A Shape Reconstructability Measure of Object Part Importance with Applications to Object Detection and Localization We propose a computational model which computes the importance of 2-D object shape parts, and we apply it to detect and localize objects with and without occlusions. The importance of a shape part (a localized contour fragment) is considered from the perspective of its contribution to the perception and recognition of the global shape of the object. Accordingly, the part importance measure is defined based on the ability to estimate/recall the global shapes of objects from the local part, namely the parts shape reconstructability. More precisely, the shape reconstructability of a part is determined by two factorspart variation and part uniqueness. (i) Part variation measures the precision of the global shape reconstruction, i.e. the consistency of the reconstructed global shape with the true object shape; and (ii) part uniqueness quantifies the ambiguity of matching the part to the object, i.e. taking into account that the part could be matched to the object at several different locations. Taking both these factors into consideration, an information theoretic formulation is proposed to measure part importance by the conditional entropy of the reconstruction of the object shape from the part. Experimental results demonstrate the benefit with the proposed part importance in object detection, including the improvement of detection rate, localization accuracy, and detection efficiency. By comparing with other state-of-the-art object detectors in a challenging but common scenario, object detection with occlusions, we show a considerable improvement using the proposed importance measure, with the detection rate increased over \(10~\%\). On a subset of the challenging PASCAL dataset, the Interpolated Average Precision (as used in the PASCAL VOC challenge) is improved by 48%. Moreover, we perform a psychological experiment which provides evidence suggesting that humans use a similar measure for part importance when perceiving and recognizing shapes.

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

shape part
part importance
shape reconstruction


In situ fabrication of a poly-acrylamide membrane in a microfluidic channel We present a novel technological approach for the in situ realization of a micron-thin poly-acrylamide membrane in the center of a microfluidic channel. The membrane is formed by interfacial polymerization of an inner stream of monomer solution in between two streams of initiator/catalyst solution in a hydrodynamic focusing chip. 20?m thick SU-8 structures are used to replicate the chip in poly dimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The chip is fitted within an adaptor allowing easy fluidic connections, temperature control and optical monitoring under a microscope. With this system, we can easily tune the internal stream width from 5 to 100?m, by varying the internal/external flow ratio.

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

hydrodynamic focusing
interfacial polymerization


Enhanced colliding bodies optimization for design problems with continuous and discrete variables A new multi-agent algorithm inspired by a collision between two objects in one-dimension is presented. An enhanced colliding bodies optimization which uses memory to save some best solutions is developed. A mechanism is utilized to escape from local optima. Performance of the proposed algorithm is compared to those of standard CBO and some optimization techniques.

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

enhanced colliding bodies optimization (ecbo)


detecting online commercial intention (oci) Understanding goals and preferences behind a user's online activities can greatly help information providers, such as search engine and E-Commerce web sites, to personalize contents and thus improve user satisfaction. Understanding a user's intention could also provide other business advantages to information providers. For example, information providers can decide whether to display commercial content based on user's intent to purchase. Previous work on Web search defines three major types of user search goals for search queries: navigational, informational and transactional or resource [1][7]. In this paper, we focus our attention on capturing commercial intention from search queries and Web pages, i.e., when a user submits the query or browse a Web page, whether he/she is about to commit or in the middle of a commercial activity, such as purchase, auction, selling, paid service, etc. We call the commercial intentions behind a user's online activities as OCI (Online Commercial Intention). We also propose the notion of "Commercial Activity Phase" (CAP), which identifies in which phase a user is in his/her commercial activities: Research or Commit. We present the framework of building machine learning models to learn OCI based on any Web page content. Based on that framework, we build models to detect OCI from search queries and Web pages. We train machine learning models from two types of data sources for a given search query: content of algorithmic search result page(s) and contents of top sites returned by a search engine. Our experiments show that the model based on the first data source achieved better performance. We also discover that frequent queries are more likely to have commercial intention. Finally we propose our future work in learning richer commercial intention behind users' online activities.

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

help
framework
online commercial intention
oci
user satisfaction
goals
performance
browse
model
paper
business
user
online
search
attention
research
users
web page
types
auction
intention
data
queries
machine learning
commit
learning
future
resource
query

understandability
activation
search intention
paging
examples
personality
experience
informal
preference
training
svm
web search
contention
search engine
web site
transaction


Easy doesnt do it: skill and expression in tangible aesthetics In this paper, we articulate the role of movement within a perceptual-motor view of tangible interaction. We argue that the history of humanproduct interaction design has exhibited an increasing neglect of the intrinsic importance of movement. On one hand, humanproduct interaction design has shown little appreciation in practice of the centrality of our bodily engagement in the world. This has resulted in technologies that continue to place demands on our cognitive abilities, and deny us the opportunity of building bodily skill. On the other hand, the potential for movement in products to be a meaningful component of our interaction with them has also been ignored. Both of these directions (design for bodily engagement and the expressiveness of product movements) are sketched out, paying particular respect for their potential to impact both interaction aesthetics and usability. We illustrate a number of these ideas with examples.

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

movement
tangible interaction
aesthetics
expression


RLC coupling-aware simulation and on-chip bus encoding for delay reduction This paper shows. that the worst case switching pattern that incurs the longest bus delay While considering the RLC effect is quite different from that while considering the RC effect alone. It implies that the existing encoding schemes based on the RC model may not improve or possibly worsen the delay when the inductance effects become dominant. A bus-invert method is also proposed to reduce the on-chip bus delay based on the RLC model. Simulation results show that the proposed encoding scheme significantly reduces the worst case coupling delay of the inductance-dominated buses.

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

coupling
inductance
worst case switching pattern


Studying knowledge management in information systems research: Discourses and theoretical assumptions In information systems, most research on knowledge management assumes that knowledge has positive implications for organizations. However, knowledge is a double-edged sword: while too little might result in expensive mistakes, too much might result in unwanted accountability. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the lack of attention paid to the unintended consequences of managing organizational knowledge and thereby to broaden the scope of IS-based knowledge management research. To this end, this paper analyzes the IS literature on knowledge management. Using a framework developed by Deetz (1996), research articles published between 1990 and 2000 in six IS journals are classified into one of four scientific discourses. These discourses are the normative, the interpretive, the critical, and the dialogic. For each of these discourses, we identify the research focus, the metaphors of knowledge, the theoretical foundations, and the implications apparent in the articles representing it. The metaphors of knowledge that emerge from this analysis are knowledge as object, asset, mind, commodity, and discipline. Furthermore, we present a paper that is exemplary of each discourse. Our objective with this analysis is to raise IS researchers' awareness of the potential and the implications of the different discourses in the study of knowledge and knowledge management.

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


Partial Information Network Queries ? Introducing the Partial Information Network Query (PINQ) problem. Developing a parameterized algorithm for PINQ. For topology-free network queries: improving upon previous running times. For two types of alignment network queries: improving upon previous running times.

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

partial information network query (pinq)


Rule-based and case-based reasoning approach for internal audit of bank Banks currently have a great interest in internal audits to reduce risks, to prevent themselves from insolvency, and to take quick action for financial incidents. This study presents an integrated audit approach of rule-based and case-based reasoning, which includes two stages of reasoning, i.e., screening stage based on rule-based reasoning and auditing stage based on case-based reasoning. Rule-based reasoning uses induction rules to determine whether a new problem should be inspected further or not. Case-based reasoning performs similarity-based matching to find the most similar case in case base to the new problem. The method presented is applied to data of internal audits of a bank.

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


Under-approximating loops in C programs for fast counterexample detection Many software model checkers only detect counterexamples with deep loops after exploring numerous spurious and increasingly longer counterexamples. We propose a technique that aims at eliminating this weakness by constructing auxiliary paths that represent the effect of a range of loop iterations. Unlike acceleration, which captures the exact effect of arbitrarily many loop iterations, these auxiliary paths may under-approximate the behaviour of the loops. In return, the approximation is sound with respect to the bit-vector semantics of programs. Our approach supports arbitrary conditions and assignments to arrays in the loop body, but may as a result introduce quantified conditionals. To reduce the resulting performance penalty, we present two quantifier elimination techniques specially geared towards our application. Loop under-approximation can be combined with a broad range of verification techniques. We paired our techniques with lazy abstraction and bounded model checking, and evaluated the resulting tool on a number of buffer overflow benchmarks, demonstrating its ability to efficiently detect deep counterexamples in C programs that manipulate arrays.

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

model checking
underapproximation
counterexamples


Robust MIMO radar target localization via nonconvex optimization This communication addresses the problem of robust target localization in distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar using possibly outlier range measurements. To achieve robustness against outliers, we construct an objective function for MIMO target localization via the maximum correntropy criterion. To deal with such a nonconvex and nonlinear function, we apply a half-quadratic optimization technique to determine the target position and auxiliary variables alternately. Especially, we derive a semidefinite relaxation formulation for the aforementioned position determination step. The robust performance of the developed approach is demonstrated by comparing with several conventional localization methods via computer simulation.

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

target localization
nonconvex optimization
semidefinite relaxation
maximum correntropy criterion

multiple-input multiple-output (mimo) radar


Plant invasions across the Northern Hemisphere: a deep-time perspective Few invasion biologists consider the long-term evolutionary context of an invading organism and its invaded ecosystem. Here, I consider patterns of plant invasions across Eastern North America, Europe, and East/Far East Asia, and explore whether biases in exchanges of plants from each region reflect major selection pressures present within each region since the late Miocene, during which temperate Northern Hemisphere floras diverged taxonomically and ecologically. Although there are many exceptions, the European flora appears enriched in species well adapted to frequent, intense disturbances such as cultivation and grazing; the North American composite (Asteraceae) flora appears particularly well adapted to nutrient-rich meadows and forest openings; and the East Asian flora is enriched in shade-tolerant trees, shrubs, and vines of high forest-invasive potential. I argue that such directionality in invasions across different habitat types supports the notion that some species are preadapted to become invasive as a result of differences in historical selection pressures between regions.

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

preadaptation
naturalized plants
invasion biology


On classification with bags, groups and sets Many classification tasks are not entirely suitable for supervised learning. Instead of individual feature vectors, bags of feature vectors can be considered. Many learning scenarios with bags in training and/or test phase have been proposed. We provide an overview and taxonomy of these learning scenarios.

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

multiple instance learning
set classification
group-based classification
label dependencies
weakly labeled data


Technological support for the enactment of collaborative scripted learning activities across multiple spatial locations Support for Computer Supported Collaborative Blended Learning scripts is proposed. Requirements are: replicability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability. The system integrates several technologies and derives a more general architecture. An experiment, based on a previous script, was conducted to validate the proposal. The findings show that the script reduces the management workload.

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

cscl scripts
orchestration
ims learning design
service integration
case study


unboundedly parallel simulations via recurrence relations New methods are presented for parallel simulation of discrete event systems that, when applicable, can usefully employ a number of processors much larger than the number of objects in the system being simulated. Abandoning the distributed event list approach, the simulation problem is posed using recurrence relations. We bring three algorithmic ideas to bear on parallel simulation: parallel prefix computation, parallel merging , and iterative folding . Efficient parallel simulations are given for (in turn) the G/G/1 queue, a variety of queueing networks having a global first come first served structure (e.g., a series of queues with finite buffers), acyclic networks of queues, and networks of queues with feedbacks and cycles. In particular, the problem of simulating the arrival and departure times for the first N jobs to a single G/G/1 queue is solved in time proportional to N/P + log P using P processors.

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

queueing networks
structure
simulation
systems
log
event
parallel
computation
queue
distributed
buffers
global

network
processor
method
efficiency
parallel simulation
object
timing
feedback


Assembly and disassembly: An overview and framework for cooperation requirement planning with conflict resolution Assembly, one of the oldest forms of industrial production, and its twin area, disassembly, have enjoyed tremendous modernization in the era of the information revolution. New enabling technologies, including prominent examples such as virtual CAD, Design for Assembly and Disassembly ( DFAD), robotic and intelligent assembly, and Flexible Assembly ( FA), are now becoming commonplace. This article reviews some of the newer solutions, and an extended framework for Cooperation Requirement Planning (ECRP) in robotic assembly/ disassembly is developed. Recent research under the PRISM program at Purdue University to enable ECRP and other relevant projects is presented. The challenges to researchers in this field, in adapting these solutions to the emerging environment of global and local supply networks are also discussed.

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

error recovery
artificial intelligence
design for disassembly


Robust optimisation for self-scheduling and bidding strategies of hybrid CSPfossil power plants A robust MILP approach is proposed for self-scheduling of hybrid CSPfossil fuel plant. Uncertainty is introduced in the model by asymmetric prediction intervals. The robustness cost is controlled by the budget of uncertainty. Plant self-scheduling and bidding strategies in a day-ahead market are simultaneously considered.

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 B I O O O O O O O

asymmetric uncertainty
backup system
hybrid csp plant
self-scheduling


self-managing, disconnected processes and mechanisms for mobile e-business With the tremendous advances in hand-held computing and communication capabilities, rapid proliferation of mobile devices, and decreasing device costs, we are seeing a growth in mobile e-business in various consumer and business markets. In this paper, we present a novel architecture and framework for end-to-end mobile e-business applications such as purchasing, retail point of sales, and order management. The design takes into consideration disconnection, application context and failure modes to provide mobile users with seamless and transparent access to commerce and content activities. In our architecture, we consider a novel business process design based on state-machines and event management to handle disconnection and resource limitations. We designed, implemented and deployed a system for mobile e-business on clients integrated with private exchanges and sell-side servers. The e-business framework on mobile clients is implemented based on J2ME and open XML standards. A performance study of simple e-business transactions was done on the client using the above mechanisms and programming environment. We show that the performance of a purchasing process using the framework does reasonably well.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-managing systems
context-driven computing
mobile computing
workflow
disconnected computing
mobile e-business


PARAFAC - PARALLEL FACTOR-ANALYSIS We review the method of Parallel Factor Analysis, which simultaneously fits multiple two-way arrays or 'slices' of a three-way array in terms of a common set of factors with differing relative weights in each 'slice'. Mathematically, it is a straightforward generalization of the bilinear model of factor (or component) analysis (x(ij) = SIGMA(r=1)R a(ir)b(jr)) to a trilinear model (x(ijk) = SIGMA(r=1)R a(ir)b(jr)c(kr)). Despite this simplicity, it has an important property not possessed by the two-way model: if the latent factors show adequately distinct patterns of three-way variation, the model is fully identified; the orientation of factors is uniquely determined by minimizing residual error, eliminating the need for a separate 'rotation' phase of analysis. The model can be used several ways. It can be directly fit to a three-way array of observations with (possibly incomplete) factorial structure, or it can be indirectly fit to the original observations by fitting a set of covariance matrices computed from the observations, with each matrix corresponding to a two-way subset of the data. Even more generally, one can simultaneously analyze covariance matrices computed from different samples, perhaps corresponding to different treatment groups, different kinds of cases, data from different studies, etc. To demonstrate the method we analyze data from an experiment on right vs. left cerebral hemispheric control of the hands during various tasks. The factors found appear to correspond to the causal influences manipulated in the experiment, revealing their patterns of influence in all three ways of the data. Several generalizations of the parallel factor analysis model are currently under development, including ones that combine parallel factors with Tucker-like factor 'interactions'. Of key importance is the need to increase the method's robustness against nonstationary factor structures and qualitative (nonproportional) factor change.

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

3-way exploratory factor analysis
unique axes
parallel proportional profiles
factor rotation problem
3-way data preprocessing
3 mode principal components
trilinear decomposition
multidimensional scaling
longitudinal factor analysis
factor analysis of spectra
interpretation of factors
real or causal or explanatory factors
tucker,l.r.
cattel,r.b.


Helper threads via virtual multithreading on an experimental ltanium (R) 2 processor-based platform Helper threading is a technology to accelerate a program by exploiting a processor's multithreading capability to run "assist" threads. Previous experiments on hyper-threaded processors have demonstrated significant speedups by using helper threads to prefetch hard-to-predict delinquent data accesses. In order to apply this technique to processors that do not have built-in hardware support for multithreading, we introduce virtual multithreading (VMT), a novel form of switch-on-event user-level multithreading, capable of fly-weight multiplexing of event-driven thread executions on a single processor without additional operating system support. The compiler plays a key role in minimizing synchronization cost by judiciously partitioning register usage among the user-level threads. The VMT approach makes it possible to launch dynamic helper thread instances in response to long-latency cache miss events, and to run helper threads in the shadow of cache misses when the main thread would be otherwise stalled. The concept of VMT is prototyped on an Itanium (R) 2 processor using features provided by the Processor Abstraction Layer (PAL) firmware mechanism already present in currently shipping processors. On a 4-way MP physical system equipped with VMT-enabled Itanium 2 processors, helper threading via the VMT mechanism can achieve significant performance gains for a diverse set of real-world workloads, ranging from single-threaded workstation benchmarks to heavily multithreaded large scale decision support systems (DSS) using the IBM DB2 Universal Database. We measure a wall-clock speedup of 5.8% to 38.5% for the workstation benchmarks, and 5.0% to 12.7% on various queries in the DSS workload.

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

cache miss prefetching
switch-on-event
itanium processor
db2 database


A Systematic Review of Simulation Studies Investigating Emergency Department Overcrowding The problem of emergency department (ED) overcrowding has reached crisis proportions in the last decade. In 2005, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine reported on the important role of simulation as a systems analysis tool that can have an impact on care processes at the care-team, organizational, and environmental levels. Simulation has been widely used to understand causes of ED overcrowding and to test interventions to alleviate its effects. In this paper, we present a systematic review of ED simulation literature from 1970 to 2006 from healthcare, systems engineering, operations research and computer science publication venues. The goals of this review are to highlight the contributions of these simulation studies to our understanding of ED overcrowding and to discuss how simulation can be better used as a tool to address this problem. We found that simulation studies provide important insights into ED overcrowding but they also had major limitations that must be addressed.

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

emergency department
overcrowding
simulation

emergency department simulations
literature review


An effective lower bound on L-max in a worker-constrained job shop A common industrial operation is a dual resource constrained job shop where: (a) the objective is to minimize L-max, the maximum job lateness; (b) machines are organized into groups; and (c) each worker is assigned to a specific machine group. Because this problem is NP-hard, finding optimal solutions by enumeration is impractical. This paper details a procedure to compute a lower bound on L-max that will be used in follow-up work to effectively evaluate the absolute performance of heuristic solutions. Given an allocation of workers to machine groups, a lower bound on L-max is first computed for each machine group using a network-flow formulation. The lower bound on L-max for the job shop is the largest of the lower bounds for the machine groups. A search algorithm then finds a worker allocation yielding the smallest such lower bound on L-max for the job shop; and the latter quantity is our proposed lower bound on L-max. Given a worker allocation, we use the Virtual Factory (a heuristic scheduler developed by Hodgson et al. in 1998) to generate a schedule. Experiments with a wide variety of job shops indicated that the proposed lower bound on L-max could often be achieved by a Virtual Factory schedule based on the worker allocation yielding this lower bound. However, there were problem instances for which other worker allocations enabled the Virtual Factory to generate better schedules. Follow-up work provides optimality criteria, and heuristics to find improved allocations if these criteria are not satisfied. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

job shop scheduling
dual resource constrained systems
maximum lateness


A local tree alignment approach to relation extraction of multiple arguments In this paper, we address the problem of relation extraction of multiple arguments where the relation of entities is framed by multiple attributes. Such complex relations are successfully extracted using a syntactic tree-based pattern matching method. While induced subtree patterns are typically used to model the relations of multiple entities, we argue that hard pattern matching between a pattern database and instance trees cannot allow us to examine similar tree structures. Thus, we explore a tree alignment-based soft pattern matching approach to improve the coverage of induced patterns. Our pattern learning algorithm iteratively searches the most influential dependency tree patterns as well as a control parameter for each pattern. The resulting method outperforms two baselines, a pairwise approach with the tree-kernel support vector machine and a hard pattern matching method, on two standard datasets for a complex relation extraction task.

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

relation extraction
multiple arguments
local tree alignment
soft pattern matching


EDM in the Danish public sector: the FESD project Purpose - To confirm that the purpose of the FESD project has been to provide a framework Accepted 24 February 2005 contract for the whole public sector covering the purchase of an EDM system, technical and organisational consulting for implementation and organisational change. Design/methodology/approach - The project took the approach of working closely together with 11 partnering organisations on developing the functional requirements for the system and participating in the tender negotiations with the bidding consortia. This has proved valuable, since the project has gained a profound legitimacy for its demands and a strong basis for the roll-out in the rest of the public sector. Findings - The results of the project are manifold: for the first time in the Danish public sector a mutual framework contract has made it possible to put the same requirements forward to the bidding vendors. It has made it possible to develop mutual technical standards and to develop standardised work processes supported by the systems. Furthermore, a number of long-term findings will become evident over the next two years when the implementation projects begin to show results. Practical implications - Originally it was one of the major tasks of the FESD project to show efficiency gains and return of investment within the project's life span. This has not been possible due to the fact that the implementation projects in the partnering organisations are far from finished. Also, efficiency gains are not always part of the success criteria and it may turn out that efficiency gains weigh more in the minds of planners than in the real implementation projects. Originality/value - The article is a report from a country highly esteemed for its efforts in pushing public digital administration in order to create better service and higher efficiency.

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

document management
electronic document delivery
public sector organizations
organizational change


Locally conservative discontinuous PetrovGalerkin finite elements for fluid problems We develop a locally conservative formulation of the discontinuous PetrovGalerkin finite element method (DPG) for convectiondiffusion type problems using Lagrange multipliers to exactly enforce conservation over each element. We provide a proof of convergence as well as extensive numerical experiments showing that the method is indeed locally conservative. We also show that standard DPG, while not guaranteed to be conservative, is nearly conservative for many of the benchmarks considered. The new method preserves many of the attractive features of DPG, but turns the normally symmetric positive-definite DPG system into a saddle point problem.

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

local conservation
convection-diffusion
stokes flow
least squares
minimum residual
higher order
adaptive mesh refinement


Reassortment Networks for Investigating the Evolution of Segmented Viruses Many viruses of interest, such as influenza A, have distinct segments in their genome. The evolution of these viruses involves mutation and reassortment, where segments are interchanged between viruses that coinfect a host. Phylogenetic trees can be constructed to investigate the mutation-driven evolution of individual viral segments. However, reassortment events among viral genomes are not well depicted in such bifurcating trees. We propose the concept of reassortment networks to analyze the evolution of segmented viruses. These are layered graphs in which the layers represent evolutionary stages such as a temporal series of seasons in which influenza viruses are isolated. Nodes represent viral isolates and reassortment events between pairs of isolates. Edges represent evolutionary steps, while weights on edges represent edit costs of reassortment and mutation events. Paths represent possible transformation series among viruses. The length of each path is the sum edit cost of the events required to transform one virus into another. In order to analyze tau stages of evolution of n viruses with segments of maximum length m, we first compute the pairwise distances between all corresponding segments of all viruses in O(m(2)n(2)) time using dynamic programming. The reassortment network, with O(tau n(2)) nodes, is then constructed using these distances. The ancestors and descendents of a specific virus can be traced via shortest paths in this network, which can be found in O(tau n(3)) time.

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

influenza a
dynamic programming
reassortment
shortest paths


Scaffolding problem solving in technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs): Bridging research and theory with practice With the expanding availability and capability of varied technologies, classroom-based problem solving has become an increasingly attainable, yet still elusive, goal. Evidence of technology-enhanced problem-solving teaching and learning in schools has been scarce, understanding how to support students' problem solving in classroom-based, technology-enhanced learning environments has been limited, and coherent frameworks to guide implementation have been slow to emerge. Whereas researchers have examined the use and impact of scaffolds in mathematics, science, and reading, comparatively little research has focused on scaffolding learning in real-world, everyday classroom settings. Web-based systems have been developed to support problem solving, but implementations suggest variable enactment and inconsistent impact. The purpose of this article is to identify critical issues in scaffolding students' technology-enhanced problem solving in everyday classrooms. First, we examine two key constructs (problem solving and scaffolding) and propose a framework that includes essential dimensions to be considered when teachers scaffold student problem solving in technology-rich classes. We then investigate issues related to peer-, teacher-, and technology-enhanced scaffolds, and conclude by examining implications for research. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

technology-enhanced learning environments (teles)


A NEW APPROACH TO OBJECTIVE QUALITY-MEASURES BASED ON ATTRIBUTE-MATCHING In this paper the results of a study of objective quality measures for a broad range of coding systems are presented. These objective measures take the linear and the nonlinear distortions of the coder into account. A correlation analysis was performed, in order to find out those measures which are most effective in predicting perceivable parametric attributes of speech quality. The results of this experiment, the so-called attribute-matching, yield a good composite measure for predicting the total quality for a wide range of coding systems and can be computed in pseudo-realtime. Furthermore, we describe the test signal we have used in our study, which was not natural speech but a speech-model process.

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

objective quality-measures
attribute-matching
speech-model process


Building additive utilities for Multi-Group Hierarchical Discrimination: The MHDIS method The discrimination problem is of major interest in fields such as environmental management, human resources management, production management, finance, marketing, medicine, etc. For decades this problem has been studied from a multivariate statistical point of view. Recently the possibilities of new approaches have been explored, based mainly on mathematical programming. This paper follows the methodological framework of multicriteria decision aid (MCDA), to propose a new method for multigroup discrimination based on a hierarchical procedure (Multi-Group Hierarchical Discrimination-M.H.DIS). The performance of the M.H.DIS method is evaluated along with eight real world case studies from the fields of finance and marketing. A comparison is also performed with other MCDA methods.

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

discrimination
multicriteria decision aid

preference disaggregation
goal programming


The effects of static versus dynamic 3D representations on 10th grade students atomic orbital mental model construction: Evidence from eye movement behaviors Dynamic 3D representations enhanced students performance. Dynamic 3D representations fostered students to allocate greater attention. Eye movements could predict students 3D mental models of an atomic orbital. Low-spatial-ability students with dynamic 3D representations spent more attention.

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

atomic orbital concept
spatial ability
eye-tracking


A novel switching local evolutionary PSO for quantitative analysis of lateral flow immunoassay This paper presents a novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) based on a non-homogeneous Markov chain and differential evolution (DE) for quantification analysis of the lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA), which represents the first attempt to estimate the concentration of target analyte based on the well-established state-space model. A new switching local evolutionary PSO (SLEPSO) is developed and analyzed. The velocity updating equation jumps from one mode to another based on the non-homogeneous Markov chain, where the probability transition matrix is updated by calculating the diversity and current optimal solution. Furthermore, DE mutation and crossover operations are implemented to improve local best particles searching in PSO. Compared with some well-known PSO algorithms, the experiments results show the superiority of proposed SLEPSO. Finally, the new SLEPSO is successfully exploited to quantification analysis of the LFIA system, which is essentially nonlinear and dynamic. Therefore, this can provide a new method for the area of quantitative interpretation of LFIA system. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

lateral flow immunoassay
particle swarm optimization
differential evolution

non-homogeneous markov chain
immunochromatographic strip


The Frobenius anatomy of word meanings I: subject and object relative pronouns This article develops a compositional vector-based semantics of subject and object relative pronouns within a categorical framework. Frobenius algebras are used to formalize the operations required to model the semantics of relative pronouns, including passing information between the relative clause and the modified noun phrase, as well as copying, combining, and discarding parts of the relative clause. We develop two instantiations of the abstract semantics, one based on a truth-theoretic approach and one based on corpus statistics.

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

computational linguistics
type logical grammars
distributional vector space semantics
compact closed categories
string diagrams pregroups


Blow-up of Compressible NavierStokesKorteweg Equations Based on the results of Xin (Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 51(3):229240, 1998), Zhang and Tan (Acta Math. Sin. Engl. Ser. 28(3):645652, 2012), we show the blow-up phenomena of smooth solutions to the non-isothermal compressible NavierStokesKorteweg equations in arbitrary dimensions, under the assumption that the initial density has compact support. Here the coefficients are generalized to a more general case which depends on density and temperature. Our work extends the previous corresponding results.

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 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


A coordinated planning model for the design of a distributed database system Motivated by a problem faced by a multimedia entertainment retailer, we explore the problem of planning the design of a distributed database system. The problem consists of planning the design/expansion of the distributed database system by introducing new database servers and retiring possibly some existing ones in order to reduce telecommunication costs for processing user queries and server acquisition, operations and maintenance cost in a multiperiod environment where user processing demand varies over time. We develop a mathematical programming model and an effective solution approach to determine the best decisions regarding acquisition and retirement of database servers and assignment of user processing demand to the servers over time. Through a computational study, we investigate the impact of important parameters such as length of the planning horizon and demand growth on the solution quality and utilization of server capacity and examine the effectiveness of the solution approach in comparison with the commercial package LINDO. We also discuss some extensions to the problem as directions for future research.

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

planning
distributed database system
database servers
mathematical programming


Computationally feasible estimation of the covariance structure in generalized linear mixed models In this paper, we discuss how a regression model, with a non-continuous response variable, which allows for dependency between observations, should be estimated when observations are clustered and measurements on the subjects are repeated. The cluster sizes are assumed to be large. We find that the conventional estimation technique suggested by the literature on generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) is slow and sometimes fails due to non-convergence and lack of memory on standard PCs. We suggest to estimate the random effects as fixed effects by generalized linear model and to derive the covariance matrix from these estimates. A simulation study shows that our proposal is feasible in terms of mean-square error and computation time. We recommend that our proposal be implemented in the software of GLMM techniques so that the estimation procedure can switch between the conventional technique and our proposal, depending on the size of the clusters.

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

monte carlo simulations
large sample
interdependence
cluster errors


Are there time and cost savings by using telemanagement for patients on intensified insulin therapy? A randomised, controlled trial Background: Patients with insulin dependent diabetes require frequent advice if their metabolic control is not optimal. This study focuses on the fiscal and administrative aspects of telemanagement, which was used to establish a supervised autonomy of patients on intensified insulin therapy. Methods: A prospective, randomised trial with 43 patients on intensified insulin therapy was conducted. Travelling distance to the diabetes centre was 50 min one way; all patients had undergone a diabetes education course with lessons in dose adaptation. Patients were randomly assigned to telecare (n = 27) or conventional care (n = 16). They used BG-meters with a storage capacity of 120 values (Precision QID(TM) Abbott/Medisense) and transmitted their data over a combined modem/interface via telephone line to the diabetes centre. Data were displayed and stored by a customised software (Precision Link Plus(TM), Abbott/Medisense). Advice for proper dose adjustment was given by telephone. Results: Average time needed for instruction in the telemedical system was 15 min. Data were transmitted every 1-3 weeks and a teleconsultation was performed by phone every 2-4 weeks, depending on the extent of specific problems. On average, personal visits in the control group were performed once a month. Physician's time expenditure for telemanagement, compared to conventional advice was moderately higher (50 vs. 42 min per month). A substantial amount of time on the patients side could be saved through replacing personal communications by telephone contacts and data transmission reduction (96 vs. 163 min/month including data transmission time). Setting up an optimal telemanagement scenario, a cost analysis was carried out yielding savings of 650 EURO per year per patient. HbA(1c) dropped significantly from 8.2 to 7.0% after 8 months of observation, but there was no significant difference between the intervention and control groups. Major technical problems with the telematic system did not occur during the study. Conclusions: Telemanagement of insulin-requiring diabetic patients is a cost and time saving procedure for the patients and results in metabolic control comparable to conventional outpatient management. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Clinical and Personality Correlates of MMO Gaming: Anxiety and Absorption in Problematic Internet Use Massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs) are increasingly popular worldwide. MMO gaming can result in problematic Internet use (PIU; or Internet addiction), which is characterized by dysfunction in areas such as work or relationships. Because PIU in online gaming is increasingly seen in clinical populations, we explored PIU in the context of MMO gaming. Using a cross-sectional design, we sought to identify clinical and personality factors, as well as motivations for gaming, that differentiated between people who scored high or low on a measure of problematic Internet use. Subjects completed all study procedures via an online survey. Participants were 163 MMO users recruited from the community, from gaming websites, and from online forums. Subjects completed a series of demographic, mood, anxiety, and personality questionnaires. The study found that individuals in the high PIU group (n = 79) were more likely to have higher levels of social phobia (p = .000), state (p = .000) and trait (p = .000) anxiety, introversion (p = .000), neuroticism (p = .000) and absorption (p = .019) than individuals in the low-PIU group (n = 84). Different reasons for gaming also characterized the group with more problematic Internet use. Our findings provide support for the idea that high anxiety and absorption may be risk factors for problematic Internet use within the MMO gaming environment and suggest that gamers who endorse problematic Internet use identify different motivations for online gaming than gamers who do not.

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

internet addiction
anxiety
personality
online gaming


Convergence of LiuStorey conjugate gradient method ? The conjugate gradient method is a useful and powerful approach for solving large-scale minimization problems. Liu and Storey developed a conjugate gradient method, which has good numerical performance but no global convergence result under traditional line searches such as Armijo, Wolfe and Goldstein line searches. In this paper a convergent version of LiuStorey conjugate gradient method (LS in short) is proposed for minimizing functions that have Lipschitz continuous partial derivatives. By estimating the Lipschitz constant of the derivative of objective functions, we can find an adequate step size at each iteration so as to guarantee the global convergence and improve the efficiency of LS method in practical computation.

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

liustorey conjugate gradient method
global convergence


A space- and power-efficient multi-match packet classification technique combining TCAMs and SRAMs Packet classification is implemented in modern network routers for providing differentiated services based on packet header information. Traditional packet classification only reports a single matched rule with the highest priority for an incoming packet and takes an action accordingly. With the emergence of new Internet applications such as network intrusion detection system, all matched rules need to be reported. This multi-match problem is more challenging and is attracting attentions in recent years. Because of the stringent time budget on classification, architectural solutions using ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) are the preferred choice for backbone network routers. However, despite its advantage on search speed, TCAM is much more expensive than SRAM, and is notorious for its extraordinarily high power consumption. These problems limit the application and scalability of TCAM-based solutions. This paper presents a tree-based multi-match packet classification technique combining the benefits of both TCAMs and SRAMs. The experiments show that the proposed solution achieves significantly more savings on both memory space and power consumption on packet matching compared to existing solutions.

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 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 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

ternary content addressable memory (tcam)

network intrusion detection system (nids)


Oscillation and comparison theorems for half-linear second-order difference equations The authors consider second-order difference equations of the type Delta((Deltay(n))(alpha)) + q(n)y(sigma (n))(alpha) =0, (E) where alpha > 0 is the ratio of odd positive integers, {q(n)} is a positive sequence, and {sigma (n)} is a positive increasing sequence of integers with sigma (n) --> infinity as n --> infinity. They give some oscillation and comparison results for equation (E). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

comparison theorems
difference equations
oscillation


Automated 3D surface scanning based on CAD model This paper presents a method to automate the process of surface scanning using optical range sensors and based on a priori known information from a CAD model. A volumetric model implemented through a 3D voxel map is generated from the object CAD model and used to define a sensing plan composed of a set of viewpoints and the respective scanning trajectories. Surface coverage with high data quality and scanning costs are the main aspects in sensing plan definition. A surface following scheme is used to define collision free and efficient scanning path trajectories. Results of experimental tests performed on a typical industrial scanning system with 5 dof are shown. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

automatic surface scanning
viewpoint set computation
next best viewpoint
range data


A NEW MECHANISM FOR TRACKING A MOBILE TARGET USING GRID SENSOR NETWORKS Tracking moving targets is one of the important problems of wireless sensor networks. We have considered a sensor network where numerous sensor nodes are spread in a grid like manner. These sensor nodes are capable of storing data and thus act as a separate datasets. The entire network of these sensors act as a set of distributed datasets. Each of these datasets has its local temporal dataset along with Spatial data. and the geographical coordinates of a, given object or target. In this paper an algorithm is introduced that mines global temporal patterns from these datasets and results in the discovery of linear or nonlinear trajectories of moving objects tinder supervision. The main objective here is to perforin in-network aggregation between the data contained in the various datasets to discover global spatio-temporal patterns; the main constraint is that there should be minimal communication among the participating nodes. We present the algorithm and analyze it in terms of the communication costs.

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

target tracking
in-network aggregation
spatio-temporal mining


Supply chain simulator: A scenario-based educational tool to enhance student learning Simulation-based educational products are excellent set of illustrative tools that proffer features like visualization of the dynamic behavior of a real system, etc. Such products have great efficacy in education and are known to be one of the first-rate student centered learning methodologies. These products allow students to practice skills such as critical thinking and decision-making. In this paper, a case is presented where a scenario-based e-learning product namely 'supply chain simulator' is developed at KFUPM for an introductory technology course. The product simulates a supply chain - a network of facilities and distribution systems that carries out the task of procurement and transformation of materials from manufacturer to customer. The product was put to test during four semesters and results of the survey conducted by the instructors and the students are presented. The results clearly suggest the benefits of using such a tool in enhancing student learning. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

scenario-based e-learning
teaching/learning strategies
interactive learning environments
active learning


Obtaining traceability codes from Chinese Reminder Theorem codes Traceability codes are used in schemes that prevent illegal redistribution of digital content. In this Letter, we use Chinese Reminder Theorem codes to construct traceability codes. Both the code parameters and the traitor identification process take into account the non-uniformity of the alphabet of Chinese Reminder Theorem codes. Moreover it is shown that the identification process can be done in polynomial time using list decoding techniques.

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


Learning and Control Model of the Arm for Loading We propose a learning and control model of the arm for a loading task in which an object is loaded onto one hand with the other hand, in the sagittal plane. Postural control during object interactions provides important points to motor control theories in terms of how humans handle dynamics changes and use the information of prediction and sensory feedback. For the learning and control model, we coupled a feedback-error-learning scheme with an Actor-Critic method used as a feedback controller. To overcome sensory delays, a feedforward dynamics model (FDM) was used in the sensory feedback path. We tested the proposed model in simulation using a two-joint arm with six muscles, each with time delays in muscle force generation. By applying the proposed model to the loading task, we showed that motor commands started increasing, before an object was loaded on, to stabilize arm posture. We also found that the FDM contributes to the stabilization by predicting how the hand changes based on contexts of the object and efferent signals. For comparison with other computational models, we present the simulation results of a minimum-variance model.

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


A finite-capacity queue with exhaustive vacation/close-down/setup times and Markovian arrival processes We consider a finite-capacity single-server vacation model with close-down/setup times and Markovian arrival processes (MAP). The queueing model has potential applications in classical IP over ATM or IP switching systems, where the close-down time corresponds to an inactive timer and the setup time to the time delay to set up a switched virtual connection (SVC) by the signaling protocol. The vacation time may be considered as the time period required to release an SVC or as the time during which the server goes to set up other SVCs. By using the supplementary variable technique, we obtain the queue length distribution at an arbitrary instant, the loss probability, the setup rate, as well as the Laplace-Stieltjes transforms of both the virtual and actual waiting time distributions.

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 B I 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

markovian arrival process (map)
finite capacity queue
close-down time
supplementary variable method


Adaptive sequential Monte Carlo by means of mixture of experts Appropriately designing the proposal kernel of particle filters is an issue of significant importance, since a bad choice may lead to deterioration of the particle sample and, consequently, waste of computational power. In this paper we introduce a novel algorithm adaptively approximating the so-called optimal proposal kernel by a mixture of integrated curved exponential distributions with logistic weights. This family of distributions, referred to as mixtures of experts, is broad enough to be used in the presence of multi-modality or strongly skewed distributions. The mixtures are fitted, via online-EM methods, to the optimal kernel through minimisation of the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the auxiliary target and instrumental distributions of the particle filter. At each iteration of the particle filter, the algorithm is required to solve only a single optimisation problem for the whole particle sample, yielding an algorithm with only linear complexity. In addition, we illustrate in a simulation study how the method can be successfully applied to optimal filtering in nonlinear state-space models.

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 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 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

optimal proposal kernel
particle filter
sequential monte carlo

adaptive algorithms
kullback-leibler divergence
coefficient of variation
expectation-maximisation
shannon entropy


Personalized Recommendation over a Customer Network for Ubiquitous Shopping Personalization services in a ubiquitous computing environment-ubiquitous personalization services computing-are expected to emerge in diverse environments. Ubiquitous personalization must address limited computational power of personal devices and potential privacy issues. Such characteristics require managing and maintaining a client-side recommendation model for ubiquitous personalization. To implement the client-side recommendation model, this paper proposes Buying-net, a customer network in ubiquitous shopping spaces. Buying-net is operated in a community, called the Buying-net space, of devices, customers, and services that cooperate together to achieve common goals. The customers connect to the Buying-net space using their own devices that contain software performing tasks of learning the customers' preferences, searching for similar customers for network formation, and generating recommendation lists of items. Buying-net attempts to improve recommendation accuracy with less computational time by focusing on local relationship of customers and newly obtained information. We experimented with such customer networks in the area of multimedia content recommendation and validated that Buying-net outperformed a typical collaborative-filtering-based recommender system on accuracy as well as computational time. This shows that Buying-net has good potential to be a system for ubiquitous shopping.

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

mobile commerce
recommender systems
ubiquitous personalization services


Modelling and analysis of a competitive model with stage structure A two-species Lotka-Volterra type competition model with stage structures for both species is proposed and investigated. In our model, the individuals of each species are classified as belonging either the immature or the mature. First, we consider the stage-structured model with constant coefficients. By constructing suitable Lyapunov functions, sufficient conditions are derived for the global stability of nonnegative equilibria of the proposed model. It is shown that three typical dynamical behaviors (coexistence, bistability, dominance) are possible in stage-structured competition model. Next, we consider the stage-structured competitive model in which the coefficients are assumed to be positively continuous periodic functions. By using Gaines and Mawhin's continuation theorem of coincidence degree theory, a set of easily verifiable sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence of positive periodic solutions to the model. Numerical simulations are also presented to illustrate the feasibility of our main results. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

stage structure
competition
global stability


Continuous K-Nearest Neighbor Query for Moving Objects with Uncertain Velocity One of the most important queries in spatio-temporal databases that aim at managing moving objects efficiently is the continuous K-nearest neighbor (CKNN) query. A CKNN query is to retrieve the K-nearest neighbors (KNNs) of a moving user at each time instant within a user-given time interval [t s , t e ]. In this paper, we investigate how to process a CKNN query efficiently. Different from the previous related works, our work relieves the past assumption, that an object moves with a fixed velocity, by allowing that the velocity of the object can vary within a known range. Due to the introduction of this uncertainty on the velocity of each object, processing a CKNN query becomes much more complicated. We will discuss the complications incurred by this uncertainty and propose a cost-effective P2 KNN algorithm to find the objects that could be the KNNs at each time instant within the given query time interval. Besides, a probability-based model is designed to quantify the possibility of each object being one of the KNNs. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the efficiency and the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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

continuous k-nearest neighbor query
k-nearest neighbors
moving query object
spatio-temporal databases


detecting topical events in digital video The detection of events is essential to high-level semantic querying of video databases. It is also a very challenging problem requiring the detection and integration of evidence for an event available in multiple information modalities, such as audio, video and language. This paper focuses on the detection of specific types of events, namely, topic of discussion events that occur in classroom/lecture environments. Specifically, we present a query-driven approach to the detection of topic of discussion events with foils used in a lecture as a way to convey a topic. In particular, we use the image content of foils to detect visual events in which the foil is displayed and captured in the video stream. The recognition of a foil in video frames exploits the color and spatial layout of regions on foils using a technique called region hashing. Next, we use the textual phrases listed on a foil as an indication of a topic, and detect topical audio events as places in the audio track where the best evidence for the topical phrases was heard. Finally, we use a probabilistic model of event likelihood to combine the results of visual and audio avent detection that exploits their time cooccurrence. The resulting identification of topical events is evaluated in the domain of classroom lectures and talks.

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

color
video
hashing
use
topic of discussion events
event
topical audio events
layout
evidence
paper
audio
spatial
detection
environments
semantic
region
recognition
language
identification
types
image

query-driven topic detection
digital video
slide detection
timing
informal
place
video stream
contention
visualization
modal
exploit
multi-modal fusion
queries
probabilistic models
tracking
database
integrability
query


On the guessing number of shift graphs In this paper we investigate guessing number, a relatively new concept linked to network coding and certain long standing open questions in circuit complexity. Here we study the bounds and a variety of properties concerning this parameter. As an application, we obtain the lower and upper bounds for shift graphs, a subclass of directed circulant graphs.

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


intelligent understanding of handwritten geometry theorem proving Computer-based geometry systems have been widely used for teaching and learning, but largely based on mouse-and-keyboard interaction, these systems usually require users to draw figures by following strict task structures defined by menus, buttons, and mouse and keyboard actions. Pen-based designs offer a more natural way to develop geometry theorem proofs with hand-drawn figures and scripts. This paper describes a pen-based geometry theorem proving system that can effectively recognize hand-drawn figures and hand-written proof scripts, and accurately establish the correspondence between geometric components and proof steps. Our system provides dynamic and intelligent visual assistance to help users understand the process of proving and allows users to manipulate geometric components and proof scripts based on structures rather than strokes. The results from evaluation study show that our system is well perceived and users have high satisfaction with the accuracy of sketch recognition, the effectiveness of visual hints, and the efficiency of structure-based manipulation.

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

hand-drawn figures
hand-written proof scripts
structure based manipulation


A Semi-Infinite Programming Approach to Preoperative Planning of Robotic Cardiac Surgery Under Geometric Uncertainty In this paper, a computational framework for patient-specific preoperative planning of robotics-assisted minimally invasive cardiac surgery (RAMICS) is presented. It is expected that the preoperative planning of RAMICS will improve the success rate by considering robot kinematics, patient-specific thoracic anatomy, and procedure-specific intraoperative conditions. Given the significant anatomical features localized in the preoperative computed tomography images of a patient's thorax, port locations, and robot orientations (with respect to the patient's body coordinate frame) are determined to optimize qualities such as dexterity, reachability, tool approach angles, and maneuverability. To address intraoperative geometric uncertainty, the problem is formulated as a generalized semi-infinite program (GSIP) with a convex lower-level problem to seek a plan that is less sensitive to geometric uncertainty in the neighborhood of surgical targets. It is demonstrated that with a proper formulation of the problem, the GSIP can be replaced by a tractable constrained nonlinear program that uses a multicriteria objective function to balance between the nominal task performance and robustness to collisions and joint limit violations. Finally, performance of the proposed formulation is demonstrated by a comparison between the plans generated by the algorithm and those recommended by an experienced surgeon for several case studies.

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

medical robotics
planning under uncertainty
port placement


An accelerated IEEE 802.11 handoff process based on the dynamic cluster chain method The latency of the IEEE 802.11 handoff process in wireless local area network (WLAN) is much higher than 50 ms. Since the bearable maximum delay is 50 ms. Since the bearable maximum delay 50 ms in multimedia applications, e.g., voice over IP (VOIP), such large handoff gap may bring up excessive jitter. Therefore, many researches make much effort about how to fast handoff. In this paper, we propose an accelerated handoff mechanism in which three methods are involved: (1) dynamic cluster chain, (2) PMSKA caching, and (3) fast reassociation with the pairwise transient key security association (PTKSA) establishment. Access points (APs) are arranged as a cluster for each client station (STA). APs that are cluster members can cache PMKSA of STA in advance to reduce the extensible authentication protocol-transport Laver Security (EAP-TLS) authentication delay. the dynamic cluster chain which is arranged by a dynamic cluster selection and transition method, is proposed to assure that STA stays within a cluster. Furthermore, the fast reassociation with the PTSA establishment process incorporates four-way handshake into the IEEE 802.11 reassociation process to further accelerate handoff process. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Algorithmic aspects of acyclic edge colorings A proper coloring of the edges of a graph G is called acyclic if there is no two-colored cycle in G. The acyclic edge chromatic number of G, denoted by a'(G), is the least number of colors in an acyclic edge coloring of G. For certain graphs G, a'(G) greater than or equal to Delta(G) + 2 where Delta(G) is the maximum degree in G. It is known that a'(G) less than or equal to Delta + 2 for almost all Delta-regular graphs, including all Delta-regular graphs whose girth is at least cDelta log Delta. We prove that determining the acyclic edge chromatic number of an arbitrary graph is an NP-complete problem, ror graphs G with sufficiently large girth in terms of Delta(G), we present deterministic polynomial-time algorithms that color the edges of G acyclically using at most Delta(G) + 2 colors.

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


An improved meshless method with almost interpolation property for isotropic heat conduction problems In the paper an improved element free Galerkin method is presented for heat conduction problems with heat generation and spatially varying conductivity. In order to improve computational efficiency of meshless method based on Galerkin weak form, the nodal influence domain of meshless method is extended to have arbitrary polygon shape. When the dimensionless size of the nodal influence domain approaches 1, the Gauss quadrature point only contributes to those nodes in whose background cell the Gauss quadrature point is located. Thus, the bandwidth of global stiff matrix decreases obviously and the node search procedure is also avoided. Moreover, the shape functions almost possess the Kronecker delta function property, and essential boundary conditions can be implemented without any difficulties. Numerical results show that arbitrary polygon shape nodal influence domain not only has high computational accuracy, but also enhances computational efficiency of meshless method greatly.

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

meshless method
heat conduction
computational efficiency
interpolation property


Function-defined shape metamorphoses in visual cyberworlds Animated shape transformations should be an intrinsic part of visual cyberworlds. However, quite often only limited animation of the polygon-based shapes can be found there, specifically when using the virtual reality modeling language (VRML) and its successor extensible 3D (X3D). This greatly limits the expressive power of visual cyberworlds and has motivated our research in this direction. In this paper, we present function-based extensions of VRML and X3D, which allow for time-dependent shape modeling on the web. Our shape modeling approach is based on the concurrent use of implicit, explicit and parametric functions defining geometry, appearance and their transformations through time. The functions are typed straight in VRML/X3D code as individual formulas and as function scripts. We have also developed a web enabled interactive software tool for modeling function-based VRML/X3D objects.

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

function-based shape modeling
computer animation
3d web visualization


Crosstalk analysis for a CMOS-gate-driven coupled interconnects This paper deals in crosstalk analysis of a CMOS-gate-driven capacitively and inductively coupled interconnect. Alpha power-law model of a MOS transistor is used to represent a CMOS driver. This is combined with a transmission-line-based coupled-interconnect model to develop a composite driver-interconnect-load model for analytical purposes. On this basis, a transient analysis of crosstalk noise is carried out. Comparison of the analytical results with SPICE extracted results shows that the average error involved in estimating noise peak and their time of occurrence is less than 7%.

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

coupling
inductance
integrated-circuit interconnect
signal integrity
transmission lines


Blocking reduction strategies in hierarchical text classification One common approach in hierarchical text classification involves associating classifiers with nodes in the category tree and classifying text documents in a top-down manner. Classification methods using this top-down approach can scale well and cope with changes to the category trees. However, all these methods suffer from blocking which refers to documents wrongly rejected by the classifiers at higher-levels and cannot be passed to the classifiers at lower-levels. In this paper, we propose a classifier-centric performance measure known as blocking factor to determine the extent of the blocking. Three methods are proposed to address the blocking problem, namely, Threshold Reduction, Restricted Voting, and Extended Multiplicative. Our experiments using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers on the Reuters collection have shown that they all could reduce blocking and improve the classification accuracy. Our experiments have also shown that the Restricted Voting method delivered the best performance.

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


Kernel ellipsoidal trimming Ellipsoid estimation is important in many practical areas such as control, system identification, visual/audio tracking, experimental design, data mining, robust statistics and statistical outlier or novelty detection. A new method, called kernel minimum volume covering ellipsoid (KMVCE) estimation, that finds an ellipsoid in a kernel-defined feature space is presented. Although the method is very general and can be applied to many of the aforementioned problems, the main focus is on the problem of statistical novelty/outlier detection. A simple iterative algorithm based on Mahalanobis-type distances in the kernel-defined feature space is proposed for practical implementation. The probability that a non-outlier is misidentified by our algorithms is analyzed using bounds based on Rademacher complexity. The KMVCE method performs very well on a set of real-life and simulated datasets, when compared with standard kernel-based novelty detection methods.

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

minimum volume covering ellipsoid
rademacher complexity
novelty detection


Supervised fuzzy logic modeling for building earthquake hazard assessment Building hazard assessment prior to earthquake occurrence exposes interesting problems especially in earthquake prone areas. Such an assessment provides an early warning system for building owners as well as the local and central administrators about the possible hazards that may occur in the next scenario earthquake event, and hence pre- and post-earthquake preparedness can be arranged according to a systematic program. For such an achievement, it is necessary to have efficient models for the prediction of hazard scale of each building within the study area. Although there are subjective intensity index methods for such evaluations, the objective of this paper is to propose a useful tool through fuzzy logic (FL) to classify the buildings that would be vulnerable to earthquake hazard. The FL is a soft computing intelligent reasoning methodology, which is rapid, simple and easily applicable with logical and rational association between the building-hazard categories and the most effective factors. In this paper, among the most important factors are the story number (building height), story height ratio, cantilever extension ratio, moment of inertia (stiffness), number of frames, column and shear wall area percentages. Their relationships with the five hazard categories are presented through a supervised hazard center classification method. These five categories are none, slight, moderate, extensive, and complete hazard classes. A new supervised FL classification methodology is proposed similar to the classical fuzzy c-means procedure for the allocation of hazard categories to individual buildings. The application of the methodology is presented for Zeytinburnu quarter of Istanbul City, Turkey. It is observed that out of 747 inventoried buildings 7.6%, 50.0%, 14.6%, 20.1%, and 7.7% are subject to expected earthquake with none, slight, moderate, extensive, and complete hazard classes, respectively.

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earthquake
hazard
categories
moment of inertia
stiffness


Color texture segmentation based on image pixel classification Image segmentation partitions an image into nonoverlapping regions, which ideally should be meaningful for a certain purpose. Thus, image segmentation plays an important role in many multimedia applications. In recent years, many image segmentation algorithms have been developed, but they are often very complex and some undesired results occur frequently. By combination of Fuzzy Support Vector Machine (FSVM) and Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), a color texture segmentation based on image pixel classification is proposed in this paper. Specifically, we first extract the pixel-level color feature and texture feature of the image via the local spatial similarity measure model and localized Fourier transform, which is used as input of FSVM model (classifier). We then train the FSVM model (classifier) by using FCM with the extracted pixel-level features. Color image segmentation can be then performed through the trained FSVM model (classifier). Compared with three other segmentation algorithms, the results show that the proposed algorithm is more effective in color image segmentation.

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

image segmentation
fuzzy support vector machine
local spatial similarity measure model


MuSeQoR: Multi-path failure-tolerant security-aware QoS routing in ad hoc wireless networks In this paper, we present MuSeQoR: a new multi-path routing, protocol that tackles the twin issues of reliability (protection against failures Of Multiple paths) and security, while ensuring minimum data redundancy. Unlike ill all the previous studies. reliability is addressed in the context of both erasure and corruption channels. We also quantify the security of the protocol in terms of the number of eavesdropping nodes. The reliability and security requirements of a session are specified by a User and are related to the parameters of the protocol adaptively. This relationship is of central importance and shows how the protocol attempts to simultaneously achieve reliability and security. In addition. by using optimal coding schemes and by dispersing the original data. we minimize the redundancy. Finally, extensive simulations were performed to assess the performance of the protocol Under varying network conditions. The simulation Studies clearly indicate the gains in using Such a protocol and also highlight the enormous flexibility of the protocol. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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multi-path routing
dispersity routing
diversity coding
erasure channel
corruption channel


Robust location estimation under dependence We discuss the approximation of the mean of autocorrelated data under contaminations of different types. Many robust location estimators have been investigated carefully for independent data, but their properties have not been studied in detail under dependencies. We pay attention to estimators based on subranges like minimum volume ellipsoid and minimum covariance determinant estimators, mid-ranges and trimmed means, of which the sample mean and median are special cases, and also include the Hodges - Lehmann and the Bickel - Hodges estimators. Our interest is in small to moderate sample sizes.

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

time series
robustness
additive outliers
innovative outliers
sensitivity function
bias curve


Determination of the rank of an integration lattice The continuing and widespread use of lattice rules for high-dimensional numerical quadrature is driving the development of a rich and detailed theory. Part of this theory is devoted to computer searches for rules, appropriate to particular situations. In some applications, one is interested in obtaining the (lattice) rank of a lattice rule Q(Lambda) directly from the elements of a generator matrix B (possibly in upper triangular lattice form) of the corresponding dual lattice Lambda(perpendicular to). We treat this problem in detail, demonstrating the connections between this (lattice) rank and the conventional matrix rank deficiency of modulo p versions of B.

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Using cell phone data to measure quality of service and passenger flows of Paris transit system Cell-phone data are used to measure passenger flows in the underground part of Paris transit system. Travel times, trains level of occupancy and origindestination flows are measured. The measures are consistent with field observations, and with estimates from automated fare collection data. Having an independent real-time measure of train occupancy can be beneficial to the quality of the system.

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