Utilizing domain models for application design and validation Domain analysis enables identifying families of applications and capturing their terminology in order to assist and guide system developers to design valid applications in the domain. One major way of carrying out the domain analysis is modeling. Several studies suggest using metamodeling techniques, feature-oriented approaches, or architectural-based methods for modeling domains and specifying applications in those domains. However, these methods mainly focus on representing the domain knowledge, providing insufficient guidelines (if any) for creating application models that satisfy the domain rules and constraints. In particular, validation of the application models which include application-specific knowledge is insufficiently dealt. In order to fill these lacks, we propose a general approach, called Application-based DOmain Modeling (ADOM), which enables specifying domains and applications similarly, (re)using domain knowledge in application models, and validating the application models against the relevant domain models. In this paper we present the ADOM approach, demonstrating its application to UML 2.0 class and sequence diagrams.

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

domain engineering
software product line engineering
feature oriented
variability management


Motion control and data capturing for laser scanning with an industrial robot Reverse engineering is concerned with the problem of creating computer aided design (CAD) models of real objects by interpreting point data measured from their surfaces. For complex objects, it is important that the measuring device is free to move along arbitrary paths and make its measurements from suitable directions. This paper shows how a standard industrial robot with a laser profile scanner can be used to achieve that freedom. The system is planned to be part of a future automatic system for the Reverse Engineering of unknown objects.

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

3d measurement systems
laser scanner
path planning


Anti-diffusive flux corrections for high order finite difference WENO schemes In this paper, we generalize a technique of anti-diffusive flux corrections, recently introduced by Desprs and Lagoutire [Journal of Scientific Computing 16 (2001) 479524] for first-order schemes, to high order finite difference weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes. The objective is to obtain sharp resolution for contact discontinuities, close to the quality of discrete traveling waves which do not smear progressively for longer time, while maintaining high order accuracy in smooth regions and non-oscillatory property for discontinuities. Numerical examples for one and two space dimensional scalar problems and systems demonstrate the good quality of this flux correction. High order accuracy is maintained and contact discontinuities are sharpened significantly compared with the original WENO schemes on the same meshes.

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

anti-diffusive flux correction
sharpening contact discontinuity
weno scheme


Integrated design of robotic mechanisms for force balancing and trajectory tracking Traditionally, mechanisms are driven by constant velocity motors. A real-time controllable (RTC) mechanism refers to the mechanism driven by servomotors, which can be planned and scheduled in real-time. Robot manipulators are typical examples of the RTC mechanisms. The generic task of an RTC mechanism is the trajectory or motion tracking. This paper describes an integrated approach to design an RTC mechanism considering force balancing and trajectory tracking, simultaneously. In particular, a new approach called adjusting kinematic parameter (AKP) for the force balancing of RTC mechanisms is described. The force balanced mechanism has simpler dynamics, and thus facilitates the development of control systems for performing trajectory tracking. This paper demonstrates that the force balanced mechanism by the AKP approach is more promising than those by other approaches in terms of the reduction of joint forces and torques in servomotors, and improvement of the trajectory tracking performance. Based on simulation, this paper also shows the effects of two different control systems: PD and non-linear PD versus the AKP approach and the counterweight approach. Crown Copyright (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Network prefix-level traffic profiling: Characterizing, modeling, and evaluation A cardinal prerequisite for the proper and efficient management of a network, especially an ISP network, is to understand the traffic that it carries. Traffic profiling is a means to obtain knowledge of the traffic behavior. Previous work has been focusing on traffic profiling at the link level or the host level. However, network prefix-level traffic behaviors have not yet been investigated. In this paper, we are interested in empirical studies for finding and describing structural patterns in the overwhelming network measurement data, as well as obtaining insight from it, with the expected traffic profiles potentially of interest to a broad range of applications such as network management, traffic engineering, and data services. To this end, first, we derive a collection of features that characterize the network prefix-level aggregate traffic behaviors. Next we use a simple model to capture them on all features, and apply machine learning techniques to extract representative profiles from them. Finally, we collect Netflow measurements from the entire periphery of a Tier-1 ISP network to empirically validate the simple model we proposed. Our extensive results show that nearly all networks exhibit traffic characteristics that are stable over time. The derived traffic profiles provide valuable insights on the manifold behavioral patterns that cannot be easily learned otherwise.

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


The Influence on Humans of Long Hours of Viewing 3D Movies Three-dimensional (3D) movies have become very popular in movie theaters and for home viewing, To date, there has been no report of the effects of the continual vergence eye movement that occurs when viewing 3D movies from the beginning to the end. First, we analyzed the influence of viewing a 3D movie for several hours on vergence eye movement. At the same time, we investigated the influence of long viewing on the human body, using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) and critical fusion frequency (CFF). It was suggested that the vergence stable time after saccade when viewing a long movie was influenced by the viewing time and that the vergence stable time after saccade depended on the content of the movie. Also the differences were seen in the SSQ and CFF between the movie's beginning and its ending when viewing a 3D movie.

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


Visualization of Document Retrieval using External Cluster Relationship Owing to the limitations of existing visualization schemes, existing document retrieval systems display limited results, often showing only document titles, short summaries, and keywords. This makes it difficult to examine multiple results at once or to find a meaningful relationship between results. This study proposes a new method for the real-time visualization of document retrieval results via clustering. The method clusters similar documents into groups, making it easier to understand the relationship between the retrieved documents. This study also proposes a two-level visualization algorithm which projects the cluster centers onto a two-dimensional space using multidimensional scaling in order to illustrate the relationships among different clusters, and displays individual documents at locations determined by the external cluster relationship in low dimensional space in order to allow the comparison of individual documents. The method was tested on benchmark data and real-world data, and the results show that it is possible to visualize the search results in real time.

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

information visualization
on-line computation
text mining
document visualization


Quantitative Analysis of Pulmonary Emphysema Using Local Binary Patterns We aim at improving quantitative measures of emphysema in computed tomography (CT) images of the lungs. Current standard measures, such as the relative area of emphysema (RA), rely on a single intensity threshold on individual pixels, thus ignoring any interrelations between pixels. Texture analysis allows for a much richer representation that also takes the local structure around pixels into account. This paper presents a texture classification-based system for emphysema quantification in CT images. Measures of emphysema severity are obtained by fusing pixel posterior probabilities output by a classifier. Local binary patterns (LBP) are used as texture features, and joint LBP and intensity histograms are used for characterizing regions of interest (ROIs). Classification is then performed using a nearest neighbor classifier with a histogram dissimilarity measure as distance. A 95.2% classification accuracy was achieved on a set of 168 manually annotated ROIs, comprising the three classes: normal tissue, centrilobular emphysema, and paraseptal emphysema. The measured emphysema severity was in good agreement with a pulmonary function test (PFT) achieving correlation coefficients of up to vertical bar r vertical bar = 0.79 in 39 subjects. The results were compared to RA and to a Gaussian filter bank, and the texture-based measures correlated significantly better with PFT than did RA.

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

local binary patterns (lbps)
quantitative computed tomography (ct)
tissue classification


MVSec: multi-perspective and deductive visual analytics on heterogeneous network security data In this article, we present a visual analytics system, MVSec, which helps analysts understand better what information flows under network security datasets. The major contributions of this work include: (1) a data fusion strategy for multiple heterogeneous datasets by using unified event tuple and statistic tuple data structure, which compress large scale datasets and lays the foundation of cooperative visual analysis; (2) multiple coordinated views, which provide analysts with multiple visual perspectives to characterize loud events, dig out subtle events and investigate relations of events in datasets; and (3) a contextual visual analysis with deductive viewpoints, which inspires analysts to explore hypotheses and reason their deductions from visual narratives. In case studies, we demonstrate in detail how the system helps analysts draw an analytical storyline and understand network situations better in VAST Challenge 2013. Additionally, we discuss lessons learned in designing our system and participating in VAST Challenge 2013, which is helpful and applicable not only to similar network security systems but also to other domains facing visual analytics challenges.

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

visual analytics
network security
vast challenge


DPSO based on a min-max approach and clamping strategy for the evacuation vehicle assignment problem The most challenging task during a flood event is to evacuate people from the affected areas to safer locations. The difficulty of this task is attributed to an uneven distribution of vehicles, a lack of timely assistance, a deficiency in decision making and poor coordination at the operational level. Although it is important to identify flood-prone areas, the assignment of vehicles to the appropriate evacuation routes is of primary importance. The latter consideration is a crucial determinant of the number of people who are saved in any emergency evacuation. This paper proposes an improved discrete particle swarm optimisation (DPSO) algorithm for solving the evacuation vehicle assignment problem (EVAP). Discrete particle positions are proposed that support the implementation of this DPSO. A min-max approach is used for the initial calculations of particle positions for the EVAP. This algorithm was computationally tested using different numbers of potentially flooded areas and compared with an average DPSO approach and with genetic algorithms. The findings of this study reveal that DPSO with a min-max approach that incorporates a new velocity clamping procedure offers good performance with respect to maximising the number of individuals who can be evacuated by vehicles from diverse locations for situations involving various numbers of potential flooded areas.

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

discrete particle swarm optimisation
evacuation vehicle assignment problem
velocity clamping


Generic interface specifications for integrating distributed discrete-event simulation models Distributed simulation refers to the technology and methodology that enable interactive execution of multiple simulation models that are geographically distributed and connected via network. While existing standards (eg High Level Architecture) provide a technical architecture to enable distributed simulation, they do not provide any standard pattern for interfacing distributed discrete-event simulation models. In this paper, generic interface specifications have been proposed to enable interoperability among distributed discrete-event simulation models. The interface specification models have been broadly classified into four types: Entity transfer, Data exchange, Resource sharing, and Event notification. The specifications define the minimum set of messages required to realize a situation. The specifications are described in detail using Unified Modelling Language sequence diagrams. A prototype distributed simulation, developed using a commercial-off-the-shelf simulation package, is used to demonstrate the proposed specifications. Finally, to test the validity of the proposed specifications, statistical results obtained from the constructed distributed simulation are compared against those from a single (non-distributed) simulation.

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


A novel approach for estimation of optimal embedding parameters of nonlinear time series by structural learning of neural network In this work a novel approach for estimation of embedding parameters for reconstruction of underlying dynamical system from the observed nonlinear time series by a feedforward neural network with structural learning is proposed. The proposed scheme of optimal estimation of embedding parameters can be viewed as a global non-uniform embedding. It has been found that the proposed method is more efficient for estimating embedding parameters for reconstruction of the attractor in the phase space than conventional uniform embedding methods. The simulation has been done with Henon series and three other real benchmark data sets. The simulation results for short term prediction of Henon Series and the bench mark time series with the estimated embedding parameters also show that the estimated parameters with proposed technique are better than the estimated parameters with the conventional method in terms of the prediction accuracy. The proposed technique seems to be an efficient candidate for prediction of future values of noisy real world time series.

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

nonlinear time series
embedding parameters
structural learning
neural network

chaos
strange attractor
embedding theorem


Quadrature formulas associated with rational modifications of the Chebyshev weight functions Making use of the connection between quadrature formulas on the unit circle and the interval [- 1, 1] recently established in [1], explicit expressions for the nodes and the weights of the Gaussian formulas associated with rational modifications of the Chebyshev weight functions, are given. Some illustrative numerical examples are also presented. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Readability of vertically vibrating aircraft displays Vibrations pose a problem to the visual system. The vibrations in aircraft are mainly vertical and cause reading errors when the pilots read the instruments. In three experiments, reading capability was tested during vertical vibration of modern military aircraft, using symbols presented on a computer monitor. The results showed that complexity of symbols have a significant effect on the performance. The orientations of symbols were also of importance for their readability. Indexes made up of horizontally oriented lines were found to be especially difficult to read during vertical vibration. Orienting them 45 up or down improved readability in a significant way. The size of the symbols was found to be of importance especially when they were horizontally oriented.

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


the adaptability of electronic evidence acquisition guides for new technologies The use of evidence acquisition guides for the identification and collection of electronic evidence is supported internationally as a means of providing best practice methodologies, as a legal framework and to ensure that sources of evidence are not tainted before examination and analysis can occur. This work seeks to analyse and discuss several of the more publicly known and available evidence collection guides as a means of determining how adaptable they are to modern devices and technologies; in particular, wireless and VOIP-based technologies.

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

digital forensics
emerging technologies
standard operating procedures
digital evidence


Quality adaptive least squares trained filters for video compression artifacts removal using a no-reference block visibility metric Compression artifacts removal is a challenging problem because videos can be compressed at different qualities. In this paper, a least squares approach that is self-adaptive to the visual quality of the input sequence is proposed. For compression artifacts, the visual quality of an image is measured by a no-reference block visibility metric. According to the blockiness visibility of an input image, an appropriate set of filter coefficients that are trained beforehand is selected for optimally removing coding artifacts and reconstructing object details. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on a variety of sequences compressed at different qualities in comparison to several other de-blocking techniques. The proposed method outperforms the others significantly both objectively and subjectively.

O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 filtering
least squares filter
no-reference quality metric
noise reduction
image enhancement
blocking artifact reduction
picture quality improvement


The influence of slip condition on thin film flow of a fourth grade fluid by the homotopy analysis method This paper provides an investigation regarding slip effects on thin film flow of a fourth grade fluid down a vertical cylinder. The nonlinear problem that arises is solved for both exact and HAM (homotopy analysis method) solutions. Exact and HAM solutions are also compared. Finally we briefly describe the flow characteristics to include the effects of emerging parameters.

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

slip effects
fourth grade fluid
nonlinear problem


Use of a novel Hill-climbing genetic algorithm in protein folding simulations We have developed a novel Hill-climbing genetic algorithm (GA) for simulation of protein folding. The program (written in C) builds a set of Cartesian points to represent an unfolded polypeptides backbone. The dihedral angles determining the chains configuration are stored in an array of chromosome structures that is copied and then mutated. The fitness of the mutated chains configuration is determined by its radius of gyration. A four-helix bundle was used to optimise simulation conditions, and the program was compared with other, larger, genetic algorithms on a variety of structures. The program ran 50% faster than other GA programs. Overall, tests on 100 non-redundant structures gave comparable results to other genetic algorithms, with the Hill-climbing program running from between 20 and 50% faster. Examples including crambin, cytochrome c, cytochrome B and hemerythrin gave good secondary structure fits with overall alpha carbon atom rms deviations of between 5 and 5.6 with an optimised hydrophobic term in the fitness function.

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


VHDL modeling for classification of power quality disturbance employing wavelet transform, artificial neural network and fuzzy logic The identification and classification of voltage and current disturbances are important tasks in the monitoring and protection of power systems. Most power quality disturbances are non-stationary and transitory and both detection and classification have proved to be very demanding. New intelligent system technologies that use wavelet transforms, expert systems and artificial neural networks include some unique advantages regarding fault analysis. This paper presents a new approach to classifying six classes of signals: five types of disturbance including sag, swell, transient, fluctuation, interruption, and the normal waveform. The concept of discrete wavelet transform for feature extraction from the power disturbance signal, combined with an artificial neural network and incorporating fuzzy logic to offer a powerful tool for detecting and classifying power quality problems, is introduced. The system was modeled using VHDL, a hardware description language, followed by extensive testing and simulation to verify the functionality of the system that allows efficient hardware implementation of the same. The extensive simulation results confirm the feasibility of the proposed algorithm. This method proposed herein classified and obtained 98.19% classification accuracy from the application of this system to software-generated signals and utility sampled disturbance events.

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

power quality
artificial neural network
fuzzy logic
wavelet transform
vhdl
modeling


Variable matrix-type step-size affine projection algorithm with orthogonalized input vectors An APA is realized with orthogonalized input vectors to implement it using sum of NLMS-like updating equations. We make the matrix-type step-size APA by adopting the individual step sizes corresponding to each of NLMS-like updating equations. We analyze the MSD of the matrix-type step-size APA that is different from the conventional APA. We derive the individual step sizes by minimizing the MSD to achieve the fastest convergence on every iteration. The algorithm works well even for badly-excited input signals because of the regularization-absorbed step sizes.

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

adaptive filters
gramschmidt process
variable matrix-type step size
msd analysis
regularization


Vehicle dynamics simulations with coupled multibody and finite element models With the advent of multibody system simulations (MSS) programs, it has become common practice to use computer modeling to evaluate vehicle dynamics performance. This approach has proved to be very effective for predicting the handling performance of vehicles; however, it has proved less successful for predicting the vehicle response at frequencies that are of interest in ride harshness and durability applications. The lack of correlation between theory and experiment can be partially traced back to tire models that are inadequate for rough road simulation. This paper presents a comprehensive vehicle dynamics model for simulating the dynamic response of ground vehicles on rough surfaces. This approach uses a MSS program to simulate the vehicle and a nonlinear FE program for the tires. Parallel processing of the tire models improves the efficiency of the overall simulation. Applications for this technology include vehicle ride and harshness analysis and durability loads simulation. This paper describes the MSS vehicle model, the tire FE model, and the interface which transfers data between the two simulations. Simulation and experiment results for a single tire without a vehicle encountering an obstacle and for a vehicle with four tires driving across a pot hole are presented. Conclusions and opportunities for further research end the paper.

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


Exploring the performance of split data cache schemes on superscalar processors and symmetric multiprocessors Current technology continues providing smaller and faster transistors, so processor architects can offer more complex and functional ILP processors, because manufacturers can fit more transistors on the same chip area. As a consequence, the fraction of chip area reachable in a single clock cycle is dropping, and at the same time the number of transistors on the chip is increasing. However, problems related with power consumption and heat dissipation are worrying. This scenario is forcing processor designers to look for new processor organizations that can provide the same or more performance but using smaller sizes. This fact especially affects the on-chip cache memory design; therefore, studies proposing new smaller cache organizations while maintaining, or even increasing, the hit ratio are welcome. In this sense, the cache schemes that propose a better exploitation of data locality (bypassing schemes, prefetching techniques, victim caches, etc.) are a good example. This paper presents a data cache scheme called filter cache that splits the first level data cache into two independent organizations.. and its performance is compared with two other proposals appearing in the open literature, as well as larger classical caches. To check the performance two different scenarios are considered: a superscalar processor and a symmetric multiprocessor. The obtained results show that (i) in the superscalar processor the split data caches perform similarly or better than larger conventional caches, (ii) some splitting schemes work well in multiprocessors while others work less well because of data localities, (iii) the reuse information that some split schemes incorporate for managing is also useful for designing new competitive protocols to boost performance in multiprocessors, (iv) the filter data cache achieves the best performance in both scenarios. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

ilp
superscalar processors
split data cache
multiprocessors

competitive coherence protocols
performance evaluation


Gamma oscillations in a minimal CA3 model A minimal model of the CA3 region of the hippocampus produces gamma oscillations. These oscillations exist across a broad range of conditions. For instance, the oscillations exist in the presence or absence of external input. Additionally, quantal synaptic failures do not eliminate the gamma oscillations. More importantly, there is a sensitivity to the average firing rates of neurons in the simulations. Specifically, increasing the average firing rates leads to a continuous phase transition that is a quenching of the gamma oscillations. Although the minimal model includes an inhibitory neuron, no explicit time constant of this neuron or the inhibitory synaptic conductance corresponds to the observed frequencies of oscillation.

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


Higher dimensional hexagonal networks We define the higher dimensional hexagonal graphs as the generalization of a triangular plane tessellation, and consider it as a multiprocessor interconnection network. Nodes in a k-dimensional (k-D) hexagonal network are placed at the vertices of a k-D triangular tessellation, so that each node has up to 2k+2 neighbors. In this paper, we propose a simple addressing scheme for the nodes, which leads to a straightforward formula for computing the distance between nodes and a very simple and elegant routing algorithm. The number of shortest paths between any two nodes and their description are also provided in this paper. We then derive closed formulas for the surface area (volume) of these networks, which are defined as the number of nodes located at a given distance (up to a given distance, respectively) from the origin node. The number of nodes and the network diameter under a more symmetrical border conditions are also derived. We show that a k-D hexagonal network of size t has the same degree, the same or lower diameter, and fewer nodes than a (k+1)-D mesh of size t. Simple embeddings between two networks are also described. That is, we show how to reduce the dimension of a mesh by removing some nodes, and converting it into a hexagonal network, while preserving the simplicity of basic data communication schemes such as routing and broadcasting.

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


A Practical Architecture for an Anycast CDN IP Anycast has many attractive features for any service that involve the replication of multiple instances across the Internet. IP Anycast allows multiple instances of the same service to be "naturally" discovered, and requests for this service to be delivered to the closest instance. However, while briefly considered as an enabler for content delivery networks (CDNs) when they first emerged, IP Anycast was deemed infeasible in that environment. The main reasons for this decision were the lack of load awareness of IP Anycast and unwanted side effects of Internet routing changes on the IP Anycast mechanism. In this article we re-evaluate IP Anycast for CDNs by proposing a load-aware IP Anycast CDN architecture. Our architecture is prompted by recent developments in route control technology, as well as better understanding of the behavior of IP Anycast in operational settings. Our architecture makes use of route control mechanisms to take server and network load into account to realize load-aware Anycast. We show that the resulting redirection requirements can be formulated as a Generalized Assignment Problem and present practical algorithms that address these requirements while at the same time limiting connection disruptions that plague regular IP Anycast. We evaluate our algorithms through trace based simulation using traces obtained from a production CDN network.

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

algorithms
anycast
content delivery networks
routing

performance
design
autonomous system
load balancing


the role of asynchronous discussions in increasing the effectiveness of remote synchronous requirements negotiations Important and yet very difficult process in software development, requirements engineering is plagued with additional challenges in the emergent dynamics of geographically distributed software teams. Our hypothesis is that a mix of lean and rich communication media are needed towards increasing the effectiveness of meetings in reaching mutual agreement when stakeholders are geographically dispersed.We studied tool-supported remote inspections in six educational global project teams in a multicultural software development environment. In this paper we present the preliminary results from comparing the effectiveness of the requirements negotiations when preceded by the asynchronous discussions to those negotiations with no prior asynchronous discussions.

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

requirements negotiation
computer-mediated communication
software inspection
common ground
asynchronous communication


an operational approach to data bases We present a model-independent treatment of some important data base problems. Our approach uses the data base update as elementary concept. The basic tool is the data base view defined by a set of data base updates rather than by the usual view definition mapping.

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

concept
tool
data base
update
definition


New near perfect sequences of even lengths This paper presents a new method of construction of near perfect sequences of even length N?=?2mn where m is an odd prime number and n?=?(2 J ?+?1),?J is an even number. We use a shift sequence associated with a primitive polynomial of degree 2J over a finite field GF(2), together with a pair of completely orthogonal sequences of length m to construct near perfect sequences of odd lengths. We concatenate two near perfect sequences of same odd lengths under certain conditions to obtain new near perfect sequences of even lengths. These near perfect sequences also exist for unbounded lengths over m th roots of unity.

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

near perfect sequences
completely orthogonal

periodic autocorrelation
shift sequences concatenation


video streaming over cooperative wireless networks We study the problem of broadcasting video streams over a WMAN to many mobile devices. We propose to form a cooperative network among mobile devices that receive the same video stream, and share received video data over a WLAN. The proposed system significantly reduces the energy consumption and the channel switching delay. We design a distributed leader election algorithm for the cooperative system and analytically show that the proposed system outperforms current systems in terms of energy consumption and channel switching delay. We evaluate the proposed system in a real mobile video streaming testbed as well as in a trace driven simulator. Our experimental results show that the proposed system: (i) achieves as high as 70\% of energy saving gain, (ii) outperforms current systems with only three cooperative mobile devices, (iii) reduces channel switching delay by up to 98\%, (iv) is robust under device failures and quickly reacts to network dynamics, and (v) uniformly distributes load across all cooperative devices.

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

video broadcast
cooperative networks
mobile tv


Bounds for the MSE performance of constant modulus estimators The constant modulus (CM) criterion has become popular in the design of blind linear estimators of sub-Gaussian independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) processes transmitted through unknown linear channels in the presence of unknown additive interference. In this paper, me present an upper bound for the conditionally unbiased mean-squared error (USME) of CM-minimizing estimators that depends only on the source kurtoses and the UMSE of Wiener estimators. Further analysis reveals that the extra UMSE of CM estimators can be upper-bounded by approximately the square of the Wiener (i.e., minimum) UMSE. Since our results hold for vector-valued finite-impulse response/infinite-impulse response (FIR/IIR) linear channels, vector-valued FIR/IIR estimators with a possibly constrained number of adjustable parameters, and multiple interferers with arbitrary distribution, they confirm the longstanding conjecture regarding the general mean-square error (MSE) robustness of CM estimators.

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

blind beamforming
blind deconvolution
blind equalization
blind multiuser detection
constant modulus algorithm
godard algorithm


Asymmetric quantum codes: new codes from old In this paper we extend to asymmetric quantum error-correcting codes the construction methods, namely: puncturing, extending, expanding, direct sum and the \(({ \mathbf u}| \mathbf{u}+{ \mathbf v})\) construction. By applying these methods, several families of asymmetric quantum codes can be constructed. Consequently, as an example of application of quantum code expansion developed here, new families of asymmetric quantum codes derived from generalized Reed-Muller codes, quadratic residue, Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem, character codes and affine-invariant codes are constructed.

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

code constructions
classical code techniques


Fast and efficient DOA estimation method for signals with known waveforms using nonuniform linear arrays We propose a new method to estimate the direction of arrival (DOA) of non-coherent source signals with known waveforms. We exploit nonuniform linear array in conjunction with linear regression model for DOA estimation. The effect of correlated sources on the performance of parameter estimation is also investigated. Our method estimates the parameters with linear operation and has lower computational cost compared to existing methods.

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

known waveform
sparse linear array
maximum likelihood problem
regression analysis


High order finite difference WENO schemes with the exact conservation property for the shallow water equations ? Shallow water equations with nonflat bottom have steady state solutions in which the flux gradients are nonzero but exactly balanced by the source term. It is a challenge to design genuinely high order accurate numerical schemes which preserve exactly these steady state solutions. In this paper we design high order finite difference WENO schemes to this system with such exact conservation property (C-property) and at the same time maintaining genuine high order accuracy. Extensive one and two dimensional simulations are performed to verify high order accuracy, the exact C-property, and good resolution for smooth and discontinuous solutions.

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

shallow water equation
weno scheme
conservation laws
c-property


Examining the role of information technology in cultivating firms dynamic marketing capabilities Most prior research has investigated an organization's dynamic capabilities in general and overlooked their effect on critical business functions. Our study considered the role of IT in improving firm's dynamic marketing capabilities. We developed a model consisting of market orientation, IT infrastructure capabilities, and the use of IT in customer relationship management (CRM). With data collected from 135 manufacturing and service firms in Taiwan, our results supported most of our hypotheses. Our results showed important direct effects of a firm's market orientation, use of IT to support CRM, and the functionality of IT infrastructure capabilities on its dynamic marketing capabilities.

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

dynamic marketing capabilities
dynamic capabilities
market orientation
it infrastructure


An economic model to compare the profitability of pay-per-use and fixed-fee licensing This paper develops an economic model to compare the profitability of two strategies for the pricing of packaged software: fixed-fee and pay-per-use licensing. It is assumed that the market consists of a monopoly software vendor who is selling packaged software to customers who are homogeneous in marginal value of software use but heterogeneous in level of use. In addition to obtaining the software package from the market, customers can develop the required software in-house. When in-house development costs are constant across customers, the results show that the software vendor prefers pay-per-use licensing over fixed-fee licensing if in-house development is relatively expensive, whereas fixed-fee licensing is optimal if the cost of in-house development drops below a certain threshold value. When the assumption of a constant in-house development cost is relaxed by letting it vary among customers, it still holds that pay-per-use licensing is optimal if its average is relatively large. For low and medium values of the average cost of in-house development, however, fixed-fee licensing may no longer be optimal as the relative attractiveness of the two licensing strategies now depends on how dispersed the in-house development costs of individual customers are.

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

software pricing
pay-per-use licensing
fixed-fee licensing
mathematical modeling


Probing ligand binding modes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis MurC ligase by molecular modeling, dynamics simulation and docking Multi drug resistance capacity for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-Mtb) demands the profound need for developing new anti-tuberculosis drugs. The present work is on Mtb-MurC ligase, which is an enzyme involved in biosynthesis of peptidoglycan, a component of Mtb cell wall. In this paper the 3-D structure of Mtb-MurC has been constructed using the templates 1GQQ and 1P31. Structural refinement and energy minimization of the predicted Mtb-MurC ligase model has been carried out by molecular dynamics. The streochemical check failures in the energy minimized model have been evaluated through Procheck, Whatif ProSA, and Verify 3D. Further torsion angles for the side chains of amino acid residues of the developed model were determined using Predictor. Docking analysis of Mtb-MurC model with ligands and natural substrates enabled us to identify specific residues viz. Gly125, Lys126, Arg331, and Arg332, within the Mtb-MurC binding pocket to play an important role in ligand and substrate binding affinity and selectivity. The availability of Mtb-MurC ligase built model, together with insights gained from docking analysis will promote the rational design of potent and selective Mtb-MurC ligase inhibitors as antituberculosis therapeutics.

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


Host intrusion prevention: Part of the operating system or on top of the operating system? Instrusion prevention systems (IPS) are becoming essential for securing information technology (IT). However, IPS will never become a fully integral part of the operational system, because of the complexity of the problem, the changing nature of threats, and the dependence of IPS on the particulars of the applications being protected. But certain IPS functionality is likely to move into the operating system, namely innate defenses that offer simple protection against vulnerability classes, and IPS plumbing, i.e. the IPS components that are currently in kernel modules. The integration of these aspects of IPS with the operating system will result in an OS that is more adaptable and easier to develop new innovative IPS technologies upon.

O B I 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 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

host-based
buffer overflow
innate defense


comparing models of computation We give a denotational framework (a meta model) within which certain properties of models of computation can be understood and compared. It describes concurrent processes as sets of possible behaviors. Compositions of processes are given as intersections of their behaviors. The interaction between processes is through signals, which are collections of events. Each event is a value-tag pair, where the tags can come from a partially ordered or totally ordered set. Timed models are where the set of tags is totally ordered. Synchronous events share the same tag, and synchronous signals contain events with the same set of tags. Synchronous systems contain synchronous signals. Strict causality (in timed systems) and continuity (in untimed systems) ensure determinacy under certain technical conditions. The framework is used to compare certain essential features of various models of computation, including Kahn process networks, dataflow, sequential processes, concurrent sequential processes with rendezvous, Petri nets, and discrete-event systems.

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

sequential processes
totally ordered set
synchronous events
models of computation
concurrent processes
petri nets
kahn process networks
denotational framework

partially ordered set
value-tag pair
discrete-event systems
concurrent sequential processes


Wild knots Wild knots, a class of knots which cannot be represented by polygonal paths in 3-dimensional space, are investigated as an embellishment to the Celtic style of ornamental knotwork. Wild knotwork designs are compared to fractal knotwork designs and the traditional technique of N-interlacement. It is shown that all three styles may co-exist in one design.

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

wild knot
celtic knotwork
n-interlacement
art


Modelling the profitability of credit cards by Markov decision processes This paper derives a Markov decision process model for the profitability of credit cards, which allows lenders to find an optimal dynamic credit limit policy. The states of the system are based on the borrowers behavioural score and the decisions are what credit limit to give the borrower each period. In determining which Markov chain best describes the borrowers performance, second order as well as first order Markov chains are considered and estimation procedures developed that deal with the low default levels that may exist in the data. A case study is given in which the optimal credit limit is derived and the results compared with the actual outcomes.

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

markov decision process
behavioural score
profitability

or in banking
credit card
probability of default


From bi-ideals to periodicity The necessary and sufficient conditions are extracted for periodicity of bi-ideals. They cover infinitely and finitely generated bi-ideals.

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

periodic words
bi-ideals
the sequence generates the bi-ideal
finitely generated bi-ideals


A logical approach to efficient Max-SAT solving Weighted Max-SAT is the optimization version of SAT and many important problems can be naturally encoded as such. Solving weighted Max-SAT is an important problem from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in finding efficient solving techniques. Most of this work focuses on the computation of good quality lower bounds to be used within a branch and bound DPLL-like algorithm. Most often, these lower bounds are described in a procedural way. Because of that, it is difficult to realize the logic that is behind. In this paper we introduce an original framework for Max-SAT that stresses the parallelism with classical SAT. Then, we extend the two basic SAT solving techniques: search and inference. We show that many algorithmic tricks used in state-of-the-art Max-SAT solvers are easily expressible in logical terms in a unified manner, using our framework. We also introduce an original search algorithm that performs a restricted amount of weighted resolution at each visited node. We empirically compare our algorithm with a variety of solving alternatives on several benchmarks. Our experiments, which constitute to the best of our knowledge the most comprehensive Max-SAT evaluation ever reported, demonstrate the practical usability of our approach. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


The contraction principle for set valued mappings on a metric space with a graph Let (X,d) ( X , d ) be a metric space and F:X?X F : X ? X be a set valued mapping. We obtain sufficient conditions for the existence of a fixed point of the mapping F F in the metric space X X endowed with a graph G G such that the set V(G) V ( G ) of vertices of G G coincides with X X and the set of edges of G G is E(G)={(x,y):(x,y)?XX} E ( G ) = { ( x , y ) : ( x , y ) ? X X } .

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 B I I 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

fixed point
metric space
set valued mapping


Anisotropic filtering for model-based segmentation of 4D cylindrical echocardiographic images This paper presents a 4D (3D+time) echocardiographic image anisotropic filtering and a 3D model-based segmentation system. To improve the extraction of left ventricle boundaries, we rely on two preprocessing stages. First, we apply an anisotropic filter that reduces image noise. This 4D filter takes into account the spatial and temporal nature of echocardiographic images. Second, we adapt the usual gradient filter estimation to the cylindrical geometry of the 3D ultrasound images. The reconstruction of the endocardium takes place by deforming a deformable simplex mesh having an a priori knowledge of left ventricle shape and that is guided by a region-based data attraction force. The external force formulation improves the segmentation robustness against noise and outliers. We illustrate our method by showing experimental results on very challenging sparse and noisy ultrasound images of the heart and by computing quantitative measurements of the left ventricle volume.

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

cylindrical geometry
anisotropic filtering

ultrasound image
deformable models
echocardiography


A tree conditional random field model for panel detection in comic images A novel context modeling method is used to detect panels within comic images. Connected components, edge and line segments are extracted from comic images. We extract geometric and contextual features for each of the three kinds of objects. A tree CRF is used to model the interactions among these objects. The detected panels are presented as convex polygons to keep the content integrity.

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

panel detection
conditional random field
context modeling

comic image document
probabilistic graphical model


Probabilistic student modelling to improve exploratory behaviour This paper presents the details of a student model that enables an open learning environment to provide tailored feedback on a learner's exploration. Open learning environments have been shown to be beneficial for learners with appropriate learning styles and characteristics, but problematic for those who are not able to explore effectively. To address this problem, we have built a student model capable of detecting when the learner is having difficulty exploring and of providing the types of assessments that the environment needs to guide and improve the learner's exploration of the available material. The model, which uses Bayesian Networks, was built using an iterative design and evaluation process. We describe the details of this process, as it was used to both define the structure of the model and to provide its initial validation.

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

bayesian networks
exploration
open learning environments
student modelling


An algorithm for the fast simulation of multicomponent object deformation In this paper a fast algorithm for the simulation of deformable objects composed of multiple components made of different materials is introduced. By using the boundary element method and considering individual components and their interfaces separately, a relationship between the unknown and known displacements is established. Based on this expression, a component-based condensation method can be applied. This reduces the size of the matrix to be inverted to depend only on the number of unknown displacements of the components with changing boundary condition. To speed up the construction of the required matrices, a maximal matrix method is proposed. By categorizing the changes in boundary conditions, three fast update strategies on matrix inverse are introduced. Based on the maximal matrix method and the matrix inverse update strategy, we define eight easily formed characteristic matrices, which enhance the computation speed further The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated by a set of experimental results.

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

deformation
multiple components
condensation
matrix inverse
maximal matrix method


A Simple Model for Chunk-Scheduling Strategies in P2P Streaming Peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming tries to achieve scalability (like P2P file distribution) and at the same time meet real-time playback requirements. It is a challenging problem still not well understood. In this paper, we describe a simple stochastic model that can be used to compare different downloading strategies to random peer selection. Based on this model, we study the tradeoffs between supported peer population, buffer size, and playback continuity. We first study two simple strategies: Rarest First (RF) and Greedy. The former is a well-known strategy for P2P file sharing that gives good scalability by trying to propagate the chunks of a file to as many peers as quickly as possible. The latter is an intuitively reasonable strategy to get urgent chunks first to maximize playback continuity from a peer's local perspective. Yet in reality, both scalability and urgency should be taken care of. With this insight, we propose a Mixed strategy that achieves the best of both worlds. Furthermore, the Mixed strategy comes with an adaptive algorithm that can adapt its buffer setting to dynamic peer population. We validate our analytical model with simulation. Finally, we also discuss the modeling assumptions and the model's sensitivity to different parameters and show that our model is robust.

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

marginal probability model
peer-to-peer (p2p)
performance analysis
video


Partial match queries in relaxed multidimensional search trees Partial match queries arise frequently in the context of large databases, where each record contains a distinct multidimensional key, that is, the key of each record Is a K-tuple of values. The components of a key are called the coordinates or attributes of the key. In a partial match query we specify the value of s attributes, 0 < s < K, and leave the remaining K - s attributes unspecified. The goal is to retrieve all the records in the database that match the specified attributes. In this paper we present several results about the average performance and variance of partial matches in relaxed K-dimensional trees (search trees and digital tries). These data structures are variants of the well known Kd-trees and Kd-tries. In relaxed trees the sequence of attributes used to guide a query is explicitly stored at the nodes of the tree and randomly generated and, in general, win be different for different search paths. In the standard variants, the sequence of attributes that guides a query examines the attributes in a cyclic fashion, fixed and identical far all search paths. We show that the probabilistic analysis of the relaxed multidimensional trees is very similar to that of standard Kd-trees and Kd-tries, and also to the analysis of quadtrees. In fact, besides the average cost and variance of partial match in relaxed Kd-trees and Kd-tries, we also obtain the Variance of partial matches in two-dimensional quadtrees. We also compute the average cost of partial matches in other relaxed multidimensional digital tries, namely, relaxed Kd-Patricia and relaxed Kd-digital search trees.

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

analysis of algorithms
k-dimensional binary search trees
relaxed k-dimensional search trees


autism/excel study Five high school students with ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) participating in the Excel/Autism study were able to demonstrate mastery of a set of Excel topics. The Excel curriculum covered approximately the same topics as are covered in the Excel portion of Computer Business Applications, a class for regular education students at Fox Chapel Area High School, a high school in suburban Pittsburgh. The students with ASD were provided with one-on-one tutoring support. Two of the five ASD participants self-initiated activities and engaged in generative thinking to a substantial degree over the course of the eight instructional sessions for which data was recorded. Two others demonstrated lesser amounts of this behavior, and one participant did not demonstrate any. The ASD experimental participants, as compared to a treatment group of three students with ASD who did not receive instruction in Excel, demonstrated improvement in a multi-step planning task which was significant.

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

multi-step planning
adapted computer curriculum
autism
spreadsheets


Answering queries in hybrid Bayesian networks using importance sampling In this paper we propose an algorithm for answering queries in hybrid Bayesian networks where the underlying probability distribution is of class MTE (mixture of truncated exponentials). The algorithm is based on importance sampling simulation. We show how, like existing importance sampling algorithms for discrete networks, it is able to provide answers to multiple queries simultaneously using a single sample. The behaviour of the new algorithm is experimentally tested and compared with previous methods existing in the literature.

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


Voltage distribution along a long ceramic insulator string in a high-voltage tower window Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce an efficient model for analysis of the voltage distribution along the long ceramic insulator strings in a high-voltage tower window, especially when the structure and parameters of the ceramic insulator are unknown. The effect of the grading ring on the voltage distribution is also investigated. Design/methodology/approach - A circuit model composed of capacitors is used to analyze the voltage distribution along the ceramic insulator strings in a transmission tower window. The capacitances of the disk insulators, line conductors, and tower are obtained by using the finite element method, charge simulation method, boundary element method, and measurement according to their characteristics. Findings - The model is very efficient. The voltage distribution along insulator strings can be optimized by adjusting the parameters of the grading ring. The maximum amount of voltage applied to a single insulator disk can be reduced effectively by increasing either the diameter of the grading ring or the distance from the upper surface of the grading ring to the high-voltage end of the insulator string. Originality/value - The model is very efficient for analysis of the voltage distribution along the long ceramic insulator strings, especially when the structure and parameters of the ceramic insulator are unknown.

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

boundary-elements methods
circuit theory
electrical insulation devices
electric field effects


On special differential superordinations using multiplier transformation In the present paper we establish several differential superordinations regardind the multiplier transformations 1 (m, lambda, l) f (z) = z + Sigma(infinity)(j=2) (1 + lambda (j-1) + l/l + 1)(m) a(j)z(j), where m is an element of N boolean OR {0}, lambda, l >= 0 and f is an element of A, A= {f is an element of H(U) : f(z) = z + Sigma(infinity)(j=2) a(j)z(j), z is an element of U} A number of interesting consequences of some of these superordination results are discussed. Relevant connections of some of the new results obtained in this paper with those in earlier works are also provided.

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

differential superordination
convex function
best subordinant
differential operator


standards and policy sig The Standards and Policy SIG will provide an opportunity for SIGCHI communities and others to share activity in the standards and policies relevant to HCI in their respective areas. There are two goals for the SIG. One is to collect a list of resources that may be useful for SIGCHI researchers and practitioners. The other is to identify new opportunities for SIGCHI to provide leadership in the standards and policy area; and to uncover areas where SIGCHI should be coordinating with other societies in areas that impact HCI standards and policies.

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


Conditional edge-fault Hamiltonicity of augmented cubes The augmented cube is a variation of hypercubes, it possesses many superior properties. In this paper, we show that, for any n-dimensional augmented cube (n >= 3) with faulty edges up to 4n - 8 in which each vertex is incident to at least two fault-free edges, there exists a fault-free Hamiltonian cycle. Our result is optimal with respect to the number of faulty edges tolerated. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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


Some principles of organization of spinal neurons underlying locomotion in zebrafish and their implications Recent studies of the spinal motor system of zebrafish, along with work in other species, are leading to some principles that appear to underlie the organization and recruitment of motor networks in cord: (1) broad neuronal classes defined by a set of transcription factors, key morphological features, and transmitter phenotypes arise in an orderly way from different dorso-ventral zones in spinal cord; (2) motor behaviors and both motoneurons and interneurons differentiate in order from gross, often faster, movements and the neurons driving them to progressively slower movements and their underlying neurons; (3) recruitment order of motoneurons and interneurons is based upon time of differentiation; (4) different locomotor speeds involve some shifts in the set of active interneurons. Here we review these principles and some of their implications for other parts of the brain, other vertebrates, and limbed locomotion.

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

motoneurons
transcription factors
locomotion


Requirement-Aware Scheduling of Bag-of-Tasks Applications on Grids with Dynamic Resilience Grids have been extensively deployed to handle various scientific and engineering applications that can be structured as bag-of-tasks (BoT). The scheduling of BoT applications on Grids is an important issue for achieving high performance. Grid scheduling involves a number of challenging issues, mainly due to the dynamic nature of the Grid. To deal with this dynamic nature, in this paper, we propose an online scheduling algorithm called prudent algorithm with replication (PAR) for scheduling Grid applications. PAR is shown to prudently make scheduling decisions in such a way that it can tolerate inaccurate performance predictions. Another point to note is that PAR adopts task duplication as an attempt to reduce serious schedule increases. Moreover, since the applications to be performed may widely vary in terms of their required hardware and software, we also capture the loads' various processing requirements in our algorithms, a unique feature that is applicable for running proprietary applications only on certain eligible processing nodes. Thus, in our problem formulation each application can only be processed by certain processors as both the applications and processing nodes are heterogeneous. We then present a task selection policy, referred to as requirement-aware load selection (RALS) policy to handle the contention of multiple applications that have various processing requirements but share the same computing resources. Based on RALS and PAR, we develop two scheduling algorithms: requirement-aware prudent algorithm with replication (RAPAR), and requirement-aware knowledge-free algorithm with replication (RAKAR). RAPAR and RAKAR address the scheduling of multiple BoT applications with heterogeneous processing requirements on Grids. RAPAR works in scenarios where inaccurate performance prediction information is provided whereas RAKAR works without any prediction information. Performance evaluation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and competitiveness of our approaches when compared to existing algorithms.

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

task scheduling
grid computing
bag-of-tasks applications
parallel computing


Comparison of different multiway methods for the analysis of geographical metal distributions in fish, sediments and river waters in Catalonia Comparison of different multiway data analysis methods based on Principal Component Analysis and Multivariate Curve Resolution Matrix Augmentation bilinear models and on PARAFAC and TUCKER3 models is performed in the analysis of a three-way data set built up by the analysis of 11 metal ions in 17 fish, sediment and water samples from the same river site locations of Catalonia (NE, Spain). Adaptation of Multivariate Curve Resolution to PARAFAC and TUCKER3 type of models showed the flexibility of this method to handle different data structures and also to fulfill different constraint types. Although the way the results were obtained using these different chemometric methods varied, similar environmental interpretations and conclusions were derived independently of the chemometric method used for data analysis. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

parafac tucker3 fish sediments waters catalonia


collaborative processes in trauma teams This project aims to further our understanding of collaboration practices in small, collocated teams that work in dynamic, time-and safety critical environments. We use emergency room as a natural laboratory for investigating information gathering, sharing and archiving, as well as decision making in trauma teams as they conduct trauma resuscitations. We have observed and analyzed six trauma resuscitations and conducted interviews with trauma team members. We found that every worker has different information needs, which are role specific and change rapidly over time. Information gathering and sharing within trauma teams often become inefficient due to the urgency of situation and the lack of information support technologies. Our future efforts will focus on deriving system requirements for collaborative technologies that could support trauma teams more effectively.

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

cognitive work analysis
healthcare
teamwork
interaction analysis
ethnography


Geometry Constructions Language Geometry Constructions Language (gcl) is a language for explicit descriptions of constructions in Euclidean plane and of their properties. Other mathematical objects can also be described in the language. The language gcl is intuitive and simple, yet it supports arrays, flow control structures, user-defined procedures, etc. The processors for the gcl language-applications gclc and Wingclc-enable visualization of described objects and producing of mathematical illustrations, provide different semantical information and support for automated proving of properties of the constructed objects. These features make the tools gclc and Wingclc powerful mechanized geometry systems and they have thousands of users worldwide.

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

geometric constructions
dynamic geometry software
automated geometry theorem proving


manifest types, modules, and separate compilation This paper presents a variant of the SML module system that introduces a strict distinction between abstract types and manifest types (types whose definitions are part of the module specification), while retaining most of the expressive power of the SML module system. The resulting module system provides much better support for separate compilation.

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

module
support
power
separate compilation
paper
types


Parallel watershed transformation algorithms for image segmentation The watershed transformation is a mid-level operation used in morphological image segmentation. Techniques applied on large images, which must often complete fast, are usually computationally expensive and complex entailing efficient parallel algorithms. Two distributed approaches of the watershed transformation are introduced in this paper. The algorithms survey in a Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) model both local and global connectivity properties of the morphological gradient of a gray-scale image to label connected components. The sequentiality of the serial algorithm is broken in the parallel versions by exploiting the ordering relation between two neighboring pixels successively incorporated in the same region. Thus, a path is traced, for every unlabeled pixel, down to its region of inclusion (whose label is then propagated backwards); in the second algorithm, regions grow independently around their seeds. In both cases only pixels which satisfy the ordering relation are incorporated in any region. This way, not only different regions are explored in a parallel fashion, but also different parts of the same region, when the latter extends to neighboring subdomains, are treated likewise. Running time and relative speedup evaluated on a Cray T3D parallel computer are used to appreciate the performance of both algorithms.

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

morphological segmentation
image processing
rainfalling simulation
hillclimbing simulation
complexity analysis
experimental results


Classification of switching intentions toward internet telephony services: a quantitative analysis Recent years have witnessed the growing popularity of Internet telephony services (ITSs) in the telecommunications industry. However, most studies of ITSs have focused on technological trends, institutional policies, or advances in related technologies. Although there has been a sharp increase in demand for ITSs, which are increasingly likely to replace existing telephone services, few studies have provided a quantitative analysis of ITSs. This study develops some classification models for predicting consumers intentions to switch from traditional telephone services to ITSs by adopting data mining methods to analyze switching intentions and using discriminant analysis, logistic regression, classification tree, and neural network techniques to develop the classification models. This study compares these models to identify the superior one, and using the chosen model, the study suggests some customer relationship management strategies that can best address the transition from traditional telephone services to ITSs. The classification model has important practical implications for managers in the telecommunications industry.

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

switching intention
classification data mining
internet telephony service
telecommunication industry


Internet banking: strategic responses to the accession of WTO by Chinese banks Purpose - To assess to what extent Chinese domestic banks' use of internet banking as a strategic response to the entrance of the WTO is affected by factors both external and internal to the banks. Design/methodology/approach - A model depicted by a path diagram is developed to test the impact of various external and internal factors considered to have an impact on Chinese domestic banks' strategic response to the accession into the WTO. Survey questions from prior studies were adopted and modified. Structural equation analyses were used for data analysis. Findings - The research hypothesis that the increasingly competitive conditions in the banking sector resulting from China's accession into the WTO has a significant effect on Chinese domestic banks' internet banking investment decisions was confirmed. Research limitations/implications - The conceptual model and research instrument could be further refined. The sampling frame used could be expanded to cover all banks in the Chinese mainland. Practical implications - Findings of the study should benefit organizations in improving their use of IT as a strategic weapon, especially for the banking industry. Originality/value - This study is the first empirical research on internet banking in mainland China from a strategic perspective.

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


Evaluation of struggle strategy in Genetic Algorithms for ground stations scheduling problem Ground station scheduling problem arises in spacecraft operations and aims to allocate ground stations to spacecraft to make possible the communication between operations teams and spacecraft systems. The problem belongs to the family of satellite scheduling for the specific case of mapping communications to ground stations. The allocation of a ground station to a mission (e.g. telemetry, tracking information, etc.) has a high cost, and automation of the process provides many benefits not only in terms of management, but in economic terms as well. The problem is known for its high complexity as it is an over-constrained problem. In this paper, we present the resolution of the problem through Struggle Genetic Algorithms - a version of GAs that distinguishes for its efficiency in maintaining the diversity of the population during genetic evolution. We present some computational results obtained with Struggle GA using the STK simulation toolkit, which showed the efficiency of the method in solving the problem. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

ground station scheduling
satellite scheduling
struggle genetic algorithms
simulation


computer engineering curriculum development This poster describes the development of a curriculum for the area of computer engineering following the Computing Curricula 2001 effort. It explains the organization of the intended report and the elements that encompass the body of knowledge for the proposed curriculum.

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


Outbreak detection through automated surveillance: A review of the determinants of detection Public health agencies and other groups have invested considerable resources in automated surveillance systems over the last decade. These systems generally follow syndromes in pre-diagnostic data drawn from sources such as emergency department visits. A main goal of syndromic surveillance systems is to detect outbreaks rapidly and the number of studies evaluating outbreak detection has increased recently. This paper reviews these studies with the goal of identifying the determinants of outbreak detection in automated syndromic surveillance systems. The review identified 35 studies with 22 studies (63%) relying on naturally occurring outbreaks and 13 studies (37%) relying on simulated outbreaks. In general, the results from these studies suggest that syndromic surveillance systems are capable of detecting some types of disease outbreaks rapidly with high sensitivity. The determinants of detection included characteristics of the system and of the outbreak. Influential system characteristics included representativeness, the outbreak detection algorithm, and the specificity of the algorithm. Important outbreak characteristics included the magnitude and shape of the signal and the timing of the outbreak. Future evaluations should aim to address inconsistencies in the evidence noted in this review and to identify the potential influence of other factors on outbreak detection.

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

surveillance
outbreak detection
public health


An outdoor time scenes simulation scheme based on support vector regression with radial basis function on DCT domain In this paper, a novel strategy for forecasting outdoor scenes is introduced. This new approach combines the support vector regression in neural network computation and the discrete cosine transform (DCT). In 1995, Vapnik introduced a neural-network algorithm called support vector machine (SVM). During the recent years, due to SVMs high generalization performance and attractive modeling features, it has received increasing attention in the application of regression estimation which is called support vector regression (SVR). In SVR, a set of color-block images were transformed by the discrete cosine transformation to be the training data. We also used the radial basis function (RBF) of the training data as SVRs kernel to establish the RBF neural network. Finally, the time scenes simulation algorithm (TSSA) is able to synthesize the corresponding scene of any assigned time of the original outdoor scene image. To explore the utility and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, simulations under various input images were conducted. The experiment results showed that our proposed algorithm can precisely simulate the desired scenes at an assigned time and has two advantages: (a) Using the color-block images instead of using the scene images of a place to create the reference database, the database can be used for any outdoor scene image taken at anywhere at anytime. (b) Taking the support vector regression on the DCT coefficients of scene images instead of taking the SVR on the spatial pixels of scene images, it simplifies the regression procedure and saves the processing time.

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

discrete cosine transform
support vector regression
neural network
scene


Computing the probability density function of the stable Paretian distribution The practical implementation of a stable Paretian model is a nontrivial task, because-with the exception of a few special cases-its probability density function cannot be expressed analytically. Here, we present an algorithm for calculating the probability density function of the asymmetric stable Paretian distribution. Due to the use of the Fast Fourier Transform, the algorithm is computationally efficient, easily implemented, and of similar accuracy as existing algorithms. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

density approximation
heavy-tailed data
financial modeling


Efficient multi-camera vehicle detection, tracking, and identification in a tunnel surveillance application This paper presents an integrated solution for the problem of detecting, tracking and identifying vehicles in a tunnel surveillance application, taking into account practical constraints including real-time operation, poor imaging conditions, and a decentralized architecture. Vehicles are followed through the tunnel by a network of non-overlapping cameras. They are detected and tracked in each camera and then identified, i.e. matched to any of the vehicles detected in the previous camera (s). To limit the computational load, we propose to reuse the same set of Haar-features for each of these steps. For the detection, we use an AdaBoost cascade. Here we introduce a composite confidence score, integrating information from all stages of the cascade. A subset of the features used for detection is then selected, optimizing for the identification problem. This results in a compact binary 'vehicle fingerprint', requiring minimal bandwidth. Finally, we show that the same subset of features can also be used effectively for tracking. This Haar-features based 'tracking-by-identification' yields surprisingly good results on standard datasets, without the need to update the model online. The general multi-camera framework is validated using three tunnel surveillance videos. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

vehicle detection
adaboost
tunnel surveillance


BGRP: Quiet grafting mechanisms for providing a scalable end-to-end QoS solution The provisioning of quality of service guarantees over a region spanning multiple administrative domains is nowadays one of the most basic and crucial issues. A scalable and efficient end-to-end QoS architecture is indispensable for ensuring the desired QoS guarantees to QoS-aware services. Towards this end, this paper introduces a scalable inter-domain resource control architecture for Differentiated Services networks. The proposed architecture is based on the Border Gateway Resource Protocol framework, while scalability issues are further elaborated. Therefore, our discussion mainly extends to Quiet Grafting mechanisms, which succeed in significantly limiting the signalling load and efficiently handling the resources reserved between domains. Extended simulation scenarios verify the efficiency of the proposed,quiet grafting mechanisms', while the applicability of the results, especially with respect to real world networks and scenarios is stated. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

inter-domain reservation protocol
border gateway reservation protocol
sink tree


Branch-directed and pointer-based data cache prefetching In this paper we provide a survey of hardware-based data cache prefetching strategies. We then present two new methods which improve both the accuracy and effectiveness of data cache prefetching. The first design ties data address prediction to the instruction prefetching logic, allowing data cache prefetching to work in tandem with dynamic branch prediction. The second mechanism prefetches link-based data structures, typically problematic data accesses for sequential prefetching schemes. Combining the two mechanisms we can improve data cache hit rates, while reducing memory bus traffic by as much as 50%.

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

data caches
hardware and software prefetching
history-based branch prediction
stride prefetching
pointer-based prefetching