Slewing and vibration control of a single-link flexible manipulator by positive position feedback (PPF) Positive position feedback (PPF) is an effective vibration control technique for smart actuators and has been studied in recent years. In this paper, PPF controller is analyzed and applied to the PZT actuators for suppressing multi-mode vibrations while slewing the single-link flexible manipulator. Both set-point and trajectory tracking control are considered. Moreover, PPF is compared with L-type velocity feedback for PZT actuators to verify the characteristic of anti-spillover of PPF The hardware experiments verified the proposed method. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

single-link flexible manipulator
positive position feedback (ppf)


Multiview segmentation and tracking of dynamic occluding layers We present an algorithm for the layered segmentation of video data in multiple views. The approach is based on computing the parameters of a layered representation of the scene in which each layer is modelled by its motion, appearance and occupancy, where occupancy describes, probabilistically, the layers spatial extent and not simply its segmentation in a particular view. The problem is formulated as the MAP estimation of all layer parameters conditioned on those at the previous time step; i.e., a sequential estimation problem that is equivalent to tracking multiple objects in a given number views. ExpectationMaximisation is used to establish layer posterior probabilities for both occupancy and visibility, which are represented distinctly. Evidence from areas in each view which are described poorly under the model is used to propose new layers automatically. Since these potential new layers often occur at the fringes of images, the algorithm is able to segment and track these in a single view until such time as a suitable candidate match is discovered in the other views. The algorithm is shown to be very effective at segmenting and tracking non-rigid objects and can cope with extreme occlusion. We demonstrate an application of this representation to dynamic novel view synthesis.

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

multiple views
segmentation
novel view synthesis


Micro-Raman imaging and micro-photoluminescence measurements of strain in ZnMgSe/ZnSe microdiscs Semiconductor microdiscs are promising for applications in photonics and quantum-information processing, such as efficient solid-state-based single-photon emitters. Strain in the multilayer structure of those devices has an important influence on their optical properties. We present measurements of the strain distribution in ZnMgSe/ZnSe microdiscs by means of micro-photoluminescence and micro-Raman imaging. Photoluminescence measurements of microdiscs reveal substantially broadened emission lines with a shift to lower energy at the undercut part of microdiscs, indicating local relaxation in this area. The distribution of the strain in the microdiscs is obtained from an imaging micro-Raman analysis, revealing that the freestanding part of the microdiscs is free of defects.

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


A new cache replacement algorithm for last-level caches by exploiting tag-distance correlation of cache lines Cache memory plays a crucial role in determining the performance of processors, especially for embedded processors where area and power are tightly constrained. It is necessary to have effective management mechanisms, such as cache replacement policies, because modern embedded processors require not only efficient power consumption but also high performance. Practical cache replacement algorithms have focused on supporting the increasing data needs of processors. The commonly used Least Recently Used (LRU) replacement policy always predicts a near-immediate re-reference interval, hence, applications that exhibit a distant re-reference interval may perform poorly under LRU replacement policy. In addition, recent studies have shown that the performance gap between LRU and theoretical optimal replacement (OPT) is large for highly-associative caches. LRU policy is also susceptible to memory-intensive workloads where a working set is greater than the available cache size. These reasons motivate the design of alternative replacement algorithms to improve cache performance. This paper explores a low-overhead, high-performance cache replacement policy for embedded processors that utilizes the mechanism of LRU replacement. Experiments indicate that the proposed policy can result in significant improvement of performance and miss rate for large, highly-associative last-level caches. The proposed policy is based on the tag-distance correlation among cache lines in a cache set. Rather than always replacing the LRU line, the victim is chosen by considering the LRU-behavior bit of the line combined with the correlation between the cache lines tags of the set and the requested blocks tag. By using the LRU-behavior bit, the LRU line is given a chance of residing longer in the set instead of being replaced immediately. Simulations with an out-of-order superscalar processor and memory-intensive benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed cache replacement algorithm can increase overall performance by 5.15% and reduce the miss rate by an average of 11.41%.

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


QUAC: Quick unsupervised anisotropic clustering Completely unsupervised clustering algorithm for multidimensional data. Anisotropicit does not assume spherical clusters or use isotropic kernels. Fastan excellent tool for performing rapid cluster analysis on datamuch faster than mean-shift. Excellent initialisation for a Gaussian mixture model. Qualitative and quantitative results show superiority over well-known methods in accuracy and speed.

O O O B 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


The intelligent water drops algorithm: a nature-inspired swarm-based optimization algorithm A natural river often finds good paths among lots of possible paths in its ways from the source to destination. These near optimal or optimal paths are obtained by the actions and reactions that occur among the water drops and the water drops with the riverbeds. The intelligent water drops (IWD) algorithm is a new swarm-based optimisation algorithm inspired from observing natural water drops that flow in rivers. In this paper, the IWD algorithm is tested to find solutions of the n-queen puzzle with a simple local heuristic. The travelling salesman problem (TSP) is also solved with a modified IWD algorithm. Moreover, the IWD algorithm is tested with some more multiple knapsack problems (MKP) in which near-optimal or optimal solutions are obtained.

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

intelligent water drops
travelling salesman problem
tsp
mkp

swarm intelligence
iwds
multiple knapsack problem
n-queen puzzle


Dynamic load balancing algorithm for molecular dynamics based on Voronoi cells domain decompositions ? We present a new algorithm for automatic parallel load balancing in classical molecular dynamics. It assumes a spatial domain decomposition of particles into Voronoi cells. It is a gradient method which attempts to minimize a cost function by displacing Voronoi sites associated with each processor/sub-domain along steepest descent directions. Excellent load balance has been obtained for quasi-2D and 3D practical applications, with up to 440?106 440 ? 10 6 particles on 65,536 MPI tasks.

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

molecular dynamics
parallel load balancing


Fragments of ?-thymosin from the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus as potential antimicrobial peptides against staphylococcal biofilms The immune mediators in echinoderms can be a potential source of novel antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) applied toward controlling pathogenic staphylococcal biofilms that are intrinsically resistant to conventional antibiotics. The peptide fraction <5 kDa from the cytosol of coelomocytes of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (5-CC) was tested against a group of Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogen reference strains. The 5-CC of P. lividus was active against all planktonic-tested strains but also showed antibiofilm properties against staphylococcal strains. Additionally, we demonstrated the presence of three small peptides in the 5-CC belonging to segment 9-41 of a P. lividus?-thymosin. The smallest of these peptides in particular, showed the common chemicalphysical characteristics of AMPs. This novel AMP from ?-thymosin has high potential activity as an antibiofilm agent, acting on slow-growing bacterial cells that exhibit a reduced susceptibility to conventional antibiotics and represent a reservoir for recurrent biofilm-associated infections.

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

antibiofilm agents
antimicrobial peptides (amps)


Coincidence and common fixed point theorems in modified intuitionistic fuzzy metric spaces The aim of this paper is to prove common fixed point theorems for weakly compatible mappings in modified intuitionistic fuzzy metric spaces employing the common limit range property. Illustrative examples are also furnished to support our main results. Our results improve and generalize several previously known fixed point theorems of the existing literature. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Current-mode variable frequency quadrature sinusoidal oscillators using two CCs and four passive components including grounded capacitors This paper reports realizations of current-mode quadrature sinusoidal oscillator using only two multiple-output current conveyors (first or second generation current conveyor CCI/CCII) and four passive components including two grounded capacitors. Therefore, the circuits employ minimum number of passive components to realize a second-order sinusoidal oscillator. Three types of circuits are reported depending on the condition of oscillation and frequency of oscillation (FO). The circuits have FO controllable by either resistor or capacitor and are suitable to be used as variable frequency oscillator for different applications. All the circuits provide two explicit quadrature current outputs from high output impedance terminals. PSPICE simulation results are included to verify the workability of the proposed circuits.

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

currentmode (cm)
explicit-current-output (eco)
current conveyors (ccs)


Computer-assisted three-dimensional reconstruction and motion analysis of living, crawling cells A computer-assisted three-dimensional dynamic image analysis system (3D-DIAS) has been developed for reconstructing and motion analyzing living, crawling cells. The system simultaneously reconstructs the cell surface, the nucleus and pseudopodia, both expanding and retracting. Although this system has been developed for single cell analysis, it can be used for the dynamic reconstruction and motion analysis of cells in early embryos, the human heart and any other cell, organ or object changing shape over time. Ongoing development of a dynamic analysis system with a confocal front-end, a high speed reconstruction system, a near-real time system and a virtual reality system are described.

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

3d dynamic image analysis system (3d-dias)


On relating functional specifications to architectural specifications: A case study Software architecture specifications are predominantly concerned with describing the component structure of systems and how the components interact behaviorally. They are increasingly part of standardized software development processes because they represent a system abstraction in which design choices relevant to the correctness of the final system are taken. Therefore, much of software architecture research has concentrated on specification and analysis, whereas little attention has been paid to formally relating architectural specifications to higher levels of specification, such as the system requirements. In this paper we present our progress toward addressing an instance of this problem, namely relating state-based software architecture specifications to high-level functional specifications. Our approach is to use an intermediate specification given in terms of a set of temporal logic properties to bridge the gap between the two levels of specifications. We describe our approach in the context of a particular case study, the AEGIS GeoServer Simulation Testbed system, showing how a compact functional specification of a critical behavioral property of the system can be used to validate three alternative architectural specifications of that system. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All fights reserved.

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

functional specification
simulation testbed

software architectures
formal methods
verification
validation


data collection by the people, for the people Data Collection by the People, for the People is a CHI 2011 workshop to explore data from the crowd, bringing together mobile crowdsourcing & participatory urbanism researchers with data analysis and visualization researchers. The workshop is two-day event beginning with day of field work in the city of Vancouver, trying out mobile crowdsourcing applications and data analysis tools. Participants are encouraged to contribute applications and tools which they wish to share. Our goal is to provoke discussion and brainstorming, enabling both data collection researchers and data manipulationanalysis researchers to benefit from mutually learned lessons about crowdsourced data.

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

participatory sensing
data cleaning
citizen science


Determining the value of dedicated multimodal cargo facilities in a multi-region distribution network ? This paper presents an analytic model of a multi-region distribution problem that addresses the operational benefits of serving a global market using a network of dedicated multimodal cargo facilities (DMCFs). The model allows an explicit evaluation of the comparative value of using a dedicated air cargo-based multimodal distribution facility in an established network of supply and demand points as opposed to more traditional methods for inter-regional shipments. We develop a large-scale, non-linear programming model to evaluate the corresponding logistics costs, incorporating the congestion effects of aircraft loading/unloading on dock-to-dock lead times in the network. We then demonstrate how this difficult problem can be decomposed into its linear (LP) and non-linear (multi-class queueing) sub-problems. An iterative solution scheme is devised to compute the comparative costs of traditional and DMCF-based cargo operations.

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


A model of technical variation of microarray signals We describe a mathematical model of signal from single-channel direct hybridization microarray platforms. The model establishes a linear relationship between microarray signals and their standard deviations from a minimum set of assumptions. We use the model to precisely define important microarray quality characteristics: resolved fold change and dynamic range. The definitions lead to closed form expressions relating these characteristics to physical parameters of the microarray experiment in the case when both specific and nonspecific binding of target to probe are governed by the Langmuir hybridization isotherm. The predictions of the model are in close agreement to data obtained from spike-in experiments. Given the generality of the model, the introduced definitions of dynamic range and resolved concentration fold-change can be used to conduct cross-platform comparisons and to guide improvement of the microarray platform.

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


simulation for intrusion-resilient, ddos-resistant authentication system (idas) SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol and IPSec (Internet Protocol Security) are widely used for identity authentication and communication protection. However, both protocols suffer from intrusion and single-point of compromising as well as DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. An innovative Intrusion-Resilient, DDoS-Resistant Authentication System (IDAS) System is proposed to achieve the following goals: (1) An intrusion-resilient authentication protocol will be able to protect credential information by distributing shared secret to multiple computers and thus eliminates the single point of compromising. (2) This protocol can readily detect the use of partial credential as a user/computer and indicate which part of secret is exposed; consequently, the compromised computer can be recovered. (3) Even when an insider compromised all related servers, the credential is only valid for a short period of time and will be self healed in next period. (4) A DDoS resistant protocol must be stateless and efficient as well as stop botnet attacks and "low and slow" attacks. (5) This authentication protocol only takes a single round trip time, which is faster than any other authentication protocols and is important to the performance of critical applications in a multi-continent network. It is difficult to prove the capabilities of IDAS by actually implementing a full scale botnet due to financial constraint. Instead, simulation results are reported in this paper to show that this IDAS protocol can resist DDoS attacks even when thousands of attackers, which is about the same size as the current botnet, are bombarding it. A user will not even sense the extra delay due to the DDoS attacks; thus, the collateral damage is eliminated.

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

network security
discrete event simulation
computer network defense


Digraph decompositions and monotonicity in digraph searching Graph decompositions such as tree-decompositions and associated width measures have been the focus of much attention in structural and algorithmic graph theory. In particular, it has been found that many otherwise intractable problems become tractable on graph classes of bounded tree-width. More recently, proposals have been made to define a similar notion to tree-width for directed graphs. Several proposals have appeared so far, supported by algorithmic applications. In this paper we explore the limits of algorithmic applicability of digraph decompositions and show that various natural candidates for problems, which potentially could benefit from digraphs having small "directed width", remain NP-complete even on almost acyclic graphs. Closely related to graph and digraph decompositions are graph searching games. An important property of graph searching games is monotonicity and a large number of papers addresses the question whether particular variants of these games are monotone. However, so far for two natural types of graph searching games - underlying DAG- and Kelly-decompositions - the question whether they are monotone was still open. We settle this issue by showing that both variants, the visible and the inert invisible graph searching games on directed graphs, are non-monotone. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

directed path-width
directed tree-width
dag-width
kelly-width
entanglement
cops and robber games


Performance analysis of Markov modulated 1-persistent CSMA/CA protocols with exponential backoff scheduling This paper proposes a Markovian model of 1-persistent CSMA/CA protocols with K-Exponential backoff scheduling algorithm. The input buffer of each access node is modeled as a Geo/G/1 queue, and the service time distribution of each individual head-of-line packet is derived from the Markov chain of the underlying scheduling algorithm. From the queueing model, we derive the characteristic equation of network throughput and obtain the stable throughput and bounded delay regions with respect to the retransmission factor. Our results show that the stable throughput region of the exponential backoff scheme exists even for an infinite population. Moreover, we find that the bounded delay region of exponential backoff is only a sub-set of its stable throughput region due to the large variance of the service time of input packets caused by the capture effect. All analytical results presented in this paper are verified by simulations.

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

performance analysis
exponential backoff


Resting-state functional connectivity and nicotine addiction: prospects for biomarker development Given conceptual frameworks of addiction as a disease of intercommunicating brain networks, examinations of network interactions may provide a holistic characterization of addiction-related dysfunction. One such methodological approach is the examination of resting-state functional connectivity, which quantifies correlations in low-frequency fluctuations of the blood oxygen leveldependent magnetic resonance imaging signal between disparate brain regions in the absence of task performance. Here, evidence of differentiated effects of chronic nicotine exposure, which reduces the efficiency of network communication across the brain, and acute nicotine exposure, which increases connectivity within specific limbic circuits, is discussed. Several large-scale resting networks, including the salience, default, and executive control networks, have also been implicated in nicotine addiction. The dynamics of connectivity changes among and between these large-scale networks during nicotine withdrawal and satiety provide a heuristic framework with which to characterize the neurobiological mechanism of addiction. The ability to simultaneously quantify effects of both chronic (trait) and acute (state) nicotine exposure provides a platform to develop a neuroimaging-based addiction biomarker. While such development remains in its early stages, evidence of coherent modulations in resting-state functional connectivity at various stages of nicotine addiction suggests potential network interactions on which to focus future addiction biomarker development.

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

resting-state functional connectivity
biomarkers


Probabilistic neural computing with advanced nanoscale MOSFETs The use of intrinsic nanoscale MOSFET noise for probabilistic computation is explored, using the continuous restricted Boltzmann machine (CRBM), a probabilistic neural model, as the exemplar architecture. The CRBM is modified by localising noise in its synaptic multipliers, exploiting random telegraph signal (RTS) noise in nanoscale MOSFETs. A look-up table (LUT) technique is adopted to link temporal noise data to the synaptic multipliers of a CRBM, trained to model simple, non-trivial data distributions. It is shown that, for such distributions at least, the CRBM with intrinsic nanoscale MOSFET noise can be trained to provide a useful model.

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

probabilistic computing
neuromorphic vlsi systems


A Bayesian non-linear method for feature selection in machine translation quality estimation We perform a systematic analysis of the effectiveness of features for the problem of predicting the quality of machine translation (MT) at the sentence level. Starting from a comprehensive feature set, we apply a technique based on Gaussian processes, a Bayesian non-linear learning method, to automatically identify features leading to accurate model performance. We consider application to several datasets across different language pairs and text domains, with translations produced by various MT systems and scored for quality according to different evaluation criteria. We show that selecting features with this technique leads to significantly better performance in most datasets, as compared to using the complete feature sets or a state-of-the-art feature selection approach. In addition, we identify a small set of features which seem to perform well across most datasets.

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

machine translation
quality estimation
gaussian processes


Fast spanning tree reconnection mechanism for resilient Metro Ethernet networks The low cost, high transmission rate and ubiquity of current Ethernet lead to the possibility of bringing Ethernet into Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs). However, the traditional spanning tree based Ethernet protocol does not meet the requirement for MANs in terms of network resilience, despite the advancement of Ethernet standardization and commercialization. In this paper, we propose a fast spanning tree reconnection (FSTR) mechanism for Metro Ethernet networks to handle single link failure. Upon failure of a link on a spanning tree, a distributed failure recovery protocol is activated to reconnect the broken spanning tree using a reconnect-link. We present the details of the protocol, including failure notification and forwarding table reconfiguration procedures. The pre-configuration of the reconnect-links to reconnect each spanning tree is formulated as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. We prove that the pre-configuration problem is NP-complete. We develop an efficient algorithm based on 2-edge connectivity augmentation that can achieve close approximation to the optimal solutions. The numerical results of FSTR mechanism on different network topologies show its features of efficiency and fast recovery. (C) 2011 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 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


A GIS tool for hydrogeological water balance evaluation on a regional scale in semi-arid environments A GIS tool to evaluate hydrogeological water balance based on a mass-balance model applied to surface and subsurface systems is discussed. The tool is designed for managers responsible for groundwater resource planning during conditions of water shortage. In developing the tool, the natural groundwater recharge was evaluated through the application of a soil water balance equation, and defined as the difference between the inflows (rainfall, irrigation) and the outflows (plant evapotranspiration, surface run-oft). A distributed approach was used in the soil water balance equation to account for the spatial variability of climate and landscape features. Conversely the groundwater balance was calculated on a watershed or aquifer scale, using a lumped water balance equation, in which withdrawals for different uses were estimated together with inflows from other water bodies and coastal outflows. The model was implemented on a GIS platform with an automatic routine that manages all the data sets required and allows for the forecasting of groundwater storage volumes. Furthermore, the model was able to evaluate agricultural water demands under different climatic and management scenarios. A tool which provides a summary of the results and performs a statistical analysis for any portion of the study area was also implemented. The model was applied to a coastal region of Southern Italy. The averaged groundwater balance calculated by the model was in agreement with the piezometric head and chlorine concentration trends measured in selected monitoring wells. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

surface water balance
water resources management
hydrology


A main stem concept for image matching An original main stem concept for image matching is presented. The main stem is a global image feature defined as a tree of reduced components without redundant and noise components. It has been shown that this image feature is strongly invariant to different types of topological transformations and contains useful information about meaningful image regions and their interrelations. We present how to construct the main stem and we devise an appropriate method for image matching that is based on their stems. The method for mapping the main stem onto a feature vector and appropriate metric to compare between the feature vectors in the selected representation space are presented. Preliminary experiments show the validity of the proposed method for robust image matching.

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

image representation
component tree
image indexing
similarity measure


DESIGN AND MODELING IN THE SOFTWARE PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Performance related problems are becoming more and more strategic in the software development, especially recently with the advent of Web Services and related business-oriented composition techniques (software as a service, Web 2.0, orchestration, choreography, etc.). In particular, an early integration of performance specifications in the SDP has been recognized during the last few years as an effective approach to improve the overall quality of a software. The goal of our work is the definition of a software development process that integrates performance evaluation and prediction. The software performance engineering development process (SPEDP) we specify is focused on performance, which plays a key role driving the software development process, thus implementing a performance/QoS-driven (software) development process. More specifically, in this paper our aim is to formally define the SPEDP design process, posing particular interest on the basis, on the first step of SPEDP, the software/system architecture design, modeling and/or representation. We define both the diagrams to use and show how to model the structure of the software architecture, its behavior and performance requirements. This is the first mandatory step for the automation of the SPEDP into a specific tool, which we have partially implemented as a performance plug-in for ArgoUML, ArgoPerformance.

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

software development process
software performance engineering


A search for vaccines and therapeutic for dengue: A review Dengue is a serious emerging or re-emerging infectious disease that is endemic in over 100 countries. There has been an estimated of 50 million infection per year globally with more than 2.5 billion people are at risk for epidemic transmission. The major burden for dengue is in the south-east Asia and the western Pacific although there have been increasing reports of this disease in the Americas. This infectious disease is caused by the dengue virus which is a member of the Flaviviridae and is spread by the highly domesticated Aedes aegypti Mosquito. There are two principal illnesses associated with dengue which are Dengue Fever (DF) and Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF). The former is a flu-like illness with symptoms like fever, headaches, joint aches and rashes while the latter is more severe and often fatal complication of DF as a result of the dengue shock syndrome (DSS). To date, there is no licensed vaccine or therapeutic drug available for DF and DHF/DSS, although there have been reports of some vaccine candidates in clinical trials. The treatment for DF and DHF/DSS has only been supportive thus far. This paper discusses the protein of the dengue virus as well as reviews some of the work and strategies that have been carried out in the quest for finding vaccines and therapeutic drugs for dengue, particularly those employing computer-aided approaches.

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

dengue theraputic
dengue vaccine
computer aided drug design
vaccine design
molecular docking
ligand docking
ns213/ns3 complex


Conceptual model for spatial data cubes: A UML profile and its automatic implementation The paper presents a state of art of conceptual models for Spatial Data Warehouses The paper details a new UML profile for modeling complex Spatial OLAP applications The implementation in a commercial CASE tool is presented Its automatic implementation in a classical ROLAP architecture is shown

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

conceptual multidimensional modelling
object constraint language
data aggregation


The 01 inverse maximum stable set problem ? In this paper we study the 01 inverse maximum stable set problem, denoted by IS{0,1} I S { 0 , 1 } . Given a graph and a fixed stable set, it is to delete the minimum number of vertices to make this stable set maximum in the new graph. We also consider IS{0,1} I S { 0 , 1 } against a specific algorithm such as Greedy G r e e d y and 2opt 2 o p t , aiming to delete the minimum number of vertices so that the algorithm selects the given stable set in the new graph; we denote them by IS{0,1},greedy I S { 0 , 1 } , g r e e d y and IS{0,1},2opt I S { 0 , 1 } , 2 o p t , respectively. Firstly, we show that they are NP-hard, even if the fixed stable set contains only one vertex. Secondly, we achieve an approximation ratio of 2 ? ? ( 1 l o g ? ) for IS{0,1},2opt I S { 0 , 1 } , 2 o p t . Thirdly, we study the tractability of IS{0,1} I S { 0 , 1 } for some classes of perfect graphs such as comparability, co-comparability and chordal graphs. Finally, we compare the hardness of IS{0,1} I S { 0 , 1 } and IS{0,1},2opt I S { 0 , 1 } , 2 o p t for some other classes of graphs.

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

maximum stable set problem
approximation ratio
perfect graphs

inverse combinatorial optimization
np-hardness


impact analysis of database schema changes We propose static program analysis techniques for identifying the impact of relational database schema changes upon object-oriented applications. We use dataflow analysis to extract all possible database interactions that an application may make. We then use this information to predict the effects of schema change. We evaluate our approach with a case-study of a commercially available content management system, where we investigated 62 versions of between 70k-127k LoC and a schema size of up to 101 tables and 568 stored procedures. We demonstrate that the program analysis must be more precise, in terms of context-sensitivity than related work. However, increasing the precision of this analysis increases the computational cost. We use program slicing to reduce the size of the program that needs to be analyzed. Using this approach, we are able to analyse the case study in under 2 minutes on a standard desktop machine, with no false negatives and a low level of false positives.

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


On stability of linear and weakly nonlinear switched systems with time delay This paper studies time-delayed switched systems that include both stable and unstable modes. By using multiple Lyapunov-functions technique and a dwell-time approach, several criteria on exponential stability for both linear and nonlinear systems are established. It is shown that by suitably controlling the switching between the stable and unstable modes, exponential stabilization of the switched system can be achieved. Some examples and numerical simulations are provided to illustrate our results. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

switched systems
time delay
exponential stability


A Machine Learning Approach for Identifying Disease-Treatment Relations in Short Texts The Machine Learning (ML) field has gained its momentum in almost any domain of research and just recently has become a reliable tool in the medical domain. The empirical domain of automatic learning is used in tasks such as medical decision support, medical imaging, protein-protein interaction, extraction of medical knowledge, and for overall patient management care. ML is envisioned as a tool by which computer-based systems can be integrated in the healthcare field in order to get a better, more efficient medical care. This paper describes a ML-based methodology for building an application that is capable of identifying and disseminating healthcare information. It extracts sentences from published medical papers that mention diseases and treatments, and identifies semantic relations that exist between diseases and treatments. Our evaluation results for these tasks show that the proposed methodology obtains reliable outcomes that could be integrated in an application to be used in the medical care domain. The potential value of this paper stands in the ML settings that we propose and in the fact that we outperform previous results on the same data set.

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


modeling mobility for vehicular ad-hoc networks Without realistic modeling of node mobility, simulation evaluation of performance of mobile ad hoc networks may not correlate well with performance in a real deployment. In this work, we present a new, realistic model of node motion based on the movement of vehicles on real street maps. Our model can be used with the ns-2 network simulator. We compare our model with the Random Waypoint mobility model, the most widely used mobility model. Results show that, in many ways, the Random Waypoint mobility model is a good approximation for simulating the motion of vehicles on a road, but there are situations in which our new model is better suited.

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

movement
mobility model
mobility
maps
approximation
performance
deployment
simulation
modeling
mobile ad hoc networks
evaluation
motion

situated
network simulation
wireless networks
randomization
street mobility
ns-2
vehicular ad hoc networks


Electromagnetic-artificial neural network model for synthesis of physical dimensions for multilayer asymmetric coupled transmission structures (invited article) A methodology for synthesis (leading to physical dimensions) of multilayer asymmetric coupled microstrip lines using artificial neural network models is presented. Models are appropriate for design and optimization of multilayer configurations for circuits like filters, baluns, and directional couplers. Proposed methodology is demonstrated by designing a two-layer coupled line filter. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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

multilayer coupled lines
computer-aided design
inverse modeling


Minimum \(K_{\phi }\)-divergence estimators for multinomial models and applications The properties of minimum \(K_{\phi }\)-divergence estimators for parametric multinomial populations are well-known when the assumed parametric model is true, namely, they are consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. Here we study these properties when the parametric model is not assumed to be correctly specified. Under certain conditions, these estimators are shown to converge to a well-defined limit and, suitably normalized, they are also asymptotically normal. Two applications of the results obtained are reported. First, two consistent bootstrap estimators of the null distribution of the test statistics in a certain class of goodness-of-fit tests are proposed and studied. Second, two methods for the model selection test problem based on \(K_{\phi }\)-divergence type statistics are proposed and studied. Both applications are illustrated with numerical examples.

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

minimum \(k_{\phi }\)-divergence estimator


Cold chain logistics system based on cloud computing All information technology (IT) resources that cloud computing provide can be seen as services. As a new IT implementation, cloud computing now has a profound impact on technological change. Cloud computing can provide critical software for business management, reducing IT and maintenance costs for hardware and software effectively. It can also enable small and medium enterprises to have access to professional IT solutions with less IT investment. The cold chain logistics system based on cloud computing can be used to connect the database between cold chain logistics and external customers, so that each database connection terminal can keep track of and update the data. A cold chain logistics system based on cloud computing is designed in this paper. This system consists of six functional parts: (1) data collection; (2) data calculation; (3) data updating and transmission; (4) configuration management; (5) control strategy; and (6) business development. It brings better cooperation between cold chain logistics and their customers, realizes co-control of product sales information, accelerates the speed of cold chain logistics and maximizes the interests of all parties. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

cloud computing service
cloud service
network services


A cutting plane algorithm for a single machine scheduling problem Each of N part types (production families or items) is to be processed on a single machine. The part types arrive into the buffer in front of the machine at every unit of time at specified rates. The machine can process a finite number of part types at specified rates, but only one part type can be processed at any given time. Each switch from one type to another requires setup time. The objective is to schedule the part types in the sense that the required demand is met and the average work backlog in the system is minimal. Assuming a finite horizon, we define this problem as mixed 01 programming problem. In order to strengthen the formulation, we consider its LP relaxation in an enlarged space of variables. By projecting this polyhedron into the space of the original variables we obtain new valid inequalities for the original problem that are then used as cutting planes in a cutting plane/branch and bound algorithm. At the end we report some computational results that have the objective of empirically estimating the reduction in the integrality gap (the gap between the optimal values of the original problem and its linear programming relaxation). Also, we give and compare the CPU times of the cutting plane/branch and bound algorithm proposed in this paper and the branch and bound algorithm applied directly to the original problem.

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

single machine scheduling
mixed 01 programming problem
valid inequalities

branch and bound/cutting plane algorithm


Countering imbalanced datasets to improve adverse drug event predictive models in labor and delivery The IOM report, Preventing Medication Errors, emphasizes the overall lack of knowledge of the incidence of adverse drug events (ADE). Operating rooms, emergency departments and intensive care units are known to have a higher incidence of ADE. Labor and delivery (L&D) is an emergency care unit that could have an increased risk of ADE, where reported rates remain low and under-reporting is suspected. Risk factor identification with electronic pattern recognition techniques could improve ADE detection rates. The objective of the present study is to apply Synthetic Minority Over Sampling Technique (SMOTE) as an enhanced sampling method in a sparse dataset to generate prediction models to identify ADE in women admitted for labor and delivery based on patient risk factors and comorbidities. By creating synthetic cases with the SMOTE algorithm and using a 10-fold cross-validation technique, we demonstrated improved performance of the Nave Bayes and the decision tree algorithms. The true positive rate (TPR) of 0.32 in the raw dataset increased to 0.67 in the 800% over-sampled dataset. Enhanced performance from classification algorithms can be attained with the use of synthetic minority class oversampling techniques in sparse clinical datasets. Predictive models created in this manner can be used to develop evidence based ADE monitoring systems.

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

adverse drug events
labor and delivery
oversampling


Reduced Communication Costs via Network Flow and Scheduling for Partitions of Dynamically Reconfigurable FPGAs This paper presents a dynamically reconfigurable FPGA partitioning algorithm for netlist-level circuits. The proposed algorithm combines traditional max-flow min-cut computing with a scheduling mechanism to improve maximum communication costs. Application of our previously published scheduling mechanism [19] to partitioning of sequential circuits can induce problems regarding the crossing of cuts, so in this paper we introduce an additional labeling mechanism to guarantee the removal of any crossed cuts. Experimental results on a number of standard benchmark circuits show the proposed algorithm achieves superior maximum communication costs compared to the published FBP-m, PAT and Hierarchical algorithms. Compared to the published ILP algorithm, which uses a very different methodology, our algorithm consistently produces superior runtime but approximately equal maximum communication costs.

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

dynamically reconfigurable computing
circuit partitioning
temporal partitioning
graph theory


Multiple integral representations for some families of hypergeometric and other polynomials The main objective of this paper is to investigate several general families of hypergeometric and other polynomials and their associated multiple integral representations. Each of the integral representations, which are derived in this paper, may be viewed also as a linearization relationship for the product of two different members of the associated family of hypergeometric and other polynomials. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. 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 B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

integral representations
linearization relationship

hypergeometric polynomials
srivastava polynomials
gamma function
eulerian beta integral
lagrange-hermite polynomials
pochhammer symbol
hermite-kampe de feriet polynomials


Crowdsourcing Service-Level Network Event Monitoring The user experience for networked applications is becoming a key benchmark for customers and network providers. Perceived user experience is largely determined by the frequency, duration and severity of network events that impact a service. While today's networks implement sophisticated infrastructure that issues alarms for most failures, there remains a class of silent outages (e. g., caused by configuration errors) that are not detected. Further, existing alarms provide little information to help operators understand the impact of network events on services. Attempts to address this through infrastructure that monitors end-to-end performance for customers have been hampered by the cost of deployment and by the volume of data generated by these solutions. We present an alternative approach that pushes monitoring to applications on end systems and uses their collective view to detect network events and their impact on services - an approach we call Crowdsourcing Event Monitoring (CEM). This paper presents a general framework for CEM systems and demonstrates its effectiveness for a P2P application using a large dataset gathered from BitTorrent users and confirmed network events from two ISPs. We discuss how we designed and deployed a prototype CEM implementation as an extension to BitTorrent. This system performs online service-level network event detection through passive monitoring and correlation of performance in end-users' applications.

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

measurement
reliability
service-level network events
anomaly detection


Exploiting agent oriented software engineering in cooperative robotics search and rescue This paper reports our progress in applying multiagent systems analysis and design in the area of cooperative robotics. In this paper, we apply the Multiagent Systems Engineering (MaSE) methodology to design a team of autonomous, heterogeneous search and rescue robots. MaSE provides a top-down approach to building cooperative robotic systems instead of the bottom-up approach employed in most robotic implementations. We follow the MaSE steps and discuss various approaches and their impact on the final system design.

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

cooperative robotics
multiagent systems
software engineering


Evaluation of Apoptosis Markers in Conjunctival and Eyelid Benign and Malignant Tumors The balance between cell proliferation and programmed cell death plays a crucial role in malignant development. Bcl-2 family proteins, including proapoptosis protein Bak and antiapoptosis protein Bcl-2, regulate the apoptotic process. Mutation of the p53 gene, which results in P53 protein accumulation, was observed in many types of human cancer. The aim of our study was to evaluate immunohistochemical Bcl-2, Bak, and P53 protein expression and the relation between these proteins in conjunctival and eyelid benign and malignant tumors. We examined a series of 42 papillomas (CEP), 12 squamous cell cancers (SCC), and 19 cases of basal cell cancer (BCC). The age in the CEP group ranged from 1894 years, and in the SCC and BCC groups from 4287 years. Staining patterns were correlated with sex, age, and tumor localization. P53 protein-positive immunostaining was observed in 71% of cases, Bcl-2 in 83.9%, and Bak in 74.2 cases in the SCC and BCC groups. In the CEP group, P53 overexpression was observed in 90.5% of cases, Bcl-2 in 71.4%, and Bak in 76.2%. No statistically significant correlation was found between examined protein expression and sex, age, and tumor localization. An inverse correlation was observed between P53 and Bak protein expression in the CEP group. No statistically significance correlation was noted between Bcl-2 and P53 and Bcl-2 and Bak protein expression in both examined groups. The obtained data suggests that P53 and Bcl-2 protein expression coupled with decreasing Bak expression are associated with apoptosis and proliferation as well as malignant progression in conjunctival and eyelid tumors.

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

basal cell cancer
p53
bak protein expression


LIP-MOTION ANALYSIS FOR SPEECH SEGMENTATION IN NOISE This paper explains how visual information from the lips and acoustic signals can be combined together for speech segmentation. The psychological aspects of lip-reading and current automatic lip-reading systems are reviewed. The paper describes an image processing system which can extract the velocity of the lips from image sequences. The velocity of the lips is estimated by a combination of morphological image processing and block matching techniques. The resultant velocity of the lips is used to locate the syllable boundaries. This information is particularly useful when the speech signal is corrupted by noise. The paper also demonstrates the correlation between speech signals and lip information. Data fusion techniques are used to combine the acoustic and visual information for speech segmentation. The principal results show that using the combination of visual and acoustic signals can reduce segmentation errors by at least 10.4% when the signal-to-noise ratio is lower than 15 dB.

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

speech segmentation
data fusion
block matching

lip-reading
lip-tracking
articulatory dynamics


Remote FPGA Lab for Enhancing Learning of Digital Systems Learning in digital systems can be enhanced through applying a learn-by-doing approach on practical hardware systems and by using Web-based technology to visualize and animate hardware behavior. The authors have reported the Web-based Remote FPGA Lab (RFL) which provides a novel, real-time control and visualization interface to a remote, always-on FPGA hardware implementation. The RFL helps students to understand and reason about digital systems operation, using interactive animation of signal behavior in an executing digital logic system, at any level of the design hierarchy. The RFL supports the creation of real-time interactive digital systems teaching demos. The article presents student RFL usage data and survey data which highlight improved student engagement, learning and achievement. The article describes the RFL architecture, communication interface, Web page functionality, user access administration and database management. The article also describes the RFLGen program, developed to automate user design integration into the Xilinx ISE VHDL-based RFL project wrapper for creation of FPGA configuration bitstreams and RFL animations.

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

verification
remote fpga laboratory
digital systems education
reconfigurable computing
web-based training


Unsupervised co-segmentation for 3D shapes using iterative multi-label optimization This paper presents an unsupervised algorithm for co-segmentation of a set of 3D shapes of the same family. Taking the over-segmentation results as input, our approach clusters the primitive patches to generate an initial guess. Then, it iteratively builds a statistical model to describe each cluster of parts from the previous estimation, and employs the multi-label optimization to improve the co-segmentation results. In contrast to the existing one-shot algorithms, our method is superior in that it can improve the co-segmentation results automatically. The experimental results on the Princeton Segmentation Benchmark demonstrate that our approach is able to co-segment 3D shapes with significant variability and achieves comparable performance to the existing supervised algorithms and better performance than the unsupervised ones.

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

co-segmentation
shape correspondence
multi-label optimization


Neon: System Support for Derived Data Management Modern organizations face increasingly complex information management requirements. A combination of commercial needs, legal liability and regulatory imperatives has created a patchwork of mandated policies. Among these, personally identifying customer records must be carefully access-controlled, sensitive files must be encrypted on mobile computers to guard against physical theft, and intellectual property must be protected from both exposure and "poisoning." However, enforcing such policies can be quite difficult in practice since users routinely share data over networks and derive new files from these inputs-incidentally laundering any policy restrictions. In this paper, we describe a virtual machine monitor system called Neon that transparently labels derived data using byte-level "tints" and tracks these labels end to end across commodity applications, operating systems and networks. Our goal with Neon is to explore the viability and utility of transparent information flow tracking within conventional networked systems when used in the manner in which they were intended. We demonstrate that this mechanism allows the enforcement of a variety of data management policies, including data-dependent confinement, mandatory I/O encryption, and intellectual property management.

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


Exploiting multiple cues in motion segmentation based on background subtraction This paper presents a novel algorithm for mobile-object segmentation from static background scenes, which is both robust and accurate under most of the common problems found in motion segmentation. In our first contribution, a case analysis of motion segmentation errors is presented taking into account the inaccuracies associated with different cues, namely colour, edge and intensity. Our second contribution is an hybrid architecture which copes with the main issues observed in the case analysis by fusing the knowledge from the aforementioned three cues and a temporal difference algorithm. On one hand, we enhance the colour and edge models to solve not only global and local illumination changes (i.e. shadows and highlights) but also the camouflage in intensity. In addition, local information is also exploited to solve the camouflage in chroma. On the other hand, the intensity cue is applied when colour and edge cues are not available because their values are beyond the dynamic range. Additionally, temporal difference scheme is included to segment motion where those three cues cannot be reliably computed, for example in those background regions not visible during the training period. Lastly, our approach is extended for handling ghost detection. The proposed method obtains very accurate and robust motion segmentation results in multiple indoor and outdoor scenarios, while outperforming the most-referred state-of-art approaches.

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

motion segmentation
ghost detection
background subtraction

shadow suppression
colour segmentation
edge segmentation


A combined approach of partial least squares and fuzzy c-means clustering for the monitoring of an activated-sludge waste-water treatment plant In this paper, a combined approach of partial least squares (PLS) and fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering for the monitoring of an activated-sludge waste-water treatment plant is presented. Their properties are also investigated. Both methods were applied together in process monitoring. PLS was used for extracting the most useful information from the control and process variables in order to predict a response variable, namely the diluted sludge volume index. Score values were used in FCM, which utilizes the principle of an object belonging to several classes at the same time instead of just one class. The memberships of each of the classes are defined by the membership values. Corresponding membership plots were used to help in the interpretation of the score plots. Short-term changes were considered to be disturbances and long-term changes due to drifting. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science 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 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 I 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


efficient parallel set-similarity joins using mapreduce In this paper we study how to efficiently perform set-similarity joins in parallel using the popular MapReduce framework. We propose a 3-stage approach for end-to-end set-similarity joins. We take as input a set of records and output a set of joined records based on a set-similarity condition. We efficiently partition the data across nodes in order to balance the workload and minimize the need for replication. We study both self-join and R-S join cases, and show how to carefully control the amount of data kept in main memory on each node. We also propose solutions for the case where, even if we use the most fine-grained partitioning, the data still does not fit in the main memory of a node. We report results from extensive experiments on real datasets, synthetically increased in size, to evaluate the speedup and scaleup properties of the proposed algorithms using Hadoop.

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


Partial correspondence based on subgraph matching Exploiting both appearance similarity and geometric consistency is popular in addressing the feature correspondence problem. However, when there exist outliers the performance generally deteriorates greatly. In this paper, we propose a novel partial correspondence method to tackle the problem with outliers. Specifically, a novel pairwise term together with a neighborhood system is proposed, which, together with the other two pairwise terms and a unary term, formulates the correspondence to be solved as a subgraph matching problem. The problem is then approximated by the recently proposed Graduated Non-Convexity and Graduated Concavity Procedure (GNCGCP). The proposed algorithm obtains a state-of-the-art accuracy in the existence of outliers while keeping O(N3) O ( N 3 ) computational complexity and O(N2) O ( N 2 ) storage complexity. Simulations on both the synthetic and real-world images witness the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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

feature correspondence
subgraph matching
gncgcp


A variational phase field method for curve smoothing A variational phase field model is proposed for curve smoothing, in which a weight function is associated with the similarity measure term in the model so that important geometric features could be well preserved. Finite element approximation of the proposed model is given for its numerical implementation. Since the model has a linear weak variational form, the discretized system could be solved efficiently by many existing solution techniques. An effective algorithm is also developed, for the purpose of feature preservation, to automatically determine the weight from the given data. Various numerical examples are presented to demonstrate effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

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

phase field model
curve smoothing
feature preservation
finite element approximation
weight function


From the bench to the bedside in the big data age: ethics and practices of consent and privacy for clinical genomics and personalized medicine Scientists and clinicians are starting to translate genomic discoveries from research labs to the clinical setting. In the process, big data genomic technologies are both a risk to individual privacy and a benefit to personalized medicine. There is an opportunity to address the social and ethical demands of various stakeholders and shape the adoption of diagnostic genome technologies. We discuss ethical and practical issues associated with the networking of genomics by comparing how the European Union (EU) and North America understand and practice notions of privacy and consent in research. An overview of international policy suggests the embedding of genomics within digital networks and the Internet creates conditions that challenge the management of privacy and consent in the age of big data. The risks of re-identification, informational harms, and data security vulnerabilities are issues that need to be better addressed in the clinical setting to reconcile the unpredictable pathway of research and practice in the networked information society.

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

clinical genomics
big data
internet
privacy
policy
personalized medicine


On rendering synthetic images for training an object detector ? We propose a novel approach to generating synthetic training data. We introduce detector-specific similarity measures between real and synthetic images. We show that the choice of the similarity measure relies on the features used by the detector. We have tested our approach on different object detection tasks.

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

synthetic data
synthetic image rendering


Right

Thing

at

a

Wrong

Time?.

Adenosine

Receptors

and

Cerebroprotection

in

Stroke

The

involvement

of

adenosine

receptors

in

normal

and

pathologic

functions

of

the

brain

remains

to

be

defined.

Previous

studies

have

shown

that

chronic

preischemic

administration

of

the

agonist

[N6-(3-iodobenzyl)-5?-N-methylcarboxoamidoadenosine

or

IB-MECA)

results

in

a

significant

protection

of

neurons

in

selectively

vulnerable

brain

regions

and

in

an

equally

significant

reduction

of

the

subsequent

mortality.

Acute

administration

of

the

drug,

on

the

other

hand,

resulted

in

a

pronounced

worsening

of

these

parameters.

We

now

report

that

the

effect

of

administration

of

IB-MECA

depends

on

the

timing

of

treatment

with

respect

to

the

onset

of

the

focal

insult,

and

provide

the

first

data

supporting

speculation

that

treatment

with

adenosine

receptor

agonists

may

decrease

the

infarct

size

following

focal

brain

Treatment

with

IB-MECA

administered

min

prior

to

transient

middle

cerebral

ischemia

(MCAOt=

min)

resulted

in

a

significant

increase

of

the

infarct

size

(p

whereas

administration

min

after

ischemia

resulted

in

statistically

significant

decrease

of

the

infarct

volume.

Postischemic

treatment

results

in

improved

neuronal

preservation,

decreased

intensity

of

reactive

gliosis,

and

pronounced

reduction

of

microglial

infiltration.

The

data

indicate

that

the

effects

of

adenosine

receptor

stimulation

depend

on

the

differential

impact

of

these

receptors

on

both

neuronal

and

non-neuronal

elements

of

the

cerebral

tissue,

for

example,

astrocytes,

microglia,

and

vasculature.

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

focal cerebral ischemia
neuroprotection
cerebral infarction
physiology
pharmacology
mice


Potentialities of the wavelet and multifractal techniques to evaluate changes in the functional state of the human brain The task is to estimate quantitatively the changes in functional states arising in the human brain with different neural disruptions. To solve the task we analyze long-lasting recordings from patients with epilepsy and subjects with chronic psychogenic pain disorders. Using the wavelet transform of the electroencephalographic (EEG) segments and the wavelet-transform modulus maxima method we evaluate the maximal global energy of the segment and its multifractal parameters such as the width and the asymmetry of the singularity spectrum. By contrast to the segments gained for functional probes like opening eyes or hyperventilation in recordings without the epileptic discharges, the segments immediately preceding the epileptic seizure are characterized by the significant changes in the global energy and the width of the singularity spectrum. It gives promise that the applied methods can not only serve for automatically detecting the epileptic patterns but also predict modifications in the epileptic brain activity before epileptic discharges. For the patients with psychogenic pain syndromes we demonstrate the efficiency of the used parameters to evaluate objectively the improvement of the functional state connected with the pain disappearance.

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

global energy
singularity spectrum
epileptic
eeg


Memory modeling for system synthesis We present our methodology for developing models of on-chip SRAM memory organizations. The models were created to enable the quick evaluation of energy, area, and performance of different memory configurations considered during synthesis. The models are defined in terms of parameters, such as size and mode of operation, which are known at synthesis time. Our methodology does not require knowledge of the underlying memory circuitry and provides models with average percentage errors within 8%. We examine the importance of the different parameters in the models to reduce the time required to develop the models. We found that only ten different memories from a large span of possible memory sizes are needed to obtain reasonably accurate models, with average errors within 15%. In this paper, we present our modeling methodology, discuss the important aspects in developing the models, and examine the parameters necessary in creating accurate models quickly and easily.

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

power-consumption model
special low-power99
system-level


Smoothed dissipative particle dynamics with angular momentum conservation Smoothed dissipative particle dynamics (SDPD) combines two popular mesoscopic techniques, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics and dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) methods, and can be considered as an improved dissipative particle dynamics approach. Despite several advantages of the SDPD method over the conventional DPD model, the original formulation of SDPD by Espaol and Revenga (2003) [9], lacks angular momentum conservation, leading to unphysical results for problems where the conservation of angular momentum is essential. To overcome this limitation, we extend the SDPD method by introducing a particle spin variable such that local and global angular momentum conservation is restored. The new SDPD formulation (SDPD+a) is directly derived from the NavierStokes equation for fluids with spin, while thermal fluctuations are incorporated similarly to the DPD method. We test the new SDPD method and demonstrate that it properly reproduces fluid transport coefficients. Also, SDPD with angular momentum conservation is validated using two problems: (i) the TaylorCouette flow with two immiscible fluids and (ii) a tank-treading vesicle in shear flow with a viscosity contrast between inner and outer fluids. For both problems, the new SDPD method leads to simulation predictions in agreement with the corresponding analytical theories, while the original SDPD method fails to capture properly physical characteristics of the systems due to violation of angular momentum conservation. In conclusion, the extended SDPD method with angular momentum conservation provides a new approach to tackle fluid problems such as multiphase flows and vesicle/cell suspensions, where the conservation of angular momentum is essential.

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

smoothed particle hydrodynamics
taylorcouette flow
shear flow

mesoscopic simulation
tank-treading vesicle
kellerskalak theory


HLLS: A History information based Light Location Service for MANETs ? In mobile ad hoc networks, a location service (LS) provides the fundamental service for geographical routing. However, most existing schemes for location service incur a high overhead because of the periodic updates of location information. To address this issue, we propose a novel History information based Light Location Service (HLLS), using the temporal relationship among historical locations of mobile nodes in the network. In HLLS, location information of mobile nodes is propagated by Hello beacons locally, and the location query is performed with the aid of historical locations. In this way, HLLS can eliminate the tremendous periodical location updates and significantly reduce the overhead for location service. Using a combination of analytical modeling and extensive simulations, we show the effectiveness of HLLS in comparison with other approaches.

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

manets
location service
history information


Developing a bioaerosol detector using hybrid genetic fuzzy systems The aim of this work is to develop a model, which works as a reasoning mechanism in a bioaerosol detector. Ability to distinguish between safe and harmful aerosols is one of its main requirements. Instead of commonly used misclassification rate as a metric of accuracy, true positive JP) and false positive (FP) rates are used because of the uneven misclassification costs and class distributions of the collected data. Interpretability of the model builds up the confidence for the developed model and enables its adjustment in cases when bioaerosol detector is further developed. Thus, it is another crucial requirement for the model. Clearly, the objectives are contradicting and therefore multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are applied to find tradeoff models. Fuzzy classifiers (FCs) are selected as a model type because their linguistic rules are intuitive to human beings. FCs are identified by hybrid genetic fuzzy system (GFS) which initializes the population adequately using decision trees (DTs) and simplification operations. During MOEA optimization transparency of fuzzy partition is used as a metric of interpretability and TP and FP rates as metrics of accuracy. Heuristic rule and rule condition removal is applied to offspring population in order to keep the rule base consistent. The identified FCs are highly comprehensible yet accurate and their linguistic rules provide valuable insights for further development of bioaerosol detector. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (moeas)


implementation of a rewarding module for an e-commerce platform for marginalized areas e-Commerce can help to deliver economic growth, increased business opportunities, enhanced competitiveness and better access to markets. At present, though most small enterprises lack the knowledge of how investment in e-Commerce could benefit their businesses and help them develop that competitive edge. Currently most of the small enterprises are adopting e-Commerce projects because of improved access to the technical and communication infrastructure. E-Commerce platforms have emerged and expanded in rural communities to improve business in these areas. Shopping malls, selling on-line and shopping websites have being created to ensure growth of small businesses in rural communities. However, it is still difficult to ensure sustainability of e-Commerce projects in these areas. Donors and well-wishers implement most of the e-Commerce projects in rural communities. Once the donors fail to keep on supporting the projects in most cases it causes failure of these e-Commerce projects. Thus, rural people lack adequate resources and skills to support such systems especially in the absence of the initiators. Shortage of advanced technologies also contributes to the failure of e-Commerce. In many rural communities, e-Commerce projects have not benefited the targeted people because of new and advanced changes in these projects. These technological changes make it difficult for rural people to be able to support e-Commerce projects. Discovering new ways of selling and identifying advanced strategies play an important role in sustainability of e-Commerce projects in rural areas. A lot of activities and applications have been developed to improve the e-Commerce projects. This paper explains the rewarding application as a strategy to improve e-Commerce projects in rural areas. The application allows customers to get points for buying on-line from a marginalized area. This allows the e-Commerce project in rural communities to be able to compete on the global markets.

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

e-marketing
points based system
rewarding program
e-commerce platform
e-commerce sustainability
online shopping


Networks with trainable amplitude of activation functions Network training algorithms have heavily concentrated on the learning of connection weights. Little effort has been made to learn the amplitude of activation functions, which defines the range of values that the function can take. This paper introduces novel algorithms to learn the amplitudes of nonlinear activations in layered networks, without any assumption on their analytical form. Three instances of the algorithms are developed: (i) a common amplitude is shared among all nonlinear units; (ii) each layer has its own amplitude; and (iii) neuron-specific amplitudes are allowed. The algorithms can also be seen as a particular double-step gradient-descent procedure, as gradient-driven adaptive learning rate schemes, or as weight-grouping techniques that are consistent with known scaling laws for regularization with weight decay. As a side effect, a self-pruning mechanism of redundant neurons may emerge. Experimental results on function approximation, classification, and regression tasks, with synthetic and real-world data, validate the approach and show that the algorithms speed up convergence and modify the search path in the weight space, possibly reaching deeper minima that may also improve generalization.

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

gradient descent
conjugate gradient
weight grouping
speaker identification
speaker normalization
bayesian evidence
automatic pruning


Meshless numerical modeling of brittle-viscous deformation: first results on boudinage and hydrofracturing using a coupling of discrete element method (DEM) and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) We have developed a new approach for the numerical modeling of deformation processes combining brittle fracture and viscous flow. The new approach is based on the combination of two meshless particle-based methods: the discrete element method (DEM) for the brittle part of the model and smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) for the viscous part. Both methods are well established in their respective application domains. The two methods are coupled at the particle scale, with two different coupling mechanisms explored: one is where DEM particles act as virtual SPH particles and one where SPH particles are treated like DEM particles when interacting with other DEM particles. The suitability of the combined approach is demonstrated by applying it to two geological processes, boudinage, and hydrofracturing, which involve the coupled deformation of a brittle solid and a viscous fluid. Initial results for those applications show that the new approach has strong potential for the numerical modeling of coupled brittle-viscous deformation processes.

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

numerical modeling
dem
sph
boudinage
hydrofracturing


Korovkin type approximation theorem for statistical A-summability of double sequences In this paper, we prove a Korovkin type approximation theorem for a function of two variables by using the notion of statistical A-summability. We also construct an example by Meyer-Konig and Zeller operators to show that our result is stronger than those of previously proved by other authors.

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

double sequence
density
statistical convergence
a-statistical convergence
statistical a-summability
positive linear operator


improving question-answering with linking dialogues Question-answering dialogue systems have found many applications in interactive learning environments. This paper is concerned with one such application for Army leadership training, where trainees input free-text questions that elicit pre-recorded video responses. Since these responses are already crafted before the question is asked, a certain degree of incoherence exists between the question that is asked and the answer that is given. This paper explores the use of short linking dialogues that stand in between the question and its video response to alleviate the problem of incoherence. We describe a set of experiments with human generated linking dialogues that demonstrate their added value. We then describe our implementation of an automated method for utilizing linking dialogues and show that these have better coherence properties than the original system without linking dialogues.

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


Information cells and information cell mixture models for concept modelling By combining the prototype theory and random set theory interpretations of vague concepts, a novel structure named information cell and a combined structure named information cell mixture model are proposed to represent the semantics of vague concepts. An information cell L i on the domain ? has a transparent cognitive structure L i =about P i which is mathematically formalized by a 3-tuple ?P i ,d i ,? i ? comprising a prototype set P i (??), a distance function d i on ? and a density function ? i on [0,+?). An information cell mixture model on domain ? is actually a set of weighted information cells L i s. Apositive neighborhood function of the information cell mixture model is introduced in this paper to reflect the belief distribution of positive neighbors of the underlying concept. An information cellularization algorithm is also proposed to learn the information cell mixture model from a training data set, which is a direct application of the k-means and EM algorithms. Information cell mixture models provide some tools for information coarsening and concept modelling, and have potential applications in uncertain reasoning and classification.

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

information cells
prototype theory
random set theory


Evaluating the validity of data instances against ontology evolution over the Semantic Web It is natural for ontologies to evolve over time. These changes could be at structural and semantic levels. Due to changes to an ontology, its data instances may become invalid, and as a result, may become non-interpretable. In this paper, we address precisely this problem, validity of data instances due to ontological evolution. Towards this end, we make the following three novel contributions to the area of Semantic Web. First, we propose formal notions of structural validity and semantic validity of data instances, and then present approaches to ensure them. Second, we propose semantic view as part of an ontology, and demonstrate that it is sufficient to validate a data instance against the semantic view rather than the entire ontology. We discuss how the semantic view can be generated through an implication analysis, i.e., how semantic changes to one component imply semantic changes to other components in the ontology. Third, we propose a validity identification approach that employs locally maintaining a hash value of the semantic view at the data instance.

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