using active queue management to enhance performance in ieee802.11 Active Queue Management (AQM) is most commonly used in wired networks, principally in backbone routers where packet loss is due to network congestion. In this work we extend AQM to wireless networks. In particular, a new priority queue algorithm is introduced which helps to manage both control and routing packets in the wireless network. This priority queue algorithm offers an improvement in QoS for some services; specifically for TCP traffic and real time services that are sensitive to the loss of control and routing packets. Key AQM schemes (RED, REM, AVQ, Blue and RIO) are extended to incorporate the priority queue algorithm. The behaviour and performance of the augmented schemes is then examined through simulation.

O B I I 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 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

wireless networks
active queue management


Considerate home notification systems: A user study of acceptability of notifications in a living-room laboratory Recent field experiments on acceptability of notifications in the home showed that people generally want to be informed of urgent messages as soon as possible, whereas non-urgent messages should not be presented at all. A possible way to improve the acceptability of a notification might be to adjust the presentation mode and the timing of notifications to the message content and to the state of the user. For example, acceptability might be improved by considering user activities when selecting the best time to present the message. The relation between acceptability, presentation mode and timing has not been formally studied in a controlled home setting before. This paper presents the results of a user study, in which 10 participant couples were asked to engage in everyday home activities, and to subjectively rate factors that were expected to influence acceptability. The study was situated in a living-room laboratory in which the user activities and the timing of notifications were controlled. Questionnaire data was evaluated using cluster analysis in order to construct a semantic model that describes the relationship between user, system and environment. The key findings in the present study are: (1) acceptability could be improved by adjusting the level of intrusiveness of the presentation to message urgency: urgent messages should be presented intrusively, medium-urgent messages unobtrusively, and (2) non-urgent messages should be postponed until the message urgency has increased, or skipped if the message urgency never exceeds the predefined presentation threshold. Surprisingly, the user activities at the time of notification were not found to influence acceptability. These findings have resulted in a model of acceptability of notifications for the design of future home notification systems.

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

considerate home environments
ubiquitous computing
user attention
ambient displays
user engagement


A memetic algorithm with dynamic population management for an integrated productiondistribution problem This paper studies an NP-hard multi-period productiondistribution problem to minimize the sum of three costs: production setups, inventories and distribution. This problem is solved by a very recent form of metaheuristic called memetic algorithm with population management (MA?PM). Contrary to classical two-phase methods (production planning, then distribution planning), the algorithm simultaneously tackles production and distribution decisions. Several versions with different population management strategies are evaluated and compared with a two-phase heuristic and a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP), on 90 randomly generated instances with 20 periods and 50, 100 or 200 customers. The significant savings obtained compared to the two other methods confirm both the interest of integrating production and distribution decisions and of using the MA?PM template.

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

production
distribution
memetic algorithm


On the Performance of Content Delivery under Competition in a Stochastic Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Network Peer-to-peer (P2P) network is widely used for transferring large files nowadays. Measurement results show that most downloading peers are patient as the average download session is usually very long. It is sometimes even longer than downloading from a dedicated server using a modem. Existing results in the literature indicate that the stochastic fluctuation and the heterogeneity in the service capacity of each peer are two of the major reasons that make the average download time far longer than expected. In those studies, it has been often assumed that there is only one downloading peer in the network, ignoring the interaction and competition among peers. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the interaction and competition among peers on downloading performance under stochastic, heterogeneous, and unstructured P2P settings, thereby greatly extending the existing results on stochastic P2P networks made only under a single downloading peer in the network. To analyze the average download time in a P2P network with multiple competing downloading peers, we first introduce the notion of system utilization tailored to a P2P network. We investigate the relationship among the average download time, system utilization, and the level of competition among downloading peers in a stochastic P2P network. We then derive an achievable lower bound on the average download time and propose algorithms to give the peers the minimum average download time. Our result can much improve the download performance compared to earlier results in the literature. The performance of the different algorithms is compared under NS-2 simulations. Our results also provide theoretical explanation to the inconsistency of performance improvement by using parallel connections (parallel connections sometimes do not outperform a single connection) observed in some measurement studies.

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


The paradigm of open C++ Open languages are a new class of formal languages initially defined in [Sunik]. A language of this class combines the grammar of an object-oriented programming language with the universality of a natural language. This work details Open C++ based on the syntax and the conceptual system of C++.

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


Numerical simulation of two-dimensional sine-Gordon solitons via a split cosine scheme This paper proposes a split cosine scheme for simulating solitary solutions of the sine-Gordon equation in two dimensions, as it arises, for instance, in rectangular large-area Josephson junctions. The dispersive nonlinear partial differential equation allows for soliton-type solutions, a ubiquitous phenomenon in a large variety of physical problems. The semidiscretization approach first leads to a system of second-order nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The system is then approximated by a nonlinear recurrence relation which involves a cosine function. The numerical solution of the system is obtained via a further application of a sequential splitting in a linearly implicit manner that avoids solving the nonlinear scheme at each time step and allows an efficient implementation of the simulation in a locally one-dimensional fashion. The new method has potential applications in further multi-dimensional nonlinear wave simulations. Rigorous analysis is given for the numerical stability. Numerical demonstrations for colliding circular solitons are given. (c) 2005 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

solitons
cosine scheme
sequential splitting


Implication in intuitionistic fuzzy and interval-valued fuzzy set theory: construction, classification, application With the demand for knowledge-handling systems capable of dealing with and distinguishing between various facets of imprecision ever increasing, a clear and formal characterization of the mathematical models implementing such services is quintessential. In this paper, this task is undertaken simultaneously for the definition of implication within two settings: first, within intuitionistic fuzzy set theory and secondly, within interval-valued fuzzy set theory. By tracing these models back to the underlying lattice that they are defined on, on one hand we keep up with an important tradition of using algebraic structures for developing logical calculi (e.g. residuated lattices and MV algebras), and on the other hand we are able to expose in a clear manner the two models' formal equivalence. This equivalence, all too often neglected in literature, we exploit to construct operators extending the notions of classical and fuzzy implication on these structures; to initiate a meaningful classification framework for the resulting operators, based on logical and extra-logical criteria imposed on them; and finally, to re(de)fine the intuititive ideas giving rise to both approaches as models of imprecision and apply them in a practical context. (C) 2003 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 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 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

intuitionistic fuzzy set theory
residuated lattices

interval-valued fuzzy set theory
indeterminacy
implicators
smets-magrez axioms
mv-algebras
knowledge-based systems


All good things come in threes-Three beads learn to swim with lattice Boltzmann and a rigid body solver We simulate the self-propulsion of devices in a fluid in the regime of low Reynolds numbers. Each device consists of three bodies (spheres or capsules) connected with two damped harmonic springs. Sinusoidal driving forces compress the springs which are resolved within a rigid body physics engine. The latter is consistently coupled to a 3D lattice Boltzmann framework for the fluid dynamics. In simulations of three-sphere devices, we find that the propulsion velocity agrees well with theoretical predictions. In simulations where some or all spheres are replaced by capsules, we find that the asymmetry of the design strongly affects the propelling efficiency. (C) 2012 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

stokes flow
self-propelled microorganism
lattice boltzmann method
numerical simulation


Securing electronic health records without impeding the flow of information We present an integrated set of technologies, known as the Hippocratic Database, that enable healthcare enterprises to comply with privacy and security laws without impeding the legitimate management, sharing, and analysis of personal health information. The Hippocratic Database approach to securing electronic health records involves (1) active enforcement of fine-grained data disclosure policies using query modification techniques, (2) efficient auditing of past database access to verify compliance with policies and track security breaches, (3) data mining algorithms that preserve privacy by randomizing information at the individual level, (4) de-identification of personal health data using an optimal method of k-anonymization, and (5) information sharing across autonomous data sources using cryptographic protocols. Our research confirms that policies concerning the disclosure of electronic health records can be reliably and efficiently enforced and audited at the database level. We further demonstrate that advanced data mining and anonymization techniques can be employed to analyze aggregate health records without revealing individual patient identities. Finally, we show that web services and commutative encryption can be used to share sensitive information selectively among autonomous entities without compromising security or privacy.

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

security
privacy
auditing
anonymization
data mining


A

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laser

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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 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


An autonomic mobility management solution for the future wireless Internet The recent development of a myriad of heterogeneous wireless technologies that share the same core IP is driving the mobility as a key issue for the future wireless Internet. One of the critical challenges is to support uninterrupted and seamless multimedia services while on the move. This article focuses on mobility management in the future Internet regarding a solution proposed in the Autonomic Internet (AutoI) project. Our mobility management solution aims at enhancing user mobility experience and enabling adaptability and context awareness in the future wireless Internet. This is achieved through the use of more adequate information exploited by a utility-based mobility decision approach as well as a hysteresis margin to preserve decision stability. The proposed solution is discussed and experimental validations are performed to evaluate its impact on real-world scenarios. The proposed solution has been demonstrated to be effective in providing seamless user experience even with frequent handovers. Further, the use of the hysteresis-based mobility decision solution has been effective to reduce the number of handovers, without precluding the quality of connections.

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

adaptability
mobility
autonomic
decision
management
context awareness


On deriving and validating comparative statics of a symmetric model of advertising competition In this article, a market share attraction model is estimated using a data set of six manufacturers related to the ready-to-eat cereal industry in the US. For each year of the studied period, the market share of each firm is less than 50%, and these market shares are further apart from one another. In the reported application it is demonstrated, for the first time in the literature, that if model parameters change, all rivals in the industry should adjust their advertising spending in a manner consistent with the symmetric competitive structure for which all market shares are equal. Implications of this important finding are discussed. Scope and purpose Using a market share model of advertising competition and following a game theoretic approach, this study examines analytically and empirically the sensitivity of optimal advertising to changes in model parameters in a setting of symmetric competition. The results presented in the paper suggest that the proposed approach is useful for a firm to ascertain how to adapt its advertising strategy in response to changes in the market to maintain or enhance its position.

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

game theory
market-share attraction models
sensitivity analysis


An approach to incomplete multiplicative preference relations and its application in group decision making To measure the consistency of multiplicative preference relations, a reasonable concept of consistent multiplicative preference relations is defined, and the multiplicative geometric consistent index (MGCI) is presented. In a simulation method, the average values of the MGCI are studied. Considering incomplete multiplicative preference relations, a consistency-based linear programming model is constructed, which is optimal from the point of view of consistency with respect to the known judgments. In a group decision making context, the group consensus index (GCOI) is given to measure the consensus of individual multiplicative preference relations. Then, the hybrid weighted geometric mean (HWGM) operator is defined to calculate the collective multiplicative preference relation. Based on the consistency and consensus analysis, an approach to group decision making with incomplete multiplicative preference relations is developed. Furthermore, we briefly research the application of the new method to incomplete interval multiplicative preference relations and incomplete fuzzy preference relations. Meanwhile, the associated examples are offered to show the practicability and efficiency of the proposed procedure.

O O O O O O O O O O O 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 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 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


Computation of fracture mechanics parameters for structures with residual stresses Most manufacturing processes induce residual stresses in metallic parts, which will influence the in-service behaviour of the part with respect to fatigue and damage tolerance resistance, corrosion resistance and strength. In the particular case of a compressive residual stress field, the fatigue and damage tolerance behaviour is actually improved. The objective of this work is to develop a numerical method, based on the boundary element method and the principle of superposition, to assess the influence of residual stresses on fracture mechanics parameters. The numerical procedures are detailed and applied on an actual toughness test specimen, for which failure loads with and without residual stresses where measured. In spite on the complexity of the failure process with internal stresses, the method captures well the magnitude of the toughness variation.

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

residual stresses
fracture mechanics
boundary element


Texture segmentation using separable and non-separable wavelet frames In this paper, a new feature which is characterized by the extrema density of 2-D wavelet frames estimated at the output of the corresponding filter bank is proposed for texture segmentation. With and without feature selection, the discrimination ability of features based on pyramidal and tree-structured decompositions are comparatively studied using the extrema density, energy, and entropy as features: respectively. These comparisons are demonstrated with separable and nonseparable wavelets. With the three-, four-, and five-category textured images from Brodatz album? it is observed that most performances with feature selection improve significantly than those without feature selection. In addition. the experimental results show that the extrema density-based measure performs best among the three types of features investigated. A Min-Min method based on genetic algorithms, which is a novel approach with the spatial separation criterion (SPC) as the evaluation function is presented to evaluate the segmentation performance of each subset of selected features. In this work, the SPC is defined as the Euclidean distance within class divided by the Euclidean distance between classes in the spatial domain. It is shown that with feature selection the tree-structured wavelet decomposition based on non-separable wavelet frames has better performances than the tree-structured wavelet decomposition based on separable wavelet frames and pyramidal decomposition based on separable and non-separable wavelet frames in the experiments. Finally, we compare to the segmentation results evaluated with the templates of the textured images and verify the effectiveness of the proposed criterion. Moreover, it is proved that the discriminatory characteristics of features do spread over all subbands from the feature selection vector.

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

extrema density
wavelet frames
texture segmentation
feature selection
genetic algorithms

min-min method
spatial separation criterion (spc)


animating pictures with stochastic motion textures In this paper, we explore the problem of enhancing still pictures with subtly animated motions. We limit our domain to scenes containing passive elements that respond to natural forces in some fashion. We use a semi-automatic approach, in which a human user segments the scene into a series of layers to be individually animated. Then, a "stochastic motion texture" is automatically synthesized using a spectral method, i.e., the inverse Fourier transform of a filtered noise spectrum. The motion texture is a time-varying 2D displacement map, which is applied to each layer. The resulting warped layers are then recomposited to form the animated frames. The result is a looping video texture created from a single still image, which has the advantages of being more controllable and of generally higher image quality and resolution than a video texture created from a video source. We demonstrate the technique on a variety of photographs and paintings.

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

physical simulation
image-based rendering
animation
natural phenomena
image-based animation


Macroscopic modeling of aggregation experiments using embodied agents in teams of constant and time-varying sizes In this paper, we present discrete-time, nonspatial, macroscopic models able to capture the dynamics of collective aggregation experiments using groups of embodied agents endowed with reactive controllers. The strength of the proposed models is that they have been built up incrementally, with matching between models and embodied simulations verified at each step as new complexity was added. Precise heuristic criteria based on geometrical considerations and systematic tests with one or two embodied agents prevent the introduction of free parameters into the models. The collective aggregation experiments presented in this paper are concerned with the gathering and clustering of small objects initially scattered in an enclosed arena. Experiments were carried out with teams consisting of one to ten individuals, using groups of both constant and time-varying sizes. In the latter case, the number of active workers was controlled by a simple, fully distributed, threshold-based algorithm whose aim was to allocate an appropriate number of individuals to a time-evolving aggregation demand. To this purpose, agents exclusively used their local perception to estimate the availability of work. Results show that models can deliver both qualitatively and quantitatively correct predictions and they represent a useful tool for generalizing the dynamics of these highly stochastic, asynchronous, nonlinear systems, often outperforming intuitive reasoning. Finally, in addition to discussions of small prediction discrepancies and difficulties in generating quantitatively correct macroscopic models, we conclude the paper by reviewing the intrinsic limitations of the current modeling methodology and by proposing a few suggestions for future work.

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 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

macroscopic modeling
collective aggregation

swarm intelligence
swarm robotics
threshold-based allocation algorithms


evaluation over thousands of queries Information retrieval evaluation has typically been performed over several dozen queries, each judged to near-completeness. There has been a great deal of recent work on evaluation over much smaller judgment sets: how to select the best set of documents to judge and how to estimate evaluation measures when few judgments are available. In light of this, it should be possible to evaluate over many more queries without much more total judging effort. The Million Query Track at TREC 2007 used two document selection algorithms to acquire relevance judgments for more than 1,800 queries. We present results of the track, along with deeper analysis: investigating tradeoffs between the number of queries and number of judgments shows that, up to a point, evaluation over more queries with fewer judgments is more cost-effective and as reliable as fewer queries with more judgments. Total assessor effort can be reduced by 95\% with no appreciable increase in evaluation errors.

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

select
point
information retrieval
evaluation
analysis
queries
relevance
million query track
errors

measurement
estimates
reliability
retrieval
tracking
algorithm
documentation
test collections
effect
cost
lighting
query


A novel delayed chaotic neural model and its circuitry implementation In this paper, we investigate a novel delayed chaotic neural model, in which a non-monotonously increasing transfer function is employed as activation function. Local stability and existence of Hopf bifurcation are analyzed in details. Chaos behavior of the neuron model is observed in computer simulations. An electronic implementation of the neuron is also considered. The dynamical behavior of the designed circuits is closely similar to the results simulated by numerical experiments.

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 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

chaos
circuitry implementation
activation function


Performance analysis and optimization of a five-degrees-of-freedom compliant hybrid parallel micromanipulator Performance is a critical topic for the further improvement of compliant parallel mechanisms. The research attempts to propose a paradigm called performance decomposition and integration to manage the overall performance of these mechanisms in a higher level. A CHPMM is proposed as an example to showcase part of the principle of PDI in the process of design and optimization. The proposed method can be well integrated with the methodology of system hybridization through the specific methods of mechanism hybridization, actuation hybridization and optimization hybridization. For the future work, a physical prototype will be manufactured to further improve the overall performance in aspects of manipulation and control under the guidance of the proposed methods.

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

compliant mechanisms
hybrid mechanisms
performance index


Efficient algorithm for finding ground-states in the Random Field Ising model with an external field We present an efficient algorithm that, combined with a max-flow, min-cut minimization algorithm, makes it possible to find the ground states of the Gaussian Random Field Ising model when the external applied field B is continuously varied from -infinity to + infinity. The algorithm exactly finds all the possible ground states and their limiting range (B-min, B-max). Examples of the dependence of the magnetization and energy with B are shown for the 2d-RFIM. (C) 2000 Academic Press.

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

gaussian random-field ising model
exact ground states


Software model checking: extracting verification models from source code To formally verify a large software application, the standard method is to invest a considerable amount of time and expertise into the manual construction of an abstract model, which is then analysed for its properties by either a mechanized or a human prover. There are two problems with this approach. The first problem is that this verification method can be no more reliable than the humans that perform the manual steps. If the average rate of error for human work is a function of the problem size, this holds not only for the construction of the original application, but also for the construction of the model. The standard verification trajectory therefore tends to become less reliable for larger applications. The second problem is one of timing and relevance. Software applications built by teams of programmers can change rapidly, often daily. Manually constructing an accurate abstraction of any one version of the application, though, can take weeks, which may jeopardize the validity of the results. In this paper a different verification method that avoids these problems is discussed. This method, which may be the precursor of a new class of testing techniques, was originally developed to allow for a thorough testing of parts of the software of a new commercial telephone switch. Here it is argued, though, that the method also has broad applicability to distributed software systems design in general.

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

software verification
model extraction
software testing
logic verification
automate
spin


A constraint programming approach for a batch processing problem with non-identical job sizes This paper presents a constraint programming approach for a batch processing machine on which a finite number of jobs of non-identical sizes must be scheduled. A parallel batch processing machine can process several jobs simultaneously and the objective is to minimize the maximal lateness. The constraint programming formulation proposed relies on the decomposition of the problem into finding an assignment of the jobs to the batches, and then minimizing the lateness of the batches on a single machine. This formulation is enhanced by a new optimization constraint which is based on a relaxed problem and applies cost-based domain filtering techniques. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of cost-based domain filtering techniques. Comparisons to other exact approaches clearly show the benefits of the proposed approach: it can optimally solve problems that are one order of magnitude greater than those solved by a mathematical formulation or by a branch-and-price.

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

combinatorial optimization
artificial intelligence
scheduling
packing


Postmodernism, cybernetics and fuzzy set theory This paper is an attempt to stimulate thought and discourse towards postmodernism and its less known roots. It addresses the relationship between postmodernism and the development of the fuzzy set theory, in the 1970s.

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


Adaptive FEC-based lightpath routing and wavelength assignment in WDM optical networks ? Forward error correction (FEC) has been widely used in optical communication systems to compensate for the degradation of the received optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR). Current optical networks tend to use the same type of FEC for all the lightpaths even though lightpaths with higher OSNRs can be established by FECs with lower overhead. This paper proposes an adaptive approach to choose the most efficient FECs for different lightpaths based on their individual OSNRs. An Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model and a simple waveplane-based heuristic algorithm considering shuffled lightpath demand sequences are developed to tackle the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem. The simulation results indicate that compared to the non-adaptive case, using the proposed adaptive FEC selection scheme can significantly reduce the required FEC overhead. Apart from being far more tractable, the proposed heuristic approach performs almost as well as the ILP model.

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

adaptive forward error correction (fec)
optical signal to noise ratio (osnr)
shuffled demand sequences
waveplane-based heuristic algorithm


the application study on chinese e-government construction E-government plays more and more important role in governance of Chinese government. Meanwhile, at all costs Chinese government enhances the construction of e-government to establish a transparent and service government for Chinese citizens. Hopefully, Studies on the application of Chinese e-government can make contribution to the construction of Chinese e-government.

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


A Shape Descriptor for 3D Objects Based on Rotational Symmetry The ability to extract spatial features from 3D objects is essential for applications such as shape matching and object classification. However, designing an effective feature vector which is invariant with respect to rotation, translation and scaling is a challenging task and is often solved by normalization techniques such as PCA, which can give rise to poor object alignment. In this paper, we introduce a novel method to extract robust and invariant 3D features based on rotational symmetry. By applying a rotation-variant similarity function on two instances of the same 3D object, we can define an autocorrelation on the object in the space of rotations. We use a special representation of the SO(3) and determine significant rotation axes for an object by means of optimization techniques. By sampling the similarity function via rotations around these axes, we obtain robust and invariant features, which are descriptive for the underlying geometry. The resulting feature vector cannot only be used to characterize an object with respect to rotational symmetry but also to define a distance between 3D models. Because the features are compact and pre-computable, our method is suitable to perform similarity searches in large 3D databases.

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

feature vector
shape descriptor
shape matching


improving vibrotactile pattern identification for mobile devices using perceptually transparent rendering At present, vibration feedback is widely used to improve the limited user interface of a mobile device. Despite recent advances of miniature actuator technology, a vibration motor is still a dominant actuator for commercial mobile devices. In this paper, we present a new vibration rendering method which can enhance the identification of mobile device vibrations produced by a vibration motor. Whereas the traditional method separates vibrations in voltage applied to the motor, we partition vibrations in their perceived intensity using perceptually transparent rendering . An empirical evaluation using absolute identification showed that our rendering method can improve perception performance in terms of correct identification rate and the amount of information transfer. The results suggest that perceptually transparent rendering can contribute to increasing the number of discrete vibrations that can be used for information delivery via a mobile device, e.g., for the priorities of phone calls.

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

identification
vibration
perceived intensity
mobile device


Robust linear pose graph-based SLAM We propose a robust solution to the Linear SLAM problem. An insight into L-SLAM based on generalized least square and inverse function theorem. Delayed optimization is proposed to process any potential outliers. The recovery of corrupted information matrix is efficiently performed based on block matrix inversion.

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

pose graph
robust loop closure
generalized least squares


Absorbing boundary condition for nonlinear Euler equations in primitive variables based on the Perfectly Matched Layer technique For aeroacoustics problems, the nonlinear Euler equations are often written in primitive variables in which the pressure is treated as a solution variable. In this paper, absorbing boundary conditions based on the Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) technique are presented for nonlinear Euler equations in primitive variables. A pseudo mean flow is introduced in the derivation of the PML equations for increased efficiency. Absorbing equations are presented in unsplit physical primitive variables in both the Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed equations although they are not theoretically perfectly matched to the nonlinear Euler equations. The derived equations are tested in numerical examples and compared with the PML absorbing boundary condition in conservation form that was formulated in an earlier work. The performance of the PML in primitive variables is found to be close to that of the conservation formulation. A comparison with the linear PML in nonlinear problems is also considered. It is found that using nonlinear absorbing equations presented in this paper significantly improves the performance of the absorbing boundary condition for strong nonlinear cases. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

perfectly matched layer
nonlinear euler equations
primitive variables

nonreflecting boundary condition
computational aeroacoustics


Link molecule method for quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical hybrid simulations We present a new coupling method for hybrid simulations in which the system is partitioned into covalently linked quantum mechanical (QM) and molecular mechanical (MM) regions. Our method, called the link molecule method (LMM), is substantially different from the link atom methods in that LMM is free from the delicate issue of how to remove the additional degrees of freedom with respect to the position of the virtual atoms linking the QM and the MM regions. The force acting on the atom at the regional boundary is obtained in a simple form based on the total energy conservation. The accuracy of LMM is demonstrated in detail using a system of silicon partitioned into the QM and the MM region at the (100) boundary plane. This condition has been difficult to simulate by conventional methods employing the link atoms because of the strong repulsion between the nearby link atoms.

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

hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical simulations


Unsupervised segmentation of color-texture regions in images and video A new method for unsupervised segmentation of color-texture regions in images and video is presented. This method, which we refer to as JSEG, consists of two independent steps: color quantization and spatial segmentation. In the first step, colors in the image are quantized to several representative classes that can be used to differentiate regions in the image. The image pixels are then replaced by their corresponding color class labels, thus forming a class-map of the image. The focus of this work is on spatial segmentation, where a criterion for "good" segmentation using the class-map is proposed. Applying the criterion to local windows in the class-map results in the "J-image," in which high and low values correspond to possible boundaries and interiors of color-texture regions. A region growing method is then used to segment the image based on the multiscale J-images. A similar approach is applied to video sequences. An additional region tracking scheme is embedded into the region growing process to achieve consistent segmentation and tracking results, even for scenes with nonrigid object motion. Experiments show the robustness of the JSEG algorithm on real images and video.

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

image segmentation
color segmentation
texture segmentation
video segmentation
spatiotemporal segmentation


Output feedback direct adaptive neural network control for uncertain SISO nonlinear systems using a fuzzy estimator of the control error A direct adaptive control algorithm, based on neural networks (NN) is presented for a class of single input single output (SISO) nonlinear systems. The proposed controller is implemented without a priori knowledge of the nonlinear systems; and only the output of the system is considered available for measurement. Contrary to the approaches available in the literature, in the proposed controller, the updating signal used in the adaptive laws is an estimate of the control error, which is directly related to the NN weights instead of the tracking error. A fuzzy inference system (FIS) is introduced to get an estimate of the control error. Without any additional control term to the NN adaptive controller, all the signals involved in the closed loop are proven to be exponentially bounded and hence the stability of the system. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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

adaptive control
neural networks
nonlinear systems


Rule extraction from support vector machines based on consistent region covering reduction Due to good performance in classification and regression, support vector machines have attracted much attention and become one of the most popular learning machines in last decade. As a black box, the support vector machine is difficult for users understanding and explanation. In many application domains including medical diagnosis or credit scoring, understandability and interpretability are very important for the practicability of the learned models. To improve the comprehensibility of SVMs, we propose a rule extraction technique from support vector machines via analyzing the distribution of samples. We define the consistent region of samples in terms of classification boundary, and form a consistent region covering of the sample space. Then a covering reduction algorithm is developed for extracting compact representation of classes, thus a minimal set of decision rules is derived. Experiment analysis shows that the extracted models perform well in comparison with decision tree algorithms and other support vector machine rule extraction methods.

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

rule extraction
support vector machine
consistent region
covering reduction


Expression of Connexins in Chromaffin Cells of Normal Human Adrenals and in Benign and Malignant Pheochromocytomas Decrease in connexin (Cx) expression and loss of gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) have been associated with aberrant cell growth and enhanced neoplastic phenotype. We studied the expression of Cx26, Cx32, Cx43, and Cx50 in chromaffin cells of 10 normal human adrenal glands, 10 benign, and 13 malignant pheochromocytomas. Immunohistochemistry showed that Cx50 expression seemed to be the predominant form of Cx expressed in human chromaffin cells, whereas Cx43 immunoreactivity was the most prominent form found in the adrenal cortex. However, Western blotting revealed that nonphosphorylated and singly and doubly phosphorylated forms of Cx43 were present within the malignant adrenomedullary cells at the same time. Cx26 and Cx32 were distributed inhomogeneously with no emphasis of expression in the types of tissues studied. Cx50 expression was diminished in malignant pheochromocytomas. We conclude that there is a differential expression of Cx in human adrenals. Immunohistological testing for Cx expression does not however allow differentiation of benign from malignant pheochromocytomas

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

adrenal tumor
chromaffin cell
pheochromocytoma


The f-Vector of the Descent Polytope For a positive integer n and a subset SaS dagger[n-1], the descent polytope DP (S) is the set of points (x (1),aEuro broken vertical bar,x (n) ) in the n-dimensional unit cube [0,1] (n) such that x (i) a parts per thousand yenx (i+1) if iaS and x (i) a parts per thousand currency signx (i+1) otherwise. First, we express the f-vector as a sum over all subsets of [n-1]. Second, we use certain factorizations of the associated word over a two-letter alphabet to describe the f-vector. We show that the f-vector is maximized when the set S is the alternating set {1,3,5,aEuro broken vertical bar}a (c)[n-1]. We derive a generating function for F (S) (t), written as a formal power series in two non-commuting variables with coefficients in a"currency sign[t]. We also obtain the generating function for the Ehrhart polynomials of the descent polytopes.

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

non-commutative rational generating function


Fine-Grain Interoperability of Scientific Workflows in Distributed Computing Infrastructures Today there exist a wide variety of scientific workflow management systems, each designed to fulfill the needs of a certain scientific community. Unfortunately, once a workflow application has been designed in one particular system it becomes very hard to share it with users working with different systems. Portability of workflows and interoperability between current systems barely exists. In this work, we present the fine-grained interoperability solution proposed in the SHIWA European project that brings together four representative European workflow systems: ASKALON, MOTEUR, WS-PGRADE, and Triana. The proposed interoperability is realised at two levels of abstraction: abstract and concrete. At the abstract level, we propose a generic Interoperable Workflow Intermediate Representation (IWIR) that can be used as a common bridge for translating workflows between different languages independent of the underlying distributed computing infrastructure. At the concrete level, we propose a bundling technique that aggregates the abstract IWIR representation and concrete task representations to enable workflow instantiation, execution and scheduling. We illustrate case studies using two real-workflow applications designed in a native environment and then translated and executed by a foreign workflow system in a foreign distributed computing infrastructure.

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

scientific workflow
interoperability
portability
intermediate representation
distributed computing


Modeling, simulation and advanced control of methanol production from variable synthesis gas feed A process relying on feedstock produced using a non-continuous energy source such as solar energy needs detailed understanding of the dynamics to define procedures for cycling and robust control design. In this work, methanol production from synthesis gas (or syngas) is studied. The syngas is (assumed to be) obtained from an intermittent upstream biomass-gasification process run by solar energy. Development of the methanol synthesis recycle-loop model is described in detail, along with several case studies performed using the steady-state and dynamic models for better understanding of the process behavior. A linear model predictive controller is designed to reject disturbances from a varying upstream syngas production process and track set point changes in the desired variables for methanol synthesis. (C) 2012 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

kinetics
sequential-modular
non-continuous
system identification
model predictive control


Performance analysis of "Groupby-After-Join" query processing in parallel database systems Queries containing aggregate functions often combine multiple tables through join operations. This query is subsequently called "Groupby-Join". There is a special category of this query whereby the group-by operation can only be performed after the join operation. This is known as "Groupby-After-Join" queries-the focus of this paper. In parallel processing of such queries, it must be decided which attribute is used as a partitioning attribute, particularly join attribute or group-by attribute. Based on the partitioning attribute, two parallel processing methods, namely join partition method (JPM) and aggregate partition method (APM) are discussed. The behaviours of these parallelization methods are described in terms of cost models. Experiments are performed based on simulations. The simulation results show that the aggregate partition method performs better than the join partition method. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

groupby queries
groupby-join queries
parallel query processing
parallel query optimization
parallel databases


The t/k-diagnosability of the BC graphs Processor fault diagnosis takes an important role in fault-tolerant computing on multiprocessor systems. There are two classical diagnosis strategies-the precise strategy and the pessimistic strategy, both of which are based on the well-known PMC diagnostic model. Nevertheless, the degree of diagnosability of the system is limited under these two strategies. A better method, called the t/k-diagnosis strategy, is proposed by Somani and Peleg, in which the identified fault-set is allowed to contain at most k fault-free processors. Using this diagnosis strategy, the degree of diagnosability of the hypercube increases greatly as the number of the fault-free processors in the fault-set increases. In this paper, we study the t/k-diagnosability of so-called BC graphs that include hypercubes, crossed cubes, Mobius cubes, and twisted cubes, etc. We show that any n-dimensional BC graph is t(n, k)/k-diagnosable when n greater than or equal to 4 and 0 less than or equal to k less than or equal to n, where t(n, k) = (k + 1)n - 1/2 (k + 1)(k + 2) + 1. Therefore, the crossed cube, the Mobius cube, and the twisted cube all have the same t/k-diagnosability as the hypercube. As a result, the algorithms developed for diagnosis on the hypercube may also be used to diagnose multiprocessor systems whose network topologies are based on BC graphs.

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

diagnosis
diagnosability
bc graph
hypercube
crossed cube
mobius cube
twisted cube

precise diagnosis strategy
pessimistic diagnosis strategy
t/k-diagnosis strategy


The study of trust vector based trust rating aggregation in service-oriented environments In most existing studies on trust evaluation, a single trust value is aggregated from the ratings given to previous services of a service provider, to indicate his/her current trust level. Such a mechanism is useful but may not be able to depict the trust features of a service provider well under certain circumstances. Alternatively, a complete set of trust ratings can be transferred to a service client for local trust evaluation. However, this incurs a big overhead in communication, since the rating dataset is usually in large scale covering a long service history. The third option is to generate a small set of data that should represent well the large set of trust ratings of a long time period. In the literature, a trust vector approach has been proposed, with which a trust vector of three values resulting from a computed regression line can represent a set of ratings distributed within a time interval (e.g., a week or a month, etc.). However, the computed trust vector can represent the set of ratings well only if these ratings imply consistent trust trend changes and are all very close to the obtained regression line. In a more general case with trust ratings for a long service history, multiple time intervals have to be determined, within each of which a trust vector can be obtained and can represent well all the corresponding ratings. Hence, a small set of data can represent well a large set of trust ratings with well preserved trust features. This is significant for large-scale trust rating transmission, trust evaluation and trust management. In this paper, we propose one greedy and two optimal multiple time interval (MTI) analysis algorithms. We also have studied the properties of our proposed algorithms analytically and empirically. These studies can illustrate that our algorithms can return a small set of MTI to represent a large set of trust ratings and preserve well the trust features.

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

trust rating aggregation
trust vector
multiple time intervals


A hybridization of simulated annealing and electromagnetism-like mechanism for a periodic job shop scheduling problem In this paper, we present on a periodic job shop scheduling problem (PJSSP) based on the periodic event scheduling problem (PESP), which is different from cyclic scheduling. The PESP schedules a number of recurring events, such that each pair of events fulfills certain constraints during a given time period. To solve such a hard PJSS problem, we propose a hybrid algorithm, namely EM-SA. which is based on electromagnetism-like mechanism (EM) and simulated annealing (SA). To evaluate this proposed EMSA, some randomly constructed instances are solved, and the related results are compared with SA and optimum solutions obtained by the branch-and-bound (B&B) algorithm. The results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed hybrid EM-SA algorithm to solve the PJSSP. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

periodic job shop scheduling
periodic event scheduling problem
simulated annealing


Compensation technique for DC and transient instability of thin film transistor circuits for large-area devices A reliable driving scheme that can compensate for the inherent instability of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin film transistors (TFTs) is essential for implementation of large-area devices including displays and sensor arrays for bio-imaging applications. In particular, for high precision and high-resolution devices, the technique should be accurate and fast. A new driving scheme is presented that enables control of the DC and transient shift in the threshold voltage (V(T)) and gate voltage of drive/amplifier TFT, while fulfilling the timing requirements for the different applications. The transient shift in the gate voltage has been known to contribute as much as 10% error in controlling the DC shift in the VT whereas it is less than 0.5% for the driving scheme presented here.

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

threshold voltage shift
sensor array
amoled display


Columnar Machine: Fast estimation of structured sparse codes Ever since the discovery of columnar structures, their function remained enigmatic. As a potential explanation for this puzzling function, we introduce the Columnar Machine. We join two neural network types, Structured Sparse Coding (SSC) of generative nature exploiting sparse groups of neurons and Feed-Forward Networks (FFNs) into one architecture. Memories supporting recognition can be quickly loaded into SSC via supervision or can be learned by SSC in a self-organized manner. However, SSC evaluation is slow. We train FFNs for predicting the sparse groups and then the representation is computed by fast undercomplete methods. This two step procedure enables fast estimation of the overcomplete group sparse representations. The suggested architecture works fast and it is biologically plausible. Beyond the function of the minicolumnar structure it may shed light onto the role of fast feed-forward inhibitory thalamocortical channels and cortico-cortical feed-back connections. We demonstrate the method for natural image sequences where we exploit temporal structure and for a cognitive task where we explain the meaning of unknown words from their contexts.

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

structured representation
sparsity
minicolumns
feed-forward inhibition


Model checking epistemic-probabilistic logic using probabilistic interpreted systems Model checking is a formal technique widely used to verify security and communication protocols in epistemic multi-agent systems against given properties. Qualitative properties such as safety and liveliness have been widely analyzed in the literature. However, systems have also quantitative and uncertain (i.e., probabilistic) properties such as degree of reliability and reachability, which still need further attention from the model checking perspective. In this paper, we analyze such properties and present a new method for probabilistic model checking of epistemic multi-agent systems specified by a new probabilistic-epistemic logic PCTLK. We model multi-agent systems as distributed knowledge bases using probabilistic interpreted systems and define transformations from those interpreted systems into discrete-time Markov chains and from PCTLK formulae to PCTL formulae, an existing extension of CTL with probabilities. By so doing, we are able to convert the PCTLK model checking problem into the PCTL one. Thus, we make use of PRISM, the model checker of PCTL without adding new computation cost. A concrete case study has been implemented to show the applicability of the proposed technique along with performance analysis and comparison with MCK, an epistemic-probabilistic model checker, and MCMAS, a model checker for multi-agent systems, in terms of execution time and state space scalability. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

model checking
interpreted systems
markov chains

verification
multi-agent systems
markov decision processes
probabilistic and epistemic logic


Towards fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for abstract argumentation argumentation frameworks have received a lot of interest in recent years. Most computational problems in this area are intractable but several tradable fragments have been identified. In particular, Dunne showed that many problems can be solved in linear time for argumentation frameworks of bounded tree-width. However, these tractability results, which were obtained via Courcelle's Theorem, do not directly lead to efficient algorithms. The goal of this paper is to turn the theoretical tractability results into efficient algorithms and to explore the potential of directed notions of tree-width for defining larger tractable fragments. As a by-product, we will sharpen some known complexity results. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

fixed-parameter tractability
tree-width
dynamic programming


A model for the qualitative description of images based on visual and spatial features ? An approach that provides a qualitative description of any image is presented in this paper. The main visual features (shape and colour) and the main spatial features (fixed orientation, relative orientation and topology) of each object within the image are described. This approach has been tested in two real scenarios that involve agents and human interaction: (i) images captured by the webcam of a mobile robot while it navigates, and (ii) images of tile compositions captured by an industrial camera used to select tile pieces to be used in assembling tile mosaics. In both scenarios, promising results have been obtained.

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

computer vision
qualitative shape
qualitative colours
qualitative orientation
spatial description


geographical information retrieval system using semantic relationships between multiple layers Current geographical information retrieval systems provide users with keyword-based searching capabilities. Users select a layer, input keywords which they want to search, then the retrieval system returns the matching features to users through a map interface. In such a system, each layer only serves as an independent representation for a group of geographical features, manages them physically, and no semantics are counted. Therefore, the problems of semantic heterogeneity caused by localized language and the ambiguity of natural language make that approach insufficient to satisfy the high quality retrieval requirement. In this research, we propose a method to add semantic capabilities to these systems by defining the semantic relationships between multiple layers on the map. Ontologies are utilized for describing the terms in the domain; each layer is set to belong to one or more terms in the Ontology, and their semantic relationships such as synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, and sibling are defined through the relationships between the terms. The architecture for Ontology-based Geographical Information Retrieval System (OGIRS) is provided, then an Ontology-based City Map Guide (OntoCMG) prototype system based on our architecture is introduced. The experimental result shows the system supporting semantic geographical information retrieval, it can retrieval the maps that match the retrieval terms on semantic, and improve the retrieval quality.

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


From raster to vector cellular automata models: A new approach to simulate urban growth with the help of graph theory The transition from formal and strict CA-based models to relaxed ones is discussed throughout the text. A new prototype of CA-based models is presented in which cadastral parcels were employed to simulate urban growth. Spatial structure was abstracted to a graph representation to reduce computational time. Neighbourhood and the push-and-pull effect among land uses were defined more flexibly. The prototype has run five iterations and offers its first results for the urban situation in 2015 of the study area.

O O O B B I 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 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

cellular automata
urban growth
graph theory
vector


Simulation modelling and analysis of a border security system Border control is vital to the security of a nation and its citizens. All countries look at measures to improve the security of their borders. But increasing security can bring a substantial financial burden. In this study, we analyze the border security problem of Turkey using a simulation approach. Our main objective is to find more efficient ways of improving border control and security along Turkeys land borders. To achieve this, we examine the structure of the border security system and its major elements, examine the relationships between performance measures, and assess the effectiveness of security elements on each system performance measure. We also look into the issues of planned changes and additional resources, and we evaluate new alternative system designs. The results of simulation experiments are analyzed by statistical methods.

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


A multiscale contact homogenization technique for the modeling of third bodies in the contact interface In this work, a contact homogenization technique is developed to extract the macroscopic coefficient of friction (CF) from a three-body frictional system. The particular frictional system under consideration consists of rigid particles embedded between a finitely deformable elastic solid and a rigid surface. The challenge of the problem lies in modeling the interaction between the particles with the finite element mesh, as well as in the dynamic nature of the problem. In order to extract the macroscopic CF, a microscopic sample is analyzed in a time-adaptive dynamic setting and the macroscopic CF is identified as the ratio of tangential force to normal force applied to the sample. In order to alleviate dynamic effects, time averaging is employed. The identification of a representative contact element (RCE) and the application of proper boundary conditions are discussed for periodic and random arrangements of the particles in the interface with a particular emphasis on the nature of the micro-to-macro transition procedure. Finally, the implementation of the model in a coupled micromacro simulation using a RCE is discussed in the context of multiscale analysis.

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

homogenization
contact
multiscale analysis


Rigid and fluid interactions with institutions In two recent papers, Shaun Gallagher asks the question of how we interact with institutions. To answer it, he proposes to expand Clark and Chalmers extended mind hypothesis into the societal realm. He introduces the idea of the socially extended mind, to reflect the fact that social institutions can help us to perform cognitive tasks that we would not be able to do without them. Drawing on work by Carol Gilligan, I argue that the socially extended mind view is limited to addressing patriarchal, rule-based, hierarchical institutions and interactions, and unable to grasp democratic, fluid and horizontal aspects of society. Gallagher is sensitive to a similar worry and suggests a combination of the socially extended mind and enactive ideas. At first sight, it might seem as if enaction would be the ideal candidate to address the democratic aspects of society, and so the two would be good bed fellows. But I argue that this is unlikely, due to the incompatibilities between enaction and the extended mind. I claim instead that the enactive approach to intersubjectivityparticipatory sense-makingcan capture both patriarchic and democratic aspects of society. Patriarchy and democracy can be seen as lying on the spectrum of participation, which ranges from orientational sense-making to joint sense-making. Enaction investigates the relations along the whole spectrum and how they play out in actual social interactions, also with institutions.

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

extended mind
enaction
patriarchy
democracy


tree-width and functional dependencies in databases Conjunctive query (CQ) evaluation on relational databases is NP-complete in general. Several restrictions, like bounded tree-width and bounded hypertree-width, allow polynomial time evaluations.We extend the framework in the presence of functional dependencies. Our exteAnded CQ evaluation problem has a concise equivalent formulation in terms of the homomorphism problem (HOM) for non-relational structures. We introduce the notions of "closure tree-width" and "hyperclosure tree-width" for arbitrary structures, and we prove that HOM (and hence CQ) restricted to bounded (hyper)closure tree-width becomes tractable. There are classes of structures with bounded closure tree-width but unbounded tree-width. Similar statements hold for hyperclosure tree-width and hypertree-width, and for hyperclosure tree-width and closure tree-width. It follows from a result by Gottlob, Mikls, and Schwentick that for fixed k ? 2, deciding whether a given structure has hyperclosure tree-width at most k , is NP-complete. We prove an analogous statement for closure tree-width. Nevertheless, for given k we can approximate k -bounded closure tree-width in polynomial time.

O O B I 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 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

conjunctive queries
hypertree-width
tree-width


Hybrid constraint SVR for facial age estimation In this paper, facial age estimation is discussed in a novel viewpoint how to jointly exploit the supervised training data and human annotations to improve the age estimation precision. This is motivated by the lacking of data problem in age estimation and the current web booming. To do so, fuzzy age label is firstly defined, and it is then merged into the Support Vector Regression (SVR) framework together with the traditional data labels. The new learning problem is finally formulated into a similar dual form with the standard SVR, which can be easily solved using existing solvers. In experiments, we have compared with the state of the art regression based methods, and the results are very competitive.

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

age estimation
support vector regression
fuzzy age label


The PCG: An empirical study Process communication graph (PCG) is the visual formalism used in a graph-based visual language (VL) for parallel programming. It combines control flow and data flow graphs into a single visual formalism, and supports different levels of abstraction at which parallel programs are expressed and moves to compositional programming. Empirical studies allow designers to put their designs to test in a direct and intentional interaction with users. For research projects this may be the only way to assess if their goals have been met. The case study presented here was conducted on programmers (students) solving parallel programming problems using the PCG formalism to construct parallel programs. The results of this evaluation indicate that users benefit from visual programming, even at the beginning of the learning curve. (C) 2001 Academic Press.

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

vpl : visual programming languages
vpl-iia1 : concurrent languages
vpl-vid1 : usability studies


Universal relations and #P-completeness This paper follows the methodology introduced by Agrawal and Biswas in [Manindra Agrawal, Somenath Biswas, Universal relations, in: Structure in Complexity Theory Conference, 1992, pp. 207-2201, based on a notion of universality for the relations associated with NP-complete problems. The purpose was to study NP-complete problems by examining the effects of reductions on the solution sets of the associated witnessing relations. This provided a useful criterion for NP-completeness while suggesting structural similarities between natural NP-complete problems. We extend these ideas to the class #P. The notion we find also yields a practical criterion for #P-completeness, as illustrated by a varied set of examples, and strengthens the argument for structural homogeneity of natural complete problems. (C) 2008 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

computational complexity
counting problems


Marketing aspects of knowledge-based management in groups of companies: case of Poland Purpose - This paper focuses on identifying key factors which condition the occurrence of synergies in multi-entity companies in relation to the application of knowledge management procedures in the marketing and development function. Design/methodology/approach - The factors have been identified as selected knowledge management subsystems and subsequently validated empirically in the groups of companies under review. The questionnaire used as a research tool included 27 questions on the organisation of the key management processes in the area of marketing and development in terms of knowledge management. The research results are described by means of the correlation and median analysis. Findings - Our observations and research findings appear to support a claim that the management of a multiple organisation that allows identification, selection, organisation, dissemination, and transfer of important information between group members is a crucial determinant of synergies and financial performance of a group of companies. Originality/value - The enterprises in the former Comecon countries had a relatively little time to make important changes in the organisation and management, to improve their effectiveness and competitiveness. In the Polish economic realities, as the privatisation and restructuring processes of the former state-owned enterprises got under way, one of the ways in which businesses sought to improve performance was to establish groups of companies. We described the hidden effects of this process, which primary was not included to the direct goals of the group establishing process. However, is one of the most important effects of this activity.

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 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

group theory
organizations
knowledge management marketing


on automatic detection of sql injection attacks by the feature extraction of the single character The SQL injection attack causes very serious problem to web applications which have database including personal data. To detect the SQL injection attack, the parsing and the black list based on the existed attack have been widely used. However, a new attack method that is not included by the black list has still been developed. In this paper, we proposed the detecting method based on single character, and show the effectiveness of the proposed method experimentally using both attack and normal samples.

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

detection
sql injection attack
single character


New definitions and measures of telecommunications access Current definitions of telecommunications access are antiquated and overly simplistic. They overlook technological alternatives, overlaps, and interdependencies as well as patterns of usage and the integration of usage into daily lives. Ethnographic observation of communication behavior can be used to construct social indicators of telecommunications access and usage that are based on theories about communication and behavior, not technologies.

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

telephone service
universal access
information technology


A system to detect houses and residential street networks in multispectral satellite images Maps are vital tools for most government agencies and consumers. However, their manual generation and updating is tedious, time consuming, and expensive. To address these concerns, we are developing automated techniques. In this paper, we restrict our attention to residential regions. These regions provide a challenge, testing the current limits of automated image analysis. Such regions are also typically areas of rapid growth and development and, therefore, are of interest from the applications perspective. In previous studies, we introduced statistical measures to extract these kinds of regions from satellite images [in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, vol. 1, 2002, p. 127, IEEE Trans. GeoRS (2003), IEEE Trans. PAMI]. As the next step toward automatic map generation, here we introduce a novel system to detect houses and street networks in IKONOS multispectral images. These images have one meter panchromatic resolution with 4m resolution in the spectral bands. Our system consists of four major components: multispectral analysis to detect cultural activity, segmentation of regions of possible human activity (based on the surface material), decomposition of the segmented images, and graph theoretical algorithms over the decompositions to extract the street network and to detect houses. We tested our system on a large and diverse data set. Our results indicate the usefulness of our system in detecting houses and street networks, hence generating automated maps.

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

vegetation and shadow water indices
clustering
spatial coherence
binary balloon algorithm
graph theory
shortest path algorithm
house detection
road detection


Single parameter indices and bibliometric outliers In this paper, we look at the issue of the high-end of research performance which is captured in the tail of a citation distribution. As the mean is insufficient to capture the skewness of such distributions, a consistency or concentration measure is the additional parameter needed. We show that the h-index is only approximately a heuristic mock of a composite indicator built from three primary indicators which are the number, mean and consistency term. The z-index is able to sense the change in consistency in the distribution due to the outliers in the tail of the distribution.

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

scientometric distributions
extreme values
quantity
h-index
z-index


Accuracy and validity of observational estimates of shoulder and elbow posture This study investigated the accuracy of video-based observational posture analysis for the elbow and shoulder. Posture analyses were conducted by 28 ergonomists for four jobs presented on a traditional VHS format video recording. Estimates of posture from the observational-based methods were compared with values measured directly with an optical motion capture system. Ergonomists used categorical posture scales and a continuous visual analog scale to estimate the peak and most frequently occurring or average posture for each job. Use of a three-category scale resulted in misclassifications of peak and most frequently occurring elbow and shoulder posture with a probability averaging 30.1%. With the six-category posture scale this average probability of misclassification increased to 64.9%. Using a continuous visual analog scale peak shoulder elevation was the only posture for which the average error among ergonomists estimates was significantly different from zero (p<0.05). Correlations between the estimated postures and measured postures were higher and statistically significant (p<0.05) for elbow flexion and shoulder elevation (r2 between 0.45 and 0.66) but were considerably lower and not significant (r2 between 0.03 and 0.18) for the peak and average horizontal shoulder abduction. Ergonomists estimates of the temporal distribution of shoulder posture, indicating the duration severity of the posture, appeared to be biased such that the percentage of the cycle time in each posture category was estimated as more uniformly distributed than the measured values indicated.

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

exposure assessment
musculoskeletal disorders


An efficient location reporting and indexing framework for urban road moving objects The tracking of moving objects consists of two critical operations: location reporting, in which moving objects (or clients) send their locations to centralized servers, and index maintenance, through which centralized servers update the locations of moving objects. In existing location reporting techniques, each moving object reports its locations to servers by utilizing long-distance links such as 3G/4G. Corresponding to this location reporting strategy, servers need to respond to all the location updating requests from individual moving objects. Such techniques suffer from very high communication cost (due to the individual reporting using long-distance links) and high index update I/Os (due to the massive amount of location updating requests). In this paper, we present a novel Group-movement based location Reporting and Indexing (GRI) framework for location reporting (at moving object side) and index maintenance (at server side). In the GRI framework, we introduce a novel location reporting strategy which allows moving objects to report their locations to servers in a group (instead of individually) by aggregating the moving objects that share similar movement patterns through wireless local links (such as WiFi). At the server side, we present a dual-index, Hash-GTPR-tree (H-GTPR), to index objects sharing similar movement patterns. Our experimental results on synthetic and real data sets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our new GRI framework, as well as the location reporting strategy and the H-GTPR tree index technique.

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

moving objects
location reporting
index maintenance
local links

group-movement patterns
long-distance links


An adaptive boundary element approach to transient free surface flow as applied to injection molding An adaptive (Lagrangian) boundary element approach is proposed for the general two-dimensional simulation of confined moving-boundary flow of viscous incompressible fluids. Only the quasi-steady creeping (Stokes) flow of a Newtonian fluid is examined. The method is stable as it includes remeshing capabilities of the deforming moving boundary, and thus it can handle large deformations. An algorithm is developed for mesh refinement of the deforming moving-boundary mesh. Several flow problems are presented to illustrate the utility of the approach, with particular emphasis on cavity filling and viscous fingering, as applied to conventional and gas-assisted injection molding. The accuracy of the method is assessed through the problem of jet flow and the transient fountain flow between two flat plates. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


A Switch-Tagged Routing Methodology for PC Clusters with VLAN Ethernet Ethernet has been used for connecting hosts in PC clusters, besides its use in local area networks. Although a layer-2 Ethernet topology is limited to a tree structure because of the need to avoid broadcast storms and deadlocks of frames, various deadlock-free routing algorithms on topologies that include loops suitable for parallel processing can be employed by the application of IEEE 802.1Q VLAN technology. However, the MPI communication libraries used in current PC clusters do not always support tagged VLAN technology; therefore, at present, the design of VLAN-based Ethernet cannot be applied to such PC clusters. In this study, we propose a switch-tagged routing methodology in order to implement various deadlock-free routing algorithms on such PC clusters by using at most the same number of VLANs as the degree of a switch. Since the MPI communication libraries do not need to perform VLAN operations, the proposed methodology has advantages in both simple host configuration and high portability. In addition, when it is used with on/off and multispeed link regulation, the power consumption of Ethernet switches can be reduced. Evaluation results using NAS parallel benchmarks showed that the performance of the topologies that include loops using the proposed methodology was comparable to that of an ideal one-switch (full crossbar) network, and the torus topology in particular had up to a 27 percent performance improvement compared with a tree topology with link aggregation.

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

deadlock avoidance
interconnection networks