Competitive implementation of parallel programs We apply the methodology of competitive analysis of algorithms to the implementation of programs on parallel machines. We consider the problem of finding the best on-line distributed scheduling strategy that executes in parallel an unknown directed acyclic graph (dag) which represents the data dependency relation graph of a parallel program and which is revealed as execution proceeds. We study the competitive ratio of some important classes of dags assuming a fixed communication delay ratio tau that captures the average interprocessor communication measured in instruction cycles. We provide competitive algorithms for divide-and-conquer dags, trees, and general dags, when the number of processors depends on the size of the input dag and when the number of processors is fixed. Our major result is a lower bound Omega(tau/log tau) of the competitive ratio for trees; it shows that it is impossible to design compilers that produce almost optimal execution code for all parallel programs. This fundamental result holds for almost any reasonable distributed memory parallel computation model, including the LogP and BSP model.

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

parallel computation
competitive analysis
communication delay
scheduling


a general two-pass method integrating specular and diffuse reflection We analyse some recent approaches to the global illumination problem by introducing the corresponding reflection operators , and we demonstrate the advantages of a two-pass method. A generalization of the system introduced by Wallace et al. at Siggraph '87 to integrate diffuse as well as specular effects is presented. It is based on the calculation of extended form-factors , which allows arbitrary geometries to be used in the scene description, as well as refraction effects. We also present a new sampling method for the calculation of form-factors, which is an alternative to the hemi-cube technique introduced by Cohen and Greenberg for radiosity calculations. This method is particularly well suited to the extended form-factors calculation. The problem of interactive display of the picture being created is also addressed by using hardware-assisted projections and image composition to recreate a complete specular view of the scene.

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

method
global illumination
diffuse
radiosity
image
demonstrate
general
sampling

interaction systems factor project reflectance hardware effect compositing completeness integrability


The influence of strong electric field on the interface in the AlSiO2-n-Si Auger transistor The influence of the strong electric field on electron emission from semiconductor surfaces was investigated. We have measured a tunnel electron emission from the metal to the semiconductor in metalinsulatorsemiconductor heterostructures with a tunnel transparent insulator layer. A tunnel electron emission from semiconductor tips to vacuum was also investigated. Semiconductor tip field emitters make the investigation of the semiconductor surface at extremely strong electric field possible. On the other hand the investigation of metalinsulatorsemiconductor heterostructures allows to realize the emission of hot electrons from the metal to the semiconductor, and enables the creation of Auger transistor based on the AlSiO2-n-Si heterojunctions. This is one of the fastest operating semiconductor bipolar transistors. The estimations show that metalinsulatorsemiconductor Auger transistor based on the GaInAsSb solid solution with varying composition makes it possible to increase the highest operation frequency of the Auger transistor up to ten times compared with the silicon based Auger transistor, and in effect approaches the highest frequency of more than 10?12s.

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

auger transistor
hot electrons
tips
strong electric field

impact ionisation
self-consistent quantum wells
field emission


Multi-path content delivery: Efficiency analysis and optimization algorithms The paper studies the benefits of multi-path content delivery from a rate-distortion efficiency perspective. We develop an optimization framework for computing transmission schedules for streaming media packets over multiple network paths that maximize the end-to-end video quality, for the given bandwidth resources. We comprehensively address the two prospective scenarios of content delivery with packet path diversity. In the context of sender-driven systems, our framework enables the sender to compute at every transmission instance the mapping of packets to network paths that meets a rate constraint while minimizing the end-to-end distortion. In receiver-driven multi-path streaming, our framework enables the client to dynamically decide which packets, if any, to request for transmission and from which media servers, such that the end-to-end distortion is minimized for a given transmission rate constraint. Via simulation experiments, we carefully examine the performance of the scheduling framework in both multi-path delivery scenarios. We demonstrate that the optimization framework closely approaches the performance of an ideal streaming system working at channel capacity with an infinite play-out delay. We also show that the optimization leads to substantial gains in rate-distortion performance over a conventional content-agnostic scheduler. Through the concept of error-cost performance for streaming a single packet, we provide another useful insight into the operation of the optimization framework and the conventional scheduling system. (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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

video streaming
multi-path delivery
rate-distortion optimization
packet scheduling
rate allocation
server diversity
joint source-channel coding
markov decision processes


Accelerated Life Test Plans for Repairable Systems With Multiple Independent Risks This paper proposes a Bayesian approach to planning an accelerated life test (ALT) for repairable systems with multiple s-independent failure modes. A power law process (PLP), that combines both proportional intensity (PI) and acceleration time (AT) approaches, is used for modeling the failure process of repairable systems under ALT. Based on the Bayesian D-optimality, and Ds-optimality, we develop optimal plans for ALT by invoking the general equivalence theorem. We also discuss the elicitation of prior distributions, and derive the expression of the Fisher information matrix. Finally, a case study on testing diesel automotive engines is presented to illustrate how to use the proposed planning principle to obtain the 2-stress-level optimal plan, and a compromise plan for 3-stress-level ALT.

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

accelerated life test
power law process
repairable systems

bayesian optimal design
competing risks
d-optimality
kullback-leibler distance


Using central manifold theorem in the analysis of master-slave synchronization networks This work presents a stability analysis of the synchronous state for one-way master-slave time distribution networks with single star topology. Using bifurcation theory, the dynamical behavior of second-order phase-locked loops employed to extract the synchronous state in each node is analyzed in function of the constitutive parameters. Two usual inputs, the step and the ramp phase perturbations, are supposed to appear in the master node and, in each case, the existence and the stability of the synchronous state are studied. For parameter combinations resulting in non-hyperbolic synchronous states the linear approximation does not provide any information, even about the local behavior of the system. In this case, the center manifold theorem permits the construction of an equivalent vector field representing the asymptotic behavior of the original system in a local neighborhood of these points. Thus, the local stability can be determined.

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

bifurcation
synchronization
synchronous state

master-slave
network
phase-locked loops
single-star


Activity Theory as a means for multi-scale analysis of the engineering design process: A protocol study of design in practice We explore the multi-scale nature of design activity. We propose a framework for combining understanding of design activity across scales. We demonstrate the multi-scale nature of design activity via an industrial observation study. We identify implications for design prescriptions based on a multi-scale perspective.

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

case study
design practice
protocol analysis


Resampling for checking linear regression models via non-parametric regression estimation Let us consider the fixed regression model, and assume that the random errors, {?t}, follow an ARMA-type dependence structure. The purpose of this paper is to study the application of the bootstrap test to check that the unknown regression function, m, follows a general linear model of the type:

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

hypothesis testing
non-parametric estimators
time series


A nested invocation suppression mechanism for active replication fault-tolerant CORBA Active replication is a common approach to building highly available and reliable distributed software applications. The redundant nested invocation (RNI) problem arises when servers in a replicated group issues nested invocations to other server groups in response to a client invocation. Automatic suppression of RNI is always a desirable solution, yet it is usually a difficult design issue. If the system has multi-threading support, the difficulties of implementation increase dramatically. Intuitively, to design a deterministic thread execution control mechanism is a possible approach. Unfortunately, some modem operating systems implement thread on kernel level for execution fairness. For the kernel thread case, modification on thread control implies modifying the operating system kernel. This approach loses system portability which is one of the important requirements of CORBA or middleware. In this work, we propose a mechanism to perform the auto-suppression of redundant nested invocation in an active replication fault-tolerant (FT) CORBA system. Besides the mechanism design, we discuss the design correctness semantic and the correctness proof of our design.

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

fault-tolerance
distributed computing environment
replica determinism


Research profiling for standardization and innovation This paper addresses the profiling of research papers on standardization and innovationexploring major topics and arguments in this field. Drawing on 528 papers retrieved from the database, Web of Science, we employed trend, factor, and clustering analyses to demonstrate that the standardization and innovation research has continuously grown from publication of 13 papers in 1995 to 68 papers in 2008; the majority of these papers have been published in the six subject group domains of management, economics, environment, chemistry, computer science, and telecommunications. Technology innovation management specialty journals are the most central sources favorable for these themes. We also present an exploratory taxonomy that offers nine topical clusters to demonstrate the contextual structures of standardization and innovation. The implications of our results for ongoing consistent policy and future research into standardization and innovation are discussed.

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

standardization
innovation
taxonomy
research profiling

publication analysis
clustering analysis
bibliometrics


Towards a just and fair Internet: applying Rawls principles of justice to Internet regulation I suggest that the social justice issues raised by Internet regulation be exposed and examined by using a methodology adapted from that described by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. Rawls theory uses the hypothetical scenario of people deliberating about the justice of social institutions from the original position as a method of removing bias in decision-making about justice. The original position imposes a veil of ignorance that hides the particular circumstances of individuals from them so that they will not be influenced by self-interest. I adapt Rawls methodology by introducing an abstract description of information technology to those deliberating about justice from within the original position. This abstract description focuses on information devices that users can use to access information (and which may record information about them as well) and information networks that information devices use to communicate. The abstractness of this description prevents the particular characteristics of the Internet and the computing devices in use from influencing the decisions about the just use and regulation of information technology and networks. From this abstract position, the principles of justice that the participants accept for the rest of society will also apply to the computing devices people use to communicate, and to Internet regulation.

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

distributive justice
rights
social contract


Combined Petri net modelling and AI-based heuristic hybrid search for flexible manufacturing systems - part II. Heuristic hybrid search This two-part paper presents modelling and scheduling approaches of flexible manufacturing systems using Petri nets (PNs) and artificial intelligence (Al)-based heuristic search methods. In Part I, PN-based modelling approaches and basic AI-based heuristic search algorithms were presented. In Part II, a new heuristic function that exploits PN information is proposed. Heuristic information obtained from the PN model is used to dramatically reduce the search space. This heuristic is derived from a new concept, the resource cost reachability matrix, which builds on the properties of B-nets proposed in Part I. Two hybrid search algorithms, (I) an approach to model dispatching rules using analysis information provided by the PN simulation and (2) an approach of the modified stage-search algorithm, are proposed to reduce the complexity of large systems. A random problem generator is developed to test the proposed methods. The experimental results show promising results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

petri net modelling
heuristic search
resource cost reachability matrix
hybrid search


a wii remote, a game engine, five sensor bars and a virtual reality theatre The Nintendo Wii Remote is having a huge impact on the computer games industry. This paper describes a project which is integrating this controller into a game environment in a multi-wall virtual reality theatre. Aspects considered include interaction taxonomies of the Wii controller, the extension of driver software to have the Wii controller deal with multiple Sensor Bars at once, and the porting of the game engine into the virtual reality theatre.

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


Pauses in doctor-patient conversation during computer use: The design significance of their durations and accompanying topic changes Talk is often suspended during medical consultations while the clinician interacts with the patient's records and other information This study of four general practitioners (GPs) focused on these suspensions and the adjacent conversational turns. Conversation analysis revealed how GPs took action to close conversations down prior to attending to the records. resulting in a 'free turn' that could be taken up by either GP or patient The durations of the Intervening pauses were also analysed, exposing a hitherto unobserved 10-second timeframe within which both GP and patient showed a preference for the conversation to be resumed. Resumption was more likely to be achieved within 10 s when the GP's records were paper-based rather than computer-based. Subsequent analysis of topic changes on resumption of talk has revealed a 5-second timeframe, also undocumented, when pauses exceed this timeframe. it is rare for the previous topic to be resumed without a restatement Data recorded in the home suggest that these timeframes are also present in family conversations We argue for considering the two timeframes when designing systems for use in medical consultations and other conversational settings, and discuss possible outcomes (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

medical interaction
conversational pauses
user interface design


Efficient Processing of Top-k Queries in Uncertain Databases with x-Relations This work introduces novel polynomial algorithms for processing top-k queries in uncertain databases under the generally adopted model of x-relations. An x-relation consists of a number of x-tuples, and each x-tuple randomly instantiates into one tuple from one or more alternatives. Our results significantly improve the best known algorithms for top-k query processing in uncertain databases, in terms of both runtime and memory usage. In the single-alternative case, the new algorithms are 2 to 3 orders of magnitude faster than the previous algorithms. In the multialternative case, we introduce the first-known polynomial algorithms, while the current best algorithms have exponential complexity in both time and space. Our algorithms run in near linear or low polynomial time and cover both types of top-k queries in uncertain databases. We provide both the theoretical analysis and an extensive experimental evaluation to demonstrate the superiority of the new approaches over existing solutions.

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

algorithm
probabilistic data
top-k
uncertain database
x-relation


Fast Gauss Bilateral Filtering In spite of high computational complexity, the bilateral filter and its modifications and extensions have recently become very popular image and shape processing tools. In this paper, we propose a fast and accurate approximation of the bilateral filter. Our approach combines a dimension elevation trick with a Fast Gauss Transform. First we represent the bilateral filter as a convolution in a high dimensional space. Then the convolution is efficiently approximated by using space partitioning and Gaussian function expansions. Advantages of our approach include linear computational complexity, user-specified precision, and an ability to process high dimensional and non-uniformly sampled data. We demonstrate capabilities of the approach by considering its applications to the image and volume denoising and high-dynamic-range tone mapping problems.

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

fast gauss transform (fgt)
yaroslavsky filter
fast image filtering


Artificial neural network weights optimization based on social-based algorithm to realize sediment over the river Predictions of sediment load are required in a wide spectrum of problems such as design of the dead volume of a dam, sediment transport in the river, design of stable channels, and dredging needs. Researchers have used the regression between sediment concentration and water discharge. Such relationships are obtained through the application of regression analysis in many studies. Unfortunately, in the classical regression approach to determine sediment concentrationwater discharge relationships, internal uncertainties are not taken explicitly into consideration. Therefore, researchers look for non-linear methods to estimate sediment load such as artificial neural network (ANN) methods to solve non-linear problems. The main purpose of this paper is to optimize the ANN connection weights with novel social-based algorithm (SBA) to realize the sediment in Maroon river. The SBA tries to capture several people in different types of countries. They try to reach high levels. The approach illustrated feed-forward neural network optimization for sediment estimation of four Maroon river stations in Iran, which was called FF-SBA. Three inputs were presented in each station: length of river, discharge and debit. Sediment parameter on the same station is measured as the output parameter. Results of optimization algorithms such as the genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization and imperialist competitive algorithm were compared with the SBA results, and it was found that the FF-SBA model exhibited more capability, flexibility, and accuracy in sediment training, testing, and forecasting steps for the Maroon river in Iran.

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

social-based algorithm (sba)
feed-forward back-propagation algorithm


Computing services supply management: Incentives, information, and communication The management of computing resources and the choice of the organizational form used to govern them is an intricate problem for several reasons. First, the technology itself is subject to externalities, both positive and negative. Delay costs in particular are a significant issue, both from the standpoint of the internal cost-minimizing use of the resources, and the growing importance of time-based competition which requires responsive information systems. Second, the relationship between the IS department and central management is likely to be characterized by a combination of incentive conflicts, asymmetric information in the form of specialized IS knowledge that cannot be readily and fully transmitted to central management (limited communication). Existing principal-agent models do not incorporate this combination of features. Hence in this paper we develop a general, yet tractable, microeconomic model to study the control of an organization's computing resources that incorporates all of these features. Because the model is new, the paper is primarily theoretical, Limited communication is modeled by a finite message space which must be used to communicate a real-valued parameter, A mechanism design approach is then used in this setting to derive the optimal centralized control structure, Limited and costly communication implies that the optimal centralized mechanism need not dominate a decentralized mechanism such as a profit center, in contrast to the result with full and costless communication. A numerical example is also presented, which suggests that it is costs of communication rather than limited communication itself that is most likely to degrade the performance of a centralized control structure.

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

profit center
limited communication
mechanism design

cost center
capacity
order statistics
revelation principle


MULS: A general framework of providing multilevel service quality in sequential data broadcasting In recent years, data broadcasting has become a promising technique to design a mobile information system with power conservation, high scalability, and high bandwidth utilization. In many applications, the query issued by a mobile client corresponds to multiple items that should be accessed in a sequential order. In this paper, we study the scheduling approach in such a sequential data broadcasting environment. Explicitly, we propose a general framework referred to as MULS ( standing for MUltiLevel Service) for an information system. There are two primary stages in MULS: online scheduling (OLS) and optimization procedure. In the first stage, we propose an OLS algorithm to allocate the data items into multiple channels. As for the second stage, we devise an optimization procedure, called Sampling with Controlled Iteration (SCI), to enhance the quality of broadcast programs generated by algorithm OLS. Procedure SCI is able to strike a compromise between effectiveness and efficiency by tuning the control parameters. According to the experimental results, we show that algorithm OLS with procedure SCI outperforms the approaches in prior works prominently in both effectiveness ( that is, the average access time of mobile users) and efficiency (that is, the complexity of the scheduling algorithm). Therefore, by cooperating algorithm OLS with procedure SCI, the proposed MULS framework is able to generate broadcast programs with the flexibility of providing different service qualities under different requirements of effectiveness and efficiency: in the dynamic environment in which the access patterns and information contents change rapidly, the parameters used in SCI will perform OLS with satisfactory service quality. As for the static environment in which the query profile and the database are updated infrequently, larger values of parameters are helpful to generate an optimized broadcast program, indicating the advantageous feature of MULS.

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

sequential data broadcasting
multilevel service quality
data broadcasting


Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration We discuss a robotic module called a Molecule. Molecules can be the basis far building self-reconfiguring robots. They support multiple modalities of locomotion and manipulation. We describe the design, functionality, and control of the Molecule. We show how a set of Molecules can aggregate as active three-dimensional structures that can move and change shape. Finally, we discuss global motion algorithms for Molecular structures. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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 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 O O O O O O O O


Terminological resources for text mining over biomedical scientific literature We present a combined terminological resource for text mining over biomedical literature. The purpose of the resource is to allow the detection of mentions of specific biological entities in scientific publications, and their grounding to widely accepted identifiers. This is an essential process, useful in itself, and necessary as an intermediate step for almost every type of complex text mining application. We discuss some of the properties of the terminology for this domain, in particular the degree of ambiguity, which constitutes a peculiar problem for text mining applications. Without a correct recognition and disambiguation of the domain entities no reliable results can be produced. We also discuss an application that makes use of the resulting terminological knowledge base. We annotate an existing corpus of sentences about protein interactions. The annotation consists of a normalization step that matches the terms in our resource with their actual representation in the corpus, and a disambiguation step that resolves the ambiguity of matched terms. In this paper we present a large terminological resource, compiled through the aggregation of a number of different manually curated sources. We discuss the lexical properties of such resources, specifically the degree of ambiguity of the terms, and we inspect the causes of such ambiguity, in particular for protein names. This information is of vital importance for the implementation of an efficient term normalization and grounding algorithm.

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


A compression algorithm for pre-simulated Monte Carlo p-value functions: Application to the ontological analysis of microarray studies Monte Carlo simulation is frequently employed to compute p-values for test statistics with unknown null distributions. However, the computations can be exceedingly time-consuming, and, in such cases, the use of pre-computed simulations can be considered to increase speed. This approach is attractive in principle, but complicated in practice because the size of the pre-computed data can be prohibitively large. We developed an algorithm for computing size-reduced representations of Monte Carlo p-value functions. We show that, in typical settings, this algorithm reduces the size of the pre-computed data by several orders of magnitude, while bounding provably the approximation error at an explicitly controllable level. The algorithm is data-independent, fully non-parametric, and easy to implement. We exemplify its practical utility by applying it to the threshold-free ontological analysis of microarray data. The presented algorithm simplifies the use of pre-computed Monte Carlo p-value functions in software, including specialized bioinformatics applications.

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

biomedical pattern recognition
microarrays
data compression


The robustness of the hyperbolic efficiency estimator The robustness properties of a specific type of orientation in the context of efficiency measurement using partial frontiers are investigated. This so called unconditional hyperbolic quantile estimator of efficiency has been recently studied and can be seen as an extension of the input/output methodology of partial frontiers that was introduced previously. The influence function as well as the breakdown point of this fully non-parametric and unconditional estimator are derived for a complete multivariate setup (multiple inputs and outputs). Like for the input and output quantile estimators, the hyperbolic quantile estimator is B-robust but unlike the two former types of estimator its breakdown point does not depend on the actual input or output level of the production unit. Some examples are given to assess the relevance of this type of estimator and to show the differences with the input and output quantile estimators of efficiency from both a robustness and a statistical efficiency point of view. Finally, a real life example is used to illustrate how the hyperbolic efficiency estimator might be used in a robust context.

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

breakdown point
efficiency measurement
influence function

hyperbolic orientation
quantile based frontiers


Low-carbon emission/economic power dispatch using the multi-objective bacterial colony chemotaxis optimization algorithm considering carbon capture power plant This paper formulates the emission economic dispatch model with CCS power plant. The bacterial colony chemotaxis (MOBCC) algorithm has been improved. The improved MOBCC algorithm is applied to solve the emission economic dispatch problem.

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

carbon capture and storage power plant
bacterial colony chemotaxis algorithm
emission/economic dispatch
low-carbon emission developments


Discovering Learner Styles in Adaptive e-Learning Hypermedia Systems A distinct feature of an adaptive e-learning hypermedia system (AEHS) is the learner model it employs, that is, a representation of information about an individual learner. Learner modeling and adaptation are strongly correlated, in the sense that the amount and nature of the information represented in the learner model depend largely on the kind of adaptation effect that the system has to deliver. In fact, we see a problem arising when teachers assume similar learning styles, thinking styles, levels of knowledge and abilities for learners. This is because learners that are less able will feel that it is too difficult for them to follow and those that are more capable will feel as though the learning method is too easy. Teachers can adjust the standards; however, there may be conflicts between learners with varied styles. Thinking style, learning style, level of knowledge, preferences and ability of learner are part of learner's characteristics, which have significant influence on the activity of learners in the learning process. In this paper we have focused our attention on the learner model, which allows for the discovery of preferences, needs and interests of users that have access to an AEHS. In order to observe the psychological and pedagogical characteristics of a learner, a quantitative and qualitative research is conducted based on a questionnaire. The thinking style of a learner is analyzed. Based on the statistical results, we figure out the rules about pedagogical activity decision-making. This study presents two subsequent experiments. The first experiment explores the relationship of thinking style and pedagogical activities to validate this specific psychological construct in the context of an AEHS. The second experiment reduces the questionnaire to 60 questions, using a filtering principle keeping the validity of the original questionnaire.

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

learner model
pedagogical activities
thinking style
adaptation


Efficient and Scalable Pareto Optimization by Evolutionary Local Selection Algorithms Local selection is a simple selection scheme in evolutionary computation. Individual fitnesses are accumulated over time and compared to a fixed threshold, rather than to each other, to decide who gets to reproduce. Local selection, coupled with fitness functions stemming from the consumption of finite shared environmental resources, maintains diversity in a way similar to fitness sharing. However, it is more efficient than fitness sharing and lends itself to parallel implementations for distributed tasks. While local selection is not prone to premature convergence, it applies minimal selection pressure to the population. Local selection is, therefore, particularly suited to Pareto optimization or problem classes where diverse solutions must be covered. This paper introduces ELSA, an evolutionary algorithm employing local selection and outlines three experiments in which ELSA is applied to multiobjective problems: a multimodal graph search problem, and two Pareto optimization problems. In all these experiments, ELSA significantly outperforms other well-known evolutionary algorithms. The paper also discusses scalability, parameter dependence, and the potential distributed applications of the algorithm.

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

evolutionary algorithms
local selection
elsa
scalability

agent-based search
cover
multicriterion optimization
pareto front
efficiency


An adaptive \(hp\)-DG method with dynamically-changing meshes for non-stationary compressible Euler equations Compressible Euler equations describing the motion of compressible inviscid fluids are typically solved by means of low-order finite volume (FVM) or finite element (FEM) methods. A promising recent alternative to these low-order methods is the higher-order discontinuous Galerkin (\(hp\)-DG) method (Schnepp and Weiland, J Comput Appl Math 236:49094924, 2012; Schnepp and Weiland, Radio Science, vol46, RS0E03, 2011) that combines the stability of FVM with excellent approximation properties of higher-order FEM. This paper presents a novel \(hp\)-adaptive algorithm for the \(hp\)-DG method which is based on meshes that change dynamically in time. The algorithm reduces the order of the approximation on shocks and keeps higher-order elements where the approximation is smooth, which leads to an efficient discretization of the time-dependent problem. The method is described and numerical examples are presented.

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

numerical simulation
finite element method
\(hp\)-adaptivity
discontinuous galerkin method
automatic adaptivity
dynamically changing meshes
35l65
65d99
76h05


An empirical study of classification algorithm evaluation for financial risk prediction A wide range of classification methods have been used for the early detection of financial risks in recent years. How to select an adequate classifier (or set of classifiers) for a given dataset is an important task in financial risk prediction. Previous studies indicate that classifiers' performances in financial risk prediction may vary using different performance measures and under different circumstances. The main goal of this paper is to develop a two-step approach to evaluate classification algorithms for financial risk prediction. It constructs a performance score to measure the performance of classification algorithms and introduces three multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods (i.e., TOPSIS, PROMETHEE, and VIKOR) to provide a final ranking of classifiers. An empirical study is designed to assess various classification algorithms over seven real-life credit risk and fraud risk datasets from six countries. The results show that linear logistic, Bayesian Network, and ensemble methods are ranked as the top-three classifiers by TOPSIS, PROMETHEE, and VIKOR. In addition, this work discusses the construction of a knowledge-rich financial risk management process to increase the usefulness of classification results in financial risk detection. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

classification algorithm
financial risk prediction

multiple criteria decision making (mcdm)


Optimizing current harmonics compensation in three-phase power systems with an Enhanced Bacterial foraging approach Realization of shunt active power filter for three-phase three-wire power systems. Development of an Enhanced Bacterial foraging optimization technique. Implementation of PSO, BFO and Enhanced BFO on APF for dc-link voltage regulation. Real-time analysis under various supplies and sudden load change with Opal-RT Lab. Comparative performance of PSO, BFO and Enhanced BFO in terms of source current THD.

O B I 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 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

active power filter
current harmonics
bacterial foraging optimization

real-time analysis
particle swarm optimization


Voltage relations for debonding detection of piezoelectric sensors with segmented electrode The piezoelectric patches in sheet form have two electrodes for obtaining an electric potential when these patches are being deformed. These patches may be used as sensors in different structures for measuring local displacements/deformations. This information can be used in some techniques of structural health monitoring. However, the application of these methods depends on the health of the piezoelectric sensor. This research shows a technique for sensor debonding monitoring, which consists of segmenting the electrode of the piezoelectric sensor in three parts. Voltage relations between the segmented electrodes show a linear behavior and these relations correspond to force relations in electrodes. The results show that if debonding occurs, the force relations in electrodes are influenced and the voltage relations change. The method showed in this work can be used to identify debonding of piezoelectric sensors.

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

piezoelectric sensor
debonding
structural health monitoring
segmented electrode


use cases as a component of information access evaluation Information access research and development, and information retrieval especially, is based on quantitative and systematic benchmarking. Benchmarking of a computational mechanism is always based on some set of assumptions on how a system with the mechanism under consideration will provide value for its users in concrete situations and those assumptions need to be validated somehow. The valuable effort put into those validation studies is seldom useful for other research or system development projects. This paper argues that use cases for information access can be written to give explicit pointers towards benchmarking mechanisms and that if use cases and hypotheses about user preferences, goals, expectation and satisfaction are made explicit in the design of research systems, they will can more conveniently be validated or disproven -- which in turn makes the results emanating from research efforts more relevant for industrial partners, more sustainable for future research and more portable across projects and studies.

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

evaluation
benchmarking
use cases
information access
validation


A procedure for constructing social network using Web search engines: the case for Japanese automotive industry Recently, search engines have enabled us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant. In this paper, we propose a procedure for analyzing the social relationship and structure using Web search engines, which includes novel ways to create a search query and to use the number of hits. This allows us to construct various networks that reflect directed and undirected relationships among actors under arbitrary contexts. As a case study for evaluations of the proposed procedure, we focus on 50 companies belonging to the automotive industry in Japan. We constructed several directed and undirected networks under different temporal and geographical contexts. It is shown that we can acquire a general understanding of the industrial community through the analyses of these created networks and their centrality measures.

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


LSTRKFALTG A forward modeling program to compute theoretical gravity anomalies of strike limited listric fault structures with prescribed vertical variation in density ? A method to compute the gravity anomalies of strike limited listric fault structures among which the density contrast varies continuously with depth is presented along with a program, LSTRKFALTG. The expression for the gravity anomaly due to a listric fault structure having finite strike length is derived in the space domain using both analytical and numerical approaches. The main program is supported with a subroutine SIMP. Calculation of gravity anomalies at different offsets across a synthetic fault structure reveals the fact that the offset of the profile controls the magnitude of the gravity anomaly. Sample input and output data files pertaining to a synthetic fault model are presented. The validity and efficacy of the method is demonstrated with a real field example.

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

listric fault structure
finite strike
offset
forward modeling
gravity anomaly


aspect-oriented application-level scheduling for j2ee servers Achieving sufficient execution performance is a challenging goal of software development. Unfortunately, violating performance requirements is often revealed at a late stage of the development. Fixing a performance problem at such a late stage is difficult in terms of cost and time. To solve this problem, this paper presents QoSWeaver , which provides aspect-oriented application-level scheduling. QoSWeaver weaves scheduling code written in an aspect into application code. The scheduling code gets an application thread to voluntarily yield its execution to implement a scheduling policy. The idea of scheduling at the application level is not new, but aspect-oriented programming makes it more realistic by separation of scheduling code. QoSWeaver also provides a profile-based pointcut generator , which automatically generates pointcuts for fine-grained scheduling. To investigate the ability of QoSWeaver for implementing practical scheduling policies, we used QoSWeaver for tuning the performance of a river monitoring system named Kasendas . For reliable examination, Kasendas was originally developed by an outside corporation and then it was tuned by the authors with QoSWeaver. The authors could successfully improve the performance of Kasendas under heavy workload and the work of the performance tuning was not large.

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


Adding probabilities and rules to OWL Lite subsets based on probabilistic Datalog This paper proposes two probabilistic extensions of variants of the OWL Lite description language. which are essential for advanced applications like information retrieval. The first step follows the axiomatic approach of combining description logics and Horn clauses: Subsets of OWL Lite are mapped in a sound and complete way onto Horn predicate logics (Datalog variants). Compared to earlier approaches, a larger fraction of OWL Lite can be transformed by switching to Datalog with equality in the head; however, some OWL Lite constructs cannot be transformed completely into Datalog. By using probabilistic Datalog, the new probabilistic OWL Lite subsets (both with support for Horn rules) are defined, and the semantics are given by the semantics of the corresponding probabilistic Datalog program. As inference engines for probabilistic Datalog are available, description logics and information retrieval systems can easily be combined.

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

owl lite
probabilistic datalog
logics
rules
information retrieval


Semiunitary Precoding for Spatially Correlated MIMO Channels The focus of this paper is on spatial precoding in correlated multiantenna channels where the number of data-streams is adapted independent of the number of transmit antennas. Towards the goal of a low-complexity implementation, a statistical semiunitary precoder is studied where the precoder matrix evolves fairly slowly with respect to the channel evolution. While prior work on statistical precoding has focussed on information-theoretic limits, most of these computations result in complicated functional dependencies of the mutual information with the channel statistics that do not explicitly reveal the impact of statistics on performance. In contrast, estimates that are directly in terms of the channel statistics are obtained here for the relative mutual information loss of a semiunitary precoder with respect to a perfect channel information benchmark. Based on these estimates, matching metrics are developed that capture the degree of matching of a channel to the precoder structure continuously and allow ordering two matrix channels in terms of their mutual information performance. While these metrics are based on bounds, numerical studies are used to show that the proposed metrics capture the performance tradeoffs accurately. The main conclusion of this work is a simple-to-state fundamental principle in the context of signaling design for single-user MIMO systems: the best channel for the statistical precoder is the channel that is matched to it.

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

mimo systems
semiunitary precoding
spatial precoding

adaptive coding
correlated channels
low-complexity signaling
multimode signaling


De novo ligand design with explicit water molecules: an application to bacterial neuraminidase Most computer-aided drug design methods ignore the presence of crystallographically-determined water molecules in the binding site of a target protein. In this paper, our de novo ligand design methods are applied to the X-ray crystal structure of bacterial neuraminidase in the presence of some selected water molecules. We have found that, for this particular protein, the complete removal of all bound water molecules leads to difficulties in generating any potential ligands if the unsatisfied hydrogen-bonding sitepoints left by removing these water molecules are to be satisfied by a ligand. As more of the crystallographically determined water molecules are allowed in the binding site, it becomes much easier to generate ligands in larger numbers and with wider chemical diversity. This example shows that, in some cases, bound water molecules can be more accessible for hydrogen bonding to an incoming ligand than the actual protein binding sitepoints associated with them. From the point of view of de novo ligand design, water molecules can thus act as versatile amphiprotic hydrogen-bonding sitepoints and reduce the conformational constraints of a particular binding site.

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

de novo drug design
structure generation
ligand-protein interactions
x-ray crystal structures
hydration


Face detection using multimodal density models We present two methods using multimodal density models for face detection in gray-level images. One generative method uses a mixture of factor analyzers to concurrently perform clustering and, within each cluster, perform local dimensionality reduction. The parameters of the mixture model are estimated using the EM algorithm. A face is detected if the probability of an input sample is above a predefined threshold. The other discriminative method uses Kohonen's self-organizing map for clustering, Fisher's linear discriminant to find an optimal projection for pattern classification, and a Gaussian distribution to model the class-conditional density function of the projected samples for each class. The parameters of the class-conditional density functions are maximum likelihood estimates, and the decision rule is also based on maximum likelihood. A wide range of face images including ones in different poses, with different expressions and under different lighting conditions, is used as the training set to capture variations of the human face. Our methods have been tested on three data sets with a total of 225 images containing 871 faces. Experimental results on the first two data sets show that our generative and discriminative methods per-form as well as the best methods in the literature, yet have fewer false detections. Meanwhile, both methods are able to detect faces of nonfrontal views and under more extreme lighting in the third data set. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science (USA).

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

face detection
mixture of factor analyzers
em algorithm

multimodal density estimation
fisher's linear discriminant
self-organizing map
factor analysis


Detecting noisy instances with the ensemble filter: A study in software quality estimation The performance of a classification model is invariably affected by the characteristics of the measurement data it is built upon. If the quality of the data is generally poor, then the classification model will demonstrate poor performance. The detection and removal of noisy instances will improve quality of the data, and consequently, the performance of the classification model. We investigate a noise handling technique that attempts to improve the quality of datasets for classification purposes by eliminating instances that are likely to be noise. Our approach uses twenty five different classification techniques to create an ensemble filter for eliminating likely noise. The basic assumption is that if a given majority of classifiers in the ensemble misclassify an instance, then it is likely to be a noisy instance. Using a relatively large number of base-level classifiers in the ensemble filter facilitates in achieving the desired level of noise removal conservativeness with several possible levels of filtering. It also provides a higher degree of confidence in the noise elimination procedure as the results are less likely to get influenced by (possibly) inappropriate learning bias of a few algorithms with twenty five base-level classifiers than with relatively smaller number of base-level classifiers. Empirical case studies of two high assurance software projects demonstrates the effectiveness of our noise elimination approach by the significant improvement achieved in classification accuracies at various levels of noise filtering.

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


Fuzzy uniform structures and continuous t-norms We introduce and discuss a notion of fuzzy uniform structure that provides I direct link with the classical theory of uniform spaces More exactly, for each continuous l-norm we prove that the category of all fuzzy uniform spaces in our sense (and fuzzy uniformly Continuous mappings) is isomorphic to the category of uniform spaces (and uniformly continuous mappings) by means of a covariant functor Moreover. we also describe the inverse functor and. then. we discuss completeness and completion of these fuzzy uniform structures It follows from our results that each fuzzy uniform structure in our sense induces a Hutton [0,1]-uniformity and, conversely, each Hutton [0.1]-uniformity induces a fuzzy uniform structure in our sense (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

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

fuzzy uniform structure
covariant functor
completeness
completion

fuzzy uniform space
fuzzy pseudometric
hutton [0,1]-uniformity
topological category


Molecular simulations in the multibaric-multithermal ensembles We present new generalized-ensemble molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulation methods, which we refer to as the multibaric-multithermal algorithms. The multibaric-multithermal simulations perform random walks widely both in the potential-energy space and in the volume space. Thus, these algorithms allow the simulations to escape from any local-minimum-energy state. In order to test the effectiveness of these algorithms, we investigate the liquidgas phase transition of a LennardJones 126 potential system by the multibaric-multithermal Monte Carlo simulation.

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

multibaric-multithermal ensemble
molecular dynamics simulation


Is information acquisition still important in the information age? How should the information age affect teaching goals and methods? One of the claims voiced by educators is that computerized information tools make systematic study and acquisition of information redundant. Put bluntly this claim states that students should no longer waste their time learning or memorizing texts and facts that can be retrieved in a keystroke. We attempted to examine the current role of information acquisition in learning processes by interviewing 24 expert academic researchers who work regularly with computerized information tools. Analysis of the researchers descriptions of their learning and thinking processes revealed that, according to the majority of the researchers, computerized information tools have not reduced the importance learning and acquiring information. These exploratory findings suggest that information acquisition should still be an important part of the curriculum in the age of information.

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

cognitive effects of information technology


TeraStitcher - A tool for fast automatic 3D-stitching of teravoxel-sized microscopy images Further advances in modern microscopy are leading to teravoxel-sized tiled 3D images at high resolution, thus increasing the dimension of the stitching problem of at least two orders of magnitude. The existing software solutions do not seem adequate to address the additional requirements arising from these datasets, such as the minimization of memory usage and the need to process just a small portion of data.

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


digital logic simulation at the gate and functional level Simulation, in several forms, is used extensively in present day circuit design. The various forms of simulation can be categorized in terms of level of detail offered, ranging from circuit level (transistors, capacitors, etc.) to timing level (e.g., MOTIS (1) ) to logic gate level (NAND, NOR, etc.) to register transfer level. As with a microscope, increasing the resolution decreases the field of view. This 'law' imposes a constraint on the size of circuit a designer can simulate at any one level of detail, and most simulation programs are rigidly defined to operate at only one level. This leads to obvious problems, for example, when a circuit is mixed analog/digital, although some progress has been made on incorporating circuit level and gate level detail in one program (2) . However, digital circuit sizes keep increasing and even now the gate level often offers too much resolution. To keep simulation costs down and to avoid overwhelming the macroscopic features of a circuit with irrelevant data another level of digital logic simulation is required. The various Hardware Description Languages (3) are too far removed from the gate level to be of much use here as they represent a very large, discrete jump from the gate level, when we would prefer a continuum of simulation resolution.

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

program
use
simulation
size
functional
design
level of detail
data
logic
timing
hardware
constraint

digitize examples field-of-view feature analog circuits


Asymptotic bounds on frameproof codes We study the asymptotic behavior of frameproof codes. Some lower bounds are derived from the theory of error-correcting codes. In particular, the lower bound obtained directly by applying algebraic-geometry codes is improved by employing the Jacobian group structure of algebraic curves.

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

algebraic-geometry codes
frame-proof codes


Virtual world teaching, experiential learning, and assessment: An interdisciplinary communication course in Second Life While many reports espouse the potential impact that 3-D virtual worlds are expected to have on teaching and learning in higher education in a few years, there are few empirical studies that inform instructional design and learning assessment in virtual worlds. This study explores the nature and process of learning in Second Life in a graduate interdisciplinary communication course in fall 2007. Literature suggests that 3-D virtual worlds can be well suited for experiential learning environments. In this study, the actual instructional effectiveness of Second Life as an experiential learning environment for interdisciplinary communication is empirically examined using mixed research methods of journal content analysis, surveys, focus group, and virtual world snapshots and video. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

virtual reality
computer-mediated communication
interdisciplinary projects
interactive learning environments
cooperative/collaborative learning


Enhancing Physical Education and Sport Science students' self-efficacy and attitudes regarding Information and Communication Technologies through a computer literacy course Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have become an integral component of Physical Education (PE) and Sport Science (SS) curricula and professions. It is thus imperative that PE and SS students develop ICT skills, self-efficacy in ICT and positive attitudes towards ICT. This study was aimed at designing a computer literacy course targeted at equipping PE and SS students with core ICT skills, and at evaluating its impact on students' computer and Internet self-efficacy, attitudes towards computers and the Internet, and computer anxiety. The study also explored students' responses to the course, students' perceptions of the relevance of ICT for PE and SS professionals as well as eventual differences in the course's impact in relation to students' prior ICT experience. Participants were 89 PE and SS undergraduate students. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through pretest/posttest questionnaires and transcripts of an online discussion forum. Data analysis showed that the course significantly enhanced students' computer and Internet self-efficacy and their positive attitudes towards computers and the Internet, while significantly reducing their computer anxiety. The course was very well-received by the students, who were found to fully perceive the pervasiveness of ICT in today's PE and SS professions, and who felt that they had developed valuable ICT skills. The course elicited positive responses regardless of students' prior ICT experience, although it had significantly more positive effects, in terms of computer self-efficacy, Internet self-efficacy and computer attitudes, with the students who were most in need of the course, namely those with low prior ICT experience. The findings are discussed in relation to training PE and SS students in ICT within academic settings. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

applications in subject areas
post-secondary education
teaching/learning strategies
pedagogical issues
improving classroom teaching


Recursive subdivision of polygonal complexes and its applications in computer-aided geometric design A method for subdividing polygonal complexes and identifying conditions to control their limit curves is presented. A polygonal complex is a sequence of panels where every two adjacent panels share one edge only. We formulate this problem and establish a general theory which has a number of applications in CAGD such as the generation of subdivision surfaces through predefined arbitrary network of curves. This is a further extension of the capability of these surfaces making them more attractive and more practical in surface modeling and computer graphics. One of the main advantages of the proposed scheme is that the regions of the surface between the interpolated curves do not have to be rectangular-a limitation of existing tenser-product based CAD systems. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

curve interpolation
b-spline
arbitrary curve networks
n-sided regions


Expanding a multilingual media monitoring and information extraction tool to a new language: Swahili The Europe Media Monitor (EMM) family of applications is a set of multilingual tools that gather, cluster and classify news in currently fifty languages and that extract named entities and quotations (reported speech) from twenty languages. In this paper, we describe the recent effort of adding the African Bantu language Swahili to EMM. EMM is designed in an entirely modular way, allowing plugging in a new language by providing the language-specific resources for that language. We thus describe the type of language-specific resources needed, the effort involved, and ways of boot-strapping the generation of these resources in order to keep the effort of adding a new language to a minimum. The text analysis applications pursued in our efforts include clustering, classification, recognition and disambiguation of named entities (persons, organisations and locations), recognition and normalisation of date expressions, as well as the identification of reported speech quotations by and about people.

O O O B I O B I 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 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

swahili
information extraction
media monitoring

named entity recognition and classification


an agent-based market platform for smart grids The trend towards renewable, decentralized, and highly fluctuating energy suppliers (e.g. photovoltaic, wind power, CHP) introduces a tremendous burden on the stability of future power grids. By adding sophisticated ICT and intelligent devices, various Smart Grid initiatives work on concepts for intelligent power meters, peak load reductions, efficient balancing mechanisms, etc. As in the Smart Grid scenario data is inherently distributed over different, often non-cooperative parties, mechanisms for efficient coordination of the suppliers, consumers and intermediators is required in order to ensure global functioning of the power grid. In this paper, a highly flexible market platform is introduced for coordinating self-interested energy agents representing power suppliers, customers and prosumers. These energy agents implement a generic bidding strategy that can be governed by local policies. These policies declaratively represent user preferences or constraints of the devices controlled by the agent. Efficient coordination between the agents is realized through a market mechanism that incentivizes the agents to reveal their policies truthfully to the market. By knowing the agent's policies, an efficient solution for the overall system can be determined. As proof of concept implementation the market platform D'ACCORD is presented that supports various market structures ranging from a single local energy exchange to a hierarchical energy market structure (e.g. as proposed in [10]).

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


Towards open science: the myExperiment approach By making research content more reusable, and providing a social infrastructure that facilitates sharing, the human aspects of the scholarly knowledge cycle may be accelerated and 'time-to-discovery' reduced. We propose that the key to this is the sharing of methods and processes. We present myExperiment, a social web site for discovering, sharing and curating Scientific Workflows and experiment plans, and describe how myExperiment facilitates the management and sharing of research workflows, supports a social model for content curation tailored to the researcher and community, and supports Open Science by exposing content and functionality to the users' tools and applications. Based on this, we introduce the notion of the Research Object the work objects that are built, transformed and published in the course of scientific experiments and suggest that by encapsulating methods with results we can achieve research that is more reusable and repeatable and hence rapid and robust. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

scientific workflow
web 2.0
data curation research object
semantic web
e-laboratory


The number of convex polyominoes and the generating function of Jacobi polynomials Lin and Chang gave a generating function of convex polyominoes with an m+1 m + 1 by n+1 n + 1 minimal bounding rectangle. Gessel showed that their result implies that the number of such polyominoes is Some (binomial coefficients) identities arise from alternative solutions of combinatorial problems and incidentally give added significance to doing problems the hard way. J. RIORDAN

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

convex polyominoes
generating function
jacobi polynomials


Clinical psychology offers in the internet in Spain This paper analyzes the situation of on-line clinical psychology in Spain. Internet is becoming one of the principal tools for people to access to psychological information. Thus, users will be biased by the contents of the sites they contact to. Psychologists should pay attention to what kind of services are being spread through the Internet. To do this, a few characteristics such us interaction, security, theoretical approach or treated disorders have been revised in 185 Spanish psychology websites. Results shows that there are critical differences between public and private sites suggesting that the public sector should make un effort to keep up with the advances on this field, that private sites could improve their services in some ways such as security or the interaction user-professional and some interesting findings referred to the relation between the theoretical approach of the sites and the kind of help they provide.

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


KCAR: A knowledge-driven approach for concurrent activity recognition Recognising human activities from sensors embedded in an environment or worn on bodies is an important and challenging research topic in pervasive computing. Existing work on activity recognition is mainly concerned with identifying single user sequential activities from well-scripted or pre-segmented sequences of sensor events. However a real-world environment often contains multiple users, with each performing activities simultaneously, in their own way and with no explicit instructions to follow. Recognising multi-user concurrent activities is challenging, but essential for designing applications for real environments. This paper presents a novel Knowledge-driven approach for Concurrent Activity Recognition (KCAR). Within KCAR, we explore the semantics underlying each sensor event and use semantic dissimilarity to segment a continuous sensor sequence into fragments, each of which corresponds to one ongoing activity. We exploit the Pyramid Match Kernel, with a strength in approximate matching on hierarchical concepts, to recognise activities of varying grained constraints from a potentially noisy sensor sequence. We conduct an empirical evaluation on a large-scale real-world data set that is collected over one year and consists of 2.8 millions of sensor events. Our results demonstrate that KCAR achieves an average recognition accuracy of 91%.

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

concurrent activity recognition
semantics
pyramid match kernel


On compatibilities of ?-lock resolution method in linguistic truth-valued lattice-valued logic The paper focuses on the efficient resolution-based automated reasoning theory, approach and algorithm for a lattice-ordered linguistic truth-valued logic. Firstly two hybrid resolution methods in linguistic truth-valued lattice-valued logic are proposed by combining ?-lock resolution with generalized deleting strategy and ?-linear resolution. ?-Lock resolution for first-order linguistic truth-valued lattice-valued logic \(\fancyscript{L}_{V(n \times 2)}F(X)\) is equivalently transformed into that for propositional logic \(L_{n}P(X)\) which reduce much the complexity of the resolution procedure. Then the compatibilities of ?-lock resolution with generalized deleting strategy and ?-linear resolution are discussed. We finally contrive an algorithm for ?-linear semi-lock resolution and some examples are provided to illustrate the proposed theory and algorithm. This work provides effective support for automated reasoning scheme in linguistic truth-valued logic based on lattice-valued algebra with the aim at establishing formal tools for symbolic natural language processing.

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

compatibilities
generalized deleting strategy


IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTING OF A SYSTEM FOR PRODUCING EMOTION-BY-RULE IN SYNTHETIC SPEECH A system is described which adds simulated emotion effects to synthetic speech. The control parameters of a speech synthesizer are controlled by rule in order to simulate the features of emotion expressed in the human voice. The system can simulate six vocal emotions and was evaluated with naive listeners. The results indicated that the system was producing recognizable vocal emotions, with perception rankings similar to those found by previous research on human emotional speech. This system has been developed for use in voice prosthesis systems fbr non-vocal disabled persons, although it could be used to enhance any application which uses rule-based synthetic speech.

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

speech synthesis
synthesis-by-rule
mood
affect
synthetic speech perception


Incremental retinal-defocus theory of myopia development - Schematic analysis and computer simulation Previous theories of myopia development involved subtle and complex processes such as the sensing and analyzing of chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, spatial gradient of blur, or spatial frequency content of the retinal image, but they have not been able to explain satisfactorily the diverse experimental results reported in the literature. On the other hand, our newly proposed incremental retinal-defocus theory (IRDT) has been able to explain all of these results. This theory is based on a relatively simple and direct mechanism for the regulation of ocular growth. It states that a time-averaged decrease in retinal-image defocus area decreases the rate of release of retinal neuromodulators, which decreases the rate of retinal proteoglycan synthesis with an associated decrease in scleral structural integrity. This increases the rate of scleral growth, and in turn the eye's axial length, which leads to myopia. Our schematic analysis has provided a clear explanation for the eye's ability to grow in the appropriate direction under a wide range of experimental conditions. In addition, the theory has been able to explain how repeated cycles of nearwork-induced transient myopia leads to repeated periods of decreased retinal-image defocus, whose cumulative effect over an extended period of time results in an increase in axial growth that leads to permanent myopia. Thus, this unifying theory forms the basis for understanding the underlying retinal and scleral mechanisms of myopia development. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

refraction
retinal-defocus
under-correction
constant light
nearwork-induced transient myopia
irdt model


Patterning micro- and nano-structured FePt by direct imprint lithography Direct nanoimprint on silicon. Micro- and nano-patterned FePt. Metal-containing polymer as nanoimprint resist. High thermal stability and coercivity FePt. Heat treatment of the metal-containing polymer.

B O O O B O B I I 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

fept
direct imprint lithography
patterning


Software Code Generation for the RVC-CAL Language The MPEG Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) framework is a new standard under development by MPEG that aims at providing a unified high-level specification of current and future MPEG video coding technologies using dataflow models. In this framework, a decoder is built as a configuration of video coding modules taken from the standard MPEG toolbox library or proprietary libraries. The elements of the library are specified by a textual description that expresses the I/O behavior of each module and by a reference software written using a subset of the CAL Actor Language named RVC-CAL. A decoder configuration is written in an XML dialect by connecting a set of CAL modules. Code generators are fundamental supports that enable the direct transformation of a high level specification to efficient hardware and software implementations. This paper presents a synthesis tool that from a CAL dataflow program generates C code and an associated SystemC model. The generated code is validated against the original CAL description simulated using the Open Dataflow environment. Experimental results of the translation of two descriptions of an MPEG-4 Simple Profile decoder with different granularities are shown and discussed.

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

reconfigurable video coding
cal actor language
software code generation


Performance implications of knowledge management processes: Examining the roles of infrastructure capability and business strategy Knowledge management (KM) has attracted significant attention from researchers and practitioners as a facilitator of firm performance. Even though companies have implemented KM, they offers inconsistent support that KM enhances firm performance. Thus, we examine that KM process is a critical variable through which infrastructure capability and business strategy effect firm performance. Data from 135 firms provide empirical support for this issue. We found the roles of infrastructure capability and business strategy have a positive association with the KM process. We confirmed the relationship between KM and firm performance. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

knowledge management
infrastructure capability
business strategy


Development of the unlocking mechanisms for the complex method The locking phenomenon, or the degeneracy, has long been the potential defectiveness of the Complex Method. A locked optimization process leads to not only unreliable optimum but waste of time. In this paper, a modified Complex algorithm is suggested and assessed by four test functions. The results showed that the improved Complex Method equipped with the new unlocking mechanisms demonstrates excellent abilities to avoid locking phenomenon. Besides, it reduces the time of processing to about 80% to reach the optimum with the same accuracy. Moreover, a practical example of a common engineering problem is also given to show its applicability.

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optimization
complex method
degeneracy
locking phenomenon


Parallel MR Image Reconstruction Using Augmented Lagrangian Methods Magnetic resonance image (MRI) reconstruction using SENSitivity Encoding (SENSE) requires regularization to suppress noise and aliasing effects. Edge-preserving and sparsity-based regularization criteria can improve image quality, but they demand computation-intensive nonlinear optimization. In this paper, we present novel methods for regularized MRI reconstruction from undersampled sensitivity encoded data-SENSE-reconstruction-using the augmented Lagrangian (AL) framework for solving large-scale constrained optimization problems. We first formulate regularized SENSE-reconstruction as an unconstrained optimization task and then convert it to a set of (equivalent) constrained problems using variable splitting. We then attack these constrained versions in an AL framework using an alternating minimization method, leading to algorithms that can be implemented easily. The proposed methods are applicable to a general class of regularizers that includes popular edge-preserving (e.g., total-variation) and sparsity-promoting (e.g., l(1)-norm of wavelet coefficients) criteria and combinations thereof. Numerical experiments with synthetic and in vivo human data illustrate that the proposed AL algorithms converge faster than both general-purpose optimization algorithms such as nonlinear conjugate gradient (NCG) and state-of-the-art MFISTA.

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

augmented lagrangian
image reconstruction
regularization

parallel magnetic resonance imaging (mri)


Integrated parallel performance views The influences of the operating system and system-specific effects on application performance are increasingly important considerations in high performance computing. OS kernel measurement is key to understanding the performance influences and the interrelationship of system and user-level performance factors. The KTAU (Kernel TAU) methodology and Linux-based framework provides parallel kernel performance measurement from both a kernel-wide and process-centric perspective. The first characterizes overall aggregate kernel performance for the entire system. The second characterizes kernel performance when it runs in the context of a particular process. KTAU extends the TAU performance system with kernel-level monitoring, while leveraging TAU's measurement and analysis capabilities. We explain the rational and motivations behind our approach, describe the KTAU design and implementation, and show working examples on multiple platforms demonstrating the versatility of KTAU in integrated system/application monitoring.

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decision table based approach for business rules modelling in uml/ocl The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is widely used language for the specification of object-oriented designs. The Object Constraint Language (OCL) supplements this language by providing possibility to specify models in precise and unambiguous manner. However, the OCL is less suited for business rules (BR) modelling and validating with business people because it requires appropriate technical knowledge. This paper presents a decision table (DT) based approach for definition of business rules within UML/OCL models. The relevance between DT and different kinds of OCL expressions has been determined and approach to construct OCL expressions with DT has been considered.

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


Temporally coherent video matting Existing video matting approaches determine the alpha matte sequence frame-by-frame, which lead to flickering near the boundary of the foreground region. We reduce this effect by considering video data as a spatio-temporal cube, and extending a robust matting algorithm to a 3D solver. Our results demonstrate consistent and visually pleasing alpha mattes, and tend to preserve temporal coherence better than previous techniques.

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On representing second-order uncertainty in multi-state systems via moments of mixtures of Dirichlet distributions Second-order probabilities have been proposed as representations of the uncertainty in the parameters of probabilistic models such as Bayesian belief networks. We investigate conditions under which second-order probabilities can be represented in terms of their marginal moments. We show that certain combinations of marginal means and variances do not correspond to any valid second-order joint distribution. By fitting a Dirichlet mixture to marginal mean and variance information, we derive sufficient conditions for a valid second-order joint distribution to exist.

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second-order probabilities
bayes networks
dirichlet distribution


Accurate higher-order likelihood inference on \(P(Y<X)\) The stress-strength reliability \(R=P(Y<X)\), where \(X\) and \(Y\) are independent continuous random variables, has obtained wide attention in many areas of application, such as in engineering statistics and biostatistics. Classical likelihood-based inference about \(R\) has been widely examined under various assumptions on \(X\) and \(Y\). However, it is well-known that first order inference can be inaccurate, in particular when the sample size is small or in presence of unknown parameters. The aim of this paper is to illustrate higher-order likelihood-based procedures for parametric inference in small samples, which provide accurate point estimators and confidence intervals for \(R\). The proposed procedures are illustrated under the assumptions of Gaussian and exponential models for \((X,Y)\). Moreover, simulation studies are performed in order to study the accuracy of the proposed methodology, and an application to real data is discussed. An implementation of the proposed method in the R software is provided.

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stress-strength model
confidence interval
modified signed log-likelihood
higher-order likelihood inference
small sample size
area under the roc curve