Solving games via three-valued abstraction refinement Games that model realistic systems can have very large state spaces, making their direct solution difficult. We present a symbolic abstraction-refinement approach to the solution of two-player games with reachability or safety goals. Given a reachability or safety property, an initial set of states, and a game representation, our approach starts by constructing a simple abstraction of the game, guided by the predicates present in the property and in the initial set. The abstraction is then refined, until it is possible to either prove, or disprove, the property over the initial states. Specifically, we evaluate the property on the abstract game in three-valued fashion, computing an over-approximation (the may states), and an under-approximation (the must states), of the states that satisfy the property. If this computation fails to yield a certain yes/no answer to the validity of the property on the initial states, our algorithm refines the abstraction by splitting uncertain abstract states (states that are may-states, but not must-states). The approach lends itself to an efficient symbolic implementation. We discuss the property required of the abstraction scheme in order to achieve convergence and termination of our technique. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

abstraction refinement safety reachability


Memory efficient software synthesis with mixed coding style from dataflow graphs This paper presents a set of techniques to reduce the code and data sizes for software synthesis from graphical digital signal-processing programs based on the synchronous dataflow model. By; sharing the kernel code among multiple instances of a block with a shared function, we can further reduce the code size below the previous results based on inline coding style. A systematic approach also is devised to give up the single appearance schedule for reducing the data buffer requirement. The proposed techniques have been evaluated with two real-life examples to prove their significance.

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

code sharing
memory requirement
schedule adjustment


Dense community detection in multi-valued attributed networks The proliferation of rich information available for real world entities and their relationships gives rise to a general type of graph, namely multi-valued attributed graph, where graph vertices are associated with a number of attributes and a vertex may have multiple values on an attribute. It would be useful if we can cluster such graphs into densely connected components with homogeneous attribute values. Recent work has studied graph clustering in attributed graphs considering the full attribute space. However, full space clustering often leads to poor results due to irrelevant attributes. In this paper, we study subspace clustering in multi-valued attributed graph and propose an algorithm SCMAG for community detection. Our algorithm uses a cell-based subspace clustering approach and identifies cells with dense connectivity in the subspaces. Random walk with restart is used to measure the structural connectivity and attribute similarity. An indexing scheme is designed to support efficiently calculating cell connectivity from random walk scores. We also propose a new cell combining strategy on dimensions of categorical attributes and a novel mechanism to handle multi-valued attributes. Experimental results on IMDB data and bibliographic data demonstrate that SCMAG significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art subspace clustering algorithm and attributed graph clustering algorithm. Case studies show SCMAG can find dense communities with homogeneous properties under different subspaces.

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

community detection
attributed graph
random walk with restart


Write disturbance modeling and testing for MRAM The magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is considered one of the potential candidates that will replace current on-chip memories (RAM, EEPROM, and flash memory) in the future. The MRAM is fast and does not need a high supply voltage for read/write operations, and is compatible with the CMOS technology. It can also endure almost unlimited read/write cycles. These combined advantages of RAM and flash memory make it a potential choice for SOC. In this paper, we present the write disturbance fault (WDF) model for MRAM, i.e., a fault that affects the data stored in the MRAM cells due to excessive magnetic field during the write operation. We also construct the SPICE macro model for the magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) device of the toggle MRAM to obtain circuit simulation results. We then present an MRAM fault simulator called RAMSES-M, based on which we derive the shortest test for the proposed WDF model. The test is shown to be better and more robust as compared with the conventional March C- test algorithm. We also present a March 17 N diagnosis algorithm for identifying WDF. A 1 Mb MRAM chip has been designed and fabricated using a CMOS-based 0.18-mu m technology. The proposed WDF model is justified by chip measurement results, with the march test results reported. Finally, specific MRAM fault behavior and test issues are discussed.

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

failure analysis
fault model
fault simulation
magnetic random access memory (mram)
memory testing
nonvolatile memory
write disturbance fault (wdf)


Torque feedback on the steering wheel of agricultural vehicles The torque feedback on the steering wheel of automobiles, also known as road feel, is important in some driving situations. New electronic and electro-hydraulic steering systems remove the mechanical connection between the road wheel and the steering wheel, but make it possible for the designer to provide any desired torque feedback to the driver. This study was performed to investigate whether the operation of agricultural vehicles can be made easier by the nature of the torque feedback on the steering wheel. For operators of agricultural vehicles, this feedback can be particularly important when they simultaneously monitor the operation of an attached machine. Experiments were performed in the field and in a tractor-driving simulator in which experienced tractor drivers drove in parallel swathing mode with the help of a GPS lightbar. Torque feedback on a real tractors steering wheel was measured and implemented in the simulator. Also, in different tractor simulator runs, torque feedback on the steering wheel was computed based on steering wheel angle, the lateral force on the ground wheel, and the projected driving error. Analysis showed that when steering is the only task, the behavior and performance of the operator does not significantly change if the torque feedback is removed. However, when the operator has to perform a monitoring task as well, the performance of the operator was significantly improved by providing a torque feedback that was a function of the projected driving error. Also, when the feedback torque is a function of steering wheel angle, tending to move the steering wheel towards zero steering angle position, the operator achieved a higher performance, presumably by reducing unnecessary steering inputs.

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

tractor operator
steer-by-wire
haptic device


A Novel Malware Clustering Method Using Frequency of Function Call Traces in Parallel Threads With the rapid development and proliferation of the Internet, cyber attacks are increasingly and continually emerging and evolving nowadays. Malware - a generic term for computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spywares, adwares, and bots - is a particularly lethal security threat. To cope with this security threat appropriately, we need to identify the malwares' tendency/characteristic and analyze the malwares' behaviors including their classification. In the previous works of classification technologies, the malwares have been classified by using data from dynamic analysis or code analysis. However, the works have not been succeeded to obtain efficient classification with high accuracy. In this paper, we propose a new classification method to cluster malware more effectively and more accurately. We firstly perform dynamic analysis to automatically obtain the execution traces of malwares. Then, we classify malwares into some clusters using their characteristics of the behavior that are derived from Windows API calls in parallel threads. We evaluated our classification method using 2,312 malware samples with different hash values. The samples classified into 1,221 groups by the result of three types of antivirus softwares were classified into 93 clusters. 90% of the samples used in the experiment were classified into 20 clusters at most. Moreover, it ensured that 39 malware samples had characteristics different from other samples, suggesting that these may be new types of malware. The kinds of Windows API calls confirmed the samples classified into the same cluster had the same characteristics. We made clear that antivirus softwares named different name to malwares that have same behavior.

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


PUQ:

A

code

for

non-intrusive

uncertainty

propagation

in

computer

simulations

We

present

a

software

package

for

the

non-intrusive

propagation

of

uncertainties

in

input

parameters

through

computer

simulation

codes

or

mathematical

models

and

associated

analysis;

we

demonstrate

its

use

to

drive

micromechanical

simulations

using

a

phase

field

approach

to

dislocation

dynamics.

The

PRISM

uncertainty

quantification

framework

(PUQ)

offers

several

methods

to

sample

the

distribution

of

input

variables

and

to

obtain

surrogate

models

(or

response

functions)

that

relate

the

uncertain

inputs

with

the

quantities

of

interest

(QoIs);

the

surrogate

models

are

ultimately

used

to

propagate

uncertainties.

PUQ

requires

minimal

changes

in

the

simulation

code,

just

those

required

to

annotate

the

QoI(s)

for

its

analysis.

Collocation

methods

include

Monte

Carlo,

Latin

Hypercube

and

Smolyak

sparse

grids

and

surrogate

models

can

be

obtained

in

terms

of

radial

basis

functions

and

via

generalized

polynomial

chaos.

PUQ

uses

the

method

of

elementary

effects

for

sensitivity

analysis

in

Smolyak

runs.

The

code

is

available

for

download

and

also

available

for

cloud

computing

in

nanoHUB.

PUQ

orchestrates

runs

of

the

nanoPLASTICITY

tool

at

nanoHUB

where

users

can

propagate

uncertainties

in

dislocation

dynamics

simulations

using

simply

a

web

browser,

without

downloading

or

installing

any

software.

Program

title:

PUQ

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

MIT

license

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Python,

C.

Computer:

Workstations.

Operating

system:

Linux,

Mac

OSX.

Classification:

External

routines:

SciPy,

Matplotlib,

Nature

of

problem:

Uncertainty

propagation

and

creation

of

response

surfaces.

Solution

method:

Generalized

Polynomial

Chaos

(gPC)

using

Smolyak

sparse

grids.

Running

time:

PUQ

performs

uncertainty

quantification

and

sensitivity

analysis

by

running

a

simulation

multiple

times

using

different

values

for

input

parameters.

Its

run

time

will

be

the

product

of

the

run

time

of

the

chosen

simulation

code

and

the

number

of

runs

required

to

achieve

the

desired

accuracy.

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

uncertainty quantification
sensitivity analysis


An investigation of the characteristics of the stationary feed motor current in NC machines The cross-feed directional cutting force acts normal to the machined surface of a workpiece. It is important to estimate and control this force, since it directly affects the machined surface. However, using the current supplied to a stationary motor to predict the cutting state poses difficulties, because of the current's somewhat undesired behaviour. In this paper, a largely empirical approach was used to help resolve this problem. We show that the current's undesired behaviour is related to infinitesimal rotations of the motor. Subsequently, the relationship between the current and the cutting force was identified with an error of less than 15%. The predictions obtained using two machine tools with different characteristics were compared to confirm the validity of the method when investigating the characteristics of the stationary feed motor current.

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

stationary feed motor
current
cutting force


A preliminary study of the application of artificial neural networks to prediction of milk yield in dairy sheep The aim of this study was to test the usefulness of artificial neural networks (ANNs) for predicting lactation as well as test-day milk yield(s) in Chios dairy sheep on the basis of a few (24) available test-day records at the beginning of a lactation period. The ANN employed was a neural network-like system with some advantages over other ANNs. No selection of learning coefficients, of the number of hidden layers or of the number of neurons in the layers was required. The effect on the network's predictive ability of the number of records used in the training phase, the number of input variables (i.e. test-day records) and data preprocessing was investigated. Input variables were the county, herd, lactation, lambing month, litter size, milk yield recorder, test day and days in milk (after lambing) when the first milk sample was obtained. Various criteria of goodness of prediction of lactation as well as of test-day yields were used, including Pearson and rank correlations between observed and predicted yields; the average difference between observed and predicted yields; the difference between their standard deviations; the standard deviation of differences between observed and predicted yields, and the ratio between it and the observed mean value. The average difference between observed and predicted yields was generally statistically non-significant (P<0.05) while predicted standard deviations were underestimated. Values of Pearson and rank correlations between observed and predicted lactation yields ranged from 0.87 to 0.97. In prediction of test-day yields, correlation estimates were generally lower than those obtained in lactation yields and declined as the interval between yields increased. Better predictions were obtained as the number of records used for training increased from 500 to 1000, the number of test-day records increased from 2 to 4, and data preprocessing (i.e. encoding of data) was employed. Training the network for low prediction error of a specific parameter did not improve its overall performance. In contrast, network specialization (i.e. using training data for specific parameters prediction) improved the predictive ability of the parameter in question. Results illustrated the potential effectiveness of ANNs in predicting milk yield in dairy sheep and appeared to justify further pursuit of this research.

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

artificial neural networks
dairy sheep
prediction


artists augmented by agents (invited speech) Computers can be very helpful to us by performing tasks on our behalf. For example, they are very good at performing calculations, storing information and producing visualisations of objects that do not yet exist as a made artifact. Increasingly, however, a different role is being found for the computer. It is the role of a catalyst, or a stimulant, to our own creative thinking. In such cases the computer is not primarily performing a task for us and generating an answer within itself, rather it is helping us to generate answers within ourselves. The computer helps us think creatively. This role for the computer can be illustrated in the context of computer support to creative design. In order to design computer systems that support the creative process, it is important to understand that process well enough to predict what might help, rather than hinder. Given such research, we may begin to define the characteristics of what the computer must do in order to augment creative thinking. The paper explores a particular application of intelligent user interfaces:- the augmentation of creative thought in artists.

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

speech help role task order research systems design context process support paper predict

applications
visualisation
examples
creativity
computation
object
intelligent user interface
agent
informal
art


energy-efficient instruction set synthesis for application-specific processors Several techniques have been proposed to enhance the energy-efficiency of ASIPs (Application-Specific Instruction set Processors). While those techniques can reduce the energy consumption with a minimal change in the instruction set (IS), they fail to exploit the opportunity of designing the entire IS from the energy-efficiency perspective. In this paper, we present an energy-efficient IS synthesis technique that can comprehensively reduce the energy-delay product (EDP) of ASIPs through optimal instruction encoding, considering both the instruction bitwidth and the dynamic instruction count. Experimental results with a typical embedded RISC processor show that our technique can generate application-specific IS's that are up to 40\% more energy-efficient over the native IS for several application benchmarks.

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

energy-delay product
customization
low power


Local influence assessment in heteroscedastic measurement error models Functional heteroscedastic measurement error models are investigated aiming to assess the effects of perturbations of data on some inferential procedures. This goal is accomplished by resorting to methods of local influence. The techniques provide to the practitioner a valuable tool that enables to identify potential influential elements and to quantify the effects of perturbations in these elements on results of interest. An illustrative example with a real data set is also reported.

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

measurement error models
local influence


The absolute center of a network This paper presents a new algorithm for finding an absolute center (minimax criterion) of an undirected network with n nodes and m arcs based on the concept of minimum-diameter trees. Local centers and their associated radii are identified by a monotonically increasing sequence of lower bounds on the radii. Computational efficiency is addressed in terms of worst-case complexity and practical performance. The complexity of the algorithm is O(n(2) lg n + mn). In practice, because of its very rapid convergence, the algorithm renders the problem amenable even to manual solution for quite large networks, provided that the mini mal-distance matrix is given. Otherwise, evaluation of this matrix is the effective computational bottleneck. An interesting feature of the algorithm and its theoretical foundations is that it synthesizes and generalizes some well-known results in this area, particularly Halpern's lower bound on the local radius of a network and properties of centers of tree networks. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


An analytical model of a new packet marking algorithm for TCP flows In Differentiated Services networks, packets may receive a different treatment according to their Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) label. As a consequence, packet marking schemes can also be devised to differentiate packets belonging to a same TCP flow, with the goal of improving the performance experienced. This paper presents an analytical model for an adaptive packet marking scheme proposed in our previous work. The model combines three specific sub-models aimed at describing (i) the TCP sources aggregate, (ii) the marker, and (iii) the network status. Preliminary simulation results show quite accurate predictions for throughput and average queue occupancy. Besides, the research suggests new interesting guidelines to model queues fed by TCP traffic.

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


Scan Chain Ordering to Reduce Test Data for BIST-Aided Scan Test Using Compatible Scan Flip-Flops In this paper, the scan chain ordering method for BIST-aided scan test for reducing test data and test application time is proposed. In this work. we utilize the simple LFSR without a phase shifter as PRPG and configure scan chains using the compatible set of flip-flops with considering, the correlations among flip-flops in an LFSR. The method can reduce the number of inverter codes required for inverting, the bits in PRPG partterns that conflict with ATPG patterns. The experimental results for some benchmark circuits are shown to present the feasibility of our test method.

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

bist-aided scan test
test data reduction
compatible flip-flops
test pattern generation


a model-based service creation platform This paper presents a middleware platform supporting a model-based approach to service creation. We observe that the complexity of software services increases. To manage this complexity, to reuse middleware functionality, and to quickly create specific services in an efficient and cost-effective way upon user request, models are used, going towards 'higher-level' programming. In the Friends project, a service creation environment has been developed that supports the modelling and analysis of services at successive abstraction levels, their actual implementation, and their deployment on a service platform. We focus on the underlying paradigms and report on our implementation.

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

platform approach
systems architecting
component-based design
behaviour specification


A bio-inspired system model for interactive surveillance applications Advances in computer vision and pattern recognition research are leading to video surveillance systems with improved scene analysis capabilities. However, up to now few works have handled the problem of how the system, along with a human operator, can actively cope with detected anomalous events. In this paper, on the basis of recent studies on artificial cognitive systems, a general framework is proposed for designing interactive, adaptable and intelligent surveillance systems. The aim of the system is to react to situations in a preventive way using actuators installed in the monitored environment. An application of the proposed system is introduced where a guard is supported in pursuing an intruder. The operator is first localized and tracked and then multi-modal guidance messages are communicated to him on a mobile device. Previous experience on the interaction dynamics between the two players is provided by a simulator, modeling guard and intruder behaviors, to predict near future events and decide the appropriate messages to be sent. Results on real world video sequences show the reliability of the simulated data to build up interaction models and predict near future events. Moreover, the system capability of learning relationships with the operator to establish efficient and personalized communications is verified.

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

cognitive video surveillance
interaction learning and modeling
predictive decision


Optimal additive Schwarz methods for the hp h p -BEM: The hypersingular integral operator in 3D on locally refined meshes We propose and analyze an overlapping Schwarz preconditioner for the p p and hp h p boundary element method for the hypersingular integral equation in 3D. We consider surface triangulations consisting of triangles. The condition number is bounded uniformly in the mesh size h h and the polynomial order p p . The preconditioner handles adaptively refined meshes and is based on a local multilevel preconditioner for the lowest order space. Numerical experiments on different geometries illustrate its robustness.

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

hp h p -bem hp h p hp h p h p
preconditioning
additive schwarz method


Parallel particle filtering In recent years, there has been exciting advances in estimation methods based on Monte Carlo techniques. The particle filtering technique may Core with non-linear models as well as non-Gaussian dynamic and observation noises. It recursively constructs the conditional probability density of the state variables, with respect to all available Measurements, through a random exploration of the state space by entities called particles. A weight is assigned to each particle by a Bayesian correction term based on measurements. The main drawback of this procedure is due to the large number of particles needed which limits its application to on-line filtering. A data parallel algorithm is proposed to achieve real-time particle filtering, Extensive results are presented. Them shove that the accuracy of the method is preserved and that the computing times of the parallel algorithm are compatible kith the real-time constraints of the most challenging applications. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

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


Extracting semantics in OLAP databases using emerging cubes Data cubes capture general trends aggregated from multidimensional data from a categorical relation. When provided with two relations, interesting knowledge can be exhibited by comparing the two underlying data cubes. Trend reversals or particular phenomena irrelevant in one data cube may indeed clearly appear in the other data cube. In order to capture such trend reversals, we have proposed the concept of Emerging Cube. In this article, we emphasize on two new approaches for computing Emerging Cubes. Both are devised to be integrated within standard Olap systems, since they do not require any additional nor complex data structures. Our first approach is based on Sql. We propose three queries with different aims. The most efficient query uses a particular data structure merging the two input relations to achieve a single data cube computation. This query works fine even when voluminous data are processed. Our second approach is algorithmic and aims to improve efficiency and scalability while preserving integration capability. The E-Idea algorithm works a laBuc and takes the specific features of Emerging Cubes into account. E-Idea is automaton-based and adapts its behavior to the current execution context. Our proposals are validated by various experiments where we measure query response time. Comparative experiments show that E-Ideas response time is proportional to the size of the Emerging Cube. Experiments also demonstrate that extracting Emerging Cubes can be computed in practice, in a time compatible with user expectations.

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

olap mining
data warehouse
trend analysis


Tiny-sync: Tight time synchronization for wireless sensor networks Time synchronization is a fundamental middleware service for any distributed system. Wireless sensor networks make extensive use of synchronized time in many contexts (e. g., data fusion, TDMA schedules, synchronized sleep periods, etc.). We propose a time synchronization method relevant for wireless sensor networks. The solution features minimal complexity in network bandwidth, storage as well as processing, and can achieve good accuracy. Especially relevant for sensor networks, it also provides tight, deterministic bounds on offset and clock drift. A method for synchronizing the entire network is presented. The performance of the algorithm is analyzed theoretically and validated on a realistic testbed. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing algorithms in terms of precision and resource requirements.

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

algorithms
performance
sensor networks
time synchronization


What are suspicious VoIP delays? Voice over IP (VoIP) is unquestionably the most popular real-time service in IP networks today. Recent studies have shown that it is also a suitable carrier for information hiding. Hidden communication may pose security concerns as it can lead to confidential information leakage. In VoIP, RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) in particular, which provides the means for the successful transport of voice packets through IP networks, is suitable for steganographic purposes. It is characterised by a high packet rate compared to other protocols used in IP telephony, resulting in a potentially high steganographic bandwidth. The modification of an RTP packet stream provides many opportunities for hidden communication as the packets may be delayed, reordered or intentionally lost. In this paper, to enable the detection of steganographic exchanges in VoIP, we examined real RTP traffic traces to answer the questions, what do the normal delays in RTP packet streams look like? and, is it possible to detect the use of known RTP steganographic methods based on this knowledge?

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

ip telephony
voip delays
information hiding


Enteral versus Parenteral Nutrition: Effect on Intestinal Barrier Function Total parenteral nutrition (TPN), or the complete absence of enteral nutrients, is commonly used in a clinical setting. However, a major consequence of TPN administration is the development of mucosal atrophy and a loss of epithelial barrier function (EBF); and this loss may lead to an increase in clinical infections and septicemia. Our laboratory has investigated the mechanism of this TPN-associated loss of EBF using a mouse model. We have demonstrated that the mucosal lymphoid population significantly changes with TPN, and leads to a rise in interferon gamma (IFN-?) and decline in interleukin-10 (IL-10) expressionboth of which contribute to the loss of EBF. Associated with these cytokine changes is a dramatic decline in the expression of tight junction and adherens junction proteins. This article discusses the potential mechanisms responsible for these changes, and potential strategies to alleviate this loss in EBF.

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

epithelial barrier function
tight junction
mouse

intraepithelial lymphocyte
interleukin-7 (il-7)
interferon gamma (ifn-?)
il-10
epithelial cells


An edge-based image copy detection scheme This paper presents a novel scheme to detect copied versions of digital images, particularly in an Internet environment based on edge information of images. The edge information is used to generate the signature set for a corresponding image. The edge-based signature sets are then used to compute the distortions between query images and test images, from among which a user wants to find copies. Experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme not only withstands various modifications of an original image but also offers good detection performance in dealing with various rotations, shifting of 17.5% of the width or height of an image, and cutting out up to 45% of the area of an image, which previous research work has found difficult to detect. Therefore, our proposed scheme could be very helpful in detecting copies of digital images transmitted in an Internet environment.

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 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

copyright protection
edge-detection
rotation


Some representations for series on idempotent semirings - or how to go beyond recognizability keeping representability In this article, we compare different types of representations for series with coefficients in complete idempotent semirings. Each of these representations was introduced to solve a particular problem. We show how they are or are not included one in the other and we present a common generalization of them.

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


Geometric and approximation properties of some complex rotation-invariant, integral operators in the unit disk The purpose of this paper is to obtain Jackson-type estimates in approximation by some complex rotation-invariant integral operators in the unit disk. In addition, these operators preserve some sufficient conditions for starlikeness and univalence of analytic functions.

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


Secure Handover Authentication Protocol Based on Bilinear Pairings Handover authentication protocol enables a mobile node to switch from one base station to another without loss or interruption of service when the node exits the transmission area of his or her current base station. This paper proposes a secure prime-order handover authentication protocol based on bilinear pairings. The proposed protocol adapts the concept of pseudonyms to provide user anonymity and user unlinkability. It withstands well-known security threats and achieves mutual authentication, user unlinkability. A batch signature verification mechanism to verify a mass of signatures is presented in our scheme. We also prove that our scheme is secure under random oracle.

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

user unlinkability
handover authentication
bilinear pairings


COMMUNICATION IN XYZ ALL-TO-ALL QUANTUM NETWORKS WITH A MISSING LINK We explicitate the relation between Hamiltonians for networks of interacting qubits in the XYZ model and graph Laplacians. We then study evolution in networks in which all sites can communicate with each other. These are modeled by the complete graph K(n) and called all-to-all networks. It turns out that K(n) does not exhibit perfect state transfer (PST). However, we prove that deleting an edge in K(n) allows PST between the two non-adjacent sites, when n is a multiple of four. An application is routing a qubit over n different sites, by switching off the link between the sites that we wish to put in communication. Additionally, we observe that, in certain cases, the unitary inducing evolution in K(n) is equivalent to the Grover operator.

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

quantum transport
spin chains
spectral graph theory


Identification of sport talents using a web-oriented expert system with a fuzzy module This paper presents a fuzzy expert system for scouting and evaluation of young sport talents. Based on the knowledge of several human sport experts, various motoric skills tests, morphologic characteristics measurements and functional tests are quantized according to their importance for a chosen set of sports. Obtained values are entered into the knowledge database along with the grades of the measured results for each test. Fuzzy logic is implemented in order to make the system more flexible and robust. The whole system is web-oriented, i.e. developed ASP.NET application is available to the internet users with a proper login and password. The developed expert system gives acceptability prediction and proposal of the most suitable sports for the person being tested. The output results of the system were evaluated by 4 experts, using real data collected during several years. Comparison is done between the sport proposed by our expert system and the actual outcome of the persons sports career. Also, the comparison of the expert system output and the human expert suggestions were done. All tests showed high reliability and accuracy of the developed system. Strengths, possibilities and future plans of the Sport Talent expert system are also discussed.

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

sport talents identification
web application


Incremental construction of minimal deterministic finite cover automata We present A fast incremental algorithm for constructing minimal Deterministic Finite Cover Automata (DFCA) for a given language. Since it was shown that the minimal DFCA for a language L has less states than the minimal Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) for the same language L, this technique seems to be the best choice for incrementally building the automaton for a large language, especially when the number of states in the DFCA is significantly less than the number of states in the corresponding minimal DFA. We have implemented the proposed algorithm and have tested it against the best-known DFCA minimization technique. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O

dfa
dfca minimization
incremental construction

deterministic finite cover automata (dfca)


Numerical comparison of methods for solving fractional differentialalgebraic equations (FDAEs) In this paper, the variational iteration method (VIM) and the Adomian decomposition method (ADM) are implemented to give approximate solutions for fractional differentialalgebraic equations (FDAEs). Both methods in applied mathematics can be used as alternative methods for obtaining analytic and approximate solutions for different types of fractional differential equations. This paper presents a numerical comparison between these two methods and the homotopy analysis method (HAM) for solving FDAEs. Numerical results reveal that the VIM and the ADM are quite accurate and applicable.

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

fractional differentialalgebraic equations (fdaes)


A 98 GMACs/W 32-Core Vector Processor in 65 nm CMOS This paper presents a high-performance dual-issue 32-core SIMD platform for image and video processing. The SIMD cores support 8/16 bits SIMD MAC instructions, and vertical vector access. Eight cores with a 4-ports L2 cache are connected by CIB bus as a cluster. Four clusters are connected by mesh network. This hierarchical network can provide more than 192 GB/s low latency inter-core BW in average. The 4-ports L2 cache architecture is also designed to provide 192 GB/s L2 cache BW. To reduce coherence operation in large-scale SMP, an application specified protocol is proposed. Compared with MOESI, 67.8% of L1 cache energy can be saved in 32 cores case. The whole system including 32 vector cores, 256 KB L2 cache, 64-bit DDRII PHY and two PLL units, occupy 25 mm(2) in 65 nm CMOS. It can achieve a peak performance of 375 GMACs and 98 GMACs/W at 1.2 V.

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


Optimal insertion in deterministic DAWGs In this paper, we present an on-line algorithm for adding words (strings) in deterministic directed acyclic word graphs (DAWGs) i.e. acyclic deterministic finite-state automata (DFAs). The proposed algorithm performs optimal insertion, meaning that if applied to a minimal DAWG, the DAWG after the insertion will also be minimal. The time required to add a new word is O(n) with respect to the size of the DAWG. Repetitive application of the proposed insertion algorithm can be used to construct minimal deterministic DAWGs incrementally, although the algorithm is not time-efficient for building minimal DAWGs from it set of words: to build a DAWG of n words this way, O(n(2)) time is required. However, the algorithm is quite useful in cases where existing minimal DAWGs have to be updated rapidly (e.g. speller dictionaries), since each word insertion traverses only a limited portion of the graph and no additional minimization operation is required. This makes the process very efficient to be used on-line. This paper provides a proof of correctness for the algorithm, a calculation of its time-complexity and experimental results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

dfa
incremental algorithms
spelling checker


Physiological and subjective evaluation of a humanrobot object hand-over task In the context of task sharing between a robot companion and its human partners, the notions of safe and compliant hardware are not enough. It is necessary to guarantee ergonomic robot motions. Therefore, we have developed Human Aware Manipulation Planner (Sisbot etal., 2010), a motion planner specifically designed for humanrobot object transfer by explicitly taking into account the legibility, the safety and the physical comfort of robot motions. The main objective of this research was to define precise subjective metrics to assess our planner when a human interacts with a robot in an object hand-over task. A second objective was to obtain quantitative data to evaluate the effect of this interaction. Given the short duration, the relative ease of the object hand-over task and its qualitative component, classical behavioral measures based on accuracy or reaction time were unsuitable to compare our gestures. In this perspective, we selected three measurements based on the galvanic skin conductance response, the deltoid muscle activity and the ocular activity. To test our assumptions and validate our planner, an experimental set-up involving Jido, a mobile manipulator robot, and a seated human was proposed. For the purpose of the experiment, we have defined three motions that combine different levels of legibility, safety and physical comfort values. After each robot gesture the participants were asked to rate them on a three dimensional subjective scale. It has appeared that the subjective data were in favor of our reference motion. Eventually the three motions elicited different physiological and ocular responses that could be used to partially discriminate them.

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

humanrobot interaction
physiology
eye tracking
human aware planning


Breakout Local Search for the Max-Cutproblem Given an undirected graph G=(V,E) G = ( V , E ) where each edge of E is weighted with an integer number, the maximum cut problem (Max-Cut) is to partition the vertices of V into two disjoint subsets so as to maximize the total weight of the edges between the two subsets. As one of Karp's 21 NP-complete problems, Max-Cut has attracted considerable attention over the last decades. In this paper, we present Breakout Local Search (BLS) for Max-Cut. BLS explores the search space by a joint use of local search and adaptive perturbation strategies. The proposed algorithm shows excellent performance on the set of well-known maximum cut benchmark instances in terms of both solution quality and computational time. Out of the 71 benchmark instances, BLS is capable of finding new improved results in 34 cases and attaining the previous best-known result for 35 instances, within computing times ranging from less than 1s to 5.6h for the largest instance with 20,000 vertices.

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

max-cut
local search and heuristics
adaptive diversification
metaheuristics


Robust quasi-likelihood inference in generalized linear mixed models with outliers It is well known that in a traditional outlier-free situation, the generalized quasi-likelihood (GQL) approach [B.C. Sutradhar, On exact quasilikelihood inference in generalized linear mixed models, Sankhya: Indian J. Statist. 66 (2004), pp. 261-289] performs very well to obtain the consistent as well as the efficient estimates for the parameters involved in the generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs). In this paper, we first examine the effect of the presence of one or more outliers on the GQL estimation for the parameters in such GLMMs, especially in two important models such as count and binary mixed models. The outliers appear to cause serious biases and hence inconsistency in the estimation. As a remedy, we then propose a robust GQL (RGQL) approach in order to obtain the consistent estimates for the parameters in the GLMMs in the presence of one or more outliers. An extensive simulation study is conducted to examine the consistency performance of the proposed RGQL approach.

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

consistency
count and binary mixed models
outliers

generalized linear mixed model
generalized quasi-likelihood
overdispersion
regression effects
robust approach


Easy intruder deduction problems with homomorphisms We present complexity results for the verification of security protocols. Since the perfect cryptography assumption is unrealistic for cryptographic primitives with visible algebraic properties, we extend the classical Dolev-Yao model by permitting the intruder to exploit these properties. More precisely, we are interested in theories such as Exclusive or and Abelian groups in combination with the homomorphism axiom. We show that the intruder deduction problem is in PTIME in both cases, improving the EXPTIME complexity results of Lafourcade, Lugiez and Treinen. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

automatic theorem proving
formal methods


User-adaptive reminders for home-based medical tasks - A case study Objectives: We present a prototype adaptive reminder system for home-based medical tasks. The system consists of a mobile device for reminder presentation and ambient sensors to determine opportune moments for reminder delivery. Our objective was to study interaction with the prototype under naturalistic living conditions and gain insight into factors affecting the long-term acceptability of context-sensitive reminder systems for the home setting. Methods: A volunteer participant used the prototype in a residential research facility while adhering to a regimen of simulated medical tasks for ten days. Some reminders were scheduled at fixed times during the day and some were automatically time-shifted based on sensor data. We made a complete video and sensor record of the stay. Finally, the participant commented about his experiences with the system in a debriefing interview. Results. Based on this case study, including direct observation of individual alert-action sequences, we make four recommendations for designers of context-sensitive adaptive reminder systems. Captured metrics suggest that adaptive reminders led to faster reaction times and were perceived by the participant as being more useful. Conclusions. The evaluation of context-sensitive systems that overlap into domestic lives is challenging. We believe that the ideal experiment is to deploy such systems in real homes and assess performance longitudinally. This case study in an instrumented live-in facility is a step toward that long-term goal.

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

adaptive assistance
smart homes
mobile computing
medication adherence
in-home acceptability evaluation


Antenna Radiation Pattern Influence on the Localization Accuracy in Wireless Sensor Networks Localization or position determination is one of the most common applications for the wireless sensor networks. Many investigations have been made during the last decade, most of the effort being concentrated in the direction of improving the accuracy of the positioning results by using complex filtering and correction algorithms, and other techniques such as radio maps or directive antennas for the reference nodes. The most common sources of errors include reflections on nearby objects, radio frequency noise, and variable characteristics of the communication channel. In the vast majority of cases, several assumptions have been made in order to simplify the computing algorithms or the complexity of nodes, and finally their cost. The omnidirectional radiation pattern of the node antennas is such an assumption. In this paper we investigate theoretically and validate by measurements the influence of the radiation pattern on the localization accuracy of a wireless sensor node network. By taking into consideration the orientation of nodes, which could be provided by a local digital compass on each node, we demonstrate that the position accuracy could be improved with a minimum of resources. All measurements were made in radio emissions controlled environment - a semi-anechoic chamber, without affecting the generality of the proposed solution.

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

positioning accuracy
error correction
received signal strength indicator


Image interpolation using neural networks This work presents an image interpolation method based on a multilayer perceptron, The method is tested in noise-free as well as noisy line doubling and image expansion problems. Two adaptive algorithms are compared. Results show that the proposed method improves image interpolation.

B I 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 B I


Monte Carlo modelling of imperfections in two-dimensional photonic crystals In this paper we describe a Monte Carlo simulation of imperfections in photonic crystals, a new class of materials with optical properties that offer promise in a range of potential applications in the areas of information and communications technology. We describe the relevant physical and structural properties of these materials and outline the derivation of a theoretical model. We then present a Monte Carlo investigation of the tolerance of these materials to fabrication defects. (C) 2003 IMACS. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Integrating adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system and local binary pattern operator for robust retinal blood vessels segmentation Automatic extraction of blood vessels is an important step in computer-aided diagnosis in ophthalmology. The blood vessels have different widths, orientations, and structures. Therefore, the extracting of the proper feature vector is a critical step especially in the classifier-based vessel segmentation methods. In this paper, a new multi-scale rotation-invariant local binary pattern operator is employed to extract efficient feature vector for different types of vessels in the retinal images. To estimate the vesselness value of each pixel, the obtained multi-scale feature vector is applied to an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system. Then by applying proper top-hat transform, thresholding, and length filtering, the thick and thin vessels are highlighted separately. The performance of the proposed method is measured on the publicly available DRIVE and STARE databases. The average accuracy 0.942 along with true positive rate (TPR) 0.752 and false positive rate (FPR) 0.041 is very close to the manual segmentation rates obtained by the second observer. The proposed method is also compared with several state-of-the-art methods. The proposed method shows higher average TPR in the same range of FPR and accuracy.

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

retinal image segmentation
blood vessel detection
adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system


Stochastic geometry based models for modeling cellular networks in urban areas Recently a new approach to modeling cellular networks has been proposed based on the Poisson point process (PPP). Unlike the traditional, popular hexagonal grid model for the locations of base stations, the PPP model is tractable. It has been shown by Andrews etal. (in IEEE Trans Commun 59(11):31223134, 2011) that the hexagonal grid model provides upper bounds of the coverage probability while the PPP model gives lower bounds. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive comparison of the PPP and the hexagonal grid models with real base station deployments in urban areas worldwide provided by the open source project OpenCellID. Our simulations show that the PPP model gives upper bounds of the coverage probabilities for urban areas and is more accurate than the hexagonal grid model. In addition, we show that the Poisson cluster process is able to accurately model the base station location distribution.

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

cellular networks
stochastic geometry
poisson point process

matern cluster process
hard-core process
geyer saturation process


PHAST: Hardware-accelerated shortest path trees ? We present a novel algorithm to solve the non-negative single-source shortest path problem on road networks and graphs with low highway dimension. After a quick preprocessing phase, we can compute all distances from a given source in the graph with essentially a linear sweep over all vertices. Because this sweep is independent of the source, we are able to reorder vertices in advance to exploit locality. Moreover, our algorithm takes advantage of features of modern CPU architectures, such as SSE and multiple cores. Compared to Dijkstras algorithm, our method needs fewer operations, has better locality, and is better able to exploit parallelism at multi-core and instruction levels. We gain additional speedup when implementing our algorithm on a GPU, where it is up to three orders of magnitude faster than Dijkstras algorithm on a high-end CPU. This makes applications based on all-pairs shortest-paths practical for continental-sized road networks. Several algorithms, such as computing the graph diameter, arc flags, or exact reaches, can be greatly accelerated by our method.

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

shortest paths
route planning
high performance computing


SAMAR: Subjectivity and sentiment analysis for Arabic social media SAMAR is a system for subjectivity and sentiment analysis (SSA) for Arabic social media genres. Arabic is a morphologically rich language, which presents significant complexities for standard approaches to building SSA systems designed for the English language. Apart from the difficulties presented by the social media genres processing, the Arabic language inherently has a high number of variable word forms leading to data sparsity. In this context, we address the following 4 pertinent issues: how to best represent lexical information; whether standard features used for English are useful for Arabic; how to handle Arabic dialects; and, whether genre specific features have a measurable impact on performance. Our results show that using either lemma or lexeme information is helpful, as well as using the two part of speech tagsets (RTS and ERTS). However, the results show that we need individualized solutions for each genre and task, but that lemmatization and the ERTS POS tagset are present in a majority of the settings. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

subjectivity and sentiment analysis
morphologically rich language
arabic


Shallow semantic labeling using two-phase feature-enhanced string matching A two-phase annotation method for semantic labeling in natural language processing is proposed. The dynamic programming approach stresses on a non-exact string matching which takes full advantage of the underlying grammatical structure of the parse trees in a Treebank. The first phase of the labeling is a coarse-grained syntactic parsing which is complementary to a semantic dissimilarities analysis in its latter phase. The approach goes beyond shallow parsing to a deeper level of case role identification, while preserving robustness, without being bogged down into a complete linguistic analysis. The paper presents experimental results for recognizing more than 50 different semantic labels in 10,000 sentences. Results show that the approach improves the labeling, even though with incomplete information. Detailed evaluations are discussed in order to justify its significances.

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

natural language processing
string matching
shallow parsing


Traftic studies for fast optical switching in an intelligent optical network The optical layer of the transport network is expected in the (near) future to make the transition from a statically configured layer to a fully flexible, automatic and intelligent layer. Such an intelligent optical network (ION) allows to set up (or tear down) bandwidth between two nodes on demand, following a simple request of the client network layer: the so-called switched connections. For successful deployment of these switched connections it is of utmost importance to have a well-educated idea about the granularities of the traffic flows in the optical transport network. Deploying switched connections with a capacity of 10 Gbps to transport a traffic demand with a granularity of a few hundred Mbps does not exactly make efficient use of the network resources. In this paper, the granularity of the traffic demand between US metro areas is investigated for two future points in time, namely 2006 and 2010. For this study we focus on the traffic flows between two metro area entities: the points of presence (Pops) or the main aggregation points of the customer traffic in a metro area, and the collector central offices (COs) or the nodes a bit further in the metro area, closer to the end-customers. We have found that a significant portion of the total traffic volume at these moments in time will qualify for transport using switched connections with a capacity of 10 Gbps. According to our study, in 2006 around one third of the traffic will qualify for transportation in such 10 Gbps connections between Pops in different metro areas, while by 2010 this amount will have increased to more than 99%. The traffic granularity between the collector COs, however, will in 2006 still be too small to justify the use of direct 10 Gbps connections, but in 20 10 almost three quarter of the traffic could make use of 10 Gbps direct connections from collector CO to collector CO. These results enable us to sketch the expected network evolution scenario and determine the type and size of equipment needed in the different steps of the network evolution. The optical edge aggregation switches will have to be moved deeper into the metro area with time: in 2006 they will be needed at the Pops, while by 2010 they could be placed at the collector COs.

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

fast optical switching
intelligent optical network
traffic granularity
network evolution

optical backbone network
metro network
access network
peering


A sparse preconditioned iterative method for vibration analysis of geometrically mistuned bladed disks In this paper, the Static Mode Compensation method to predict geometrical mistuning effects on the response of bladed disks is reviewed and its limitations are analyzed. This method proved to be effective only for narrow clusters of modes under localized low rank perturbation. A new algorithm is introduced to address its deficiencies that draws on optimal preconditioned methods for generalized eigenvalue problem featuring sparse matrix vector multiplications, being more attractive under limited memory constraints of multi-millon DOF FEM models. The central idea of the SMC is to correct nominal eigenspace using modal acceleration method. It has been extended here by replacing the quasi-static set of modes with inexact solutions of the linear JacobiDavidson correction equations. Some heuristic strategies are discussed to lower the computational effort given the block-circulant structure of the nominal system. Numerical experiments on an industrial scale bladed disk model show that this leads to a very competitive tool. Computational performance and accuracy of both methods is compared in two areas of spectrum. The study demonstrates low accuracy of SMC method in the modal interaction zone, while validating efficiency and accuracy of the new algorithm in both areas.

O 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

turbomachinery
model reduction
indirect methods


Tense operators in fuzzy logic ? The aim of the paper is to introduce and describe tense operators in every fuzzy logic which is axiomatized by means of a residuated poset. For this we use the axiomatization of universal quantifiers as a starting point and we modify these axioms for our sake. At first, we show that the operators can be recognized as modal operators and we study the pairs as the so-called dynamic pairs. Further, we get constructions of these operators in the corresponding residuated poset provided a time frame is given. Moreover, we solve the problem of finding a time frame in the case when the tense operators are given. In particular, any tense algebra is representable in its DedekindMacNeille completion.

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

fuzzy logic
residuated poset
tense operators

modal logic
tense logic
fuzzy dynamic algebra


Resource-Aware Compiler Prefetching for Fine-Grained Many-Cores Super-scalar, out-of-order processors that can have tens of read and write requests in the execution window place significant demands on Memory Level Parallelism (MLP). Multi- and many-cores with shared parallel caches further increase MLP demand. Current cache hierarchies however have been unable to keep up with this trend, with modern designs allowing only 4-16 concurrent cache misses. This disconnect is exacerbated by recent highly parallel architectures (e.g. GPUs) where power and area per-core budget favor numerous lighter cores with less resources, further reducing support for MLP on a per-core basis. Support for hardware and software prefetch increases MLP pressure since these techniques overlap multiple memory requests with existing computation. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a novel Resource-Aware Prefetching (RAP) compiler algorithm that is aware of the number of simultaneous prefetches supported, and optimized for the same. We implemented our algorithm in a GCC-derived compiler and evaluated its performance using an emerging fine-grained many-core architecture. Our results show that the RAP algorithm outperforms a well-known loop prefetching algorithm by up to 40.15% in run-time on average across benchmarks and the state-of-the art GCC implementation by up to 34.79%, depending upon hardware configuration. Moreover, we compare the RAP algorithm with a simple hardware prefetching mechanism, and show run-time improvements of up to 24.61%. To demonstrate the robustness of our approach, we conduct a design-space exploration (DSE) for the considered target architecture by varying (i) the amount of chip resources designated for per-core prefetch storage and (ii) off-chip bandwidth. We show that the RAP algorithm is robust in that it improves performance across all design points considered. We also identify the Pareto-optimal hardware-software configuration which delivers 53.66% run-time improvement on average while using only 5.47% more chip area than the bare-bones design.

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


Use of non-photorealistic rendering and photometric stereo in making bas-reliefs from photographs ? Automatic bas-relief generation from 2D photographs potentially has applications to coinage, commemorative medals and souvenirs. However, current methods are not yet ready for real use in industry due to insufficient artistic effect, noticeable distortion, and unbalanced contrast. We previously proposed a shape-from-shading (SFS) based method to automatically generate bas-reliefs from single frontal photographs of human faces; however, suppression of unwanted details remained a problem. Here, we give experimental results showing how incorporating non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) into our previous framework enables us to both suppress unwanted detail, and yet also emphasize important features. We have consider an alternative approach to recovering relief shape, based on photometric stereo instead of SFS for surface orientation estimation. This can effectively reduce the computational time.

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

bas-relief
non-photorealistic rendering
shape-from-shading


On wonder land betrayal: creating artificial life software to meet aesthetic goals Examines the way in which works of generative computer-based art, specifically those which reference Artificial Life, may gain aesthetic appeal through instilling a sense of "wonder" in a viewer. This idea is examined from its roots in our fascination with natural phenomena and the sublime, through its representation in terms of the basic elements of drawing off and on-screen, and into the computational realm in which Artificial Life software finds its form. Further explores the artistic potential of the approach which takes computationally-realized works with a single level of emergent organizational structure, to those capable of giving rise to interactions built yet again on top of these in an ever-increasing hierarchy of added complexity. The difficulties of coding such software systems successfully will be briefly discussed.

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


Beta-Shifts, Their Languages, and Computability For every real number beta > 1, the beta-shift is a dynamical system describing iterations of the map x bar right arrow beta x mod 1 and is studied intensively in number theory. Each beta-shift has an associated language of finite strings of characters; properties of this language are studied for the additional insight they give into the dynamics of the underlying system. We prove that the language of the beta-shift is recursive iff beta is a computable real number. That fact yields a precise characterization of the reals: The real numbers beta for which we can compute arbitrarily good approximations-hence in particular the numbers for which we can compute their expansion to some base-are precisely those for which there exists a program that decides for any finite sequence of digits whether the sequence occurs as a subword of some element of the beta-shift. While the "only if" part of the proof of the above result is constructive, the "if" part is not. We show that no constructive proof of the "if" part exists. Hence, there exists no algorithm that transforms a program computing arbitrarily good approximations of a real number beta into a program deciding the language of the beta-shift.

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

computability theory
dynamical systems
computable analysis


An effective algorithm for the segmentation of digital plane curves - The isoparametric formulation An algorithm based on the isoparametric formulation of the finite element methods is presented for segmenting digital plane curves which consist of straight lines and arcs. Isoparametric shape functions make it possible to generate curves that have straight and arbitrarily curved segments using the natural coordinate transformation. The strong attributes of this algorithm include robustness and simplicity

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


attacking elliptic curve cryptosystems with special-purpose hardware Since their invention in the mid 1980s, Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC) have become an alternative to common Public-Key (PK) cryptosystems such as, e.g., RSA. The utilization of Elliptic Curves (EC) in cryptography is very promising because of their resistance against powerful index-calculus attacks. Providing a similar level of security as RSA, ECC allows for efficient implementation due to a significantly smaller bit size of the operands. It is widely accepted that the only feasible way to attack actual cryptosystems, if at all, is the application of dedicated hardware. In times of continuous technological improvements and increasing computing power, the question of the security of ECC against attacks based on special-purpose hardware and, in particular based on recently emerged low-cost FPGAs, arises.This work presents the first architecture with a corresponding FPGA implementation of an attack against ECC over prime fields. We describe an FPGA-based multi-processing hardware architecture for the Pollard-Rho method which is, to our knowledge, currently the most efficient attack against ECC. The implementation is running on a contemporary low-cost FPGA which allows for a much better cost-performance ratio than conventional CPUs. With the implementation at hand, a fairly accurate estimate about the cost of an FPGA-based attack can be given. We will extrapolate the results on actual ECC key lengths (128 bits and above) and estimate the expected runtimes for a successful attack. Since FPGA-based attacks are out of reach for key lengths exceeding 128 bits, we provide estimates for an ASIC design.Based on our results, currently used elliptic curve cryptosystems (160 bit and above) are infeasible to break with available computational and financial resources. However, some of the security standards proposed by the SECG in [2, 3] become subject to attacks based on low-cost FPGAs.

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

elliptic curve cryptosystem
discrete logarithm
cryptanalysis
pollard's rho


designing and evaluating affective aspects of sociable media to support social connectedness The use of sociable media for supporting social connectedness has been a serious subject of study for researchers and designers in recent years. Social connectedness is considered to be the momentary experience of belongingness and relatedness with others. Particular user groups may benefit from support in social connectedness, such as elderly or divorced parents and their children. Several research projects have made efforts to support social connectedness. However, there have been few formal studies into the factors affecting connectedness. Also, the way in which social connectedness has been measured in studies to date is diverse and often not grounded in psychological theory. This shows a need for more elaborate investigation in how social connectedness can be measured, what types of content could be shared between users, and which interactions should be provided by a system, when aiming for social connectedness. This should lead to guidelines and an ontology of elements to help and inspire designers of social connectedness systems.

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

computer mediated communication
interaction design
measurement


The Use of Bedside Electronic Medical Record to Improve Quality of Care in Nursing Facilities A Qualitative Analysis It appears that the implementation and use of a bedside electronic medical record in nursing homes can be a strategy to improve quality of care. Staff like using the bedside electronic medical record and believe it is beneficial. Information gleaned from this qualitative evaluation of four nursing homes that implemented complete electronic medical records and participated in a larger evaluation of the use of an electronic medical record will be useful to other nursing homes as they consider implementing bedside computing technology. Nursing home owners and administrators must be prepared to undertake a major change requiring many months of planning to successfully implement. Direct care staff will need support as they learn to use the equipment, especially for the first 6 to 12 months after implementation. There should be a careful plan for continuing education opportunities so that staff learn to properly use the software and can benefit from the technology. After 12 to 24 months, almost no one wants to return to the era of paper charting.

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

electronic medical record
nursing homes
technology


a recommender system for dynamically evolving online forums Recommender systems can be used in online forums to recommend discussion topics to users; however as these forums are characterized by a constant influx of new users and new posts, it is important to consider the performance of the recommender system under a scenario in which the internal composition of the items to be recommended, i.e., discussion threads, and the user preferences are constantly changing. In this paper we describe and evaluate a forum recommender designed to handle the challenges of dynamically evolving internet forums used to gather and discuss feature requests for various software products. In particular, we empirically show that two proposed enhancements to the representations of user profiles will result in improved recommendation effectiveness in dynamic environments.

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

requirements elicitation
collaborative recommender systems
clustering


learning the task allocation game The distributed task allocation problem occurs in domains like web services, the grid, and other distributed systems. In this problem, the system consists of servers and mediators. Servers execute tasks and may differ in their capabilities, e.g. one server may take more time than the other in executing the same task. Mediators act on behalf of users, which can potentially be other mediators, and are responsible for receiving tasks from users and allocating them to servers.This work introduces a new gradient ascent learning algorithm that outperforms state of the art multiagent learners on this problem. We experimentally show that our algorithm converges faster and is less sensitive to tuning parameters than other algorithms. We also provide an informal proof that WPL has the same convergence guarantee as the best known algorithm, GIGA-WoLF. We also show that our algorithm converges in Jordan's and Shapley's games where many other algorithms fail to converge. Finally, we verify the practicality of our algorithm in the distributed task allocation domain, comparing its performance to an optimal global solution.

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

multiagent systems
reinforcement learning
markov decision process


Improving the performance of the organic thin-film transistors with thin insulating lithium fluoride buffer layer The pentacene-based organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) with a thin insulating lithium fluoride (LiF) buffer layer between the pentacene and source/drain electrodes were fabricated. Compared with conventional OTFTs, the introduction of the buffer layer (1nm) leads to field-effect mobility increases from 0.16 to 0.5cm2/Vs, and threshold voltage downshifts from ?19 to ?8V for the linear region. The on/off current ratio is improved to a level of 105 for the off-state current decreasing. These improvements are attributed to (i) tunneling injection through the LiF layer and (ii) interface dipole energy barrier decreasing and contact resistance reduction between pentacene and Au. The results demonstrate that it is an effective method to improve the device characteristics by using a buffer layer.

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


Social Workers and Broadband Advocacy: Social Justice and Information Communications Technologies This article presents the results of an exploratory study examining attitudes toward broadband advocacy, as related to attitudes toward and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and a variety of other personal, political, and professional characteristics. A random sample (n = 297) of licensed social workers in Michigan was surveyed. There is a growing body of literature indicating that access to broadband Internet is an important element of the digital divide, especially in the United States, which after having led in this area has fallen behind. Findings from this study indicate significant relationships between willingness to engage in broadband advocacy and political views, attitudes toward and use of ICTs, and knowledge about broadband. The implications for a profession focused on social justice and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable populations are explored.

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


SignalML from an EDF+ perspective Both SignalML and EDF+ offer a solution for the incompatibility between different data storage formats in biomedicine. This article discusses the SignalML approach from an EDF+ point of view.

B O O B 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 O B O O O


Soft computing-based active vibration control of a flexible structure Control of vibration of flexible structures has been of remarkable research attention in the last decade. Conventional control methods have not been widely successful due to the dynamic complexity of flexible structures. The literature has recently seen an emergence of demand of soft computing techniques in modelling and control of such dynamic systems. However, the form of soft computing required depends on the nature of the application. This paper accordingly presents investigations into modelling and control techniques based on soft computing methods for vibration suppression of two-dimensional flexible plate structures. The design and analysis of an active vibration control (AVC) system utilising soft computing techniques including neural networks and fuzzy logic is presented. The investigation involves soft computing approach with single-input single-output (SISO) and single-input multi-output (SIMO) AVC structures. A comprehensive comparative assessment of the approaches in terms of performance and design efficiency is also provided. Investigations reveal that the developed soft computing-based AVC system performs very well in the suppression of vibration of a flexible plate structure. It is also shown that the developed SIMO AVC system performs much better in the suppression of vibration of a flexible plate structure in comparison to the SISO AVC system.

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

active vibration control
flexible plate structure
fuzzy logic
modelling

single-input single-output and single input multi-output


Efficient

algorithms

for

quantitative

trait

loci

mapping

problems

Rapid

advances

in

molecular

genetics

push

the

need

for

efficient

data

analysis.

Advanced

algorithms

are

necessary

for

extracting

all

possible

information

from

large

experimental

data

sets.

We

present

a

general

linear

algebra

framework

for

quantitative

trait

loci

(QTL)

mapping,

using

both

linear

regression

and

maximum

likelihood

estimation.

The

formulation

simplifies

future

comparisons

between

and

theoretical

analyses

of

the

methods.

We

show

how

the

common

structure

of

QTL

analysis

models

can

be

used

to

improve

the

kernel

algorithms,

drastically

reducing

the

computational

effort

while

retaining

the

original

analysis

results.

We

have

evaluated

our

new

algorithms

on

data

sets

originating

from

two

large

populations

of

domestic

animals.

Using

an

updating

approach,

we

show

that

orders

of

magnitude

reduction

in

computational

demand

can

be

achieved

for

matrix

factorizations.

For

interval-mapping/composite-interval-mapping

settings

using

a

maximum

likelihood

model,

we

also

show

how

to

use

the

original

EM

algorithm

instead

of

the

ECM

approximation,

significantly

improving

the

convergence

and

further

reducing

the

computational

time.

The

algorithmic

improvements

makes

it

feasible

to

perform

analyses

which

have

previously

been

deemed

impractical

or

even

impossible.

For

example,

using

the

new

algorithms,

it

is

reasonable

to

perform

permutation

testing

using

exhaustive

search

on

populations

of

individuals

using

an

epistatic

two-QTL

model.

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


functional geometry A method of describing pictures is introduced. The equations, which describe the appearance of a picture, also form a purely functional program which can be used to compute the set of lines necessary to plot the picture on a graphical device. The method is illustrated by using it to describe the structure of one of the woodcuts of Maurits Escher.

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

geometry structure method device functional

graphics
computation
functional programming


System design and implementation of a National Image Registry for Orthopaedic Oncology Image Management, Research and Teaching Orthopaedic oncology is highly dependent on imaging studies to diagnose and treat patients. However, many types of bone tumors are rare creating a lack of teaching and research cases. We have developed a system to locally document and nationally register electronic images for teaching and research on bone tumors. The system minimizes storage requirements and maintains confidentiality using a unique approach. This paper demonstrates the system design and current implementation.

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

orthopaedic oncology
image registry
image management