An Efficient Stack Management for Sensor Operating Systems Operating systems for sensor networks must provide energy and memory-space efficient execution environments for applications because of the resource constraints of the sensor nodes. The shared-stack cooperative threads have been proposed to conserve stack memory-space and to minimize the possibility of stack overflow in the sensor operating systems. However, stack switching brings about external fragmentations in the stack space. Compaction may remove the fragmentation but the compaction overhead could degrade the performance. In this paper, we propose an efficient scheme to determine the compaction time of a shared-stack to reduce the number of compactions. For determining the time of a compaction, we evaluated the expected stack overflow time according to our stack model, which is based on the continuous time Markov chain. Our simulation results show that the number of compactions is greatly reduced and the lifetime of the sensor networks is increased with using our proposed scheme.

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

operating systems
sensor networks
cooperative threads
stack overflow
continuous time markov chain


Design and experimental results of a preamplifier for particles tracking in secondary electron detectors This paper presents the design and experimental characterization of a preamplifier used in the electronic front-end of low-pressure gaseous secondary electron detectors. The circuitimplemented in a printed circuit board as a proof of concept has been designed to cope with the specifications of the readout electronics used in spatial (beam particle position) measurements. Experimental results show a transimpedance gain of 80dB?, an overall voltage gain of 18dB, a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 36.5dB and a shaping time frame of 140170ns. These features improve the performance of previous reported approaches to the problem, and allow us to minimize the overlapping probability in secondary electron detections for radioactive ion beams tracking, achieving a counting rate higher than 106 particles per second.

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

preamplifier
secondary electron detectors

transimpedance amplifier
particle tracking
spatial detection
radioactive ions beams


Automated short proof generation for projective geometric theorems with Cayley and bracket algebras: I. Incidence geometry In this paper we establish the Cayley expansion theory on factored and shortest expansions of typical Cayley expressions in two- and three-dimensional projective geometry. We set up a group of Cayley factorization formulae based on the classification of Cayley expansions. We continue to establish three powerful simplification techniques in bracket computation. On top of the Cayley expansions and simplifications, together with a set of elimination rules, we design an algorithm that can produce extremely short proofs in two- and three-dimensional projective geometry. The techniques developed here can be immediately applied to other symbolic computation tasks involving brackets.

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

cayley algebra
bracket algebra
automated theorem proving
projective incidence geometry


Data and knowledge visualization with virtual reality spaces, neural networks and rough sets: Application to cancer and geophysical prospecting data Visual data mining with virtual reality spaces is used for the representation of data and symbolic knowledge. High quality structure-preserving and maximally discriminative visual representations can be obtained using a combination of neural networks (SAMANN and NDA) and rough sets techniques, so that a proper subsequent analysis can be made. The approach is illustrated with two types of data: for gene expression cancer data, an improvement in classification performance with respect to the original spaces was obtained; for geophysical prospecting data for cave detection, a cavity was successfully predicted.

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

data and knowledge visualization
visual data mining
virtual reality
neural networks
rough sets


Three-dimensional face recognition using shapes of facial curves We study shapes of facial surfaces for the purpose of face recognition. The main idea is to 1) represent surfaces by unions of level curves, called facial curves, of the depth function and 2) compare shapes of surfaces implicitly using shapes of facial curves. The latter is performed using a differential geometric approach that computes geodesic lengths between closed curves on a shape manifold. These ideas are demonstrated using a nearest-neighbor classifier on two 3D face databases: Florida State University and Notre Dame, highlighting a good recognition performance.

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

shape analysis
geodesic paths
3d face recognition
range images


Improving an upper bound on the size of k-regular induced subgraphs This paper considers the NP-hard graph problem of determining a maximum cardinality subset of vertices inducing a k-regular subgraph. For any graph G, this maximum will be denoted by alpha (k) (G). From a well known Motzkin-Straus result, a relationship is deduced between alpha (k) (G) and the independence number alpha(G). Next, it is proved that the upper bounds upsilon (k) (G) introduced in Cardoso et al. (J. Comb. Optim., 14, 455-463, 2007) can easily be computed from upsilon (0)(G), for any positive integer k. This relationship also allows one to present an alternative proof of the Hoffman bound extension introduced in the above paper. The paper continues with the introduction of a new upper bound on alpha (k) (G) improving upsilon (k) (G). Due to the difficulty of computing this improved bound, two methods are provided for approximating it. Finally, some computational experiments which were performed to compare all bounds studied are reported.

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

graphs
independent sets
induced matchings
combinatorial optimization


Quantitative methods for detecting cerebral infarction from multiple channel EEG recordings EEG has been known to be non-stationary and time varying. Timefrequency representation (TFR) is a proper tool for such non-stationary signals. In the present paper, TFR-based quantitative methods that can translate complicated and subjective waveform-based EEG analysis into objective measures are introduced to characterize EEG recorded from normal subjects and cerebral infarction (CI) patients. Relative frequency band energy (RFBE) is computed from timefrequency plane for the five subbands: delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma. Moreover, we propose the Shannon entropy (SE) of TFR to detect the difference in EEG for the two kinds of subjects. Finally, the temporal evolutions of these quantitative parameters are presented to trace EEG changes. The experiment results show that CI results in the RFBE changes of the five rhythms; however, the RFBEs of some rhythms have stronger association with CI. Increase in EEG SE of CI patients is obvious. The time evolutions of RFBE and SE as valuable objective measures can be displayed in real time and be used as helpful references in detection and monitoring of CI.

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

cerebral infarction
timefrequency representation
relative frequency band energy
entropy


Reduction of stochastic parity to stochastic mean-payoff games A stochastic graph game is played by two players on a game graph with probabilistic transitions. We consider stochastic graph games with w-regular winning conditions specified as parity objectives, and mean-payoff (or limit-average) objectives. These games lie in NP boolean AND coNP. We present a polynomial-time Turing reduction of stochastic parity games to stochastic mean-payoff games. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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

formal verification and model checking
stochastic games
mean-payoff objectives
formal methods


Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme in Systemic Sclerosis The main pathologic hallmark of systemic sclerosis (SSc) is endothelial derangement; the pathologic alterations of the vessel wall in SSc are strikingly similar to the modification detected in the atherosclerotic lesions, and it is now evident that SSc is also characterized by accelerated macrovascular disease. Peptides related to angiotensin II, the final product of the reninangiotensin system (RAS), play a role as regulators of endothelial cell function. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), the key enzyme in the RAS, is the predominant pathway of angiotensin II formation in blood and tissues. In intron 16 of the gene encoding for ACE an insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism, consisting of the presence or absence of a 287base pair Alu sequence, has been identified. This polymorphism has been related to ACE enzyme levels, and data from experimental studies reported a functional role for this polymorphism in modulating the angiotensin II levels. We previously documented a high ACE D allele frequency in SSc patients and its role in increasing the risk of SSc, thus suggesting that the I/D polymorphism might be a useful genetic marker to identify SSc patients at risk to develop a severe vascular disease, frequently leading to gangrene. Moreover, our preliminary data, besides supporting the role of ACE I/D polymorphism as a predisposing factor to SSc, demonstrated its involvement in accelerated macrovascular disease by increasing the intima media thickness. Therefore, in SSc, not only endothelial dysfunction, but also vascular damage, linked to ACE I/D polymorphism, may significantly contribute to accelerated macrovascular disease, as the ACE D allele, by regulating both the production of angiotensin II and the degradation of bradykinin, contributes to mechanisms involved in the induction and maintenance of vessel wall modification

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

systemic sclerosis
macrovascular disease
reninangiotensin system
angiotensin
ace
polymorphism


Towards Programmable Smart Materials: Dynamical Reconfiguration of Emergent Transport Networks Smart materials promise adaptive morphology and functionality of materials, however, controlling the desired pattern formation using simple and local bottom-up interactions is a difficult task, but. one which living organisms appear to manage effortlessly. We have previously demonstrated a virtual material inspired by the slime mould Physarum polycephalum which, from simple interactions within a swarm based particle collective, forms complex emergent transport networks. One desired characteristic of smart materials is that they should be programmable, adapting their structure in response to external stimuli. As a step towards this aim we suggest a prototype method to dynamically reconfigure emergent transport networks, based on real-time network analysis of the current configuration and feedback via dynamic adjustment of network node weights. The analysis method utilises a novel collective memory of previous network history which is used to provide connectivity information to control a feedback method to the network nodes. Although simple in operation, the feedback method utilises complex neural network-like control including excitation, inhibition and refractory dynamics. The transitions of the reconfiguration method are analysed and high level motif's; and transitions are described. We suggest how the dynamical reconfiguration method may he used as a spatially represented unconventional computing method for combinatorial optimisation problems including the Euclidean Travelling Salesman Problem. We conclude by discussing limitations and possible improvements to the dynamical reconfiguration method and exploring the potential advantages of exploring low-level and indirect methods of influence on smart materials.

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

smart materials
transport networks
physarum polycephalum
combinatorial optimisation


Role of oxidizer in the chemical mechanical planarization of the Ti/TiN barrier layer The electrochemical parameters controlling the polishing rates of Ti and TiN are investigated. In this paper, alumina containing slurry was studied at pH 4 with 5% H2O2 as the oxidizer. Passive film formation on the surface during chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) plays an important role. To understand the oxide growth mechanism and the surface chemistry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was performed. It was found that in the absence of an oxidizer, the removal of Ti and TiN is mainly due to mechanical abrasion of oxide layer or metal layer. However, in the presence of 5% H2O2 as the oxidizer, different removal behavior was observed for Ti and TiN. The removal mechanism of Ti during CMP is mainly due to mechanical abrasion of the oxide layer whereas for TiN it could be attributed to the formation of metastable soluble peroxide complexes.

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


Business process management and supply chain collaboration: a critical comparison The link between a firm and supply chain (SC) members has been recognised as one of the key issues for ensuring business success and achieving competitive advantage. Indeed, working across organisational boundaries is required to accomplish effective responses to customers needs. Our preliminary research confirmed that there are positive relationships between business process management (BPM), supply chain collaboration (SCC), collaborative advantage and organisational performance. This study is a step further and uses a multiple case design to illuminate the results and gain a greater understanding from extensive discussions about these relationships. By means of semi-structured interviews, the three main issues were identified as: (1) the link between BPM and organisational performance; (2) the link between BPM and SCC; and (3) the contextual factors and benefits achieved from working collaboratively with SC partners. The different scenarios of the link between BPM and SCC were developed in a taxonomy, and the case studies were used to illustrate the experience of intra- and inter-organisational practices in the developing economy of Thailand. The case studies results explain in depth that both BPM and SCC are important for improving organisational performance and competitiveness. BPM not only improves organisational performance directly, but also assists with collaborative activities that in turn help to improve internal capabilities. Additionally, the comparisons in issuesrelating tofirm size, industry type, relationship closeness and relationship length were also included in this study.

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

business process management
supply chain collaboration
collaborative advantage


Multivariate time series modeling in a connectionist approach Multivariate models in the framework of artificial neural network have been constructed for systems where time series data of several variables is known. The models have been tested using computer generated data for the Lorenz and Henon systems. They are found to be robust and give accurate short term predictions. Analysis of the models is able to throw some light on theoretical questions related to multivariate "embedding" and removal of redundancy in the embedding.

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

multivariate time series modeling
artificial neural network

state space reconstruction
nonlinear dynamics
prediction


Implementation of high-order compact finite-difference method to parabolized Navier-Stokes schemes The numerical solution to the parabolized Navier-Stokes (PNS) and globally iterated PNS (IPNS) equations for accurate computation of hypersonic axisymmetric flowfields is obtained by using the fourth-order compact finite-difference method. The PNS and IPNS equations in the general curvilinear coordinates are solved by using the implicit finite-difference algorithm of Beam and Warming type with a high-order compact accuracy. A shock-fitting procedure is utilized in both compact PNS and IPNS schemes to obtain accurate solutions in the vicinity of the shock. The main advantage of the present formulation is that the basic flow variables and their first and second derivatives are simultaneously computed with the fourth-order accuracy. The computations are carried out for a benchmark case: hypersonic axisymmetric flow over a blunt cone at Mach 8. A sensitivity study is performed for the basic flowfield, including profiles and their derivatives obtained from the fourth-order compact PNS and IPNS solutions, and the effects of grid size and numerical dissipation term used are discussed. The present results for the flowfield variables and also their derivatives are compared with those of other basic flow models to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. The present work represents the first known application of a high-order compact finite-difference method to the PNS schemes, which are computationally more efficient than Navier-Stokes solutions. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

hypersonic axisymmetric flows
compact finite-difference method
pns equations
iterated pns (ipns) equations


Asymmetric clustering using the alphabeta divergence We propose the use of asymmetric dissimilarity in centroid-based clustering. We asymmetrize the AB-divergence on the basis of the within-cluster variances. The proposed approach efficiently takes into consideration clusters with different variances. Experiments were conducted on real and simulated data of high and low dimensionality.

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

clustering
dissimilarity
alphabeta divergence


Production planning to support mixed-model assembly A mixed-model assembly line is widely used nowadays in industry. Effectively applying mixed-model assembly can result in smooth part usage and balanced workloads on the assembly line. The problem of production planning in terms of scheduling various models on an assembly line over a time horizon is studied here. The problem assumes that each model has a given range of production days within the planning horizon. An industrial production system is presented to demonstrate the application of this problem. A two-phase procedure that generates an initial solution and makes further improvement is developed. The procedure is evaluated using randomly generated problems and an industrial example. (C) 2003 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O


ATRIPPI: AN ATOM-RESIDUE PREFERENCE SCORING FUNCTION FOR PROTEIN-PROTEIN INTERACTIONS We present an ATRIPPI model for analyzing protein-protein interactions. This model is a 167-atom-type and residue-specific interaction preferences with distance bins derived from 641 co-crystallized protein-protein interfaces. The ATRIPPI model is able to yield physical meanings of hydrogen bonding, disulfide bonding, electrostatic interactions, van der Waals and aromatic-aromatic interactions. We applied this model to identify the native states and near-native complex structures on 17 bound and 17 unbound complexes from thousands of decoy structures. On average, 77.5% structures (155 structures) of top rank 200 structures are closed to the native structure. These results suggest that the ATRIPPI model is able to keep the advantages of both atom-atom and residue-residue interactions and is a potential knowledge-based scoring function for protein-protein docking methods. We believe that our model is robust and provides biological meanings to support protein-protein interactions.

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

protein-protein interaction
atom-atom interacting preference
knowledge-based scoring matrix
residue-residue interaction preference


Representations of body and space: theoretical concepts and controversies Recent years have seen a revived interest in how body and space are represented perceptually and how they affect human cognition and behaviour. Various conceptualisations of body and space have been proposed, alternately stressing neurophysiological, cognitive, or social aspects, but unified approaches are scarce. This short paper will give an overview of different views on body and space. At least three relevant dimensions can be identified in which concepts of body and space may differ: (1) perspective: while we conceptually differentiate between body and space perception, they imply each other and the underlying mechanisms overlap. (2) Level: representations of body and space may emerge at different processing levels, from spinal mechanisms guiding reflex movements to those we construct in our imagination. (3) Affect: representations of body and space are closely linked to affect, but this relationship has not received enough attention yet. Despite many empirical findings, our current views on body and space representations remain ambiguous. One problem may lie in the implicit diversity of bodies and spaces examined in different studies. Specifications of these concepts may help understand existing results better and are important for guiding future research.

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

body image
body schema
peripersonal space


The narrative construction of our (social) world: steps towards an interactive learning environment for children with autism Children with autism exhibit a deficit in narrative comprehension which adversely impacts upon their social world. The authors research agenda is to develop an interactive software system which promotes an understanding of narrative structure (and thus the social world) while addressing the needs of individual children. This paper reports the results from a longitudinal study, focussing on primitive elements of narrative, presented as proto-narratives, in an interactive software game which adapts to the abilities of individual children. A correlation has been found with a real-world narrative comprehension task, and for most children a clear distinction in their understanding of narrative components.

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


Markov chain analysis of collaborative codes in random multi access communication systems A discrete-time Markov chain analysis is developed for the performance of collaborative codes in random multi access communication systems (CCMA). Two media access schemes are proposed: asynchronous CCMA where users can start transmission at any time and synchronous CCMA where users can start transmission only at the start of a synchronizing clock. The performance of these two systems is compared with pure ALOHA and slotted ALOHA, respectively. It is shown that these well-known protocols are special case of CCMA when the number of available codes is only one. The performance of 2-, 3-, and 5-user codes is studied and it is shown that they offer significant performance enhancement in CCMA environment compared to the non-coded case in terms of throughput, efficiency, delay, and the number of retries for a successful transmission. Because of CCMA advantages, their use for voice traffic application is studied and it was found that CCMA allows more traffic than the non-coded case for all codes used, which is doubled in the case of 5-user slotted environment. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

collaborative codes
markov chain analysis
pure aloha
slotted aloha

multiple access
synchronous ma
asynchronous ma
discrete-time markov chains


Hopf Bifurcation in a Chaotic Associative Memory This paper has two basic objectives: the first is to investigate Hopf Bifurcation in the internal state of a Chaotic Associative Memory (CAM). For a small network with three neurons, resulting in a six-dimensional Equation of State, the existence and stability of Hopf Bifurcation were verified analytically. The second objective is to study how the Hopf Bifurcation changed the external state (output) of CAM, since this network was trained to associate a dataset of inputoutput patterns. There were three main differences between this study and others: the bifurcation parameter was not a time delay, but a physical parameter of a CAM; the weights of interconnections between chaotic neurons were neither free parameters nor chosen arbitrarily, but determined in the training process of classical AM; the Hopf Bifurcation occurred in the internal state of CAM, and not in the external state (inputoutput network signal). We present three examples of Hopf Bifurcation: one neuron with supercritical bifurcation while the other two neurons do not bifurcate; two neurons bifurcating into a subcritical bifurcation and one neuron does not bifurcate; and the same example as before, but with a supercritical bifurcation. We show that the presence of a limit cycle in the internal state of CAM prevents output signals from the network converging towards a desired equilibrium state (desired memory), although the CAM is able to access this memory.

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


A simple analytical framework for the performance evaluation of a tree-based connection rerouting architecture in a UMTS network The enormous increase in wireless communications and the growing request for transmission bandwidth have led to the need to configure wireless access networks with cellular structures based on the use of micro- and pico-cells. Applying these structures means that handovers between neighboring cells are more frequent and therefore have to be carefully managed. A key issue in connection with this is the rerouting of the data flows directed to a user making a handover. In fact, the time interval needed to update all the routing tables in the crossover switches is critical because in this interval data have to be stored, and later forwarded once the route towards the new location has been determined. The paper considers a connectionless protocol, the Signaling Network Layer (SNL), which has been conceived for use in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) context for connection rerouting purposes and is based on a tree-structured rerouting architecture. Through an analytical model based on a queueing network, its performance is analyzed in terms of the distribution of the rerouting delay. The proposed model is then applied to a case study to demonstrate its versatility and manageability and to get insight into the dimensioning of the rerouting architecture.

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


Inter-modulation compensation for multi-carrier M-ary/SS system One of the problems in multi-carrier modulation is nonlinear distortion due to nonlinearity of channels, such as in HPA (High Power Amplifier). This problem is also true of multi-carrier SS (Spread Spectrum) systems. In this paper, an inter-modulation compensation scheme for multi-carrier M-ary/SS system is proposed. We propose two methods to control the sequences transmitted in parallel to avoid the occurrence of severe inter-modulation distortion. One is the "package sequence selection" method, which requires slight redundancy. The other method is based on error correction code, which requires no additional frequency or power except the redundancy for error correction. We confirm the validity of our proposed scheme by computer simulation, and the BER (Bit Error Rate) performance in an AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) channel is presented.

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

nonlinear amplification
multi-carrier m-ary/ss modulation
convolutional code


Accelerating VQ-based codeword search on the basis of partial search strategy In this paper, a technique for accelerating the search on VQ-based codeword search is proposed. With our approach, all the pixel blocks of vector representation in an image picture could be encoded efficiently into their corresponding indices, and be associated with the closest codeword in the pre-generated codebook. The technique adopted in our scheme is inspired by the concept of space partition of the initial codebook. It is accomplished in a manner that the search range for the image block is significantly reduced. There is a key-codebook comprised of numerous key-codewords, and with a smaller book size, which is generated from the given codewords during system initialization. Any image block is then directed to look for the closest key-codeword in the key-codebook. Ultimately, the best-match codeword is checked out according to the relation between the closest key-codeword and the 'genuine' codewords in the given codebook. This short-time achievement is obtained because of the considerable book size reduction. A flexible radius, spread by a key-codeword is imposed in our elaborated algorithm to attain the most precise hit ratio estimation. The experiments show that our scheme is at least two and a half times faster than that of a full search in VQ implementation. Moreover, the strategy we proposed is also compatible with the search algorithms in finding the closest codeword, and the high quality of image display remained the same. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Potential Energy of Water In the present paper the importance of the water as resource for hydropower, his sub appraisement in the electrical market, and the function of the state as regulatory entity, to demand the rational use in hydroelectric power station.

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

rational use of water
electricity market


A distributed object-oriented framework for dependable multiparty interactions In programming distributed object-oriented systems, there are several approaches for achieving binary interactions in a multiprocess environment. Usually these approaches take care only of synchronisation or communication. In this paper Me describe a way of designing and implementing a more general concept: multiparty interactions. In a multiparty interaction, several parties (objects or processes) somehow "come together" to produce an intermediate and temporary combined state, use this state to execute some activity, and then leave this interaction and continue their normal execution. The concept of multiparty interactions has been investigated by several researchers, but to the best of our knowledge none have considered how failures in one or more participants of the multiparty interaction can be dealt with. In this paper, we propose a general scheme for constructing dependable multiparty interactions in a distributed object-oriented system, and describe its implementation in Java. In particular, we extend the notion of multiparty interaction to include facilities for handling exceptions. To show how our scheme can be used, we use our framework to build an abstraction mechanism that supports cooperative and competitive concurrency in distributed systems. This mechanism is then applied to program a system in which multiparty interactions are more than simple synchronisations or communications.

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

distributed object-oriented systems
concurrent exception handling
fault tolerance
coordinated atomic actions


Test sizes and the importance of finding global maxima of the likelihood function This paper demonstrates the importance of taking care to find a global maximum when estimating nuisance parameters required for hypothesis tests. We find that sizes can be badly inflated when this is not done for a test of the general linear regression model.

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

local maxima
ma(1) errors
marginal likelihood
t test


Controlled Interphase Power Controller (IPC) on the Base of Squashed Transformer One of the perspective technical decisions in the field of management of modes of the electrical networks and systems are the Flexible Alternating Power Transmission Systems (FACTS) or Power Controllers. Most perspective of them is Interphase Power Controller (IPC) on the base of noncontrollable phase-shifting transformer with the three working windings connected in "delta" and constant shifting angle of 60 degrees. The analyses of its characteristics and working modes which are done in this paper are shone, then using multiwindings controllable transformer allows essentially to damage the required power of the phase-shifting transformer.

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 I I 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 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

electrical networks and systems
interphase power controller
characteristics

multiwindings controllable phase shifting transformer


identifying the challenges for optimizing the process to achieve reproducible results in e-science applications One of the major requirements for e-science applications handling sensor data, is reproducibility of results. Several optimization and scalability problems exist where the reproducibility of results remains guaranteed. Firstly, various data streams need to be coordinated to optimize the accuracy and processing of the results. Secondly, because of the high volume of streaming data and a series of processing steps to be performed on that data, demand for disk space may grow unacceptably high. Lastly, reproducibility in a decentralized scenario may be difficult to achieve because of data replication. This paper introduces and addresses these challenges which arise for optimizing the process of achieving reproducibility of results.

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

reproducibility
optimization
sensor data


Least Recently Plus Five Least Frequently Replacement Policy (LR+5LF) In this paper, we present a new block replacement policy in which we proposed a new efficient algorithm for combining two important policies Least Recently Used (LRU) and Least Frequently Used (LFU). The implementation of the proposed policy is simple. It requires limited calculations to determine the victim block. We proposed our models to implement LRU and LFU policies. The new policy gives each block in cache two weighing values corresponding to LRU and LFU policies. Then a simple algorithm is used to get the overall value for each block. A comprehensive comparison is made between our Policy and LRU, First In First Out (FIFO), V-WAY, and Combined LRU and LFU (CRF) policies. Experimental results show that the LR+5LF replacement policy significantly reduces the number of cache misses. We modified simple scalar simulator version 3 under Linux Ubuntu 9.04 and we used speccpu2000 benchmark to simulate this policy. The results of simulations showed, that giving higher weighing to LFU policy gives this policy best performance characteristics over other policies. Substantial improvement on miss rate was achieved on instruction level 1 cache and at level 2 cache memory.

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

cache memory
replacement policy
lru
lfu
miss rate


A Geometrically Enhanced Conceptual Model and Query Language Motivated by our experiences with spatial modelling for the sustainable land use initiative we present a geometrically enhanced ER model (GERM), which preserves the key principles of entity-relationship modelling and at the same time introduces bulk constructors and geometric features. The model distinguishes between a syntactic level of types and an explicit internal level, in which types give rise to polyhedra that are defined by algebraic varieties. It further emphasises the stability of algebraic operations by means of a natural modelling algebra that extends the usual Boolean operations on point sets.

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

conceptual model
natural modelling algebra
query language

geometric model
spatial model
entity-relationship model


Modeling of enzyme-substrate complexes for the metalloproteases MMP-3, ADAM-9 and ADAM-10 The matrix metalloproteases ( MMPs) and the ADAMs ( A Disintegrin And Metalloprotease domain) are proteolytic enzyme families containing a catalytic zinc ion, that are implicated in a variety of normal and pathological processes involving tissue remodeling and cancer. Synthetic MMP inhibitors have been designed for applications in pathological situations. However, a greater understanding of substrate binding and the catalytic mechanism is required so that more effective and selective inhibitors may be developed for both experimental and clinical purposes. By modeling a natural substrate spanning P4-P4' in complex with the catalytic domains, we aim to compare substrate-specificities between Stromelysin-1 (MMP-3), ADAM-9 and ADAM - 10, with the aid of molecular dynamics simulations. Our results show that the substrate retains a favourable antiparallel beta-sheet conformation on the P-side in addition to the well-known orientation of the P'-region of the scissile bond, and that the primary substrate selectivity is dominated by the sidechains in the S1' pocket and the S2/S3 region. ADAM-9 has a hydrophobic residue as the central determinant in the S1' pocket, while ADAM-10 has an amphiphilic residue, which suggests a different primary specificity. The S2/S3 pocket is largely hydrophobic in all three enzymes. Inspired by our molecular dynamics calculations and supported by a large body of literature, we propose a novel, hypothetical, catalytic mechanism where the Zn-ion polarizes the oxygens from the catalytic glutamate to form a nucleophile, leading to a tetrahedral oxyanion anhydride transition state.

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

adam (a disintegrin and metalloprotease domain)


LTRES: A loss-tolerant reliable event sensing protocol for wireless sensor networks Many Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) transport protocols proposed in recent studies focus on providing end-to-end reliability as in TCP. However, traditional end-to-end reliability enforcement is energy and time consuming for common loss-tolerant applications in WSNs. In this paper, a Loss-Tolerant Reliable Event Sensing protocol (LTRES) is proposed based on the particular reliability requirements for dynamic event observation in WSNs. According to the application-specific requirements, a reliable event sensing threshold at the transport layer is determined by the sink. A distributed source rate adaptation mechanism is designed, incorporating a loss rate based lightweight congestion control mechanism, to regulate the data traffic injected into the network so that the reliability requirements can be satisfied. An equation based fair rate control algorithm is designed to improve the fairness among the traffic flows sharing the congestion path. The performance evaluations show that LTRES can provide event-based loss-tolerant reliable data transport service for multiple events with short convergence time, low loss rate and high overall bandwidth utilization. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

congestion control
event sensing
fair rate control
wireless sensor networks


Delaunay and Voronoi tessellations and minimal simple cycles in triangular region and regular-3 undirected planar graphs Linear time algorithms are presented which generate the Voronoi tessellation from a Delaunay tessellation and vice versa when the tessellations of convex polygons and triangles are stored as edge-adjacent undirected graphs. These two geometric algorithms lead naturally to two further linear and quadratic graph algorithms for determining the minimal simple cycles or regions in both triangular and regular-3 undirected planar graphs.

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

delaunay and voronoi tessellations
graph algorithms


Selection Cooperation in Heterogeneous Cooperative Networks Selection cooperation is an attractive cooperative strategy for wireless networks due to its simplicity and efficiency. In this paper, we consider a heterogeneous cooperative network consisting of different kinds of nodes with low-cost radios where the activities of one kind of nodes are triggered by the other kinds of nodes. This is a common scenario for many networks, such as wireless sensor networks. By exploiting the transmission relationship between heterogeneous nodes, we propose a selection cooperation protocol where inducing nodes can cooperate with the following nodes after their own transmissions for improving the communication reliability of the latter nodes. Through performance analysis, we show an interesting feature that the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff of the proposed protocol does not rely on the best relay selection method and the protocol always achieves the full diversity gain. We further develop an energy-efficient best relay selection method based on power control where the power consumption is minimized without decreasing the full diversity order. Simulation results demonstrate the good performance of the protocol and the remarkable energy reduction of the proposed best relay selection method.

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

cooperative diversity
heterogeneous wireless networks


Methylglyoxal, Glyoxal, and Their Detoxification in Alzheimer's Disease Abstract: The accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in brains with Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been implicated in the formation of insoluble deposits such as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. AGEs are also known to activate glia, resulting in inflammation and neuronal dysfunction. As reactive intermediates of AGE formation, neurotoxic reactive dicarbonyl compounds such as glyoxal and methylglyoxal have been identified. One of the most effective detoxification systems for methylglyoxal and glyoxal is the glutathione-dependent glyoxalase system, consisting of glyoxalase I and glyoxalase II. In this study, we have determined the methylglyoxal and glyoxal levels in the cerebrospinal fluid of AD patients compared to healthy controls. Methylglyoxal levels in AD patients were twofold higher than in controls, but this difference was not significant due to the large intergroup variations and the small sample size. However, the concentrations of both compounds were five to seven times higher in CSF than in plasma. We also investigated the glyoxalase I level in AD and healthy control brains. The number of glyoxalase I- positive neurons were increased in AD brains compared to controls. Our findings suggest that glyoxalase I is upregulated in AD in a compensatory manner to maintain physiological methylglyoxal and glyoxal levels.

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

glyoxalase
advanced glycation end products
methylglyoxal
glyoxal


A class of embedded discontinuous Galerkin methods for computational fluid dynamics We present a class of embedded discontinuous Galerkin (EDG) methods for numerically solving the Euler equations and the NavierStokes equations. The essential ingredients are a local Galerkin projection of the underlying governing equations at the element level onto spaces of polynomials of degree k to parametrize the numerical solution in terms of the approximate trace, a judicious choice of the numerical flux to provide stability and consistency, and a global jump condition that weakly enforces the single-valuedness of the numerical flux to arrive at a global formulation in terms of the numerical trace. The EDG methods are thus obtained from the hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method by requiring the approximate trace to belong to smaller approximation spaces than the one in the HDG method. In the EDG methods, the numerical trace is taken to be continuous on a suitable collection of faces, thus resulting in an even smaller number of globally coupled degrees of freedom than in the HDG method. On the other hand, the EDG methods are no longer locally conservative. In the framework of convectiondiffusion problems, this lack of local conservativity is reflected in the fact that the EDG methods do not provide the optimal convergence of the approximate gradient or the superconvergence for the scalar variable for diffusion-dominated problems as the HDG method does. However, since the HDG method does not display these properties in the convection-dominated regime, the EDG method becomes a reasonable alternative since it produces smaller algebraic systems than the HDG method. In fact, the resulting stiffness matrix has a similar sparsity pattern as that of the statically condensed continuous Galerkin (CG) method. The main advantage of the EDG methods is that they are generally more stable and robust than the CG method for solving convection-dominated problems. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the performance of the EDG methods. They confirm that, even though the EDG methods are not locally conservative, they are a viable alternative to the HDG method in the convection-dominated regime.

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

discontinuous galerkin methods
euler equations
navierstokes equations
computational fluid dynamics

finite element methods
hybrid/mixed methods


A Modified Digestion-Circularization PCR (DC-PCR) Approach to Detect Hypermutation-Associated DNA Double-Strand Breaks Hypermutation of immunoglobulin variable region genes occurs in B cells during an immune response, and is vital for the development of high-affinity antibodies. The molecular mechanism of the hypermutation reaction is unknown, but it seems to correlate with the generation of locus-specific, double-strand breaks. These DNA breaks have been measured by ligation-mediated polymerase chain reaction (LM-PCR), a technique that relies upon the ligation of a small linker to DNA breaks followed by the specific amplification of such breaks using combinations of locus- and linker-specific primers. Here, we describe a modified version of the digestion-circularization PCR (DC-PCR) technique, which can be used to amplify and measure DNA breaks directly.

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

b lymphocyte
immunoglobulin gene
somatic hypermutation
dna double-strand breaks


Conjecturable knowledge discovery: A fuzzy clustering approach Traditionally, clustering is the task of dividing objects into homogeneous clusters based on their degrees of similarity. As objects are assigned to clusters, users need to manually give descriptions for all clusters. Characterizing clusters by hand can consume a great deal of time of users. In addition, users sometimes have no specific idea as to how to explain the clustering results; thus, they might give inappropriate descriptions. A clustering technique is proposed to discover conjecturable rules, providing descriptions of clusters with a decision tree classification technique. Every cluster in a conjecturable tree is depicted by only one conjecturable rule. However, less-utilized rules are not necessarily trivial. In some real-life circumstances, there might be some clusters which can be depicted by two or more rules, namely, recessive conjecturable rules. For example, customers usually prefer to buy inexpensive red wines; however, on certain occasions, such for a birthday celebration, they will buy expensive wine. Therefore, we know that there are some people who generally belong to a low-value cluster but may simultaneously be assigned to a high-value one. In this study, we propose a new discovery model for mining conjecturable rules to reveal this type of knowledge. The experimental results show that our proposed model is able to discover conjecturable rules as well as recessive rules. The results of sensitivity analysis are also given for practitioners' reference. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

conjecturable rules
fuzzy clustering
classification


Network-Level Access Control Policy Analysis and Transformation Network-level access control policies are often specified by various people (network, application, and security administrators), and this may result in conflicts or suboptimal policies. We have defined a new formal model for policy representation that is independent of the actual enforcement elements, along with a procedure that allows the easy identification and removal of inconsistencies and anomalies. Additionally, the policy can be translated to the model used by the target access control element to prepare it for actual deployment. In particular, we show that every policy can be translated into one that uses the "First Matching Rule" resolution strategy. Our policy model and optimization procedure have been implemented in a tool that experimentally demonstrates its applicability to real-life cases.

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

firewall configuration
policy anomalies
policy conflict
policy transformation
policy translation


Contextualization models for XML retrieval In a hierarchical XML structure, surrounding elements form the context of an XML element. In document-oriented XML, the context is a part of the semantics of the element and augments its textual information. The process of taking the context of the element into account in element scoring is called contextualization. This study extends the concept of contextualization and presents a classification of contextualization models. In an XML collection, elements are of different granularity, i.e. lower level elements are shorter and carry less textual information. Thus, it seems credible that contextualization interacts differently with diverse elements. Even if it is known that contextualization leads to improved effectiveness in element retrieval, the improvement on different granularity levels has not been investigated. This study explores the effect of contextualization on these levels. Further, a parameterized framework for testing contextualization is presented. The empirical part of the study is carried out in a traditional laboratory setting, where an XML collection is granulated. This is necessary in order to measure performance separately at different hierarchy levels. The results confirm the effectiveness of contextualization, and show how the elements of different granularities benefit from contextualization.

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

evaluation
granularity level
granulation
semi-structured data
structured documents
content element


an empirical study on configuration errors in commercial and open source systems Configuration errors (i.e., misconfigurations) are among the dominant causes of system failures. Their importance has inspired many research efforts on detecting, diagnosing, and fixing misconfigurations; such research would benefit greatly from a real-world characteristic study on misconfigurations. Unfortunately, few such studies have been conducted in the past, primarily because historical misconfigurations usually have not been recorded rigorously in databases. In this work, we undertake one of the first attempts to conduct a real-world misconfiguration characteristic study. We study a total of 546 real world misconfigurations, including 309 misconfigurations from a commercial storage system deployed at thousands of customers, and 237 from four widely used open source systems (CentOS, MySQL, Apache HTTP Server, and OpenLDAP). Some of our major findings include: (1) A majority of misconfigurations (70.0\%~85.5\%) are due to mistakes in setting configuration parameters; however, a significant number of misconfigurations are due to compatibility issues or component configurations (i.e., not parameter-related). (2) 38.1\%~53.7\% of parameter mistakes are caused by illegal parameters that clearly violate some format or rules, motivating the use of an automatic configuration checker to detect these misconfigurations. (3) A significant percentage (12.2\%~29.7\%) of parameter-based mistakes are due to inconsistencies between different parameter values. (4) 21.7\%~57.3\% of the misconfigurations involve configurations external to the examined system, some even on entirely different hosts. (5) A significant portion of misconfigurations can cause hard-to-diagnose failures, such as crashes, hangs, or severe performance degradation, indicating that systems should be better-equipped to handle misconfigurations.

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


pagerank based clustering of hypertext document collections Clustering hypertext document collection is an important task in Information Retrieval. Most clustering methods are based on document content and do not take into account the hyper-text links. Here we propose a novel PageRank based clustering (PRC) algorithm which uses the hypertext structure. The PRC algorithm produces graph partitioning with high modularity and coverage. The comparison of the PRC algorithm with two content based clustering algorithms shows that there is a good match between PRC clustering and content based clustering.

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 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


Cable-direct-driven-robot (CDDR) with a 3-link passive serial support We present a cable-direct-driven-robot with a 3 link passive serial support. We implemented the dynamic model of the robot. We introduced damping elements to improve dynamics.

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


Impact of sensor-enhanced mobility prediction on the design of energy-efficient localization Energy efficiency and positional accuracy are often contradictive goals. We propose to decrease power consumption without sacrificing significant accuracy by developing an energy-aware localization that adapts the sampling rate to targets mobility level. In this paper, an energy-aware adaptive localization system based on signal strength fingerprinting is designed, implemented, and evaluated. Promising to satisfy an applications requirements on positional accuracy, our system tries to adapt its sampling rate to reduce its energy consumption. The contribution of this paper is fourfold. (1) We have developed a model to predict the positional error of a real working positioning engine under different mobility levels of mobile targets, estimation error from the positioning engine, processing and networking delay in the location infrastructure, and sampling rate of location information. (2) In a real test environment, our energy-saving method solves the mobility estimation error problem by utilizing additional sensors on mobile targets. The result is that we can improve the prediction accuracy by 56.34% on average, comparing to algorithms without utilizing additional sensors. (3) We further enhance our sensor-enhanced mobility prediction algorithm by detecting the targets moving foot step and then estimate the targets velocity. This method can improve the mobility prediction accuracy by 49.81% on an average, comparing to previous sensor-enhanced mobility prediction algorithm. (4) We implemented our energy-saving methods inside a working localization infrastructure and conducted performance evaluation in a real office environment. Our performance results show as much as 68.92% reduction in power consumption.

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

position measurement
power demand
quality assurance


computational complexity analysis of simple genetic programming on two problems modeling isolated program semantics Analyzing the computational complexity of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for binary search spaces has significantly informed our understanding of EAs in general. With this paper, we start the computational complexity analysis of genetic programming (GP). We set up several simplified GP algorithms and analyze them on two separable model problems, ORDER and MAJORITY, each of which captures a relevant facet of typical GP problems. Both analyses give first rigorous insights into aspects of GP design, highlighting in particular the impact of accepting or rejecting neutral moves and the importance of a local mutation operator.

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

genetic programming
evolutionary algorithms


Why fuzzy T-equivalence relations do not resolve the Poincare paradox, and related issues In this paper, which is a rejoinder on the comments (Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 133 (2) (2003)), we will answer the questions whether approximate equality should satisfy transitivity, and whether fuzzy T=equivalence relations resolve the Poincare paradox. Furthermore, we will present an improved definition of resemblance relation and we will investigate its connection with nearness relations. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

approximate equality
poincare paradox
resemblance relation

fuzzy t-equivalence relation
nearness relation


A STATIC ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR LIVELOCK FREEDOM IN CSP In a process algebra with hiding and recursion it is possible to create processes which compute internally without ever communicating with their environment. Such processes are said to diverge or livelock. In this paper we show how it is possible to conservatively classify processes as livelock-free through a static analysis of their syntax. In particular, we present a collection of rules, based on the inductive structure of terms, which guarantee livelock-freedom of the denoted process. This gives rise to an algorithm which conservatively flags processes that can potentially livelock. We illustrate our approach by applying both BDD-based and SAT-based implementations of our algorithm to a range of benchmarks, and show that our technique in general substantially outperforms the model checker FDR whilst exhibiting a low rate of inconclusive results.

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

communicating sequential processes
divergence
fairness
symbolic static analysis


Computational study of the effects of protein tyrosine nitrations on the catalytic activity of human thymidylate synthase Tyrosine nitration is a widespread post-translational modification capable of affecting both the function and structure of the host protein molecule. Enzyme thymidylate synthase (TS), a homodimer, is a molecular target for anticancer therapy. Recently purified TS preparations, isolated from mammalian tissues, were found to be nitrated, suggesting this modification to appear endogenously in normal and tumor tissues. Moreover, human TS (hTS) nitration in vitro led to a by twofold lowered catalytic activity following nitration in average of 1 tyrosine residue per monomer (DA...browska-MaA > et al. in Org Biomol Chem 10:323-331, 2012), with the modification identified by mass spectrometry at seven different sites (Y33, Y65, Y135, Y213, Y230, Y258 and Y301). In the present paper, combined computational approach, including molecular and essential dynamics and free energy computations, was used to predict the influence on the activity of hTS of nitration of each of the seven tyrosine residues. The simulations were based on the crystal structure of hTS ternary complex with dUMP and Tomudex (PDB code: 1I00), with the Tomudex molecule replaced by the molecule of TS cofactor analogue, tetrahydrofolate. The present results indicate that while with nitration of five out of seven residues (Y33, Y135, Y230, Y258 and Y301), single residue modification appears to have a strong reducing effect on the activity, with the remaining two, Y65 and Y213, no or a weaker influence is apparent. Taken together, these results demonstrate that tyrosine nitrations in the hTS enzyme show clear tendency to influence the structure and dynamics and, in turn, catalytic properties of the host enzyme. These effects are overall distance-dependent.

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

protein tyrosine nitration
molecular dynamics
binding free energy computations


Txt lang: Texting, textism use and literacy abilities in adolescents with and without specific language impairment The present study examined text messaging in adolescence, in particular relationships among textism use, language and literacy skills. Forty-seven typically developing (TD) 17-year-olds and 47 adolescents of the same age with specific language impairment (SLI) participated. Participants completed standardised assessments of cognitive, language and literacy abilities, an interview about frequency of text messaging, and were asked to send a text message in reply to one sent by the experimenter. Adolescents with SLI were less likely than their TD peers to reply to the text message. Non-senders with SLI (32%) had significantly lower reading abilities than senders with SLI. Senders with SLI composed shorter texts and used less text language than did TD peers. Correlational analyses revealed significant positive relationships among textism density, number of types of textism used and measures of literacy in adolescence. Implications of these findings for educational technology instruction in how to text are discussed.

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

specific language impairment (sli)
textisms


Affect Detection: An Interdisciplinary Review of Models, Methods, and Their Applications This survey describes recent progress in the field of Affective Computing (AC), with a focus on affect detection. Although many AC researchers have traditionally attempted to remain agnostic to the different emotion theories proposed by psychologists, the affective technologies being developed are rife with theoretical assumptions that impact their effectiveness. Hence, an informed and integrated examination of emotion theories from multiple areas will need to become part of computing practice if truly effective real-world systems are to be achieved. This survey discusses theoretical perspectives that view emotions as expressions, embodiments, outcomes of cognitive appraisal, social constructs, products of neural circuitry, and psychological interpretations of basic feelings. It provides meta-analyses on existing reviews of affect detection systems that focus on traditional affect detection modalities like physiology, face, and voice, and also reviews emerging research on more novel channels such as text, body language, and complex multimodal systems. This survey explicitly explores the multidisciplinary foundation that underlies all AC applications by describing how AC researchers have incorporated psychological theories of emotion and how these theories affect research questions, methods, results, and their interpretations. In this way, models and methods can be compared, and emerging insights from various disciplines can be more expertly integrated.

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

affect sensing and analysis
multimodal recognition
emotion detection
emotion theory


The Need for a Performance Map Based Decision Process This paper presents a mathematical framework to create a unique decision process based on multiple performance maps of varying functional value and volatility to aid in complex decisions for highly nonlinear and coupled systems by involving human visualization and direct algebraic computations. This map-based process is intended to extend other decision tools, such as fuzzy logic and classical optimization (through cost functions) by embedding in-depth measurement certification, lessons learned, and data uncertainty in geometric map representations. As systems become ever more complex with more human intervention, reliable decisions must be made in less and less time (i.e., a few milliseconds). This decision framework is best carried out with selected maps combined into envelopes as functional/proven decision surfaces. Its potential for data-driven decisions of broad applicability is illustrated in several unique domains ranging from an intelligent actuator, a sensored soldier, health care provider management, a venture capital firm, and in human guided design/synthesis processes for parametrically dense systems. We also show that there is a geometrical structure (serial, parallel, or hybrid) to these decision processes which guides the efficient formulation of the most useful forward or inverse computation.

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

forward/inverse decision making
system decision theory


SoRoute: a reliable and effective social-based routing in cognitive radio ad hoc networks A cognitive radio ad hoc network (CRAHN) can be considered as a special delay tolerant network (DTN) that is composed of mobile secondary users (SUs) with social characteristics. Given intermittent connectivity and spectrum availability, it is a challenging issue regarding how to transmit messages between SUs in a reliable and effective way in CRAHNs. To tackle this challenge, we propose a social-aware opportunistic routing and relay selection scheme, called SoRoute, which first predicts the link reliability based on a new social-relationship-aware mobility model and then fuses the relationships of SUs to make a routing and relay decision. In our design, different prediction schemes are employed for the nodes with different relationships. A message is forwarded to the relay node with the largest encounter probability with the destination. The evaluation results demonstrate that our social-based opportunistic routing scheme significantly improves the performance compared to the existing routing schemes such as Direct Delivery, First Contact, MaxProp, and Prophet.

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

delay tolerant networks
social relationship
the one simulator


Exploration, exploitation and adaptive rationality: the neo-Schumpeterian perspective Resource allocation between exploration of emerging technological possibilities and exploitation of known technological possibilities involves a delicate trade-off. We develop a model to represent this trade-off under the time-pressing situation where the firms existing basis of survival is constantly challenged by competitors innovation and imitation. We examine how the employment of an adaptive rule improves a balance between the exploration and the exploitation. Simulation experiments show that an adaptively rational decision rule, or a step-by-step exploration of unknown opportunities based on feedback on returns, is more likely to increase firm survival under diverse conditions than an all-or-nothing approach regarding the unknown opportunities. Furthermore, our study suggests that the adaptively rational rule is self-protected from too much loss, while its potential pay-off can be unbounded above.

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

exploration and exploitation
evolution
schumpeterian competition


Reduced biquaternion canonical transform, convolution and correlation The reduced biquaternion canonical transform (RBCT) is defined in this paper, which is the generalization of reduced biquaternion Fourier transform (RBFT). The Parseval's theorem related to RBCT is investigated. The concepts of reduced biquaternion canonical convolution (RBCCV) and reduced biquaternion canonical correlation (RBCCR) are defined, then the convolution and correlation theorem of RBCT are developed in this paper. All these theorems can also be seen as the generalizations of the corresponding theorem related to RBFT. Finally, the discrete form and fast algorithm of RBCT are presented, and the computation complexity is similar to FFT.

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


The POPCORN market. Online markets for computational resources The POPCORN project provides an infrastructure for globally distributed computation over the whole Internet. It provides any programmer connected to the Internet with a single huge virtual parallel computer composed of all processors on the Internet, which care to participate at any given moment. POPCORN provides a market-based mechanism for trade in CPU time to motivate processors to provide their CPU cycles for other peoples' computations. "Selling" CPU time is as easy as visiting a certain web site with a Java-enabled browser. "Buying" CPU time is done by writing a parallel program using the POPCORN paradigm. A third entity in the POPCORN system is a ''market'' for CPU time, which is where buyers and sellers meet and trade. The POPCORN system may be visited on our web-site: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/ similar to popcorn. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

global computation
resource allocation
java


Pure-Strategy Nash Equilibria of GSP Keyword Auction Despite the tremendous commercial success of generalized second-price (GSP) keyword auctions, it still remains a big challenge for an advertiser to formulate an effective bidding strategy. In this paper, we strive to bridge this gap by proposing a framework for studying pure-strategy Nash equilibria in GSP auctions. We first analyze the equilibrium bidding behaviors by investigating the properties and distribution of all pure-strategy Nash equilibria. Our analysis shows that the set of all pure-strategy Nash equilibria of a GSP auction can be partitioned into separate convex polyhedra based on the order of bids if the valuations of all advertisers are distinct. We further show that only the polyhedron that allocates slots efficiently is weakly stable, thus allowing all inefficient equilibria to be weeded out. We then propose a novel refinement method for identifying a set of equilibria named the stable Nash equilibrium set (STNE) and prove that STNE is either the same as or a proper subset of the set of the well-known symmetrical Nash equilibria. These findings free both auctioneers and advertisers from complicated strategic thinking. The revenue of a GSP auction on STNE is at least the same as that of the classical Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism and can be used as a benchmark for evaluating other mechanisms. At the same time, STNE provides advertisers a simple yet effective and stable bidding 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

keyword advertising
stability
generalized second-price
sponsored search


teddy-bear based robotic user interface for interactive entertainment A Robotic User Interface (RUI) is part of a concept in which a robot is used as an interface for human behavior. Our RUI, which we have been developing for communications, is a system for interpersonal exchanges that uses robots as agents for physical communication. In this paper, we propose a new type of RUI for interactive entertainment. This RUI enables people to directly interact with the information world.

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


Computer-aided molecular design using Tabu search A detailed implementation of the Tabu search (TS) algorithm for computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) of transition metal catalysts is presented in this paper. Previous CAMD research has applied deterministic methods or genetic algorithms to the solution of the optimization problems which arise from the search for a molecule satisfying a set of property targets. In this work, proper-ties are estimated using correlations based on connectivity indices, which allows the TS algorithm to use several novel operators to generate neighbors, such as swap and move, which would have no effect with a traditional group contribution-based approach. In addition, the formulation of the neighbor generation process guarantees that molecular valency and connectivity constraints are met, resulting in a complete molecular structure. Results on two case studies using TS are compared with a deterministic approach and show that TS is able to provide a list of good candidate molecules while using a much smaller amount of computation time. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

tabu search
computation time
transition metal catalysts


Integrated color, texture and shape information for content-based image retrieval Feature extraction and the use of the features as query terms are crucial problems in content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems. The main focus in this paper is on integrated color, texture and shape extraction methods for CBIR. We have developed original CBIR methodology that uses Gabor filtration for determining the number of regions of interest (ROIs), in which fast and effective feature extraction is performed. In the ROIs extracted, texture features based on thresholded Gabor features, color features based on histograms, color moments in YUV space, and shape features based on Zernike moments are then calculated. The features presented proved to be efficient in determining similarity between images. Our system was tested on postage stamp images and Corel photo libraries and can be used in CBIR applications such as postal services.

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

image retrieval
feature extraction
zernike moments


On the generators of Z(4) cyclic codes of length 2(e) Results are presented on the generators of ideals in the ring Z(4)[x]/ (x(n) - 1). In particular, each ideal (cyclic code) has a unique distinguished set of generators that characterizes any cyclic code. Some results about dual codes are also included.

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


Distribution-free bounds for relational classification Statistical relational learning (SRL) is a subarea in machine learning which addresses the problem of performing statistical inference on data that is correlated and not independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.)-as is generally assumed. For the traditional i.i.d. setting, distribution-free bounds exist, such as the Hoeffding bound, which are used to provide confidence bounds on the generalization error of a classification algorithm given its hold-out error on a sample size of N. Bounds of this form are currently not present for the type of interactions that are considered in the data by relational classification algorithms. In this paper, we extend the Hoeffding bounds to the relational setting. In particular, we derive distribution-free bounds for certain classes of data generation models that do not produce i.i.d. data and are based on the type of interactions that are considered by relational classification algorithms that have been developed in SRL. We conduct empirical studies on synthetic and real data which show that these data generation models are indeed realistic and the derived bounds are tight enough for practical use.

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

relational learning
bounds
classification


Systematic maintenance of corporate experience repositories Experience-based continuous learning is essential for improving products, processes, and technologies in emerging as well as established areas of business and engineering science. This can be facilitated by case-based organizational learning through capturing relevant experience in the form of cases for reuse in a corporate experience repository. For obvious reasons, learning from experience needs to be a permanent endeavor. Thus an organization has to handle a "continuous stream of experience." Consequently, such an experience repository requires maintenance. This should not simply happen ad hoc but in a systematic manner. To make competent decisions about maintenance, the experience base and its usage have to be analyzed (i.e., evaluated). To improve maintenance itself, it is necessary to learn about it. For this purpose, we identify the relevant tasks for maintaining an experience repository and the responsibilities of the roles involved. Maintenance addresses not only the actual experience in the form of cases but also the conceptual model and the methods, techniques, and tools that are used for filling and updating the experience repository. To support the roles involved in the maintenance tasks, we provide a flexible, practical maintenance and evaluation framework. This framework provides guidance for the roles. The framework can be combined with other approaches from artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering, and software engineering at different levels of detail. For the practical application of the framework, we describe an integrated technical solution for a corporate experience repository that is maintained using our framework. Furthermore, we discuss the empirical validation of the framework and its implementation.

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

experience management
experience factory
corporate memory


Tugging Graphs Faster: Efficiently Modifying Path-Preserving Hierarchies for Browsing Paths Many graph visualization systems use graph hierarchies to organize a large input graph into logical components. These approaches detect features globally in the data and place these features inside levels of a hierarchy. However, this feature detection is a global process and does not consider nodes of the graph near a feature of interest. TugGraph is a system for exploring paths and proximity around nodes and subgraphs in a graph. The approach modifies a pre-existing hierarchy in order to see how a node or subgraph of interest extends out into the larger graph. It is guaranteed to create path-preserving hierarchies, so that the abstraction shown is meaningful with respect to the underlying structure of the graph. The system works well on graphs of hundreds of thousands of nodes and millions of edges. TugGraph is able to present views of this proximal information in the context of the entire graph in seconds, and does not require a layout of the full graph as input.

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 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

graph visualization
proximity
graph hierarchies


Visualizing principles of abstract machines by generating interactive animations In this paper we describe the design rationale of GANIMAM, a web-based system which generates interactive animations of abstract machines from specifications. Common principles of abstract machines come into play at three levels: the design of the specification language, the choice of graphical annotations to visualize higher-level abstractions and the use of the system to explore and better understand known and detect new principles.

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


nfsv4 replication for grid storage middleware Sharing data in scientific collaborations that involve many institutions around the world demands a large-scale storage system that is reliable and efficient, yet at the same time, convenient to use. This paper presents a replicated file system that supports mutable replication with strong consistency guarantees, high failure resiliency, and good scaling properties. The principal concern with such a system is usually its performance penalty. Using experiment evaluation, we show that in simulated wide area networks, the proposed replicated file system maintains a significant performance advantage over a single server system. At the same time, it provides comparable and often better performance than GridFTP, the de facto standard file transfer application that is often used to manually synchronize shared data.

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

grid computing
global name space
distributed file system


Effect of Vitamin C on Liver and Kidney Functions in Normal and Diabetic Rats Diabetes mellitus (DM) is recognized as one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. About 56% of the world population suffers from this disease and the number of people diagnosed with diabetes is rapidly increasing. Diabetes has been demonstrated to be associated with oxidative stress and hyperglycemia, one of the most important indictors of oxidative stress. The endogenous mechanisms of enzymes and antioxidants are able to destroy the reactive species and create a balance between antioxidant and free radicals. In diabetes, the oxidative stress is increased because of the deficiency in the antioxidant defense. The intake of antioxidants, such as vitamin C, may reduce the oxidative stress associated with diabetes and hence help to restore the antioxidant defense system. The aim of this article was to investigate the effect of different doses of vitamin C on the biochemical parameters of normal and streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Biochemical analysis was used to study the effect of this vitamin on the biochemical parameters of normal and diabetic rats. Liver and kidney enzymes were elevated after the onset of diabetes. Moderate doses of vitamin C significantly (P < 0.0008) reduced plasma gamma-glutamyl level in diabetic rats. Moreover, vitamin C significantly (P < 0.01) reduced the blood urea nitrogen level of diabetic rats. The plasma level of electrolytes, such as calcium and sodium, also changed significantly (P < 0.00001) after oral administration of vitamin C. Antioxidants, such as vitamin C, may ameliorate the biochemical parameters of diabetic rats

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

diabetes mellitus
vitamin c
electrolytes

liver function test
kidney function test