Protein Fragment Swapping: A Method for Asymmetric, Selective Site-Directed Recombination This article presents a new approach to site-directed recombination, swapping combinations of selected discontiguous fragments from a source protein in place of corresponding fragments of a target protein. By being both asymmetric (differentiating source and target) and selective (swapping discontiguous fragments), our method focuses experimental effort on a more restricted portion of sequence space, constructing hybrids that are more likely to have the properties that are the objective of the experiment. Furthermore, since the source and target need to be structurally homologous only locally (rather than overall), our method supports swapping fragments from functionally important regions of a source into a target "scaffold" (for example, to humanize an exogenous therapeutic protein). A protein fragment swapping plan is defined by the residue position boundaries of the fragments to be swapped; it is assessed by an average potential score over the resulting hybrid library, with singleton and pairwise terms evaluating the importance and fit of the swapped residues. While we prove that it is NP-hard to choose an optimal set of fragments under such a potential score, we develop an integer programming approach, which we call SWAGMER, that works very well in practice. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in three swapping problems: selective recombination between beta-lactamases, activity swapping between glutathione transferases, and activity swapping between carboxylases and mutases in the purE family. We show that the selective recombination approach generates better plan (in terms of resulting potential score) than traditional site-directed recombination approaches. We also show that in all cases the optimized experiments are significantly better than ones that would result from stochastic methods.

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

experiment planning
protein engineering
site-directed recombination


Energy efficiency with QoS control in dynamic optical networks with SDN enabled integrated control plane The paper presents energy efficient routing algorithms based on a novel integrated control plane platform. The centralized control plane structure enables the use of flexible heuristic algorithms for route selection in optical networks. Differentiated routing for various traffic types is used in our previous work. The work presented in this paper further optimizes the energy performance in the whole network by utilizing a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for route selection. The trade-off between energy optimization and QoS for high priority traffic is examined and results show an overall improvement in energy performance whilst maintaining satisfactory QoS. Energy savings are obtained on the low priority traffic whilst the QoS for the high priority traffic is not degraded.

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

moea
optical translucent network
gmpls
gpon


Combined CI-MD approach in formulation of engineering moduli of single layer graphene sheet An evolutionary approach is applied to evaluate the moduli of graphene sheet. Evolutionary approach used is multi-gene genetic programming. The approach evolves explicit moduli models of graphene sheet. The approach shows great potential to predict the elastic moduli of graphene sheet.

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

mechanical properties
defects
nanomaterial modeling
artificial intelligence
molecular dynamics


Accelerating generators of iterative methods for finding multiple roots of nonlinear equations Two accelerating generators that produce iterative root-finding methods of arbitrary order of convergence are presented. Primary attention is paid to algorithms for finding multiple roots of nonlinear functions and, in particular, of algebraic polynomials. First, two classes of algorithms for solving nonlinear equations are studied: those with a known order of multiplicity and others with no information on multiplicity. We also demonstrate the acceleration of iterative methods for the simultaneous approximations of multiple roots of algebraic polynomials. A discussion about the computational efficiency of the root-solvers considered and three numerical examples are given. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

solving nonlinear equations
iterative methods
multiple roots

acceleration of convergence
simultaneous methods


minimize aspect interaction re-evaluation due to software evolution Detection of interaction among individually built software modules, such as aspects in AOSD, is one of the most complex problems in software engineering. In addition, software is very dynamic and ever evolving. Software evolution should not annul existing aspect interaction analyses. Changes made to the core module in AOSD should only result in reevaluating interaction analysis of the aspects that depend on the specific changes that were made, changes should not impact aspects that depend on the invariant sub-module.

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

semantical aspect interaction
modular model checking
aspect oriented modeling (aom)


A data-model-fusion prognostic framework for dynamic system state forecasting A novel data-model-fusion prognostic framework is developed in this paper to improve the accuracy of system state long-horizon forecasting. This framework strategically integrates the strengths of the data-driven prognostic method and the model-based particle filtering approach in system state prediction while alleviating their limitations. In the proposed methodology, particle filtering is applied for system state estimation in parallel with parameter identification of the prediction model (with unknown parameters) based on Bayesian learning. Simultaneously, a data-driven predictor is employed to learn the system degradation pattern from history data so as to predict system evolution (or future measurements). An innovative feature of the proposed fusion prognostic framework is that the predicted measurements (with uncertainties) from the data-driven predictor will be properly managed and utilized by the particle filtering to further update the prediction model parameters, thereby enabling markedly better prognosis as well as improved forecasting transparency. As an application example, the developed fusion prognostic framework is employed to predict the remaining useful life of lithium ion batteries through electrochemical impedance spectroscopy tests. The investigation results demonstrate that the proposed fusion prognostic framework is an effective forecasting tool that can integrate the strengths of both the data-driven method and the particle filtering approach to achieve more accurate state forecasting.

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

nonlinear prediction
fault diagnosis
failure prognostics
neural networks
neural fuzzy systems
remaining useful life prediction


A fuzzy model for optical recognition of musical scores Optical music recognition aims at reading automatically scanned scores in order to convert them in an electronic format, such as a midi file. We only consider here classical monophonic music: we exclude any music written on several staves, but also any music that contains chords. In order to overcome recognition failures due to the lack of methods dealing with structural information, non-local rules and corrections, we propose a recognition approach integrating structural information in the form of relationships between symbols and of musical rules. Another contribution of this paper is to solve ambiguities by accounting for sources of imprecision and uncertainty, within the fuzzy set and possibility theory framework. We add to a single symbol analysis several rules for checking the consistency of hypotheses: graphical consistency (compatibility between accidental and note, between grace note and note, between note and augmentation dot, etc.), and syntactic consistency (accidentals, tonality, metric). All these rules are combined in order to lead to better decisions. Experimental results on 65 music sheets show that our approach leads to very good results, and is able to correct errors made by other approaches, such as the one of SmartScore. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

image processing
pattern recognition
fuzzy sets and possibility theory
flexible rules
fusion
structural music information


application level hand-off support for mobile media transcoding sessions Media transcoding can be used to enable mobile devices that have low resolution and low bit-rate capabilities to access content created for stationary, desktop clients with high bandwidth connections. By deploying transcoding servers near the edge of a large network, it becomes possible to support clients with multiple resolutions, while limiting the bandwidth requirements in the core network.

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


matching independent global constraints for composite web services Service discovery employs matching techniques to select services by comparing their descriptions against user constraints. Semantic-based matching approaches achieve higher recall than syntactic-based ones (as they employ ontological reasoning mechanisms to match syntactically heterogeneous descriptions). However, semantic-based approaches still have problems (e.g. lack of scalability as an exhaustive search is often performed to located services conforming to constraints). This paper proposes two approaches that deal with the problem of scalability/performance for composite service location. First, services are indexed based on the values they assign to their restricted attributes (the attributes restricted by a given constraint). Then, services that assign "conforming values" to those attributes are combined to form composite services. The first proposed approach extends a local optimisation technique to perform the latter, since identifying such values is NP-hard. However, this approach returns false negatives since the local optimisation technique does not consider all the values. Hence, a second approach that derives conforming values using domain rules is defined. The used rules are returned with each composite service so that a user can understand the context in which it is retrieved. Results obtained from the experiments that varied the number of available services demonstrate that the performance of the local optimisation-based approach is 76\% better than existing semantic-based approaches and recall is 98\% higher than syntactic-based approaches.

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


Non-uniform random variate generation by the vertical strip method ? In this paper, a method called the vertical strip (VS) method is proposed for generating non-uniform random variates with a given density. It can be considered as an improvement of the grid method as the VS method avoids setting up a directory to store information on big rectangles. Unlike the horizontal strip method that is based on the Riemann integral, the VS method is based on the Lebesgue integral and can be applied to unbounded densities or densities with infinite support. Applications of the VS method for generating random variates, which follow the exponential distribution and normal density, are also given.

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

rejectionacceptance method
non-uniform random variates


A calibrated direct conversion front-end transmitter with resonant matching techniques for mobile WiMAX/WiBro applications A direct conversion front-end transmitter with the properties of high linearity and high single sideband rejection ratio is described in this paper. The transmitter employs two resonant matching techniques to improve its operating bandwidth. The first resonant circuit design is applied at the inter-stage of the LO input buffer in order to achieve a wideband frequency response which ranges from dc to 6 GHz. The second resonant circuit is applied at the power amplifier (PA) driver output stage to increase the matching bandwidth and meet both the Worldwide Inter-operability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Wireless Broadband (WiBro) applications simultaneously. In addition, the sideband signal and carrier leakage of this transmitter are further minimized by a proposed calibration circuit design to achieve the error vector magnitude (EVM) specifications. The measured single sideband performance with calibration mechanism demonstrates approximately 15 dB improvement on sideband and carrier suppression. The rejected sideband and carrier signals can be up to 55.19 and 56.31 dBc, respectively. The measured dynamic gain range of the transmitter is 53 dB in 1-dB step with a maximum relative gain error lower than 0.4 dB. The transmitter delivers +0.766 dBm output power with EVM of -34.687 dB for the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) 64QAM-3/4 modulated signals. The measured constellation is minimized to be < 1.5% with output power from -2.3 to -36.2 dBm.

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

direct conversion
resonant matching
wimax
wibro
transmitter
calibration


Computer-based Assessment of Collaborative Problem Solving: Exploring the Feasibility of Human-to-Agent Approach How can activities in which collaborative skills of an individual are measured be standardized? In order to understand how students perform on collaborative problem solving (CPS) computer-based assessment, it is necessary to examine empirically the multi-faceted performance that may be distributed across collaboration methods. Theaim of this study was to explore possible differences in student performance in humanto-agent (H-A), compared to human-to-human (H-H) CPS assessment tasks. One hundred seventy nine 14years-old students from the United States, Singapore and Israel participated in the study. Students in both H-H and H-A modes were able to collaborate and communicate by using identical methods and resources. However, while in the H-A mode, students collaborated with a simulated computer-driven partner, and in the H-H mode students collaborated with another student to solve a problem. Overall, the findings showed that CPS with a computer agent involved significantly higher levels of shared understanding, progress monitoring, and feedback. However, no significant difference was found in a students ability to solve the problem or in student motivation with a computer agent or a human partner. One major implication of CPS score difference in collaboration measures between the two modes is that in H-A mode one can program a wider range of interaction possibilities than would be available with a human partner. Thus, H-A approach offers more opportunities for students to demonstrate their CPS skills. This study is among the first of its kind to investigate systematically the effect of collaborative problem solving in standardized assessment settings.

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

collaborative problem solving
computer agent


Shape optimization of curves and surfaces considering fairness metrics and elastic stiffness (vol 24, pg 449, 2003) A method is presented for generating round curves and surfaces allowing discontinuities in tangent vectors and curvatures. The distance of the center of curvature from the specified point is used for formulating the objective function that is a continuous function of the design variables through convex and concave shapes. It is shown that a shell with and without ribs can be generated within the same problem formulation if the minimization problem is converted into a maximization problem and the parameter region where integration is to be carried out is restricted in view of the sign of the curvature. Optimal shapes are also found under constraints on the compliance against static loads. A multiobjective optimization problem is solved by the constraint method to generate a trade-off design between roundness and mechanical performance.

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

fairness metric
parametric surface
ribbed


coordinator-worker-context process pattern This paper describes the Coordinator-Worker-Context process pattern---a pattern for designing processes that contain embedded elements responsible for ensuring proper execution and coordination. Coordinator-Worker-Context addresses some of the problems that occur in complex processes involving both human workers and automated systems.

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

business modeling
socio-technical systems
business automation
patterns
business process


api hyperlinking via structural overlap This paper presents a tool Altair that automatically generates API function cross-references, which emphasizes reliable structural measures and does not depend on specific client code. Altair ranks related API functions for a given query according to pair-wise overlap, i.e., how they share state, and clusters tightly related ones into meaningful modules. Experiments against several popular C software packages show that Altair recommends related API functions for a given query with remarkably more precise and complete results than previous tools, that it can extract modules from moderate-sized software (e.g., Apache with 1000+ functions) at high precision and recall rates (e.g., both exceeding 70\% for two modules in Apache), and that the computation can finish within a few seconds.

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

module clustering
overlap rank
api recommendation


Reusing JessTab rules in Protege Protege provides a complete ontology and knowledge base management tool. Along with JESS, JessTab provides one method of rule-based reasoning over a Protege ontology and knowledge base. However, once JessTab rules have been created for a knowledge base, they are explicitly tied to it as they name particular classes and slots, which greatly hinders their reuse with further knowledge bases. We have developed a two-phase process and a supporting tool to support the reuse of JessTab rule sets. The first phase involves changing the class and slot references in the rule set into an abstract reference; the second phase involves automatically mapping between the abstract rules and further knowledge bases. Once mappings have been defined and applied for all the classes and slots in the abstract rules, the new rule set can then be run against the new knowledge base. We have satisfactorily tested our tool with several ontologies and associated rule sets; moreover, some of these tests have identified possible future improvements to the tool. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


An efficient direct solver for rarefied gas flows with arbitrary statistics A new numerical methodology associated with a unified treatment is presented to solve the BoltzmannBGK equation of gas dynamics for the classical and quantum gases described by the BoseEinstein and FermiDirac statistics. Utilizing a class of globally-stiffly-accurate implicitexplicit RungeKutta scheme for the temporal evolution, associated with the discrete ordinate method for the quadratures in the momentum space and the weighted essentially non-oscillatory method for the spatial discretization, the proposed scheme is asymptotic-preserving and imposes no non-linear solver or requires the knowledge of fugacity and temperature to capture the flow structures in the hydrodynamic (Euler) limit. The proposed treatment overcomes the limitations found in the work by Yang and Muljadi (2011) [33] due to the non-linear nature of quantum relations, and can be applied in studying the dynamics of a gas with internal degrees of freedom with correct values of the ratio of specific heat for the flow regimes for all Knudsen numbers and energy wave lengths. The present methodology is numerically validated with the unified treatment by the one-dimensional shock tube problem and the two-dimensional Riemann problems for gases of arbitrary statistics. Descriptions of ideal quantum gases including rotational degrees of freedom have been successfully achieved under the proposed methodology.

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

quantum rarefied gas dynamics
semi-classical boltzmann equation
bhatnagargrosskrook
asymptotic preserving
weighted essentially non-oscillatory


Quantitative model for binary measurements of protein-protein interactions We develop a stochastic model for quantifying the binary measurements of protein-protein interactions. A key concept in the model is the binary response function (BRF) which represents the conditional probability of successfully detecting a protein-protein interaction with a given number of the protein complexes. A popular form of the BRF is introduced and the effect of the sharpness (Hill's coefficient) of this function is studied. Our model is motivated by the recently developed yeast two-hybrid method for measuring protein-protein interaction networks. We suggest that the same phenomenological BRF can also be applied to the mass spectroscopic measurement of protein-protein interactions. Based on the model, we investigate the contributions to the network topology of protein-protein interactions from (i) the distribution of protein binary association free energy, and from (ii) the cellular protein abundance. It is concluded that the association constants among different protein pairs cannot be totally independent. It is also shown that not only the association constants but also the protein abundance could be a factor in producing the power-law degree distribution of protein-protein interaction networks.

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

biology
dna
genetic analysis
rna
stochastic processes


TreeMAC: Localized TDMA MAC protocol for real-time high-data-rate sensor networks ? Earlier sensor network MAC protocols focus on energy conservation in low-duty cycle applications, while some recent applications involve real-time high-data-rate signals. This motivates us to design an innovative localized TDMA MAC protocol to achieve high throughput and low congestion in data collection sensor networks, besides energy conservation. TreeMAC divides a time cycle into frames and each frame into slots. A parent node determines the childrens frame assignment based on their relative bandwidth demand, and each node calculates its own slot assignment based on its hop-count to the sink. This innovative 2-dimensional frame-slot assignment algorithm has the following nice theory properties. First, given any node, at any time slot, there is at most one active sender in its neighborhood (including itself). Second, the packet scheduling with TreeMAC is bufferless, which therefore minimizes the probability of network congestion. Third, the data throughput to the gateway is at least 1/3 of the optimum assuming reliable links. Our experiments on a 24-node testbed show that TreeMAC protocol significantly improves network throughput, fairness, and energy efficiency compared to TinyOSs default CSMA MAC protocol and a recent TDMA MAC protocol Funneling-MAC. Partial results of this paper were published in Song, Huang, Shirazi and Lahusen [W.-Z. Song, R. Huang, B. Shirazi, and R. Lahusen, TreeMAC: Localized TDMA MAC protocol for high-throughput and fairness in sensor networks, in: The 7th Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, PerCom, March 2009]. Our new contributions include analyses of the performance of TreeMAC from various aspects. We also present more implementation detail and evaluate TreeMAC from other aspects.

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

treemac
tdma
sensor network
realtime
fairness


An Empirical Performance Study of Connection Oriented Time Warp Parallel Simulation Dine warp is a well-known optimistic mechanism for parallel execution of simulation programs. Implementing time warp using a connection-oriented communication approach is proposed in the literature as a way to improve nine warp performance because it allows for the use of more efficient event queue implementations. However, no empirical performance studies have been reported for connection-oriented nine warp. In this paper, we present an enhanced version of the connection-oriented nine warp algorithm along with its associated data structures. An empirical performance study, of the connection-oriented nine warp is conducted on a network of workstations using a standard synthetic benchmark simulation model. Experimental results show that this algorithm is capable of achieving better performance than that of traditional connectionless time warp,for several performance measures.

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

parallel simulation
time warp
connectionless


A comprehensive solution for application-level adaptation Driven by the emergence of mobile and pervasive computing there is a growing demand For context-aware software systems that can dynamically adapt to their run-time environment. We present the results of project MADAM that has delivered a comprehensive solution for the development and operation of context-aware, self-adaptive applications. The main contributions of MADAM are (a) a sophisticated middleware that supports the dynamic adaptation of component-based applications, and (b) an innovative model-driven development methodology that is based on abstract adaptation models and corresponding model-to-code transformations. MADAM has demonstrated the viability of a general, integrated approach to application-level adaptation. We discuss our experiences with two real-world case studies that were built using the MADAM approach. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 software
component framework
compositional adaptation
context awareness
model-driven development
utility function


Measuring the impact of information skills training: a survey of health libraries in England The lack of robust research measuring the impact of NHS based information skills training prompted the West Midlands Regional Trainers' Forum to conduct a post-training survey.

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

evaluation
information literacy
health care
questionnaires
surveys


Refinable shift invariant spaces in R-d Let phi : R-d --> C be a compactly supported function which satisfies a refinement equation of the form phi(x) = Sigma(k is an element of Lambda) ck phi (Ax - k), c(k) is an element of C, where Gamma subset of R-d is a lattice, Lambda is a finite subset of Gamma, and A is a dilation matrix. We prove, under the hypothesis of linear independence of the Gamma-translates of phi, that there exists a correspondence between the vectors of the Jordan basis of a finite submatrix of L = [c(Ai-j)](i,j is an element of Gamma) and a finite-dimensional subspace H in the shift-invariant space generated by W. We provide a basis of H and show that its elements satisfy a property of homogeneity associated to the eigenvalues of L. If the function phi has accuracy kappa, this basis can be chosen to contain a basis for all the multivaxiate polynomials of degree less than kappa. These latter functions are associated to eigenvalues that are powers of the eigenvalues of A(-1). Furthermore we show that the dimension of H coincides with the local dimension of phi, and hence, every function in the shift-invariant space generated by phi can be written locally as a linear combination of translates of the homogeneous 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 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 B I

shift-invariant spaces
refinable functions


The phosphorylation specificity of B-RAF(WT), B-RAF(D594V), B-RAF(V600E) and B-RAF(K601E) kinases: An in silico study Phosphorylation of the B-RAF kinase is an essential process in tumour induction and maintenance in several cancers. Herein the phosphorylation specificity of the activation segment of the wild type B-RAF kinase and the B-RAF(D594V), B-RAF(V600E) and B-RAF(K601E) mutants was examined by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and GRID molecular interaction field analysis. According to our analysis, Thr599 and Ser602 were the only residues in the activation segment in B-RAF(WT) that were well exposed to ATP binding, which is in agreement with the experimental results, and provide a molecular basis of the observed phosphorylation. The phosphorylation specificity was altered significantly for each of the three different mutants studied due to the large conformational changes and subsequent alterations in the electrostatic forces between several residues for each of these mutants. Thus the analysis revealed limited phosphorylation potential of the non-active B-RAF(D594V) mutant and several potential ATP binding sites were identified for the highly active B-RAF(V600E) mutant. The Lys601 residue, which is specific to RAF and not present in the activation segment of other similar kinases, was identified to potentially be of major importance to the observed differences in the phosphorylation specificity of the mutants. Our results indicate that Lys601 might be a specific ATP coordinating residue, contributing to the B-RAF phosphorylation specificity. The overall results can be helpful for the understanding of the B-RAF phosphorylation processes on a molecular level. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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


envy-free auctions for digital goods We study auctions for a commodity in unlimited supply, e.g., a digital good. In particular we consider three desirable properties for auctions: item Competitive: the auction achieves a constant fraction of the optimal revenue even on worst case inputs. item Truthful: any bidder's best strategy is to bid the maximum value they are willing to pay. item Envy-free: after the auction is run, no bidder would be happier with the outcome of another bidder (for digital good auctions, this means that there is a single sale price and goods are allocated to all bidders willing to pay this price).Our main result is to show that no constant-competitive auction that is truthful and always gives outcomes are envy-free. We consider two relaxations of these requirements, allowing the auction to be untruthful with vanishingly small probability, and allowing the auction to give non-envy-free outcomes with vanishingly small probability. Under both of these relaxations we get competitive auctions.

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


Rethinking security properties, threat models, and the design space in sensor networks: A case study in SCADA systems In recent years we have witnessed the emergence and establishment of research in sensor network security. The majority of the literature has focused on discovering numerous vulnerabilities and attacks against sensor networks, along with suggestions for corresponding countermeasures. However, there has been little guidance for understanding the holistic nature of sensor network security for practical deployments. In this paper, we discuss these concerns and propose a taxonomy composed of the security properties of the sensor network, the threat model, and the security design space. In particular, we try to understand the application-layer goals of a sensor network, and provide a guide to research challenges that need to be addressed in order to prioritize our defenses against threats to application-layer goals.

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


An Energy Efficient Barrier Coverage Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks Intrusion detection is one of the most important applications of wireless sensor networks. When mobile objects are entering into the boundary of a sensor field or are moving cross the sensor field, they should be detected by the scattered sensor nodes before they pierce through the field of sensor (barrier coverage). In this paper, we propose an energy efficient scheduling method based on learning automata, in which each node is equipped with a learning automaton, which helps the node to select best node to guarantee barrier coverage, at any given time. To apply our method, we used coverage graph of deployed networks and learning automata of each node operates based on nodes that located in adjacency of current node. Our algorithm tries to select minimum number of required nodes to monitor barriers in deployed network. To investigate the efficiency of the proposed barrier coverage algorithm several computer simulation experiments are conducted. Numerical results show the superiority of the proposed method over the existing methods in term of the network lifetime and our proposed algorithm can operate very close to optimal method.

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

barrier coverage
sensor networks
energy efficient scheduling


Consideration of illumination effects and optimization of window size for accurate calculation of depth map for 3D shape recovery ? Obtaining an accurate and precise depth map is the ultimate goal for 3D shape recovery. For depth map estimation, one of the most vital parts is the initial selection of the focus measure and processing the images with the selected focus measure. Although, many focus measures have been proposed in the literature but not much attention has been paid to the factors affecting those focus measures as well as the manner the images are processed with those focus measures. In this paper, for accurate calculation of depth map, we consider the effects of illumination on the depth map as well as the selection of the window size for application of the focus measures. The resulting depth map can further be used in techniques and algorithms leading to recovery of three-dimensional structure of the object which is required in many high-level vision applications. It is shown that the illumination effects can directly result in incorrect estimation of depth map if proper window size is not selected during focus measure computation. Further, it is shown that the images need some kind of pre-processing to enhance the dark regions and shadows in the image. For this purpose, an adaptive enhancement algorithm is proposed for pre-processing. In this paper, we prove that without such pre-processing for image enhancement and without the use of proper window size for the estimation of depth maps, it is not possible to obtain the accurate depth map.

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

depth map
window size
focus measures
3d shape recovery

illumination problems
blurring
adaptive histogram enhancement
sum of modified laplacian
gray-level variance
shape from focus (sff)


Acoustic emissions for particle sizing of powders through signal processing techniques The present work introduces an innovative method for measuring particle size distribution of an airborne powder, based on the application of signal processing techniques to the acoustic emission signals produced by the impacts of the powder with specific metallic surfaces. The basic idea of the proposed methodology lies on the identification of the unknown relation between the acquired acoustic emission signals and the powder particle size distribution, by means of a multi-step procedure. In the first step, wavelet packet decomposition is used to extract useful features from the acoustic emission signals; the dimensionality of feature space is further reduced through multivariate data analysis techniques. As a final step, a neural network is properly trained to map the feature vector into the particle size distribution. The proposed solution has several advantages, such as low cost and low invasiveness which allow the system based on this technique to be easily integrated in pre-existing plants. It has been successfully applied to the PSD measurement of coal powder produced by grinding mills in a coal-fired power station, and the experimental results are reported in the paper. The measurement principle can also be applied to different particle sizing applications, whenever a solid powder is carried in air or in other gases.

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

particle sizing
acoustic emissions
multivariate data analysis


Perceptually motivated morphological strategies for shape retrieval In this paper, two perceptually motivated morphological strategies (PMMS) are proposed to enhance the retrieval performance of common shape matching methods. Firstly, two human perception customs are introduced, which have important relations to shape retrieval. Secondly, these two customs are properly modeled by morphological operations. Finally, the proposed PMMS is applied to improve the retrieval performances of a popular shape matching method named Inner-Distance Shape Contexts (IDSC), and then the Locally Constrained Diffusion Process (LCDP) method is exploited to further enhance the retrieval performance. This combination achieves a retrieval rate of 98.56% on MPEG-7 dataset. We also conduct the experiments on Swedish Leaf dataset, the ETH-80 dataset and the Natural Silhouette dataset. The experimental results obtained from four datasets demonstrate clearly the effectiveness of the proposed 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 B I O O O O O O O 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

morphological operation
perceptual custom


Formulation and analysis of in-place MSD radix sort algorithms We present a unified treatment of a number of related in-place MSD radix sort algorithms with varying radices, collectively referred to here as 'Matesort' algorithms. These algorithms use the idea of in-place partitioning which is a considerable improvement over the traditional linked list implementation of radix sort that uses 0(n) space. The binary Matesort algorithm is a recast of the classical radix-exchange sort, emphasizing the role of in-place partitioning and efficient implementation of bit processing operations. This algorithm is O(k) space and has O(kn) worst-case order of running time, where k is the number of bits needed to encode an element value and n is the number of elements to be sorted. The binary Matesort algorithm is evolved into a number of other algorithms including 'continuous Matesort' for handling floating point numbers, and a number of 'general radix Matesort' algorithms. We present formulation and analysis for three different approaches (sequential, divide-and-conquer and permutation-loop) for partitioning by the general radix Matesort algorithm. The divide-and-conquer approach leads to an elegantly coded algorithm with better performance than the permutation-loop-based American Flag Sort algorithm.

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

sorting algorithms
msd radix sort
general radix matesort
quicksort


On the Cauchy problem for a quantum kinetic equation linked to the Compton effect The Cauchy problem is studied for an homogeneous quantum kinetic equation describing the Compton effect. Since the collision kernel commonly used in physics is highly singular, numerical simulations are performed for related collision kernels to get a preliminary insight into the behavior of the solutions. Some of the numerical results are then given a theoretical explanation. Global existence of a solution to the Cauchy problem is proven when the L-1 initial data are a.e. smaller than the Planck distribution function, and non-existence of solutions to the Cauchy problem is proven when the L-1 initial data are a.e. bigger than the Planck distribution function. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A method for simulating Atomic Force Microscope nanolithography in the Level Set framework During the last decades it has been shown that the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) can be used in non-contact mode as an efficient lithographic technique capable of manufacturing nanometer sized devices on the surface of a silicon wafer. The AFM nanooxidation approach is based on generating a potential difference between a cantilever needle tip and a silicon wafer. A water meniscus builds up between the tip and the wafer, resulting in a medium for oxyions to move due to the high electric field in the region. A simulator for nanooxidation with a non-contact AFM, implemented in a Level Set environment, was developed. The presented simulator implements the growth of thicker oxides by analyzing the potential, electric field, and ion concentrations at the ambient/oxide and oxide/silicon interfaces, while the growth of thin oxides assumes a single liquid/silicon interface, which is modeled as an infinitely long conducting plane. The nanodot shapes have been shown to follow the electric field and hence the surface charge distribution shape; therefore, a Monte Carlo particle distribution for the surface charge density is generated for two-dimensional and three-dimensional topography simulations in a Level Set framework.

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

level set
monte carlo
atomic force microscope

topography simulation
local anodic oxidation
oxide nanodots


Estimation of inverse mean: An orthogonal series approach In this article, we propose the use of orthogonal series to estimate the inverse mean space. Compared to the original slicing scheme, it significantly improves the estimation accuracy without losing computation efficiency, especially for the heteroscedastic models. Compared to the local smoothing approach, it is more computationally efficient. The new approach also has the advantage of robustness in selecting the tuning parameter. Permutation test is used to determine the structural dimension. Moreover, a variable selection procedure is incorporated into this new approach, which is particularly useful when the model is sparse. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulations and a real data analysis.

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

sufficient dimension reduction
central subspace
sliced inverse regression


Isolation concepts for clique enumeration: Comparison and computational experiments We do Computational studies concerning the enumeration of isolated cliques in graphs. Isolation, as recently introduced, measures the degree of connectedness of the cliques to the rest of the graph. Isolation helps both in getting faster algorithms for the enumeration of maximal general cliques and in filtering out cliques with special semantics. We compare three isolation concepts and their combination with two enumeration modi for maximal cliques ("isolated maximal" vs "maximal isolated"). All studied concepts exhibit the fixed-parameter tractability of the enumeration task with respect to the parameter "degree of isolation". We provide a first systematic experimental study of the corresponding enumeration algorithms, using synthetic graphs (in the G(n,m,p) model), financial networks, and a music artist similarity network, proposing the enumeration of isolated cliques as a useful instrument in analyzing financial and social networks. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

np-hard problem
fixed-parameter tractability
exact algorithm
algorithm engineering
dense subgraph


The Belfast Induced Natural Emotion Database For many years psychological research on facial expression of emotion has relied heavily on a recognition paradigm based on posed static photographs. There is growing evidence that there may be fundamental differences between the expressions depicted in such stimuli and the emotional expressions present in everyday life. Affective computing, with its pragmatic emphasis on realism, needs examples of natural emotion. This paper describes a unique database containing recordings of mild to moderate emotionally colored responses to a series of laboratory-based emotion induction tasks. The recordings are accompanied by information on self-report of emotion and intensity, continuous trace-style ratings of valence and intensity, the sex of the participant, the sex of the experimenter, the active or passive nature of the induction task, and it gives researchers the opportunity to compare expressions from people from more than one culture.

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

natural emotion
database
emotion induction


Periodic scheduling of marked graphs using balanced binary words This paper presents an algorithm to statically schedule live and strongly connected Marked Graphs. The proposed algorithm computes the best execution where the execution rate is maximal and place sizes are minimal. The proposed algorithm provides transition schedules represented as binary words. These words are chosen to be balanced. The contributions of this paper are the proposed algorithm itself along with the characterization of the best execution of any marked graph. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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 B I O O O O O O O


TCP friendly protocols for media streams over heterogeneous wired-wireless networks The growing need for Internet friendly streaming protocols prompted us to develop IFTP (Internet Friendly Transport Protocol). IFTP is a protocol with an inherent rate-based flow control mechanism designed to emulate TCP's window-based flow control mechanism. In this paper, we present two proposals to improve the performance of IFTP in networks with wireless links. The first is IFTP-W, which specifies an error-sensitive section. Bit errors not occurring in this section are ignored. The second is IFTPV, which distinguishes between losses due to congestion and those due to the wireless link. In this paper, we present the performance of IFTP-W with varying error-sensitive section lengths on networks with varying link qualities. We also analyze the performance of IFTPV in extensive scenarios with various network conditions. The results show that both proposals maintain the TCP-friendliness and fairness properties, but perform better than IFTP on wireless networks. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

transport protocols
tcp-friendly
multimedia applications


Efficient algorithms for finding sills in digital topographic maps In stratified geophysical flows, the energetically optimal exchange of dense fluid across a topographic barrier generally takes place at the deepest unblocked connection, which is typically a saddle point (sill). The flow at or near a sill is often hydraulically controlled, in which case the sill is called a controlling sill. Oceanographic examples include overflows of newly formed dense water at high latitudes as well as sills in channels connecting major ocean basins, such as the Strait of Gibraltar. Controlling sills are usually associated with strong flows, making them ideal sites for monitoring transport and hydrographic variability. The locations and depths of controlling sills also provide strong constraints for the downstream hydrographic properties below sill depth. Here, two algorithms for finding sills in digital topographic maps are presented. The first approximates the sill height to arbitrary precision in O(k) O ( k ) steps, where k is the number of data points in the map. The second algorithm, which requires O(klogk) O ( k log k ) steps, additionally returns the sill location. Several tests carried out with realistic problems from physical oceanography reveal that the second algorithm runs faster in practice, even though its worst case behavior is worse.

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

digital elevation model
topography
priority queue


SoNeUCONABC, an expressive usage control model for Web-Based Social Networks In the era of hyper-connectivity Web-Based Social Networks (WBSNs) are demanding applications. They facilitate the interaction of huge amounts of users and the development of appropriate Access Control Models (ACMs) is an arising necessity. Particularly, the development of WBSNs ACMs with expressive power and capable of managing access control along the whole usage process is the challenge pursued. To contribute on this issue, first, 23 proposals have been analysed and second, SoNeUCONABC, an expressive usage control model for WBSNs, is proposed. It extends UCONABC ( Park, 2003) including relationships management and it is formally defined, specifying entities and elements involved and an access control policy language. Moreover, policy construction is carefully detailed by using regular expressions and access control enforcement functions are described. Finally, the evaluation shows, theoretically, the significant expressive power of SoNeUCONABC and, empirically, the feasibility of its implementation by the development of a proof of concept system.

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

web based social networks
access control model
access control policy


Automated context aggregation and file annotation for PAN-based computing This paper presents a method for automatically annotating files created on portable devices with contextual metadata. We achieve this through the combination of two system components. One is a context dissemination mechanism which allows devices in a personal area network (PAN) to maintain a shared aggregate contextual perception. The other is a storage management system that uses such context information to automatically decorate files created on personal devices with annotations. As a result, the user is able to flexibly browse and lookup files that were generated on the move, based on the contextual situation at the time of their creation. What is equally important is that the user is relieved from the cumbersome task of having to manually provide annotations in an explicit fashion. This is especially valuable when generating files on the move, using U/I-restricted portable devices.

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

ubiquitous computing
mobile computing
context awareness
semantic file systems
storage organization


Improved n-Term Karatsuba-Like Formulas in GF(2) It is well known that Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) can be used to construct efficient algorithms for multiplication of polynomials over GF(2). In this note, we show how to select an appropriate set of modulus polynomials to obtain minimal number of multiplications.

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

polynomial multiplication
fast algorithm
karatsuba algorithm


Process development in metal/BCB multilayer interconnections of MMCM with embedded chip in Si substrate A vertical interlayer connection via (VILCV) fabrication process is presented. This process is used for the interconnection of multilayer benzocyclobutene (BCB) based microwave multichip modules (MMCM). The excellent planarity of BCB allows VILCV to be formed using gold electroplating or stud bumps prior to BCB application. And mechanical polishing (MP) planarization is adopted to expose the VILCV, enabling interconnection between different layers. Subsequently upper interconnection is patterned. Metal/BCB multilayer structure can be made by repeating above steps. This approach eliminates the need for laser drilling and plasma etching. Both four terminal Kelvin structures and via chains are fabricated as test vehicles. Finally, a transition of transmission lines in different layers and a packaged MMIC embedded in Si substrate are presented and measured in high frequency range up to 20GHz. The results show there is only minimal performance degradation.

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

metal/bcb multilayer
microwave multichip module (mmcm)


Numerical simulation of the smooth quantum hydrodynamic model for semiconductor devices An extension of the classical hydrodynamic model for semiconductor devices to include quantum transport effects is reviewed. This smooth quantum hydrodynamic (QHD) model is derived specifically to handle in a mathematically rigorous way the discontinuities in the classical potential energy which occur at heterojunction barriers in quantum semiconductor devices. A conservative upwind discretization of the one-dimensional (1D) steady-state smooth QHD equations is outlined. Smooth QHD model simulations of the resonant tunneling diode are presented which exhibit enhanced negative differential resistance when compared with simulations using the original O(?2) QHD model.

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

quantum hydrodynamic model
semiconductor devices

numerical simulations
electron tunneling


A three-dimensional hybrid finite element volume tracking model for mould filling in casting processes Metal casting is a complicated process in which flow momentum plays a crucial role in the mould filling process due to the high velocity of the liquid metal. Inertia and gravity effects may cause splashing, jetting or undesirable filling of the metal flow into the mould cavity. When considering complex parts, the accurate prediction of mould filling behaviour using empirical knowledge and intuition is nearly impossible. Therefore, numerical modelling and simulation are essential to predict such a complex physical problem and assist in part with mould design. A mould filling analysis can help the mould designer to determine the size and location of the gate as well as a proper runner system design for ensuring a complete and balanced filling of the part. Such an analysis can also be used to predict potential product defects, such as air entrapment, porosities, and help in correct positioning of overflows and venting systems. A three-dimensional finite element model combined with a volume tracking method has been developed in this work to simulate the cavity filling for casting processes. A mixed formulation based on a four node tetrahedral element with a bubble function at the centroid (P1(+)/P1) is employed to solve the flow equations. Such a finite element provides a small dimension of the element matrices and satisfies the Brezzi-Babuska condition to ensure a stable solution of the Navier-Stokes equations. A slip boundary condition combined with a friction model is implemented to better simulate the metal flow near the mould walls. An algebraic model is used to account for the turbulence effects during the mould filling. The flow fronts are tracked by a volume tracking method developed for the tetrahedral elements. This method can handle complicated flow front shapes and complex situations like merging and separation of flow fronts. The combination of a volume tracking technique with a FEM flow solver in three-dimensional unstructured meshes constitutes the major feature of this model. Examples of the filling simulations are presented to illustrate the capabilities of the numerical model. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

mould filling
finite element
mixed formulation
volume tracking


Estimation of prediction error by using K-fold cross-validation Estimation of prediction accuracy is important when our aim is prediction. The training error is an easy estimate of prediction error, but it has a downward bias. On the other hand, K-fold cross-validation has an upward bias. The upward bias may be negligible in leave-one-out cross-validation, but it sometimes cannot be neglected in 5-fold or 10-fold cross-validation, which are favored from a computational standpoint. Since the training error has a downward bias and K-fold cross-validation has an upward bias, there will be an appropriate estimate in a family that connects the two estimates. In this paper, we investigate two families that connect the training error and K-fold cross-validation.

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

bias correction
k-fold cross-validation
large dataset


Embeddability and recovery of a bubblesort star graph interconnection network The bubblesort star graph interconnection network is a merging network of the star graph and the bubblesort graph, and have many advantages over the latter two networks'. In this paper, a new approach is proposed for embedding a (2n - 5) level or a (2n - 4) level complete binary tree (CBT) with dilation one into an n-dimensional bubblesort star graph interconnection network (BSn). A recovery scheme which can recover a single fault in one step and with dilation less than or equal to 3 is also presented. Furthermore, a large number, one-third, of the nodes in the CBT can be recovered in the smallest number of recovery steps and with dilation less than or equal to 4. The fault-tolerant embedding approach can be extended to embed [n/2] CBT2n-5's or [n/4] CBT2n-4's into the BSn, and-the capability of multiple faults recovery is still remained. Therefore, the expansion of the proposed approach is as small as n!/([n/2] x (2(2n-5) - 1)) or n!/([n/4] x (2(2n-4) - 1)).

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

bubblesort star graph
interconnection network
embeddability
recovery


Application of Model Based Diagnosis for Diagnosing Faults in the High-speed Maglev's Traction Power Supply System The traction power supply system of the Highspeed Maglev Transrapid plays an important role as the power supply interface between a general power system and the Maglev Transrapid. Most conventional diagnosis systems are expert systems based on experiences which can not diagnose faults beyond those captured by the experiences. In this paper, model-based diagnosis (MBD) as a cognitive diagnosis method is applied to diagnose faults in the traction power supply system. The system models employed including system description, system signs and element models are described. Finally, an actual fault of the traction power supply system of High-speed Maglev is simulated to verify the effectiveness of MBD technique.

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

model-based diagnosis
high-speed maglev
fault diagnosis


mostly concurrent compaction for mark-sweep gc A memory manager that does not move objects may suffer from memory fragmentation . Compaction is an efficient, and sometimes inevitable, mechanism for reducing fragmentation. A Mark-Sweep garbage collector must occasionally execute a compaction, usually while the application is suspended. Compaction during pause time can have detrimental effects for interactive applications that require guarantees for maximal pause time. This work presents a method for reducing the pause time created by compaction at a negligible throughput hit. The solution is most suitable when added to a Mark-Sweep garbage collector. Compaction normally consists of two major activities: the moving of objects and the update of all the objects' references to the new locations. We present a method for executing the reference updates concurrently, thus eliminating a substantial portion of the pause time hit. To reduce the time for moving objects in each compaction, we use the existing technique of incremental compaction, but select the optimal area to compact. Selecting the area is done after executing the mark and sweep phases, and is based on their results. We implemented our compaction on top of the IBM J9 JVM V2.2, and present measurements of its effect on pause time, throughput, and mutator utilization. We show that our compaction is indeed an efficient fragmentation reduction tool, and that it improves the performance of a few of the benchmarks we used, with very little increase in the pause time (typically far below the cost of the mark phase).

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

applications use performance reduction tool throughput jvm incremental select fragmentation compaction method effect cost update

measurement
activation
efficiency
benchmark
object
java
timing
management
locatability
optimality
interactive applications
concurrency
memorialized
incremental compaction
concurrent compaction
garbage collection
moving object


Flipping and cyclic shifting of binary aggregation functions We introduce two types of trans formations of random variables, called flipping and cyclic shifting. As these transformations preserve monotonicity at the level of univariate cumulative distribution functions, they can be used to develop corresponding coordinate-wise transformations of binary aggregation functions. We lay bare the admissibility of these transformations, i.e. the necessary and sufficient conditions under which they result in a binary aggregation function. We investigate which additional properties, such as the 1-Lipschitz property and 2-increasingness, entail these admissibility conditions. Moreover, we point out which of these properties are preserved under flipping and/or cyclic shifting. Interestingly, quasi-copulas remain quasi-copulas under flipping, while copulas remain copulas under flipping as well as under cyclic shifting. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

aggregation function
cyclic shifting
flipping
monotonicity

copula
2-increasingness
1-lipschitz property
quasi-copula


Comment on "Generic universal switch blocks" In the paper [5], the authors defined the well-structured symmetric switch block M-N,M-W and showed that M-N,M-W is universal for any pair of positive integers N and W, However, we find that this result is partially correct. Here, we show that, when N greater than or equal to 7, M-N,M-W is not universal for odd Ws (greater than or equal to 3) and it is universal for any even W.

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

field programmable gate array
universal switch block design
fpga routing


G-MSA - A GPU-based, fast and accurate algorithm for multiple sequence alignment Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) methods are essential in biological analysis. Several MSA algorithms have been proposed in recent years. The quality of the results produced by those methods is reasonable, but there is no single method that consistently outperforms others. Additionally, the increasing number of sequences in the biological databases is perceived as one of the upcoming challenges for alignment methods in the nearest future. The lack of performance concerns not only the alignment problems, but may be observed in many areas of biologically related research. To overcome this problem in the field of pairwise alignment, several CPU (Graphics Processing Unit) computing approaches have been proposed lately. These solutions show a great potential of CPU platform. Therefore, our main idea was to design and implement an MSA method which can take advantage of modern graphics cards. Our solution is based on T-Coffee - well known for its high accuracy MSA algorithm. Its computational time, however, is often unacceptable. Performed tests show that our method, named G-MSA, is highly efficient achieving up to 193-fold speedup on a single GPU while the quality of its results remains very good. Due to effective memory usage the method can perform alignment for huge sets of sequences that previously could only be aligned on computer clusters. Moreover, multiple GPUs support with load balancing makes the application very scalable. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

the t-coffee algorithm
gpu heuristics
multiple gpus applications
bioinformatics


On minimal Sturmian partial words ? Partial words, which are sequences that may have some undefined positions called holes, can be viewed as sequences over an extended alphabet A?=A?{?} A ? = A ? { ? } , where ? ? stands for a hole and matches (or is compatible with) every letter in A A . The subword complexity of a partial word w w , denoted by pw(n) p w ( n ) , is the number of distinct full words (those without holes) over the alphabet that are compatible with factors of length n n of w w . A function f:N?N f : N ? N is (k,h) ( k , h ) -feasible if for each integer N?1 N ? 1 , there exists a k k -ary partial word w w with h h holes such that pw(n)=f(n) p w ( n ) = f ( n ) for all n n such that 1?n?N 1 ? n ? N . We show that when dealing with feasibility in the context of finite binary partial words, the only affine functions that need investigation are f(n)=n+1 f ( n ) = n + 1 and f(n)=2n f ( n ) = 2 n . It turns out that both are (2,h) ( 2 , h ) -feasible for all non-negative integers h h . We classify all minimal partial words with h h holes of order N N with respect to f(n)=n+1 f ( n ) = n + 1 , called Sturmian, computing their lengths as well as their numbers, except when h=0 h = 0 in which case we describe an algorithm that generates all minimal Sturmian full words. We show that up to reversal and complement, any minimal Sturmian partial word with one hole is of the form ai?ajbal a i ? a j b a l , where i,j,l i , j , l are integers satisfying some restrictions, that all minimal Sturmian partial words with two holes are one-periodic, and that up to complement, ?(aN?1?)h?1 ? ( a N ? 1 ? ) h ? 1 is the only minimal Sturmian partial word with h?3 h ? 3 holes. Finally, we give upper bounds on the lengths of minimal partial words with respect to f(n)=2n f ( n ) = 2 n , showing them tight for h=0,1 h = 0 , 1 or 2 2 .

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

automata and formal languages
combinatorics on words
graph theory
feasible functions
sturmian words


Digital transformations and the archival nature of surrogates Large-scale digitization is generating extraordinary collections of visual and textual surrogates, potentially endowed with transcendent long-term cultural and research values. Understanding the nature of digital surrogacy is a substantial intellectual opportunity for archival science and the digital humanities, because of the increasing independence of surrogate collections from their archival sources. The paper presents an argument that one of the most significant requirements for the long-term access to collections of digital surrogates is to treat digital surrogates as archival records that embody traces of their fluid lifecycles and therefore are worthy of management and preservation as archives. It advances a theory of the archival nature of surrogacy founded on longstanding notions of archival quality, the traces of their source and the conditions of their creation, and the functional work of the archive. The paper presents evidence supporting a secondary provenance derived from re-digitization, re-ingestion of multiple versions, and de facto replacement of the original sources. The design of the underlying research that motivates the paper and summary findings are reported separately. The research has been supported generously by the US Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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

large-scale digitization
preservation repositories


Occlusion invariant face recognition using selective local non-negative matrix factorization basis images In this paper, we propose a novel occlusion invariant face recognition algorithm based on Selective Local Non-negative Matrix Factorization (S-LNMF) technique. The proposed algorithm is composed of two phases; the occlusion detection phase and the selective LNMF-based recognition phase. We use a local approach to effectively detect partial occlusions in an input face image. A face image is first divided into a finite number of disjointed local patches, and then each patch is represented by PCA (Principal Component Analysis), obtained by corresponding occlusion-free patches of training images. And the 1-NN threshold classifier is used for occlusion detection for each patch in the corresponding PCA space. In the recognition phase, by employing the LNMF-based face representation, we exclusively use the LNMF bases of occlusion-free image patches for face recognition. Euclidean nearest neighbor rule is applied for the matching. We have performed experiments on AR face database that includes many occluded face images by sunglasses and scarves. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed local patch-based occlusion detection technique works well and the S-LNMF method shows superior performance to other conventional approaches.

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


Material damping vs. radiation damping in soil-structure interaction analysis The main objective of this paper is to contribute to a quantification of the effect of soil damping on the most important design variables in the seismic response of building structures with prismatic rectangular foundations. A soil-structure interaction model was used for this purpose. The physical model of the structure is based on a general beam formulation. A lumped-parameter model was adopted to represent the soil and the interaction mechanisms. The seismic load was incorporated by ground acceleration records of many earthquakes. Finally, using the Correspondence Principle, the hysteretic and Voigt damping was incorporated into the soil model. Using the implemented models, a numerical study was carried out. The results obtained lead to an indirect assessment of the importance of energy dissipation due to soil material damping compared with the dissipation due to radiation damping. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

soil-structure interaction
seismic analysis
lumped-parameter model
structural dynamics


dimensionality reduction for long duration and complex spatio-temporal queries In this paper we present an approach to mine and query spatio-temporal data with the aim of finding interesting patterns and understanding the underlying data generating process. An important class of queries is based on the flock pattern. A flock is a large subset of objects moving along paths close to each other for a certain pre-defined time. One approach to process a "flock query" is to map spatio-temporal data into a high dimensional space and reduce the query into a sequence of standard range queries which can be presented using a spatial indexing structure. However, as is well known, the performance of spatial indexing structures drastically deteriorates in high dimensional space. In this paper we propose a preprocessing strategy which consists of using a random projection to reduce the dimensionality of the transformed space. Our experimental results show, for the first time, the possibility of breaking the curse of dimensionality in a spatio-temporal setting.

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


Guiding flows for controlling crowds In this paper, we present a novel method for controlling massive crowds by using control particles. Our method differs from previous ones that generate attraction (or repelling) forces around the control particles. Instead of doing this, we create a steady-state, flow-like control field that guides the crowd to move along with the control particles. Our control field can be naturally incorporated into the original simulation by using density-based weighted blending. Although we focus on simulation methods that use dynamic potential functions, our method can also be used to improve the controllability of agent-based simulation methods. Since the control particles can be easily manipulated by traditional key-framing, our method provides animators with an intuitive interface for manipulating the position of crowd over time. We illustrate the effectiveness of our method on several examples.

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

crowd simulation
key-frame animation
interactive control


Comparison of crowdsourcing translation with Machine Translation In this paper we examine the model of crowdsourcing for translation and compare it with Machine Translation (MT). The large volume of material to be translated, the translation of this material into many languages combined with tight deadlines lead enterprises today to follow either crowdsourcing and/or MT. Crowdsourcing translation shares many characteristics with MT, as both can cope with high volume, perform at high speed, and reduce the translation cost. MT is an older technology, whereas crowdsourcing is a new phenomenon gaining much ground over time, mainly through Web 2.0. Examples and challenges of both models will be discussed and the paper is closed with future prospects regarding the combination of crowdsourcing and MT, so that they are not regarded as opponents. These prospects are partially based on the results of a survey we conducted. Based on our background, experience, and research, this paper covers aspects both from the point of view of translation studies and computational linguistics applications as well as of information sciences, and particularly the development of the Web regarding user-generated content.

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

empirical data
human translation
quality


Retrospective correction of the heel effect in hand radiographs A method for the retrospective correction of intensity inhomogeneities induced by the heel effect in digital radiographs is presented. The method is based on a mathematical model for the heel effect derived from the acquisition geometry. The model parameters are estimated by fitting the model to the image intensity data in the background or direct exposure area only where the heel effect is directly measurable, while the correction is then applied to the whole image. The method iterates between background segmentation and heel effect correction until convergence. We illustrate the performance of the method on flat field and phantom images and demonstrate its robustness on a database of 137 diagnostic hand radiographs. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

geometrical heel effect models
inhomogeneity correction


Novel methods of DOA estimation based on compressed sensing Making use of the sparsity of targets, three novel direction of arrival (DOA) models based on compressed sensing (CS) theory are proposed. Covariance matrix CS, interpolated array CS and beam space CS carry out compressive sampling on covariance matrix, interpolated array and beam space, respectively. High-resolution DOA estimations are obtained through reconstruction of sparse signal by convex optimization problem resolution. The proposed methods are conceptually different from subspace-based methods and provide high resolution using a uniform linear array without restricting requirements on the spatial and temporal stationary and correlation properties of the sources and the noise. Results of both simulated data and measured data show that these methods are superior to conventional DOA methods in angular estimation performance.

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


Assessing NEO Hazard Mitigation in Terms of Astrodynamics and Propulsion Systems Requirements Uncertainties associated with assessing valid near-Earth object (NEO) threats and carrying out interception missions place unique and stringent burdens on designing mission architecture, astrodynamics, and spacecraft propulsion systems. A prime uncertainty is associated with the meaning of NEO orbit predictability regarding Earth impact. Analyses of past NEO orbits and impact probabilities indicate uncertainties in determining if a projected NEO threat will actually materialize within a given time frame. Other uncertainties regard estimated mass, composition, and structural integrity of the NEO body. At issue is if one can reliably estimate a NEO threat and its magnitude. Parameters that determine NEO deflection requirements within various time frames, including the terminal orbital pass before impact, and necessary energy payloads, are quantitatively discussed. Propulsion system requirements for extending space capabilities to rapidly interact with NEOs at ranges of up to about 1 AU (astronomical unit) from Earth are outlined. Such missions, without gravitational boosts, are deemed critical for a practical and effective response to mitigation. If an impact threat is confirmed on an immediate orbital pass, the option for interactive reconnaissance, and interception, and subsequent NEO orbit deflection must be promptly carried out. There also must be an option to abort the mitigation mission if the NEO is subsequently found not to be Earth threatening. These options require optimal decision latitude and operational possibilities for NEO threat removal while minimizing alarm. Acting too far in advance of the projected impact could induce perturbations that ultimately exacerbate the threat. Given the dilemmas, uncertainties, and limited options associated with timely NEO mitigation within a decision making framework, currently available propulsion technologies that appear most viable to carry out a NEO interception/mitigation mission within the greatest margin of control and reliability are those based on a combined (bimodal) nuclear thermal/nuclear electric propulsion platform. Elements of required and currently available performance characteristics for nuclear and electric propulsion systems are also discussed.

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

neo hazard mitigation
astrodynamics
propulsion systems


Purpose-based benchmarks We define an approach to benchmarking, "purpose-based benchmarks", which explicitly and comprehensively measures the ability of a computing system to reach a goal of human interest. This contrasts with the traditional approach of defining a benchmark as a task to be timed, or as the rate at which some activity is performed. Purpose-based benchmarks are more difficult to create than traditional benchmarks, but have a profound advantage that makes them well worth the trouble: they provide a well-defined quantitative measure of the productivity of a computer system.

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 B O O O O

performance analysis
scalability
hpcs
acceptability functions
purpose-based benchmarks


A reduced basis method with exact-solution certificates for steady symmetric coercive equations Reduced basis method that provides rigorous bounds of the exact PDE energy. Upper bound computation is based on variational argument. Lower bound computation is based on complementary variational principle. Bound evaluation permits offlineonline computational decomposition.

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 B I I O O O O O O

reduced basis
complementary variational principle

a posteriori error bound
partial differential equations


Efficient

implementation

of

Bailey

and

Borwein

pseudo-random

number

generator

based

on

normal

numbers

This

paper

describes

an

implementation

of

a

Linear

Congruential

Generator

(LCG)

based

on

the

binary

representation

of

the

normal

number

and

of

a

combined

generator

based

on

that

LCG.

The

base

LCG

with

the

modulus

provides

a

quality

sequence

with

the

period

which

passes

all

but

two

statistical

tests

from

BigCrush

test

suite.

We

improved

on

the

original

implementation

by

adapting

Barretts

modular

reduction

method,

which

resulted

in

four-fold

increase

in

efficiency.

The

combined

generator

has

the

period

of

and

passes

all

tests

from

BigCrush

suite.

Program

title:

BCNRandom

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

C.

Computer:

IBM

PC;

MacBook

Pro.

Operating

system:

Windows

Linux,

Unix,

OS

X.

RAM:

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

This

is

a

fast

pseudorandom

number

generator

based

on

normal

numbers,

with

long

period

and

good

statistical

properties.

It

passes

all

BigCrush

statistical

tests

and

is

faster

than

C

standard

library

rand

generator.

Suitable

for

parallel

execution

by

multiple

threads

and/or

processes

because

of

skip

ahead

property.

Solution

method:

Linear

Congruential

Generators

with

specially

chosen

parameters

are

used.

A

customized

fast

modular

reduction

is

employed.

Running

time:

Generation

rate

is

million

numbers

per

second.

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

normal numbers
linear congruential generator