Identifying related landmark tags in urban scenes using spatial and semantic clustering Web based experiment to identify useful landmarks for navigation from urban images. Development of a spatial-semantic clustering technique to generate network graphs. Use of trigram phrase matching with stop word and synonym lists. Two phase bag-of-words query expansion linked to different types of landmarks.

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

urban landmarks
scene tagging
tag clustering
mereology
feature graphs


Spatio-Temporal Auxiliary Particle Filtering With l(1)-Norm-Based Appearance Model Learning for Robust Visual Tracking In this paper, we propose an efficient and accurate visual tracker equipped with a new particle filtering algorithm and robust subspace learning-based appearance model. The proposed visual tracker avoids drifting problems caused by abrupt motion changes and severe appearance variations that are well-known difficulties in visual tracking. The proposed algorithm is based on a type of auxiliary particle filtering that uses a spatio-temporal sliding window. Compared to conventional particle filtering algorithms, spatio-temporal auxiliary particle filtering is computationally efficient and successfully implemented in visual tracking. In addition, a real-time robust principal component pursuit (RRPCP) equipped with l(1)-norm optimization has been utilized to obtain a new appearance model learning block for reliable visual tracking especially for occlusions in object appearance. The overall tracking framework based on the dual ideas is robust against occlusions and out-of-plane motions because of the proposed spatio-temporal filtering and recursive form of RRPCP. The designed tracker has been evaluated using challenging video sequences, and the results confirm the advantage of using this tracker.

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


Per-Colorant-Channel Color Barcodes for Mobile Applications: An Interference Cancellation Framework We propose a color barcode framework for mobile phone applications by exploiting the spectral diversity afforded by the cyan (C), magenta (M), and yellow (Y) print colorant channels commonly used for color printing and the complementary red (R), green (G), and blue (B) channels, respectively, used for capturing color images. Specifically, we exploit this spectral diversity to realize a three-fold increase in the data rate by encoding independent data in the C, M, and Y print colorant channels and decoding the data from the complementary R, G, and B channels captured via a mobile phone camera. To mitigate the effect of cross-channel interference among the print-colorant and capture color channels, we develop an algorithm for interference cancellation based on a physically-motivated mathematical model for the print and capture processes. To estimate the model parameters required for cross-channel interference cancellation, we propose two alternative methodologies: a pilot block approach that uses suitable selections of colors for the synchronization blocks and an expectation maximization approach that estimates the parameters from regions encoding the data itself. We evaluate the performance of the proposed framework using specific implementations of the framework for two of the most commonly used barcodes in mobile applications, QR and Aztec codes. Experimental results show that the proposed framework successfully overcomes the impact of the color interference, providing a low bit error rate and a high decoding rate for each of the colorant channels when used with a corresponding error correction scheme.

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

aztec codes
color barcodes
interference cancellation


Deterministic Parallelism via Liquid Effects Shared memory multithreading is a popular approach to parallel programming, but also fiendishly hard to get right. We present Liquid Effects, a type-and-effect system based on refinement types which allows for fine-grained, low-level, shared memory multithreading while statically guaranteeing that a program is deterministic. Liquid Effects records the effect of an expression as a formula in first-order logic, making our type-and-effect system highly expressive. Further, effects like Read and Write are recorded in Liquid Effects as ordinary uninterpreted predicates, leaving the effect system open to extension by the user. By building our system as an extension to an existing dependent refinement type system, our system gains precise value- and branch-sensitive reasoning about effects. Finally, our system exploits the Liquid Types refinement type inference technique to automatically infer refinement types and effects. We have implemented our type-and-effect checking techniques in CSOLVE, a refinement type inference system for C programs. We demonstrate how CSOLVE uses Liquid Effects to prove the determinism of a variety of benchmarks.

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

liquid types
type inference
c
determinism

languages
reliability
verification
dependent types
safe parallel programming


Analytical test buffer design for differential signaling I/O buffers by error syndrome analysis This paper presents a novel Input Test Buffer design methodology that is used for testing the differential signaling interconnects. The input test buffer is aimed to detect hardware failures in differential electrical connections. The input test buffer can also be used to check the differential signal's connectivity such as, diagnosing the cable connections, detecting off-lined or un-powered connections. The strategy employed here is to analyze the fault syndromes instead of enumerating the defects to achieve high fault coverage. This analysis leads to defining the key design components comprising of an Analog Null Detector that detects and preserves the fault information in the signal, and several digital engines that process this signal. Preserving the fault information is crucial, as the differential input/output (I/Os) are robust enough to mask the defective signal. The functionality of the test buffer is clearly defined such that the user can customize it to a specific I/O technology. The impact on performance and area are negligible. The proposed input test buffer design was implemented and verified in designs using regular current mode logic (CML) differential input buffers in the 0.13-mu m process. The results demonstrate comprehensive coverage for catastrophic defects. The fault detection capability is demonstrated through Spice based fault simulations.

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

differential input/output (i/os)
high speed-interconnect


A self-watching model of analogy-making and perception This paper describes Metacat, an extension of the Copycat model of analogy-making. The development of Copycat focused on modelling context-sensitive concepts and the ways in which they interact with perception within an abstract microworld of analogy problems. This approach differs from most other models of analogy in its insistence that concepts acquire their semantics from within the system itself, through perception, rather than being imposed from the outside. The present work extends these ideas by incorporating self-perception, episodic memory, and reminding into the model. These mechanisms enable Metacat to explain the similarities and differences that it perceives between analogies, and to monitor and respond to patterns that occur in its own behaviour as it works on analogy problems. This introspective capacity overcomes several limitations inherent in the earlier model, and affords the program a powerful degree of self-control. Metacat's architecture includes aspects of both symbolic and connectionist systems. The paper outlines the principal components of the architecture, analyses several sample runs and examples of program-generated commentary about analogies, and discusses Metacat's relation to some other well-known models of analogy.

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


Factor analysis of Internet traffic destinations from similar source networks Purpose - This study aims to assess whether similar user populations in the Internet produce similar geographical traffic destination patterns on a per-country basis. Design/methodology/approach - The authors collected a country-wide NetFlow trace, which encompasses the whole Spanish academic network. Such a trace comprises several similar campus networks in terms of population size and structure. To compare their behaviors, the authors propose a mixture model, which is primarily based on the Zipf-Mandelbrot power law to capture the heavy-tailed nature of the per-country traffic distribution. Then, factor analysis is performed to understand the relation between the response variable, number of bytes or packets per day, with dependent variables such as the source IP network, traffic direction, and country. Findings - Surprisingly, the results show that the geographical distribution is strongly dependent on the source IP network. Furthermore, even though there are thousands of users in a typical campus network, it turns out that the aggregation level which is required to observe a stable geographical pattern is even larger. Practical implications - Based on these findings, conclusions drawn for one network cannot be directly extrapolated to different ones. Therefore, ISPs' traffic measurement campaigns should include an extensive set of networks to cope with the space diversity, and also encompass a significant period of time due to the large transient time. Originality/value - Current state of the art includes some analysis of geographical patterns, but not comparisons between networks with similar populations. Such comparison can be useful for the design of content distribution networks and the cost-optimization of peering agreements.

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

content distribution networks
factor analysis

geographical characterization
heavy-hitters
internet remote host location
zipf-mandelbrot
geography


Kernel trees for support vector machines The support vector machines (SVMs) are one of the most effective classification techniques in several knowledge discovery and data mining applications. However, a SVM requires the user to set the form of its kernel function and parameters in the function, both of which directly affect to the performance of the classifier. This paper proposes a novel method, named a kernel-tree, the function of which is composed of multiple kernels in the form of a tree structure. The optimal kernel tree structure and its parameters is determined by genetic programming (GP). To perform a fine setting of kernel parameters, the gradient descent method is used. To evaluate the proposed method, benchmark datasets from UCI and dataset of text classification are applied. The result indicates that the method can find a better optimal solution than the grid search and the gradient search.

B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 selection
support vector sachines


STATE-OF-THE-ART AND TRENDS IN THE SYSTEMATIC DEVELOPMENT OF RICH INTERNET APPLICATIONS Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are widely adopted Web applications that add the richer interaction, presentation, and client-side computation capabilities of desktop applications to the Web. However, the evolution from Web applications towards RIAs comes at the cost of increased complexity in their development. For this reason, a wide variety of tools and technologies have been proposed in order to streamline their development effort. This paper investigates the current state of the art of the RIA development approaches. The review shows that the current industrial development practice lacks a comprehensive approach to RIA development, supporting all the development steps from the design to implementation, test and maintenance, and helping identifying correct design choices. This is in part due to the severe fragmentation of current RIA technologies that prevents the adoption of a commonly recognized set of best practices resulting in ad-hoc development processes. These aspects are in part treated by research methodologies and some innovative industrial solutions, but also these approaches present some limitations. The paper identifies future research directions for RIAs to fully support their development process and to support their design in a more comprehensive and systematic way, from both industrial and research perspectives.

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

rich internet applications
systematic development


Rate and Quality Control with Embedded Coding for Mobile Robot with Visual Patrol The visual information of a surveillance system should provide extended and just-in-time perception in monitored environments. However, delivering visual information of surveillance from nonstationary providers, such as mobile cameras, to designated end-users over bandwidth-limited networks is a challenging task. In this paper, for transmitting visual objects of interest, an embedded spatial coding approach is proposed to progressively encode the presentation quality of visual objects under receivers' bandwidth limitation. First, different levels of importance for the objects of interest are characterized by the standard edge detection algorithm and several designated priorities for these objects are progressively assigned. The spatial coding approach then adopts a wavelet-based image coding algorithm based on the assigned priority of each object of interest. Therefore, each individual receiver can adaptively obtain the best visual information of the most important object under its available bandwidth. The proposed priority assignment and spatial coding mechanism has been extensively tested and analyzed. The experimental results show that, under different bandwidth scenarios and required acceptable signal-quality levels, the end-users can obtain the best visual quality of the important objects of interest. Therefore, the importance of the objects of interest in real-time surveillance video can be properly determined and the required transmission quantity can be effectively allocated.

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

embedded coding
rate and quality control
surveillance system

real-time video transmission
region of interest


Markov random field-based clustering applied to the segmentation of masses in digital mammograms In this paper we propose a new pixel clustering model applied to the analysis of digital mammograms. The clustering represents here the first step in a more general method and aims at the creation of a concise data-set (clusters) for automatic detection and classification of masses, which are typically among the first symptoms analysed in early diagnosis of breast cancer. For the purpose of this work, a set of mammographic images has been employed, that are 12-bit gray level digital scans and as such, are inherently inhomogeneous and affected by the noise resulting from the film scanning. The image pixels are described only by their intensity (gray level), therefore, the available information is limited to one dimension. We propose a Markov random field (MRF)-based technique that is suitable for performing clustering in an environment which is described by poor or limited data. The proposed method is a statistical classification model, that labels the image pixels based on the description of their statistical and contextual information. Apart from evaluating the pixel statistics, that originate from the definition of the K-means clustering scheme, the model expands the analysis by the description of the spatial dependence between pixels and their labels (context), hence leading to the reduction of the inhomogeneity of the output. Moreover, we define a probabilistic description of the model, that is characterised by a remarkable simplicity, such that its realisation can be easily and efficiently implemented in any high- or low-level programming language, thus allowing it to be run on virtually any kind of platform. Finally, we evaluate the algorithm against the classical K-means clustering routine. We point out similarities between the two methods and, moreover, show the advantages and superiority of the MRF scheme.

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

image analysis
markov random fields
mammography
micro-calcification
ising potential


Curvature detection by entanglement generation using a beam splitter In this paper, we investigate the behavior of radiation field, whose state is described by the so-called sphere coherent state, through a beam splitter. These states are realization of coherent states of two-dimensional harmonic oscillator, which lives on a sphere, as radiation field. By using the linear entropy as a measure of entanglement, we show that the entanglement depends on the curvature of the sphere. So, by using the appropriating sphere coherent states, we can control the entanglement of the output states of the beam splitter in the laboratory. In addition, as the convince measures of non-classical behaviors, we consider Mandel parameters of the output states of the beam splitter and their quadrature squeezing.

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

beam splitter
sphere coherent
entanglement
linear entropy


Accepting splicing systems In this paper, we propose a novel approach to splicing systems, namely we consider them as accepting devices. Two ways of iterating the splicing operation and two variants of accepting splicing system are investigated. Altogether, we obtain four models, which are compared with each other as well as with the generating splicing systems from the computational power point of view. Several decision problems concerning the accepting splicing systems are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

formal languages
accepting splicing system


Prediction based occluded multitarget tracking using spatio-temporal attention This paper proposes the prediction based occluded multitarget tracking method using spatio-temporal attention mechanism. To cope with occlusion between targets, the proposed method provides an efficient method for more complex analysis by combining object association with partial probability model in spatially attentive window and occlusion activity detection in predicted temporal location. While multiple objects are moving or occluding between them in areas of visual field, a simultaneous tracking of multiple objects tends to fail. This is due to the fact that incompletely estimated feature vectors such as location, color, velocity, and acceleration of a target can provide only ambiguous and missing information. Thus, the spatially and temporally considered mechanism is proposed to track each target before, during, and after occlusion. Robustness of the proposed method is demonstrated with representative simulations.

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 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 O O O O O 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


Digitising the past The beginning of a new future at the Royal Tropical Institute of The Netherlands Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe a project to digitise maps at the Royal Tropical Institute, or Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT), of The Netherlands. KIT has an extensive collection of maps and nautical charts of (sub-) tropical regions, including general maps and topographical map series, city maps, thematic maps and national atlases. The collection comprises some 27,000 maps and over 1,000 atlases. Almost 12,000 maps are from the former Dutch colonies, Netherlands Indies (Indonesia), Surinam and The Netherlands Antilles. Design/methodology/approach - The paper explains how users have access to the maps via the Library's online catalogue. One of the future goals is combining the KIT collections in order to make it possible to search a map and to find accompanying documents, museum objects and photographs and to add more metadata. Findings - The paper finds that the digitised collection of maps has been used by various researchers as well as by relief workers in the aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia. Originality/value - The innovative part of the project is the ability to search by location and to navigate through serial maps. A link with Google Earth makes it possible to compare an old map with a new satellite image.

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


motivating participation by displaying the value of contribution One of the important challenges faced by designers of online communities is eliciting sufficent contributions from community members. Users in online communities may have difficulty either in finding opportunities to add value, or in understanding the value of their contributions to the community. Various social science theories suggest that showing users different perspectives on the value they add to the community will lead to differing amounts of contribution. The present study investigates a design augmentation for an existing community Web site that could benefit from additional contribution. The augmented interface includes individualized opportunities for contribution and an estimate of the value of each contribution to the community. The value is computed in one of four different ways: (1) value to self; (2) value to a small group the user has affinity with; (3) value to a small group the user does not have affinity with; and (4) value to the entire user community. The study compares the effectiveness of the different notions of value to 160 community members.

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

motivation
value of contributions
identity
under-contribution
recommender systems


Fuzzy interpretation of discretized intervals When there are both numerical and nominal attributes in a database, existing data mining systems (such as rule induction and decision tree construction) discretize numerical domains into intervals and the discretized intervals are treated in a similar way to nominal values during induction. This correspondence describes a type of fuzzy intervals implemented in the HCV (Version 2.0) rule induction software (referred to as HCV hereafter) for the interpretation of rule induction results when rules with sharp intervals do not clearly apply to a test example at hand. A battery of experimental results with HCV show that these fuzzy intervals are useful.

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


Calculation of Reactances for Ring Windings to Toroidal Inductors of Hybrid Induction Machine The linear induction motors of hybrid structure have a series of particularities and their most precise estimation of practical flows and outlets has a high level of complexity, especially due to the different form of inductor. The personal contribution on theoretical ground is the justification of the relations for the calculation of practical reactances and outlets, which were also validated by the experimental results using the method of effects' overlapping. The theoretical and experimental results confirm the accuracy of methods and greatly confirm the proposed methods.

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

equivalent circuitry
hybrid linear induction machine
magnetic core
slot
magnetization reactance


Large-scale access scheduling in wireless mesh networks using social centrality Distributed node cliques for cluster communications by social centrality metrics. Efficient channel access in each cluster by compact schedule based on Latin squares. Valid node and cluster access activation using an on-demand coloring algorithm. Fair radio and channel allocation to nodes and clusters in large scale WMNs. Coexistence of LaSo L a S o with traditional 802.11 DCF channel access mechanisms.

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

wireless mesh networks
latin squares
social centrality

multi-radio multi-channel
multiple access scheduling


The clique-transversal set problem in claw-free graphs with degree at most 4 The clique-transversal set problem is to find a minimum clique-transversal set of a graph. It has been proved that CTS problem is NP-hard for claw-free graphs. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for CTS in claw-free graphs with small degrees.

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

graph algorithms
clique
clique-transversal set problem
polynomial time algorithm
claw-free graph


On Generalized Convexity of Nonlinear Complementarity Functions In this paper, we study some properties of quasiconvex nonlinear complementarity functions. However, we prove that a nonlinear complementarity function cannot be pseudoconvex. As a consequence of this, we show that every convex nonlinear complementarity function is nondifferentiable. Furthermore, some properties of homogeneous nonlinear complementarity functions are proved.

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

nonlinear complementarity function
generalized convexity

homogeneous function
nonlinear complementarity problem
90c33


Dense cluster gateway based routing protocol for multi-hop mobile ad hoc networks In a multi-hop mobile ad hoc network dynamic clusterization of nodes can be quite effective for better management of routing problems. In a cluster based protocol inter cluster data transfer takes place through the cluster gateways. Therefore, it is important to maintain information about the gateways as a part of the routing tables in order that the inter cluster routing proceeds smoothly even as the nodes move about. In this paper we propose a randomized approach for inter cluster routing over dense cluster gateways (DCG). A group of large number of gateway edges between two adjacent clusters offering inter cluster connectivity between the two is referred to as a DCG. The minimum number of gateway edges that define a DCG is dependent on the characteristics of particular ad hoc network. A DCG is expected to offer robust inter cluster connectivity as it typically has a large number of gateway edges. Our protocol is an improvement over the cluster based routing using k-tree core backbone proposed in [Information Processing Letters 88 (2003) 187194]. It distributes the routing load on the cluster gateways without adding the extra overhead of maintaining information about dense cluster gateways. We also propose a heuristic which reduces the load on the cluster-heads. The heuristic elects some nodes to act as sub-cluster-heads which share a part of the workload of the respective cluster-heads. The protocol has been implemented on ns-2 simulator. An analysis of the result of the experiments has been presented.

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

k-tree core
cluster-head
sub-cluster-head
routing algorithm
wheel game
load balancing
back-bone topology


Evaluation and application of multiple scoring functions for a virtual screening experiment In order to identify novel chemical classes of factor Xa inhibitors, five scoring functions (FlexX, DOCK, GOLD, ChemScore and PMF) were engaged to evaluate the multiple docking poses generated by FlexX. The compound collection was composed of confirmed potent factor Xa inhibitors and a subset of the LeadQuest(R) screening compound library. Except for PMF the other four scoring functions succeeded in reproducing the crystal complex (PDB code: IFAX). During virtual screening the highest hit rate (80%) was demonstrated by FlexX at an energy cutoff of -40 kJ/mol, which is about 40-fold over random screening (2.06%). Limited results suggest that presenting more poses of a single molecule to the scoring functions could deteriorate their enrichment factors. A series of promising scaffolds with favorable binding scores was retrieved from LeadQuest. Consensus scoring by pair-wise intersection failed to enrich the hit rate yielded by single scorings (i.e. FlexX). We note that reported successes of consensus scoring in hit rate enrichment could be artificial because their comparisons were based on a selected subset of single scoring and a markedly reduced subset of double or triple scoring. The findings presented in this report are based upon a single biological system and support further studies.

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

binding affinity
protein-ligand interactions
scoring function


Preventing Private Information Inference Attacks on Social Networks Online social networks, such as Facebook, are increasingly utilized by many people. These networks allow users to publish details about themselves and to connect to their friends. Some of the information revealed inside these networks is meant to be private. Yet it is possible to use learning algorithms on released data to predict private information. In this paper, we explore how to launch inference attacks using released social networking data to predict private information. We then devise three possible sanitization techniques that could be used in various situations. Then, we explore the effectiveness of these techniques and attempt to use methods of collective inference to discover sensitive attributes of the data set. We show that we can decrease the effectiveness of both local and relational classification algorithms by using the sanitization methods we 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

social network analysis
data mining
social network privacy


Modeling a case of herding behavior in a multi-player game The system mentioned in the title belongs to the family of the so-called massively multi-player online social games. It features a scoring system for the elements of the game that is prone to herding effects. We analyze in detail its stationary regime in the thermodynamic limit, when the number of players tends to infinity. In particular, for some classes of input sequences and selection policies, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a complete meanfield-like measure, showing off an interesting condensation phenomenon.

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


Surveys on Seroprevalence of Canine Monocytic Ehrlichiosis among Dogs Living in the Ivory Coast and Gabon and Evaluation of a Quick Commercial Test Kit Dot-ELISA Canine monocytic ehlichiosis (CME), an enzootic disease in Africa, has been studied in canine blood samples (serum). These dogs, without any clinical sign of disease, were living in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) and in several small villages located in northeasst Gabon (Ogoou Ivindo). The results obtained by indirect fluorescent antibody (IFA) test, used as a point of reference, and by a quick test dot-Elisa were compared. Blood samples taken from 390 asymptomatic dogs in 2003 (137 in Ivory Coast and 253 in Gabon) were screened by IFA (antigen from Symbiotics Europe, Lyon) with a positive threshold set at 1/80. Afterwards, CME was detected by the commercial test kit Dot-Elisa in solid phase Snap 3Dx (Idexx, Westbrook, Maine, USA), using recombinant proteins which belong to Ehrlichia canis, p30 and p30-1. Using the IFA test, CME seroprevalence in the Ivory Coast is found to be 67.8%. Among 93 Ivorian seropositive blood samples, 76 samples show an antibody titer >1/2560. In Gabon, IFA showed that seroprevalence is only 3.1%. Among 8 seropositive Gabonese dogs, only one sample shows an antibody test titer> 1/2560. Results from the Snap 3Dx test used on 390 blood samples are 100 positive samples and 290 negative ones. Comparison between IFA and Snap test 3DX revealed that the Snap test shows 97.9% specificity, 93.1% sensitivity, a 94% positive predictive value, a 97.6%, negative predictive value, and 96.6% reliability. In conclusion, CME seroprevalence in Abidjan is very high. Dogs studied for CME were watchdogs, living in kennels, where infection transmitted by Rhipicephalus sanguineus seems to be higher in the Gabonese area called Ogoou Ivindo, where semi-stray dogs were subjected to the test. These dogs where carried ticks identified as Haemaphysalis leachi, but this kind of tick is not considered as bearing Ehrlichia canis. Finally, results of the Snap 3Dx show that it is a simple and reliablemeans for quickly detecting dogs suspected of asymptomatic canine ehrlichiosis

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

ehrlichia canis
ehrlichiosis
dogs
seroprevalence
ifa
gabon
ivory coast


Fabrication and characterization of gold coated hollow silicon microneedle array for drug delivery Fabrication method for an array of hollow tapered Si microneedles is presented. Si microneedles biocompatibility is increased by coating Ti &Au. The breaking force of fabricated microneedles is 10 times above the skin resistive force. Flow rate variation through microneedles with respect to different inlet pressure is studied.

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


EQ-sequences for coding floorplans A floorplan specifies the layout of modules in very large scale integration (VLSI) design, and a new code, called the EQ-sequence, for representing a floorplan is presented in this paper. The EQ-sequence is based on a Q-sequence. The EQ-sequence can preserve the adjacent relationships of rooms on a floorplan, but the Q-sequence cannot. The algorithms for encoding, moving and decoding of an EQ-sequence are introduced. With the EQ-sequence, we can check whether two modules abut each other on a floorplan. It has been proved that any floorplan of n rooms is uniquely encoded by an EQ-sequence and any EQ-sequence is uniquely decoded to a floorplan, both in O(n) time.

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


Locomotion analysis and its applications in neurological disorders detection: state-of-art review Driven by the need of non-invasive diagnosis in clinical practice, behavioral screening and tests have attracted more and more research interests recently. Locomotion analysis, as an important division of behavioral tests, has been widely used in diagnostic decision making, comparative biomechanics, biometric identification and forensics, etc. Plenty of instruments and approaches for locomotion analysis have been developed in both academic and industrial fields to detect diseases clinically, especially neurological disorders. Thus, it is crucial to summarize the methodology and applications of locomotion analysis to help researchers better understand this field. In this review, we focus on describing some recently developed locomotion instruments and their applications in detecting neurological disorders. We also discuss the recent progress of locomotion studies and their pros and cons.

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

locomotion
detection
neurological disorders


Parallel and sequential hybrid methods for a finite family of asymptotically quasi \(\phi \)-nonexpansive mappings In this paper we study some novel parallel and sequential hybrid methods for finding a common fixed point of a finite family of asymptotically quasi \(\phi \)-nonexpansive mappings. The results presented here modify and extend some previous results obtained by several authors.

O O O O O O O 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

asymptotically quasi-\(\phi \)-nonexpansive mapping


Survivability Experiment and Attack Characterization for RFID Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been developed as an important technique for many high security and high integrity settings. In this paper, we study survivability issues for RFID. We first present an RFID survivability experiment to define a foundation to measure the degree of survivability of an RFID system under varying attacks. Then we model a series of malicious scenarios using stochastic process algebras and study the different effects of those attacks on the ability of the RFID system to provide critical services even when parts of the system have been damaged. Our simulation model relates its statistic to the attack strategies and security recovery. The model helps system designers and security specialists to identify the most devastating attacks given the attacker's capacities and the system's recovery abilities. The goal is to improve the system survivability given possible attacks. Our model is the first of its kind to formally represent and simulate attacks on RFID systems and to quantitatively measure the degree of survivability of an RFID system under those attacks.

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


Agents applied in health care: A review The agent-oriented paradigm has emerged as a viable approach for the development of autonomic systems in the healthcare domain. This paper reviews representative works in this area in order to identify the main research lines and study their level of applicability. Moreover, from the analysis of those works and the authors own experiences, some lines of future research are suggested. This paper presents a review of the literature (20022008) of applications of agents in healthcare collected from medical databases as well as international conferences. 15 agent-based systems were selected according to a set of criteria of work relevancy. Their internal architecture as well as communication-based coordination techniques were reviewed. A classification considering the main goal of the systems has been made. For each category, a discussion of the suitability of agent technology in resolving healthcare problems is presented. Agent-based systems offer added values over classical software approaches (e.g., reusability, reliability, flexibility, robustness, maintainability and adaptability). Furthermore, agent technology supports the integration of legacy systems, tackling the shortcomings of centralised systems, such as performance bottlenecks, resource limitations, and different kinds of failures. During the review, we found a huge number of contributions in this area, showing a growing interest of researchers. However, most of the analysed systems are only prototypes, they are not widely deployed in real environments and they are difficult to extend to others domains. Several aspects (security, reusability, modularity, personalisation, system maintenance) should be studied carefully in the next years in order to bring agent technology to real settings.

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

medical informatics
multi-agent systems
artificial intelligence
decision-making
computer-assisted


seu mitigation for sram-based fpgas through dynamic partial reconfiguration This paper presents a methodology for designing reliable systems implemented on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), able to cope with the effects of Single Event Upset (SEU) faults, causing bit-flips in SRAM memory. The approach exploits FPGAs' partial dynamic re-configuration capability to mitigate the effects of SEUs, affecting either the user SRAM memory or the configuration memory itself. The goal is to detect the occurrence of faults and either to restart computation or to trigger a reconfiguration of part of the device in order to recover from them. The proposal allows the exploration of different solutions, characterized byvarying costs and benefits, allowing the designer to select the most convenient trade-off. Results of the application of the methodology to a case study are reported to evaluate the proposed approach.

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 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


Solution for underflow problem in linkage and segregation analysis Finding genes for complex traits is one of the major challenges of modern human genetics. Current developments of molecular techniques facilitated use of large pedigrees and marker sets of thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, one of the problems occurring in statistical analysis of such large data sets is that the likelihood is very low and underflow may easily occur. In this work we describe a method permitting to avoid underflow during computation of a likelihood function, using different algorithms. Our method makes practically possible analysis of thousands of individuals and thousands of SNPs. The method is easy to implement without major change of the code of existing programs. It also helps to reduce the amount of computer memory used in analysis without noticeable alteration of the program running time. The algorithm was implemented in the software packages for segregation and linkage analysis, which are available from http://mga.bionet.nsc.ru/.

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


Combining UCT and Nested Monte Carlo Search for Single-Player General Game Playing Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) has been recently very successful for game playing, particularly for games where the evaluation of a state is difficult to compute, such as Go or General Games. We compare nested Monte Carlo (NMC) search, upper confidence bounds for trees (UCT-T), UCT with transposition tables (UCT+T), and a simple combination of NMC and UCT+T (MAX) on single-player games of the past General Game Playing (GGP) competitions. We show that transposition tables improve UCT and that MAX is the best of these four algorithms. Using UCT+T, the program Ary won the 2009 GGP competition. MAX and NMC are slight improvements over this 2009 version.

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

general game playing (gpp)
nested monte-carlo search
single-player games
upper confidence bounds for trees (uct)


Estimation of static formation temperatures in geothermal wells by using an artificial neural network approach An artificial neural network (ANN) approach was used to develop a new predictive model for the calculation of static formation temperature (SFT) in geothermal wells. A three-layer ANN architecture was successfully trained using a geothermal borehole database, which contains statistically normalised SFT estimates. These estimates were inferred from seven analytical methods commonly used in geothermal industry. Bottom-hole temperature (BHT) measurements and shut-in times were used as main input variables for the ANN training. Transient temperature gradients were used as secondary variables. The LevenbergMarquardt (LM) learning algorithm, the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid transfer function and the linear transfer function were used for the ANN optimisation. The best training data set was obtained with an ANN architecture composed by five neurons in the hidden layer, which made possible to predict the SFT with a satisfactory efficiency (R2>0.95). A suitable accuracy of the ANN model was achieved with a percentage error less than 5%. The SFTs predicted by the ANN model were statistically analyzed and compared with true SFTs measured in synthetic experiments and actual BHT logs collected in geothermal boreholes during long shut-in times. These data sets were processed both to validate the new ANN model and to avoid bias. The SFT estimates inferred from the ANN validation process were in good agreement (R2>0.95) with the true SFT data reported for synthetic and field experiments. The results suggest that the new ANN model could be used as a practical tool for the reliable prediction of SFT in geothermal wells using BHT and shut-in time as input data only.

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

horner method
geothermal energy
levenbergmarquardt algorithm
borehole drilling
bottom-hole temperature
artificial intelligence
shut-in time


Model selection in binary and tobit quantile regression using the Gibbs sampler A stochastic search variable selection approach is proposed for Bayesian model selection in binary and tobit quantile regression. A simple and efficient Gibbs sampling algorithm was developed for posterior inference using a location-scale mixture representation of the asymmetric Laplace distribution. The proposed approach is then illustrated via five simulated examples and two real data sets. Results show that the proposed method performs very well under a variety of scenarios, such as the presence of a moderately large number of covariates, collinearity and heterogeneity.

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

asymmetric laplace distribution
bayesian model selection
gibbs sampling
tobit quantile regression


Auxiliary mixture sampling with applications to logistic models A new method of data augmentation for binary and multinomial logit models is described. First, the latent utilities are introduced as auxiliary latent variables, leading to a latent model which is linear in the unknown parameters, but involves errors from the type I extreme value distribution. Second, for each error term the density of this distribution is approximated by a mixture of normal distributions, and the component indicators in these mixtures are introduced as further latent variables. This leads to Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation based on a convenient auxiliary mixture sampler that draws from standard distributions like normal or exponential distributions and, in contrast to more common MetropolisHastings approaches, does not require any tuning. It is shown how the auxiliary mixture sampler is implemented for binary or multinomial logit models, and it is demonstrated how to extend the sampler to mixed effect models and time-varying parameter models for binary and categorical data. Finally, an application to Austrian labor market data is discussed.

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

categorical data
markov chain monte carlo
utilities

binary data
random-effects models
state space models


Optical Burst-Switched SSB-OFDM Using a Fast Switching SG-DBR Laser The application of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) in an optical burst-switched system employing a single fast switching sample grating-distributed Bragg reflector (SG-DBR) laser is demonstrated experimentally. The effect of filter profiles compatible with 50, 25, and 12.5 GHz wavelength-division multiplexing grids on the system is investigated with system performance examined in terms of error vector magnitude per subcarrier for OFDM burst data beginning at various times after a switching event. Additionally the placement of the OFDM training sequence within the data burst and its effect on the system is investigated.

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

burst-switched
networks
optical communications
wavelength division multiplexing


Defining the intellectual structure of information systems and related college of business disciplines: a bibliometric analysis Information systems permeate every business function, thereby requiring holistic Information Systems (IS) approaches. Much academic research is still discipline specific. More interdisciplinary research is needed to inform both industry and academe. Interdisciplinary research has been positively associated with increased levels of innovation, productivity and impact. IS research contributes to the knowledge creation and innovation within IS and other College of Business (COB) disciplines. This research defines the intellectual structures within IS and between IS and other COB disciplines. We use a large scale, diachronic bibliometric analysis of COB journals to assess reciprocal knowledge exchange and also to identify potential intra- and interdisciplinary publication outlets. Our findings show an increase in IS knowledge contributions to other COB disciplines, which supports the discussion that IS is a reference discipline. Our research also visually depicts the intellectual structures within IS and between IS and other COB disciplines. Anyone exploring research in IS and allied COB disciplines can peruse the proximity maps to identify groups of similar journals. The findings from this research inform decisions related to which journals to read, target as publication outlets, and include on promotion and tenure lists.

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

bibliometric
information systems
business
knowledge exchange


On aggregate Farrell efficiencies ? In this paper we establish the fact that an industry maximal revenue is the sum of its firms maximal revenues. This fact enables us to discover conditions for aggregation of Farrell efficiencies.

O O O O O O O O O O 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


Real-time motion attention and expressive gesture interfaces This paper aims at investigating the relationship between gestures' expressivity and the amount of attention they attract. We present a technique for quantifying behavior saliency, here understood as the capacity to capture one's attention, by the rarity of selected motion and gestural expressive features. This rarity index is based on the real-time computation of the occurrence probability of expressive motion features numerical values. Hence, the time instants that correspond to rare unusual dynamic patterns of an expressive feature are singled out. In a multi-user scenario, the rarity index highlights the person in a group which shows the most different behavior with respect to the others. In a mono-user scenario, the rarity index highlights when the expressive content of a gesture changes. Those methods can be considered as preliminary steps toward context-aware expressive gesture analysis. This work has been partly carried out in the framework of the eNTERFACE 2008 workshop (Paris, France, August 2008) and is partially supported by the EU ICT SAME Project (www.sameproject.eu) and by the NUMEDIART Project (www.numediart.org).

O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 Framework for Commercial Grids-Economic and Technical Challenges This paper argues that the technology of Grid computing has not yet been adopted in commercial settings due to the lack of viable business models. While in academia Grid technology has already been taken up, the sharing approach among non for-profit organizations is not suitable for enterprises. In this paper, the idea of a Grid market is taken up to overcome this Grid adoption gap. We propose a framework for building up a Grid market and identifies the associated economic and technical challenges. Based on this framework, we identify a catalogue of possible market mechanisms which offer a promising fit to the Grid environment's characteristics and which may thus help to carry the idea of Grid markets from theory to practice.

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


Energy-Efficient Pre-Execution Techniques in Two-Step Physical Register Deallocation Instruction pre-execution is an effective way to prefetch data. We previously proposed an instruction pre-execution scheme, which we call two-step physical register deallocation (TSD). The TSD realizes pre-execution by exploiting the difference between the amount of instruction-level parallelism available with an unlimited number of physical registers and that available with an actual number of physical registers. Although previous TSD study has successfully improved performance, it still has an inefficient energy consumption. This is because attempts are made for instructions to be pre-executed as much as possible, independently of whether or not they can significantly contribute to load latency reduction, allowing for maximal performance improvement. This paper presents a scheme that improves the energy efficiency of the TSD by pre-executing only those instructions that have great benefit. Our evaluation results using the SPECfp2000 benchmark show that our scheme reduces the dynamic pre-executed instruction count by 76%, compared with the original scheme. This reduction saves 7% energy consumption of the execution core with 2% overhead. Performance degrades by 2%, compared with that of the original scheme, but is still 15% higher than that of the normal processor without the TSD.

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

microarchitecture
microprocessor
instruction pre-execution
low power


A Relational Extension of the Notion of Motifs: Application to the Common 3D Protein Substructures Searching Problem The geometrical configurations of atoms in protein structures can be viewed as approximate relations among them. Then, finding similar common substructures within a set of protein structures belongs to a new class of problems that generalizes that of finding repeated motifs. The novelty lies in the addition of constraints on the motifs in terms of relations that must hold between pairs of positions of the motifs. We will hence denote them as relational motifs. For this class of problems, we present an algorithm that is a suitable extension of the KMR paradigm and, in particular, of the KMRC as it uses a degenerate alphabet. Our algorithm contains several improvements that become especially useful when-as it is required for relational motifs-the inference is made by partially overlapping shorter motifs, rather than concatenating them. The efficiency, correctness and completeness of the algorithm is ensured by several non-trivial properties that are proven in this paper. The algorithm has been applied in the important field of protein common 3D substructure searching. The methods implemented have been tested on several examples of protein families such as serine proteases, globins and cytochromes P450 additionally. The detected motifs have been compared to those found by multiple structural alignments methods.

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

algorithms
computational molecular biology
learning


Video staging: A proxy-server-based approach to end-to-end video delivery over wide-area networks Real-time distribution of stored video over wide-area networks (WANs) is a crucial component of many emerging distributed multimedia applications. The heterogeneity in the underlying network environments Is an important factor that must be taken into consideration when designing an end-to-end video delivery system. In this paper, wt? present a novel approach to the problem of end-to-end video delivery over WANs using proxy servers situated between local-area networks (LANs) and a backbone WAN. A major objective of our approach is to reduce the backbone WAN bandwidth requirement. Toward this end, we develop an effective video delivery technique called video staging via intelligent utilization of the disk bandwidth and storage space available at proxy servers. Using this video staging technique, only part of a video stream is retrieved directly from the central video server across the backbone WAN whereas the rest of the video stream is delivered to users locally from proxy servers attached to the LANs. In this manner, the WAN bandwidth requirement can be significantly reduced, particularly when a large number of users from the same I,AN access the video data. We design several video staging methods and evaluate their effectiveness in trading the disk bandwidth of a proxy server for the backbone WAN bandwidth. We also develop two heuristic algorithms to solve the problem of designing a multiple video staging scheme for a proxy server with a given video access profile of a LAN. Our results demonstrate that the proposed proxy-server-based approach provides an effective and scalable solution to the problem of the end-to-end,video delivery over WANs.

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

end-to-end video delivery
heterogeneous networking environment
mpeg
video smoothing
video streaming


Model-based testing of global properties on large-scale distributed systems Large-scale distributed systems are becoming commonplace with the large popularity of peer-to-peer and cloud computing. The increasing importance of these systems contrasts with the lack of integrated solutions to build trustworthy software. A key concern of any large-scale distributed system is the validation of global properties, which cannot be evaluated on a single node. Thus, it is necessary to gather data from distributed nodes and to aggregate these data into a global view. This turns out to be very challenging because of the systems dynamism that imposes very frequent changes in local values that affect global properties. This implies that the global view has to be frequently updated to ensure an accurate validation of global properties. In this paper, we present a model-based approach to define a dynamic oracle for checking global properties. Our objective is to abstract relevant aspects of such systems into models. These models are updated at runtime, by monitoring the corresponding distributed system. We conduce real-scale experimental validation to evaluate the ability of our approach to check global properties. In this validation, we apply our approach to test two open-source implementations of distributed hash tables. The experiments are deployed on two clusters of 32 nodes. The experiments reveal an important defect on one implementation and show clear performance differences between the two implementations. The defect would not be detected without a global view of the system. Testing global properties on distributed software consists of gathering data from different nodes and building a global view of the system, where properties are validated. This process requires a distributed test architecture and tools for representing and validating global properties. Model-based techniques are an expressive mean for building oracles that validate global properties on distributed systems.

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


Determining shape and motion from non-overlapping multi-camera rig: A direct approach using normal flows In this paper, we explore how a wide field-of-view imaging system that consists of a number of cameras in a network arranged to approximate a spherical eye can reduce the complexity of estimating camera motion. Depth map of the imaged scene can be reconstructed once the camera motion is there. We present a direct method to recover camera motion from video data, which neither requires establishment of feature correspondences nor recovery of optical flow, but from normal flow which is directly observable. With a wide visual field, the inherent ambiguities between translation and rotation disappear. Several subsets of normal flow pairs and triplets can be utilized to constraint the directions of translation and rotation separately. The intersection of solution spaces arising from normal flow pairs or triplets yields the estimate on the direction of motion. In addition, the larger number of normal flow measurements so resulted can be used to combat the local flow extraction error. Rotational magnitude is recovered in a subsequent stage. This article details how motion recovery can be improved with the use of such an approximate spherical imaging system. Experimental results on synthetic and real image data are provided. The results show that the accuracy of motion estimation is comparable to those of the state-of-the-art methods that require to use explicit feature correspondences or full optical flows, and our method has a much faster computational speed. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

non-overlapping multiple cameras
spherical camera


sustained systems performance monitoring at the u. s. department of defense high performance computing modernization program The U. S. Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) has implemented sustained systems performance testing on high performance computing systems in use at DoD Supercomputing Resource Centers. The intent is to monitor performance improvements by updates to the operating system, compiler suites, and numerical and communications libraries, and to monitor penalties arising from security patches. In practice, each system's workload is simulated by appropriate choices of user application codes representative of the HPCMP computational technical areas. Past successes include surfacing an imminent failure of an OST in a Cray XT3, incomplete configuration of a scheduler update on an SGI Altix 4700, performance issues associated with a communications library update for a Linux Networx Advanced Technology Cluster, and intermittent resetting of Intel Nehalem cores to standard mode from turbo mode. This history demonstrates that SSP testing is critical to deliver the highest quality of service to the HPCMP users.

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


Bargaining in competing supply chains with uncertainty Substantial literature has been devoted to supply chain coordination. The majority of this literature ignores competition between supply chains. Moreover, a significant part of this literature focuses on coordination that induce the supply chain members to follow strategies that produce the equilibria chosen by a vertically integrated supply chain. This paper investigates the equilibrium behavior of two competing supply chains in the presence of demand uncertainty. We consider joint pricing and quantity decisions and competition under three possible supply chain strategies: Vertical Integration (VI), Manufacturers Stackelberg (MS), and Bargaining on the Wholesale price (BW(?), ? is the bargaining parameter) over a single or infinitely many periods. We show that, in contrast to earlier literature, using VIVI (VI in both chains) is the unique Nash Equilibrium over one period decision, while using MSMS or BW(?)BW(?) may be Nash Equilibrium over infinitely many periods.

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 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

competing supply chain
uncertain demand
channel coordination


Adaptive Cellular Memetic Algorithms A cellular genetic algorithm (CGA) is a decentralized form of GA where individuals ill a population are Usually arranged in a 2D grid and interactions among individuals are restricted to a set neighborhood. In this paper, we extend the notion of cellularity to memetic algorithms (MA), a configuration termed cellular memetic algorithm (CMA). In addition, we propose adaptive mechanisms that tailor the amount of exploration versus exploitation of local solutions carried out by the CMA. We systematically benchmark this adaptive mechanism and provide evidence that the resulting adaptive CMA outperforms other methods both in the quality of solutions obtained and the number of function evaluations for a range of continuous optimization problems.

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

memetic algorithm
cellular genetic algorithm

parallel genetic algorithm
cellular memetic algorithm


Haar invariant signatures and spatial recognition using omnidirectional visual information only This paper describes a method for spatial representation, place recognition and qualitative self-localization in dynamic indoor environments, based on omnidirectional images. This is a difficult problem because of the perceptual ambiguity of the acquired images, and their weak robustness to noise, geometrical and photometric variations of real world scenes. The spatial representation is built up invariant signatures using Invariance Theory where we suggest to adapt Haar invariant integrals to the particular geometry and image transformations of catadioptric omnidirectional sensors. It follows that combining simple image features in a process of integration over visual transformations and robot motion, can build discriminant percepts about robot spatial locations. We further analyze the invariance properties of the signatures and the apparent relation between their similarity measures and metric distances. The invariance properties of the signatures can be adapted to infer a hierarchical process, from global room recognition to local and coarse robot localization. The approach is validated in real world experiments and compared to some local and global state-of-the-art methods. The results demonstrate a very interesting performance of the proposed approach and show distinctive behaviors of global and local methods. The invariant signature method, while being very time and memory efficient, provides good separability results similarly to approaches based on local features.

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

omnidirectional vision
indoor qualitative robot localization


Using contexts to supervise a collaborative process This article describes an investigation into the feasibility of using contextual reasoning to monitor and supervise the collaborative work of several knowledge workers working together on a project. Managing large and complex projects is a difficult task that requires situational awareness by the project manager to be able to be proactive when possible and to react correctly in the presence of events. In complex projects, effective oversight of the project personnel and the progress of the project are essential in ensuring that project objectives are met. This is especially true of projects that require contributions from various experts, whose interaction may be limited to a Web-based collaborative tool. Such oversight is typically the job of a project manager who is tasked with avoiding cost overruns, shipment delays, and ensuring product effectiveness. We utilize context-based reasoning and contextual graphs as the tools of choice for implementing an agent that emulates the function of a competent pro eel manager. We use rocket design and manufacture as the domain to evaluate our technique. We use a public domain rocket design software package developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a guide to the domain. The article describes the investigation, its results, and the related works in a collaborative design project.

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

computer supported cooperative work
context-based reasoning
project management


A multi-agent approach to intelligent monitoring in smart grids In this paper, we propose a scalable multi-agent architecture to give support to smart grids, paying special attention to the intelligent monitoring of distribution substations. The data gathered by multiple sensors are used by software agents that are responsible for monitoring different aspects or events of interest, such as normal voltage values or unbalanced intensity values that can end up blowing fuses and decreasing the quality of service of end consumers. The knowledge bases of these agents have been built by means of a formal model for normality analysis that has been successfully used in other surveillance domains. The architecture facilitates the integration of new agents and can be easily configured and deployed to monitor different environments. The experiments have been conducted over a power distribution network.

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

smart grids
intelligent monitoring
normality analysis


An energy-efficient partitioned instruction cache architecture for embedded processors Energy efficiency of cache memories is crucial in designing embedded processors. Reducing energy consumption in the instruction cache is especially important, since the instruction cache consumes a significant portion of total processor energy. This paper proposes a new instruction cache architecture, named Partitioned Instruction Cache (PI-Cache), for reducing dynamic energy consumption in the instruction cache by partitioning it to smaller (less power-consuming) sub-caches. When the proposed PI-Cache is accessed, only one sub-cache is accessed by utilizing the temporal/spatial locality of applications. In the meantime, other sub-caches are not accessed, leading to dynamic energy reduction. The PI-Cache also reduces dynamic energy consumption by eliminating the energy consumed in tag lookup and comparison. Moreover, the performance gap between the conventional instruction cache and the proposed PI-Cache becomes little when the physical cache access time is considered. We evaluated the energy efficiency by running a cycle accurate simulator, SimpleScalar, with power parameters obtained from CACTI. Simulation results show that the PI-Cache improves the energy-delay product by 20%-54% compared to the conventional direct-mapped instruction cache.

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

partitioned cache
low power design
embedded processor


A general strategy for the optimization of RungeKutta schemes for wave propagation phenomena We analyze optimized explicit RungeKutta schemes (RK) for computational aeroacoustics, and wave propagation phenomena in general. Exploiting the analysis developed in [S. Pirozzoli, Performance analysis and optimization of finite-difference schemes for wave propagation problems, J. Comput. Phys. 222 (2007) 809831], we rigorously evaluate the performance of several time integration schemes in terms of appropriate error and cost metrics, and provide a general strategy to design RungeKutta methods tailored for specific applications. We present families of optimized second- and third-order RungeKutta schemes with up to seven stages, and describe their implementation in the framework of Williamsons 2N 2 N -storage formulation [J.H. Williamson, Low-storage RungeKutta schemes, J. Comput. Phys. 35 (1980) 4856]. Numerical simulations of the 1D linear advection equation and of the 2D linearized Euler equations are performed to demonstrate the validity of the theory and to quantify the improvement provided by optimized schemes.

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

computational aeroacoustics
rungekutta schemes

optimized algorithms
numerical dispersion
numerical dissipation


General relativistic simulations of jet formation in Kerr black hole magnetosphere We report a two-dimensional numerical result of jet formation driven by magnetic field due to a current loop near a rapidly rotating black hole. It shows that the magnetic flux tube bridging the region between the ergosphere and the disk around the black hole is twisted rapidly due to the frame-dragging effect and expands explosively to form a jet. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

relativistic jet
general relativistic mhd


A research framework for Web-based open decision support systems With the prevalence of the Web, most decision-makers are likely to use the Web to support their decision-making. Web-based technologies are leading a major stream of researching decision support systems (DSS). In this paper, we propose a formal definition and a conceptual framework for Web-based open DSS (WODSS). The formal definition gives an overall view of WODSS and creates a uniform research framework for various decision support systems. The conceptual framework based on browser/broker/server computing mode employs the electronic market to mediate decision-makers and providers, and facilitate sharing and reusing of decision resources. We also analyze the basic functions and develop an admitting model, a trading model and a competing model of electronic market in WODSS based on market theory in economics. These models reveal the key mechanisms that drive WODSS function efficiently. Finally, an illustrative example is studied to support the proposed ideas.

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

decision support systems
electronic market
decision resources


Gesture recognition using Bezier curves for visualization navigation from registered 3-D data This paper presents a gesture recognition system for visualization navigation. Scientists are interested in developing interactive settings for exploring large data sets in an intuitive environment. The input consists of registered 3-D data. A geometric method using Bezier curves is used for the trajectory analysis and classification of gestures. The hand gesture speed is incorporated into the algorithm to enable correct recognition from trajectories with variations in hand speed. The method is robust and reliable: correct hand identification rate is 99.9% (from 1641 frames), modes of hand movements are correct 95.6% of the time, recognition rate (given the right mode) is 97.9%. An application to gesture-controlled visualization of 3D bioinformatics data is also presented. (C) 2004 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

gesture recognition system
bezier curves
visualization navigation

motion analysis
hand tracking
human-computer interaction
region detection and identification
3-d trajectory analysis


Supporting SMEs' IP capabilities: Impact study of INPI pre-diagnosis through the use of the AIDA approach This article aims to evaluate the impact of a regional SME IP support programme in France led by the INPI (National Institute of IP) and the Lorraine regional government. The panel includes 150 regional SMEs. The data were collected through the use of the AIDA approach and a data analysis was carried out, including principal components analysis (PCA) and a hierarchical ascending classification (HAC). The data analysis shows that the INPI pre-diagnosis allowed enterprises to progress in their IP-management. The knowledge of IP and its issues increase very significantly and appear to influence the IP-related management of the companies studied.

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


Motion Regularization for Matting Motion Blurred Objects This paper addresses the problem of matting motion blurred objects from a single image. Existing single image matting methods are designed to extract static objects that have fractional pixel occupancy. This arises because the physical scene object has a finer resolution than the discrete image pixel and therefore only occupies a fraction of the pixel. For a motion blurred object, however, fractional pixel occupancy is attributed to the object's motion over the exposure period. While conventional matting techniques can be used to matte motion blurred objects, they are not formulated in a manner that considers the object's motion and tend to work only when the object is on a homogeneous background. We show how to obtain better alpha mattes by introducing a regularization term in the matting formulation to account for the object's motion. In addition, we outline a method for estimating local object motion based on local gradient statistics from the original image. For the sake of completeness, we also discuss how user markup can be used to denote the local direction in lieu of motion estimation. Improvements to alpha mattes computed with our regularization are demonstrated on a variety of examples.

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


Clinical Association of Autoimmune Diseases with Diabetes Mellitus The adult form of polyglandular autoimmune syndrome (type 2) is associated with disorders of the thyroid, adrenal, and pancreas (type 1 diabetes mellitus). We profile the clinical association of autoimmune diseases among patients from our center in southern India

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


SME ERP system sourcing strategies: a case study Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify ERP system sourcing strategies available to SMEs and to provide insights from a case study of the practices applied and decisions made by an SME in using a hybrid of sourcing resources to implement the successful conversion of their legacy ERP system to a new information technology (IT) environment. Design/methodology/approach - This research is a case study utilizing various data sources including face-to-face interviews, informal conversations, and e-mails with members of the case company. Company software applications and documents were examined and employees were observed in action. The analysis compares characteristics of the client-vendor relationship of the case company with findings from relevant outsourcing literature. Findings - This case study identified, among others, the following practices that were critical to the case company in their outsourcing endeavors: attending networking events for SMEs, obtaining formal contract for ownership of intellectual property, utilizing local vendor contact point for communication with offshore contact point, and utilizing vendor's skill-set for specialized resources. Practical implications - This case study relates practice with theory, providing a reference for both academia and practitioners. Originality/value - The decision making and practices described in this paper provide insights that may be useful to organizations considering IT software implementations. ERP systems are increasingly more affordable for SMEs and offshore outsourcing is becoming more accessible; therefore, SMEs considering these options may benefit from Kanebridge's experience.

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

manufacturing resource planning
small to medium-sized enterprises


New technologies for advanced three-dimensional optimum shape design in aeronautics The analysis of complex flows around realistic aircraft geometries is becoming more and more predictive. In order to obtain this result, the complexity of flow analysis codes has been constantly increasing, involving more refined fluid models and sophisticated numerical methods. These codes can only run on top computers, exhausting their memory and CPU capabilities. It is, therefore, difficult to introduce best analysis codes in a shape optimization loop: most previous works in the optimum shape design field used only simplified analysis codes. Moreover, as the most popular optimization methods are the gradient-based ones, the more complex the flow solver, the more difficult it is to compute the sensitivity code. However, emerging technologies are contributing to make such an ambitious project, of including a state-of-the-art flow analysis code into an optimisation loop, feasible. Among those technologies, there are three important issues that this paper wishes to address: shape parametrization, automated differentiation and parallel computing. Shape parametrization allows faster optimization by reducing the number of design variable; in this work, it relies on a hierarchical multilevel approach. The sensitivity code can be obtained using automated differentiation. The automated approach is based on software manipulation tools, which allow the differentiation to be quick and the resulting differentiated code to be rather fast and reliable. In addition, the parallel algorithms implemented in this work allow the resulting optimization software to run on increasingly larger geometries. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

optimum shape design
automated differentiation
shape parametrization
parallel computing


Reliability estimation in a generalized life-model with application to the Burr-XII Estimators of the reliability function in a GLM (generalized life model) are considered. The class of the GLM includes (among others) the Weibull, Pareto, Beta, Gompertz, and Rayleigh distribution. A proper general prior density and the predictive function for general class of distribution proposed by Al-Hussaini [1] are used to obtain the exact estimate. Also, the Bayes estimates relative to symmetric loss function (quadratic loss), and asymmetric loss function (LINEX loss, and GE loss), are obtained. Comparisons are made between those estimators and the MLE applying to the Burr-XII model using the Bayes approximation due to Lindley. Monte Carlo simulation was used.

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bayes prediction
burr-xii model
lifetime distributiorts
lindley procedure
symmetric and asymmetric loss functions
type-2 and completely censored samples


TIGHT QUANTUM BOUNDS FOR COMPUTATIONAL GEOMETRY PROBLEMS We present new quantum lower bounds and upper bounds for several computational geometry problems. The bounds presented here improve on currently known results in a number of ways. We give asymptotically optimal bounds for one of the problems considered, and we provide, up to logarithmic factors, optimal bounds for a number of other problems and, in particular, we settle an open problem of Bahadur et al. Some of these new bounds are obtained using a general algorithm for finding a minimum pair over a given arbitrary order relation.

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

quantum computing
quantum algorithm
lower bound
upper bound


Single-machine due-window assignment and scheduling with resource allocation, aging effect, and a deteriorating rate-modifying activity We consider single-machine scheduling with a common due-window and a deteriorating rate-modifying activity. We assume that the processing time of a job is a function of the amount of a resource allocated to it, its position in the processing sequence, and its aging effect. The objective is to minimize the total cost, which is a function of earliness, tardiness, due-window starting time, due-window size, and resource consumption. We consider two models of the job processing time function and provide polynomial-time solution algorithms for the corresponding problems. We also give a more efficient solution algorithm for a special case of the second problem. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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scheduling
resource allocation
aging effect

due-window assignment
deteriorating rate-modifying activity