A stochastic optimization approach for roundness measurements In this paper, we develop a vision-based inspection system for roundness measurements. A stochastic optimization approach has been proposed to compute the reference circles of MIC (maximum inscribing circle), MCC (minimum circumscribing circle) and MZC (minimum zone circle) methods. The proposed algorithm is a hybrid optimization method based on simulated annealing and HookeJeeves pattern search. From the experimental results, it is noted that the algorithm can solve the roundness assessment problems effectively and efficiently. The developed vision-based inspection system can be an on-line tool for the measurement of circular components.

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

measurement
simulated annealing
pattern search


Asymptotic solvers for second-order differential equation systems with multiple frequencies In this paper, an asymptotic expansion is constructed to solve second-order differential equation systems with highly oscillatory forcing terms involving multiple frequencies. An asymptotic expansion is derived in inverse of powers of the oscillatory parameter and its truncation results in a very effective method of dicretizing the differential equation system in question. Numerical experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the asymptotic method in contrast to the standard RungeKutta method.

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


Power-Rate Allocation in DS-CDMA Systems Based on Discretized Verhulst Equilibrium This paper proposes to extend the discrete Verhulst power equilibrium approach, previously suggested in [1], to the power-rate optimal allocation problem. Multirate users associated to different types of traffic are aggregated to distinct user classes, with the assurance of minimum rate allocation per user and QoS. Herein, Verhulst power allocation algorithm of [1] was adapted to the DS-CDMA jointly power-rate control problem. The analysis was carried out taking into account static and dynamic channels, as well as the convergence time (number of iterations), quality of solution, in terms of the normalized mean squared error (NSE), when compared to the analytical solution based on interference matrix inversion, and the solution given by classical Foschini algorithm [2] as well, besides the computational complexity analysis.

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

resource allocation
power-rate control
siso multirate ds-cdma
discrete verhulst equilibrium equation


A relational approach to probabilistic classification in a transductive setting Transduction is an inference mechanism adopted from several classification algorithms capable of exploiting both labeled and unlabeled data and making the prediction for the given set of unlabeled data only. Several transductive learning methods have been proposed in the literature to learn transductive classifiers from examples represented as rows of a classical double-entry table (or relational table). In this work we consider the case of examples represented as a set of multiple tables of a relational database and we propose a new relational classification algorithm, named TRANSC, that works in a transductive setting and employs a probabilistic approach to classification. Knowledge on the data model, i.e., foreign keys, is used to guide the search process. The transductive learning strategy iterates on a k-NN based re-classification of labeled and unlabeled examples, in order to identify borderline examples, and uses the relational probabilistic classifier Mr-SBC to bootstrap the transductive algorithm. Experimental results confirm that TRANSC outperforms its inductive counterpart (Mr-SBC).

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

multi-relational data mining
transductive classification
relational probabilistic classification
relational learning


Exploring the risk factors of preterm birth using data mining Preterm birth is the leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality, but a precise mechanism is still unknown. Hence, the goal of this study is to explore the risk factors of preterm using data mining with neural network and decision tree C5.0. The original medical data were collected from a prospective pregnancy cohort by a professional research group in National Taiwan University. Using the nest case-control study design, a total of 910 motherchild dyads were recruited from 14,551 in the original data. Thousands of variables are examined in this data including basic characteristics, medical history, environment, and occupation factors of parents, and variables related to infants. The results indicate that multiple birth, hemorrhage during pregnancy, age, disease, previous preterm history, body weight before pregnancy and height of pregnant women, and paternal life style risk factors related to drinking and smoking are the important risk factors of preterm birth. Hence, the findings of our study will be useful for parents, medical staff, and public health workers in attempting to detect high risk pregnant women and provide intervention early to reduce and prevent preterm birth.

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

preterm birth
data mining
neural network
decision tree


Interval-based analysis in embedded system design Complex multi-processor systems-on-chip and distributed embedded systems exhibit a confusing variety of run time interdependencies. For reliable timing validation, not only application, but also architecture, scheduling and communication properties have to be considered. This is very different from functional validation, where architecture, scheduling and communication can be idealized. To avoid unknown corner-case coverage in simulation-based validation on one had, and the state-space explosion or over-simplification of unified formal performance models on the other, we take a compositional approach and combine different efficient models and methods for timing analysis of single processes, real-time operating system (RTOS) overhead, single processors and communication components, and finally multiple connected components. As a result, timing analysis of complex, heterogeneous embedded systems becomes feasible. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of IMACS.

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

real-time embedded systems
performance verification
interval analysis


sequential verification of serializability Serializability is a commonly used correctness condition in concurrent programming. When a concurrent module is serializable, certain other properties of the module can be verified by considering only its sequential executions. In many cases, concurrent modules guarantee serializability by using standard locking protocols, such as tree locking or two-phase locking. Unfortunately, according to the existing literature, verifying that a concurrent module adheres to these protocols requires considering concurrent interleavings. In this paper, we show that adherence to a large class of locking protocols (including tree locking and two-phase locking) can be verified by considering only sequential executions. The main consequence of our results is that in many cases, the (manual or automatic) verification of serializability can itself be done using sequential reasoning .

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


diversifying search results of controversial queries Diversifying search results of queries seeking for different view points about controversial topics is key to improving satisfaction of users. The challenge for finding different opinions is how to maximize the number of discussed arguments without being biased against specific sentiments. This paper addresses the issue by first introducing a new model that represents the patterns occurring in documents about controversial topics. Second, proposing an opinion diversification model that uses (1) relevance of documents, (2) semantic diversification to capture different arguments and (3) sentiment diversification to identify positive, negative and neutral sentiments about the query topic. We have conducted our experiments using queries on various controversial topics and applied our diversification model on the set of documents returned by Google search engine. The results show that our model outperforms the native ranking of Web pages about controversial topics by a significant margin.

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


Memetic computation based on regulation between neural and immune systems: the framework and a case study Lamarckian learning has been introduced into evolutionary computation to enhance the ability of local search. The relevant research topic, memetic computation, has received significant amount of interest. In this study, a novel memetic computational framework is proposed by simulating the integrated regulation between neural and immune systems. The Lamarckian learning strategy of simulating the unidirectional regulation of neural system on immune system is designed. Consequently, an immune memetic algorithm based on the Lamarckian learning is proposed for numerical optimization. The proposed algorithm combines the advantages of immune algorithms and mathematical programming, and performs well in both global and local search. The simulation results based on ten low-dimensional and ten high-dimensional benchmark problems show that the immune memetic algorithm outperforms the basic genetic algorithm-based memetic algorithm in solving most of the test problems.

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

memetic computation
lamarckian learning
numerical optimization

artificial immune system
genetic algorithm


Optimal design of flywheels using an injection island genetic algorithm This paper presents an approach to optimal design of elastic flywheels using an Injection Island Genetic Algorithm (iiGA), summarizing a sequence of results reported in earlier publications. An iiGA in combination with a structural finite element code is used to search for shape variations and material placement to optimize the Specific Energy Density (SED, rotational energy per unit weight) of elastic flywheels while controlling the failure angular velocity. iiGAs seek solutions simultaneously at different levels of refinement of the problem representation (and correspondingly different definitions of the fitness function) in separate subpopulations (islands). Solutions are sought first at low levels of refinement with an axi-symmetric plane stress finite element code for high-speed exploration of the coarse design space. Next, individuals are injected into populations with a higher level of resolution that use an axi-symmetric three-dimensional finite element code to "fine-tune" the structures. A greatly simplified design space (containing two million possible solutions) was enumerated for comparison with various approaches that include: simple GAs, threshold accepting (TA), iiGAs and hybrid iiGAs. For all approaches compared for this simplified problem, all variations of the iiGA were found to be the most efficient. This paper will summarize results obtained studying a constrained optimization problem with a huge design space approached with parallel GAs that had various topological structures and several different types of iiGA, to compare efficiency. For this problem, all variations of the iiGA were found to be extremely efficient in terms of computational time required to final solution of similar fitness when compared to the parallel GAs.

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

automated design
flywheel
genetic algorithm and fem


Paving the way for CRM success: The mediating role of knowledge management and organizational commitment Data from an international sample of 312 hotels (from UK and Spain) is analyzed. The process through which CRM technology translates into organizational performance is described. A CRM technology, when properly implemented, shows a positive effect on performance. Knowledge management and organizational commitment acted as relevant mediators. Organizational commitment probed to be the main determinant of CRM success.

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

crm success
organizational commitment
knowledge management

customer relationship management (crm)
crm technology infrastructure


A

computational

tool

for

FCNC

and

CP-violating

processes

in

the

MSSM

We

present

version

a

Fortran

program

that

calculates

low-energy

flavor

observables

in

the

general

R

R

-parity

conserving

MSSM.

For

a

set

of

MSSM

parameters

as

input,

the

code

gives

predictions

for:

Electric

dipole

moments

of

the

leptons

and

the

neutron.

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magnetic

moments

g

of

the

leptons.

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lepton

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e

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B

decays

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s

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l

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and

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decays

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d

and

B

s

Bs

B

s

mixing).

Program

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queens

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Fortran

Computer:

Any.

Operating

system:

Any,

tested

on

Linux.

Classification:

Does

the

new

version

supersede

the

previous

version?:

Yes

Catalogue

identifier

of

previous

version:

Journal

reference

of

previous

version:

Comput.

Phys.

Comm.

Nature

of

problem:

Predicting

CP-violating

observables,

meson

mixing

parameters

and

branching

ratios

for

set

of

rare

processes

in

the

general

R-parity

conserving

MSSM.

Solution

method:

We

use

standard

quantum

theoretical

methods

to

calculate

Wilson

coefficients

in

MSSM

and

at

one

loop

including

QCD

corrections

at

higher

orders

when

this

is

necessary

and

possible.

The

input

parameters

can

be

read

from

an

external

file

in

SLHA

format.

Reasons

for

new

version:

A

major

rewrite

of

the

internal

code

structure

to

accommodate

higher

order

corrections;

new

observables

added.

Summary

of

revisions:

is

able

to

perform

resummation

of

chirally

enhanced

corrections

to

all

orders

of

perturbation

expansion

included

terms

only).

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calculating

new

observables

are

added:

lepton

magnetic

moment

anomaly,

to

e?

e

and

to

e?,??

e

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B

B

to

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D

decays,

B

B

to

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e

e

decays.

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initialization

in

the

sfermion

sector

is

simplified

and

follows,

by

default,

the

conventions.

Running

time:

For

a

single

parameter

set

approximately

in

double

precision

on

a

PowerBook

Mac

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

rare decays
flavor and cp violation
supersymmetry
general mssm
higher order resummation
fortran 77 code


Super-Resolution Iris Image Restoration Based on Multiple MLPs and CLS Filter Iris recognition is a biometric technology which shows a very high level of recognition accuracy, but low resolution (LR) iris images cause the degradation of the recognition performance. Therefore, a zoom lens with a long focal length is used in an iris camera. However, a bulky and costly zoom lens whose focal length is longer than 150 mm is required for capturing the iris image at a distance, which can increase the size and cost of the system. In order to overcome this problem, we propose a new super-resolution method which restores a single LR iris image into a high resolution (HR) iris image. Our research is novel in the following three ways compared to previous works. First, in order to prevent the loss of the middle and high frequency components of the iris patterns in the original image, the LR iris image is up-sampled using multiple multi-layered perceptrons (MLPs). Second, a point spread function (PSF) and a constrained least square (CLS) filter are used to remove sensor blurring in the up-sampled image. Third, the optimal parameters of the CLS filter and PSF in terms of the recognition accuracy are determined according to the zoom factor of the LR image. The experimental results show that the accuracy of iris recognition with the HR images restored by the proposed method is much enhanced compared to the three previous methods.

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


A language-independent and formal approach to pattern-based modelling with support for composition and analysis Patterns are used in different disciplines as a way to record expert knowledge for problem solving in specific areas. Their systematic use in Software Engineering promotes quality, standardization, reusability and maintainability of software artefacts. The full realisation of their power is however hindered by the lack of a standard formalization of the notion of pattern. Our goal is to provide a language-independent formalization of the notion of pattern, so that it allows its application to different modelling languages and tools, as well as generic methods to enable pattern discovery, instantiation, composition, and conflict analysis. For this purpose, we present a new visual and formal, language-independent approach to the specification of patterns. The approach is formulated in a general way, based on graphs and category theory, and allows the specification of patterns in terms of (nested) variable submodels, constraints on their allowed variance, and inter-pattern synchronization across several diagrams (e.g. class and sequence diagrams for UML design patterns). We provide a formal notion of pattern satisfaction by models and propose mechanisms to suggest model transformations so that models become consistent with the patterns. We define methods for pattern composition, and conflict analysis. We illustrate our proposal on UML design patterns, and discuss its generality and applicability on different types of patterns, e.g. workflow patterns, enterprise integration patterns and interaction patterns. The approach has proven to be powerful enough to formalize patterns from different domains, providing methods to analyse conflicts and dependencies that usually are expressed only in textual form. Its language independence makes it suitable for integration in meta-modelling tools and for use in Model-Driven Engineering.

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

pattern formalization
pattern-based modelling
pattern conflicts


Early mover advantage in e-commerce platforms with low entry barriers: The role of customer relationship management capabilities This research investigates whether early mover advantage (EMA) exists among entrepreneurial e-tailers operating on third-party e-commerce platforms. Contrary to traditional wisdom, the current research hypothesizes that e-tailers may enjoy early mover advantages because of the consumer demand inertia amplified by the nature of the Internet and the system design characteristics of e-commerce platforms. We also argue that customer relationship management capabilities help enhance early mover advantages in an online setting. We employ panel data on 7309 e-tailers to perform analyses and find empirical evidence that strongly supports the abovementioned hypotheses.

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

customer relationship management (crm) capability


Contextualized Monitoring and Root Cause Discovery in IPTV Systems Using Data Visualization This article describes the architecture and design of an IPTV network monitoring system and some of the use cases it enables. The system is based on distributed agents within IPTV terminal equipment (set-top box), which collect and send the data to a server where it is analyzed and visualized. In the article we explore how large amounts of collected data can be utilized for monitoring the quality of service and user experience in real time, as well as for discovering trends and anomalies over longer periods of time. Furthermore, the data can be enriched using external data sources, providing a deeper understanding of the system by discovering correlations with events outside of the monitored domain. Four supported use cases are described, among them using weather information for explaining away the IPTV quality degradation. The system has been successfully deployed and is in operation at the Slovenian IPTV provider Telekom Slovenije.

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


Mean field and propagation of chaos in multi-class heterogeneous loss models We consider a system consisting of N N parallel servers, where jobs with different resource requirements arrive and are assigned to the servers for processing. Each server has a finite resource capacity and therefore can serve only a finite number of jobs at a time. We assume that different servers have different resource capacities. A job is accepted for processing only if the resource requested by the job is available at the server to which it is assigned. Otherwise, the job is discarded or blocked. We consider randomized schemes to assign jobs to servers with the aim of reducing the average blocking probability of jobs in the system. In particular, we consider a scheme that assigns an incoming job to the server having maximum available vacancy or unused resource among d d randomly sampled servers. We consider the system in the limit where both the number of servers and the arrival rates of jobs are scaled by a large factor. This gives rise to a mean field analysis. We show that in the limiting system the servers behave independentlya property termed as propagation of chaos. Stationary tail probabilities of server occupancies are obtained from the stationary solution of the mean field which is shown to be unique and globally attractive. We further characterize the rate of decay of the stationary tail probabilities. Numerical results suggest that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the average blocking probability of jobs as compared to static schemes that probabilistically route jobs to servers independently of their states.

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

mean field
propagation of chaos
loss models


Conceptual indexing and active retrieval of video for interactive learning environments Selecting an instructive story from a video case base is an information retrieval problem, but standard indexing and retrieval techniques [1]were not developed with such applications in mind. The classical model assumes a passive retrieval system queried by interested and well-informed users. In educational situations, students cannot be expected to form appropriate queries or to identify their own ignorance. Systems that teach must, therefore, be active retrievers that formulate their own retrieval cues and reason about the appropriateness of intervention. The Story Producer for InteractivE Learning (SPIEL) is an active retrieval system for recalling stories to tell to students who are learning social skills in a simulated environment 2and3. SPIEL is a component of the Guided Social Simulation (GuSS) architecture [4]used to build YELLO, a program that teaches account executives the fine points of selling Yellow Pages advertising. SPIEL uses structured, conceptual indices derived from research in case-based reasoning 5and6. SPIEL's manually-created indices are detailed representations of what stories are about, and they are needed to make precise assessments of stories' relevance. SPIEL's opportunistic retrieval architecture operates in two phases. During the storage phase, the system uses its educational knowledge encapsulated in a library of storytelling strategies to determine, for each story, what an opportunity to tell that story would look like. During the retrieval phase, the system tries to recognize those opportunities while the student interacts with the simulation. This design is similar to opportunistic memory architectures proposed for opportunistic planning 7and8.

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

multimedia
intelligent tutoring systems
care-based reasoning


When agile meets the enterprise We present challenges of using agile practices in traditional enterprise environments. We organize the challenges under two factors. For both factors, we identify successful mitigation strategies.

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

agile development
enterprise environment
grounded theory


Presenting a new multiclass classifier based on learning automata Among the various traditional approaches of pattern recognition, the statistical approach has been most intensively studied and used in practice. This paper presents a new classifier called MLAC for multiclass classification based on the learning automata. The proposed classifier using a soft decision method could find the optimal hyperplanes in solution space and separate available classes from each other well. We have tested the MLAC classifier on some multiclass datasets including IRIS, WINE and GLASS.1 The results show a significant improvement in comparison with the previous learning automata based classifiers as it has more accuracy and lower running time. Also, in order to evaluate performance of the proposed MLAC classifier, it has been compared with conventional classifiers such as K-Nearest Neighbor, Multilayer Perceptron, Genetic classifier and Particle Swarm classifier on these datasets in terms of accuracy. The obtained results show that the proposed MLAC classifier not only improves the classification's accuracy, but also reduces time complexity.

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

pattern classification
learning automata (la)


Secured communication protocol for internetworking ZigBee cluster networks ZigBee uses the network security and application profile layers of the IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee Alliance standards for reliable, low-powered, wireless data communications. However, the ZigBee has problems of being less secure, and has a difficulty in distributing shared symmetric keys between each pair of nodes. In addition, the ZigBee protocol is inadequate for large sensor networks, which may consist of several very large scale clusters. In this paper, we first construct a secure ZigBee scheme for realistic scenarios consisting of a large network with several clusters containing coordinators and numerous devices. We present a new key management protocol for ZigEee networks, which can be used among participants of different clusters and analyze its performance. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


hp-finite element simulations for Stokes flow stable and stabilized The stable Galerkin formulation and a stabilized Galerkin least squares formulation for the Stokes problem are analyzed in the context of the hp-version of the finite element method. Theoretical results for both formulations establish exponential rates of convergence under realistic assumptions on the input data. We confirm these results by a series of numerical experiments on an L-shaped domain where the solution exhibits corner singularities.

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


Joint Optimization of Complexity and Overhead for the Routing in Hierarchical Networks The hierarchical network structure was proposed in the early 80s and becomes popular nowadays. The routing complexity and the routing table size are the two primary performance measures in a dynamic route guidance system. Although various algorithms exist for finding the best routing policy in a hierarchical network, hardly exists any work in studying and evaluating the aforementioned measures for a hierarchical network. In this paper, a new mathematical framework to carry out the averages of the routing complexity and the routing table size is proposed to express the routing complexity and the routing table size as the functions of the hierarchical network parameters such as the number of the hierarchical levels and the subscriber density (cluster-population) for each hierarchical level.

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

joint optimization
hierarchical networks
routing
complexity


The solitary wave solution of coupled KleinGordonZakharov equations via two different numerical methods In this research, we propose two different methods to solve the coupled KleinGordonZakharov (KGZ) equations: the Differential Quadrature (DQ) and Globally Radial Basis Functions (GRBFs) methods. In the DQ method, the derivative value of a function with respect to a point is directly approximated by a linear combination of all functional values in the global domain. The principal work in this method is the determination of weight coefficients. We use two ways for obtaining these coefficients: cosine expansion (CDQ) and radial basis functions (RBFs-DQ), the former is a mesh-based method and the latter categorizes in the set of meshless methods. Unlike the DQ method, the GRBF method directly substitutes the expression of the function approximation by RBFs into the partial differential equation. The main problem in the GRBFs method is ill-conditioning of the interpolation matrix. Avoiding this problem, we study the bases introduced in Pazouki and Schaback (2011) [44]. Some examples are presented to compare the accuracy and easy implementation of the proposed methods. In numerical examples, we concentrate on Inverse Multiquadric (IMQ) and second-order Thin Plate Spline (TPS) radial basis functions. The variable shape parameter (exponentially and random) strategies are applied in the IMQ function and the results are compared with the constant shape parameter.

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

differential quadrature method
kleingordonzakharov (kgz) equations
radial basis functions (rbfs)
inverse multiquadric (imq)
thin plate spline (tps)


On tests for global maximum of the log-likelihood function Given the location of a relative maximum of the log-likelihood function, how to assess whether it is the global maximum? This paper investigates an existing statistical tool, which, based on asymptotic analysis, answers this question by posing it as a hypothesis testing problem. A general framework for constructing tests for global maximum is given. The characteristics of the tests are investigated for two cases: correctly specified model and model mismatch. A finite sample approximation to the power is given, which gives a tool for performance prediction and a measure for comparison between tests. The sensitivity of the tests to model mismatch is analyzed in terms of the Renyi divergence and the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the true underlying distribution and the assumed parametric class and tests that are insensitive to small deviations from the model are derived thereby overcoming a fundamental weakness of existing tests. The tests are illustrated for three applications: passive localization or direction finding using an array of sensors, estimating the parameters of a Gaussian mixture model, and estimation of superimposed exponentials in noise-problems that are known to suffer from local maxima.

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

array processing
gaussian mixtures
global optimization
maximum likelihood (ml)
parameter estimation
superimposed exponentials in noise


Using state equation to prove non-reachability in timed petrinets Non-reachability proofs in Timed Petrinets were usually done by proving the non-reachability within the underlying timeless net. However, in many cases this approach fails. In this paper, we present an approach to prove non-reach ability within the actual Timed Petrinet. For this purpose, we introduce a state equation for Timed Petrinets in analogy to timeless nets. Using this state equation, we can express reachability as a system of equations and inequations, which is solvable in polynomial time.

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


Microglial NADPH Oxidase Mediates Leucine Enkephalin Dopaminergic Neuroprotection Abstract: Here, we report that leucine enkephalin (LE) is neuroprotective to dopaminergic (DA) neurons at femtomolar concentrations through anti-inflammatory properties. Mesencephalic neuron-glia cultures pretreated with femtomolar concentrations of LE (10?15-10?13 M) protected DA neurons from lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced DA neurotoxicity, as determined by DA uptake assay and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) immunocytochemistry (ICC). However, des-tyrosine leucine enkephalin (DTLE), an LE analogue that is missing the tyrosine residue required for binding to the kappa opioid receptor, was also neuroprotective (10?15-10?13 M), as determined by DA uptake assay and TH ICC. Both LE and DTLE (10?15-10?13 M) reduced LPS-induced superoxide production from microglia-enriched cultures. Further, both LE and DTLE (10?14, 10?13 M) reduced the LPS-induced tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF?) mRNA and TNF? protein from PHOX+/+ microglia, as determined by quantitative real-time RT-PCR and ELISA analysis in mesencephalic neuron-glia cultures, respectively. However, both peptides failed to inhibit TNF? expression in PHOX?/? cultures, which are unable to produce extracellular superoxide in response to LPS. Additionally, LE and DTLE (10?14, 10?13 M) failed to show any neuroprotection against LPS in PHOX?/? cultures. Together, these data indicate that LE and DTLE are neuroprotective at femtomolar concentrations through the inhibition of oxidative insult associated with microglial NADPH oxidase and the attenuation of the ROS-mediated amplification of TNF? gene expression in microglia.

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

microglial nadph oxidase
neuroprotection
neurotoxicity

leucine enkephalin (le)
des-tyrosine leucine enkephalin (dtle)
lipopolysaccharide (lps)
tumor necrosis factor-alpha (tnf?)


Query rewriting for SWIFT (First) answers Traditionally, the answer to a database query is construed as the set of all tuples that meet the criteria stated. Strict adherence to this notion in query evaluation is, however, increasingly unsatisfactory because decision makers are more prone to adopting an exploratory strategy for information search which we call "getting some answers quickly, and perhaps more later." From a decision-maker's perspective, such a strategy is optimal for coping with information overload and makes economic sense (when used in conjunction with a micropayment mechanism). These new requirements present new opportunities for database query optimization. In this paper, we propose a progressive query processing strategy that exploits this behavior to conserve system resources and to minimize query response time and user waiting time. This is accomplished by the heuristic decomposition of user queries into subqueries that can be evaluated on demand. To illustrate the practicality of the proposed methods, we describe the architecture of a prototype system that provides a nonintrusive implementation of our approach. Finally, we present experimental results obtained from an empirical study conducted using an Oracle Server that demonstrate the benefits of the progressive query processing strategy.

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

www
internet
progressive query evaluation
query rewrite


Ramsey Games With Giants The classical result in the theory of random graphs, proved by Erd. os and Renyi in 1960, concerns the threshold for the appearance of the giant component in the random graph process. We consider a variant of this problem, with a Ramsey flavor. Now, each random edge that arrives in a sequence of rounds must be colored with one of r colors. The goal can be either to create a giant component in every color class, or alternatively, to avoid it in every color. One can analyze the offline or online setting for this problem. In this paper, we consider all these variants and provide nontrivial upper and lower bounds; in certain cases (like online avoidance) the obtained bounds are asymptotically tight. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 38, 1-32, 2011

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


An Adaptive Speed Sensorless Induction Motor Drive With Artificial Neural Network for Stability Enhancement An artificial neural network (ANN) based adaptive estimator is presented in this paper for the estimation of rotor speed in a sensorless vector-controlled induction motor (IM) drive. The model reference adaptive system (MRAS) is formed with instantaneous and steady state reactive power. Selection of reactive power as the functional candidate in MRAS automatically makes the system immune to the variation of stator resistance. Such adaptive system performs satisfactorily at very low speed. However, it is observed that an unstable region exists in the speed-torque domain during regeneration. In this work, ANN is applied to overcome such stability related problem. The proposed method is validated through computer simulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK. Sample results from a laboratory prototype (using dSPACE-1104) have confirmed the usefulness of the proposed estimator.

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

artificial neural network (ann)
induction motor (im)
model reference adaptive system (mras)
vector control


Adaptive anisotropic meshing for steady convection-dominated problems Obtaining accurate solutions for convectiondiffusion equations is challenging due to the presence of layers when convection dominates the diffusion. To solve this problem, we design an adaptive meshing algorithm which optimizes the alignment of anisotropic meshes with the numerical solution. Three main ingredients are used. First, the streamline upwind PetrovGalerkin method is used to produce a stabilized solution. Second, an adapted metric tensor is computed from the approximate solution. Third, optimized anisotropic meshes are generated from the computed metric tensor by an anisotropic centroidal Voronoi tessellation algorithm. Our algorithm is tested on a variety of two-dimensional examples and the results shows that the algorithm is robust in detecting layers and efficient in avoiding non-physical oscillations in the numerical approximation.

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

anisotropic mesh generation
convection-dominated problem
stabilized method


Cell communication in tissue P systems: Universality results We introduce an evolution-communication model for tissue P systems where communication rules are inspired by the general mechanism of cell communication based on signals and receptors: a multiset can enter a cell only in the presence of another multiset. Some basic variants of this model are also considered where communication is restricted either to be unidirectional or to use special multisets of objects called receptors. The universality for all these variants of tissue P systems is then proved by using two cells (three cells in the case of unidirectional communication) and rules of a minimal size.

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


activity rhythm detection and modeling We present an algorithm for detecting and modeling rhythmic temporal patterns in the record of an individual's computer activity, or online "presence." The model is both predictive and descriptive of temporal features and is constructed with minimal a priori knowledge.

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

awareness
rhythms
user modeling
cscw
statistics


Energy-Efficient Paths in Radio Networks We consider a radio network consisting of n stations represented as the complete graph on a set of n points in the Euclidean plane with edge weights omega(p,q)=|pq| (delta) +C (p) , for some constant delta > 1 and nonnegative offset costs C (p) . Our goal is to find paths of minimal energy cost between any pair of points that do not use more than some given number k of hops. We present an exact algorithm for the important case when delta=2, which requires O(kn log n) time per query pair (p, q). For the case of an unrestricted number of hops we describe a family of algorithms with query time O(n(1+alpha)), where alpha > 0 can be chosen arbitrarily. If we relax the exactness requirement, we can find an approximate (1 + epsilon) solution in constant time by querying a data structure which has linear size and which can be build in O(n log n) time. The dependence on epsilon is polynomial in 1/epsilon. One tool we employ might be of independent interest: For any pair of points (p, q) epsilon (P x P) we can report in constant time the cluster pair (A, B) representing (p, q) in a well-separated pair decomposition of P.

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

computational geometry
communication networks


Novelty detection for the inspection of light-emitting diodes We propose novel feature-extraction and classification methods for the automatic visual inspection of manufactured LEDs. The defects are located at the area of the p-electrodes and lead to a malfunction of the LED. Besides the complexity of the defects, low contrast and strong image noise make this problem very challenging. For the extraction of image characteristic we compute radially-encoded features that measure discontinuities along the p-electrode. Therefore, we propose two different methods: the first method divides the object into several radial segments for which mean and standard deviation are computed and the second method computes mean and standard deviation along different orientations. For both methods we combine the features over several segments or orientations by computing simple measures such as the ratio between maximum and mean or standard deviation. Since defect-free LEDs are frequent and defective LEDs are rare, we apply and evaluate different novelty-detection methods for classification. Therefore, we use a kernel density estimator, kernel principal component analysis, and a one-class support vector machine. We further compare our results to Pearson's correlation coefficient, which is evaluated using an artificial reference image. The combination of one-class support vector machine and radially-encoded segment features yields the best overall performance by far, with a false alarm rate of only 0.13% at a 100% defect detection rate, which means that every defect is detected and only very few defect-free p-electrodes are rejected. Our inspection system does not only show superior performance, but is also computationally efficient and can therefore be applied to further real-time applications, for example solder joint inspection. Moreover, we believe that novelty detection as used here can be applied to various expert-system applications. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

light emitting diodes
feature extraction
one-class svm
kernel pca
kernel density estimation


Finding a tree structure in a resolution proof is NP-complete The resolution tree problem consists of deciding whether a given sequence-like resolution refutation admits a tree structure. This paper shows the NP-completeness of both the resolution tree problem and a natural generalization of the resolution tree problem that does not involve resolution. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


a real-time simulator for interventional radiology Interventional radiologists manipulate guidewires and catheters and steer stents through the patient's vascular system under X-ray imaging for treatment of vascular diseases. The complexity of these procedures makes training mandatory in order to master hand-eye coordination, instrument manipulation and procedure protocols for each radiologist. In this paper we present a simulator for interventional radiology, which deploys a model of guidewire/catheter based on the Cosserat theory applied to one-dimensional structures. This model starts from the energetic formulation of the flament considering the Hook laws of continuum mechanics. The Lagrange formulations are used to describe the model deformation. This model takes (self-) collisions into account and it is revealed to be very efficient for interactive applications. The simulation environment allows to carry out the most common procedures: guidewire and catheter navigation, contrast dye injection to visualize the vessels, balloon angioplasty and stent placement. Moreover, heartbeat as well as breathing are also simulated visually.

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

real-time simulation
cosserat rod theory
x-ray
minimally invasive surgery


A semantic-based probabilistic approach for real-time video event recognition ? This paper presents an approach for real-time video event recognition that combines the accuracy and descriptive capabilities of, respectively, probabilistic and semantic approaches. Based on a state-of-art knowledge representation, we define a methodology for building recognition strategies from event descriptions that consider the uncertainty of the low-level analysis. Then, we efficiently organize such strategies for performing the recognition according to the temporal characteristics of events. In particular, we use Bayesian Networks and probabilistically-extended Petri Nets for recognizing, respectively, simple and complex events. For demonstrating the proposed approach, a framework has been implemented for recognizing humanobject interactions in the video monitoring domain. The experimental results show that our approach improves the event recognition performance as compared to the widely used deterministic approach.

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

video event detection
semantic video analysis
bayes network
petri net
low-level uncertainty


Reproductive weak solutions of magneto-micropolar fluid equations in exterior domains We establish the existence of a reproductive weak solution, a so-called periodic weak solution, for the equations of motion of magneto-micropolar fluids in exterior domains in R-3. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

navier-stokes equations
magneto-micropolar fluid
reproductive solution
exterior domain


Beam Bounding Box a novel approach for beam concept modeling and optimization handling Simplified models of the vehicle structure are often used during the concept phase of vehicle development to improve the Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) performance. Together with the structural joints and panels, beams are one of the constituent parts of these models. There are different approaches for their modeling and optimization handling, which however are either not able to maintain the similarity with the detailed Finite Element (FE) model (reference and/or optimized) or suffering some flexibility and performance issues. The objective of the current work is to develop and validate a new method which is an improved alternative of the existing approaches. It keeps the reference cross-sectional shapes of all 1D beams, but when each of them is rescaled during optimization, the beam is represented by means of generic cross-sectional properties. Thus a lighter and simpler representation of the concept beams is created and at the same time the connection with the detailed FE model is not broken. The feasibility of the approach is successfully verified for a set of representative beam cross-sections and then for an industrial case study. Its benefit in terms of computational time is also demonstrated. The proposed method can be easily implemented and then applied to make concept modeling for the vehicle structure faster and more flexible.

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


exploring the use of large displays in american megachurches Within the HCI community, there is a growing interest in how technology is used and appropriated outside the workplace. In this paper, we present preliminary findings of how large displays, projection systems, and presentation software are used in American megachurches to support religious practice. These findings are based on ten visits to church services by the study.s authors. We describe how large display technology augments and replaces certain church traditions, and finish by discussing issues related to the design for church environments that are highlighted by this use of technology.

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


AT-HOME 2.0-An Educational Framework for Home-based Healthcare This paper intends to describe some of the primary social and cultural dynamics in South African home-based healthcare, using ethnographic case study material and design methodology. This constitutes a detailed narrative of the "care experience" in a poor community, emphasising the needs of and barriers to educational information, particularly concerning caregivers. In reaction to this context, a collaborative training model - AT-HOME 2.0 - emerges through design intervention. This is foreseen as a basic framework whereby caregivers (are encouraged to) develop educational content via information and communication technologies (e. g. mobile phones and social media). Such content can and may include experiences, suggestions, and guidelines that are relevant to the practice of caregiving. AT-HOME 2.0 will conceptually - and in some cases practically - demonstrate how educational content may be generated, published, and disseminated in the sphere of home-based healthcare.

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

home-based healthcare
informal learning
digital technologies
socio-cultural dynamics


overcoming limitations of prefetching in multiprocessors by compiler-initiated coherence action In this paper we first identify limitations of compiler-controlled prefetching in a CC-NUMA multiprocessor with a write-invalidate cache coherence protocol. Compiler-controlled prefetch techniques for CC-NUMAs often are focused only, on stride-accesses, and this introduces a major limitation. We consider combining prefetch with two other compiler-controlled techniques to partly remedy the situation: (1) load-exclusive to reduce write-latency and (2) store-update to reduce read-latency. The purpose of each of these techniques in a machine with prefetch is to let them reduce latency for accesses which the prefetch technique could not handle. We evaluate two different scenarios, firstly with a hybrid compiler/hardware prefetch technique and secondly with an optimal stride-prefetcher. We find that the combined gains under the hybrid prefetch technique are significant for six applications we have studied: in average, 71\% of the original write-stall time remains after using the hybrid prefetcher, and of these ownership-requests, 60\% would be eliminated using load-exclusive; in average, 68\% of the read-stall time remains after using the hybrid prefetcher and of these read-misses, 34\% were serviced by remote caches and would be converted by store-update into misses serviced by a clean copy in memory which reduces the read-latency. With an optimal stride-prefetcher our results show that it beneficient to complement prefetch, with the two techniques here as well.

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

memory access latency reduction
compiler-initiated coherence
read-latency
migratory sharing
cc-numa multiprocessor
compiler-controlled prefetching
compiler-analysis
read-stall time
write-latency
parallel architectures


modeling and optimization of non-blocking checkpointing for optimistic simulation on myrinet clusters Checkpointing and Communication Library (CCL) is a recently developed software implementing CPU offloaded checkpointing functionalities in support of optimistic parallel simulation on myrinet clusters. Specifically, CCL implements a non-blocking execution mode of memory-to-memory data copy associated with checkpoint operations, based on data transfer capabilities provided by a programmable DMA engine on board of myrinet network cards. Re-synchronization between CPU and DMA activities must sometimes be employed for several reasons, such as maintenance of data consistency, thus adding some overhead to (otherwise CPU cost-free) non-blocking checkpoint operations. In this paper we present a cost model for non-blocking checkpointing and derive a performance effective re-synchronization semantic which we call minimum cost re-synchronization MC . With this semantic, an occurrence of re-synchronization either commits an on-going DMA based checkpoint operation (causing suspension of CPU activities) or aborts the operation (with possible increase in the expected rollback cost due to a reduced amount of committed checkpoints) on the basis of a minimum overhead expectation evaluated through the cost model. We have implemented MC within CCL, and we also report experimental results demonstrating the performance benefits from this optimized re-synchronization semantic, in terms of increase in the execution speed, for a Personal Communication System (PCS) simulation application.

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


Efficiency of IP Packets Pre-marking for H264 Video Quality Guarantees in Streaming Applications For the last few years, many classifications and marking strategies have been proposed with the consideration of video streaming applications. According to IETF recommendation, two groups of solutions have been proposed. The firts one assumes that applications or IF end points pre-mark their packets. The second solution applies the router which is topologically closest to video source. It should perform Multifield Classification and mark all incomming packets. This paper investigates the most popular marking strategies belonging to both mentioned above groups of solutions. The pre-marking strategies based on H264 coder extensions are simulated based on NS-2 network simulator and Evalvid-RA framework. The results are compared with the IETF recommendations for video traffic shaping in the IP networks and marking algorithms proposed by other researchers.

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

ip packet
h264 video coding
diffserv architecture


On sets of vectors of a finite vector space in which every subset of basis size is a basis II This article contains a proof of the MDS conjecture for k a parts per thousand currency sign 2p - 2. That is, that if S is a set of vectors of in which every subset of S of size k is a basis, where q = p (h) , p is prime and q is not and k a parts per thousand currency sign 2p - 2, then |S| a parts per thousand currency sign q + 1. It also contains a short proof of the same fact for k a parts per thousand currency sign p, for all q.

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


Group topic model: organizing topics into groups Latent Dirichlet allocation defines hidden topics to capture latent semantics in text documents. However, it assumes that all the documents are represented by the same topics, resulting in the forced topic problem. To solve this problem, we developed a group latent Dirichlet allocation (GLDA). GLDA uses two kinds of topics: local topics and global topics. The highly related local topics are organized into groups to describe the local semantics, whereas the global topics are shared by all the documents to describe the background semantics. GLDA uses variational inference algorithms for both offline and online data. We evaluated the proposed model for topic modeling and document clustering. Our experimental results indicated that GLDA can achieve a competitive performance when compared with state-of-the-art approaches.

B 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 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 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

topic modeling
latent dirichlet allocation
group
variational inference
document clustering


Co-authorship networks in the digital library research community The field of digital libraries (DLs) coalesced in 1994: the first digital library conferences were held that year, awareness of the World Wide Web was accelerating, and the National Science Foundation awarded $24 Million (US) for the Digital Library Initiative (DLI). In this paper we examine the state of the DL domain after a decade of activity by applying social network analysis to the co-authorship network of the past ACM, IEEE, and joint ACM/IEEE digital library conferences. We base our analysis on a common binary undirectional network model to represent the co-authorship network, and from it we extract several established network measures. We also introduce a weighted directional network model to represent the co-authorship network, for which we define AuthorRank as an indicator of the impact of an individual author in the network. The results are validated against conference program committee members in the same period. The results show clear advantages of PageRank and AuthorRank over degree, closeness and betweenness centrality metrics. We also investigate the amount and nature of international participation in Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL).

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

digital library
authorrank
social network analysis


Bipartite Matching in the Semi-streaming Model We present the first deterministic 1+epsilon approximation algorithm for finding a large matching in a bipartite graph in the semi-streaming model which requires only O((1/epsilon)(5)) passes over the input stream. In this model, the input graph G = (V, E) is given as a stream of its edges in some arbitrary order, and storage of the algorithm is bounded by O(npolylog n) bits, where n = | V |. The only previously known arbitrarily good approximation for general graphs is achieved by the randomized algorithm of McGregor (Proceedings of the InternationalWorkshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems and Randomization and Computation, Berkeley, CA, USA, pp. 170-181, 2005), which uses Omega((1/epsilon) 1/epsilon) passes. We show that even for bipartite graphs, McGregor's algorithm needs Omega(1/epsilon)(Omega(1/epsilon)) passes, thus it is necessarily exponential in the approximation parameter. The design as well as the analysis of our algorithm require the introduction of some new techniques. A novelty of our algorithm is a new deterministic assignment of matching edges to augmenting paths which is responsible for the complexity reduction, and gets rid of randomization. We repeatedly grow an initial matching using augmenting paths up to a length of 2k + 1 for k = [2/epsilon]. We terminate when the number of augmenting paths found in one iteration falls below a certain threshold also depending on k, that guarantees a 1 + epsilon approximation. The main challenge is to find those augmenting paths without requiring an excessive number of passes. In each iteration, using multiple passes, we grow a set of alternating paths in parallel, considering each edge as a possible extension as it comes along in the stream. Backtracking is used on paths that fail to grow any further. Crucial are the so-called position limits: when a matching edge is the ith matching edge in a path and it is then removed by backtracking, it will only be inserted into a path again at a position strictly lesser than i. This rule strikes a balance between terminating quickly on the one hand and giving the procedure enough freedom on the other hand.

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

bipartite graph matching
streaming algorithms
approximation schemes


Correlation analysis of principal components from two populations We investigate a correlation coefficient of principal components from two sets of variables. Using perturbation expansion, we get a limiting distribution of the correlation. In addition, we obtain a limiting distribution of the Fisher's z transformation of the above correlation. Additionally, we verify the accuracy of the limiting distributions using Monte Carlo simulations. Finally in this study, we present two examples and a bootstrap estimation.

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

principal component
perturbation method
canonical correlation analysis
fisher's z transformation


Modeling by singular value decomposition and the elimination of statistically insignificant coefficients Numerical advantages of singular value decomposition over other least squares techniques. Elimination of statistically insignificant coefficients. Benefit of a statistical rejection procedure.

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

svd
stepwise regression
numerical analysis


Linguistic majorities with difference in support A new linguistic aggregation rule that extends numerical majorities based on difference in support is introduced. Linguistic majorities with difference in support are formalised for fuzzy set and 2-tuples. Both representations are proved to be mathematically isomorphic. A set of normative properties have been demonstrated to hold for the new linguistic majorities.

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

aggregation rule
linguistic majorities
difference in support

social choice
linguistic preferences
fuzzy sets
2-tuples


An underfrequency load shedding scheme for islanded microgrids In this paper an UFLS scheme for implementing in MG was proposed. This load shedding method estimates the power deficit based on the frequency first derivative. It considers power generation variations during the load shedding process. The proposed load shedding scheme is independent from MG parameters. A microgrid with several DER is adopted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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

microgrid
power deficit
underfrequency load shedding


Some new fuzzy entropy formulas The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, a general conclusion about fuzzy entropy induced by distance measure is presented based on the axiom definitions of fuzzy entropy and distance measure. Secondly, some fuzzy entropy formulas which relate to the fuzzy entropy formula defined by De Luca and Termini (Inform. Control 20 (1972) 301) are given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

measures of information
sigma-fuzzy entropy
sigma-distance measure


Adhesion properties of polymethylsilsesquioxane based low dielectric constant materials by the modified edge lift-off test Delamination occurring during the chemical and mechanical planarization process or wire bonding steps in packaging is a fundamental issue in integrating of low dielectric constant (low-k) materials into the multilayer structures of semiconductor chips. Since it is known that low adhesion strength is mainly attributed to the failure phenomenon, the measurement of interfacial fracture toughness is critical to provide a quantitative basis in the choice of the materials. In this study, a modified edge lift-off test was adopted to measure the fracture toughness of polymethylsilsesquioxane based low-k materials with various chemical and physical structures. Interfacial fracture toughness was improved by adding multi-functional monomers to methylsilsesquioxane monomers or by increasing the percentage of functional end groups inside the prepolymers. In addition, the change in curing conditions and thickness influenced the adhesion performance presumably by changing the morphology of low-k materials.

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


When consensus meets self-stabilization This paper presents a shared-memory self-stabilizing failure detector, asynchronous consensus and replicated state-machine algorithm suite, the components of which can be started in an arbitrary state and converge to act as a virtual state-machine. Self-stabilizing algorithms can cope with transient faults. Transient faults can alter the system state to an arbitrary state and hence, cause a temporary violation of the safety property of the consensus. Started in an arbitrary state, the long lived, memory bounded and self-stabilizing failure detector, asynchronous consensus, and replicated state-machine suite, presented in the paper, recovers to satisfy eventual safety and eventual liveness requirements. Several new techniques and paradigms are introduced. The bounded memory failure detector abstracts away synchronization assumptions using bounded heartbeat counters combined with a balance-unbalance mechanism. The practically infinite paradigm is introduced in the scope of self-stabilization, where an execution of, say, 2(64) sequential steps is regarded as (practically) infinite. Finally, we present the first self-stabilizing wait-free reset mechanism that ensures eventual safety and can be used to implement efficient self-stabilizing timestamps that are of independent interest. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

state-machine
wait-free
distributed reset
self-stabilization


Hybrid perturbation-Polynomial Chaos approaches to the random algebraic eigenvalue problem The analysis of structures is affected by uncertainty in the structures material properties, geometric parameters, boundary conditions and applied loads. These uncertainties can be modelled by random variables and random fields. Amongst the various problems affected by uncertainty, the random eigenvalue problem is specially important when analyzing the dynamic behavior or the buckling of a structure. The methods that stand out in dealing with the random eigenvalue problem are the perturbation method and methods based on Monte Carlo Simulation. In the past few years, methods based on Polynomial Chaos (PC) have been developed for this problem, where each eigenvalue and eigenvector are represented by a PC expansion. In this paper four variants of a method hybridizing perturbation and PC expansion approaches are proposed and compared. The methods use Rayleigh quotient, the power method, the inverse power method and the eigenvalue equation. PC expansions of eigenvalues and eigenvectors are obtained with the proposed methods. The new methods are applied to the problem of an Euler Bernoulli beam and a thin plate with stochastic properties.

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

random eigenvalue problem
perturbation
polynomial chaos

stochastic finite element method
iterative methods


A conservative box-scheme for the Euler equations The work presented in this paper shows that the mixed-type scheme of Murman and Cole, originally developed for a scalar equation, can be extended to systems of conservation laws. A characteristic scheme for the equations of gas dynamics is introduced that has a close connection to a four operator scheme for the Burgers-Hopf equation. The results indicate that the scheme performs well on the classical test cases. The scheme has no tuning parameters and can be interpreted as the projection of an L-infinity-stable scheme. At steady state second order accuracy is obtained as a by-product of the box-scheme feature. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


Using a new protocol to enhance path reliability and realize load balancing in mobile ad hoc networks ? In this paper we introduce a novel end-to-end approach for achieving the dual goal of enhanced reliability under path failures, and multi-path load balancing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). These goals are achieved by fully exploiting the presence of multiple paths in mobile ad hoc networks in order to jointly attack the problems of frequent route failures and load balancing. More specifically, we built a disjoint-path identification mechanism for maintaining multiple routes between two endpoints on top of the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), and the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol. A number of additional modifications are incorporated to the SCTP protocol in order to allow its smooth operation. The proposed approach differs from previously related work since it consists of an entirely end-to-end scheme built on top of a transport layer protocol. We provide both analytical and simulation results that prove the efficiency of our approach over a wide range of mobility scenarios.

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

mobile ad hoc networks
sctp
dsr
reliability
load balancing


Situative Managementuntersttzungssysteme Sogenannte digital natives sind mittlerweile auch auf den obersten Fhrungsebenen von Organisationen zu finden. Diese neue Managergeneration betrachtet Managementuntersttzungssysteme (MUS) mittlerweile als eine Selbstverstndlichkeit, hat aber auch zunehmend hohe Erwartungen, dass diese ihre individuellen Nutzungsprferenzen erfllen. Dementsprechend hinterfragen sie MUS, die keine Anpassungsmechanismen fr ihren jeweiligen Arbeitsstil, die verschiedenen relevanten MUS-Nutzungsflle und die unterschiedlichen MUS-Zugangsmglichkeiten vorsehen. Dieser Beitrag zeigt verschiedene Nutzungssituationen von Fhrungskrften auf, definiert als Klassen hnlicher Nutzergruppenprferenzen und schlgt Stellhebel vor, um die MUS-Gestaltung konzeptionell daran anzupassen. Basierend auf den Ergebnissen einer Literaturrecherche werden zunchst Nutzergruppenprferenzen in Form von 36 Nutzungssituationen klassifiziert. Hierauf aufbauend machen wir Vorschlge zur Endgerteauswahl. Wir vervollstndigen das Konfigurationsmodell, indem wir auch die Gestaltung der MUS-Benutzerschnittstelle einbeziehen. Schlielich zeigen wir die Ntzlichkeit unseres Vorschlags mithilfe einer Pilotumsetzung auf und evaluieren diese.

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

managementuntersttzungssysteme (mus)
is-analyse und -gestaltung
nutzungsfaktoren in der mus-gestaltung
mus-konfiguration
management support systems (mss)
is analysis and design
user-group preferences
use factors in mss design
mss configuration


Regular Polytopes of Nearly Full Rank An abstract regular polytope P of rank n can only be realized faithfully in Euclidean space E(d) of dimension d if d >= n when P is finite, or d >= n - 1 when P is infinite (that is, P is an apeirotope). In case of equality, the realization P of P is said to be of full rank. If there is a faithful realization P of P of dimension d = n + 1 or d = n ( as P is finite or not), then P is said to be of nearly full rank. In previous papers, all the at most four-dimensional regular polytopes and apeirotopes of nearly full rank have been classified. This paper classifies the regular polytopes and apeirotopes of nearly full rank in all higher dimensions.

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

abstract regular polytope
realization
faithful
nearly full rank


Acceptable consistency analysis of interval reciprocal comparison matrices When a decision maker expresses his/her opinions by means of an interval reciprocal comparison matrix, the study of consistency becomes a very important aspect in decision making in order to avoid a misleading solution. In the present paper. an acceptably consistent interval reciprocal comparison matrix is defined, which can be reduced to an acceptably consistent crisp reciprocal comparison matrix when the intervals become exact numbers. An interval reciprocal comparison matrix with unacceptable consistency can be easily adjusted such that the revised matrix possesses acceptable consistency. Utilizing a convex combination method, a family of crisp reciprocal comparison matrices with acceptable consistency can be obtained, whose weights are further found to exhibit a style of convex combination, and aggregated to obtain interval weights from an acceptably consistent interval reciprocal comparison matrix. A novel, simple yet effective formula of possibility degree is presented to rank interval weights. Numerical results are calculated to show the quality and quantity of the proposed approaches and compare with other existing procedures. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

interval reciprocal comparison matrix
acceptable consistency
convex combination

interval weight
possibility degree formula


Wireless Internet access: 3G vs. WiFi? ? This article compares and contrasts two technologies for delivering broadband wireless Internet access services: 3G vs. WiFi. The former, 3G, refers to the collection of third-generation mobile technologies that are designed to allow mobile operators to offer integrated data and voice services over mobile networks. The latter, WiFi, refers to the 802.11b wireless Ethernet standard that was designed to support wireless LANs. Although the two technologies reflect fundamentally different service, industry, and architectural design goals, origins, and philosophies, each has recently attracted a lot of attention as candidates for the dominant platform for providing broadband wireless access to the Internet. It remains an open question as to the extent to which these two technologies are in competition or, perhaps, may be complementary. If they are viewed as in competition, then the triumph of one at the expense of the other would be likely to have profound implications for the evolution of the wireless Internet and structure of the service-provider industry.

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

internet broadband wireless 3g ethernet access

wlan
spectrum
economics
industry structure


Decentralized fuzzy control of multiple nonholonomic vehicles This work considers the problem of controlling multiple nonholonomic vehicles so that they converge to a scent source without colliding with each other. Since the control is to be implemented on a simple 8-bit microcontroller, fuzzy control rules are used to simplify a linear quadratic regulator control design. The inputs to the fuzzy controllers for each vehicle are the noisy direction to the source, the distance to the closest neighbor vehicle, and the direction to the closest vehicle. These directions are discretized into four values: forward, behind, left, and right; and the distance into three values: near, far, and gone. The values of the control at these discrete values are obtained based on the collision-avoidance repulsive forces and an attractive force towards the goal. A fuzzy inference system is used to obtain control values from a small number of discrete input values. Simulation results are provided which demonstrate that the fuzzy control law performs well compared to the exact controller. In fact, the fuzzy controller demonstrates improved robustness to noise.

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

fuzzy logic
mobile robots
group behavior
cooperative robotics
kalman estimation


On optimal p-cycle-based protection in WDM optical networks with sparse-partial wavelength conversion We study the optimal configuration of p-cycles in survivable wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical mesh networks with sparse-partial wavelength conversion while 100% restorability is guaranteed against any single failures. We formulate the problem as two integer linear programs (Optimization Models I, and II) which have the same constraints, but different objective functions. p-cycles and wavelength converters are optimally determined subject to the constraint that only a given number of nodes have wavelength conversion capability, and the maximum number of wavelength converters that can be placed at such nodes is limited. Optimization Model I has a composite sequential objective function that first (G1) minimizes the cost of link capacity used by all p-cycles in order to accommodate a set of traffic demands; and then (G2) minimizes the total number of wavelength converters used in the entire network. In Optimization Model II, the cost of one wavelength. converter is measured as the cost of a deployed wavelength link with a length of a units; and the objective is to minimize the total cost of link capacity & wavelength converters required by p-cycle configuration. During p-cycle configuration, our schemes fully takes into account wavelength converter sharing, which reduces the number of converters required while attaining a satisfactory level of performance. Our simulation results indicate that the proposed schemes significantly outperform existing approaches in terms of protection cost, number of wavelength conversion sites, and number of wavelength converters needed.

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

integer linear programming
optimal p-cycle configuration
sparse-partial wavelength conversion


Biomechanical simulation of the fetal descent without imposed theoretical trajectory The medical training concerning childbirth for young obstetricians involves performing real deliveries, under supervision. This medical procedure becomes more complicated when instrumented deliveries requiring the use of forceps or suction cups become necessary. For this reason, the use of a versatile, configurable childbirth simulator, taking into account different anatomical and pathological cases, would provide an important benefit in the training of obstetricians, and improve medical procedures. The production of this type of simulator should be generally based on a computerized birth simulation, enabling the computation of the reproductive organs deformation of the parturient woman and fetal interactions as well as the calculation of efforts produced during the second stage of labor. In this paper, we present a geometrical and biomechanical modeling of the main parturient's organs involved in the birth process, interacting with the fetus. Instead of searching for absolute precision, we search to find a good compromise between accuracy and model complexity. At this stage, to verify the correctness of our hypothesis, we use finite element analysis because of its reliability, precision and stability. Moreover, our study improves the previous work carried out on childbirth simulators because: (a) our childbirth model takes into account all the major organs involved in birth process, thus potentially enabling different childbirth scenarios; (b) fetal head is not treated as a rigid body and its motion is computed by taking into account realistic boundary conditions, i.e. we do not impose a pre-computed fetal trajectory; (c) we take into account the cyclic uterine contractions as well as voluntary efforts produced by the muscles of the abdomen; (d) a slight pressure is added inside the abdomen, representing the residual muscle tone. The next stage of our work will concern the optimization of our numerical resolution approach to obtain interactive time simulation, enabling it to be coupled to our haptic device.

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

biomechanical modeling of organs
finite element model


Complex patterns in networks of hyperexcitable neurons Complex patterns in neuronal networks emerge from the cooperative activity of the participating neurons, synaptic connectivity and network topology. Several neuron types exhibit complex intrinsic dynamics due to the presence of nonlinearities and multiple time scales. In this paper we extend previous work on hyperexcitability of neuronal networks, a hallmark of epileptic brain seizure generation, which results from the net imbalance between excitation and inhibition and the ability of certain neuron types to exhibit abrupt transitions between low and high firing frequency regimes as the levels of recurrent AMPA excitation change. We examine the effect of different topologies and connection delays on the hyperexcitability phenomenon in networks having recurrent synaptic AMPA (fast) excitation (in the absence of synaptic inhibition) and demonstrate the emergence of additional time scales.

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


Decentralized Management of Building Indoors through Embedded Software Agents In order to support personalized people comfort and building energy efficiency as well as safety, emergency, and context-aware information exchange scenarios, next-generation buildings will be smart. In this paper we propose an agent-oriented decentralized and embedded architecture based on wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) for enabling efficient and effective management of buildings. The main objective of the proposed architecture is to fully support distributed and coordinated sensing and actuation operations. The building management architecture is implemented at the WSAN side through MAPS (Mobile Agent Platform for Sun SPOTs), an agent-based framework for programming WSN applications based on the Sun SPOT sensor platform, and at the base station side through an OSGi-based application. The proposed agent-oriented architecture is demonstrated in a simple yet effective operating scenario related to monitoring workstation usage in computer laboratories/offices. The high modularity of the proposed architecture allows for easy adaptation of higher-level application-specific agents that can therefore exploit the architecture to implement intelligent building management policies.

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

smart buildings
multi-agent systems
building management systems