Certifying polynomial time and linear/polynomial space for imperative programs In earlier work of Kristiansen and Niggl the polynomial-time computable functions were characterized by stack programs of mu-measure 0, and the linear-space computable functions by loop programs of mu-measure 0. Until recently, an open problem was how to extend these characterizations to programs with user-friendly basic instructions, such as assignment statements, and with mixed data structures. It is shown how to strengthen the above characterizations to imperative programs built from arbitrary basic instructions by sequencing and by if-then-else and for-do statements. These programs operate on variables, each of which may represent any data structure such as stacks, registers, trees, or graphs. The paper presents a new method of certifying "polynomial size boundedness" of such imperative programs under the natural assumption that the basic instructions used are polynomially size bounded, too. The certificate for a program P with variables among X-1,...,X-n will be an (n+1) x (n+1) matrix M(P) over the finite set {0, 1,infinity}. It is shown that certified string programs (i.e., stack programs, but with any polynomial-time computable basic instructions) exactly compute the functions in FPTIME. Accordingly, certified general loop programs (using any linear-space computable basic instructions) exactly compute the functions in FLINSPACE. Furthermore, it is shown that certified power string programs (i.e., string programs, but built from polynomial-space computable basic instructions and extended by power loop statements) exactly compute the polynomial-space computable functions in FPSPACE. In addition, examples of certified "natural" (implementations of) algorithms, such as insertion-sort or binary addition and multiplication, are given.

O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 space
polynomial space
static program analysis
property testing
implicit computational complexity
imperative programming languages


A Generalization of an Edge-Connectivity Theorem of Chartrand In 1966, Chartrand proved that if the minimum degree of a graph is at least the floor of half the number of nodes, then its edge-connectivity equals its minimum degree. A more discriminating notion of edge-connectivity is introduced, called the k-component order edge-connectivity, which is the minimum number of edges required to be removed so that the order of each component of the resulting subgraph is less than k. Results are established that guarantee that this parameter is at least as large as the minimum degree, provided the minimum degree is sufficiently large. This generalizes Chartrand's result. It is also determined when these results are best possible. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 54(2),82-89 2009

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

edge connectivity
k-component edge connectivity
k-component edge-failure set
k-component edge-failure state


plug-in scheduler design for a distributed grid environment This paper presents the approach chosen within the DIET (Distributed Interactive Engineering Toolbox) project a Grid-RPC environment to allow a resource broker to be tuned for specific application classes. Our design allows the use of generic or application dependent performance measures in a simple and seamless way.

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

performance prediction
grid computing
scheduling


Derived Metric Tensors for Flow Surface Visualization Integral flow surfaces constitute a widely used flow visualization tool due to their capability to convey important flow information such as fluid transport, mixing, and domain segmentation. Current flow surface rendering techniques limit their expressiveness, however, by focusing virtually exclusively on displacement visualization, visually neglecting the more complex notion of deformation such as shearing and stretching that is central to the field of continuum mechanics. To incorporate this information into the flow surface visualization and analysis process, we derive a metric tensor field that encodes local surface deformations as induced by the velocity gradient of the underlying flow field. We demonstrate how properties of the resulting metric tensor field are capable of enhancing present surface visualization and generation methods and develop novel surface querying, sampling, and visualization techniques. The provided results show how this step towards unifying classic flow visualization and more advanced concepts from continuum mechanics enables more detailed and improved flow analysis.

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

metric tensor
deformation
velocity gradient
continuum mechanics


CT-perfusion imaging of the human brain: Advanced deconvolution analysis using circulant singular value decomposition According to indicator dilution theory tissue timeconcentration curves have to be deconvolved with arterial input curves in order to get valid perfusion results. Our aim was to adapt and validate a deconvolution method originating from magnetic resonance techniques and apply it to the calculation of dynamic contrast enhanced computed tomography perfusion imaging. The application of a block-circulant matrix approach for singular value decomposition renders the analysis independent of tracer arrival time to improve the results.

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

computed tomography
perfusion
deconvolution
brain


system-level design automation tools for digital microfluidic biochips Biochips based on digital microfluidics offer a powerful platform for massively parallel biochemical analysis such as clinical diagnosis and DNA sequencing. Current full-custom design techniques for digital microfluidic biochips do not scale well for increasing levels of system integration. Analogous to classical VLSI synthesis, a top-down system-level design automation approach can shorten the biochip design cycle and reduce human effort. We present here an overview of a system-level design methodology that includes architectural synthesis and physical design. The proposed design automation approach is expected to relieve biochip users from the burden of manual optimization of bioassays, time-consuming hardware design, and costly testing and maintenance procedures.

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

biochip
microfluidics
synthesis
physical design


Asking the right question: Risk and expectation in multiagent contracting In this paper we are interested in the decision problem faced by an agent when requesting bids for collections of tasks with complex time constraints and interdependencies. In particular, we study the problem of specifying an appropriate schedule for the tasks in the request for bids. We expect bids to require resource commitments, so we expect different settings of time windows to solicit different bids and different costs. The agent is interested in soliciting "desirable" bids, where desirable means bids that can be feasibly combined in a low-cost combination that covers the entire collection of tasks. Since the request for bids has to be issued before the agent can see any bids, in this decision process there is a probability of loss as well as a probability of gain. This requires the decision process to deal with the risk posture of the person or organization on whose behalf the agent is acting. We describe a model based on Expected Utility Theory and show how an agent can attempt to maximize its profits while managing its financial risk exposure. We illustrate the operation and properties of the model and discuss what assumptions are required for its successful integration in multiagent contracting applications.

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

automated auctions
optimization
risk estimation


A formal ontology of artefacts This article presents a formal ontology which accounts for the general nature of artefacts. The objective is to help structure application ontologies in areas where specific artefacts are present - in other words, virtually any area of activity. The conceptualization relies on recent philosophical and psychological research on artefacts, having resulted in a largely consensual theoretical basis. Furthermore, this ontology of artefacts extends the foundational DOLCE ontology and supplements its axiomatization. The conceptual primitives are as follows: artificial entity, intentional production of entities, (state of) capacity, capacity to play a role in actions of a given type, function and functional object. These primitives enable artefacts in general to be characterized as intentionally and successfully produced entities, and isolate an important subclass of "technical" artefacts to which a function is ascribed. Lastly, we emphasize the novelty of this ontology by comparing it with other works with similar objectives.

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

ontology of artefacts
formal ontology
technical artefacts
function


Dependability analysis in the Ambient Assisted Living Domain: An exploratory case study Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) investigates the development of systems involving the use of different types of sensors, which monitor activities and vital signs of lonely elderly people in order to detect emergency situations or deviations from desirable medical patterns. Instead of requiring the elderly person to manually push a button to request assistance, state-of-the-art AAL solutions automate the process by 'perceiving' lonely elderly people in their home environment through various sensors and performing appropriate actions under the control of the underlying software. Dependability in the AAL domain is a critical requirement, since poor system availability, reliability, safety, or integrity may cause inappropriate emergency assistance to potentially have fatal consequences. Nevertheless, contemporary research has not focused on assessing dependability in this domain. This work attempts to fill this gap presenting an approach which relies on modern quantitative and qualitative dependability analysis techniques based on software architecture. The analysis method presented in this paper consists of conversion patterns from Unified Modeling Language (UML) behavior models of the AAL software architecture into a formal executable specification, based on a probabilistic process algebra description language, which enables a sound quantitative and qualitative analysis. The UML models specify system component interactions and are annotated with component failure probabilities and system usage profile information. The resulting formal specification is executed on PRISM, a model checking tool adequate for the purpose of our analysis in order to identify a set of domain-specific dependability properties expressed declaratively in Probabilistic Computational Tree Logic (PCTL). The benefits of using these techniques are twofold. Firstly, they allow us to seamlessly integrate the analysis during subsequent software lifecycle stages in critical scenarios. Secondly, we identify the components which have the highest impact on software system dependability, and therefore, be able to address software architecture and individual software component problems prior to implementation and the occurrence of critical errors. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

ambient assisted living
dependability analysis


A customized m-Health system for improving Tuberculosis treatment adherence and follow-up in south India Tuberculosis is a major public health problem in India with more than 2 million new cases every year. With the growing crisis of inadequate healthcare workforce, monitoring of drug treatment for Tuberculosis is an arduous task. mHealth services (healthcare using mobile communication technologies) are gaining support as an effective tool to handle the situation, especially where technological and human resources are limited. This paper illustrates the delivery of a mHealth service with insights into the feasibility and applicability of deploying a voice call based reminder system for drug adherence in a resource limited setting.

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


Analytic Methods for the Logic of Proofs The logic of proofs (lp) was proposed as Gdels missed link between Intuitionistic and S4-proofs, but so far the tableau-based methods proposed for lp have not explored this closeness with S4 and contain rules whose analycity is not immediately evident. We study possible formulations of analytic tableau proof methods for lp that preserve the subformula property. Two sound and complete tableau decision methods of increasing degree of analycity are proposed, KELP and preKELP. The latter is particularly inspired on S4-proofs. The crucial role of proof constants in the structure of lp-proofs methods is analysed. In particular, a method for the abduction of proof constant specifications in strongly analytic preKELP proofs is presented; abduction heuristics and the complexity of the method are discussed.

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


A neural network-based diagnostic method for solitary pulmonary nodules Several computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) methods for solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs) have been proposed, which can be divided into two major categories: (1) the morphometric CT method, depending on high-resolution morphometric characteristics from single CT scan and (2) the perfusion CT method, depending on properties of the post-contrast enhancement dynamics obtained from repeated CT scans at predefined time points. The goal of this work is to introduce a neural network-based CAD method of lung nodule diagnosis by combining morphometry and perfusion characteristics by perfusion CT. Compared with previous methods, the proposed approach has the following distinctive features. Firstly, this work develops a very efficient semi-automatic procedure to segment entire nodules. Secondly, reliable nodule classification can be achieved by using only two time-point perfusion CT feature measures (precontrast and 90s). This greatly reduces the amount of radiation exposure to patients and the data processing time. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is compared with those of several previously developed CAD methods.

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

computer-aided diagnosis
contrast enhancement
lung cancer
solitary pulmonary nodule
neural network


An integrated framework for risk profiling of breast cancer patients following surgery An integrated decision support framework is proposed for clinical oncologists making prognostic assessments of patients with operable breast cancer. The framework may be delivered over a web interface. It comprises a triangulation of prognostic modelling, visualisation of historical patient data and an explanatory facility to interpret risk group assignments using empirically derived Boolean rules expressed directly in clinical terms. The prognostic inferences in the interface are validated in a multicentre longitudinal cohort study by modelling retrospective data from 917 patients recruited at Christie Hospital, Wilmslow between 1983 and 1989 and predicting for 931 patients recruited in the same centre during 19901993. There were also 291 patients recruited between 1984 and 1998 at the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology and the Linda McCartney Centre, Liverpool, UK. There are three novel contributions relating this paper to breast cancer cases. First, the widely used Nottingham prognostic index (NPI) is enhanced with additional clinical features from which prognostic assessments can be made more specific for patients in need of adjuvant treatment. This is shown with a cross matching of the NPI and a new prognostic index which also provides a two-dimensional visualisation of the complete patient database by risk of negative outcome. Second, a principled rule-extraction method, orthogonal search rule extraction, generates readily interpretable explanations of risk group allocations derived from a partial logistic artificial neural network with automatic relevance determination (PLANNARD). Third, 95% confidence intervals for individual predictions of survival are obtained by Monte Carlo sampling from the PLANNARD model.

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

survival analysis
artificial neural networks


Probabilistic white matter fiber tracking using particle filtering and von Mises-Fisher sampling Standard particle filtering technique have previously been applied to the problem of fiber tracking by Brun et al. [Brun, A., Bjornemo, M., Kikinis, R., Westin, C.F., 2002. White matter tractography using sequential importance sampling. In: Proceedings of the ISMRM Annual Meeting, p. 1131] and Bjornemo et al. [Bjornemo, M., Brun, A., Kikinis, R., Westin, C.F., 2002. Regularized stochastic white matter tractography using diffusion tensor MRI, In: Proc. MICCAI, pp. 435-442]. However, these previous attempts have not utilised the full power of the technique, and as a result the fiber paths were tracked in a goal directed way. In this paper, we provide an advanced technique by presenting a fast and novel probabilistic method for white matter fiber tracking in diffusion weighted MRI (DWI), which takes advantage of the weighting and resampling mechanism of particle filtering. We formulate fiber tracking using a non-linear state space model which captures both smoothness regularity of the fibers and the uncertainties in the local fiber orientations due to noise and partial volume effects. Global fiber tracking is then posed as a problem of particle filtering. To model the posterior distribution, we classify voxels of the white matter as either prolate or oblate tensors. We then construct the orientation distributions for prolate and oblate tensors separately. Finally, the importance density function for particle filtering is modeled using the von Mises-Fisher distribution on a unit sphere. Fast and efficient sampling is achieved using Ulrich-Wood's simulation algorithm. Given a seed point, the method is able to rapidly locate the globally optimal fiber and also provides a probability map for potential connections. The proposed method is validated and compared to alternative methods both on synthetic data and real-world brain MRI datasets. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

diffusion tensor mri
tractography
particle filtering

probabilistic fiber tracking
von mises-fisher sampling


On optimal (v, 5, 2, 1) optical orthogonal codes The size of a (v, 5, 2, 1) optical orthogonal code (OOC) is shown to be at most equal to when v a parts per thousand 11 (mod 132) or v a parts per thousand 154 (mod 924), and at most equal to in all the other cases. Thus a (v, 5, 2, 1)-OOC is naturally said to be optimal when its size reaches the above bound. Many direct and recursive constructions for infinite classes of optimal (v, 5, 2, 1)-OOCs are presented giving, in particular, a very strong indication about the existence of an optimal (p, 5, 2, 1)-OOC for every prime p a parts per thousand 1 (mod 12).

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

optimal optical orthogonal code
difference family
difference matrix


General skew constrained clock network sizing based on sequential linear programming In this paper, we investigate the problem of clock network sizing subject to general skew constraints. A novel approach based on sequential linear programming is presented. The original nonlinear programming problem is transformed into a sequence of linear programs by taking the first-order Taylor's expansion of clock path delay with respect to buffer and/or wire widths. For each linear program, the sensitivities of clock path delay, with respect to buffer and/or wire widths, are efficiently updated by applying time-domain analysis to the clock network in a divide-and-conquer fashion. Our technique can take into account power supply and process variations. We demonstrate experimentally that the proposed technique is not only capable of optimizing effectively the skew and area of clock network, but also of providing more accurate delay and skew results compared to the traditional approaches.

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


Learning to predict opinion share and detect anti-majority opinionists in social networks We address the problem of detecting anti-majority opinionists using the value-weighted mixture voter (VwMV) model. This problem is motivated by the fact that 1) each opinion has its own value and an opinion with a higher value propagates more easily/rapidly and 2) there are always people who have a tendency to disagree with any opinion expressed by the majority. We extend the basic voter model to include these two factors with the value of each opinion and the anti-majoritarian tendency of each node as new parameters, and learn these parameters from a sequence of observed opinion data over a social network. We experimentally show that it is possible to learn the opinion values correctly using a short observed opinion propagation data and to predict the opinion share in the near future correctly even in the presence of anti-majoritarians, and also show that it is possible to learn the anti-majoritarian tendency of each node if longer observation data is available. Indeed, the learned model can predict the future opinion share much more accurately than a simple polynomial extrapolation can do. Ignoring these two factors substantially degrade the performance of share prediction. We also show theoretically that, in a situation where the local opinion share can be approximated by the average opinion share, 1) when there are no anti-majoritarians, the opinion with the highest value eventually takes over, but 2) when there are a certain fraction of anti-majoritarians, it is not necessarily the case that the opinion with the highest value prevails and wins, and further, 3) in both cases, when the opinion values are uniform, the opinion share prediction problem becomes ill-defined and any opinion can win. The simulation results support that this holds for typical real world social networks. These theoretical results help understand the long term behavior of opinion propagation.

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


Minimizing dispersive errors in smoothed particle magnetohydrodynamics for strongly magnetized medium In this study, we investigate the dispersive properties of smoothed particle magnetohydrodynamics (SPM) in a strongly magnetized medium by using linear analysis. In modern SPM, a correction term proportional to the divergence of the magnetic fields is subtracted from the equation of motion to avoid a numerical instability arising in a strongly magnetized medium. From the linear analysis, it is found that SPM with the correction term suffer from significant dispersive errors, especially for slow waves propagating along magnetic fields. The phase velocity for all wave numbers is significantly larger than the exact solution and has a peak at a finite wavenumber. These excessively large dispersive errors occur because magnetic fields contribute an unphysical repulsive force along magnetic fields. The dispersive errors cannot be reduced, even with a larger smoothing length and smoother kernel functions such as the Gaussian or quintic spline kernels. We perform the linear analysis for this problem and find that the dispersive errors can be removed completely while keeping SPM stable if the correction term is reduced by half. These findings are confirmed by several simple numerical experiments.

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

smoothed particle magnetohydrodynamics (spm)


filtering with raster signatures Efficient evaluation of spatial queries is an important issue in spatial database. Among spatial operations, spatial join is very useful, intersection being the most common predicate. However, the exact intersection test of two spatial objects is the most time-consuming and I/O-consuming step in processing spatial joins. On the other hand, the use of approximations can reduce the need for examining the exact geometry of spatial objects in order to find the intersecting ones. This work proposes a new raster approximation (Three-Color Raster Signature - 3CRS) for representing different data types (polygons, polylines and points), and to be used as filter in the second step of the Multi-Step Query Processor. We have also executed experimental tests over real datasets, the results having demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach.

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

three-colors raster signature
multi-step query processor
four-colors raster signature
spatial databases
gis


Evaluating a Tool for Improving Accessibility to Charts and Graphs This article reports a case study of the iterative design and evaluation of a natural language-driven assistive technology, iGraph-LITE, providing people who are blind access to line graphs. Two laboratory-based usability studies involving blind and sighted people are presented with a discussion of the ensuing implementation of changes. Blind participants were found to adopt different graph interrogation strategies than sighted participants. A small field study is then reported in which a blind user who works with graphs took part to determine the degree to which the iGraph-LITE commands would meet the needs of blind graph experts. The final study invited sighted graph experts and novices to visually inspect and explain a set of line graphs comparable to those used in the usability studies. It aimed to highlight the concepts and the range of words sighted people use, to ascertain the appropriateness of the iGraph-LITE lexicon. A set of preliminary guidelines is presented.

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

accessibility (blind and visually impaired)


Current Knowledge of Rickettsial Diseases in Italy Rickettsial diseases continue to be the cause of serious health problems in Italy. From 1998 to 2002, 4,604 clinical cases were reported, with 33 deaths in the period from 1998 to 2001. Almost all the cases reported in Italy are cases of Mediterranean spotted fever (MSF). Other rickettsioses that have been historically documented are murine typhus and epidemic typhus. Since 1950, only sporadic cases of murine typhus have been reported, and Italy currently appears to be free of epidemic typhus. As in other European countries, imported cases of rickettsialpox, African tick-bite fever (ATBF), and scrub typhus have been reported. In 2004, three cases of a mild form of rickettsiosis were serologically attributed to Rickettsia helvetica

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

rickettsial diseases
mediterranean spotted fever
murine typhus
epidemic typhus
italy

spotted fever group rickettsiosis
spotted fever group rickettsiae
rickettsia conorii


Automatic tiling of iterative stencil loops Iterative stencil loops are used in scientific programs to implement relaxation methods for numerical simulation and signal processing. Such loops iteratively modify the same array elements over different time steps, which presents opportunities for the compiler to improve the temporal data locality through loop tiling. This article presents a compiler framework for automatic tiling of iterative stencil loops, with the objective of improving the cache performance. The article first presents a technique which allows loop tiling to satisfy data dependences in spite of the difficulty created by imperfectly nested inner loops. It does so by skewing the inner loops over the time steps and by applying a uniform skew factor to all loops at the same nesting level. Based on a memory cost analysis, the article shows that the skew factor must be minimized at every loop level in order to minimize cache misses. A graph-theoretical algorithm, which takes polynomial time, is presented to determine the minimum skew factor. Furthermore, the memory-cost analysis derives the tile size which minimizes capacity misses. Given the tile size, an efficient and general array-padding scheme is applied to remove conflict misses. Experiments were conducted on 16 test programs and preliminary results showed an average speedup of 1.58 and a maximum speedup of 5.06 across those test 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

languages
caches
loop transformations
optimizing compilers


Experimental evaluation of user performance on two-dimensional and three-dimensional perspective displays in discrete-event simulation Using 3D animation enhances better performance in model validation than using 2D graphics. Small improvement in the display leads to significantly better performance in model verification. Using a 3D perspective view improves understanding of model behavior than the 2D display. The 3D perspective display facilitates interaction between the modeler and the client. 3D display has major effect on generation of ideas on the system and successful simulation projects.

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

discrete event simulation
visual display
two-dimensional display
three-dimensional perspective


Valuable words: The price dynamics of internet domain names This article estimates the first constant quality price index for Internet domain names. The suggested index provides a benchmark for domain name traders and investors looking for information on price trends, historical returns, and the fundamental risk of Internet domain names. The index increases transparency in the market for this newly emerged asset class. A cointegration analysis shows that domain registrations and resale prices form a long-run equilibrium and indicates supply constraints in domain space. This study explores a large data set of domain sales spanning the years 2006 to 2013. Differences in the quality of individual domain names are controlled for in hedonic repeat sales regressions.

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


The network is the database: Data management for highly distributed systems This paper describes the methodology and implementation of a data management system for highly distributed systems, which was built to solve the scalability and reliability problems faced in a wide area postal logistics application developed at Siemens. The core of the approach is to borrow from Internet routing protocols, and their proven scalability and robustness, to build a network-embedded dynamic database index, and to augment schema definition to optimize the use of this index. The system was developed with an eye toward future applications in the area of sensor 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 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 I

wide-area data management
distributed data management


A no-reference sharpness metric based on the notion of relative blur for Gaussian blurred image The notion of relative blur that corresponds well with HVS perception is proposed. A granularity analysis is put forward for determining the scale fineness. Modifications are introduced to a traditional edge width metric for robustness.

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

sharpness metric
relative blur
granularity

blur metric
image quality assessment
object scale
edge profile truncating
perceptual blurr


Adaptive control and constrained control allocation for overactuated ocean surface vessels In this article, the constrained control allocation is proposed for overactuated ocean surface vessels with parametric uncertainties and unknown external disturbances. The constrained control allocation is transformed into a convex quadratic programming problem and a recurrent neural network is employed to solve it. To complete the control allocation, the control command is derived via the backstepping method. Adaptive tracking control is proposed for the full-state feedback case using the backstepping technique and the Lyapunov synthesis. It is proved that the proposed adaptive tracking control is able to guarantee semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop system. Then, the obtained control command is distributed to each actuator of overactuated ocean vessels. Finally, simulation studies are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive tracking control and the constrained control allocation scheme.

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

overactuated ocean surface vessels
constrained control allocation
adaptive tracking control


Grouping of Persistent Scatterers in high-resolution SAR data of urban scenes Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a technique to simultaneously estimate surface deformation and 3D structure from stacks of SAR images. It was proposed first about one decade ago to monitor preferably urban areas, where in general the highest numbers of PS are found. At that time no high-resolution satellite SAR data were available. Instead, for example, stacks of ERS imagery were used providing ground range resolution of about 25m. In data of such kind only the strongest PS can be detected, which are usually caused by corner reflectors built by orthogonal building and road planes of considerable size, whereas smaller structures causing weaker ones signal are averaged by clutter or mutually interfere with others in the same resolution cell. Thus, if any, only a few or even just one single PS are found per building. The advent of a new senor generation of systems like TerraSAR-X and COSMO-Skymed in 2007 led to a significant improvement of spatial resolution of about one order of magnitude. This comes along with a dramatic rise of PS density: In some cases tens to hundreds are detected at large buildings, which offers the possibility to monitor even individual urban objects. In addition, especially at building faades the distribution of those PS is often quite regular. A reason for that is the usually rectilinear arrangement of faade structures inducing PS like windows or balconies. Those patterns contain a lot of information about the objects under investigation, which is mostly ignored in current PSI processing schemes. For example, consider a regular structure of windows on a certain faade of a multi-story building. Assuming the same kind of structure generates one single PS at each window, the phase centers of all scatterers caused by windows of each floor share the same height. This means, we may benefit from such kind of redundancy, for instance, to improve the height estimate by averaging over PS having the same elevation. In this work, we first discuss the regular appearance of PS at urban faades for an urban test scene in TerraSAR-X spotlight mode data. Then, we show how PS analysis could benefit by exploitation of the redundancy due to repetitive patterns of man-made objects. Finally, we propose a PS grouping scheme based on a production system and discuss first results achieved for the test area.

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

sar
persistent scatterer interferometry
urban
grouping


Large-scale seismic signal analysis with Hadoop A global dataset of over 300 million waveforms has been cross correlated. The algorithms have been adapted to run as MapReduce jobs on a Hadoop cluster. Increased parallelism was required to make best use of mappers. IO was significantly increased but had little impact on performance. A factor of 19 speedup was achieved relative to initial implementation.

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 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


L-fuzzy closure systems This paper studies the generalization of fuzzy closure operators and fuzzy closure systems, introduced by Belohlavek in 2001, and introduces the concepts of strong L-fuzzy closure systems and strong L-fuzzy closure operators. It is shown that a strong L-fuzzy closure system is precisely the fuzzy system in opposition to the crisp system, and a strong L-fuzzy closure operator is a suitable closure operator that has a close relation to a strong L-fuzzy closure system. It is also shown that there is a Galois correspondence between the category of (strong) L-fuzzy closure system spaces and that of (strong) L-fuzzy closure spaces. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

closure system
closure operator
galois correspondence

non-classical logics
complete residuated lattice


A study of depth/texture bit-rate allocation in multi-view video plus depth compression Multi-view video plus depth (MVD) data offer a reliable representation of three-dimensional (3D) scenes for 3D video applications. This is a huge amount of data whose compression is an important challenge for researchers at the current time. Consisting of texture and depth video sequences, the question of the relationship between these two types of data regarding bit-rate allocation often raises. This paper questions the required ratio between texture and depth when encoding MVD data. In particular, the paper investigates the elements impacting on the best bit-rate ratio between depth and color: total bit-rate budget, input data features, encoding strategy, and assessed view.

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

multi-view video coding
bit-rate
hevc
h.264
psnr
view synthesis


Archival science in Spain between 1975 and 2005: a review We will analyse the evolution of Spanish Archivistics, as a joint study of records management and archives administration, in a period of thirty years as the title indicates. Continuity can be traced by means of professional and academic bibliography. Due to the growing number of professionals, associations and publications, archivistics techniques and principles generalisation, standardisation, new technologies, archivistics in the University, and University research on archivistics matters we can verify a considerable advance in theory. The result is a proliferation of archivistics handbooks, and of publications that show the development of specialised archivistics, the mechanisation of archivistic operations, and the concern about basic matters such as documental selection, studies on documental typologies, the diverse models of archival classification with an application of organic-functional criteria, an application of ISAD(G) to documental description, the legal problems of access to documents and the conservation of heritage, and the newest of the electronic documents. To sum up, there is a strong advance in archivistics theory and practice among archivistics professionals, although the existence of a specific academic degree is still pending.

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

bibliography archives
spanish archives
history of archives and archivistics


A deep HMM model for multiple keywords spotting in handwritten documents In this paper, we propose a query by string word spotting system able to extract arbitrary keywords in handwritten documents, taking both segmentation and recognition decisions at the line level. The system relies on the combination of a HMM line model made of keyword and non-keyword (filler) models, with a deep neural network that estimates the state-dependent observation probabilities. Experiments are carried out on RIMES database, an unconstrained handwritten document database that is used for benchmarking different handwriting recognition tasks. The obtained results show the superiority of the proposed framework over the classical GMMHMM and standard HMM hybrid architectures.

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

handwriting recognition
deep neural network

keyword spotting
hidden markov models
hybrid deep architecture
dnn hmm


limits of parallel marking garbage collection More and more, parallel multicore systems will be used even in low-end devices such as embedded controllers that require realtime guarantees. When garbage collection is used in these systems, parallel or concurrent garbage collection brings important performance advantages. In the context of realtime systems, it has to be shown that a parallel garbage collector implementation not only performs well in most cases, but guarantees on its performance in the worst case are required. This paper analyses the difficulties a parallel mark-and-sweep garbage collector faces during a parallel mark phase. The performance of such a garbage collector degrades when only some of the available processors can perform scanning work in the mark phase. Whenever the grey set contains fewer elements than the number of available processors, some processors may be stalled waiting for new objects to be added to the grey set. This paper gives an upper bound for the number of stalls that may occur as a function of simple properties of the memory graph. This upper bound is then determined for the Java applications that are part of the SPECjvm98 benchmark suite and the theoretical worst-case scalability of a parallel mark phase is analysed. The presented approach is then applied to a Java virtual machine that has uniform mark steps, which at first results in poor worst-case scalability. A small change in the implementation is then proposed and analysed to achieve good scalability even in the worst case.

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

applications
realtime
concurrent
scalability
benchmark
performance
multicore
context
case
virtual machine
paper
change
java
systems
implementation
graph
parallel
garbage collection

collect object scan control processor device functional memorialized embedding


Accuracy of intelligent medical systems Intelligent medical systems are a special kind of medical software in general, and just as any medical software system they should make accurate presumptions. However, accuracy of intelligent medical systems is highly dependent on various factors such as: choosing an appropriate basic method (i.e. decision trees, neural networks), induction method (i.e. purity measures) and appropriate support methods (i.e. discretization, pruning, boosting). In this paper we present the results of extensive research of the above alternatives on 54 UCI databases and their influence on the accuracy of decision trees, which constitute one of the most desirable forms of intelligent medical systems. We also introduce new hybrid purity measures that on some databases outperform other purity measures. The results presented here show that the selection of the right purity measure with the proper discretization method and application of the boosting method can really make a difference in terms of higher accuracy of induced decision trees. Thereafter choosing the appropriate factors that can increase the accuracy of the induced decision tree is a very demanding and time-consuming task. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

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


design and evaluation of a compiler for embedded stream programs Applications that combine live data streams with embedded, parallel, and distributed processing are becoming more commonplace. WaveScript is a domain-specific language that brings high-level, type-safe, garbage-collected programming to these domains. This is made possible by three primary implementation techniques, each of which leverages characteristics of the streaming domain. First, we employ a novel evaluation strategy that uses a combination of interpretation and reification to partially evaluate programs into stream dataflow graphs. Second, we use profile-driven compilation to enable many optimizations that are normally only available in the synchronous (rather than asynchronous) dataflow domain. Finally, we incorporate an extensible system for rewrite rules to capture algebraic properties in specific domains (such as signal processing). We have used our language to build and deploy a sensornetwork for the acoustic localization of wild animals, in particular, the Yellow-Bellied marmot. We evaluate WaveScript's performance on this application, showing that it yields good performance on both embedded and desktop-class machines, including distributed execution and substantial parallel speedups. Our language allowed us to implement the application rapidly, while outperforming a previous C implementation by over 35\%, using fewer than half the lines of code. We evaluate the contribution of our optimizations to this success.

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

applications
streams
use
performance
design
domain
evaluation
rewrite
live
parallel
interpretation
code
language
implementation
compilation
distributed
dataflow
signal processing
rules

sensor networks
speedup
data streaming
synchronization
extensibility
stream processing language
combinational
locality
domain-specific language
program
strategies
systems
optimality
asynchronicity
process
stream programing
graph
animation
profiles
embedding
class


Task allocation for maximizing reliability of distributed systems: A simulated annealing approach This paper addresses the problem of task allocation in heterogeneous distributed systems with the goal of maximizing the system reliability. It first develops an allocation model for reliability based on a cost function representing the unreliability caused by the execution of tasks on the system processors and the unreliability caused by the interprocessor communication time subject to constraints imposed by both the application and the system resources. It then presents a heuristic algorithm derived from the well-known simulated annealing (SA) technique to quickly solve the mentioned problem. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through experimental studies on a large number of randomly generated instances. Indeed, the quality of solutions are compared with those derived by using the branch-and-bound (1313) technique. (C) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

task allocation
distributed systems
reliability
simulated annealing


Privacy in Non-private Environments We study private computations in information-theoretical settings on networks that are not 2-connected. Non-2-connected networks are "non-private" in the sense that most functions cannot privately be computed on them. We relax the notion of privacy by introducing lossy private protocols, which generalize private protocols. We measure the information each player gains during the computation. Good protocols should minimize the amount of information they lose to the players. Throughout this work, privacy always means 1-privacy, i.e. players are not allowed to share their knowledge. Furthermore, the players are honest but curious, thus they never deviate from the given protocol. The randomness used by the protocol yields distributions on communication strings for each player and for each input. We define the loss of a protocol to a player as the logarithm of the number of different probability distributions the player can observe. This is justified since we prove that in optimal protocols, the distributions have pairwise disjoint support. Thus, the players can easily distinguish them, and the logarithm of their number is the number of bits the player learns. The simplest non-2-connected networks consists of two blocks that share one bridge node. We prove that on such networks, communication complexity and the loss of a private protocol are closely related: Up to constant factors, they are the same. Then we study one-phase protocols, an analogue of one-round communication protocols. In such a protocol each bridge node may communicate with each block only once. We investigate in which order a bridge node should communicate with the blocks to minimize the loss of information. In particular, for symmetric functions it is optimal to sort the components by increasing size. Then we design a one-phase protocol that for symmetric functions simultaneously minimizes the loss at all nodes where the minimum is taken over all one-phase protocols. Finally, we prove a phase hierarchy. For any k there is a function such that every (k-1)-phase protocol for this function has an information loss that is exponentially greater than that of the best k-phase protocol.

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

private computation
secure multi-party computation
secure function evaluation
graph connectivity


Articulatory-to-acoustic mapping for inverse problem Mutual dependence of articulatory parameters allows the reducing of codebook volume and helps to improve conditions for global optimum search, The initial approximations of articulatory vectors for the inverse problem solving are sampled along the trajectories of articulatory parameters in synthesized syllables. Piece-wise linear mapping of the space of articulatory parameters onto the space of acoustic parameters, the minimal value of cross-sectional area of the vocal tract and the Reynolds number accelerate the process of optimization over 100 times.

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

inverse problem
codebook
global optimum
mapping


Sensitivity analysis of the combined travel demand model with applications The conventional sequential four-step procedure of travel demand forecasting has been widely adopted by practitioners. However, it suffers from inconsistent consideration of travel times and congestion effects in various steps of the procedure. A combined travel demand model overcomes the problems associated with the sequential four-step procedure by integrating travel-destination-mode-route choice together. In this paper, a standard sensitivity analysis for non-linear programming is employed for conducting the sensitivity analysis of the combined travel demand model. Explicit expressions of the derivatives of model variables with respect to perturbations of input variables and parameters of the combined travel demand model are developed. These derivatives could be used to assess changes in solution variables and various system performance measures when the network characteristics are changed slightly. To gain insight into the usefulness of the sensitivity expressions, five applications, such as identification of critical parameters, paradox analysis, access control, destination choice, and error and uncertainty analysis, are presented with numerical results.

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

travel demand model
sensitivity analysis

four-step travel demand model
combined travel demand model
traffic equilibrium
non-linear program


Operations planning with real time pricing of a primary input We examine the problem of planning the operation of an air separation plant where the price of its primary production input, electricity, changes hour to hour, a situation commonly referred to as real time pricing (RTP). We present a solution approach where operating decisions are obtained from optimizing a mixed integer program embedded in a rolling horizon procedure. A simulation study is conducted to assess the effect of unreliable and finite information on the efficiency of the operations plans generated by the procedure. Results of the study suggest that the rolling horizon procedure generates robust plans. An additional simulation study is conducted to identify the conditions under which RTP is attractive vis-a-vis other selected electricity pricing schemes. Results of the study indicate that RTP is most appealing when there is substantial flexibility in the operating environment in terms of the load placed on the plant (customer demand) and with regard to ramp-up (akin to set-up) times. Although this appeal diminishes with increased loads and longer ramp-ups, it is nevertheless the case that the operational inflexibility must be significant before RTP loses its allure. Scope and purpose: This paper considers the plant operation problem faced by firms in the industrial gas industry with production facilities where the price of the primary production input, that is electricity, changes hour to hour, which is often referred to as real time pricing. The purpose of this work is to present an optimization based planning approach that rigorously takes into account the realities of this environment. In addition this work seeks to identify, through the use of simulation, the conditions under which real time pricing is most appealing vis-a-vis other electricity pricing schemes, and also the degree to which planning horizon length and uncertainty in electricity prices impact the efficiency of the operations plans generated by our planning approach.

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

mixed integer programming
production planning


An application of a real-time scheduling system for turbulent manufacturing environments Classical scheduling approaches are not effective in real plants since they assume highly unrealistic assumptions that are seldom found in practice. These assumptions mainly deal with the consideration of the manufacturing environment as static. But in most real manufacturing installations some unexpected events take place. Ignoring these events may lead to schedules of unacceptable performance. Moreover, a quick reaction to changes is necessary, taking into account the significant amount of indirect costs involved in the derived interruptions. Reactivity and flexibility have to become key requirements at high control levels since they can contribute to shorten throughput times, improve equipment utilisation rates and service to customers. There is a need to extend classical scheduling models, so that they are able to better represent the factory. Genetic algorithms stand for one of the most promising alternative techniques to the classical ones. They show non-linearity, domain independence, robustness and flexibility. In this article, an evolutionary genetic algorithm has been used for sequencing job-shop problems in a real-time environment. Untoward events such as lack of materials or tools, change in production orders or unavailability of machines have been represented in the model and a solution using genetic algorithms has been designed and implemented. In the context of a European project belonging to the Competitive and Sustainable Growth programme, a prototype of a dynamic scheduler using genetic algorithms is described and some conclusions are drawn regarding the feasibility and quality of the solution.

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

real-time production scheduling
genetic and evolutionary algorithms


Simplified spiking neural network architecture and STDP learning algorithm applied to image classification Spiking neural networks (SNN) have gained popularity in embedded applications such as robotics and computer vision. The main advantages of SNN are the temporal plasticity, ease of use in neural interface circuits and reduced computation complexity. SNN have been successfully used for image classification. They provide a model for the mammalian visual cortex, image segmentation and pattern recognition. Different spiking neuron mathematical models exist, but their computational complexity makes them ill-suited for hardware implementation. In this paper, a novel, simplified and computationally efficient model of spike response model (SRM) neuron with spike-time dependent plasticity (STDP) learning is presented. Frequency spike coding based on receptive fields is used for data representation; images are encoded by the network and processed in a similar manner as the primary layers in visual cortex. The network output can be used as a primary feature extractor for further refined recognition or as a simple object classifier. Results show that the model can successfully learn and classify black and white images with added noise or partially obscured samples with up to 20 computing speed-up at an equivalent classification ratio when compared to classic SRM neuron membrane models. The proposed solution combines spike encoding, network topology, neuron membrane model and STDP learning.

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

spiking neural networks - snn
visual receptive fields
embedded system
artificial neuron


The Operational Meaning of Min- and Max-Entropy In this paper, we show that the conditional min-entropy H(min) (A|B) of a bipartite state rho AB is directly related to the maximum achievable overlap with a maximally entangled state if only local actions on the B-part of rho AB are allowed. In the special case where A is classical, this overlap corresponds to the probability of guessing A given B. In a similar vein, we connect the conditional max-entropy H(max) (A|B) to the maximum fidelity of rho AB with a product state that is completely mixed on A. In the case where A is classical, this corresponds to the security of A when used as a secret key in the presence of an adversary holding B. Because min- and max-entropies are known to characterize information-processing tasks such as randomness extraction and state merging, our results establish a direct connection between these tasks and basic operational problems. For example, they imply that the (logarithm of the) probability of guessing A given B is a lower bound on the number of uniform secret bits that can be extracted from A relative to an adversary holding B.

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

entropy measures
max-entropy
min-entropy
operational interpretations
quantum information theory
quantum hypothesis testing
singlet fraction
single-shot information theory


Korean large vocabulary continuous speech recognition with morpheme-based recognition units In Korean writing, a space is placed between two adjacent word-phrases, each of which generally corresponds to two or three words in English in a semantic sense. If the word-phrase is used as a recognition unit for Korean large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR), the out-of-vocabulary (OOV) rate becomes very large. If a morpheme or a syllable is used instead, a severe inter-morpheme coarticulation problem arises due to short morphemes. We propose to use a merged morpheme as the recognition unit and pronunciation-dependent entries in a language model (LM) so that we can reduce such difficulties and incorporate the between-word phonology rule into the decoding algorithm of a Korean LVCSR system. Starting from the original morpheme units defined in the Korean morphology, we merge pairs of short and frequent morphemes into larger units by using a rule-based method and a statistical method. We define the merged morpheme unit as word and use it as the recognition unit. The performance of the system was evaluated in two business-related tasks: a read speech recognition task and a broadcast news transcription task. The OOV rate was reduced to a level comparable to that of American English in both tasks. In the read speech recognition task, with a 32k vocabulary and a word-based trigram LM computed from a newspaper text corpus, the word error rate (WER) of the baseline system was reduced from 25.0% to 20.0% by cross-word modeling and pronunciation-dependent language modeling, and finally to 15.5% by increasing speech database and text corpora. For the broadcast news transcription task, we showed that the statistical method relatively reduced the WER of the baseline system without morpheme merging by 3.4% and both of the proposed methods yielded similar performance. Applying all the proposed techniques, we achieved 17.6% WER for clean speech and 27.7% for noisy speech.

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

korean large vocabulary continuous speech recognition


Dynamic yard crane dispatching in container terminals with predicted vehicle arrival information The performance of a container terminal depends on many aspects of operations. This paper focuses on the optimal sequencing of a yard crane (or YC for short) for serving a fleet of vehicles for delivery and pickup jobs. The objective is to minimize the average vehicle waiting time. While heuristic algorithms could not guarantee an optimal solution, a conventional mathematical formulation such as mixed integer program would require too much computing time. We present two new algorithms to efficiently compute YC dispatching sequences that are provably optimal within the planning window. The first algorithm is based on the well-known A? search along with an admissible heuristics. We also incorporate this heuristics into a second backtracking algorithm which uses a prioritized search order to accelerate the computation. Experimental results show that both new algorithms perform very well for realistic YC jobs. Specifically, both are able to find within seconds optimal solutions for heavy workload scenarios with over 2.41018 possible dispatching sequences. Moreover, even when the vehicle arrival times are not accurately forecasted, the new algorithms are still robust enough to produce optimal or near-optimal sequences, and they consistently outperform all the other algorithms evaluated.

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

yard crane dispatching
container terminal


Design of a Web-Based Decision Support System for Service Portfolios in Heterogeneous Radio Access Network Environments Newly emerging radio access technologies have produced a novel heterogeneous network environment. Wireless service operators should build the best service portfolio strategy for each user by focusing on the co-existence of multiple access networks and complex service combinations, while maximizing the overall network utilization. Web-based Decision Support System (web-based DSS) is one of the best ways of making service portfolios available to every user in a multiple access network environment. Service designers, customer relationship managers, and network engineers can build the best match relationship between services and networks to enhance user utilization. In addition, the easily accessible web-based DSS in an optimal heterogeneous network operation framework provides opportunities for designing new services. The network load and financial effect of newly designed services could also be analyzed and reshaped easily by testing the DSS functionality. Various mathematical tools have been developed for DSS to integrate different network domains. To demonstrate its applicability to the integration of network domains, we tested various service scenarios in a heterogeneous network environment and evaluated the versatile functions of web-based DSS.

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

decision support system
heterogeneous network
service portfolio


Can internet users protect themselves? Challenges and techniques of automated protection of HTTP communication HTTPS enables secure access to web content and web-based services. Although supported by many content and service providers, HTTPS is oftentimes not enabled by default, as pointed out in an open letter sent to Google by security experts. In this article, we discuss if and how web users can protect themselves by using HTTPS instead of HTTP. We show that many websites allow for accessing content by HTTPS instead of HTTP. However, HTTPS access must be manually configured or requested by the user, or is impossible at all, e.g., for embedded objects. For this reason, we explore how to protect users transparently by automatically using HTTPS whenever possible. In order to enable this approach, one needs to determine whether using HTTPS yields the same content as using HTTP, even in the presence of dynamic websites incorporating advertisements and news. We show that this decision is possible for entire websites like amazon.com in short time by combining a fast content comparison algorithm, result caching, and observations on the structure of the website. Besides the concrete HTTP use case considered in this article, our results are of independent interest for any setting in which content can be accessed by various means. Finally, we present and discuss different approaches for implementing automated protection of HTTP connections. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

security
automated protection
content
http


Do You Recognize That Buildings Faade? With the computational power of modern smartphones constantly increasing, resource intensive applications are becoming feasible to an ever growing extent. In this paper, we report on a research project recently started. Its aim is to develop an application for smartphones that combines pedestrian and public transport navigation including the computation of routes consisting of pedestrian routes and public transport trips and intuitive user guidance at any time of the trip. In particular, we focus on intuitive user guidance based on (LMs) in the surroundings of the user. For this reason, we use collaborative approaches to collect LMs and data about them.

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

pedestrian navigation
collaborative landmark mining
nadine


later stages support for security requirements Software security concerns are frequent, widespread, and with potentially harmful consequences. We believe that security concerns should not only be specified as part of software requirements, but should also be supported during later stages of development (architecture, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance). This paper focuses on security requirements and the support available for them past their creation. As part of ongoing research we surveyed 12 approaches to security requirements engineering and identified the level of support each approach provides on a variety of areas related to later stages support. We show that support for security requirements after they are specified is lacking at best, creating opportunities for significant improvement and further research in this area.

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

security requirements
requirements integration


An Iterative Method for Deciding SVM and Single Layer Neural Network Structures We present two new classifiers for two-class classification problems using a new Beta-SVM kernel transformation and an iterative algorithm to concurrently select the support vectors for a support vector machine (SVM) and the hidden units for a single hidden layer neural network to achieve a better generalization performance. To construct the classifiers, the contributing data points are chosen on the basis of a thresholding scheme of the outputs of a single perceptron trained using all training data samples. The chosen support vectors are used to construct a new SVM classifier that we call Beta-SVN. The number of chosen support vectors is used to determine the structure of the hidden layer in a single hidden layer neural network that we call Beta-NN. The Beta-SVN and Beta-NN structures produced by our method outperformed other commonly used classifiers when tested on a 2-dimensional non-linearly separable data set.

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

neural and statistical pattern recognition


Parameter Estimation Methods for Condition-Based Maintenance With Indirect Observations This article proposes methods to estimate the parameters of condition monitored equipment whose failure rate follows the Cox's time-dependent Proportional Hazards Model. Due to errors of measurement, of interpretation, or due to limited accuracy of measurement instruments, the observation process is not perfect, and does not directly reveal the exact degradation state. At each observation moment, we observe and collect information about an indicator of the underlying unobservable degradation state. To match the indicator's value to the unobservable degradation state, the stochastic relation between them is given by an observation probability matrix. In this study, we consider the case of imperfect observations, and we assume that the equipment's unobservable degradation state transition follows a Hidden Markov Model. We determine the Probability Density Function of the time to failure, and use the Maximum Likelihood Estimation to estimate the model's parameters. These are the Proportional Hazards', and the Hidden Markov Models' parameters. We study the cases of censored, and uncensored data; and carry out simulation studies to test the accuracy, and the convergence of the estimation methods.

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

hidden markov model
maximum likelihood estimation
parameter estimation

time-dependent proportional hazards model


Information visibility using transmission methods Lossy coding, selective seeing, ignoring visual cues, and perceptual biases are different sources of error into the visual communication. To counteract these tendencies we propose a change of paradigm from transmitting important information first to seeing important information first, for the same quality factor. Here we use the new paradigm to the evaluation of the visual efficiency of image information when it is reconstructed at high and low fidelity using different transmission methods. To this aim, we apply a rational model of computational attention in which a multi-bitrate attention map will provide us with the attention score for each spatial location at high and low quality versions of the image reconstruction. The rational approach of attention does not purport to describe the ways in which the Human Visual System (HVS) actually do behave in making choices among possible locations of interest for allocating attention. Instead we are interested in the aspects of rationality that seem to be present in the decision making of the HVS. From both rateattention and ratedistortion curves, we conclude which transmission method is the overall winner according to the new paradigm. A dataset of advertisement images is used to compare the visual efficiency of the advertisement when it is transmitted using three different coders without region-dependent quality of encoding. Experimental results show that a potential consumer may see important areas faster using SPIHT (without region-dependent quality of encoding) on a significant number of advertisement images, even though this transmission method should improve its capabilities in terms of important information visibility across bitrates.

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

computational attention
transmission
paradigm
visual efficiency
important information


Posynomial Parametric Geometric Programming with Interval Valued Coefficient The article presents solution procedure of geometric programming with imprecise coefficients. We have considered problems with imprecise data as a form of an interval in nature. Many authors have solved the imprecise problem by geometric programming technique in a different way. In this paper, we introduce parametric functional form of an interval number and then solve the problem by geometric programming technique. The advantage of the present approach is that we get optimal solution of the objective function directly without solving equivalent transformed problems. Numerical examples are presented to support of the proposed approach.

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

uncertain parameter
optimization
duality theorem


Time-varied pitch gain predictor for low bit rate speech coders The long-term predictor (LTP) can effectively reduce the redundancy of the quasi-periodicity of speech signals. Traditional pitch predictors in linear predictive coding systems are developed by assuming that pitch gains are constant in ea(h processing subframe. In this paper, we introduce a time-varied prediction gain to achieve a better representation of speech periodicity than the traditional approach, Due to the non-stationary. variation of speech. the proposed LTP method can trace the detailed fluctuation of speech amplitude in both transient and stationary periods, Simulation results show that the proposed first-order varied-gain pitch predictor obtains a near speech quality as the fifth-order pitch predictor of the G.723.1 coder does: however. the former requires much lower computation than the latter.

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

speech coding
time-varied pitch gain predictor


Construction of logic gates for one-dimensional Lorentz gases, and their dynamics and statistical properties We construct AND and NOT gates for various models of Lorentz Lattice Gas Cellular Automata (LLGCA) on the 1-dimensional integer lattice 96 and investigate their dynamics and statistical properties.

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

lorentz gas cellular automata
complexity


Regression analysis for massive datasets In the past decades, we have witnessed a revolution in information technology. Routine collection of systematically generated data is now commonplace. Databases with hundreds of fields (variables), and billions of records (observations) are not unusual. This presents a difficulty for classical data analysis methods, mainly due to the limitation of computer memory and computational costs (in time, for example). In this paper, we propose an intelligent regression analysis methodology which is suitable for modeling massive datasets. The basic idea here is to split the entire dataset into several blocks, applying the classical regression techniques for data in each block, and finally combining these regression results via weighted averages. Theoretical justification of the goodness of the proposed method is given, and empirical performance based on extensive simulation study is discussed.

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

best linear unbiased estimator
minimum variance
optimal weight


The potential of virtual communities in the insurance industry in the UK and Greece Virtual communities (VCs) are formed on the Internet and are expected to evolve to a strategically important e-business model. VCs foster trust among their members and allow them to interact, exchange ideas and experiences, regardless of their geographical or ethnic origin. Organisations should consider VCs as a new market place since their members are current or future customers. Through the interaction with the members of a VC, companies will eventually learn more about the needs of their customers, they will strengthen their relationships and they will be able to customise their services. This exploratory study reports on a survey of 43 information systems and marketing managers of insurance companies in the UK and Greece. It investigates the potential of VCs in the services sector with respect to their contribution to consumers loyalty and discusses the requirements for the functionality of a VC. The results of this study are useful both for the design of VCs and the evaluation of their business value.

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

virtual communities
insurance companies
survey


Memory-restricted black-box complexity of One Max We show that the black-box complexity with memory restriction one of the n-dimensional ONEMAX function class is at most 2n. This disproves the Theta(n logn) conjecture of Droste, Jansen, and Wegener (Theory Computing Systems 39 (2006) 525-544). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

algorithms
black-box complexity
query complexity
bounded memory


A two-parameter expression for failure surfaces The MohrCoulomb, Tresca and Von Mises criteria are classical failure criteria, widely accepted and used for various materials. To take into account the influence of intermediate principal stress on the strength of soil, Bishop, LadeDuncan and Matsuoka proposed criteria in terms of three principal stresses or three stress invariants. This note describes an expression with two parameters for modeling the shape of the failure surface in the octahedral plane. By studying the roles of these two parameters and comparing the new criterion with the aforementioned criteria, the advantage and flexibility of the proposed function is explored. Application of the function is demonstrated by fitting the new surface to experimental data for various soils.

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

convexity
friction angle
stress ratio
lode angle


Applications and Technical Issues of Wavelength-Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks With Colorless Optical Network Units [Invited] We review our recent research activities on the applications and technical issues of WDM passive optical networks (WDM-PONs). First, we describe our focus on two candidate applications of WDM-PON: one is a long-reach WDM-PON based on wavelength routing for metro-access integration, and the other is a short-reach WDM-PON for coexistence with current PON systems. We identify that the realization of colorless optical network units (ONUs) is an important technical issue for both applications, and an effective protection function is another important issue, especially for the long-reach WDM-PON. We compare several colorless-ONU approaches as well as introduce our recent research results to resolve the issues raised by some colorless-ONU approaches. We also describe two demonstrations: one is the longreach WDM-PON with a wavelength-shifted protection scheme as well as loop-back-type colorless ONUs, and the other is a WDM-PON coexisting with a current PON system with tunable-type colorless ONUs.

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

optical fiber communication
optical communication terminals
wavelength division multiplexing
passive optical network


Inter- versus intra-molecular cyclization of tripeptides containing tetrahydrofuran amino acids: a density functional theory study on kinetic control Density functional B3LYP method was used to investigate the preference of intra- and inter-molecular cyclizations of linear tripeptides containing tetrahydrofuran amino acids. Two distinct model pathways were conceived for the cyclization reaction, and all possible transition states and intermediates were located. Analysis of the energetics indicate intermolecular cyclization being favored by both thermodynamic and kinetic control. Geometric and NBO analyses were performed to explain the trends obtained along both the reaction pathways. Conceptual density functional theory-based reactive indices also show that reaction pathways leading to intermolecular cyclization of the tripeptides are relatively more facile compared to intramolecular cyclization.

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


Virtualizing network-on-chip resources in chip-multiprocessors The number of cores on a single silicon chip is rapidly growing and chips containing tens or even hundreds of identical cores are expected in the future. To take advantage of multicore chips, multiple applications will run simultaneously. As a consequence, the traffic interferences between applications increases and the performance of individual applications can be seriously affected. In this paper, we improve the individual application performance when several applications are simultaneously running. This proposal is based on the virtualization concept and allows us to reduce execution time and network latency in a significant percentage.

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


Formal verification of ASMs using MDGs We present a framework for the formal verification of abstract state machine (ASM) designs using the multiway decision graphs (MDG) tool. ASM is a state based language for describing transition systems. MDG provides symbolic representation of transition systems with support of abstract sorts and functions. We implemented a transformation tool that automatically generates MDG models from ASM specifications. Then formal verification techniques provided by the MDG tool, such as model checking or equivalence checking, can be applied on the generated models. We illustrate this work with the case study of an ATM switch controller, in which behavior and structure were specified in ASM and, using our ASM-MDG facility, are successfully verified with the MDG tool.

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

formal verification
multiway decision graphs
model checking


Enumeration Degrees and Enumerability of Familes We study the enumerability of families relative to the enumeration degrees. It is shown that if a family of finite sets is e-reducible to every non-zero e-degree, then the family is computably enumerable (c. e). On the another hand, we will find a non-c. e. family which is e-reducible to all non-zero e-degree. This allows to construct a model, whose (extended) degree spectrum coincides with the non-zero e-degrees.

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

c.e. families
turing degrees
e-degrees (enumeration degrees)
degree spectra of models