Virtual reality: The non-temporal cartographic animation and the urban (large) scale projects The evolution of digital technology has placed cartography in a dialog on questions concerning the new abilities, its form and prospective. The cartographic presentation in three dimensions has as a basic feature: the simulation with the "natural" ability of understanding the space. One of the problems that arose in virtual environments refers to the use of scale in relation to the analysis and the study of space. This relation of geographic analysis and cartographic tools is strictly defined in traditional cartography, but in the virtual cartographic environment the rules of optical understanding and measurement of space are defined by an arbitrary free moving of the sight, that prescribes the natural vision and therefore the perception of the specific space. In close relation with the cartographic motion is the cartographic visualization of the time and the relevant techniques: splitting of time, creation of motion frames, timing, rapidity, motion pattern, etc. The specific work describes, through specific examples that focus mainly on urban areas, methodological and technical approaches concerning the concept of time and scale problems in virtual cartography, but mainly contributes in the ongoing scientific dialogue concerning the theoretical documentation of Virtual Cartography. Finally,we regard Computational Intelligence as a comprehensive and effective algorithmic platform for mechanisms of Virtual Reality.

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

cartographic animation
time
cartographic visualization
virtual reality
scale
computational intelligence


Investigating the commonality attributes for scaling product families using comprehensive product platform planning (CP3) A product family with a platform paradigm is expected to increase the flexibility of the manufacturing process to market changes, and to take away market share from competitors that develop one product at a time. The recently developed Comprehensive Product Platform Planning (CP3) method (i) presents a generalized model, (ii) allows the formation of product sub-families, and (iii) provides simultaneous identification and quantification of platform/scaling design variables. The CP3 model is founded on a generalized commonality matrix that represents the platform planning process as a mixed-binary nonlinear programming (MBNLP) problem. This MBNLP problem is high-dimensional and multimodal, owing to the commonality constraint. In this paper, the complex MBNLP model is reduced to a tractable MINLP problem without resorting to limiting approximations; along the reduction process, redundancies in the original commonality matrix are also favorably addressed. To promote a better understanding of the importance of a reduced MINLP, this paper also provides a uniquely comprehensive formulation of the number of possible platform combinations (or commonality combinations). In addition, a new commonality index (CI) is developed to simultaneously account for the inter-product commonalities (based on design variable sharing) and the overlap between groups of products sharing different platform variables. To maximize the performance of the product family and the commonality index yielded by the new CP3 model, we apply an advanced mixed-discrete Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. The potential of the new CP3 framework is illustrated through its application to design scalable families of electric motors. Maximizing the new CI produced families with more commonality among similar sets of motor variants (compared to maximizing the conventional CI), which can be a beneficial platform attribute for a wide range of product families.

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

commonality matrix
product family
product platform planning

mixed integer nonlinear programming (minlp)


Incorporating ?-dominance in AMOSA: Application to multiobjective 0/1 knapsack problem and clustering gene expression data Recently, a new model of multiobjective simulated annealing, AMOSA, was developed which was found to provide improved performance for several multi objective optimization problems especially for problems with many objectives. In this article, we aim to further improve the performance of AMOSA by incorporating the concept of ?-dominance which is a more generalized form of conventional dominance. This strategy is referred to as ?-AMOSA. The result of ?-AMOSA is compared with those of AMOSA, NSGA-II and ?-MOEA and AMOSA for several test problems with number of objectives varying from two to fifteen and the number of variables varying from one to thirty. The performance of ?-AMOSA is also compared with other strategies for multiobjective 0/1 knapsack problem. A real life application of ?-AMOSA for clustering genes from gene expression data is also demonstrated. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of ?-AMOSA.

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

additive ?-amosa
multiobjective knapsack problem
multiplicative ?-amosa
moo strategy
multiobjective optimization
?-dominance


the drm game In this paper we cast DRM in a setting that allows us to model a number of current approaches as games. The DRM game is partitioned into two subgames, one that considers the game associated with content acquisition, and a second that considers how a consumer uses the content, along with a vendor's response to this usage. Examples are provided in order to demonstrate how these subgames correspond to real situations associated with content industries, and the conditions under which Nash equilibria will exist. These subgames form the primary stage of a repeated game that models a number of important long-term interactions between consumers and vendors. We analyze current strategies that attempt to influence the outcome of the repeated game, and we also consider a new type of architectural infrastructure that makes novel use of a trust authority in order to create a suitable environment for constructing DRM games that may prove useful in the future.

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 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 B O O O O O O O O


Efficient image updates using light fields The light field rendering method is an interesting variation on achieving realism. Once authentic imagery has been acquired using a camera gantry, or a handheld camera, detailed novel views can be synthetically generated from various viewpoints. One common application of this technique is when a user "walks" through a virtual world. In this situation, only a subset of the previously stored light field is required, and considerable computation burden is encountered in processing the input light field to obtain this subset. In this paper, we show that appropriate portions of the light field can be cached at select "nodal points" that depend on the camera walk. Once spartanly and quickly cached, scenes can be rendered from any point on the walk efficiently. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

image-based rendering
walkthroughs
virtual reality
visualization


website localization This paper presents the development of a methodology for presenting websites to an audience culturally different that the ones from which they originate. The process, called website localization, consists of far more than just textual translation of websites. The three-step procedure outlined is the first step in determining more effective techniques for website localization. Included is a case study that highlights the important aspects of localization.

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

translation
website localization
localization


Use of the University of Minnesota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database for study of microbial degradation Microorganisms are ubiquitous on earth and have diverse metabolic transformative capabilities important for environmental biodegradation of chemicals that helps maintain ecosystem and human health. Microbial biodegradative metabolism is the main focus of the University of Minnesota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database (UM-BBD). UM-BBD data has also been used to develop a computational metabolic pathway prediction system that can be applied to chemicals for which biodegradation data is currently lacking. The UM-Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS) relies on metabolic rules that are based on organic functional groups and predicts plausible biodegradative metabolism. The predictions are useful to environmental chemists that look for metabolic intermediates, for regulators looking for potential toxic products, for microbiologists seeking to understand microbial biodegradation, and others with a wide-range of interests.

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

pathway prediction
microbial degradation


finding the optimal shadows of a convex polytope Let P be a convex polytope in R d . We discuss the problem of placing a light source at infinity so as to minimize or maximize the shadow area of the polytope. By shadow area we mean the ( d -1)-volume of the orthogonal projection of P on a hyperplane normal to the direction of illumination. Let n be the number of ( d -1)-dimensional facets of the polytope. We exhibit two algorithms for finding the optimal placement of the light source. One algorithm uses &Ogr;( n d-1 ) space and time to find the optimal placement. The other uses &Ogr( n ) space to find the optimal placement in &Ogr;( n d -1 log n ) time. Also, we present an interesting result relating the minimum and maximum shadow areas of P to the radii of the inscribed and circumscribed sphere of a zonotope derived from P .

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

shadow illumination log space mean placement algorithm

place optimality project direct timing normalization lighting


Comparison of adaptive noise reduction algorithms in dual microphone hearing aids In this paper, a physical and perceptual evaluation of two adaptive noise reduction algorithms for dual-microphone hearing aids are described. This is the first comparison between a fixed directional microphone on the one hand, and an adaptive directional microphone and an adaptive beamformer on the other hand, all implemented in the same digital hearing aid. The adaptive directional microphone is state-of-the-art in most modern commercial hearing aids. The physical evaluation shows the importance of an individual calibration procedure for the performance of the noise reduction algorithms with two microphone hearing aids. The directivity index calculated in anechoic conditions and intelligibility-weighted polar diagrams measured in reverberant conditions show that all the noise reduction strategies yield an improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), but that the adaptive beamformer generally performs best. From the perceptual evaluation, it is demonstrated that the adaptive beamformer always performs best in single noise source scenarios. In a more complex noise scenario, there is still a SNR improvement with all the techniques, however the effect is the same for all the strategies. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

adaptive beamformer
adaptive directional microphone
calibration
noise reduction algorithms
hearing aids


Swarm intelligence algorithms for macroscopic traffic flow model validation with automatic assignment of fundamental diagrams Evolutionary and swarm intelligence algorithms are applied to the traffic flow model calibration problem. Algorithms versatility is exploited to replace expert knowledge. Automatic spatial assignment of fundamental diagrams of traffic flow. Proposed solution method is designed to be simulator independent. Particle swarm is the most efficient search method for this problem.

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

traffic flow model parameter estimation
intelligent transportation systems
particle swarm optimisation
genetic algorithms
cuckoo search


the benefits of immersion for spatial understanding of complex underground cave systems A common reason for using immersive virtual environments (IVEs) in visualization is the hypothesis that IVEs should provide a higher level of spatial understanding for complex 3D structures, such as those found in underground cave systems. Therefore, we aimed to explore the use of IVEs for visualization of underground caves, and to determine the benefits of immersion for viewing such models. We ran an experiment in which domain experts answered questions with two different levels of immersion. The results show that for certain tasks the more immersive system significantly improved accuracy, speed, and comprehension over the non-immersive environment, and that 3D visualization overall is a good match for the underground cave data.

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

spatial understanding
visualization
immersion
cave


Parsimonious Mahalanobis kernel for the classification of high dimensional data The classification of high dimensional data with kernel methods is considered in this paper. Exploiting the emptiness property of high dimensional spaces, a kernel based on the Mahalanobis distance is proposed. The computation of the Mahalanobis distance requires the inversion of a covariance matrix. In high dimensional spaces, the estimated covariance matrix is ill-conditioned and its inversion is unstable or impossible. Using a parsimonious statistical model, namely the High Dimensional Discriminant Analysis model, the specific signal and noise subspaces are estimated for each considered class making the inverse of the class specific covariance matrix explicit and stable, leading to the definition of a parsimonious Mahalanobis kernel. A SVM based framework is used for selecting the hyperparameters of the parsimonious Mahalanobis kernel by optimizing the so-called radius-margin bound. Experimental results on three high dimensional data sets show that the proposed kernel is suitable for classifying high dimensional data, providing better classification accuracies than the conventional Gaussian kernel.

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

svm
high dimensional data
high dimensional discriminant analysis
kernel methods
parsimonious mahalanobis kernel


Maximizing connected coverage via controlled actor relocation in wireless sensor and actor networks Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) have recently emerged with the idea of combining wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In addition to resource constrained sensors, resource rich and mobile actor nodes are employed in WSANs. These actors can collect data from the sensors and perform appropriate actions as a result of processing such data. To perform the actions at all parts of the region in a timely manner, the actors should be deployed in such a way that they might be able to communicate with each other and cover the whole monitored area. This requires that the actors should be placed carefully prior to network operation in order to maximize the coverage and maintain the inter-actor connectivity. In this paper, we propose a distributed actor deployment algorithm that strives to maximize the coverage of actors without violating the connectivity requirement. The approach applies repelling forces between neighboring actors and from the sensors that sit on the boundaries in order to spread them in the region. The spreading of the nodes is done using a tree of actors which can provide more freedom for the movement of the nodes but at the same time maintain the required connectivity among the nodes. We present two techniques for creation of such an actor tree which are based on local pruning of the actor links and spanning tree of the inter-actor network. The performance of our approach is validated both analytically and experimentally.

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

actor coverage
actor connectivity
travel distance


Characteristics of students assigned to technology-based instruction Previous research has examined factors influencing teacher decisions to integrate technology using between-teacher designs. This study used a within-teacher design to compare students who were assigned multi-media learning objects for learning fractions with students taught by the same teachers who were not assigned to the technology. There were two conditions: (1) teachers were asked to limit the number of assigned students to 25% of their class (N=375 grade 710 students) and (2) teachers could assign as many students as they wanted (N=149 grade 7 students). In the constrained decision setting, students assigned to the technology were more likely than students not assigned to score lower on a fractions achievement test, have dysfunctional attitudes towards mathematics learning, have low self-efficacy, exert low effort, and be male. In the unconstrained decision setting, 70% of students were assigned the technology and the only statistically significant predictor was prior achievement. Teachers' criteria were congruent with research identifying correlates of mathematics achievement and comfort with technology.

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


MVP: Minimum-Violations Partitioning for Reducing Capture Power in At-Speed Delay-Fault Testing Scan shift power can be reduced by activating only a subset of scan cells in each shift cycle. In contrast to shift power reduction, the use of only a subset of scan cells to capture responses in a cycle may cause capture violations, thereby leading to fault coverage loss. In order to restore the original fault coverage, new test patterns must be generated, leading to higher test-data volume. In this paper, we propose minimum-violations partitioning, a scan-cell clustering method that can support multiple capture cycles in delay testing without increasing test-data volume. This method is based on an integer linear programming model and it can cluster the scan flip-flops into balanced parts with minimum capture violations. Based on this approach, hierarchical partitioning is proposed to make the partitioning method routing-aware. Experimental results on ISCAS'89 and IWLS'05 benchmark circuits demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

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

low-power testing
minimum-violations partitioning


Combined feedforward and feedback control of a redundant, nonlinear, dynamic musculoskeletal system A functional electrical stimulation controller is presented that uses a combination of feedforward and feedback for arm control in high-level injury. The feedforward controller generates the muscle activations nominally required for desired movements, and the feedback controller corrects for errors caused by muscle fatigue and external disturbances. The feedforward controller is an artificial neural network (ANN) which approximates the inverse dynamics of the arm. The feedback loop includes a PID controller in series with a second ANN representing the nonlinear properties and biomechanical interactions of muscles and joints. The controller was designed and tested using a two-joint musculoskeletal model of the arm that includes four mono-articular and two bi-articular muscles. Its performance during goal-oriented movements of varying amplitudes and durations showed a tracking error of less than 4 in ideal conditions, and less than 10 even in the case of considerable fatigue and external disturbances.

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

feedback control
functional electrical stimulation


certificateless onion routing Onion routing protocols allow users to establish anonymous channels to preserve their privacy over a public network. Several protocols implementing this primitive have been proposed in recent years, and TOR, a real-life implementation, provides an onion routing service to thousands of users over the internet. This paper presents Certificateless Onion Routing a new approach to the problem. Starting from the identity based solution (PB-OR) of Kate et al. [23], we adopt the certificateless setting introduced by Al-Riyami and Paterson [2]. Such a setting is particularly well suited in practice as it retains the good aspects of identity based cryptography (no PKI is required) and traditional public key cryptography (there is no key escrow). Next, we present a novel certificateless anonymous key-agreement (KA) protocol and we show how to turn it into a very efficient (and provably secure!) certificateless onion routing protocol. When compared with Tor and PB-OR, our protocol offers better performances, especially when current security levels (i.e. 128 bits) are considered. In particular, our scheme significantly improves the computational costs required from each router. In this sense our solution is up to 7 times faster than PB-OR and up to 11 times faster than Tor.

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


Lead times, order release mechanisms, and customer service Lead times play a crucial role in manufacturing performance. They affect work-in-process as well as finished goods inventories, information requirements, quality management practices, and customer service. The impact of lead times on order release mechanisms is well understood. For example, in push systems, orders are released in anticipation of future requirements using lead time offsetting. The impact of order release mechanisms on lead times, however, is ill understood. In this paper, an experimental study is conducted to assess the interaction between order release mechanisms and lead times with a special emphasis on customer service. In particular, the behavior of push, pull and long-pull systems are investigated. Simulation experiments show that load-dependent order release mechanisms yield superior performance even in an environment with high degree of uncertainty.

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

manufacturing
order release mechanisms
customer service


Scheduling mobile collaborating workforce for multiple urgent events ? Despite the advancement of wireless technologies that allows collaboration at different places, under emergencies, professionals are often still required to arrive at the scene to carry out critical tasks. Under many practical constraints, how to schedule mobile collaborating workforce for urgent event requirements becomes a challenging problem. In this paper, we study the optimal mobile workforce assignment problems for multiple events and propose an efficient algorithm to find an optimal workforce arrangement with respect to quick response under qualification and location constraints. A practical example is given to illustrate how our method works. We also study the exception case where there are not enough qualified users. We allow a user to take on multiple qualified tasks previously assigned to different users. But each person is restricted within one event location so as to reduce traffic transfer between different places for the quick response purpose. We analyze the computational complexity of the problem of finding an optimal assignment of mobile workforce under such restraints and solve it by means of integer linear programming.

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


Genetic algorithm-based subproblem solution procedures for a modified shifting bottleneck heuristic for complex job shops In this paper, we consider a modified shifting bottleneck heuristic for complex job shops. The considered job shop environment contains parallel batching machines, machines with sequence-dependent setup times and reentrant process flows. Semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities (Wafer Fabs) are typical examples for manufacturing systems with these characteristics. Our primary performance measure is total weighted tardiness (TWT). The shifting bottleneck heuristic uses a disjunctive graph to decompose the overall scheduling into scheduling problems for single tool groups. The scheduling algorithms for these scheduling problems are called subproblem solution procedures (SSPs). In previous research, only subproblem solution procedures based on dispatching rules have been considered. In this paper, we are interested in how much we can gain in terms of TWT if we apply more sophisticated subproblem solution procedures like genetic algorithms for parallel machine scheduling. We conduct simulation experiments in a dynamic job shop environment in order to assess the performance of the suggested subproblem solution procedures. It turns out that using near to optimal subproblem solution procedures leads in many situations to improved results compared to dispatching-based subproblem solution procedures.

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

scheduling
genetic algorithms
complex job shops
shifting bottleneck heuristic


HandVR: a hand-gesture-based interface to a video retrieval system Using ones hands in humancomputer interaction increases both the effectiveness of computer usage and the speed of interaction. One way of accomplishing this goal is to utilize computer vision techniques to develop hand-gesture-based interfaces. A video database system is one application where a hand-gesture-based interface is useful, because it provides a way to specify certain queries more easily. We present a hand-gesture-based interface for a video database system to specify motion and spatiotemporal object queries. We use a regular, low-cost camera to monitor the movements and configurations of the users hands and translate them to video queries. We conducted a user study to compare our gesture-based interface with a mouse-based interface on various types of video queries. The users evaluated the two interfaces in terms of different usability parameters, including the ease of learning, ease of use, ease of remembering (memory), naturalness, comfortable use, satisfaction, and enjoyment. The user study showed that querying video databases is a promising application area for hand-gesture-based interfaces, especially for queries involving motion and spatiotemporal relations.

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

hand-gesture
query interface
motion query
multimedia databases


On the end-to-end flow allocation and channel assignment in multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks with partially overlapped channels The performance of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) can be improved significantly with the increase in number of channels and radios. Despite the availability of multiple channels in several of the current wireless standards, only a small fraction of them are non-overlapping and many channels are partially overlapped. In this paper, we formulate the joint channel assignment and flow allocation problem for multi-channel multi-radio WMNs as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP). Unlike most of the previous studies, we consider the case when both non-overlapped and partially overlapped channels are being used. We consider an objective of maximizing aggregate end-to-end throughput and minimizing queueing delay in the network, instead of the sum of link capacities, since the traffic characteristics of a multi-hop WMN are quite different from a single hop wireless network. Our static channel assignment algorithm incorporates network traffic information, i.e., it is load aware. Our formulation takes into consideration several important network parameters such as the transmission power of each node, path loss information, the signal to interference plus noise ratio at a node, and the frequency response of the filters used in the transmitter and receiver. We show by simulations that our MILP formulation makes efficient use of the spectrum, by providing superior channel assignments and flow allocations with the addition of partially overlapped channels, without the use of any additional spectrum. We also justify the need to consider alternative objective functions such as, minimizing average queueing in the network. We also propose a polynomially bounded heuristic algorithm to scale the proposed algorithm to bigger network topologies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

channel assignment
partially overlapped channels
wireless mesh networks


Real-time fingertip localization conditioned on hand gesture classification ? A novel use of the ORD feature, to both globally and locally characterize hands A dataset for hand gesture classification and fingertip localization is proposed. We reduce the search space of fingertip locations conditioned to a hand gesture. A new cost function to solve the graph matching problem of fingertip localization

O 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

hand gesture recognition
fingertip classification
range camera
interactivity


Video-based 3D Motion Capture through Biped Control Marker-less motion capture is a challenging problem, particularly when only monocular video is available. We estimate human motion from monocular video by recovering three-dimensional controllers capable of implicitly simulating the observed human behavior and replaying this behavior in other environments and under physical perturbations. Our approach employs a state-space biped controller with a balance feedback mechanism that encodes control as a sequence of simple control tasks. Transitions among these tasks are triggered on time and on proprioceptive events (e.g., contact). Inference takes the form of optimal control where we optimize a high-dimensional vector of control parameters and the structure of the controller based on an objective function that compares the resulting simulated motion with input observations. We illustrate our approach by automatically estimating controllers for a variety of motions directly from monocular video. We show that the estimation of controller structure through incremental optimization and refinement leads to controllers that are more stable and that better approximate the reference motion. We demonstrate our approach by capturing sequences of walking, jumping, and gymnastics.

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

video-based motion capture
bipedal control


A preliminary study of ecommerce adoption in developing countries What factors underlie the adoption dynamics of ecommerce technologies among users in developing countries? Even though the internet promised to be the great equalizer, the nuanced variety of conditions and contingencies that shape user adoption of ecommerce technologies has received little scrutiny. Building on previous research on technology adoption, the paper proposes a global information technology (IT) adoption model. The model includes antecedents of performance expectancy, social influence, and technology opportunism and investigates the crucial influence of facilitating conditions. The proposed model is tested using data from 172 technology users from 37 countries, collected over a 1-year period. The findings suggest that in developing countries, facilitating conditions play a critical moderating role in understanding actual ecommerce adoption, especially when in tandem with technological opportunism. Altogether, the paper offers a preliminary scrutiny of the mechanics of ecommerce adoption in developing countries.

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

ecommerce adoption
performance
social influence
facilitating conditions
technological opportunism


M-TREE: A high efficiency security architecture for protecting integrity and privacy of software Secure processor architectures enable new sets of applications such as commercial grid computing, software copy protection and secure mobile agents by providing secure computing environments that are immune to both physical and software attacks. Despite a number of secure processor designs have been proposed, they typically made trade-offs between security and efficiency. This article proposes a new secure processor architecture called M-TREE, which offers a significant performance gain while without compromising security. The M-TREE architecture uses a novel hierarchical Message Authentication Code Tree (MACTree) for protecting applications integrity at a minimal performance overhead. M-TREE also introduces a new one-time-pad class encryption mechanism that accelerates security computation over the existing block cipher-based schemes with high security guarantee. Based on the results of our performance simulations the performance overhead of the M-TREE integrity check mechanism is as small as 14% in the worst case, a substantial improvement over the 60% slowdown reported by previously proposed techniques. Meanwhile, the overhead of M-TREE encryption scheme is approximately 30%, compared to 50% of using block cipher encryption. In overall, our M-TREE architecture can provide a tamper-resistant and tamper-evident computing environment with low-performance impact, thereby offering a transparent and practical security computing platform.

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

security and privacy
data integrity and encryption
trusted computing


Equations of motion and ballistic paths of volcanic ejecta When the equations of motion are broken down into component form their solution provides the coordinates of positions of moving particles at successive times, making it possible to plot the paths of those particles. In two dimensions the equations contain horizontal and vertical accelerations which, when added separately in each component's direction, provide the net force per unit mass acting horizontally and vertically. Repeated integration of accelerations leads to particle velocities and displacements, hence particle positions and paths. Though conceptually applicable to many kinds of motion in geomorphology, the method is applied here to paths of volcanic ejecta in equatorial latitudes. The horizontal component includes the sum of inertial, resistance and aeolian terms whereas the vertical component is the sum of inertial, gravitational, resistance, lift and total centrifugal terms. The total centrifugal effect on a body in motion on a rotating Earth is itself composed of two components. One component is the conventionally conceived centrifugal effect at right angles to Earth's polar axis. The second component is the Coriolis effect at right angles to the velocity vectors that are tangential to the path of motion and at right angles to the axis of spin of the moving body. When the axis of spin is coincident with the polar axis, as it is for eastward motion of a body on the equator, both components act in the same direction, in this case upwards vertically. Completing the scenario is the inclusion of the equatorial tropopause which impedes further vertical motion but allows horizontal motion to continue, an aspect of considerable importance with respect to transport of dust (volcanic and aeolian) and pollutants. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

pyroclasts
trajectories
impact energy
computer models


Terminating Calculi for Propositional Dummett Logic with Subformula Property In this paper we present two terminating tableau calculi for propositional Dummett logic obeying the subformula property. The ideas of our calculi rely on the linearly ordered Kripke semantics of Dummett logic. The first calculus works on two semantical levels: the present and the next possible world. The second calculus employs the semantical levels of known or not known at the present state of knowledge, that are usual in tableau systems, and exploits a property of the construction of the completeness theorem to introduce a check which is an alternative to loop check mechanisms.

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

dummett logic
tableau calculi
subformula property


Multiscale contour corner detection based on local natural scale and wavelet transform A new corner detection method for contour images is proposed based on dyadic wavelet transform (WT) at local natural scales. The points corresponding to wavelet transform modulus maxima (WTMM) at different scales are taken as corner candidates. For each candidate, the scale at which the maximum value of the normalized WTMM exists is defined as its local natural scale, and the corresponding modulus is taken as its significance measure. This approach achieves more accurate estimation of the natural scale of each candidate than the existing global natural scale based methods. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is suitable for both long contours and short contours. The simulation and the objective evaluation results reveal better performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the existing methods.

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

corner detection
dyadic wavelet transform
local natural scale


reducing the cost of conditional transfers of control by using comparison specifications A significant portion of a program's execution cycles are typically dedicated to performing conditional transfers of control. Much of the research on reducing the costs of these operations has focused on the branch, while the comparison has been largely ignored. In this paper we investigate reducing the cost of comparisons in conditional transfers of control. We decouple the specification of the values to be compared from the actual comparison itself, which now occurs as part of the branch instruction. The specification of the register or immediate values involved in the comparison is accomplished via a new instruction called a comparison specification , which is loop invariant. Decoupling the specification of the comparison from the actual comparison performed before the branch reduces the number of instructions in the loop, which provides performance benefits not possible when using conventional comparison instructions. Results from applying this technique on the ARM processor show that both the number of instructions executed and execution cycles are reduced.

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


Strategic development and SWOT analysis at the University of Warwick SWOT analysis is an established method for assisting the formulation of strategy. An application to strategy formulation and its incorporation into the strategic development process at the University of Warwick is described. The application links SWOT analysis to resource-based planning, illustrates it as an iterative rather than a linear process and embeds it within the overall planning process. Lessons are drawn both for the University and for the strategy formulation process itself.

B I 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 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

strategic planning
resource-based planning


A hybrid cognitive/reactive intelligent agent autonomous path planning technique in a networked-distributed unstructured environment for reinforcement learning This paper proposes a path planning technique for autonomous agent(s) located in an unstructured networked distributed environment, where each agent has limited and not complete knowledge of the environment. Each agent has only the knowledge available in the distributed memory of the computing node the agent is running on and the agents share some information learned over a distributed network. In particular, the environment is divided into several sectors with each sector located on a single separate distributed computing node. We consider hybrid reactive-cognitive agent(s) where we use autonomous agent motion planning that is based on the use of a potential field model accompanied by a reinforcement learning as well as boundary detection algorithms. Potential fields are used for fast convergence toward a path in a distributed environment while reenforcement learning is used to guarantee a variety of behavior and consistent convergence in a distributed environment. We show how the agent decision making process is enhanced by the combination of the two techniques in a distributed environment. Furthermore, path retracing is a challenging problem in a distributed environment, since the agent does not have complete knowledge of the environment. We propose a backtracking technique to keep the distributed agent informed all the time of its path information and step count including when migrating from one node to another. Note that no node has knowledge of the entire global path from a source to a goal when such a goal resides on a separate node. Each agent has only knowledge of a partial path (internal to a node) and related number of steps corresponding to the portion of the path that agent traversed when running on the node. In particular, we show how each of the agents(s), starting in one of the many sectors with no initial knowledge of the environment, using the proposed distributed technique, develops its intelligence based on its experience and seamlessly discovers the shortest global path to the target, which is located in a different node, while avoiding any obstacle(s) it encounters in its way, including when transitioning and migrating from one distributed computing node to another. The agent(s) use (s) multiple-token-ring message passing interface (MPI) to perform internode communication. Finally, the experimental results of the proposed method show that single and multiagents sharing the same goal and running on the same or different nodes successfully coordinate the sharing of their respective environment states/information to collaboratively perform their respective tasks. The results also show that distributed multiagent sharing information increases by an order of magnitude the speed of convergence to the optimal shortest path to the goal in comparison with the single-agent case or noninformation sharing multiagent case.

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

agent navigation
obstacle avoidance
message-passing interface
distributed artificial intelligence


WINTRAC: a TCP window adjustment scheme for bandwidth management In TCP, congestion control as well as error recovery are implemented by a sliding window. The dynamics of TCP specifically, a mismatch between the TCP window and the bandwidth-delay product of the network can sometimes cause the network switches or routers to accumulate large queues, resulting in buffer overflows, reduced throughput, unfairness and underutilization. It is generally accepted that there is a limit to how much control can be accomplished from the congestion control mechanisms in the end systems. Some mechanisms are needed in the intermediate network elements to complement the endpoint congestion avoidance mechanisms. We describe in this paper, a new TCP rate control scheme based on a simple recursive algorithm. The idea behind the algorithm is to match the offered network load to the available resources by modifying at an intermediate network element, the receiver's advertised window in TCP acknowledgments returning to the source. We show through simulations that the scheme can efficiently control TCP traffic to limit queue buildups and buffer requirements at the network nodes, resulting in significant improvements in delay, packet loss rates, fairness in the distribution of the maximum achievable window size, and link utilization. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

tcp rate control
bandwidth management
congestion control


Ion-molecular D 2 + complex in a quantum ring Low-lying states of an ion-molecular D 2 + complex in quantum rings with different and small cross-sections are analyzed. Following the adiabatic procedure, we have deduced a one-dimensional wave equation with periodic conditions, which describes low-lying levels related to the electron rotation around the symmetric axis under the Coulomb interaction with the positive ions. We show that the strong confinement allow us to obtain artificial molecules more stable than the natural molecule.

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

adiabatic approximation
artificial molecule


Survey of Energy-Cognizant Scheduling Techniques Execution time is no longer the only metric by which computational systems are judged. In fact, explicitly sacrificing raw performance in exchange for energy savings is becoming a common trend in environments ranging from large server farms attempting to minimize cooling costs to mobile devices trying to prolong battery life. Hardware designers, well aware of these trends, include capabilities like DVFS (to throttle core frequency) into almost all modern systems. However, hardware capabilities on their own are insufficient and must be paired with other logic to decide if, when, and by how much to apply energy-minimizing techniques while still meeting performance goals. One obvious choice is to place this logic into the OS scheduler. This choice is particularly attractive due to the relative simplicity, low cost, and low risk associated with modifying only the scheduler part of the OS. Herein we survey the vast field of research on energy-cognizant schedulers. We discuss scheduling techniques to perform energy-efficient computation. We further explore how the energy-cognizant scheduler's role has been extended beyond simple energy minimization to also include related issues like the avoidance of negative thermal effects as well as addressing asymmetric multicore architectures.

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

shared resource contention
thread level scheduling
power-aware scheduling
asymmetric multicore processors
cooperative resource sharing


The U.S. Government Printing Office's initiatives for the Federal Depository Library Program to set the stage for the 21st century It is estimated that the majority of federal information is born digital. To that end, the U.S. Government Printing Office is transforming into a 21st century electronic information agency. As part of this effort, the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) has been investigating new options for the dissemination of Federal information that incorporate digitization, preservation, electronic metadata, and information retrieval. The FDLP's efforts to find new solutions will improve acquisitions, information access, and collection development for depository libraries. This article describes just a few of the initiatives GPO has undertaken to increase access to electronic U.S. Government 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 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

depository libraries
government printing office

federal government information
information dissemination
information technology


Theoretical and approximate derivation of bit error rate in DS-CDMA systems under Rician fading environment The transmission quality in mobile wireless communications is affected by not only the thermal noise but also the multipass fading which changes drastically an amplitude and a phase of received signal. The paper proposes the theoretical and approximate methods for deriving an average bit error rate in DS-CDMA systems under the Rician fading environment on the assumption of the frequency non-selective fading, as parameters of the number of simultaneous access stations, the maximum Doppler frequency and so on. It is confirmed from the coincidence of theoretical and approximate results with simulation ones that the proposed approach is applicable to a variety of system parameters.

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


Numerical shape-from-shading for discontinuous photographic images The height, u(x, y), of a continuous, Lambertian surface of known albedo (i.e., grayness) is related to n(x, y), information recoverable from a black and white flash photograph of the surface, by the partial differential equation rootu(x)(2) + u(y)(2) - n = 0. We review the notion of a unique viscosity solution for this equation when n is continuous and a recent unique extension of the viscosity solution when n is discontinuous. We prove convergence to this extension for a wide class of the numerical algorithms that converge when n is continuous. After discussing the properties of the extension and the order of error in the algorithms simulating the extension, we point out warning signs which, when observed in the numerical solution, usually indicate that the surface is not continuous or that the viscosity solution or its extension does not correspond to the actual surface. Finally, we discuss a method that, in some of these cases, allows us to correct the simulation and recover the actual surface again.

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

shape-from-shading
viscosity solutions
discontinuous hamilton-jacobi equations
convergent numerical methods


distedit: a distributed toolkit for supporting multiple group editors The purpose of our project is to provide toolkits for building applications that support collaboration between people in distributed environments. In this paper, we describe one such toolkit, called DistEdit, that can be used to build interactive group editors for distributed environments. This toolkit has the ability to support different editors simultaneously and provides a high degree of fault-tolerance against machine crashes. To evaluate the toolkit, we modified two editors to make use of the toolkit. The resulting editors allow users to take turns at making changes while other users observe the changes as they occur. We give an evaluation of the toolkit based on the development and use of these editors.

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

collaboration applications use users environments project support group distributed paper toolkit evaluation

interaction
developer
fault tolerance
change


inferring intra-organizational collaboration from cosine similarity distributions in text documents We present a method that uses text mining methods and statistical distributions to infer degrees of collaboration between staff members in an organization, based on the similarity of the documents that that they wrote and exchanged over time.

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


Discrete simulation of large aggregates of neurons Realistic simulation of aggregates of neurons often utilises compartmental models which limit the scope of the simulations with single processor architectures to small or medium size networks (typically hundreds of neurons). An alternative approach, based on cell automata models, allows efficient simulation of nervous tissue by modelling neurons as finite state automata. In this paper, data structures and algorithms appropriate for efficient simulation of message-based event-driven models of neurons in single processor architectures are presented. With these techniques, the simulation of large networks (of the order of 105 neurons with 102 synapses per neuron) becomes feasible.

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

neuronal simulation
pulse coded neuron models


The pi-index: a new indicator for assessing scientific impact There are several simple and sophisticated scientometric indicators generally applied in the literature (e.g. total number of publications and citations, citations per journal paper, relative citedness indexes, Hirsch index, etc.), which may characterize the publications of scientists both qualitatively and quantitatively. The calculation methods generally use data referring to the total set of papers studied. Scientific progress, however, may be attributed primarily to information in the highly cited publications. Therefore, a new indicator (pi-index) is suggested for comparative assessment of scientists active in similar subject fields. The pi-index is equal to one hundredth of the number of citations obtained to the top square root of the total number of journal papers ('elite set of papers') ranked by the decreasing number of citations. The relation of the pi-index to other indexes and its dependence on the field is studied, using data of journal papers of 'highly cited researchers'.

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

pi-index
evaluation of publications
highly cited papers


analysis and measurement of session setup delay and jitter in vowlan using composite metrics In this paper we look at the signaling for session mobility using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Session Description Protocol (SDP). Bearing in mind that perceived voice quality is sensitive mostly to delay variation (also called jitter), we work on bounding that value for providing a better voice Quality of Service over Wireless LAN (WLAN). For mobility we use a hybrid SIP-MIP stack. The basic idea is to combine the strengths of MIP for doing fast handovers and the strengths of SIP for powerful session adaptation capabilities. Numerical calculation figures as well as real implementation results are provided. It can be observed that the session update cycle during mobility can be modified in such a way that session delay variation bounds achieved are quite low and there are almost no spikes. We use composite performance metrics that we defined in previous work to analyze the correlation between the data patterns for session signaling delay in the classical case and our proposed case to better highlight the achieved performance delta.

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

session description protocol
wireless lan
quality of service
session initiation protocol


Eikonal-based region growing for efficient clustering ? Fast and efficient superpixel algorithm based on the Eikonal equation Dynamic color-based potential function Parameter-free refinement of the superpixels Equivalent or better performances than the state-of-the-art Flexibility of the approach

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


Psychoneuroimmunology in Oral Biology and Medicine Rheumatoid arthritis involves psychoneuroendocrine-immunopathological comorbidities. In the stoma, patients with rheumatoid arthritis frequently show signs of periondontal disease consequent to elevated levels of crevicular proinflammatory cytokines. It is not clear whether rheumatoid arthritis may manifest in association with immunopathological manifestations of the oral soft mucosa. Oral lichen planus (OLP), first described by E. Wilson in 1859, is a T-cell-mediated inflammatory disease whose lesions characteristically lack B cells, plasma cells, immunoglobulin. or complement. It is increasingly well characterized and recognized as a model for psychoneuroimmunology research in oral biology and medicine. To date, we have shown an association between changes in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) regulation, systemic markers of cellular immunity and mood states, with clinical stages of OLP (i.e., atrophic vs. erosive vs. bullous lesions). We report significant associations (p < 0.05) between the stage of OLP, HPA deregulation, and altered distribution and functional responses of nave CD4+ cells. We emphasize the need to study in greater details the psychoneuroendocrine-immune inter-relationships in OLP, and we propose a novel neuroimmune hypothesis for OLP.

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

psychoneuroimmunology
oral biology
medicine


Phase diagrams and scaling regimes for a continuum model of the growth of thin composite films We present the results of extensive numerical integration in (1 + 1) dimensions of a set of continuum equations which was recently proposed for describing the growth of thin composite solid films composed of two types of particles. In this model, the Kaxdar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation, which describes the growth of the films, is coupled to the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDGL) equation for the order parameter. We study the effect of the model's parameters on the universality of the scaling exponents that characterize the power-law behavior of the various properties of interest, and the transitions in the films' morphology that result from-varying the parameters. We find that the scaling properties of the model are nonuniversal. Phase diagrams that identify the various scaling regimes, as well as the morphological transitions, are obtained. Thus, neither the dynamics of the-domains' growth is governed by the TDGL equation, nor is the scaling of the films' surface structure described by the KPZ equation.

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

kardar-parisi-zhang and ginzburg-landau equations


debugging with control-flow breakpoints Modern source-level debuggers support dynamic breakpoints that are guarded by conditions based on program state. Such breakpoints address situations where a static breakpoint is not sufficiently precise to characterise a point of interest in program execution. However, we believe that current IDE support for dynamic breakpoints are cumbersome to use. Firstly, guard conditions formulated in (non-aspect-oriented) source-languages cannot directly express control-flow conditions, forcing developers to seek alternative formulations. Secondly, guard-conditions can be complex expressions and manually typing them is cumbersome.We present the Control-flow Breakpoint Debugger ( CBD ). CBD uses a dynamic pointcut language to characterise control-flow breakpoints---dynamic breakpoints which are conditional on the control-flow through which they were reached. CBD provides a "point-and-click" GUI to specify and incrementally refine control-flow breakpoints, thereby avoiding the burden of manually editing the potentially complex expressions that define them.We performed 20 case studies debugging and fixing documented bugs in 3 existing applications. Our results show that dynamic breakpoints in general are useful in practice, and that CBD's GUI allows specifying them adequately in the majority of cases.

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


Hybrid metaheuristic algorithms for minimum weight dominating set Minimum weight dominating set (MWDS) finds many uses in solving problems as varied as clustering in wireless networks, multi-document summarization in information retrieval and so on. It is proven to be NP N P -hard, even for unit disk graphs. Many centralized and distributed, greedy and approximation algorithms have been proposed for the MWDS problem. However, all the approximation algorithms are limited to unit disk graphs which are primarily used to model wireless networks. This assumption fails when applied to other domains. In this paper, we present two metaheuristic algorithms a hybrid genetic algorithm and a hybrid ant colony optimization algorithm for the problem of computing minimum weight dominating set. We compare our results with that of a greedy heuristic as well as the only other metaheuristic algorithm proposed so far in the literature and show that our algorithms are far better than these algorithms.

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

dominating set
genetic algorithm
heuristic

ant-colony optimization
constrained optimization


better extractors for better codes? We present an explicit construction of codes that can be list decoded from a fraction (1-?) of errors in sub-exponential time and which have rate ?/log O(1) (1/?). This comes close to the optimal rate of ?(?), and is the first sub-exponential complexity construction to beat the rate of ? 2 achieved by Reed-Solomon or algebraic-geometric codes. Our construction is based on recent extractor constructions with very good seed length [17]. While the "standard" way of viewing extractors as codes (as in [16]) cannot beat the O(? 2 ) rate barrier due to the 2 log (1/?) lower bound on seed length for extractors, we use such extractor codes as a component in a well-known expander-based construction scheme to get our result. The O(? 2 ) rate barrier also arises if one argues about list decoding using the minimum distance (via the so-called Johnson bound) --- so this also gives the first explicit construction that "beats the Johnson bound" for list decoding from errors.The main message from our work is perhaps conceptual, namely that good strong extractors for low min-entropies will yield near-optimal list decodable codes. Given all the progress that has been made on extractors, we view this as an optimistic avenue to look for better list decodable codes, both by looking for better explicit extractor constructions, as well as by importing non-trivial techniques from the extractor world in reasoning about and constructing codes.

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

expander graphs
pseudorandomness
randomness extractors
error-correcting codes


evaluating crossmodal awareness of daily-partner robot to user's behaviors with gaze and utterance detection This paper proposes a daily-partner robot, that is aware of the user's situation or behavior by using gaze and utterance detection. For appropriate and familiar anthropomorphic interaction, the robot should wait for a timing to talk something to the user corresponding to the situation of her/him while she/he doing a task or thinking. According to the need, our proposed robot i) estimates the user's context by detecting her/his gaze and utterance, such as the target of the user's speech, ii) tries to notify the need to speak to the user by silent ( i.e. without making an utterance ) gazeturns toward the user and joint attention with taking advantage of the attentiveness, and iii) tell the message when the user talks to the robot. The results of experiments combining subjects' daily tasks with/without the above steps show that the crossmodal-aware behaviors of the robot are important in respectful communications without disturbing the user's ongoing task by adopting silent behaviors showing the robot's intention to speak and for drawing the user's attention.

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

utterance detection
crossmodal awareness

stuffed-toy robot
wide-area gaze-tracking
anthropomorphic behaviors


Cone-based genetic optimization procedure for test generation and its application to n-detections in combinational circuits Test generation procedures based on genetic optimization were shown to be effective in achieving high fault coverage for benchmark circuits. In this work, we propose a representation of test patterns for genetic optimization based test generation, where subsets of inputs are considered as indivisible entities. Using this representation, crossover between two test patterns t(1) and t(2) copies all the values of each subset either from t(1) or from t(2). By keeping input subsets undivided, activation and propagation capabilities of t(1) and t(2) are expected to be captured and carried over to the new test patterns. Experimental results presented show that the proposed scheme results in complete stuck-at test sets and n-detection test sets for combinational circuits, even in cases where other procedures report incomplete fault coverages.

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

combinational circuits
genetic optimization
test generation


An alternative approach to computing with words An alternative theory of linguistic variables is introduced based on voting model semantics. This theory is then applied to computing with words whereby a calculus is introduced for inference from linguistic facts and rules.

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

linguistic variable
linguistic syllogism
linguistic fact
linguistic rule


An orthotropic mesh corrected crack model This paper recovers the original spirit of the continuous crack approaches, where displacements jumps across the crack are smeared over the affected elements and the behaviour is established through a softening stress(total) strain law, using standard finite element displacement interpolations and orthotropic local constitutive models. The paper focuses on the problem of shear locking observed in the discrete problem when orthotropic models are used. The solution for this drawback is found in the form of a mesh corrected crack model where the structure of the inelastic strain tensor is linked to the geometry of the cracked element. The discrete model is formulated as a non-symmetric orthotropic local damage constitutive model, in which the softening modulus is regularized according to the material fracture energy and the element size. The resulting formulation is easily implemented in standard non-linear FE codes and suitable for engineering applications. Numerical examples show that the results obtained using this crack model do not suffer from dependence on the mesh directional alignment, comparing very favourably with those obtained using related standard isotropic or orthotropic damage 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 O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

tensile cracking
strain softening
smearedembedded models
mesh dependent correction


Low-complexity speaker verification with decimated supervector representations A low complexity speaker verification system is presented. Sparse random projections and decimation are used for dimensionality reduction. A multi-offset decimation diversity based speaker verification system is proposed.

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

gmm mean supervector
data-independent projection


Non-Oriented MLS Gradient Fields We introduce a new approach for defining continuous non-oriented gradient fields from discrete inputs, a fundamental stage for a variety of computer graphics applications such as surface or curve reconstruction, and image stylization. Our approach builds on a moving least square formalism that computes higher-order local approximations of non-oriented input gradients. In particular, we show that our novel isotropic linear approximation outperforms its lower-order alternative: surface or image structures are much better preserved, and instabilities are significantly reduced. Thanks to its ease of implementation (on both CPU and GPU) and small performance overhead, we believe our approach will find a widespread use in graphics applications, as demonstrated by the variety of our results.

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

5 [computer graphics]: computational geometry and object modellinggeometric algorithms


Bernoulli polynomials and Pascal matrices in the context of Clifford analysis This paper describes an approach to generalized Bernoulli polynomials in higher dimensions by using Clifford algebras. Due to the fact that the obtained Bernoulli polynomials are special hypercomplex holomorphic (monogenic) functions in the sense of Clifford Analysis, they have properties very similar to those of the classical polynomials. Hypercomplex Pascal and Bernoulli matrices are defined and studied, thereby generalizing results recently obtained by Zhang and Wang (Z. Zhang, J. Wang, Bernoulli matrix and its algebraic properties, Discrete Appl. Math. 154 (11) (2006) 16221632).

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

hypercomplex bernoulli polynomials
bernoulli numbers
block pascal matrix
hypercomplex bernoulli matrix


A new general method to compute virtual channels occupancy probabilities in wormhole networks Virtual channels have been proposed to develop deadlock free routing algorithms and to overcome the performance degradation due to chains of blocked messages in wormhole switched networks. Hence, capturing the effect of virtual channels has always been an important issue in developing analytical performance models for these interconnection networks. Almost all previous models relayed on a method proposed by Dally to compute the probability of the number of busy virtual channels per physical channel. Dally's method is based on a Markov chain and after extensive investigation our results reveal that its accuracy degrades as traffic increases. In this study we propose and validate a new general method to compute this probability. The new general method is based on an M/G/I queue and it exhibits a good degree of accuracy at different traffic conditions. We further showed that Dally's method can be deduced as a special case of the general method. Predictions from both, Dally's method and the new general method are validated against results obtained from an event-driven simulator that mimics the behaviour of wormhole-switch networks. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

multicomputers
wormhole switching
m/g/i queues
performance modelling
simulation


relay-assisted partial packet recovery with idma method in cdma wireless network Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) is an effective technique for reliable transmission of packets in wireless networks. In ARQ, however, only a few erroneous bits in a packet will cause the entire packet to be discarded at the receiver. In this case, it's wasteful to retransmit the correct bit in the received packet. The partial packet recovery only retransmits the unreliable decoded bits in order to increase the throughput of network. In addition, the cooperative transmission based on Interleave-division multiple-access (IDMA) can obtain diversity gains with multiple relays with different locations for multiple sources simultaneously. By exploring the diversity from the channel between relay and destination, we propose a relay-assisted partial packet recovery in CDMA wireless network to improve the performance of throughput. In the proposed scheme, asynchronous IDMA iterative chip-by-chip multiuser detection is utilized as a method of multiple partial recovery, which can be a complementarity in a current CDMA network. The confidence values' concept is applied to detect unreliable decoded bits. According to the result of unreliable decoded bits' position, we use a recursive algorithm based on cost evaluation to decide a feedback strategy. Then the feedback request with minimum cost can be obtained. The simulation results show that the performance of throughput can be significantly improved with our scheme, compared with traditional ARQ scheme. The upper bound with our scheme is provided in our simulation. Moreover, we show how relays' location affects the performance.

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

partial packet recovery
cooperative transmission
idma


On design and optimization of face verification systems that are smart-card based The optimization of a smart card face verification system is a very complex process with many key factors to consider. It involves the investigation of the effect the system parameters have on the system performance measured in terms of accuracy and speed. As the parameters involved are not independent, the search space is of exponential complexity. In practice only partial optimization is feasible with many parameters forced to take default values. We argue that the key options to optimize are image resolution or/and image pre-processing. In addition the main design issue is the degree of compression that can be applied to the probe image before it is transmitted to the smart card. In this work we investigate different optimization strategies by considering both image compression and image resolution, and demonstrate that both the system performance and speed of access can be improved by the jointly optimized parameter setting and the level of probe compression. The experimental results obtained on the XM2VTS database suggest that the choice of one strategy over another is a matter of the time available for the system design, system performance, and response time.

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

face verification
smart card
system design
optimization


AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on SiC and Si substrates: A review from the small-signal-modeling's perspective In this article, small-signal modeling approaches for GaN HEMTs on SiC and Si substrates have been developed. The main advantage of these approaches is their accuracy, reliability, and dependency on only cold S-parameter measurements to extract the parasitic elements of the device. The proposed equivalent circuit model for GaN on Si HEMT considers extra effects due to parasitic conduction through substrate or buffer layers. S-parameter measurements at different bias conditions in addition to physical based analysis have been used to validate the accuracy and reliability of the developed modeling methods. 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:389400, 2014.

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

gan hemt
semiconductor device modeling
computer aided analysis
parameter extraction


fast convergence to nearly optimal solutions in potential games We study the speed of convergence of decentralized dynamics to approximately optimal solutions in potential games. We consider ?-Nash dynamics in which a player makes a move if the improvement in his payoff is more than an ? factor of his own payoff. Despite the known polynomial convergence of ?-Nash dynamics to approximate Nash equilibria in symmetric congestion games [7], it has been shown that the convergence time to approximate Nash equilibria in asymmetric congestion games is exponential [25]. In contrast to this negative result, and as the main result of this paper, we show that for asymmetric congestion games with linear and polynomial delay functions, the convergence time of ?-Nash dynamics to an approximate optimal solution is polynomial in the number of players, with approximation ratio that is arbitrarily close to the price of anarchy of the game. In particular, we show this polynomial convergence under the minimal liveness assumption that each player gets at least one chance to move in every T steps. We also prove that the same polynomial convergence result does not hold for (exact) best-response dynamics, showing the ?-Nash dynamics is required. We extend these results for congestion games to other potential games including weighted congestion games with linear delay functions, cut games (also called party affiliation games) and market sharing games.

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

price of anarchy
convergence time
congestion games
potential games


electromagnetic communications within swarms of autonomous underwater vehicles Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have great value as platforms for sensors. While traditional AUVs have been large platforms that tend to operate alone or in very small groups, there has been recent interest in using very large numbers of small AUVs in swarms. Such swarms offer the potential to increase sensor density within the same, or lower, system cost. In this paper, we compare via simulation the network throughput obtained in such a swarm using electromagnetic and acoustic signals. The results of these simulations suggest that, for the same raw channel bit rate, much higher throughputs (by up to more than one order of magnitude) can be obtained using electromagnetic signals than can be obtained using acoustic signals, and that careful choice of parameters such as carrier frequency can help optimize performance.

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

auv
underwater communications
underwater networks


A molecular dynamics study on sI hydrogen hydrate A molecular dynamics simulation is carried out to explore the possibility of using sI clathrate hydrate as hydrogen storage material. Metastable hydrogen hydrate structures are generated using the LAMMPS software. Different binding energies and radial distribution functions provide important insights into the behavior of the various types of hydrogen and oxygen atoms present in the system. Clathrate hydrate cages become more stable in the presence of guest molecules like hydrogen.

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

binding energy
md simulation
radial distribution function
structure i (si) clathrate


Linear Complexity of Binary Whiteman Generalized Cyclotomic Sequences of Order 4 In this letter we propose a new Whiteman generalized cyclotomic sequence of order 4. Meanwhile, we determine its linear complexity and minimal polynomial. The results show that this sequence possesses both high linear complexity and optimal balance on 1 s and 0 s, which may be attractive for cryptographic applications.

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

generalized cyclotomic sequences
linear complexity
minimal polynomial


Enriching software architecture documentation The effective documentation of Architectural Knowledge (AK) is one of the key factors in leveraging the paradigm shift toward sharing and reusing AK. However, current documentation approaches have severe shortcomings in capturing the knowledge of large and complex systems and subsequently facilitating its usage. In this paper, we propose to tackle this problem through the enrichment of traditional architectural documentation with formal AK. We have developed an approach consisting of a method and an accompanying tool suite to support this enrichment. We evaluate our approach through a quasi-controlled experiment with the architecture of a real, large, and complex system. We provide empirical evidence that our approach helps to partially solve the problem and indicate further directions in managing documented AK.

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

architectural knowledge
software architecture
documentation


Extension inside the disk of asymptotics for Sobolev orthogonal polynomials In this paper, we consider a general Sobolev inner product on the unit circle of the following type: [GRAPHICS] with mu(j) (j = 0,..., p) finite positive Borel measures on [0, 2pi] and p a positive integer p greater than or equal to 1. Under the assumption that the Caratheodory functions of measures mu(0),..., mu(p-1) and the Szego function of measure mu(p) have analytic extension outside the open unit disk, we prove that Szego's asymptotic formula holds true for the Sobalev orthogonal polynomials. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A run-time programmable simulator to enable multi-modal interaction with rigid-body systems This paper describes DIMPLE, a software application for haptic force-feedback controllers which allows easy creation of interactive rigid-body simulations. DIMPLE makes extensive use of an established standard for control-rate transmission of audio control commands, which can be used to drive many simultaneous parameters of a given audio/visual synthesis engine. Because it is used with a high-level, visual multimedia programming language, DIMPLE allows fast and uncomplicated development of responsive, haptically-enabled virtual environments useful for fast proto-typing of applications in fields where lower level programming skills may not be widespread. Examples of specific scenes constructed using DIMPLE are given, with applications to perception. HCl research, music, and multimedia. A pilot evaluation study was performed comparing DIMPLE to another implementation of a specific scene, which showed comparable results between subjects overall impressions of the simulation. (C) Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

virtual reality
haptics
sound synthesis
virtual instruments
gesture


Twittering the Little India Riot: Audience responses, information behavior and the use of emotive cues The use of Twitter was studied over the lifecycle of a riot. Time predicted collectivistic responses towards the community as a riot evolves. Emotive levels impacted responses, information sharing and exchange. Over a riot's lifecycle, loose and multi-layered communal dialogue was observed.

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

audience responses
information behavior
twitter

crisis
information cues
situational crisis communication theory


THE COMPLEXITY OF BOOLEAN FUNCTIONS IN DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS Every Boolean function on n variables can be expressed as a unique multivariate polynomial modulo p for every prime p. In this work, we study how the degree of a function in one characteristic affects its complexity in other characteristics. We establish the following general principle: functions with low degree modulo p must have high complexity in every other characteristic q. More precisely, we show the following results about Boolean functions f : {0, 1}(n) -> {0, 1} which depend on all n variables, and distinct primes p, q: If f has degree o(log n) modulo p, then it must have degree Omega(n(1-o(1))) modulo q. Thus a Boolean function has degree o(log n) in at most one characteristic. This result is essentially tight as there exist functions that have degree log n in every characteristic. If f has degree d = o( log n) modulo p, then it cannot be computed correctly on more than 1-p(-O(d)) fraction of the hypercube by polynomials of degree n(1/2-epsilon) modulo q. As a corollary of the above results it follows that if f has degree o(log n) modulo p, then it requires super-polynomial size AC(0)[q] circuits. This gives a lower bound for a broad and natural class of functions.

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

low degree polynomials
bounded depth circuits
lower bounds