Components of service value in business-to-business Cloud Computing Cloud computing services are used in many businesses. However, little is known about the components of service value in B2B cloud computing services from a customer perspective. In the B2C service literature, service value has four components: customer perceptions of the quality, equity, benefits, and sacrifices for the delivered service. The purpose of this research is to determine whether the components from an established B2C model applies to B2B cloud computing services. We followed a qualitative approach and interviewed twenty-one managers responsible for handling cloud computing services and for the decision to repurchase services. The interviews were then analysed to determine whether the existing model covers cloud computing services completely. We found broad support for the established service value components in a B2B cloud computing context. Importantly, we found evidence for a fifth component we called cloud service governance. A deeper understanding of service value perceptions among business users of cloud computing services means vendors can measure this for their customers. This is important because perceptions of service value directly influences customer satisfaction, impacting the buyers intention to repurchase the service. Similarly, this study will help buyers of B2B cloud computing services to assess the value extracted from their cloud computing service relationships. It will also help cloud providers and new competitors focus their efforts (e.g., into increasing technical reliability) to improve their customers perceptions of value obtained from their cloud computing services. This research advances the literature by extending the established B2C service value model to the context of B2B cloud computing, and providing the first evidence of an extra component in B2B services more generally.

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

service value
cloud computing
cloud service governance

business-to-business
service science
service level agreements


Path planning in expansive configuration spaces We introduce the notion of expansiveness to characterize a family of robot configuration spaces whose connectivity can be effectively captured by a roadmap of randomly-sampled milestones. The analysis of expansive configuration spaces has inspired us to develop a new randomized planning algorithm. This new algorithm tries to sample only the portion of the configuration space that is relevant to the current query, avoiding the cost of precomputing a roadmap for the entire configuration space. Thus, it is well-suited for problems where only a single query is submitted for a given environment. The algorithm has been implemented and successfully applied to complex assembly maintainability problems from the automotive industry.

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

motion planning
random sampling
probabilistic roadmap


Quadratic Discriminant Index for Optimal Multiplier Load Flow Method in ill conditioned system Determine the boundary zone between solvable and unsolvable of load flow solutions. Calculating the maximum loading point. Calculating low voltage solutions at the maximum loading point. Implementing all straight lines through two distinct state variables solutions.

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

optimal multiplier
quadratic discriminant
maximum loading point
ill conditioned system


State analysis of time-varying singular nonlinear systems via Haar wavelets State analysis of time-varying singular nonlinear systems via Haar wavelets is proposed in this paper. Based upon some useful properties of Haar wavelets, a special product matrix and a related coefficient matrix are applied to the time-varying systems such that the state of time-varying singular nonlinear systems can be solved easily. The local property of Haar wavelets is advantageous to shorten the calculation process in the task. We finally give a brief comparison between Haar wavelet and other orthogonal functions. (C) 1999 IMACS/Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

singular nonlinear systems
haar wavelets


A new weighted upwind finite volume element method based on non-standard covolume for time-dependent convection-diffusion problems In modern numerical simulation of problems in energy resources and environmental science, it is important to develop efficient numerical methods for time-dependent convection-diffusion problems. On the basis of nonstandard covolume grids, we propose a new kind of high-order upwind finite volume element method for the problems. We first prove the stability and mass conservation in the discrete forms of the scheme. Optimal second-order error estimate in L-2-norm in spatial step is then proved strictly. The scheme is effective for avoiding numerical diffusion and nonphysical oscillations and has second-order accuracy. Numerical experiments are given to verify the performance of the scheme. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

nonstandard covolume
mass conservation
stability

convection-diffusion
weighted upwind fvem
high-order accuracy


Sensor fusion in smart camera networks for Ambient Intelligence This short report introduces the topics of PhD research that was conducted on 2008-2013 and was defended on July 2013. The PhD thesis covers sensor fusion theory, gathers it into a framework with design rules for fusion-friendly design of vision networks, and elaborates on the rules through fusion experiments performed with four distinct applications of Ambient Intelligence.

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


predictive runtime verification of multi-processor socs in systemc Concurrent interaction of multi-processor systems result in errors which are difficult to find. Traditional simulation-based verification techniques remove the concurrency information by arbitrary schedulings. We present a novel simulation-based technique for SystemC that preserves and exploits concurrency information. Our approach is unique in that we can detect potential errors in an observed execution, even if the error does not actually occur in that execution. We identify synchronization constructs in SystemC and develop predictive techniques for temporal assertion verification and deadlock detection. Our automated potential deadlock detection algorithm works on SystemC programs with semaphores, locks, wait and notify synchronizations and has less overhead compared with assertion verification. We patched SystemC kernel to implement our solution and obtained favorable results on industrial designs.

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


Arabic word recognition by classifiers and context Given the number and variety of methods used for handwriting recognition, it has been shown that there is no single method that can be called the "best". In recent years, the combination of different classifiers and the use of contextual information have become major areas of interest in improving recognition results. This paper addresses a case study on the combination of multiple classifiers and the integration of syntactic level information for the recognition of handwritten Arabic literal amounts. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time either of these methods has been applied to Arabic word recognition. Using three individual classifiers with high level global features, we performed word recognition experiments. A parallel combination method was tested for all possible configuration cases of the three chosen classifiers. A syntactic analyzer makes a final decision on the candidate words generated by the best configuration schemed The effectiveness of contextual knowledge integration in our application is confirmed by the obtained results.

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

handwriting recognition
contextual knowledge
arabic literal amounts


Quality-of-service-aware fault tolerance for grid-enabled applications This study first reviews how grid-enabled applications can be provided with fault tolerance. Existing methods, implemented either in the grid application/middleware or in a Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS)-based network, are outlined. Then, the paper shows the advantages of integrating application/middleware fault-tolerant schemes, such as service replication, with GMPLS network-layer fault-tolerant schemes, such as path restoration. An integrated fault-tolerant scheme is capable of providing flexible QoS-aware fault tolerance while minimizing the necessary computational and network resources. In the end, the implementation of the proposed integrated scheme in a Video-on-Demand (VoD) application is experimentally validated.

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

fault tolerance
grid
replication
restoration


Localized outlying and boundary data detection in sensor networks This paper targets the identification of outlying sensors (that is, outlying reading sensors) and the detection of the reach of events in sensor networks. Typical applications include the detection of the transportation front line of some vegetation or animalcule's growth over a certain geographical region. We propose and analyze two novel algorithms for outlying sensor identification and event boundary detection. These algorithms are purely localized and, thus, scale well to large sensor networks. Their computational overhead is low, since only simple numerical operations are involved. Simulation results indicate that these algorithms can clearly detect the event boundary and can identify outlying sensors with a high accuracy and a low false alarm rate when as many as 20 percent sensors report outlying readings. Our work is exploratory in that the proposed algorithms can accept any kind of scalar values as inputs-a dramatic improvement over existing work, which takes only 0/1 decision predicates. Therefore, our algorithms are generic. They can be applied as long as "events" can be modeled by numerical numbers. Though designed for sensor networks, our algorithms can be applied to the outlier detection and regional data analysis in spatial data mining.

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

sensor networks
event boundary detection
outlying sensor identification


Extending the event calculus for tracking epidemic spread The email reporting system has been recognized as a key tool for early warning of disease outbreaks and surveillance of emerging diseases. The aim of the work reported here was to develop a formal language for building an event-centered representation of outbreak histories, described by outbreak reports, which could be used for tracking the spread of epidemics. The SpatioTemporal Extended Event Language (STEEL) we have built is an extension of the Event Calculus that is based on joint spatial and temporal location of event occurrences and structured conglomeration of events. This language allows us to represent and build aggregates of events, according to their spatiotemporal location. In a proof of concept study, this language was implemented in Prolog. A trial corpus of 35 outbreak reports from a PROMED-Mail diffusion list was hand coded in an experimental implementation of STEEL. The performances of this language were compared with three human experts during a question and answer task on this corpus. The experiment showed agreement between responses of the experts and the system. STEEL ensures the spatial and temporal location of event occurrence. The resulting representation is very close to the narrative. Further work must be made to develop a system capable of automatically modeling outbreak reports.

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

event representation
spatiotemporal representation
event aggregation
outbreak report representation


Chaos Theory as a Lens for Interpreting Blogging Blogging is becoming increasingly popular as a global phenomenon. Individual blog traffic and blogosphere structure are of interest to academia and practice. Although it is difficult to get a snapshot of the blogosphere with enough blogs over a long enough period to capture the real situation, chaos theory finds underlying order in this apparent random and complex phenomenon. This study provides an overall view of blogging from micro (individual blog traffic dynamics) and macro (blogosphere structure) levels through a chaos theory lens. Key concepts of chaos theory are used to construct an interpretive framework to illustrate blog system behavior dynamics. Blog systems tend to be nonlinear, dynamic, and deterministic, as well as sensitive to initial conditions. The study also demonstrates the feasibility of applying chaos theory thinking to areas such as knowledge management and the recent global financial crisis. Implications for practice and research opportunities are presented.

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

blogging
blogosphere
blog traffic
chaos theory
global financial crisis
knowledge management


Modeling and simulation of a grid connected PV system based on the evaluation of main PV module parameters In this work we present a new method for the modeling and simulation study of a photovoltaic grid connected system and its experimental validation. This method has been applied in the simulation of a grid connected PV system with a rated power of 3.2Kwp, composed by a photovoltaic generator and a single phase grid connected inverter. First, a PV module, forming part of the whole PV array is modeled by a single diode lumped circuit and main parameters of the PV module are evaluated. Results obtained for the PV module characteristics have been validated experimentally by carrying out outdoor IV characteristic measurements. To take into account the power conversion efficiency, the measured AC output power against DC input power is fitted to a second order efficiency model to derive its specific parameters. The simulation results have been performed through Matlab/Simulink environment. Results has shown good agreement with experimental data, whether for the IV characteristics or for the whole operating system. The significant error indicators are reported in order to show the effectiveness of the simulation model to predict energy generation for such PV system.

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

photovoltaic systems
parameter extraction


maximizing total upload in latency-sensitive p2p applications Motivated by an application in distributed gaming, we define and study the latency-constrained total upload maximization problem . In this problem, a peer-to-peer overlay network is modeled as a complete graph and each node v i has an upload bandwidth capacity c i and a set of receivers R ( i ). Each sender-receiver pair ( v i , v j ), where v j ? R ( i ), is a request that should be satisfied, i.e., v i should send a data packet to each v j ? R ( i ). The goal is to find a set of at most n multicast-trees T i of depth at most 2, such that each node can be part of multiple trees, all capacity constraints are met, and the number of satisfied requests is maximized. In this paper, we prove that the problem is NP-complete, and we present an algorithm with approximation ratio 1-2/? c min, where c min is the minimum upload capacity. Finally, we also study the impact of network coding on the quality and approximability of the solution.

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


the minimization of hardware size in reconfigurable embedded platforms To minimize the hardware fabrications in reconfigurable devices, this paper explores hardware synthesis to derive reconfiguration plans during the design time based on schedules derived by CAD tools, where a schedule includes the starting time, the execution time, and the intertask data transmissions for each task. We propose scheduling algorithms to derive optimal solutions for hardware descriptions with the same reconfiguration latency based on backward configuration and backward ordering strategies. For general cases, where a hardware description might be shared by tasks, we develop an algorithm based on a duplication merging strategy with performance evaluations. Our proposed algorithms could be applied after the hardware/software co-design procedures of task partitioning and scheduling to optimize the hardware requirements during the design time.

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


A dedicated microcontroller based fuzzy controlled shunt active power filter This paper presents a dedicated micro-controller based fuzzy logic controller for three-phase shunt active power filter. It is used to improve power quality by compensating harmonics and reactive power requirement of non-linear loads. The compensation process proposed is simple, which is based on sensing line currents and regulating the dc link voltage. It operates without sensing the harmonic or reactive volt-ampere requirement of the load. Fuzzy logic control is used to regulate the dc link voltage in place of the conventional PI controller, as the fuzzy control is based on simple linguistic variables and does not require the mathematical model of the system. Response of the fuzzy controller is compared with the conventional PI controller by simulation study. An attempt is made to implement a complex control like fuzzy logic on an inexpensive 8-bit micro-controller (INTEL 8031). Various experimental results are presented under steady state and transient conditions.

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


A longitudinal study of the effects of Internet use and videogame playing on academic performance and the roles of gender, race and income in these relationships In this research we examined the effects of Internet use and videogame playing on childrens academic performance. Gender, race, and income were also considered. Participants were 482 youth, average age 12years old. One-third were African American and two-thirds were Caucasian American. All measures were completed twice, first in Year 1 and then one year later, Year 2. Results indicated that greater Internet use was associated with better reading skills, but only for youth initially low in reading skills. Videogame playing was associated with better visual-spatial skill but also with lower GPAs. Gender, race and income influenced Internet use, videogame playing and academic performance but not the relationships between using these technologies and academic performance. Implications of the results for increasing the benefits of technology use are discussed.

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

technology
academic performance
internet


Kolmogorov's strong law of large numbers for fuzzy random variables In this paper, Kolmogorov's strong law of large numbers for sums of independent and level-wise identically distributed fuzzy random variables is obtained. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

strong law of large numbers
fuzzy random variables


A neural-based model for fast continuous and global robot location One of the problems in the field of mobile robotics is the estimation of the robot position in an environment. This paper proposes a model for estimating a confidence interval of the robot position in order to compare it with the estimation made by a dead-reckoning system. Both estimations are fused using heuristic rules. The positioning model is very valuable in estimating the current robot position with or without knowledge about the previous positions. Furthermore, it is possible to define the degree of knowledge of the robot previous position, making it possible to adapt the estimation by varying this knowledge degree. This model is based on a one-pass neural network which adapts itself in real time and learns about the relationship between the measurements from sensors and the robot position.

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


checking software component behavior using behavior protocols and spin Using software components is a modern approach for building extensible and reliable applications. To ensure high dependability, a component application should undergo verification, e.g. model checking, to prove it has certain properties. The implementation of an application is usually too complex to be verified at a formal level; therefore, a model being an abstraction of the implementation is to be used. Behavior protocols [11] are a platform for modeling of software component behavior. In this paper, we propose a method for translation behavior protocols to Promela [7], which is consequently used as the input for the Spin model checker [7]. Having the Promela code describing the component behavior, one can efficiently check for the behavior compatibility and LTL (Linear Temporal Logic) properties of cooperating software components.

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


Binding and multiple instantiation in a distributed network of spiking nodes An implementation of a distributed connectionist network of spiking neuron-like elements is presented. Spiking nodes fire at a precise moment and transmit their activation, with particular strengths and delays, to nodes connected to them. When the potential of the node reaches a particular threshold, it emits a spike. Thereafter, the potential is reset to a resting value. The receiving nodes accumulate potential, but also slowly lose their potential through decay. As with real neurons., after firing there is a short refractory period during which the node will be completely insensitive to incoming signals, after which its sensitivity will slowly increase. Precise timing properties are used to represent symbols in a distributed manner and to solve the problems of variable binding and multiple instantiation. Several predictions about human short-term memory, predicate processing, complex reasoning and multiple instantiation arise from this model. This network shows how symbolic processing can be achieved using neurobiologically and psychologically plausible mechanisms that also have the advantages of generalization and noise tolerance found in connectionist networks.

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

spiking nodes
multiple instantiation
memory
symbolic processing


Genome-wide identification of galactinol synthase (GolS) genes in Solanum lycopersicum and Brachypodium distachyon Galactinol synthase (GolS) genes have been identified at genome-wide scale in Solanum lycopersicum and Brachypodium distachyon species. The results of this study can contribute to understanding of the structure and biological role of GolS genes/proteins in different plant species.

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

polyadenylation signal
tandem duplication
segmental duplication
mrna longevity


Synthetic aperture radar imaging with fractional Fourier transform and channel equalization This paper investigates the Range-Doppler Algorithm based on the Fractional Fourier Transform (RDA-FrFT) to obtain High-Resolution (HR) images for targets in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging. A mathematical framework for the RDA-FrFT is developed in this paper with closed-form expressions for the range and azimuth compression. The channel effect is considered in this paper for the first time with three inverse techniques to reduce this effect; inverse filter deconvolution, Linear Minimum Mean Square Error (LMMSE) deconvolution, and regularized deconvolution. The performance of the RDA-FrFT is compared with the classical RDA, which is based on the Fourier Transform (FT). Simulation results reveal that the RDA-FrFT offers better focusing capabilities and greater side-lobe reduction ratios. The reflectivity profile obtained with the RDA-FrFT demonstrates a superior performance to the classical RDA. Results show also that the RDA-FrFT gives low Peak Side-Lobe (PSL) and Integrated Side-Lobe (ISL) levels after range and azimuth compression for the detected targets. Finally, the results reveal that the proposed regularized deconvolution technique enhances the performance of the RDA-FrFT significantly if the channel effect is considered.

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

sar imaging
rda
inverse filter deconvolution
lmmse deconvolution
regularized deconvolution


Maximum likelihood estimation in nonlinear mixed effects models A stochastic approximation version of EM for maximum likelihood estimation of a wide class of nonlinear mixed effects models is proposed. The main advantage of this algorithm is its ability to provide an estimator close to the MLE in very few iterations. The likelihood of the observations as well as the Fisher Information matrix can also be estimated by stochastic approximations. Numerical experiments allow to highlight the very good performances of the proposed method.

B I I 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

mixed effects model
nonlinear model
em algorithm
saem algorithm


Non-constant positive steady states for the HP food chain system with cross-diffusions We consider a strongly coupled reaction-diffusion system describing three interacting species in the HP food chain structure. Based on the Leray-Schauder degree theory, the non-existence and existence of non-constant positive steady states are investigated. The stability of the constant positive steady state is also discussed. The results indicate that strong cross-diffusions are helpful for the appearance of the non-constant positive steady state (stationary patterns). (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

diffusion
cross-diffusion
non-constant positive steady state


Higher even-order convergence and coupled solutions for second-order boundary value problems on time scales ? In this paper, for a second-order boundary value problem on time scales, a method of generalized quasilinearization, under coupled upper and lower solutions, is discussed. An attempt for the method is to establish sufficient conditions for generating monotone iterative schemes whose elements converge rapidly to the unique solution of the given problem. Furthermore, the convergence is of order k ( k ? 2 ) , which is even. Finally, two examples are provided to illustrate our results.

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

time scales
boundary value problem
quasilinearization
coupled upper and lower solutions


The effects of reducing demand uncertainty in a manufacturerretailer channel for single-period products The retail-market demand for a newsboy-type product is uncertain. The product's manufacturer sets: (i) a wholesale price w/unit for selling the product to the retailer, and (ii) the refund amount r/unit (if any) for unsold units returned by the retailer. Given w and r, the retailer determines: (i) the quantity Q that he orders from the manufacturer, and (ii) the retailer price p/unit at which he sells to the consumers. Keeping in mind the retailer's freedom to set Q and p in the retailer's own interest, the manufacturer needs to determine how to set w and r that are optimal for the manufacturer. For this market structure, this paper studies how the level of retail-market demand uncertainty will affect the decisions (w,r,Q,p), the expected manufacturer's profit and the expected retailer's profit. Many of the effects turn out to be counter-intuitive with interesting explanations. This paper extends a problem considered (in different variations) in several recent papers in major IE/MS/OR, marketing and economics journals. Somewhat counter-intuitive (and contradictory) results are presented here. Single-period or newsboy-type products have been the subject of many recent studies. Practically all these studies assume that there is only one decision-maker; i.e., the vertically integrated manufacturer-cum-retailer. As an entirely separate issue, the interactions between a manufacturer and a retailer in a market channel have also been widely studied, but mostly in the context of a multi-period product. Both characteristics (single-period product and market channel) were included in Iyer and Bergen's ( [4]) investigation of a manufacturerretailer channel for fashion goods. Iyer and Bergen considered the effects of demand-uncertainty reduction; they made the following assumptions: I. the manufacturer cannot change the wholesale price; II. the manufacturer does not accept returns from the retailer; and III. the retail price is fixed. With Iyer and Bergen's assumptions IIII relaxed, Emmons and Gilbert ( [8]) considered manufacturerretailer interactions for newsboy products. However, their results do not relate to how demand-uncertainty reduction would affect the manufacturerretailer interactions (i.e., Iyer and Bergen's question). Our paper shows that when one or more of Iyer and Bergen's three assumptions are relaxed, the effects of demand-uncertainty reduction are significantly different from those depicted in Iyer and Bergen's paper.

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

two-echelon newsboy problem
supply chain


Let's search together, but not too close! An analysis of communication and performance in collaborative information seeking Communication is considered to be one of the most essential components of collaboration, but our understanding as to which form of communication provides the most optimal cost-benefit balance lacks severely. To help investigate effects of various communication channels on a collaborative project, we conducted a user study with 30 pairs (60 participants) in three different conditions - co-located, remotely located with text chat, and remotely located with text as well as audio chat, in an exploratory search task. Using both quantitative and qualitative data analysis, we found that teams with remotely located participants were more effective in terms of being able to explore more diverse information. Adding audio support for remote collaboration helped participants to lower their cognitive load as well as negative emotions compared to those working in the same space. We also show how these findings could help design more effective systems for collaborative information seeking tasks using adequate and appropriate communication. We argue that collaboration is an important aspect of human-centered IR, and that our work provides interesting insights into people doing information seeking/retrieval in collaboration. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

collaboration
information seeking
communication

experimentation
human factors
measurement


parallel placement for fpgas revisited The runtime of classic sequential placement algorithms for FPGAs continues to represent a serious problem, aggravated by the continuous increase of FPGAs. The traditional way to parallelize the placement step is to use parallel distributed implementations run on a network of processors. This approach can suffer from significant communication and synchronization runtime overheads. To address that, we propose the use of multithreading for parallelization. The top level placement problem is decomposed into region-based placement sub-problems using four-way min-cut partitioning. These sub-problems are then processed in parallel by worker threads. The final solution, constructed using the results from all sub-problems, is further improved using a fast low-temperature annealing refinement step. Using this technique, we parallelize the simulated annealing based placement algorithm of VPR. The new parallel placement algorithm achieves an average speed-up of 2.5x using four threads, while the wirelength after placement and circuit delay after routing increased on average with 3.7\% and 2.15\% respectively.

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

fpga placement
parallel simulated annealing


Lower bounds for wrap-around L-2-discrepancy and constructions of symmetrical uniform designs The wrap-around L-2-discrepancy has been used in quasi-Monte Carlo methods, especially in experimental designs. In this paper, explicit lower bounds of the wrap-around L-2-discrepancy of U-type designs are obtained. Sufficient conditions for U-type designs to achieve their lower bounds are given. Taking advantage of these conditions, we consider the perfect resolvable balanced incomplete block designs, and use them to construct uniform designs under the wrap-around L2-discrepancy directly. We also propose an efficient balance-pursuit heuristic, by which we find many new uniform designs, especially with high levels. It is seen that the new algorithm is more powerful than existing threshold accepting ones in the literature. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

lower bound
wrap-around l-2-discrepancy
perfect rbibd


An agent-based methodology for manufacturing decision making: a textile case study Decentralised decision making and real-time response to the unforeseen changes, often taking place in both the manufacturing and market environments, are two important factors that affect the flexibility, required for a production chain to follow demand. This article describes an agent-based methodology, for addressing both real-time and decentralised manufacturing decision-making challenges. At the manufacturing levels of production and processes, the agents employ a mechanism to generate local alternatives as well as a message exchange procedure to build decision trees, which are traversed and evaluated via user-defined objective functions. The generic structure used in the approach allows in a wide range the application of production system configurations. The real-time information, required for monitoring the system status and for generating valid alternatives, is obtained through integration with the existing information systems. An application to the textile industry is presented and 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

agent-based systems
decision support systems
scheduling


Criteria used by nurses to evaluate practice-related information on the World Wide Web Existing criteria used to evaluate information on the World Wide Web often are not related to nursing, especially in relation to clinical and evidence-based practice. Published criteria have been found orientated to the health-consumer, medicine, or general information. In this study, the process by which nurses evaluate practice-related information and the associated evaluative nursing criteria were investigated using a grounded theory approach. In the first stage of this ongoing investigation, semistructured interviews were used to collect data from UK postregistration nursing students. The findings from this initial study provided indications of the process and the criteria for evaluating information on the World Wide Web. Participating students identified intuition as part of the evaluative process, They identified some criteria similar to existing standards, but critically, with additional criteria that are nursing practice related. Because these new criteria are significant for evaluating nursing information, further refinement of these findings is being undertaken through the next stage of the research program.

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

evaluative criteria
postregistration nurses


a study in interactive 3-d rotation using 2-d control devices This paper describes and evaluates the design of four virtual controllers for use in rotating three-dimensional objects using the mouse. Three of four of these controllers are "new" in that they extend traditional direct manipulation techniques to a 3-D environment. User performance is compared during simple and complex rotation tasks. The results indicate faster performance for complex rotations using the new continuous axes controllers compared to more traditional slider approaches. No significant differences in accuracy for complex rotations were found across the virtual controllers.A second study compared the best of these four virtual controllers (the Virtual Sphere) to a control device by Evans, Tanner and Wein. No significant differences either in time to complete rotation task or accuracy of performance were found. All but one subject indicated they preferred the Virtual Sphere because it seemed more "natural".

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

task
use
design
performance
mouse
paper
control
user
accuracy
device
virtual controllers
virtual sphere

rotate
input devices
interactive graphics
real-time graphics
object
timing
interaction
environments
direct manipulating
user performance
3-d graphics
i/o devices
complexity
rotation control
virtualization
continuation
completeness


Are two better than one? Playing singly, playing in dyads in a computerized simulation of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict The study used a computerized simulation of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Israeli female students of Jewish and Palestinian origin participated in the study. Players in dyads resolved the conflict in the game more than single players did. Players in dyads took more political actions in the game than single players did. Players in dyads took less security actions in the game than single players did.

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

peacemaker
gender
computerized simulations


Entropy, Similarity Measure, Inclusion Measure of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets and Their Relationships In the present paper, we introduce a new axiomatic definition of the inclusion measure for intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs, for short). The close relationships among entropy, similarity measure, and inclusion measure of IFSs are then discussed in detail. Also, we obtain some important theorems by which the entropy, similarity measure and inclusion measure of IFSs can be transformed into each other based on their axiomatic definitions. Moreover, some formulae for calculating the entropy, similarity measure and inclusion measure of IFSs are put forward. Finally, we compare the proposed new entropy, similarity and distance measures with the existing ones.

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

entropy
similarity measure
inclusion measure

intuitionistic fuzzy set
distance measure


Modeling NASA swarm-based systems: using agent-oriented software engineering and formal methods The need to collect new data and perform new science is causing the complexity of NASA missions to continually increase. This complexity needs to be controlled via new technological advancements and balanced with a reduction in mission and operation costs. Planned and hypothesized missions involve self-management, biological-inspiration based on swarms, and autonomous operation as a means of achieving these goals. We consider a tailored software engineering approach to developing such systems based on agent-oriented software engineering and formal methods. We report on advances in modeling, implementing, and testing NASA swarm-based concept missions.

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

emergent behavior
agent-oriented software engineering


A second order PVM flux limiter method. Application to magnetohydrodynamics and shallow stratified flows In this work we propose a second order flux limiter finite volume method, named PVM-2U-FL, that only uses information of the two external waves of the hyperbolic system. This method could be seen as a natural extension of the well known WAF method introduced by E.F. Toro in [23]. We prove that independently of the number of unknowns of the 1D system, it recovers the second order accuracy at regular zones, while in presence of discontinuities, the scheme degenerates to PVM-2U method, which can be seen as an improvement of the HLL method (see [6]and[10]). Another interesting property of the method is that it does not need any spectral decomposition of the Jacobian or Roe matrix associated to the flux function. Therefore, it can be easily applied to systems with a large number of unknowns or in situations where no analytical expression of the eigenvalues or eigenvectors are known. In this work, we apply the proposed method to magnetohydrodynamics and to stratified multilayer flows. Comparison with the two-waves WAF and HLL-MUSCL methods are also presented. The numerical results show that PVM-2U-FL is the most efficient and accurate among them.

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

second order
multilayer
stratified flows

finite volumes
flux limiters
riemann solver
magnetohydrodynamic


An indexing method for answering queries on moving objects We consider the problem of indexing a set of objects moving in d-dimensional spaces along linear trajectories. A simple external-memory indexing scheme is proposed to efficiently answer general range queries. The following are examples of the queries that can be answered by the proposed method: report all moving objects that will ( i) pass between two given points within a specified time interval; ( ii) become within a given distance from some or all of a given set of other moving objects. Our scheme is based on mapping the objects to a dual space, where queries about moving objects are transformed into polyhedral queries concerning their speeds and initial locations. We then present a simple method for answering such polyhedral queries, based on partitioning the space into disjoint regions and using a B+-tree to index the points in each region. By appropriately selecting the boundaries of each region, we guarantee an average search time that matches a known lower bound for the problem. Specifically, for a fixed d, if the coordinates of a given set of N points are statistically independent, the proposed technique answers polyhedral queries, on the average, in O(( N/B)(1-1/d) &BULL; ( log(B) N)(1/d) + K/B) I/ O's using O(N/B) space, where B is the block size, and K is the number of reported points. Our approach is novel in that, while it provides a theoretical upper bound on the average query time, it avoids the use of complicated data structures, making it an effective candidate for practical applications. The proposed index is also dynamic in the sense that it allows object insertion and deletion in an amortized update cost of logB( N) I/ O's. Experimental results are presented to show the superiority of the proposed index over other methods based on R-trees.

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 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 O O O O O O O O O O O

b plus -trees
mobile objects
mobile database management
query processing


Upwinding meshfree point collocation method for steady MHD flow with arbitrary orientation of applied magnetic field at high Hartmann numbers In this paper, a meshfree point collocation method, with an upwinding scheme, is presented to obtain the numerical solutions of the coupled equations in velocity and magnetic field for the fully developed magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow through an insulated straight duct of rectangular section. The moving least-square (MLS) approximation is employed to construct the shape functions in conjunction with the framework of the point collocation method. Computations have been carried out for different applied magnetic field orientations and a wide range of values of Hartmann number from 5 to 10(6). As the adaptive upwinding local support domain is introduced in the meshless point collocation method, numerical results show that the method may compute MHD problems not only at low and moderate values but also at high values of the Hartmann number with high accuracy and good convergence. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

mhd flow
meshfree point collocation method
upwinding scheme


A GENETIC ALGORITHM APPROACH FOR SOLVING THE MACHINE-JOB ASSIGNMENT WITH CONTROLLABLE PROCESSING TIMES This paper considers a genetic algorithm (GA) for a machine-job assignment with controllable processing times (MJACPT). Integer representation with standard genetic operators is used. In an objective function, a job assignment is obtained from genetic code and for this, fixed assignment processing times are calculated by solving a constrained nonlinear convex optimization problem. Additionally, the job assignment of each individual is improved by local search. Computational results are presented for the instances from literature and modified large-scale instances for the generalized assignment problem (GAP). It can be seen that the proposed GA approach reaches almost all optimal solutions, which are known in advance, except in one case. For large-scale instances, GA obtained reasonably good solutions in relatively short computational time.

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

computer numerically controlled (cnc) machines


The development of the Online Archive Catalogue at theI University of Birmingham using CALM 2000 The Special Collections Department of information Services at the University of Birmingham is currently using the CALM 2000 archives management system to enable management of the archives collections held by the university. The project to develop the OPAC side of CALM, enabling online and remote access to archive catalogue records, was initiated in September 2000 and completed at the end of May 2001. Reviews the history of the project, its various stages and final results. The Online Archive Catalogue at the University of Birmingham provides a significant research resource for users of information services as well as for the wider research community both nationally and internationally and may be accessed via the Internet at http://calm.bham.ac.uk/DServeA/.

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


tracking graphics state for networked rendering As networks get faster, it becomes more feasible to render large data sets remotely. For example, it is useful to run large scientific simulations on remote compute servers but visualize the results of those simulations on one or more local displays. The WireGL project at Stanford is researching new techniques for rendering over a network. For many applications, we can render remotely over a gigabit network to a tiled display with little or no performance loss over running locally. One of the elements of WireGL that makes this performance possible is our ability to track the graphics state of a running application. In this paper, we will describe our techniques for tracking state, as well as efficient algorithms for computing the difference between two graphics contexts. This fast differencing operation allows WireGL to transmit less state data over the network by updating server state lazily. It also allows our system to context switch between multiple graphics applications several million times per second without flushing the hardware accelerator. This results in substantial performance gains when sharing a remote display between multiple clients. network to a tiled display with little or no performance loss over running locally. One of the elements of WireGL that makes this performance possible is our ability to track the graphics state of a running application. In this paper, we will describe our techniques for tracking state, as well as efficient algorithms for computing thi

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

network applications performance context project graphics paper sharing rendering data switch tracking display server

simulation
examples
efficiency
hardware acceleration
computation
tile display
locality
visualization
systems
algorithm
networked rendering
remote rendering
graphics state
update


Denials leak information: Simulatable auditing Show that query denials can leak private information in online auditing. Introduce a new model called simulatable auditing where query denials provably do not leak information. Propose a probabilistic compromise definition to overcome limitations of the classical definition. Present simulatable auditing algorithms under classical and probabilistic compromise definitions.

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


anonymous authentication with subset queries (extended abstract) We develop new schemes for anonymous authentication that support identity escrow. Our protocols also allow a prover to demonstrate membership in an arbitrary subset of users; key revocation is an important special case of this feature. Using the Fiat-Shamir heuristic, our interactive authentication protocols yield new constructions for non-interactive group signature schemes. We use the higher-residuosity assumption, which leads to greater efficiency and more natural security proofs than previous constructions. It also leads to an increased vulnerability to collusion attacks, although countermeasures are available.

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

anonymous authentication
identity escrow
group signature


Non-convex row-sparse multiple measurement vector analysis prior formulation for EEG signal reconstruction We address the problem of Compressed Sensing based EEG transmission over WBAN. We propose a joint-sparse analysis prior framework for recovering the signals. The results show significant improvements over state-of-the-art methods.

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


Improving Chen and Han's Algorithm on the Discrete Geodesic Problem The computation of geodesic distances or paths between two points on triangulated meshes is a common operation in many computer graphics applications. In this article, we present an exact algorithm for the single-source all-vertices shortest path problem. Mitchell et al. [1987] proposed an O(n(2) log n) method (MMP), based on Dijkstra's algorithm, where n is the complexity of the polyhedral surface. Then, Chen and Han [1990] (CH) improved the running time to O(n(2)). Interestingly Surazhsky et al. [2005] provided experimental evidence demonstrating that the MMP algorithm runs many times faster, in practice, than the CH algorithm. The CH algorithm encodes the structure of the set of shortest paths using a set of windows on the edges of the polyhedron. Our experiments showed that in many examples over 99% of the windows created by the CH algorithm are of no use to define a shortest path. So this article proposes to improve the CH algorithm by two separate techniques. One is to filter out useless windows using the current estimates of the distances to the vertices, the other is to maintain a priority queue like that achieved in Dijkstra's algorithm. Our experimental results suggest that the improved CH algorithm, in spite of an O(n(2) log n) asymptotic time complexity, greatly outperforms the original CH algorithm in both time and space. Furthermore, it generally runs faster than the MMP algorithm and uses considerably less space.

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

algorithms
performance
design and analysis of algorithms
computational geometry
shortest path problems


Evolutionary extreme learning machine ensembles with size control Ensemble learning aims to improve the generalization power and the reliability of learner models through sampling and optimization techniques. It has been shown that an ensemble constructed by a selective collection of base learners outperforms favorably. However, effective implementation of such an ensemble from a given learner pool is still an open problem. This paper presents an evolutionary approach for constituting extreme learning machine (ELM) ensembles. Our proposed algorithm employs the model diversity as fitness function to direct the selection of base learners, and produces an optimal solution with ensemble size control. A comprehensive comparison is carried out, where the basic ELM is used to generate a set of neural networks and 12 benchmarked regression datasets are employed in simulations. Our reporting results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other ensembling techniques, including simple average, bagging and adaboost, in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency.

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

learner model ensembles
extreme learning machines
evolutionary computation
generalization capability
robustness


Modelling structured geothermal systems II: Application of linear stability analysis This paper illustrates how information obtained from linearised mathematical models can be used to investigate the development in time of complex natural systems such as structured geothermal reservoirs. Solutions to the saturation equation resulting from a linear stability analysis are obtained in the form of unidirectional waves. From the direction of propagation of these waves, the upper layers of a vapour-dominated zone equilibrate earlier than the lower layers, and the lower layers of a liquid-dominated zone equilibrate earlier than the upper layers. Our results support the two-layer models suggested for Wairakei (New Zealand), The Geysers (California), and Larderello (Italy). They also explain why the inverse model with a liquid layer over a vapour-dominated zone proposed for the Kawah Kamojang system (Indonesia) is not valid. We suggest to replace this model by a single-phase liquid layer over a liquid-dominated convective zone. The latter two-layer structure as well as the three-layer structure with a liquid layer between the upper vapour and lower liquid-dominated zones are proven to be possible in a homogeneous reservoir. Computer simulation results are presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

counterflow
vapour-dominated
liquid-dominated
permeability
heat flux
quasi-static process
saturation waves


Analysis of non-stationary signals in power systems Classical techniques to estimate the spectrum of the multi-component signal are based on Fourier-based transformations. The frequency estimates obtained from their spectral peaks are affected by the window length and phase of signal component, thus presenting a large valiance even in the absence of noise. The spectrum of the signals is estimated with the help of the Wigner-Ville distribution and its time-frequency representation is obtained For the same purpose, the min-norm method (subspace method) is used. The accuracy of the tested methods was investigated and compared with the parameters of the frequency estimation via FFT The proposed methods were also tested with non-stationary multiple-component signals occurring during the fault operation of inverter-fed drives and transmission lines.

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

power transmission systems
fault tolerance
power transistors
spectra


Efficient algorithms to detect and restore minimality, an extension of the regular restriction of resolution A given binary resolution proof, represented as a binary tree, is said to be minimal if the resolutions cannot be reordered to generate an irregular proof. Minimality extends Tseitin's regularity restriction and still retains completeness. A linear-time algorithm is introduced to decide whether a given proof is minimal. This algorithm can be used by a deduction system that avoids redundancy by retaining only minimal proofs and thus lessens its reliance on subsumption, a more general but more expensive technique. Any irregular binary resolution tree is made strictly smaller by an operation called Surgery, which runs in time linear in the size of the tree. After surgery the result proved by the new tree is nonstrictly more general than the original result and has fewer violations of the regular restriction. Furthermore, any nonminimal tree can be made irregular in linear time by an operation called Splay. Thus a combination of splaying and surgery efficiently reduces a nonminimal tree to a minimal one. Finally, a close correspondence between clause trees, recently introduced by the authors, and binary resolution trees is established. In that sense this work provides the first linear-time algorithms that detect minimality and perform surgery on clause trees.

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


A low-overhead and reliable switch architecture for Network-on-Chips This paper proposes and evaluates Low-overhead, Reliable Switch (LRS) architecture to enhance the reliability of Network-on-Chips (NoCs). The proposed switch architecture exploits information and hardware redundancies to eliminate retransmission of faulty flits. The LRS architecture creates a redundant copy of each newly received flit and stores the redundant flit in a duplicated flit buffer that is associated with the incoming channel of the flit. Flit buffers in the LRS are equipped with information redundancy to detect probable bit flip errors. When an error is detected in a flit buffer, its duplicated buffer is used to recover the correct value of the flit. In this way, the propagation of the erroneous flits in NoC is prevented without any need to credit signals and, retransmission buffers. Using an HDL-based NoC simulator, the LRS is compared to two other widely used reliability enhancement methods: the Switch-to-Switch (S2S) and the End-to-End (E2E) methods. The simulation results show that the LRS consumes less power and provides higher performance compared to those of the E2E and S2S methods. More importantly, unlike the E2E and the S2S methods, the LRS has constant overheads, which makes it applicable in all working conditions. To validate the comparison, an analytical performance and reliability model is developed for the LRS, S2S and E2E methods. The results of the model match those obtained from the simulations while the proposed model is significantly faster. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

networks-on-chip
virtual channel
flow-control
modeling


Robot Exploration in a Dynamic Environment Using Hexagonal Grid Coverage Robot covering problem has gained attention as having the most promising applications in our real life. Previous spanning tree coverage algorithm addressed this problem well in a static environment, but not in a dynamic one. In this paper, we present and analyze our algorithm workable in a dynamic environment with less shadow areas.

O B 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 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

spanning tree coverage
exploration
hexagonal grid coverage


Genes, Cognition, and Communication Twin and family studies have demonstrated that most cognitive traits are moderately to highly heritable. Neurodevelopmental disorders such as dyslexia, autism, and specific language impairment (SLI) also show strong genetic influence. Nevertheless, it has proved difficult for researchers to identify genes that would explain substantial amounts of variance in cognitive traits or disorders. Although this observation may seem paradoxical, it fits with a multifactorial model of how complex human traits are influenced by numerous genes that interact with one another, and with the environment, to produce a specific phenotype. Such a model can also explain why genetic influences on cognition have not vanished in the course of human evolution. Recent linkage and association studies of SLI and dyslexia are reviewed to illustrate these points. The role of nonheritable genetic mutations (sporadic copy number variants) in causing autism is also discussed. Finally, research on phenotypic correlates of allelic variation in the genes ASPM and microcephalin is considered; initial interest in these as genes for brain size or intelligence has been dampened by a failure to find phenotypic differences in people with different versions of these genes. There is a current vogue for investigators to include measures of allelic variants in studies of cognition and cognitive disorders. It is important to be aware that the effect sizes associated with these variants are typically small and hard to detect without extremely large sample sizes.

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

genes
language
communication
dyslexia
autism
microcephalin
aspm
copy number variants

specific language impairment (sli)
foxp2
single nucleotide polymorphisms (snps)
copy number variant (cnv)


Fast Bayesian ambient modal identification in the frequency domain, Part II: Posterior uncertainty This paper investigates the determination of the posterior covariance matrix of modal parameters within the framework of a Bayesian FFT approach for modal identification using ambient vibration data. The posterior covariance matrix is approximated by the inverse of the Hessian of the negative log-likelihood function (NLLF) with respect to the modal parameters. To suppress the growth of computational effort with the number of measured dofs, a condensed form of the NLLF is derived that only involves matrix computation of dimension equal to the number of modes. Issues associated with the singularity of the Hessian due to mode shape scaling are discussed and a strategy is presented to properly evaluate its inverse. The theory described in Parts I and II of this work is applied to modal identification using synthetic and field data with a moderate to large number of measured dofs. It is demonstrated that using the proposed method Bayesian modal identification can be performed in a matter of seconds in typical cases, which is otherwise prohibitive based on the original formulation.

O O O O O O O O O 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

bayesian methods
operational modal analysis
system identification


A multi-objective decision-making process for reuse selection of historic buildings The ongoing reuse of historic buildings is important work for both World Heritage properties and listed cultural properties recognized by national or local governments. However, the varied concerns among related people of different positions make reuse selection problems become a difficult task. Effective and proper evaluation for reuse selection may accelerate the implementation of sustainable conservation. This study presents a comprehensive methodology for the reuse selection of historic buildings. The criteria, which are relevant to the reuse selection of historic buildings, have been identified through FDM method and used to construct an ANP model. Thereafter, the application of ANP for the reuse selection has been demonstrated through two illustrative examples in Taiwan. The result reveals that the proposed methodology can effectively capture the interdependencies among the various criteria. These have rarely been applied in the context of reuse selection problems and their utilization has made evaluation and selection for reuse a feasible concept. This approach also enables decision-makers to better understand the complex relationships of the relevant attributes in reuse selection problems, which may subsequently improve the acceptability of the decision.

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

historic buildings
reuse
selection problems

analytic network process
fuzzy delphi method


Uncalibrated Euclidean reconstruction: a review This paper provides a review on techniques for computing a three-dimensional model of a scene from a single moving camera, with unconstrained motion and unknown parameters. In the classical approach, called autocalibration or self-calibration, camera motion and parameters are recovered first, using rigidity; then structure is easily computed. Recently, new methods based on the idea of stratification have been proposed. They upgrade the projective structure, achievable from correspondences only, to the Euclidean structure, by exploiting all the available constraints.

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

three-dimensional vision
self-calibration
uncalibrated cameras


MULTISCALE ENTROPY ANALYSIS OF TRAFFIC TIME SERIES There has been considerable interest in quantifying the complexity of different time series, such as physiologic time series, traffic time series. However, these traditional approaches fail to account for the multiple time scales inherent in time series, which have yielded contradictory findings when applied to real-world datasets. Then multi-scale entropy analysis (MSE) is introduced to solve this problem which has been widely used for physiologic time series. In this paper, we first apply the MSE method to different correlated series and obtain an interesting relationship between complexity and Hurst exponent. A modified MSE method called multiscale permutation entropy analysis (MSPE) is then introduced, which replaces the sample entropy (SampEn) with permutation entropy (PE) when measuring entropy for coarse-grained series. We employ the traditional MSE method and MSPE method to investigate complexities of different traffic series, and obtain that the complexity of weekend traffic time series differs from that of the workday time series, which helps to classify the series when making predictions.

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

complexity
multiscale entropy analysis
permutation entropy
sample entropy
traffic series


a critical appraisal of systematic reviews in software engineering from the perspective of the research questions asked in the reviews After a seminal article introducing-evidence based software engineering in 2004, systematic reviews (SR) have been increasingly used as a method for conducting secondary studies in software engineering. Our goal is to critically appraise the use of SR in software engineering with respect to the research questions asked and the ways the questions were used in the reviews. We analyzed 53 literature reviews that had been collected in two published tertiary studies. We found that over 65\% of the research questions asked in the reviews were exploratory and only 15\% investigated causality questions. We concluded that there is a need for a consistent use of terminology to classify secondary studies and that reports of literature reviews should follow reporting guidelines to support assessment and comparison.

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


design of transaction-oriented systems employing a transaction monitor An increasing number of computer users are implementing an on-line facility with the aid of a transaction monitor program. This transaction monitor may be supplied either by the computer hardware manufacturer or by a software supplier. It is felt that the literature is inadequate in aiding such a user to implement his system. Consequently this paper sets out to achieve such an aim by presenting a methodology for the design of a transaction-oriented system employing a transaction monitor. The decisions to be made are outlined together with the choices available for each decision. The methodology is iterative in that a decision at any stage can have a significant impact on the final design and is also affected by previously taken decisions.

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

system design methodology
transaction monitors


Texture Classification Using Dominant Neighborhood Structure This paper proposes a new approach to extract global image features for the purpose of texture classification. The proposed texture features are obtained by generating an estimated global map representing the measured intensity similarity between any given image pixel and its surrounding neighbors within a certain window. The intensity similarity map is an average representation of the texture-image dominant neighborhood similarity. The estimated dominant neighborhood similarity is robust to noise and referred to as image dominant neighborhood structure. The global rotation-invariant features are then extracted from the generated image dominant neighborhood structure. Features obtained from the local binary patterns (LBPs) are then extracted in order to supply additional local texture features to the generated features from the dominant neighborhood structure. Both features complement each other. The experimental results on representative texture databases show that the proposed method is robust to noise and can achieve significant improvement in terms of the obtained classification accuracy in comparison to the LBP method. In addition, the method classification accuracy is comparable to the two recent LBP extensions: dominant LBP and completed LBP.

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

dominant local binary pattern (dlbp)
dominant neighborhood structure (dns)
local binary pattern (lbp)
rotation invariance


Optimisation of combined collaborative recommender systems A new approach to collaborative user modelling is presented in this paper. We have developed a framework that can be used for easy testing of different concepts. We have also introduced three different areas where collaborative modelling can be further improved. For the first phase of testing, we have created a hybrid system based on three different collaborative recommender techniques. Since this system implements multiple collaboration techniques, we decided to call this approach Combined Collaborative Recommender. Although each prediction technique can produce adequate results, we have proved that the combination of these techniques into a unified system provides a much more stable system. It should also be pointed out that these analyses were done using a very large dataset (more than 2 million ratings) providing reliable results. Results of these optimisations are presented along with pointers for further development.

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

personalisation
collaborative recommendation
hybrid recommender systems


Aggregating multi-valued CP-nets: a CSP-based approach We develop a framework for preference aggregation in multi-attribute, multi-valued domains, where agents preferences are represented by Conditional Preference Networks (CP-nets). Most existing work either does not consider computational requirements, or depends on the strong assumption that the agents can express their preferences by acyclic CP-nets that are compatible with a common order on the variables. In this paper, we focus on majoritarian aggregation of CP-nets. We propose a general approach that allows for aggregating preferences when the expressed CP-nets are not required to be acyclic. Moreover, there is no requirement for any common structure among the agents CP-nets. The proposed approach computes a set of locally winning alternatives through the reduction to a constraint satisfaction problem. We present results of experiments that demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of our approach. Through comprehensive experiments we also investigate the distributions of the numbers of locally winning alternatives with different CP-net structures, with varying domain sizes and varying numbers of variables and agents.

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

cp-nets
majority rule
local condorcet winner
necessary/possible condorcet winner


Word-sequence kernels We address the problem of categorising documents using kernel-based methods such as Support Vector Machines. Since the work of Joachims (1998), there is ample experimental evidence that SVM using the standard word frequencies as features yield state-of-the-art performance on a number of benchmark problems. Recently. Lodhi et at. (2002) proposed the use of string kernels, a novel way of computing document similarity based of matching non-consecutive subsequences of characters. In this article, we propose the use of this technique with sequences of words rather than characters. This approach has several advantages, in particular it is more efficient computationally and it ties in closely with standard linguistic pre-processing techniques. We present some extensions to sequence kernels dealing with symbol-dependent and match-dependent decay factors, and present empirical evaluations of these extensions on the Reuters-21578 datasets.

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

kernel machines
text categorisation
linguistic processing


Stability analysis and model order reduction of coupled systems In this paper we discuss the stability and model order reduction of coupled linear time-invariant descriptor systems. Sufficient conditions for the asymptotic stability of a closed-loop system are given. We present a model reduction approach for coupled systems based on reducing the order of the subsystems and coupling the reduced-order models through the same interconnection relations as for the original system. Such an approach allows us to obtain error bounds for the reduced-order closed-loop system in terms of the errors in the reduced-order subsystems. Model reduction of coupled systems with unstable or improper subsystems is also considered. Numerical examples are given.

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

coupled systems
stability
model reduction
error bounds

balanced truncation
coprime
factorization


Effects of rapid thermal annealing in vacuum on electrical properties of thin Ta2O5Si structures The effect of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in vacuum (1273K) on the properties of thin thermal Ta2O5 films in dependence on the oxidation temperature (673873K) has been studied. It is established that the electrical and dielectric properties of the annealed layers are rather strong function of the oxidation temperature than of the film thickness. RTA reduces the leakage current of layers oxidized at 673 and 773K and deteriorates the current for layers formed at 823 and 873Kin both the cases the effect is stronger for shortest annealing time. The leakage current level after annealing of the lower-oxidation temperature layers is comparable with that of the as-grown high temperature oxidized films. The effect of RTA on the dielectric constant and fixed oxide charge is complex and there is not a simple relation with the leakage current behaviourthe annealing is not beneficial for fixed oxide charge in poorly oxidized films at 673 and 773K. The results are discussed in terms of oxidation and crystallization effects during the annealing in the oxygen free ambient and their relation with the properties of the initial Ta2O5Si structures.

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

ta2o5
rapid thermal annealing
leakage current


Robust point pattern matching based on spectral context A novel spectral method is proposed for the problem of point pattern matching. We propose a local structural descriptor via spectral graph analysis. We define a metric of geometric consistency by using the quantity of order.

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

point pattern matching
structural descriptor
geometric consistency


Advanced Glycation End Products: A Possible Link to Angiotensin in an Animal Model Abstract: Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) have been associated with progressive vascular and renal damage in a variety of pathological conditions such as renal failure and diabetes mellitus. The formation of AGEs is generally attributed to increased oxidative and carbonyl stress or hyperglycemia. Activation of the cellular receptor of AGE (RAGE) leads to subsequent cellular activation and proinflammatory responses. Angiotensin (Ang) produces cellular oxidative stress and similarly promotes end organ damage via its type 1 receptor. We investigated the interrelation between these two systems in a new transgenic rat (TGR) model with Ang II-dependent hypertension and renal damage and in nontransgenic controls. TGR showed increased systolic blood pressure (?210 mmHg), proteinuria, and increased renal collagen I mRNA expression compared with normotensive nontransgenic controls. Immunohistochemical staining of kidney sections showed colocalization for N?-carboxy(methyl)lysine, RAGE, and NF-?B in TGR glomeruli. These features were absent in nontransgenic controls. Our observations suggest a possible link between Ang II-dependent end-organ damage and the AGE/RAGE axis in vivo. TGRs provide an excellent model to study the interrelation between the renin-angiotensin system and the AGE/RAGE axis in promoting cardiovascular end-organ damage, which would otherwise not be possible in humans.

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

advanced glycation end products
rage
angiotensin
kidney
rat


A Correlated Resource Model of Internet End Hosts Understanding and modeling resources of Internet end hosts are essential for the design of desktop software and Internet-distributed applications. In this paper, we develop a correlated resource model of Internet end hosts based on real-trace data taken from several volunteer computing projects, including SETI@home. This data cover a five-year period with statistics for 6.7 million hosts. Our resource model is based on statistical analysis of host computational power, memory, and storage as well as how these resources change over time and the correlations among them. We find that resources with few discrete values (core count, memory) are well modeled by approximations governing the change of relative resource quantities over time. Resources with a continuous range of values are well modeled by correlated log-normal distributions (cache, processor speed, and available disk space). We validate and show the utility of the model by applying it to a resource allocation problem for Internet-distributed applications, and compare it to other models. We also make our trace data and tool for automatically generating realistic Internet end hosts publicly available.

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

host model
internet end host
resource scheduling
internet computing


Progressive heuristic search for probabilistic planning based on interaction estimates Development of real planning and scheduling applications often requires the ability to handle uncertainty. Often this uncertainty is represented using probability information on the initial conditions and on the outcomes of actions. In this paper, we describe a novel probabilistic plan graph heuristic that computes information about the interaction between actions and between propositions. This information is used to find better relaxed plans and to compute their probability of success. This information guides a forward state space search for high probability, non-branching seed plans. These plans are then used in a planning and scheduling system that handles unexpected outcomes by runtime replanning. We briefly describe the heuristic, the search process, and the results on different domains from recent international planning competitions. We discuss the results of this study and some of the issues involved in advancing this work further.

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

probabilistic planning
interaction
heuristic search


Interaction protocols for cross-organisational workflows Workflow technologies are widely used in industry and commerce to assist in the specification, execution and completion of well defined processes within organisations. As industrial and commercial relations have evolved, based on advances on information and communications technologies, cross-organisational workflow integration has become an important issue. Since organisations can have very different workflows, the creation of compatible workflows so that organisations can collaborate and/or carry out mutual transactions automatically in an integrated fashion can be a very complex and time consuming process. As a consequence, the development of technologies to support the creation and execution of compatible workflows is a most relevant issue. In the present article we introduce the JamSession coordination platform as a tool to implement cross-organisational workflow integration. JamSession is declarative and based on algebraic specification methods, and therefore workflow integration implemented using this platform can profit from formal behavioural analysis, based on which desired features and properties can be verified and/or obtained.

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

interaction protocols
workflow integration

cross-organisational workflows
knowledge-based systems
hierarchical petry nets