Feature-level and decision-level fusion of noncoincidently sampled sensors for land mine detection We present and compare methods for feature-level (predetection) and decision-level (postdetection) fusion of multisensor data. This study emphasizes fusion techniques that are suitable for noncommensurate data sampled at noncoincident points. Decision-level fusion is most convenient for such data, but it is suboptimal in principle, since targets not detected by all sensors will not obtain the full benefits of fusion. A novel algorithm for feature-level fusion of noncommensurate, noncoincidently sampled data is described, in which a model is fitted to the sensor data and the model parameters are used as features. Formulations for both feature-level and decision-level fusion are described, along with some practical simplifications. A closed-form expression is available for feature-level fusion of normally distributed data and this expression is used with simulated data to study requirements for sample position accuracy in multisensor data. The performance of feature-level and decision-level fusion algorithms are compared for experimental data acquired by a metal detector, a ground-penetrating radar, and an infrared camera at a challenging test site containing surrogate mines. It is found that fusion of binary decisions does not perform significantly better than the best available sensor. The performance of feature-level fusion is significantly better than the individual sensors, as is decision-level fusion when detection confidence information is also available ("soft-decision" fusion).

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

land mines
sensor fusion
ground penetrating radar
metal detectors


Distinguishing the rates of gene activation from phenotypic variations Stochastic genetic switching driven by intrinsic noise is an important process in gene expression. When the rates of gene activation/inactivation are relatively slow, fast, or medium compared with the synthesis/degradation rates of mRNAs and proteins, the variability of protein and mRNA levels may exhibit very different dynamical patterns. It is desirable to provide a systematic approach to identify their key dynamical features in different regimes, aiming at distinguishing which regime a considered gene regulatory network is in from their phenotypic variations.

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

positive feedback
energy landscape
flow cytometry experiment


An advanced taxi movement model in the working day movement for delay-tolerant networks Vehicle safety communications is an important technology for preventing automobile accidents. The number of neighbor nodes is important in the automobile industry, which is becoming increasingly more customer-oriented. The Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator is a specialized tool for the simulation of a routing protocol in a delay-tolerant network (DTN). Various movement models, including random waypoint, working day movement, and post-disaster movement, have been studied. DTN is a network suggested for communication between networks with significantly varied delay times. In order to raise the accuracy of simulation results in DTNs, a movement model that considers an actual situation is very important. As for the ONE simulator, a working day movement model shows actual movement patterns of people among various movement models. For types of transportation, a road, a vehicle and a bus are provided, but a real-life situation is not provided for a taxi. A taxi moves to a destination via the shortest route when there is a customer; otherwise, it moves at fast speeds randomly. Such movement can generate various communication situations and packet transmission in a DTN. Therefore, this paper aims to design an advanced taxi movement model.

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


Preliminary evaluation of flex power FPGA: A power reconfigurable architecture with fine granularity The Flex Power FPGA is presented as a novel FPGA model offering the ability to configure the trade-off between power consumption and speed for each logic element by adjusting the threshold voltage. This FPGA model targets the reduction of static power consumption, which has become one of the most important issues in the development of future-generation devices. The present paper describes a preliminary simulation study of the Flex Power FPGA. A method to effectively assign threshold voltages to transistors at a prescribed granularity based on a timing analysis of the mapped circuit is implemented using the VPR simulator, and the static power reduction for 70 urn technologies is estimated using MCNC benchmark circuits. Simulation results show that the average static power can be reduced to as little as 1/30 of that in the corresponding conventional FPGA. This FPGA model is also demonstrated to be effective with future technologies, where the proportion of static power will be greater.

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

reconfigurable device
low-power
control
eda


A quasi-optimal domain decomposition algorithm for the time-harmonic Maxwell's equations This paper presents a new non-overlapping domain decomposition method for the time harmonic Maxwell's equations, whose effective convergence is quasi-optimal. These improved properties result from a combination of an appropriate choice of transmission conditions and a suitable approximation of the Magnetic-to-Electric operator. A convergence theorem of the algorithm is established and numerical results validating the new approach are presented.

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

maxwell's equation
electromagnetism
domain decomposition methods
finite elements
pad approximants


Fakes states attack using detector efficiency mismatch on SARG04, phase-time, DPSK, and Ekert protocols In quantum cryptosystems, variations in detector efficiency can be exploited to stage a successful attack. This happens when the efficiencies of Bob's two detectors are different functions of a control parameter accessible to Eve (e.g., timing of the incoming pulses). It has previously been shown that the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol is vulnerable to this attack. In this paper, we show that several other protocols and encodings may also be vulnerable. We consider a faked states attack in the case of a partial efficiency mismatch on the Scarani-Acin-Ribordy-Gisin 2004 (SARG04) protocol, and derive the quantum bit error rate as a function of detector efficiencies. Additionally, it is shown how faked states can in principle be constructed for quantum cryptosystems that use aphase-time encoding, the differential phase shift keying (DPSK) and the Ekert protocols.

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

quantum cryptography
quantum cyrtanalysis
single photon counting
single photon detectors


Two-layer CA for simulation of catalytic reaction at dynamically varying surface temperature The two-layer CA model for simulation the CO oxidation reaction is investigated. The two-layer CA makes possible to study the dynamics of reaction depending on surface temperature distribution. Oscillations of adsorbed reagents concentrations occur in the reaction. Five various reaction behavior regimes were found.

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

cellular automata composition
surface waves
concentration oscillations


Neural network for dynamic human motion prediction Successful use of artificial neural network (ANN) to simulate human model motion. Experimentation results of using ANN to simulate the tasks of walking and jumping. The use of ANN reduces the simulation time from 140min to a fraction of a second.

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

digital human modeling
artificial neural networks
general regression neural network


toward formalizing a validation methodology using simulation coverage The biggest obstacle in the formal verification of large designs istheir very large state spaces, which cannot be handled even bytechniques such as implicit state space traversal. The only viablesolution in most cases is validation by functional simulation. Unfortunately, this has the drawbacksof high computationalrequirementsdue to the large number of test vectors needed, and the lack of adequate coverage measures to characterize the quality of a given testset. To overcome these limitations, there has been recent interest inhybrid techniques which combine the strengths of formal verification and simulation. Formal verification-based techniques are usedon a test model (usually much smaller than the design) to derive a setof functional test vectors, which are then used for design validationthrough simulation. The test set generated typically satisfies somecoverage measure on the test model. Recent research has proposedthe use of state or transition coverage. However, no effort has beenmade to relate these measures to the coverage of design errors. Furthermore, the derivation of the test model remains largely ad-hoc,with few formal guidelines.We demonstrate that under a given set of assumptions, transitiontours on test models can be used for complete validation of an implementation against a specification, for a large and important classof designs that includes many programmable/hardwired, general-purpose processors/DSPs. A by-product of this study is specificguidelines for deriving the test model, motivated by the requirement of providing complete coverage of all errors. We illustrate theapplication of our methodology on a pipelined implementation of the DLX processor.

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

quality
use
simulation
design
formal verification
model
coverage
errors
processor
research
methodology
test
space
functional
implementation
demonstrate

requirements
measurement
guideline
pipeline
general
product
vectorization
formalism
transit
functional testing
ad-hoc
completeness
programmer


mining anchor text for query refinement When searching large hypertext document collections, it is often possible that there are too many results available for ambiguous queries. Query refinement is an interactive process of query modification that can be used to narrow down the scope of search results. We propose a new method for automatically generating refinements or related terms to queries by mining anchor text for a large hypertext document collection. We show that the usage of anchor text as a basis for query refinement produces high quality refinement suggestions that are significantly better in terms of perceived usefulness compared to refinements that are derived using the document content. Furthermore, our study suggests that anchor text refinements can also be used to augment traditional query refinement algorithms based on query logs, since they typically differ in coverage and produce different refinements. Our results are based on experiments on an anchor text collection of a large corporate intranet.

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

hypertext
mining
quality
method
intranet
text
process
query refinement
queries
coverage
search
query

interaction
contention
use
collect
experience
algorithm
web search
refine
documentation
anchor text
query log
rank


scalable and dynamic quorum systems We investigate issues related to the probe complexity of quorum systems and their implementation in a dynamic environment. Our contribution is twofold. The first regards the algorithmic complexity of finding a quorum in case of random failures. We show a tradeoff between the load of a quorum system and its probe complexity for non adaptive algorithms. We analyze the algorithmic probe complexity of the Paths quorum system suggested by Naor and Wool in [18], and present two optimal algorithms. The first is a non adaptive algorithm that matches our lower bound. The second is an adaptive algorithm with a probe complexity that is linear in the minimum between the size of the smallest quorum set and the inverse of the load of the system. We supply a constant degree network in which these algorithms could be executed efficiently. Thus the Paths quorum system is shown to have good balance between many measures of quality. Our second contribution is presenting Dynamic Paths -a suggestion for a dynamic and scalable quorum system, which can operate in an environment where elements join and leave the system. The quorum system could be viewed as a dynamic adaptation of the Paths system, and therefore has low load high availability and good probe complexity. We show that it scales gracefully as the number of elements grows.

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

network
availability
present
lower bound
probe
quality
systems
adaptive algorithm
size
dynamic
implementation
case
complexity

measurement
environments
scalability
optimality
dynamic adaptation
algorithm
randomization
dynamic environment
failure


Performance analysis of a discrete-time queuing system with a correlated train arrival process In this paper, we present an exact transient and steady-state discrete-time queuing analysis of a statistical multiplexer with a finite number of input links and whose arrival process is correlated and consists of a train of a fixed number of fixed-length packets. The functional equation describing this queuing model is manipulated and transformed into a mathematical tractable form. This allows us to derive the transient probability generating function (pgf) of the buffer occupancy. From this transient pgf, time-dependent performance measures such as transient probability of empty buffer, transient mean of buffer occupancy and instantaneous packet overflow probabilities are derived. By applying the final-value theorem, the corresponding exact expressions for the steady-state pgf of the queue length and packet arrivals are derived. We also show how the transient analysis provides insights into the derivation of the system's busy period distribution. Closed-form expressions for the mean packet and message delays are also provided. The paper presents significant results on the transient and steady-state analysis of statistical multiplexers with N input links and correlated train arrivals.

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

performance analysis
train arrivals
busy period

atm multiplexers
transient transform analysis
functional equations
discrete-time queues
message delay


Canonical Effective Subalgebras of Classical Algebras as Constructive Metric Completions We prove general theorems about unique existence of effective subalgebras of classical algebras. The theorems are consequences of standard facts about completions of metric spaces within the framework of constructive mathematics, suitably interpreted in realizability models. We work with general realizability models rather than with a particular model of computation. Consequently, all the results are applicable in various established schools of computability, such as type 1 and type 2 effectivity, domain representations, equilogical spaces, and others.

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

computable and effective algebra
constructive metric spaces


A comment on the Chen-Chung scheme for hierarchical access control Chen and Chung proposed an improved scheme of hierarchical access control based on the Chinese Remainder theorem and symmetric encryption [1]. In this paper, we point out that the part of their scheme for adding a new class is not correct. Furthermore, we discuss how to fix this problem.

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 O O O 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 proposal for a standard interface between Monte Carlo tools and one-loop programs Many highly developed Monte Carlo tools for the evaluation of cross sections based on tree matrix elements exist and are used by experimental collaborations in high energy physics. As the evaluation of one-loop matrix elements has recently been undergoing enormous progress, the combination of one-loop matrix elements with existing Monte Carlo tools is on the horizon. This would lead to phenomenological predictions at the next-to-leading order level. This note summarises the discussion of the next-to-leading order multi-leg (NLM) working group on this issue which has been taking place during the workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders at Les Houches, France, in June 2009. The result is a proposal for a standard interface between Monte Carlo tools and one-loop matrix element programs. Dedicated to the memory of, and in tribute to, Thomas Binoth, who led the effort to develop this proposal for Les Houches 2009. Thomas led the discussions, set up the subgroups, collected the contributions, and wrote and edited this paper. He made a promise that the paper would be on the arXiv the first week of January, and we are faithfully fulfilling his promise. In his honour, we would like to call this the Binoth Les Houches Accord.

O O O O O O O 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 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 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 B I I


Morpheme-based, cross-lingual indexing for medical document retrieval The increasing availability of machine-readable medical documents is not really matched with the sophistication of currently used retrieval facilities to deal with a variety of critical natural language phenomena. Still most popular are string-matching methods which encounter problems for the medical sublanguage, in particular, concerning the wide-spread use of complex word forms such as noun compounds. We introduce a methodology for the segmentation of complex compounds into medically motivated morphemes. Given the sublanguage patterns in our data these morphemes derive from German, Greek and Latin roots. For indexing and retrieval purposes, such a morpheme dictionary may be further structured by defining the semantic relations among morpheme sets in order to build up a multilingual morpheme thesaurus. We present a tool for thesaurus compilation and management, and outline a methodology for the proper construction and maintenance of a multilingual morpheme thesaurus.

medical language processing
morphological analysis
information retrieval


A Generalized Discrete Event System (G-DEVS) Flattened Simulation Structure: Application to High-Level Architecture (HLA) Compliant Simulation of Workflow The objective of the paper is to specify a new flattened Generalized Discrete Event System simulation engine structure and the Workflow modeling and simulation environment embedding it. We express first the new flattened simulation structure and give the corresponding transformation functions. We analyze performance tests conducted on this new simulation structure to measure its efficiency. Then, having selected the essential concepts in the elaboration of the Workflow, we present a language of description to define the Workflow processes. Finally, we define a distributed Workflow Reference Model that interfaces components of the Workflow with respect to the High-Level Architecture standard. Today enterprises can take advantage of this platform in the context of networking where interoperability, flexibility, and efficiency are challenging concepts.

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

discrete event system
flattened simulation structure
workflow

generalized discrete event system
distributed simulation
high-level architecture
enterprise interoperability


Gap junctions are needed to stabilize slow bursting behaviour ? A mathematical model of a two-cell network of mutually inhibitory and gap-junctionally coupled interneurons has been developed to help understand the genesis and control of slow bursting oscillations observed in rat brain slices. The model suggests a mechanism for stable bursting which relies on persistent sodium and slowly inactivating potassium currents in the individual neurons, and inhibitory synapses and gap junctions between the neurons. The work indicates that a role for gap-junctional coupling may be in the stabilization of these slow bursts.

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 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

oscillation
interneuron
gap junction
mutual inhibition


SKELETONIZING CHARACTER IMAGES USING A MODIFIED MEDIAL AXIS-BASED STRATEGY In this paper we propose a thinning methodology applicable to character images. It is novel in terms of its ability to adapt to local character shape while constructing the thinned skeleton. Our method does not produce many of the distortions in the character shapes which normally result from the use of existing thinning algorithms. The proposed thinning methodology is based on the medial axis of the character. The skeleton has a width of one pixel. As a by-product of our thinning approach, the skeleton also gets segmented into strokes in vector form. Hence further stroke segmentation is not required. We have conducted experiments with printed and handwritten characters in several scripts such as English, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil. We obtain less spurious branches compared to other thinning methods. Our method does not use any kind of post processing.

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

contour
junction points
skeleton segments
skeletonization


Basic Reproduction Number of Rabies Model with Stage Structure The mathematical model is proposed to simulate the dynamics of rabies transmissions in the raccoon population where juveniles stay with their mother and become adults until they establish their own habitats. The basic reproduction number of rabies transmission is formulated and is shown to be a threshold value of disease invasion. The bifurcation direction from the disease-free equilibrium is proved to be forward when the basic reproduction number passes through unity for spatial homogenous environment. The global stability of the disease-free steady state is also studied.

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 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 B O O O O O O O O

threshold stability bifurcation structure


An image steganographic algorithm based on spatial desynchronization Calibration based attack is one of the most important steganalytic attacks in recent past specifically for JPEG domain steganography. In calibration attack, the attacker generally predicts the cover image statistics from the stego image. Preventing attackers from such prediction is used to resist these attacks. Domain separation (or randomization) is such a technique which is used for hiding the embedding domain from the attacker. It is observed that existing domain randomization techniques cannot provide enough randomization such that they are easily be detected by recent steganalysis techniques. In this paper, we have extended our previous work based on spatial desynchronization using statistical analysis. It is also experimentally shown that proposed algorithm is less detectable against the calibration based blind as well as targeted steganalytic attacks than the existing JPEG domain steganographic schemes.

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

steganography
steganalysis
calibration attack
domain separation


trusted computing architectures for a mobile it infrastructure As computing architectures become mobile the physical ownership of data and security guarantees for that data is required to gain trust of the users of the computing architectures. In this paper we highlight security guarantees required to alleviate privacy concerns of the users of a computing service. A hardware system entrusted with security is referred to as the trusted platform module (TPM). We highlight how security guarantees in an IT infrastructure can be met using trusted platform modules and should be an integral part of computing services along with other security constructs like firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus etc.

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


The existence and construction of non-extreme (a,b)-trees In amortized analysis of data structures, it is standard to assume that initially the structure is empty. Usually, results cannot be established otherwise. In this paper, we investigate the possibilities of establishing such results for initially non-empty multi-way trees. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


A spam rejection scheme during SMTP sessions based on layer-3 e-mail classification This paper proposes a scheme that rejects spam e-mails during their simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) sessions. This scheme utilizes a layer-3 e-mail classification technique, which allows e-mail classes to be estimated before the end of SMTP sessions at receiving e-mail servers. We analyze the proposed scheme using discrete-time Markov chain analysis under varying e-mail traffic loads and service capacities. This paper also considers the effects of e-mail retransmission and illegal spam relaying by zombie systems on the performance of the proposed scheme. Results from our analysis show that e-mail server loading decreases by using the proposed technique. This allows the reduction in non-spam e-mail queuing delays and loss probability. Our scheme also protects e-mail servers from being overloaded by spam traffic and, if performed collectively over the Internet, it is capable of performing outbound spam control.

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


Regulation of Endolymphatic Fluid Volume Direct measurements of the dispersal of markers in endolymph have failed to support previously established hypotheses of endolymph homeostasis, specifically longitudinal flow, radial flow, and dynamic flow theories. Rather, they suggest that in the normal state endolymph is maintained without a significant involvement of volume flow at all. Ions appear to be transported into and out of the endolymphatic space in a similar manner to that for a single cell, with each ion transport process contributing to the electrolyte pool. In abnormal volume states, however, longitudinal volume flow of endolymph may contribute to homeostasis. Procedures that enlarge the endolymphatic space result in endolymph flow toward the base of the cochlea, contributing to the removal of electrolytes and volume. Similarly, procedures that decrease cochlear endolymph volume induce apically directed flow in the cochlea, contributing to the addition of electrolytes and volume to the endolymphatic space. The endolymphatic sac responds to endolymph volume disturbance, showing opposite responses to volume increases and decreases. Although evidence is still limited, the endolymphatic sac appears to act as a bidirectional overflow system. While volume disturbances originating from out-of-balance transport processes anywhere in the labyrinth may be corrected by the sac, dysfunction of the sac itself is likely to have a substantial effect on endolymph status.

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


An error resilient coding scheme for H.264/AVC video transmission based on data embedding For entropy-coded H.264/AVC video frames, a transmission error in a codeword will not only affect the underlying codeword but also may affect subsequent codewords, resulting in a great degradation of the received video frames. In this study, an error resilient coding scheme for H.264/AVC video transmission is proposed. At the encoder, for an H.264/AVC intra-coded I frame, the important data for each macroblock (MB) are extracted and embedded into the next frame by the proposed MB-interleaving slice-based data embedding scheme for I frames. For an H.264/AVC inter-coded P frame, two types of important data with different error recovery capabilities for each MB are extracted and embedded into the next frame by the proposed MB-interleaving slice-based data embedding scheme for P frames. At the decoder, if the important data for a corrupted MB can be correctly extracted, the extracted important data for the corrupted MB will facilitate the employed error concealment scheme to conceal the corrupted MB; otherwise, the employed error concealment scheme is simply used to conceal the corrupted MB. As compared with some recent error resilient approaches based on data embedding, in this study, the important data selection mechanism for different types of MBs, the detailed data embedding mechanism, and the error detection and concealment scheme performed at the decoder are well developed to design an integrated error resilient coding scheme. Additionally, two types of important data with different transmission error recovery capabilities for each MB in P frames can provide more reliable error resiliency. Based on the simulation results obtained in, this study, the proposed scheme can recover high-quality H.264/AVC video frames from the corresponding corrupted video frames up to a video packet loss rate of 20%. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

error resilient coding
error concealment
transmission error
data embedding


Assessment of the critical dimension prediction accuracy for the lumped parameter model for resist lithography Lithography modelling is widely used to predict the critical dimensions (CD) of patterned features after lithographic processing. A lot of full and simplified resist models are available. Previous works on full resist models have shown that the numerous model parameters are very difficult to set and often have a poor range of validity outside the dataset that have been used to generate them [Proc. SPIE 3678 (1999) 877; Proc. SPIE 4404 (2001) 99]. Simplified resist models are an alternative solution, easier to set, and they often provide a good simulation accuracy [Proc. SPIE 4691 (2002) 1266; Proc. SPIE 5040 (2003) 1536]. Among simplified models, lumped parameter model (LPM) is widely used for CD predictions. In this paper, we study the CD prediction accuracy of the LPM, using a comparison between experimental and simulated data. A systematic method is applied for LPM parameters extraction (contrast ? and effective thickness Deff). This assessment shows that a single parameter set giving reasonable accuracy is not found. Moreover, the critical analysis of the model parameters shows that these LPM parameters have a poor physical meaning. We also point out that there is a fundamental disagreement between the LPM theory and experiments.

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

lumped parameter model
simplified resist models
critical dimension
cd prediction
simulation
lithography


IMPROVING NEURAL NETWORKS PREDICTION ACCURACY USING PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION COMBINER This paper proposes a technique to improve Artificial Neural Network (ANN) prediction accuracy using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) combiner. A hybrid system consists of two stages with the first stage containing two ANNs. The first ANN predictor is a multi-layer feed-forward network trained with error back-propagation and the second predictor is a functional link network. These two predictors are combined in the second stage using PSO combiner in a linear and non-linear fashion. The proposed method is applied to problem of predicting daily natural gas consumption. The performance of ANN predictors and combination methods are tested on real data from four different gas utilities. The experimental results show that the proposed particle swarm optimization combiners results in more accurate prediction compared to using single ANN predictor. Prediction accuracy improvement of the proposed PSO combiners have been shown using hypothesis testing.

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

neural networks
particle swarm optimization


A novel negative sampling based on TFIDF for learning word representation In recent years, continuous-valued word embedding learned by neural network attaches extensive attentions. Especially, Mikolov?s Continuous Bag-of-Words (CBOW) model and Skip-gram model optimized by Negative Sampling (NEG) achieves impressive result in capturing word semantic and syntactic information. However, the property of NEG that samples over word frequency has the drawbacks of unbalanced training and tends to decrease the training times of medium-frequency words which have greater amount of information; furthermore, words with higher frequency are less probability of being the negative samples. Focus on these issues, this paper proposed a novel NEG strategy that samples negatives based on the notion of Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (NEG-TFIDF). Two ideas are included in this method. First, Negative Sampling is considers as the more effective optimization approach for learning word representation; second, the concept of TFIDF is combined to optimize Negative Sampling, which is a classic and popular method to assess the discrimination of one word for a corpus. Statistical results prove that NEG-TFIDF feasibly reduces the interference of high-frequency words that have very less information and increases the training times of medium-frequency words keeping the total training times being constant and without more calculations. The experiment results show that NEG-TFIDF outperforms Mikolov?s NEG on both word analogy and word similarity test tasks, particularly in terms of the performance of medium-frequency words. Meanwhile, it also achieves better effects on NLP tasks. Moreover, NEG-TFIDF is a reasonable solution to the problem that NEG?s performance decreases when the number of negative samples increases beyond a boundary value.

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


exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.

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

surface computing
health care
older adults
multitouch


Two new neural network approaches to two-dimensional CT image reconstruction Recently, we developed two neural network techniques for reconstructing two-dimensional CT images from a small number of projection data. They are simulated annealing and back propagation reconstruction techniques. The two techniques have been developed independent of each other. In this paper we present a comparative evaluation study on the two techniques. We start with introducing the two new approaches one by one, and then present simulation results. Reconstruction results by a well known conventional method - Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (ART) - is also presented for the sake of comparison. A quantitative evaluation among the three reconstruction methods is presented. A pixel-wise error estimator is used to calculate the overall error in the reconstructed images. The estimator reveals the effectiveness of the new neural network techniques compared to the conventional technique ART. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

art
ct image reconstruction
simulated annealing


A novel generic graph model for traffic grooming in heterogeneous WDM mesh networks As the operation of our fiber-optic backbone networks migrates from interconnected SONET rings to arbitrary mesh topology, traffic grooming on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks becomes an extremely important research problem. To address this problem, we propose a new generic graph model for traffic grooming in heterogeneous WDM mesh networks. The novelty of our model is that, by only manipulating the edges of the auxiliary graph created by our model and the weights of these edges, our model can achieve various objectives using different grooming policies, while taking into account various constraints such as transceivers, wavelengths, wavelength-conversion capabilities, and grooming capabilities. Based on the auxiliary graph, we develop an integrated traffic-grooming algorithm (IGABAG) and an integrated grooming procedure (INGPROC) which jointly solve several traffic-grooming subproblems by simply applying the shortest-path computation method. Different grooming policies can be represented by different weight-assignment functions, and the performance of these grooming policies are compared under both nonblocking scenario and blocking scenario. The IGABAG can be applied to both static and dynamic traffic grooming. In static grooming, the traffic-selection scheme is key to achieving good network performance. We propose several traffic-selection schemes based on this model and we evaluate their performance for different network topologies.

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

mesh network
optical network
wavelength-division multiplexing (wdm)


Nuclear Receptors, Testosterone, and Posttranslational Modifications in Human INSL3 Promoter Activity in Testicular Leydig Cells Insulin-like peptide 3 (INSL3) is a hormone produced by fetal and adult Leydig cells of the mammalian testis. During embryonic life INSL3 is required for testicular descent, whereas in adults it is involved in bone metabolism and male germ cell survival. Despite these important roles, the molecular mechanisms regulating INSL3 expression remain poorly understood. So far, two transcription factors have been implicated in INSL3 transcription: the nuclear receptors SF1 and NUR77. Circumstantial evidence also points to a role for androgens. Using transient transfections in MA-10 Leydig cells, we found that testosterone regulates in a time- and dose-dependent manner the human INSL3 promoter. The INSL3 promoter, however, does not contain a classical androgen-responsive element. Testosterone responsiveness was found to be mediated through an element located in the proximal INSL3 promoter, which also contains a NUR77-SF1-binding site. Furthermore, we found that posttranslational modifications, such as phosphorylation and acetylation, modulate transcription factor activity and therefore also contribute to INSL3 promoter activity in Leydig cells. All together, these data provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms regulating INSL3 expression in the mammalian testis.

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

male sex differentiation
testis descent
relaxin-like factor


computer literacy by computer The basic concepts of computer literacy can be taught by the use of computer management and interactive instruction. The approach described here emphasizes measuring student achievement, and informing students of their progress. This approach also incorporates a system for the evaluation of alternative instructional experiences.

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

use
computer literacy
instruction
evaluation
management
student

interaction
measurement
systems
computer assisted instruction
computation
cai
concept
experience
learning
psi


A comparison of two stochastic model updating methods using the DLR AIRMOD test structure The problem of stochastic model updating is addressed. Results are compared from two methods (covariance and interval model updating). Real test data is taken from the AIRMOD structure a replica of GARTEUR SM-AG19. Similar parameter bounds could be identified from both methods.

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

covariance and interval model updating
airmod structure


Location estimation via support vector regression Location estimation using the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) is an emerging application that infers the location of the mobile receiver from multiple signals measurements. While geometrical and signal propagation models have been deployed to tackle this estimation problem, the terrain factors and power fluctuations have confined the accuracy of such estimation. Using support vector regression, we investigate the missing value location estimation problem by providing theoretical and empirical analysis on existing and novel kernels. A novel synthetic experiment is designed to compare the performances of different location estimation approaches. The proposed support vector regression approach shows promising performances, especially in terrains with local variations in environmental factors.

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

location estimation
support vector regression
global system for mobile communication


MRI Pulse Sequence Design With First-Order Gradient Moment Nulling in Arbitrary Directions by Solving a Polynomial Program We suggest a polynomial program for the calculation of optimized gradient waveforms for magnetic resonance tomography pulse sequences. Such non-linear mathematical programs can describe gradient system capabilities, meet k-space trajectory specifications, and capture sequence timing conditions. Moreover they allow the incorporation of gradient moment nulling constraints in one or several arbitrary spatial directions, which can reduce flow motion artifacts in the images. We report first experiences in solving such automatic pulse sequence design programs with the interior point solver Ipopt.

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

double spin echo sequence
nonlinear optimization
timing constraint


Monitoring and steering Grid applications with GRID superscalar We present the design and implementation of a general task monitoring and steering system for Grid applications (GSTAT). The system is integrated in the GRID superscalar (GRIDSs) programming framework. Information at the application, Grid node, and individual task levels are supplied upon request. Using the steering capabilities, individual tasks or the whole application can be cancelled. The corresponding jobs can be restarted using fault tolerance and checkpointing capabilities based on GRIDSs. In addition, the computational resources assigned to an application can be modified. GSTAT is tested using high throughput and high performance computing cases on an Internet-based Grid of computers.

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

grid superscalar
steering grid applications

grid computing
monitoring grid applications


Efficient bufferless packet switching on trees and leveled networks In bufferless networks the packets cannot be buffered while they are in transit; thus, once injected, the packets have to move constantly. Bufferless networks are interesting because they model optical networks. The objective of this work is to demonstrate that efficient bufferless packet switching is achievable in particular, interesting network topologies. We consider the tree and leveled network topologies, which represent a wide class of network configurations. On these networks, we study many-to-one batch problems where each node is the source of at most one packet, and the destination of an arbitrary number of packets. Each packet is to follow a preselected path from the source to the destination. Let T* be the optimal delivery time for the packets. We have the following results: For trees, we present two bufferless algorithms: (i) a deterministic algorithm with delivery time O(delta . T* . log n), and (ii) a randomized algorithm with delivery time O(T* . log(2) n); where, delta is the maximum node degree, and n is the number of nodes. Both algorithms are distributed in the sense that packet forwarding decisionsare made locally at the nodes. For leveled networks, we present two algorithms: (i) a centralized algorithm with delivery time O (T* . log n), and (ii) a distributed algorithm with delivery time O (T* . log(2)n), where n is the number of nodes. The first algorithm is centralized in the sense that all decisions are madeby a single node. The distributed algorithm simulates the centralized one; the cost of this simulation isan extra logarithmic factor. Our bufferless algorithms are near-optimal, and they improve on previous results for trees and leveled networks by multiple logarithmic factors. (C) 2007 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

routing algorithms
packet scheduling
hot-potato routing
congestion
dilation


Multiresolutional Gaussian Mixture Model for Precise and Stable Foreground Segmentation in Transform Domain This paper describes a multiresolutional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) for precise and stable foreground segmentation. A multiple block sizes GMM and a computationally efficient fine-to-coarse strategy, which are carried out in the Walsh transform (WT) domain, are newly introduced to the GMM scheme. By using a set of variable size block-based GMMs, a precise and stable processing is realized. Our fine-to-coarse strategy comes from the WT spectral nature, which drastically reduces the computational steps. In addition. the total computation amount of the proposed approach requires only less than 10% of the original pixel-based GMM approach. Experimental results show that our approach gives stable performance in many conditions. including dark foreground objects against light, global lighting changes, and scenery in heavy snow.

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

foreground segmentation
gaussian mixture model
walsh transform

fine-to-coarse strategy
variable block size


Medical dictionaries for patient encoding systems: a methodology Medical language is highly compositional and makes extensive use of common roots, especially LatinoGreek roots. Besideswords devoted to common sense, medical language presents some typical characteristics,especially on morphological and semantic aspects of word formation. Morphological decomposition and identification precedes semantic analysis. It is only when these two prerequisites are fulfilled that an attempt to grasp the meaning of a whole expression is made possible. The main aim of the proposed approach is that of coping with the lack of coverage of the medical lexical knowledge, in order to help physicians find the correct international classification for diseases (ICD) codes for a written diagnosis. The proposed methodology allows the development of a powerful dynamic dictionary dedicated to natural language processing in the field of diagnoses and narrative procedures . It describes the design of an analyser that can profit fromh a dictionary. The methods used have proved to be efficient for various classifications, s well as for multiple languages, as the system presently supports French, German, English and Dutch for ICD-9 and ICD-10 classifications.

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

natural language processing
classifications


A pilot-aided detector for spectrum sensing of Digital Video BroadcastingTerrestrial signals in cognitive radio networks In this paper, the main properties of digital television broadcasting signals based on the Digital Video BroadcastingTerrestrial (DVB-T) standard are analyzed, and these properties are utilized to design a new pilot-aided detector for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks. The proposed detector consists of a processing unit and a combination and decision unit. In the processing unit, multiple statistics that correspond to different enhanced pilot components are computed. In the combination and decision unit, three newly proposed combination schemes are adopted to combine these statistics, and then, a final decision on the presence or absence of the DVB-T signals is made on the basis of the Neyman-Pearson criterion. The proposed pilot-aided detector exploits both the periodic continual and scattered pilots that are intrinsic in the DVB-T signals, processes the observed data timely, experiences short sensing duration, and requires no time synchronization information. Furthermore, the proposed pilot-aided detector is able to distinguish DVB-T signals from interference. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that spectrum bands that are not currently occupied by the DVB-T systems can be detected accurately by using the proposed pilot-aided detector. Simulation results also demonstrate the significant performance gain of the proposed detector compared with the counterparts.Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

digital video broadcastingterrestrial (dvb-t)


MIX is a 2-MCFL and the word problem in Z2 Z 2 is captured by the IO and the OI hierarchies In this work we establish that the language MIX={w?{a;b;c}?||w|a=|w|b=|w|c} MIX = { w ? { a ; b ; c } ? | | w | a = | w | b = | w | c } and the language O 2 = { w ? { a ; a ; b ; b } | | w | a = | w | a ? | w | b = | w | b } are 2-MCFLs. As 2-MCFLs form a class of languages that is included in both the IO and OI hierarchies, and as O2 O 2 is the group language of a simple presentation of Z2 Z 2 we exhibit here the first, to our knowledge, non-virtually-free group language (i.e. non-context-free group language) that is captured by the IO and OI hierarchies. Moreover, it was a long-standing open problem whether MIX was a mildly context sensitive language or not, and it was conjectured that it was not, so we close this conjecture by giving it a negative answer.

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

higher-order collapsible pushdown automata


Topological optimization of structures subject to Von Mises stress constraints The topological asymptotic analysis provides the sensitivity of a given shape functional with respect to an infinitesimal domain perturbation. Therefore, this sensitivity can be naturally used as a descent direction in a structural topology design problem. However, according to the literature concerning the topological derivative, only the classical approach based on flexibility minimization for a given amount of material, without control on the stress level supported by the structural device, has been considered. In this paper, therefore, we introduce a class of penalty functionals that mimic a pointwise constraint on the Von Mises stress field. The associated topological derivative is obtained for plane stress linear elasticity. Only the formal asymptotic expansion procedure is presented, but full justifications can be deduced from existing works. Then, a topology optimization algorithm based on these concepts is proposed, that allows for treating local stress criteria. Finally, this feature is shown through some numerical examples.

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

topological derivative
topology optimization
local stress criteria
von mises stress


Macroscopic 1/f behavior of fractal signals generated by additive substitution We analyze the structure of the discrete Fourier transform of a particular class of self-similar discrete signals which are iteratively generated by an additive substitution procedure, starting from a finite generator sequence. The amplitude spectra of such signals obtained from different generators have a similar form. The amplitude spectrum contains several affine branches, the number of which depends on the iteration level, on the size of the generator, and on the spectrum's symmetry. It has a macroscopic 1/f-characteristic.

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

deterministic fractal signals
1/f-behavior
scaling behavior


Remote access virtual private network architecture for high-speed wireless internet users The new emerging, broadband wireless network (BWN) technologies with high-speed wireless internet access promotes corporations to provide their roaming employees with high-speed wireless access to the computing resources on their corporate networks. Thus, a value added service to broadband wireless network is the remote access virtual private network (VPN), where the corporate legitimate users can connect to their offices wirelessly from different locations and get secure services as if they were connected to the corporate local area network (LAN). One of the most important challenges is to block out illegitimate user requests, which are wirelessly received. to protect corporate privacy. Registration (adding new users) and authentication (accepting current users) functions should be implemented with highly secured wireless connection. These functions are accomplished by encapsulating (i.e. tunneling) the user information in a secured form to the corporate authentication server through the internet traffic. The corporate authentication server then grants or denies the user access. In this paper, we propose a new operational design algorithm for remote access wireless VPN authentication and registration protocols that depends on modifying tunnel establishment as compared to existing dial-in VPN mechanisms. The modifications proposed in this paper are made to support successful deployment of the remote access VPN services over high-speed wireless network. The paper presents an overview of two tunneling approaches using Layer 3 and Layer 2 separately for implementing these functions. Then we propose how we establish the tunnel in both approaches, and compare it to similar operation steps previously reported for the dial-in VPN protocols. The proposed algorithms are distinguished from previously developed dial-in VPN protocols by using L2TP and IPSEC instead of mobile IP. It is also shown that the steps involved in the establishment of the tunnel are functionally different and more appropriate to our applications using communication environment of the BWN. Finally, a qualitative analysis of the added functions, and a comparison between L2TP-based and IPSec-based approaches are established. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

high-speed wireless
tunneling protocols
portability


Traffic behavior in a two-lane system consisting of a mixture of buses and cars In this paper, a two-lane traffic system consisting of a mixture of buses and cars is studied. The buses stop at each bus stop to pick up passengers and are not allowed to change lane. The cars may change lane when hindered by preceding vehicles. Our simulations show that with a fixed number of buses, four states of the traffic system are identified. The spatial-temporal plots of the four traffic states, and the trajectories of buses at different densities are presented. A gradual transition instead of sharp phase transition from bunching state to homogeneous state of the buses is found. Next, we study the system behavior at different number of bus stops, and an optimal number of stops is suggested. Finally, the influence of bus stops on the fundamental diagram is studied.

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

two-lane traffic system
mcd model
synchronized
flow.


a framework for data base semantic integrity A structured framework is provided for describing the semantic integrity requirements of a data base. The semantic integrity of a data base is said to be violated when the data base ceases to represent a legitimate configuration of the application domain it is intended to model. In the context of the relational data model, it is possible to identify multiple levels of semantic integrity information. Relation constraints comprise one such level; they express the semantic information not contained in the structure of the relations nor in the identity of their underlying domains. The three components of a relation constraint are considered: (1) the assertion (a predicate on the state of the data base or on transitions between data base states), (2) the validity requirement (the occasion(s) at which the assertion must hold), and (3) the violation-action (the action that is to occur if the assertion does not hold at a time when it should). A framework for relation constraints is presented. Details of a structured classification scheme are outlined. This scheme is intended to form a basis for a high level, well-directed, and disciplined methodology for the design of relational data bases. Emphasis is placed on the assertion component of relation constraints. Assertions are viewed as more than expressions of some relationship among different values in a data base; assertions single out the data that is constrained, and state the properties that this data must possess. A classification is provided of the various predicate types used to identify constrained data and to state the properties which they are to possess. Approaches to the relation constraint assertion specification process are discussed.

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

requirements
framework
design
express
context
domain
model
constraint
classification
component
structure
values
methodology
semantic
data base
types
process
data
relation
action
scheme

applications
validation
direct
timing
data base management
informal
data models
relationships
transit
data definition
ident
configurability
data base design
semantic integrity
data semantics
assert
integrability


Impact of reducing resist stripping processes at elevated temperature on ULK and HM materials Ultra low-k materials for interconnects in chip manufacturing require new or adapted procedures for integration into copper damascene metallization, including patterning processes. This work deals with the impact H2 containing stripping processes at elevated temperatures on porous ultra low-k materials and low-k hard mask/capping materials. Porous MSQ and SiO2 and a low-k hard mask have been prepared by spin on deposition (SOD) and for comparison dense SiOCH by PECVD deposition. Resist stripping was done with a downstream microwave discharge in an advanced strip passivation chamber (ASP) of Applied Materials using mixtures of H2/N2 and H2/He. Shrinkage (change of thickness) and electrical properties (k-value and field break down) were investigated. FTIR spectra were used to support the investigation. Ashing parameters, like time of plasma treatment, temperature and gas composition, have been characterized. It was found that the advantage of nitrogen admixture is the high rate of ashing, but shrinkage and impact on k-values will be higher than with He admixture. Helium admixture reduces shrinkage and k-values will be only slightly impacted, but stripping time has to be increased for resist removal.

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

resist removal
electrical properties
ftir


Form-finding of compressive structures using Prescriptive Dynamic Relaxation We present small strain truss and triangular elements for compressive form-finding. We modify Dynamic Relaxation form-finding to include element prescription. We provide forcing functions to achieve desired segmental geometry. A scheme for equilibrium and geometrical convergence is verified. Case studies validate the practical application of element geometry prescription.

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

dynamic relaxation
compressive structures

form-finding
concrete shells
footbridges
segmentation


A video cloud platform combing online and offline cloud computing technologies With the rapid growth of video data from various sources, like security and transportation surveillance, there arise requirements for both online real-time analysis and offline batch processing of large-scale video data. Existing video processing systems fall short in addressing many challenges in large-scale video processing, for example performance, data storage, and fault tolerance. The emerging cloud computing and big data techniques shed lights to intelligent processing for large-scale video data. This paper proposes a general cloud-based architecture and platform that can provide a robust solution to intelligent analysis and storage for video data, which is named as BiF (Batch processing Integrated with Fast processing) architecture. We have implemented the BiF architecture using both Hadoop platform and Storm platform, which are typical offline batch processing cloud platform and online real-time processing cloud platform, respectively. The proposed architecture can handle continual surveillance video data effectively, where real-time analysis, batch processing, distributed storage and cloud services are seamlessly integrated to meet the requirements of video data processing and management. The evaluations show that the proposed approach is efficient in terms of performance, storage, and fault tolerance.

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

cloud computing
video processing
hadoop
storm


Multiple-description vector quantization with lattice codebooks: Design and analysis The problem of designing a multiple-description vector quantizer with lattice codebook Lambda is considered. A general solution is given to a labeling problem which plays a crucial role in the design of such quantizers, Numerical performance results are obtained for quantizers based on the lattices A(2) and Z(i), i = 1, 2, 4, 8, that make use of this labeling algorithm. The high-rate squared-error distortions for this family of L-dimensional vector quantizers are then analyzed for a memoryless source with probability density function (pdf) p and differential entropy h(p) infinity) (d) over bar (0)2(2R(1+a)) = (1)/(4) G(Lambda )2(2h(p)) and lim(R --> infinity) (d) over bar (s)2(2R(1-a)) = G(S(L))2(2h(p)) where G(Lambda) is the normalized second moment of a Voronoi cell of the lattice Lambda and G(S(L)) is the normalized second moment of a sphere in L dimensions.

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

cubic lattice
hexagonal lattice
lattice quantization
multiple descriptions
source coding
vector quantization


ON q-ANALOGS OF STEINER SYSTEMS AND COVERING DESIGNS The q-analogs of covering designs, Steiner systems, and Turan designs are studied. It is shown that q-covering designs and q-Turan designs are dual notions. A strong necessary condition for the existence of Steiner structures (the q-analogs of Steiner systems) over F-2 is given. No Steiner structures of strength 2 or more are currently known, and our condition shows that their existence would imply the existence of new Steiner systems of strength 3. The exact values of the q-covering numbers C-q(n, k, 1) and C-q(n, n-1, r) are determined for all q,n,k,r. Furthermore, recursive upper and lower bounds on the size of general q-covering designs and q-Turan designs are presented. Finally, it is proved that C-2(5, 3,2) = 27 and C-2(7, 3,2) <= 399. Tables of upper and lower bounds on C-2(n, k, r) are given for all n <= 8.

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

covering designs
steiner structures
turan designs


Prostaglandin E2 Receptors and COX Enzymes in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of prostaglandin E2 receptors (EP14), cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1), and COX-2 in nontumor and tumor human liver tissues, and also to evaluate the antitumor activity of selective EP1 receptor antagonist used alone or in combination with COX-1 and COX-2 selective inhibitors. Semiquantitative PCR analyses revealed that EP14, COX-1, and COX-2 mRNA expression was detected in nearly all the tissue samples assayed, although with a high variability between nontumor and tumor tissues. In vitro EP1 receptor antagonist inhibited anchorage-independent cell growth and reduced the viability of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, treatment with the combination of EP1 receptor antagonist and COX inhibitors produced a significantly greater cell growth inhibition than the single agent alone. These findings suggest that the EP1 receptor may represent an important target for HCC treatment, and in addition they could provide preclinical support for a combined chemotherapeutic approach with EP1 antagonists and COX inhibitors in the treatment of liver cancer.

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


Meeting scheduling: Face-to-face, automatic scheduler, and email based coordination We conducted laboratory experiments based on small groups (4 to 5 participants) to compare the performance of 4 different mechanisms of meeting scheduling: (a) face-to-face coordination wherein individuals negotiate in person and arrive at a consensus on the timing of the meeting, (b) email as the sole communication medium with no structured support, (c) the calendar-based scheduling mechanism using email, and (d) an automated scheduler. Participants of the experiment were drawn from a university in Hong Kong. The experiment was implemented based on the real task of meeting scheduling among project groups that had to meet several times during a 3-month period to work on their project (regardless of this experiment). Postexperimental surveys were used to assess satisfaction with agreed meeting time and perceived efficiency in coordination. The frequency of scheduling conflicts also was measured. Data analysis indicates that even with higher scheduling conflicts among the group members, participants in general showed more satisfaction with the meeting time reached during the face-to-face meeting and also concurred on the efficiency of face-to-face coordination. Overall, they preferred communication-oriented approaches such as face-to-face coordination over decision-oriented ones such as the automated scheduler. We discuss the result of data analysis from the perspective of cultural implications on meeting scheduling and on virtual process management.

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


Integrated topology control and routing in wireless sensor networks for prolonged network lifetime This study considers an integrated topology control and routing problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which are employed to gather data via use of sensors with limited energy resources. We employ a hierarchical topology and routing structure with multiple sinks and devise a topology control scheme via usable energy fraction at the sensors. We develop and examine three different mathematical models whose solutions prescribe clusterhead and sink locations and data routing from sensors to sinks in a period of a deployment cycle. We develop a heuristic solution algorithm which provides very small optimality gaps for the models. The approach utilizes two types of solution representations, a combination of multiple neighborhoods, and objective value-based cut inequalities for improving the evaluation of candidate solutions. We present extensive numerical test results and analysis of the models and the solution approach. We determine that our proposed model, which minimizes average energy usage and the range of remaining energy distribution at the sensors, captures important characteristics of topology control and routing integration in WSN design and exhibits significantly better performance than our benchmark models and a well-known protocol HEED in extending network lifetime.

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

data gathering
network design models
algorithms


IPSILON: Incremental Parsing for Semantic Indexing of Latent Concepts A new framework for content-based image retrieval, which takes advantage of the source characterization property of a universal source coding scheme, is investigated. Based upon a new class of multidimensional incremental parsing algorithm, extended from the Lempel-Ziv incremental parsing code, the proposed method captures the occurrence pattern of visual elements from a given image. A linguistic processing technique, namely the latent semantic analysis (LSA) method, is then employed to identify associative ensembles of visual elements, which lay the foundation for intelligent visual information analysis. In 2-D applications, incremental parsing decomposes an image into elementary patches that are different from the conventional fixed square-block type patches. When used in compressive representations, it is amenable in schemes that do not rely on average distortion criteria, a methodology that is a departure from the conventional vector quantization. We call this methodology a parsed representation. In this article, we present our implementations of an image retrieval system, called IPSILON, with parsed representations induced by different perceptual distortion thresholds. We evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the parsed representations by comparing their performance with that of four image retrieval systems, one using the conventional vector quantization for visual information analysis under the same LSA paradigm, another using a method called SIMPLIcity which is based upon an image segmentation and integrated region matching, and the other two based upon query-by-semantic-example and query-by-visual-example. The first two of them were tested with 20 000 images of natural scenes, and the others were tested with a portion of the images. The experimental results show that the proposed parsed representation efficiently captures the salient features in visual images and the IPSILON systems outperform other systems in terms of retrieval precision and distortion robustness.

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

incremental parsing
image retrieval
latent semantic analysis
vector quantization


On applying fair queuing discipline to schedule requests at access gateway for downlink differential QoS Scheduling packets is a usual solution to allocate the bandwidth on a bottleneck link. However, this solution cannot be used to manage the downlink bandwidth at the user-side access gateway, since the traffic is queued at the ISP-side gateway but not the user-side gateway. An idea is scheduling the requests at the user-side gateway to control the amount of the responses queued in the ISP-side gateway. This work first investigates the possibility of applying the class-based fair queuing discipline, which was widely and maturely used in scheduling packets, to schedule requests. However, we found that simply applying this discipline to schedule requests would encounter the timing and ordering problems at releasing requests and may not satisfy high-class users. Thus, we propose a minimum-service first request scheduling (MSF-RS) scheme. MSF-RS always selects the next request from the class receiving the minimum service to provide user-based weighted fairness, which ensures more bandwidth for high-class users. Next, MSF-RS uses a window-based rate control on releasing requests to maintain full link utilization and reduce the user-perceived latency. The results of analysis, simulation and field trial demonstrate that MSF-RS provides fairness while reducing 2330% of user-perceived latency on average. Besides, a MSF-RS gateway can save 25% of CPU loading.

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

request scheduling
access gateway
fair queuing


METAL: A framework for mixture-of-experts task and attention learning Rapid increase in the size and complexity of sensory systems demands for attention control in real world robotic tasks. However, attention control and the task are often highly interlaced which demands for interactive learning. In this paper, a framework called METAL (mixture-of-experts task and attention learning) is proposed to cope with this complex learning problem. METAL consists of three consecutive learning phases, where the first two phases provide an initial knowledge about the task, while in the third phase the attention control is learned concurrently with the task. The mind of the robot is composed of a set of tiny agents learning and acting in parallel in addition to an attention control learning (ACL) agent. Each tiny agent provides the ACL agent with some partial knowledge about the task in the form of its decision preference-called policy as well. The ACL agent in the third phase learns how to make the final decision by attending the least possible number of tiny agents. It acts on a continuous decision space which gives METAL the ability to integrate different sources of knowledge with ease. A Bayesian continuous RL method is utilized at both levels of learning on perceptual and decision spaces. Implementation of METAL on an E-puck robot in a miniature highway driving task along with farther simulation studies in Webots (TM) environment verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed framework, where a smooth driving behavior is shaped. It is also shown that even though the robot has learned to discard some sensory data, probability of raising aliasing in the decision space is very low, which means that the robot can learn the task as well as attention control simultaneously.

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

attention control learning
decision space
bayesian continuous rl


lossless compression of already compressed textures Texture compression helps rendering by reducing the footprint in graphics memory, thus allowing for more textures, and by lowering the number of memory accesses between the graphics processor and memory, increasing performance and lowering power consumption. Compared to image compression methods like JPEG however, textures codecs are typically much less efficient, which is a problem when downloading the texture over a network or reading it from disk. Therefore, in this paper we investigate lossless compression of already compressed textures. By predicting compression parameters in the image domain instead of in the parameter domain, a more efficient representation is obtained compared to using general compression such as ZIP or LZMA. This works well also for pixel indices that have previously proved hard to compress. A 4-bit-per-pixel format can thus be compressed to around 2.3 bits per pixel (bpp), or 9.6\% of the original size, compared to around 3.0 bpp when using ZIP or 2.8 bpp using LZMA. Compressing the original images with JPEG to the same quality also gives 2.3 bpp, meaning that texture compression followed by our packing is on par with JPEG in terms of compression efficiency.

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A set of ethical principles for design science research in information systems We aim to begin a debate about ethical principles in design science research in IS. We suggest a set of ethical principles for design science research in IS. Ethical principles for design science need to be different from behavioral science. Design science researchers should give priority to the public interest. The interpretation and application of the principles require careful consideration.

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

design science research
ethical principles


A locality correlation preserving support vector machine We propose a novel support vector machine like classification algorithm LCPSVM. LCPSVM combines the idea of margin maximization between classes and local correlation preservation of class data. It is shown that SVM and other related algorithms can be obtained as special cases of LCPSVM. Experiments under different conditions are performed, and the results are discussed.

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

kernel methods
locality correlation preservation
fuzzy membership


Using haptic feedback as an aid in the design of passive mechanisms This paper presents a novel investigation of the effectiveness of haptic feedback for designing a class of interconnected multi-body systems such as passive mechanisms. The traditional application of haptic feedback in the design process has been in applications such as parts assembly or mold design. The design of the mechanism discussed in this paper is for applications where the user needs to manipulate the mechanism in order to interact with an environment. The objective of the design is to have the link ratios so that it can allow the user better movement control of the mechanism and thus give a better force amplification when there is a sudden change in the contact reaction force with the application environment. A haptic device is used as a design interface between the designer of such mechanisms and the virtual mechanism model. For this preliminary investigation, we used a four-bar mechanism. In our case study, we choose, as an example, to use the net distance travel of a tool when penetrating inside a model of a deformable surface as the design objective to minimize. The effects on the variation of this distance travelled can then be studied by adjusting some of the key design parameters used in the mechanism. To evaluate our proposed haptic-aided design environment, an informal preliminary user study was conducted, where each subject explored a sampled design space of the mechanism. The results of the user study suggest that the usage of a haptic device in the design of this class of mechanism can expedite the design process.

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

mechanism design
haptic-aided design
force/trajectory generating mechanisms
user interaction


Pose estimation from multiple cameras based on Sylvester's equation In this paper, we introduce a method to estimate the object's pose from multiple cameras. We focus on direct estimation of the 3D object pose from 2D image sequences. Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract corresponding feature points from adjacent images in the video sequence. We first demonstrate that centralized pose estimation from the collection of corresponding feature points in the 2D images from all cameras can be obtained as a solution to a generalized Sylvester's equation. We subsequently derive a distributed solution to pose estimation from multiple cameras and show that it is equivalent to the solution of the centralized pose estimation based on Sylvester's equation. Specifically, we rely on collaboration among the multiple cameras to provide an iterative refinement of the independent solution to pose estimation obtained for each camera based on Sylvester's equation. The proposed approach to pose estimation from multiple cameras relies on all of the information available from all cameras to obtain an estimate at each camera even when the image features are not visible to some of the cameras. The resulting pose estimation technique is therefore robust to occlusion and sensor errors from specific camera views. Moreover, the proposed approach does not require matching feature points among images from different camera views nor does it demand reconstruction of 3D points. Furthermore, the computational complexity of the proposed solution grows linearly with the number of cameras. Finally, computer simulation experiments demonstrate the accuracy and speed of our approach to pose estimation from multiple cameras. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

distributed estimation
sylvester's equation
multiple views


A lifecycle model for simulating bacterial evolution This paper presents a lifecycle model (LCM) to simulate bacterial evolution from a finite population of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. The potential of this approach is in relating the microscopic behaviors of single bacterial cell to the macroscopic effects of bacterial colonies. This can be accomplished via use of an individual-based modeling method under the framework of agentenvironmentrule (AER). Here, our study focuses on investigating the behaviors at different developmental stages in E. coli lifecycle and developing a new biologically inspired methodology for static or dynamic systems. The experimental results through a varying environment demonstrates that our model can be used to study under which circumstances a certain bacterial behaviors emerges, and also give an inspiration to design a new biological optimization algorithm being used for optimization problems.

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

e. coli
bacterial chemotaxis
bacterial foraging