Minimum energy cooperative path routing in all-wireless networks: NP-completeness and heuristic algorithms We study the routing problem in all-wireless networks based on cooperative transmissions. We model the minimum-energy cooperative path (MECP) problem and prove that this problem is NP-complete. We hence design an approximation algorithm called cooperative shortest path (CSP) algorithm that uses Dijkstra's algorithm as the basic building block and utilizes cooperative transmissions in the relaxation procedure. Compared with traditional non-cooperative shortest path algorithms, the CSP algorithm can achieve a higher energy saving and better balanced energy consumption among network nodes, especially when the network is in large scale. The nice features lead to a unique, scalable routing scheme that changes the high network density from the curse of congestion to the blessing of cooperative transmissions.

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

distributed algorithms
energy efficiency
wireless networks


distance teaching workloads In this paper, we describe a formula for calculating the teaching workload for students who are studying off campus both on and off-line. Initially the faculty of information technology developed a proposal for calculating academic workloads. This proposal reflected the rigid teacher centred learning structures of traditional on-campus delivery and made no allowance for the services required by off-campus students. In response, teachers of off-campus students developed a complementary proposal, based on actual time logs, which reflected their student centred approach to learning. Contrary to popular wisdom, off-campus teaching was found to be more time-consuming than on-campus.

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

student centered learning
flexible delivery
electronic educational environments
distance education


Improving the efficiency of discrete time scheduling formulation The problem of production scheduling in multipurpose plants can be formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem based on a discrete representation of time. The mathematical difficulties associated with solving integer programs are well established and combining this factor with the increasing complexity and size of scheduling problems, there exists a strong requirement for efficient solution algorithms. This paper attempts to address this requirement by looking at two ways to reduce the gap between the optimal solution and the solution of its relaxed LP counterpart. The first;method involves generating cut constraints in problems where the presence of changeover activities tends to widen the relaxation gap. The second method uses an established reformulation technique based on variable disaggregation which exploits the lot sizing problem found embedded in many scheduling instances. The reformulation is applied to a general scheduling framework and its performance evaluated. Test examples are described for both methods, along with their numerical results. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


The post-SCF quantum chemistry characteristics of inter- and intra-strand stacking interactions in d(CpG) and d(GpC) steps found in B-DNA, A-DNA and Z-DNA crystals The energies of intra- and inter-strand stacking interactions in model d(GpC) and d(CpG) two-base-pair steps were estimated by MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ single point calculations corrected for basis superposition errors. The stacked two-nucleobase pairs were constructed using experimental values of base pair and base step parameters taken from Nucleic Acid Database (http://ndbserver.rutgers.edu/). Three distinct polymorphic forms were analysed, namely A-, B-and Z-DNA. The applied methodology enables statistical analysis of structural and energetic diversities. The structural relationships between polymorphic forms are quite complex and depend on the sequence of pairs. The variability of parameters such as shift and tilt is almost the same irrespective of the polymorphic form and sequence of steps analysed. In contrast, shift and twist distributions easily discriminate all three polymorphic forms of DNA. Interestingly, despite significant structural diversities, the energies of the most frequent energy ranges are comparable irrespective of the polymorphic form and base sequence. There was observed compensation of inter-and intra-strand interactions, especially for d(GpC) and d(CpG) steps found in A-and B-DNA. Thus, among many other roles, these pairs act as a kind of energetic buffer, balancing the double helix.

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

cytosine
guanine
intermolecular interactions
polymorphism


A modified Newton method in parallel circular iteration of single-step and double-step In this paper, two theorems for the convergence of a modified Newton method in parallel circular iteration are given. The convergent condition of single-step method's circular iteration is relaxed compared with the classical theorem in the same field, while the one of the first proposed double-step method of the five-order is obtained accurately as well. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

modified newton method
parallel circular iteration
convergent condition

zeros of a polynomial
single-step
double-step


Instability of FIFO at arbitrarily low rates in the adversarial queueing model We study the stability of the commonly used packet forwarding protocol, FIFO (first in first out), in the adversarial queueing model. We prove that FIFO can become unstable, i.e., lead to unbounded buffer-occupancies and queueing delays, at arbitrarily low injection rates. In order to demonstrate instability at rate r, we use a network of size (O) over tildeO(1/r).

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

fifo
stability
adversarial queueing model


constraints on communication and electronic mail How information flows through an organization is important to many organizational processes. The information people receive influences the perceptions they have of the organization they work for and the tasks they are assigned. Electronic mail constitutes a new medium in organizational communication. It may alter some of the information flow in the organizations in which it is used. My analysis suggests that some new communication occurs in large organizations that have electronic mail. I suggest that this new communication occurs because the way electronic mail is organized allows people to find other people with common interests at a low cost to either party. This new communication creates links between people who would otherwise not share information. Granovetter's work on the significance of weak ties suggests that such connections may have substantial influence on the way in which behavior is shaped and constrained by one's network and in the manipulation of networks to achieve specific goals (1973, 1974). These processes are important to organizational socialization and problem solving, respectively. Other functions of large formal organizations may also be affected.

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

network
communication
information flow
organization
electronic mail
influence
goals
analysis
behavior
links
manipulation
cost

sharing formalism perception process social constraint connection informal


Examining network externalities and network structure for new product introduction Much of the existing work on network externalities has assumed that network effects are dependent on network size. Very little consideration has been given to the view that marginal benefits from joining the network may not increase with network size, if consumer benefits come from direct interactions with neighbors in a local network. We use agent-based simulation to examine the effectiveness of the traditional network market strategy in the presence of a local network. Our results show that it is appropriate to establishing a sustainable network by leveraging the properties of local networks.

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

local networks
network effects
network externalities
network structure
product introduction


Crossing textual and visual content in different application scenarios This paper deals with multimedia information access. We propose two new approaches for hybrid text-image information processing that can be straightforwardly generalized to the more general multimodal scenario. Both approaches fall in the trans-media pseudo-relevance feedback category. Our first method proposes using a mixture model of the aggregate components, considering them as a single relevance concept. In our second approach, we define trans-media similarities as an aggregation of monomodal similarities between the elements of the aggregate and the new multimodal object. We also introduce the monomodal similarity measures for text and images that serve as basic components for both proposed trans-media similarities. We show how one can frame a large variety of problem in order to address them with the proposed techniques: image annotation or captioning, text illustration and multimedia retrieval and clustering. Finally, we present how these methods can be integrated in two applications: a travel blog assistant system and a tool for browsing the Wikipedia taking into account the multimedia nature of its content.

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

cross-content information retrieval and browsing


A new family of proximity graphs: Class cover catch digraphs Motivated by issues in machine learning and statistical pattern classification, we investigate a class cover problem (CCP) with an associated family of directed graphsclass cover catch digraphs (CCCDs). CCCDs are a special case of catch digraphs. Solving the underlying CCP is equivalent to finding a smallest cardinality dominating set for the associated CCCD, which in turn provides regularization for statistical pattern classification. Some relevant properties of CCCDs are studied and a characterization of a family of CCCDs is given.

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

class cover problem
pattern classification
machine learning


automatically defined functions for learning classifier systems This work introduces automatically defined functions (ADFs) for learning classifier systems (LCS). ADFs had been successfully implemented in genetic programming (GP)for various domain problems such as multiplexer and even-odd parity, but they have never been attempted in LCS research field before. ADFs in GP contract program trees and shorten training times whilst providing resilience to destructive genetic operators. We have implemented ADFs in Wilson's accuracy based LCS, known as XCS [14]. This initial investigation of ADFs in LCS shows that the multiple genotypes to a phenotype issue in feature rich encodings disables the subsumption deletion function. The additional methods and increased search space also leads to much longer training times. This is compensated by the ADFs containing useful knowledge, such as the importance of the address bits in the multiplexer problem. The ADFs also create masks that autonomously subdivide the search space into areas of interest and uniquely, areas of not interest. The next stage of this work is to implement simplification methods and then determine methods by which ADFs can facilitate scaling for more complex problems within the same problem domain.

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

automatically defined functions
learning classifier systems
genetic programming


An Integrated Model for Activity-dependent Synaptic Modifications An integrated model is proposed for activity-dependent synaptic modifications. These include two forms of homosynaptic modification, two forms of associative modification and one form of heterosynaptic modification. The model is constructed by referring to the physiological and biochemical data that likely underlie the induction and expression of long-term potentiation and long-term depression and by making certain assumptions. Computer simulations are performed, and the simulation results prove to have good agreement with relevant experimental results. Thus, the model may produce realistically different forms of synaptic modification. 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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

integrated model ltp-like synaptic modification ltd-like synaptic modification receptor phosphorylation dephosphorylation


a fast hybrid classification algorithm based on the minimum distance and the k-nn classifiers Some of the most commonly used classifiers are based on the retrieval and examination of the k Nearest Neighbors of unclassified instances. However, since the size of datasets can be large, these classifiers are inapplicable when the time-costly sequential search over all instances is used to find the neighbors. The Minimum Distance Classifier is a very fast classification approach but it usually achieves much lower classification accuracy than the k -NN classifier. In this paper, a fast, hybrid and model-free classification algorithm is introduced that combines the Minimum Distance and the k -NN classifiers. The proposed algorithm aims at maximizing the reduction of computational cost, by keeping classification accuracy at a high level. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed approach can be applicable in dynamic, time-constrained environments.

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


Adaptive Fuzzy Filtering in a Deterministic Setting Manyreal-world applications involve the filtering and estimation of process variables. This study considers the use of interpretable Sugeno-type fuzzy models for adaptive filtering. Our aim in this study is to provide different adaptive fuzzy filtering algorithms in a deterministic setting. The algorithms are derived and studied in a unified way without making any assumptions on the nature of signals (i.e., process variables). The study extends, in a common framework, the adaptive filtering algorithms (usually studied in signal processing literature) and p- norm algorithms (usually studied in machine learning literature) to semilinear fuzzy models. A mathematical framework is provided that allows the development and an analysis of the adaptive fuzzy filtering algorithms. We study a class of nonlinear LMS-like algorithms for the online estimation of fuzzy model parameters. A generalization of the algorithms to the p- norm is provided using Bregman divergences (a standard tool for online machine learning algorithms).

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

adaptive filtering algorithms
bregman divergences


Gain modulation of recurrent networks Gain modulation is an important mechanism by which attentional and other inputs modify the amplitude of neuronal responses without changing their selectivity. Gain modulation has been studied previously in feedforward circuits but not in recurrent neural networks. We show how gain modulation modifies the response of a recurrent network to feedforward inputs. Even modest gain modulation of the recurrent network can cause downstream neurons to switch from a state in which they are unresponsive to a stimulus to a state where they respond selectively. Funneling the recurrent connections of a network through gain modulated neurons allows the selectivity within the network to be modified by modulatory inputs.

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


Design for Delay Measurement Aimed at Detecting Small Delay Defects on Global Routing Resources in FPGA Small delay defects can cause serious issues such as very short lifetime in the recent VLSI devices. Delay measurement is useful to detect small delay defects in manufacturing testing. This paper presents a design for delay measurement to detect small delay defects on global routing resources, such as double, hex and long lines, In a Xilinx Virtex 4 based FPGA. This paper also shows a measurement method using the proposed design. The proposed measurement method is based on an existing one for SoC using delay value measurement circuit (DVMC). The proposed measurement modifies the construction of configurable logic blocks (CLBs) and utilizes an on-chip DVMC newly added. The number of configurations required by the proposed measurement is 60, which is comparable to that required by stuck-at fault testing for global routing resources in FPGAs. The area overhead is low for general FPGAs, in which the area of routing resources is much larger than that of the other elements such as CLBs. The area of every modified CLB is 7% larger than an original CLB, and the area of the on-chip DVMC is 22% as large as that of an original CLB. For recent FPGAs, we can estimate that the area overhead is approximately 2% or less of the FPGAs.

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

dvmc (delay value measurement circuit)
fpga (field programmable gate array)
global routing resource


Actuator fault-tolerant control for discrete systems with strong uncertainties In this paper, a reliable control method is first proposed for discrete systems with strong uncertainties. Actuator fault compensation is also investigated based on state feedback controller. The reliable control approach uses analytical redundancy and does not need duplicated actuators. Fault compensation controller is designed using accommodation mechanism which compensates the fault effects. The closed-loop stability is established based on Lyapunov's sense. The novelty of this paper is in controller design part. This reliable control approach is applied to three-tank system. The fault compensation method is applied to winding machine in continuous annealing process systems. Applications of the proposed design indicate that the method is effective for three-tank system and continuous annealing process systems. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

actuator fault
reliable control
fault compensation
strong uncertainties
winding machine


A nonlinear rigid-plastic analysis for metal forming problem using the rigid-plastic point collocation method A rigid-plastic point collocation method is applied to the analysis of plane strain forging, which is a nonlinear rigid-plastic problem of bulk metal forming. In general, the bulk metal forming problems are nonlinear and large deformation problems, used to be analyzed with the conventional rigid-plastic finite element methods. While the conventional rigid-plastic finite element methods have some shortcomings such as necessities of mesh generation, remeshing and numerical integration for these methods. The rigid-plastic point collocation method not only is a kind of truly meshless method, but also is a kind of no integration and no fundamental solution method. In this paper, the first, a linear elastic cantilever beam problem is analyzed by using the point collocation method, into which the concepts of the considered nodes and the unconsidered nodes are introduced. The numerical solution of the problem is compared with the exact solution of it, and quite high accuracy of the numerical solution has been achieved. The second, a plane strain metal forming problem has been analyzed by using the rigid-plastic point collocation method. Because the considered nodes and the unconsidered nodes are used, no renoding is needed. The solution of the rigid-plastic problem is compared with a conventional rigid-plastic finite element solution, and reasonable results have been obtained.

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

point collocation method
meshless method
metal forming


Coherence resonance in propagating spikes in FitzHugh-Nagumo model Coherence resonance in propagating spikes generated by noise in spatially distributed excitable media is studied with computer simulation and circuit experiment on the FitzHugh-Nagumo model. White noise is added to the one end of the media to generate spikes, which propagate to the other end. The mean and standard deviation of the interspike intervals of the spikes after propagation take minimum values at the intermediate strength of the added noise. This shows stronger coherence than obtained in the previous studies.

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

stochastic resonance
fitzhugh-nagumo model
spike propagation


Empirical performance evaluation of schedulers for cluster of workstations Cluster computing is receiving exponential popularity as a choice for high performance computing. This is mainly due to its effective cost performance ratio. Resource management systems (RMS) are the key component to manage the resources of clusters efficiently and have a very vital role in the performance of distributed parallel systems especially a job scheduling module. In this paper, we have empirically evaluated four resource management systems (SGE, TORQUE, and MAUI Scheduler and SLURM) with special focus on job scheduler component. These schedulers have been evaluated on a more comprehensive set of metrics such as throughput, CPU, memory and network utilization. Experiments were carried out on three different size testbeds with a range of scheduler configurations such as FCFS, Backfilling, Fair share and SJF scheduling techniques. A head-to-head comparison of different scheduling techniques has also been presented which highlights the effect of RMS on the performance of scheduling techniques. It has been observed from results that relative difference among the performance of scheduling techniques reached up to 63%. We conclude from the experiments that there is no single choice of RMS which can be identified as the best but SLURM performs better than others in most of the cases.

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

cluster computing
scheduling
resource management systems

performance evaluation and distributed system


Classification of respiratory sounds by using an artificial neural network In this paper, a classification method for respiratory sounds (RSs) in patients with asthma and in healthy subjects is presented. Wavelet transform is applied to a window containing 256 samples. Elements of the feature vectors are obtained from the wavelet coefficients. The best feature elements are selected by using dynamic programming. Grow and Learn (GAL) neural network, Kohonen network and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) are used for the classification. It is observed that RSs of patients (with asthma) and healthy subjects are successfully classified by the GAL network.

O O B I 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 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

respiratory sounds
artificial neural network
wavelet transform

classification of biomedical signals
pattern recognition


Hierarchical clustering with planar segments as prototypes Clustering methods divide a set of observations into groups in such a way that members of the same group are more similar to one another than to the members of the other groups. One of the scientifically well known methods of clustering is the hierarchical agglomerative one. For data of different properties different clustering methods appear favorable. If the data possess locally linear form, application of planar (or hyperplanar) prototypes should be advantageous. However, although a clustering method using planar prototypes, based on a criterion minimization, is known, it has a crucial drawback. It is an infinite extent of such prototypes that can result in addition of very distant data points to a cluster. Such distant points can considerably differ from the majority within a cluster. The goal of this work is to overcome this problem by developing a hierarchical agglomerative clustering method that uses the prototypes confined to the segments of hyperplanes. In the experimental part, we show that for data that possess locally linear form this method is highly competitive to the method of the switching regression models (the accuracy improvement of 24%) as well as to other well-known clustering methods (the accuracy improvement of 16%).

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

hierarchical clustering
switching regression models

maximum density of planar segment linkage


Fuzzy Logic Control Design for a Stair-Climbing Robot In the paper, a robot is designed to move up-and-down stairs for providing service. This robot consists of a main body, actuating system, roller chains, a front arm and a rear arm for assisting in moving up and down stairs. The actuating system includes two brushless DC motors for locomotion, two worm gears for torque magnification, and two DC motors to control arms. A DSP-based board acts as control center. Some rubber blocks attached to the roller chains are used to generate friction with ground and stairs for moving. A fuzzy logic controller integrates the outputs of DC bus current sensor and an inclinometer to steer the robot. Two walking experiments of moving up and down stairs with the rise/depth of 120/400 mm and 175/280 mm are shown in the taped pictures from videos to verify the proposed design.

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


Preclinical evaluation and molecular docking of 4-phenyl-1-Napthyl phenyl acetamide (4P1NPA) from Streptomyces sp DPTB16 as a potent antifungal compound The incidence of fungal disease has increased dramatically over the past decades, mainly due to the emergence and transmission of antifungal resistance within the fungal pathogens. The present study investigates the use of novel antifungal compound 4-Phenyl-1-Napthyl Phenyl Acetamide (4P1NPA), isolated from marine Streptomyces sp. DPTB16 as a potent antifungal drug. The preclinical studies and molecular docking for 4P1NPA against Cytochrome P450 51 (CYP 51) were performed using in silico pharmacology and docking tools. The finding reveals the drug likeliness of 4P1NPA and satisfactory interaction of 4P1NPA with CYP 51. These results collectively evidence the use of 4P1NPA as a drug to treat fungal infections. On the whole, we highlight the findings of this research will be helpful to design 4P1NPA as novel antifungal drug to defend the emerging antifungal resistance. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


What Do Hormones Have to Do with Aging? What Does Aging Have to Do with Hormones? It is clear that aging results in alterations of endocrine physiology, which in turn appear to contribute to development of the senescent phenotype. How the underlying basic aging process or processes cause the endocrine cell dysfunctions leading to hormone imbalance is far from clear, but oxidative alteration of cell membranes is an attractive candidate mechanism that might be susceptible to some degree of global remediation.

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


A new recombination lower bound and the minimum perfect phylogenetic forest problem Understanding recombination is a central problem in population genetics. In this paper, we address an established computational problem in this area: compute lower bounds on the minimum number of historical recombinations for generating a set of sequences (Hudson and Kaplan in Genetics 111, 147-164, 1985; Myers and Griffiths in Genetics 163, 375-394, 2003; Gusfield et al. in Discrete Appl. Math. 155, 806-830, 2007; Bafna and Bansal in IEEE/ACM Trans. Comput. Biol. Bioinf. 1, 78-90, 2004 and in J. Comput. Biol. 13, 501-521, 2006; Song et al. in Bioinformatics 421, i413-i244, 2005). In particular, we propose a new recombination lower bound: the forest bound. We show that the forest bound can be formulated as the minimum perfect phylogenetic forest problem, a natural extension to the classic binary perfect phylogeny problem, which may be of interests on its own. We then show that the forest bound is provably higher than the optimal haplotype bound (Myers and Griffiths in Genetics 163, 375-394, 2003), a very good lower bound in practice (Song et al. in Bioinformatics 421, i413-i422, 2005). We prove that, like several other lower bounds (Bafna and Bansal in J. Comput. Biol. 13, 501-521, 2006), computing the forest bound is NP-hard. Finally, we describe an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation that computes the forest bound precisely for certain range of data. Simulation results show that the forest bound may be useful in computing lower bounds for low quality data.

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

lower bound on the minimum number of recombination


An introduction to periodical discrete sets from a tomographical perspective In this paper we introduce a new class of binary matrices whose entries show periodical configurations, and we furnish a first approach to their analysis from a tomographical point of view. In particular we propose a polynomial-time algorithm for reconstructing matrices with a special periodical behavior from their horizontal and vertical projections. We succeeded in our aim by using a reduction involving polyominoes which can be characterized by means of 2 - SAT formulas. (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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

discrete tomography
computational complexity
polyomino
2-sat reduction


Choices for interaction with things on Internet and underlying issues Currently, a large number of smart objects and different types of devices are interconnected and communicate via Internet Protocol that creates a worldwide ubiquitous and pervasive network called the Internet of Things (IoT). With an increase in the deployment of smart objects, IoT is expected to have a significant impact on human life in the near future. A majorbreakthrough in bridging the gap between virtual and physical worlds came from the vision of the Web of Things (WoT), which employs open Web standards in achieving information sharing and objects interoperability. Social Web of Things (SWoT) further extends WoT to integrate smart objects with social networks and is observed to not only bridge between physical and virtual worlds but also facilitate continued interaction between physical devices and human. This makes SWoT the most promising approach and has now become an active research area. This survey introduces necessary background and fundamentals to understand current efforts in IoT, WoT and SWoT by reviewing key enabling technologies. These efforts are investigated in detail from several different perspectives such as architecture design, middleware, platform, systems implementation, and application in hand. Moreover, a large number of platforms and applications are analyzed and evaluated from various alternatives have become popular during the past decade. Finally, we address associated challenges and highlight potential research to be perused in future.

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

internet of things
social web of things
web of things

social internet of things
wireless sensor networks


Structure analysis and property improvements of the computer-simulated fullerene-based ultralow-k dielectrics We have recently proposed new ultralow-k dielectric materials using a theoretical approach called molecular design. This approach requires the application of complementary theoretical methods to describe the complex problems. The methods include classical, continuum theoretical, and quantum-chemical approximations. The advantage of the present approach is that various possible candidates for ultralow-k dielectrics can be tested theoretically without performing expensive and time-consuming experiments. In this study, we analyze the way to connect linker molecules to the node molecules, in order to improve mechanical and dielectric properties of generated ultralow-k structures. Two different types of bonding linker molecules to the cage C60 molecule with the >C C C CH2 CH2 C< linker molecules are possible. It is shown that at the present improvement step it is possible to get property combinations with dielectric constant of k=2.2 and bulk modulus of B=33GPa for the simple cubic topology.

O 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

fullerenes and fullerene-based dielectrics


The Seelinder: Cylindrical 3D display viewable from 360 degrees We propose a 3D video display technique that allows multiple viewers to see 3D images from a 360-degree horizontal arc without wearing 3D glasses. This technique uses a cylindrical parallax barrier and a one-dimensional light source array. We have developed an experimental display system using this technique. Since this technique is based on the parallax panoramagram, the parallax number and resolution are limited by the diffraction at the parallax barrier. In order to solve this problem, we improved the technique by revolving the parallax barrier. The improved technique was incorporated into two experimental display systems. The newer one is capable of displaying 3D color video images within a 200-mm diameter and a 256-mm height. Images have a resolution of 1254 circumferential pixels and 256 vertical pixels, and are refreshed at 30Hz. Each pixel has a viewing angle of 60 degrees that is divided into over 70 views so that the angular parallax interval of each pixel is less than 1 degree. These pixels are arranged on a cylindrical surface to allow for the produced 3D images to be observed from all directions. In this case, observers may barely perceive the discrete parallax.

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

autostereoscopic display
multi-view
omnidirectional
ray-space
light field


joint rate allocation, routing and spectrum sharing for multi-hop cognitive radio networks with imperfect spectrum sensing In this paper we study the joint rate allocation, routing and spectrum sharing policy for multi-hop Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs). We formulate this cross layer optimization problem as a sequential decision process which aims to minimize the average total power consumption of CRNs in each scheduling cycle under the constraint that each Cognitive Radio (CR) user's traffic demand is guaranteed. We consider imperfect spectrum sensing in our problem formulation and address Primary Users (PUs) protection with the interference regulation. We use Dynamic Programming (DP) to solve the formulated problem and derive the optimal rate allocation, routing and spectrum sharing policy for CRNs.

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


SPAN: Finding collaborative frauds in online auctions Fraud is an ongoing concern for online auction websites. Current methods to detect or prevent fraud have been limited in several ways, making them difficult to apply in real world settings. Firstly, existing methods cannot adapt to changes in the behaviour of fraudulent users over time: new models must be continuously constructed as they gradually lose accuracy. In addition, each method can only be used to detect a specific type of fraud. Secondly, existing methods are generally poor at identifying collaborative frauds. And thirdly, method training and evaluation has been limited by the quality of available datasets. We propose an algorithm named SPAN (Score Propagation over an Auction Network), for detecting users committing collaborative fraud that addresses these problems. SPAN is a two phase method that first applies anomaly detection on multiple 2-dimensional feature subspaces to generate an initial anomaly score for each user, then applies belief propagation to revise those scores to identify suspicious groups of users. We report extensive experimental results using synthetic data which shows that SPAN performs well across three different types of fraud, and outperforms a previous approach for collaborative fraud detection called 2-Level Fraud Spotting. Experiments on a real dataset shows that SPAN behaves reasonably, and can identify groups of users that appear anomalous.

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

fraud detection
anomaly detection
belief propagation

online auction fraud
markov random fields


Using a discrete event simulator as real time graphic applications kernel Simulation is often used to solve problems in many areas in the form of problem analysis. Real time graphic applications such as videogames typically use a continuous simulation scheme. This operating scheme has disadvantages that can be avoided by using a discrete event simulator as the application kernel. This paper proposes the integration of a discrete event simulator into a real time graphic application to control the kernel simulation. Using a discrete methodology avoids disorderly event execution or the execution of cancelled events. The use of this methodology involves using events as the method of modeling the system dynamics and the interaction and behavior of the objects.

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


Statistical mixture model for documents skew angle estimation ? We present a statistical approach to skew detection, where the distribution of textual features of document images is modeled as a mixture of straight lines in Gaussian noise. The Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm is used to estimate the parameters of the statistical model and the estimated skew angle is extracted from the estimated parameters. Experiments demonstrate that our method is favorably comparable to other existing methods in terms of accuracy and efficiency.

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

statistical mixture models
expectation maximization (em)
linear least squares


A novel hybridization of artificial neural networks and ARIMA models for time series forecasting Improving forecasting especially time series forecasting accuracy is an important yet often difficult task facing decision makers in many areas. Both theoretical and empirical findings have indicated that integration of different models can be an effective way of improving upon their predictive performance, especially when the models in combination are quite different. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are flexible computing frameworks and universal approximators that can be applied to a wide range of forecasting problems with a high degree of accuracy. However, using ANNs to model linear problems have yielded mixed results, and hence; it is not wise to apply ANNs blindly to any type of data. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models are one of the most popular linear models in time series forecasting, which have been widely applied in order to construct more accurate hybrid models during the past decade. Although, hybrid techniques, which decompose a time series into its linear and nonlinear components, have recently been shown to be successful for single models, these models have some disadvantages. In this paper, a novel hybridization of artificial neural networks and ARIMA model is proposed in order to overcome mentioned limitation of ANNs and yield more general and more accurate forecasting model than traditional hybrid ARIMA-ANNs models. In our proposed model, the unique advantages of ARIMA models in linear modeling are used in order to identify and magnify the existing linear structure in data, and then a neural network is used in order to determine a model to capture the underlying data generating process and predict, using preprocessed data. Empirical results with three well-known real data sets indicate that the proposed model can be an effective way to improve forecasting accuracy achieved by traditional hybrid models and also either of the components models used separately. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

auto-regressive integrated moving average (arima)


Effects of additives in polymer thick film-organic light emitting diodes (PTF-OLED) The optimum composition and film thickness determined for a single-layer organic light emitting diodes (120150cd/m2 at 30mA/cm2) has been determined in one of our previous publication [Display 21 (2001) 199]. In this following study, a series of additives was included in the original composition for the purposes of color tuning, enhancement of the device efficiency as well as the stability of the polymer thick film-organic light emitting diodes (PTF-OLED). The additives attempted including three dyes (rubrene, perylene and DCM), three sensitizers (naphthalene, anthracene and p-terphenyl), several stabilizers (antioxidant and photo-stabilizer) and a number of organic soluble salts known as phase transfer catalyst. Rubrene was found being able to improve the OLED efficiency by 3-fold and its durability by at least 60 times at a concentration of 510pph (in part per hundred of Alq3 replaced). The color of the OLED can also be tuned according to the additional dye used. The sensitizer naphtahlene can also improved the efficiency of the OLED by 2-fold while the effect of the other additives was less significant. In addition, the lowering of the turn-on voltage and thus a higher current efficiency resulted by the addition of a charge injection layer (lithium fluoride or calcium fluoride) in between the cathode and the organic layer. The performance of the doped PTF-OLED is within an order of magnitude compared to a heterojunction small molecule-based OLED.

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

organic light emitting diodes
additives
sensitizers


Biomolecular committor probability calculation enabled by processing in network storage Computationally complex and data intensive atomic scale biomolecular simulation is enabled via processing in network storage (PINS): a novel distributed system framework to overcome bandwidth, compute, storage, organizational, and security challenges inherent to the wide-area computation and storage grid. PINS is presented as an effective and scalable scientific simulation framework to meet the unbounded requirements of a user of infinite need. The novel hybrid databasefilesystem architecture enables the high throughput computation and data generation required by our scientific target. Biomolecular simulation methods are correlated with the primary PINS components, including: client tools, hybrid database/file management service (GEMS), computation engine (Condor), virtual file system adapter (Parrot), and local file servers (Chirp). Performance for the PINS prototype is reported for the committor probability calculation of a solvated protein domain requiring 500 independent simulations and the generation of over 1,000,000 output files.

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

high throughput computing
distributed systems
computational biophysics


Null FoleySammon transform In this paper, an important conclusion for linear discriminant analysis is proved: in the case of the small sample size, (number-of-classes-1) null projection directions (NPDs) do exist, on which, the within-class distance equals zero and the between-class distance is positive. The Null FoleySammon Transform (NFST), which is constituted by NPDs, is also proposed. Its effectiveness is evidenced by experiments on face recognition.

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

linear discriminant analysis
null foleysammon transform

feature extraction
fisher criterion
foleysammon transform


advanced techniques for the creation and propagation of modules in cartesian genetic programming The choice of an appropriate hardware representation model is key to successful evolution of digital circuits. One of the most popular models is cartesian genetic programming, which encodes an array of logic gates into a chromosome. While several smaller circuits have been successfully evolved on this model, it lacks scalability. A recent approach towards scalable hardware evolution is based on the automated creation of modules from primitive gates. In this paper, we present two novel approaches for module creation, an age-based and a cone-based technique. Further, we detail a cone-based crossover operator for use with cartesian genetic programming. We evaluate the different techniques and compare them with related work. The results show that age-based module creation is highly effective, while cone-based approaches are only beneficial for regularly structured, multiple output functions such as multipliers.

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

module acquisition
automatically defined functions (adfs)
cartesian genetic programming (cgp)


Searching for Coexpressed Genes in Three-Color cDNA Microarray Data Using a Probabilistic Model-Based Hough Transform The effects of a drug on the genomic scale can be assessed in a three-color cDNA microarray with the three color intensities represented through the so-called hexaMplot. In our recent study, we have shown that the Hough Transform (HT) applied to the hexaMplot can be used to detect groups of coexpressed genes in the normal-disease-drug samples. However, the standard HT is not well suited for the purpose because 1) the assayed genes need first to be hard-partitioned into equally and differentially expressed genes, with HT ignoring possible information in the former group; 2) the hexaMplot coordinates are negatively correlated and there is no direct way of expressing this in the standard HT and 3) it is not clear how to quantify the association of coexpressed genes with the line along which they cluster. We address these deficiencies by formulating a dedicated probabilistic model-based HT. The approach is demonstrated by assessing effects of the drug Rg1 on homocysteine-treated human umbilical vein endothetial cells. Compared with our previous study, we robustly detect stronger natural groupings of coexpressed genes. Moreover, the gene groups show coherent biological functions with high significance, as detected by the Gene Ontology analysis.

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

three-color cdna microarray
probabilistic hough transform
gene coexpression


Position-Invariant Robust Features for Long-Term Recognition of Dynamic Outdoor Scenes A novel Position-Invariant Robust Feature, designated as PIRF, is presented to address the problem of highly dynamic scene recognition. The PIRF is obtained by identifying existing local features (i.e. SIFT) that have a wide baseline visibility within a place (one place contains more than one sequential images). These wide-baseline visible features are then represented as a single PIRF, which is computed as an average of all descriptors associated with the PIRF. Particularly, PIRFs are robust against highly dynamical changes in scene: a single PIRF can be matched correctly against many features from many dynamical images. This paper also describes an approach to using these features for scene recognition. Recognition proceeds by matching an individual PIRF to a set of features from test images, with subsequent majority voting to identify a place with the highest matched PIRF. The PIRF system is trained and tested on 2000+ outdoor omnidirectional images and on COLD datasets. Despite its simplicity, PIRF offers a markedly better rate of recognition for dynamic outdoor scenes (ca. 90%) than the use of other features. Additionally, a robot navigation system based on PIRF (PIRF-Nav) can outperform other incremental topological mapping methods in terms of time (70% less) and memory. The number of PIRFs can be reduced further to reduce the time while retaining high accuracy, which makes it suitable for long-term recognition and localization.

O O O O 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 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 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

scale invariant feature transformation (sift)


Quality function deployment implementation based on analytic network process with linguistic data: An application in automotive industry Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a cross-functional planning tool, which is used to ensure that the voice of the customer is deployed throughout the product planning and design stages. The QFD process involves various inputs in the form of linguistic data, e.g., human perception, judgment, and evaluation on importance or relationship strength. Such data are usually ambiguous and uncertain. This paper aims to implement of QFD under a fuzzy environment. In addition, the analytic network process (ANP), the general form of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used, to prioritize design requirements by taking into account the degree of the interdependence between the customer needs and design requirements and the inner dependence among them. The developed approach is used to study the basic product planning stage of a car design.

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


An efficient simplex type algorithm for sparse and dense linear programs We present a big-M method for solving general linear programming problems with a recently developed exterior point simplex algorithm (EPSA). We also provide intuitive motivations to EPSA. We describe major steps in implementing EPSA for large-scale linear programming. Our implementation was carried out under the MATLAB environment. This algorithm seems to be more efficient than the classical primal simplex algorithm (PSA), employing Dantzigs rule. Preliminary computational studies on randomly generated sparse and dense small and medium linear programs support this belief. In particular, EPSA is up to 10 times faster than PSA on medium size linear programs. This translates into corresponding savings in CPU time. Although the computational effort required in each step of EPSA requires more time compared to an iteration step of PSA, the improvement of EPSA comes from the fact that it requires adequately less iterations than PSA. Moreover, as the problem size increases and the problem density decreases, EPSA gets relatively faster.

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

simplex type algorithms
big-m method
algorithm evaluation
numerical experiments


Independent Domination in Cubic Graphs A set S of vertices in a graph G is an independent dominating set of G if S is an independent set and every vertex not in S is adjacent to a vertex inS. The independent domination number of G, denoted by, is the minimum cardinality of an independent dominating set. In this article, we show that if is a connected cubic graph of ordern that does not have a subgraph isomorphic to K2, 3, then . As a consequence of our main result, we deduce Reed's important result [Combin Probab Comput 5 (1996), 277295] that if G is a cubic graph of ordern, then , where denotes the domination number of G.

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

independent domination number
domination number


Path based algorithms for metro network design We propose a flexible and modular heuristic for the planning of metro networks. Two criteria are optimized jointly: population coverage and construction cost. Non-dominated lines are generated within corridors specified by the planners. These lines are then assembled into a network through mathematical programming. The algorithm is intuitive, flexible and computationally efficient.

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

path based algorithm
bicriteria optimization


Effectiveness of the global modulus of continuity on metric spaces In the "delta-epsilon" - definition of continuity of a function f between metric spaces, the value of delta depends on x, epsilon and function f as well. This kind of dependence can be described by a function, so called, "global modulus of continuity", which maps the triple (f,x, epsilon) to corresponding delta. By a recent result of Repovs and Semenov (Proc. Int. Conf. Topol. (Trieste, 1993), G. Gentili (Ed.), Rent. Ist. Mat. Univ. Trieste, vol. 25, 1993, pp. 441-446), there is a continuous global modulus of continuity for the function space C(X, Y) of all continuous functions from a locally compact metric space X to an arbitrary metric space Y. Based on Weihrauch's framework on computable metric spaces (K. Weihrauch, Theoret. Comput. Sci. 113 (1993) 191-210), we show that there is a computable global modulus of continuity for C(X, Y), if X is an "effectively locally compact" metric space and Y is a computable metric space. The proof is a direct construction not depending on the proof of Repovs and Semenov. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

computable metric space
global modulus of continuity


Rehearsing Naval Tactical Situations Using Simulated Teammates and an Automated Tutor This paper describes a deployed simulation-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) for training of Tactical Action Officers (TAOs). The TAO on board a Navy ship is responsible for the operation of the entire watch team manning the ship's command center. The ITS goal is to train the TAO in "command by negation," in which watchstanders perform their duties autonomously, while the TAO supervises, intervening in order to correct mistakes and rectify omissions. The ITS uses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to provide Automated Role Players (ARPs) representing the watchstanders in the ship, and to provide a Natural Language interface to communicate with these automated teammates. An adaptive coaching strategy is used to provide coaching and feedback during an exercise. The paper presents a discussion of the ITS instructional design, its architecture, and the AI techniques it employs.

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

artificial intelligence applications
computer-assisted instruction
intelligent tutoring systems


Six strategies for generalizing software engineering theories General theories of software engineering must balance between providing full understanding of a single case and providing partial understanding of many cases. In this paper we argue that for theories to be useful in practice, they should give sufficient understanding of a sufficiently large class of cases, without having to be universal or complete. We provide six strategies for developing such theories of the middle range. In lab-to-lab strategies, theories of laboratory phenomena are developed and generalized to other laboratory phenomena. This is a characteristic strategy for basic science. In lab-to-field strategies, theories are developed of artifacts that first operate under idealized laboratory conditions, which are then scaled up until they can operate under uncontrolled field conditions. This is the characteristic strategy for the engineering sciences. In case-based strategies, we generalize about components of real-world cases, that are supposed to exhibit less variation than the cases as a whole. In sample-based strategies, we generalize about the aggregate behavior of samples of cases, which can exhibit patterns not visible at the case level. We discuss three examples of sample-based strategies. Throughout the paper, we use examples of theories and generalization strategies from software engineering to illustrate our analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of related work and implications for empirical software engineering research.

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

external validity
scaling up
architectural mechanisms
statistical inference


THE EFFECTS OF THE BEYOND MEAN FIELD CORRECTIONS OF FERMI SUPERFLUID GAS IN A DOUBLE-WELL POTENTIAL By considering the contribution of the higher-order term representing the lowest approximation of beyond mean field corrections, we investigate a superfluid Fermi gas confined in a double-well potential in Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) side of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to BEC crossover. Two limited cases of deep BEC regime and BEC regime of BCS-BEC crossover, corresponding to the two-body scattering length a(sc) is small enough and large enough, respectively. We derive a simple two-mode model that could depict the dynamics effectively. With making thorough analysis on the two-mode model and its corresponding classical Hamiltonian, we find that the Josephson oscillation or self-trapping phenomenon could emerge at certain parameters. We find three kinds of the phase states: Josephson oscillation (JO), oscillating-phase-type self-trapping (OPTST) and running-phase-type self-trapping (RPTST). The dependence of these three phase states on the dimensionless interaction parameter y = 1/(k(F)a(sc)) and the initial system energy are given in this paper.

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

self-trapping phenomenon
double-well potential


HIGH-PERFORMANCE THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION FOR MOLECULAR STRUCTURE DETERMINATION We describe an efficient parallel implementation of a reliable iterative reconstruction algorithm for estimating the three-dimensional (3D) density map of a macromolecular complex from a large number of two-dimensional (2D) cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) images. Our algorithm is based on a hybrid regularization approach first developed by Bjorck and O'Leary-Simmons. Our implementation uses a special data structure to represent the 3D density map to improve data locality in the reconstruction computation. Our parallelization strategy allows both 2D images and 3D data to be distributed on a 2D processor grid. We have used our implementation successfully on several datasets of different sizes, and we are able to achieve scalable parallel performance on a distributed memory cluster using over 15,000 CPUs for the largest dataset.

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

cryo-em
3d image reconstruction
parallel computing


A mixed-integer programming formulation for the general capacitated lot-sizing problem A new mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation is presented for the production planning of single-stage multi-product processes. The problem is formulated as a multi-item capacitated lot-sizing problem in which (a) multiple items can be produced in each planning period, (b) sequence-independent set-ups can carry over from previous periods, (c) set-ups can cross over planning period boundaries, and (d) set-ups can be longer than one period. The formulation is extended to model time periods of non-uniform length, idle time, parallel units, families of products, backlogged demand, and lost sales. (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 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

multi-item capacitated lot sizing
mixed-integer programming
set-up carry over
set-up cross over


Improving evaluation criteria for monitoring networks of weak radioactive plumes after nuclear emergencies Networks of monitoring stations have been set up in many European countries to detect the passage of a radioactive cloud in the event of a large-scale nuclear emergency. The layout and spatial density of these networks differs according to the needs and criteria defined by national authorities. Germany and the Netherlands decided to set up relatively dense networks for the detection of weak radioactive plumes and, additionally, environmental radioactivity from deposited aerosols. Plausible evaluation criteria are presented here to assess important properties which determine the reliability and efficiency of sections of these networks. As a test case the existing sampling design of the Dutch and German networks with 193 sensors in an area of 200km around the nuclear power plant near the city of Lingen (Emsland) in the German federal state of Lower Saxony has been selected. For a hypothetical accident scenario 292 radioactive plumes have been simulated which are shaped by recorded weather conditions of the year 2007. To quantify the network performance frequency distributions of the proposed evaluation parameters have been analyzed. Simulation results show that 95% of the plumes are detected within 4h after the release. Maximal values of the ?-dose rate 1m above the ground mostly occur near the source within a radius of 5km. However, under certain weather conditions maximal ground values may also be found more than 50km away from the source. Within a circle of radius 90km 98% of the recorded maximal ?-dose rates of the plumes were found by 62% of the 193 sensors. But only in a joint network of German and Dutch sensors all simulated plumes triggered an alarm. This result encourages efforts of close international collaboration, e.g. between EU member states, in network design and operation. Test series which involved the removal of sensors either randomly or in a controlled way showed that the network configuration is fit for the intended purpose of detecting a large majority of plumes. But already a small reduction in the number of sensors would degrade the performance. Whereas the joint network triggers alarms reliably, it fails to detect the true plume maxima. The assessment criteria can be used for a revision of existing networks or for planning purposes in countries such as those applying for EU membership.

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


A 200-mA, 93% peak power efficiency, single-inductor, dual-output DC-DC buck converter A single-inductor dual-output (SIDO) DC-DC buck converter is presented. The circuit uses only one (external) inductor to provide two independent output voltages ranging from 1.2 V to the power supply (2.6-5 V) with a maximum total output current of 200 mA. The proposed converter has been fabricated in a 0.35-mu m p-substrate CMOS technology. Measurement results demonstrate that a peak power efficiency as high as 93.3% can be achieved. An automatic substrate bias switch technique, that cancels the body effect of the p-channel output power transistors, improves the converter power efficiency performance.

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

dc-dc converters
single-inductor dual-output


Multi-agent framework for third party logistics in E-commerce ? In an e-commerce environment, the third party logistics (3PL) takes charge of the logistics design, delivery, storage and transportation in a supply chain with its professional and complete value-added services. Beginning with an analysis of the relationships between the 3PL and supply chain members, the authors suggest that only when the 3PL reengineers its logistics business process to accommodate the customer could it maximize the value of the customer. Finally, five intelligent agents, order management agent, logistics process reengineering agent, resource scheduling agent, dynamic union management agent and simulating and evaluating agent are designed to form an e-commerce based 3PL system which, with the collaboration of the five agents, could construct a virtual private logistics teamwork suitable for a certain customer's need and furthermore, realize the winwin between the customer and the logistics service vendor.

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

third party logistics (3pl)
e-commerce
business process reengineering
multi-agent


the implication and finite implication problems for typed template dependencies The class of typed template dependencies is a class of data dependencies that includes embedded multivalued and join dependencies. We show that the implication and the finite implication problems for this class are unsolvable. An immediate corollary is that this class has no formal system for finite implication. We also show how to construct a finite set of typed template dependencies whose implication and finite implication problems are unsolvable.The class of simple template dependencies is a proper subclass of the above class, and it generalizes slightly embedded join dependencies. It is shown that the implication and the finite implication problems for this class are also unsolvable. An immediate corollary is that this class has no formal system for either implication or finite implication.

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

systems
formalism
data dependence
embedding


using the burks 2 cd-rom in a principles of programming languages course In this paper, we describe the use of the BURKS 2 CD-ROM in a principles of programming languages course. The CD-ROM contains compilers and documentation for many programming languages. The course described in this paper emphasises principles and paradigms of languages rather than the details of one or two specific languages.

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


A proof of the invariance of the contact angle in electrowetting We prove the invariance of the contact angle in liquid-solid electrowetting phenomena: an electrified droplet is spreading on a solid surface. The drop minimizes its energy. We express the differential of this energy with respect to the shape of the drop and deduce necessary conditions for optimality. By variational methods, using well-chosen test functions, we obtain the main result about the contact angle between the drop and the solid. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A branch and bound algorithm for the cyclic job-shop problem with transportation The cyclic job-shop problem with transportation can be used to describe optimization problems in fully automated manufacturing systems or assembly lines. We study the problem where the machines have no buffers, which rapidly decreases the number of feasible solutions and, therefore, makes it a lot harder to find those feasible solutions. After formulating the problem, we will characterize feasible solutions based on the route of the robot and their properties. With the aim of minimizing the cycle time, we have developed a tree search method to construct feasible solutions and combined it with a bounding procedure. Computational results are reported and compared to those gained by solving the problem with an LP solver.

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

cyclic job-shop
transport
blocking
minimal cycle time


a practical approach of memory access parallelization to exploit multiple off-chip ddr memories 3D stacked memory enables more off-chip DDR memories. Redesigning existing IPs to exploit the increased memory parallelism will be prohibitively costly. In our work, we propose a practical approach to exploit the increased bandwidth and reduced latency of multiple off-chip DDR memories while reusing existing IPs without modification. The proposed approach is based on two new concepts: transaction id renaming and distributed soft arbitration. We present two on-chip network components, request parallelizer and read data serializer, to realize the concepts. Experiments with synthetic test cases and an industrial strength DTV SoC design show that the proposed approach gives significant improvements in total execution cycle (21.6\%) and average memory access latency (31.6\%) in the DTV case with a small area overhead (30.1\% in the on-chip network, and less than 1.4\% in the entire chip).

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

network latency test industrial exploit memory design arbitration data parallelization bandwidth case access distributed read practical transaction


Control approach for high sensitivity cardiopulmonary exercise testing during stimulated cycle ergometry in spinal cord injured subjects People with complete lower-limb paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury (SCI) can perform cycle ergometry by means of functional electrical stimulation. Here, we propose and evaluate new exercise testing methods for estimation of cardiopulmonary performance parameters during this form of exercise. We utilised a customised ergometer incorporating feedback control of stimulated exercise workrate and cycling cadence. This allowed the imposition of arbitrary workrate profiles with high precision with the potential for improved sensitivity in exercise testing. New incremental exercise test (IET) and step exercise test (SET) protocols for determination of peak and steady-state performance parameters were assessed. The IET protocol allowed reliable determination of the ventilatory threshold, peak workrate and oxygen uptake-workrate relationship, but gave unrepresentative peak oxygen uptake values and highly variable measures of oxygen uptake kinetics. The SET protocol gave reliable estimation of steady-state oxygen uptake and metabolic efficiency of constant load exercise, but high variability in the estimation of oxygen uptake kinetics. The feedback-controlled testbed and the new IET and SET protocols have the potential for estimation of cardiopulmonary performance parameters with improved sensitivity during stimulated cycle ergometry in subjects with SCI.

O 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 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


Gauging human mobility characteristics and its impact on mobile routing performance A new generation of 'behaviour-aware' services are emerging, defining the future mobile social networks. It is important for current mobility models to capture mobile users' behavioural characteristics and also reproduce their effects on the performance of networking protocols. Recent work in mobility modelling focused on replicating metrics of encounter statistics and spatio-temporal preferences. In this study, we attempt to show the sufficiency (or inadequacy) of these mobility metrics in reproducing realistic performance of networking protocols. We provide three main findings: (a) careful parameterisation of the models can replicate mobility metrics; (b) a rich set of communities in real mobile societies exist with distinct behavioural clusters of users; (c) even carefully crafted models surprisingly result in structural dynamics and protocol performance that is dramatically different from the trace-driven performance. These findings strongly suggest a need to re-visit mobility modelling to incorporate accurate behavioural characteristics.

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

encounter statistics
mobility models
mobile societies

delay tolerant network
protocol testing
similarity


An automated method for the detection of pulmonary embolism in V/Q-scans In this paper, a fully automatic method for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE) from V/Q-scans is presented. Image analysis is applied to the ventilation and the perfusion images obtained in the V/Q-scan. The difference of the ventilation and the perfusion is calculated after transformation and hot-spot reduction of the images. From this difference image the integral of the underperfused areas are used as features. With the aid of these features a simple test for PE is devised. The method is evaluated on two sets of patients. One set comprises 102 patients who have undergone both V/Q-scanning and angiography. The performance given as the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve is 0.85. Another set is made up by the 507 consecutive patients examined with V/Q-scanning at Lund University Hospital in Sweden. In this case, the reference was the consensus opinion of two radiologists, the ROC-area is 0.67. A fully automatic and reasonably robust expert system is developed to aid the radiologist in the interpretation of V/Q-scans for PE.

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


Validating visual clusters in large datasets: fixed point clusters of spectral features Finding clusters in large datasets is a difficult task. Almost all computationally feasible methods are related to k-means and need a clear partition structure of the data, while most such datasets contain masking outliers and other deviations from the usual models of partitioning cluster analysis. It is possible to look for clusters informally using graphic tools like the grand tour, but the meaning and the validity of such patterns is unclear. In this paper, a three-step-approach is suggested: In the first step, data visualization methods like the grand tour are used to find cluster candidate subsets of the data. In the second step, reproducible clusters are generated from them by means of fixed point clustering, a method to find a single cluster at a time based on the Mahalanobis distance. In the third step, the validity of the clusters is assessed by the use of classification plots. The approach is applied to an astronomical dataset of spectra from the Hamburg/ESO survey.

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

discriminant coordinates
contamination model
sky surveys
stellar populations


Retrieval constraints and word frequency distributions a log-logistic model for IR We first present in this paper an analytical view of heuristic retrieval constraints which yields simple tests to determine whether a retrieval function satisfies the constraints or not. We then review empirical findings on word frequency distributions and the central role played by burstiness in this context. This leads us to propose a formal definition of burstiness which can be used to characterize probability distributions with respect to this phenomenon. We then introduce the family of information-based IR models which naturally captures heuristic retrieval constraints when the underlying probability distribution is bursty and propose a new IR model within this family, based on the log-logistic distribution. The experiments we conduct on several collections illustrate the good behavior of the log-logistic IR model: It significantly outperforms the Jelinek-Mercer and Dirichlet prior language models on most collections we have used, with both short and long queries and for both the MAP and the precision at 10 documents. It also compares favorably to BM25 and has similar performance to classical DFR models such as InL2 and PL2.

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

information retrieval theory
log-logistic distribution


Analysis of Electrical Industrial Systems Using Probabilistic Networks This paper presents a methodology in order to evaluate the security of electrical industrial systems considering security, quality, reliability and availability factors and the system response to sudden disturbances such as short circuit and harmonics. The models proposed using the probabilistic networks theory: Bayesian Networks and Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets. The obtained results allow the identification of hidden failures and erroneus coordination of protection. The models are tested on the IEEE 493 system proposed by the IEEE Gold Book.

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


Fuzzy random renewal process and renewal reward process So far, there have been several concepts about fuzzy random variables and their expected values in literature. One of the concepts defined by Liu and Liu (2003a) is that the fuzzy random variable is a measurable function from a probability space to a collection of fuzzy variables and its expected value is described as a scalar number. Based on the concepts, this paper addresses two processes-fuzzy random renewal process and fuzzy random renewal reward process. In the fuzzy random renewal process, the interarrival times are characterized as fuzzy random variables and a fuzzy random elementary renewal theorem on the limit value of the expected renewal rate of the process is presented. In the fuzzy random renewal reward process, both the interarrival times and rewards are depicted as fuzzy random variables and a fuzzy random renewal reward theorem on the limit value of the long-run expected reward per unit time is provided. The results obtained in this paper coincide with those in stochastic case or in fuzzy case when the fuzzy random variables degenerate to random variables or to fuzzy variables.

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

renewal process
renewal reward process
fuzzy random variable

fuzzy variable
stochastic renewal process


Detection of highly articulated moving objects by using co-segmentation with application to athletic video sequences In this paper, we adapt the co-segmentation for the fundamental problem of segmenting automatically and accurately highly articulated athletes in a large variety of poses without any initialization or prior knowledge. Our intention is to reduce the complexity of athlete segmentation by formulating it as a constrained 2D pair of frames co-segmentation, in order to extract the common foreground objects under unconstrained environments without any user input. In fact, the co-segmentation allows to integrate implicitly the temporal information for automatic moving object segmentation without any assumption or prior knowledge on camera motion. The proposed method was applied on various real-world video sequences of athletic sports meetings, and promising results are obtained. Experiments show that suggested method witnessed a significant improvement over background subtraction methods, which are commonly used for athlete segmentation.

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

video-based analysis of athlete action
co-segmentation


Identification of the state-space dynamics of oil flames through computer vision and modal techniques This paper presents a new approach to estimate unstable flame dynamics. Computer vision processed images from CCD cameras provide a discriminant characteristic vector. A four-degree-of-freedom second order model is identified through Operational Modal Analysis. Unstable and stable flame models are cross-validated through spectral analysis. The method is capable of predicting flame extinction.

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

artificial intelligence image processing


Sound and Extensible Renaming for Java Descriptive names are crucial to understand code. However, good names are notoriously hard to choose and manually changing a globally visible name can be a maintenance nightmare. Hence, tool support for automated renaming is an essential aid for developers and widely supported by popular development environments. This work improves on two limitations in current refactoring tools: too weak preconditions that lead to unsoundness where names do not bind to the correct declarations after renaming, and too strong preconditions that prevent renaming of certain programs. We identify two main reasons for unsoundness: complex name lookup rules make it hard to define sufficient preconditions, and new language features require additional preconditions. We alleviate both problems by presenting a novel extensible technique for creating symbolic names that are guaranteed to bind to a desired entity in a particular context by inverting lookup functions. The inverted lookup functions can then be tailored to create qualified names where otherwise a conflict would occur, allowing the refactoring to proceed and improve on the problem with too strong preconditions. We have implemented renaming for Java as an extension to the JastAdd Extensible Java Compiler and integrated it in Eclipse. We show examples for which other refactoring engines have too weak preconditions, as well as examples where our approach succeeds in renaming entities by inserting qualifications. To validate the extensibility of the approach we have implemented renaming support for Java 5 and AspectJ like inter-type declarations as modular extensions to the initial Java 1.4 refactoring engine. The renaming engine is only a few thousand lines of code including extensions and performance is on par with industrial strength refactoring tools.

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

languages
name analysis
extensible compilers


large-scale behavioral targeting with a social twist Behavioral targeting (BT) is a widely used technique for online advertising. It leverages information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as page views, search queries and ad clicks, to select the ads most relevant to user to display. With the proliferation of social networks, it is possible to relate the behavior of individuals and their social connections. Although the similarity among connected individuals are well established (i.e., homophily), it is still not clear whether and how we can leverage the activities of one's friends for behavioral targeting; whether forecasts derived from such social information are more accurate than standard behavioral targeting models. In this paper, we strive to answer these questions by evaluating the predictive power of social data across 60 consumer domains on a large online network of over 180 million users in a period of two and a half months. To our best knowledge, this is the most comprehensive study of social data in the context of behavioral targeting on such an unprecedented scale. Our analysis offers interesting insights into the value of social data for developing the next generation of targeting services.

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

social targeting
large-scale data mining
social-network analysis