green's conjecture and testing linear-invariant properties Given a set of linear equations Mx=b, we say that a set of integers S is (M,b)-free if it contains no solution to this system of equations. Motivated by questions related to testing linear-invariant properties of boolean functions, as well as recent investigations in additive number theory, the following conjecture was raised (implicitly) by Green and by Bhattacharyya, Chen, Sudan and Xie: we say that a set of integers S ? [n], is ?-far from being (M,b)-free if one needs to remove at least ? n elements from S in order to make it (M,b)-free. The above conjecture states that for any system of homogenous linear equations Mx=0 and for any ? >0 there is a constant time algorithm that can distinguish with high probability between sets of integers that are (M,0)-free from sets that are ?-far from being (M,0)-free. Or in other words, that for any M there is an efficient testing algorithm for the property of being (M,0)-free. In this paper we confirm the above conjecture by showing that such a testing algorithm exists even for non-homogenous linear equations. As opposed to most results on testing boolean functions, which rely on algebraic and analytic arguments, our proof relies on results from extremal hypergraph theory, such as the recent removal lemmas of Gowers, Rodl et al. and Austin and Tao.

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

property testing
hypergraphs removal lemma


Weighted least squares projection twin support vector machines with local information Recently proposed least squares projection twin support vector machine (LSPTSVM), as a variant of projection twin support vector machine (PTSVM), attempts to further enhance the performance of PTSVM, whose solution follows from solving two sets of linear equations whereas PTSVM needs to solve two quadratic programming problems along with two sets of linear equations. Unfortunately, LSPTSVM fails to exploit the underlying correlation or similarity information between any pair of data points with the same labels that may be important for classification performance as much as possible. To mitigate the above deficiency, in this paper, we propose a novel binary classifier based on LSPTSVM, called weighted least squares projection support vector machine with local information (LIWLSPTSVM). Compared to LSPTSVM, LIWLSPTSVM mines as much underlying similarity information within samples as possible by computing the relative density degree for each data point according to the weights of the intra-class graph of training set. Because of measuring the importance of samples in the same class by density weighting method, weighted mean, instead of standard mean in LSPTSVM, is used as the class mean. Moreover, LIWLSPTSVM successfully inherits the merit of the LSPTSVM, and it has a special case of LSPTSVM when the relative density degree of each point is degenerated to one. The experimental results on toy as well as publicly available datasets confirm the effectiveness of our method.

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

projection twin support vector machine
least squares
similarity information
relative density degree


Calculation of the confidence intervals for transformation parameters in the registration of medical images Images from different individuals typically cannot be registered precisely because anatomical features within the images differ across the people imaged and because the current methods for image registration have inherent technological limitations that interfere with perfect registration. Quantifying the inevitable error in image registration is therefore of crucial importance in assessing the effects that image misregistration may have on subsequent analyses in an imaging study. We have developed a mathematical framework for quantifying errors in registration by computing the confidence intervals of the estimated parameters (3 translations, 3 rotations, and 1 global scale) for the similarity transformation. The presence of noise in images and the variability in anatomy across individuals ensures that estimated registration parameters are always random variables. We assume a functional relation among intensities across voxels in the images, and we use the theory of nonlinear, least-squares estimation to show that the parameters are multivariate Gaussian distributed. We then use the covariance matrix of this distribution to compute the confidence intervals of the transformation parameters. These confidence intervals provide a quantitative assessment of the registration error across the images. Because transformation parameters are nonlinearly related to the coordinates of landmark points in the brain, we subsequently show that the coordinates of those landmark points are also multivariate Gaussian distributed. Using these distributions, we then compute the confidence intervals of the coordinates for landmark points in the image. Each of these confidence intervals in turn provides a quantitative assessment of the registration error at a particular landmark point. Because our method is computationally intensive, however, its current implementation is limited to assessing the error of the parameters in the similarity transformation across images. We assessed the performance of our method in computing the error in estimated similarity parameters by applying that method to real world dataset. Our results showed that the size of the confidence intervals computed using our method decreased i.e. our confidence in the registration of images from different individuals increased for increasing amounts of blur in the images. Moreover, the size of the confidence intervals increased for increasing amounts of noise, misregistration, and differing anatomy. Thus, our method precisely quantified confidence in the registration of images that contain varying amounts of misregistration and varying anatomy across individuals.

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

confidence region
nonlinear least-squares
mutual information


Hybrid microdata using microaggregation ? Statistical disclosure control (also known as privacy-preserving data mining) of microdata is about releasing data sets containing the answers of individual respondents protected in such a way that: (i) the respondents corresponding to the released records cannot be re-identified; (ii) the released data stay analytically useful. Usually, the protected data set is generated by either masking (i.e. perturbing) the original data or by generating synthetic (i.e. simulated) data preserving some pre-selected statistics of the original data. Masked data may approximately preserve a broad range of distributional characteristics, although very few of them (if any) are exactly preserved; on the other hand, synthetic data exactly preserve the pre-selected statistics and may seem less disclosive than masked data, but they do not preserve at all any statistics other than those pre-selected. Hybrid data obtained by mixing the original data and synthetic data have been proposed in the literature to combine the strengths of masked and synthetic data. We show how to easily obtain hybrid data by combining microaggregation with any synthetic data generator. We show that numerical hybrid data exactly preserving means and covariances of original data and approximately preserving other statistics as well as some subdomain analyses can be obtained as a particular case with a very simple parameterization. The new method is competitive versus both the literature on hybrid data and plain multivariate microaggregation.

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

statistical disclosure control
synthetic data
hybrid data
microaggregation

microdata protection
privacy-preserving data mining


Outlier detection by logic programming The development of effective knowledge discovery techniques has become a very active research area in recent years due to the important impact it has had in several relevant application domains. One interesting task therein is that of singling out anomalous individuals from a given population, for example, to detect rare events in time-series analysis settings, or to identify objects whose behavior is deviant w.r.t. a codified standard set of rules. Such exceptional individuals are usually referred to as outliers in the literature. In this article, the concept of outlier is formally stated in the context of knowledge-based systems, by generalizing that originally proposed in Angiulli et al. [2003] in the context of default theories. The chosen formal framework here is that of logic programming, wherein potential applications of techniques for outlier detection are thoroughly discussed. The proposed formalization is a novel one and helps to shed light on the nature of outliers occurring in logic bases. Also the exploitation of minimality criteria in outlier detection is illustrated. The computational complexity of outlier detection problems arising in this novel setting is also thoroughly investigated and accounted for in the paper. Finally, rewriting algorithms are proposed that transform any outlier detection problem into an equivalent inference problem under stable model semantics, thereby making outlier computation effective and realizable on top of any stable model solver.

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

outlier detection
logic programming
computational complexity


Enhanced tracking and recognition of moving objects by reasoning about spatio-temporal continuity A framework for the logical and statistical analysis and annotation of dynamic scenes containing occlusion and other uncertainties is presented. This framework consists of three elements; an object tracker module, an object recognition/classification module and a logical consistency, ambiguity and error reasoning engine. The principle behind the object tracker and object recognition modules is to reduce error by increasing ambiguity (by merging objects in close proximity and presenting multiple hypotheses). The reasoning engine deals with error, ambiguity and occlusion in a unified framework to produce a hypothesis that satisfies fundamental constraints on the spatio-temporal continuity of objects. Our algorithm finds a globally consistent model of an extended video sequence that is maximally supported by a voting function based on the output of a statistical classifier. The system results in an annotation that is significantly more accurate than what would be obtained by by-frame evaluation of the classifier output. The framework has been implemented and applied successfully to the analysis of team sports with a single camera.

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 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

visual surveillance
spatial reasoning
temporal reasoning
resolving ambiguity


Many to one embeddings from grids into cylinders, tori, and hypercubes We describe novel methods for embedding 2-dimensional grid graphs into cylinders (one way wrap-around grids), tori, and hypercubes, where the guest grid G is larger than the host graph H, implying a many to one embedding. We call [\G\ / \H\] the optimal load, denoted l. We consider optimal embeddings with respect to dilation (the stretching of guest edges) and load; i.e., edges are mapped to edges or onto one node, and the number of grid nodes mapped onto any hypercube node is not greater than l. We show, by construction, that, for loads of at least 4, optimal embeddings into the hypercube always exist subject only to modest restrictions on the relative dimensions of guest and host. If the problem instances are grouped by grid height, the restrictions imply that only some finite number of instances in each group may not be solvable by the given methods. The essence of the method is a mapping from grids into cylinders of height at least one half of but not greater than the grid height, and so it can also be used to construct embeddings into cylinders and tori. Previous work has gone so far as to show that if the optimal load l is a power of 2, then dilation 1, load l+1 embeddings into the hypercube can be constructed. Optimal results for loads 2 and 3 are not known.

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


exploring the portability and extensibility of xml schema generated web applications This project explores the portability and extensibility of XML schema generated web applications, by implementing an application that can generate web applications in different technologies combinations, using a single XML document to define data structures and actions. This document can be shared with other users who wish to implement the web application on their software and hardware configuration. New technologies can be easily supported due to the modular architecture of the code generating application.

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


undergraduate computer science education The rapid development of electronic computers coupled with the very successful popularization of the actual and possible roles of computers has put higher educational institutions in a peculiar situation. Most universities and colleges, even while attempting to organize computer programs, have shown very little grasp of the need for computer science education. The computer manufacturers themselves have often seemed opposed to such education while eager to sell machines to be managed atrociously by untutored personnel. It is obvious that equipment as expensive as computers are, should be in charge of very well prepared people. It is also obvious that businesses, industries, and governmental agencies are not prepared to provide an adequate background in computer science. It would be a grievous error, however, to treat the computer science area as one which is merely technical and not fit for a liberal education. The intellectual character of computer science as we shall indicate more fully later, is at a higher level of thought then many computer scientists themselves realize. A strange situation has arisen in the computer science area largely due to its spectacular growth. This is the absence of well-established leaders. True, there are many competent people who have achieved a degree of recognition but there are none who have achieved a status comparable to many from the older sciences. Those computer scientists who have been best placed to lead have ignored computer science education.

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

computer science
education
character
fit
recognition
roles

situated
science
program
organization
developer
computer science education
computation
errors
management


transforming text into hypertext for a compact disc encyclopedia A hypertext version of a multi-volume engineering encyclopedia on a compact disc is described. The methods for characterizing the explicit and implicit structure of the document, the novel user interface to the compact disc version, and the design and development lessons that apply to any hypertext project involving realistic amounts of text and graphics are discussed.

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

hypertext
text
project
user interface
version
graphics
structure
compact
design


The minimum bandwidth required at each time slot of the fast broadcasting scheme In this paper, we show that the Fast broadcasting scheme (L-S. Juhn and L-M. Tseng, 1998 [4]), abbreviated the FBR scheme, is also suitable for heterogeneous clients of different communication capabilities although it is originally designed for homogeneous clients of the same bandwidth. Given alpha channels of total bandwidth alpha . b Mbps to deliver a video of the consumption rate b Mbps, we first show that the FBR scheme can be employed to serve clients with communication capabilities ranging from b to alpha . b Mbps. Furthermore, we propose a simple way to determine the minimum bandwidth required at any given time slot. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

fast broadcasting scheme
heterogeneous clients

performance evaluation
multimedia communication
video-on-demand
protocol analysis


scalable distributed visualization using off-the-shelf components This paper describes a visualization architecture for scalable computer systems. The architecture is currently being prototyped for use in Beowulf-class clustered systems. A set of OpenGL frame buffers are driven in parallel by a set of CPUs. The visualization architecture merges the contents of these frame buffers by user-programmable associative and commulative combining operations. The system hardware is built from off-the-shelf components including OpenGL accelerators, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and gigabit network interfaces and switches. A second-generation prototype supports 60 Hz operation at 1024 1024 pixel resolution with interactive latency up to 1000 nodes.

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

network fpgas gigabit use interfaces paper buffers visualization latency systems prototype parallel architecture opengl hardware distributed

fat-tree fpga field-programmable-gate-array generation scalability association computation acceleration cluster user combinational component interaction contention operability switch beowulf class programmer


Security for cluster based ad hoc networks A mobile ad hoc network is a short-lived cooperative collection of mobile nodes that communicate with each other without the services of a fixed infrastructure. Each host acts as a specialised router to relay information to other nodes. Near-Term Digital Radio (NTDR) networks, which follow the cluster based design principles, are designed specifically for use in ad hoc networks. A major challenge in the design of these networks is their vulnerability to security attacks. In this paper, we describe the security threats and propose security services to counteract these threats in cluster-based NTDR ad hoc networks. We describe secure schemes for a mobile node to initiate, join and leave a cluster. We also discuss the secure end-to-end communication and group key management related issues for NTDR networks. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

secure mobile ad
network security
security architecture
secure protocols


Asons: an automatically switched optical networks simulator Automatically switched optical networks (ASONs) are emerging as a primary technology choice for telecom operators' and service providers' optical backbone networks. Although the ITU-T has published a recommendation for ASONs, intensive research work is still going on towards specifying the ASON protocols, as well as mechanisms that could be implemented through them. Even though simulation is expedient towards evaluating and analyzing the performance of the emerging ASON protocols and algorithms, existing network simulators fail to support these operations. This paper presents work towards extending the ns-2 simulator with an additional simulation environment, namely asons, enabling experiments on ASON networks. The simulation environment was implemented as a set of distributed modules based on the G.8080 ITU-T recommendation. Special mechanisms focusing on ASON resilience features were realized and used to conduct a number of simulation experiments. Although the simulator is oriented to configuration and resilience experiments, it provides a sound basis for a rich set of other ASON experiments, with minimal additional customization effort. Following the presentation of the design and implementation aspects of the simulator, we describe sample resilience experiments supported by asons. (C) 2004 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 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O B O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B B O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O


A practical approach on optimal RTU placement in power distribution systems incorporating fuzzy sets theory Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) infrastructures have so far been brought into the huge amount of focus since the need for a more reliable power system accosting with the catastrophic events of interruptions has been raised. Hence, benefiting from an automation technology which can remotely monitor and coordinate commands to enable immediate response and switching are obviously inevitable. This paper outlines an implementable method in response to the goal of placement of remote terminal units (RTUs) which are in charge for data acquisition and control in a power distribution system. In this light, a new practical methodology based on the robust decision making (DM) method, analytical hierarchical process (AHP), is proposed to simply and at the same time profoundly exploit some practical aspects which have not been considered before in the cases of placements. The proposed method investigates both qualitative and quantitative aspects interrelated with the placement problem. Fuzzy sets are then involved to overcome the existent uncertainty and judgment vagueness. The optimum number of RTUs to be located in the previous-step obtained candidates is determined through reliability cost/worth analysis. Having the belief practically implemented on a real distribution test feeder of Irans power grid, the efficacy and accuracy of the proposed methodology are satisfactorily confirmed.

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

remote terminal units (rtus)
analytical hierarchical process (ahp)
reliability cost/worth


Generalized Silver Codes For an n(t) transmit, n(r) receive antenna system (n(t) x n(r) system), a full-rate space time block code (STBC) transmits at least n(min) = min(n(t), n(r))complex symbols per channel use. The well-known Golden code is an example of a full-rate, full-diversity STBC for two transmit antennas. Its ML-decoding complexity is of the order of M-2.5 for square M-QAM. The Silver code for two transmit antennas has all the desirable properties of the Golden code except its coding gain, but offers lower ML-decoding complexity of the order of M-2. Importantly, the slight loss in coding gain is negligible compared to the advantage it offers in terms of lowering the ML-decoding complexity. For higher number of transmit antennas, the best known codes are the Perfect codes, which are full-rate, full-diversity, information lossless codes (for n(r) >= n(t)) but have a high ML-decoding complexity of the order of M-ntnmin (for n(r) = n(t), like the Perfect codes, and allow higher mutual information than the comparable punctured Perfect codes for n(r) < n(t). These codes are referred to as the generalized Silver codes, since they enjoy the same desirable properties as the comparable Perfect codes (except possibly the coding gain) with lower ML-decoding complexity, analogous to the Silver code and the Golden code for two transmit antennas. Simulation results of the symbol error rates for four and eight transmit antennas show that the generalized Silver codes match the punctured Perfect codes in error performance while offering lower ML-decoding complexity.

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

anticommuting matrices
ergodic capacity
full-rate space-time block codes
information losslessness
low ml-decoding complexity


Oxidative Stress-Induced Depolymerization of Microtubules and Alteration of Mitochondrial Mass in Human Cells Abstract: Mitochondrial biogenesis is a biological process that has been intensively studied over the past few years. However, the detailed molecular mechanism underlying this increase in mitochondria remains unclear. To investigate the mechanism of such a mitochondrial proliferation, we examined alterations in mitochondria of human osteosarcoma 143B cells that had been treated with 100 to 500 ?M hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) for 48 h. The results showed that mitochondrial mass of the cell was increased with the increase of the concentration of H2O2. On the other hand, by using real-time PCR techniques, we observed the changes of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) content in the cells exposed to oxidative stress. The copy number of mtDNA was increased by treatment with a low dose of H2O2 but was drastically decreased after treatment with H2O2 higher than 300 ?M. Transmission electron microscopic images revealed that mitochondria were abnormally proliferated in cells exposed to oxidative stress. Moreover, we found that the percentage of 143B cells arrested at the G2/M phase increased upon treatment with H2O2. Immunostaining and microtubule fractionation assay revealed that microtubules were depolymerized in the cells that had been treated with H2O2. To understand the effect of microtubules depolymerization on the mitochondrial mass, we treated the cells with several kinds of microtubule-active drugs, which arrest cultured cells at the G2/M phase. The results showed that mitochondrial mass and mtDNA copy number all were increased after such treatments. Taking these findings together, we suggest that oxidative stress-induced microtubule derangement is one of the molecular events involved in the increase of mitochondrial mass upon treatment of human cells with H2O2.

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

oxidative stress
microtubule
mitochondrial mass
osteosarcoma


A machine learning approach to POS tagging We have applied the inductive learning of statistical decision trees and relaxation labeling to the Natural Language Processing (NLP) task of morphosyntactic disambiguation (Part Of Speech Tagging). The learning process is supervised and obtains a language model oriented to resolve POS ambiguities, consisting of a set of statistical decision trees expressing distribution of tags and words in some relevant contexts. The acquired decision trees have been directly used in a tagger that is both relatively simple and fast, and which has been tested and evaluated on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) corpus with competitive accuracy. However, better results can be obtained by translating the trees into rules to feed a flexible relaxation labeling based tagger. In this direction we describe a tagger which is able to use information of any kind (n-grams, automatically acquired constraints, linguistically motivated manually written constraints, etc.), and in particular to incorporate the machine-learned decision trees. Simultaneously, we address the problem of tagging when only limited training material is available, which is crucial in any process of constructing, from scratch, an annotated corpus. We show that high levels of accuracy can be achieved with our system in this situation, and report some results obtained when using it to develop a 5.5 million words Spanish corpus from scratch.

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

part of speech tagging
relaxation labeling

corpus-based and statistical language modeling


On compatibility of uncertain additive linguistic preference relations based on the linguistic COWA operator Some concepts of compatibility degree and compatibility index are developed. Some properties of new concepts are discussed. An optimal model is constructed to determine the experts weights. The new approach is applied to group decision making.

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

group decision making
compatibility index
cowa operator


Calibrating cross-training to meet demand mix variation and employee absence We study the cross-training that a work team needs in order to cope with demand mix variation. Demand mix variation is defined in a straightforward, business sense manner. A certain level of absences is also considered. To numerically solve the problem a constraint-based selection procedure is developed.

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

production
manpower planning
constraint selection
cross-training
flexibility


What do successful computer science students know? An integrative analysis using card sort measures and content analysis to evaluate graduating students' knowledge of programming concepts This paper describes a multi-institutional study that used a repeated single-criterion card sort to investigate graduating computer science students' knowledge of programming concepts. The study seeks to improve computer science instruction by gaining insight into how graduating students retain and assimilate introductory programming knowledge into their broader understanding of the discipline. A total of 291 card sorts was elicited from 65 undergraduate students in their final year of study at eight colleges and universities throughout the USA. To fully exploit the rich qualitative and quantitative aspects of the card sort data, an integrative analysis process was used that combined content analysis with two measures, normalized minimum spanning tree and edit distance, both developed specifically to analyze card sort data.

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

card sorts
content analysis
programming concepts

knowledge acquisition
computer science education


Reporting bad news on software projects: the effects of culturally constituted views of face-saving Abstract.? The reluctance to report bad news about a project and its status is a known problem in software project management that can contribute to project failure. The reluctance to report bad news is heightened when it bears personal risks. Oftentimes, those who report bad news end up losing face. In extreme cases, they not only lose face, but may end up on the unemployment line. The need to preserve face is a powerful influence on social behaviour. While universal, it manifests itself differently in different cultures. To date, there have been no empirical studies of the extent to which culturally constituted views of face-saving affect reporting of bad news on software projects. This is a particularly important topic given the increased prevalence of global, dispersed software development teams and offshore outsourcing of software development. In this study, we conducted a role-playing experiment in the USA and in South Korea, to investigate the effect of culturally constituted views of face-saving on the willingness to report bad news regarding a software development project. A blame-shifting opportunity was chosen as the means to operationalize face-saving in a culturally sensitive fashion. The two countries were chosen because they differ markedly in their views of face-saving and the relative importance ascribed to two important aspects of face: lian and mianzi. Results reveal that the presence of a blame-shifting opportunity had a significant effect on US subjects willingness to report bad news, but the effect on Korean subjects was not found to be statistically significant. In the absence of a blame-shifting opportunity, we did not observe any significant differences between US and Korean subjects in willingness to report bad news. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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

whistle-blowing
mum effect
face-saving
cross-cultural


intelligent data entry assistant for xml using ensemble learning XML has emerged as the primary standard of data representation and data exchange [13]. Although many software tools exist to assist the XML implementation process, data must be manually entered into the XML documents. Current form filling technologies are mostly for simple data entry and do not provide support for the complexity and nested structures of XML grammars. This paper presents SmartXAutofill, an intelligent data entry assistant for predicting and automating inputs for XML documents based on the contents of historical document collections in the same XML domain. SmartXAutofill incorporates an ensemble classifier, which integrates multiple internal classification algorithms into a single architecture. Each internal classifier uses approximate techniques to propose a value for an empty XML field, and, through voting, the ensemble classifier determines which value to accept. As the system operates it learns which internal classification algorithms work better for a specific XML document domain and modifies its weights (confidence) in their predictive ability. As a result, the ensemble classifier adapts itself to the specific XML domain, without the need to develop special learners for the infinite number of domains that XML users have created. We evaluated our system performance using data from eleven different XML domains. The results show that the ensemble classifier adapted itself to different XML document domains, and most of the time (for 9 out of 11 domains) produced predictive accuracies as good as or better than the best individual classifier for a domain.

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


developing an elearning support model In this paper, I will examine the development and implementation of providing technical and pedagogical support for the University of Wisconsin (UW) system-wide Course Management System, utilizing a centrally located Help Desk that is staffed primarily by a student workforce.The requirements and delivery of support have shifted in recent years, and some services require a faster turnaround for problem resolution. This paper will also examine the obstacles and challenges that became apparent to us when we designed a new on-demand support model. This model is driven by the needs of the course instructors/designers, who often require support in real time.This discussion demonstrates: How the Help Desk provides system-wide technical support The benefits of engaging students as part of the support team How to separate technical and pedagogical Issues How a knowledge base is utilized for quick and consistent solutions The benefits of designing a support workflow for quick problem routing

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

support
help desk
management system
course
elearning


Hardy

inequality

in

block

weighted

spaces

In

this

study,

we

prove

the

classical

Hardy

inequality

in

block

weighted

sequence

space.

Also,

by

a

non-negative

function

K

K

(x,

y)

we

define

corresponding

continuous

case

of

the

block

sequence

space.

Indeed,

by

a

non-negative

Lebesgue

measurable

function

K

on

infinity)

x

infinity),

we

define

L-K(p)

{f

integral(infinity)(0)(integral(infinity)(0)

K(x,

y)vertical

bar

f(x)vertical

bar

dx)(p)dy

infinity}.

The

space

L-K(p)

equipped

by

the

norm

parallel

to

f

parallel

to(p,K)

K(x,

y)vertical

bar

f(x)vertical

bar

is

a

normed

linear

space.

Finally,

for

K

which

is

homogeneous

of

degree

theta

we

prove

that

parallel

to

f

parallel

to(p,K)

C(p,

q,

theta)

bar

f(p)(x)vertical

bar

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

integral inequality
hardy's inequality
nurlond's operator


On user involvement in production of images used in visual authentication ? Recognition-based visual authentication schemes use a variety of different kinds of images. These mechanisms have now matured sufficiently that we should start considering tailoring and fine-tuning themlooking at ways to make them more efficient. Since these mechanisms use images, the obvious starting point in this tailoring process is to consider the image type or genre being used by the mechanism. Images have a number of properties which are bound to influence the efficacy of the visual authentication mechanism. In this paper the notion of essential and tuning image properties is proposed. The former are those that an image must exhibit or possess in order to be used in visual authentication at allfailure to meet these metrics should disqualify the image from use. Tuning properties, on the other hand, are properties that will improve the efficiency of the mechanism. The tuning property which is the focus of this paper is the user's involvement in the production of his/her secret images. A longitudinal study was carried out with a visual authentication system in order to determine the effectivity of images with three levels of user involvement, using randomly issued images from an archive, a set of hand-drawn images called doodles, and user-provided photos. The hand-drawn doodles performed better than both system-issued images and personal photos. Furthermore, whereas doodles demonstrate viability, personal photos have many insuperable problems which make them unsuitable for use in a security setting.

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

security
visual authentication
image type


Performance evaluation of heterogeneous wireless local area networks The overall market for wireless local area networks (WLANs) grew more than 200% from 2000 to 2002, and will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23% until 2007. The objective of this research was to assess the performance of commercial-off-the-shelf WLAN systems with respect to interoperability, roaming ability, power consumption, throughput, and range. The evaluation was performed on both homogeneous and heterogeneous WLAN systems. Experimental test results indicate that the fundamental components of a WLAN system (i.e. access points and radio cards) and their combinations, significantly affect performance with respect to range, throughput, and power consumption. No significant differences in performance were observed in the WLAN systems with respect to interoperability (i.e. all systems characterized proved to be fully interoperable) or roaming (i.e. all combinations of access points and radio cards were able to seamlessly roam). (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

interoperability
power consumption
roaming
wlan


Heteroskedasticity-consistent interval estimators The linear regression model is commonly used in applications. One of the assumptions made is that the error variances are constant across all observations. This assumption, known as homoskedasticity, is frequently violated in practice. A commonly used strategy is to estimate the regression parameters by ordinary least squares and to compute standard errors that deliver asymptotically valid inference under both homoskedasticity and heteroskedasticity of an unknown form. Several consistent standard errors have been proposed in the literature, and evaluated in numerical experiments based on their point estimation performance and on the finite sample behaviour of associated hypothesis tests. We build upon the existing literature by constructing heteroskedasticity-consistent interval estimators and numerically evaluating their finite sample performance. Different bootstrap interval estimators are also considered. The numerical results favour the HC4 interval estimator.

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

bootstrap
heteroskedasticity
linear regression

covariance matrix estimation
confidence intervals
leverage point


Minimizing the number of tardy jobs in a single-machine scheduling problem with periodic maintenance This research focuses on the problem of scheduling jobs on a single machine that requires periodic maintenance with the objective of minimizing the number of tardy jobs. We present a two-phase heuristic algorithm in which an initial solution is obtained first with a method modified from Moore's algorithm for the problem without maintenance and then the solution is improved in the second phase. Performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm is evaluated through computational experiments on randomly generated problem instances and results show that the heuristic gives solutions close to those obtained from a commercial integer programming solver in much shorter time and works better than an existing heuristic algorithm in terms of the solution quality.

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

scheduling
single machine
periodic maintenance
tardy jobs
heuristic


Au/SnO2/n-Si (MOS) structures response to radiation and frequency Metalinsulatorsemiconductor (MOS) structures with insulator layer thickness of 290 were irradiated using a 60Co (?-ray) source and relationships of electrical properties of irradiated MOS structures to process-induced surface defects have been investigated both before and after ?-irradiation. The density of surface state distribution profiles of the sample Au/SnO2/n-Si (MOS) structures obtained from highlow frequency capacitance technique in depletion and weak inversion both before and after irradiation. The measurement capacitance and conductance are corrected for series resistance. Series resistance (Rs) of MOS structures were found both as function of voltage, frequency and radiation dose. The C(f)V and G(f)V curves have been found to be strongly influenced by the presence of a dominant radiation-induced defects. Results indicate interface-trap formation at high dose rates (irradiations) is reduced due to positive charge build-up in the semiconductor/insulator interfacial region (due to the trapping of holes) that reduces the flow rate of subsequent holes and protons from the bulk of the insulator to the Si/SnO2 interface. The series resistance decreases with increasing dose rate and frequency the radiation-induced flat-band voltage shift in 1 V. Results indicate the radiation-induced threshold voltage shift (?VT) strongly dependence on radiation dose rate and frequency.

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

?-rays
mos structure
radiation effect
interface states


Ranking multicriteria alternatives: The method ZAPROS III The new version of the method for the construction of partial order on the set of multicriteria alternatives is presented. This method belongs to the family of verbal decision analysis (VDA) methods and gives a more efficient means of problem solution. The method is based on psychologically valid operations for information elicitation from a decision maker: comparisons of two distances between the evaluations on the ordinal scales of two criteria. The information received from a decision maker is used for the construction of a binary relation between a pair of alternatives which yields preference, indifference and incomparability relations. The method allows construction of a partial order on the set of given alternatives as well as on the set of all possible alternatives. The illustrative example is given.

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

decision theory
multiple criteria
behavior
project management


The Windows Registry as a forensic artefact: Illustrating evidence collection for Internet usage In this paper we examine the use of the Windows Registry as a source of forensic evidence in digital investigations, especially related to Internet usage. We identify the sources of the information, along with the methods used and toolsets available for such examinations, and illustrate their use for recovering evidence. We highlight issues of the forensic practise related to Registry inspections and propose ideas for further improvements of the process and the tools involved.

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

computer forensics
digital artefacts
windows registry evidence retrieval


Fehlende Daten beim Data-Mining Der Beitrag zeigt, in welchem Schritt der Analyse von groen Datenmengen die Behandlung von fehlenden Daten stattfindet und warum ein angemessener Umgang mit diesen unerlsslich ist. Vorgestellt werden zudem Methoden zum Umgang mit fehlenden Werten, die sich insbesondere im Kontext von Data-Mining eignen, da hier die Komplexitt der Algorithmen eine bergeordnete Rolle spielt. Abgerundet wird der Beitrag mit einer Fallstudie, in der die Verfahren auf einen Beispieldatensatz des US Census Bureau angewandt werden, der in hnlicher Weise oft in CRM-Systemen der betrieblichen Umwelt anzutreffen ist. Thematisiert werden die Auswirkungen der Methoden sowie in der Praxis zu erwartende Herausforderungen.

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

missing-data imputation datenqualitt business-intelligence data-mining


User-generated descriptions of individual images versus labels of groups of images: A comparison using basic level theory Although images are visual information sources with little or no text associated with them, users still tend to use text to describe images and formulate queries. This is because digital libraries and search engines provide mostly text query options and rely on text annotations for representation and retrieval of the semantic content of images. While the main focus of image research is on indexing and retrieval of individual images, the general topic of image browsing and indexing, and retrieval of groups of images has not been adequately investigated. Comparisons of descriptions of individual images as well as labels of groups of images supplied by users using cognitive models are scarce. This work fills this gap. Using the basic level theory as a framework, a comparison of the descriptions of individual images and labels assigned to groups of images by 180 participants in three studies found a marked difference in their level of abstraction. Results confirm assertions by previous researchers in LIS and other fields that groups of images are labeled using more superordinate level terms while individual image descriptions are mainly at the basic level. Implications for design of image browsing interfaces, taxonomies, thesauri, and similar tools are discussed.

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 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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

image indexing
image retrieval
taxonomy
sorting


Widening and narrowing operators for abstract interpretation ? Abstract Interpretation, one of the most applied techniques for semantics based static analysis of software, is based on two main key-concepts: the correspondence between concrete and abstract semantics through Galois connections/insertions, and the feasibility of a fixed point computation of the abstract semantics, through the fast convergence of widening operators. The latter point is crucial to ensure the scalability of the analysis to large software systems. The aim of this paper is to set the ground for a systematic design of widening and narrowing operators, by comparing the different definitions introduced in the literature and by discussing how to tune them in case of domain abstraction and domains combination through cartesian and reduced products.

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

static analysis
abstract interpretation
widening operators
narrowing operators


Combining VIKOR-DANP model for glamor stock selection and stock performance improvement This study proposes a multiple attributes decision making (MADM) method for solving glamor stock selection problem based on fundamental analysis. Traditional analyzes rely on choosing key financial ratios in making comparison, or by observing the trends of change in various financial variables (also termed as criteria or signals in this study). However, most of the criteria for stock selection have inter-dependent/interactive characteristics. In practice, investors often have to make compromising decisions when target stocks indicate conflicting performance outcomes in different criteria. Traditional methods have difficulty in making decision while facing inter-dependent criteria and compromise alternatives. Thus, this study proposes a combined MADM method to retrieve financial experts knowledge for glamor stock selection. The proposed method not only helps to identify the ideal glamor stock, but the pertaining insights may also be used for the management teams of glamor stocks to prioritize their improvement plans. In addition, this study provides an empirical case in analyzing five glamor stocks of semiconductor industry in Taiwan. The result indicates that the proposed method for glamor stock selection is effective and provides meaningful implications for investors and management teams to refer. The selected top ranking stock consistently outperformed the other four glamor stocks in 32month and 44month holding periods from May 2009 to December 2012 with statistical significance, which indicated the effectiveness of the proposed model.

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

decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (dematel)

multiple attributes decision making (madm)

dematel-based analytical network process (danp)


SPAIS: A novel Self-checking Pollution Attackers Identification Scheme in network coding-based wireless mesh networks Pollution attacks refer to ones where attackers modify and inject corrupted data packets into the wireless network with network coding to disrupt the decoding process. In the context of network coding, the epidemic effect of pollution attacks can degrade network throughput significantly because of the mixing nature of network coding. To address this issue, a number of schemes to identify malicious nodes have been developed in the past. Nonetheless, these schemes have their limitations and cannot effectively deal with pollution attacks. In this paper, we propose a novel light-weight Self-checking Pollution Attackers Identification Scheme (SPAIS), which can identify the pollution attackers effectively and efficiently. By making full use of the broadcast nature of wireless media and the insight that a well-behaved node can monitor its downstream neighboring nodes locally by cooperating with other nodes, SPAIS hierarchically organizes the network as levels such that the nodes in the same level can monitor their downstream level nodes cooperatively. Through the combination of theoretical analysis and extensive simulations, our experimental data demonstrates that SPAIS can more effectively identify pollution attackers with a lower cost in comparison with the existing candidate schemes. For example, even if the quality of network connections is not in good condition and the malicious nodes send only one corrupted packet, the pollution attackers can be identified with a high probability.

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


declarative aspects of memory management in the concurrent collections parallel programming model Concurrent Collections (CnC) is a declarative parallel language that allows the application developer to express their parallel application as a collection of high-level computations called steps that communicate via single-assignment data structures called items. A CnC program is specified in two levels. At the bottom level, an existing imperative language implements the computations within the individual computation steps. At the top level, CnC describes the relationships (ordering constraints) among the steps. The memory management mechanism of the existing imperative language manages data whose lifetime is within a computation step. A key limitation in the use of CnC for long-running programs is the lack of memory management and garbage collection for data items with lifetimes that are longer than a single computation step. Although the goal here is the same as that of classical garbage collection, the nature of problem and therefore nature of the solution is distinct. The focus of this paper is the memory management problem for these data items in CnC. We introduce a new declarative slicing annotation for CnC that can be transformed into a reference counting procedure for memory management. Preliminary experimental results obtained from a Cholesky example show that our memory management approach can result in space reductions for CnC data items of up to 28x relative to the baseline case of standard CnC without memory management.

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


solving billing issues in ad hoc networks Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), which were targeted initially for military applications, are slowly finding their way into commercial applications. Ad hoc networking is based on the assumption that every node is willing to forward packets and act as a router. In a military environment, the nodes are assumed "co-operative" and willing to forward packets not intended for them. In a commercial network however, a node may not be totally willing to forward a packet originating from another node, since it utilizes its own battery power. Thus, there is an issue of billing for services provided by the nodes in the network.The problem of billing in ad hoc networks has not been researched extensively, but it must be addressed effectively to make MANETs commercially viable. This paper briefly explains the existing approaches targeted at solving billing and charging issues in MANETs. It gives a lead to solve billing issues using efficient routing mechanisms, and provides an insight into suitable routing approaches and frameworks that could possibly be adopted to support billing. It also provides an example Load-based hybrid routing approach, which solves the problem of billing using an inherent property that stimulates cooperation among nodes.

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

mobile ad hoc networks (manets)
load-based routing


Evolutionary data-modelling of an innovative low reflective vertical quay Vertical walls are commonly used as berthing structures. However, conventional vertical quays may have serious technical and environmental problems, as they reflect almost all the energy of the incident waves, thus affecting operational conditions and structural strength. These drawbacks can be overcome by the use of low reflective structures, but for some instances no theoretical equations exist to determine the relationship between the reflection coefficient and parameters that affect the structural response. Therefore, this study tries to fill this gap by examining the wave reflection of an absorbing gravity wall by means of evolutionary polynomial regression, a hybrid evolutionary modelling paradigm that combines the best features of conventional numerical regression and genetic programming. The method implements a multi-modelling approach in which a multi-objective genetic algorithm is used to get optimal models in terms of parsimony of mathematical expressions and fitting to data. A database of physical laboratory observations is used to predict the reflection as a function of a set of variables that characterize wave conditions and structure features. The proposed modelling paradigm proved to be a useful tool for data analysis and is able to find feasible explicit models featured by an appreciable generalization performance.

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

evolutionary polynomial regression
low reflective vertical quay
wave reflection


Using bat-modelled sonar as a navigational tool in virtual environments Bats are able to use active sonar as a mechanism for locating object in three dimensions and for generating spatial maps of their environments. Humans use passive sound cues to detect features of the space they occupy, as well as react to the spatial location of objects which generate sound. The system described in this paper allows free-ranging humans to locate a virtual sound location using active sonar. An emitted pulse, centred on the users head, serves as an intensity and time marker. The return pulse is rendered at the virtual target location and emitted after a time delay corresponding to the two-way path from sender to target and back again. The sonar system is modelled on those of bats, using ultrasonic frequency-modulated signals reflected from simple targets. The model uses the reflectivity characteristics of ultrasound, but the frequency and temporal structure used are scaled, with the speed of sound being set to 8.5ms?1 to bring the frequency range and temporal resolution within the capabilities of the human auditory system. Orientation with respect to the ensonified target is achieved by time-of-flight time delays to give target range, and binaural location information derived from interaural timing differences, interaural intensity differences, and head-related transfer functions. Subjects performed significantly better at a localization task when given temporal data based on echo delays with an outgoing reference pulse than without a reference pulse. Frequency-modulated signals sweeping from 1.5kHz100Hz over 500ms provide the best localization cues, and users found them significantly easier to locate than continuous sounds.

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

bat
virtual reality
echolocation
virtual acoustics


User-centered design by genetic algorithms: Application to brass musical instrument optimization This work presents an implementation of genetic algorithms (GAs) for a user-centered design of products. It describes at first a methodology for a user-centered design, based on the coupling between a subjective study to define desirable features and on objective study to find out the influencing objective variables. It relies on two domains that remain generally distinct: the design with a scientific approach (generally math-based) and the design with a sensory and perceptual approach (subjective). The methodology is presented on a particular product for which the perceived aspects are essential: a musical instrument (trumpet). Two types of study were carried out on a set of trumpets: firstly, a sensory study, which aim is to characterize the perception of the intonation of the instruments by musicians; secondly, an objective study, which consists in an objective description of the instruments by physical measurements (impedance). We correlated the intonation assessments data and the physical measurements, in order to deduct useful objective functions for the design of a new instrument, and to formulate the user-centered design problem as a multi-objective optimization problem. The paper presents next how GAs were implemented to solve the multi-objective optimization problem.

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

product design
user-centered design
multi-objective optimization
genetic algorithm
sensory analysis
musical acoustics


estimating probabilities for effective data fusion Data Fusion is the combination of a number of independent search results, relating to the same document collection, into a single result to be presented to the user. A number of probabilistic data fusion models have been shown to be effective in empirical studies. These typically attempt to estimate the probability that particular documents will be relevant, based on training data. However, little attempt has been made to gauge how the accuracy of these estimations affect fusion performance. The focus of this paper is twofold: firstly, that accurate estimation of the probability of relevance results in effective data fusion; and secondly, that an effective approximation of this probability can be made based on less training data that has previously been employed. This is based on the observation that the distribution of relevant documents follows a similar pattern in most high-quality result sets. Curve fitting suggests that this can be modelled by a simple function that is less complex than other models that have been proposed. The use of existing IR evaluation metrics is proposed as a substitution for probability calculations. Mean Average Precision is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, with evaluation results demonstrating competitive performance when compared with related algorithms with more onerous requirements for training 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 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


On Delay Performance and Burst Assembly for Wireless Mesh and Optical Burst Switching Converged Metro Area Network Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) have attracted increasing attention from the research community as a high-performance and low-cost solution to last-mile broadband Internet access. On the other side, Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is a promising access technology that uses optical fiber with burst switching paradigm. In this paper, we propose a novel Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) architecture, called Optical Burst Wireless Mesh Architecture (OBWMA) which integrates WMN at the user access side and OBS at the core of the MAN. OBWMA aims to combine advantages of both WMNs and OBS networks, such as large coverage at low cost and bandwidth availability. We specify the details of the interconnection and the internetworking of WMNs and the OBS network in OBWMA. Moreover, we develop an analytical model to compute the end-to-end delay in OBWMA in order to support flow requests with delay constraints. Furthermore, we propose a Control Bridge (CB) that ensures Quality of Service (QoS) mapping at the border between the WMN and the OBS parts. Also, we propose a burst assembly scheme, called Adaptive Hybrid Burst Assembly scheme (AHBA). Simulation results using ns-2 demonstrate the feasibility of OBWMA and the validity of our analytical model.

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


Using coevolutionary and complexity theories to improve IS alignment: a multi-level approach The misalignment of information systems (IS) components with the rest of an organization remains a critical and chronic unsolved problem in today's complex and turbulent world. This paper argues that the coevolutionary and emergent nature of alignment has rarely been taken into consideration in IS research and that this is the reason behind why IS alignment is so difficult. A view of IS alignment is presented about organizations that draws and builds on complexity theory and especially its focus on coevolution-based self-organized emergent behaviour and structure, which provides important insights for dealing with the emergent nature of IS alignment. This view considers Business/IS alignment as a series of adjustments at three levels of analysis: individual, operational, and strategic, and suggests several enabling conditions-principles of adaptation and scale-free dynamics aimed at speeding up the adaptive coevolutionary dynamics among the three levels.

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

information systems alignment
coevolution


Performance Bounds for Bidirectional Coded Cooperation Protocols In coded bidirectional cooperation, two nodes wish to exchange messages over a shared half-duplex channel with the help of a relay. In this correspondence, we derive performance bounds for this problem for each of three decode-and-forward protocols. The first protocol is a two phase protocol where both users simultaneously transmit during the first phase and the relay alone transmits during the second. In this protocol, our bounds are tight. The second protocol considers sequential transmissions from the two users followed by a transmission from the relay while the third protocol is a hybrid of the first two protocols and has four phases. In the latter two protocols the bounds are no identical. Numerical evaluation shows that in some cases of interest our bounds do not differ significantly. Finally, in the Gaussian case with path loss, we derive achievable rates and compare the relative merits of each protocol. This case is of interest in cellular systems. Surprisingly, we find that in some cases, the achievable rate region of the four phase protocol contains points that are outside the outer bounds of the (other two protocols.

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

bidirectional communication
capacity bounds
network coding


latent social structure in open source projects Commercial software project managers design project organizational structure carefully, mindful of available skills, division of labour, geographical boundaries, etc. These organizational "cathedrals" are to be contrasted with the "bazaar-like" nature of Open Source Software (OSS) Projects, which have no pre-designed organizational structure. Any structure that exists is dynamic, self-organizing, latent, and usually not explicitly stated. Still, in large, complex, successful, OSS projects, we do expect that subcommunities will form spontaneously within the developer teams. Studying these subcommunities, and their behavior can shed light on how successful OSS projects self-organize. This phenomenon could well hold important lessons for how commercial software teams might be organized. Building on known well-established techniques for detecting community structure in complex networks, we extract and study latent subcommunities from the email social network of several projects: Apache HTTPD, Python, PostgresSQL, Perl, and Apache ANT. We then validate them with software development activity history. Our results show that subcommunities do indeed spontaneously arise within these projects as the projects evolve. These subcommunities manifest most strongly in technical discussions, and are significantly connected with collaboration behaviour.

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

developer
software development
design
project
social
email
python
software
structure
collaboration
dynamic
behavior
teams

activation
open-source
self-organization
lighting
organization
histories
project management
extraction
skill
complexity
open source software
social networks
complex network


The yield shift theory of satisfaction and its application to the IS/IT domain Information Systems / Information Technology (IS/IT) Satisfaction is a key indicator of IS/IT success. For IS professionals and providers, satisfaction is critical throughout the life of a system because dissatisfied stakeholders can derail implementation, discontinue using an important system, erode IS/IT budgets, or even transfer their entire IT infrastructure to a different organization. The IS literature offers several perspectives on satisfaction, but none yet accounts fully for known satisfaction phenomena. We identify ten observed satisfaction effects, and summarize six existing models for satisfaction, identifying their merits, and the limits of their explanatory power. We then advance Yield Shift Theory (YST), a new causal theory for the satisfaction response that offers a more complete explanation of this phenomenon. YST derives two propositions from five assumptions to propose that variations in the satisfaction response are caused by shifts in yield for an individual's active goal set. We argue the falsifiability and scientific utility of the theory, discuss its relevance to the IS/IT artifact, and suggest a variety of directions for future research.

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

satisfaction response
satisfaction
yield shift theory

is satisfaction
is/it artifact
is/it success


On syntactic monoids of biunitary submonoids determined by homomorphisms from free semigroups onto completely simple semigroups We deal with the maximal bifix code construction which is a natural generalization of a group code construction. For a surjective morphism phi from a free monoid A* onto a completely simple semigroup with an adjoined identity M (G; I, J; Sigma)(1) and a submonoid S of M (G; I, J; Sigma)(1), under certain conditions, the base of a submonoid phi(-1) (S) is a maximal bifix code X. We investigate the relationships between the surjective morphism phi and the syntactic monoid of the monoid generated by X. (c) 2005 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 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 B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O

group code
bifix code
syntactic monoid
completely simple semigroup


An extension of the MAC scheme to locally refined meshes: convergence analysis for the full tensor time-dependent NavierStokes equations A variational formulation of the standard marker-and-cell scheme for the approximation of the NavierStokes problem yields an extension of the scheme to general 2D and 3D domains and more general meshes. An original discretization of the trilinear form of the nonlinear convection term is proposed; it is designed so as to vanish for discrete divergence free functions. This property allows us to give a mathematical proof of the convergence of the resulting approximate solutions, for the nonlinear NavierStokes equations in both steady-state and time-dependent regimes, without any small data condition. Numerical examples (analytical steady and time-dependent ones, inclined driven cavity) confirm the robustness and the accuracy of this method.

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

incompressible steady and time-dependent navierstokes equations


on the performance of persistent connection in modern web servers In the development of HTTP protocol, the technique to overlap multiple HTTP requests and replies on single TCP connection, called 'keep-alive' or 'persistent connection', has won great success. It is already verified that, persistent connection could help to save the cost of frequently creating TCP connection, and could also reduce the number of operations such like forking and destroying process. Many years passed, persistent connection mechanism has been implemented widely to support all kinds of web services. However recently, dramatic changes to networking conditions and server computing capacity challenge the motivations of such mechanism and reveal some of its drawbacks. This paper models the connection management procedure in concurrent web servers with Petri Nets, and determines the parameters for the model by measuring a bunch of key metrics in modern web servers and networks. Plus, experiments are carried out in real modern test-bed with real traffic. The analytical results yielded by the model, along with experimental results, help us to clarify the negative role that persistent connection actually plays in modern web servers, especially in those busy ones.

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


A survey on time and frequency characteristics of induction motors with broken rotor bars in line-start and inverter-fed modes A comprehensive detailed electrical, magnetic and mechanical analysis of industrial induction motors under broken bars fault is provided in this work. Effects of line-start and inverter-fed modes, different load levels and various reference speeds is deeply investigated. Different fault indexes are intuitively compared and investigated based on their applicability via analytical and experimental results. Advantages and disadvantages of fault diagnosis procedures are identified and an appropriate global fault detection routine which is applicable at different operating conditions is proposed.

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

dq direct axis and quadrature axis components

mr magnitude of the right sideband component

ml magnitude of the left sideband component


Estimating 3D human shapes from measurements Recent advances in 3D imaging technologies give rise to databases of human shapes, from which statistical shape models can be built. These statistical models represent prior knowledge of the human shape and enable us to solve shape reconstruction problems from partial information. Generating human shape from traditional anthropometric measurements is such a problem, since these 1D measurements encode 3D shape information. Combined with a statistical shape model, these easy-to-obtain measurements can be leveraged to create 3D human shapes. However, existing methods limit the creation of the shapes to the space spanned by the database and thus require a large amount of training data. In this paper, we introduce a technique that extrapolates the statistically inferred shape to fit the measurement data using non-linear optimization. This method ensures that the generated shape is both human-like and satisfies the measurement conditions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method and compare it to existing approaches through extensive experiments, using both synthetic data and real human measurements.

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

human models
statistical prior
three-dimensional reconstruction


On the discrete time dynamics of a self-stabilizing MCA learning algorithm The stability of minor component analysis (MCA) learning algorithms is an important problem in many signal processing applications. In this paper, we propose an effective MCA learning algorithm that can offer better stability. The dynamics of the proposed algorithm are analyzed via a corresponding deterministic discrete time (DDT) system. It is proven that if the learning rate satisfies some mild conditions, almost all trajectories of the DDT system starting from points in an invariant set are bounded, and will converge to the minor component of the autocorrelation matrix of the input data. Simulation results will be furnished to illustrate the theoretical results achieved. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

deterministic discrete time (ddt) system


a general purpose, expandable processor for real-time computer graphics A class of critical computer requirements for real-time scan T.V. computer graphics is examined in relation to commercially available CPU architectures. Finding general purpose processors not suited, a new processor is proposed which is designed around the concept of "instruction set partitioning." In this design, special hardware-implemented algorithms may be included in the machine instruction set, and these processors allowed to operate asynchronously from each other. The design is projected to generate a complete new frame of a color T.V. picture every 0.1-0.8 seconds depending on image complexity. Due to its inherent generality, the CPU may be similarly expanded to encompass a wide variety of other specialized, or real-time tasks with minimal additional hardware. The 32-bit parallel processor has a design cycle time of 100 ns and is in the price class of a minicomputer.

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

requirements
color
price
design
concept
general
scan
computer graphics
minimal
processor
parallel
instruction
image
relation
hardware
complexity
class

computation timing real-time partition architecture algorithm critic completeness


Investigating the relations between motivation, tool use, participation, and performance in an e-learning course using web-videoconferencing Web-videoconference systems offer several tools (like chat, audio, and webcam) that vary in the amount and type of information learners can share with each other and the teacher. It has been proposed that tools fostering more direct social interaction and feedback amongst learners and teachers would foster higher levels of engagement. If so, one would expect that the richer the tools used, the higher the levels of learner engagement. However, the actual use of tools and contributions to interactions in the learning situation may relate to students motivation. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between available tools used, student motivation, participation, and performance on a final exam in an online course in economics (N=110). In line with our assumptions, we found some support for the expected association between autonomous motivation and participation in web-videoconferences as well as between autonomous motivation and the grade on the final exam. Students tool use and participation were significantly correlated with each other and with exam scores, but participation appeared to be a stronger predictor of the final exam score than tool use. This study adds to the knowledge base needed to develop guidelines on how synchronous communication in e-learning can be used.

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

e-learning
web-videoconference
technology acceptance
self-determination theory
academic motivation


Toward predicting software development success from the perspective of practitioners: an exploratory Bayesian model Software development project managers may need to focus on particular issues during the development process for a variety of reasons, including limited resources. This study utilized a survey to ask software practitioners, who are at the core of development, to provide insight into some of the important early non-technical issues of software development, including those related to sponsor/senior management, customer/users and requirements management. Proposed relationships among these early items, and their relationship to software practitioners' perception of project success, were quantitatively represented through a proposed Bayesian Belief Network. The concept of 'success' was derived from a pilot study of practitioners and was 'defined' as (a) there is a project plan, (b) the project is well planned, (c) practitioners have a sense of achievement while working on a project, (d) practitioners have a sense of doing a good job (i. e. delivered quality) while working on a project, and (e) requirements are accepted by the development team as realistic/achievable. The proposed causal model provided quantitative evidence that reaching agreement with customers/ users on requirements, a high level of customer/user participation, and users who make adequate time for requirements gathering have the largest direct impacts on project success among the investigated items. The proposed model identified the following as the critical chain of events for success: (1) Having a sponsor throughout the project, (2) users who make adequate time for requirements gathering, (3) a high level of customer/user participation in the development process, and (4) agreement on requirements between customer/users and the development team.

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


Stochastic wave finite element for random periodic media through first-order perturbation Wave propagation features in random guided elastic media are considered in this paper. A formulation named stochastic wave finite element (SWFE) is offered. This formulation allows wave characteristics definition by means of a stochastic finite element model. The case of spatially homogeneous random properties is dealt with, through a parametric probabilistic technique. Numerical experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed approach to predict the statistics of guided wave propagation characteristics (means and standard deviations) when compared to Monte Carlo calculations.

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

guided waves
random media
parametric probabilistic model
dispersion


Selective Cyclin-Dependent Kinase Inhibitors Discriminating between Cell Cycle and Transcriptional Kinases Progression of the cell cycle is controlled by activating and inhibiting cellular factors. The delicate balance between these positive- and negative-acting regulators warrants proper cell cycle progression in normal cells and facilitates cellular response to a variety of stress stimuli. The increased activity of the positive regulators of the cell cycle in cancer cells is frequently accompanied by the loss or inactivation of the inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs). The supplementation of the cellular CDK inhibitors by the pharmacological counterparts is a very promising therapeutic option. The generated pharmacological inhibitors of CDKs belong to different classes of compounds and display various CDK inhibitory features. In this article the action and specificity of CDK inhibitor roscovitine, belonging to the group of purine analogues, is reviewed and the rationale for dissecting the inhibitory action on cell cycle and transcriptional CDKs is discussed.

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


Development of EEM based siliconwater and silicawater wall potentials for non-reactive molecular dynamics simulations Molecular dynamics simulations of heat transfer in gases are computationally expensive when the wall molecules are explicitly modeled. To save computational time, an implicit boundary function is often used. Steele's potential has been used in studies of fluidsolid interface for a long time. In this work, the conceptual idea of Steele's potential was extended in order to simulate watersilicon and watersilica interfaces. A new wall potential model is developed by using the electronegativity-equalization method (EEM), a ReaxFF empirical force field and a non-reactive molecular dynamics package PumMa. Contact angle simulations were performed in order to validate the wall potential model. Contact angle simulations with the resulting tabulated wall potentials gave a siliconwater contact angle of 129, a quartzwater contact angle of 0, and a cristobalitewater contact angle of 40, which are in reasonable agreement with experimental values.

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

wall potential
reaxff
molecular dynamics
contact angle