A genetic algorithm based heuristic to the multi-period fixed charge distribution problem This paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) based heuristic to the multi-period fixed charge distribution problem associated with backorder and inventories. The objective is to determine the size of the shipments, backorder and inventories at each period, so that, the total cost incurred during the entire period towards transportation, backorder and inventories is minimum. The model is formulated as pure integer nonlinear programming and 01 mixed integer linear programming problems, and proposes a GA based heuristic to provide solution to the above problem. The proposed GA based heuristic is evaluated by comparing their solutions with lower bound, LINGO solver and approximate solutions. The comparisons reveal that the GA generates better solutions than the approximate solutions, and is capable of providing solutions equal to LINGO solutions and closer to the lower bound value of the problems.

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


an explorational exhibit of a pig's heart Coronary heart diseases (CHD) are one of the main causes of deaths in the United States. Although it is well known that CHD mainly occurs due to blocked arteries, many of the specifics of this disease are still subject to current research. It is commonly accepted that certain factors, such as a cholesterol high diet, increase the risk of coronary heart disease. As a consequence, people should be educated to adhere a diet low in low-density lipoprotein (LDL or bad cholesterol). In order for children to become familiar with these facts, educational, explorative computer systems can be employed to raise some awareness. This poster describes an educational computer system for children that serves this purpose. While practicing their navigation skills, the children can learn about the various types of blood cells and particles within the blood stream. A geometric model of the arterial vascular system of the heart has been developed, which considers vessels of different sizes. An interactive fly-through using a standard game controller facilitates the exploration of the interior structure of the vasculature. A blood flow simulation including several different particles within the blood stream allows the young explorer to understand their functionality. This system has been deployed as an interactive museum exhibit for children. The primary age group addressed by the science museum where it is currently being displayed is 4-9 years. With proper guidance by the museum personnel and the instructional material provided at the exhibit the game is also suitable for slightly younger and much older children.The implemented system simulates a submarine-style navigation through the blood stream inside an arterial vascular tree of a heart. The vasculature is based on a computed tomography (CT) scan of a pig's heart. The user has full control over the navigation by using a Logitech WingMan Cordless Rumblepad as input device. This controller provides two analog joysticks that can be used to achieve six-degrees-of-freedom input. In this application, the user controls forward and backward movement (acceleration and deceleration) with the left joystick while changing the orientation (left, right, up and down) by using the right joystick. Collision detection with the vessel walls ensures that the vasculature cannot be left. On collision with the vessel wall as well as with any of the particles within the blood stream force feedback is provided by using the rumble feature of the input device. In addition, audio feedback with different types of sounds allows the player to distinguish between the different types of collisions. Consequently, the user has complete manual control over the navigation while visual, audio, and force feedback provided by the system results in an easy to understand assessment of what is happening. This is especially important since the targeted audience are children of a relatively young age.The software is scalable in terms of the physical size of the blood vessel systems and the amount of geometry data that is used to represent it. It can be ported to various virtual environments (VEs). At this point, it has been tested on a regular desktop computer and a large projection screen at the museum site. Especially the projection screen, which was used for the interactive exhibit, allows a user to fully immerse herself/himself into the scene. Overall, this computer system gives hands-on experience of the functions of the circulatory system of the heart and exposes the user to the various particles present in the blood stream. As a museum exhibit, it was very well received by the targeted audience, i.e., by children between the age of four and nine, and beyond. The learning experience in the virtual environment was validated in a conversation during a complementing stage performance, which included a scientist dissecting a real pig's heart, where the children were asked to identify anatomical parts and discuss the importance of the circulatory 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

fly-through
educational computer game
cardiovascular
biomedical visualization


Education reform and its needs for technical standards This paper discusses some of the leading concepts in education reform and their need for technical standards. It also discusses the efforts by several organizations to develop such standards and specifications, and how new stakeholders can get involved or monitor this work. There are a variety of reform efforts being advocated and pursued by researchers, educators, learning institutions, corporate trainers, and government leaders. Concepts such as student-centered learning, computer-based training, on-line learning, distance learning, just-in-time learning, and self-learning are widely accepted as having the potential to substantially improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning. All of these concepts have the need for one or more underlying technical standards. This paper describes a number of these standards and the work that is being done to develop them. It is important to note that these technical standards are independent from the content material (known as content standards) that students would be required to learn, as well as from the amount of that content (known as performance standards) a student would be expected to master.

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


Rationing mechanisms and inventory control-policy parameters for a divergent supply chain operating with lost sales and costs of review We consider a static divergent two-stage supply chain with one distributor and many retailers. The unsatisfied demands at the retailers end are treated as lost sales, whereas the unsatisfied demand is assumed to be backlogged at the distributor. The distributor uses an inventory rationing mechanism to distribute the available on-hand inventory among the retailers, when the sum of demands from the retailers is greater than the on-hand inventory at the distributor. The present study aims at determining the best installation inventory control-policy or order-policy parameters such as the base-stock levels and review periods, and inventory rationing quantities, with the objective of minimizing the total supply chain costs (TSCC) consisting of holding costs, shortage costs and review costs in the supply chain over a finite planning horizon. An exact solution procedure involving a mathematical programming model is developed to determine the optimum TSCC, base-stock levels, review periods and inventory rationing quantities (in the class of periodic review, order-up-to S policy) for the supply chain model under study. On account of the computational complexity involved in optimally solving problems over a large finite time horizon, a genetic algorithm (GA) based heuristic methodology is presented.

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

divergent supply chain
lost sales
inventory rationing
mathematical programming model
genetic algorithm

base-stock levels
periodic review periods
allocation rules


A globally conforming method for solving flow in discrete fracture networks using the Virtual Element Method The Virtual Element method allows for meshes made up by arbitrary polygonal elements. Guaranteed local and global conformity with no alteration of the geometry of the DFN. Unconstrained fracture-independent meshing. Application of domain decomposition preconditioners.

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


Multi-objective optimization of facility planning for energy intensive companies Because of the energy shortage and energy price rise, energy efficiency becomes a worldwide hot spot problem. It is not only a problem about cost reduction, but also a great contribute to the environmental protection. However, the energy efficiency was always ignored in the past decades. In order to gain more benefit and become more competitive in the market, energy efficiency should be considered as an essential factor in early planning phase. To overcome these problems, a new approach, which introduces energy efficiency as a key criterion into the planning process, is presented in this article. An energy recovery network is built according to the analysis of process and product demands. Afterwards the energy loss of the whole system, transport performance and space demand are simultaneously taken into account with the purpose of finding good facility planning from both energy and economic aspects. Finally, a practical expanding case is used to validate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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

multi objective optimization
local search


Sparse margin-based discriminant analysis for feature extraction The existing margin-based discriminant analysis methods such as nonparametric discriminant analysis use K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) technique to characterize the margin. The manifold learning-based methods use K-NN technique to characterize the local structure. These methods encounter a common problem, that is, the nearest neighbor parameter K should be chosen in advance. How to choose an optimal K is a theoretically difficult problem. In this paper, we present a new margin characterization method named sparse margin-based discriminant analysis (SMDA) using the sparse representation. SMDA can successfully avoid the difficulty of parameter selection. Sparse representation can be considered as a generalization of K-NN technique. For a test sample, it can adaptively select the training samples that give the most compact representation. We characterize the margin by sparse representation. The proposed method is evaluated by using AR, Extended Yale B database, and the CENPARMI handwritten numeral database. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method; its performance is better than some other state-of-the-art feature extraction methods.

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


Market application of the percolation model: Relative price distribution We study a variant of the Cont-Bouchaud model, which utilizes the percolation approach of multi-agent simulations of the stock market fluctuations. Here, instead of considering the relative price change as the difference of the total demand and total supply, we consider the relative price change to be proportional to the "relative" difference of demand and supply (the ratio of the difference in total demand and total supply to the sum of the total demand and total supply). We then study the probability distribution of the price changes.

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

econophysics
monte carlo
simulation
cont-bouchaud model


Feedback control strategies for spatial navigation revealed by dynamic modelling of learning in the Morris water maze The Morris water maze is an experimental procedure in which animals learn to escape swimming in a pool using environmental cues. Despite its success in neuroscience and psychology for studying spatial learning and memory, the exact mnemonic and navigational demands of the task are not well understood. Here, we provide a mathematical model of rat swimming dynamics on a behavioural level. The model consists of a random walk, a heading change and a feedback control component in which learning is reflected in parameter changes of the feedback mechanism. The simplicity of the model renders it accessible and useful for analysis of experiments in which swimming paths are recorded. Here, we used the model to analyse an experiment in which rats were trained to find the platform with either three or one extramaze cue. Results indicate that the 3-cues group employs stronger feedback relying only on the actual visual input, whereas the 1-cue group employs weaker feedback relying to some extent on memory. Because the model parameters are linked to neurological processes, identifying different parameter values suggests the activation of different neuronal pathways.

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

dynamic modelling
learning and memory
random walk
navigation
water maze

autoregression
spatial memory
autocorrelation
autoregressive model


A new regime for highly robust gamma oscillation with co-exist of accurate and weak synchronization in excitatoryinhibitory networks A great number of biological experiments show that gamma oscillation occurs in many brain areas after the presentation of stimulus. The neural systems in these brain areas are highly heterogeneous. Specifically, the neurons and synapses in these neural systems are diversified; the external inputs and parameters of these neurons and synapses are heterogeneous. How the gamma oscillation generated in such highly heterogeneous networks remains a challenging problem. Aiming at this problem, a highly heterogeneous complex network model that takes account of many aspects of real neural circuits was constructed. The network model consists of excitatory neurons and fast spiking interneurons, has three types of synapses (GABAA, AMPA, and NMDA), and has highly heterogeneous external drive currents. We found a new regime for robust gamma oscillation, i.e. the oscillation in inhibitory neurons is rather accurate but the oscillation in excitatory neurons is weak, in such highly heterogeneous neural networks. We also found that the mechanism of the oscillation is a mixture of interneuron gamma (ING) and pyramidal-interneuron gamma (PING). We explained the mixture ING and PING mechanism in a consistent-way by a compound post-synaptic current, which has a slowly rising-excitatory stage and a sharp decreasing-inhibitory stage.

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


Oxygen incorporation into CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells CdS/CdTe thin films with 2.1\(\upmu \hbox {m}\) thickness were grown using R.F. magnetron sputtering in two different mixtures of Ar and \(\hbox {O}_{2}\). The substrate was a commercially available Pilkington glass with TCO deposited. The concentration of \(\hbox {O}_{2}\) was selected to be 0, 1 and 5%. The crystallographic, morphological, optical and electrical properties of the as-deposited samples were compared with the ones treated with \(\hbox {CdCl}_{2}\) and subsequently annealed at high temperature. The films morphology and crystallinity were studied by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. X-ray diffraction shows a transition of zinc blend cubic phase to hexagonal as the oxygen content increases from 0 to 5%. The measurements show the larger band gap and grain sizes for the films with higher oxygen content. The band gap and transmission rate of the O\(_2\)-free and oxygenated devices is different and the grains size is greatly affected by the oxygen content.

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


Abstracting Runtime Heaps for Program Understanding Modern programming environments provide extensive support for inspecting, analyzing, and testing programs based on the algorithmic structure of a program. Unfortunately, support for inspecting and understanding runtime data structures during execution is typically much more limited. This paper provides a general purpose technique for abstracting and summarizing entire runtime heaps. We describe the abstract heap model and the associated algorithms for transforming a concrete heap dump into the corresponding abstract model as well as algorithms for merging, comparing, and computing changes between abstract models. The abstract model is designed to emphasize high-level concepts about heap-based data structures, such as shape and size, as well as relationships between heap structures, such as sharing and connectivity. We demonstrate the utility and computational tractability of the abstract heap model by building a memory profiler. We use this tool to identify, pinpoint, and correct sources of memory bloat for programs from DaCapo.

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

heap structure
runtime analysis
memory profiling


On total domination vertex critical graphs of high connectivity A graph is called ? ? -critical if the removal of any vertex from the graph decreases the domination number, while a graph with no isolated vertex is ?t ? t -critical if the removal of any vertex that is not adjacent to a vertex of degree 1 decreases the total domination number. A ?t ? t -critical graph that has total domination numberk k , is called k k -?t ? t -critical. In this paper, we introduce a class of k k -?t ? t -critical graphs of high connectivity for each integer k?3 k ? 3 . In particular, we provide a partial answer to the question Which graphs are ? ? -critical and ?t ? t -critical or one but not the other? posed in a recent work [W. Goddard, T.W. Haynes, M.A. Henning, L.C. van der Merwe, The diameter of total domination vertex critical graphs, Discrete Math. 286 (2004) 255261].

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

total domination
vertex critical
connectivity
diameter


IDD-based model validation of biochemical networks This paper presents efficient techniques for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of biochemical networks, which are modeled by means of qualitative and stochastic Petri nets, respectively. The analysis includes standard Petri net properties as well as model checking of the Computation Tree Logic and the Continuous Stochastic Logic. Efficiency is achieved by using Interval decision diagrams to alleviate the well-known problem of state space explosion, and by applying operations exploiting the Petri structure and the principle of locality. All presented techniques are implemented in our tool IDD-MC which is available on our website. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

biochemical networks
petri nets
interval decision diagrams
model checking


The Form of The Solution and Dynamics of a Rational Recursive Sequence We discuss in this paper the form of the solutions of the following recursive sequences x(n+1) = x(n-3)x(n-4)/x(n)(+/-1 +/- x(n-3)x(n-4)), n = 0, 1, ..., where the initial conditions are arbitrary real numbers. Moreover, we study the dynamics and behavior of the solutions.

O O 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

difference equations
stability
periodic solution


real time self-maintenable data warehouse Data warehousing is an approach to data integration wherein integrated information is stored in a data warehouse for direct querying and analysis. To provide fast access, a data warehouse stores materialized views of the sources of its data. As a result, a data warehouse needs to be maintained to keep its contents consistent with the contents of its data sources. Incremental maintenance is generally regarded as a more efficient way to maintain materialized views in a data warehouse. In this paper a strategy for the maintenance of data warehouse is presented. It has the following characteristics: it is self-maintainable (weak), incremental, non-blocking (the analysts transactions and the maintenance transaction are executed concurrently) and is performed in real time. The proposed algorithm is implemented for view definition SPJ (Select Project Join) queries and it calculates the aggregate functions: sum, avg, count, min and max. Aggregate functions are calculated like algebraic functions (the new result of the function can be computed using some small, constant size storage that accompanies the existing value of the aggregate). We have named this improved algorithm ?VNLTR (unlimited ?V (versions), NL (non-blocking), TR (in real time)).

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


Constructing error-correcting pooling designs with symplectic space We construct a family of error-correcting pooling designs with the incidence matrix of two types of subspaces of symplectic spaces over finite fields. We show that the new construction gives better ratio of efficiency compared with previously known three constructions associated with subsets of a set, its analogue over a vector space, and the dual spaces of a symplectic space.

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

d(e)-disjunct matrix
totally isotropic subspaces
non-isotropic subspaces


improving the memory behavior of vertical filtering in the discrete wavelet transform The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is used in several image and video compression standards, in particular JPEG2000. A 2D DWT consists of horizontal filtering along the rows followed by vertical filtering along the columns. It is well-known that a straightforward implementation of vertical filtering (assuming a row-major layout) induces many cache misses, due to lack of spatial locality. This can be avoided by interchanging the loops. This paper shows, however, that the resulting implementation suffers significantly from 64K aliasing, which occurs in the Pentium 4 when two data blocks are accessed that are a multiple of 64K apart, and we propose two techniques to avoid it. In addition, if the filter length is longer than four, the number of ways of the L1 data cache of the Pentium 4 is insufficient to avoid cache conflict misses. Consequently, we propose two methods for reducing conflict misses. Although experimental results have been collected on the Pentium 4, the techniques are general and can be applied to other processors with different cache organizations as well. The proposed techniques improve the performance of vertical filtering compared to already optimized baseline implementations by a factor of 3.11 for the (5,3) lifting scheme, 3.11 for Daubechies' transform of four coefficients, and by a factor of 1.99 for the Cohen, Daubechies, and Feauveau 9/7 transform.

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

cache
discrete wavelet transform
performance


ANALYSIS OF MULTIBACKGROUND MEMORY TESTING TECHNIQUES March tests are widely used in the process of RAM testing. This family of tests is very efficient in the case of simple faults such as stuck-at or transition faults. In the case of a complex fault model-such as pattern sensitive faults-their efficiency is not sufficient. Therefore we have to use other techniques to increase fault coverage for complex faults. Multibackground memory testing is one of such techniques. In this case a selected March test is run many times. Each time it is run with new initial conditions. One of the conditions which we can change is the initial memory background. In this paper we compare the efficiency of multibackground tests based on four different algorithms of background generation.

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

pattern sensitive faults
multibackground testing


detecting image spam using visual features and near duplicate detection Email spam is a much studied topic, but even though current email spam detecting software has been gaining a competitive edge against text based email spam, new advances in spam generation have posed a new challenge: image-based spam. Image based spam is email which includes embedded images containing the spam messages, but in binary format. In this paper, we study the characteristics of image spam to propose two solutions for detecting image-based spam, while drawing a comparison with the existing techniques. The first solution, which uses the visual features for classification, offers an accuracy of about 98\%, i.e. an improvement of at least 6\% compared to existing solutions. SVMs (Support Vector Machines) are used to train classifiers using judiciously decided color, texture and shape features. The second solution offers a novel approach for near duplication detection in images. It involves clustering of image GMMs (Gaussian Mixture Models) based on the Agglomerative Information Bottleneck (AIB) principle, using Jensen-Shannon divergence (JS) as the distance measure.

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 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


Exploiting local intensity information in ChanVese model for noisy image segmentation This manuscript presents an improved region-based active contour model for noisy image segmentation. We define a local energy according to intensity information within the neighborhood of each point in image domain. By introducing a kernel function, our method employs intensity information in local region to guide the motion of active contour. Experiments on synthetic and real world images show that our model is robust to image noise while preserving the segmentation efficacy.

O O O O O O O O B I I 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

robust chanvese model
level set method
variational method


A probabilistic spectral framework for grouping and segmentation This paper presents an iterative spectral framework for pairwise clustering and perceptual grouping. Our model is expressed in terms of two sets of parameters. Firstly, there are cluster memberships which represent the affinity of objects to clusters. Secondly, there is a matrix of link weights for pairs of tokens. We adopt a model in which these two sets of variables are governed by a Bernoulli model. We show how the likelihood function resulting from this model may be maximised with respect to both the elements of link-weight matrix and the cluster membership variables. We establish the link between the maximisation of the log-likelihood function and the eigenvectors of the link-weight matrix. This leads us to an algorithm in which we iteratively update the link-weight matrix by repeatedly refining its modal structure. Each iteration of the algorithm is a three-step process. First, we compute a link-weight matrix for each cluster by taking the outer-product of the vectors of current cluster-membership indicators for that cluster. Second, we extract the leading eigenvector from each modal link-weight matrix. Third, we compute a revised link weight matrix by taking the sum of the outer products of the leading eigenvectors of the modal link-weight matrices.

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

graph-spectral methods
maximum likelihood
motion segmentation


composition of least privilege analysis results in software architectures (position paper) Security principles are often neglected by software architects, due to the lack of precise definitions. This results in potentially high-risk threats to systems. Our own previous work tackled this by introducing formal foundations for the least privilege (LP) principle in software architectures and providing a technique to identify violations to this principle. This work shows that this technique can scale by composing the results obtained from the analysis of the sub-parts of a larger system. The technique decomposes the system into independently described subsystems and a description listing the interactions between these subsystems. These descriptions are thence analyzed to obtain LP violations and subsequently composed to obtain the violations of the overall system.

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


a software-based eye tracking system for the study of air-traffic displays This paper describes a software-based system for offline tracking of eye and head movements using stored video images, designed for use in the study of air-traffic displays. These displays are typically dense with information; to address the research questions, we wish to be able to localize gaze within a single word within a line of text (a few minutes of arc), while at the same time allowing some freedom of movement to the subject. Accurate gaze tracking in the presence of head movements requires high precision head tracking, and this was accomplished by registration of images from a forward-looking scene camera with a narrow field of view.

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

head and eye tracking
scan-path analysis
air traffic displays
image registration


A new Lagrangian Relaxation Algorithm for scheduling dissimilar parallel machines with release dates In this article we investigate the parallel machine scheduling problem with job release dates, focusing on the case that machines are dissimilar with each other. The goal of scheduling is to find an assignment and sequence for a set of jobs so that the total weighted completion time is minimised. This type of production environment is frequently encountered in process industry, such as chemical and steel industries, where the scheduling of jobs with different purposes is an important goal. This article formulates the problem as an integer linear programming model. Because of the dissimilarity of machines, the ordinary job-based decomposition method is no longer applicable, a novel machine-based Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is therefore proposed. Penalty terms associated with violations of coupling constraints are introduced to the objective function by Lagrangian multipliers, which are updated using subgradient optimisation method. For each machine-level subproblem after decomposition, a forward dynamic programming algorithm is designed together with the weighted shortest processing time rule to provide an optimal solution. A heuristics is developed to obtain a feasible schedule from the solution of subproblems to provide an upper bound. Numerical results show that the new approach is computationally effective to handle the addressed problem and provide high quality schedules.

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

lagrangian relaxation
release dates
dynamic programming
heuristics

dissimilar parallel machine
machine-based decomposition


Fast chromatography of complex biocide mixtures using diode array detection and multivariate curve resolution Use of Multivariate Curve Resolution Alternating Least Squares (MCR-ALS) is evaluated in the analysis of complex biocide environmental sample mixtures by liquid chromatography with diode array detection (LC-DAD). Chromatographic coelution problems caused either because of the presence of unknown matrix interferences or because of using short chromatographic columns to reduce analysis times are investigated. Under such circumstances, lack of chromatographic resolution and lack of spectral selectivity of UV-VIS diode array detection is compensated by chemometric resolution using Multivariate Curve Resolution. Resolution of complex environmental mixtures and quantitative calibration curves for two types of chromatographic columns (25 and 7.5 cm) with different resolution and analysis times are shown. The limits of the proposed approach are investigated in the analysis of complex environmental samples with short LC columns and UV-VIS diode array detection. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

mcr-als
coelutions
short columns
lc-dad
biocides


16-Channel micro magnetic flux sensor array for IGBT current distribution measurement Current crowding of IGBT and power diode in a chip or among chips is a barrier to the realization of highly-reliable power module. The author developed and demonstrated 16-channel flat sensitivity sensor array for IGBT current distribution measurement. The sensor array consists of tiny-scale film sensors with analog amps and shield case against noise.

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

igbt
current distribution
current crowding
magnetic flux
flat sensitivity

film sensor
reliability analysis
digital calibration


State space reduction in modeling checking parameterized cache coherence protocol by two-dimensional abstraction Scalability of cache coherence protocol is a key component in future shared-memory multi-core or multi-processor systems. The state space explosion is the first hurdle while applying model-checking to scalable protocols. In order to validate parameterized cache coherence protocols effectively, we present a new method of reducing the state space of parameterized systems, two-dimensional abstraction (TDA). Drawing inspiration from the design principle of parameterized systems, an abstract model of an unbounded system is constructed out of finite states. The mathematical principles underlying TDA is presented. Theoretical reasoning demonstrates that TDA is correct and sound. An example of parameterized cache coherence protocol based on MESI illustrates how to produce a much smaller abstract model by TDA. We also demonstrate the power of our method by applying it to various well-known classes of protocols. During the development of TH-1A supercomputer system, TDA was used to verify the coherence protocol in FT-1000 CPU and showed the potential advantages in reducing the verification complexity.

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 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

true concurrency
model checking
two-dimensional abstraction


A new antialiased line drawing algorithm ? Consider a line . Conventional line drawing algorithms sample (x,f(x)) on the line, where x must be an integer, and then map (x,f(x)) to the frame buffer according to the defined filter and f(x) . In this paper, we propose to simulate a sampled point (x,f(x)) by the four pixels around it where x and f(x) are not necessary to be integers. Based on the proposed low-pass filtering, we show that the effect of sampling at infinite number of points along a line segment can be achieved since the closed form of the intensities assigned to pixels exists. Furthermore, we show the coherence properties that can reduce the cost for computing these intensities.

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


High-performance short sequence alignment with GPU acceleration Sequence alignment is a fundamental task for computational genomics research. We develop G-Aligner, which adopts the GPU as a hardware accelerator to speed up the sequence alignment process. A leading CPU-based alignment tool is based on the Bi-BWT index; however, a direct implementation of this algorithm on the GPU cannot fully utilize the hardware power due to its irregular algorithmic structure. To better utilize the GPU hardware resource, we propose a filtering-verification algorithm employing both the Bi-BWT search and direct matching. We further improve this algorithm on the GPU through various optimizations, e.g., the split of a large kernel, the warp based implementation to avoid user-level synchronization. As a result, G-Aligner outperforms another state-of-the-art GPU-accelerated alignment tools SOAP3 by 1.83.5 times for in-memory sequence alignment.

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


To feel or not to feel: The role of affect in human-computer interaction The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented growth in user interface and human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies and methods. The synergy of technological and methodological progress on the one hand, and changing user expectations on the other, are contributing to a redefinition of the requirements for effective and desirable human-computer interaction. A key component of these emerging requirements, and of effective HCI in general, is the ability of these emerging systems to address user affect. The objective of this special issue is to provide an introduction to the emerging research area of affective HCI, some of the available methods and techniques, and representative systems and applications. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

affective computing
affect recognition
affect expression
affective user modeling


Exponential stability of a class of generalized neural networks with time-varying delays ? The dynamics of a class of generalized neural networks with time-varying delays are analyzed. Without constructing a Lyapunov function, general sufficient conditions for the existence, uniqueness and exponential stability of an equilibrium of the neural networks are obtained by the nonlinear Lipschitz measure approach. The new criteria are mild, independent of the delays and do not require the boundedness, differentiability or monotonicity assumption of the activation functions. Moreover, the proposed results extend and improve existing ones.

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

neural networks
exponential stability
nonlinear lipschitz measure


Sexism in online video games: The role of conformity to masculine norms and social dominance orientation The Video Game Sexism Scale was created to assess attitudes toward female gamers. Conformity to some masculine norms predicted video game sexism. Social dominance orientation predicted video game sexism.

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

social identity model of deindividuation effects


Pseudorandom generators for combinatorial checkerboards We define a combinatorial checkerboard to be a function f : {1, . . . , m} (d) -> {1,-1} of the form for some functions f (i) : {1, . . . , m} -> {1,-1}. This is a variant of combinatorial rectangles, which can be defined in the same way but using {0, 1} instead of {1,-1}. We consider the problem of constructing explicit pseudorandom generators for combinatorial checkerboards. This is a generalization of small-bias generators, which correspond to the case m = 2. We construct a pseudorandom generator that -fools all combinatorial checkerboards with seed length . Previous work by Impagliazzo, Nisan, and Wigderson implies a pseudorandom generator with seed length . Our seed length is better except when 1/epsilon >= d(omega(log d)).

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 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 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

pseudorandom generators
combinatorial checkerboards


The Calendar is Crucial: Coordination and Awareness through the Family Calendar Everyday family life involves a myriad of mundane activities that need to be planned and coordinated. We describe findings from studies of 44 different families' calendaring routines to understand how to best design technology to support them. We outline how a typology of calendars containing family activities is used by three different types of families-monocentric, pericentric, and polycentric-which vary in the level of family involvement in the calendaring process. We describe these family types, the content of family calendars, the ways in which they are extended through annotations and augmentations, and the implications from these findings for design.

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

families coordination awareness calendars


The Myth and Reality of Reversal of Aging by Hormesis Hormesis is an adaptive response to low doses of otherwise harmful agents by triggering a cascade of stress-specific resistance pathways. Evidence from protozoa, nematodes, flies, rodents, and primates indicate that stress-induced tolerance modulates survival and longevity. Realit is that hormesis can prolong the healthy life span. Genetic background provides the potential for longevity duration induced by stress. Senesence, or aging, is generally thought to be due to a different impact of selection for alleles positive for reproduction during early life but harmful in later life, a process called antagonistic pleiotropy (multiple phenotypic changes by a single gene). After reproduction, life span is invisible to selection. I propose the revision that mutations selected for survival until reproduction in early life may also extend later life (protagonistic pleiotropy). The protagonist candidate genes for extended life span are hormetic response genes, which activate the protective effect in both early and later life. My revision of the earlier evolutionary theory implies that natural selection of genes critical for early survival (life span until reproduction) can also be beneficial for extended longevity in old age, tipping the evolutionary balance in favor of a latent inducible life span extension unless excess stressor challenge exceeds the protection capacity. Mimetic triggers of the stress response promise the option of tricking the induction of metabolic pathways that confer resistance to environmental challenges, increased healthy life span, rejuvenation, and disease intervention without the danger of overwhelmiong damage by the stressor. Public policy should anticipate an increase in healthy life span.

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


bimodal hci-related affect recognition Perhaps the most fundamental application of affective computing will be Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in which the computer should have the ability to detect and track the user's affective states, and make corresponding feedback. The human multi-sensor affect system defines the expectation of multimodal affect analyzer. In this paper, we present our efforts toward audio-visual HCI-related affect recognition. With HCI applications in mind, we take into account some special affective states which indicate users' cognitive/motivational states. Facing the fact that a facial expression is influenced by both an affective state and speech content, we apply a smoothing method to extract the information of the affective state from facial features. In our fusion stage, a voting method is applied to combine audio and visual modalities so that the final affect recognition accuracy is greatly improved. We test our bimodal affect recognition approach on 38 subjects with 11 HCI-related affect states. The extensive experimental results show that the average person-dependent affect recognition accuracy is almost 90\% for our bimodal fusion.

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

emotion recognition
multimodal human-computer interaction


High order spacetime adaptive ADER-WENO finite volume schemes for non-conservative hyperbolic systems Better than second order accurate spacetime adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). Time accurate local time stepping (LTS). High order ADER-WENO finite volume scheme for non-conservative hyperbolic systems. Applications to the BaerNunziato model of compressible multiphase flows in 2D and 3D. Very sharp resolution of material interfaces.

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

time accurate local time stepping
baernunziato model

path-conservative weno finite volume schemes


Evaluating covariance in prognostic and system health management applications Simulated noisy data sets are used to compare the accuracy of four existing covariance estimation methodologies Among the discussed methodologies the NNVE algorithm provides the most accurate estimates of covariance. To further improve the accuracy of the covariance estimation, a new methodology based on a modification of the NNVE methodology is proposed. The proposed methodology is shown to exhibit improved performance in classification as well as anomaly detection applications.

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

system health management
covariance estimation


A Comprehensive Investigation of Wireless LAN for IEC 61850-Based Smart Distribution Substation Applications Today's power grid is facing many challenges due to increasing load growth, aging of existing power infrastructures, high penetration of renewable, and lack of fast monitoring and control. Utilizing recent developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the power-distribution level, various smart-grid applications can be realized to achieve reliable, efficient, and green power. Interoperable exchange of information is already standardized in the globally accepted smart-grid standard, IEC 61850, over the local area networks (LANs). Due to low installation cost, sufficient data rates, and ease of deployment, the industrial wireless LAN technologies are gaining interest among power utilities, especially for less critical smart distribution network applications. Extensive work is carried out to examine the wireless LAN (WLAN) technology within a power distribution substation. The first phase of the work is initiated with the radio noise interference measurements at 27.6- and 13.8-kV distribution substations, including circuit breaker switching operations. For a detailed investigation, the hardware prototypes of WLAN-enabled IEC 61850 devices are developed using industrial embedded systems, and the performance of smart distribution substation monitoring, control, and protection applications is analyzed for various scenarios using a round trip-time of IEC 61850 application messages. Finally, to examine the real-world field performance, the developed prototype devices are installed in the switchyard and control room of 27.6 power distribution substation, and testing results of various applications are discussed.

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

distribution substation automation
ieee 802.11
intelligent electronics devices (ieds)
smart grid


An assessment of the effect of mass customization on suppliers inventory levels in a JIT supply chain In some industries, mass customization requires a supplier to provide an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) with a wide range of variants of a given part. We consider an OEM-parts suppliers system for an automotive supply chain where parts are delivered to the assembly line several times a day in a just-in-time environment. Simulating varying assembly schedule and parts delivery schemes, we assess the effect of mass customization on the level of inventory the supplier needs for each variant in order to prevent stockouts. We find, among other things, that as the level of mass customization increases, there tends to be an increase in the level of inventory the supplier needs to maintain for each part variant in order to prevent stockouts. Theoretical support is provided for the phenomenon. The presented framework is also useful for evaluating the levels of mass customization that will enable the manufacturer meet customers requirements in a cost effective manner. Furthermore, the study confirms the superiority, in terms of inventory levels, of the minmax over the minsum optimization framework.

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

supply chain management
manufacturing
just-in-time assembly systems


On the interaction between knowledge and social commitments in multi-agent systems Both knowledge and social commitments have received considerable attention in Multi-Agent Systems (MASs), specially for multi-agent communication. Plenty of work has been carried out to define their semantics. However, the relationship between social commitments and knowledge has not been investigated yet. In this paper, we aim to explore such a relationship from the semantics and model checking perspectives with respect to CTLK logic (an extension of CTL logic with modality for reasoning about knowledge) and CTLC logic (an extension of CTL with modalities for reasoning about commitments and their fulfillments). To analyze this logical relationship, we simply combine the two logics in one new logic named CTLKC. The purpose of such a combination is not to advocate a new logic, but only to express and figure out some reasoning postulates merging both knowledge and commitments as they are currently defined in the literature. By so doing, we identify some paradoxes in the new logic showing that simply combining current versions of commitment and knowledge logics results in a logical language that violates some fundamental intuitions. Consequently, we propose CTLKC+, a new logic that fixes the identified paradoxes and allows us to reason about social commitments and knowledge simultaneously in a consistent manner. Furthermore, we address the problem of model checking CTLKC+ by reducing it to the problem of model checking GCTL?, a generalized version of CTL? with action formulae. By doing so, we directly benefit from CWB-NC, the model checker of GCTL?. Using this reduction, we also prove that the computational complexity of model checking CTLKC+ is still PSPACE-complete for concurrent programs as the complexity of model checking CTLK and CTLC separately.

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


Geometric point interpolation method in R3 R 3 space with tangent directional constraint This paper discusses a cubic B B -spline interpolation problem with tangent directional constraint in R3 R 3 space. Given m m points and their tangent directional vectors as well, the interpolation problem is to find a cubic B B -spline curve which interpolates both the positions of the points and their tangent directional vectors. Given the knot vector of the resulting B B -spline curve and parameter values to all of the data points, the corresponding control points can often be obtained by solving a system of linear equations. This paper presents a piecewise geometric interpolation method combining a unclamping technique with a knot extension technique, with which there is no need to solve a system of linear equations. It firstly uses geometric methods to construct a seed curve segment, which interpolates several data point pairs, i.e., positions and tangent directional vectors of the points. The seed segment is then extended to interpolate the remaining data point pairs one by one in a piecewise fashion. We show that a B B -spline curve segment can always be extended to interpolate a new data point pair by adding two more control points. Methods for a curve segment extending to interpolate one more data point pair by adding one more control point are also provided, which are utilized to construct an interpolation B B -spline curve with as small a number of control points as possible. Numerical examples show the effectiveness and the efficiency of the new method.

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

geometric interpolation
tangent directional constraint
knot extension
unclamping


A software package for interactive motor unit potential classification using fuzzy k-NN classifier We present an interactive software package for implementing the supervised classification task during electromyographic (EMG) signal decomposition process using a fuzzy k-NN classifier and utilizing the MATLAB high-level programming language and its interactive environment. The method employs an assertion-based classification that takes into account a combination of motor unit potential (MUP) shapes and two modes of use of motor unit firing pattern information: the passive and the active modes. The developed package consists of several graphical user interfaces used to detect individual MUP waveforms from a raw EMG signal, extract relevant features, and classify the MUPs into motor unit potential trains (MUPTs) using assertion-based classifiers.

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 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

motor unit potential classification
user interfaces

assertion-based classifiers
computer interaction
features extraction
fuzzy k-nn


Project selection for oil-fields development by using the AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS methods The evaluation and selection of projects before investment decision is customarily done using, technical and information. In this paper, proposed a new methodology to provide a simple approach to assess alternative projects and help the decision-maker to select the best one for National Iranian Oil Company by using six criteria of comparing investment alternatives as criteria in an AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS techniques. The AHP is used to analyze the structure of the project selection problem and to determine weights of the criteria, and fuzzy TOPSIS method is used to obtain final ranking. This application is conducted to illustrate the utilization of the model for the project selection problems. Additionally, in the application, it is shown that calculation of the criteria weights is important in fuzzy TOPSIS method and they could change the ranking. The decision-maker can use these different weight combinations in the decision-making process according to priority.

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

project selection
ahp
fuzzy topsis
criteria


On 2k-Variable Symmetric Boolean Functions With Maximum Algebraic Immunity k Given a positive even integer n, it is found that the weight distribution of any n-variable symmetric Boolean function with maximum algebraic immunity ( AI) n/2 is determined by the binary expansion of n. Based on the foregoing, all n-variable symmetric Boolean functions with maximum AI are constructed. The amount is (2wt(n) + 1)2([log2n]).

O O O 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

algebraic attack
algebraic immunity (ai)


A theoretical study of transition metal complexes of C60 and C70 and their ring-opened alternatives Ring opened structures of C60 and C70 are shown to be stabilized by complexation with transition metal fragments of the form CnHnM, where n = 3 to 6 and M = Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, and Rh. The ring opening of C60 and C70 is compared with the reverse process of the well-known catalytic conversion of acetylene into benzene. Calculations at the semi-empirical PM3(tm) level show that the 6-membered ring in C60 and C70 can be opened up in different ways through complexation with transition metal fragment. The mode of ring opening depends on the number of external 5- and 6-membered rings around the 6-membered ring being cleaved. The structures and energetics of the various ring-opened structures are discussed. 2001 by Elsevier Science Inc.

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


An optimal Galerkin scheme to solve the kinematic dynamo eigenvalue problem in a full sphere The kinematic dynamo approximation describes the generation of magnetic field in a prescribed flow of electrically-conducting liquid. One of its main uses is as a proof-of-concept tool to test hypotheses about self-exciting dynamo action. Indeed, it provided the very first quantitative evidence for the possibility of the geodynamo. Despite its utility, due to the requirement of resolving fine structures, historically, numerical work has proven difficult and reported solutions were often plagued by poor convergence. In this paper, we demonstrate the numerical superiority of a Galerkin scheme in solving the kinematic dynamo eigenvalue problem in a full sphere. After adopting a poloidaltoroidal decomposition and expanding in spherical harmonics, we express the radial dependence in terms of a basis of exponentially convergent orthogonal polynomials. Each basis function is constructed from a terse sum of one-sided Jacobi polynomials that not only satisfies the boundary conditions of matching to an electrically insulating exterior, but is everywhere infinitely differentiable, including at the origin. This Galerkin method exhibits more rapid convergence, for a given problem size, than any other scheme hitherto reported, as demonstrated by a benchmark of the magnetic diffusion problem and by comparison to numerous kinematic dynamos from the literature. In the axisymmetric flows we consider in this paper, at a magnetic Reynolds number of O(100), a convergence of 9 significant figures in the most unstable eigenvalue requires only 40 radial basis functions; alternatively, 4 significant figures requires 20 radial functions. The terse radial discretization becomes particularly advantageous when considering flows whose associated numerical solution requires a large number of coupled spherical harmonics. We exploit this new method to confirm the tentatively proposed positive growth rate of the planar flow of Bachtiar et al. [4], thereby verifying a counter-example to the Zeldovich anti-dynamo theorem in a spherical geometry.

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

kinematic dynamo
galerkin method
basis function
eigenvalue
convergence


Logistic regression, AdaBoost and Bregman distances We give a unified account of boosting and logistic regression in which each learning problem is cast in terms of optimization of Bregman distances. The striking similarity of the two problems in this framework allows us to design and analyze algorithms for both simultaneously, and to easily adapt algorithms designed for one problem to the other. For both problems, we give new algorithms and explain their potential advantages over existing methods. These algorithms are iterative and can be divided into two types based on whether the parameters are updated sequentially (one at a time) or in parallel (all at once). We also describe a parameterized family of algorithms that includes both a sequential- and a parallel-update algorithm as special cases, thus showing how the sequential and parallel approaches can themselves be unified. For all of the algorithms, we give convergence proofs using a general formalization of the auxiliary-function proof technique. As one of our sequential-update algorithms is equivalent to AdaBoost, this provides the first general proof of convergence for AdaBoost. We show that all of our algorithms generalize easily to the multiclass case, and we contrast the new algorithms with the iterative scaling algorithm. We conclude with a few experimental results with synthetic data that highlight the behavior of the old and newly proposed algorithms in different settings.

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

logistic regression
boosting
adaboost
bregman distances
iterative scaling

maximum-entropy methods
convex optimization
information geometry


Principles of scatter search Scatter search is an evolutionary method that has been successfully applied to hard optimization problems. The fundamental concepts and principles of the method were first proposed in the 1970s, based on formulations dating back to the 1960s for combining decision rules and problem constraints. In contrast to other evolutionary methods like genetic algorithms, scatter search is founded on the premise that systematic designs and methods for creating new solutions afford significant benefits beyond those derived from recourse to randomization. It uses strategies for search diversification and intensification that have proved effective in a variety of optimization problems. This paper provides the main principles and ideas of scatter search and its generalized form path relinking. We first describe a basic design to give the reader the tools to create relatively simple implementations. More advanced designs derive from the fact that scatter search and path relinking are also intimately related to the tabu search (TS) metaheuristic, and gain additional advantage by making use of TS adaptive memory and associated memory-exploiting mechanisms capable of being tailored to particular contexts. These and other advanced processes described in the paper facilitate the creation of sophisticated implementations for hard problems that often arise in practical settings. Due to their flexibility and proven effectiveness, scatter search and path relinking can be successfully adapted to tackle optimization problems spanning a wide range of applications and a diverse collection of structures, as shown in the papers of this volume.

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

metaheuristics
evolutionary computations
search theory


Weakly quasi-Hamiltonian-set-connected multipartite tournaments A multipartite or c c -partite tournament is an orientation of a complete c c -partite graph. Lu and Guo (submitted for publication)[3] recently introduced strong quasi-Hamiltonian-connectivity of a multipartite tournament D D as follows: For any two distinct vertices x x and y y of D D , there is a path with at least one vertex from each partite set of D D from x x to y y and from y y to x x . We obtain the definition for weak quasi-Hamiltonian-connectivity, where only one of those paths, and weak quasi-Hamiltonian-set-connectivity, where only one such path between every two distinct partite sets has to exist, in a natural way. In this paper, we characterize weakly quasi-Hamiltonian-set-connected multipartite tournaments which extends a result of Thomassen (1980)[6].

O O O O O O O O O O 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


Analysing knowledge requirements: a case study This paper presents the findings of a knowledge audit conducted to determine the knowledge requirements of a large service-based enterprise in South Africa. The objective of the knowledge audit was to identify and describe the current and future knowledge requirements of the enterprise. The results indicated that employees have some basic knowledge and information needs that must be satisfied before any further investigations take place. Once the fundamental building blocks of knowledge content are established, it is recommended that more sophisticated solutions can be developed. Broad recommendations for establishing a knowledge management strategy that will be a source of sustainable competitive advantage are proposed.

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


NEGATIVE RESISTANCE ACTIVE RESISTOR WITH IMPROVED LINEARITY AND FREQUENCY RESPONSE An original active resistor circuit will be presented. The main advantages of the new proposed implementations are the improved linearity, small area consumption and improved frequency response. An original technique for linearizing the I( V) characteristic of the active resistor will be proposed, based on the utilization of a new linear differential amplifier, and on a current-pass circuit. The linearization of the original differential structure is achieved by compensating the quadratic characteristic of the MOS transistor operating in the saturation region by an original square-root circuit. The errors introduced by the second-order effects will be strongly reduced, while the circuit frequency response of the circuit is very good as a result of operating all MOS transistors in the saturation region. In order to design a circuit having a negative equivalent resistance, an original method specific to the proposed implementation of the active resistor circuit will be presented. The circuit is implemented in 0.35 mu m CMOS technology, the SPICE simulation con. firming the theoretical estimated results and showing a linearity error under a percent for an extended input range (+/- 500mV) and a small value of the supply voltage (+/- 3V).

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

active resistor
linearity
negative equivalent resistance


Quantum computation, quantum theory and AI The main purpose of this paper is to examine some (potential) applications of quantum computation in AI and to review the interplay between quantum theory and AI. For the readers who are not familiar with quantum computation, a brief introduction to it is provided, and a famous but simple quantum algorithm is introduced so that they can appreciate the power of quantum computation. Also, a (quite personal) survey of quantum computation is presented in order to give the readers a (unbalanced) panorama of the field. The author hopes that this paper will be a useful map for AI researchers who are going to explore further and deeper connections between AI and quantum computation as well as quantum theory although some parts of the map are very rough and other parts are empty, and waiting for the readers to fill in. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

search
learning
discrimination and recognition
bayesian network
semantic analysis
communication


automatic recognition of lower facial action units The face is an important source of information in multimodal communication. Facial expressions are generated by contractions of facial muscles, which lead to subtle changes in the area of the eyelids, eye brows, nose, lips and skin texture, often revealed by wrinkles and bulges. To measure these subtle changes, Ekman et al.[5] developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). FACS is a human-observer-based system designed to detect subtle changes in facial features, and describes facial expressions by action units (AUs). We present a technique to automatically recognize lower facial Action Units, independently from one another. Even though we do not explicitly take into account AU combinations, thereby making the classification process harder, an average F 1 score of 94.83\% is achieved.

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 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


Development, implementation, and analysis of direct integration offline programming method Wire bond programming (WBP) consists of information required to drive a wire bond machines movement during the wire bonding process. Wire bond programs consist of three key components: material handling, bonding parameter, and bonding path instructions. Of the three components, the bonding path component requires effort and time the most to prepare, as the preparation of bond path is currently being carried out manually. The manual process is tedious and error prone. In comparison to a manual process, offline programming (OLP) of bonding path creation provides a much more reliable and a less tedious method as it is error proof. OLP can be categorized into two versions, mainly vendor specific OLP and direct integration offline programming (Di-OLP), which is presented in this paper. Vendor specific OLP utilizes bonding diagrams created by a computer-aided design program to generate wire bonding paths. Di-OLP on the other hand utilizes the numeric coordinate data extracted from the bonding diagram creation software to generate the bonding path component of the wire bond program. Di-OLP is a more flexible method as it has the potential to be adapted to different machine platforms. This paper explains the challenges in the implementation of Di-OLP. The effectiveness and efficiency of the program created by Di-OLP are evaluated as compared to a manual programming method. Final results indicate that the offline programming is more efficient as it greatly reduces the time required to create the bonding paths for wire bond programs as compared to the manual methodology.

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

computer-aided design
direct integration offline programming
bondlist


Transport protocols for wireless sensor networks: State-of-the-art and future directions Characteristics of wireless sensor networks, specifically dense deployment, limited processing power, and limited power supply ,provide unique design challenges at the transport layer. Message transmission between sensor nodes over a wireless medium is especially expensive. Care must be taken to design an efficient transport layer protocol that combines reliable message delivery and congestion control with minimal overhead and retransmission. Sensor networks are created using low cost, low power nodes. Wireless sensors are assumed to have a finite lifetime; care must be taken to design and implement transport layer algorithms that allow maximum network lifetime. In this paper we present current and future challenges in the design of transport layers for sensor networks. Current transport layer protocols are compared based on how they implement reliable message delivery, congestion control, and energy efficiency.

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

networking
wireless sensor network
wsn
layer 4
end-to-end reliability


Optimal braking and estimation of tyre friction in automotive vehicles using sliding modes This article proposes a sliding-mode-based scheme for optimal deceleration in an automotive braking maneuvre. The scheme is model-based and seeks to maintain the longitudinal slip value associated with the tyre road contact patch at an optimum value - the point at which the friction coefficient-slip curve reaches a maximum. The scheme assumes only wheel angular velocity is measured, and uses a sliding mode observer to reconstruct the states and a parameter relating to road conditions for use in the controller. The sliding mode controller then seeks to maintain the vehicle at this optimal slip value through an appropriate choice of sliding surface.

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

observers
nonlinear systems
friction estimation


Representing parametric probabilistic models tainted with imprecision Numerical possibility theory, belief functions have been suggested as useful tools to represent imprecise, vague or incomplete information. They are particularly appropriate in uncertainty analysis where information is typically tainted with imprecision or incompleteness. Based on their experience or their knowledge about a random phenomenon, experts can sometimes provide a class of distributions without being able to precisely specify the parameters of a probability model. Frequentists use two-dimensional Monte-Carlo simulation to account for imprecision associated with the parameters of probability models. They hence hope to discover how variability and imprecision interact. This paper presents the limitations and disadvantages of this approach and propose a fuzzy random variable approach to treat this kind of knowledge. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

possibility
belief functions
fuzzy random variable

imprecise probabilities
probability-boxes
monte-carlo 2d


Designing hypermedia tools for solving problems in mathematics This article presents the design and preparation using hypermedia tools of an interactive CD-ROM for the active teaching and learning of diverse problem-solving strategies in Mathematics for secondary school students. The use of the CD-ROM allows the students to learn, interactively, the heuristic style of solving problems. A range of problems has been used, each of which requires different solving strategies. A complementary section for consulting the theoretical foundations for the process of solving problems and other related information is also included on the CD-ROM. This section provides both theoretical and curriculum support for teachers. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

computer mediated communication
interactive learning environments
multimedia/hypermedia systems
secondary education
teaching/learning strategies


a service framework for carrier grade multimedia services using parplay apis over a sip system The implementation of new mobile communication technologies developed in the third generation partnership project (3GPP) will allow to access the Internet not only from a PC but also via mobile phones, palmtops and other devices. New applications will emerge, combining several basic services like voice telephony, e-mail, voice over IP, mobility or web-browsing, and thus wiping out the borders between the fixed telephone network, mobile radio and the Internet. Offering those value-added services will be the key factor for success of network and service providers in an increasingly competitive market. In 3GPP's service framework the use of the PARLAY APIs is proposed that allow application development by third parties in order to speed up service creation and deployment. 3GPP has also adopted SIP for session control of multimedia communications in an IP network. This paper proposes a mapping of SIP functionality to PARLAY services and describes a prototype implementation using the SIP Servlet API. Furthermore an architecture of a Service Platform is presented that offers a framework for the creation, execution and management of carrier grade multimedia services in heterogeneous networks.

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

carrier grade services
network-independent services
sir-parlay mapping
caller preferences


Condition for relaxed Monte Carlo method of solving systems of linear equations In this paper, we point out the limitation of the paper entitled "Solving Systems of Linear Equations with Relaxed Monte Carlo Method" published in this journal (Tan in J. Supercomput. 22:113-123, 2002). We argue that the relaxed Monte Carlo method presented in Sect. 7 of the paper is only correct under the condition that the coefficient matrix A must be diagonal dominate. However, for nondiagonal dominate case; the corresponding Neumann series may diverge, which would lead to infinite loop when simulating the iterative Monte Carlo algorithm. In this paper, we first prove that only for the diagonal dominate matrix, the corresponding von Neumann series can converge, and the Monte Carlo algorithm can be relaxed. Therefore, it is not true for nondiagonal dominate matrix, no matter the relaxed parameter gamma is a single value or a set of values. We then present and analyze the numerical experiment results to verify our arguments.

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 B I I I 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 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

relaxed monte carlo method
diagonal dominate matrix


A computational fluid dynamics study of inspiratory flow in orotracheal geometries Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been used to investigate the flow of air through the human orotracheal system. Results from an idealised geometry, and from a patient-specific geometry created from MRI scans were compared. The results showed a significant difference in the flow structures between the two geometries. Inert particles with diameters in the range 19?m were tracked through the two geometries. Particle diameter has proved to be an important factor in defining the eventual destinations of inhaled particles. Results from our calculations match other experimental and computational results in the literature, and differences between the idealised and patient-specific geometries are less significant.

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


modelling and evolutionary multi-objective evaluation of interdependencies and work processes in airport operations An airport is a multi-stakeholders environment, with work processes and operations cutting across a number of organizations. Airport landside operations involve a variety of services and entities that interact and depend on each others. In this paper, we introduce the Landside Modelling and Analysis of Services (LAMAS) tool, which is a multi-agent system, to simulate, analyze and evaluate the interdependencies of services in airport operations. A genetic algorithm is used to distribute resources among the different entities in an airport such that the level of service is maintained. The problem is modelled as a multi-objective constrained resource allocation problem with the objective functions being the maximization of quality of service while reducing the total cost.

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

quality of service
genetic algorithm
airport landside


A quantitative and qualitative assessment of aspectual feature modules for evolving software product lines Variability mechanisms are systematically evaluated in the evolution of SPLs. FOP and AFM have shown better adherence to the Open-Closed Principle than CC. When crosscutting concerns are present, AFM are recommended over FOP. Refactoring at component level has important impact in AFM and FOP. CC compilation should be avoided when modular design is an important requirement.

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

software product lines
aspectual feature modules
variability mechanisms

feature-oriented programming
aspect-oriented programming


Circular Cone: A novel approach for protein ligand shape matching using modified PCA Nowadays in modern medicine, computer modeling has already become one of key methods toward the discovery of new pharmaceuticals. And virtual screening is a necessary process for this discovery. In the procedure of virtual screening, shape matching is the first step to select ligands for binding protein. In the era of HTS (high throughput screening), a fast algorithm with good result is in demand. Many methods have been discovered to fulfill the requirement. Our method, called Circular Cone, by finding principal axis, gives another way toward this problem. We use modified PCA (principal component analysis) to get the principal axis, around which the rotation is like whirling a cone. By using this method, the speed of giving score to a pocket and a ligand is very fast, while the accuracy is ordinary. So, the good speed and the general accuracy of our method present a good choice for HTS.

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

shape matching
pocket
ligand
new pharmaceuticals
circular cone


XML-based agent communication, migration and computation in mobile agent systems This article presents the research work that exploits using XML (Extensible Markup Language) to represent different types of information in mobile agent systems, including agent communication messages, mobile agent messages, and other system information. The goal of the research is to build a programmable information base in mobile agent systems through XML representations. The research not only studies using XML in binary agent system space such as representing agent communication messages and mobile agent messages, but also explores interpretive XML data processing to avoid the need of an interface layer between script mobile agents and system data represented in XML. These XML-based information representations have been implemented in Mobile-C, a FIPA (The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) compliant mobile agent platform. Mobile-C uses FIPA ACL (Agent Communication Language) messages for both inter-agent communication and inter-platform migration. Using FIPA ACL messages for agent migration in FIPA compliant agent systems simplifies agent platform, reduces development effort, and easily achieves inter-platform migration through well-designed communication mechanisms provided in the system. The ability of interpretive XML data processing allows mobile agents in Mobile-C directly accessing XML data information without the need of an extra interface layer.

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


Automatic proxy-based watermarking for WWW With the appearance of digital libraries and information archive centers on the Internet, copyright issues are becoming very concerning. Unlike hardcopies, digital data can be modified and distributed very easily. Watermarking is the solution to this copyright problem. By embedding a secure, identifiable mark on the digital data, ownership and content integrity can be ensured. Currently, the watermarking process is usually done manually and off-line. This makes updating of watermarking techniques and watermark logo content difficult. Enforcement of watermarking policies within an organization for providing content on the Internet is also not easy. Furthermore, installing watermarking software on each workstation of an organization is not very cost effective. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to address the copyright issues of digital data on the Internet. The basic idea is to move the watermarking process from the content developers to a reverse proxy server that is usually close to the organization's gateway. Data will be watermarked only when it is retrieved through this proxy. The main advantages of this approach are that: (i) it is cost effective as being independent of the amount of data on the web server and also independent of the number of content developers in the organization, (ii) it makes updates and maintenance tasks easy, being an one-for-all solution, and (iii) the reverse proxy effectively enforces the watermarking guideline. Both design considerations and implementation details of watermarking in a fully functional, Squid-based reverse proxy server are presented and its performance is analyzed. All results show that automatic watermarking in a reverse proxy server is a practical, cost efficient and enforcement effective solution for handling copyright issues in Internet digital Libraries. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

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

internet
digital libraries
copyright
watermarking
proxy server