research journey towards industrial application of reuse technique Component-based reuse in mission critical Command and Control system domain was a starting point for a long lasting research collaboration between National University of Singapore (NUS) and ST Electronics Pte. Ltd. (STEE). STEE industrial projects as well as NUS lab studies revealed limitations of conventional architecture-centric, component-based reuse in the area of generic design to unify similarity patterns (e.g., similar classes, components or architectural patterns) commonly found in software. Further research showed that meta-level extensions to conventional techniques could strengthen their generic design capabilities, considerably improving effectiveness of reuse solutions, and increasing productivity gains due to reuse. These experiences led to development of "mixed strategy" approach based on synergistic application of meta-level generative programming technique of XVCL, together with conventional programming techniques. In the paper, we describe university-industry collaboration that proved beneficial for both parties: STEE advanced reuse practice via application of XVCL in several software product line projects. Early inputs from STEE helped NUS team validate and refine XVCL reuse methods, and expand into new research directions. We describe a sequence of projects that led to successful application of XVCL in industrial projects. We describe experiences from those projects and their significance for both industrial practice and understanding principles of flexible software, i.e., software that can be easily changed and adapted to various reuse contexts.

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


performance analysis of mobile agents tracking Mobile agents have arisen as an interesting paradigm to build distributed applications, due to the unparalleled advantages they offer. However, along with the advantages they also present new challenges. One of the most relevant is that it is not easy to ensure efficient communication among agents that move continually from one computer to another.In this paper, we apply SPE techniques to model and analyze, how a mobile agent tracking approach addresses the highly dynamic movement problem in a distributed computing environment.

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

software performance engineering(spe)
puma


Recovering memory access patterns of executable programs This paper deals with the binary analysis of executable programs, with the goal of understanding how they access memory. It explains how to statically build a formal model of all memory accesses. Starting with a control flow graph of each procedure, well-known techniques are used to structure this graph into a hierarchy of loops in all cases. The paper shows that much more information can be extracted by performing a complete data-flow analysis over machine registers after the program has been put in static single assignment (SSA) form. By using the SSA form, registers used in addressing memory can be symbolically expressed in terms of other previously set registers. By including the loop structures in the analysis, loop indices and trip counts can also often be expressed symbolically. The whole process produces a formal model made of loops where memory accesses are linear expressions of loop counters and registers. The paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the results when applied to several dozens of SPEC benchmark programs. Because static analysis has no access to input data, the paper ends by describing a lightweight instrumentation strategy that collects at run time enough information to rebuild an exact trace. The section on applications also describes how the techniques developed in this paper can be used to perform automatic parallelization of binary code. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

memory accesses
binary analysis
static single assignment
automatic parallelization

decompilation
memory tracing
program skeletonization


Image quality in image classification: Adaptive image quality modification with adaptive classification Process monitoring using imaging can provide valuable information. However, the large number of images obtained necessitate automated classification into those showing "good" and "bad" product. This paper shows how a database of reference images can be used to modify image quality so as to obtain extremely high classification accuracies. The final model obtained combined adaptive image quality improvement with adaptive Bayesian Classification. Adapting to changes in image quality was accomplished with the aid of case-based reasoning. Experimental verification involved monitoring the presence or absence of purposefully added contaminant particles during extrusion of polyethylene. The new model was a major improvement over previous work and conclusively demonstrated the advantage of being able to adapt both image quality and the classification model itself to improve classification performance in dynamic environments involving large changes in image quality. Adaptation could be readily accomplished but did require human intervention to identify the need for adaptation and to accomplish it by using images of known class. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

image quality
adaptive
bayesian
classification

case-based reasoning
image quality modification


Kernel-based mixture models for classification A generative model for classification based on kernels and mixtures of univariate Gamma distributions is introduced. It models the point distances to cluster centroids in the transformed Hilbert space associated with the inner product induced by the kernel. The distances are readily computed using the kernel trick. Nested within this kernel-based Gamma mixture model (KMM) are two special cases corresponding to the kernel-based mixture of exponentials and the kernel-based mixture of spherical Gaussians. The Akaike information criterion is used to select an appropriate parsimonious type-of-mixture model for the data at hand. A powerful classification rule based on the knowledge of all point distances to every class centroid is developed based on this model. The flexibility in the choice of the kernel and the probabilistic nature of a mixture distribution makes KMM appealing for modeling and inference. A comparison with other popular classification methods shows that this model is very efficient when handling high dimensional data.

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

machine learning
supervised classification
discriminant analysis
model selection


ECoDE - An environmental component design evaluation tool Mass consumerism has brought about increasing consumption of non-renewable natural resources and manufactured goods, and is creating a waste disposal problem of unprecedented magnitude in the process. In the long run, sustainable manufacturing is only attainable given environmentally responsible product design. There tire many tools for the analysis of the impact of manufactured products on the environment, but they, do not other a level of detail sufficient to identify enviromnentally offensive components in the Product. This paper discusses a computer-based design evaluation tool, ECoDE, developed for assessing the environmental impact of components in a product. ECoDE makes use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process to compare each criterion, and rank them in an ascending order of relative significance. The types of materials used, their costs, manufacturing processes, reliability, and ease of access for disassembly are some of the key assessment criteria being considered. Finally, a multi-attribute (or criteria) rating technique is used to compute the scores against each of the criteria for both components and the overall product. The larger the score, the less severe the impact of the component or product on the environment. A discussion is then made on an evaluation test case conducted by ECoDE. Preliminary tests have found that ECoDE is able to calculate the least environmentally friendly component and highlight its likely causes.

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

computer based design tools
design decision support tools
design for environment


Computation of bounds for transient measures of large rewarded Markov models using regenerative randomization In this paper we generalize a method (called regenerative randomization) for the transient solution of continuous time Markov models. The generalized method allows to compute two transient measures (the expected transient reward rate and the expected averaged reward rate) for rewarded continuous time Markov models with a structure covering bounding models which are useful when a complete, exact model has unmanageable size. The method has the same good properties as the well-known (standard) randomization method: numerical stability, well-controlled computation error, and ability to specify the computation error in advance, and, for large enough models and long enough times, is significantly faster than the standard randomization method. The method requires the selection of a regenerative state and its performance depends on that selection. For a class of models, class C?, including typical failure/repair models with exponential failure and repair time distributions and repair in every state with failed components, a natural selection for the regenerative state exists, and results are available assessing approximately the performance of the method for that natural selection in terms of visible model characteristics. Those results can be used to anticipate when the method can be expected to be significantly faster than standard randomization for models in that class. The potentially superior efficiency of the regenerative randomization method compared to standard randomization for models not in class C? is illustrated using a large performability model of a fault-tolerant multiprocessor system. Rewarded continuous time Markov models are widely used for performance, dependability and performability analysis of computer and telecommunication systems. Realistic modeling of such systems usually yields Markov models whose size exceeds the available memory resources. An approach to deal with the largeness problem is the use of bounding Markov models. However, even those bounding models can have very large state spaces, making important the development of efficient numerical solution techniques. Often, one is interested in transient characteristics of the system which require the transient analysis of the model. This paper generalizes a method, called regenerative randomization, for the transient analysis of Markov models, so that it can be used for the computation of bounds for the expected transient reward rate and the expected averaged reward rate transient measures with general reward rate structures including arbitrary non-negative reward rates associated with the states of the model. Examples of such measures are the unavailability of a fault-tolerant system at time t and the expected interval unavailability of a fault-tolerant system at time t. The method has the same good properties as the well-known standard randomization (also called uniformization) method: numerical stability, well-controlled computation error, and ability to specify the computation error in advance, and, for large models and long mission times, can be significantly faster than that method. Furthermore, for a class of models, class C?, including typical failure/repair models with exponential failure and repair time distributions and repair in every state with failed components, theoretical results are available assessing the performance of the method in terms of visible model characteristics. Those results can be used to anticipate when the generalized regenerative randomization method can be expected to be competitive for class C? models. The generalized regenerative randomization method allows a numerically stable, with well-controlled and specifiable-in-advance error, solution of some large rewarded continuous time Markov models in affordable CPU times.

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

continuous time markov chains
rewarded models


Enacting agent-based services for automated procurement Negotiation events in industrial procurement involving multiple, highly customisable goods pose serious challenges to buying agents when trying to determine the best set of providing agents offers. Typically, a buying agent's decision involves a large variety of constraints that may involve attributes of a very same item as well as attributes of different, multiple items. In this paper we present iBundler, an agent-aware service offered to buying agents to help them determine the optimal bundle of received offers based on their business rules. In this way, buying agents are relieved with the burden of solving too hard a problem and concentrate on strategic issues. iBundler is intended as a negotiation service for buying agents and as a winner determination service for reverse combinatorial auctions with side constraints. Furthermore, we assess the computational cost added by employing agent technology in the development of iBundler to characterise the type of negotiation scenarios that it can acceptably handle.

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 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 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 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

e-commerce
open agent systems
scalability
artificial intelligence
integer programming
optimization


Extending multimedia research: How do prerequisite knowledge and reading comprehension affect learning from text and pictures Multimedia effects and modality effects were limited to immediate recall. A redundant presentation of text proved harmful for delayed performance. Reading comprehension did not moderate effects of multimedia design. High scientific-literacy learners showed a multimedia effect for delayed recall. Better cognitive prerequisites were associated with less forgetting over time.

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

multimedia effect
reading comprehension
prerequisite knowledge

modality effect
redundancy effect
delayed testing
scientific literacy


An accelerating scheme for destructive parsimonious extreme learning machine Constructive and destructive parsimonious extreme learning machines (CP-ELM and DP-ELM) were recently proposed to sparsify ELM. In comparison with CP-ELM, DP-ELM owns the advantage in the number of hidden nodes, but it loses the edge with respect to the training time. Hence, in this paper an equivalent measure is proposed to accelerate DP-ELM (ADP-ELM). As a result, ADP-ELM not only keeps the same hidden nodes as DP-ELM but also needs less training time than CP-ELM, which is especially important for the training time sensitive scenarios. The similar idea is extended to regularized ELM (RELM), yielding ADP-RELM. ADP-RELM accelerates the training process of DP-RELM further, and it works better than CP-RELM in terms of the number of hidden nodes and the training time. In addition, the computational complexity of the proposed accelerating scheme is analyzed in theory. From reported results on ten benchmark data sets, the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed accelerating scheme in this paper is confirmed experimentally.

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

single-hidden layer feedforward network
destructive algorithm
constructive algorithms
sparseness


Minimizing the Maximum Firewall Rule Set in a Network with Multiple Firewalls A firewall's complexity is known to increase with the size of its rule set. Empirical studies show that as the rule set grows larger, the number of configuration errors on a firewall increases sharply, while the performance of the firewall degrades. When designing a security-sensitive network, it is critical to construct the network topology and its routing structure carefully in order to reduce the firewall rule sets, which helps lower the chance of security loopholes and prevent performance bottleneck. This paper studies the problems of how to place the firewalls in a topology during network design and how to construct the routing tables during operation such that the maximum firewall rule set can be minimized. These problems have not been studied adequately despite their importance. We have two major contributions. First, we prove that the problems are NP-complete. Second, we propose a heuristic solution and demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm by simulations. The results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the maximum firewall rule set by 2-5 times when comparing with other algorithms.

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

firewall configuration
access control rules
network security


Hidden Markov processes An overview of statistical and information-theoretic aspects of hidden Markov processes (HMPs) is presented. An HMP is a discrete-time finite-state homogeneous Markov chain observed through a discrete-time memoryless invariant channel. In recent years, the work of Baum and Petrie on finite-state finite-alphabet HMPs was expanded to HMPs with finite as well as continuous state spaces and a general alphabet. In particular, statistical properties and ergodic theorems for relative entropy densities of HMPs were developed. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the maximum-likelihood (ML) parameter estimator were proved under some mild conditions. Similar results were established for switching autoregressive processes. These processes generalize HMPs. New algorithms were developed for estimating the state, parameter, and order of an HMP, for universal coding and classification of HMPs, and for universal decoding of hidden Markov channels. These and other related topics are reviewed in this paper.

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

baum-petrie algorithm
entropy ergodic theorems
finite-state channels
hidden markov models
identifiability
kalman filter
maximum-likelihood (ml) estimation
order estimation
recursive parameter estimation
ziv inequality


A note on two of Hrushovski's constructions In this paper we compare two of Hrushovski's constructions which arise in different contexts (Hrushovski, preprint [5], Hrushovski, 1989 [4]) and we show that under certain hypotheses they coincide. Using a group theoretic approach we also exhibit a structure which satisfies these hypotheses. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

classification of totally categorical structures

amalgamation properties in stable theories


conceptualising tangibles to support learning We present a new way of conceptualising tangibles for learning. This scheme adopts Heidegger's analysis of the ways a user can treat a tool: either as 'ready-to-hand' or 'present-at-hand'. It also proposes two types of activity a learner can engage in when using a tangible: either exploratory or expressive activity. Finally, two types of models that a user can explore are proposed: theoretical and practical models.Examples from the literature are described in terms of this framework and an example is given from our own work of an attempt to use this conceptualisation in design.

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


INFINITE FAMILIES OF OPTIMAL SPLITTING AUTHENTICATION CODES SECURE AGAINST SPOOFING ATTACKS OF HIGHER ORDER We consider the problem of constructing optimal authentication codes with splitting. New infinite families of such codes are obtained. In particular, we establish the first known infinite family of optimal authentication codes with splitting that are secure against spoofing attacks of order two.

authentication code
splitting authentication code
splitting t-design


Users' experiences with qualitative data analysis software - Neither Frankenstein's monster nor muse The use of qualitative data analysis software has been increasing in recent years. A number of qualitative researchers have raised questions concerning the effect of such software in the research process. Pears have been expressed that the use of the computer for qualitative analysis may interfere with the relationship between the researcher and the research process itself by distancing the researcher from both the data and the respondent. Others have suggested that the use of a quantitative tool, the computer, would lead to data dredging, quantification of results, and loss of the ''art'' of qualitative analysis. In this study of 12 qualitative researchers, including both faculty members and graduate students, we have found that these fears are exaggerated. Users of qualitative data analysis software in most cases use the computer as an organizational time-saving tool and take special care to maintain close relationships with both the data and the respondents. It is an open question, however, whether or not the amount of time and effort saved by the computer enhance research creativity. The research findings are mixed in this area. At issue is the distinction between creativity and productivity when computer methods are used.

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

computer software
ethnograph
research methodology


Multiprocessor speed scaling for jobs with arbitrary sizes and deadlines In this paper we study energy efficient deadline scheduling on multiprocessors in which the processors consumes power at a rate of \(s^\alpha \) when running at speed \(s\), where \(\alpha \ge 2\). The problem is to dispatch jobs to processors and determine the speed and jobs to run for each processor so as to complete all jobs by their deadlines using the minimum energy. The problem has been well studied for the single processor case. For the multiprocessor setting, constant competitive online algorithms for special cases of unit size jobs or arbitrary size jobs with agreeable deadlines have been proposed by Albers et al. (2007). A randomized algorithm has been proposed for jobs of arbitrary sizes and arbitrary deadlines byGreiner et al. (2009). We propose a deterministic online algorithm for the general setting and show that it is \(O(\log ^\alpha P)\)-competitive, where \(P\) is the ratio of the maximum and minimum job size.

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 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

dynamic speed scaling
competitive analysis
multiprocessor scheduling


ENDOSCOPIC IMAGE CUTTING SIMULATION BASED ON MASS-SPRING MODEL AND COMPUTATIONAL GEOMETRY As minimally invasive surgical techniques become widely known to patients, medical training systems based on virtual simulation are highly desired. These systems help surgeon trainees to acquire, practice and evaluate their surgical skills. A key component in a virtual training system is to simulate the dynamics that occur in surgical procedures. Tissue cutting, as a common phenomenon during surgery, has attracted many research efforts in computer simulation. In this paper, we propose an approach to endoscopic image cutting simulation which is based on both mass-spring model and Computational Geometry. In the cutting simulation model, the springs to be cut off are imagined into line segments. In the calculation of the elastic force on mass points, we have found that whether some adjacent springs of a mass point to be eliminated or not during a cutting is critical. If a spring intersects the cutting plane, we set the elastic force of this spring to zero. We adopted properties of cross product and related algorithms (the rapid exclusion test, the crossover test) in Computational Geometry to determine the springs that are intersected with the cutting plane. And then, we utilized the bilinear interpolation and OpenGL techniques to render the cutting procedure of the soft tissue. The experimental results show that our cutting simulation is effective and practical.

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

cutting simulation
cross product
cutting plane


EHR adoption across China's tertiary hospitals: A cross-sectional observational study MEG has examined EHRs adoption in 848 Chinese hospitals. Most hospitals have EHRs adoption level on 2 and 0; very few have a higher score. Clinical information using and sharing are low. Government should pay more attention to incentive policies and financial support.

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

electronic health record
health information systems
technology assessment
evaluation


Overcoming Barriers to the Transformation of the Genus Ehrlichia Abstract: While bacterial transformation has evolved since the early 20th century to allow for the genetic manipulation of a variety of microbial agents, rickettsial organisms have proved resistant to such advances until only recently. The Ehrlichia are small, gram-negative, obligately intracellular bacterial parasites, which belong to the family Anaplasmataceae and cause a variety of infections in human and animal hosts. E. chaffeensis is the causative agent of human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis and is transmitted by Amblyomma americanum, the Lone Star tick. In this work, we describe the first report of successful transformation of a closely related ehrlichial species, the murine monocytotropic species E. muris. Application of these techniques should allow for a wide variety of molecular studies to be performed that were previously impossible. This heralds the beginning of a new era in ehrlichial research.

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

e. chaffeensis
e. muris
pcr
chloramphenicol


A knowledge encapsulation approach to ontology modularization The development of monolithic ontologies for complex domains may face various challenges in reasoning and implementation. The notion of modularity can be employed for developing more efficient ontologies, especially in distributed environments. In this paper, we introduce a framework for developing ontologies in a modular manner. We describe the interface-based modular ontology formalism, (IBF), which theoretically supports the framework. The main feature of the framework is its support for knowledge encapsulation, i.e., it allows ontologies to define their main content using well-defined interfaces, such that their knowledge bases can only be accessed by other ontologies through these interfaces. An important implication of the proposed framework is that ontology modules can be developed completely independent of each other's signature and languages. Such modules are free to only utilize the required knowledge segments of the others. We also investigate the issues of inconsistency in the proposed modular ontology framework. We provide solutions for isolating inconsistent ontology modules from the other parts of a modular ontology and also resolve inconsistencies which may be arisen by integrating consistent knowledge bases.

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

semantic web
modular ontology
description logics


Fixed-effect variable selection in linear mixed models using R-2 statistics In the linear mixed model (LMM), several R-2 statistics have been proposed for assessing the goodness-of-fit of fixed effects. However, the performance of these statistics has not been fully demonstrated either analytically or through simulations. We report results of simulations to asses the ability of these statistics to select the most parsimonious model. R-2 statistics from a full model were compared to other models in which fixed-effect covariates were removed. The full model was also compared to an overfitted model that included additional covariates not linked to the outcome. All models compared involved the same random effects. In this paper, we show that R-2 statistics that involve the residuals are unable to adequately discriminate between the correct model and one from which important fixed-effect covariates are omitted if the computation of the predicted values for the residuals included the random effects (referred to as conditional R-2 statistics). However, if the random effects are excluded from the computation of the predicted values that lead to the residuals, these R-2 statistics (referred to as marginal R-2 statistics) are able to select the most parsimonious model. Other R-2 statistics that have been proposed by Xu [2003. Measuring explained variation in linear mixed effects models. Statist. Med. 22(22), 3527-3541] performed poorly in that there was little variation in the value of these statistics from a full model to a reduced model. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

goodness-of-fit
model adequacy
model fit
model selection


A novel authenticated group key agreement protocol for mobile environment An authenticated group key agreement protocol allows a group of parties to authenticate each other and then determine a group key via an insecure network environment. In 2009, Lee et al. first adopted bilinear pairings to propose a new nonauthenticated group key agreement protocol and then extend it to an authenticated group key agreement protocol. This paper points out that the authenticated protocol of Lee et al. is vulnerable to an impersonation attack such that any adversary can masquerade as a legal node to determine a group key with the other legal nodes and the powerful node. This paper shall employ the short signature scheme of Zhang et al. to propose a new authenticated group key agreement protocol. The short signature scheme of Zhang et al. is proven to be secure against the adaptive chosen-message attacks in the random oracle model, so the proposed protocol can withstand the possible attacks. Besides, compared with the authenticated protocol of Lee et al., the proposed protocol is more secure and efficient.

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

authenticated group key
bilinear pairings
impersonation attack
short signature
random oracle


Using three-dimensional finite element analysis in time domain to model railway-induced ground vibrations The finite element analysis is used to assess the ground-borne vibrations. Time domain simulation is preferred for reducing the model size. Lysmer and Kuhlemeyer absorbing boundary conditions are analysed. Structural vibrations are calculated for realistic cases. A mesh tool is presented to automatically add infinite elements in ABAQUS model.

O O B I I 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

railway ground vibrations
finite/infinite element method
viscous boundary
vehicle dynamics
soilstructure interaction


Approximate blocking probabilities in loss models with independence and distribution assumptions relaxed Effective approximations are developed for the blocking probability in a general stationary loss model, where key independence and exponential-distribution assumptions are relaxed, giving special attention to dependence among successive service times, not studied before. The new approximations exploit recent heavy-traffic limits for the steady-state number of busy servers in the associated infinite-server model with the same arrival and service processes. In addition, a new heavy-traffic approximation is developed for the long-run proportion of time that all servers are busy. These new approximations are then combined to develop new approximations for the separate blocking probabilities of individual arrival streams in multi-class loss models. Simulation experiments show that these approximations are effective.

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

infinite server (is)
heavy traffic (ht)
quality-and-efficiency-driven (qed)


A matrix geometric representation for the queue length distribution of multitype semi-Markovian queues In this paper we study a broad class of semi-Markovian queues introduced by Sengupta. This class contains many classical queues such as the GI/M/1 queue, SM/MAP/1 queue and others, as well as queues with correlated inter-arrival and service times. Queues belonging to this class are characterized by a set of matrices of size m m and Sengupta showed that its waiting time distribution can be represented as a phase-type distribution of order m m . For the special case of the SM/MAP/1 queue without correlated service and inter-arrival times the queue length distribution was also shown to be phase-type of order m m , but no derivation for the queue length was provided in the general case. This paper introduces an order m2 m 2 phase-type representation (?,K) ( ? , K ) for the queue length distribution in the general case and proves that the order m2 m 2 of the distribution cannot be further reduced in general. A matrix geometric representation (?,K,?) ( ? , K , ? ) is also established for the number of type ??{1,,m} ? ? { 1 , , m } customers in the system, where a customer is of type ? ? if the phase in which it completes service belongs to ? ? . We derive these results in both discrete and continuous time and also discuss the numerical procedure to compute (?,K,?) ( ? , K , ? ) . When the arrivals have a Markovian structure, the numerical procedure is reduced to solving a QuasiBirthDeath (for the discrete time case) or fluid queue (for the continuous time case). Finally, by combining a result of Sengupta and Ozawa, we provide a simple formula to compute the order m m phase-type representation of the waiting time in a MAP/MAP/1 queue without correlated service and inter-arrival times, using the R R matrix of a QuasiBirthDeath Markov chain.

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

queue length
matrix geometric
quasibirthdeath markov chain
fluid queue


Cross-layer design based on RC-LDPC codes in MIMO channels with estimation errors In this paper, we propose a cross-layer design framework combining adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) with hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) based on rate-compatible low-density parity-check codes (RC-LDPC) in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels with estimation errors. First, we propose a new puncturing pattern for RC-LDPC codes and demonstrate that the new puncturing pattern performs similar to the random puncturing but is easier to apply. Then, we apply RC-LDPC codes with the new puncturing pattern to the cross-layer design combing AMC with ARQ over MIMO fading channels and derive the expressions for the throughput of the system. The effect of channel estimation errors on the system throughput is also investigated. Numerical results show that the joint design of AMC and ARQ based on RC-LDPC codes can achieve considerable spectral efficiency gain.

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

multiple-input multiple-output (mimo) channel


Timing of investments in oligopoly under uncertainty: A framework for numerical analysis We present a modeling framework for the analysis of investments in an oligopoly market for a homogenous commodity. The demand evolves stochastically and the firms carry out investment projects in order to adjust their production cost functions or production capacities. The model is formulated as a discrete time state-space game where the firms use feedback strategies. The firms are assumed to move sequentially to ensure a unique Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium. Once the equilibrium has been solved, Monte Carlo simulation is used to form probability distributions for the firms' cash flow patterns and accomplished investments. Such information can be used to value firms operating in an oligopoly market. An example of the model is given in a duopoly market. The example illustrates the trade-off between the value of flexibility and economies of scale under competitive interaction.

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

investment analysis
game theory
uncertainty modeling
real options


Independent component analysis based on first-order statistics This communication puts forward a novel method for independent source extraction in instantaneous linear mixtures. The method is based on the conditional mean of the whitened observations and requires some prior knowledge of the positive support of the desired source. A theoretical performance analysis yields the closed-form expression of the asymptotic interference-to-signal ratio achieved by this technique. The analysis includes the effects of inaccuracies in the estimation of the positive support of the desired source in single-step and iterative implementations of the algorithm. Numerical experiments validate the fitness of the asymptotic approximations. As it is based on first-order statistics, the method is extremely cost-effective, which makes it an attractive alternative to second- and higher-order statistical techniques in power-limited scenarios.

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

independent component analysis
source extraction
performance analysis


On Rational Interpolation-Based List-Decoding and List-Decoding Binary Goppa Codes We derive the Wu list-decoding algorithm for generalized Reed-Solomon (GRS) codes by using Grobner bases over modules and the Euclidean algorithm as the initial algorithm instead of the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm. We present a novel method for constructing the interpolation polynomial fast. We give a new application of the Wu list decoder by decoding irreducible binary Goppa codes up to the binary Johnson radius. Finally, we point out a connection between the governing equations of the Wu algorithm and the Guruswami-Sudan algorithm, immediately leading to equality in the decoding range and a duality in the choice of parameters needed for decoding, both in the case of GRS codes and in the case of Goppa codes.

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

goppa code
list decoding
list size
rational interpolation
reed-solomon code


Low-complexity 2D DOA estimator for multiple coherently distributed sources Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a new method for the two-dimensional direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of multiple coherently distributed (CD) sources, which can provide lower computational complexity while sustaining the estimation performance within a tolerable level. Design/methodology/approach - Using three parallel uniform linear arrays (ULAs), a new method for parametric estimation of multiple coherently distributed sources is proposed. The proposed method is based on the Taylor approximation to the generalized steering vectors (GSVs) of shifted ULAs, and utilizes the special array geometry. In addition, a simple parameter matching procedure is also given in this paper. Findings - Several numerical experiments have been designed. The experiments are based on coherently distributed source model, and the noise is assumed to be zero-mean and spatially and temporally white and Gaussian. Numerical results show that the proposed method can exhibit good estimation performance under small angular spread and be applicable to the multisource scenario with different angular distributions. Research limitations/implications - This research is limited to CD sources. Furthermore, the proposed method is based on the small angular approximation to GSV. Hence, it is fitter for the case of small angular extension. Originality/value - Without any spectrum-peak searching, the proposed method provides lower computational cost compared to the classical spectrum-based methods. Moreover, it does not depend on the prior knowledge about angular distribution shape and is hence robust to mismodeling.

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 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

2d doa estimation
uniform linear array (ula)
generalized steering vector (gsv)
numerical analysis
array signal processing


building the polargrid portal using web 2.0 and opensocial Science requires collaboration. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of coupling current social networking techniques to science gateways to provide a scientific collaboration model. We are particularly interested in the integration of local and third party services, since we believe the latter provide more long-term sustainability than gateway-provided service instances alone. Our prototype use case for this study is the PolarGrid portal, in which we combine typical science portal functionality with widely used collaboration tools. Our goal is to determine the feasibility of rapidly developing a collaborative science gateway that incorporates third-party collaborative services with more typical science gateway capabilities. We specifically investigate Google Gadget, OpenSocial, and related standards.

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


Correlated observation errors in data assimilation Data assimilation provides techniques for combining observations and prior model forecasts to create initial conditions for numerical weather prediction (NWP). The relative weighting assigned to each observation in the analysis is determined by its associated error. Remote sensing data usually has correlated errors, but the correlations are typically ignored in NWP. Here, we describe three approaches to the treatment of observation error correlations. For an idealized data set, the information content under each simplified assumption is compared with that under correct correlation specification. Treating the errors as uncorrelated results in a significant loss of information. However, retention of an approximated correlation gives clear benefits. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

observation error correlation
shannon information content
degrees of freedom


Computational modelling of 3D objects by using fitting techniques and subsequent mesh generation The aim of this paper is to present a method to generate computational, geometric models of 3D objects defined in the form of a cloud of points (CoP). These objects can then be discretized for subsequent finite element analyses. Various procedures required to achieve this are briefly described, including the mathematical representation of an integrated image acquisition/modelling system, which allows for the automatic creation of accurate geometric models of either scanned images of objects or of CoP generally, as well as the mesh generation algorithm employed. The application of this combined method is then demonstrated with respect to modelling human organs and agricultural objects. The main emphasis of the paper is on the wide applicability of the developed techniques.

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 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

image acquisition
surface fitting
topology optimization
least squares fitting


minimum-drift digital video down-conversion This paper presents a new technique for decoding a full-resolution video bitstream at low memory cost and displaying the signal at a lower resolution. Existing techniques solve the problem by storing the down-converted blocks into memory instead of the full-resolution blocks. While the memory is reduced, these techniques introduce drift errors because the decoder does not have the same pixels as the encoder in performing motion-compensated prediction. The approach proposed here alleviates the problem by tracking the drift at the decoder. It improves the video quality without any increase in decoder complexity. The effectiveness of the approach is evaluated using both objective and subjective tests. This minimum-drift approach is very simple to implement and can also be applied for memory reduction of a full resolution HDTV decoder.

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


On the perturbations of a Hamiltonian system The perturbations of a Hamiltonian system having compounded cycle are studied in this paper. The existence theory and stability theory of singular closed orbits are applied to study the given perturbed systems. By using the small parametric perturbation techniques of differential equations, we study Hopf bifurcation, singular closed orbits bifurcation and give the number and distributions of limit cycles in the above perturbed near Hamiltonian system.

O O 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

lyapunov constant
saddle connection
saddle quantity
poincarbendixson theorem


An empirical investigation of mobile banking adoption: The effect of innovation attributes and knowledge-based trust Rapid advances in mobile technologies and devices have made mobile banking increasingly important in mobile commerce and financial services. Using innovation diffusion theory and knowledge-based trust literature, this study develops a research model to examine the effect of innovation attributes (perceived relative advantage, ease of use and compatibility) and knowledge-based trust (perceived competence, benevolence and integrity) on attitude and behavioral intention about adopting (or continuing to use) mobile banking across potential and repeat customers. Based on a survey of 368 participants (177 for potential customers and 191 for repeat customers), this study uses a structural equation modeling approach to investigate the research model. The results indicate that perceived relative advantage, ease of use, compatibility, competence and integrity significantly influence attitude, which in turn lead to behavioral intention to adopt (or continue-to-use) mobile banking. Additionally, by using multi-group analysis with t-statistics, the results found that the antecedents of attitude toward mobile banking differ between potential and repeat customers. The implications for research and practice and future research directions are discussed.

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

mobile banking
innovation diffusion
attitude
behavioral intention


A linear-time algorithm for computing the multinomial stochastic complexity The minimum description length (MDL) principle is a theoretically well-founded, general framework for performing model class selection and other types of statistical inference. This framework can be applied for tasks such as data clustering, density estimation and image denoising. The MDL principle is formalized via the so-called normalized maximum likelihood (NML) distribution, which has several desirable theoretical properties. The codelength of a given sample of data under the NML distribution is called the stochastic complexity, which is the basis for MDL model class selection. Unfortunately, in the case of discrete data, straightforward computation of the stochastic complexity requires exponential time with respect to the sample size, since the definition involves an exponential sum over all the possible data samples of a fixed size. As a main contribution of this paper, we derive an elegant recursion formula which allows efficient computation of the stochastic complexity in the case of n observations of a single multinomial random variable with K values. The time complexity of the new method is O(n + K) as opposed to 0 (n log n log K) obtained with the previous results.(c) 2007 Elsevier B. V. All fights reserved.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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
combinatorial problems
computational complexity


A field model for human detection and tracking The large shape variability and partial occlusions challenge most object detection and tracking methods for nonrigid targets such as pedestrians. This paper presents a new approach based on a two-layer statistical field model that characterizes the prior of the complex shape variations as a Boltzmann distribution and embeds this prior and the complex image likelihood into a Markov field. A probabilistic variational analysis of this model reveals a set of fixed-point equations characterizing the equilibrium of the field. It leads to computationally efficient methods for calculating the image likelihood and for training the model. Based on that, effective algorithms for detecting nonrigid objects are developed. This new approach has several advantages. First, it is intrinsically suitable for capturing local nonrigidity. In addition, due to the distributed likelihood, this approach is robust to partial occlusions. Moreover, the two-layer structure provides large flexibility of modeling the image observations, which makes the new method robust to clutters. Extensive experiments demonstrate its effectiveness.

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

markov random fields
image models
machine learning
statistical computing
probabilistic algorithms


The design, implementation and evaluation of an ODMG compliant, parallel object database server This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a parallel object database server. While a number of research groups and companies now provide object database servers designed to run on uniprocessors, there has been surprisingly littlework on the exploitation of parallelism to provide scalable performance in Object Database Management Systems (ODBMS). The work described in this paper takes as its starting-point the Object Database Management Group (ODMG) standard for object databases, thereby allowing the project to focus on research into parallelism, rather than on the ODBMS interfaces. The system is designed to run on a distributed memory parallel machine, and the paper describes the key issues and design decisions including: parallel query optimisation and execution, flow control, support for user-defined operations in queries, object distribution, cache management and navigational client access. The work shows that the significant differences between the object and relational database paradigms lead to significant differences in the designs of parallel servers to support these two paradigms. The paper presents an extensive performance analysis of the prototype systems which shows that good performance can be achieved on a cluster of linux PCs.

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


Positivity of flux vector splitting schemes Over the last ten years, robustness of schemes has raised an increasing interest among the CFD community. One mathematical aspect of scheme robustness is the positivity preserving property. At high Mach numbers, solving the conservative Euler equations can lead to negative densities or internal energy. Some schemes such as the flux vector splitting (FVS) schemes are known to avoid this drawback. In this study, a general method is detailed to analyze the positivity of FVS schemes. As an application, three classical FVS schemes (Van Leer's, Hanel's variant, and Steger and Warming's) are proved to be positively conservative under a CFL-like condition. Finally, it is proved that for any FVS scheme, there is an intrinsic incompatibility between the desirable property of positivity and the exact resolution of contact discontinuities. (C) 1999 Academic Press.

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

stability and convergence of numerical methods


Cooperative Spectrum Sensing with Double Threshold and Censoring in Rayleigh Faded Cognitive Radio Network The performance of cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) with double threshold and censoring of cognitive radios (CRs) has been evaluated using maximal ratio combining (MRC) in the presence of Rayleigh faded sensing (S) and reporting (R) channels. Each CR senses the primary user through sensing channel and evaluates the energy of the received signal at its sensing channel input and performs double threshold based spectrum sensing. The qualified CRs are censored and only the selected CRs report their decisions to fusion centre. Censoring of CRs is done on the basis of the quality of R-channel. Typically two types of censoring such as rank-based and threshold-based censoring are considered to select the best CR based on the quality of the R-channels. The censoring of CRs not only improves the detection performance but also reduces the transmission overhead. The performance of CSS has been investigated in terms of average missed detection probability, total error probability, average number of transmitted bits and agility gain of the network with respect to relevant network parameters such as number of selected CRs, censoring thresholds, fail sensing probabilities and S and R-channel signal to noise ratios under both the perfect and imperfect channel estimation. The performance has been studied for hard decision fusion rule (majority) and soft decision fusion rule (MRC). The impact of channel variation rate on the sensing performance is also indicated. Further the performance of double threshold based CSS with censoring is compared with that of single threshold based CSS with censoring.

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

agility gain
cooperative spectrum sensing
censoring
maximal ratio combining

double threshold energy detector
probability of missed detection


A three-dimensional multidimensional gas-kinetic scheme for the Navier-Stokes equations under gravitational fields This paper extends the gas-kinetic scheme for one-dimensional inviscid shallow water equations (K. Xu, A well-balanced gas-kinetic scheme for the shallow-water equations with source terms, J. Comput. Phys. 178 (2002) 533-562) to multidimensional gas dynamic equations under gravitational fields. Four important issues in the construction of a well-balanced scheme for gas dynamic equations are addressed. First, the inclusion of the gravitational source term into the flux function is necessary. Second, to achieve second-order accuracy of a well-balanced scheme, the Chapman-Enskog expansion of the Boltzmann equation with the inclusion of the external force term is used. Third, to avoid artificial heating in an isolated system under a gravitational field, the source term treatment inside each cell has to be evaluated consistently with the flux evaluation at the cell interface. Fourth, the multidimensional approach with the inclusion of tangential gradients in two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases becomes important in order to maintain the accuracy of the scheme. Many numerical examples are used to validate the above issues, which include the comparison between the solutions from the current scheme and the Strang splitting method. The methodology developed in this paper can also be applied to other systems, such as semi-conductor device simulations under electric fields. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

gas-kinetic scheme
navier-stokes equations
compressible convection


Identity verification through finger matching: A comparison of Support Vector Machines and Gaussian Basis Functions classifiers The paper presents a people identity verification system based on the matching of top view finger snapshots, supplementing purely geometrical finger shape comparison with textural information. Low dimensional feature vectors are used to train binary classifiers based on small Gaussian Basis Functions networks which, in this task, are able to match Support Vector Machines performance while outperforming them in runtime efficiency, thereby exposing a different facet in the comparison which complements available literature reports.

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

support vector machines
gaussian basis functions

regularization networks
classification
biometrics


Multipendulum mechatronic setup: Design and experiments In the paper a novel multipendulum mechatronic setup is described. The setup may be used for implementing different algorithms of estimation, synchronization and control and solving various research and educational tasks in hybrid modeling, analysis, identification and control of mechanical systems. It also allows one to study influence of the data communication protocols on dynamics of distributed mechatronic complexes. Experimental results confirming existence of the lower bound for transmission rate ensuring reasonable estimation accuracy under data rate constraints are presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

nonlinear dynamics
communication constraints


A decomposition method to analyze the performance of frame bridge based automated container terminal This paper studies a new automated container terminal system. This study decomposes the container flow in the new system into three queuing sub-networks. An iterative method is developed to analyze the operational efficiency of the system.

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

automated container terminals
performance analysis
port operation


a method of verifying web service composition Service composition is one of the primary tasks in developing service-oriented systems. However, there are currently some challenges to check its correction. In this paper, we propose a visual methodology and a tool for verifying business processes written in BPEL by using the SPIN model checker. We present algorithms to translate BPEL processes into PROMELA programs via labeled control flow graphs. The use of label control graphs in the tool will help regular users understand BPEL business processes and the verification process with a model checker more easily. Finally, the Spin model checker will verify important properties of the PROMELA program that represents a BPEL business process.

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


Scale multiplication in odd Gabor transform domain for edge detection In this paper, we propose an adaptive edge detection technique based on scale multiplication in odd Gabor transform domain (ESMG). With adjacent scale multiplication in odd Gabor transform domain, a sharpened edge response output is obtained, which can more effectively resist the inverse influence from noise contamination on the performance of edge detector. Based on odd Gabor filter with single scale, it is shown that Rayleigh distribution can be feasibly adopted to model the real pdf of edge response. Thus the pdf of sharpened edge response output can be approximately modeled by an exponential distribution since there exists strong correlation between two edge response outputs with two adjacent scale factors. In determining the threshold for the sharpened edge response, an adaptive strategy is applied, in which the nonlinear relation of the threshold with the mean and variance of exponential distribution is exploited. Moreover, an optimization problem is finally formulated to find the adaptive adjustment factor. The experimental results on both synthetic and real world natural images show that our scheme is robust and takes on good edge detection performance.

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

edge detection
gabor transform
scale multiplication


Complexity-Regularized Tree-Structured Partition for Mutual Information Estimation A new histogram-based mutual information estimator using data-driven tree-structured partitions (TSP) is presented in this paper. The derived TSP is a solution to a complexity regularized empirical information maximization, with the objective of finding a good tradeoff between the known estimation and approximation errors. A distribution-free concentration inequality for this tree-structured learning problem as well as finite sample performance bounds for the proposed histogram-based solution is derived. It is shown that this solution is density-free strongly consistent and that it provides, with an arbitrary high probability, an optimal balance between the mentioned estimation and approximation errors. Finally, for the emblematic scenario of independence, I(X;Y), it is shown that the TSP estimate converges to zero with O(e(-n1/3+log log n)).

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

complexity regularization
data-dependent partitions
histogram-based estimates
minimum cost tree pruning
mutual information (mi)
strong consistency
tree-structured partitions (tsps)
vapnik and chervonenkis inequality


THE FACTORS AFFECTING STRATEGIC INFORMATION-SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS - AN EMPIRICAL-ASSESSMENT The strategic potential of information systems (IS) is now well accepted. This paper examines some key characteristics of strategic IS applications and investigates their relationship with contextual factors representing the industry environment, the organization structure, and the IS function. Empirical analysis of 81 strategic IS applications in large companies shows that these applications contribute mainly to functions involving customers or competitors, primarily to reduce cost or provide some differentiation. They have limited effect on suppliers. However, the effect on suppliers is greater in decentralized organizations and in heterogeneous environments. Moreover, a heterogeneous environment and a mature IS function enhance the role of information storage. The implications for future research and for IS practice are examined.

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

industry environment
organization structure

information technology
strategic utilization
competitive advantage
information systems maturity


Reducing Plenoptic Camera Artifacts The focused plenoptic camera differs from the traditional plenoptic camera in that its microlenses are focused on the photographed object rather than at infinity. The spatio-angular tradeoffs available with this approach enable rendering of final images that have significantly higher resolution than those from traditional plenoptic cameras. Unfortunately, this approach can result in visible artifacts when basic rendering is used. In this paper, we present two new methods that work together to minimize these artifacts. The first method is based on careful design of the optical system. The second method is computational and based on a new lightfield rendering algorithm that extracts the depth information of a scene directly from the lightfield and then uses that depth information in the final rendering. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches.

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 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

focused plenoptic camera
lightfield rendering

plenoptic rendering
artifact reduction
depth estimation


Test Data Compression Using Selective Encoding of Scan Slices We present a selective a encoding method that reduces test data volume and test application time for scan testing of Intellectual Property (IP) cores. This method encodes the slices of test data that are fed to the scan chains in every clock cycle. To drive N scan chains, we use only c tester channels, where c = log(2) (N + 1)]+2. In the best case, we can achieve compression by a factor of N/c using only one tester clock cycle per slice. We derive a sufficient condition on the distribution of care bits that allows us to achieve the best-case compression. We also derive a probabilistic lower bound on the compression for a given care-bit density. Unlike popular compression methods such as Embedded Deterministic Test (EDT), the proposed approach is suitable for IP cores because it does not require structural information for fault simulation, dynamic compaction, or interleaved test generation. The on-chip decoder is small, independent of the circuit under test and the test set, and it can be shared between different circuits. We present compression results for a number of industrial circuits and compare our results to other recent compression methods targeted at IP cores.

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


An Automatic Method for Selecting the Parameter of the Normalized Kernel Function to Support Vector Machines Soft-margin support vector machine (SVM) is one of the most powerful techniques for supervised classification. However, the performances of SVMs are based on choosing the proper kernel functions or proper parameters of a kernel function. It is extremely time consuming by applying the k-fold cross-validation (CV) to choose the almost best parameter. Nevertheless, the searching range and fineness of the grid method should be determined in advance. In this paper, an automatic method for selecting the parameter of the normalized kernel function is proposed. In the experimental results, it costs very little time than k-fold cross-validation for selecting the parameter by our proposed method. Moreover, the corresponding soft-margin SVMs can obtain more accurate or at least equal performance than the soft-margin SVMs by applying k-fold cross-validation to determine the parameters.

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

soft-margin support vector machine
kernel method
optimal kernel
k-fold cross-validation


Quantum image scaling using nearest neighbor interpolation Although image scaling algorithms in classical image processing have been extensively studied and widely used as basic image transformation methods, the quantum versions do not exist. Therefore, this paper proposes quantum algorithms and circuits to realize the quantum image scaling based on the improved novel enhanced quantum representation (INEQR) for quantum images. It is necessary to use interpolation in image scaling because there is an increase or a decrease in the number of pixels. The interpolation method used in this paper is nearest neighbor which is simple and easy to realize. First, NEQR is improved into INEQR to represent images sized \(2^{n_{1}} \times 2^{n_{2}}\). Based on it, quantum circuits for image scaling using nearest neighbor interpolation from \(2^{n_{1}} \times 2^{n_{2}}\) to \(2^{m_{1}} \times 2^{m_{2}}\) are proposed. It is the first time to give the quantum image processing method that changes the size of an image. The quantum strategies developed in this paper initiate the research about quantum image scaling.

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

image scaling
nearest neighbor interpolation
quantum image processing


Orbweb-A Network Substrate for Peer-to-Peer Desktop Grid Computing Based on Open Standards While Desktop Grid Computing has become a promising alternative to classical Grids for certain kinds of applications, it has not yet reached the same level of standardization. In this article, we present Orbweb, a network substrate for Peer-to-Peer Desktop Grid Computing based on the open industrial-strength eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). We discuss, how XMPP can be leveraged to tackle domain-specific challenges, including high scalability, support for volatility, NAT/Firewall traversal, and protocol efficiency. Where XMPP fails to meet these requirements, we contribute pertinent extensions. In particular, we boost the scalability of XMPP by taking load of the XMPP servers through dynamically negotiated direct Peer-to-Peer communication channels between XMPP peers. We pave the way for scalable group membership management by substituting the existing XMPP Multi-User Chat protocol for one that does not suffer from limitations imposed by an A >> everyone knows everyoneA << visibility model and allows for deploying custom virtual topologies that best match the interaction patterns of a given application. As efficient multicasting is an essential prerequisite for many distributed algorithms, we adapt the well-known Bimodal Multicast protocol to work in a highly volatile Peer-to-Peer Desktop Grid Computing environment. Finally, we show how to improve the protocol efficiency of XMPP by leveraging a standardized binary encoding of the XML Information Set for XMPP packet transmission. To substantiate the applicability of our approach and the effectiveness of our extensions, we describe how some important higher-level services used in Peer-to-Peer Desktop Grid Computing can be implemented on top of Orbweb and provide a detailed experimental analysis with up to 10K nodes.

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

peer-to-peer
desktop grid
communication middleware


A re-averaged WENO reconstruction and a third order CWENO scheme for hyperbolic conservation laws A WENO re-averaging (or re-mapping) technique is developed that converts function averages on one grid to another grid to high order. Nonlinear weighting gives the essentially non-oscillatory property to the re-averaged function values. The new reconstruction grid is used to obtain a standard high order WENO reconstruction of the function averages at a select point. By choosing the reconstruction grid to include the point of interest, a high order function value can be reconstructed using only positive linear weights. The re-averaging technique is applied to define two variants of a classic CWENO3 scheme that combines two linear polynomials to obtain formal third order accuracy. Such a scheme cannot otherwise be defined, due to the nonexistence of linear weights for third order reconstruction at the center of a grid element. The new scheme uses a compact stencil of three solution averages, and only positive linear weights are used. The scheme extends easily to problems in higher space dimensions, essentially as a tensor product of the one-dimensional scheme. The scheme maintains formal third order accuracy in higher dimensions. Numerical results show that this CWENO3 scheme is third order accurate for smooth problems and gives good results for non-smooth problems, including those with shocks.

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

cweno3
weno reconstruction
compact stencil
positive linear weights

re-average
re-map
central weno
euler equations


Kinematic Models for Manoeuvring and Seakeeping of Marine Vessels The motion of marine vessels has traditionally been studied using two different approaches: manoeuvring and seakeeping. These two approaches use different reference frames and coordinate systems to describe the motion. This paper derives the kinematic models that characterize the transformation of motion variables (position, velocity, accelerations) and forces between the different coordinate systems used in these theories. The derivations hereby presented are done in terms of the formalism adopted in robotics. The advantage of this formulation is the use of matrix notation and operations. As an application, the transformation of linear equations of motion used in seakeeping into body-fixed coordinates is considered for both zero and forward speed.

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


Innovation through social media in the public sector: Information and interactions A content analysis on information and interactions in Chinese government microblogs. A majority of messages were posted for self-promotion rather than service delivery. The forms, languages and timeliness of messages posted are monotonous and formal. Interactions between governments and the public were mostly insufficient and preliminary. Chinese government use of microblogs is improved over time.

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

social media
government
information
interactions


Stability and global Hopf bifurcation for neutral BAM neural network In this paper, a simplified neutral BAM neural network model is considered. Some results of stability and Hopf bifurcations occurring at the zero equilibrium as the delay increases are exhibited. Global existence of periodic solutions is established by using a global Hopf bifurcation result of Wu and a Bendixson criterion for higher dimensional ordinary differential equations due to Li and Muldowney. Finally, some numerical simulations are carried out to support the analytical results.

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

neutral
bam neural network
stability
global hopf bifurcation


Restricted inflectional form generation in management of morphological keyword variation Word form normalization through lemmatization or stemming is a standard procedure in information retrieval because morphological variation needs to be accounted for and several languages are morphologically non-trivial. Lemmatization is effective but often requires expensive resources. Stemming is also effective in most contexts, generally almost as good as lemmatization and typically much less expensive; besides it also has a query expansion effect. However, in both approaches the idea is to turn many inflectional word forms to a single lemma or stem both in the database index and in queries. This means extra effort in creating database indexes. In this paper we take an opposite approach: we leave the database index un-normalized and enrich the queries to cover for surface form variation of keywords. A potential penalty of the approach would be long queries and slow processing. However, we show that it only matters to cover a negligible number of possible surface forms even in morphologically complex languages to arrive at a performance that is almost as good as that delivered by stemming or lemmatization. Moreover, we show that, at least for typical test collections, it only matters to cover nouns and adjectives in queries. Furthermore, we show that our findings are particularly good for short queries that resemble normal searches of web users. Our approach is called FCG (for Frequent Case (form) Generation). It can be relatively easily implemented for Latin/Greek/Cyrillic alphabet languages by examining their (typically very skewed) nominal form statistics in a small text sample and by creating surface form generators for the 39 most frequent forms. We demonstrate the potential of our FCG approach for several languages of varying morphological complexity: Swedish, German, Russian, and Finnish in well-known test collections. Applications include in particular Web IR in languages poor in morphological resources.

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

frequent case form generation for keywords

generative methods in management of keyword variation


A hybrid evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithm with adaptive multi-fitness assignment There are several studies on hybrid multi-operator recombination methods, while few works have been proposed in the area of combining different fitness assignment in a framework. On the other hand, it is known that fitness assignment has a marked impact on the performance of evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithm (EMOA). In this paper, a hybrid EMOA is proposed, which divides the population into several smaller subpopulations according to their distribution in the objective space. Each subpopulation is evolved by an individual EMOA, and a hybrid performance measure estimates the performance of these EMOAs. We focus on the fitness assignment and assume that all EMOAs used in the subpopulations adopt the same recombination operator. To evaluate performance of the proposed algorithm, we compare it with MOEA/D-M2M, MOE-A/D, SMS-EMOA and NSGA-II on 16 test instances. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than or similar to those compared EMOAs.

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 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

decomposition
hybrid algorithm
evolutionary algorithm


Polyhedral space generation and memory estimation from interface and memory models of real-time video systems We present a tool and a methodology for estimating the memory storage requirement for synchronous real-time video processing systems. Typically, a designer will use the feedback information from this estimation to select the most optimal execution order for software processors or space to time mapping for hardware. We propose to start from a conceptual interface and memory model that captures memory usage and data transfers. This high-level modeling is provided as an extension library of SystemC called IMEM. A common polyhedral iteration space is generated from the model, where polytopes are placed using a new placement algorithm based on simple heuristics. This algorithm will ensure maximum freedom of selecting executing order as all negative dependencies are removed to the length of zero. A demonstration is given regarding how the polytopes and dependency vectors can then be used as input to a memory storage estimation tool called STOREQ.

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

memory storage estimation
polyhedral
modeling
video
systemc


Optimal construction of airline individual crew pairings In this paper we develop eight scheduling models to minimize crew costs and to plan the proper individual pairings using real constraints for a Taiwan airline. These models are formulated as integer linear programs, where column-generation-based algorithms are developed to solve them. A case study regarding the operation of a major Taiwan Airline is presented. The construction of airline cabin crew schedules is generally separated into two problems, crew scheduling and crew rostering. Traditionally, the planned pairings from crew scheduling are not allocated to individual crew members. In reality, crew members from different home bases are considered for service on the same flight. Crew members with higher ranks may be assigned to serve lower classes of cabin seats. As well, flights having different aircraft types are sometimes combined to form a pairing. When these factors are handled in downstream crew rostering, it increases not only the complexity of the crew rostering problem but also the crew cost. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate such factors as multiple home bases, mixed aircraft types and multiple cabin classes into the crew scheduling problems, to improve the construction of cabin crew schedules, and to better link crew scheduling and crew rostering.

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

individual pairing
integer linear program
column generation


Curved feature metrics in models of visual cortex We study the relation between maps of a high-dimensional stimulus manifold onto an essentially two-dimensional cortical area and low-dimensional maps of stimulus features such as centroid position, orientation, spatial frequency, etc. Whereas the former safely can be represented in a Euclidean space, the latter are shown to require a Riemannian metric in order to reach qualitatively similar stationary structures under a standard learning algorithm. We show that the non-Euclidean framework allows for a tentative explanation of the presence of the so-called pinwheels in feature maps and compare maps obtained numerically in the flat high-dimensional maps and in the curved low-dimensional case.

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

neural maps
riemannian geometry
orientation columns


NONCLASSICALITY AND DECOHERENCE OF PHOTON-ADDED THERMAL STATE Using the normally ordered form of thermal state characteristic of average photon number n(c), we introduce the photon-added thermal state (PATS) and investigate its statistical properties, such as Mandel's Q-parameter, photon number distribution (PND), and Wigner function (WF). We then study its decoherence in a thermal environment with average thermal photon number (n) over bar and dissipative coefficient kappa by deriving analytical expressions of the WF. The nonclassicality is discussed in terms of the negativity of the WF. It is found that the WF is always positive when kappa t >= kappa t(c) = (1/2) ln (2 (n) over bar + 2)/(2 (n) over bar + 1) for any number PATS. The expression for time evolution of the PND and the tomogram of PATS are also derived analytically, which are related to hypergeometric function and single variable Hermite polynomials.

B O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 visual progranmming approach to manufacturing modeling The RESearch Queueing Package Modeling Environment (RESQME) is an interactive, graphics-oriented workstation environment for iteratively constructing, running and analyzing models of resource contention systems. It is built on top of the RESearch Queueing Package (RESQ) which provides the functionality to evaluate extended queueing networks. In this paper we describe how to create a pull system, a manufacturing line with finite buffers, using the graphical interface and hierarchical modeling capability. This serves as an example of the kind of manufacturing submodels that can be created in this system and then used for higher-level modeling.

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

hierarchical modeling
queueing networks
contention
research
systems
paper
buffers
resource

interaction visualization examples environments packaging functional manufacturability interfaces queue graphics model evaluation