Self-Measurement of Combinatorial Circuit Delays in FPGAs This article proposes a Built-In Self-Test (BIST) method to accurately measure the combinatorial circuit delays on an FPGA. The flexibility of the on-chip clock generation capability found in modern FPGAs is employed to step through a range of frequencies until timing failure in the combinatorial circuit is detected. In this way, the delay of any combinatorial circuit can be determined with a timing resolution of the order of picoseconds. Parallel and optimized implementations of the method for self-characterization of the delay of all the LUTs on an FPGA are also proposed. The method was applied to Altera Cyclone II and III FPGAs. A complete self-characterization of LUTs on a Cyclone II was achieved in 2.5 seconds, utilizing only 13kbit of block RAM to store the results. More extensive tests were carried out on the Cyclone III and the delays of adder circuits and embedded multiplier blocks were successfully measured. This self-measurement method paves the way for matching timing requirements in designs to FPGAs as a means of combating the problem of process variations.

O 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 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

performance
testing
configuration
delay measurement


exploring the african village metaphor for computer user interface icons This paper proposes an alternative to the office metaphor for African users unfamiliar with the office environment. The objective of the research was to identify users for whom the African Village metaphor is better than the office metaphor. Five widely used African cultural objects were identified for the design of user interface icons for the African Village metaphor. Computer Science and Information Technology staff members from four universities in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire requested participants to identify icons from the current office metaphor, identify the five African objects, to indicate their traditional use, associate these objects with computer actions, and indicate their level of support for the African Village metaphor. Participants were grouped according to age and culture. The data were analysed using proportions, means and correlation analysis. Results indicate that in all age groups a larger proportion of African users support the African Village metaphor compared to users from other cultural groups, and that support is almost null among young users from other cultural groups. On the ability to associate African objects with computer actions, older African users performed better than younger Africans, but younger users from other cultural groups performed better than their peers. On the knowledge of African cultural objects, young African participants performed worse compared to young participants from other cultures. A significant correlation was found between knowledge of cultural objects and ability to associate computer actions with cultural objects. The research results show the African Village metaphor is more suitable for older African users than the office metaphor. The paper assesses the effectiveness of a possible alternative to the office metaphor, capable of improving usability especially for African users and contribute towards improving computer literacy for this group of users.

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

icon recognition
african culture
metaphors
user interface usability
human factors


data-driven persona development Much has been written on creating personas --- both what they are good for, and how to create them. A common problem with personas is that they are not based on real customer data, and if they are, the data set is not of a sample size that can be considered statistically significant. In this paper, we describe a new method for creating and validating personas, based on the statistical analysis of data, which is fast and cost effective.

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

factor analysis
interview
data analysis
survey
user research
data gathering


Which online channel is right? Online auction channel choice for personal computers in the presence of demand decay Electronic commerce has become a viable marketing channel for many companies as they take advantage of the ease of electronic markets to move merchandise quickly and inexpensively. Researchers have investigated the use of an e-commerce channel in conjunction with traditional channels, but less research has been dedicated to choosing which e-commerce channel to use. In this study, we examine the choices made by Dell, a computer manufacturer, about whether to utilize their own proprietary auction site to sell computers or to use eBay, a popular and well-established third-party auction site, to move excess merchandise. We find that Dell receives a price premium over other vendors of Dell computers, and that DellAuction.com receives a price premium over eBay.com auctions. This price premium is drastically reduced as technology ages and is made obsolete by newer technology-based products. We further find that there is little to no price premium for extremely new technology, which is consistent with a contention that the online auction demand is so high for new technology that Dell cannot realize much of a price premium making a more popular third-party channel a more viable option. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

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

channel choice
demand decay
electronic commerce
electronic markets

consumer behavior
econometric analysis
market channels
online auctions
selling strategy


A proof for the positive definiteness of the Jaccard index matrix In this paper we provide a proof for the positive definiteness of the Jaccard index matrix used as a weighting matrix in the Euclidean distance between belief functions defined in Jousselme et al. (2001) [13]. The idea of this proof relies on the decomposition of the matrix into an infinite sum of positive semidefinite matrices. The proof is valid for any size of the frame of discernment but we provide an illustration for a frame of three elements. The Jaccard index matrix being positive definite guarantees that the associated Euclidean distance is a full metric and thus that a null distance between two belief functions implies that these belief functions are strictly identical. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

belief functions
distance
jaccard
definiteness


Student training in the undergraduate curriculum of power system transient stability This paper describes a set of power system laboratory exercises assigned for student training in the undergraduate curriculum of power system transient stability to senior students at two universities. These exercises utilize a user-friendly, interactive PC-based graphical software package for the comprehension of power system transient stability. The exercises cover the classical method of equal area criterion for the single machine infinite bus system and help the students to acquire a realistic feeling of the transient stability problem with an on-line explanation of the various effects of faults on transient stability. The exercise description, student reaction and the utilization of the software are discussed.

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

equal area criterion
transient stability

student design projects
personal computers
power engineering education


The stochastic walk algorithms for point location in pseudo-triangulations A pseudo-triangulation is a planar subdivision into polygons with three convex vertices, useful for ray shooting, visibility problems and kinetic collision detection. As pseudo-triangulations are quite young, there is a lack of specialized algorithms for them. In this paper, we address the question of location in pseudo-triangulations. We propose two location algorithms based on the so-called stochastic walk and present their experimental results. The class of walk location algorithms is very popular for triangulations, namely in engineering applications, due to simplicity and low memory requirements, in spite of their non-optimality. As far as we know, no walk algorithm specialized on pseudo-triangulations has been developed before.

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

point location
walk algorithm
visibility
collision detection


A Time-Aware Fault Tolerance Scheme to Improve Reliability of Multilevel Phase-Change Memory in the Presence of Significant Resistance Drift Because of its promising scalability potential and support of multilevel per cell storage, phase-change memory has become a topic of great current interest. However, recent studies show that structural relaxation effect makes the resistance of phase-change material drift over the time, which can severely degrade multilevel per cell phase-change memory storage reliability. This makes powerful memory fault tolerance solutions indispensable, where error correction code (ECC) will play an essential role. This work aims to develop fault tolerance solutions that can effectively compensate memory cell resistance drift. First, based upon information-theoretical study, we show that conventional use of ECC, which is unaware of memory content lifetime, can only achieve the performance with a big gap from the information-theoretical bounds. This motivates us to study the potential of time-aware memory fault tolerance, where the basic idea is to keep track the memory content lifetime and use this lifetime information to accordingly adjust how memory cell resistance is quantized and interpreted for ECC decoding. Under this time-aware fault tolerance framework, we study the use of two types of ECCs, including classical codes such as BCH that only demand hard-decision input and advanced codes such as low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that demand soft-decision probability input. Using hypothetical four-level per cell and eight-level per cell phase-change memory with BCH and LDPC codes as test vehicles, we carry out extensive analysis and simulations, which demonstrate very significant performance advantages of such time-aware memory fault tolerance strategy in the presence of significant memory cell resistance drift.

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

bch
resistance drift
structural relaxation

error correction code (ecc)
low-density parity-check (ldpc)
phase-change memory


Communication enhancerappliances for better communication in a family The aim of the exploratory study described in this paper was to develop appliance concepts which can enhance family communication by using digital technologies.

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

human communication
humanhuman interaction
hci


Complexity management in practice: A Viable System Model intervention in an Irish eco-community While soft OR tools offer specific solutions to manage complexity in organisations, little is known concerning soft OR tools to deal with self-organisation in communities. This paper describes an action research project where the authors facilitated a process of self-organisation in a developing Irish eco-community whose members operate in a non-hierarchical, and cooperative fashion. We used the Viable System Model as a hermeneutical enabler of the community learning process concerning their self-organisation: by embedding VSM distinctions, they redesigned their primary tasks and developed meta-systemic management tools to deal with the complexity they were facing. Observations of the dynamics of the self-organising process over a period of 3years show the community designed their roles and tasks more effectively, improved the connectivity of roles, and in general, their viability and sustainability. We reflect on the distinctiveness of the methods used, and their contributions to research in soft OR in community projects.

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

viable system model
complexity management

or in society problem analysis
psm
community or


Depth-Aware Image Seam Carving Image seam carving algorithm should preserve important and salient objects as much as possible when changing the image size, while not removing the secondary objects in the scene. However, it is still difficult to determine the important and salient objects that avoid the distortion of these objects after resizing the input image. In this paper, we develop a novel depth-aware single image seam carving approach by taking advantage of the modern depth cameras such as the Kinect sensor, which captures the RGB color image and its corresponding depth map simultaneously. By considering both the depth information and the just noticeable difference (JND) model, we develop an efficient JND-based significant computation approach using the multiscale graph cut based energy optimization. Our method achieves the better seam carving performance by cutting the near objects less seams while removing distant objects more seams. To the best of our knowledge, our algorithm is the first work to use the true depth map captured by Kinect depth camera for single image seam carving. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach produces better seam carving results than previous content-aware seam carving methods.

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

energy optimization
kinect depth camera
seam carving


Scalable dynamic Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment for parallel applications ? Parallel/distributed systems are continuously growing. This allows and enables the scalability of the applications, either by considering bigger problems in the same period of time or by solving the problem in a shorter time. In consequence, the methodologies, approaches and tools related to parallel paradigm should be brought up to date to support the increasing requirements of the applications and the users. MATE (Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment) provides automatic and dynamic tuning for parallel/distributed applications. The tuning decisions are made according to performance models, which provide a fast means to decide what to improve in the execution. However, MATE presents some bottlenecks as the application grows, due to the fact that the analysis process is made in a full centralized manner. In this work, we propose a new approach to make MATE scalable. In addition, we present the experimental results and the analysis to validate the proposed approach against the original one.

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 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

dynamic tuning
scalability
parallel applications


a key-recovery attack on authentication watermarking by li and yuan We present a key-recovery attack on a watermarking scheme for authentication and localisation due to Li and Yuan. The attack exploits a lack of diffusion in the system. Each bit of the key affects only a small region of the watermarked image. Even though a brute-force attack is intractible, an exhaustive search is possible by considering one region at a time, and thereby recover the key.

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


Towards an understanding of the behavioral intention to use online news services: An exploratory study Purpose - Research into the use/adoption of online news services (ONSs) is still in its infancy, Scholars have indicated that there is no comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding or predicting consumers' online adoption behavior. The purpose of the paper is to propose a theoretical framework as a foundation for better understanding and further analyzing the adoption of ONSs. Design/methodology/approach - A literature review was conducted together with a series of in-depth interviews with selected key industry experts. Three paradigms (i.e. the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, the Technology Acceptance Model, the Uses and Gratifications Theory) were examined and included findings from research into some aspects of online behaviour and these are discussed in relation to the objectives of this paper. Findings - Six factors are identified as potential key drivers in the adoption of ONSs These are based on the findings from the literature review and the in-depth interviews with the industry experts. The six factors are: Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Core Service Quality (PCSQ), Perceived Supplementary Service Quality (PSSQ), Trust, Networking, Interface and Subjective Norm. A theoretical framework for better understanding and analyzing the adoption of ONSs is built that shows the relationship among these factors and adoption of ONSs. Originality/value - For researchers, this paper provides a framework to identify and understand the way the potential key factors contribute to the adoption of online news services. For practitioners, this framework lists the features that specifically attract online news users. Understanding users' preferences is of major importance in e-businesses for making strategic decisions to increase user satisfaction, as well as improving the performance of the business.

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

information media
consumer behaviour
internet
taiwan


metrics, techniques and recent developments in mixed-signal testing This paper presents a tutorial on mixed-signal testing. Our focus is on testing the analog portion of the mixed-signal device, as the digital portion is handled in the usual way. We begin by first outlining the role of test in a manufacturing environment, and its impact on product cost and quality. We look at the impact of manufacturing defects on the behavior of digital and analog circuits. Subsequently, we argue that analog circuits require very different test methods than those presently used to test digital circuits. We then describe four common analog test methods and their measurement setups. We also describe how analog testing can be accomplished using digital sampling techniques. Finally, we close this tutorial with a brief description of several developments presently underway on the design of testable mixed-signal circuits.

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

product cost
measurement setups
manufacturing defects
manufacturing environment
quality


On the convergence behaviour of variable stepsize multistep methods for singularly perturbed problems In this note, we investigate the convergence behaviour of linear multistep discretizations for singularly perturbed systems, emphasising the features of variable stepsizes. We derive a convergence result for A(phi)-stable linear multistep methods and specify a refined error estimate for backward differentiation formulas. Important ingredients in our convergence analysis are stability bounds for non-autonomous linear problems that are obtained by perturbation techniques.

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

linear multistep methods
backward differentiation formulas
variable stepsizes
stability
convergence


an end-user demonstration approach to support aspect-oriented modeling Aspect-oriented modeling (AOM) is a technique to separate concerns that crosscut the modularity boundaries of a modeling hierarchy. AOM is traditionally supported by manual editing or writing model transformation rules that refine a base model. However, traditional model weaving approaches present challenges to those who are unfamiliar with a model transformation language or metamodel definitions. This poster describes an approach to weave aspect models by recording and analyzing demonstrated operations by end-users.

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


Mobilizing a health professional's workstationresults of an evaluation study To evaluate the idea of a multifunctional mobile pen computer to support information processing tasks of health care professionals we carried out a field study. On a tablet-sized mobile pen computer we set up a health professional workstation, MEDIAS/WIN, with most of the application systems that are presently used by health professionals at Heidelberg University Medical Center. Our experiences during the study, involving 11 physicians, nine nurses and four computer scientists showed that it's not enough to make existing applications mobilemost user interfaces have to be adapted for pen input. The presented system served as a valuable basis for study purposes but was not suitable for use in clinical routine. Patient data of the current clinical case and medical knowledge in the form of reference lists were found to be most important for mobile usage. Desirable functionality also included mobile access to electronic mail, electronic ordering of meals and some documentation tasks, e.g. the documentation of diagnoses and orders for diagnostic and therapy.

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

health professional workstation
mobile pen computer
evaluation study


Robust adaptive decentralized fuzzy control for stochastic large-scale nonlinear systems with dynamical uncertainties ? In this paper, a robust adaptive fuzzy decentralized backstepping output feedback control approach is proposed for a class of uncertain large-scale stochastic nonlinear systems with unknown nonlinear functions, dynamical uncertainties and without the measurements of the states. The fuzzy logic systems are used to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions, and a fuzzy state observer is designed for estimating the unmeasured states. To solve the problem of the dynamical uncertainties, the changing supply function technique is incorporated into the backstepping recursive design technique, and a new robust adaptive fuzzy decentralized output feedback control approach is constructed. It is proved that the proposed control approach can guarantee that all the signals of the resulting closed-loop system are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB) in probability, and the observer errors and the output of the system converge to a small neighborhood of the origin by choosing design parameters appropriately. A simulation example is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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

stochastic nonlinear large-scale systems


Reconstruction-based speech enhancement from robust acoustic features A method of speech enhancement that reconstructs clean speech from acoustic features. Features estimated by a statistical method incorporating noise and speaker adaptation. Listening tests find enhancement highly effective in reducing background noise.

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


scalability and resource usage of an olap benchmark on clusters of pcs Designing clusters of PCs for distributed databases processing OLAP(On Line Analytical Processing) workloads in parallel with good scalability remains a particular challenge as we are lacking a deep understanding of the architectural issues around resource usage by standard DBMSs on distributed platforms.To address this problem, we present a novel performance monitoring framework for filtering and abstracting samples of performance data from low level counters into a high level performance picture. Our framework is used side by side with the DBMS and delivers many interesting insights about the most critical resource in the different queries and systems configuration. As required for a larger distributed hardware/software system, our solution comprises software instrumentation at the OS level, tools for gathering performance relevant data and an analytical model for performance evaluation and performance prediction to future platforms.We demonstrate the viability of our approach with the in-depth analysis of distributed TPC-D, a standard OLAP benchmark running on clusters of commodity PCs. Based on the data provided by our framework, we isolate and resolve a few crucial performance issues of OLAP workloads on clusters. For different queries, we give a workload characterization in terms of resource usage, quantify the optimal scalability and investigate the impact of the networking speed on the overall application performance. We show that the disk performance and CPU speed remains the most critical resource bottleneck for most queries. Queries with a lot of inter-node communication are limited by the communication software inefficiency within the DBMS and not by the raw networking speeds. A systematic performance evaluation constitutes a solid basis for architectural decisions and system optimization in clusters of PCs that are dedicated to large parallel database systems.

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

performance analysis
cluster of pcs
distributed olap processing
parallel databases


Large deformation diffeomorphic metric curve mapping We present a matching criterion for curves and integrate it into the large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping (LDDMM) scheme for computing an optimal transformation between two curves embedded in Euclidean space R(d). Curves are first represented as vector-valued measures, which incorporate both location and the first order geometric structure of the curves. Then, a Hilbert space structure is imposed on the measures to build the norm for quantifying the closeness between two curves. We describe a discretized version of this, in which discrete sequences of points along the curve are represented by vector-valued functionals. This gives a convenient and practical way to define a matching functional for curves. We derive and implement the curve matching in the large deformation framework and demonstrate mapping results of curves in R(2) and R(3). Behaviors of the curve mapping are discussed using 2D curves. The applications to shape classification is shown and experiments with 3D curves extracted from brain cortical surfaces are presented.

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


Ontology-based supply chain decision support for steel manufacturers in China The method is presented to combine multi-source decision knowledge. Rule-based ontology reasoning is presented to support decision-makings. The semantic interoperable decision environment is enabled. The decision knowledge is evolved and updated as time goes by. Practices of Chinas iron and steel industry can be improved based on this study.

O O O B I 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

knowledge management
rule-based reasoning
global supply chain


object-oriented simulation of computer architectures using c++ Object-oriented languages such as C++ allow class definitions which eliminate the need for writing special-purpose simulators in many cases. Simulating digital logic components and computer architectures is one case where the simulation model can be effectively and conveniently expressed in the programming language itself. A class library supporting: schematic organization, multi-level digital-signal representation, and implementations of a modest set of component primitives has been developed. This library supports two forms of hierarchical arrangements; first, the digital signals themselves can be expressed as vectors (as for a bus), either directly or by composition, and second, the digital components can be arranged hierarchically as modules, and the modules can be used in an identical manner in which the primitives are used. The library code described here is available from the author.

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

organization author simulation code language case logic representation model writing class component

digitize
hierarchic
computer architecture
vectorization
signaling
definition
module
implementation
libraries
object-oriented
compositing
programming language


Human Mast Cells Stimulate Activated T Cells Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune demyelinating disease of the central nervous system mainly mediated by Th1 and/or Th17 cells, which cross the bloodbrain barrier. Recent evidence indicates that Th2 cells and mast cells, typically associated with allergic reactions, are also involved. Brain mast cells are critically located perivascularly and secrete numerous proinflammatory and vasoactive molecules that can disrupt the bloodbrain barrier, a finding that precedes clinical or pathologic signs of multiple sclerosis. Brain mast cells in multiple sclerosis are activated by neural factors, including substance P, myelin basic protein, and corticotropin-releasing hormone, caused by acute stress, which induce release of several inflammatory mediators. Mast cells can stimulate activated T cells coming in contact with them at the bloodbrain barrier, as well as after stimulation with myelin basic protein or substance P. Pretreatment with the flavone luteolin blocks mast cell stimulation and T cell activation, as well as experimental autoimmune encephalitis. Interactions between mast cells and T cells could constitute a new and unique therapeutic target for multiple sclerosis.

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

luteolin
mast cells
multiple sclerosis
t cells


Recognising Informative Web Page Blocks using visual segmentation for efficient information extraction As web sites are getting more complicated, the construction of web information extraction systems becomes more troublesome and time-consuming. A common theme is the difficulty in locating the segments of a page in which the target information is contained, which we call the informative blocks. This article reports on the Recognising Informative Page Blocks algorithm (RIPB), which is able to identify the informative block in a web page so that information extraction algorithms can work on it more efficiently. RIPB relies on an existing algorithm for vision-based page block segmentation to analyse and partition a web page into a set of visual blocks, and then groups related blocks with similar content structures into block clusters by using a tree edit distance method. RIPB recognises the informative block cluster by using tree alignment and tree matching. A series of experiments were performed, and the conclusions were that RIPB was more than 95% accurate in recognising informative block clusters, and improved the efficiency of information extraction by 17%.

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

information extraction
informative block


iron file systems Commodity file systems trust disks to either work or fail completely, yet modern disks exhibit more complex failure modes. We suggest a new fail-partial failure model for disks, which incorporates realistic localized faults such as latent sector errors and block corruption. We then develop and apply a novel failure-policy fingerprinting framework, to investigate how commodity file systems react to a range of more realistic disk failures. We classify their failure policies in a new taxonomy that measures their Internal RObustNess (IRON) , which includes both failure detection and recovery techniques. We show that commodity file system failure policies are often inconsistent, sometimes buggy, and generally inadequate in their ability to recover from partial disk failures. Finally, we design, implement, and evaluate a prototype IRON file system, Linux ixt3, showing that techniques such as in-disk checksumming, replication, and parity greatly enhance file system robustness while incurring minimal time and space overheads.

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

framework
recovery
replication
design
errors
minimal
failure
detection
block corruption
disks
space
iron file systems
prototype
internal
file systems
trust

measurement
policy
timing
evaluation
redundancy
robust
reliability
storage
fault tolerance
taxonomies
fault
latent sector errors
complexity
fail-partial failure model
blocking


Topology optimization for microstructures of viscoelastic composite materials An extended BESO method for designing microstructures of viscoelastic composites. Unambiguous microstructures of viscoelastic composites are obtained. Composites with desirable viscoelastic properties are presented. Comparison with theoretical bounds of storage and loss moduli.

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

topology optimization
viscoelastic composite

bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (beso)


A semiparametric additive rates model for multivariate recurrent events with missing event categories Multivariate recurrent event data arise in many clinical and observational studies, in which subjects may experience multiple types of recurrent events. In some applications, event times can be always observed, but types for some events may be missing. In this article, a semiparametric additive rates model is proposed for analyzing multivariate recurrent event data when event categories are missing at random. A weighted estimating equation approach is developed to estimate parameters of interest, and the resulting estimators are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. In addition, a lack-of-fit test is presented to assess the adequacy of the model. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed method performs well for practical settings. An application to a platelet transfusion reaction study is provided.

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 B I I 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

additive rates model
missing at random
multivariate recurrent events
weighted estimating equation


MeSHing molecular sequences and clinical trials: A feasibility study The centralized and public availability of molecular sequence and clinical trial data presents an opportunity to identify potentially valuable linkages across the bench-to-bedside T1 translational barrier. In this study, we sought to leverage keyword metadata (Medical Subject Heading [MeSH] descriptors) to infer relationships between molecular sequences and clinical trials, as indexed by GenBank and ClinicalTrials.gov. The results of this feasibility study found that approximately 30% of sequences in GenBank could be linked to trials and over 90% of trials in ClinicalTrials.gov could be linked to sequences through MeSH descriptors. In a cursory evaluation, we were able to consistently identify meaningful linkages between molecular sequences and clinical trials. Based on our findings, there may be promise in subsequent studies aiming to identify linkages across the T1 translational barrier using existing large repositories.

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

clinicaltrials.gov
pubmed/medline
bench-to-bedside
translational bioinformatics
metadata analysis


Using novelty detection to identify abnormalities caused by mean shifts in bivariate processes Non-random (abnormal) behaviour indicates that a process is under the influence of special causes of variation. Detection of abnormal patterns is well established in univariate statistical process control (SPC). Various solutions including heuristics, traditional computer programming, expert systems and neural networks (NNs) have been successfully implemented. In multivariate SPC (MSPC), on the other hand, there is a clear need for more investigations into pattern detection. Bivariate SPC is a special case of MSPC where the number of variates is two and is studied here in terms of identification of shift patterns. In this work, an existing NN classification technique-known-as novelty detection (ND)-whose application for MSPC has not been reported is applied for pattern recognition. ND successfully detects non-random bivariate time-series patterns representing shifts of various magnitudes in the process mean vector. The investigation proposes a simple heuristic approach for applying ND as an effective and useful tool for pattern detection in bivariate SPC with potential applicability for MSPC in general. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

bivariate
statistical process control
novelty detection
neural networks
pattern recognition
special causes


Nugget-Cut: A Segmentation Scheme for Spherically- and Elliptically-Shaped 3D Objects In this paper, a segmentation method for spherically- and elliptically-shaped objects is presented. It utilizes a user-defined seed point to set up a directed 3D graph. The nodes of the 3D graph are obtained by sampling along rays that are sent through the surface points of a polyhedron. Additionally, several arcs and a parameter constrain the set of possible segmentations and enforce smoothness. After the graph has been constructed, the minimal cost closed set on the graph is computed via a polynomial time s-t cut, creating an optimal segmentation of the object. The presented method has been evaluated on 50 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data sets with World Health Organization (WHO) grade IV gliomas (glioblastoma multiforme). The ground truth of the tumor boundaries were manually extracted by three clinical experts (neurological surgeons) with several years (> 6) of experience in resection of gliomas and afterwards compared with the automatic segmentation results of the proposed scheme yielding an average Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 80.37+/-8.93%. However, no segmentation method provides a perfect result, so additional editing on some slices was required, but these edits could be achieved quickly because the automatic segmentation provides a border that fits mostly to the desired contour. Furthermore, the manual segmentation by neurological surgeons took 2-32 minutes (mean: 8 minutes), in contrast to the automatic segmentation with our implementation that took less than 5 seconds.

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


Minimum linear gossip graphs and maximal linear (Delta, k)-gossip graphs Gossiping is an information dissemination problem in which each node of a communication network has a unique piece of information that must be transmitted to all other nodes using two-way communications between pairs of nodes along the communication links of the network. In this paper, we study gossiping using a linear-cost model of communication which includes a start-up time and a propagation time which is proportional to the amount of information transmitted. A minimum linear gossip graph is a graph (modeling a network), with the minimum possible number of links, in which gossiping can be completed in minimum time under the linear-cost model. For networks with an even number of nodes, we prove that the structure of minimum linear gossip graphs is independent of the relative values of the start-up and unit propagation times. We prove that this is not true when the number of nodes is odd. We present four infinite families of minimum linear gossip graphs. We also present minimum linear gossip graphs for all even numbers of nodes n less than or equal to. 32 except cept n = 2. linear (Delta, k)-gossip graph s a graph w th maximum degree Delta in which gossiping can be completed in, k rounds with minimum propagation time. We present three infinite families of maximal linear (Delta, k)gossip graphs, that is, linear (Delta, k)-gossip graphs with a Maximum number of nodes. We show that not all minimum broadcast graphs are maximal linear (Delta, k)-gossip graphs. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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


On the effective capacity region for cognitive radio multiple access channels This paper investigates the effective capacity region for a cognitive radio multiple access channel (CR-MAC) under the interference power constraint to protect the primary user (PU) transmission. A closed-form greedy power allocation policy which encourages exclusive transmission of the secondary users (SUs) is proposed to obtain an inner effective capacity region boundary. It is shown that the proposed policy is practically optimal for stringent interference power constraint and loose delay quality-of-service (QoS) constraint and the obtained inner bound on the effective capacity is thus tight.

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

cognitive radio
multiple access channels
effective capacity


Security types preserving compilation Starting from the seminal work of Volpano and Smith, there has been growing evidence that type systems may be used to enforce confidentiality of programs through non-interference. However, most type systems operate on high-level languages and calculi, and "low-level languages have not received much attention in studies of secure information flow" (Sabelfeld and Myers, [Language-based information-flow security. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 2003; 21:5-19]). Therefore, we introduce an information flow type system for a low-level language featuring jumps and calls, and show that the type system enforces termination-insensitive non-interference. Furthermore, information flow type, systems for low-level languages should appropriately relate to their counterparts for high-level languages. Therefore, we introduce a compiler from a high-level imperative programming language to our low-level language, and show that the compiler preserves information flow types. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

non-interference
program analysis
low-level languages


Novel adaptive collaboration sensing for efficient acquisition of spectrum opportunities in cognitive radio networks In this paper, we aim to acquire more spectrum opportunities in a limited sensing time. We construct a novel MAC-layer sensing framework for efficient acquisition of spectrum opportunities. Specifically, we employ the sequential probability ratio test and develop a new collaboration sensing scheme for multiuser to collaborate during multi-slot, in which we effectively utilize the resources of secondary users to sense the channels for efficient acquisition of spectrum opportunities. Subsequently, we formulate the proposed scheme as an optimization problem and derive an optimal solution with low complexity, which is based on dynamic programming theory. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme could offer good performance with efficient acquisition of spectrum opportunities in cognitive radio networks.

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

adaptive collaboration sensing
sequential probability ratio test
dynamic programming

mac-layer sensing
cognitive radio network


A tabu search heuristic for resource management in naval warfare Effective utilization of scarce resources, in particular weapon resources, is a prominent issue in naval anti-air warfare. In this paper, defence plans are constructed to guide the allocation and scheduling of different types of defence weapons against anti-ship missiles, subject to various physical and operational constraints. To reduce the frequency of replanning, decision trees are considered to explicitly account, in a probabilistic manner, for all possible outcomes of a particular action. A construction heuristic is first developed to generate an initial tree. A tabu search heuristic then improves this tree through the removal or addition of defence actions, followed by update operations aimed at maintaining the consistency. Numerical results obtained on scenarios with an increasing number of threats show that substantial improvements, in terms of survivability of the ship, can be obtained in reasonable computation times using tabu search.

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

naval warfare
resource management
weapon
tabu search


Seeing eye to eye? An exploratory study of free open source software users perceptions This study develops a typology that permits the classification of free open source software (FOSS) users into market segments. Based on the typology the nature and extent of perception differences between core FOSS users and FOSS users in other market segments is examined. Significant perception differences are observed between users in different market segments. Consequently, the potential barriers to FOSS adoption are identified and recommendations that may drive greater FOSS adoption are proposed.

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


Special Volume on Magnetic Resonance Imaging in R The special volume on "Magnetic Resonance Imaging in R" features articles and packages related to a variety of imaging modalities: functional MRI, diffusion-weighted MRI, dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI, dynamic susceptibility-contrast MRI and structural MRI. The papers describe the methodology, software implementation and provide comprehensive examples and data.

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


Real time asset tracking in the data center The importance and difficultly of asset tracking make it worthy of attention. We focus on data centers consisting of vertical racks where each rack may accommodate a variety of equipment. We describe an asset tracking system which automatically detects and identifies equipment within rack; has "pinpoint" accuracy, i.e., location resolution equals asset size; relays this information to possibly several management back-ends; includes a back-end application that maintains a location history for all equipment; and uses a visualization tool to display both the current state and the history of deployment. The solution features a flexible architecture that simplifies the connection with both existing and future asset management applications. The architecture supports simple configuration, load balancing, and redundancy. Care has been taken to use widely recognized standards wherever possible.

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

rifd
supply chain
inventory management
change management


No-bend orthogonal drawings of subdivisions of planar triconnected cubic graphs A plane graph is a planar graph with a fixed embedding. In a no-bend orthogonal drawing of a plane graph. each vertex is drawn as a point and each edge is drawn as a single horizontal or vertical line segment. A planar graph is said to have a no-bend orthogonal drawing if at least one of its plane embeddings has a no-bend orthogonal drawing. In this paper we consider a class of planar graphs, called subdivisions of planar triconnected cubic graphs, and give a linear-time algorithm to examine whether such a planar graph G has a no-bend orthogonal drawing and to find one if G has.

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

planar graph
algorithm
orthogonal drawing


SLHAplus:

A

library

for

implementing

extensions

of

the

standard

model

We

provide

a

library

to

facilitate

the

implementation

of

new

models

in

codes

such

as

matrix

element

and

event

generators

or

codes

for

computing

dark

matter

observables.

The

library

contains

an

SLHA

reader

routine

as

well

as

diagonalisation

routines.

This

library

is

available

in

CalcHEP

and

micrOMEGAs.

The

implementation

of

models

based

on

this

library

is

supported

by

LanHEP

and

FeynRules.

Program

title:

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen's

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

C

Computer:

IBM

PC,

MAC

Operating

system:

UNIX

(Linux,

Darwin,

Cygwin)

RAM:

MB

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

Implementation

of

extensions

of

the

standard

model

in

matrix

element

and

event

generators

and

codes

for

dark

matter

observables.

Solution

method:

For

generic

extensions

of

the

standard

model

we

provide

routines

for

reading

files

that

adopt

the

standard

format

of

the

SUSY

Les

Houches

Accord

(SLHA)

file.

The

procedure

has

been

generalized

to

take

into

account

an

arbitrary

number

of

blocks

so

that

the

reader

can

be

used

in

generic

models

including

non-supersymmetric

ones.

The

library

also

contains

routines

to

diagonalize

real

and

complex

mass

matrices

with

either

unitary

or

bi-unitary

transformations

as

well

as

routines

for

evaluating

the

running

strong

coupling

constant,

running

quark

masses

and

effective

quark

masses.

Running

time:

sec

O O O 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 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 I O O O O O O O O O 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

slha
matrix element and event generators


Fuzzy context-free languages - Part 1: Generalized fuzzy context-free grammars Motivated by aspects of robustness in parsing a context-free language, we study generalized fuzzy context-free grammars. These fuzzy context-free K-grammars provide a general framework to describe correctly as well as erroneously derived sentences by a single generating mechanism. They model the situation of making a finite choice out of an infinity of possible grammatical errors during each context-free derivation step. Formally, a fuzzy context-free K-grammar is a fuzzy context-free grammar with a countable rather than a finite number of rules satisfying the following condition: for each symbol a., the set containing all right-hand sides of rules with left-hand side equal to alpha forms a fuzzy language that belongs to a given family K of fuzzy languages. We investigate the generating power of fuzzy context-free K-grammars, and we show that under minor assumptions on the parameter K, the family of languages generated by fuzzy context-free K-grarnmars possesses closure properties very similar to those of the family of ordinary context-free languages. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

formal language
fuzzy context-free grammar
grammatical error
algebraic closure property


New physics-based preconditioning of implicit methods for non-equilibrium radiation diffusion This note presents an extension of previous work on physics-based preconditioning of the non-equilibrium radiation diffusion equations. The new physics-based preconditioner presented in this manuscript is a minor modification to the operator-split preconditioner presented previously. Results show that the new preconditioner is more effective on test problems that are more nonlinear.

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

radiation diffusion
preconditioning
implicit
nonlinear


Design issues for knowledge artifacts The notion of knowledge artifact has rapidly gained popularity in the fields of general knowledge management and more recently knowledge-based systems. The main goal on this paper is to propose and discuss a methodology for the design and implementation of knowledge-based systems founded on knowledge artifacts. We advocate that the systems built according to this methodology can be effective to convey the flow of knowledge between different communities of practice. Our methodology has been developed from the ground up, i.e. we have built some concrete systems based on the abstract notion of knowledge artifact and synthesized our methodology based on reflections upon our experiences building these systems. In this paper, we also describe the most relevant systems we have built and how they have guided us to the synthesis of our proposed methodology.

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

knowledge artifacts
knowledge management

knowledge-based systems
ontologies
agile software development


Temporal texture synthesis by patch-based sampling and morphing interpolation We present a new algorithm for synthesizing temporal textures, which is simple and requires only a static texture image as input to produce a continuous varying stream of realistic images. We first introduce the basis sequence generation procedure in which the chosen patches from the input texture image are stitched on the output frame via blended alpha mattes formed by minimum error cuts. All the frames in the generated basis sequence are toroidal. We then employ the probabilities of similarity and transition links to generate an inexhaustible sequence with quasi-periodic quality. To ensure the smoothness of frame-to-frame transition, we interpolate natural metamorphosis in each transition link using the efficient automatic morphing technique which solves the problem of morphing between chaotic textures with obscure features. In addition, the proposed method allows users to simply and promptly control the motion parameters and interactively render the landscape animations. We combine the proposed approach with the color transfer technique to augment the visual gratification. Several examples including scenes for cloud, fire, and water are presented to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is simple, efficient, and controllable for synthesizing temporal textures. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

temporal texture synthesis
morphing interpolation
color transfer


A scalable and reconfigurable priority queue architecture for ATM switches Applications with real-time traffic, such as video and voice, require quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees, such as bounded end-to-end delays and bounded cell loss probabilities. In order to provide the QoS guarantees for each connection in ATM networks, link scheduling to prioritize the transmission of queued cells is desirable. A hardware priority queue is then necessary since fast cell switching is hard to be realized in software. In addition, the queue has to be scalable with respect to the number of cells and the number of priority levels. A failure in the priority queue, however, will jeopardize the QoS guarantees for time-critical cells. Moreover, the errors occurred in the queue are unlikely to be detected at the destination. In this paper, we present a fast and scalable priority queue architecture for ATM switches. The queue can reconfigure itself once an error is detected, and thus it will continue normal operation even in the event of a failure. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B,V. All rights reserved.

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

priority queues
fault
error detection
reconfiguration


Change detection on LOD 2 building models with very high resolution spaceborne stereo imagery Due to the fast development of the urban environment, the need for efficient maintenance and updating of 3D building models is ever increasing. Change detection is an essential step to spot the changed area for data (map/3D models) updating and urban monitoring. Traditional methods based on 2D images are no longer suitable for change detection in building scale, owing to the increased spectral variability of the building roofs and larger perspective distortion of the very high resolution (VHR) imagery. Change detection in 3D is increasingly being investigated using airborne laser scanning data or matched Digital Surface Models (DSM), but rare study has been conducted regarding to change detection on 3D city models with VHR images, which is more informative but meanwhile more complicated. This is due to the fact that the 3D models are abstracted geometric representation of the urban reality, while the VHR images record everything. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to detect changes directly on LOD (Level of Detail) 2 building models with VHR spaceborne stereo images from a different date, with particular focus on addressing the special characteristics of the 3D models. In the first step, the 3D building models are projected onto a raster grid, encoded with building object, terrain object, and planar faces. The DSM is extracted from the stereo imagery by hierarchical semi-global matching (SGM). In the second step, a multi-channel change indicator is extracted between the 3D models and stereo images, considering the inherent geometric consistency (IGC), height difference, and texture similarity for each planar face. Each channel of the indicator is then clustered with the Self-organizing Map (SOM), with change, non-change and uncertain change status labeled through a voting strategy. The uncertain changes are then determined with a Markov Random Field (MRF) analysis considering the geometric relationship between faces. In the third step, buildings are extracted combining the multispectral images and the DSM by morphological operators, and the new buildings are determined by excluding the verified unchanged buildings from the second step. Both the synthetic experiment with Worldview-2 stereo imagery and the real experiment with IKONOS stereo imagery are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that the proposed method can be applied as an effective way to monitoring the building changes, as well as updating 3D models from one epoch to the other.

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

stereo imagery
markov random field
3d building models

semi-global matching
building change detection
self-organizing map


A CMOS differential difference operational mirrored amplifier Design of a high-performance differential difference operational mirrored amplifier is presented. The proposed circuit is useful for continuous-time analog signal processing. The circuit is developed using folded cascode amplifier and the floating current source. Several applications including grounded resistor, voltage amplifier, grounded inductor and oscillator circuit are presented. Simulation results for the DDOMA circuit and its applications are given.

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

operational mirrored amplifier
grounded resistor
oscillator


Polyrigid and polyaffine transformations: A novel geometrical tool to deal with non-rigid deformations Application to the registration of histological slices We describe in this paper a novel kind of geometrical transformations, named polyrigid and polyaffine. These transformations efficiently code for locally rigid or affine deformations with a small number of intuitive parameters. They can describe compactly large rigid or affine movements, unlike most free-form deformation classes. Very flexible, this tool can be readily adapted to a large variety of situations, simply by tuning the number of rigid or affine components and the number of parameters describing their regions of influence. The displacement of each spatial position is defined by a continuous trajectory that follows a differential equation which averages the influence of each rigid or affine component. We show that the resulting transformations are diffeomorphisms, smooth with respect to their parameters. We devise a new and flexible numerical scheme to allow a trade-off between computational efficiency and closeness to the ideal diffeomorphism. Our algorithms are implemented within the Insight Toolkit, whose generic programming style offers rich facilities for prototyping. In this context, we derive an effective optimization strategy of the transformations which demonstrates that this new tool is highly suitable for inference. The whole framework is exemplified successfully with the registration of histological slices. This choice is challenging, because these data often present locally rigid deformations added during their acquisition, and can also present a loss of matter, which makes their registration even more difficult. Powerful and flexible, this new tool opens up large perspectives, in non-rigid 3D rigid registration as well as in shape statistics.

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

diffeomorphism
insight toolkit
histological slices

parametric transformation
non-rigid registration
image registration


using web-graph distance for relevance feedback in web search We study the effect of user supplied relevance feedback in improving web search results. Rather than using query refinement or document similarity measures to rerank results, we show that the web-graph distance between two documents is a robust measure of their relative relevancy. We demonstrate how the use of this metric can improve the rankings of result URLs, even when the user only rates one document in the dataset. Our research suggests that such interactive systems can significantly improve search results.

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

distance
research
use
demonstrate
relevance
web search
effect
user
search
robust
query

measurement
link analysis
interactive system
metrication
relation
refine
documentation
relevance feedback
similarity measure
web graph


Network optimization for the design of underground mines Efficient methods to model and optimize the design of open-cut mines have been known for many years. The design of the infrastructure of underground mines has a similar potential for optimization and strategic planning. In this article we discuss the use of network optimization to tackle this problem. The idea is to design a connected system of declines, ramps, drives, and possibly shafts, to minimize capital development and haulage costs over the lifetime of a mine. This can be modeled as a variation on the Steiner problem, with suitable metric and constraints. These constraints include: an upper bound on the absolute gradient of arcs in the embedded network (typically 1/7), turning circle restrictions for navigability, and obstacle avoidance. Here we give an overview of the literature, focussing on our published work. We investigate the way in which this design problem can be modeled as a network optimization problem that accurately reflects the real costs involved while remaining mathematically tractable. Our approach is to first establish a fundamental model, which principally captures the development costs of the mine, and to study its geometric properties. We then outline more complicated generalized models, which add extra costs and constraints to the fundamental model but are still solvable. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


exploiting sequential dependencies for expert finding We propose an expert finding method based on assumption of sequential dependence between a candidate expert and the query terms in the scope of a document. We assume that the strength of relation of a candidate to the document's content depends on its position in this document with respect to the positions of the query terms. The experiments on the official Enterprise TREC data demonstrate the advantage of our method over the method based on independence of query terms and persons in a document.

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


Goal programming, regulation and generalised economies of scale and scope In this paper a new class of goal programming models are employed to define economies of scale and scope first with reference to distribution models and then with reference to more general linear and nonlinear goal programming models. Applications to interregional production, regulation and exchange are provided and in every case these models yield competitive results as special cases. But in their general form the models and associated results correspond to appropriately regulated market conditions with regulation being determined inter alia by means of appropriate supply and/or demand goal oriented taxes and subsidies.

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


Optimal placement of braces for steel frames with semi-rigid joints by scatter search A heuristic method called Scatter Search (SS) is applied to optimize the placement of braces for steel frames with semi-rigid joints. The standard SS is modified such that the hierarchical clustering is used for the update of the solutions needed to diversify the solution set. The nonlinear analysis called refined plastic hinge method is used for structural analysis. The nonlinear relations between rotations and bending moments of semi-rigid joints are modeled by the three-parameter models. Three design problems are formulated as combinatorial problems and solved by SS. Finally, the characteristics of the optimal solutions are discussed.

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

scatter search
placement of braces
refined plastic hinge method


Causal reversibility in Bayesian networks Causal manipulation theorems proposed by Spirtes et al. and Pearl in the context of directed probabilistic graphs, such as Bayesian networks, offer a simple and theoretically sound formalism for predicting the effect of manipulation of a system from its causal model. While the theorems are applicable to a wide variety of equilibrium causal models, they do not address the issue of reversible causal mechanisms, i.e. mechanisms that are capable of working in several directions, depending on which of their variables are manipulated exogenously. An example involving reversible causal mechanisms is the power train of a car: normally the engine moves the transmission which, in turn, moves the wheels; when the car goes down the hill, however, the driver may want to use the power train to slow down the car, i.e. let the wheels move the transmission, which then moves the engine. Some probabilistic systems can also be symmetric and reversible. For example, the noise introduced by a noisy communication channel does not usually depend on the direction of data transmission. In this paper, we investigate whether Bayesian networks are capable of representing reversible causal mechanisms. Building on the result of Druzdzel and Simon (1993), which shows that conditional probability tables in Bayesian networks can be viewed as descriptions of causal mechanisms, we study the conditions under which a conditional probability table can represent a reversible causal mechanism. Our analysis shows that conditional probability tables are capable of modelling reversible causal mechanisms but only when they fulfill the condition of soundness, which is equivalent to injectivity in equations. While this is a rather strong condition, there exist systems where our finding and the resulting framework are directly applicable.

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

manipulation
causal reversibility
bayesian networks


Residual thermal stress analysis in cylindrical steel bars using finite element method and artificial neural networks In this study, it was proposed that the residual stresses within steel bars after quenching in water from 600 C could be calculated by using the finite element method (FEM) and an artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm. Three modelled cylindrical specimens of AISI 1020 steel were heated and then quenched in water. Using FEM, temperature distribution with time and thermal residual stress values in the samples were calculated after cooling. The analysis was extended to elasticplastic deformation during the quenching of steel cylinders of various diameters. The calculated temperature and thermal residual stress values were used in training a multi-layer, feed forward, back propagation ANN algorithm. The results obtained via the ANN algorithm method have been compared with the FEM results. Comparison showed good agreement.

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 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 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

residual stress
finite element method
artificial neural networks


Improvements on open and traction boundary conditions for Navier-Stokes time-splitting methods We present in this paper a numerical scheme for incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with open and traction boundary conditions, in the framework of pressure-correction methods. A new way to enforce this type of boundary condition is proposed and provides higher pressure and velocity convergence rates in space and time than found in the present state of the art. We illustrate this result by computing some numerical and physical tests. In particular, we establish reference solutions of a laminar flow in a geometry where a bifurcation takes place and of the unsteady flow around a square cylinder. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

navier-stokes equations
projection methods
pressure-correction methods
fractional step methods
traction boundary condition
open boundary condition
pressure boundary condition
bifurcated tube


Anonymous Transactions in Computer Networks We present schemes for providing anonymous transactions while privacy and anonymity are preserved, providing user's anonymous authentication in distributed networks such as the Internet. We first present a practical scheme for anonymous transactions while the transaction resolution is assisted by a Trusted Authority. This practical scheme is extended to a theoretical scheme where a Trusted Authority is not involved in the transaction resolution. Both schemes assume that all the players interact over anonymous secure channels. Given authority that generates for each player hard to produce evidence EVID (e. g., problem instance with or without a solution) to each player, the identity of a user U is defined by the ability to prove possession of aforementioned evidence. We use zero-knowledge proof techniques to repeatedly identify U by providing a proof that U has evidence EVID, without revealing EVID, therefore avoiding identity theft. In both schemes the authority provides each user with a unique random string. A player U may produce a unique user name and password for each other player S using a one-way function over the random string and the IP address of S. The player does not have to maintain any information in order to reproduce the user name and password used for accessing a player S. Moreover, the player U may execute transactions with a group of players S-U in two phases; in the first phase the player interacts with each server without revealing information concerning its identity and without possibly identifying linkability among the servers in S-U. In the second phase the player allows linkability and therefore transaction commitment with all servers in S-U, while preserving anonymity (for future transactions).

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

security
transaction commit
electronic commerce


Using electronic medical records to determine the diagnosis of clinical depression To investigate the validity of using electronic medical records (EMR) database in a large health organization for identifying patients with clinical depression. The Massachusetts General Hospital EMR system was used to generate a sample of primary care patients seen in the primary care clinic in 2007. Using this sample, the validity of using certain fields in the EMR database (i.e., billing diagnosis, problem list, and medication list) to identify patients with clinical depression was compared to primary care physician (PCP) assessment by a written questionnaire. Based on this standard, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and the areas under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of three specific EMR fields individually and in combination were calculated to identify which EMR field best predicted PCP classification. The EMR fields billing diagnosis, problem list and antidepressant in medication list, were all able to identify patients diagnosis of depression by their PCPs reasonably well. Having one or more billing diagnosis of depression had the highest sensitivity and highest AUC (77% sensitivity, 76% specificity, AUC 0.77) among any of the fields used alone. The AUC for billing diagnosis of depression performed the best of the three single fields tested, with an AUC of 0.77, corresponding to a test with moderate accuracy. This analysis demonstrates that specific EMR fields can be used as a proxy for PCP assessment of depression for this EMR system. Limitations to our analysis include the physician response rate to our survey as well as the quality of the data, which is collected primarily for administrative and clinical purposes. When using administrative and clinical data in mental health studies, researchers must first assess the accuracy of choosing specific fields within their EMR system in order to determine the level of accuracy for them to be used as proxies for clinical diagnoses.

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


A tele-home care system exploiting the DVB-T technology and MHP Objectives: The aim of this research work is the development of a low-cost system for telemedicine based on the DVB-T technology. The diffusion of DVB-T standard and the low cost of DVB-T set-top boxes bring the vision of a capillary distribution of tele-home care monitoring systems with easy-to-use patient's interface. Methods: Exploiting the potentiality of the DVB-T set-top box, we transformed it into an "on-demand tele-home care interface". The Xlet we developed is able to govern the functionality of an external microcontroller-based unit for the acquisition of the bio-signals of interest. The uplink connection is used to send the exam results to a remote care center. Results. The Xlet providing the patient interface on the set-top box is uploaded by a DVB-T broadcaster without any intervention in the patient's home. A prototypal low-cost base station for the acquisition of the patient's signals (1-lead ECG) has been developed. It is able to be connected to the set-top box via an infrared link. A smart-card-based system is in charge for the customization of the Xlet for every patient. Conclusions. The proposed system, based on a currently widespread infrastructure, is able to allow the patients monitoring from home without any installation procedure. Even untrained (or elderly) people can easily use such system due to their practice with the basic DVB-T home-entertainment equipments.

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


F-p-CODES, THETA FUNCTIONS AND THE HAMMING WEIGHT MACWILLIAMS IDENTITY Hirzebruch and van der Geer attached theta functions to self-orthogonal, C subset of C-perpendicular to, linear codes C subset of F-p(n), for p an odd prime, and related them to the Lee weight enumerator of the code [5, Ch. 5]. Choide and Jeong extended this result to Jacobi theta functions and provided an analytic proof of the Lee weight MacWilliams Identity for such C [3]. We provide an analytic proof of the Hamming weight MacWilliams identity for linear codes C subset of F-p(n), generalizing the seminal result for binary codes C subset of F-2(n) [2].

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

automorphic forms
lattices
weight enumerators


PI-controlled bioreactor as a generalized Lienard system It is shown that periodic orbits can emerge in Cholette's bioreactor model working under the influence of a PI-controller. We find a diffeomorphic coordinate transformation that turns this controlled enzymatic reaction system into a generalized Lienard form. Furthermore, we give sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of limit cycles in the new coordinates. We also perform numerical simulations illustrating the possibility of the existence of a local center (period annulus). A result with possible practical applications is that the oscillation frequency is a function of the integral control gain parameter. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Unsupervised mining of long time series based on latent topic model This paper presents a novel unsupervised method for mining time series based on two generative topic models, i.e., probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (pLSA) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). The proposed method treats each time series as a text document, and extracts a set of local patterns from the sequence as words by sliding a short temporal window along the sequence. Motivated by the success of latent topic models in text document analysis, latent topic models are extended to find the underlying structure of time series in an unsupervised manner. The clusters or categories of unlabeled time series are automatically discovered by the latent topic models using bag-of-patterns representation. The proposed method was experimentally validated using two sets of time series data extracted from a public Electrocardiography (ECG) database through comparison with the baseline k-means and the Normalized Cuts approaches. In addition, the impact of the bag-of-patterns' parameters was investigated. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed unsupervised method not only outperforms the baseline k-means and the Normalized Cuts in learning semantic categories of the unlabeled time series, but also is relatively stable with respect to the bag-of-patterns' parameters. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to explore latent topic models for unsupervised mining of time series data.

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

ecg signals
bag-of-patterns
unsupervised learning


the effects of walking and control method on pressure-based interaction Pressure-based interactions have largely been limited to static scenarios; very few have focused on its use on mobile devices and even fewer have investigated the use of pressure while the user is in motion (i.e. walking). Pressure input is well suited to mobile interaction as mobile devices almost universally adopt touch and gestural input. This paper presents the initial results of research looking into the effects of walking on the application of pressure during linear targeting. Positional and rate-based (velocity) control methods are compared in order to determine which allows for more stable and accurate selections. Results suggest that rate-based control is superior for both mobile (walking) and static (sitting) linear targeting and that mobility significantly increases errors, selection time and subjective workload. These results will influence the design of a second part of the study, which will evaluate user ability to control the same application using only audio feedback.

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


A co-training algorithm for EEG classification with biomimetic pattern recognition and sparse representation In this paper, a semi-supervised co-training method is proposed to construct a high-performance classifier for motor imagery based BrainComputer Interfaces (BCI), which is trained with little labeled data. Two novel classifiers: Biomimetic Pattern Recognition (BPR) and Sparse Representation (SR) are applied. Each classifier labels the unlabeled data for the other classifier to extend the labeled set. And the enlarged labeled set is used to generate the final classifier BPRSR. BPRSR is constructed by combining BPR with SR, in which SR is used to replace the traditional distance method when BPR encounters the overlap coverage problem. The features extracted by common spatial pattern were used for classification. The experiment with datasets from previous BCI competitions demonstrates the validity of our proposed co-training algorithm compared with BPR, SR and BPRSR without co-training. And the experiment about our novel classifier BPRSR compared with other excellent classifiers on datasets from previous BCI competitions and our own lab was also conducted. And the result shows that the classifier BPRSR can overcome the overlap coverage problem of BPR by introducing SR.

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

eeg classification
biomimetic pattern recognition
sparse representation

semi-supervised co-training
hyper sausage neuron


Strain localization analysis of elasto-viscoplastic soil considering structural degradation Natural deposits are affected by chemical bonding or the cementation between soil particles during the sedimentation process. Under the effect called `aging', aggregations and linkage between assemblages are formed in the soil structure. It is known that the structure affects the characteristics of the strength, the deformation, and the strain localization. Strain localization is generally considered to be important as a presage of failure. It has recently been recognized that strain localization may occur also during compressive deformation, particularly for porous materials with large confining stress, and the localized compressive deformation may cause large displacement. The aim of the present paper is to study the effect of structural degradation on the localization of both shear and compressive strain for water-saturated clay. Firstly, an elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model considering structural changes with the viscoplastic deformation is proposed in the present paper. Structural collapse is expressed as the shrinking of both the overconsolidation boundary surface and the static yield surface with increasing viscoplastic deformation in the model. Secondly, finite element analyses of undrained and partially drained compression tests under plane strain conditions are conducted to study the effect of structural changes on strain localization. It is seen in the results that the localization of both shear and compressive strain is promoted by the degradation of the soil structure.

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