal terms in computing the CRB is investigated. Moreover, we compute an oracle CRB versus the blind uniform CRB and show that this is only 3 dB better than the blind uniform CRB. Finally, the CRB, the approximated CRB, the uniform CRB and the oracle CRB are compared to each other and to some of the main mixing matrix estimation methods in the literature. Simulation results show that the approximated CRB is close to the CRB for high SNR?s. They also show that the approximated CRB is approximately equal to the oracle CRB.

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

sparse component analysis
mixing matrix estimation
cramrrao bound


Algorithm 872: Parallel 2D constrained Delaunay mesh generation Delaunay refinement is a widely used method for the construction of guaranteed quality triangular and tetrahedral meshes. We present an algorithm and a software for the parallel constrained Delaunay mesh generation in two dimensions. Our approach is based on the decomposition of the original mesh generation problem into N smaller subproblems which are meshed in parallel. The parallel algorithm is asynchronous with small messages which can be aggregated and exhibits low communication costs. On a heterogeneous cluster of more than 100 processors our implementation can generate over one billion triangles in less than 3 minutes, while the single-node performance is comparable to that of the fastest to our knowledge sequential guaranteed quality Delaunay meshing library (the Triangle).

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

algorithms
design
theory
delaunay triangulation
parallel refinement