Study of the impact of winding form and film thickness on thin-film inductors Using a DC-magnetron sputtering system, we fabricated several forms of double-sided coupling thin-film inductors on a PCB (Printed Circuit Board). Due to the effects of winding forms and thickness of the film, the inductance, Q factor and resonance frequency of the inductors are different. Of the three types of inductors covering the same area, the meander inductor has the highest resonance frequency (up to 400 MHz), the circular-spiral inductor has the largest inductance (up to 1 ?H/cm2) and Q factor (up to 25) at low frequency, and the hexagon-spiral inductor has moderate inductance and Q factor at an intermediate frequency. So the proper choice of winding form will depend on the specific application.

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


Automating data-model workflows at a level 12 HUC scale: Watershed modeling in a distributed computing environment Data-model workflows for reproducibility and provenance of distributed hydrological models. Essential Terrestrial Variable (ETV) datasets used to compute hydrological models. HydroTerre data workflows to create rapid data inputs for HUC-12 catchment scales. Infrastructure to support models and big data at high resolution from multiple federal sources.

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

distributed hydrological model
data-model workflows
model workflows
essential terrestrial variables
pihm
geographic information science
data as a service
model as a service


Reinforcement Learning for Multiple Access Control in Wireless Sensor Networks: Review, Model, and Open Issues Wireless sensor networking is a viable communication technology among low-cost and energy-limited sensor nodes deployed in an environment. Due to high operational features, the application area of this technology is extended significantly but with some energy related challenges. One main cause of the nodes energy wasting in these networks is idle listening characterized with no communication activity. This drawback can be mitigated by the means of energy-efficient multiple access control schemes so as to minimize idle listening. In this paper, we discuss the applicability of distributed learning algorithms namely reinforcement learning towards multiple access control (MAC) in wireless sensor networks. We perform a comparative review of relevant work in the literature and then present a cooperative multi agent reinforcement learning framework for MAC design in wireless sensor networks. Accordingly, the paper concludes with some major challenges and open issues of distributed MAC design using reinforcement learning.

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

multiple access control
reinforcement learning
wireless sensor networks


Generation and Evaluation of Business Continuity Processes using Algebraic Graph Transformation and the mCRL2 Process Algebra Critical business processes can fail. Therefore, continuity processes are needed as back-up solutions. Today, those continuity processes are set up and maintained manually. They are mostly based on best practices that focus on specific continuity scenarios, Nevertheless, failures can occur in new and unforeseen combinations. As a consequence, a given business continuity plan needs to handle such situations as well. For this purpose, we present a technique for the generation and validation of the universe of continuity processes given a critical business process at Credit Suisse. The presented approach uses a combination of formal methods in the area of algebraic graph transformation and process algebra encompassing modal logic. The overall approach prepares for a sound evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of such plans. It uses formal tools, not standard software engineering solutions, to benefit from formal guarantees that facilitate the implementation of local and global security requirements. ACM Classification: C.3 Special-Purpose and Application-based Systems (Process control Systems), G.2.3 Applications, 1.6.4 Model Validation and Analysis, 1.6.5 Model Development

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

business continuity
business process
algebraic graph transformation
process algebra
generation
evaluation


Ranking multicriteria alternatives: The method ZAPROS III The new version of the method for the construction of partial order on the set of multicriteria alternatives is presented. This method belongs to the family of verbal decision analysis (VDA) methods and gives a more efficient means of problem solution. The method is based on psychologically valid operations for information elicitation from a decision maker: comparisons of two distances between the evaluations on the ordinal scales of two criteria. The information received from a decision maker is used for the construction of a binary relation between a pair of alternatives which yields preference, indifference and incomparability relations. The method allows construction of a partial order on the set of given alternatives as well as on the set of all possible alternatives. The illustrative example is given.

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

decision theory
multiple criteria
behavior
project management


Proving sequential function chart programs using timed automata Applications described by sequential function chart (SFC) often being critical, we have investigated the possibilities of program checking. In particular, physical time can be handled by SFC programs using temporizations, which is why we are interested in the quantitative temporal properties. We have proposed a modeling of SFC in timed automata, a formalism which takes time into account. In this modeling, we use the physical constraints of the environment. Verification of properties can be carried out using the model-checker Kronos. We apply this method to SFC programs of average size like that of the control part of the production cell Korso. The size of the programs remains however a limit and we are studying the means of solving this problem. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

formal methods
tctl logic
sequential function chart (sfc)


A Fast Ray-Tracing Using Bounding Spheres and Frustum Rays for Dynamic Scene Rendering Ray tracing is one of the most popular techniques for generating photo-realistic images Extensive research and development work has made interactive static scene rendering realistic This paper deals with in dynamic scene rendering in which not only the eye point but also the objects in the scene change then 3D locations every frame In order to realize interactive dynamic scene rendering R-nos (Ray Tracing based on Ray Plane and Bounding Sphere) which utilizes the coherency in rays. objects, and grouped-rays. is Introduced RTRPS uses bounding spheres as the spatial data structure which utilizes the coherency in objects By using bounding spheres, RTRPS can ignore the rotation of moving objects within a sphere, and shorten the update time between frames RTRPS utilizes the coherency in rays by merging rays into a ray-plane, assuming that the secondary rays and shadow rays are shot through an aligned grid Since a pair of ray-planes shares an original ray. the intersection for the ray can be completed using the coherency m the ray-planes Because of die three kinds of coherency, RTRPS can significantly reduce the number of intersection tests for ray tracing Further acceleration techniques for I ay-plane-sphere and ray-triangle intersection are also presented A parallel projection technique converts a 3D vector inner product operation into a 2D operation and reduces the number of floating point operations Techniques based on frustum culling and binary-tree structured ray-planes optimize the order of intersection tests between ray-planes and a sphere. resulting in 50% to 90% reduction of intersection tests Two ray-triangle intersection techniques are also introduced which are effective when a lame number of rays are packed into a ray-plane Our performance evaluations indicate that RTRPS gives 13 to 392 times speed up in comparison with a ray tracing algorithm without organized rays and spheres We found out that RTRPS also provides competitive performance even if only primary rays are used.

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

computer graphics
intersection test
bounding volume


Sobolev Duals for Random Frames and ?? Quantization of Compressed Sensing Measurements Quantization of compressed sensing measurements is typically justified by the robust recovery results of Cands, Romberg and Tao, and of Donoho. These results guarantee that if a uniform quantizer of step size ? is used to quantize m measurements y=?x of a k-sparse signal x?? N , where ? satisfies the restricted isometry property, then the approximate recovery x # via ? 1-minimization is within O(?) of x. The simplest and commonly assumed approach is to quantize each measurement independently. In this paper, we show that if instead an rth-order ?? (SigmaDelta) quantization scheme with the same output alphabet is used to quantize y, then there is an alternative recovery method via Sobolev dual frames which guarantees a reduced approximation error that is of the order ?(k/m)(r?1/2)? for any 0<?<1, if m? r,? k(logN)1/(1??). The result holds with high probability on the initial draw of the measurement matrix ? from the Gaussian distribution, and uniformly for all k-sparse signals x whose magnitudes are suitably bounded away from zero on their support.

O O O B I O O B O B I 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 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

quantization
random frames
compressed sensing


Scheduling with fuzzy delays and fuzzy precedences A problem of scheduling jobs nonpreemptively on a single machine subject to time delay constraints and precedence constraints is considered. Time delay constraints and precedence constraints are fuzzified. Schedules are evaluated not only by their makespan but also by degrees of satisfaction with time delays and degrees of satisfaction with fuzzy precedence. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

fuzzy system models
fuzzy control
multiple criteria evaluation


BI-FEATURE VERIFICATION FOR PALMPRINT IMAGES CAPTURED IN PEGLESS SCENARIOS This paper presents a reliable and robust palmprint verification approach that involves using a bi-feature, biometric, palmprint feature-point number (FPN) and a histogram of oriented gradient (HOG). The bi-feature was fused and verified using a support vector machine (SVM) at the feature level. The approach has the advantages of capturing palm images in pegless scenarios with a low cost and low-resolution (100 dpi) digital scanner, and one sensor can capture palmprint bi-feature information. The low-resolution images result in a smaller database. Nine thousand palmprint images were collected from 300 people to verify the validity of the proposed approach. The results showed an accurate classification rate of 99.04%. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed approach is feasible and effective in palmprint verification. Our findings will help extend palmprint verification technology to security access control systems.

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

palmprint verification
support vector machine
bifeature
histogram of oriented gradient


A total least squares proximal support vector classifier for credit risk evaluation In this paper, a total least squares (TLS) version of proximal support vector machines (PSVM) is proposed for credit risk evaluation. The formulation of this new model is different from the original PSVM model, so a novel iterative algorithm is proposed to solve this model. A simulation test is first implemented on a classic two-spiral dataset, and then an empirical experiment is conducted on two publicly available credit datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed total least squares PSVM (TLS-PSVM) is at least comparable with PSVM and better than other models including standard SVM model.

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 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

total least squares method
proximal support vector machine


Improving the scalability of hyperspectral imaging applications on heterogeneous platforms using adaptive run-time data compression Latest generation remote sensing instruments (called hyperspectral imagers) are now able to generate hundreds of images, corresponding to different wavelength channels, for the same area on the surface of the Earth. In previous work, we have reported that the scalability of parallel processing algorithms dealing with these high-dimensional data volumes is affected by the amount of data to be exchanged through the communication network of the system. However, large messages are common in hyperspectral imaging applications since processing algorithms are pixel-based, and each pixel vector to be exchanged through the communication network is made up of hundreds of spectral values. Thus, decreasing the amount of data to be exchanged could improve the scalability and parallel performance. In this paper, we propose a new framework based on intelligent utilization of wavelet-based data compression techniques for improving the scalability of a standard hyperspectral image processing chain on heterogeneous networks of workstations. This type of parallel platform is quickly becoming a standard in hyperspectral image processing due to the distributed nature of collected hyperspectral data as well as its flexibility and low cost. Our experimental results indicate that adaptive lossy compression can lead to improvements in the scalability of the hyperspectral processing chain without sacrificing analysis accuracy, even at sub-pixel precision levels.

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

heterogeneous parallel computing
adaptive run-time data compression
wavelet transform


Williamson matrices up to order 59 A recent result of Schmidt has brought Williamson matrices back into the spotlight. In this article, a new algorithm is introduced to search for hard to find Williamson matrices. We find all nonequivalent Williamson matrices of odd order n up to n = 59. It turns out that there are none for n = 35, 47, 53, 59 and it seems that the Turyn class may be the only infinite class of these matrices.

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

symmetric circulant matrices
hadamard matrices


A calculational approach to path-based properties of the EisensteinStern and SternBrocot trees via matrix algebra This paper proposes a calculational approach to prove properties of the EisensteinStern and the SternBrocot trees. The calculational style of reasoning is enabled by a matrix formulation well-suited to formulate path-based properties. We show that nodes with palindromic paths contain the same rational in both the EisensteinStern and SternBrocot trees. We show how certain numerators and denominators in these trees can be written as the sum of two squares. We show how we can construct Sierpinski's triangle from these trees of rationals.

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

eisensteinstern tree (aka calkinwilf tree)


Migrating autonomous objects in a WAN environment Along with the fast progress the interconnection of computer systems makes the need for enterprise-wide distributed solutions grows. These systems have to support hundreds or even thousands of sites located all over the world. The distances between the sites will impose high communication costs on distributed activities thus significantly increasing their response times. This problem can be alleviated through migrating objects to the sites where they are needed. However, migration in such systems cannot be managed globally. Therefore, we present a migration protocol for (autonomous) objects which enables them autonomously to decide whether or not and which site to migrate to, thus making the system self-tuning. We also present two migration strategies objects can use to derive their migration decisions. The first one finds the optimal placement for an object while the second strategy in some cases returns a sub-optimal location but induces lower computation costs. The two strategies are evaluated through benchmarks in a distributed system of autonomous objects. The experiments show a significant decrease in communication costs when migration is employed.

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

distributed systems
object migration
wide-area networks


Recent advances in fuzzy arithmetics In the present paper we propose a comparative overview of some recent results in fuzzy arithmetics. This study is motivated by the fact that the multiplication of two trapezoidal fuzzy numbers by using Zadeh's extension principle is not of trapezoidal shape. Since in several applications these are the fuzzy numbers which are only admitted, the result of the multiplication is either approximated by a trapezoidal fuzzy number, either the multiplication is given in such a way. that the result is of trapezoidal shape. We study several approaches to solve this problem both from the theoretical and practical point of view.

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


The initial development of the WebMedQual scale: Domain assessment of the construct of quality of health web sites ? To develop a comprehensive instrument assessing quality of health-related web sites. Phase I consisted of a literature review to identify constructs thought to indicate web site quality and to identify items. During content analysis, duplicate items were eliminated and items that were not clear, meaningful, or measurable were reworded or removed. Some items were generated by the authors. Phase II: a panel consisting of six healthcare and MIS reviewers was convened to assess each item for its relevance and importance to the construct and to assess item clarity and measurement feasibility. Three hundred and eighty-four items were generated from 26 sources. The initial content analysis reduced the scale to 104 items. Four of the six expert reviewers responded; high concordance on the relevance, importance and measurement feasibility of each item was observed: 3 out of 4, or all raters agreed on 7685% of items. Based on the panel ratings, 9 items were removed, 3 added, and 10 revised. The WebMedQual consists of 8 categories, 8 sub-categories, 95 items and 3 supplemental items to assess web site quality. The constructs are: content (19 items), authority of source (18 items), design (19 items), accessibility and availability (6 items), links (4 items), user support (9 items), confidentiality and privacy (17 items), e-commerce (6 items). The WebMedQual represents a first step toward a comprehensive and standard quality assessment of health web sites. This scale will allow relatively easy assessment of quality with possible numeric scoring.

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

internet
rating information
psychometrics/methods


An information-theoretic approach to spectral variability, similarity, and discrimination for hyperspectral image analysis A hyperspectral image can be considered as an image cube where the third dimension is the spectral domain represented by hundreds of spectral wavelengths. As a result, a hyperspectral image pixel is actually a column vector with dimension equal to the number of spectral bands and contains valuable spectral information that can be used to account for pixel variability, similarity and discrimination. In this correspondence, we present a new hyperspectral measure, Spectral Information Measure (SIM), to describe spectral variability and two criteria, spectral information divergence and spectral discriminatory probability, for spectral similarity and discrimination, respectively. The spectral information measure is an information-theoretic measure which treats each pixel as a random variable using its spectral signature histogram as the desired probability distribution. Spectral Information Divergence (SID) compares the similarity between two pixels by measuring the probabilistic discrepancy between two corresponding spectral signatures. The spectral discriminatory probability calculates spectral probabilities of a spectral database (library) relative to a pixel to be identified so as to achieve material identification. In order to compare the discriminately power of one spectral measure relative to another, a criterion is also introduced for performance evaluation, which is based on the power of discriminating one pixel from another relative to a reference pixel. The experimental results demonstrate that the new hyperspectral measure can characterize spectral variability more effectively than the commonly used Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM).

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

hyperspectral image
spectral angle mapper
spectral discriminatory probability
spectral information divergence
spectral information measure

spectral discriminatory entropy
spectral discriminatory power


Sparse marginbased 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 learningbased 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 marginbased 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


norm-oriented programming of electronic institutions Norms constitute a powerful coordination mechanism among heterogeneous agents. We propose means to specify and explicitly manage the normative positions of agents (permissions, prohibitions and obligations), with which distinct deontic notions and their relationships can be captured. Our rule-based formalism includes constraints for more expressiveness and precision and allows the norm-oriented programming of electronic institutions: normative aspects are given a precise computational interpretation. Our formalism has been conceived as a machine language to which other higher-level normative languages can be mapped, allowing their execution.

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 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


parallel performance tuning for haskell Parallel Haskell programming has entered the mainstream with support now included in GHC for multiple parallel programming models, along with multicore execution support in the runtime. However, tuning programs for parallelism is still something of a black art. Without much in the way of feedback provided by the runtime system, it is a matter of trial and error combined with experience to achieve good parallel speedups. This paper describes an early prototype of a parallel profiling system for multicore programming with GHC. The system comprises three parts: fast event tracing in the runtime, a Haskell library for reading the resulting trace files, and a number of tools built on this library for presenting the information to the programmer. We focus on one tool in particular, a graphical timeline browser called ThreadScope. The paper illustrates the use of ThreadScope through a number of case studies, and describes some useful methodologies for parallelizing Haskell programs.

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


Input variable selection in time-critical knowledge integration applications: A review, analysis, and recommendation paper Input Variable Selection (IVS) helps when processing system inputs is computationally heavy. A framework to accommodate high level perspective of different approaches to IVS is provided. Sensitivity analysis (SA) helps IVS in heterogeneous input variables with time constraint. Event-based SA proves fit by its application in an industrial drilling disaster prevention problem.

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

input variable selection
sensitivity analysis

supervisory control and data acquisition


Applying Web usage mining for personalizing hyperlinks in Web-based adaptive educational systems Nowadays, the application of Web mining techniques in e-learning and Web-based adaptive educational systems is increasing exponentially. In this paper, we propose an advanced architecture for a personalization system to facilitate Web mining. A specific Web mining tool is developed and a recommender engine is integrated into the AHAI system in order to help the instructor to carry out the whole Web mining process. Our objective is to be able to recommend to a student the most appropriate links/Web pages within the AHAI system to visit next. Several experiments are carried out with real data provided by Eindhoven University of Technology students in order to test both the architecture proposed and the algorithms used. Finally, we have also described the meaning of several recommendations, starting from the rules discovered by the Web mining algorithms. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

education and e-learning
adaptive hypermedia
recommender system
data mining


A numerical study of multiple imputation methods using nonparametric multivariate outlier identifiers and depth-based performance criteria with clinical laboratory data It is well known that if a multivariate outlier has one or more missing component values, then multiple imputation (MI) methods tend to impute nonextreme values and make the outlier become less extreme and less likely to be detected. In this paper, nonparametric depth-based multivariate outlier identifiers are used as criteria in a numerical study comparing several established methods of MI as well as a new proposed one, nine in all, in a setting of several actual clinical laboratory data sets of different dimensions. Two criteria, an 'outlier recovery probability' and a 'relative accuracy measure', are developed, based on depth functions. Three outlier identifiers, based on Mahalanobis distance, robust Mahalanobis distance, and generalized principle component analysis are also included in the study. Consequently, not only the comparison of imputation methods but also the comparison of outlier detection methods is accomplished in this study. Our findings show that the performance of an MI method depends on the choice of depth-based outlier detection criterion, as well as the size and dimension of the data and the fraction of missing components. By taking these features into account, an MI method for a given data set can be selected more optimally.

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

multiple imputation
multivariate
nonparametric
outlier detection
depth functions


Self-Configurable FPGA-Based Computer Systems Method of information processing in reconfigurable computer systems is formulated and its improvements that allow an information processing efficiency to increase are proposed. New type of high-performance computer systems, which are named self-configurable FPGA-based computer systems and perform information processing according to this improved method, is proposed. The structure of self-configurable FPGA-based computer systems, rules of application of computer software and hardware means, which are necessary for these systems implementation, are described and their execution time characteristics are estimated. The directions for further works are discussed.

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

field programmable gate arrays
high performance computing
reconfigurable architectures
reconfigurable logic
self-configurable computer systems


An in-silico model of the biosynthesis of neurotransmitter glutamate, elucidates the complex regulatory role of glucocorticoids in neurotransmitter glutamate release An in-silico model, of the glucocorticoid regulated glutamate release, in rat hippocampal tissue, is constructed. The model permits the pseudo-steady state estimation of various fluxes, experimentally impossible to measure, from a set of measured rates. Estimates of the astrocytic pyruvate carboxylase reaction and the neuronal TCA cycle rates are correlated with different dexamethasone concentrations, in order to extrapolate explicit kinetic equations. The model suggests that the observed effects of glucocorticoids can be attributed to the inhibitory actions of dexamethasone on two competing pathways, that of the neuronal TCA cycle and the biosynthetic pathway of neurotransmitter glutamate.

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

neurotransmitter glutamate
glucocorticoids
dexamethasone

metabolic flux analysis of neurotransmitter glutamate

in-silico model of biosynthesis of neurotransmitter glutamate


A Bayesian approach for object classification based on clusters of SIFT local features Several methods have been presented in the literature that successfully used SIFT features for object identification, as they are reasonably invariant to translation, rotation, scale, illumination and partial occlusion. However, they have poor performance for classification tasks. In this work, SIFT features are used to solve object class recognition problems in images using a two-step process. In its first step, the proposed method performs clustering on the extracted features in order to characterize the appearance of the different classes. Then, in the classification step, it uses a three layer Bayesian network for object class recognition. Experiments show quantitatively that clusters of SIFT features are suitable to represent classes of objects. The main contributions of this paper are the introduction of a Bayesian network approach in the classification step to improve performance in an object class recognition task, and a detailed experimentation that shows robustness to changes in illumination, scale, rotation and partial occlusion.

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

object class recognition
local features
sift
clustering


LabeledIn: Cataloging labeled indications for human drugs A semi-automated framework to annotate drug labels for drug indications is proposed. 500 drug labels corresponding to 250 frequently accessed drugs are double-annotated. Annotation achieves 88% agreement and establishes 7805 drugdisease relationships. The results are computable, precise, and linked to the source drug labels. The resultant resource complements existing resources and is made publicly available.

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

corpus annotation
natural language processing


Spatial ordered weighted averaging: incorporating spatially variable attitude towards risk in spatial multi-criteria decision-making The paper discusses a decompositionanalysisaggregation approach to multi-criteria spatial decision-making and proposes a novel aggregation method applicable to problems of the object-location or suitability for application type, concentrating on methodological rather than software development aspects. The approach allows the decision maker to: (a) break the problem down into a series of elementary (easier to understand) problems, (b) analyse them (in the broad sense of the word), and then (c) produce an answer for the complex problem by aggregating the answers derived for the elementary problems. The choice of methodology used for this aggregation is very important as different aggregating techniques may yield different results to the (same) original problem. The method presented here, which is in effect an extension of the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) method into a spatial decision-making technique, is termed spatial ordered weighted averaging (SOWA). The main advantage of the method proposed is the incorporation of spatially variable attitude to risk into the decision-making process. The mathematical background of the method and an example of its application in urban water management are presented and discussed. The authors suggest that the method could be useful as an analytical and decision-making tool for the incorporation of spatially variable risk perception in GIS-based decision support systems.

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

ordered weighted averaging
spatially variable risk perception

multi-criteria spatial decision support
suitability evaluation


A family of multi-point flux approximation schemes for general element types in two and three dimensions with convergence performance A family of flux-continuous, locally conservative, control-volume-distributed multi-point flux approximation (CVD-MPFA) schemes has been developed for solving the general geometry-permeability tensor pressure equation on structured and unstructured grids. These schemes are applicable to the full-tensor pressure equation with generally discontinuous coefficients and remove the O(1) errors introduced by standard reservoir simulation schemes when applied to full-tensor flow approximation. The family of flux-continuous schemes is characterized by a quadrature parameterization. Improved numerical convergence for the family of CVD-MPFA schemes using the quadrature parameterization has been observed for structured and unstructured grids in two dimensions. The CVD-MPFA family cell-vertex formulation is extended to classical general element types in 3-D including prisms, pyramids, hexahedra and tetrahedra. A numerical convergence study of the CVD-MPFA schemes on general unstructured grids comprising of triangular elements in 2-D and prismatic, pyramidal, hexahedral and tetrahedral shape elements in 3-D is presented. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

reservoir pressure unstructured convergence


A fictitious domain approach for the simulation of dense suspensions Low Reynolds number concentrated suspensions do exhibit an intricate physics which can be partly unraveled by the use of numerical simulation. To this end, a Lagrange multiplier-free fictitious domain approach is described in this work. Unlike some methods recently proposed, the present approach is fully Eulerian and therefore does not need any transfer between the Eulerian background grid and some Lagrangian nodes attached to particles. Lubrication forces between particles play an important role in the suspension rheology and have been properly accounted for in the model. A robust and effective lubrication scheme is outlined which consists in transposing the classical approach used in Stokesian Dynamics to our present direct numerical simulation. This lubrication model has also been adapted to account for solid boundaries such as walls. Contact forces between particles are modeled using a classical Discrete Element Method (DEM), a widely used method in granular matter physics. Comprehensive validations are presented on various one-particle, two-particle or three-particle configurations in a linear shear flow as well as some O(103) O ( 10 3 ) and O(104) O ( 10 4 ) particle simulations.

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

suspensions
fictitious domain
lubrication
discrete element method


Optimized admission control scheme for coexisting femtocell, wireless and wireline networks The most important challenge for the implementation of the Future Internet is to make the heterogeneity of access technologies transparent to the end user. Compared to the general case where the interworking networks are independent, the case of femtocells interworking with pre-existing wireless networks poses more challenges due to the sharing of the same backhaul capacity. Therefore, while a user is practically able to initiate the same service through multiple network interfaces, he is allocated capacity from the same capacity pool. However, while the femtocell inherits the QoS mechanisms of cellular networks and is able to provide a reliable CAC, this does not apply to the IP-based networks and that may drastically affect the performance of the femtocell. Hence, we propose an integrated Dynamic Service Admission Control (DSAC) framework for coexisting femtocell, wireless and wireline network environments. In particular, DSAC is able to provide QoS guarantees as a conventional capacity partitioning scheme while at the same time offers better performance in terms of acceptance probability and capacity utilization especially when short term variations of traffic load composition occur.

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

femtocell
admission control
future internet
qos


Chemosensitizing acridones: In vitro calmodulin dependent cAMP phosphodiesterase inhibition, docking, pharmacophore modeling and 3D QSAR studies Calmodulin inhibitors have proved to play a significant role in sensitizing MDR cancer cells by interfering with cellular drug accumulation. The present investigation focuses on the evaluation of in vitro inhibitory efficacy of chloro acridones against calmodulin dependent cAMP phosphodiesterase (PDE1c). Moreover, molecular docking of acridones was performed with PDE1c in order to identify the possible protein ligand interactions and results thus obtained were compared with in vitro data. In addition an efficient pharmacophore model was developed from a set of 38 chemosensitizing acridones effective against doxorubicin resistant (HL-60/DX) cancer cell lines. Pharmacophoric features such as one hydrogen bond acceptor, one hydrophobic region, a positive ion group and three aromatic rings i.e., AHPRRR have been identified. Ligand based 3D-QSAR was also performed by employing partial least square regression analysis.

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


Basis for the implementation of an EEG-based single-trial binary brain computer interface through the disgust produced by remembering unpleasant odors In order to implement an EEG-based brain computer interface (BCI), a very large number of strategies (ranging from sensorymotor, p300, auditory based, visually based) can be used. However, no technique exists which is based on the olfactory stimulation or, better, based on the imagination of olfactory stimuli. The present paper describes an innovative paradigm, that is the voluntary brain activation with the disgust produced by remembering unpleasant odors, and a simple and robust classification method on which a single trial binary BCI can be implemented. In order to classify the signal, mainly the channels P4, C4, T8 and P8 have been used, by spanning the frequency band between 32 and 42Hz, that is a subset of the gamma band external to the bands usually occupied by other tasks (the interval between 1 and 30Hz), and the alpha band between 8 and 12Hz. Right hemisphere of the brain and gamma band of frequencies are particularly sensitive when experiencing negative emotions, such as the disgust produced by smelling or remembering unpleasant odors, while the alpha band is usually modified with concentration. This constitutes an advantage for the proposed classification technique because it is made intrinsically easy by the localization into particular positions and frequencies: different features are mostly based on different frequency bands. The choice of disgust produced by remembering unpleasant odors is twofold: smelling is an ancestral sensation which is so strong that its EEG signal is produced also in persons affected by hyposmia when they imagine an olfactory situation; it can be used without external stimulation, that is the user can decide freely when and if activate it. The proposed method and the experimental setup are described and a series of experimental measurements are presented and discussed. The accuracy of the proposed method is also evaluated and the reached levels are about 90%. The proposed system can be a useful communication alternative for disabled people that cannot use other BCI paradigms.

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

humancomputer interface
unpleasant odor
emotion


On expander codes Sipser and Spielman have introduced a constructive family of asymptotically good linear error-correcting codes-expander codes-together with a simple parallel algorithm that will always remove a constant fraction of errors. We introduce a variation on their decoding algorithm that, with no extra cost in complexity, provably corrects up to 12 times more errors.

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


location cache for web queries This paper proposes a strategy to reduce the amount of hardware involved in the solution of search engine queries. It proposes using a secondary compact cache that keeps minimal information stored in the query receptionist machine to register the processors that must get involved in the solution of queries which are evicted from the standard result cache or are not admitted in it. This cache strategy produces exact answers by using very few processors.

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

inverted files
parallel and distributed computing


Structural vibration control Undesirable time-variable motions of dynamical structures (e.g. scales, balances, vibratory platforms, bridges and buildings) are mainly caused by unknown or uncertain excitations. In a variety of applications it is desirable or even necessary to attenuate these disturbances in an effective way and with moderate effort. Hence, several passive as well as active methods and techniques have been developed in order to treat these problems. However, employment of active techniques often fails because of their considerable financial costs. We propose an affordable control scheme which accounts for the above-mentioned deficiencies. In addition, we allow constraints on control actions. Furthermore, the number of control inputs (actuators) may be arbitrary, i.e., the system may be mismatched. The scheme is based on Lyapunov stability theory and, provided that the bounds of the uncertainties are a priori known, a stable attractor (ball of ultimate boundedness) of the structure can be computed. In case measurement errors or uncertainties, respectively, are significant, it is shown how the Lyapunov-based control scheme may be combined with a fuzzy control concept. The effectiveness and behavior of the control scheme is demonstrated on two simplified models of elastic structures such as a two story building and a bridge subjected to a moving truck.

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

vibrations
robust control
fuzzy theory
identification


Cataract halos: A driving hazard in aging populations. Implication of the Halometer DG test for assessment of intraocular light scatter Cataract, regardless of etiology, results in light scatter and subjective glare. Senile cataract is emerging as a crucial factor in driving safely, particularly in night driving and adverse weather conditions. The authors examined this visual impairment using a new Halometer DG test in the eyes of older adult drivers with and without cataract. Examined subjects consisted of n=65 older adults with cataract in one or both eyes and n=72 adult drivers who did not have a cataract in either eye. Subjects were examined for distance high contrast visual acuity (VA) and red/green disability glare (DG) with a new halo generating instrument. Subjects also completed a subjective Driving Habits Questionnaire (DHQ), designed to obtain information about driving during the past year. DG increased with age of the driver. VA and Halometer DG testing of better and worse eyes prognosticated impairments which significantly affect driving performance. Cataract subjects demonstrated increased Halometer DG scores and were two to four times more likely to report difficulty with driving at night and with challenging driving situations than were cataract-free drivers. DG is a specific cataract-induced functional age-related risk factor of driving difficulty, easily measured by a technician with a new Halometer DG device. Optometrists and ophthalmologists should incorporate Halometer DG testing in their pre-examination vision testing rooms for patients over age 55, and also perform this test on others who complain about glare. Traffic safety engineers should incorporate automotive optical-microprocessor-aided tests for DG into cars, to alert drivers of mild functional impairments and progressive degrees of DG sensitization.

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

disability-glare
visual-acuity
driver safety


Fitting polynomial surfaces to triangular meshes with Voronoi squared distance minimization This paper introduces Voronoi squared distance minimization (VSDM), an algorithm that fits a surface to an input mesh. VSDM minimizes an objective function that corresponds to a Voronoi-based approximation of the overall squared distance function between the surface and the input mesh (SDM). This objective function is a generalization of the one minimized by centroidal Voronoi tessellation, and can be minimized by a quasi-Newton solver. VSDM naturally adapts the orientation of the mesh elements to best approximate the input, without estimating any differential quantities. Therefore, it can be applied to triangle soups or surfaces with degenerate triangles, topological noise and sharp features. Applications of fitting quad meshes and polynomial surfaces to input triangular meshes are demonstrated.

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

squared distance minimization
centroidal voronoi tessellation


Progressive ranking of range aggregates ? Ranking-aware queries have been gaining much attention recently in many applications such as multimedia databases, search engines and data streams. They are, however, not only restricted to such applications but are also very useful in On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) applications. In this paper, we introduce aggregation ranking queries in OLAP data cubes motivated by an online advertisement tracking data warehouse application. These queries aggregate information over a specified range and then return the ranked order of the aggregated values. For instance, an advertiser might be interested in the top-k publishers over the last three months in terms of sales obtained through the online advertisements placed on the publishers. They differ from range aggregate queries in that range aggregate queries are mainly concerned with an aggregate operator such as SUM and MIN/MAX over the selected ranges of all dimensions in the data cubes. Existing techniques for range aggregate queries are not able to process aggregation ranking queries efficiently. Hence, in this paper we propose new algorithms to handle this problem. The essence of the proposed algorithms is based on both ranking and cumulative information to progressively rank aggregation results. Furthermore we empirically evaluate our techniques and the experimental results show that the query cost is improved significantly.

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

data warehousing
on-line analytical processing
data cube


Low computational complexity enhanced zerotree coding for wavelet-based image compression The embedded zerotree wavelet (EZW) algorithm, introduced by J.M. Shapiro and extented by A. Said and W.A. Pearlman, has proven to be a computationally simple and efficient method for image compression. In the current study, we propose a novel algorithm to improve the performance of EZW coding. The proposed method, called enhanced zerotree coding (EZC), is based on two new techniques: adaptive multi-subband decomposition (AMSD) and band flag scheme (BFS). The purpose of AMSD is to change the statistics of transformed coefficients so that the coding performance in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) can be elevated at a lower bit rate. In addition, BFS is used to reduce execution time in finding zerotrees. In BFS the tree depths are controlled, therefore, many unnecessary comparison operations can be skipped. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the performance of EZW coding and requires low computational complexity. In addition, the property of embedded coding is preserved, which enables a progressive transmission.

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

image coding
adaptive multi-subband decomposition


A New Method for Modeling the Behavior of Finite Population Evolutionary Algorithms As practitioners we are interested in the likelihood of the population containing a copy of the optimum. The dynamic systems approach, however, does not help us to calculate that quantity. Markov chain analysis can be used in principle to calculate the quantity. However, since the associated transition matrices are enormous even for modest problems, it follows that in practice these calculations are usually computationally infeasible. Therefore, some improvements on this situation are desirable. In this paper, we present a method for modeling the behavior of finite population evolutionary algorithms (EAs), and show that if the population size is greater than 1 and much less than the cardinality of the search space, the resulting exact model requires considerably less memory space for theoretically running the stochastic search process of the original EA than the Nix and Vose-style Markov chain model. We also present some approximate models that use still less memory space than the exact model. Furthermore, based on our models, we examine the selection pressure by fitness-proportionate selection, and observe that on average over all population trajectories, there is. no such strong bias toward selecting the higher fitness individuals as the fitness landscape suggests.

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

approximate model
fitness-proportionate selection
success probability


A predictorcorrector method for structural nonlinear analysis A predictorcorrector method is presented for the efficient and reliable analysis of structural nonlinear behaviors. The key idea lies on modifying the starting point of iterations of the Newton iterative method. The conventional Newton method starts iterations at the previously converged solution point. However, in the present predictorcorrector method, a point close to the converged solution of the current step is predicted first, and then the Newton method starts iterative procedure at the predicted point. The predictor, the neural network in the present study, recognizes the pattern of the previously converged solutions to predict the starting point of the current step. Then the corrector, the standard Newton method in the present study, is used to obtain the converged solution by iterative computation starting at the predicted point. Numerical tests are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of the present predictorcorrector method. The performance of the present method is compared with the conventional Newton method and Riks' continuation method. The present predictorcorrector method saves computational cost significantly and yields stable results without diverging, for the nonlinear analysis with monotonous deformation path as well as complicated deformation path including buckling and post-buckling behaviors.

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

nonlinear analysis
predictorcorrector
neural network

iterative algorithm
newton method (newtonraphson method)
buckling analysis
post-buckling analysis


Massively parallel forward modeling of scalar and tensor gravimetry data We present an approach to calculate scalar and tensor gravity utilizing the massively parallel architecture of consumer graphics cards. Our parametrization is based on rectilinear blocks with constant density within each blocks. This type of parametrization is well suited for inversion of gravity data or joint inversion with other datasets, but requires the calculation of a large number of model blocks for complex geometries. For models exceeding 10,000 cells we achieve an acceleration of a factor of 40 for scalar data and 30 for tensor data compared to a single thread on the CPU. This significant acceleration allows fast computation of large models exceeding 10(6) model parameters and thousands of measurement sites. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

gravity modeling
cuda
parallel computing


On the profile of temperature dependent series resistance in Al/Si3N4/p-Si (MIS) Schottky diodes The temperature dependence of capacitancevoltage (CV) and conductancevoltage (G/wV) characteristics of metalinsulatorsemiconductor (Al/Si3N4/p-Si) Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) was investigated by considering series resistance effect in the temperature range of 80300K. It is found that in the presence of series resistance, the forward bias CV plots exhibit a peak, and experimentally show that the peak positions with a maximum at 260K shift toward lower voltages with increasing temperature. The CV and (G/wV) characteristics confirm that the interface state density (Nss) and series resistance (Rs) of the diode are important parameters that strongly influence the electric parameters of MIS structures. The crossing of the G/wV curves appears as an abnormality compared to the conventional behavior of ideal Schottky diode. It is thought that the presence of series resistance keeps this intersection hidden and unobservable in homogeneous Schottky diodes, but it appears in the case of inhomogeneous Schottky diode. In addition, the high frequency (Cm) and conductance (Gm/w) values measured under both reverse and forward bias were corrected for the effect of series resistance to obtain the real diode capacitance.

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

temperature dependence
series resistance

conductance method
mis structure
nitride passivation


An efficient protocol for authenticated key agreement This paper proposes an efficient two-pass protocol for authenticated key agreement in the asymmetric (public-key) setting. The protocol is based on Diffie-Hellman key agreement and can be modified to work in an arbitrary finite group and, in particular, elliptic curve groups. Two modifications of this protocol are also presented: a one-pass authenticated key agreement protocol suitable for environments where only one entity is on-line, and a three-pass protocol in which key confirmation is additionally provided. Variants of these protocols have been standardized in IEEE P1363 [17], ANSI X9.42 [2], ANSI X9.63 [4] and ISO 15496-3 [18], and are currently under consideration for standardization and by the U. S. government's National Institute for Standards and Technology [30].

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

authenticated key agreement
key confirmation


The possible cardinalities of global secure sets in cographs Let G = (V, E) be a graph. A global secure set SD subset of V is a dominating set which also satisfies a condition that vertical bar N [X] boolean AND SD vertical bar >= vertical bar N [X] - SD vertical bar for every subset X subset of SD. The minimum cardinality of the global secure set in the graph G is denoted by gamma(s)(G). In this paper, we introduce the notion of gamma(s)-monotone graphs. The graph G is gamma(s)-monotone if, for every k is an element of {gamma(s)(G), gamma(s)(G) + 1, ... , n}, it has a global secure set of cardinality k. We will also present the results concerning the minimum cardinality of the global secure sets in the class of cographs. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Predicting customer churn from valuable B2B customers in the logistics industry: a case study This study uncovers the effect of the length, recency, frequency, monetary, and profit (LRFMP) customer value model in a logistics company to predict customer churn. This unique context has useful business implications compared to the main stream customer churn studies where individual customers (rather than business customers) are the main focus. Our results show the five LRFMP variables had a varying effect on customer churn. Specifically length, recency and monetary variables had a significant effect on churn, while the frequency variable only became a top predictor when the variability of the first three variables was limited. The profit variable had never become a significant predictor. Certain other behavioral variables (such as time between transactions) also had an effect on churn. The resulting set of predictors of churn expands the original LRFMP and RFM models with additional insights. Managerial implications were provided.

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

customer value analysis
prediction model


Supine and Prone Colon Registration Using Quasi-Conformal Mapping In virtual colonoscopy, CT scans are typically acquired with the patient in both supine (facing up) and prone (facing down) positions. The registration of these two scans is desirable so that the user can clarify situations or confirm polyp findings at a location in one scan with the same location in the other, thereby improving polyp detection rates and reducing false positives. However, this supine-prone registration is challenging because of the substantial distortions in the colon shape due to the patient's change in position. We present an efficient algorithm and framework for performing this registration through the use of conformal geometry to guarantee that the registration is a diffeomorphism (a one-to-one and onto mapping). The taeniae coli and colon flexures are automatically extracted for each supine and prone surface, employing the colon geometry. The two colon surfaces are then divided into several segments using the flexures, and each segment is cut along a taenia coli and conformally flattened to the rectangular. domain using holomorphic differentials. The mean curvature is color encoded as texture images, from which feature points are automatically detected using graph cut segmentation, mathematic morphological operations, and principal component analysis. Corresponding feature points are found between supine and prone and are used to adjust the conformal flattening to be quasi-conformal, such that the features become aligned. We present multiple methods of visualizing our results, including 2D flattened rendering, corresponding 3D endoluminal views, and rendering of distortion measurements. We demonstrate the efficiency and efficacy of our registration method by illustrating matched views on both the 2D flattened colon images and in the 3D volume rendered colon endoluminal view. We analytically evaluate the correctness of the results by measuring the distance between features on the registered colons.

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

mathematical foundations for visualization


Design of a Training Support System in the Information Technology Area The descent of productivity in some areas where the computer has been the first protagonist and the results encounter in diverse studies have manifested the importance of training in the information technology area. This paper proposes the Design of a Training Support System in the Information Technology Area (SISEPATI). This system tries to bring support to: (1) the training given to a user in the use of a system/software/apphcation (s/s/a); (2) the user to make easier his/her interaction and complete his/her knowledge about the s/s/a; (3) the integrator, in the adjust or changes that he/she has to make on the methods or tools used in the training delivered, according to the comments or results encounter with the user interactions; and to (4) the supra-user so that he/she can evaluated the results of the training and of both systems: the one that supports the training and the s/s/a. The proposed system has to pass by a revision process by trainers and trainees to improve it and change it so it can bring nearest the goals set forth. The improves and changes required in SISEPATI design can be collect with the design of other system, a Support System for the Participative Design, this system will bring the collective results that can be obtain by the opinions, suggestions and ideas given by trainees, trainers, designers and supra-users applying Collective Decision Making Theory. That will increase the consensus level about the aspects to consider in a design of a support training system as the proposed. In other way of ideas there has to be indicated that the development of a system like the expound will be justified in those cases in where the complexity of the s/s/a will merit due to the effort involved to detail the objectives, contents, restrictions, etc. of the s/s/a: or due to the complexity of the procedures or organizational aspects requiring to repeat the training with certain frequency.

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

training
support system
collective decision


Reversal ?CP using hard stamps In this work, we present a new method of Micro-Contact Printing (?CP) which we call reversal ?CP using hard stamps which can be used for the fabrication of different structures like negative index materials, e.g., split ring resonators (SRRs), dots and squares made of gold. Typically soft stamps made of PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) inked with thiols are used for ?CP. The softness of the stamp material entails a lot of problems like deformation of the structures, sagging and pairing of the protruding features and reliability of the process. We use hard stamps which are spin coated with a thiol solution so that the thioles stay in the recessed areas of the stamp. In the following ?CP process an EVG620 is used to bring the stamp and substrate into contact so that the thiols on the stamp diffuse and bind to the gold surface and serve as an etch mask for succeeding wet chemical etching. Using this method overcomes the disadvantage of a soft stamp material. Smallest feature sizes down to 100nm are shown.

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


linear ordering and application to placement Given a set of interconnected elements, linear ordering generates a linear sequence of elements of the set, which is the basis for most constructive initial-placement methods. This paper presents a new strategy for linear ordering. The important difference of the new technique from the previous ones is that it starts the ordering process from the most lightly connected seed. It was applied to various placement problems including standard cell and gate array and produced very good results.

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

process
placement
standard cell
paper
sequence

arrays applications order strategies method


Robust registration for computer-integrated orthopedic surgery: Laboratory validation and clinical experience In order to provide navigational guidance during computer-integrated orthopedic surgery, the anatomy of the patient must first be registered to a medical image or model. A common registration approach is to digitize points from the surface of a bone and then find the rigid transformation that best matches the points to the model by constrained optimization. Many optimization criteria, including a least-squares objective function, perform poorly if the data include spurious data points (outliers). This paper describes a statistically robust, surface-based registration algorithm that we have developed for orthopedic surgery. To find an initial estimate, the user digitizes points from predefined regions of bone that are large enough to reliably locate even in the absence of anatomic landmarks. Outliers are automatically detected and managed by integrating a statistically robust M-estimator with the iterative-closest-point algorithm. Our in vitro validation method simulated the registration process by drawing registration data points from several sets of densely digitized surface points. The method has been used clinically in computer-integrated surgery for high tibial osteotomy, distal radius osteotomy, and excision of osteoid osteoma.

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


Computational and theoretical analysis of null space and orthogonal linear discriminant analysis Dimensionality reduction is an important pre-processing step in many applications. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a classical statistical approach for supervised dimensionality reduction. It aims to maximize the ratio of the between-class distance to the within-class distance, thus maximizing the class discrimination. It has been used widely in many applications. However, the classical LDA formulation requires the nonsingularity of the scatter matrices involved. For undersampled problems, where the data dimensionality is much larger than the sample size, all scatter matrices are singular and classical LDA fails. Many extensions, including null space LDA (NLDA) and orthogonal LDA (OLDA), have been proposed in the past to overcome this problem. NLDA aims to maximize the between-class distance in the null space of the within-class scatter matrix, while OLDA computes a set of orthogonal discriminant vectors via the simultaneous diagonalization of the scatter matrices. They have been applied successfully in various applications. In this paper, we present a computational and theoretical analysis of NLDA and OLDA. Our main result shows that under a mild condition which holds in many applications involving high-dimensional data, NLDA is equivalent to OLDA. We have performed extensive experiments on various types of data and results are consistent with our theoretical analysis. We further apply the regularization to OLDA. The algorithm is called regularized OLDA (or ROLDA for short). An efficient algorithm is presented to estimate the regularization value in ROLDA. A comparative study on classification shows that ROLDA is very competitive with OLDA. This confirms the effectiveness of the regularization in ROLDA.

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

linear discriminant analysis
dimensionality reduction
null space
regularization


Optimal configuration for the self-identification of a two-dimensional variable geometry truss This study addresses the optimal changes in geometry of a two-dimensional variable geometry truss (VGT) to identify the stiffness matrix of the truss using the concept of self-identification. The optimization of the geometry changing of the VGT is a problem of selecting the optimal combination of multiple design variables from a large number of candidate sets. This study proposes a simple optimization method for determining a set of optimal geometric parameters; in this method, the approximated mode shape matrix obtained using spline interpolation techniques is used to calculate the objective function for self-identification. The objective function used in this paper is a function of the condition number of the coefficient matrix of a linear matrix equation and a criterion for self-identification. The proposed algorithm can be used to reduce the number of actual vibration tests required for measuring the mode shapes and modal frequency while it maximizes the objective function. Numerical experiments are conducted to investigate the relationship between the convergence characteristics of the optimization and the target vibration modes. The effectiveness of the optimized geometry changing is verified by comparing the identification error for the uniform geometry changing, the optimized one for the three lower modes of the VGT, and the one found by a classical QR decomposition. Furthermore, the numerical results show that the identification sensitivity with respect to noisy data is reduced by the optimization.

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

stiffness identification
testing configuration optimization
adaptive structures


The combined effect of physical, psychosocial/organisational and/or environmental risk factors on the presence of work-related musculoskeletal symptoms and its consequences Combined exposure to poor physical and poor psychosocial factors increased the odds of MSS. This combination also increased the odds of reduced activities and absenteeism due to MSS. Favourable psychosocial conditions reduced the odds of MSS due to poor physical conditions. To reduce MSS and its consequences, employers need to adopt a multifaceted approach.

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


Why GSA: a gravitational search algorithm is not genuinely based on the law of gravity This letter highlights a fundamental inconsistency in the formulation of the Gravitational search algorithm (GSA) (Rashedi et al., Inf Sci 223248, 2009). GSA is said to be based on the law of gravity, that is, candidate solutions attract each other in the search space based on their relative distances and masses (qualities). We show that, contrary to what is claimed, GSA does not take the distances between solutions into account, and therefore cannot be considered to be based on the law of gravity.

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

gravitational search algorithm
law of gravity

heuristic search algorithms
natural computing
optimization


Sensitivity analysis applied to the construction of radial basis function networks Conventionally, a radial basis function (RBF) network is constructed by obtaining cluster centers of basis function by maximum likelihood learning. This paper proposes a novel learning algorithm for the construction of radial basis function using sensitivity analysis. In training, the number of hidden neurons and the centers of their radial basis functions are determined by the maximization of the output's sensitivity to the training data. In classification, the minimal number of such hidden neurons with the maximal sensitivity will be the most generalizable to unknown data. Our experimental results show that our proposed sensitivity-based RBF classifier outperforms the conventional RBFs and is as accurate as support vector machine (SVM). Hence, sensitivity analysis is expected to be a new alternative way to the construction of RBF networks.

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

radial basis function neural network
orthogonal least square learning
network pruning


Dominance rules in combinatorial optimization problems The aim of this paper is to study the concept of a dominance rule in the context of combinatorial optimization. A dominance rule is established in order to reduce the solution space of a problem by adding new constraints to it, either in a procedure that aims to reduce the domains of variables, or directly in building interesting solutions. Dominance rules have been extensively used over the last 50 years. Surprisingly, to our knowledge, no detailed description of them can be found in the literature other than a few short formal descriptions in the context of enumerative methods. We are therefore proposing an investigation into what dominance rules are. We first provide a definition of a dominance rule with its different nuances. Next, we analyze how dominance rules are generally formulated and what are the consequences of such formulations. Finally, we enumerate the common characteristics of dominance rules encountered in the literature and in the usual process of solving combinatorial optimization problems.

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

combinatorial optimization
dominance rules
constraints


In silico and experimental validation of proteinprotein interactions between PknI and Rv2159c from Mycobacterium tuberculosis PknI interacts with two novel proteins, Rv2159c and Rv0148. The three dimensional structure of Rv2159c was predicted. The in silico docking between PknI and Rv2159c was established well. The possible interacting residues were mutated and their structural stability were analyzed. PknI attracts the hydrophobic residues (AlaGlyTrp) for its interaction with Rv2159c.

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

proteinprotein interaction
homology modeling
protein docking
molecular dynamics
binding free energy


An Analytical Study of People Mobility in Opportunistic Networks An opportunistic network is a type of Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) tit which communication opportunities are intermittent Moreover, tit end-to-end path between the source and the destination may never have existed, disconnection and reconnection are common occurrences, and link performance is highly variable or extreme With numerous emerging opportunistic networking applications. strategies that can facilitate effective data communication in such challenging environments have become increasingly desirable In particular, knowing the Fundamental properties of opportunistic networks will soon be the key to the proper design of opportunistic routing schemes and applications In this study, we Investigate opportunistic network scenarios based on two public network traces, namely, the UCSD and Dartmouth traces Our contribution is twofold First, we Identify the censorship Issue in network traces that usually leads to a strongly skewed distribution of the measurements Based on this knowledge, we then apply the Kaplan-Meier Estimator to calculate the survivorship of network measurements The survivorship Feature IS used to design our proposed censorship removal algorithm (CRA) for recovering censored data Second, we perforin an in-depth analysis of the UCSD and Dartmouth network traces We show, that they exhibit strong self-similarity, and call be modeled as such We believe these newly revealed characteristics will be Important tit the Future development and evaluation of opportunistic 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 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

delay tolerant networks
survival analysis
kaplan-meier estimator
self-similarity


Multidimensional upwinding for incompressible flows based on characteristics In this paper, the multidimensional characteristic based upwind scheme (MCB) which has been recently introduced by the authors is applied to two another benchmark problems namely flow in a channel with a backward facing step and two-dimensional steady and unsteady flows past a circular cylinder. Extension of MCB scheme for calculating convective fluxes on non-Cartesian grids is presented here. For the flow over backward facing step, obtained results were compared against well-known experimental data and the results show high accuracy of MCB scheme and faster convergence rate with respect to conventional CB scheme. In the case of flow over circular cylinder, the flow at steady and transient regimes is investigated by MCB scheme. Again, the results obtained by MCB are compared to the other results in the literature and show good agreement with them. Also, rapid convergence rate of MCB was observed in this case too. It is concluded that, the genuinely multidimensional characteristic based (MCB) scheme, has been introduced earlier by the authors, is a robust and powerful scheme for modeling incompressible viscous flows for achieving the high accuracy and remarkable advantage in convergence rate with respect to conventional characteristic based schemes.

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

incompressible flow
artificial compressibility
navierstokes equations
wave angle


Interactive fuzzy programming for random fuzzy two-level programming problems through possibility-based fractile model This paper focuses on interactive decision making methods for random fuzzy two-level linear programming problems. Considering the probabilities that the decision makers objective function values are smaller than or equal to target variables, fuzzy goals of the decision makers are introduced. Using the fractile model to optimize the target variables under the condition that the degrees of possibility with respect to the attained probabilities are greater than or equal to certain permissible levels, the original random fuzzy two-level programming problems are reduced to deterministic ones. Interactive fuzzy nonlinear programming to obtain a satisfactory solution for the decision maker at the upper level in consideration of the cooperative relation between decision makers is presented. An illustrative numerical example demonstrates the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method.

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

two-level programming
random fuzzy programming
fractile criteria optimization
interactive programming


On the Equivalence Between Stein and De Bruijn Identities This paper focuses on illustrating 1) the equivalence between Stein's identity and De Bruijn's identity, and 2) two extensions of De Bruijn's identity. First, it is shown that Stein's identity is equivalent to De Bruijn's identity under additive noise channels with specific conditions. Second, for arbitrary but fixed input and noise distributions under additive noise channels, the first derivative of the differential entropy is expressed by a function of the posterior mean, and the second derivative of the differential entropy is expressed in terms of a function of Fisher information. Several applications over a number of fields, such as signal processing and information theory, are presented to support the usefulness of the developed results in this paper.

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

bayesian cramer-rao lower bound (bcrlb)
costa's epi
cramer-rao lower bound (crlb)
de bruijn's identity
entropy power inequality (epi)
fisher information inequality (fii)
stein's identity


Access control protocols with two-layer architecture for wireless networks In this paper we study two access control protocols which have similar two-layer access control architectures for wireless networks in public places. The first protocol, called the Lancaster protocol, employs user password for authentication and enforces access control at the IP layer; while the second protocol, referred to as the Stanford protocol, uses public key cryptosystems (PKC) for authentication and performs access control at the link layer. Although both protocols are intended to restrict access to wireless networks only to authorized users, our analysis shows that both protocols have serious security flaws which make them vulnerable to attacks. Then we propose a password-based protocol and a PKC-based protocol for the Lancaster architecture and the Stanford architecture, respectively. Both of our protocols provide mutual authentication, perfect forward secrecy and access control for wireless networks. Moreover, they also provide DoS resistance and identity confidentiality for the client. We present detailed security and performance analysis for our protocols, and show that both of our protocols are secure and efficient for access control in wireless networks.

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


On Effect of Compromised Nodes on Security of Wireless Sensor Network For secure communications in wireless sensor network in adversarial conditions, one way is providing keys to sensor nodes before deployment. Two sensor nodes can communicate provided they have at least one key in common or there is a path between the two nodes where each pair of neighboring nodes on this path has at least one key in common. However node compromise poses severe security threats in sensor networks. Here we have considered dual BIBD design for the distribution of the keys such that any pair of sensors has exactly one key in common. In this scenario we study the probability of disconnection when a number of nodes, not more than the replication number of the keys are compromised and the resulting status of the network in terms of its resiliency properties.

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

combinatorial design
connectivity
key pre-distribution
network security