Eliciting security requirements and tracing them to design: an integration of Common Criteria, heuristics, and UMLsec Building secure systems is difficult for many reasons. This paper deals with two of the main challenges: (i) the lack of security expertise in development teams and (ii) the inadequacy of existing methodologies to support developers who are not security experts. The security standard ISO 14508 Common Criteria (CC) together with secure design techniques such as UMLsec can provide the security expertise, knowledge, and guidelines that are needed. However, security expertise and guidelines are not stated explicitly in the CC. They are rather phrased in security domain terminology and difficult to understand for developers. This means that some general security and secure design expertise are required to fully take advantage of the CC and UMLsec. In addition, there is the problem of tracing security requirements and objectives into solution design, which is needed for proof of requirements fulfilment. This paper describes a security requirements engineering methodology called SecReq. SecReq combines three techniques: the CC, the heuristic requirements editor HeRA, and UMLsec. SecReq makes systematic use of the security engineering knowledge contained in the CC and UMLsec, as well as security-related heuristics in the HeRA tool. The integrated SecReq method supports early detection of security-related issues (HeRA), their systematic refinement guided by the CC, and the ability to trace security requirements into UML design models. A feedback loop helps reusing experience within SecReq and turns the approach into an iterative process for the secure system life-cycle, also in the presence of system evolution.

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

security requirement elicitation
common criteria (cc)


Stochastic amplification of calcium-activated potassium currents in Ca2+ microdomains Small conductance (SK) calcium-activated potassium channels are found in many tissues throughout the body and open in response to elevations in intracellular calcium. In hippocampal neurons, SK channels are spatially co-localized with L-Type calcium channels. Due to the restriction of calcium transients into microdomains, only a limited number of L-Type Ca2+ channels can activate SK and, thus, stochastic gating becomes relevant. Using a stochastic model with calcium microdomains, we predict that intracellular Ca2+ fluctuations resulting from Ca2+ channel gating can increase SK2 subthreshold activity by 12 orders of magnitude. This effectively reduces the value of the Hill coefficient. To explain the underlying mechanism, we show how short, high-amplitude calcium pulses associated with stochastic gating of calcium channels are much more effective at activating SK2 channels than the steady calcium signal produced by a deterministic simulation. This stochastic amplification results from two factors: first, a supralinear rise in the SK2 channels steady-state activation curve at low calcium levels and, second, a momentary reduction in the channels time constant during the calcium pulse, causing the channel to approach its steady-state activation value much faster than it decays. Stochastic amplification can potentially explain subthreshold SK2 activation in unified models of both sub- and suprathreshold regimes. Furthermore, we expect it to be a general phenomenon relevant to many proteins that are activated nonlinearly by stochastic ligand release.

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

stochastic
sk2
hill coefficient
subthreshold

calcium-activated potassium
microdomain
noise


concepts of high-level-language computer architecture High-level-language (HLL) computer architecture refers to those architecture which can accept one or more high-level languages (such as Fortran, Alogl, Snobol, etc.). This paper classifies the HLL computer architecture into four types (von Neumann architecture, syntax-oriented architecture, indirect execution architecture, and direct execution architecture) based on the criterion of proximity in lexicality, syntax and semantics between the high-level language and the machine language. It then introduces concepts of these high-level-language architecture. A simple example is employed to illustrate the differences among these four types of architecture.

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

direct paper architecture language types

concept examples semantic proximics computation


Vector mixed quasi complementarity problems in Banach spaces In this paper, we introduce a new class of set-valued vector implicit quasi complementarity problems with corresponding set-valued implicit quasi variational inequality problems. By means of the Fan-KKM theorem, we investigate the nonemptiness and compactness of solution sets of these problems. Our work generalizes and improves some results appeared recently in the literature. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

convex cone
quasi complementarity problem
process mapping


Understanding users initial trust in mobile banking: An elaboration likelihood perspective Due to the high perceived risk, building users initial trust is crucial to facilitating their adoption and usage of mobile banking. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this research examined users initial trust in mobile banking. The results indicated that initial trust develops along a dual route including the central route and peripheral route. Self-efficacy as the elaboration likelihood moderates the effects of central cues and peripheral cues on initial trust. Central cues include information quality and service quality, whereas peripheral cues include system quality, structural assurance and reputation. The results imply that service providers need to employ differentiated strategies to build users initial trust in mobile banking.

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

initial trust
mobile banking
elaboration likelihood model


Axiomatic characterizations of threshold choice functions for comparison functions In this paper we characterize the threshold choice functions associated with comparison functions (= reciprocal fuzzy relations), a special of which is the Orlovsky choice function (with threshold 1/2). Our family of threshold choice functions is somewhat larger than the family of choice functions which select only those alternatives that secure a certain pre-specified proportion of the votes against all other alternatives. Our family of threshold choice functions also include ones which select only those alternatives that exceed a certain pre-specified proportion of the votes against all other alternatives. This is the price we pay for omitting continuity from our axiomatic characterizations. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

decision analysis
multiple criteria evaluation
group decision-making


Remarks on environmental data archives and their use in monitoring the US/Mexican border area Lo Presti and O'Brien described the use and limitations of the EPA's toxic release inventory data in monitoring the US Mexican border area. Efforts like theirs are critical in assessing the environmental impact of industrialization along the border. Their report serves as a model for archive-based environmental studies of other geographic regions.

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


MRI brain image segmentation by multi-resolution edge detection and region selection Combining both spatial and intensity information in image, we present an MRI brain image segmentation approach based on multi-resolution edge detection, region selection, and intensity threshold methods. The detection of white matter structure in brain is emphasized in this paper. First, a multi-resolution brain image representation and segmentation procedure based on a multi-scale image filtering method is presented. Given the nature of the structural connectivity and intensity homogeneity of brain tissues, region-based methods such as region growing and subtraction to segment the brain tissue structure from the multi-resolution images are utilized. From the segmented structure, the region-of-interest (ROI) image in the structure region is derived, and then a modified segmentation of the ROI based on an automatic threshold method using our threshold selection criterion is presented. Examples on both T1 and T2 weighted MRI brain image segmentation is presented, showing finer brain tissue structures.

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

multi-resolution edge detection
multi-scale filtering
region-growing


Parallel predictor-corrector methods for the solution of ordinary differential equations. II This work presents parallel multistep methods for the solution of ordinary differential equations. The characteristic of parallel computing is that there is a "front" and the computation at points ahead of the front depends only on information behind it. This requires a resetting of serial algorithms and may also lead to numerical errors and instabilities. The analysis of positive and negative aspects of parallel computing is the subject of this paper. Some of the methods presented below are uncommon in the literature on mathematical computing. Others have been elaborated for this study on the basis of the traditional Adams-Bashforth multistep methods. A performance comparison of the methods is made by numerical testing in molecular dynamics calculations. The increase of the number of processors m appears to seriously deteriorate the stability of the calculations and the use of m larger than 2 seems impractical.

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


Narrowing the expectation gap of construction information technologies between academic preparation and industrial needs As university educators teaching in construction techniques and information technologies (ITs), it is our responsibility to ensure that construction schools share a vision with potential employers of our graduates an what construction IT knowledge and skills are required in the near future. Specifically, construction schools need to address such issues in designing curricula for construction related teaching programs. A survey conducted in Hong Kong that sought to investigate the perceived expectation gap of construction IT skills/knowledge between academic preparation and industrial needs is presented. The results of the survey are analyzed and examined to reveal the deficiencies of current construction IT education in Hong Kong. Recommendations for improving the quality of construction IT teaching are proposed. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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


Spatial histograms of soft pairwise similar patches to improve the bag-of-visual-words model ? A new approach to improve image representation for category level classification. We encode pairwise relative spatial information of patches in the bag of word model. A simple approach complementary to the Spatial Pyramid Representation (SPR). Can be combined with SPR and outperforms other existing spatial methods. Experimental validation of the approach is shown on 5 challenging datasets.

O O O O O 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

object classification
angle and distance histograms
bag-of-words


Permanent oscillations in a 3-node recurrent neural network model In this paper we discuss the existence of oscillations in a specific recurrent neural network: the 3-node network with two weight parameters and one time delay. Simple and practical criteria for fixing the range of the parameters in this network model are derived. Computer simulations are used to show typical patterns and to point out that these criteria are only sufficient conditions for such oscillations to happen.

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

recurrent neural networks
time delays
3-node networks


Interval ordered information systems Interval information systems are generalized models of single-valued information systems. By introducing a dominance relation to interval information systems, we propose a ranking approach for all objects based on dominance classes and establish a dominance-based rough set approach, which is mainly based on substitution of the indiscernibility relation by the dominance relation. Furthermore, we discuss interval ordered decision tables and dominance rules. To simplify knowledge representation and extract much simpler dominance rules, we propose attribute reductions of interval ordered information systems and decision tables that eliminate only the information that are not essential from the viewpoint of the ordering of objects or dominance rules. The approaches show how to simplify an interval ordered information system and find dominance rules directly from an interval ordered decision table. These results will be helpful for decision-making analysis in interval information systems.

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

interval information systems
dominance relation

interval decision tables
rough sets
attribute reduction


A semi-continuous version of the Berger-Yeung problem We present a continuous dual of multiterminal source encoding with one distortion criterion (the "Berger-Yeung problem"), A continuous source X is encoded with "high resolution" (D-x --> O), with the aid of a "helper," i.e., a correlated discrete or continuous source II, that is encoded separately subject to some arbitrary distortion criterion D-y, We find the asymptotic form of the set of achievable coding rates R(D-x, D-y) of the Sand Y-encoders as D-x --> 0. Two extreme cases of our result provide high-resolution interpretations to the classical work of Wyner, Ahlswede, Korner, and Ziv on source coding with side information.

O O O O O O O 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 B I

berger-yeung problem
multiterminal source coding
shannon lower bound
wyner-ziv problem


Measuring bidirectional texture reflectance with a kaleidoscope We describe a new technique for measuring the bidirectional texture function (BTF) of a surface that requires no mechanical movement, can measure surfaces in situ under arbitrary lighting conditions, and can be made small, portable and inexpensive. The enabling innovation is the use of a tapered kaleidoscope, which allows a camera to view the same surface sample simultaneously from many directions. Similarly, the surface can be simultaneously illuminated from many directions, using only a single structured light source. We describe the techniques of construction and measurement, and we show experimental results.

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

brdf
reflection models
image-based rendering
realistic image synthesis


Finding Usability and Communicability Problems for Transactional Web Applications Today the amount of web applications has grown exponentially and the number of both novice and experienced users decided to experiment with these applications has increased. However, there has been a large increase in problems when the user interacts with those applications. Therefore, a study was made in order to ensure the quality of web applications. To achieve this, a usability methodology for transactional web applications was applied first, where a considerable number of problems identified by Nielsen principles were found and we applied the communicability methods SIM (Semiotic Inspection Method) and CEM (Communicability Assessment Method). During this research two web applications were tested, we found out that there is an association with usability problems, where the 68% to 72% of these problems are about communicability, which turn to be the most serious problems. This shows how difficult is for the designer to interact with the user and vice versa.

O B 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 B 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 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 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

usability
semiotic inspection method
transactional web applications


dynamic variables Most programming languages use static scope rules for associating uses of identifiers with their declarations. Static scope helps catch errors at compile time, and it can be implemented efficiently. Some popular languagesPerl, Tel, TeX, and Postscriptoffer dynamic scope, because dynamic scope works well for variables that customize the execution environment, for example. Programmers must simulate dynamic scope to implement this kind of usage in statically scoped languages. This paper describes the design and implementation of imperative language constructs for introducing and referencing dynamically scoped variablesdynamic variables for short. The design is a minimalist one, because dynamic variables are best used sparingly, much like exceptions. The facility does, however, cater to the typical uses for dynamic scope, and it provides a cleaner mechanism for so-called thread-local variables. A particularly simple implementation suffices for languages without exception handling. For languages with exception handling, a more efficient implementation builds on existing compiler infrastructure. Exception handling can be viewed as a control construct with dynamic scope. Likewise, dynamic variables are a data construct with dynamic scope.

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

use
exception handling
dynamic
language
design
implementation
data
infrastructure
paper
errors
control
rules

thread
variability
efficiency
examples
environments
compilation
exception
timing
locality
programmer
programming language
identifiability


QUANTUM FINGERPRINTS THAT KEEP SECRETS We introduce a new type of cryptographic primitive that we call a hiding fingerprinting scheme. A (quantum) fingerprinting scheme maps a binary string of length n to d (qu)bits, typically d << n, such that given any string y and a fingerprint of x, one can decide with high accuracy whether x = y. It can be seen that a classical fingerprint of x that guarantees error <= epsilon necessarily reveals Omega(min {n, log(1/epsilon)}) bits of information about x. We call a scheme hiding if it reveals o(min {n, log(1/epsilon)}) bits; accordingly, no classical scheme is hiding. We construct quantum hiding fingerprinting schemes. Our schemes are computationally efficient and their hiding properties are shown to be optimal.

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

quantum information
communication complexity
accessible information


Integrated development environment for knowledge-based systems and its practical application The modeling of an application domain and its specific knowledge description language are important for developing knowledge-based systems. A rapid-prototyping approach is suitable for such developments since in this approach the modeling and language development are processed simultaneously. However, programming languages and their supporting environments which are usually used for prototyping are not necessarily adequate for developing practical applications. We have been developing an integrated development environment for knowledge-based systems, which supports all the development phases from the early prototyping phase to final commercial development phase. The environment called INSIDE is based on a Prolog abstract machine, and provides all of the functions required for the development of practical applications in addition to the standard Prolog features. This enables the development of both prototypes and practical applications in the same environment. Moreover, their efficient development and maintenance can be achieved. In addition, the effectiveness of INSIDE is described by examples of its practical application.

O B I 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 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 B I

development environment
practical application
knowledge description language


Adaptive backstepping Elman-based neural control for unknown nonlinear systems This paper proposes an Elman-based self-organizing RBF neural network (ESRNN) which is a recurrent multilayered neural network, thus the ESRNN can handle the dynamic response. The ESRNN starts without any hidden neurons and all the hidden neurons are generated and learning online through a simultaneous structure and parameter learning via the Mahalanobis distance approach. Furthermore, an adaptive backstepping Elman-based neural control (ABENC) system which is composed of a computation controller and a switching controller is proposed. In this approach, the ESRNN is used to online approximate the unknown nonlinear system dynamics based on a Lyapunov function, so that system stability can be guaranteed. The switching controller is designed to eliminate the effect of the approximation error introduced by the ESRNN upon system stability. Finally, to effectively demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ABENC scheme, a chaotic system and an inverted pendulum are applied as example studies. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ABENC system can achieve favorable control performance after the structure and parameter learning of the ESRNN.

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

neural control
chaotic system
inverted pendulum

elman neural network
self-organizing neural network


analysis of abet accreditation as a software process The ABET assessment process is highly complex and is emphasizes the use of assessment to improve programs. Since the process is complex, it has a considerable overhead. This paper will present some models for estimating the added overhead of such assessment. The models can be used to help determine if any other activities must be curtailed because of the increased overhead of assessment. The models suggest which categories of colleges and universities will be affected most adversely by the overhead of the ABET accreditation process.

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


Virtual memory window for application-specific reconfigurable coprocessors The complexity of hardware/software (HW/SW) interfacing and the lack of portability across different platforms, restrain the widespread use of reconfigurable accelerators and limit the designer productivity. Furthermore, communication between SW and HW parts of codesigned applications are typically exposed to SW programmers and HW designers. In this work, we introduce a virtualization layer that allows reconfigurable application-specific coprocessors to access the user-space virtual memory and share the memory address space with user applications. The layer, consisting of an operating system (OS) extension and a HW component, shifts the burden of moving data between processor and coprocessor from the programmer to the OS, lowers the complexity of interfacing, and hides physical details of the system. Not only does the virtualization layer enhance programming abstraction and portability, but it also performs runtime optimizations: by predicting future memory accesses and speculatively prefetching data, the virtualization layer improves the coprocessor execution-applications achieve better performance without any user intervention. We use two different reconfigurable system-on-chip (SoC) running Linux and codesigned applications to prove the viability of our concept. The applications run faster than their SW versions, and the overhead due to the virtualisation is limited. Dynamic prefetching in the virtualisation layer further reduces the abstraction overhead.

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

codesign
operating system (os)
reconfigurable computing


Towards an XML-based implementation of structured hypermedia documents Document structures are a crucial mechanism for the creation and the usability of complex hypermedia documents. They form a possibility to deal with the inherent complexity of such documents and with document structures it is also possible to support the reuse of parts of hypermedia documents. In several theoretical approaches different kinds of document structures have been proposed. For example in the Dexter Hypertext Model or in the hypermedia model developed by Klaus Tochtermarm. In the creation process of such hypermedia documents, which is strongly influenced by the offered functionality of the existing editors and tools, only simple kinds of structures could presently be used. Furthermore the use of hypermedia documents is often somehow connected to special system requirements, which makes it difficult to use these documents in a network. Especially the use of such hypermedia documents in the internet with all its different platforms and operating systems still cause many difficulties. The profit of hypermedia documents could obviously be increased, if broad forms of structuring could be used to build hypermedia documents and when these documents fulfill at the time the demands of interoperability and platform independency. This papers presents a contribution to this topic by introducing techniques for the implementation of structured hypermedia documents, which fulfill the demands of system and platform independency. These techniques are consequently based on the Extensible Markup Language. To form the basis for an XML-based implementation of structured hypermedia documents, the concepts of the Tochtermarm model were transformed into a XML document type definition. Because we understand the process of creating a hypermedia document as an integrative process, not only the document type definition itself is described, but also the aspects of displaying such a XML-based hypermedia document. Due to the continuous use of XML conform techniques the developed HMDoc hypermedia documents are platform and system independent and can therefore be easily used in networks like the internet.

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

document structuring
xml-based document notation


Using off-the-shelf tools for terabyte-scale waveform recording in intensive care: Computer system design, database description and lessons learned ? Until now, the creation of massive (long-term and multichannel) waveform databases in intensive care required an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and informaticians and, in most cases, also design-specific software and hardware development. Recently, several commercial software tools for waveform acquisition became available. Although commercial products and even turnkey systems are now being marketed as simple and effective, the performance of those solutions is not known. The additional expense upfront may be worthwhile if commercial software can eliminate the need for custom software and hardware systems and the associated investment in teams and development. We report the development of a computer system for long-term large-scale recording and storage of multichannel physiologic signals that was built using commercial solutions (software and hardware) and existing hospital IT infrastructure. Both numeric (1Hz) and waveform (62.5500Hz) data were captured from 24 SICU bedside monitors simultaneously and stored in a file-based vital sign data bank (VSDB) during one-year period (total DB size is 4.21TB). In total, vital signs were recorded from 1175 critically ill patients. Up to six ECG leads, all other monitored waveforms, and all monitored numeric data were recorded in most of the cases. We describe the details of building blocks of our system, provide description of three datasets exported from our VSDB and compare the contents of our VSDB with other available waveform databases. Finally, we summarize lessons learned during recording, storage, and pre-processing of physiologic signals.

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

raid redundant array of independent disks


augmenting mobile 3g using wifi We investigate if WiFi access can be used to augment 3G capacity in mobile environments. We rst conduct a detailed study of 3G and WiFi access from moving vehicles, in three different cities. We find that the average 3G and WiFi availability across the cities is 87\% and 11\%, respectively. WiFi throughput is lower than 3G through-put, and WiFi loss rates are higher. We then design a system, called Wiffler, to augments mobile 3G capacity. It uses two key ideas leveraging delay tolerance and fast switching -- to overcome the poor availability and performance of WiFi. For delay tolerant applications, Wiffler uses a simple model of the environment to predict WiFi connectivity. It uses these predictions to delays transfers to offload more data on WiFi, but only if delaying reduces 3G usage and the transfers can be completed within the application's tolerance threshold. For applications that are extremely sensitive to delay or loss (e.g., VoIP), Wiffler quickly switches to 3G if WiFi is unable to successfully transmit the packet within a small time window. We implement and deploy Wiffler in our vehicular testbed. Our experiments show that Wiffler significantly reduces 3G usage. For a realistic workload, the reduction is 45\% for a delay tolerance of 60 seconds.

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


Scheduling gain for frequency-selective Rayleigh-fading channels with application to self-organizing packet scheduling ? This paper investigates packet scheduling in the context of Self-Optimizing Networks, and demonstrates how to improve coverage dynamically by adjusting the scheduling strategy. We focus on ? ? -fair schedulers, and we provide methods for calculating the scheduling gain, including several closed form formulas. Scheduling gain is analyzed for different fading models, with a particular focus on the frequency-selective channel. We then propose a coverage-capacity self-optimization algorithm based on ? ? -fair schedulers. A use case illustrates the implementation of the algorithm and simulation results show that important coverage gains are achieved at the expense of very little computing power.

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

wireless communication
self-optimizing networks


Propagation strategies for stereo image matching based on the dynamic triangle constraint For the purpose of reliable stereo image matching, this paper discusses a novel propagation strategy of image matching under the dynamic triangle constraint. Firstly, the construction and the dynamic updating method for the corresponding triangulations on the stereo pairs are introduced, which are used as both constraints and carriers during the matching propagation. Then, three propagation strategies: the stochastic propagation, the adjacent propagation based on the topological relationship of triangles, and the self-adaptive propagation, which considers the texture features are proposed. The detailed algorithms of these three propagation strategies are also presented. To compare these strategies, a stereo pair with typic texture features is employed to describe the different propagation manners of these three strategies, and an experimental analysis is illustrated with different aerial stereo pairs. From test results, the following has been found: (1) stochastic propagation gives the worst matching results; (2) self-adaptive propagation performs better than the adjacent propagation by making use of the global best first strategy. From these conclusions, the self-adaptive propagation strategy is recommended for reliable stereo image matching under the dynamic triangle constraint.

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

matching propagation
dynamic triangle constraint
stochastic propagation
adjacent propagation


An adaptive and upgradable agent-based system for coordinated product development and manufacture Last decade witnessed the growth of globally decentralized product development and manufacture. The complexity of products created in such a distributed environment often requires close collaborations among a number of design and production partners. In this paper, an agent-based system for coordinated product development and manufacture is presented. The system consists of two categories of agents. The first category consists solely of a managing agent (MA) and the second consists of many functional agents such as the manufacturability evaluation agent, resource agent, process-planning agent, scheduling agent, etc. Each agent represents a domain expert and it can be installed in an individual computer. All the agents could be dispersed in geographically different regions and communicate with one another through the Internet. With each functional agent having specific functionality, the MA is the center of the intelligent system. It assists the work of other agents and enables them to collaborate closely with one another. With such a system in place, a product life cycle can be optimized from product design to final manufacturing as all the procedures are considered comprehensively and integrally, and each procedure is performed in a way as to ease and expedite the work of other agents. An agent language, which includes many specifically defined performatives, is defined. Each agent can perform its task intelligently by interpreting the commands (performatives) from other agents. Moreover, with the consideration of possible future methodology changes, the internal structure of each functional agent is modularized into several components. Such an architecture ensures that the system is flexible, adaptive and upgradable.

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

process planning
performative
upgradability


A labeled transition model A-LTS for history-based aspect weaving and its expressive power This paper proposes an event-based transition system called A-LTS. An A-LTS is a simple system consisting of two agents, a basic program and a monitor. The monitor observes the behavior of the basic program and if the behavior matches some pre-defined pattern, then the monitor interrupts the execution of the basic program and possibly triggers the execution of another specific program. An A-LTS models a common feature found in recent software technologies such as Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP), history-based access control and active database. We investigate the expressive power of A-LTS and show that it is strictly stronger than finite state machines and strictly weaker than pushdown automata (PDA). This implies that the model checking problem for A-LTS is decidable. It is also shown that the expressive power of A-LTS, linear context-free grammar and deterministic PDA are mutually incomparable. We also discuss the relationship between A-LTS and pointcut/advice in AOR.

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

labeled transition system
pushdown automaton
formal model
aspect-oriented programming
aspectj


Point processes for unsupervised line network extraction in remote sensing This paper addresses the problem of unsupervised extraction of line networks ( for example, road or hydrographic networks) from remotely sensed images. We model the target line network by an object process, where the objects correspond to interacting line segments. The prior model, called "Quality Candy," is designed to exploit as fully as possible the topological properties of the network under consideration, while the radiometric properties of the network are modeled using a data term based on statistical tests. Two techniques are used to compute this term: one is more accurate, the other more efficient. A calibration technique is used to choose the model parameters. Optimization is done via simulated annealing using a Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) algorithm. We accelerate convergence of the algorithm by using appropriate proposal kernels. The results obtained on satellite and aerial images are quantitatively evaluated with respect to manual extractions. A comparison with the results obtained using a previous model, called the "Candy" model, shows the interest of adding quality coefficients with respect to interactions in the prior density. The relevance of using an offline computation of the data potential is shown, in particular, when a proposal kernel based on this computation is added in the RJMCMC algorithm.

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

monte carlo
simulated annealing
remote sensing

stochastic processes
edge and feature detection


Coherence-enhancing diffusion filtering The completion of interrupted lines or the enhancement of flow-like structures is a challenging task in computer vision, human vision, and image processing. We address this problem by presenting a multiscale method in which a nonlinear diffusion filter is steered by the so-called interest operator (second-moment matrix, structure tensor). An m-dimensional formulation of this method is analysed with respect to its well-posedness and scale-space properties. An efficient scheme is presented which uses a stabilization by a semi-implicit additive operator splitting (AOS), and the scale-space behaviour of this method is illustrated by applying it to both 2-D and 3-D images.

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


Adaptive threshold-based block classification in medical image compression for teleradiology Telemedicine, among other things, involves storage and transmission of medical images, popularly known as teleradiology. Due to constraints on bandwidth and storage capacity, a medical image may be needed to be compressed before transmission/storage. Among various compression techniques, transform-based techniques that convert an image in spatial domain into the data in spectral domain are very effective. Discrete cosine transform (DCT) is possibly the most popular transform used in compression of images in standards like Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). In DCT-based compression the image is split into smaller blocks for computational simplicity. The blocks are classified on the basis of information content to maximize compression ratio without sacrificing diagnostic information. The present paper presents a technique along with computational algorithm for classification of blocks on the basis of an adaptive threshold value of variance. The adaptive approach makes the classification technique applicable across the board to all medical images. Its efficacy is demonstrated by applying it to CT, X-ray and ultrasound images and by comparing the results against the JPEG in terms of various objective quality indices.

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

telemedicine
teleradiology
medical image compression

data compression
discrete cosine transform (dct)


Stochastic approach to modelling of near-periodic jumping loads A mathematical model has been developed to generate stochastic synthetic vertical force signals induced by a single person jumping. The model is based on a unique database of experimentally measured individual jumping loads which has the most extensive range of possible jumping frequencies. The ability to replicate many of the temporal and spectral features of real jumping loads gives this model a definite advantage over the conventional half-sine models coupled with Fourier series analysis. This includes modelling of the omnipresent lack of symmetry of individual jumping pulses and jump-by-jump variations in amplitudes and timing. The model therefore belongs to a new generation of synthetic narrow band jumping loads which simulate reality better. The proposed mathematical concept for characterisation of near-periodic jumping pulses may be utilised in vibration serviceability assessment of civil engineering assembly structures, such as grandstands, spectator galleries, footbridges and concert or gym floors, to estimate more realistically dynamic structural response due to people jumping.

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

humanstructure dynamic interaction
jumping forces
stadia


EquiCast: Scalable multicast with selfish users ? Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks suffer from the problem of freeloaders, i.e., users who consume resources without contributing anything in return. In this paper, we tackle this problem taking a game theoretic perspective by modeling the system as a non-cooperative game. We introduce EquiCast, a wide-area P2P multicast protocol for large groups of selfish nodes. EquiCast is the first P2P multicast protocol that is formally proven to enforce cooperation in selfish environments. Additionally, we prove that EquiCast incurs a low constant load on each user.

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

peer-to-peer networks
non-cooperative game
incentives


Comparative docking and ADMET study of some curcumin derivatives and herbal congeners targeting ?-amyloid Alzheimers disease (AD) is caused by the accumulation of beta-amyloid (?-A) in the brain that forms amyloid plaque. ?-A is an oligo-peptide consisting of 3942 amino acid residues, produced by proteolytic cleavage of amyloid precursor protein by secretase enzymes. Evolutionary trace and protein family analysis of ?-A indicates that C-terminal residues of ?-A are highly conserved and hydrophobic in nature. Prevalence of hydrophobic residues at C-terminal of ?-A promote aggregation, and also provide the stability to ?-A plaque due to hydrophobichydrophobic interaction between residues of ?-A. In this work, designing, evaluation and screening of potent inhibitors for ?-A formation were studied. Curcumin and some of its herbal congeners were taken into consideration, to evaluate their anti-alzheimeric property against ?-A as well as with ?-A fibrils. Most of these herbal compounds were found potent inhibitors of ?-A aggregation than known drugs for AD. The binding affinity of cassumunins Aand B was compared with that of curcumin and it was found that cassumunins A and B may cause more potent inhibition of ?-A than curcumin. Principal descriptors as well as absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) properties for these compounds were predicted, and were found satisfactory.

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

alzheimers disease curcumin admet descriptors


Convergence of Distributed Asynchronous Learning Vector Quantization Algorithms Motivated by the problem of effectively executing clustering algorithms on very large data sets, we address a model for large scale distributed clustering methods. To this end, we briefly recall some standards on the quantization problem and some results on the almost sure convergence of the competitive learning vector quantization (CLVQ) procedure. A general model for linear distributed asynchronous algorithms well adapted to several parallel computing architectures is also discussed. Our approach brings together this scalable model and the CLVQ algorithm, and we call the resulting technique the distributed asynchronous learning vector quantization algorithm (DALVQ). An in-depth analysis of the almost sure convergence of the DALVQ algorithm is performed. A striking result is that we prove that the multiple versions of the quantizers distributed among the processors in the parallel architecture asymptotically reach a consensus almost surely. Furthermore, we also show that these versions converge almost surely towards the same nearly optimal value for the quantization criterion.

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

vector quantization
distributed
asynchronous

k-means
stochastic optimization
scalability
distributed consensus


A 32-bit RISC microprocessor with DSP functionality: Rapid prototyping We have designed a 32-bit RISC microprocessor with 16-/32-bit fixed-point DSP functionality. This processor, called YD-RISC, combines both general-purpose microprocessor and digital signal processor (DSP) functionality using the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) design principles. It has functional units for arithmetic operation, digital signal processing (DSP) and memory access. They operate in parallel in order to remove stall cycles after DSP or load/store instructions, which usually need one or more issue latency cycles in addition to the first issue cycle. High performance was achieved with these parallel functional units while adopting a sophisticated five-stage pipeline structure. The pipelined DSP unit can execute one 32-bit multiply-accumulate (MAC) or 16-bit complex multiply instruction every one or two cycles through two 17-b x 17-b multipliers and an operand examination logic circuit. Power-saving techniques such as power-down mode and disabling execution blocks allow low power consumption. In the design of this processor, we use logic synthesis and automatic place-and-route. This top-down approach shortens design time, while a high clock frequency is achieved by refining the processor architecture.

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

risc with dsp functionality
parallelism between functional units
power-saving
top-down approach


Evaluation of the Eulerian-Lagrangian Spray Atomization (ELSA) model in spray simulations: 2D cases The aim of this paper is the evaluation and validation of the Eulerian-Lagrangian Spray Atomization (ELSA) model implemented in a CFD code by Renault. ELSA is an integrated model for capturing the whole spray evolution, in particular including primary break-up and secondary atomization. Two-dimensional simulations have been performed during the study, which is in fact enough to capture some of the main features of the spray, such as the spray penetration and the axial velocity. A mesh independence study has also been carried out in order to characterize the lowest mesh size that can be used to correctly characterize the spray. Furthermore, the two-equation k-epsilon turbulence model has been adjusted by changing some of the parameters of the dissipation rate transport equation in order to accurately characterize the spray. Finally some analyses of the results obtained, in terms of penetration, liquid mass fraction and droplet number and size, are presented in the last section of the paper. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 B O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 optimal used period of repairable product with leadtime after the warranty expiry This paper considers the two-phase warranty models for repairable products. It defines the time-interval [0, W] as the first phase (warranty period) and the time interval (W, T+W) as the second phase (buyer survival period). The products have two types of failures: type I failures (minor failures) and type II failures (catastrophic failures). In the model, type I failures are also removed by minimal repairs in the first and the second phases, and type II failures are removed by replacements in the first phase. If type II failures take place in the second phase, then it is supposed the life of products will be ended. To buy a new product is conducted at time T+W or upon the type II failure. Whenever each replacement takes place, the spare unit is ordered and then delivered. Therefore, the lead-time is considered. This thesis considers three warranty and maintenance models for seller, buyer and the society. The objective is to obtain the optimal T*. Finally, a numerical example is provided.

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


A Robust Seamless Communication Architecture for Next-Generation Mobile Terminals on Multi-CPU SoCs We propose a robust seamless communication architecture that enables legacy mobile terminal software designed for single-CPU processors to be run on multi-CPU processors without any software modifications. This architecture features two new technologies: proxy processes, which help achieve the design of its user-level system-call hooking and a robust design method, which reduces bandwidth variation by systematic parameter optimization. Our evaluations confirmed that this architecture achieves fundamental features with satisfactory performance, that we have succeeded in getting actual mobile terminal software to run on three CPUs without modifying the software, and that the robust design method reduces bandwidth variation by 21%.

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

multi-cpu
linux
interprocess communication
taguchi method


Creating building ground plans via robust K-way union A step toward large-scale simulation in urban environment Due to collaborative efforts and advances in data acquisition technology, a large volume of geometric models describing urban buildings has become available in public domain via "Digital Earth" software like ESRI ArcGlobe and Google Earth. As a consequence, almost every major international city has been reconstructed in the virtual world. Although mostly created for visualization, we believe that these urban models can benefit many applications beyond visualization including video games, city scale evacuation plans, traffic simulations, and earth phenomenon simulations. However, before these urban models can be used in these applications, they require tedious manual preparation that usually takes weeks, if not months. In this paper, we present a framework that produces disjoint 2D ground plans from these urban models, an important step in the preparation process. Designing algorithms that can robustly and efficiently handle unstructured urban models at city scale is the main technical challenge. In this work, we show both theoretically and empirically that our method is resolution complete, efficient, and numerically stable.

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

urban geometry objects
geometry processing
numerical robustness


Upper and lower bounds for the multiplexing of multiclass Markovian on/off sources In this paper, we consider a multiplexer with constant output rate and infinite buffer capacity fed by independent Markovian fluid on/off sources. We do not suppose that the model is symmetrical: there is an arbitrary number K of different traffic classes, and for each class k, an arbitrary number N-k Of sources of this class. We derive lower and upper bounds for the stationary distribution of the backlog X of the form B exp(-theta*x) less than or equal to P(X > x) less than or equal to C(theta) exp(-theta x), with 0 less than or equal to theta less than or equal to theta*. When K = 2 or K = 1, we numerically compare our bounds to the exact distribution of X and to other previously known results. Through various examples, we discuss the behavior of P(X > x) and the tightness of the bounds.

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

exponential bound
statistical multiplexing
multiclass input
markov fluid input
effective bandwidth
large deviation
tail distribution


On the use of the polynomial annihilation edge detection for locating cracks in beam-like structures A crack in a structure causes a discontinuity in the first derivative of the mode shapes: On this basis, a numerical method for detecting discontinuities in smooth piecewise functions and their derivatives, based on a polynomial annihilation technique, has been applied to the problem of crack detection and localisation in beam-like structures for which only post-damage mode shapes are available. Using a finite-element model of a cracked beam, the performance of this methodology has been analysed for different crack depths and increasing amounts of noise. Given the crack position, a procedure to estimate its depth is also proposed and corresponding results shown.

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

discontinuity
polynomial annihilation edge detection

cracked cantilever beam
bending vibration
mode shapes first derivative


On a new class of analytic functions associated with conic domain The aim of this paper is to generalize the conic domain defined by Kanas and Wisniowska, and define the class of functions which map the open unit disk E E onto this generalized conic domain. A brief comparison between these conic domains is the main motivation of this paper. A correction is made in selecting the range interval of order of conic domain.

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

k k -uniformly convex functions k k k k k


Differential evolution based nearest prototype classifier with optimized distance measures for the features in the data sets In this paper a further generalization of differential evolution based data classification method is proposed, demonstrated and initially evaluated. The differential evolution classifier is a nearest prototype vector based classifier that applies a global optimization algorithm, differential evolution, for determining the optimal values for all free parameters of the classifier model during the training phase of the classifier. The earlier version of differential evolution classifier that applied individually optimized distance measure for each new data set to be classified is generalized here so, that instead of optimizing a single distance measure for the given data set, we take a further step by proposing an approach where distance measures are optimized individually for each feature of the data set to be classified. In particular, distance measures for each feature are selected optimally from a predefined pool of alternative distance measures. The optimal distance measures are determined by differential evolution algorithm, which is also determining the optimal values for all free parameters of the selected distance measures in parallel. After determining the optimal distance measures for each feature together with their optimal parameters, we combine all featurewisely determined distance measures to form a single total distance measure, that is to be applied for the final classification decisions. The actual classification process is still based on the nearest prototype vector principle; A sample belongs to the class represented by the nearest prototype vector when measured with the above referred optimized total distance measure. During the training process the differential evolution algorithm determines optimally the class vectors, selects optimal distance metrics for each data feature, and determines the optimal values for the free parameters of each selected distance measure. Based on experimental results with nine well known classification benchmark data sets, the proposed approach yield a statistically significant improvement to the classification accuracy of differential evolution classifier.

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

differential evolution
classification
distance measures

distance selection for the feature
pool of distances


Optimal component selection based on cohesion & coupling for component based software system under build-or-buy scheme The work is in the area of component based software system development. Fuzzy bi-criteria optimization model for component selection under build-or-buy scheme is formulated. The model simultaneously maximizes intra-modular coupling density (ICD) and functionality within the limitation of budget, reliability and delivery time. A case study is devised to explain the formulated model.

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


Judgmental adjustment in time series forecasting using neural networks Time series models are a highly useful forecasting method, but are deficient in the sense that they merely extrapolate past patterns in the data without taking into account the expected irregular future events. To overcome this limitation, forecasting experts in practice judgmentally adjust the statistical forecasts. Typical judgmental factors may be treated as outliers in statistical analysis. To automate the judgmental adjustment process, neural network models are developed in this study. To collect the data for judgmental events, judgmental effects are filtered out of raw data. The main trend is captured by a neural network model using the filtered data, while judgmental effects are modeled by another neural network. Then the judgmental effects are additively adjusted. Performance of this architecture is tested in comparison with five other architectures. According to the experiments, the architecture of neural network based additive judgmental adjustment significantly improves the forecasting performance.

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


Modeling and analysis of software aging and software failure Many studies reported that system suffered from outages more due to software faults than hardware faults. Recently, the phenomenon of software aging, which was caused by aging-related faults, is observed in many software systems. Software aging, characterized by progressive performance degradation, is mainly caused by exhaustion of the operating system resources, such as memory leaking, unreleased-file locks, data corruption, etc. This paper mainly focuses on the modeling and analysis of software aging and software failure. A stochastic time series decomposition algorithm based on robust locally weighted regression (Loess) is presented to separate the exhaustion of system resource from the resource usage, from which aging trend is estimated. Then the model of software aging and software failure process is constructed. Experiments on a practical server system verify the effectiveness of the algorithm presented in this paper, and the two-stage failure process is also confirmed for the first time in the history of research on software aging. The conclusions drawn from this paper will greatly benefit the application of software rejuvenation technique, that is, it makes it easy to determine when to perform software rejuvenation, which is a key issue in implementation of software rejuvenation. The results for the server system employing different rejuvenation policies show that software performance can be effectively improved.

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

software faults
software aging
software failure

robust locally weighted regression (loess)


Artificial agents and the expanding ethical circle I discuss the realizability and the ethical ramifications of Machine Ethics, from a number of different perspectives: I label these the anthropocentric, infocentric, biocentric and ecocentric perspectives. Each of these approaches takes a characteristic view of the position of humanity relative to other aspects of the designed and the natural worldsor relative to the possibilities of extra-human extensions to the ethical community. In the course of the discussion, a number of key issues emerge concerning the relation between technology and ethics, and the nature of what it is to have moral status. Some radical challenges to certain technological presuppositions and ramifications of the infocentric approach will be discussed. Notwithstanding the obvious tensions between the infocentric perspective on one side and the biocentric and ecocentric perspectives on the other, we will see that there are also striking parallels in the way that each of these three approaches generates challenges to an anthropocentric ethical hegemony, and possible scope for some degree of convergence.

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

artificial intelligence
anthropocentrism
biocentrism
ecocentrism
infocentrism
consciousness
the more-than-human world


Downloading trace study for BitTorrent P2P performance measurement and analysis With the increasing client population and the explosive volume of Internet media content, the peer-to-peer networking technologies and systems provide a rapid and scalable content distribution mechanism in the global networks. The BitTorrent protocol and its derivatives are among the most popular peer-to-peer file sharing applications, which contribute a dominant fraction of todays Internet traffic. In this paper, we conduct the performance measurement and analysis of BitTorrent systems with an extensive volume of real trace logs. We use several downloading-side metrics, including overall downloading time, maximum of downloading bandwidth, average bandwidth utilization, maximum of downloading connections, and average number of active connections, to derive various interesting results from the downloading-side aspect of network resource usage. Performance examination learns many new observations and characteristics into the virtue of BitTorrent protocols and systems, thereby providing beneficial information for bandwidth allocation and connection control in BitTorrent client applications. Therefore, this study is complementary to many previous research works that mainly focused on system-oriented and uploading-side performance measurements.

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

file sharing application
peer-to-peer network
internet measurement


Rate-lifetime tradeoff for reliable communication in wireless sensor networks ? The network lifetime and application performance are two fundamental, yet conflicting, design objectives in wireless sensor networks. There is an intrinsic tradeoff between network lifetime maximization and application performance maximization, the latter being often correlated to the rate at which the application can send its data reliably in sensor networks. In this paper we study this tradeoff by investigating the interactions between the network lifetime maximization problem and the rate allocation problem with a reliable data delivery requirement. Severe bias on the allocated rates of some sensor nodes may exist if only the total throughput of the sensor network is maximized, hence we enforce fairness on source rates of sensor nodes by invoking the network utility maximization (NUM) framework. To guarantee reliable communication, we adopt the hop-by-hop retransmission scheme. We formulate the network lifetime maximization and fair rate allocation both as constrained maximization problems. We characterize the tradeoff between them, give the optimality condition, and derive a partially distributed algorithm to solve the problem. Furthermore, we propose an approximation of the tradeoff problem using NUM framework, and derive a fully distributed algorithm to solve the problem.

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

wireless sensor networks
network utility maximization
rate allocation


Representing and matching simulation cases: A case-based reasoning approach Simulation modelling is a complex decision-making process that involves the processing of various knowledge and information within a context defined by specific application. Building a "good" simulation model has been heavily reliant on the skill and experience of human expert, which has become one of the most expensive and limited resources in market competition. Case-based reasoning (CBR) can be used to effectively solve problems in ill-defined domains where operations specific knowledge and information are processed in a contextual manner such as simulation modeling. This paper addresses some of the basic issues in applying CBR to improve simulation modeling, with emphasis on knowledge or case representation, case indexing. and case matching. Numerical examples and experimental studies were conducted to verify and validate the concepts and model/algorithms developed. The results showed the effectiveness and applicability of proposed method. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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

conceptual modelling
case-based reasoning


PROBABILISTIC TELEPORTATION OF AN ARBITRARY TWO-QUBIT STATE VIA ONE-DIMENSIONAL FOUR-QUBIT CLUSTER-CLASS STATE An explicit scheme for probabilistically teleporting an arbitrary two-qubit state is proposed by using a one-dimensional four-qubit cluster-class state as the quantum channel. In the scheme, the sender first performs two Bell state measurements (BSMs). Then with the sender's help, the receiver can reconstruct the original state probabilistically by introducing an auxiliary qubit and making appropriate unitary operations. Moreover, the total success probability and classical communication cost of the present scheme are also calculated.

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


Paley type partial difference sets in non p-groups By modifying a construction for Hadamard (Menon) difference sets we construct two infinite families of negative Latin square type partial difference sets in groups of the form Z(3)(2) x Z(p)(4t) where p is any odd prime. One of these families has the well-known Paley parameters, which had previously only been constructed in p-groups. This provides new constructions of Hadamard matrices and implies the existence of many new strongly regular graphs including some that are conference graphs. As a corollary, we are able to construct Paley-Hadamard difference sets of the Stanton-Sprott family in groups of the form Z(3)(2) x Z(p)(4t) x EA(9p(4t) +/- 2) when 9p(4t) +/- 2 is a prime power. These are new parameters for such difference sets.

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

paley type partial difference set
paley-hadamard difference set
hadamard matrix
hadamard design
difference set
strongly regular graph
conference graph


the pedagogic opportunities of touch-screen voting Touch-screen systems have been used to count votes in a growing number of precincts across the United States. These controversial systems provide an opportunity for valuable classroom discussions both for service courses and courses for computer science majors.This paper begins with an overview of touch-screen voting systems in the United States. It describes ways to productively address this issue with university classes at various levels in the curriculum. It is hoped that this paper will be a useful resource to professors looking to bring this important issue into their classroom, perhaps as a partial requirement of an ethics and social implications module of a course's coverage.

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

touch-screen voting
requirements analysis


The Emperor's new clothes? A meta-study of education technology policies in Ireland, North and South (1996-2006) In this paper, we asked whether or not it matters if policy direction for embedding digital technology in education is aligned with the locus of control of curriculum reform and of teachers' professional development. We created a simple con trol: choice framework with which to analyse and compare approaches to education technology policy and the interaction of technology with curriculum and professional development in Northern Ireland and in the south of Ireland. While we expected to find harmony between technology provision and educational change, we did not discover it. We concluded that different approaches are not necessarily at odds and their interplay is more complex. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

country-specific developments
evaluation methodologies


ON THE INFLUENCE OF WORD REPRESENTATIONS FOR HANDWRITTEN WORD SPOTTING IN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS Word spotting is the process of retrieving all instances of a queried keyword from a digital library of document images. In this paper we evaluate the performance of different word descriptors to assess the advantages and disadvantages of statistical and structural models in a framework of query-by-example word spotting in historical documents. We compare four word representation models, namely sequence alignment using DTW as a baseline reference, a bag of visual words approach as statistical model, a pseudo-structural model based on a Loci features representation, and a structural approach where words are represented by graphs. The four approaches have been tested with two collections of historical data: the George Washington database and the marriage records from the Barcelona Cathedral. We experimentally demonstrate that statistical representations generally give a better performance, however it cannot be neglected that large descriptors are difficult to be implemented in a retrieval scenario where word spotting requires the indexation of data with million word images.

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

handwriting recognition
feature representation
shape descriptors


Use of a silicon drift detector for cathodoluminescence detection The response of a silicon drift detector to visible light is a low energy-peak in the X-ray spectrum. The count rate in the low energy peak is related to probe current and to sample sensitivity. The characterization of a luminescent sample at different probe currents gives its local sensitivity. A silicon drift detector can be used to perform panchromatic cathodoluminescence. The realization of cathodoluminescence maps can lead to artefacts.

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

silicon drift detector
cathodoluminescence


Image compositing using dominant patch transformations A simple but effective patch matching method. An improved patch-based synthesis technique for image compositing. The patterns of patch transformations found by reasonable statistical studies.

B I O B I I 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

image compositing
patch matching
dominant patch transformations


Synthesis of predictable networks-on-chip-based interconnect Architectures for chip multiprocessors Today, chip multiprocessors (CMPs) that accommodate multiple processor cores on the same chip have become a reality. As the communication complexity of such multicore systems is rapidly increasing, designing an interconnect architecture with predictable behavior is essential for proper system operation. In CMPs, general-purpose processor cores are used to run software tasks of different applications and the communication between the cores cannot be precharacterized. Designing an efficient network-on-chip (NoC)-based interconnect with predictable performance is thus a challenging task. In this paper, we address the important design issue of synthesizing the most power efficient NoC interconnect for CMPs, providing guaranteed optimum throughput and predictable performance for any application to be executed on the CMP. In our synthesis approach, we use accurate delay and power models for the network components (switches and links) that are obtained from layouts of the components using industry standard tools. The synthesis approach utilizes the floor-plan knowledge of the NoC to detect timing violations on the NoC links early in the design cycle. This leads to a faster design cycle and quicker design convergence across the high-level synthesis approach and the physical implementation of the design. We validate the design flow predictability of our proposed approach by performing a layout of the NoC synthesized for a 25-core CMP. Our approach maintains the regular and predictable structure of the NoC and is applicable in practice to existing NoC architectures.

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

bandwidth
chip multiprocessors (cmps)
networks-on-chip (nocs)
power consumption


Controlling coverage of D-optimal onion designs and selections Statistical molecular design (SMD) is a powerful approach for selection of compound sets in medicinal chemistry and quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) as well as other areas. Two techniques often used in SMD are space-filling and D-optimal designs. Both on occasions lead to unwanted redundancy and replication. To remedy such shortcomings, a generalization of D-optimal selection was recently developed. This new method divides the compound candidate set into a number of subsets ('layers' or 'shells'), and a D-optimal selection is made from each layer. This improves the possibility to select representative molecular structures throughout any property space independently of requested sample size. This is important in complex situations where any given model is unlikely to be valid over the whole investigated domain of experimental conditions. The number of selected molecules can be controlled by varying the number of subsets or by altering the complexity of the model equation in each layer and/or the dependency of previous layers. The new method, called D-optimal onion design (DOOD), will allow the user to choose the model equation complexity independently of sample size while still avoiding unwarranted redundancy. The focus of the present work is algorithmic improvements of DOOD in comparison with classical D-optimal design. As illustrations, extended DOODs have been generated for two applications by in-house programming, including some modifications of the D-optimal algorithm. The performances of the investigated approaches are expected to differ depending on the number of principal properties of the compounds in the design, sample sizes and the investigated model, i.e. the aim of the design. QSAR models have been generated from the selected compound sets, and root mean squared error of prediction (RMSEP) values have been used as measures of performance of the different designs. Copyright (C) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

statistical molecular design
principal properties

space-filling design
d-optimal design
d-optimal onion designs
pls


Video Paintbox: The fine art of video painting We present the Video Paintbox; a novel system capable of transforming video into stylised animations. Our system solves the problem of temporally coherent painting for a wide class of video, and is able to introduce cartoon-like motion emphasis cues. Coherent painting in video is a long-standing problem that is associated with the difficulties in placing, orienting, and sizing paint strokes over time. Our solution allows removal of stroke flicker, allowing animators control over any stylisation and incoherence they might care to re-introduce. Furthermore, the animator can choose to selectively paint certain objects, leaving photorealistic video elsewhere. Many common motion cues used by animators, such as streak-lines, squash-and-stretch, and anticipated movement may be integrated with either real or painted footage. The motion cues depend on a robust analysis of video that allows for effects such as camera motion and occlusion, and which is able to automatically build articulated dolls complete with kinematic properties. We describe our Video Paintbox, discuss animator controls, and illustrate with examples.

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

video stylization
cartoon
non-photorealistic rendering


Automatic assessment of oral language proficiency and listening comprehension ? This paper describes an attempt to automate the large-scale assessment of oral language proficiency and listening comprehension for fairly advanced students of English as a second language. The automatic test is implemented as a spoken dialogue system and consists of a reading as well as a repeating task. Two experiments are described in which different rating criteria were used by human judges. In the first experiment, proficiency was scored globally for each of the two test components. In the second experiment, various aspects of proficiency were evaluated for each section of the test. In both experiments, rate of speech (ROS), goodness of pronunciation (GOP) and repeat accuracy were calculated for the spoken utterances. The correlation between scores assigned by human raters and these three automatically derived measures was determined to assess their suitability as proficiency indicators. Results show that the more specific rating instructions used in the second experiment improved intra-rater agreement, but made little difference to inter-rater agreement. In addition, the more specific rating criteria resulted in a better correlation between the human and the automatic scores for the repeating task, but had almost no impact in the reading task. Overall, the results indicate that, even for the narrow range of proficiency levels observed in the test population, the automatically derived ROS and accuracy scores give a fair indication of oral proficiency.

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

rate of speech
goodness of pronunciation

automatic language proficiency assessment


Spatio-temporal Semantic Features for Human Action Recognition Most approaches to human action recognition is limited due to the use of simple action datasets under controlled environments or focus on excessively localized features without sufficiently exploring the spatio-temporal information. This paper proposed a framework for recognizing realistic human actions. Specifically, a new action representation is proposed based on computing a rich set of descriptors from keypoint trajectories. To obtain efficient and compact representations for actions, we develop a feature fusion method to combine spatial-temporal local motion descriptors by the movement of the camera which is detected by the distribution of spatio-temporal interest points in the clips. A new topic model called Markov Semantic Model is proposed for semantic feature selection which relies on the different kinds of dependencies between words produced by "syntactic" and "semantic" constraints. The informative features are selected collaboratively based on the different types of dependencies between words produced by short range and long range constraints. Building on the nonlinear SVMs, we validate this proposed hierarchical framework on several realistic action datasets.

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


POTMiner: mining ordered, unordered, and partially-ordered trees Non-linear data structures are becoming more and more common in data mining problems. Trees, in particular, are amenable to efficient mining techniques. In this paper, we introduce a scalable and parallelizable algorithm to mine partially-ordered trees. Our algorithm, POTMiner, is able to identify both induced and embedded subtrees in such trees. As special cases, it can also handle both completely ordered and completely unordered trees.

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

data mining
induced and embedded subtrees

frequent patterns
partially-ordered trees


Design Space Exploration for Efficient Resource Utilization in Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture Coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures (CGRAs) aim to achieve both goals of high performance and flexibility. In addition, power consumption is significant for the reconfigurable architecture to be used as a competitive processing core in embedded systems. However, the existing reconfigurable architectures require too much area and power. In this paper, we propose a new design space exploration flow, optimizing CGRA to reduce area and power with enhancing performance for digital signal processing (DSP) application domain. It reduces the array size through efficient arrangement of array components and customization of their interconnection, exploiting input patterns belonging to the DSP application domain. Such a design flow is based on pipelining and sharing of area/delay-critical resources in the processing element array. Experimental results show that for DSP applications, the proposed approach reduces area by up to 36.75%, average execution time by 36.78%, and average power by 31.85% when compared with the existing CGRA architecture.

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

coarse-grained reconfigurable architecture (cgra)


Supporting multiple consistency models within a mobility enabled file system using a component based framework Most existing Distributed File Systems (DFSs) implement a single consistency model to maintain one-copy equivalence. The functionality of that consistency model is based on a balance between environmental constraints and the targeted level of consistency. Such systems efficiently maintain consistency while the environmental capabilities remain constant, e. g., presuming uninterrupted connectivity. However, when these characteristics change, the inflexible nature of a single consistency model results in its inability to maintain an expected balance between consistency and constraints. This illustrated with existing implementations of DFSs. GLOMAR is a DFS middleware layer that allows application developers to map their specific consistency models to environmental constraints. As a result, multiple consistency models can be created, with each scoped for a particular application and environmental scenario. This paper outlines important aspects of GLOMAR, detailing its implementation and outlining a number of consistency models.

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

distributed file system
consistency control
components


Response correction techniques for surrogate-based design optimization of microwave structures Simulation-based optimization has become an important design tool in microwave engineering. However, using electromagnetic (EM) solvers in the design process is a challenging task, primarily due to a high-computational cost of an accurate EM simulation. In this article, we present a review of EM-based design optimization techniques exploiting response-corrected physically based low-fidelity models. The surrogate models created through such a correction can be used to yield a reasonable approximation of the optimal design of the computationally expensive structure under consideration (high-fidelity model). Several approaches using this idea are reviewed including output space mapping, manifold mapping, adaptive response correction, and shape-preserving response prediction. A common feature of these methods is that they are easy to implement and computationally efficient. Application examples are provided. 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2012.

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

response correction
space mapping
design optimization

computer-aided design (cad)
simulation-driven design
electromagnetic simulation