A study of average-case speedup and scalability of parallel computations on static networks A parallel system consists of a parallel algorithm and a parallel machine that supports the implementation of the algorithm. The scalability of a parallel system is a measure of its capability to increase speedup in Proportion to the number of processors, or its capability to keep a constant efficiency as the number of processors increases. The present paper is devoted to the investigation of the average-case scalability of parallel algorithms executing oil multicomputers with symmetric static networks, including the completely connected network, ring, hypercube, and torus. In particular, we characterize the communication overhead such that the expected efficiency can be kept at certain constant level, and that the number of tasks grows at the rate Theta(P log P). (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

completely connected network
efficiency
hypercube
ring
scalability
speedup
torus

communication cost
execution time
performance analysis
random parallel program


The numerical approximation of a delta function with application to level set methods It is shown that a discrete delta function can be constructed using a technique developed by Anita Mayo [The fast solution of Poisson's and the biharmonic equations on irregular regions, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 21 (1984) 285-299] for the numerical solution of elliptic equations with discontinuous source terms. This delta function is concentrated on the zero level set of a continuous function. In two space dimensions, this corresponds to a line and a surface in three space dimensions. Delta functions that are first and second order accurate are formulated in both two and three dimensions in terms of a level set function. The numerical implementation of these delta functions achieves the expected order of accuracy. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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


SCATTER SEARCH WITH MULTIPLE IMPROVEMENT METHODS FOR THE LINEAR ORDERING PROBLEM In this work, the Linear Ordering Problem (LOP) is approached. This is an NP-hard problem which has been solved with different metaheuristic algorithms. Particularly, it has been solved with a Scatter Search algorithm that applies the traditional approach which incorporates a single improvement method. In this paper, we propose a Scatter Search algorithm which uses multiple improvement methods to achieve a better balance of intensification and diversification. To validate our approach, a statistically-supported experimental study of its performance was carried out using the most challenging standard instances. The overall performance of the proposed Scatter Search algorithm was compared with the state-of-the-art algorithm solution for LOP. The experimental evidence shows that our algorithm outperforms the best algorithm solution for LOP, improving 2.89% the number of best-known solutions obtained, and 71% the average percentage error. It is worth noticing that it obtains 53 new best-known solutions for the instances used. We claim that the combination of multiple improvement methods (local searches) can be applied to improve the balance between intensification and diversification in other metaheuristics to solve LOP and problems in other domain.

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

metaheuristics
scatter search
linear ordering problem

balancing of intensification and diversification


A dispersively accurate compact finite difference method for the Degasperis-Procesi equation In this paper we are aimed to solve the non-dissipative Degasperis-Procesi equation based on the u - P formulation. To resolve the computational difficulty at the wave crest where the first-order derivative may diverge and the shockpeakon solution may form, the first-order spatial derivative term in the two-step equations will be approximated in a conservative form. The resulting equations will be approximated by the symplecticity-preserving time-stepping scheme and the spatial discretization scheme that can optimize the numerical wavenumber for the first-order spatial derivative term. This scheme will be developed in a three-point grid stencil with the accuracy order of seventh within the combined compact finite difference framework. Besides the validation of numerical accuracy, we will in particular address the discrete conservation of Hamiltonians even when peakon collides with antipeakon and generates, as a result, a shockpeakon. We will also demonstrate the capability of applying the proposed numerical method to sharply resolve some important features of the third-order dispersive DP equation. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

shockpeakon
conservation of hamiltonians

non-dissipative
degasperis-procesi equation
symplecticity-preserving


Imprecise data envelopment analysis (IDEA): A review and improvement with an application The standard data envelopment analysis (DEA) method requires that the values for all inputs and outputs be known exactly. When some outputs and inputs are unknown decision variables such as bounded data, ordinal data, and ratio bounded data, the DEA model becomes a non-linear programming problem and is called imprecise DEA (IDEA). There are two different approaches in dealing with imprecise outputs and inputs. One uses scale transformations and variable alternations to convert the non-linear IDEA model into a linear program. The other converts imprecise data into exact data and then uses the standard linear DEA model. The current paper reviews and compares the two approaches through an efficiency analysis of a set of telephone offices. A simplified approach is developed to reduce the computational burden if one uses the first approach. The treatment of weight restrictions in IDEA is discussed. It is shown that weight restrictions on imprecise data are redundant. New developments and improvements to both approaches are provided.

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

data envelopment analysis
efficiency
imprecise data


Link-topic model for biomedical abbreviation disambiguation We suggest the link topic model for disambiguating biomedical abbreviations. The model chooses the most probably sense that generates the entire document with its underlying topic. Two distinct modes for word generation are designed to explore semantic dependencies between words. A word is generated either dependently on a specific long form or independently.

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

umls unified medical language system
mesh medical subject headings
cui concept unique identifiers
lda latent dirichlet allocation
svm support vector machine
me maximum entropy
wsd word sense disambiguation


Computer aided medical diagnosis system based on principal component analysis and artificial immune recognition system classifier algorithm In this study, diagnosis of lung cancer, which is a very common and important disease, was conducted with computer aided medical diagnosis system based on principal component analysis and artificial immune recognition system. The approach system has two stages. In the first stage, dimension of lung cancer dataset that has 57 features is reduced to 4 features using principal component analysis. In the second stage, artificial immune recognition system (AIRS) was our used classifier. We took the lung cancer dataset used in our study from the UCI (from University of California, Department of Information and Computer Science) Machine Learning Database. The obtained classification accuracy of our system was 100% and it was very promising with regard to the other classification applications in literature for this problem.

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

principal component analysis (pca)
artificial immune system


Radial Basis Function Nets for Time Series Prediction This paper introduces a novel ensemble learning approach based on recurrent radial basis function networks (RRBFN) for time series prediction with the aim of increasing the prediction accuracy. Standing for the base learner in this ensemble, the adaptive recurrent network proposed is based on the nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input model (NARX) and works according to a multi-step (MS) prediction regime. The ensemble learning technique combines various MS-NARX-based RRBFNs which differ in the set of controlling parameters. The evaluation of the approach includes a discussion on the performance of the individual predictors and their combination.

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

narx architecture
ensemble predictors
multi-step prediction


software blueprints The process of developing a software product is analogous to the process by which a building concept becomes a reality. Reliability is insured in both processes by validation of the design with a blueprint prior to construction. Just as the architect relies on blueprints to validate his plans for construction of a building, so may the software developer rely on software blueprints to validate his plans for construction of a software product. The sequence of steps in software development include determination of requirements, specification of the various modules or subprograms to be developed, preparation of the module blueprints, peer review of the blueprints, construction or coding of the modules, module testing, and system testing. The module blueprint is the focal point of the process. Utilizing the structured flowcharting techniques of Nassi and Shneiderman, the blueprint is prepared as a working design document. It contains the complete coding requirements of the module and includes a graphical representation of the detailed logic performed, an English description of the action performed, and the actual source code of the programming language employed. Currently recognized benefits of peer review are refined and expanded when the procedure is applied to validation of software blueprints. The degree of understanding, and thus error detection, is superior to that obtained from applying the review technique to source code listings. The blueprint review introduces an apprenticeship environment in which learning is quickened and the time required for a novice to obtain the capability of mature design is lessened. The procedures used provide a prototype for future software design applications.

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

requirements
point
applications
software development
software design
design
concept
novice
representation
error detection
review
software
product
procedure
reliability
prototype
code
module
process
logic
learning
future
sequence
action
programming language

understandability
stepwise refinement
peer-review
nassi-shneiderman charts
iterative refinement
requirements specification
structured flowcharts
structured code
timing
graphics
chapin charts
structured walkthrough
structured programming team
structure
systems
environments
determinism
test
structured design
program design language
structured programming
source-code
documentation
completeness


Information-theoretic algorithm for feature selection Feature selection is used to improve the efficiency of learning algorithms by finding an optimal subset of features. However, most feature selection techniques can handle only certain types of data. Additional limitations of existing methods include intensive computational requirements and inability to identify redundant variables. In this paper, we present a novel, information-theoretic algorithm for feature selection, which finds an optimal set of attributes by removing both irrelevant and redundant features. The algorithm has a polynomial computational complexity and is applicable to datasets of a mixed nature. The method performance is evaluated on several benchmark datasets by using a standard classifier (C4.5).

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

classification
information theory
information-theoretic network


The Impact Factor in non-English-speaking countries The representativeness of the ISI-Thomson Impact Factor rankings and the existing relationship between countries national languages and the diffusion of scientific publications is analyzed. We discuss literature on the Impact Factor related to language use, publication strategies for authors and editors from non-English-speaking countries, the effects of the inclusion of a new journal in the ISI-Thomson databases and the scientific policies articulated in some non-English-speaking countries. The adoption of the Impact Factor as the valuation criterion for scientific activities has favoured the consolidation of English language journals in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. The vernacular languages only conserve part of their importance in certain disciplines, such as Clinical Medicine or Social Sciences and Humanities. The Impact Factor, invented over 50years ago now, could be a limitation for non-English authors and scientific journals, and does not consider some widely used practices among the scientific community concerning the development of Internet as a means for the diffusion of knowledge.

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

journal impact factor
scientific literature
publishing


performance monitor unit design for an axi-based multi-core soc platform As the physical gate-count in System-On-Chip (SOC) system increases and system design complexity grows steadily, it becomes more and more difficult to achieve good resource utilization by assigning each task to certain hardware IP and tracing the execution patterns of each task efficiently. Therefore, the performance monitoring feature is getting more and more important to provide the ease of system monitoring and performance debugging. In this paper, we present a performance monitoring unit (PMU) for the AMBA Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) bus. The PMU has capability to measure major performance metrics, such as bus latency for the specific master requests and amount of memory traffic for specific durations. It can also measure the contention of the bus masters and slaves in the SOC. We present the distributor and the synchronization method to use multiple performance counting units as well. The performance monitoring unit has been verified in the platform FPGA board with 9 by 4 AXI interconnect configuration. These monitoring features can give the insight to system design architect by helping to find and analyze the performance bottleneck of target system.

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

soc platform
amba
performance monitor
axi


Diversity-multiplexing tradeoff of asynchronous cooperative diversity in wireless networks Synchronization of relay nodes is an important and critical issue in exploiting cooperative diversity in wireless networks. In this paper, two asynchronous cooperative diversity schemes are proposed, namely, distributed delay diversity and asynchronous space-time coded cooperative diversity schemes. In terms of the overall diversity-multiplexing (DM) tradeoff function, we show that the proposed independent coding based distributed delay diversity and asynchronous space-time coded cooperative diversity schemes achieve the same performance as the synchronous space-time coded approach which requires an accurate symbol-level timing synchronization to ensure signals arriving at the destination from different relay nodes are perfectly synchronized. This demonstrates diversity order is maintained even at the presence of asynchronism between relay node. Moreover, when all relay nodes succeed in decoding the source information, the asynchronous space-time coded approach is capable of achieving better DM tradeoff than synchronous schemes and performs equivalently to transmitting information through a parallel fading channel as far as the DM tradeoff is concerned. Our results suggest the benefits of fully exploiting the space-time degrees of freedom in multiple antenna systems by employing asynchronous space-time codes even in a frequency-flat-fading channel. In addition, it is shown asynchronous space-time coded systems are able to achieve higher mutual information than synchronous space-time coded systems for any finite signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) when properly selected baseband waveforms are employed.

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

cooperative diversity
distributed delay diversity

asynchronous space-time codes
diversity-multiplexing (dm) tradeoff
relay channels


A Testbed for Energy Profile Characterization of IP Services in Smartphones over Live Networks Mobile phones are becoming pervasively used to access Internet and multimedia contents due to their increasing processing power and its wide range of featured wireless communication technologies (Infrared, Bluetooth, NFC, GSM, UMTS, HSPA, WiMax, LTE). In this paper we also introduce mobile devices as a pervasive testbed platform to characterize the energy consumption profile of Internet services. The most innovative advantage provided by our solution is the testbeds flexibility and simplicity, making it possible to carry out extensive testing campaigns using actual mobile devices in live networks with real services.

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


Estimation of Error From Treating Travel Time as Additional Repair Time We consider the unavailability of a two-unit parallel system with one traveling repair person, and common statistically independent exponential unit life lengths. The unavailability can be approximated by treating travel time as an additional repair time for each unit failure before returning to the duplex state, where the two units are functioning. This is an approximation because travel time extends the repair time only for the first unit failure before returning to the duplex state. We derive error bounds for this overestimation for arbitrary travel and repair time distributions. The error bounds show that the percent overestimation has a theoretical maximum of 27% (and can be as low as zero when the travel time distribution is degenerate at zero). Thus, this paper has important contributions for practice because it provides insight to the errors that occurred due to using an approximation.

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

error estimation
traveling time
two-unit parallel system


Rank order data in DEA: A general framework In data envelopment analysis (DEA), performance evaluation is generally assumed to be based upon a set of quantitative data. In many real world settings, however, it is essential to take into account the presence of qualitative factors when evaluating the performance of decision making units (DMUs). Very often rankings are provided from best to worst relative to particular attributes. Such rank positions might better be presented in an ordinal, rather than numerical sense. The paper develops a general frame work for modeling and treating qualitative data in DEA and provides a unified structure for embedding rank order data into the DEA framework. The existing techniques are discussed and their equivalence is demonstrated. Both continuous and discrete projection models are provided. It is shown that qualitative data can be treated in conventional DEA methodology.

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

data envelopment analysis (dea)
efficiency


Lagrangian Vortex Sheets for Animating Fluids Buoyant turbulent smoke plumes with a sharp smoke-air interface, such as volcanic plumes, are notoriously hard to simulate. The surface clearly shows small-scale turbulent structures which are costly to resolve. In addition, the turbulence onset is directly visible at the interface, and is not captured by commonly used turbulence models. We present a novel approach that employs a triangle mesh as a high-resolution surface representation combined with a coarse Eulerian solver. On the mesh, we solve the interfacial vortex sheet equations, which allows us to accurately simulate buoyancy induced turbulence. For complex boundary conditions we propose an orthogonal turbulence model that handles vortices caused by obstacle interaction. In addition, we demonstrate a re-sampling scheme to remove surfaces that are hidden inside the bulk volume. In this way we are able to achieve highly detailed simulations of turbulent plumes efficiently.

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


ERD: a fast and reliable tool for RNA design including constraints The function of an RNA in cellular processes is directly related to its structure. The free energy of RNA structure in another important key to its function as only some structures with a specific level of free energy can take part in cellular reactions. Therefore, to perform a specific function, a particular RNA structure with specific level of free energy is required. For a given RNA structure, the goal of the RNA design problem is to design an RNA sequence that folds into the given structure. To mimic the biological features of RNA sequences and structures, some sequence and energy constraints should be considered in designing RNA. Although the level of free energy is important, it is not considered in the available approaches for RNA design problem.

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


A comparative study of algebra viewpoint and information viewpoint in attribute reduction Attribute reduction is an important issue in rough set theory and has already been studied from the algebra viewpoint and information viewpoint of rough set theory respectively. However, the concepts of attribute reduction based on these two different viewpoints are not equivalent to each other. In this paper, we make a comparative study on the quantitative relationship between some basic concepts of rough set theory like attribute reduction, attribute significance and core defined from these two viewpoints. The results show that the relationship between these conceptions from the two viewpoints is rather an inclusion than an equivalence due to the fact that the rough set theory discussed from the information point of view restricts attributes and decision tables more specifically than it does when considered from the algebra point of view. The identity of the two viewpoints will hold in consistent information decision tables only. That is, the algebra viewpoint and information viewpoint are equivalent for a consistent decision table, while different for an inconsistent decision table. The results are significant for the design and development of methods for information reduction.

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

rough set
algebra viewpoint
information viewpoint
attribute reduction
attribute significance
core


Generalized Random Walks for Fusion of Multi-Exposure Images A single captured image of a real-world scene is usually insufficient to reveal all the details due to under-or over-exposed regions. To solve this problem, images of the same scene can be first captured under different exposure settings and then combined into a single image using image fusion techniques. In this paper, we propose a novel probabilistic model-based fusion technique for multi-exposure images. Unlike previous multi-exposure fusion methods, our method aims to achieve an optimal balance between two quality measures, i.e., local contrast and color consistency, while combining the scene details revealed under different exposures. A generalized random walks framework is proposed to calculate a globally optimal solution subject to the two quality measures by formulating the fusion problem as probability estimation. Experiments demonstrate that our algorithm generates high-quality images at low computational cost. Comparisons with a number of other techniques show that our method generates better results in most cases.

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


Feedforward neural networks for principal components extraction In recent times, an upsurge of interest in the study of artificial neural networks apt to computing a principal component extraction has been observed. The present work is devoted to the description and performance analysis (by means of computer simulations) of some neural networks of such a kind. The main conclusion reached is that, while the first principal component is almost always efficiently obtained, lesser components tends to be sloppily approximated. All the nets considered here share the interesting feature of being endowed with a feedforward connectivity, together with an Hebbian law of synaptic weights adjustment. Their potential usefulness as modular tools, to be inserted in more complex models of psychological and neurological functions has been suggested. There is, however, for the time being no clear evidence supporting any real biological implementation of these simple computational architectures.

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


the software process and application domains We introduce a software process model that is intended to facilitate reuse. The reuse potential is provided by a pattern library that supplies a major part of a system specification. The patterns can be easily adapted to allow the specification of a line of related software products, e.g., information systems for car rental and hotel room "rental".

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

car rental
pattern library
software products
application domains
system specification
information systems
software process model

hotel room booking
software reusability
software reuse


Integrating product portfolio design and supply chain design for the forest biorefinery Supply chain (SC) design involves making strategic long-term decisions for a company, e.g. number, location and capacity of facilities, production rates, flow of material between SC nodes, as well as choosing suppliers and markets. The forest biorefinery is emerging as a promising opportunity for improving the business model of forest product companies; however it introduces significant challenges in terms of mitigating technology, economic and financial risks each of which must be systematically addressed in the SC design. In this regard, product portfolio definition and technology selection are two important decisions that have rarely been considered in a systematic SC evaluation. This paper presents a methodology, in which product/process portfolio design and SC design are linked in order to build a design decision making framework. According to this methodology, design of "manufacturing flexibility" links product/process portfolio design to SC design, through a margins-based SC operating policy. Techno-economic studies along with scenario generation for price and demand changes representing market volatility are employed in the methodology. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A hybrid multi-objective PSOEDA algorithm for reservoir flood control operation A hybrid multi-objective optimization algorithm is proposed. It combines particle swarm optimization with estimation of distribution algorithm. The algorithm is applied to solve reservoir flood control operation problem.

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

estimation of distribution algorithm
reservoir flood control operation

multi-objective optimization
hybrid algorithm
particle swarm optimization algorithm


Compositional rule of inference as an analogical scheme We discuss fuzzy deductive reasoning achieved through the compositional rule of inference from the analog point of view, merging it into the analogical scheme. Necessary and sufficient conditions on operators gy involved are investigated to fit the compositional rule of inference into the analogical scheme. Several examples including well known models are included. (C) 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

analogical scheme
compositional rule of inference

conjunction
fuzzy relation
residual implication


Anonymous personalization in collaborative Web search We present an innovative approach to Web search, called collaborative search, that seeks to cope with the type of vague queries that are commonplace in Web search. We do this by leveraging the search behaviour of previous searchers to personalize future result-lists according to the implied preferences of a community of like-minded individuals. This technique is implemented in the I-SPY meta-search engine and we present the results of a live-user trial which indicates that I-SPY can offer improved search performance when compared to a benchmark search engine, across a variety of performance metrics. In addition, I-SPY achieves its level of personalization while preserving the anonymity of individual users, and we argue that this offers unique privacy benefits compared to alternative approaches to personalization.

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


wiki trust metrics based on phrasal analysis Wiki users receive very little guidance on the trustworthiness of the information they find. It is difficult for them to determine how long the text in a page has existed, or who originally authored the text. It is also difficult to assess the reliability of authors contributing to a wiki page. In this paper, we create a set of trust indicators and metrics derived from phrasal analysis of the article revision history. These metrics include author attribution, author reputation, expertise ratings, article evolution, and text trustworthiness. We also propose a new technique for collecting and maintaining explicit article ratings across multiple revisions.

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


Interactive visual tools as triggers of collaborative reasoning in entry-level pathology The growing importance of medical imaging in everyday diagnostic practices poses challenges for medical education. While the emergence of novel imaging technologies offers new opportunities, many pedagogical questions remain. In the present study, we explore the use of a new tool, a virtual microscope, for the instruction and the collaborative learning of pathology. Fifteen pairs of medical students were asked to solve diagnostic tasks in a virtual microscopy learning environment. The students collaborative efforts were analysed on the basis of approximately 20 hours of video recordings. Our analyses show how students use the technology as a mediating tool to organize, manipulate and construct a shared visual field, and later, shared understanding of the problem and solutions. Organization of the visual field is done through multimodal referential practices: gestures, three dimensional manipulation of the image and paced inspection of the specimen. Furthermore, we analyse and describe how the aforementioned practices coincide with students medical reasoning in this particular learning context. The analysis of medical students diagnostic work illustrates the collaborative potential of the virtual microscopy environment and how such interactive tools render the traditional distinction between collaborating around or through computers irrelevant, as even face to face collaboration becomes enacted through technology. Finally, we argue that as technologies develop, understanding the technical side of image production, or any representation, becomes an integral part of the interpretative process. How this knowledge is communicated to the students may play a substantive role in how students learn to interpret medical images.

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

medical education
collaboration
virtual microscopy
referential practices


Modeling the propagation of topology-aware P2P worms considering temporal parameters The propagation of topology-aware peer-to-peer (P2P) worms in the Internet is a serious threat due to their ability to evade traditional detection mechanisms by means of avoiding revealing any abnormal behavior. Recent increase in the popularity and the usage of P2P systems and applications is exponentially increasing the risk of this threat. The existing models of P2P worms propagation consider network topology as an important parameter affecting the propagation process. However, a drawback of these models is that they ignore the infection time lag (i.e. the time taken by worm to infect a host). In this paper, we extend the four-factor worm propagation model and propose timed four-factor model to consider both the network topology and the infection time lag. We have also developed an agent-based simulation model to conduct simulative experiments based on the proposed model. The results of our experiments show that the infection time lag has considerable impact on the attack performance of topology-aware P2P worms. The performance of different peer immunization strategies considering the launch time of immunization strategies and other effective parameters have also been investigated in this paper.

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

topology-aware p2p worms
immunization strategy
agent-based modeling and simulation


Proofs of a set of hybrid let-polymorphic type inference algorithms We present a generalized let-polymorphic type inference algorithm, prove that any of its instances is sound and complete with respect to the Hindley/Milner let-polymorphic type system, and find a condition on two instance algorithms so that one algorithm should find type errors earlier than the other. By instantiating the generalized algorithm with different parameters, we can obtain not only the two opposite algorithms (the bottom-up standard algorithm W and the top-down algorithm M) but also other hybrid algorithms which are used in real compilers. Such instances' soundness and completeness follow automatically, and their relative earliness in detecting type-errors is determined by checking a simple condition. The set of instances of the generalized algorithm is a superset of those used in the two most popular ML compilers: SML/NJ and OCaml.

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


Objective comparison of quantitative imaging modalities without the use of a gold standard Imaging is often used for the purpose of estimating the value of some parameter of interest. For example, a cardiologist may measure the ejection fraction (EF) of the heart in order to know how much blood is being pumped out of the heart on each stroke. In clinical practice, however, it is difficult to evaluate an estimation method because the gold standard is not known, e.g., a cardiologist does not know the true EF of a patient. Thus, researchers have often evaluated an estimation method by plotting its results against the results of another (more accepted) estimation method, which amounts to using one set of estimates as the pseudogold standard. In this paper, we present a maximum-likelihood approach for evaluating and comparing different estimation methods without the use of a gold standard with specific emphasis on the problem of evaluating EF estimation methods. Results of numerous simulation studies will be presented and indicate that the method can precisely and accurately estimate the parameters of a regression line without a gold standard, i.e., without the x axis.

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

cardiac ejection fraction
modality comparison
regression analysis


Integration of renewable energy sources in smart grids by means of evolutionary optimization algorithms Nowadays, modern power networks have to face a number of challenges such as growing electricity demand, aging utility infrastructure and not to forget the environmental impact of the greenhouse gases produced by conventional electric generation. In order to increase renewable energy penetration but without disregarding security and reliability matters during the process, distribution power networks need to evolve to a flexible power network, better known as smart grid, in which distributed intelligence, communication technologies and automated control systems work as the driving factors. Taking into consideration this new frame, intelligent optimization techniques emerge as the only suitable way to optimally design this smart grid. In this paper, a generalized optimization formulation is introduced to determine the optimal location of distributed generators to offer reactive power capability. In order to find a suitable solution to such Reactive Power Management problem, genetic algorithms are applied in those cases where different multiobjective functions are to be considered. A more detailed description of the genetic algorithm evolution process is shown in a microgrid example.

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

genetic algorithm
reactive power
smart grids


A combinatorial property of the factor poset of a word We prove the following interesting combinatorial property of the poset of the factors of a word. Let w be a word and n = G(w) + 2, where G(w) is the maximal length of a repeated factor of w. If v is any word such that the posets of the factors of v and of w up to length n are isomorphic, then v can be obtained by renaming the letters of w or of the reversal of w. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Type 1 narcolepsy: a CD8+ T cellmediated disease? Type 1 narcolepsy is a sleep disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness with unintentional sleep attacks and cataplexy. The disorder is caused by a loss of hypocretinergic neurons in the brain. The specific loss of these neurons in narcolepsy is thought to result from an autoimmune attack, and this is supported by evidence of both environmental and genetic factors pointing toward an involvement of the immune system. However, definitive proof of an autoimmune etiology is still missing. Several different immune-mediated disorders targeting neurons are known, and many of these are believed to be caused by autoreactive CD8+ T cells. In this paper, we review the current knowledge on CD8+ T cellmediated neuronal damage on the basis of our understanding of other autoimmune disorders and experimental studies. We identify major histocompatibility complex class I presentation of autoantigens on neurons as a possible mechanism in the development of the disease, and propose T cellmediated pathogenesis, with cytotoxic CD8+ T cells targeting the hypocretinergic neurons, as a central element.

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


Optimal control of mobile monitoring agents in immune-inspired wireless monitoring networks This paper studies optimal control of mobile monitoring agents in artificial-immune-system-based (AIS-based) monitoring networks. In AIS-based structural health monitoring (SHM) networks, the active structural health monitoring is performed by a group of mobile monitoring agents equipped with damage pattern recognition algorithms. The mobile monitoring agents mimic immune cells in the natural immune system and patrol a structure to detect damage patterns using their receptors (feature vectors), damage pattern recognition algorithms, and the dynamic response data of the structure. The optimal control of mobile monitoring agents includes agent generation and distribution. The generation of mobile monitoring agents is optimized to minimize the response time for the mobile monitoring agents to diagnose structural damage in a sub-network and maximize the average affinity of monitoring agents? receptors to the damaged sensor data feature vector. The objective functions for distributing mobile monitoring agents are to increase the detection probability and extend network life by balancing energy consumption of sensor nodes in the network. The presented optimization algorithms are developed using multi-objective genetic algorithms. The impact of the algorithm parameters on the performance of the algorithm is also investigated.

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

multi-objective genetic algorithm
mobile monitoring agent
artificial immune system


Simulation of a convective flow forming a pattern of the human brain To explain consistently determining the global shape of the brain, the vortex model of the brain was proposed by Nakada. He explained that structural organization of the brain is guided by the self-organization pattern based on the principal rule of free thermal convection. In the present study, a computer simulation of a simple thermal-driven convective-diffusive flow was performed to clarify the fundamental relation between this type of the flow and formation of the brain shape. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations containing the external force dependent on temperature, and an equation for temperature were solved with projection method. The multi-directional finite-difference method was employed to discretize the governing equations. Computational results were suitably visualized and found to be consistent with the arguments in the vortex theory that the thermal-driven convective-diffusive flow is an essential mechanism for determining the global shape of the human brain.

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


An overview of fuzzy research with bibliometric indicators Bibliometrics in fuzzy research. List of most cited papers on fuzzy topics of all time. An overview of influential authors, institutions and countries. Journal analysis in fuzzy research.

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


interaction protocol for agent-based e-learning system This paper presents a development of interaction protocol specification for automating the document downloading and notifying in e-learning system. From agent-roles diagram, it is now being transformed into its illocution schema as the real conversation message that three main agents consisting of e-learning agent, lecturer agent and student agent will convey when performing their goals. This interaction protocol is defined using ISLANDER editor as the graphical verification tool that will check the correctness of the interaction protocol defined using the Electronic Institution (EI) approach. The process of this interaction protocol specification will be explained in detail. Preliminarily, this interaction protocol specification is concentrating on the one-to-one agent interaction first since it is assumed to be a generic template for complex scenario soon. Once this interaction protocol is specified correctly, then it is ready to be monitored using its monitoring tool to check its execution. This paper describes the interaction protocol specification using Electronic Institutions Integrated Development Environment (EIDE) methodology.

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

electronic institution
interaction protocol


A event occurrence rules based compact modeling formalism for a class of discrete event systems The analysis, failure diagnosis and control of discrete event systems (DESs) requires an accurate model of the system. In this paper we present a methodology which makes the task of modeling DESs considerably less cumbersome, less error prone, and more user-friendly than it usually is. In doing so we simplify the modeling formalism of [4, 5], proposed for obtaining valid models of complex discrete event systems, by eliminating 'precedence relations', and capturing them as part of the 'event occurrence rules'. Under the new modeling formalism the size of the system model is polynomial in the number of signals; whereas the number of states in the commonly used automata models is exponential in the number of signals. We present automated techniques for deriving an automaton model from the model in the proposed formalism. We illustrate the modeling formalism using examples drawn from manufacturing and process control systems.

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


Automated sampling and control of gaseous simulations In this work, we describe a method that automates the sampling and control of gaseous fluid simulations. Several recent approaches have provided techniques for artists to generate high-resolution simulations based on a low-resolution simulation. However, often in applications the overall flow in the low-resolution simulation that an animator observes and intends to preserve is composed of even lower frequencies than the low resolution itself. In such cases, attempting to match the low-resolution simulation precisely is unnecessarily restrictive. We propose a new sampling technique to efficiently capture the overall flow of a fluid simulation, at the scale of users choice, in such a way that the sampled information is sufficient to represent what is virtually perceived and no more. Thus, by applying control based on the sampled data, we ensure that in the resulting high-resolution simulation, the overall flow is matched to the low-resolution simulation and the fine details on the high resolution are preserved. The samples we obtain have both spatial and temporal continuity that allows smooth keyframe matching and direct manipulation of visible elements such as smoke density through temporal blending of samples. We demonstrate that a user can easily configure a simulation with our system to achieve desired results.

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

eulerian simulation
simulation control
poisson disk sampling
bilateral sampling


On micro-to-macro connections in domain decomposition multiscale methods Micro-to-macro connection techniques constitute a key ingredient in the formulation of multiscale strategies. In this contribution several connection methods are explored for the concurrent multiscale analysis of brittle heterogeneous materials. Particularly, these techniques are investigated in a domain decomposition strong coupling multiscale framework. The structural component under analysis is partitioned into a number of non-overlapping domains and a fine scale resolution is assigned therein in an adaptive manner exploiting a zoom-in technique. Mesh refinement is employed in the domains where crack coalescence and growth take place. The original contribution presented in this manuscript consists in the study of different strong and weak locality constraints that connect coarse and fine resolution domains. Standard collocation and average compatibility are considered and serve as a basis for the development of two new interscale links. The influence of different locality constraints is studied in terms of the mechanical response and the error distribution is compared to a full fine scale analysis.

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

domain decomposition methods
quasi-brittle materials
strain localization
micromacro connection


Contrast constancy in natural scenes in shadow or direct light: A proposed role for contrast-normalisation (non-specific suppression) in visual cortex The range of contrasts in natural scenes is generally thought to far exceed the limited dynamic ranges of individual contrast-encoding neurons in the primary visual cortex. The visual system may employ gain-control mechanisms (Ohzawa et al. 1985) to compensate for the mismatch between the range of natural contrast energies and the limited dynamic range of visual neurons; one proposed mechanism is contrast normalisation or non-specific suppression (Heeger 1992a). This paper aims to evaluate the role of contrast normalisation in human contrast perception, using a computer model of primary visual cortex. The model uses orthogonal pairs of Gabor patches to simulate simple-cell receptive-fields to calculate local, band-limited contrast in a series of 50 digitised photographs of natural scenes. The average range of contrast energies in each image was 2.29 log units, while the "lifetime range" each model simple cell would see across all images was 2.98 log units. These ranges are greater than the dynamic range of real mammalian simple cells. Contrast normalisation (dividing contrast responses by the summed responses of all nearby neurons) reduces contrast ranges, perhaps sufficiently to match them to neurons' limited dynamic ranges. Comparison of images taken under diffuse and direct lighting conditions showed that contrast normalisation can sometimes match these conditions effectively. This may lead to perceptual contrast constancy in the face of spurious changes in contrast caused by natural environmental conditions.

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

natural scenes
contrast
gabor
visual cortex

environmental lighting
shadows
contrast constancy


Simulation-based optimization for housekeeping in a container transshipment terminal An important activity in container transshipment terminals consists in transferring containers in the yard from their current temporary positions to different positions closer to the point along the berth from which the containers will be boarded on departing vessels. This housekeeping process aims at speeding-up discharge and loading operations and, thus, relieving congestion. This paper introduces a heuristic procedure to manage the routing of multi-trailer systems and straddle carriers in a maritime terminal. A simulation model embedded in a local search heuristic allows a proper evaluation of the impact of different vehicle schedules on congestion and throughput. Computational experiments performed on test instances derived from real-life data show that important improvements in routing distance and vehicle waiting time can be obtained compared to the use of standard scheduling policies.

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

container terminal
logistics
vehicle routing
simulationoptimization


Interactive multimedia teaching of Digital Signal Processors This article shows a novel approach to Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) teaching based on an interactive multimedia educational tool, designed with Shockwave (TM) and Macromedia Director (TM). The use and utility of the tool has been analyzed, and the benefits of this novel teaching methodology have been pointed out. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals. Inc.

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

interactive learning environments
distributed learning environments
multimedia/hypermedia systems


Automatic Recognition of Boredom in Video Games Using Novel Biosignal Moment-Based Features This paper presents work conducted toward the biosignals-based automatic recognition of boredom, induced during video-game playing. For this purpose, common biosignal feature extraction methods were exploited and their capability to identify boredom was assessed. Moreover, for the first time, Legendre and Krawtchouk moments, as well as novel moment variations, were extracted as biosignal features and their potential toward automatic affect recognition was examined using the specific application scenario. The present analysis was conducted with ECG and GSR data collected from 19 different subjects, while boredom was naturally induced during the repetitive playing of a 3D video game. Conventional biosignal features as well as moment-based ones were found to be effective for the automatic recognition of boredom by achieving classification accuracies around 85 percent. Then, the joint use of moments and moment variations with conventional features was found to significantly improve classification accuracy by producing a maximum correct classification ratio of 94.17 percent.

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


Cytoplasm and nucleus segmentation in cervical smear images using Radiating GVF Snake A Radiating Gradient Vector Flow (RGVF) Snake aiming at accurate extraction of both the nucleus and cytoplasm from a single-cell cervical smear image is proposed. After preprocessing, the areas in the image are roughly clustered into nucleus, cytoplasm and the background by a spatial K-means clustering algorithm. After initial contours are extracted, the image is segmented using RGVF. RGVF involves a new edge map computation method and a stack-based refinement, and is thus robust to contaminations and can effectively locate the obscure boundaries. The boundaries can also be correctly traced even if there are interferences near the cytoplasm and nucleus regions. Experiments performed on the Herlev dataset, which contains 917 images show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

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

cervical cell
boundary extraction
active contour


Automatic decomposition of time series into step, ramp, and impulse primitives Time series data that can be modeled as linear combinations of weighted and shifted primitive functions such as ramps, steps and impulses are representative of many industrial, manufacturing, and business processes. Data of this type also are found in statistical process control, structural health monitoring, and other system diagnosis applications. Often, the existence of one or more of these primitive functions may be indicative of the occurrence of a specific process event, making their detection and interpretation of great interest. The human eye is an exceptional tool at this kind of pattern recognition. However, for processes that generate large amounts of data the human eye encounters difficulties related to speed and consistency necessitating an automated approach. In this paper, we consider the problem of decomposing a time series into its steps, ramps, and impulses constituents and expressing it as a linear combination of weighted and shifted versions of these primitives. We express the problem as a least squares error minimization coupled with a combinatorial search to arrive at an acceptable decomposition. We show that under certain conditions, such decomposition is possible and can be obtained efficiently using a sliding window approach. We illustrate the results with several examples.

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

signal primitives
signal interpretation
signal decomposition


Best second order bounds for two-terminal network reliability with dependent edge failures Given a network modeled by a probabilistic graph G=(V,E) with bounds on the operation probabilities of edges and of pairs of edges, the second order two-terminal reliability problem is to find best possible bounds on the probability of an operating path between two given nodes s and t without assuming independence of failures. An exact column generation method is proposed to solve this problem as well as several variants of it. The auxiliary problem is to find an optimum (s?t)-connected (or (s?t)-disconnected) subgraph and is strongly NP-hard. This is also the case for the quadratic shortest path problem and for the quadratic minimum cut problem considered by Assous (Networks 16(1986) 319329) in heuristics for the second order two-terminal reliability problem. Tabu search heuristics and row generation integer programming algorithms are proposed for solving the auxiliary problem. Computational results are provided for examples from the literature.

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

reliability
bounds
column generation
tabu search
row generation


Where Does the Mouse Go? An Investigation into the Placement of a Body-Attached TouchPad Mouse for Wearable Computers We investigated the effects of placement of a TouchPad input device on a user's body for the control of a wearable computer. This study involved 25 subjects performing selection tasks with a TouchPad mouse while wearing a wearable computer on their back and using a head-mounted display. Each subject performed the tasks in 27 different combinations of four postures (sitting, kneeling, standing and prone) and seven different placements of the TouchPad mouse on the subject's body (forearm, thigh by 2, torso by 2, and upper arm by 2). We measured the time and error rate to complete the selection of a circular target. The results for the effects due to posture showed that there were similar time effects for sitting, standing and kneeling. When examining the effects resulting from mouse position, the front of the thigh was shown to be the best position of the mouse. When the posturing and mouse position conditions were combined, the results indicated that the thigh front mouse position would be most appropriate for sitting, kneeling and standing postures, and the forearm mouse position would be best for the prone position.

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


Supervised restoration of degraded medical images using multiple-point geostatistics Reducing noise in medical images has been an important issue of research and development for medical diagnosis, patient treatment, and validation of biomedical hypotheses. Noise inherently exists in medical and biological images due to the acquisition and transmission in any imaging devices. Being different from image enhancement, the purpose of image restoration is the process of removing noise from a degraded image in order to recover as much as possible its original version. This paper presents a statistically supervised approach for medical image restoration using the concept of multiple-point geostatistics. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed technique which has potential as a new methodology for medical and biological image processing.

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 B I O O O O O O O O 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

image restoration
degraded medical images


A strategic analysis of inter organizational information sharing In this paper we study the effect of inter organizational information sharing strategies on firm level performance under both stable as well as volatile market conditions. We use information exchange in a supply chain as a representation of inter organizational information sharing, and study five strategies for information sharing that range from minimal to near-complete information exchange. We present analytical evaluation of the relative performance of these strategies and experimental results from a proof-of-concept system. Our results show that near-complete information sharing that combines more than one type of information being shared has better performance in volatile market conditions.

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

supply chain management
e-commerce
electronic markets


Surface-micromachined RF MEMs switches on GaAs substrates This paper reports on the development of a broadband, low insertion loss, ohmic-contact MEMs switch for microwave and millimeter-wave applications. The switch Is surface-micromachined and electrostatically-actuated with electromechanical performance simulated with analytical and numerical models that compare well to experiment, The switch has an actuation voltage of 30 V, a response time of 20 mu s, and mechanical strength to withstand 10(9) actuations. A 3D electromagnetics scattering model developed iteratively with the electromechanical modeling predicts RF performance demonstrated to be greater than 50 dB of isolation below 2 GHz and less than 0.2 dB of insertion loss from DC through 40 GHz, (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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


low-overhead state-retaining elements for low-leakage mtcmos design Multi-threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) has shown to be a very effective technique for reducing sub-threshold leakage currents in DSM CMOS designs. Application of the MTC-MOS paradigm to sequential circuits requires the availability of data-retaining elements for storing circuit state during stand-by mode. In this paper we propose two novel circuit schemes for sequential elements featuring low leakage currents in stand-by mode and high-speed/low-dynamic power in active mode. We present post-layout simulation results obtained after parasitic extraction for delay and power of circuits built in 130nm CMOS technology. Our experiments demonstrate several advantages of the proposed schemes over the best previously published solutions.

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


Suppression of the unsteady vortex wakes of a circular cylinder pair by a doublet-like counter-rotation The present investigation examines the suppression of unsteady, two-dimensional wake instabilities of a pair of identical circular cylinders, placed side-by-side normal to freestream at a low Reynolds number of 150. It is found that when the cylinders are counter-rotated, unsteady vortex wakes can be completely suppressed. At fast enough rotational speeds, a virtual elliptic body is produced by a closed streamline, strongly resembling a doublet potential flow. Copyright (c) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

vortex wakes
instabilities
virtual elliptic body

vortex suppression
numerical simulation
flow control


The Effect of Poverty on Child Development and Educational Outcomes Poverty affects a child's development and educational outcomes beginning in the earliest years of life, both directly and indirectly through mediated, moderated, and transactional processes. School readiness, or the child's ability to use and profit from school, has been recognized as playing a unique role in escape from poverty in the United States and increasingly in developing countries. It is a critical element but needs to be supported by many other components of a poverty-alleviation strategy, such as improved opportunity structures and empowerment of families. The paper reviews evidence from interventions to improve school readiness of children in poverty, both in the United States and in developing countries, and provides recommendations for future research and action.

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

poverty
child development
school readiness
educational outcomes
developing countries


Analysis of self-describing gridded geoscience data with netCDF Operators (NCO) The netCDF Operator (NCO) software facilitates manipulation and analysis of gridded geoscience data stored in the self-describing netCDF format. NCO is optimized to efficiently analyze large multi-dimensional data sets spanning many files. Researchers and data centers often use NCO to analyze and serve observed and modeled geoscience data including satellite observations and weather, air quality, and climate forecasts. NCO's functionality includes shared memory threading, a message-passing interface, network transparency, and an interpreted language parser. NCO treats data files as a high level data type whose contents may be simultaneously manipulated by a single command. Institutions and data portals often use NCO for middleware to hyperslab and aggregate data set requests, while scientific researchers use NCO to perform three general functions: arithmetic operations, data permutation and compression, and metadata editing. We describe NCO's design philosophy and primary features, illustrate techniques to solve common geoscience and environmental data analysis problems, and suggest ways to design gridded data sets that can ease their subsequent analysis.

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

geoscience
data analysis
arithmetic
metadata
netcdf


HYPERgeometric

functions

DIfferential

REduction

(HYPERDIRE):

MATHEMATICA

based

packages

for

differential

reduction

of

generalized

hypergeometric

functions:

FD

F

D

and

FS

F

S

Horn-type

hypergeometric

functions

of

three

variables

HYPERDIRE

is

a

project

devoted

to

the

creation

of

a

set

of

Mathematica

based

programs

for

the

differential

reduction

of

hypergeometric

functions.

The

current

version

includes

two

parts:

the

first

one,

FdFunction,

for

manipulations

with

Appell

hypergeometric

functions

FD

F

D

of

r

r

variables;

and

the

second

one,

FsFunction,

for

manipulations

with

LauricellaSaran

hypergeometric

functions

FS

F

S

of

three

variables.

Both

functions

are

related

with

one-loop

Feynman

diagrams.

Program

title:

HYPERDIRE

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

GNU

General

Public

License

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Mathematica

Computer:

All

computers

running

Mathematica

Operating

system:

All

operating

systems

running

Mathematica

Classification:

Catalogue

identifier

of

previous

version:

Journal

reference

of

previous

version:

Comput.

Phys.

Comm.

Does

the

new

version

supersede

the

previous

version?:

No.

It

is

an

extension

to

the

previous

program,

which

performs

reductions

of

hypergeometric

functions

pFp

p

F

p

F

F

F

and

F

Nature

of

problem:

Reduction

of

hypergeometric

functions

FD

F

D

and

FS

F

S

to

the

set

of

basis

functions

Solution

method:

Differential

reduction

Reasons

for

new

version:

New

algorithms

for

the

reduction

of

multivariable

Lauricella

functions,

Horn

functions,

(hypergeometric

functions

FD

F

D

and

FS

F

S

Summary

of

revisions:

HYPERDIRE

is

a

project

devoted

to

the

creation

of

a

set

of

Mathematica

based

programs

for

the

differential

reduction

of

hypergeometric

functions.

The

current

version

includes

two

parts:

the

first

one,

FdFunction,

for

manipulations

with

Appell

hypergeometric

functions

FD

F

D

of

r

r

variables;

and

the

second

one,

FsFunction,

for

manipulations

with

LauricellaSaran

hypergeometric

functions

FS

F

S

of

three

variables.

Both

functions

are

related

with

one-loop

Feynman

diagrams.

Running

time:

Depends

on

the

complexity

of

problem

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

hypergeometric functions
differential reduction
feynman diagrams


Three modified versions of differential evolution algorithm for continuous optimization Differential evolution (DE) is one simple and effective evolutionary algorithm (EA) for global optimization. In this paper, three modified versions of the DE to improve its performance, to repair its defect in accurate converging to individual optimal point and to compensate the limited amount of search moves of original DE are proposed. In the first modified version called bidirectional differential evolution (BDE), to generate a new trial point, is used from the bidirectional optimization concept, and in the second modified version called shuffled differential evolution (SDE), population such as shuffled frog leaping (SFL) algorithm is divided in to several memeplexes and each memeplex is improved by the DE algorithm. Finally, in the third modified version of DE called shuffled bidirectional differential evolution (SBDE) to improve each memeplex is used from the proposed BDE algorithm. Three proposed modified versions are applied on two types of DE and six obtained algorithms are compared with original DE and SFL algorithms. Experiments on continuous benchmark functions and non-parametric analysis of obtained results demonstrate that applying bidirectional concept only improves one type of the DE. But the SDE and the SBDE have a better success rate and higher solution precision than original DE and SFL, whereas those are more time consuming on some functions. In a later part of the comparative experiments, a comparison of the proposed algorithms with some modern DE and the other EAs reported in the literature confirms a better or at least comparable performance of our proposed algorithms.

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

bidirectional optimization
differential evolution
global optimization
shuffled frog leaping


Closures on CPOs form complete lattices It is well known that closure operators on a complete lattice, ordered pointwise, give rise to a complete lattice, and this basic fact plays an important role in many fields of the semantics area, notably in domain theory and abstract interpretation. We strengthen that result by showing that closure operators on any directed-complete partial order (CPO) still form a complete lattice. An example of application in abstract interpretation theory is given. (C) 1999 Academic Press.

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

complete lattice
cpo
domain theory
abstract interpretation


empirical and theoretical support for lenient learning Recently, an evolutionary model of Lenient Q-learning (LQ) has been proposed, providing theoretical guarantees of convergence to the global optimum in cooperative multi-agent learning. However, experiments reveal discrepancies between the predicted dynamics of the evolutionary model and the actual learning behavior of the Lenient Q-learning algorithm, which undermines its theoretical foundation. Moreover it turns out that the predicted behavior of the model is more desirable than the observed behavior of the algorithm. We propose the variant Lenient Frequency Adjusted Qlearning (LFAQ) which inherits the theoretical guarantees and resolves this issue.

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

replicator dynamics
multi-agent learning
q-learning
evolutionary game theory


an empirical study of critical mass and online community survival There is general consensus that critical mass at inception ensures the sustained success of online communities. However, no clear understanding of what constitutes such a 'critical mass' exists and too few quantitative studies have been conducted into the relationship between initial online community interaction and its longer term success to draw any conclusions. In this paper we start to address this gap through a large-scale study of the relationship between IRC chat channel survival and initial chat channel community interactions. A sample 282 chat channel births was used for survival analysis which explored the relationship between the overall user activity in each channel at its inception and the channel's life expectancy. Significant relationships were observed between online community lifespan and critical mass measures: 1) message volume, 2) user population heterogeneity and 3) production functions. The results lend support to the Critical Mass Theory of collective action.

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

online community system design
synchronous communication
computer-mediated communication


extracting captions from videos using temporal feature Captions in videos provide much useful semantic information for indexing and retrieving video contents. In this paper, we present an effective approach to extracting captions from videos. Its novelty comes from exploiting the temporal information in both localization and segmentation of captions. Since some simple features such as edges, corners and color are utilized, our approach is efficient. It involves four steps. First, we exploit the distribution of corners to spatially detect and locate the caption in a frame. Then the temporal localization for different captions in a video is performed by identifying the change of stroke directions. After that, we segment the caption pixels in a clip with a same caption based on the consistency and dominant distribution of caption color. Finally, the segmentation results are further refined. The experimental results on two representative movies have preliminarily verified the validity of our approach.

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


Robust airline schedule design in a dynamic scheduling environment In the past decade, major airlines in the US have moved from banked hub-and-spoke operations to de-banked hub-and-spoke operations in order to lower operating costs. In Jiang and Barnhart (2009) [1], it is shown that dynamic airline scheduling, an approach that makes minor adjustments to flight schedules in the booking period by re-fleeting and re-timing flight legs, can significantly improve utilization of capacity and hence increase profit. In this paper, we develop robust schedule design models and algorithms to generate schedules that facilitate the application of dynamic scheduling in de-banked hub-and-spoke operations. Such schedule design approaches are robust in the sense that the schedules produced can more easily be manipulated in response to demand variability when embedded in a dynamic scheduling environment. In our robust schedule design model, we maximize the number of potentially connecting itineraries weighted by their respective revenues. We provide two equivalent formulations of the robust schedule design model and develop a decomposition-based solution approach involving a variable reduction technique and a variant of column generation. We demonstrate, through experiments using data from a major U.S. airline that the schedule generated can improve profitability when dynamic scheduling is applied. It is also observed that the greater the demand variability, the more profit our robust schedules achieve when compared to existing ones.

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

airline schedule design
dynamic scheduling


Transformation-based temporal aggregation using order-based buffer replacement strategy We present a new method for computing temporal aggregation based on dimension transformation. The novelty of our method lies in transforming the start time and end time of one-dimensional temporal tuples to two-dimensional data points and storing the points in a two-dimensional index. It then calculates temporal aggregates through a temporal join between the data in the index and the base intervals (defined as the intervals delimited by the start time or end time of the tuples). To enhance the performance, this Method calculates the aggregates by incrementally modifying the aggregates from that of the previous base interval without re-reading all tuples for the Current base interval. We further improve the efficiency with a new buffer page replacement technique that predicts the page access order within the index. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through experiments.

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

temporal databases
multi-dinlensional indexes
buffer management


Codes over an infinite family of rings with a Gray map Codes over an infinite family of rings which are an extension of the binary field are defined. Two Gray maps to the binary field are attached and are shown to be conjugate. Euclidean and Hermitian self-dual codes are related to binary self-dual and formally self-dual codes, giving a construction of formally self-dual codes from a collection of arbitrary binary codes. We relate codes over these rings to complex lattices. A Singleton bound is proved for these codes with respect to the Lee weight. The structure of cyclic codes and their Gray image is studied. Infinite families of self-dual and formally self-dual quasi-cyclic codes are constructed from these codes.

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


on oblivious ptas's for nash equilibrium If a class of games is known to have a Nash equilibrium with probability values that are either zero or ?(1) -- and thus with support of bounded size -- then obviously this equilibrium can be found exhaustively in polynomial time. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that there is a PTAS for the class of games whose equilibria are guaranteed to have small --- O(1/n) -- values, and therefore large -- ?(n) -- supports. We also point out that there is a PTAS for games with sparse payoff matrices, a family for which the exact problem is known to be PPAD-complete [Chen, Deng, Teng 2006]. Both algorithms are of a special kind that we call oblivious: The algorithm just samples a fixed distribution on pairs of mixed strategies, and the game is only used to determine whether the sampled strategies comprise an ?-Nash equilibrium; the answer is "yes" with inverse polynomial probability (in the second case, the algorithm is actually deterministic). These results bring about the question: Is there an oblivious PTAS for finding a Nash equilibrium in general games? We answer this question in the negative; our lower bound comes close to the quasi-polynomial upper bound of [Lipton, Markakis, Mehta 2003]. Another recent PTAS for anonymous games [Daskalakis, Papadimitriou 2007 and 2008, Daskalakis 2008] is also oblivious in a weaker sense appropriate for this class of games (it samples from a fixed distribution on unordered collections of mixed strategies), but its running time is exponential in 1/?. We prove that any oblivious PTAS for anonymous games with two strategies and three player types must have 1/? ? in the exponent of the running time for some ? ? 1/3, rendering the algorithm in [Daskalakis 2008] (which works with any bounded number of player types) essentially optimal within oblivious algorithms. In contrast, we devise a poly n (1/?) O(\log 2 (1/?)) non-oblivious PTAS for anonymous games with two strategies and any bounded number of player types. The key idea of our algorithm is to search not over unordered sets of mixed strategies, but over a carefully crafted set of collections of the first O(log 1/?) moments of the distribution of the number of players playing strategy 1 at equilibrium. The algorithm works because of a probabilistic result of more general interest that we prove: the total variation distance between two sums of independent indicator random variables decreases exponentially with the number of moments of the two sums that are equal, independent of the number of indicators.

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

ptas
oblivious algorithms
anonymous games


Market manipulation with outside incentives Much evidence has shown that prediction markets can effectively aggregate dispersed information about uncertain future events and produce remarkably accurate forecasts. However, if the market prediction will be used for decision making, a strategic participant with a vested interest in the decision outcome may manipulate the market prediction to influence the resulting decision. The presence of such incentives outside of the market would seem to damage the markets ability to aggregate information because of the potential distrust among market participants. While this is true under some conditions, we show that, if the existence of such incentives is certain and common knowledge, in many cases, there exist separating equilibria where each participant changes the market probability to different values given different private signals and information is fully aggregated in the market. At each separating equilibrium, the participant with outside incentives makes a costly move to gain trust from other participants. While there also exist pooling equilibria where a participant changes the market probability to the same value given different private signals and information loss occurs, we give evidence suggesting that two separating equilibria are more natural and desirable than many other equilibria of this game by considering domination-based belief refinement, social welfare, and the expected payoff of either participant in the game. When the existence of outside incentives is uncertain, however, trust cannot be established between players if the outside incentive is sufficiently large and we lose the separability at equilibria.

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

equilibrium analysis
prediction market
information aggregation


Multiple instance learning for computer aided detection and diagnosis of gastric cancer with dual-energy CT imaging A multiple instance learning algorithm-based CAD scheme is proposed. Identify tumor invasion depth of gastric cancer with dual-energy CT imaging. We extract two-level features, bag-level features and instance-level features. We propose weighted distance Citation-KNN algorithm for classification.

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

multiple instance learning
gastric cancer

computer aided diagnosis
circular gabor features
dual-energy ct


Scheduling permutation flowshops with initial availability constraint: Analysis of solutions and constructive heuristics In this paper, we address the problem of scheduling a set of jobs in a flowshop with makespan objective. In contrast to the usual assumption of machine availability presented in most research, we consider that machines may not be available at the beginning of the planning period, due to processing of previously scheduled jobs. We first formulate the problem, analyse the structure of solutions depending on a number of factors (such as machines, jobs, structure of the processing times, availability vectors, etc.), and compare it with its classical counterpart. Results indicate that the problem under consideration presents a different structure of solutions, and that it is easier than the classical permutation flowshop problem. In view of these results, we propose and test a number of fast heuristics for the problem.

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

scheduling
flowshop
makespan
machine availability