A method-level comparison of the Java Grande and SPEC JVM98 benchmark suites In this paper we seek to provide a foundation for the study of the level of use of object-oriented techniques in Java programs in general, and scientific applications in particular. Specifically, we investigate the profiles of Java programs from a number of perspectives, including the use of class library methods, the size of methods called, the mode of invoke instruction used and the polymorphicity of call sites. We also present a categorization of the nature of small methods used in Java programs. We compare the Java Grande and SPEC JVM98 benchmark suites, and note a significant difference in the nature and composition of these suites, with the programs from the Java Grande suite demonstrating a less object-oriented approach. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O 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 improved hybrid Cuckoo Search (IHCS) metaheuristics algorithm for permutation flow shop scheduling problems Permutation flow shop scheduling problems with makespan minimisation are considered in this paper. Flow shop scheduling is one important type of scheduling problems for the past several decades. Flow shop scheduling problems are non-deterministic polynomial time hard (NP-hard) problems. Hence the exact methods can not be used to solve these problems. Many heuristics and metaheuristics were addressed in the literature to solve the flow shop scheduling problems. Cuckoo Search is a recently developed metaheuristics algorithm. The efficiency of the algorithm may decrease as the parameters of the Cuckoo Search are constant. Hence an improved hybrid Cuckoo Search (IHCS) algorithm is developed in the present work to solve the permutation flow shop scheduling problems. The proposed algorithm has been implemented for some benchmark problems in the literature and the results are compared with some other metaheuristics algorithms.

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

flow shop
scheduling
makespan
heuristics
metaheuristics
improved hybrid cuckoo search
ihcs

non-deterministic polynomial time hard
np-hard


informing automatic generation of remote control interfaces with human designs Embedded processors are making it possible for common appliances, such as cable boxes, micorwaves, and fax machines, to provide even more fuctionality. Unfortunately, as these appliances become more complex, their interfaces are also becoming harder to use. At the same time, more people are carrying hand-held computerized devices that can communicate. We envision a future in which people will use their handhelds to communicate with and control common appliances in their environment. This work describes the design of a specification language and the construction of an automatic interface generator, using lessons learned from analyzing manually created interfaces.

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

appliances
generation
use
remote control
handheld
specification language
design
human
interfaces
future
control

communication
processor
personal digital assistants (pdas)
environments
device
timing
complexity
pebbles
handheld computers
embedding


social networks and context-aware spam Social networks are popular for online communities. This paper evaluates the risk of sophisticated context-aware spam that could result from information sharing on social networks and discusses potential mitigation strategies. Unlike normal spam, context-aware spam would likely have a high click-through rate due to exploitation of authentic social connections. Context-aware spam could lead to more insidious attacks that try to install malware or steal passwords. In this paper, we analyzed Facebook, a popular social networking website. Our goal was to determine how many users were vulnerable to context-aware attack email and understand aspects of Facebook's design that make such attacks possible. We also classified different kinds of email attacks based on certain pieces of data such as birthdays, lists of friends, wall posts, and user news feeds. We analyzed Facebook starting from a single university e-mail address to calculate the number of users who would be vulnerable to each type of attack. We found that a hacker could send sophisticated context-aware email to approximately 85\% of users. Furthermore, our analysis shows that people with private profiles are almost equally vulnerable to a subset of attacks. Finally, we discuss defense strategies. Some strategies would require users to coordinate their privacy policies with each other. We also suggest design improvements for social networks that may help reduce exposure to context-aware attack email.

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

privacy
email
spam
facebook
social networks


Spatial reuse efficiency calculation for multihop wireless networks A multihop network provides an increase in the spatial and frequency resource reuse as compared to a single-hop network. However, a precise quantification of the benefit obtained in terms of spatial reuse is still an open issue. In this paper, a mathematical analysis is carried out in order to derive the spatial reuse efficiency of a multihop wireless network. It is demonstrated through both approximate and exact analysis, that for an unbounded network, the reuse efficiency of the wireless system increases with the number of multiple hops, M , and the spatial protection margin, ? ? , defined around the receiver. Significantly, it has been found that even in case of an infinitely large spatial protection margin, the obtained reuse efficiency is a finite value and is limited by the number of multiple hops in the communicating link.

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

multihop wireless
reuse efficiency
spatial protection margin

protocol model
time division multiple access


A two-level variational multiscale method for convection-dominated convectiondiffusion equations This paper studies the error in, the efficient implementation of and time stepping methods for a variational multiscale method (VMS) for solving convection-dominated problems. The VMS studied uses a fine mesh C0 finite element space Xh to approximate the concentration and a coarse mesh discontinuous vector finite element space LH for the large scales of the flux in the two scale discretization. Our tests show that these choices lead to an efficient VMS whose complexity is further reduced if a (locally) L2-orthogonal basis for LH is used. A fully implicit and a semi-implicit treatment of the terms which link effects across scales are tested and compared. The semi-implicit VMS was much more efficient. The observed global accuracy of the most straightforward VMS implementation was much better than the artificial diffusion stabilization and comparable to a streamline-diffusion finite element method in our tests.

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

variational multiscale method
efficient implementation


computing optimal strategies to commit to in extensive-form games Computing optimal strategies to commit to in general normal-form or Bayesian games is a topic that has recently been gaining attention, in part due to the application of such algorithms in various security and law enforcement scenarios. In this paper, we extend this line of work to the more general case of commitment in extensive-form games. We show that in some cases, the optimal strategy can be computed in polynomial time; in others, computing it is NP-hard.

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

noncooperative game theory
extensive-form games
stackelberg


Designing hypermedia tools for solving problems in mathematics This article presents the design and preparation using hypermedia tools of an interactive CD-ROM for the active teaching and learning of diverse problem-solving strategies in Mathematics for secondary school students. The use of the CD-ROM allows the students to learn, interactively, the heuristic style of solving problems. A range of problems has been used, each of which requires different solving strategies. A complementary section for consulting the theoretical foundations for the process of solving problems and other related information is also included on the CD-ROM. This section provides both theoretical and curriculum support for teachers. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

computer mediated communication
interactive learning environments
multimedia/hypermedia systems
secondary education
teaching/learning strategies


An equilibrium model for urban transit assignment based on game theory The urban public transport system is portrayed as a special commodity market where passenger is consumer, transit operator is producer and the special goods is the service for passengers trip. The generalized Nash equilibrium game is applied to describe how passengers adjust their route choices and trip modes. We present a market equilibrium model for urban public transport system as a series of mathematical programmings and equations, which is to describe both the competitions among different transit operators and the interactive influences among passengers. The proposed model can simultaneously predict how passengers choose their optimal routes and trip modes. An algorithm is designed to obtain the equilibrium solution. Finally, a simple numerical example is given and some conclusions are drawn.

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

generalized nash equilibrium game
equilibrium


Designing technology to improve quality of life for people with dementia: user-led approaches This paper addresses the design of assistive technology that specifically aims to support an improvement in the quality of life of people with dementia. Starting from interviews with users, a grounded theory approach was used to compile a wish list of issues important for maintaining quality of life. A large list of potential technologies that could address these issues was generated, and four were selected for initial development: a music player, a device to reduce social isolation, a conversation prompter, and a device to support sequences of tasks. The music player and social isolation device are described in this paper in detail. A user-led approach to their design was followed, including approaches to finding control interfaces that were intuitive for people with dementia. The paper concludes with a list of recommendations for designers looking to develop equipment of this kind.

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

user-led design
intuitive control interfaces
music playing


Health informatics as a tool to improve quality in non-acute care new opportunities and a matching need for a new evaluation paradigm Whilst most health care is delivered to people living at home, the focus of innovation in health informatics concepts has been largely on acute hospitals. However, delivery of services in community settings, and often related to long-term conditions, is complex, and involves multiple professions and agencies, delivery of care in several locations including home settings, and individually tailored care for episodes lasting over long periods of time. This challenge is poorly supported by current information systems. However, computer-based record systems have a major potential to improve quality of care by enabling integrated care delivery through multi-professional electronic patient records, whilst also providing quality assurance processes. In turn, though, this requires a new evaluation paradigm. Firstly, the multi-disciplinary and holistic ideal of integrated care requires an as yet inadequately developed framework to give structure to assessment of the value and utility of the data recorded and the way in which they are processed and presented, mapped to clinical processes and to the views of consumers as prime stakeholders. Secondly, a deeper and longer-term evaluation philosophy is needed which does not stop after the initial confirmation of system functioning, but continues on with a deepening into the effects on the individual clinical services, and then on the host user organisation. This paper maps out the new paradigm, and suggests specific issues which merit practical research to reset evaluation and assessment tools to this new setting and viewpoints.

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

informatics
nonacute care
evaluation
quality


Dude, Where's My Card? RFID Positioning That Works with Multipath and Non-Line of Sight RFIDs are emerging as a vital component of the Internet of Things. In 2012, billions of RFIDs have been deployed to locate equipment, track drugs, tag retail goods, etc. Current RFID systems, however, can only identify whether a tagged object is within radio range (which could be up to tens of meters), but cannot pinpoint its exact location. Past proposals for addressing this limitation rely on a line-of-sight model and hence perform poorly when faced with multipath effects or non-line-of-sight, which are typical in real-world deployments. This paper introduces the first fine-grained RFID positioning system that is robust to multipath and non-line-of-sight scenarios. Unlike past work, which considers multipath as detrimental, our design exploits multipath to accurately locate RFIDs. The intuition underlying our design is that nearby RFIDs experience a similar multipath environment (e.g., reflectors in the environment) and thus exhibit similar multipath profiles. We capture and extract these multipath profiles by using a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) created via antenna motion. We then adapt dynamic time warping (DTW) techniques to pinpoint a tag's location. We built a prototype of our design using USRP software radios. Results from a deployment of 200 commercial RFIDs in our university library demonstrate that the new design can locate misplaced books with a median accuracy of 11 cm.

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


JUSTIFYING DATABASE NORMALIZATION - A COST-BENEFIT MODEL During the information systems development process within an organization, data resource is typically analyzed in the form of a data model. During this data analysis phase, the data model is further refined so that it obeys certain rules of good behavior. Normalization is the process of grouping data into such well refined structures. Determining an appropriate normal form has not been clear to database systems analysts. This paper proposes an effective methodology for determining normal forms by employing a cost/benefit model coupled with a decision tree. Three primary variables that impact the benefits and costs of normalization are addressed. The resulting cost/benefit analysis enables database analysts to produce more cost-effective normalized databases.

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

database systems
normal forms
decision tree

database analysis
normalization decision
cost benefit model
binary decisions
graphical decision support


Data structure-guided development of electrocardiographic signal characterization and classification The study introduces and elaborates on a certain perspective of biomedical data analysis where data structure is revealed through fuzzy clustering. The key objective of the study is to develop a characterization of the content of the clusters by offering a number of their descriptors established on the basis of membership grades of patterns included there, as well as on the basis of their class membership. Next, a design of a cluster-based classifier is presented in which the structure of the classifier is based on a collection of clusters. The structure also exploits the descriptors of the clusters as well as aggregates their characteristics with the activation levels of the associated clusters formed in the feature space in which QRS complexes are represented. The underlying methods involve the use of fuzzy clustering and two essential ways of representing QRS complexes with the use of the Hermite expansion of signals and piecewise aggregate approximation (PAA). The material involves QRS segments coming from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database. The key results demonstrate and quantify the effectiveness of QRS characterization with the use of clustering realized in the space of coefficients of the Hermite series expansion and the PAA expansion. In general, accuracy of the discussed classification schemes increases with the increase of the number of clusters; the difference varies in the range of 30% (when moving from 10 to 60 clusters). The fuzzification coefficient of the fuzzy C-Means clustering algorithm has a visible impact on the quality of the results in the range of up 40% difference in the classification of accuracy (when the coefficient varies in-between 1.1 and 2.5). The PAA representation space leads to slightly better results than those obtained when using the Hermite representation of the signals, the difference is of around 5%. It was shown that granular representation of electrocardiographic signals is essential to data analysis and classification by providing a means to reveal and characterize the data structure and by providing prerequisites to construct pattern classifiers. The study also shows that fuzzy clusters deliver important structural information about the data that could be further quantified by looking into the content of clusters.

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


Hybrid Dimensionality Reduction Method Based on Support Vector Machine and Independent Component Analysis This paper presents a new hybrid dimensionality reduction method to seek projection through optimization of both structural risk (supervised criterion) and data independence (unsupervised criterion). Classification accuracy is used as a metric to evaluate the performance of the method. By minimizing the structural risk, projection originated from the decision boundaries directly improves the classification performance from a supervised perspective. From an unsupervised perspective, projection can also be obtained based on maximum independence among features (or attributes) in data to indirectly achieve better classification accuracy over more intrinsic representation of the data. Orthogonality interrelates the two sets of projections such that minimum redundancy exists between the projections, leading to more effective dimensionality reduction. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid dimensionality reduction method that satisfies both criteria simultaneously provides higher classification performance, especially for noisy data sets, in relatively lower dimensional space than various existing methods.

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

hybrid dimensionality reduction
projection

independence maximization
structural risk minimization


Countering overlapping rectangle privacy attack for moving kNN queries An important class of LBSs is supported by the moving k nearest neighbor (MkNN) query, which continuously returns the k nearest data objects for a moving user. For example, a tourist may want to observe the five nearest restaurants continuously while exploring a city so that she can drop in to one of them anytime. Using this kind of services requires the user to disclose her location continuously and therefore may cause privacy leaks derived from the user's locations. A common approach to protecting a user's location privacy is the use of imprecise locations (e.g., regions) instead of exact positions when requesting LBSs. However, simply updating a user's imprecise location to a location-based service provider (LSP) cannot ensure a user's privacy for an MkNN query: continuous disclosure of regions enable LSPs to refine more precise location of the user. We formulate this type of attack to a user's location privacy that arises from overlapping consecutive regions, and provide the first solution to counter this attack. Specifically, we develop algorithms which can process an MkNN query while protecting the user's privacy from the above attack. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our privacy protection technique and the efficiency of our algorithm.

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

confidence level
overlapping rectangle attack


The modelling of the immune competition by generalized kinetic (Boltzmann) models: Review and research perspectives The first part of this paper deals with a review of mathematical topics related to the modeling of the immune competition, at the cellular level, by mathematical methods and structures developed by the models and methods of the classical kinetic theory. Special attention is devoted to the competition between tumor and immune cells. The second part develops a critical analysis of the existing literature and proposes some research perspectives with special attention to modeling relatively more general aspects of the immune competition and control therapeutical actions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Estimating Mutation Distances from Unaligned Genomes Alignment-free distance measures are generally less accurate but more efficient than traditional alignment-based metrics. In the context of genome sequence analysis, the efficiency gain is often so substantial that it outweights the loss in accuracy. However, a further disadvantage of alignment-free distances is that their relationship to evolutionary events such as substitutions is generally unknown. We have therefore derived an estimator of the number of substitutions per site between two unaligned DNA sequences, K(r). Simulations show that this estimator works well with "ideal'' data. We compare K(r) to two alternative alignment-free distances: a k-tuple distance and a measure of relative entropy based on average common substring length. All three measures are applied to 27 primate mitochondrial genomes, eight whole genomes of Streptococcus agalactiae strains, and 12 whole genomes of Drosophila species. In each case, the cluster diagrams based on K(r) are equivalent to or significantly better than those based on the two alternative measures. This is due to the fact that in contrast to the alternative measures K(r) is derived from an explicit model of evolution. The computation of K(r) is efficiently implemented in the program kr, which can be downloaded freely from the internet.

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

alignment-free distance
genome comparison
suffix tree
shortest unique substring


A cross-layer protocol of spectrum mobility and handover in cognitive LTE networks Cognitive radio technique is the next step toward efficient wireless bandwidth utilization. While some of the spectrum bands (unlicensed band) have been increasingly used, most of the other spectrum resources (licensed band) are underutilized. This drives the challenges of open spectrum and dynamic spectrum access concepts, which allows unlicensed users (or called secondary users, SUs) equipped with cognitive radios to opportunistically access the spectrum not used by licensed users (or called primary users, PUs). Most existing results mainly focus on designing the lower-layer cognitive radio problems. In the literature, this is the first result to investigate the higher-layer solution for cognitive radio networks. In this paper, we present a cross-layer protocol of spectrum mobility (layer-2) and handover (layer-3) in cognitive LTE networks. With the consideration of the Poisson distribution model of spectrum resources, a cross-layer handoff protocol with the minimum expected transmission time is developed in cognitive LTE networks. Performance analysis of the proposed handoff protocol is investigated. Finally, simulation results illustrates the proposed handoff protocol significantly reduces the expected transmission time and the spectrum mobility ratio.

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

cognitive radio
spectrum mobility
handover
lte networks


TRAVEL TIME DISTRIBUTION FOR NETWORK FLOWS UNDER LOCAL ROUTING When transporting data packets on communication networks, the local routing protocols are often preferred because of the large-scale and complicated property of many realistic network structures such as Internet. Based on a local routing protocol with a navigation parameter proposed in a previous paper [W. X. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. E 73, 026111 (2006)], this paper numerically investigates the distribution of travel time for transporting data packets from the origin to the destination in complex networks, including random networks, small-world networks and scale-free networks. Numerical results show that exponential distributions of travel time with various values of exponent in complex networks are obtained. Furthermore, the different values of the exponent can also intuitively prove the previous result for the optimal local routing strategy. Finally, violations of the First-Departure-First-Arrival situation in complex networks are discussed.

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

travel time distribution
complex networks
local routing


Are judgments for action verbs and point-light human actions equivalent? The aim of the present study was to examine whether the ability to judge action words and the ability to judge human actions share common mechanisms. With this purpose in mind, we proposed both a lexical and an action decision task to twenty-four healthy participants. For both tasks, the participants had to judge whether the stimulus that was presented (a letter string or a point-light sequence) was valid or not (i.e. a word vs. a pseudo-word, an action vs. a pseudo-action). The data analysis showed that the action decision task has common characteristics with the lexical decision task. As for verbal material, judgements of pseudo-actions were slower than judgements for actions. Moreover, we demonstrated that the ability to judge an action verb was positively correlated with the ability to judge a point-light human action, whereas no significant correlation appeared between nouns and point-light judgements abilities. This dissociation supports the argument that the judgement of action words and the judgement of human actions share a common but specific basis through the involvement of motor representations.

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

judgement ability
point-light human actions
sensorimotor representations


Interactions with 3D isotropic and homogeneous radiation fields: a Monte Carlo simulation algorithm Monte Carlo techniques have become important tools for many biomedical applications. Many of these involve simulations of radiation fields that rely on the isotropy and homogeneity of the radiation source. The current study proposes a general algorithm to simulate such a radiation field around a fixed object. The idea is to surround the object with a sphere and to limit the source of radiation to the surface of that sphere. To insure the isotropy of the radiation source, each point on the sphere surface as seen from the object defines a direction at which a unidirectional field of particles is created. The combination of all unidirectional fields approaching from all points on the source sphere creates the effect of an isotropic and homogeneous radiation source. The algorithm is first presented without mathematical detail. Next, the expressions for the position and direction of the particles that compose the field are derived using analytical geometry. The radius of the source sphere is the only parameter needed for this algorithm. The randomness of each particle is simulated by the choice of four random numbers. Two algorithms using these analytical results are proposed, and an example of a C program is given for each. Both algorithms can be easily adapted to any situation that involves the Monte Carlo simulation of radiation interactions of a fixed object immersed within an isotropic and homogeneous radiation field.

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

monte carlo method
computer simulation
isotropic field
chord length distribution


A maritime inventory routing problem: Practical approach Despite of the practicality of the motivation of the inventory routing problem (IRP), there are few successful implementation stories of IRP based decision support systems which utilize optimization algorithms. Besides the fact that the IRP is an extremely challenging optimization problem, simplifications and assumptions made in the definition of typical IRP in the literature make it even more difficult to take advantage of the developed technologies for IRP in practice. This paper introduces a flexible modeling framework for IRP, which can accommodate various practical features. A simple algorithmic framework of an optimization based heuristic method is also proposed. A case study on a practical maritime inventory routing problem (MIRP) shows that the proposed modeling and algorithmic framework is flexible and effective enough to be a choice of model and solution method for practical inventory routing problems.

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

branch-and-cut
large neighborhood search


The \(L^p\)-Version of the Generalized BohlPerron Principle for Neutral Type Functional Differential Equations We consider a vector linear neutral type homogeneous functional differential equation. It is proved that the considered equation is exponentially stable, provided the corresponding non-homogeneous equation with the zero initial function and an arbitrary free term from \(L^p([0,\infty ), \mathbb {C}^n)\), has a solution belonging to \(L^p([0,\infty ), \mathbb {C}^n)\).

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

neutral type equation
linear equation
exponential stability
34k20


Resist process issues related to the glass transition changes in chemically amplified resist films Optical interferometry is applied for in situ measurement of the glass transition temperature in thin resist films (Tgfilm) spin-coated on flat reflective substrates, using a novel, low-cost, rapid methodology. Process issues, such as film thickness and thermal processing effect on Tgfilm were explored using this methodology. In the case of relatively thick films the calculated Tgfilm from the optical interferometry method is in good agreement with the corresponding differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) values. The film thickness effect on Tgfilm in the case of two positive chemically amplified resists (one commercial for DUV and one experimental for 157 nm lithography) is studied and discussed. In both cases, as film thickness decreases the Tgfilm increases indicating strong surface phenomena that should be taken into account in lithographic processing. The presented methodology enabled studies on Tg changes during resist processing in characteristic positive and negative tone chemically amplified resist materials allowing deeper insight in resist optimization issues.

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

glass transition temperature
optical interferometry
lithography
resists


Power Control for Cognitive Radio Networks: Axioms, Algorithms, and Analysis The deployment of cognitive radio networks enables efficient spectrum sharing and opportunistic spectrum access. It also presents new challenges to the classical problem of interference management in wireless networks. This paper develops an axiomatic framework for power allocation in cognitive radio networks based on four goals: QoS protection to primary users, opportunism to secondary users, admissibility to secondary users, and autonomous operation by individual users. Two additional goals, licensing and versatility, which are desirable rather than essential, are also presented. A general class of Duo Priority Class Power Control (DPCPC) policies that satisfy such goals is introduced. Through theoretical analysis and simulation, it is shown that a specific interference-aware power-control algorithm reaches such goals.

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

distributed algorithms
dynamic spectrum access


What does the amygdala contribute to social cognition? The amygdala has received intense recent attention from neuroscientists investigating its function at the molecular, cellular, systems, cognitive, and clinical level. It clearly contributes to processing emotionally and socially relevant information, yet a unifying description and computational account have been lacking. The difficulty of tying together the various studies stems in part from the sheer diversity of approaches and species studied, in part from the amygdala's inherent heterogeneity in terms of its component nuclei, and in part because different investigators have simply been interested in different topics. Yet, a synthesis now seems close at hand in combining new results from social neuroscience with data from neuroeconomics and reward learning. The amygdala processes a psychological stimulus dimension related to saliency or relevance; mechanisms have been identified to link it to processing unpredictability; and insights from reward learning have situated it within a network of structures that include the prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum in processing the current value of stimuli. These aspects help to clarify the amygdala's contributions to recognizing emotion from faces, to social behavior toward conspecifics, and to reward learning and instrumental behavior.

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

amygdala
emotion
saliency
social cognition
reward learning


HPG: The hera presentation generator This paper presents a model-based design and development environment for Web Information Systems (WISs) using Semantic Web technologies. This environment called the Hera Presentation Generator (HPG) integrates a number of software tools created for the presentation generation phase of the Hera methodology. These tools are the HPG model builders that help constructing the WIS input specifications and the HPG engine that implements the data transformations involved in a WIS. There are two versions of the HPG engine: HPG-XSLT and HPG-Java. HPG-XSLT is characterized by the use of XSLT stylesheets for the data transformations and by the full generation of a Web presentation. HPG-Java uses Java code for the data transformations and thus exploits more than HPG-XSLT the RDF(S) semantics captured in the Hera models and builds one-page-at-a-time. Generating one-page-at-a-time is motivated by recent extensions to the Hera methodology in order to better sustain the building of WISs with richer user interaction support (e.g., form-based). Nevertheless, HPG-Java lost the declarativity, simplicity, and reuse capabilities of the XSLT transformation templates. HPG thus fills the existing gap for tool support for the design of WIS using Semantic Web technologies.

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


Visual evoked potential-based brain-machine interface applications to assist disabled people This paper describes a brain-computer interface (BCI) based on electroencephalography (EEG) that has been developed to assist disabled people. The BCI uses the evoked potentials paradigm (through P300 and N2PC waves detection), registering the EEG signals with 16 electrodes over the scalp. Three applications have been developed using this BCI paradigm. The first application is an Internet browser that allows to access to Internet and to control a computer. The second application allows controlling a robotic arm in order to manipulate objects. The third application is a basic communication tool that allows severe disabled people to interact with other people using basic commands related to emotions and needs. All the applications are composed by visual interfaces that show different options related to the application. These options are pseudo-randomly flickering in a screen. In order to select a specific command, the user must focus on the desired option. The BCI is able to obtain the desired option by detecting the P300 and N2PC waves produced as an automatic response of the brain to attended visual stimuli and finally classifying these signals. Different experiments with volunteers have been carried out in order to validate the applications. The experimental results obtained as well as the improvement achieved by using both types of evoked potentials are shown in the paper. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

electroencephalography
evoked potentials
disabled people

brain-computer interface
human-machine interface


systems for human-powered mobile computing This article outlines several projects aimed at generating electrical energy by passively tapping a variety of human body sources and activities. After summarizing different energy harvesting modalities and techniques, I spotlight work done in my research group at the MIT Media Laboratory, including a system that scavenges electricity from the forces exerted on a shoe during walking. This system uses a flexible piezoelectric foil stave to harness sole-bending energy and a reinforced PZT dimorph to capture heel-strike energy. The piezoelectric generators drive a battery-less, active RF tag, which transmits a short-range wireless ID while walking, thereby enabling location based services and active environments. Other systems that we have developed are also discussed, including a battery-less pushbutton that can send an RF ID code with a single push, sensor nodes that harvest mobility rather than energy, and power management schemes that exploit sensor diversity to achieve energy efficiency.

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

sensor
media
tag
drive
mobility
human
group
wireless
research
systems
environments
diversity
exploit
energy harvesting
code
energy
mobile computing
laboratory

activation
batteries
project
flexibility
location-based service
power scavenging
parasitic power
modal
power-management
energy efficiency
scheme


Using Ideas of Kolmogorov Complexity for Studying Biological Texts Kolmogorov complexity furnishes many useful tools for studying different natural processes that can be expressed using sequences of symbols from a finite alphabet (texts), such as genetic texts, literary and music texts, animal communications, etc. Although Kolmogorov complexity is not algorithmically computable, in a certain sense it can be estimated by means of data compressors. Here we suggest a method of analysis of sequences based on ideas of Kolmogorov complexity and mathematical statistics, and apply this method to biological (ethological) texts. Adistinction of the suggested method from other approaches to the analysis of sequential data by means of Kolmogorov complexity is that it belongs to the framework of mathematical statistics, more specifically, that of hypothesis testing. This makes it a promising candidate for being included in the toolbox of standard biological methods of analysis of different natural texts, from DNA sequences to animal behavioural patterns (ethological texts). Two examples of analysis of ethological texts are considered in this paper. Theses examples show that the proposed method is a useful tool for distinguishing between stereotyped and flexible behaviours, which is important for behavioural and evolutionary studies.

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

kolmogorov complexity
hypothesis testing


An analysis of the performance of a high-order stabilised finite element method for simulating compressible flows Stabilised finite element methods are now well established and are used in both industrial and commercial flow solvers. However, these methods have traditionally been restricted to linear approximations in space and they are rarely implemented within a high-order context. In the present work, the numerical performance of a higher-order approach is investigated for the simulation of some inviscid and laminar viscous two dimensional subsonic and transonic flows. The results produced clearly demonstrate the benefits that the higher-order approach has to offer, in terms of a reduction in both the degrees of freedom and, more importantly, the CPU time required, when compared with a low-order finite element or finite volume method.

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

higher-order
stabilised finite elements
compressible flow
streamline upwind/petrovgalerkin (supg)


Inferring semantics from textual information in multimedia retrieval We propose a method for inferring semantic information from textual data in content-based multimedia retrieval. Training examples of images and videos belonging to a specific semantic class are associated with their low-level visual and aural descriptors augmented with textual features such as frequencies of significant words. A fuzzy mapping of a semantic class in the training set to a class of similar objects in the test set is created by using Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) trained from the low-level descriptors. Experiments with two databases and different textual features show promising results, indicating the usefulness of the approach in bridging the gap from low-level visual features to semantic concepts.

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

multimodal databases
multimedia semantics
content-based retrieval
self-organizing maps
symbol grounding problem


Security constrained multi-period optimal power flow by a new enhanced artificial bee colony Presenting a new operation function for power systems, i.e. DSCOPF. Proposing a new stochastic search method named EABC. Adapting the proposed EABC as the solution approach of DSCOPF. Extensive testing of the presented model and solution approach.

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

inter-temporal constraints
multi-period framework


An ontology-based fuzzy decision support system for multiple sclerosis The use of Magnetic Resonance (MR) as a supporting tool in the diagnosis and monitoring of multiple sclerosis (MS) and in the assessment of treatment effects requires the accurate determination of cerebral white matter lesion (WML) volumes. In order to automatically support neuroradiologists in the classification of WMLs, an ontology-based fuzzy decision support system (DSS) has been devised and implemented. The DSS encodes high-level, specialized medical knowledge in terms of ontologies and fuzzy rules and applies this knowledge in conjunction with a fuzzy inference engine to classify WMLs and to obtain a measure of their volumes. The performance of the DSS has been quantitatively evaluated on 120 patients affected by MS. Specifically, binary classification results have been first obtained by applying thresholds on fuzzy outputs and then evaluated, by means of ROC curves, in terms of trade-off between sensitivity and specificity. Similarity measures of WMLs have been also computed for a further quantitative analysis. Moreover, a statistical analysis has been carried out for appraising the DSS influence on the diagnostic tasks of physicians. The evaluation has shown that the DSS offers an innovative and valuable way to perform automated WML classification in real clinical settings.

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

multiple sclerosis
decision support system

knowledge representation
knowledge reasoning
ontology
fuzzy logic


Perceptions of Health Information Exchange in Home Healthcare The aim of this study was to understand home healthcare nurses' current experiences in obtaining outside clinical information at the point of care and the type of clinical information they most desire in their patients' health information exchange profile. A Web-based survey was deployed to home health workers in New York to learn about their experiences retrieving outside clinical data prior to having access to health information exchange, preferred data elements and sources in their patients' health information exchange profiles, and how availability of outside clinical data may affect emergency department referrals. Of the 2383 participants, 566 responded for a 23.8% overall response rate, and 469 of these respondents were RNs. Most RNs, 96.7%, agreed that easier and quicker access to outside information would benefit delivery of care, and 72.6% said the number of emergency department referrals would decrease. When asked about pre-health information exchange access to patient data, 96.3% said it was problematic. Inpatient discharge summaries were chosen most often by the RNs as a top five desired data element 81.5% of the time. Obtaining outside clinical information has been a challenge without health information exchange, but improved access to this information may lead to improved care. Further study is required to assess experiences with the use of health information exchange.

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

data collection
home care agencies
information services
workflow


Using ontologies for resource description in the CineGrid Exchange Moving media data between CineGrid Exchange nodes or external sites, and properly handling them at source and destination, is a challenge for the CineGrid community. The heterogeneous nature of the Exchange nodes, and in particular the lack of a globally accepted description mechanism for distributed media repositories, requires customized solutions to realize the real-time delivery of digital assets. To address these issues we developed a Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology, the CineGrid Description Language (CDL). CDL, coupled with the already existing Network Description Language (NDL), provides a common description of the various network and computing components. Tools for resource discovery, selection and composition will use CDL for data delivery, storage and viewing use cases. We present here the CDL ontology and an initial demonstration of its applicability.

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

semantic web
network topology description
services description


Tactile sensing in dexterous robot hands Review We present a review of tactile sensing applications in dexterous robot hand manipulation. This problem is key to dexterous manipulation, and no update reviews are available. The main types of tactile sensors and their integration with robot hands are discussed. An overview of tactile data processing techniques and its applications is presented.

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

tactile sensing
tactile sensors
robot hands
dexterous manipulation
review


On the Equilibrium Points, Boundedness and Positivity of a Sveirs Epidemic Model under Constant Regular Constrained Vaccination This paper discusses the disease-free and endemic equilibrium points of a SVEIRS propagation disease model which potentially involves a regular constant vaccination. The positivity of such a model is also discussed as well as the boundedness of the total and partial populations. The model takes also into consideration the natural population growing and the mortality associate to the disease as well as the lost of immunity of newborns. It is assumed that there are two finite delays affecting to the susceptible, recovered, exposed and infected population dynamics.

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

epidemic models
seirs epidemic models
sveirs epidemic models
vaccination control


Conditional e-payments with transferability We introduce a novel conditional e-cash protocol allowing future anonymous cashing of bank-issued e-money only upon the satisfaction of an agreed-upon public condition. Payers are able to remunerate payees for services that depend on future, yet to be determined outcomes of events. Moreover, payees are able to further transfer payments to third parties. Once the payment is complete, any double-spending attempt by the payer will reveal its identity; no double spending by any of payees in the payee transfer chain is possible. Payers cannot be linked to payees or to ongoing or past transactions. The flow of cash within the system is thus both correct and anonymous. We discuss several applications of conditional e-cash including online trading of financial securities, prediction markets, and betting 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 comprehensive study for advanced in situ contact dry cleaning An advanced in situ pre-contact dry cleaning process with fluorine species has been comprehensively investigated to effectively remove the native oxide on the top surface of Ni-salicide layer for ensuring lower contact resistance (Rc) without the drawbacks, including the clipping of contact top opening, the formation of by-product re-deposition and severe Ni-salicide loss, of the conventional argon ion bombardment process. In this study, two kinds of in situ dry cleaning approaches, called saturation and low etch rate (LER) modes, have been evaluated to further reduce Rc and prevent the contact to poly short issue as keeping contact size scaling down to 28nm node. The Rc reduction of ?40% at 45nm and no contact to poly short issue at 28nm contact design rules can be simultaneously demonstrated by implementing optimized in situ saturation and LER dry cleaning conditions.

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

in situ contact dry cleaning
contact resistance
contact to poly short

ar pre-clean
ni-salicide
breakdown voltage


Towards the design of optimal data redundancy schemes for heterogeneous cloud storage infrastructures ? Nowadays, data storage requirements from end-users are growing, demanding more capacity, more reliability and the capability to access information from anywhere. Cloud storage services meet this demand by providing transparent and reliable storage solutions. Most of these solutions are built on distributed infrastructures that rely on data redundancy to guarantee a 100% of data availability. Unfortunately, existing redundancy schemes very often assume that resources are homogeneous, an assumption that may increase storage costs in heterogeneous infrastructures e.g., clouds built of voluntary resources. In this work, we analyze how distributed redundancy schemes can be optimally deployed over heterogeneous infrastructures. Specifically, we are interested in infrastructures where nodes present different online availabilities. Considering these heterogeneities, we present a mechanism to measure data availability more precisely than existing works. Using this mechanism, we infer the optimal data placement policy that reduces the redundancy used, and then its associated overheads. In heterogeneous settings, our results show that data redundancy can be reduced up to 70%.

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


Automated contour detection in X-ray left ventricular angiograms using multiview active appearance models and dynamic programming This paper describes a new approach to the automated segmentation of X-ray left ventricular (LV) angiograms, based on active appearance models (AAMs) and dynamic programming. A coupling of shape and texture information between the end-diastolic (ED) and end-systolic (ES) frame was achieved by constructing a multiview AAM. Over-constraining of the model was compensated for by employing dynamic programming, integrating both intensity and motion features in the cost function. Two applications are compared: a semi-automatic method with manual model initialization, and a fully automatic algorithm. The first proved to be highly robust and accurate, demonstrating high clinical relevance. Based on experiments involving 70 patient data sets, the algorithm's success rate was 100% for ED and 99% for ES, with average unsigned border positioning errors of 0.68 mm for ED and 1.45 mm for ES. Calculated volumes were accurate and unbiased. The fully automatic algorithm, with intrinsically less user interaction was less robust, but showed a high potential, mostly due to a controlled gradient descent in updating the model parameters. The success rate of the fully automatic method was 91% for ED and 83% for ES, with average unsigned border positioning errors of 0.79 mm for ED and 1.55 mm for ES.

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

active appearance models (aams)
automatic left ventricle segmentation
image analysis
multiple views
x-ray angiography


Grid organizational memory-provision of a high-level Grid abstraction layer supported by ontology alignment In this paper the problem of managing ontological descriptions for a dynamically-changing Grid environment is addressed. The focus of the research is on unification of semantic descriptions for Grid services and resources through ontologies. The Grid Organizational Memory (GOM) has been designed and implemented to enable storing and accessing Grid metadata, kept in the form of ontologies. In GOM, ontology storage and management are designed to support the natural evolution process both in the knowledge structure and knowledge management services. An important element of the GOM framework is the ontology separation schema, specifying the internal vertical and horizontal dependencies according to the Virtual Organization thematic domains, efficiency of knowledge retrieval and ontology development support. The separation schema is applied in the knowledge base distribution model on the Grid. An ontology alignment-based approach is proposed to minimize user commitment on the Grid ontological metadata, to support ontology usage and development. In particular the ontology similarity based approach is presented as support for ontology updates, e.g. extension with new facts from external ontologies and environments, as well as a more efficient and complete, less implementation-bounded querying process. This paper presents research on semantic description of the Grid environment within the scope of the K-Wf Grid project that addresses knowledge-based semiautomatic workflow construction for applications on the Grid. (c) 2006 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 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

semantic grid
metadata management
ontology store


A WiMAX simulation module for investigating QoS during horizontal handovers WiMAX is one of the most interesting solutions for broadband wireless access, supporting multimedia traffic and applications through an appropriate QoS management for fixed and mobile devices. Simulation tools play a central role to study network performance and to test new functionalities. In this paper we propose a new simulation module, compliant to IEEE 802.16e, which implements the five WiMAX QoS classes and handover procedures as well, so as to support investigations on QoS management during mobility in WiMAX scenarios. The developed tool has been validated and tested through exhaustive simulations, showing its conformance with the defined specifications.

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


an online ppm prediction model for web prefetching Web prefetching is a primary means to reduce user access latency. An important amount of work can be found by the use of PPM (Prediction by Partial Match) for modeling and predicting user request patterns in the open literature. However, in general, existing PPM models are constructed off-line. It is highly desirable to perform the online update of the PPM model incrementally because user request patterns may change over time. We present an online PPM model to capture the changing patterns and fit the memory. This model is implemented based on a noncompact suffix tree. Our model only keeps the most recent W requests using a sliding window. To further improve the prefetching performance, we make use of maximum entropy principle to model for the outgoing probability distributions of nodes. Our prediction model combines entropy, prediction accuracy rate and the longest match rule. A performance evaluation is presented using real web logs. Trace-driven simulation results show our PPM prediction model can provide significant improvements over previously proposed models.

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

noncompact suffix tree
ppm
web prefetching
entropy


MULTILATERAL GENERATING FUNCTIONS FOR THE MULTIPLE LAGUERRE AND MULTIPLE HERMITE POLYNOMIALS The main object of this paper is to derive several substantially more general families of bilinear, bilateral, and mixed multilateral finite-series relationships and generating functions for the multiple Laguerre and multiple Hermite polynomials. Some applications of the above statements are also given.

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

rodrigues formula
generating function
multiple laguerre polynomials
finite-series relationship


Convergent Projective Non-negative Matrix Factorization with KullbackLeibler Divergence The problem of convergence for Projective Non-negative Matrix Factorization is solved. A new iterative formula for basis matrix is derived strictly. A proof of algorithm convergence is provided. The orthogonality and the sparseness of the basis matrix are better. There is higher recognition accuracy in face recognition.

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

kullbackleibler divergence
convergence
face recognition

projective non-negative matrix factorization


privacy-preserving demographic filtering The use of recommender systems in e-commerce to guide customer choices presents a privacy protection problem that is twofold. We seek to protect the privacy interests of customers by trying to keep private their identity and demographic characteristics, and possibly also their buying preferences and behaviour. This can be desirable even if anonymity is used. Furthermore, we want to protect the commercial interests of the e-commerce service providers by allowing them to make recommendations as accurate as possible, without unnecessarily revealing valuable information they have legitimately accumulated, such as market trends, to third parties.In this paper, we concentrate on recommender systems based on demographic filtering , which make recommendations based on feedback of previous users of similar demographic characteristics (such as age, sex, level of education, wealth, geographical location, etc.). We propose a system called ALAMBIC, which adequately achieves the above privacy-protection objectives in this kind of recommender systems. Our system is based on a semi-trusted third party in which the users need only have limited confidence. A main originality of our approach is to split user data between that party and the service provider in such a way that neither can derive sensitive information from their share alone.

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

privacy protection
demographic filtering

architecture
semi-trusted third party
recommender system
e-commerce
clustering


Connected equi-length line segments for curve and structure matching This paper deals with the problem of matching curves and structures extracted from 2D images that are subject to translation, rotation, scaling and other geometric transformations. We present in this paper a novel approach, Connected Equi-Length Line Segments (CELLS), for curve representation and matching. In our framework, a curve is represented by a number of connected equi-length line segments and a new matrix called Orientation Difference Matrix (ODM) is constructed for the curve, which reflects the distribution of the rest of the line segments with respect to the current one using orientation differences between them. The representation is invariant to rotation, scaling and translation. The problem of structure matching is also considered in this paper and is solved based on CELLS. The matching of structures is performed by (1) detecting tri-junctions and quad-junctions on the structures, (2) representing each arch using CELLS. A practical use of the proposed approach is demonstrated by registering a SAR image of a certain area to a map.

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

matching
orientation difference matrix
sar image


Exploring phrasal context and error correction heuristics in bootstrapping for geographic named entity annotation Geographic named entities can be classified into many sub-types that are useful for applications such as information extraction and question answering. In this paper, we present a high-performance bootstrapping algorithm with error correction heuristics and location normalization for the task of geographic named entity annotation with seven sub-types. Location normalization additionally resolves ambiguities of entities with same name and sub-types. In the initial stage, we annotate a raw corpus using a large set of seeds which is automatically selected from a gazetteer so that its quality does not depend on a specific training corpus. From the initial annotation, boundary patterns reflecting phrasal context are learned and applied to the corpus again to obtain new annotation which passes through error correction heuristics. As the bootstrapping loop proceeds, the annotated instances are gradually increased and the learned boundary patterns become gradually richer and more accurate. Through experiments, we explore inter/intra-phrasal context which reflects syntactic constraints of a named entity and several heuristic knowledge for correcting annotation errors introduced by incomplete boundary patterns. The experiments show the effect of the strategies on the learning curve. When our bootstrapping approach was applied to a newspaper corpus, it could achieve 89 F1 value. And the method suggested for location normalization could achieve 95% accuracy at instance level.

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

bootstrapping
geographic named entity annotation
phrasal context
location normalization


Efficient parallel algorithm to compute a doubly perfect elimination ordering of a doubly chordal graph The class of doubly chordal graphs, which is a subclass of chordal graphs and a superclass of strongly chordal graphs, arises in many application areas. Many NP-complete optimization problems on chordal graphs like domination and Steiner tree can be solved in polynomial time on doubly chordal graphs using doubly perfect elimination ordering of vertices. In this paper, we show that the computation of a doubly perfect elimination ordering in a doubly chordal graph with n vertices and m edges can be done in O ( log 2 n ) time using O(n+m) O ( n + m ) processors on the CRCW PRAM model.

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

doubly chordal graph
doubly perfect elimination ordering


Adaptive neural network structures for non-linear process estimation and control While modern feedback controllers are based on linear models, many processes of concern to chemical engineers are non-linear. The models for these processes are often too complex for non-linear controller design, and their linearized counterparts may not adequately represent the process dynamics. Adaptive radial basis function neural networks have been implemented in process estimators and controllers to approximate non-linear functions that describe the process. Existing algorithms have been proposed which require specification of network properties such as dilation of the basis functions. This work demonstrates that the function representation may be improved by selection of an optimal dilation, and presents an algorithm that allows simultaneous adaptation of dilation and node weights. In order to deal with functions that may have more than one dominant dilation, a multiresolution network adaptation algorithm is proposed. Lyapunov stability is proven for both strategies, and performance is evaluated for the control of an exothermic CSTR. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd: All rights reserved.

B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 neural network structures
optimal dilation

non-linear process estimation
lypunov stability


Managing IT projects: communication pitfalls and bridges The complex nature of the matrix organizational structure presents a communication paradigm unparalled by any other management position, creating an organizational environment that is uniquely sensitive to interpersonal communications. This paper discusses the organizational environment typically found in major information systems initiatives as well as some of the interpersonal communications challenges encountered by the IT project manager. Suggestions are provided as bridges to avoid the pitfalls these challenges present.

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

human communication
project management
non-verbal communication


Knowledge reduction in real decision formal contexts Rule acquisition is one of the main purposes in the analysis of real decision formal contexts. In general, the decision rules derived directly from a real decision formal context are not concise or compact. In order to derive more compact decision rules, this study proposes a rule acquisition oriented framework of knowledge reduction for real decision formal contexts and formulates a corresponding reduction method by constructing a discernibility matrix and its associated Boolean function. The proposed reduction method is applicable to any real decision formal contexts and with the reduced real decision formal contexts, we can obtain more compact decision rules that can imply all the decision rules derived from the initial real decision formal context. Some numerical experiments are conducted to assess the efficiency of the proposed method.

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

real decision formal context
knowledge reduction
rule acquisition


Computerized comprehension training for whom and under which conditions is it efficient? The purpose of this study was to examine the differential impact of a computer-based comprehension training programme according to second graders' comprehender profiles. These profiles differed in the children's abilities to process three types of textual information: literal information, text-connecting inferences and gap-filling inferences. The results showed that all the profiles improved significantly after the training on the question type that had caused them the greatest amount of difficulty on the pretest. In addition, factors that could a priori predict the effectiveness of the programme were investigated by comparing children who benefited from the instruction (responders) with those who did not benefit (nonresponders). Before instruction, these children differed in their lexical knowledge level and logical reasoning skills, but not in their memory or comprehension-monitoring abilities. The results support the claim that children with comprehension difficulties form a heterogeneous group and emphasize the need to examine the differential impact of comprehension instruction according to the characteristics of poor comprehenders.

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

comprehender profiles
comprehension
inferences


3SEPIAS: A Semi-Structured Search Engine for Personal Information in dAtaspace System Nowadays, personal information is being distributed into more and more heterogeneous sources, which presents a huge obstacle to management and retrieval of personal information. To address this problem, this paper presents the blueprint of a novel Personal Information Management (PIM) system named 3SEPIAS (short for Semi-Structured Search Engine for Personal Information in dAtaspace System). 3SEPIAS has three main features, data integration without upfront semantic reconciliation, flexible query model for data having sparse and evolving schema, and efficient best-effort proximity search approach on graphs. For that, we first propose a semi-structured graph data model called Interpreted Object Model (IOM) to uniformly represents a user's heterogeneous personal information and loosely integrates it into a dataspace in a schema-later way. Then, a Semi-Structured Search Engine (3SE) can be used to search over the personal dataspaces. We propose an intuitive 3SE Query Language (3SQL) that enables users to query in a varying degree of structural constraint according to their knowledge of underlying schemas. Moreover, a best-effort top-k proximity search optimization strategy and corresponding graph index structures are proposed to improve the efficiency of query processing. We perform comprehensive experiments to test both effectiveness and efficiency of our proximity search approach. The results reveal that 3SE can beat the previous proximity search systems by a large margin with only a little or even no loss of result quality, especially for large graphs. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

personal information management
dataspace
graph data model

semi-structured query
query processing and optimization


A Comprehensive Framework for Counterfeit Defect Coverage Analysis and Detection Assessment The increasing threat of counterfeit electronic components has created specialized service of testing, detection, and avoidance of such components. However, various types of counterfeit components recycled, remarked, overproduced, defective, cloned, forged documentation, and tampered pose serious threats to supply chain. Over the past few years, standards and programs have been put in place throughout the supply chain that outline testing, documenting, and reporting procedures. However, there is little uniformity in the test results among the various entities. Currently, there are no metrics for evaluating these counterfeit detection methods. In this paper, we have developed a detailed taxonomy of defects present in counterfeit components. Based on this taxonomy, a comprehensive framework has been developed to find an optimum set of detection methods considering test time, test cost, and application risks. We have also performed an assessment of all the detection methods based on the newly introduced metrics counterfeit defect coverage, under-covered defects, and not-covered defects.

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

detection methods
assessment
defect coverage


Edge-pancyclicity of recursive circulants A graph is pancyclic if it has a cycle of length l for every 3 less than or equal to l less than or equal to \V\, and it is called edge-pancyclic if every edge lies on a cycle of length l for all l = 3, 4,..., \V\. We have shown in [Inform. Process. Lett. 81 (2002) 187-190] that the recursive circulants are pancyclic or nearly pancyclic. In this paper, we improve this result by showing that the recursive circulants are edge-pancyclic or nearly edge-pancyclic. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Robust stability of single input fuzzy system for control of industrial plants with time delay Most industrial plants are complex, nonlinear, time-varying with time delay, difficult to control. The single input fuzzy controllers (SI FCs) are promising in satisfying the high performance demands to the control systems of such plants and ensuring the fuzzy system stability, coping with system nonlinearity, plant model uncertainty and SI FC design. The aim of the present investigation is to derive robust stability requirements for an incremental PI-like SI FC closed loop system that serve the development of a SI FC design method for the control of industrial plants with time delay and model uncertainty. The main contributions are: 1) modification of the Popov stability approach to study the SI FC system stability and to derive design rules; 2) derivation of robust stability criterion for a SI FC system and on its basis development of a SI FC tuning algorithm. The results are applied for the stabilisation of the air temperature in a furnace using MATLAB (TM). The advantages of the designed SI FC system are assessed in comparison with ordinary PI control system via simulations. The SI FC system preserves stability for a great range of plant uncertainties. The tradeoff is longer settling time of the nominal system transient responses.

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

frequency domain
single input fuzzy controller design
system robust stability
temperature control


Synthesis of separation processes by using case-based reasoning The paper presents a new approach to chemical process synthesis, case-based reasoning (CBR). CBR is based on the reuse of proven process solutions, which are used for solving new problems. Examples are given to demonstrate the principles of conceptual reasoning of separation systems. The phases of reasoning in this application are: the search for specific separation methods for a single separation phase, search for creative new solutions by using analogies, using negative cases to exclude some solutions, adaptation by engineering formulas and comparison of cases. Two quality factors, maturity and performance, can be used to evaluate the quality of the cases. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

case-based reasoning
separation process synthesis
conceptual design
object-oriented approach


Multiobjective genetic programming for maximizing ROC performance In binary classification problems, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) graphs are commonly used for visualizing, organizing and selecting classifiers based on their performances. An important issue in the ROC literature is to obtain the ROC convex hull (ROCCH) that covers potentially optima for a given set of classifiers [1]. Maximizing the ROCCH means to maximize the true positive rate (tpr) and minimize the false positive rate (fpr) for every classifier in ROC space, while tpr and fpr are conflicting with each other. In this paper, we propose multiobjective genetic programming (MOGP) to obtain a group of nondominated classifiers, with which the maximum ROCCH can be achieved. Four different multiobjective frameworks, including Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms Based on Decomposition (MOEA/D), Multiobjective selection based on dominated hypervolume (SMS-EMOA), and Approximation-Guided Evolutionary Multi-Objective (AG-EMOA) are adopted into GP, because all of them are successfully applied into many problems and have their own characters. To improve the performance of each individual in GP, we further propose a memetic approach into GP by defining two local search strategies specifically designed for classification problems. Experimental results based on 27 well-known UCI data sets show that MOGP performs significantly better than single objective algorithms such as FGP, GGP, EGP, and MGP, and other traditional machine learning algorithms such as C4.5, Naive Bayes, and PRIE. The experiments also demonstrate the efficacy of the local search operator in the MOGP framework.

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

classification
rocch
genetic programming

roc analysis
auc
evolutionary multiobjective algorithm
memetic algorithm
decision tree


Optimal planning in large multi-site production networks This contribution describes a general mixed-integer linear programming model based on a time-indexed formulation covering the relevant features required for the complete supply chain management of a multi-site production network. While the actual application is taken from the chemical industry, the model provides a starting point for many applications in the chemical process industry, food or consumer goods industry. In many real world problems certain features just need to be eliminated from this general model in order to describe a current situation. The model combines aspects related to production, distribution and marketing and involves production sites (plants) and sales points. Besides standard features of lot sizing problems (raw materials, production, inventories, demands) further aspects, e.g., different time scales attached to production and distribution, the use of periods with different lengths, the modeling of batch and campaign production need to be considered. There are also new conceptual aspects in this paper, e.g., how to define the capacity of a multi-site, multi-product production network, or how to approach complex planning problems. We give a complete description of features ready for implementation, and the experience we have with the current implementation in our company. A long-term implication of this contribution might be that it will initiate further research efforts aiming to derive special cuts improving the formulation.

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

decision support systems
inventory
transportation
integer programming
branch and bound


Transformation of a parity-check matrix for a message-passing algorithm over the BEC We propose transformation of a parity-check matrix of any low-density parity-check code. A code with transformed parity-check matrix is an equivalent of a code with the original parity-check matrix. For the binary erasure channel, performance of a message-passing algorithm with a transformed parity-check matrix is better than that with the original matrix.

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

low-density parity-check code
sum-product algorithm
generalized parity-check matrix


Approaches to knowledge reduction based on variable precision rough set model This paper deals with approaches to knowledge reduction based on variable precision rough set model. The concepts of ? lower distribution reduct and ? upper distribution reduct based on variable precision rough sets (VPRS) are first introduced. Their equivalent definitions are then given, and the relationships among ? lower and ? upper distribution reducts and alternative types of knowledge reduction in inconsistent systems are investigated. It is proved that for some special thresholds, ? lower distribution reduct is equivalent to the maximum distribution reduct, whereas ? upper distribution reduct is equivalent to the possible reduct. The judgement theorems and discernibility matrices associated with the ? lower and ? upper distribution reducts are also established, from which we can obtain the approaches to knowledge reduction in VPRS.

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


automatic e-learning contents composition by using gap analysis techniques A goal of e-learning is to increase efficiency by precisely identifying the training a student needs, and providing that training in the context of day to day activities of the students [1]. This paper describes how the use of IA algorithms can be utilized to automatically generate customized learning contents on elearning environments. On top of that, we also propose the inclusion in the whole process of digital rights, as in our opinion, it's a way to make up for contents creators and to encourage them to create better, more useful materials.

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

learning object
e-learning
lms
sequencing


Collision-Free Arbitration Protocol for Active RFID Systems Collisions between tags greatly reduce the identification speed in radio frequency identification (RFID) systems and increase communication overhead. In particular for an active RFID system, tags are powered by small batteries, and a large number of re-transmissions caused by collisions can deteriorate and exhaust the tag energy which may result in missing tags. An efficient collision-free arbitration protocol for active RFID systems is proposed in this paper. In this protocol, a new mechanism involving collision detection, collision avoidance, and fast tag access is introduced. Specifically, the pulse burst duration and busy-tone-detection delay are introduced between the preamble and data portion of a tag-to-reader (T-R) frame. The reader identifies tag collision by detecting pulses and transmits a busy tone to avoid unnecessary transmission when collision occurs. A polling process is then designed to quickly access the collided tags. It is shown that the use of the proposed protocol results in a system throughput of 0.612, which is an obvious improvement when compared to the framed-slotted ALOHA (FSA) arbitration protocol for ISO/IEC 18000-7 standard. Furthermore, the proposed protocol greatly reduces communication overhead, which leads to energy conservation.

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


On the design and implementation of the GSM auction in Nigeriathe world's first ascending clock spectrum auction ? In late 1999 the Government of Nigeria decided to issue no more than four new digital mobile telephony licences. An attempt was made to award these licences using a comparative selection process, which failed due to allegations of corruption. In March 2000 it was decided that the licences would be assigned by auction, which was regarded by the government as less susceptible to corruptive influences. In January 2001 Nigeria awarded three GSM spectrum licences using an auction design that incorporated an ascending clock phase. This paper describes the design of the auction and its implementation, and seeks to draw lessons from the experience.

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