A B-SHADE based best linear unbiased estimation tool for biased samples If not handled properly, a biased sample from a population usually results in a biased estimation of the population. The bias of a sample can be caused by selection bias or attrition bias. The B-SHADE (Biased Sentinel Hospital based Area Disease Estimation) model provides a best linear unbiased estimation (BLUE) solution by incorporating the ratio between the sample and the population, the autocorrelation within the population, and support from historical data. Three extensions are proposed and implemented in the software based on the B-SHADE model. First, we extend the original population total-oriented estimation method to population mean estimation, which is another important parameter in sampling. Second, a historical sample rather than a historical population is found to be applicable in population mean estimation. This is particularly important in practice, where there is no integrated historical population information but good historical samples. Finally, efficient sampling optimization based on the simulated annealing algorithm is proposed and implemented in the software. This is useful in evaluating the efficiency of old samples and designing new samples. A demonstration shows that when the vertical relationship and horizontal correlation can be well represented and calculated from historical data, the result estimated by the B-SHADE model is better than results from traditional simple random sampling and ratio estimation. Although the B-SHADE model was originally designed for sentinel hospitals, the software is a common tool for similar problems in different applications.

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


life is meaning (www.lifeismeaning.com) "To get a smile every day", "To balance what I have to do and what I choose to do", "To take my coffee in the morning with the people I love", "My meaning in life is to worship of Allah". These fragments are answers to the question: "What gives meaning to your life?" The interface of "Life is Meaning" is a Flash Web site that visualizes the information of public thoughts stored in a database. When launching the interface, an input form pops up in which the user enters the answer to the pertinent question (Figure 1). He also positions his answer by selecting one or more out of fifteen categories from a dropdown menu that includes family, personal, socializing, food, work, travel, athletics, nature, city, spirituality, ownership, philosophy, culture, pleasure, and other. Gender, age and the timestamp of the entry are also stored. All received data is outputted back to the Internet site in real-time. After submission, the participant is directed to a site where he can browse through remote outputs by category, continent or gender to compare, discover and share others' thoughts (Figure 2, 3). Participants can compare i.e. the way males and females respond to a certain category and which of the two genders is more affected by the category. "Life is Meaning" uses its own graphical elements and creates a system within itself with a focus on user intuition. Categories are distinguished by colors; gender by rounded and square-cut corners. Age entries vary by three different typefaces. Additionally, the choice of age is personalized: Instead of choosing a specific age range, the user selects the age he thinks suits him best. Furthermore, participants are invited to answer the question in the language of their choice. The aesthetics creates a pleasing feeling inside this system of signs that aims to connect the participants emotionally to the project. With participation, individuals will get a chance to read uncommon and interesting answers about the meaning of life. They will learn about others' perspectives on life and ideally question their own life and get into self-reflection. The question is existential in and of itself and aims to make the participant aware of the significance of single events, activities or experiences. The purpose is to go beyond scientific research as for instance described in Csikszentmihalyi's book "A Life Worth Living: Contributions to Positive Psychology", which is about leading a happy life. The data in "Life is Meaning" are instead collected in an uncontrolled, rather playful environment that is influenced by factors such as participants' mood, or the actual context they are in. "Life is Meaning" is a collaborative project that relies entirely on the entries of its community. A project that is similar to "Life is Meaning" in terms of collaboration is "Turns". For this Web project, users submit their own stories or query entries to collect "Turning Points in Life". Collective participation is further used in Rivane Neuenschwander's installation "I Wish Your Wish", where individuals are invited to choose one of the numerous ribbons that contain silkscreen printed wishes. In exchange, they write their own wish on a piece of paper and deposit it in a box for future exhibits. "Life is Meaning" works in a similar way: Individuals receive or read entries and as a further step they submit their own answer. The project is promoted and diffused by its own community through the sharing-with-friends-option. It is also connected throughout links and groups in social networks such as "Twitter" or "Facebook". Whereas these kinds of social networks are based on transparency of data, "Life is Meaning" intends on keeping participants anonymous and thereby obtain more reliable and honest answers. Primarily, anonymity helps to encourage participation. However, participants have the choice to enter their email address to be able to receive updates on the project. This entry is confidential and will not be published to any third party. In conclusion, the project can be seen as a documentation of collective current lifestyles and experiences on a worldwide level. The World Wide Web not only has the role to make it accessible to participants from all over the world and gather a broad range of answers, but also to function in form of an online gallery: "Life is Meaning" is definitely a contribution to today's Internet art that is no longer dependent on the traditional physical gallery 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

internet art
system of signs
flash
collective participation

data visualization
web art
data collection
information visualization


A Novel Approach for Nurse Rerostering based on a Parallel Algorithm We propose a parallel algorithm to solve the Nurse Rerostering Problem. A unique problem decomposition allows an efficient parallelization. Our parallel algorithm provides the same quality 15x faster than the sequential one. The source code of the parallel algorithm is on https://github.com/CTU-IIG/NRRPGpu.

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

personnel/human resources rescheduling
list-based heuristic
parallel/gpu algorithm
homogeneous/heterogeneous model


Building ubiquitous computing applications using the VERSAG adaptive agent framework In this article, we describe a novel approach to build ubiquitous computing applications using adaptive software agents. Towards this, we propose VERSAG, a novel agent framework and architecture which combines agent mobility with the ability to dynamically change the internal structure and capabilities of agents and leads to highly versatile and lightweight software agents. We describe the framework in depth and provide design and implementation details of our prototype implementation. A case study scenario is used to illustrate the functional benefits achievable through the use of this framework in ubiquitous computing environments. Further experimental evaluation confirms the efficiency and feasibility of the VERSAG framework which outperforms traditional mobile agents, and also demonstrates applicability of the proposed framework to agent based systems where varying capabilities are required by agents over their lifecycle.

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


Managing wildlife: A spatial information system for GPS collars data ISAMUD (Integrated System for Analysis and Management of Ungulate Data) is an integrated and modular software platform developed to manage GPS collar data for wildlife management. It is based on an open source spatial database (PostgreSQL and PostGIS) and includes open source data management, geo-statistical analysis and Web services modules (R, QGIS, GRASS, MapServer, Ka-Map) and a proprietary database front-end (MS Access). It is able to store, retrieve, update, analyze, visualize and disseminate GPS telemetry data in an efficient and consistent way, with a high degree of automatization.

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

spatial database
gps telemetry
wildlife management
open source
postgis
r
grass
postgresql


Constructions in swarms - From simple rules to complex structures Natural collective phenomena, for example, the movement of crowds of pedestrians and the impressive nest formations of social insects, provide us with an existence proof that sophisticated constructions may be built by swarms of relatively simple artificial agents. The constructions often appear to have required impressive control and coordination - yet each agent in the collective does not appear to be Provided with an internal world model or blue-print for the complete construction. These macroscopic structures emerge as the consequence of interaction of agents, carrying out simple rules based upon the local state of the world which includes the interaction between agents and the growing structure. In an attempt to understand the underpinning principles gf structure formation in collectives of mineral mobile agents the paper focuses on an investigation of automata-like agents in a two-dimensional lattice. All agents start their evolution at the same site on the lattice. Every agent moves at random until it finds a neighbourhood it likes move than other neighbourhoods. The agents form a stationary structure of their immobile bodies. The paper focuses upon the parameterisation of the rule space and the mapping between parameter space and the resulting global structure formed by the agents.

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


KSNet-approach to knowledge fusion from distributed sources The rapidity of the decision making process is an important factor in different branches of the human life (business, healthcare, industry, military applications etc.). Since responsible persons make decisions using available knowledge, it is important for knowledge management systems to deliver necessary and timely information. Knowledge logistics is a new direction in the knowledge management addressing this. Technology of knowledge fusion, based on the synergistic use of knowledge from multiple distributed sources, is a basis for these activities. The paper presents an overview of a Knowledge Source Network configuration approach (KSNet-approach) to knowledge fusion, multi-agent architecture and research prototype of the KSNet knowledge fusion system based on this approach.

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

intelligent systems
knowledge representation
multi-agent systems


Studying software evolution using artefacts' shared information content In order to study software evolution, it is necessary to measure artefacts representative of project releases. If we consider the process of software evolution to be copying with subsequent modification, then, by analogy, placing emphasis on what remains the same between releases will lead to focusing on similarity between artefacts. At the same time, software artefacts - stored digitally as binary strings - are all information. This paper introduces a new method for measuring software evolution in terms of artefacts' shared information content. A similarity value representing the quantity of information shared between artefact pairs is produced using a calculation based on Kolmogorov complexity. Similarity values for releases are then collated over the software's evolution to form a map quantifying change through lack of similarity. The method has general applicability: it can disregard otherwise salient software features such as programming paradigm, language or application domain because it considers software artefacts purely in terms of the mathematically justified concept of information content. Three open-source projects are analysed to show the method's utility. Preliminary experiments on udev and git verify the measurement of the projects' evolutions. An experiment on ArgoUML validates the measured evolution against experimental data from other studies. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

software evolution
kolmogorov complexity
information content

software measurement
information theory
similarity metric
complearn


A Mumford-Shah level-set approach for the inversion and segmentation of X-ray tomography data A level-set based approach for the determination of a piecewise constant density function from data of its Radon transform is presented. Simultaneously, a segmentation of the reconstructed density is obtained. The segmenting contour and the corresponding density are found as minimizers of a Mumford-Shah like functional over the set of admissible contours and - for a fixed contour - over the space of piecewise constant densities which may be discontinuous across the contour. Shape sensitivity analysis is used to find a descent direction for the cost functional which leads to an update formula for the contour in the level-set framework. The descent direction can be chosen with respect to different metrics. The use of an L-2-type and an H-1-type metric is proposed and the corresponding steepest descent flow equations are derived. A heuristic approach for the insertion of additional components of the density is presented. The method is tested for several data sets including synthetic as well as real-world data. It is shown that the method works especially well for large data noise (similar to 10% noise). The choice of the H-1-metric for the determination of the descent direction is found to have positive effect on the number of level-set steps necessary for finding the optimal contours and densities. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. 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 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

level set method
x-ray tomography
active contours
mumford-shah functional
inverse problems
shape optimization


Debugging Programs that use Atomic Blocks and Transactional Memory With the emergence of research prototypes, programming using atomic blocks and transactional memory (TM) is becoming more attractive. This paper describes our experience building and using a debugger for programs written with these abstractions. We introduce three approaches: (i) debugging at the level of atomic blocks, where the programmer is shielded from implementation details (such as exactly what kind of TM is used, or indeed whether lock inference is used instead), (ii) debugging at the level of transactions, where conflict rates, read sets, write sets, and other TM internals are visible, and (iii) debug-time transactions, which let the programmer manipulate synchronization from within the debugger-e.g., enlarging the scope of an atomic block to try to identify a bug. In this paper we explain the rationale behind the new debugging approaches that we propose. We describe the design and implementation of an extension to the WinDbg debugger, enabling support for C# programs using atomic blocks and TM. We also demonstrate the design of a "conflict point discovery" technique for identifying program statements that introduce contention between transactions. We illustrate how these techniques can be used by optimizing a C# version of the Genome application from STAMP TM benchmark suite.

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


A hybrid particle swarmNelderMead optimization method for crack detection in cantilever beams The estimation of a crack location and depth in a cantilever beam is formulated as an optimization problem and the optimal location and depth are found by minimizing the cost function which is based on the difference of the first four measured and calculated natural frequencies. Calculated natural frequencies are obtained using a rotational spring model of the crack, and measured natural frequencies are obtained by using cracked beam frequency response and modal analysis. A hybrid particle swarmNelderMead (PSNM) algorithm is used for estimating the crack location and depth. The hybrid PSNM is made-up of a modified particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO), aimed to identify the most promising areas, and a NelderMead simplex algorithm (NM) for performing local search within these areas. The PSNM results are compared with those obtained by the PSO, a hybrid geneticNelderMead algorithm (GANM) and a neural network (NN). The proposed PSNM method outperforms other methods in terms of speed and accuracy. The average estimation errors for crack location and depth are (0.06%, 0%) for the PSNM, however, (0.09%, 0%), (0.46%, 0.54%) and (0.39%, 1.66%) for the GANM, the PSO and the NN methods, respectively. To validate the proposed method and investigate the modeling and measurement errors some experimental results are also included. The average values of experimental location and depth estimation errors are (9.24%, 8.56%) for the PSNM, but (9.64%, 9.50%), (10.89%, 10.89%), (11.53%, 11.64%) for the GANM, the PSO and the NN methods, respectively.

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

crack detection
neldermead simplex
particle swarm optimization

structural health monitoring
natural frequency


Optimal assembly plan generation: a simplifying approach The main difficulty in the overall process of optimal assembly plan generation is the great number of different ways to assemble a product (typically thousands of solutions). This problem confines the application of most existing automated planning methods to products composed of only a limited number of components. The presented method of assembly plan generation belongs to the approach called "disassembly" and is founded on a new representation of the assembly process, with introduction of a new concept, the equivalence of binary trees. This representation allows to generate the minimal list of all non-redundant (really different) assembly plans. Plan generation is directed by assembly operation constraints and plan-level performance criteria. The method was tested for various assembly applications and compared to other generation approaches. Results show a great reduction in the combinatorial explosion of the number of plans. Therefore, this simplifying approach of assembly sequence modeling allows to handle more complex products with a large number of parts.

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

assembly sequence
assembly process representation
binary tree
binary tree equivalence


enabling the legally blind in classroom note-taking Classroom note-taking has been shown to be beneficial, even if the student never reviews his/her own notes. Students that are legally blind are thus at a disadvantage because they face significant barriers to note-taking in the classroom. This presentation demonstrates a working prototype of the CUbiC Note Taker, which is a highly portable device that allows students who are legally blind to take their own notes in class without any special in-classroom accommodations, and without requiring lecturers to adapt their presentation in any way.

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

note-taking
low-vision
lecture
meeting
assistive note-taking
automatic note-taking
lecture notes
note-taker


Signal understanding and tool condition monitoring This paper presents a new method, called signal understanding, for the monitoring of engineering processes, in particularly for the monitoring of tool conditions in machining processes. The new method is based on the blackboard system, an artificial intelligence method developed in the 1980s. It emulates a group of experts examining sensor signals from various aspects, and making monitoring decisions step-by-step. The blackboard system consists of two blackboards: an event blackboard, used to track the interpretations of the signal by the experts and a control blackboard, used to direct the interpretation process leading to monitoring decisions. As demonstrated by an example of tool condition monitoring in end milling, the method has a number of advantages over the existing methods, including improved reliability and reduced decision time.

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

artificial intelligence
signal understanding
tool condition monitoring


Memory-Scalable GPU Spatial Hierarchy Construction Recent GPU algorithms for constructing spatial hierarchies have achieved promising performance for moderately complex models by using the breadth-first search (BFS) construction order. While being able to exploit the massive parallelism on the GPU, the BFS order also consumes excessive GPU memory, which becomes a serious issue for interactive applications involving very complex models with more than a few million triangles. In this paper, we propose to use the partial breadth-first search (PBFS) construction order to control memory consumption while maximizing performance. We apply the PBFS order to two hierarchy construction algorithms. The first algorithm is for kd-trees that automatically balances between the level of parallelism and intermediate memory usage. With PBFS, peak memory consumption during construction can be efficiently controlled without costly CPU-GPU data transfer. We also develop memory allocation strategies to effectively limit memory fragmentation. The resulting algorithm scales well with GPU memory and constructs kd-trees of models with millions of triangles at interactive rates on GPUs with 1 GB memory. Compared with existing algorithms, our algorithm is an order of magnitude more scalable for a given GPU memory bound. The second algorithm is for out-of-core bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) construction for very large scenes based on the PBFS construction order. At each iteration, all constructed nodes are dumped to the CPU memory, and the GPU memory is freed for the next iteration's use. In this way, the algorithm is able to build trees that are too large to be stored in the GPU memory. Experiments show that our algorithm can construct BVHs for scenes with up to 20 M triangles, several times larger than previous GPU algorithms.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 Novel Analytical Model for Service Delay in IEEE 802.11 Networks In this paper, we present a novel analytical model for the service delay in IEEE 802.11 networks. This model is capable of closely tracking service delay's behavior in real wireless local area networks. We find a compact closed-form expression for the probability-generating function (PGF) of service delay using which all higher-order moments are achievable. We begin with finding the service-delay PGF; then we determine the probability density (mass) function of the delay metric by taking the inverse z-transform using numerical methods. At last, by comparing the first two statistical moments of this PGF with the mean delay and standard deviation from simulation results, the accuracy of the proposed analytical model is proved.

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

carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (csma/ca)


What do animat models model? The practice of modelling behaviour using animats has met recent criticism. Since animats bear little structural resemblance to biological systems, it isn't clear what animat models are models of. In this paper I identify and defend a central epistemic presupposition behind animat research; the claim that modellers can acquire new knowledge about biological systems without modelling their specific underlying mechanisms. I cast the critiques of animat research offered by Webb and Bechtel as forms of a general skeptical challenge to this presupposition and show how it could be met by an appeal to multiply-realisable behaviour types. I then outline a means of specifying such types dynamically.

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

multiple realisability
biology
dynamical systems
enactivism


Automatic generation of agents for collecting hidden Web pages for data extraction As the Web grows, more and more data has become available under dynamic forms of publication, such as legacy databases accessed by an HTML form (the so called hidden Web). In situations such as this, integration of this data relies more and more on the fast generation of agents that can automatically fetch pages for further processing. As a result, there is an increasing need for tools that can help users generate such agents. In this paper, we describe a method for automatically generating agents to collect hidden Web pages. This method uses a pre-existing data repository for identifying the contents of these pages and takes the advantage of some patterns that can be found among Web sites to identify the navigation paths to follow. To demonstrate the accuracy of our method, we discuss the results of a number of experiments carried out with sites from different domains.

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


I like you, but I won't listen to you: Effects of rationality on affective and behavioral responses to computers that flatter This experiment extended the computers are social actors (CASA) paradigm by investigating how rational thinking style moderates flattery effects in human-computer interaction. Participants played a trivia game with a computer, which they knew generated random answers that were accompanied by either strictly factual or flattering feedback on their performance. Although both high and low rationals attributed greater social attractiveness to the flattering computer than the one providing generic feedback, only low rationals exhibited different levels of conformity to flattering than generic-comment computers, favoring the latter. Results on recall memory and perceived validity of the computer feedback suggest that flattery elicited greater attention and heightened suspicion among those less prone to engage in analytical thinking, temporarily fostering mindfulness. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

computers are social actors
flattery
rationality


High performance MEMS accelerometers for concrete SHM applications and comparison with COTS accelerometers Little existence of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometers for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Acceleration sensing, signal processing and communication electronics integration possible by MEMS technology. High sensitivity, low noise floor and small bandwidth smart acceleration sensor for SHM A challenge as on date!. Exclusive design of bulk micromachined piezoresistive and surface micromachined capacitive accelerometers for SHM applications is the special feature of this research. Performance comparison with commercial MEMS accelerometers establishes the superiority of the reported devices.

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

commercial off-the-shelf (cots) accelerometer


Prototype Selection for Nearest Neighbor Classification: Taxonomy and Empirical Study The nearest neighbor classifier is one of the most used and well-known techniques for performing recognition tasks. It has also demonstrated itself to be one of the most useful algorithms in data mining in spite of its simplicity. However, the nearest neighbor classifier suffers from several drawbacks such as high storage requirements, low efficiency in classification response, and low noise tolerance. These weaknesses have been the subject of study for many researchers and many solutions have been proposed. Among them, one of the most promising solutions consists of reducing the data used for establishing a classification rule ( training data) by means of selecting relevant prototypes. Many prototype selection methods exist in the literature and the research in this area is still advancing. Different properties could be observed in the definition of them, but no formal categorization has been established yet. This paper provides a survey of the prototype selection methods proposed in the literature from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Considering a theoretical point of view, we propose a taxonomy based on the main characteristics presented in prototype selection and we analyze their advantages and drawbacks. Empirically, we conduct an experimental study involving different sizes of data sets for measuring their performance in terms of accuracy, reduction capabilities, and runtime. The results obtained by all the methods studied have been verified by nonparametric statistical tests. Several remarks, guidelines, and recommendations are made for the use of prototype selection for nearest neighbor classification.

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

prototype selection
nearest neighbor
taxonomy
classification


an investigation of social loafing and social compensation in computer-supported cooperative work The effects of computer-mediated communication on social loafing in brainstorming tasks and social compensation in decision-making tasks are examined. In the first experiment, subjects performed a brainstorming task in either nominal, face-to-face or computer-mediated brainstorming group conditions. Production blocking, in which brainstorming group members interfere with each other's output, was minimised, but the nominal group still out-performed the other groups. In the second experiment, subjects performed a group decision task in face-to-face and computer mediated communication conditions. Social compensation in the presence of social loafing was seen to occur in the first condition, but not in the second. The paper concludes by discussing some of the consequences of both experiments for the future role of computer-mediated communication in group work.

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

computer-supported cooperative work
compter-mediated communication


A novel signal sparse decomposition based on modulation correlation partition An algorithm that raises efficiency of matching pursuit is proposed. Partition strategy is introduced to improve structure of redundant dictionary. The proposed approach is more effective than the traditional ones and has robustness.

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

sparse decomposition
modulation correlation partition


Security analysis of image cryptosystems only or partially based on a chaotic permutation The paper proposes breaks for the permutation methods adopted in the chaos-based image cryptosystems. By a careful examination on the most chaotic image cryptosystems we can find that the permutation process constitute the main step or, in some cases, the only step to create the confusion. It can be applied on the pixels or on the pixel bits. A recently proposed image encryption scheme based on shuffling the pixel bits inspired from other works is treated as a case study. By applying a chosen plaintext attack, we demonstrate that a hacker can determine the permutation vectors (matrixes) used to permute the pixels bits or the pixels themselves and exploit them to reveal the plain image.

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


assisting users in a cross-cultural communication by providing culturally contextualized translations In this paper, we present a web-chat application called Culture-to-Chat (C2C). The purpose of this chat is to help users to produce messages in a English as a Second Language - ESL. Regarding this task, C2C has two resources that we named Cultural Translator and Machine Translator. The Cultural Translator uses a Brazilian Portuguese cultural knowledge base (from the Open Mind Common Sense - Br Project in collaboration to Media Lab - MIT) that works with the sender's vocabulary expression in order to provide alternative suggestions that can have the same colloquial meaning. The Machine Translation converts texts from a source language to a target language. The process that we used to combine these features and develop the application was based on an user-centered design approach with a focus on prototyping. We used different types of fidelity-levels (low, mid, high) before developing the functional web prototype version of C2C. User tests were then applied to evaluate usability issues. After collecting data from questionnaires and observation, problems were corrected and now we are heading to a larger user study regarding the C2C functionality. We have been performing a study case involving Brazilian and Canadian users. There are some initial results available from this study that will be discussed further. These data show that users appreciate the resources that help them design messages for cross-cultural communication.

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

cultural translation
communication mediated by technology
human computer interaction
natural language processing


new perspectives in autonomic design patterns for stream-classification-systems Nowadays, systems are growing in size and are becoming more and more complex. Such a complexity suggests a new need for mechanisms that enable the system to self-manage, freeing administrators of low-level task management whilst delivering an optimized system. Autonomic systems sense their operating environment and automatically take action to change the environment or their own behavior. They are able to achieve it with a minimum of human effort. This is because they are: self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting. Current autonomic systems are ad hoc solutions: each system is designed and implemented from scratch i.e., there are not standard (or well-established) methodologies that autonomic system designers and/or programmers can exploit to drive their work. In this paper, we propose a design pattern that can be easily exploited by the stream-classification-systems designer to achieve autonomicity with a minimal effort. The pattern is described using a java-like notation for the classes and interfaces. A simple UML class diagram is depicted.

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

adaptive strategies
behavioral design pattern
autonomic computing


Local linear regression with adaptive orthogonal fitting for the wind power application Short-term forecasting of wind generation requires a model of the function for the conversion of meteorological variables (mainly wind speed) to power production. Such a power curve is nonlinear and bounded, in addition to being nonstationary. Local linear regression is an appealing nonparametric approach for power curve estimation, for which the model coefficients can be tracked with recursive Least Squares (LS) methods. This may lead to an inaccurate estimate of the true power curve, owing to the assumption that a noise component is present on the response variable axis only. Therefore, this assumption is relaxed here, by describing a local linear regression with orthogonal fit. Local linear coefficients are defined as those which minimize a weighted Total Least Squares (TLS) criterion. An adaptive estimation method is introduced in order to accommodate nonstationarity. This has the additional benefit of lowering the computational costs of updating local coefficients every time new observations become available. The estimation method is based on tracking the left-most eigenvector of the augmented covariance matrix. A robustification of the estimation method is also proposed. Simulations on semi-artificial datasets (for which the true power curve is available) underline the properties of the proposed regression and related estimation methods. An important result is the significantly higher ability of local polynomial regression with orthogonal fit to accurately approximate the target regression, even though it may hardly be visible when calculating error criteria against corrupted data.

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

wind power
forecasting
local linear regression
total least squares
adaptive estimation

modelling
nonparametric regression
robust estimation


Robust video identification approach based on local non-negative matrix factorization With the popularization of media-capture devices and the development of the Internet's basic facilities, video has become the most popular media information in recent years. The massive capacity of video imposes the demand of automatic video identification techniques which are very important to various applications such as content based video retrieval and copy detection. Therefore, as a challenging problem, video identification has drawn more and more attention in the past decade. The problem addressed here is to identify a given video clip in a given set of video sequences. In this paper, a robust video identification algorithm based on local non-negative matrix factorization (LNMF) is presented. First, some concepts about LNMF are described and the way of finding the factorized matrix is given. Then, its convergence is proven. In addition, a LNMF based shot detection method is proposed for constructing a video identification framework completely based on LNMF. Finally, a LNMF based identification approach using Hausdorff distance is introduced and a two-stage search process is proposed. Experimental results show the robustness of the proposed approach to many kinds of content-preserved distortions and its superiority to other algorithms.

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

non-negative matrix factorization
local non-negative matrix factorization
content preserved distortion


Collaborative Urban Computing: Serendipitous Cooperation Between Users in an Urban Environment Recent technical advancements in computing devices and communication networks, combined with changes in the way people use information and communication technology (ICT) systems, have transformed the ICT industry. In this article, we present the collaborative urban computing (CUC) paradigm, which supports serendipitous cooperation between a set of users physically located in an urban environment and all sharing a common goal. Advantages and disadvantages of the CUC paradigm are elaborated on a proof-of-concept CUC service, which we call collaborative downloading.

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

collective intelligence
communication convergence
computing evolution
self-organization
user collaboration
user maturation


extracting collective expectations about the future from large text collections News articles often contain information about the future. Given the huge volume of information available nowadays, an automatic way for extracting and summarizing future-related information is desirable. Such information will allow people to obtain a collective image of the future, to recognize possible future scenarios and be prepared for the future events. We propose a model-based clustering algorithm for detecting future events based on information extracted from a text corpus. The algorithm takes into account both textual and temporal similarity of sentences. We demonstrate that our algorithm can be used to discover future events and estimate their probabilities over time.

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

temporal information
future-related information retrieval


Significance of Adolescent Neurodevelopment for the Neural Circuitry of Bipolar Disorder The deficits of executive control of emotions and impulses of adult BD implicate involvement of a ventral prefrontal cortex (VPFC) neural system that subserves these functions that include the VPFC, as well as its subcortical connection sites of amygdala, striatum, and thalamus. Differences in the timing of major developmental changes in the structures within this neural system suggest that abnormalities in particular components of this neural system may emerge during critical developmental epochs during the course of the illness. Our recent neuroimaging data suggest that abnormalities in the subcortical components of VPFC neural systems may be evident by early adolescence in BD, whereas VPFC deficits progress over the course of adolescence and may be difficult to detect prior to late adolescence or early adulthood. This potential neurodevelopmental model for BD could have important implications for the recognition of early signs of the disorder and for age-specific treatment strategies.

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

magnetic resonance imaging
child development


Armada: a parallel I/O framework for computational grids High-performance computing increasingly occurs on "computational grids" composed of heterogeneous and geographically distributed systems of computers, networks, and storage devices that collectively act as a single "virtual" computer. One of the great challenges for this environment is to provide efficient access to data that is distributed across remote data servers in a grid. In this paper, we describe our solution, a framework we call armada. The framework allows applications and dataset providers to flexibly compose graphs of processing modules that describe the distribution, application interfaces, and processing required of the dataset before computation. The armada runtime system then restructures the graph, and places the processing modules at appropriate hosts to reduce network traffic. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Current utilization of CASE technology: lessons from the field Since its inception, CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tools have been hailed as the "silver bullet" of applications development. Although these tools have failed to live up to such an advance billing (as do most "fix-all" solutions), these products remain a viable option for practitioners of modern applications development. This study comments on the use of CASE in modern IS installations, using the results of an in-depth survey completed by 226 IS professionals from over 30 Fortune 500-type companies. First, the study identifies the most popular features possessed by respondents' CASE toolsets. Next, we comment on the "gap" perceived to exist between CASE features actually possessed, and those features needed by these professionals in the performance of their job duties. Finally, implications for practice and research are presented.

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

computer systems
automation
systems development


Design and Analysis of Minkowski Reflectarray Antenna Using 3-D CST Microwave Studio-Based Neural Network Model with Particle Swarm Optimization This article presents a systematic analysis and design of the X-band Minkowski reflectarray antenna (RA) by using the 3-D Computer Simulation Technology Microwave Studio (CST MWS)-based multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP NN) model of a unit element. This MLP NN model is utilized efficiently as a fast and accurate model within a particle swarm optimization procedure to determine the calibration phasing characteristic belonging to the resultant optimum patch geometry and substrate. In design stage, the MLP NN analysis model is reversed to determine the variable-size of each reflectarray element to meet the necessary phase delay with the adaptive iterative step. In the final stage, the optimum Minkowski RA consisting of the variable-size Minkowski patches interspaced by 0.5 wavelength at the frequency of 11 GHz on the Taconic RF-35 with epsilon(r) = 3.54, tan delta = 0.0018 and the optimum thickness (h(opt)) are analyzed using the 3D CST MWS and compared with the counterpart square and parabolic reflectors. Compared with the counterpart RA with square element and the parabolic reflector, this optimized Minkowski RA is resulted to be capable of providing higher realized gain and lower sidelobe level (SLL). Furthermore, the effect of feed movement along the focal length on the gain-bandwidth and radiation pattern is also worked out and demonstrated. It is concluded that this method can also be applied as a robust method for the design and analysis of a RA built by arbitrarily shaped patches. (C) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 23: 272-284, 2013.

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

reflectarray antenna
particle swarm optimization

multilayer perceptron neural network (mlp nn)


Semilinear copulas A family of copulas, called semilinear, is constructed starting with some assumptions about the linearity of the copulas along some segments of the unit square. This family contains some other known families of copulas (e.g., Cuadras-Auge, Frechet) and has a nice statistical interpretation. Several construction methods are provided, especially concerning aggregation of semilinear copulas, and a special form of ordinal sum construction is introduced. Some results about related families of quasi-copulas and semicopulas are hence given. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Critical state plasticity. Part VII: Triggering a shear band in variably saturated porous media In a previous paper (Part VI), the impact of spatially varying density on the localization of deformation of granular materials has been quantified using mesoscopic representations of stresses and deformation. In the present paper, we extend the formulation to unsaturated porous media and investigate the effect of spatially varying degree of saturation on triggering a shear band in granular materials. Variational formulations are presented for porous solids whose voids are filled with liquid and gas. Two critical state formulations are used to characterize the solid constitutive response: one developed for clay and another for sand. Stabilized low-order mixed finite elements are used to solve the fully coupled solid-deformation/fluid-flow problem. For the first time, we present the consistent derivative of the effective stress tensor with respect to capillary pressure considering full coupling of solid deformation with fluid flow, which is essential for achieving an optimal convergence rate of Newton iteration.

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

bifurcation
critical state theory
heterogeneity
mixed formulation


Super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes We introduce a new class of space-time codes called super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes. These codes combine set partitioning and a super set of orthogonal space-time block codes in a systematic way to provide full diversity and improved coding gain over earlier space-time trellis code constructions. We also study the optimality of our set partitioning and provide coding gain analysis. Codes operating at different rates, up to the highest theoretically possible rate, for different number of states can be designed by using our optimal set partitioning. Super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes can provide a tradeoff between rate and coding gain. Simulation results show more than 2-dB improvements over the codes presented in the literature while providing a systematic design methodology.

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

orthogonal designs
space-time codes
super-orthogonal codes
transmitter diversity


usability testing with young children This paper discusses two aspects of usability testing with children: First, the problems uncovered by children who have worked with the software for some time, experts, are compared with the problems uncovered by novices. Second, the suitability of behavioral observations and additional voluntary talk aloud is determined for usability testing with children. The usability of an educational software program that provides exercises directly related to beginning reading was tested by 70 children from Kindergarten 2 and Grade 1. The results show that the behavioral observations were especially useful to determine the presence of anticipated problems, while talk aloud provided information about the importance of these problems and about problems that were not anticipated. Novices encounter significantly more problems than experts, but the experts provided some important additional findings.

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


Harmonic Field Based Volume Model Construction from Triangle Soup Surface triangle meshes and volume data are two commonly used representations of digital geometry. Converting from triangle meshes to volume data is challenging, since triangle meshes often contain defects such as small holes, internal structures, or self-intersections. In the extreme case, we may be simply presented with a set of arbitrarily connected triangles, a "triangle soup". This paper presents a novel method to generate volume data represented as an octree from a general 3D triangle soup. Our motivation is the Faraday cage from electrostatics. We consider the input triangles as forming an approximately closed Faraday cage, and set its potential to zero. We then introduce a second conductor surrounding it, and give it a higher constant potential. Due to the electrostatic shielding effect, the resulting electric field approximately lies in that part of space outside the shape implicitly determined by the triangle soup. Unlike previous approaches, our method is insensitive to small holes and internal structures, and is observed to generate volumes with low topological complexity. While our approach is somewhat limited in accuracy by the requirement of filling holes, it is still useful, for example, as a preprocessing step for applications such as mesh repair and skeleton extraction.

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

volume model
triangle soup
harmonic field
mesh repair


Efficient processing of nested fuzzy SQL queries in a fuzzy database In a fuzzy relational database where a relation is a fuzzy set of tuples and ill-known data are represented by possibility distributions, nested fuzzy queries can be expressed in the Fuzzy SOL language, as defined in [25], [23]. Although it provides a very convenient way for users to express complex queries, a nested fuzzy query may be very inefficient to process with the naive evaluation method. based on its semantics. In conventional databases, nested queries are unnested to improve the efficiency of their evaluation. In this paper, we extend the unnesting techniques to process several types of nested fuzzy queries. An extended merge-join is used to evaluate the unnested fuzzy queries. As shown by both theoretical analysis and experimental results, the unnesting techniques with the extended merge-join significantly improve the performance of evaluating nested fuzzy queries.

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

fuzzy database
fuzzy sol
nested fuzzy query

query optimization
query transformation
possibility distribution
performance evaluation
fuzzy equijoin


Risk-based testing:: Risk analysis fundamentals and metrics for software testing including a financial application case study The idea of risk-based testing is to focus testing and spend more time on critical functions. By combining the focused process with metrics it is possible to manage the test process by intelligent assessment and to communicate the expected consequences of decisions taken. This paper discusses an approach to risk-based testing and how risk-based testing was carried out in a large project in a financial institution. The paper concludes with how practical risk-based testing experience should inform theory and provide advice on organizational requirements that are necessary to achieve success.

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

risk analysis
risk-based testing
risk management


ON/OFF Markov Model Based Energy-Delay Aware MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network Today, the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are increasingly used in many applications, and in parallel the scientific researches to improve the features of such networks are accelerated. As the nodes are small components that suffer from very limited energy resources, several researches carried out at the MAC layer in order to minimize energy costs. The techniques based on periodic active/passive mode are energy efficient, but the node can not adapt the behavior of the transceiver according to the network traffic. Our approach aims to reduce the latency without increasing energy consumption. We propose to manage the radio in a dynamic way according to ON/OFF Markov model. The passage from passive to active mode is set according to the transition probability from OFF to ON state. Based on this probability, we give the period that the transceiver can stay in sleep mode. Through simulation we show that the proposed technique outperforms the well known MAC protocol for WSN.

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

bursty traffic
on/off markov model
listening/sleeping mode
dynamic sleeping schedule


On hereditary clique-Helly self-clique graphs ? A graph is clique-Helly if any family of mutually intersecting (maximal) cliques has non-empty intersection, and it is hereditary clique-Helly (HCH) if its induced subgraphs are clique-Helly. The clique graph of a graph G is the intersection graph of its cliques, and G is self-clique if it is connected and isomorphic to its clique graph. We show that every HCH graph is an induced subgraph of a self-clique HCH graph, and give a characterization of self-clique HCH graphs in terms of their constructibility starting from certain digraphs with some forbidden subdigraphs. We also specialize this results to involutive HCH graphs, i.e. self-clique HCH graphs whose vertex-clique bipartite graph admits a part-switching involution.

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

hereditary clique-helly
self-clique
duality digraph


Efficient

implementation

of

Bailey

and

Borwein

pseudo-random

number

generator

based

on

normal

numbers

This

paper

describes

an

implementation

of

a

Linear

Congruential

Generator

(LCG)

based

on

the

binary

representation

of

the

normal

number

and

of

a

combined

generator

based

on

that

LCG.

The

base

LCG

with

the

modulus

provides

a

quality

sequence

with

the

period

approximate

to

which

passes

all

but

two

statistical

tests

from

BigCrush

test

suite.

We

improved

on

the

original

implementation

by

adapting

Barrett's

modular

reduction

method,

which

resulted

in

four-fold

increase

in

efficiency.

The

combined

generator

has

the

period

of

approximate

to

and

passes

all

tests

from

BigCrush

suite.

Program

summary

Program

title:

BCNRandom

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

URL:

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.

Computer:

IBM

PC;

MacBook

Pro.

Operating

system:

Windows

Linux,

Unix,

OS

X.

RAM:

KB

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

This

is

a

fast

pseudorandom

number

generator

based

on

normal

numbers,

with

long

period

and

good

statistical

properties.

It

passes

all

BigCrush

statistical

tests

and

is

faster

than

C

standard

library

rand

generator.

Suitable

for

parallel

execution

by

multiple

threads

and/or

processes

because

of

skip

ahead

property.

Solution

method:

Linear

Congruential

Generators

with

specially

chosen

parameters

are

used.

A

customized

fast

modular

reduction

is

employed.

Running

time:

Generation

rate

is

million

numbers

per

second.

(C)

Elsevier

B.V.

All

rights

reserved.

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

normal numbers
linear congruential generator


The geometric element transformation method for tetrahedral mesh smoothing The geometric element transformation method (GETMe) has been introduced as a new element driven approach to mesh smoothing. It is based on simple geometric transformations, which, if applied iteratively, lead to the regularization of mesh elements. Global mesh smoothing can be accomplished by successively improving the worst elements or by averaging node positions obtained by the simultaneous transformation of all elements. GETMe smoothing has been successfully applied in the case of surface meshes. As shown in this paper, this approach also naturally extends to tetrahedral mesh smoothing without major conceptual modifications. A regularizing transformation for tetrahedra is presented and a combined approach of simultaneous and sequential GETMe smoothing is described. First numerical examples yield high quality meshes superior to those obtained by other geometry-based methods. In fact, the presented results are in a majority of cases at least comparable to those obtained by a state of the art global optimization-based method.

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

mesh quality
tetrahedral mesh
iterative element regularization
finite element mesh


Fast permutation routing in a class of interconnection networks This paper considers the following permutation routing problem: Given an N x N augmented data manipulator (ADM) network and a permutation pi between its N inputs and outputs, can all the traffic connections of pi be routed through the network in one pass? A number of backtrack search algorithms have been devised for recognizing ADM admissible permutations. None of the published results, however, appears to settle the time complexity of the problem. The goal of this paper was to answer the question positively by showing the first polynomial time bound for solving the problem. The devised algorithm requires O(N-1.695) time to decide whether a given permutation pi is admissible and compute a setting of the switches whenever pi is admissible. For many practical applications, the obtained bound compares favorably with the O(N Ig N) size of an N-input ADM network. (C) 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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

augmented data manipulators
switching networks
multistage interconnection networks
blocking networks


a domain model to improve it course design Instructional design in Information Technology (IT) has several significant issues that distinguish it from other disciplines, the most prominent of which is the rapid evolution of the computing technologies that are the essence of the discipline. Managing this change in designing and updating courses requires an understanding of the operative mechanisms that govern the change process. Several theoretical models from fields of architecture, computing and, of course, instructional design, have a bearing on this problem. A study was conducted of a number of instructional change events in IT and from that study a unified model was developed. The unified model provides understanding of the types of decisions made during IT instructional design. It also explains both successful and unsuccessful change events observed during the study. Understanding of the course creation and change process will help IT instructional designers create new courses or adapt existing courses for new material with less effort.

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

instructional design
information technology

instructional design architecture
rapid course change


OntoVIP: An ontology for the annotation of object models used for medical image simulation We propose an ontology for the annotation of medical image simulation object models. We extract and reuse relevant subsets of existing ontologies. We use this ontology in the implementation of the Virtual Imaging Platform (VIP). Such annotations facilitate the query/retrieval of the models. Should facilitate interoperation with software modeling biological phenomena.

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

semantic web
ontology web language
medical imaging


Evolutionarily stable sets in quantum penny flip games In game theory, an Evolutionarily Stable Set (ES set) is a set of Nash Equilibrium (NE) strategies that give the same payoffs. Similar to an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ES strategy), an ES set is also a strict NE. This work investigates the evolutionary stability of classical and quantum strategies in the quantum penny flip games. In particular, we developed an evolutionary game theory model to conduct a series of simulations where a population of mixed classical strategies from the ES set of the game were invaded by quantum strategies. We found that when only one of the two players mixed classical strategies were invaded, the results were different. In one case, due to the interference phenomenon of superposition, quantum strategies provided more payoff, hence successfully replaced the mixed classical strategies in the ES set. In the other case, the mixed classical strategies were able to sustain the invasion of quantum strategies and remained in the ES set. Moreover, when both players mixed classical strategies were invaded by quantum strategies, a new quantum ES set was emerged. The strategies in the quantum ES set give both players payoff 0, which is the same as the payoff of the strategies in the mixed classical ES set of this game.

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

evolutionary game theory
evolutionarily stable sets
quantum penny flip games

quantum games
evolutionarily stable strategies
evolutionary algorithms


automated conversion of curvilinear wire-frame models to surface boundary models; a topological approach An algorithm is presented for automatically converting data representing unambiguous, three-dimensional objects in wire-frame form with curvilinear edges into a boundary representation. The method is an important extension to a previously published algorithm based on graph theory and topology. The new method automatically detects and resolves anomalies, such as necks which may appear to be faces, that formerly required human intervention. The topological basis for the solution to this problem is given along with a description of what topological properties a well defined three-dimensional object should have. An implementation has been coded and examples of results are included.

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

method
examples
human
implementation
object
data
graph theory
algorithm
representation
surface

topologies extensibility model automation conversation


terrain generation using genetic algorithms We propose a method for applying genetic algorithms to create 3D terrain data sets. Existing procedural algorithms for generation of terrain have several shortcomings. The most popular approach, fractal-based terrain generation, is efficient, but is difficult for a user to control. Other methods tend to require too much user input. In this paper, we provide an alternative method of terrain generation that uses a two-pass genetic algorithm approach to produce a variety of terrain types using only intuitive user inputs. We allow a user to specify a rough sketch of terrain region boundaries, and we refine these boundaries using a genetic algorithm. We then couple this with a database of given terrain data to generate an artificial terrain, which we optimize using a second genetic algorithm.

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

geographic information systems (gis)
height field
image processing


a dynamic, web-based methodology for developing intercultural understanding This paper describes a pedagogical project that was designed at MIT in 1997 and that has been taking place every year since then, connecting American and French language students for the purpose of helping them develop intercultural understanding. It centers on the dynamic process that allows students to gradually and collaboratively construct, through a series of stages, an in-depth understanding of each other's cultures. It ends with some reflections on the challenges brought by the use of web-based communication tools as well as the pedagogical impact they inherently have on the ways students develop intercultural understanding.

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

co-construction
pedagogy
internet
dynamic methodology


Local averaging optimization for chaotic time series prediction ? Local models have emerged as one of the most accurate methods of time series prediction, but their performance is sensitive to the choice of user-specified parameters such as the size of the neighborhood, the embedding dimension, and the distance metric. This paper describes a new method of optimizing these parameters to minimize the multi-step cross-validation error. Empirical results indicate that multi-step optimization is susceptible to shallow local minima unless the optimization is limited to 10 or fewer steps ahead. The models optimized using the new method consistently performed better than those optimized with adaptive analog forecasts.

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

local models
time series prediction
embedding dimension


Measuring Efficiency in Imperfectly Competitive Markets: An Example of Rational Inefficiency The standard assumption in the efficiency literature, that firms attempt to produce on the production frontier, may not hold in markets that are not perfectly competitive, where the production decisions of all firms will determine the market price, i.e., an increase in a firms output level leads to a lower market clearing price and potentially lower profits. This paper models both the production possibility set and the inverse demand function, and identifies a Nash equilibrium and improvement targets which may not be on the production frontier when some inputs or outputs are fixed. This behavior is referred to as rational inefficiency because the firm reduces its productivity levels in order to increase profits. For a general short-run multiple input/output production process, which allows a firm to adjust its output levels and variable input levels, the existence and the uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium is proven. The estimation of a production frontier extends standard market analysis by allowing benchmark performance to be identified. On-line supplementary materials include all proofs and two additional results; when changes in quantity have a significant influence on price and all input and outputs are adjustable, we observe more benchmark production plans on the increasing returns to scale portion of the frontier. Additionally, a direction for improvement toward the economic efficient production plan is estimated, thus providing a solution to the direction selection issue in a directional distance analysis.

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

imperfectly competitive market
allocative efficiency
nonparametric frontiers
91b38


The fractal analysis of the fracture surface of concretes made from different coarse aggregates The article presents the results of examination of the fractal dimension D of concrete specimen fracture surfaces obtained in fracture toughness tests. The concretes were made from three different types of coarse aggregate: gravel, dolomite and basalt aggregate. Ordinary concretes (C40) and highperformance concretes (HPC) were subjected to testing after 7, 14, 28 and 90 days of curing, respectively. In fracture toughness and compressive tests, different behaviours of concretes were found, depending on the type of aggregate and class of concrete (C40, HPC). A significant increase in the strength parameters tested occurred also after a period of 28 days (up to the 90(th) day of curing) and was particularly large for concretes C40. Fractal examinations performed on fracture replicas showed that the fractal dimension D was diverse, depending on the coarse aggregate type and concrete class being, however, statistically constant after 7 and 14 days for respective concretes during curing. The fractal dimension D was the greater, the worse strength properties were possessed by the concrete. A cross-grain crack propagation occurred in that case, due to weak cohesion forces at the coarse aggregate/mortar interface. A similar effect was observed for C40 and HPC made from the same aggregate. A greater dimension D was exhibited by concretes C40, in which case the fracture was easier to form compared with highperformance concretes, where, as a result of high aggregate/mortar cohesion forces, the crack propagation was of inter-granular type, and the resulted fracture was flatter.

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

concrete curing
interfacial transition zone
mechanical properties
silica fume


Modelling multiple robots in space: An adaptive eco-grammar system We present a multi-robot model suitable for study of interactions and emergence of rational behavior. We focus on a grammatical approach, and to demonstrate its advantages, we design a model of an adaptive multi-robot community in terms of eco-grammar systems. We show that this grammatical model, based on the blackbord architecture, can naturally involve reinforcement collective learning. We test two learning algorithms in a common environment with almost reactive co-operating robots. Experimental results show that using the grammatical model, the robot community can be successfully trained to find a close-to-optimal solution to a given NP-complete task of a truss construction.

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

robotics
formal grammar
eco-grammar system


Role of Toll-like Receptors in HMGB1 Release from Macrophages HMGB1 is a nonhistone nuclear protein that can serve as a cytokine and activate innate immunity. The translocation of this molecule from the inside to the outside of cells is a critical event in inflammation, occurring following activation of certain Toll-like receptors (TLRs) as well as during the course of apoptotic as well as necrotic cell death. Because the kinetics of HMGB1 release differs from that of a conventional cytokine, it provides a broader therapeutic window and may be an important new target of therapy for inflammatory, autoimmune, and infectious diseases

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

macrophage
toll-like receptor
lps
apoptosis


On construction of uniform color spaces Uniform color spaces are very important in color engineering, image source coding and multimedia information processing. In spite of many efforts have been paid on the subject, however, construction of an exact uniform color space seems difficult until now. Existing approaches mainly used local and heuristic approximations. Moreover, there seemed also certain confusion in definitions of the uniform spaces. In this paper we discuss the issue from a point of view of global Riemannian geometry. The equivalence between global and local definitions of uniform space are shown. Then both an exact and an simplified algorithm are presented to uniformize either a part or the totality of a color space. These algorithms can be expected to find applications in optimal quantization of color information.

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

macadam ellipses
riemannian space
geodesic
image coding


Database allocation strategies for parallel BLAST evaluation on clusters In this work we investigate the parallel evaluation of BLAST, the most popular tool for comparing biological sequences. Our goal is to study database distribution issues that, besides workload balancing, could improve the performance of a set of BLAST processes running in a workstation cluster. We consider different partitioning strategies within actual BLAST executions against a few relevant molecular databases. We have implemented multiple databases and input sequence configurations and show that there are many important parameters, such as the fragment generation method and sequence similarities, that must be taken into account in order to make full use of such parallel environment.

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

database design
data distribution
parallelism
workstation clusters


An audiovisual human attention analysis approach to abrupt change detection in videos Audio and visual surprise curves are created using Bayesian surprise. The synchronized sequence reflecting unusual event is obtained based on the time-synchrony. The abrupt changes in videos are detected by utilizing both audio and visual modalities. The approach does not require any prior information and has been applied to human behavior and scene videos.

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

abrupt changes detection
unsupervised
time-synchrony


Semantic ambient media: From ambient advertising to ambient-assisted living The term ambient media was in its beginning used only for ambient advertising. Nowadays it denotes the media environment and the communication of information in ubiquitous and pervasive environments. With the addition of intelligence, the new field of semantic ambient media was established. In recent years, the field of semantic ambient media has spread its span from only a few sub-areas, such as ambient advertising, to new ones, such as ambient-assisted living (AAL) and health-monitoring media, significantly supported by intelligence. The study presented in this paper provides an advanced introduction to the field of semantic ambient media including the solutions for threat issues and illustration of success stories of the field. It conducts a survey of the related work and presents a thorough discussion of it. The related work is grouped according to the coverage of the principles of semantic ambient media. Based on the state-of-the-art research, the future possibilities of the field are demonstrated, especially for the ambient-assisted living, audio-visual rendering of media objects, user design principles and the society impact of the field. The paper provides ideas for impacting ambient media and directions and questions for further research. It also discusses the potential of the combination of several research studies.

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

ubiquitous media
pervasive computation
ubiquitous computation
ambient computation
artificial intelligence
machine learning
data mining
context awareness
semantics
ambient-assisted living
art


The receptive distributed pi-calculus We study an asynchronous distributed pi-calculus, with constructs for localities and migration. We show that a static analysis ensures the receptiveness of channel names, which, together with a simple type system, guarantees the message deliverability property. This property states that any migrating message will find an appropriate receiver at its destination locality. We argue that this distributed, receptive calculus is still expressive enough while allowing for an effective type inference a la ML.

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

theory
pi-calculus
distribution
receptivity
resource access control


On the complexity and algorithm of grooming regular traffic in WDM optical networks In SONET/WDM networks, a high-speed wavelength channel is usually shared by multiple low-rate traffic demands to make efficient use of the wavelength capacity. The multiplexing is known as traffic grooming and performed by SONET Add-Drop Multiplexers (SADM). The maximum number of low-rate traffic demands that can be multiplexed into one wavelength channel is called grooming factor. Since SADMs are expensive, a key optimization goal of traffic grooming is to minimize the total number of SADMs in order to satisfy a given set of traffic demands. As an important communication traffic pattern, all-to-all traffic has been widely studied for the traffic grooming problem. In this paper, we study the regular traffic pattern, which is considered as a generalization of the all-to-all traffic pattern. We focus on the Unidirectional Path-Switched Ring (UPSR) networks. We prove that the traffic grooming problem is NP-hard for the regular traffic pattern in UPSR networks, and show that the problem does not admit a Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS). We further prove that the problem remains NP-hard even if the grooming factor is any fixed value chosen from a subset of integers. We also propose a performance guaranteed algorithm to minimize the total number of required SADMs, and show that the algorithm achieves a better upper bound than previous algorithms. Extensive simulations are conducted, and the empirical results validate that our algorithm outperforms the previous ones in most cases. In addition, our algorithm always uses the minimum number of wavelengths, which are precious resources as well in optical networks.

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

sonet/wdm networks
graph partition
np-completeness
approximation algorithm


Cognitive workload analysis in rail signalling environments When working in safety critical environments, such as railway signalling, technologies are often used to assist the operator in order to make safe decisions as well as to increase efficiency. Keeping mental workload at manageable levels is one of the most critical factors to ensure that tasks can be completed in a safe and effective manner. Numerous methods have been used to measure mental workload, but none of these have managed to show the use of distinct resource pools. This paper therefore measures the levels of usage of different cognitive processes when typical tasks are carried out in two railway signalling environments. To that end, the Multiple Resource Questionnaire is used. The aims of this paper are twofold: First, it establishes the value of the Multiple Resource Questionnaire as a technique in human factors. Second, it investigates and compares the cognitive resources required to carry out the railway signalling task in two different signalling environments.

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

mental workload
cognitive resources
multiple resource questionnaire
railway signalling


Computation methods of maximum throughput for MG/SMWF-nets with conflict-free resources This paper proposes methods of computing maximum throughput for Petri nets that model workflows including resources, called WF-nets with resources. We first propose the formal definitions of WF-nets with resources and their subclasses: marked graph/state machine WF-nets with conflict-free resources (CF-Res-MG/SMWF-nets). We also show several properties of CF-Res-MG/SMWF-nets. Next we give the methods of computing maximum throughput for CF-Res-MG/SMWF-nets under condition that all tokens have to be processed in the order of First-In First-Out (FIFO). Concretely, for CF-Res-MGWF-nets, on the basis of Ramamoorthy's method of computing cycle time, we give an algorithm of computing maximum throughput under the FIFO condition. For CF-Res-SMWF-nets, there is not any method of computing maximum throughput under the FIFO condition. So we are the first to give an algorithm of computing maximum throughput for CF-Res-SMWF-nets under the FIFO condition. Finally we show an example of computing maximum throughput by using our method.

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


growing virtual plants for virtual worlds As plants are an inevitable part of our world, virtual plants are an expected part of a virtual environment. We present a method for creating, growing and visualization of virtual plants in the virtual world. Plants are created in the open-source 3D modelling platform GroIMP, which is based on growth grammars implemented as the programming language XL (eXtended L-system language). Textures created from photographs of the plants are used to enhance realism of the models.

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

graph grammars
rgg
plant modelling
virtual reality