Prevalence of Anticentromere F Protein Autoantibodies in 347 Patients with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Abstract: An association between autoimmunity and hematological malignancies has been reported including the detection of antinuclear autoantibodies (ANAs) in patients suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), with a high prevalence of ANAs directed to components of the mitotic apparatus or the mitosis-associated proteins. Previous studies have demonstrated that one of the targets of such ANAs could be the CENP-F protein, especially in some carcinomas. The prevalence and specificity of anti-CENP-F autoantibodies (aAbs) thus were analyzed in 347 patients with different histological subgroups of NHL before any treatment of NHL, along with 150 controls. The detection of these aAbs was performed using two techniques: a radioimmunological assay (RIA) and an indirect immunofluorescence technique (IIF). Twenty-five (7.2%) NHL patients and 2 (1.3%) control patients displayed anti-CENP-F aAbs using RIA. This difference between the two groups was found to be significant (P < 0.01), with a higher prevalence of aAbs in the follicular (13%) and in the marginal zone B and MALT (10.2%) lymphoma subgroups. By IIF, 10 (2.9%) patients with NHL displayed aAbs with a CENP-F or CENP-F-like pattern, whereas none of the control group did. In conclusion, these data demonstrate that a significant incidence of anti-CENP-F aAbs is observed, before any treatment, in some histological subgroups of NHL patients. In addition to the usefulness of anti-CENP-F aAbs as a marker for some NHL subgroups, prospective studies may be important to evaluate the predictive value of anti-CENP-F aAbs for the development of carcinomas.

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

antinuclear autoantibodies
indirect immunofluorescence technique

non-hodgkin's lymphoma
centromeric protein f
radioimmunological technique


Initial shape finding and modal analyses of cyclic right-cylindrical tensegrity modules Initial equilibrium and modal analyses of cyclic right-cylindrical tensegrity modules with an arbitrary number of stages are presented. There are m (?3) bars at each stage. The Maxwell number of the modules is 6?2m and is independent of the number of stages in the axial direction. Calladines relation reveals that there are 2m?5 infinitesimal mechanism modes. For multi-stage modules the necessary conditions for axial assembly of one-stage interior modules with the same internal element forces are investigated. One-stage modules with either congruent right-cylindrical modules or geometrically similar cone-shaped modules satisfy the necessary conditions. In this paper, the axial assembly of right-cylindrical modules with flip or quasi-flip symmetry is considered. For pre-stressed configurations, modal analyses are conducted to investigate the mode shapes of infinitesimal mechanism modes.

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


Social Choice Theory in HOL This article presents formalizations in higher-order logic of two proofs of Arrow's impossibility theorem due to Geanakoplos. The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem is derived as a corollary. Lacunae found in the literature are discussed.

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

arrow's theorem
gibbard-satterthwaite theorem
higher-order logic
theorem proving


Dimension-independent likelihood-informed MCMC Many Bayesian inference problems require exploring the posterior distribution of high-dimensional parameters that represent the discretization of an underlying function. This work introduces a family of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers that can adapt to the particular structure of a posterior distribution over functions. Two distinct lines of research intersect in the methods developed here. First, we introduce a general class of operator-weighted proposal distributions that are well defined on function space, such that the performance of the resulting MCMC samplers is independent of the discretization of the function. Second, by exploiting local Hessian information and any associated low-dimensional structure in the change from prior to posterior distributions, we develop an inhomogeneous discretization scheme for the Langevin stochastic differential equation that yields operator-weighted proposals adapted to the non-Gaussian structure of the posterior. The resulting dimension-independent and likelihood-informed (DILI) MCMC samplers may be useful for a large class of high-dimensional problems where the target probability measure has a density with respect to a Gaussian reference measure. Two nonlinear inverse problems are used to demonstrate the efficiency of these DILI samplers: an elliptic PDE coefficient inverse problem and path reconstruction in a conditioned diffusion.

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

markov chain monte carlo
conditioned diffusion

likelihood-informed subspace
infinite-dimensional inverse problems
langevin sde


Efficiency estimation and error decomposition in the stochastic frontier model: A Monte Carlo analysis Critics of the deterministic approach to efficiency measurement argue that no allowance is made for measurement error and other statistical noise. Without controlling for measurement error, the resulting measure of efficiency will be distorted due to the contamination of noise. The stochastic frontier models purportedly allow both inefficiency and measurement error. Some proponents argue that the stochastic frontier models should be used despite the limitations because of the superior conceptual treatment of noise. However, the ultimate value of the stochastic frontier depends on its ability to properly decompose noise and inefficiency. This paper tests the validity of the stochastic frontier cross-sectional models using a Monte Carlo analysis. The results suggest that the technique does not accurately decompose the total error into inefficiency and noise components. Further, the results suggest that at best, the stochastic frontier is only as good as the deterministic model.

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

technical efficiency
deterministic frontiers
stochastic frontiers


Asymmetric Hermitian and skew-Hermitian splitting methods for positive definite linear systems In this paper, efficient iterative methods for the large sparse non-Hermitian positive definite systems of linear equations, based on the Hermitian and skew-Hermitian splitting of the coefficient matrix, are studied. These methods include an asymmetric Hermitian/skew-Hermitian (AHSS) iteration and its inexact version, the inexact asymmetric Hermitian/skew-Hermitian (IAHSS) iteration, which employs some Krylov subspace methods as its inner process. We theoretically study the convergence properties of the AHSS method and the IAHSS method. Moreover, the contraction factor of the AHSS iteration is derived. Numerical examples illustrating the effectiveness of both AHSS and IAHSS iterations are presented. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

non-hermitian positive definite matrix
hermitian and skew-hermitian splitting
iterative method


automatic extraction of clickable structured web contents for name entity queries Today the major web search engines answer queries by showing ten result snippets, which need to be inspected by users for identifying relevant results. In this paper we investigate how to extract structured information from the web, in order to directly answer queries by showing the contents being searched for. We treat users' search trails (i.e., post-search browsing behaviors) as implicit labels on the relevance between web contents and user queries. Based on such labels we use information extraction approach to build wrappers and extract structured information. An important observation is that many web sites contain pages for name entities of certain categories (e.g., AOL Music contains a page for each musician), and these pages have the same format. This makes it possible to build wrappers from a small amount of implicit labels, and use them to extract structured information from many web pages for different name entities. We propose STRUCLICK, a fully automated system for extracting structured information for queries containing name entities of certain categories. It can identify important web sites from web search logs, build wrappers from users' search trails, filter out bad wrappers built from random user clicks, and combine structured information from different web sites for each query. Comparing with existing approaches on information extraction, STRUCLICK can assign semantics to extracted data without any human labeling or supervision. We perform comprehensive experiments, which show STRUCLICK achieves high accuracy and good scalability.

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 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 I O O O O O O O O O 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


Empirical investigation on factors influencing the behavioral intention to use Facebook There continues to be a gap in understanding of what makes an individual engage in Facebook use. This is the primary research question of this study. Social network research is a good place to begin. Hence, this research aims to investigate factors influencing the behavioral intention to use Facebook. Cross-sectional data were collected from 200 respondents through a survey. Data were then analyzed by means of multiple regression analysis. The findings verified the research hypotheses and confirmed that perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness all impact attitude toward continuance intention of Facebook. This paper provides some insights into how practitioners could better develop Facebook site and enhances understanding of users perception toward Facebook. Facebook developer should evaluate ways to improve perceptions of their sites on these dimensions. Facebook group should add more game zones and interesting features to boost up the number of Facebook users so that Facebook can maintain or achieve a higher position in social networking sites compared to others. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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

technology acceptance model (tam)
belief
malaysia


Handedness is more than laterality: lessons from chimpanzees Is human handedness unique? That is, do our nearest living relations, chimpanzee and bonobo (Pan spp.) show species-wide handedness, as is seen in living Homo sapiens? The answer may depend on definition: Handedness (congruence across subjects and across tasks) should be distinguished from hand preference (within subject and task), manual specialization (within subject, across tasks), and task specialization (across subjects, within task). Comparison is required at both population and species level. Several methodological issues (e.g., ecological validity) are crucial, as are major confounding variables (e.g., bimanuality). The behavioral manual laterality of chimpanzees is well-studied in a variety of contexts. Especially important is tool use, which seems to enhance extent of lateralization, but this varies both within and across populations. There is much evidence for task specialization in chimpanzees, but no conclusive evidence of handedness in the strictest sense. Thus, human handedness seems to be unique among living hominoids.

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

primates hominoid behavior asymmetry methodology


Integrated decision support in a hospital cancer registry In this paper we present (a) a shell for integrated knowledge-based functions that is destined to support decision processes of the users of the Giessener Tumordokumentationssystem (GTDS) and (b) some results we obtained during a 6-month observation period at one of the customers of the GTDS. A special characteristic of the provided decision support is the high degree of integration in the underlying information system GTDS, i.e. the functions are triggered by events in the patient database, existing patient data is reused as input for the reasoning process and generated alerts are presented instantly to the end-user. The first routine field of application was supporting registrars to adhere to integrity constraints as defined by the International Agency of Research on Cancer (IARC) during the documentation process. This information is important for the registrars since the checks of the IARC are an accepted standard for data quality in cancer registries. The expected benefit of this application area is less effort in achieving adherence to the specification of the IARC by preventing the costly rectification at a later time. During the last 5 months of the observation period 164 alerts were displayed. About 65% of the assessed alerts were considered to be correct. Especially, the analysis of the incorrect alerts revealed some shortcomings in the knowledge behind some of the integrity constraints of the IARC. The general feedback from the end-users indicate positive user satisfaction. Currently, the shell is in use in six hospital cancer registries.

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

integrated knowledge-based functions
catalytic decision support
arden syntax


DECENTRALIZED OUTPUT REGULATION OF LARGE SCALE NONLINEAR SYSTEMS WITH DELAY This paper deals with output regulation of a class of large-scale nonlinear systems with delays. Each of the subsystems is in the output feedback form, with nonlinear functions of the subsystem output and the outputs of other subsystems. The system outputs are subject to unknown constant delays. Both the system dynamics and the measurements are subject to unknown disturbances generated from unknown linear exosystems. Decentralized control design approach is adopted to design local controllers using measurements or regulated errors in each subsystems. It is shown in this paper that delays in the outputs of subsystems do not affect the existence of desired feedforward control input, and the invariant manifolds and the desired feedforward inputs always exist if the nonlinear functions are polynomials. Through a special parameterization of an augmented exosystem, an internal model can be designed for each subsystem, without the involvements of the uncertain parameters. The uncertain parameters affected by the uncertainty of the exosystem are estimated using adaptive control laws, and adaptive coefficients in the control inputs are used to suppress other uncertainties. The proposed decentralized adaptive control strategy ensures the global stability of the entire system, and the convergence to zero of the regulated errors. An example is included to demonstrate the proposed control strategy.

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

decentralized control
output regulation
nonlinear systems


mixed-order compositing for 3d paintings We present a method for rendering 3D paintings by compositing brush strokes embedded in space. The challenge in compositing 3D brush strokes is reconciling conflicts between their z -order in 3D and the order in which the strokes were painted, while maintaining temporal and spatial coherence. Our algorithm smoothly transitions between compositing closer strokes over those farther away and compositing strokes painted later over those painted earlier. It is efficient, running in O ( n log n ) time, and simple to implement. We demonstrate its effectiveness on a variety of 3D paintings.

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


Continuous Range Query Processing over Moving Objects In this paper, we propose a continuous range query processing method over moving objects. To effectively process continuous range queries, we design a main-memory-based query index that uses smaller storage and significantly reduces the query processing time. We show through performance evaluation that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods.

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

databases
location based services
continuous queries


Deinterleaving Finite Memory Processes Via Penalized Maximum Likelihood We study the problem of deinterleaving a set of finite-memory (Markov) processes over disjoint finite alphabets, which have been randomly interleaved by a finite-memory switch. The deinterleaver has access to a sample of the resulting interleaved process, but no knowledge of the number or structure of the component Markov processes, or of the switch. We study conditions for uniqueness of the interleaved representation of a process, showing that certain switch configurations, as well as memoryless component processes, can cause ambiguities in the representation. We show that a deinterleaving scheme based on minimizing a penalized maximum-likelihood cost function is strongly consistent, in the sense of reconstructing, almost surely as the observed sequence length tends to infinity, a set of component and switch Markov processes compatible with the original interleaved process. Furthermore, under certain conditions on the structure of the switch (including the special case of a memoryless switch), we show that the scheme recovers all possible interleaved representations of the original process. Experimental results are presented demonstrating that the proposed scheme performs well in practice, even for relatively short input samples.

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

finite memory process
finite-state machine (fsm) source
interleaved markov process (imp)
markov process


Clear P-wave arrival of weak events and automatic onset determination using wavelet filter banks P-wave arrivals of many weak events cannot be precisely determined manually. Difference in power levels between noise and P-wave in wavelet detail of weak events enables us to determine P-wave arrival manually. Because of this power difference, automatic onset detection and picking algorithm is introduced using the same wavelet detail. Parameter settings are not needed as algorithm will work on data generated by either short or very broad band seismometers. Application of the proposed algorithm on data of three stations of Egyptian National Seismic Network (ENSN) in Cairo region shows a maximum standard deviation of 0.14 seconds of the corresponding manual picks.

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

dwt
wavelets
p-wave picking
seismic data
weak events and microseisms


Approximate

probabilistic

optimization

using

exact-capacity-approximate-response-distribution

(ECARD)

Probabilistic

structural

design

deals

with

uncertainties

in

response

(e.g.

stresses)

and

capacity

(e.g.

failure

stresses).

The

calculation

of

the

structural

response

is

typically

expensive

(e.g.,

finite

element

simulations),

while

the

capacity

is

usually

available

from

tests.

Furthermore,

the

random

variables

that

influence

response

and

capacity

are

often

disjoint.

In

previous

work

we

have

shown

that

this

disjoint

property

can

be

used

to

reduce

the

cost

of

obtaining

the

probability

of

failure

via

Monte

Carlo

simulations.

In

this

paper

we

propose

to

use

this

property

for

an

approximate

probabilistic

optimization

based

on

exact

capacity

and

approximate

response

distributions

(ECARD).

In

Approximate

Probabilistic

Optimization

Using

ECARD,

the

change

in

response

distribution

is

approximated

as

the

structure

is

re-designed

while

the

capacity

distribution

is

kept

exact,

thus

significantly

reducing

the

number

of

expensive

response

simulations.

ECARD

may

be

viewed

as

an

extension

of

SORA

(Sequential

Optimization

and

Reliability

Assessment),

which

proceeds

with

deterministic

optimization

iterations.

In

contrast,

ECARD

has

probabilistic

optimization

iterations,

but

in

each

iteration,

the

response

distribution

is

approximated

so

as

not

to

require

additional

response

calculations.

The

use

of

inexpensive

probabilistic

optimization

allows

easy

incorporation

of

system

reliability

constraints

and

optimal

allocation

of

risk

between

failure

modes.

The

method

is

demonstrated

using

a

beam

problem

and

a

ten-bar

truss

problem.

The

former

allocates

risk

between

two

different

failure

modes,

while

the

latter

allocates

risk

between

members.

It

is

shown

that

ECARD

provides

most

of

the

improvement

from

risk

re-allocation

that

can

be

obtained

from

full

probabilistic

optimization.

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

reliability-based optimization
probabilistic design
uncertainty
risk allocation
approximation


affinity-based cluster assignment for unrolled loops To compete performance-wise, modern VLIW processors must have fast clock rates and high instruction-level parallelism (ILP). Partitioning resources (functional units and registers) into clusters allows the processor to be clocked faster, but operand transfers across clusters can easily become a bottleneck. Increasing the number of functional units increases the potential ILP, but only helps if the functional units can be kept busy.To support these features, optimizations such as loop unrolling must be applied to expose ILP, and instructions must be explicitly assigned to clusters to minimize cross-cluster transfers. In an architecture with homogeneous clusters, the number of functional units of a given type is typically a multiple of the number of clusters. Thus, it is common to unroll a loop so that the number of copies of the loop body is a multiple of the number of clusters. The result is that there is a natural mapping of instructions to clusters, which is often the best mapping. While this mapping can be obvious by inspection, we have found that existing cluster assignment algorithms often miss this natural split. The consequence is an excessive number of inter-cluster transfers, which slows down the loop.Because we were unable to find an existing cluster-assignment algorithm that performed well for unrolled loops, we developed our own. Our Affinity-Based Clustering (ABC) algorithm has been implemented in a production compiler for the Texas Instruments TMS320C6000, a two-cluster VLIW architecture. It is tailored for exploiting the patterns that result from either manual or compiler-based unrolling. As demonstrated experimentally, it performs well, even when post-unrolling optimizations partially obscure the natural split.

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

loop unrolling
homogeneous clusters
inspection
processor
cluster assignment
architecture
functional
clock
support
algorithm
ilp

loop scheduling
performance
partitioned register files
map
instrument
instruction-level parallelism
pattern
vliw architectures
partition
product
optimality
assignment
software pipelining
loop optimizations
instruction
compilation
feature
resource
cluster


Geometric Hermite interpolation by monotone helical quintics Monotone helical curves are polynomial helices whose unit tangent maintains a fixed sense of rotation about an axis. We investigate the interpolation of geometric Hermite data consisting of end points, tangents, and curvatures by monotone helical quintics. Based on the Hopf map model for spatial Pythagorean-hodograph curves, which subsume polynomial helices, we show that the geometric Hermite interpolation can be determined by solving a certain univariate polynomial equation of degree twelve. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

pythagorean-hodograph
geometric continuity
helix
curvature


HPCVIEW: A tool for top-down analysis of node performance It is increasingly difficult for complex scientific programs to attain a significant fraction of peak performance on systems that are based on microprocessors with substantial instruction-level parallelism and deep memory hierarchies. Despite this trend, performance analysis and tuning tools are still not used regularly by algorithm and application designers. To a large extent, existing performance tools fail to meet many user needs and are cumbersome to use. To address these issues, we developed HPCVIEW-a toolkit for combining multiple sets of program profile data, correlating the data with source code, and generating a database that can be analyzed anywhere with a commodity Web browser. We argue that HPCVIEW addresses many of the issues that have limited the usability and the utility of most existing tools. We originally built HPCVIEW to facilitate our own work on data layout and optimizing compilers. Now, in addition to daily use within our group, HPCVIEW is being used by several code development teams in DoD and DoE laboratories as well as at NCSA.

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

performance evaluation
software performance
binary analysis
software tools


A big-stepped probability approach for discovering default rules This paper deals with the extraction of default rules from a database of examples. The proposed approach is based on a special kind of probability distributions, called "big-stepped probabilities", which are known to provide a semantics for non-monotonic reasoning. The rules which are learnt are genuine default rules, which could be used (under some conditions) in a non-monotonic reasoning system and can be encoded in possibilistic logic.

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

knowledge discovery
non-monotonic reasoning
big stepped-probabilities
possibility theory


APPLICATION OF THE RANDOM FIELD THEORY IN PET IMAGING - INJECTION DOSE OPTIMIZATION This work presents new application of the random field theory in medical imaging. Results from both integral geometry and random field theory can be used to detect locations with significantly increased radiotracer uptake in images from positron emission tomography (PET). The assumptions needed to use these results are verified on a set of real and simulated phantom images. The proposed method of detecting activation (locations with increased radiotracer concentration) is used to quantify the quality of simulated PET images. Dependence of the quality on the injection dose (amount of applied radiotracer) and patient's body parameters is estimated. It is used to derive curves of constant quality determining the injection dose needed to achieve desired quality of the resulting images. The curves are compared with the formula currently used in medical practice.

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


A mathematical analysis of the development of oriented receptive fields in Linsker's model We consider Linsker's neural network model and study how oriented receptive fields (RFs) are developed at layer F?G mathematically. We concentrate on the Mexican-hat correlation function and show that this function determines the spatial frequency of RFs. We also focus on the role of the arbor function. Two types of arbor functions, a Gaussian type and a step type, are considered, and it is shown that the Gaussian arbor function develops center-surround RFs while the step arbor function enables the development of multi-lobed RFs in addition to center-surround RFs. The roles of Linsker's parameters k1, k2 are also discussed.

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

development
mathematical analysis
arbor function

linsker
self-organization
oriented receptive field
correlation based model
mexican-hat correlation function


An empirical evaluation of XQuery processors This paper presents an extensive and detailed experimental evaluation of XQuery processors. The study consists of running five publicly available XQuery benchmarksthe Michigan benchmark (MBench), XBench, XMach-1, XMark and X007on six XQuery processors, three stand-alone (file-based) XQuery processors (Galax, Qizx/Open, Saxon-B) and three XML/XQuery database systems (BerkeleyDB/XML, MonetDB/XQuery, X-Hive/DB). Next to assessing and comparing the functionality, performance and scalability for the various systems, the major focus of this work is to report in detail about the experiences made while performing such an exhaustive study, to discuss all the problems that we encountered and how we solved them, and hence to hopefully provide some guidelines (or even a recipe) for performing reproducible large-scale experimental research and system evaluation.

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

xml
xquery processors
benchmarks
performance evaluation


Learning to Avoid Risky Actions When a reinforcement learning agent executes actions that can cause frequent damage to itself, it can learn, by using Q-learning, that these actions must not be executed again. However, there are other actions that do not cause damage frequently but only once in a while, for example, risky actions such as parachuting. These actions may imply punishment to the agent and, depending on its personality, it would be better to avoid them. Nevertheless, using the standard Q-learning algorithm, the agent is not able to learn to avoid them, because the result of these actions can be positive on average. In this article, an additional mechanism of Q-learning, inspired by the emotion of fear, is introduced in order to deal with those risky actions by considering the worst results. Moreover, there is a daring factor for adjusting the consideration of the risk. This mechanism is implemented on an autonomous agent living in a virtual environment. The results present the performance of the agent with different daring degrees.

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

autonomous agent
fear
reinforcement learning
risky actions


approximation algorithms for hierarchical location problems We formulate and (approximately) solve hierarchical versions of two prototypical problems in discrete location theory, namely, the metric uncapacitated k -median and facility location problems. Our work yields new insights into hierarchical clustering, a widely used technique in data analysis. First, we show that every metric space admits a hierarchical clustering that is within a constant factor of optimal at every level of granularity with respect to the average (squared) distance objective. Second, we provide a natural solution to the leaf ordering problem encountered in the traditional dendrogram-based approach to the visualization of hierarchical clusterings.

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 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

discrete location theory
hierarchical clustering


a framework for creating a sustainable community in virtual environments There is much interest in using the virtual community as a business medium to establish a relationship between customer and stakeholders. While studies on virtual communities have widely discussed ways to sustain this community, there is the need for a complete framework or methodology to regulate members' interactions so as to produce sustainability. In order to achieve this sustainability, it is important to consider the existing trust relationship between community members and ways to identify an untrustworthy agent in a community. In this paper, we propose a framework for creating a sustainable community in Virtual Environments. The role of a third party agent and the effectiveness of continuous performance monitoring are the main keys to creating a sustainable virtual community. We also present the results of an experimental study. The study shows that the framework will help the administrator to identify all non-compliant agents after a transaction or interactions.

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


Information Recall Task Impact in Olfaction-Enhanced Multimedia Enhancing multimedia applications with olfactory sensations is one of the last challenges in the area. While there is evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, that olfactory cues help users in information recall tasks, there is a lack of work when the targeted information is one contained in a multimedia presentation, which is precisely the focus of this article. Accordingly, we present the results of two experimental studies. The first study measured the impact of olfactory media variation on the user's ability to perceive, synthesize, and analyze the informational content of olfactory-enhanced multimedia videos; the second study measured the impact of information content, and an information recall task in respect of user perception of the relevance, sense of reality, and acceptability of the olfactory media content, as well as the overall enjoyment of the experience. Results show that the use of olfactory media content, both pleasant and unpleasant, in multimedia displays does not significantly impact on information assimilation in a negative way. Moreover, the addition of a performance task may enhance the user's understanding of the correlation between the characteristic odor(s) and the scenario under consideration, as well as enable users to consciously learn the odors.

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

design
experimentation
human factors
olfaction


new modified fuzzy c-means for determination of proper structure in dataset This paper establishes an effective new fuzzy clustering algorithm for finding structure in dataset. In order to obtain a new effective fuzzy clustering, this paper mainly concentrates on cluster prototypes, fuzzy membership of objects, updating membership and termination parameters. Also to show the performance of the proposed methods, this paper tries to implement the methods to find a proper structure in a random data. This paper tries to illustrate the result of proposed methods as for visual inspection. The visual inspection may be done by program implementation using computer programming language. Also this paper tries to identify the best

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

fuzzy membership
cluster prototypes
clustering


a fast and reliable decoding scheme with prior-hash bits in distributed video coding Distributed video coding (DVC) has attracted increasing research efforts due to its low-complexity encoding requirements and its applications in wireless video sensor networks for monitoring. This paper proposes a modified Prior-Hash-Based Side-Information Search for decoding Scheme in DVC. LDPC is introduced to produce the syndromes to realize DVC. And a hash-based side-information search scheme is proposed to get the most possible side information before syndrome decoding, named the Prior-Hash bits scheme. The proposed scheme not only reduces the bits of hash in the encoder, but also greatly decreases the computation complexity and delay in the decoder. Simulation results illustrate the performance of PSNR and the complexity advantages of the proposed scheme compared with the original PRISM [1] scheme.

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


Synthetic Generation of High-Dimensional Datasets Generation of synthetic datasets is a common practice in many research areas. Such data is often generated to meet specific needs or certain conditions that may not be easily found in the original, real data. The nature of the data varies according to the application area and includes text, graphs, social or weather data, among many others. The common process to create such synthetic datasets is to implement small scripts or programs, restricted to small problems or to a specific application. In this paper we propose a framework designed to generate high dimensional datasets. Users can interactively create and navigate through multi dimensional datasets using a suitable graphical user-interface. The data creation is driven by statistical distributions based on a few user-defined parameters. First, a grounding dataset is created according to given inputs, and then structures and trends are included in selected dimensions and orthogonal projection planes. Furthermore, our framework supports the creation of complex non-orthogonal trends and classified datasets. It can successfully be used to create synthetic datasets simulating important trends as multidimensional clusters, correlations and outliers.

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

synthetic data generation
multivariate data
high-dimensional data
interaction


Exact travelling wave solutions for a diffusion-convection equation in two and three spatial dimensions The modified extended tanh-function method were applied to the general class of nonlinear diffusion-convection equations where the concentration-dependent diffusivity, D(u), was taken to be a constant while the concentration-dependent hydraulic conductivity, K (u) were taken to be in a power law. The obtained solutions include rational-type, triangular-type, singular-type. and solitary wave solutions. In fact, the profile of the obtained solitary wave solutions resemble the characteristics of a shock-wave like structure for an arbitrary m (where m > 1 is the power of the nonlinear convection term). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

diffusion-convection processes
modified extended tanh-function method
symbolic computations


Smallest Number of Sensors for k-Covering This paper presents some theoretical results on the smaller number N-k (a, b) of sensors to achieve k coverage for the rectangular area [0, a] x [0, b]. The first properties show the numbers N-k(a,b) are sub-additive and increasing on each variable. Based on these results, some lower and upper bounds for N-k(a,b) are introduced. The main result of the article proves that the minimal density of sensors to achieve k-coverage is lambda(k) <= k/2 improving a previous result of Ammari and Das [2]. Finally, the numbers N-1 (a, b) are tabled for some small values of a, b.

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


Evolutionary multi-objective optimization of QoS-Aware Publish/Subscribe Middleware in electronics production Computer-Aided Manufacturing using XML (CAMX) production systems are built on Message-Oriented Middleware Frameworks, offering standards-based communication among machines and control software applications. CAMX Frameworks implement Publish/Subscribe of XML messages through an entity called the Message Broker (MSB), which provides the messaging service using a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface. In order to create scalable frameworks, distributed MSB systems are deployed. However, the topology optimization problem arises, as clients need to be assigned to one of many MSB nodes. The problem is strictly NP-hard, and multiple optimization criteria are conflicting. A solution considering real-time systems was developed based on Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization techniques. The Framework Optimization Algorithm (FOA) is designed to work with various topologies, including federated frameworks, locally distributed clusters, and mixed environments including embedded middleware nodes. The developed FOA was tested for a case scenario based on a flexible manufacturing system running on a distributed CAMX framework, and proved to robustly converge to the optimal topology. Convergence was achieved within few seconds, demonstrating the suitability of FOA for rapid topology reconfiguration in response to changes in the system.

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

rapidly reconfigurable manufacturing systems


finding consensus trees by evolutionary, variable neighborhood search, and hybrid algorithms The consensus tree problem arises in the domain of phylogenetics and seeks to find for a given collection of trees a single tree best representing it. Usually, such a tree collection is obtained by biologists for a given taxa set either via different phylogenetic inference methods or multiple applications of a non-deterministic procedure. There exist various consensus methods which often have the drawback of being very strict, limiting the resulting consensus tree in terms of its resolution and/or precision. A reason for this typically is the coarse granularity of the tree metric used. To find fully resolved (binary) consensus trees of high quality, we consider the fine-grained TreeRank similarity measure and extend a previously presented evolutionary algorithm (EA) to a memetic algorithm (MA) by including different variants of local search using neighborhoods based on moves of single taxa as well as subtrees. Furthermore, we propose a variable neighborhood search (VNS) with an embedded variable neighborhood descent (VND) based on the same neighborhood structures. Finally sequential and intertwined combinations of the EA and MA with the VNS/VND are investigated. We give results on real and artificially generated data indicating in particular the benefits of the hybrid methods.

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

memetic algorithm
consensus tree problem
phylogenetics
variable neighborhood search
hybrid methods


OSGi-based smart home architecture for heterogeneous network With the development of home network and service applications, different protocols and transmission modes are proposed. There are more digital devices and home appliances which compliance to the protocols. The proposed protocols are different and they are usually unable to communicate with each other; we design and implement a Service-Oriented Smart-Home Architecture to integrate protocols which are popular such as UPnP, Jini, DPWS on OSGi framework and collaborating Tmote, Zigbee and Bluetooth to converge various service oriented applications. Furthermore, with the well-developed Tmote, Zigbee and Bluetooth technology, majority of devices has been developed to support these technologies, we propose three new base drivers to integrate different devices communication protocol on our platform. Additionally, we propose a Service Resolving Bundle to complement the drawbacks of OSGi mechanisms. However, OSGi services with constructs of additional description are stored in our proposed Service Resolving XML (SRXML). Also, the service user may invoke the service of this bundle to get additional information of the aimed services. The architecture utilized with service-oriented mechanisms to accommodate applications which are implemented across different domains and allows the system components to interact with one another.

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


Experimental and numerical investigation on in-plane behaviour of hollow concrete block masonry panels This paper presents the details of studies conducted on hollow concrete block masonry (HCBM) units and wall panels. This study includes, compressive strength of unit block, ungrouted and grouted HCB prisms, flexural strength evaluation, testing of HCBM panels with and without opening. Non-linear finite element (FE) analysis of HCBM panels with and without opening has been carried out by simulating the actual test conditions. Constant vertical load is applied on the top of the wall panel and then lateral load is applied in incremental manner. The in-plane deformation is recorded under each incremental lateral load. Displacement ductility factors and response reduction factors have been evaluated based on experimental results. From the study, it is observed that fully grouted and partially reinforced HCBM panel without opening performed well compared to other types of wall panels in lateral load resistance and displacement ductility. In all the wall panels, shear cracks originated at loading point and moved towards the compression toe of the wall. The force reduction factor of a wall panel with opening is much less when compared with fully reinforced wall panel with no opening. The displacement values obtained by non-linear FE analysis are found to be in good agreement with the corresponding experimental values. The influence of mortar joint has been included in the stress-strain behaviour as a monolith with HCBM and not considered separately. The derived response reduction factors will be useful for the design of reinforced HCBM wall panels subjected to lateral forces generated due to earthquakes.

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

hollow concrete block masonry
prisms
wall panels
ductility

finite element analysis
static nonlinear


Smooth relevance vector machine: a smoothness prior extension of the RVM Enforcing sparsity constraints has been shown to be an effective and efficient way to obtain state-of-the-art results in regression and classification tasks. Unlike the support vector machine (SVM) the relevance vector machine (RVM) explicitly encodes the criterion of model sparsity as a prior over the model weights. However the lack of an explicit prior structure over the weight variances means that the degree of sparsity is to a large extent controlled by the choice of kernel (and kernel parameters). This can lead to severe overfitting or oversmoothing-possibly even both at the same time (e.g. for the multiscale Doppler data). We detail an efficient scheme to control sparsity in Bayesian regression by incorporating a flexible noise-dependent smoothness prior into the RVNI. We present an empirical evaluation of the effects of choice of prior structure on a selection of popular data sets and elucidate the link between Bayesian wavelet shrinkage and RVM regression. Our model encompasses the original RVM as a special case, but our empirical results show that we can surpass RVNI performance in terms of goodness of fit and achieved sparsity as well as computational performance in many cases. The code is freely available.

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

smoothness prior
relevance vector machine


Geometrical product specifications model for product life cycle As technology increases and performance requirements continually tighten, the cost and required precision of assemblies increase as well. There exists a strong need for increased attention to tolerance design to enable high-precision assemblies to be manufactured at lower cost. For automotive and aircraft industries, the tolerancing process has become an important issue in product and process design. There is an important question that would need to be looked into: How to define a coherent expression of Geometrical Product Specification during the tolerancing process along life cycle?. There is a necessity for developing a complete answer representing standard tolerance practices. This paper proposes a model to allow a complete and coherent tolerancing process. The description of GeoSpelling, the model proposed to ISO for rebuilding standards in the fields of tolerancing and metrology, allows a unified description of geometrical specification. This model takes into account, not only the specification on isolated parts, but also on assemblies with the integration of the quantifier concept.

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

tolerancing model
geospelling model
geometrical feature
geometrical characteristics


Generalized dimension-reduction framework for recent-biased time series analysis Recent-biased approximations have received increased attention recently as a mechanism for learning trend patterns from time series or data streams. They have shown promise for clustering time series and incrementally pattern maintaining. In this paper, we design a generalized dimension-reduction framework for recent-biased approximations, aiming at making traditional dimension-reduction techniques actionable in recent-biased time series analysis. The framework is designed in two ways: equi-segmented scheme and vari-segmented scheme., In both schemes, time series data are first partitioned into segments and a dimension-reduction technique is applied to each segment. Then, more coefficients are kept for more recent data while fewer kept for older data. Thus, more details are preserved for recent data and fewer coefficients are kept for the whole time series, which improves the efficiency. greatly. We experimentally evaluate the proposed approach, and demonstrate that traditional dimension-reduction techniques, such as SVD, DIFT, DWT, PIP, PAA, and landmarks, can be embedded into our framework for recent-biased approximations over streaming time series.

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

feature extraction or construction
data mining


An extension to possibilistic fuzzy cluster analysis We explore an approach to possibilistic fuzzy clustering that avoids a severe drawback of the conventional approach, namely that the objective function is truly minimized only if all cluster centers are identical. Our approach is based on the idea that this undesired property can be avoided if we introduce a mutual repulsion of the clusters, so that they are forced away from each other. We develop this approach for the possibilistic fuzzy c-means algorithm and the Gustafson-Kessel algorithm. In our experiments we found that in this way we can combine the partitioning property of the probabilistic fuzzy c-means algorithm with the advantages of a possibilistic approach w.r.t. the interpretation of the membership degrees. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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


Does mixing of speech signals comply with central limit theorem? In this short communication compliance of central limit theorem (CLT) by the convolutive mixing of two speech signals has been investigated in the frequency domain keeping in view the blind separation of convolutive mixture of speech by the independent component analysis (ICA)-based algorithms exploiting properties of CLT. The convolutive mixing of speech is equivalent to superposition of spectral components of each signal. When two non-Gaussian signals are added, the resulting mixed signal gains Gaussianity over the addend signals under the light of CLT. This paper looks for the similar effect of CLT in the mixing process of speech signals with adequate doubts because speech signals from different speakers differ in spectral contents and are spectrally sparse. Interestingly, the results based on the measure of spectral kurtosis show that mixing process of speech signal does not gain Gaussianity in every frequency bin.

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


Hybrid image plane/stereo (HIPS) manipulation for robotic space applications Manipulation systems for planetary exploration operate under severe limitations due to power and weight restrictions and extreme environmental conditions. Typically such systems employ carefully calibrated stereo cameras and carefully calibrated manipulators to achieve precision on the order of ten millimeters with respect to instrument placement activities. The environmental and functional restrictions under which these systems are used limit the operational accuracy of these approaches. This paper presents a novel approach to stereo-based manipulation designed to robustly achieve high precision levels despite the aforementioned limitations. The basic principle of the approach, known as Hybrid Image Plane/Stereo (HIPS) Manipulation, is the generation of camera models through direct visual sensing of the manipulator's end-effector. The HIPS method estimates and subsequently uses these models to position the manipulator at a target location specified in the image-planes of a stereo camera pair using stereo correlation and triangulation. In-situ estimation and adaptation of the manipulator/camera models in this method accounts for changes in the system configuration, thus ensuring consistent precision for the life of the mission. The end result is a increase in positioning precision by a factor of approximately two for a limited version of HIPS, and an order of magnitude increase in positioning precision for the full on-line version of HIPS.

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

vision-based manipulation
stereo triangulation
stereo vision
space robotics


a cycle-accurate compilation algorithm for custom pipelined datapaths Traditional high level synthesis (HLS) techniques generate a datapath and controller for a given behavioral description. The growing wiring cost and delay of today technologies require aggressive optimizations, such as interconnect pipelining, that cannot be done after generating the datapath and without invalidating the schedule. On the other hand, the increasing manufacturing complexities demand approaches that favor design for manufacturability (DFM).To address these problems we propose an approach in which the datapath of the architecture is fully allocated before scheduling and binding. We compile a C program directly to the datapath and generate the controller. We can support the entire ANSI C syntax because the datapath can be as complex as the datapath of a processor. Since there is no instruction abstraction in this architecture we call it No-Instruction-Set-Computer (NISC). As the first step towards realization of a NISC-based design flow, we present an algorithm that maps an application on a given datapath by performing scheduling and binding simultaneously. With this algorithm, we achieved up to 70\% speedup on a NISC with a datapath similar to that of MIPS, compared to a MIPS gcc compiler. It also efficiently handles different datapath features such as pipelining, forwarding and multi-cycle units.

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


Wheres the competitive advantage in strategic information systems research? Making the case for boundary-spanning research based on the German business and information systems engineering tradition During the last decades, strategic information systems (SIS) research has become an influential stream within the information systems discipline. The success story of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems provides strong evidence. Yet, we believe that there is still a lot of untapped potential in the interaction of SIS research and industry. Put bluntly, it is impossible that results of SIS research are publicly available, reconstructable by subject matter experts, and valid beyond the single or very few cases and at the same time constitute the foundation of competitive advantage. We argue that SIS researchers need to become boundary spanners who actively engage in industry collaboration to help create competitive advantage and who disseminate their insights later on to advance the scientific knowledge base. We outline challenges of boundary-spanning SIS research and provide some ideas and recommendations. Wherever sensible, we draw on our experiences from the traditionally strong industry collaboration of the business and information systems engineering community from the German-speaking countries.

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


Mutual-reinforcement document summarization using embedded graph based sentence clustering for storytelling In this paper, a document summarization framework for storytelling is proposed to extract essential sentences from a document by exploiting the mutual effects between terms, sentences and clusters. There are three phrases in the framework: document modeling, sentence clustering and sentence ranking. The story document is modeled by a weighted graph with vertexes that represent sentences of the document. The sentences are clustered into different groups to find the latent topics in the story. To alleviate the influence of unrelated sentences in clustering, an embedding process is employed to optimize the document model. The sentences are then ranked according to the mutual effect between terms, sentence as well as clusters, and high-ranked sentences are selected to comprise the summarization of the document. The experimental results on the Document Understanding Conference (DUC) data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in document summarization. The results also show that the embedding process for sentence clustering render the system more robust with respect to different cluster numbers.

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

document summarization
sentence ranking
sentence clustering
storytelling


Confidence- and margin-based MMI/MPE discriminative training for off-line handwriting recognition We present a novel confidence- and margin-based discriminative training approach for model adaptation of a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based handwriting recognition system to handle different handwriting styles and their variations. Most current approaches are maximum-likelihood (ML) trained HMM systems and try to adapt their models to different writing styles using writer adaptive training, unsupervised clustering, or additional writer-specific data. Here, discriminative training based on the maximum mutual information (MMI) and minimum phone error (MPE) criteria are used to train writer-independent handwriting models. For model adaptation during decoding, an unsupervised confidence-based discriminative training on a word and frame level within a two-pass decoding process is proposed. The proposed methods are evaluated for closed-vocabulary isolated handwritten word recognition on the IFN/ENIT Arabic handwriting database, where the word error rate is decreased by 33% relative compared to a ML trained baseline system. On the large-vocabulary line recognition task of the IAM English handwriting database, the word error rate is decreased by 25% relative.

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

handwriting recognition
arabic
discriminative training
maximum mutual information
minimum phone error
model adaptation


On the role of feedforward in Gaussian sources: Point-to-point source coding and multiple description source coding Source coding with noiseless feedforward deals with efficient quantization of information sources into indexes, where to reconstruct a source sample, the decoder in addition to this index, has access to all the previous noiseless source samples. This problem may find applications in sensor networks, economics, and control theory. In the first part of this paper, we consider a deterministic block coding scheme for independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian sources. We show that this scheme is asymptotically optimal in terms of its rate-distortion function and the error exponent.

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

feedforward
gaussian sources
multiple description source coding
source coding


Human-competitive results produced by genetic programming Genetic programming has now been used to produce at least 76 instances of results that are competitive with human-produced results. These human-competitive results come from a wide variety of fields, including quantum computing circuits, analog electrical circuits, antennas, mechanical systems, controllers, game playing, finite algebras, photonic systems, image recognition, optical lens systems, mathematical algorithms, cellular automata rules, bioinformatics, sorting networks, robotics, assembly code generation, software repair, scheduling, communication protocols, symbolic regression, reverse engineering, and empirical model discovery. This paper observes that, despite considerable variation in the techniques employed by the various researchers and research groups that produced these human-competitive results, many of the results share several common features. Many of the results were achieved by using a developmental process and by using native representations regularly used by engineers in the fields involved. The best individual in the initial generation of the run of genetic programming often contains only a small number of operative parts. Most of the results that duplicated the functionality of previously issued patents were novel solutions, not infringing solutions. In addition, the production of human-competitive results, as well as the increased intricacy of the results, are broadly correlated to increased availability of computing power tracked by Moores law. The paper ends by predicting that the increased availability of computing power (through both parallel computing and Moores law) should result in the production, in the future, of an increasing flow of human-competitive results, as well as more intricate and impressive results.

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

genetic programming
parallel computing
moores law

human-competitive results
developmental genetic programming
automated design
patented inventions


Sustainable production in the UK: a tool to support printed circuit assembly (PCA) manufacturing Product life-cycle reduction, hazardous substance utilisation, waste generation and resource utilisation among other sustainably issues are becoming a growing concern for electronics manufactures in the UK; with tighter measures not only over what materials can be used, but also on waste production and energy utilisation. This paper discusses extensions on a tool developed by the Loughborough University to include the evaluation of sustainable phenomena during production, thus supporting more sustainable production in the electronics manufacturing domain. The tool supports the optimisation of process and product design in advance of production runs in order to support a right first time' approach to manufacturing, whilst meeting both quality and customer requirements. The main contributions are (1) providing a simulation tool to approach sustainable aspects of business based on specific user priorities in the area, (2) demonstrating the tool on a real case study developed under industrial constraints and conditions and (3) providing a tool that can evolve along with the rapidly changing sustainability requirements in the application domain. The tool is presented, in this paper, along with its integrated modelling framework. The study contains results derived from an industry-based case study, designed to represent both the functionality and potential of the developed tool. The case study and the analysis have a focus on sustainable impacts due to poor quality.

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

electronics manufacturing
modelling
pca
simulation
sustainability
quality


Online Reconstruction of 3D Objects from Arbitrary Cross-Sections We describe a simple algorithm to reconstruct the surface of smooth three-dimensional multilabeled objects from sampled planar cross-sections of arbitrary orientation. The algorithm has the unique ability to handle cross-sections in which regions are classified as being inside the object, outside the object, or unknown. This is achieved by constructing a scalar function on R-3, whose zero set is the desired surface. The function is constructed independently inside every cell of the arrangement of the cross-section planes using transfinite interpolation techniques based on barycentric coordinates. These guarantee that the function is smooth, and its zero set interpolates the cross-sections. The algorithm is highly parallelizable and may be implemented as an incremental update as each new cross-section is introduced. This leads to an efficient online version, performed on a GPU, which is suitable for interactive medical applications.

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


Pinning Synchronization for a General Complex Networks with Multiple Time-Varying Coupling Delays This paper investigates the problem of pinning synchronization for a general complex networks with multiple time-varying coupling delays by using Lyapunov functional method. Firstly, we design a controller to keep the given system synchronized, and provide a simple approximate formula to estimate the detailed pinning synchronization states. Furthermore, by using the same method, an adaptive pinning control scheme is developed to achieve global synchronization, and the adaptive pinning controllers are simpler than some traditional controllers. Moreover, the presented results can also be applied to the system with single time delay, and the coupling-configuration matrices are not necessarily symmetric. Finally, numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

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

chaotic synchronization
kronecker product
multiple coupling delay


Automatic PCA Dimension Selection for High Dimensional Data and Small Sample Sizes Bayesian inference from high-dimensional data involves the integration over a large number of model parameters. Accurate evaluation of such high-dimensional integrals raises a unique set of issues. These issues are illustrated using the exemplar of model selection for principal component analysis (PCA). A Bayesian model selection criterion, based on a Laplace approximation to the model evidence for determining the number of signal principal components present in a data set, has previously been show to perform well on various test data sets. Using simulated data we show that for d-dimensional data and small sample sizes, N, the accuracy of this model selection method is strongly affected by increasing values of d. By taking proper account of the contribution to the evidence from the large number of model parameters we show that model selection accuracy is substantially improved. The accuracy of the improved model evidence is studied in the asymptotic limit d -> infinity at fixed ratio alpha = N/d, with alpha < 1. In this limit, model selection based upon the improved model evidence agrees with a frequentist hypothesis testing approach.

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

random matrix theory
high dimensional inference


Adaptive memory programming for the vehicle routing problem with multiple trips The Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Trips is an extension of the classical Vehicle Routing Problem in which each vehicle may perform several routes in the same planning period. In this paper, an adaptive memory algorithm to solve this problem is proposed. Computational experience is reported over a set of benchmark problem instances.

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


Packet video error concealment with Gaussian mixture models In this paper, Gaussian mixture modeling is applied to error concealment for block-based packet video. A Gaussian mixture model for video data is obtained offline and is thereafter utilized online in order to restore lost blocks from spatial and temporal surrounding information. We propose estimators on closed form for missing data in the case of varying available neighboring contexts. Our error concealment strategy increases peak signal-tonoise ratio compared to previously proposed schemes. Examples of improved subjective visual quality by means of the proposed method are also supplied.

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

gaussian mixture model (gmm)
video modeling


LP-MOCVD growth of ternary BxGa1?xAs epilayers on (001)GaAs substrates using TEB, TMGa and AsH3 Zinc-blende BxGa1?xAs alloys have been successfully grown on exactly oriented (001)GaAs substrates using triethylboron, trimethylgallium and arsine sources. The growth has been accomplished in a vertical low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (LP-MOCVD) reactor. Boron incorporation behaviors have been extensively studied as a function of growth temperature and gas-phase boron mole fraction. The evolution of surface morphology was also observed. The maximum boron composition of 5.8% is obtained at the optimum growth temperature of 580C. RMS roughness over the surface area of 11?m2 is only 0.17nm at such growth conditions. Based on the experimental results, it has been clearly shown that boron incorporation will decrease significantly at higher temperature (>610C) or at much lower temperature (?550C).

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

metalorganic chemical vapor deposition
triethylboron


power reduction via macroblock prioritization for power aware h.264 video applications As the importance of multimedia applications in hand-held devices increases, the computational strain and corresponding demand for energy in such devices continues to grow. Portable multimedia devices with inherently limited energy supplies face tight energy constraints and require optimization for energy conservation. Power-aware applications give their users flexibility to prioritize and trade between performance and battery-life. This paper introduces a power-aware technique for user selectable power reduction in exchange for controlled reductions in video quality for H.264 video streams. The technique uses an encoder-decoder pair. The encoder characterizes video streams and provides information to the decoder via Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) by generating prioritized slice groups. The decoder selectively ignores low priority slice groups based on user selected preference effectively reducing the decoder workload. With a reduced computational requirement, processor voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) significantly improve decoder power performance within timing constraints. Our PXA270 system implementation resulted in power savings of as much as 53\% with an average PSNR per frame of 24dB compared to the unmodified video.

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


Classification of packed executables for accurate computer virus detection Executable packing is the most common technique used by computer virus writers to obfuscate malicious code and evade detection by anti-virus software. Universal unpackers have been proposed that can detect and extract encrypted code from packed executables, therefore potentially revealing hidden viruses that can then be detected by traditional signature-based anti-virus software. However, universal unpackers are computationally expensive and scanning large collections of executables looking for virus infections may take several hours or even days. In this paper we apply pattern recognition techniques for fast detection of packed executables. The objective is to efficiently and accurately distinguish between packed and non-packed executables, so that only executables detected as packed will be sent to an universal unpacker, thus saving a significant amount of processing time. We show that our system achieves very high detection accuracy of packed executables with a low average processing time.

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

pattern recognition
packed executables
computer virus detection


Smart pricing scheme: A multi-layered scoring rule application Innovative intensive based smart pricing scheme. Ensures smart and accurate device schedule prediction to optimize energy usage. Tractable solution concept and able to reduce P2A ratio. Highly distributed and scalable method.

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

smart grid
demand response
incentive design
energy management


Non-deterministic cellular automata and languages We summarize results on non-deterministic cellular language acceptors. The non-determinism is regarded as limited resource. For parallel devices, it is natural to bound the non-determinism in time and/or space. Depending on the length of the input, the number of allowed non-deterministic state transitions as well as the number of non-deterministic cells at all is limited. We centre our attention to real-time, linear-time, and unrestricted-time computations and discuss the computational power of these machines. Speed-up results and the possibility to reduce the non-determinism as well as closure properties of languages acceptable with a constant number of non-deterministic transitions are presented. By considering the relations with context-free languages, several relations between the devices in question are implied. We do not prove these results but we merely draw attention to the big picture and some of the main ideas involved, and open problems for further research.

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

(limited) non-determinism
language recognition
computational capacity
hierarchies
parallel computing


a framework for scalable virtual worlds using spatially organized p2p networks The general craze for virtual environments, the potential of augmented reality applications and the announced revolution of the Internet world (Web 2.0, Web 3D.0) are key points for the emergence of an 'ambient' Web which will make it possible for users to communicate, collaborate, entertain, work and exchange content. In this context, content storage, delivery, and reproduction are among the essential points for the deployment of a highly scalable platform of wide reality. In this paper, we propose a self-scalable peer-to-peer architecture for the navigation in network-based virtual worlds. To reach this goal, we propose a fully distributed and adaptive streaming method that quickly adapts the reproduced content according to user interaction. Our content delivery strategy has been implemented and tested on a dedicated simulator with a large 3D city model.

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

self-adaptation self-repartition self-distribution self-scalabity peer-to-peer


applying reach in direct manipulation user interfaces The HCI community currently faces the problem of making tangible user interfaces actively responsive to their user's current physical context. This paper explores the context of direct manipulation user interfaces for large horizontal interactive displays. Knowledge of users' reach provides direct manipulation user interfaces with a powerful tool for contextualizing and predicting user action. This paper introduces users' reach as a formal way to predict the previously observed phenomena of workspace segmentation and territoriality. By creating models of "reach-ability", reach probability surfaces can be generated which further explain the impact on workspace usage of the shape, height, and position of the workspace. As the presented techniques build on formal qualitative and mathematical models of reach, they lend themselves particularly well to an algorithmic implementation suited to driving complex user interface behaviour. This paper presents the results of an initial user study to determine the accuracy of these predictions and their underlying hypotheses about reaches role in shaping workspace usage.

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

otre
reach envelope
reach probability surface


A hybridisation of metaheuristics for flow shop scheduling The present paper deals with the formation of an optimal sequence of flow shop scheduling (FSS) for efficient operation. The primary concern of FSS is to obtain the optimal sequence, which minimises the idle time, tardiness, makespan, etc. Among these, the criteria of minimising the makespan plays a vital part. Thus, in this paper, the sequencing of the FSS for minimising the makespan is addressed. An effective hybrid has been formed with the metaheuristics, namely an ant system and a genetic algorithm (GA). A number of illustrative examples with different combinations of machines and jobs have been solved using the proposed hybrid method.

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

flow shop scheduling
metaheuristics
makespan
ant system
genetic algorithm
hybridisation


PREEMPTIVE SCHEDULING ALGORITHMS WITH NESTED PROCESSING SET RESTRICTION We consider the problem of preemptively scheduling n independent jobs {J(1),J(2), ..., J(n)} on m parallel machines {M(1),M(2), ..., M(m)}, where each job J(j) can only be processed on a prespecified subset M(j) of machines called its processing set. The machines are linearly ordered, and the processing set of J(j) is specified by two machine indexes a(j) and b(j); i.e., M(j) = {M(aj),M(aj+1), ..., M(bj)}. The processing sets are nested; i.e., for i not equal j, we have M(i) subset of M(j), or M(j) subset of M(i),or M(j) boolean AND M(i) = phi..Our goal is to minimize the makespan. We first give an O(n logn)-time algorithm to find an optimal schedule. We then give an O(mn + nlogn)-time algorithm to find a maximal schedule, where a schedule is said to be maximal if it processes as much work as any other schedule in any time interval [0, t], t>0.

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

preemptive scheduling
nested processing set

inclusive processing set
makespan minimization
polynomial-time algorithms


Robust stereo matching with improved graph and surface models and occlusion handling We decompose the stereo matching problem into three sub-problems in this work: (1) disparity estimation for non-occlusion regions and occlusion detection, (2) disparity estimation for occlusion regions, and (3) surface model for the disparity map. A three-step procedure is proposed to solve them sequentially. At the first step, we perform an initial matching and develop a new graph model using the ordering and segmentation constraints to improve disparity values in non-occlusion regions and detect occlusion regions. At the second step, we determine disparity values in occlusion regions based on global optimization. Since the conventional segmentation-based stereo matching is not efficient in highly slanted or curved objects, we propose a post-processing technique for disparity map enhancement using a three-dimensional (3D) geometric structure. The proposed three-step stereo matching procedure yields excellent quantitative and qualitative results with Middlebury data sets.

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

stereo matching
graph model
occlusion
disparity estimation

surface modeling
ordering constraint
color segmentation constraint
disparity filling


analog placement with symmetry and other placement constraints In order to handle device matching in analog circuits, some pairs of modules are required to be placed symmetrically. This paper addresses this device-level placement problem for analog circuits and our approach can handle symmetry constraint and other placement constraints simultaneously. The problem of placing devices with symmetry constraint has been extensively studied but none of the previous works has considered symmetry constraint with other placement constraints simultaneously. Instead of handling the constraints by having a penalty term in the cost function to penalize violations, a unified method is proposed that, by adjusting the edge weights in a pair of constraint graphs, can try to satisfy all the placement and symmetry constraints simultaneously in a candidate floorplan solution. The maximum distance of the modules in a symmetry group from the corresponding symmetry axis will be minimized in this weight adjusting step, in order to minimize the total packing area. We have compared our method with the most updated results on this problem [2] when there are only symmetry constraints and results show that our approach can give solutions of better quality, in an acceptable amount of run time. We will also demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in handling different types of constraints simultaneously by testing on data sets with both symmetry and other placement constraints, and the results are very promising.

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

symmetry constraints
analog circuits
placement


The extended global cardinality constraint: An empirical survey The Extended Global Cardinality Constraint (EGCC) is a vital component of constraint solving systems, since it is very widely used to model diverse problems. The literature contains many different versions of this constraint, which trade strength of inference against computational cost. In this paper, I focus on the highest strength of inference usually considered, enforcing generalized arc consistency (GAC) on the target variables. This work is an extensive empirical survey of algorithms and optimizations, considering both GAC on the target variables, and tightening the bounds of the cardinality variables. I evaluate a number of key techniques from the literature, and report important implementation details of those techniques, which have often not been described in published papers. Two new optimizations are proposed for EGCC. One of the novel optimizations (dynamic partitioning, generalized from AllDifferent) was found to speed up search by 5.6 times in the best case and 1.56 times on average, while exploring the same search tree. The empirical work represents by far the most extensive set of experiments on variants of algorithms for EGCC. Overall, the best combination of optimizations gives a mean speedup of 4.11 times compared to the same implementation without the optimizations. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

constraint programming
global constraints
propagation algorithms