Online competitive algorithms for maximizing weighted throughput of unit jobs We study an online unit-job scheduling problem arising in buffer management. Each job is specified by its release time, deadline, and a nonnegative weight. Due to overloading conditions, some jobs have to be dropped. The goal is to maximize the total weight of scheduled jobs. We present several competitive online algorithms for various versions of unit-job scheduling, as well as some lower bounds on the competitive ratios. We first give a randomized algorithm RMix with competitive ratio of e/(e?1)?1.582 e / ( e ? 1 ) ? 1.582 . This is the first algorithm for this problem with competitive ratio smaller than 2. Then we consider s-bounded instances, where the span of each job (deadline minus release time) is at most s. We give a 1.25-competitive randomized algorithm for 2-bounded instances, matching the known lower bound. We also give a deterministic algorithm Edf?, whose competitive ratio on s -bounded instances is 2?2/s+o(1/s) 2 ? 2 / s + o ( 1 / s ) . For 3-bounded instances its ratio is ??1.618 ? ? 1.618 , matching the known lower bound. In s-uniform instances, the span of each job is exactly s. We show that no randomized algorithm can be better than 1.25-competitive on s-uniform instances, if the span s is unbounded. For s=2 s = 2 , our proof gives a lower bound of 4 ? 2 2 ? 1.172 . Also, in the 2-uniform case, we prove a lower bound of 2 ? 1.414 for deterministic memoryless algorithms, matching a known upper bound. Finally, we investigate the multiprocessor case and give a 1 / ( 1 ? ( m m + 1 ) m ) -competitive algorithm for m processors. We also show improved lower bounds for the general and s-uniform cases.

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

scheduling
online algorithms
buffer management


Extracting ontological concepts for tendering conceptual structures It has been argued that beyond software engineering and process engineering, ontological engineering is the third capability needed if successful e-commerce is to be realized. In our experience of building an ontological-based tendering system, we face the problem of building an ontology. In this paper, we demonstrate how to build ontologies in the tendering domain. The ontology life cycle is identified. Extracting concepts from existing resources like on-line catalogs is described. We have reused electronic data interchange (EDI) to build conceptual structures in the tendering domain. An algorithm to extract abstract ontological concepts from these structures is proposed.

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

conceptual graphs
text-mining
e-catalogs
tendering process
e-commerce


Probabilistic terrain classification in unstructured environments Autonomous navigation in unstructured environments is a complex task and an active area of research in mobile robotics. Unlike urban areas with lanes, road signs, and maps, the environment around our robot is unknown and unstructured. Such an environment requires careful examination as it is random, continuous, and the number of perceptions and possible actions are infinite. We describe a terrain classification approach for our autonomous robot based on Markov Random Fields (MRFs ) on fused 3D laser and camera image data. Our primary data structure is a 2D grid whose cells carry information extracted from sensor readings. All cells within the grid are classified and their surface is analyzed in regard to negotiability for wheeled robots. Knowledge of our robots egomotion allows fusion of previous classification results with current sensor data in order to fill data gaps and regions outside the visibility of the sensors. We estimate egomotion by integrating information of an IMU, GPS measurements, and wheel odometry in an extended Kalman filter. In our experiments we achieve a recall ratio of about 90% for detecting streets and obstacles. We show that our approach is fast enough to be used on autonomous mobile robots in real time.

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

markov random fields
terrain classification


Design and fabrication of in-plane resonant microcantilevers An in-plane resonant bimetal microcantilever based on thermal actuation mechanism was developed utilizing the photolithography technique. The microcantilever structure consists of a platform, a long narrow anchor, and a U-shape actuation loop. Niobium and gold are used as materials for fabrication of the microcantilever. In the cantilever design the shortcoming of low actuation frequency was overcome by separating the thermal actuator part and the microcantilever part. According to the dynamic property tests, the in-plane resonant frequency of our microcantilevers is one order of magnitude higher than the out-of-plane one. With further optimizing the design, our microcantilevers may have applications as actuators and biosensors.

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


A cloudification methodology for multidimensional analysis: Implementation and application to a railway power simulator Many scientific areas make extensive use of computer simulations to study complex real-world processes. These computations are typically very resource-intensive and present scalability issues as experiments get larger even in dedicated clusters, since these are limited by their own hardware resources. Cloud computing raises as an option to move forward into the ideal unlimited scalability by providing virtually infinite resources, yet applications must be adapted to this new paradigm. This process of converting and/or migrating an application and its data in order to make use of cloud computing is sometimes known as cloudifying the application. We propose a generalist cloudification method based in the MapReduce paradigm to migrate scientific simulations into the cloud to provide greater scalability. We analysed its viability by applying it to a real-world railway power consumption simulatior and running the resulting implementation on Hadoop YARN over Amazon EC2. Our tests show that the cloudified application is highly scalable and there is still a large margin to improve the theoretical model and its implementations, and also to extend it to a wider range of simulations. We also propose and evaluate a multidimensional analysis tool based on the cloudified application. It generates, executes and evaluates several experiments in parallel, for the same simulation kernel. The results we obtained indicate that out methodology is suitable for resource intensive simulations and multidimensional analysis, as it improves infrastructures utilization, efficiency and scalability when running many complex experiments.

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

railway simulator
migration
many-task computing


A population-based iterated greedy algorithm for the minimum weight vertex cover problem Given an undirected, vertex-weighted graph, the goal of the minimum weight vertex cover problem is to find a subset of the vertices of the graph such that the subset is a vertex cover and the sum of the weights of its vertices is minimal. This problem is known to be NP-hard and no efficient algorithm is known to solve it to optimality. Therefore, most existing techniques are based on heuristics for providing approximate solutions in a reasonable computation time. Population-based search approaches have shown to be effective for solving a multitude of combinatorial optimization problems. Their advantage can be identified as their ability to find areas of the space containing high quality solutions. This paper proposes a simple and efficient population-based iterated greedy algorithm for tackling the minimum weight vertex cover problem. At each iteration, a population of solutions is established and refined using a fast randomized iterated greedy heuristic based on successive phases of destruction and reconstruction. An extensive experimental evaluation on a commonly used set of benchmark instances shows that our algorithm outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

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

iterated greedy algorithm
minimum weight vertex cover problem


The generalized covering traveling salesman problem We develop a problem with potential applications in humanitarian relief transportation and telecommunication networks. Two mathematical methods and two metaheuristic algorithms are proposed to solve the problem. The introduced problem is a generalization of the covering salesman problem and the proposed method has been adapted to be used for this problem as well. The results have been compared with the state of the art algorithms available in the literature.

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

traveling salesman problem
humanitarian relief transportation

memetic algorithm
variable neighborhood search


A chemometric study of phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors This work presents a chemometric classification for a set of phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors, based on a pattern recognition method widely used in quantitative structureactivity (QSAR) studies, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA), aiming to access the most relevant structural and physicochemical variables related to phosphodiesterase 5 inhibition and to quantify the similarity of the structures within the set of inhibitors. Our model is capable of classifying a test set of 26 known phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors in terms of similarity, the results being consistent with published experimental data.

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


Sequencing from compomers: Using mass spectrometry for DNA de novo sequencing of 200+ nt One of the main endeavors in today's life science remains the efficient sequencing of long DNA molecules. Today, most de novo sequencing of DNA is still performed using the electrophoresis-based Sanger concept of 1977, in spite of certain restrictions of this method. Methods using mass spectrometry to acquire the Sanger sequencing data are limited by short sequencing lengths of 15 - 25 nt. We propose a new method for DNA sequencing using base-specific cleavage and mass spectrometry that appears to be a promising alternative to classical DNA sequencing approaches. A single stranded DNA or RNA molecule is cleaved by a base-specific (bio-) chemical reaction using, for example, RNAses. The cleavage reaction is modified such that not all, but only a certain percentage of bases are cleaved. The resulting mixture of fragments is then analyzed using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, whereby we acquire the molecular masses of fragments. For every peak in the mass spectrum, we calculate those base compositions that will potentially create a peak of the observed mass and, repeating the cleavage reaction for all four bases, finally try to uniquely reconstruct the underlying sequence from these observed spectra. This leads us to the combinatorial problem of sequencing from compomers and, finally, to the graph-theoretical problem of finding a walk in a subgraph of the de Bruijn graph. Application of this method to simulated data indicates that it might be capable of sequencing DNA molecules with 200+ nt.

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

dna de novo sequencing
compomers
mass spectrometry


Decision Tree-Based Acoustic Models for Speech Recognition with Improved Smoothness This paper proposes likelihood smoothing techniques to improve decision tree-based acoustic models, where decision trees are used as replacements for Gaussian mixture models to compute the observation likelihoods for a given HMM state in a speech recognition system. Decision trees have a number of advantageous properties, such as not imposing restrictions on the number or types of features, and automatically performing feature selection. This paper describes basic configurations of decision tree-based acoustic models and proposes two methods to improve the robustness of the basic model: DT mixture models and soft decisions for continuous features. Experimental results for the Aurora 2 speech database show that a system using decision trees offers state-of-the-art performance, even without taking advantage of its full potential and soft decisions improve the performance of DT-based acoustic models with 16.8% relative error rate reduction over hard decisions.

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

acoustic modeling
probability estimation
likelihood computation


Representing and querying XML with incomplete information We study the representation and querying of XML with incomplete information. We consider a simple model for XML data and their DTDs, a very simple query language, and a representation system for incomplete information in the spirit of the representations systems developed by Imielinski and Lipski [ 1984] for relational databases. In the scenario we consider, the incomplete information about an XML document is continuously enriched by successive queries to the document. We show that our representation system can represent partial information about the source document acquired by successive queries, and that it can be used to intelligently answer new queries. We also consider the impact on complexity of enriching our representation system or query language with additional features. The results suggest that our approach achieves a practically appealing balance between expressiveness and tractability.

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


The Biosemiotic Glossary Project: Agent, Agency The current article is the first in a series of review articles addressing biosemiotic terminology. The biosemiotic glossary project is inclusive and designed to integrate views of a representative group of members within the biosemiotic community based on a standard survey and related publications. The methodology section describes the format of the survey conducted in NovemberDecember 2013 in preparation of the current review and targeted on the terms agent and agency. Next, I summarize denotation, synonyms and antonyms, with special emphasis on the denotation of these terms in current biosemiotic usage. The survey findings include ratings of nine citations defining or making use of the two terms. I provide a summary of respondents own definitions and suggested term usage. Further sections address etymology, connotations, and related terms in English and other languages. A section on the notions mainstream meaning vs. their meaning in biosemiotics is followed by attempt at synthesis and conclusions. Although there is currently no consensus in the biosemiotic community on what constitutes a semiotic agent, i.e., an agent in the context of semiosis (the action of signs), most respondents agree that core attributes of an agent include goal-directedness, self-governed activity, processing of semiosis and choice of action, with these features being vital for the functioning of the living system in question. I agree that these four features are constitutive of biosemiotic agents, and stipulate that biosemiotic agents fall within three major categories, namely 1) sub-organismic biosemiotic agents, 2) organismic biosemiotic agents and 3) super-organismic biosemiotic agents.

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

agent
agency
biosemiotic glossary
survey
terminology


Context-prediction performance by a dynamic Bayesian network: Emphasis on location prediction in ubiquitous decision support environment ? Ubiquitous decision support systems require more intelligent mechanism in which more timely and accurate decision support is available. However, conventional context-aware systems, which have been popular in the ubiquitous decision support systems field, cannot provide such agile and proactive decision support. To fill this research void, this paper proposes a new concept of context prediction mechanism by which the ubiquitous decision support devices are able to predict users future contexts in advance, and provide more timely and proactive decision support that users would be satisfied much more. Especially, location prediction is useful because ubiquitous decision support systems could dynamically adapt their decision support contents for a user based on a users future location. In this sense, as an alternative for the inference engine mechanism to be used in the ubiquitous decision support systems capable of context-prediction, we propose an inductive approach to recognizing a users location by learning a dynamic Bayesian network model. The dynamic Bayesian network model has been evaluated with a set of contextual data from undergraduate students. The evaluation result suggests that a dynamic Bayesian network model offers significant predictive power in the location prediction. Besides, we found that the dynamic Bayesian network model has a great potential for the future types of ubiquitous decision support systems.

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

dynamic bayesian networks
ubiquitous computing
ubiquitous decision support system
nave bayesian network
tree augmented nave bayesian network


An integration experience of a software architecture and a monitoring infrastructure to deploy applications with non-functional requirements in computing grids Resource management is an important aspect to consider regarding applications that might have different non-functional or operational requirements, when running in distributed and heterogeneous environments. In this context, it is necessary to provide the means to specify the required resource constraints and an infrastructure that can adapt the applications in light of the changes in resource availability. We adopted a contract-based approach to describe and maintain parallel applications that have non-functional requirements in a Computing Grid context, called ZeliGrid. To form the supporting infrastructure we have designed a software architecture that integrates some of the Globus services, the LDAP and the NWS monitoring services. Some modules that map the contract approach into software artifacts were also integrated to this architecture. This paper addresses the architecture and integration issues of our approach, as well as how we put the pieces together highlighting deployment and implementation details, which have to consider diverse aspects such as monitoring, security and dynamic reconfiguration. Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

non-functional requirements
contracts
middleware
dynamic configuration


A verification framework for agent communication In this paper, we introduce a veri. cation method for the correctness of multiagent systems as described in the framework of ACPL (Agent Communication Programming Language). The computational model of ACPL consists of an integration of the two different paradigms of CCP (Concurrent Constraint Programming) and SCP (Communicating Sequential Processes). The constraint programming techniques are used to represent and process information, whereas the communication mechanism of ACPL is described in terms of the synchronous handshaking mechanism of CSP. Consequently, we show how to de. ne a veri. cation method for ACPL in terms of an integration of the veri. cation methods for CCP and CSP. We prove formally the soundness of the method and discuss its completeness.

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

semantics
verification methods
specification
agent communication language
multi-agent systems


toward a definition of voice documents This paper develops a definition of a voice document as a combination of information, structure , and affordances (or user-executable actions or utterances) for use in a voice-I/O hypermedia system. Voice documents in our experimental prototype environment, HyperPhone, are finely-grained hypermedia objects with rich interconnections of literal and virtual links, and with certain well-defined local structures. We explore issues related to navigating, managing, and authoring such documents, and outline a set of questions for further work.

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

voice use hypermedia prototype definition links paper

author systems experimentation environments object interconnect virtualization documentation navigation combinational user management exploration locality action


high performance mpi design using unreliable datagram for ultra-scale infiniband clusters High-performance clusters have been growing rapidly in scale. Most of these clusters deploy a high-speed interconnect, such as Infini-Band, to achieve higher performance. Most scientific applications executing on these clusters use the Message Passing Interface (MPI) as the parallel programming model. Thus, the MPI library has a key role in achieving application performance by consuming as few resources as possible and enabling scalable performance. State-of-the-art MPI implementations over InfiniBand primarily use the Reliable Connection (RC) transport due to its good performance and attractive features. However, the RC transport requires a connection between every pair of communicating processes, with each requiring several KB of memory. As clusters continue to scale, memory requirements in RC-based implementations increase. The connection-less Unreliable Datagram (UD) transport is an attractive alternative, which eliminates the need to dedicate memory for each pair of processes. In this paper we present a high-performance UD-based MPI design. We implement our design and compare the performance and resource usage with the RC-based MVAPICH. We evaluate NPB, SMG2000, Sweep3D, and sPPM up to 4K processes on an 9216-core InfiniBand cluster. For SMG2000, our prototype shows a 60\% speedup and seven-fold reduction in memory for 4K processes. Additionally, based on our model, our design has an estimated 30 times reduction in memory over MVAPICH at 16K processes when all connections are created. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research work that presents a high-performance MPI design over InfiniBand that is completely based on UD and can achieve near identical or better application performance than RC.

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


Unsupervised learning of discriminative edge measures for vehicle matching between nonoverlapping cameras This paper proposes a novel unsupervised algorithm learning discriminative features in the context of matching road vehicles between two nonoverlapping cameras. The matching problem is formulated as a same-different classification problem, which aims to compute the probability of vehicle images from two distinct cameras being from the same vehicle or different vehicle(s). We employ a novel measurement vector that consists of three independent edge-based measures and their associated robust measures computed from a pair of aligned vehicle edge maps. The weight of each measure is determined by an unsupervised learning algorithm that optimally separates the same-different classes in the combined measurement space. This is achieved with a weak classification algorithm that automatically collects representative samples from same-different classes, followed by a more discriminative classifier based on Fisher's Linear Discriminants and Gibbs Sampling. The robustness of the match measures and the use of unsupervised discriminant analysis in the classification ensures that the proposed method performs consistently in the presence of missing/false features, temporally and spatially changing illumination conditions and systematic misalignment caused by different camera configurations. Extensive experiments based on real data of more than 200 vehicles at different times of the day demonstrate promising results.

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

unsupervised learning
gibbs sampling
vehicle matching
nonoverlapping cameras

object recognition
fisher's linear discriminants
edge feature
object reacquisition


A hybrid Lagrangian-simulated annealing-based heuristic for the parallel-machine capacitated lot-sizing and scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times The lot-sizing and scheduling problem with multiple constraints is formulated. The primal problem is decomposed into simple subproblems by Lagrangian decomposition. A hybrid Lagrangian-simulated annealing-based heuristic is proposed. It outperforms other heuristic methods and meets practical requirement of the tested firm.

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

capacitated lot-sizing and scheduling
sequence-dependent setup
unrelated parallel machines
lagrangian relaxation
simulated annealing


SCOMDY models based on pair-copula constructions with application to exchange rates Vine pair-copula constructions (PCCs) provide an important milestone for the usage of multivariate copulas to model dependence. At present time PCCs are recognized to be the most flexible class of multivariate copulas. Vine PCCs and semiparametric copula-based dynamic (SCOMDY) models with ARMA-GARCH margins are combined. As building blocks of the PCCs, bivariate t t -copulas are used. Exchange rates are considered as an application and their dependence structure is modelled using regular and canonical vines. A non-nested model comparison of the above SCOMDY models is performed using the adapted Voungs test.

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

multivariate copula
garch-arma margins
pair-copula construction


Operator-scheduling using a constraint satisfaction technique in port container terminals In port container terminals, the efficient scheduling of operators of handling equipment such as container cranes, yard cranes, and yard trucks is important. Because of many complicated constraints, finding a feasible solution, as opposed to the optimal solution, within a reasonable amount of computing time can be considered satisfactory from a practical point of view. The major constraints include the following: restrictions on the minimum workforce assignment to each time slot, the maximum total operating time per operator per shift, the minimum and maximum consecutive operating times for an operator, types of equipment that can be assigned to each operator, and the available time slots for each operator or piece of equipment. The operator-scheduling problem is defined as a constraint-satisfaction problem, and its solution is obtained by utilizing a commercial software. An actual problem, collected from a container terminal in Pusan, Korea, is solved through the solution procedure proposed in this study. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A novel permit scheme for managing parking competition and bottleneck congestion A novel tradable parking permit scheme is proposed. The design of permit scheme does not rely on VOT information. Performance of permit scheme is robust to the variation of VOT. The efficiency loss of the non-ideal permit schemes have been bounded. Equal cost-reduction distribution of parking permits is introduced.

O O O O O O B I O B 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

parking competition
bottleneck
tradable parking permit


Snake model-based lymphoma segmentation for sequential CT images The measurement of the size of lesions in follow-up CT examinations of cancer patients is important to evaluate the success of treatment. This paper presents an automatic algorithm for identifying and segmenting lymph nodes in CT images across longitudinal time points. Firstly, a two-step image registration method is proposed to locate the lymph nodes including coarse registration based on body region detection and fine registration based on a double-template matching algorithm. Then, to make the initial segmentation approximate the boundaries of lymph nodes, the initial image registration result is refined with intensity and edge information. Finally, a snake model is used to evolve the refined initial curve and obtain segmentation results. Our algorithm was tested on 26 lymph nodes at multiple time points from 14 patients. The image at the earlier time point was used as the baseline image to be used in evaluating the follow-up image, resulting in 76 total test cases. Of the 76 test cases, we made a 76 (100%) successful detection and 38/40 (95%) correct clinical assessment according to Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST). The quantitative evaluation based on several metrics, such as average Hausdorff distance, indicates that our algorithm is produces good results. In addition, the proposed algorithm is fast with an average computing time 2.58s. The proposed segmentation algorithm for lymph nodes is fast and can achieve high segmentation accuracy, which may be useful to automate the tracking and evaluation of cancer therapy.

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


Peer-to-peer multipoint videoconferencing on the Internet A peer-to-peer architecture for multipoint videoconferencing is presented. Each conference participant may have asymmetric and dissimilar bandwidth connections to the Internet. The solution does not require additional hardware, as in multipoint control units, or network infrastructure support such as multicast. Without creating any additional demand on the networking and computing resources needed for a point-to-point videoconference, this architecture can extend it into a multipoint one. A protocol for a completely distributed implementation has been developed and tested on a prototype system extending a point-to-point video phone to a multipoint one. The architecture of the prototype system along with the details of the protocol optimization is discussed. Several performance results are presented.

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


Some remarks on sets of communicating sequential processes in topological rough set framework Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), is a theoretical framework for discussing concurrent phenomena [7]. In this note, we begin an investigation into the nature of sets of communicating sequential processes. Sets of sequential processes arise naturally when one considers processes contained within specified bounds which provides their approximate description. Adopting the trace formalism, we may express those bounds in a natural way by means of containment of traces. We endow families of process traces and a fortiori, families of processes, with a rough set topology. We show in this note that basic operators on processes preserve exact sets of processes and they are non-expansive (i.e., non-destructive in terminology of [7]) with respect to the metric D on rough sets [6], [5], restricted to exact sets of processes.

O O O 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 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 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 B I I I

communicating sequential processes
exact sets of processes

constructive and non-destructive mappings on exact sets of processes


An improved evolutionary algorithm for solving multi-objective crop planning models In this paper, we analyse multi-objective optimization problems and provide useful insights about solutions that are generated using population-based approaches. We formulate a crop-planning problem as a multi-objective optimization model and solve two different versions of the problem using three different optimization approaches. The approaches considered are: ?-constrained method, a well-known multi-objective evolutionary algorithm NSGAII and our proposed multi-objective constrained algorithm (MCA). We compare the performance of our algorithm with other two algorithms and analyse the solutions from decision-making point of view. Our algorithm delivers superior solutions to non-linear version of the crop-planning model.

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

multi-objective optimization
constrained problem


Automatic DantzigWolfe reformulation of mixed integer programs DantzigWolfe decomposition (or reformulation) is well-known to provide strong dual bounds for specially structured mixed integer programs (MIPs). However, the method is not implemented in any state-of-the-art MIP solver as it is considered to require structural problem knowledge and tailoring to this structure. We provide a computational proof-of-concept that the reformulation can be automated. That is, we perform a rigorous experimental study, which results in identifying a score to estimate the quality of a decomposition: after building a set of potentially good candidates, we exploit such a score to detect which decomposition might be useful for DantzigWolfe reformulation of a MIP. We experiment with general instances from MIPLIB2003 and MIPLIB2010 for which a decomposition method would not be the first choice, and demonstrate that strong dual bounds can be obtained from the automatically reformulated model using column generation. Our findings support the idea that DantzigWolfe reformulation may hold more promise as a general-purpose tool than previously acknowledged by the research community.

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

dantzigwolfe decomposition
column generation


Fast and Accurate Statistical Criticality Computation Under Process Variations With ever-shrinking device geometries, process variations play an increased role in determining the delay of a digital circuit. Under such variations, a gate may lie on the critical path of a manufactured die with a certain probability, called the criticality probability. In this paper, we present a new technique to compute the statistical criticality information in a digital circuit under process variations by linearly traversing the edges in its timing graph and dividing it into "zones." We investigate the sources of error in using tightness probabilities for criticality computation with Clark's statistical maximum formulation. The errors are dealt with using a new clustering-based pruning algorithm which greatly reduces the size of circuit-level cutsets improving both accuracy and runtime over the current state of the art. On large benchmark circuits, our clustering algorithm gives about a 250X speedup compared with a pairwise pruning strategy with similar accuracy in results. Coupled with a localized sampling technique, errors are reduced to around 5% of Monte Carlo simulations with large speedups in runtime.

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

design automation
digital integrated circuits
statistical timing
vlsi


Missing data imputation in multivariate data by evolutionary algorithms This paper presents a proposal based on an evolutionary algorithm to impute missing observations in multivariate data. A genetic algorithm based on the minimization of an error function derived from their covariance matrix and vector of means is presented. All methodological aspects of the genetic structure are presented. An extended explanation of the design of the fitness function is provided. An application example is solved by the proposed method.

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

evolutionary optimization
multivariate analysis
multiple data imputation


On-demand base maps on the web generalized according to user profiles Thematic content in the form of geodata is becoming increasingly available on the web. However, adequate base map information to support appropriate communication of the thematic content is not available in many cases. This base map information might be served through topographic databases available on the web and optimized by means of automated generalization. This article describes an approach based on user profiles, which formally captures the user requirements (preferences) towards the base map and deploys those profiles in a web-based architecture to generate on-demand maps. Those user profiles, which may differ per user, drive the generalization process and produce base maps on demand by taking into account the user requirements as well as the thematic content. The research in this article specifically focuses on the technological environment that generates on-demand base maps incorporating four basic concepts in the user profile: (1) topology awareness between the base map and the thematic content, (2) user-specific base map information at a non-uniform scale to improve the communication of the thematic content, (3) the map specification and (4) inheritance of user profiles. Both existing and new techniques are explored to realize the environment. The approach is evaluated by applying it to a project in the Netherlands dedicated to disseminating physical planning maps through the web.

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


On the variational solution of a limiting equilibrium problem involving an anchored wall This paper presents a solution of an anchored retaining wall problem using the approach of classical variational calculus, that allows the three equilibrium equations to be taken into account. The problem is formulated as an isoperimetric problem of variational calculus and a closed-form solution of Eulers equations is found. The analysis is validated by means of the classical Coulombs wedge method that is obtained when the moment equilibrium is omitted. Unfortunately, in the general case, extremes of the functionals that are involved in the formulation of the problem can not be found in an analytical way. In this case, a crucial point was to establish bounds for the domain of the investigations of the functional maxima. Next, based on these bounds, a numerical procedure for finding maxima has been worked out. Several numerical analyses for the case of wall embedded in a non-cohesive soil have been carried out. An important finding is that the classical Coulombs wedge method, which ignores the moment equilibrium equation, is an unconservative approach and hence provides an unsafe solution for the anchor force.

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

anchor retaining wall
slip surface
lagranges multipliers


Practical electronic auction scheme with strong anonymity and bidding privacy In 2003, Chang and Chang proposed an efficient and anonymous auction protocol with freewheeling bids. They claimed that their scheme could ensure the bidders anonymity and secure confidentiality. Later, Jiang et al. pointed out that their scheme could not withstand the man-in-the-middle attacks; during this time, Jiang et al. proposed an improved scheme based on the scheme by Chang and Chang. In 2006, Chang and Chang proposed an anonymous auction scheme that was much more efficient than the abovementioned schemes. However, all of these three schemes were unable to achieve strong anonymity, bidding privacy, and secret bidding prices for sealed-bids. This article proposes a new scheme to resolve the above problems in which two managers and zero knowledge proof are used. The proposed scheme can be widely applied in any sensitive auction (e.g., auctions of cosmetics, medical services, etc.). Moreover, the proposed scheme also satisfies the following requirements: (1) bidding privacy, (2) strong anonymity, (3) secret bidding prices, (4) unforgeability, (5) verifiability, (6) non-repudiation, (7) traceability, (8) one-time registration and (9) easy revocation.

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

electronic auction
strong anonymity
bidding privacy
zero knowledge proof


efficient architectures through application clustering and architectural heterogeneity Customizing architectures for particular applications is a promising approach to yield highly energy-efficient designs for embedded systems. This work explores the benefits of architectural customization for a class of embedded architectures typically used in energy-constrained application domains such as sensor node and multimedia processing. We implement a process flow that analyzes runtime profiles of applications and combines this information with a model for our architectural design space providing a robust customization engine built upon a fully automated method for determining an efficient architecture (together with appropriate application transformations). By profiling embedded benchmarks from a variety of sensor and multimedia applications, the paper shows the relative energy savings resulting from various architectural optimizations and identifies the number of architectures that achieves near-optimal savings for a group of applications. This paper proposes the use of heterogeneous chip-multiprocessors as a cost-effective approach to capitalize on the potential energy savings provided by application customization while executing a range of applications efficiently.

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

efficient custom architectures
heterogeneous cmp


OPUCEM:

A

library

with

error

checking

mechanism

for

computing

oblique

parameters

After

a

brief

review

of

the

electroweak

radiative

corrections

to

gauge-boson

self-energies,

otherwise

known

as

the

direct

and

oblique

corrections,

a

tool

for

calculation

of

the

oblique

parameters

is

presented.

This

tool,

named

OPUCEM,

brings

together

formulas

from

multiple

physics

models

and

provides

an

error-checking

machinery

to

improve

reliability

of

numerical

results.

It

also

sets

a

novel

example

for

an

open-formula

concept,

which

is

an

attempt

to

improve

the

reliability

and

reproducibility

of

computations

in

scientific

publications

by

encouraging

the

authors

to

open-source

their

numerical

calculation

programs.

Finally,

we

demonstrate

the

use

of

OPUCEM

in

two

detailed

case

studies

related

to

the

fourth

Standard

Model

family.

The

first

is

a

generic

fourth

family

study

to

find

relations

between

the

parameters

compatible

with

the

EW

precision

data

and

the

second

is

the

particular

study

of

the

flavor

democracy

predictions

for

both

Dirac

and

Majorana-type

neutrinos.

Program

title:

OPUCEM

(library)

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen?s

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

C/C++

Computer:

PCs

and

Workstations

Operating

system:

Any

Unix

based

system

such

as

Linux

and

MacOSX,

partial

testing

with

Cygwin

under

Windows

RAM:

GUI

takes

about

MB,

the

individual

library

calls

are

negligible

Classification:

External

routines:

ROOT

library

set

(optional),

complex

number

constructs

from

either

the

standard

or

from

the

C++

Technical

Report

(ISO/IEC

TR

Nature

of

problem:

The

calculation

of

Electroweak

Precision

variables

for

each

point

of

the

parameter

space

of

a

given

beyond

the

Standard

Model

theory

is

tedious

and

error

prone.

The

available

formulas

in

the

literature

sometimes

contain

typos

and

most

of

the

time

they

are

valid

only

under

some

specific

conditions,

not

suitable

for

quick

comparison

across

different

studies

nor

direct

implementation

on

a

computer.

Solution

method:

One

loop

exact

calculation

of

the

oblique

parameters

are

collected

into

a

freely

available

C/C++

library

for

a

number

of

models.

One-loop

exact

calculation

of

the

contributions

of

a

number

of

models

to

the

oblique

parameters

are

collected

in

a

freely

available

C/C++

library.

The

public

availability

of

the

implementations

and

the

internal

error

checking

mechanism

aim

the

correctness

of

the

results.

Additionally,

the

Graphical

User

Interface

and

auxiliary

tools

provide

the

means

for

rapid

result

comparison

or

update

when

new

data

becomes

available.

Unusual

features:

The

library

computes

the

oblique

parameters

S,

T

and

U

both

with

exact

one-loop

calculations

and

with

well-defined

approximations

for

a

number

of

models

to

establish

a

certain

level

of

confidence.

The

comparisons

between

exact

and

approximate

computations,

and

amongst

formulas

from

different

papers

provide

an

error

checking

machinery

which

improves

the

end

user

reliability.

Running

time:

Fractions

of

a

second

for

each

function

call

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

ew precision data
oblique parameters
standard model
fourth family


datalog as a pointcut language in aspect-oriented programming AspectJ's pointcut language is complex, yet often not expressive enough to directly capture a desired property. Prolog has been suggested as an alternative, but Prolog queries may not terminate, and they tend to be verbose. We solve expressiveness, termination and verbosity by using Datalog plus rewrite rules .

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

semantic pointcuts
pointcut sematics
aspect-oriented programming


Efficient NC Simulation for Multi-Axis Solid Machining With a Universal APT Cutter In multi-axis machining of dies and molds with complex sculptured surfaces, numerical control (NC) simulation/verification is a must for the avoidance of expensive rework and material waste. Despite the fact that NC simulation has been extensively used by industries for many years, efficient, accurate, and reliable view-independent simulation of multi-axis NC machining still remains a difficult challenge. This paper presents the use of adaptive voxel data structure in conjunction with the modeling of a universal cutter for the development of an efficient and reliable multi-axis (typically five-axis) simulation procedure. The octree-based voxel representation of the workpiece saves a significant amount of memory space without sacrificing the simulation accuracy. Rendering of the voxel-based model is view independent and does not suffer from any aliasing effect, due to the real-time triangulation of the boundary surfaces using an extended marching cube algorithm. Implicit algebraic equations are used to model the automatically programed tool geometry, which can represent a universal cutter with high precision. In addition, the proposed method allows users to perform error analysis and gouging detection by comparing the machined surfaces with the original computer-aided design (CAD) model. Illustration of the implementation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is reliable, accurate, and highly efficient. [DOI: 10.1115/1.3130231]

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


Semantic analysis of program initialisation in genetic programming Population initialisation in genetic programming is both easy, because random combinations of syntax can be generated straightforwardly, and hard, because these random combinations of syntax do not always produce random and diverse program behaviours. In this paper we perform analyses of behavioural diversity, the size and shape of starting populations, the effects of purely semantic program initialisation and the importance of tree shape in the context of program initialisation. To achieve this, we create four different algorithms, in addition to using the traditional ramped half and half technique, applied to seven genetic programming problems. We present results to show that varying the choice and design of program initialisation can dramatically influence the performance of genetic programming. In particular, program behaviour and evolvable tree shape can have dramatic effects on the performance of genetic programming. The four algorithms we present have different rates of success on different problems.

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

genetic programming
program initialisation


Semantic integration in Xyleme: a uniform tree-based approach ? Xyleme is a huge warehouse integrating XML data of the Web. Xyleme considers a simple data model with data trees and tree types for describing the data sources, and a simple query language based on tree queries with boolean conditions. The main components of the data model are a mediated schema modeled by an abstract tree type, as a view of a set of tree types associated with actual data trees, called concrete tree types, and a mapping expressing the connection between the mediated schema and the concrete tree types. The first contribution of this paper is formal: we provide a declarative model-theoretic semantics for Xyleme tree queries, a way of checking tree query containment, and a characterization of tree queries as a composition of branch queries. The other contributions are algorithmic and handle the potentially huge size of the mapping relation which is a crucial issue for semantic integration and query evaluation in Xyleme. First, we propose a method for pre-evaluating queries at compile time by storing some specific meta-information about the mapping into map translation tables. These map translation tables summarize the set of all the branch queries that can be generated from the mediated schema and the set of all the mappings. Then, we propose different operators and strategies for relaxing queries which, having an empty map translation table, will have no answer if they are evaluated against the data. Finally, we present a method for semi-automatically generating the mapping relation.

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

xyleme
warehouse
tree queries
map translation tables


on the impact of the gop size in an h.264/avc-to-svc transcoder with temporal scalability Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is a recent extension of the ISO/ITU Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC) standard, which allows adapting the bitstream easily by dropping some parts of it named as layers. This adaptation makes possible that the same bitstream meets the requirements for reliable delivery of video to diverse clients over heterogeneous networks using temporal, spatial or SNR scalability, combined or separately. Since the SVC design requires scalability to be provided at the encoder side, the existing contents cannot benefit of it. Efficient techniques for converting contents without scalability to a scalable format are desirable. In this paper, an approach for temporal scalability transcoding from H.264/AVC to SVC is presented and the impact of the GOP size is analyzed. Independently of the GOP size chosen, around a 60\% of time saving is achieved while maintaining the coding efficiency. Moreover, this technique could be used to transform an H.264/AVC bitstream without temporal scalability to another H.264/AVC bitstream with hierarchical structures that provides temporal scalability.

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

temporal scalability
transcoding
scalable video coding


a programmer's interface to graphics dynamics The term graphics dynamics is used in this paper to describe a capability which permits the application programmer to specify a relationship between various graphics input devices and aspects of the graphics output presentation. Subsequent use of the input devices results in continuous real-time changes to the picture. An experimental graphics system is described, in which a powerful programmer's interface to graphics dynamics was implemented. This interface appears suitable for use as an extension to any of the existing standards and standards proposals, including, CORE, GKS, and PHIGS.

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

input devices
use
graphics dynamics
graphics
core
gks
paper
phigs
programmer

present
applications
aspect
relationships
systems
experimentation
dynamic
standardization
interfaces
extensibility
graphics standards
real-time
continuation
change


AIRE-1 (Autoimmune Regulator Type 1) as a Regulator of the Thymic Induction of Negative Selection The monogenic autoimmune syndrome, APS-1 (autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type 1), is characterized by the loss of self-tolerance to multiple organs. Although mutations in the AIRE (autoimmune regulator) gene are responsible for the APS-1, the function of AIRE is not known. AIRE may determine thymic induction of tolerance to self-antigens in multiple organs. To study the function of AIRE in induction of self-tolerance, an in vitro negative selection system was made using 106 DO11.10 TCR transgenic thymocytes, 105 antigen-presenting cells (APC), and the different constructs of ovalbumin (OVA). In this system, the addition of the immunodominant epitopes of OVA peptide, the antigenic ligand for the DO11.10, made the thymocytes apoptotic and negatively selected. Overexpression of the AIRE gene in APC using retroviral transduction did not cause more thymocytes to become apoptotic. However, the suppression of the expression of AIRE in APC using the dominant-negative gene made the recovery rates of the thymocytes higher than those with the expression of LacZ as a control, and consequently inducing loss of self-tolerance. From these studies, it might be possible to suggest that the AIRE gene might regulate thymic induction of the negative selection process. The target genes for transcriptional regulation by AIRE have been investigated to study the influence of AIRE expression on other proteins in antigen presentation. The expression level of B7.1 was higher in APC expressing the dominant-negative form of AIRE. The target gene regulated by AIRE in transcription will be screened using cDNA microarray.

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


Estimation and control of solid oxide fuel cell system Fuel cell is an electro-chemical device that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. Optimal operation of solid oxide fuel cells require different components built around them. The physical structure of the fuel cell and associated components impose certain restrictions on the operation of the system. Thus control of a fuel cell system is performed by nonlinear model predictive control which is able to handle multivariate, objective and constraints. This work describes the application of nonlinear model predictive control applied on the fuel cell system by utilizing estimated states from the unscented Kalman filter. A brief description of the orthogonal collocation method as a means to discretize the nonlinear continuous model has also been provided in this work. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

solid oxide fuel cell
orthogonal collocation method


Alkaline cleaning of silicon wafers: additives for the prevention of metal contamination The paper presents a new strategy for cleaning of silicon wafers. A novel class of chelating agents added to alkaline cleaning mixtures provides promising performance without negative effects such as metal redeposition due to residual metal contamination of the cleaning solution. The superior capability of the new cleaning process is confirmed by the results obtained from wafer surface metal analysis as well as from minority carrier lifetime and diffusion length measurements and gate oxide integrity tests. Particle densities and surface roughness are not influenced by the presence of the chelating agents in the cleaning solution. TOFSIMS measurements do not indicate any deposition of chelating agent on the wafer surface. With this type of modified SC-1 cleaning procedure the acid SC-2 step used in conventional RCA cleans to remove the metals deposited in the preceding SC-1 step is unnecessary resulting in substantial cost savings with respect to chemicals, waste, equipment and space.

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

cleaning procedures
heterocyclic compounds


Unsupervised data processing for classifier-based speech translator Concept classification has been used as a translation method and has shown notable benefits within the suite of speech-to-speech translation applications. However, the main bottleneck in achieving an acceptable performance with such classifiers is the cumbersome task of annotating large amounts of training data. Any attempt to develop a method to assist in, or to completely automate, data annotation needs a distance measure to compare sentences based on the concept they convey. Here, we introduce a new method of sentence comparison that is motivated from the translation point of view. In this method the imperfect translations produced by a phrase-based statistical machine translation system are used to compare the concepts of the source sentences. Three clustering methods are adapted to support the concept-base distance. These methods are applied to prepare groups of paraphrases and use them as training sets in concept classification tasks. The statistical machine translation is also used to enhance the training data for the classifier which is crucial when such data are sparse. Experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed methods. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

speech to speech translation
spoken language understanding


Tracking persons in monocular image sequences Quantitative geometric descriptions of the movements of persons are obtained by fitting the projection of a three-dimensional person model to consecutive frames of an image sequence. The kinematic of the person model is given by a homogeneous transformation tree and its body parts are modeled by right-elliptical cones. The values of a varying number of degrees of freedom (DOFs; body joints, position, and orientation of the person relative to the camera) can be determined according to the application and the kind of image sequence. The determination of the DOFs is understood as an estimation problem which is solved by an iterated extended Kalman filter (IEKF). For this purpose, the person model is augmented by a simple motion model of constant velocity for all DOFs which is used in the prediction step of the IEKF. In the update step, both region and edge information are used. Various experiments demonstrate the efficiency of our approach. (C) 1999 Academic Press.

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

modeling of persons
articulated motion estimation


Consideration of optimal pixel resolution in deriving landslide susceptibility zoning within the Sydney Basin, New South Wales, Australia Slide category landslide susceptibility zoning over the 30,603km2 Sydney Basin. Methodology to derive the optimum pixel resolution for this spatial analysis. Introduces MEMO curves to determine pruning parameters for See5 decision trees. Introduces delta (?) parameter ratio to compare the modelling rigour. Field validation methodology to evaluate the susceptibility model.

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

landslide inventory
susceptibility modelling
decision tree
gis


Synthesis of quantum-logic circuits The pressure of fundamental limits on classical computation and the promise of exponential speedups from quantum effects have recently brought quantum circuits (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A, Math. Phys. Sci., vol. 425, p. 73, 1989) to the attention of the electronic design automation community (Proc. 40th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf., 2003), (Phys. Rev. A, At. Mol. Opt. Phy., vol. 68, p. 012318, 2003), (Proc. 41st Design Automation Conf., 2004), (Proc. 39th Design Automation Conf., 2002), (Proc. Design, Automation, and Test Eur., 2004), (Phys. Rev. A, At. Mol. Opt. Phy., vol. 69, p. 062321, 2004), (IEEE Trans. Comput.-Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst., vol. 22, p. 710,2003). Efficient quantum-logic circuits that perform two tasks are discussed: 1) implementing generic quantum computations, and 2) initializing quantum registers. In contrast to conventional computing,. the latter task is nontrivial because the state space of an n-qubit register is not finite and contains exponential superpositions of classical bitstrings. The proposed circuits are asymptotically optimal for respective tasks and improve earlier published results by at least a factor of 2. The circuits for generic quantum computation constructed by the algorithms are the most efficient known today in terms of the number of most expensive gates [quantum controlled-NOTs (CNOTs)]. They are based on an analog of the Shannon decomposition of Boolean functions and a new circuit block, called quantum multiplexor (QMUX), which generalizes several known constructions. A theoretical lower bound implies that the circuits cannot be improved by more than a factor of 2. It is additionally shown how to accommodate the severe architectural limitation of using only nearest neighbor gates, which is representative of current implementation technologies. This increases the number of gates by almost an order of magnitude, but preserves the asymptotic optimality of gate counts.

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

application specific integrated circuits


Ensemble of subset online sequential extreme learning machine for class imbalance and concept drift In this paper, a computationally efficient framework, referred to as ensemble of subset online sequential extreme learning machine (ESOS-ELM), is proposed for class imbalance learning from a concept-drifting data stream. The proposed framework comprises a main ensemble representing short-term memory, an information storage module representing long-term memory and a change detection mechanism to promptly detect concept drifts. In the main ensemble of ESOS-ELM, each OS-ELM network is trained with a balanced subset of the data stream. Using ELM theory, a computationally efficient storage scheme is proposed to leverage the prior knowledge of recurring concepts. A distinctive feature of ESOS-ELM is that it can learn from new samples sequentially in both the chunk-by-chunk and one-by-one modes. ESOS-ELM can also be effectively applied to imbalanced data without concept drift. On most of the datasets used in our experiments, ESOS-ELM performs better than the state-of-the-art methods for both stationary and non-stationary environments.

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

class imbalance
concept drift
extreme learning machine


Effects of rich-gets-richer rule on small-world networks In this paper, we propose a new rewiring rule that generates small-world networks with larger clustering coefficient and smaller average path length. Unlike the random rewiring rule in the WS model described by Watts and Strogatz, we use the rich-gets-richer rule that links a vertex that already has a large number of connections and has a higher probability. Simulation results also verify that the novel rich-gets-richer rule based small-world network is an improvement over the WS model.

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

clustering coefficient
average path length

small-world network
rich-gets-richer rule


ten design lessons from the literature on child development and children's use of technology The existing knowledge base on child development offers a wealth of information that can be useful for the design of children's technology. Furthermore, academic journals and conference proceedings provide us with a constant stream of new research papers on child-computer interaction and interaction design for children. It will require some effort from designers to gather and digest the scattered research results and theoretical knowledge applicable to their products. We conducted an extended research project whereby the existing knowledge relating to the design of technology for children aged five to eight have been gathered and presented in a way that makes it accessible and useful to designers in practice. This paper provides and extract from that research, focusing on ten useful lessons learnt from existing literature.

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

cognitive skill development
design guidelines
children's technology


Permutations of finite fields for check digit systems Let q be a prime power. For a divisor n of q - 1 we prove an asymptotic formula for the number of polynomials of the form f(X) = a-b/n (Sigma(n-1)(j-1)X(j(q-1)/n)) X + a+b(n-1)/nX is an element of Fq[X] such that the five (not necessarily different) polynomials f(X), f(X) +/- X and f(f(X)) +/- X are all permutation polynomials over F(q). Such polynomials can be used to define check digit systems that detect the most frequent errors: single errors, adjacent transpositions, jump transpositions, twin errors and jump twin errors.

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

check digit systems
finite fields
permutation polynomials

orthomorphisms
complete mappings
cyclotomy


Identifying connected components in Gaussian finite mixture models for clustering Clusters are identified as connected components from high density regions. Gaussian finite mixture models are used for density estimation. Identified clusters are not constrained to have a Gaussian shape. Clusters need not be obtained by combining mixture components. A dimension reduction step is used in cases of higher data dimensionality.

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

connected components
high density regions

finite mixture of gaussian distributions


a use-case approach to the validation of social modeling and simulation The modeling and simulation (M&S) community is faced with the task of informing public policy decision makers, from both the defense community and from the civilian sector, of the impact of their decisions on the beliefs, values and interests (BVIs) of the populations in their areas of influence. The M&S techniques used for these types of analyses by necessity challenge the traditional boundaries and methods regarding validation efforts. Given that the analysis of populations is largely intractable via reductionist methodologies, we posit that insight must be garnered through experiment and iteration using simulated societies. Further, the designs of these simulation experiments must be based on the information needs of the community. We discuss the concept of developing social simulations by use case, the validation of data sources for model development, validation techniques guided by usefulness, and a case study approach to validation of social simulations.

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

social simulation
behavioral modeling
vv&a
ontology


A strategy for empowerment: The role of midwives in computer systems implementation The procurement and implementation of patient administration systems has been done on numerous occasions in the past. The Rotunda project however encompassed major bespoke clinical developments which were going to impact upon large clusters of midwives, and medical staff to a lesser extent. A broad based four level structured methodology was used to implement the project which is significantly ahead of schedule. This methodology together with its strengths and weaknesses is comprehensively discussed. The empowerment of midwives, their roles in systems analysis and design, software testing and organisational re-engineering is described. The importance of undertaking comprehensive computer training is highlighted and a compact 10 h information technology course coupled with ongoing educational and related activities which could be adopted by any organisation is documented. The seven deadly sins of project management are mapped out. An update on benefits realisation is provided. Gender issues are also discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.

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

midwives
empowerment
training
project management
gender


Cicco Simonetta's cipher-breaking rules Cicco Simonetta has been described as an important cryptanalyst (and perhaps the encipherer of the Voynich Manuscript) in consideration of his famous rules for solving medieval ciphers. His work is in reality a collection of hints for solving ciphers that were rather old-fashioned at that time. Examples of 15th century ciphers confirm that contemporary cipher clerks were well equipped to defy the tricks described by Simonetta.

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

cryptanalysis
francois viete
leon battista alberti
nomenclators
sforza
visconti


A family of Hamiltonian and Hamiltonian connected graphs with fault tolerance Processor (vertex) faults and link (edge) faults may happen when a network is used, and it is meaningful to consider networks (graphs) with faulty processors and/or links. A k-regular Hamiltonian and Hamiltonian connected graph G is optimal fault-tolerant Hamiltonian and Hamiltonian connected if G remains Hamiltonian after removing at most k-2 vertices and/or edges and remains Hamiltonian connected after removing at most k-3 vertices and/or edges. In this paper, we investigate in constructing optimal fault-tolerant Hamiltonian and optimal fault-tolerant Hamiltonian connected graphs. Therefore, some of the generalized hypercubes, twisted-cubes, crossed-cubes, and Mobius cubes are optimal fault-tolerant Hamiltonian and optimal fault-tolerant Hamiltonian connected.

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

fault-tolerance
hamiltonicity
hamiltonian connectivity
generalized hypercube


critique and evaluation of the cal poly/dpma model curriculum for computer information systems The authors have been intimate observers of a significant movement within computer education. This paper presents a history of this curriculum project and an assessment of its future influence. The forces which mandate the focus of attention in the area of data processing education are identified and the nature of the response evoked from this project is analyzed. The paper reveals the need for a better understanding of curriculum development enterprises, and the necessity to promote greater cooperation both within the academic community and within the computer industry to insure that useful curriculum materials will emerge.

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

assessment
education
attention
influence
data processing
movement
cooperation
project
curriculum development
response
model
paper
future
evaluation
curriculum

computer education
understandability
observability
histories
communities
author
enterprise
industrial
computation
material
information system


An efficient search space representation for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition In pursuance of better performance, current speech recognition systems tend to use more and more complicated models for both the acoustic and the language component. Cross-word context dependent (CD) phone models and long-span statistical language models (LMs) are now widely used. In this paper, we present a memory-efficient search topology that enables the use of such detailed acoustic and language models in a one pass time-synchronous recognition system. Characteristic of our approach is (1) the decoupling of the two basic knowledge sources, namely pronunciation information and LM information, and (2) the representation of pronunciation information the lexicon in terms of CD units by means of a compact static network. The LM information is incorporated into the search at run-time by means of a slightly modified token-passing algorithm. The decoupling of the LM and lexicon allows great flexibility in the choice of LMs, while the static lexicon representation avoids the cost of dynamic tree expansion and facilitates the integration of additional pronunciation information such as assimilation rules. Moreover, the network representation results in a compact structure when words have various pronunciations, and due to its construction, it offers partial LM forwarding at no extra cost.

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 O O O O

large vocabulary speech recognition
search algorithms
context dependent acoustic modelling


Relativistic coordinate shifting within three-dimensional space Let us consider that light, when viewed as a particle, forms a conic arc segment inscribed within the space viewed The space (or frame) viewed is considered to exhibit a gravitational potential, and it is thus this potential that deforms the fight Path from a Euclidean/Newtonian derivation of a straight line to that of a relativistic curvilinear nature. Given a distance over this conic arc segment (assumed to form a parabolic arc segment) and a given time (considering the given distance involved), one derives a constancy of the speed of light of c, where c is considered as a constant regardless of the gravitational potential exhibited by the frame viewed. If we further consider that the Special Theory requires that light propagate on a linear measure as the velocity v (of necessity v being less than c on a comparable linear measure) between the axes concerned; then a displacement (in linear measure equal to c - v) occurs. The displacement evolved is then assumed to agree with the form of Maxwell. We assume that this linear displacement of c - v occurs upon the y-axis of the frame viewed Of necessity, a relative displacement must occur upon the x-axis of the frame viewed From the calculus, the dot products derived must vary in concept, in order to derive the totality of relative coordinate shifts occurring within any three-dimensional space. One displacement is linear in nature, while the other is trigonometric in nature. We consider the displacement of Maxwell, Lorentz, Compton, and de Broglie to be linear in nature. Based on the principle of the Special Theory (and the other forms as mentioned), we consider the total displacement to be mechanically derivable. That derivation, once allowed, results the physics to agree with the observations complete to this moment in time. The paper concludes that the error in coordinate positioning shown by the global positioning satellite system (GPS satellite platform) is resolvable.

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


Artificial spiking neurons and analog-to-digital-to-analog conversion This paper studies encoding/decoding function of artificial spiking neurons. First, we investigate basic characteristics of spike-trains of the neurons and fix parameter value that can minimize variation of spike-train length for initial value. Second we consider analog-to-digital encoding based upon spike-interval modulation that is suitable for simple and stable signal detection. Third we present a digital-to-analog decoder in which digital input is applied to switch the base signal of the spiking neuron. The system dynamics can be simplified into simple switched dynamical systems and precise analysis is possible. A simple circuit model is also presented.

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

analog-to-digital converters
digital-to-analog converters


Leaf classification in sunflower crops by computer vision and neural networks In this article, we present an automatic leaves image classification system for sunflower crops using neural networks, which could be used in selective herbicide applications. The system is comprised of four main stages. First, a segmentation based on rgb color space is performed. Second, many different features are detected and then extracted from the segmented image. Third, the most discriminable set of features are selected. Finally, the Generalized Softmax Perceptron (GSP) neural network architecture is used in conjunction with the recently proposed Posterior Probability Model Selection (PPMS) algorithm for complexity selection in order to select the leaves in an image and then classify them either as sunflower or non-sunflower. The experimental results show that the proposed system achieves a high level of accuracy with only five selected discriminative features obtaining an average Correct Classification Rate of 85% and an area under the receiver operation curve over 90%, for the test set.

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

classification
computer vision
model selection
sunflower


Texture Enhanced Histogram Equalization Using TV-L-1 Image Decomposition Histogram transformation defines a class of image processing operations that are widely applied in the implementation of data normalization algorithms. In this paper, we present a new variational approach for image enhancement that is constructed to alleviate the intensity saturation effects that are introduced by standard contrast enhancement (CE) methods based on histogram equalization. In this paper, we initially apply total variation (TV) minimization with a L-1 fidelity term to decompose the input image with respect to cartoon and texture components. Contrary to previous papers that rely solely on the information encompassed in the distribution of the intensity information, in this paper, the texture information is also employed to emphasize the contribution of the local textural features in the CE process. This is achieved by implementing a nonlinear histogram warping CE strategy that is able to maximize the information content in the transformed image. Our experimental study addresses the CE of a wide variety of image data and comparative evaluations are provided to illustrate that our method produces better results than conventional CE strategies.

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

contrast enhancement
image decomposition
histogram warping


light-water interaction using backward beam tracing A new two pass approach is presented based on a variation of backward ray tracing backward beam tracing. Advantages include its capability of rendering complex, hitherto unattainable, specular to diffuse phenomenon and its easy insertion into standard renderers. The algorithm is applied to aspects of the interaction of light with water. Within this context a variety of first generation effects, including shadowing and light scattering, are both rendered and animated. Results taken from the treatment of caustics within classical optics are included as they provide valuable insights into the precise nature of specular to diffuse transfer.

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

precise
interaction
generation
ray tracing
rendering
diffuse
variation
context
algorithm

traces aspect shadow standardization optic complexity effect lighting


A fuzzy ServQual based method for reliable measurements of education quality in Italian higher education area A methodology to handle uncertainty in service performance analysis is developed. A recent extension of the ServQual model is considered. A strategic analysis of the Italian higher education services area is performed. The value tree of the Engineering program at the Palermo University is described. The Palermo higher education services are strategically analysed and assessed.

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

ahp
fuzzy sets theory
education services performance
student satisfaction


Flexible G1 interpolation of quad meshes ? Transforming an arbitrary mesh into a smooth G1 surface has been the subject of intensive research works. To get a visual pleasing shape without any imperfection even in the presence of extraordinary mesh vertices is still a challenging problem in particular when interpolation of the mesh vertices is required. We present a new local method, which produces visually smooth shapes while solving the interpolation problem. It consists of combining low degree biquartic Bzier patches with minimum number of pieces per mesh face, assembled together with G1-continuity. All surface control points are given explicitly. The construction is local and free of zero-twists. We further show that within this economical class of surfaces it is however possible to derive a sufficient number of meaningful degrees of freedom so that standard optimization techniques result in high quality surfaces.

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


Constructing high quality use case models: a systematic review of current practices There is an increasing recognition for the need to develop high quality use case models from the professional and academic communities. Quality in use case models is of particular importance when they are utilized within a use case driven development process, whereby every aspect of development is driven by the models and influenced by their quality. Many practitioners and researchers have provided guidelines, suggestions and techniques to construct high quality use case models. This invaluable body of knowledge is disseminated across numerous literature resources. Without unifying this knowledge into one resource, it cannot be expected that a use case modeler would be fully aware of the entire body of knowledge and benefitting from it. This paper presents a systematic review that was conducted in order to identify and amalgamate this knowledge. The amalgamated knowledge is presented in a unified form, specifically as a set of 26 anti-patterns, which modelers can use to improve the quality of their models.

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