Automatic joint classification and segmentation of whole cell 3D images We present a machine learning tool for automatic texton-based joint classification and segmentation of mitochondria in MNT-1 cells imaged using ion-abrasion scanning electron microscopy (IA-SEM). For diagnosing signatures that may be unique to cellular states such as cancer, automatic tools with minimal user intervention need to be developed for analysis and mining of high-throughput data from these large volume data sets (typically ? 2 GB / cell ). Challenges for such a tool in 3D electron microscopy arise due to low contrast and signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) inherent to biological imaging. Our approach is based on block-wise classification of images into a trained list of regions. Given manually labeled images, our goal is to learn models that can localize novel instances of the regions in test datasets. Since datasets obtained using electron microscopes are intrinsically noisy, we improve the SNR of the data for automatic segmentation by implementing a 2D texture-preserving filter on each slice of the 3D dataset. We investigate texton-based region features in this work. Classification is performed by k k -nearest neighbor (k k -NN) classifier, support vector machines (SVMs), adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) and histogram matching using a NN classifier. In addition, we study the computational complexity vs. segmentation accuracy tradeoff of these classifiers. Segmentation results demonstrate that our approach using minimal training data performs close to semi-automatic methods using the variational level-set method and manual segmentation carried out by an experienced user. Using our method, which we show to have minimal user intervention and high classification accuracy, we investigate quantitative parameters such as volume of the cytoplasm occupied by mitochondria, differences between the surface area of inner and outer membranes and mean mitochondrial width which are quantities potentially relevant to distinguishing cancer cells from normal cells. To test the accuracy of our approach, these quantities are compared against manually computed counterparts. We also demonstrate extension of these methods to segment 3D images obtained using electron tomography.

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

mitochondria
segmentation
classification
machine learning

texture features
automated techniques
cancer detection


EMS1: ANELEGANT ALGORITHM FOR EDIT DISTANCE BASED MOTIF SEARCH Motifs are biologically significant patterns found in DNA/protein sequences. Given a set of biological sequences, the problem of identifying the motifs is very challenging. This problem has been well studied in computational biology. Identifying motifs through experimental processes is extremely expensive and time consuming. This is one of the factors influencing computational biologists to come up with novel computational methods to predict motifs. Several motif models have been proposed in the literature and for each model numerous algorithms have been devised. Three popular motif models are (l, d)-motif search or Planted Motif Search (PMS), Simple Motif Search (SMS), and Edit-distance based Motif Search (EMS). For PMS and SMS several algorithms have been proposed and implemented. On the other hand, even though some algorithms exist in the literature for the problem of EMS, no implementations of these algorithms are known. This is mainly because the proposed algorithms are complex. In this paper we present an elegant algorithm for EMS. We have implemented this algorithm and compared it against 14 other algorithms in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Our experimental results indicate that the new algorithm is very competitive in practice.

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


fast hazard detection in combinational circuits In designing asynchronous circuits it is critical to ensure that cir-cuits are free of hazards in the specified set of input transitions. In this paper, two new algorithms are proposed to determine if a com-binational circuit is hazard-free without exploring all its gates, thus providing more efficient hazard detection. Experimental results in-dicate that the best new algorithm on average visits only 20.7\% of the original gates, with an average runtime speedup of 1.69 and best speedup of 2.27 (for the largest example.

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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 novel hybrid approach utilizing principal component regression and random forest regression to bridge the period of GPS outages Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) are two salient technologies delivering a vehicle?s position, velocity and attitude parameters for navigation. The standalone GPS undergoes signal outages (in forest area) and multipath effects (in urban areas), whereas the standalone INS solution accuracy deteriorates with time. To overcome the limitations of standalone GPS and INS, an integrated INS/GPS system is required for continuous, accurate, and reliable navigation solution. This paper proposes a hybrid method of Principal Component Regression (PCR) and Random Forest Regression (RFR) for INS and GPS data fusion. Traditional filter based fusion techniques like Kalman filter (KF), linearized KF, and particle filter (PF) have deficiencies related to sensor error modeling, immunity to noise, and computational load. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are introduced to overcome these limitations, but they show poor generalization capability in the presence of noise and suffer from over fitting. Recently, RFR is proposed as an efficient fusion technique due to its flexibility to handle non-linear inputoutput relationships and overcome the over fitting problems. The limitation with RFR is that it cannot handle both linear and non-linear inputoutput relationships effectively Hence, the paper introduces PCR, which can model linear inputoutput relationships. Thus, a hybrid approach of RFR and PCR provides enhanced modeling of inputoutput relationships leading to increased prediction accuracy and thereby improved integrated INS/GPS system performance. The results are validated through five simulated GPS outages taken on real field test data. The proposed model showed a maximum of 45.06% decrement in positional error when compared to RFR.

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

global positioning system
inertial navigation system
principal component regression
random forest regression


A hybrid algorithm for constrained portfolio selection problems Since Markowitzs seminal work on the mean-variance model in modern portfolio theory, many studies have been conducted on computational techniques and recently meta-heuristics for portfolio selection problems. In this work, we propose and investigate a new hybrid algorithm integrating the population based incremental learning and differential evolution algorithms for the portfolio selection problem. We consider the extended mean-variance model with practical trading constraints including the cardinality, floor and ceiling constraints. The proposed hybrid algorithm adopts a partially guided mutation and an elitist strategy to promote the quality of solution. The performance of the proposed hybrid algorithm has been evaluated on the extended benchmark datasets in the OR Library. The computational results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid algorithm is not only effective but also efficient in solving the mean-variance model with real world constraints.

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

differential evolution
population based incremental learning

cardinality constrained portfolio selection


Automatic detection of lung nodules in CT datasets based on stable 3D mass-spring models We propose a computer-aided detection (CAD) system which can detect small-sized (from 3 mm) pulmonary nodules in spiral CT scans. A pulmonary nodule is a small lesion in the lungs, round-shaped (parenchymal nodule) or worm-shaped (juxtapleural nodule). Both kinds of lesions have a radio-density greater than lung parenchyma, thus appearing white on the images. Lung nodules might indicate a lung cancer and their early stage detection arguably improves the patient survival rate. CT is considered to be the most accurate imaging modality for nodule detection. However, the large amount of data per examination makes the full analysis difficult, leading to omission of nodules by the radiologist. We developed an advanced computerized method for the automatic detection of internal and juxtapleural nodules on low-dose and thin-slice lung CT scan. This method consists of an initial selection of nodule candidates list, the segmentation of each candidate nodule and the classification of the features computed for each segmented nodule candidate. The presented CAD system is aimed to reduce the number of omissions and to decrease the radiologist scan examination time. Our system locates with the same scheme both internal and juxtapleural nodules. For a correct volume segmentation of the lung parenchyma, the system uses a Region Growing (RG) algorithm and an opening process for including the juxtapleural nodules. The segmentation and the extraction of the suspected nodular lesions from CT images by a lung CAD system constitutes a hard task. In order to solve this key problem, we use a new Stable 3D Mass-Spring Model (MSM) combined with a spline curves reconstruction process. Our model represents concurrently the characteristic gray value range, the directed contour information as well as shape knowledge, which leads to a much more robust and efficient segmentation process. For distinguishing the real nodules among nodule candidates, an additional classification step is applied; furthermore, a neural network is applied to reduce the false positives (FPs) after a double-threshold cut. The system performance was tested on a set of 84 scans made available by the Lung Image Database Consortium (LIDC) annotated by four expert radiologists. The detection rate of the system is 97% with 6.1 FPs/CT. A reduction to 2.5 FPs/CT is achieved at 88% sensitivity. We presented a new 3D segmentation technique for lung nodules in CT datasets, using deformable MSMs. The result is a efficient segmentation process able to converge, identifying the shape of the generic ROI, after a few iterations. Our suitable results show that the use of the 3D AC model and the feature analysis based FPs reduction process constitutes an accurate approach to the segmentation and the classification of lung nodules. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

active contours models
computer tomography (ct)
mass-spring models
image features


Fiber dispersion effects in injection-locked optical OFDM systems This paper investigates the transmission of an injection-locked optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (ILO-OFDM) scheme over an optical fiber. In the ILO-OFDM system, an optically injection-locked semiconductor laser is utilized to directly modulate the OFDM signal on the optical carrier. With a sufficiently large injection strength and a negative shift of the detuning frequency, the modulation sidebands become asymmetric similar to a single sideband modulation (SSB). The SSB spectrum is advantageous for minimizing the chromatic dispersion-induced power variation. Using simulation we show that ILO-OFDM system can be used to compensate for chromatic dispersion in long-haul applications.

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

optical injection-locked semiconductor laser

orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ofdm) signals


An IMS-based integration architecture for WiMax/LTE handover To enable seamless handovers for broadband networks, many researchers have addressed the integration of heterogeneous access technologies to provide users with always-on connectivity. Currently, there are several researches reported in the literature that discuss the integration of beyond 3G networks such as 3GPP Long Term Evolution LTE and mobile WiMax networks. They mainly focused on providing mobile users with seamless mobility when switching between heterogeneous access networks. In this context, many solutions for integration architecture have been proposed with mobility management considerations such as loose and tight coupling, IP Multimedia Subsystem IMS-based architecture and Evolved Packet Core EPC-based solutions for the purpose of providing mobile users with seamless handovers. In this paper, we present the different integration solutions and propose an integration architecture for WiMax and LTE access technologies with EPC as core network and IMS for service provisioning. A vertical handover VHO scheme is presented based on cross-layer approach that enables vertical handover with less handover latency and signaling cost.

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


Tractability results in the block algebra In this paper we define the notion of a block algebra, which is based upon a spatial application of Allen's interval algebra. In the p-dimensional Euclidean space, where p greater than or equal to 1, we consider only blocks whose sides are parallel to the axes of some orthogonal basis. The block algebra consists of a set of relations (the block relations) together with the fundamental operations of composition, converse and intersection. The 13(p) basic relations of this algebra constitute the exhaustive list of the relations possibly holding between two blocks. We are interested in the problem of testing the consistency of a set of spatial constraints between blocks, i.e. a block network. The consistency question for block networks is NP-complete. We first extend the notions of convexity and preconvexity to the block algebra. Similarly to the interval algebra case, convexity leads to a tractable set whereas, contrary to the interval algebra case, preconvexity leads to an intractable set. Nevertheless we characterize a tractable subset of the preconvex relations: the strongly preconvex relations. Moreover we show that strong preconvexity and ORD-Horn representability are the same.

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

spatial reasoning
qualitative constraints
consistency problem


Security-enhanced ambient assisted living supporting school activities during hospitalisation Children that spend long periods in hospitals suffer different negative effects that affect their emotional and psychological development and their family life. Among these effects, sleep disorders, stress, and degradation of school performance are the most frequent. A common reason behind these effects seems to be related with the disruption of the normal relationships and the lack of contact with the different social groups that the children belong to (family, friends, school, etc.). In this paper we present results of the DESEOS research project, which applies the Ambient Assisting Living paradigm to increase the quality of life of health cared children by developing novel devices and applications to enhance the contact with their different daily environments. Security and dependability are central aspects in these scenarios, and consequently are central to the DESEOS solutions. In particular, this paper presents how DESEOS provides a secure solution for one of the project scenarios.

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 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

security patterns
children hospitalisation


The

program

LOPT

for

least-squares

optimization

of

energy

levels

The

article

describes

a

program

that

solves

the

least-squares

optimization

problem

for

finding

the

energy

levels

of

a

quantum-mechanical

system

based

on

a

set

of

measured

energy

separations

or

wavelengths

of

transitions

between

those

energy

levels,

as

well

as

determining

the

Ritz

wavelengths

of

transitions

and

their

uncertainties.

The

energy

levels

are

determined

by

solving

the

matrix

equation

of

the

problem,

and

the

uncertainties

of

the

Ritz

wavenumbers

are

determined

from

the

covariance

matrix

of

the

problem.

Program

title:

LOPT

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen's

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Perl

Computer:

PC,

Mac,

Unix

workstations

Operating

system:

MS

Windows

(XP,

Vista,

Mac

OS

X,

Linux,

Unix

(AIX)

RAM:

Mwords

or

more

Word

size:

or

Classification:

Nature

of

problem:

The

least-squares

energy-level

optimization

problem,

i.e.,

finding

a

set

of

energy

level

values

that

best

fits

the

given

set

of

transition

intervals.

Solution

method:

The

solution

of

the

least-squares

problem

is

found

by

solving

the

corresponding

linear

matrix

equation,

where

the

matrix

is

constructed

using

a

new

method

with

variable

substitution.

Restrictions:

A

practical

limitation

on

the

size

of

the

problem

N

is

imposed

by

the

execution

time,

which

scales

as

N

and

depends

on

the

computer.

Unusual

features:

Properly

rounds

the

resulting

data

and

formats

the

output

in

a

format

suitable

for

viewing

with

spreadsheet

editing

software.

Estimates

numerical

errors

resulting

from

the

limited

machine

precision.

Running

time:

s

for

N

or

s

for

N

on

a

typical

PC.

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

atomic energy levels
least-squares optimization


recognizing interaction between human performers using 'key pose doublet' In this paper, we propose a graph theoretic approach for recognizing interactions between two human performers present in a video clip. We watch primarily the human poses of each performer and derive descriptors that capture the motion patterns of the poses. From an initial dictionary of poses (visual words), we extract key poses (or key words) by ranking the poses on the centrality measure of graph connectivity. We argue that the key poses are graph nodes which share a close semantic relationship (in terms of some suitable edge weight function) with all other pose nodes and hence are said to be the central part of the graph. We apply the same centrality measure on all possible combinations of the key poses of the two performers to select the set of 'key pose doublets' that best represent the corresponding action. The results on standard interaction recognition dataset show the robustness of our approach when compared to the present state of the art method.

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

human interaction
bag of words
graph centrality


A survey on optimization metaheuristics Metaheuristics are widely recognized as efficient approaches for many hard optimization problems. This paper provides a survey of some of the main metaheuristics. It outlines the components and concepts that are used in various metaheuristics in order to analyze their similarities and differences. The classification adopted in this paper differentiates between single solution based metaheuristics and population based metaheuristics. The literature survey is accompanied by the presentation of references for further details, including applications. Recent trends are also briefly discussed.

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

population based metaheuristic
single solution based metaheuristic
intensification
diversification


Cost minimization of butter-oil processing plant using artificial bee colony technique For achieving the goal of high production and hence more profit in an organization, the system reliability is an important issue, i.e. each system/subsystem must remain operative for long duration. The industrial systems are complex in configuration so it is very difficult to analyze their failure pattern. The available information about these equipments is imprecise, incomplete, vague and conflicting. Therefore, management decisions are based on experience. The objective of this paper is to improve the design efficiency and to find the optimal policy for mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR) and related costs. This paper presents an application of Artificial Bees' Colony (ABC) in order to solve a series-parallel system (here, butter-oil processing plant) availability allocation problem. In addition to maximization of system availability, the decision maker also oftenly requires that the cost of the system is minimized simultaneously. So the objective is to obtain a minimum cost configuration of the system that satisfies the given availability constraints. ABC algorithm has been used for computing the optimal design parameters at which system cost is minimized and results are shown to be statistically significant by means of pooled t-test with PSO results. (C) 2013 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

artificial bee colony algorithm
series-parallel system
availability optimization


A method for still image interpretation relying an a multi-algorithms fusion scheme. Application to human face characterization We propose a method for analysing still images relying on fusion of information obtained from several complementary processing channels. Each processing path works in three steps. A first stage, manipulating raw data, segments the image into aggregates. It is followed by a characterization stage that integrates information conveyed by aggregates. The terminal interpretation stage instanciates fuzzy rules. These rules constitute a loose model of objects present in the image. They semantically qualify aggregates, Once the interpretation has resumed on each separate channel, results of the different methods are collated on a fuzzy rule basis providing the final semantic identification of aggregates. This approach provides an interesting alternative for managing complementarity of several algorithms by introducing knowledge on each algorithm and on its intrinsic properties. The method is illustrated through an example of human face constituents characterization from black and white identity photographs. We give a thorough description of the method and provide quantitative results. These results show that a substantial improvement of recognition capabilities (50%) is obtained by fusing results of separate algorithms. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

image analysis
face recognition
fuzzy logics
rule-based pattern recognition


Harmonic generation and wave mixing in nonlinear metamaterials and photonic crystals (Invited paper) The basic concepts and phenomenology of wave mixing and harmonic generation are reviewed in context of the recent advances in the enhanced nonlinear activity in metamaterials and photonic crystals. The effects of dispersion, field confinement and phase synchronism are illustrated by the examples of the on-purpose designed artificial nonlinear structures. 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 22:469482, 2012.

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


the ip multimedia subsystem with an e-learning management system and integrated video conferencing This paper is about the implementation and operation of an electronic learning management system with integrated video phoning and video conferencing based on an IP Multimedia Subsystem. This combination provides an e-Learning platform for students of the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt.

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

next generation networks (ngn)
ip multimedia subsystem (ims)
e-learning management system (lms)
voice over ip (voip)
moodle
video conference
session initiation protocol (sip)


Influence zones: A strategy to enhance reinforcement learning Reinforcement Learning (RL) aims to learn through direct experimentation how to solve decision-making problems. RL algorithms often have their practical applications restricted to small or medium size problemsmainly because of their strategies for value function estimation demanding very high number of interactions. To overcome this difficulty, we propose to enhance RL performance by updating several state (or stateaction) values at each interaction. Therefore, the influence zone algorithm, an improvement over the topological RL agent (TRLA) strategy, allows to reduce the number of requested interactions. Such a reduction is based on the topological-preserving characteristic of the mapping between states (or stateaction pairs) and value estimates. The comparison of the influence zone approach with seven other RL algorithms suggests that the proposed algorithm is among the fastest to estimate the value function and that it takes less value function updatings to perform such an estimation. The influence zone algorithm also presents a remarkable flexibility in adapting its policy to changes of the input space topology.

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

self-organizing map
instantaneous topological map
learning acceleration


A numerical method for forced convection in porous and homogeneous fluid domains coupled at interface by stress jump A numerical method was developed for flows involving an interface between a homogeneous fluid and a porous medium. It is based on the finite volume method with body-fitted and multi-block grids. The Brinkman-Forcheimmer extended model was used to govern the flow in the porous medium region. At its interface, the flow boundary condition imposed is a shear stress jump, which includes the inertial effect, together with a continuity of normal stress. The thermal boundary condition is continuity of temperature and heat flux. The forced convection through a porous insert over a backward-facing step is investigated. The results are presented with flow configurations for different Darcy numbers, 10(-2) to 10(-5), porosity from 0.2 to 0.8, Reynolds number from 10 to 800, and the ratio of insert length to channel height from 0.1 to 0.3. The heat transfer is improved by using porous insert. To enhance the heat transfer with minimal frictional losses, it is preferable to have a medium length of insert with medium Darcy number, and larger Reynolds number. The interfacial stress jump coefficients beta and beta(1) were varied from -1 to 1, and within this range the average and local lower-wall Nusselt numbers are not sensitive to the parameters. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

porous medium
forced convection
stress jump

interfacial boundary condition
backward-facing step
porous/fluid domains


Site-shifting as the source of ambidexterity: Empirical insights from the field of ticketing We use the notion of site to create an alternative lens to theorise the strategy practice of ambidexterity. We illustrate and conceptualise how practices are bundled to yield the emerging, dynamic and fluid nature of ambidexterity. We explain how the phenomenon of site-shifting can serve as the new conceptual ground to develop and enact the practice of ambidexterity. We detail empirical insights collected from the leading ticketing company in China.

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

strategy-as-practice
information systems strategy
case study


Knowledge-based supervisory control system of a fish processing workcell; Part I: system development A laboratory workcell has been developed for fish cutting. The workcell, which uses a variety of sensors, actuators, and hardware for component interfacing and control, operates with the help of a dedicated supervisory control system. A layered architecture has been used for the system. It has several knowledge-based modules for carrying out tasks such as workcell monitoring, controller tuning, workcell conditioning, and product quality assessment. The paper describes the workcell and the development of the supervisory control system. Development of the knowledge-based modules of the system, which employ fuzzy logic for knowledge representation and decision making, is described.

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

process automation
knowledge-based supervisory control


Training intonational phrasing rules automatically for English and Spanish text-to-speech ? We describe a procedure for acquiring intonational phrasing rules for text-to-speech synthesis automatically, from annotated text, and some evaluation of this procedure for English and Spanish. The procedure employs decision trees generated automatically, using Classification and Regression Tree techniques, from text corpora which have been hand-labeled by native speakers with likely locations of intonational boundaries, in conjunction with information available about the text via simple text analysis techniques. Rules generated by this method have been implemented in the English version of the Bell Laboratories Text-to-Speech System and have been developed for the Mexican Spanish version of that system. These rules currently achieve better than 95% accuracy for English and better than 94% for Spanish.

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


Thermodynamics based stability analysis and its use for nonlinear stabilization of the CSTR We show how the availability function as defined from the entropy function concavity can be used for the stability analysis and derivation of control strategies for non-isothermal Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTRs). We first propose an overview of the required thermodynamic concepts. Then, we show how the availability function restricted to the thermal domain can be used as a Lyapunov function. The derivation of the control law and the way the strict entropy concavity is insured are discussed. Numerical simulations illustrate the application of the theory to the open loop stability analysis and the closed loop control of liquid-phase non-isothermal CSTRs. The proposed approach is compared with the classical proportional control strategy. Two chemical reactions are studied: the acid-catalyzed hydration of 2-3-epoxy-1-propanol to glycerol subject to steady state multiplicity and the production of cyclopentenol from cyclopentadiene by acid-catalyzed electrophilic addition of water in dilute solution exhibiting a non-minimum phase behavior. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Automating Logic Transformations with Approximate SPFDs During the very large scale integration design process, a synthesized design is often required to be modified in order to accommodate different goals. To preserve the engineering effort already invested, designers seek small logic structural transformations to achieve these logic restructuring goals. This paper proposes a systematic methodology to devise such transformations automatically. It first presents a simulation-based formulation to approximate sets of pairs of functions to be distinguished and avoid the memory/time explosion issue inherent with the original representation. Then, it uses this new data structure to devise the required transformations dynamically without the need of a static dictionary model. The methodology is applied to both combinational and sequential designs with transformations at a single or multiple locations. An extensive suite of experiments documents the benefits of the proposed methodology when compared to existing practices.

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

logic restructuring
very large scale integration

correction
debug
engineering change
logic rewire
optimization
spfd


a pattern language for usa citizens clearing usa passport and customs This paper contains patterns that form an initial pattern language for United States Citizens re-entering the United States from an international trip, in particular for clearing USA Passport and Customs. It is a team project completed as part of a pattern language project for the Pace University Doctor of Professional Studies (DPS) in Computing program. A preliminary version of this pattern language was presented at a writers' workshop at the 15th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP). PLoP'09, August 28--30, Chicago, IL.

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

dps
pace university
pattern
plop
doctor of professional studies


Energy equivalence routing in wireless sensor networks Energy is a critical resource in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a new approach to maintain network wide energy equivalence and maximize network lifetime. Compared to existing protocols, our approach emphasizes on route maintenance instead of route finding. This means no critical nodes would become the bottleneck of network lifetime. A reroute request packet is sent out from sinks periodically. When the packet reaches a path node, Common Neighbor Switching (CNS) algorithm checks energy difference between the node and its neighbors outside the routing tree. If the difference goes beyond a threshold, double neighbor switching is performed. Two path-rerouting algorithms, namely, Shortest Rerouting (EERS) and Longest Rerouting (EERL), are also presented to show that neighbor switching is better than path rerouting. Simulation results show that CNS outperforms Directed Diffusion in more than 90% cases, while EERS and EERL show only blurry and conditional advantage over directed diffusion.

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

energy equivalence routing
neighbor switching
path rerouting
directed diffusion


Cyclic subspace regression with analysis of the hat matrix Cyclic subspace regression (CSR) is a new approach to the complex multivariate calibration problem. The simple algorithm produces solutions for principal component regression (PCR), partial least squares (PLS), least squares (LS), and other related intermediate regressions. This paper describes further analysis of CSR and shows that by using hat matrices, CSR regression vectors are formed from a summation of weighted eigenvectors where weights are determined from the hat matrix, singular values, and sample space eigenvectors. Examination of CSR weights for PCR and PLS further documents differences and similarities and provides information to assist in determining prediction rank for PCR and PLS. By redefining CSR in terms of weighted eigenvectors, it can be shown when PLS and PCR produce essentially the same results where minor differences stem from overfitting by PLS. Additionally, weights derived from the hat matrix show when PCR and PLS generate different results and why. Equations are shown for the sample space that reveal PLS to be a method based on oblique projections while PCR uses orthogonal projections. The optimal intermediate CSR model can be identified as well. A near infrared data set is studied and illustrates principles involved. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

cyclic subspace regression
hat matrix
principal component regression
partial least squares


Human centered processes and decision support systems This paper emphasizes the role of human factors in Decision Support Systems and related assisting tools that can be used in the Operational Research field. It links both historical information and real life realizations concerning the human centered processes. The historical points mentioned in the paper give only partial emphasis, according to the feeling of the authors. The aim, here, is essentially to review some tools (e.g., utility theory, cognitive modeling, etc.) that are or might be used to tackle new problems in the context of anthropocentered systems, especially when considering the recent evolution of Information Systems towards distributed ones. Several real-life problems (mostly in an industrial setting) are reviewed. They all concern applications on which the authors have worked (or are working) together.

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

applied decision making
distributed decision
decision processes


Large independent sets in random regular graphs We present algorithmic lower bounds on the size s(d) of the largest independent sets of vertices in random d-regular graphs, for each fixed d >= 3. For instance, for d = 3 we prove that, for graphs on n vertices, s(d) >= 0.43475n with probability approaching one as n tends to infinity. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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


using peer review in teaching computing For generations, the academic community has relied on peer review as a way of encouraging scholarship and enhancing the knowledge base. Peer review has been widely used in the classroom since at least the 1970s, with hundreds of papers on its use in diverse academic fields appearing in the literature (for a comprehensive survey, see [1]). Its use appears to be on the upswing, given the current interest in active learning and teamwork. In computer science, peer review seems to have very broad application. It can be used to evaluate the contributions of various members to a project team; it can be used for design documents and code reviews, in writing assignments, and in capstone project courses. The experience of the panelists is illustrative of the wide range of peer-review practices. This panel will serve to introduce the audience to some of these applications. Since many computer-science instructors have experimented with peer review, we are anxious to have them share their experiences during the open discussion period.

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


A

cross-platform

freeware

tool

for

digital

reconstruction

of

neuronal

arborizations

from

image

stacks

Digital

reconstruction

of

neuronal

arborizations

is

an

important

step

in

the

quantitative

investigation

of

cellular

neuroanatomy.

In

this

process,

neurites

imaged

by

microscopy

are

semi-manually

traced

through

the

use

of

specialized

computer

software

and

represented

as

binary

trees

of

branching

cylinders

(or

truncated

cones).

Such

form

of

the

reconstruction

files

is

efficient

and

parsimonious,

and

allows

extensive

morphometric

analysis

as

well

as

the

implementation

of

biophysical

models

of

electrophysiology.

Here,

we

describe

a

plug

in

for

the

popular

Java

application

ImageJ

that

mediates

the

digital

reconstruction

of

neurons

from

image

stacks.

Both

the

executable

and

code

of

are

freely

distributed

(www.maths.soton.ac.uk/staff/D'Alessandro/morpho

or

and

are

compatible

with

all

major

computer

platforms

(including

Windows,

Mac,

and

Linux).

We

tested

by

reconstructuring

two

neurons

from

each

of

the

two

preparations

representing

different

brain

areas

(hippocampus

and

cerebellum),

neuritic

type

(pyramidal

cell

dendrites

and

olivar

axonal

projection

terminals),

and

labeling

method

(rapid

Golgi

impregnation

and

anterograde

dextran

amine),

and

quantitatively

comparing

the

resulting

morphologies

to

those

of

the

same

cells

reconstructed

with

the

standard

commercial

system.

Neurolucida.

of

the

numerous

morphometric

measures

that

were

analyzed

displayed

any

significant

or

systematic

difference

between

the

two

reconstructing

systems.

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


an on-chip clock generation scheme for faster-than-at-speed delay testing Faster-than-at-speed testing provides an effective way for detecting and debugging small delay defects in modern fabricated chips. However, the use of external automatic test equipment for faster-than-at-speed delay testing could be costly. In this paper, we present an on-chip clock generation scheme which facilitates faster-than-at-speed delay testing for both launch on capture and launch on shift test frameworks. The required test clock frequency with a high resolution can be obtained by specifying the information in the test patterns, which is then shifted into the delay control stages to configure the launch and capture clock generation circuit (LCCG) embedded on-chip. Similarly, the control information for selecting various test frameworks and clock signals can also be embedded in the test patterns. Experimental results are presented to validate the proposed scheme.

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

small delay defect
on-chip
faster-than-at-speed


Automated rapid prototyping of TUG specifications using Prolog A prototype is usually built quickly and cheaply to explore poorly understood user requirements in the front-end of the software development life cycle. There are several techniques to construct a prototype such as fourth generation languages, functional and logic programming languages, and simulation techniques. Despite their benefits, these techniques do not directly support formal user requirements and specifications. In this paper, a formal specification language, called TUG, is presented to support an automatic derivation of a prototype in Prolog from a specification in the language via a set of transformation rules. The work described in this paper is distinct from existing rapid prototyping techniques. There is a close correspondence between TUG and Prolog that makes the process of transformation relatively mechanical. The process also allows specifiers not to consider low-level details at implementation such as selection of data structures and algorithms due to the features of the TUG specification language and the Prolog programming language. In addition, rederivation of a prototype in Prolog from a TUG specification is also avoided whenever the specification is modified. A Change Request Script is used to update the prototype in response to the revised specification. The prototype construction and specification acquisition are integrated to handle the construction of user requirements. The formality of the TUG specification language improves the quality of the description of user requirements. Rapid prototyping from the specification via software transformations improves the understanding of user requirements in a cost effective way.

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

formality
formal specification language
rapid prototyping
tug


BAYESIAN RETRIEVAL USING A SIMILARITY-BASED LEMMATIZER The present paper describes a Bayesian network approach to Information Retrieval (IR) from Web documents. The network structure provides an intuitive representation of uncertainty relationships and the embedded conditional probability table is used by inference algorithms in an attempt to identify documents that are relevant to the user's needs, expressed in the form of Boolean queries. Our research has been directed in constructing a probabilistic IR framework that focus on assisting users to perform Ad-hoc retrieval of documents from the various domains such as economics, news, sports, etc. Furthermore, users can integrate feedback regarding the relevance of the retrieved documents in an attempt to improve performance on upcoming requests. Towards these goals, we have expanded the traditional Bayesian network IR system and tested it on several Greek web corpora on different application domains. We have developed two different approaches with regards to the structure: a simple one, where the structure is manually provided, and an automated one, where data mining is used in order to extract the network's structure. Results have depicted competitive performance against successful IR models of different theoretical backgrounds, such as the vector space utilizing tf-idf and the probabilistic model of BM25 in terms of precision-recall curves. In order to further improve the performance of the IR system, we have implemented a novel similarity-based lemmatization framework, reducing thus the ambiguity posed by the plethora of morphological variations of the languages in question. The employed lemmatization framework comprises of 3 core components (i.e. the word segregation, the data cleansing and the lemmatization modules) and is language-independent (i.e. can be applied to other languages with morphological peculiarities and thus improve Ad-hoc retrieval) since it achieves the mapping of an input word to its normalized form by employing two state-of-the-art language independent distance metric models, meaning the Levenshtein Edit distance and the Dice coefficient similarity measure, combined with a language model describing the most frequent inflectional suffixes of the examined language. Experimental results support our claim on the significance of this incorporation to Greek texts web retrieval as results improve by a factor of 4% to 11%.

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

bayesian networks
modern greek
ahr
ad-hoc retrieval


Ketamine as a promising prototype for a new generation of rapid-acting antidepressants The discovery of ketamine's rapid and robust antidepressant effects opened a window into a new generation of antidepressants. Multiple controlled trials and open-label studies have demonstrated these effects across a variety of patient populations known to often achieve little to no response from traditional antidepressants. Ketamine has been generally well tolerated across patient groups, with transient mild-to-moderate adverse effects during infusion. However, the optimal dosing and route of administration and the safety of chronic treatment are not fully known. This review summarizes the clinical effects of ketamine and its neurobiological underpinnings and mechanisms of action, which may provide insight into the neurobiology of depression, relevant biomarkers, and treatment targets. Moreover, we offer suggestions for future research that may continue to advance the field forward and ultimately improve the psychopharmacologic interventions available for those individuals struggling with depressive and trauma-related disorders.

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

ketamine depression antidepressant neurobiology


On model-driven self-engineering of inter-domain traffic Realizing autonomic networking is possible with the clear understanding of required control mechanisms under multiplexing. Attempting such understanding ecosystem is motivated as a novel unit of design, exemplified by the two extreme cases - micro-ecosystem of a single buffer with random early detection mechanism, and macro-ecosystem of a path of autonomous systems sharing traffic handling to the same destination prefix. Both problems are formalised as model-driven information coupling of distributed controllers, implicit for the micro, and explicit for the macro-ecosystems. The main contributions are ecosystem examples and their driving models; the geometry based route view diagram driving self-engineering of traffic is original, while linear bound of packet loss ratio driving the micro-ecosystem is borrowed from the literature and adapted. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

network ecosystem
control theory
fairness
autonomous systems (as)


A Dynamical Systems Approach for Static Evaluation in Go In the paper, arguments are given as to why the concept of static evaluation has the potential to be a useful extension to Monte Carlo tree search. A new concept of modeling static evaluation through a dynamical system is introduced and strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The general suitability of this approach is demonstrated.

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

computational and artificial intelligence


An asynchronous low-power medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks Duty cycling is a fundamental approach used in contention-based medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to reduce power consumption in sensor nodes. Existing duty cycle-based MAC protocols use either scheduling or low-power listening (LPL) to reduce unnecessary energy lost caused by idle listening and overhearing. This paper presents a new asynchronous duty-cycled MAC protocol for WSN. It introduces a novel dual preamble sampling (DPS) approach to efficiently coordinate channel access among nodes. DPS combines LPL with a short-strobed preamble approach to significantly reduce the idle-listening issue in existing asynchronous protocols. We provide detailed analysis of the energy consumption by using well-known energy models and compare our work with B-MAC and X-MAC, two most popular asynchronous duty cycle-based MAC protocols for WSNs. We also present experimental results based on NS-2 simulations. We show that depending on the traffic load and preamble length, the proposed MAC protocol improves energy consumption significantly without degrading network performances in terms of delivery ratio and latency. For example, for a traffic rate of 0.1 packets/s and a preamble length of 0.1s, the average improvement in energy consumption is about 154%. Copyright (c) 2011 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

energy efficiency
wireless sensor network
duty cycle
low-power listening
short-strobed preamble
dual-preamble sampling


Randomized controlled trial of an automated problem list with improved sensitivity To improve the completeness and timeliness of an electronic problem list, we have developed a system using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically extract potential medical problems from clinical, free-text documents; these problems are then proposed for inclusion in an electronic problem list management application. A prospective randomized controlled evaluation of the Automatic Problem List (APL) system in an intensive care unit and in a cardiovascular surgery unit is reported here. A total of 247 patients were enrolled: 76 in an initial control phase and 171 in the randomized controlled trial that followed. During this latter phase, patients were randomly assigned to a control or an intervention group. All patients had their documents analyzed by the system, but the medical problems discovered were only proposed in the problem list for intervention patients. We measured the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, likelihood ratios and the timeliness of the problem lists. Our system significantly increased the sensitivity of the problem lists in the intensive care unit, from about 9% to 41%, and even 77% if problems automatically proposed but not acknowledged by users were also considered. Timeliness of addition of problems to the list was greatly improved, with a time between a problem's first mention in a clinical document and its addition to the problem list reduced from about 6 days to less than 2 days. No significant effect was observed in the cardiovascular surgery unit.

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

natural language processing [mesh l01.224.065.580]


3D tangentially injected swirling recirculating flow in a nozzle with a slotted-tube-Effects of groove parameters A numerical prediction for 3D swirling recirculating flow in an air-jet spinning nozzle with a slotted-tube is carried out with the realizable k-epsilon turbulence model. The effects of the groove parameters on the flow and yarn properties are investigated. The simulation results show that some factors, such as reverse flow upstream of the injector, vortex breakdown downstream of the injector, corner recirculation zone (CRZ) behind the step and vortex ring in the groove caused by the groove geometric variation, are significantly related to fluid flow, and consequently to yarn properties. With increasing groove height, the length of the CRZ increases, while the initial vortex ring in the groove decreases and a same direction rotating vortex forms in the bottom of the groove. Similarly, as the groove width increases, the extent of both vortex breakdown in downstream of the injectors and the vortex ring in the groove increases slightly, whereas the CRZ lengths in stream-wise direction decrease. Some factors, such as the negative tangential velocities, the size of the vortex rings in the grooves and the CRZ, are constant for nozzles with different groove lengths. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

vortex breakdown
corner recirculation zone
vortex ring
groove
injector


Classification of major construction materials in construction environments using ensemble classifiers This study focused on the automatic detection of construction materials in images. We investigated the performance of six single classifiers and ensemble classifiers. We tested the classifiers on three data sets: one each for concrete, steel, and wood. The ensemble classifiers performed better than the single classifiers overall. The ensemble classifier is able to enhance the detection of construction materials.

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

color
construction material detection
data mining techniques
image processing


an axiomatic approach to exploit term dependencies in language model One of important problems of dependence retrieval model is the challenge to integrate both single words and dependencies in one weighting schema. Although there are many retrieval models that exploit term dependencies in language modeling framework, seldom of them simultaneously study the problem on different query types, e.g., short queries and verbose queries. In this paper, we derive an axiomatic dependence model by defining several basic desirable constraints that a retrieval model should meet. The experiment results show that our model significantly and robustly improves retrieval accuracy over the baseline (unigram model) in verbose queries and achieves better performance than some state-of-art dependence models.

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


Efficient geographic routeless routing protocols with enhanced location update mechanism In this paper, we introduce and evaluate two efficient controlled routeless routing protocols: Static and Dynamic Channel Width. They combine Location-Aided Routing (LAR) and Received signal strength-Aided Flooding (RAF) protocols for effective deployment in the very challenging domain of Mobile Ad hoc Sensor Networks (MASNETs). Our new approach maintains different controlled routeless geographic routing protocols that construct a virtual broadcasting channel between source nodes and their destinations. Hence with no predefined source-destination route, i.e. routeless, only some of the sensor nodes inside the channel are allowed to contribute in forwarding packets. Promising simulation results show that our protocols are able to outperform RAF, LAR, and Beacon-less routing protocols with respect to energy consumption, packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay.

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

component
location-aided routing
received signal strength-aided flooding
geo-flooding
controlled flooding


Using models in different stages of process life-cycle The use of models in different stages of a process life-cycle is described. These stages are partly overlapping and have feedback between them. The scope may range from calculation of mass and energy balances of a single unit operation to large flow sheet simulation and optimization. The novelty of the case at hand or an innovative approach taken may require the development of tailor-made, detailed new models. Sub-problems include choices between competitive theories, mechanistic and empirical approach and the proper degree of details. The same models should be applicable at different stages and for different tasks, such as simulation, optimization, design, experiment planning etc. Development of the melamine and hydrogen peroxide production processes are used as examples. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Efficient computations of gapped string kernels based on suffix kernel In recent years, several approaches to computing the value of p-length gap-weighted kernel have been presented, such as trie-based approach, suffix kernel, and range sum technique. Although other approaches can achieve better performance in some cases, suffix kernel technique is still an efficient approach in this context. In this paper, we present a series of dynamic programming algorithms based on suffix kernel to compute gapped string kernels. Given strings s and t, and a gap penalty ?, all-length gap-weighted kernel can be calculated in time O(|s||t|) with our algorithms. Moreover, some new string kernels belonging to the family of gapped string kernels are presented, including all-length and p-length match-weighted kernels, and their variants. Based on the suffix kernel technique, we can compute all-length match-weighted kernel in time O(|s||t|), and then p-length kernel in time O(p|s||t|) using the relationship between all-length and p-length kernels. Furthermore, for p-length match-weighted kernel and its variant, a bit-parallel technique is used to reduce the complexity from O(p|s||t|) to O(?pk/w?|s||t|), where w is the word size of the machine (e.g. 32 or 64 in practice) and k is determined by the longest matching subsequence of two strings s and t. The empirical results suggest that the suffix kernel technique is an important and useful approach to computing gapped string kernels.

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

kernel methods
gapped string kernels
bit-parallel technique


SCPS: A self-configuring power-saving protocol for wireless ad hoc networks ? SCPS is a novel self-configuring power-saving protocol for wireless one-hop ad hoc networks. According to IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard, a station may enter a special power-saving (PS) mode. SCPS allows all stations in the PS mode to adjust their wakeup schedules whenever a station enters or exits the PS mode. The adjustment can balance the number of wakeup stations in each beacon interval so that the contention for transmission medium and the collisions in transmission will be ameliorated, which results in more efficient energy usage. Simulation results show that SCPS successfully balances the number of stations that wake up in each beacon interval, increases the sleep ratio, and reduces the collision probability. The combined effect reduces total energy consumption.

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

power-saving schedule
self-configuration
medium access control


Using multiplicative neuron model to establish fuzzy logic relationships Determination of fuzzy logic relationships between observations is quite effective on the forecasting performance of fuzzy time series approaches. In various studies available in the literature, it has been seen that utilizing artificial neural networks for establishing fuzzy relations increase the forecasting accuracy. In this study, a novel high order fuzzy time series forecasting approach in which multiplicative neuron model is used to define fuzzy relations is proposed in order to reach high forecasting level. Also, particle swarm optimization method is utilized to train multiplicative neuron model. In order to show forecasting performance of the proposed method, it is applied to a well-known data Taiwan future exchange and the results produced by the proposed approach is compared to those obtained from other fuzzy time series forecasting models. As a result of the implementation, it is observed that the proposed approach gives the best forecasts for Taiwan future exchange time series.

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

forecasting accuracy
fuzzy relations
fuzzy time series
multiplicative neuron model


Capacity and delay tradeoffs for Ad hoc mobile networks We consider the throughput/delay tradeoffs for scheduling data transmissions in a mobile ad hoc network. To reduce delays in the network, each user sends redundant packets along multiple paths to the destination. Assuming the network has a cell partitioned structure and users move according to a simplified independent And identically distributed (i.i.d.) mobility model, we compute the exact network capacity and the exact end-to-end queueing delay when no redundancy is used. The capacity-achieving algorithm is a modified version of the Grossglauser-Tse two-hop relay algorithm and provides O(N) delay (where N is the number of users). We then show that redundancy cannot increase capacity, but can significantly improve delay. The following necessary tradeoff is established: delay/rate >= O(N). Two protocols that use redundancy and operate near the boundary of this curve are developed, with delays of O(root N) and O(log(N)), respectively. Networks with non-i.i.d. mobility are also considered and shown through simulation to closely match the performance of i.i.d. systems in the O(root N) delay regime.

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

fundamental limits
queueing analysis
stochastic systems
wireless networks


Fault recoverability analysis of switched systems This article provides an approach to evaluate the fault recoverability of switched systems (SS) under given energetic constraints. Such evaluation reveals the capability of the SS to tolerate the worst faults over a prescribed set under possible energy constraints. The evaluation is achieved by using the smallest eigenvalue of a proposed 'switched-system controllability Gramian'. Simulation results about a longitudinal flight control process example are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

B I O O B I 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


Lightweight graphics instrumentation for game state-specific power management in Android Battery life is a major concern on portable devices like smartphones and tablet PCs. On these devices, games constitute the class of most popular applications and are at the same time highly compute-intensive. Every game consists of several states like the loading, main menu and the gaming state. Each of those states has its own workload characteristics, e.g., the loading phase is likely to be memory bound and the main menu state is less interactive than the gaming state. We propose an interception technique that allows to profile the game and detect its current state based on the games communication with the underlying OS. Current power management governors are unaware of the running applications and scale the processors voltage and frequency merely based on the systems utilization. We provide the games state information and workload profile to our governor which selects the processing frequency such that the desired frame rate of the current state is ensured. This leads to an optimal choice of processing frequencies and thereby significantly reduces power consumption. We have implemented the scheme on an Android-based Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone using popular games like Jetpack Joyride and Temple Run. We reduced the CPUs power consumption by up to 43.2% compared to the Android interactive governor without impacting the gaming experience. Motivated by these results we propose a power management API that would allow game developers to significantly reduce the power consumption of their game using simple API calls.

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


R Package distrMod: S4 Classes and Methods for Probability Models Package distrMod provides an object oriented (more specifically S4-style) implementation of probability models. Moreover, it contains functions and methods to compute minimum criterion estimators - in particular, maximum likelihood and minimum distance estimators.

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

probability models
minimum criterion estimators
minimum distance estimators
s4 classes

maximum likelihood estimators
s4 methods


automatically generating object models from natural language analysis Our goal is to enable rapid production of static and dynamic object models from natural language description of problems. Rapid modeling is achieved through automation of analysis tasks. This automation captures the cognitive schemes analysts use to build their models of the world through the use of a precise methodology. The methodology is based on the use of proposed technique called role posets, and a semi-natural language (called 4W). Original problem statements are automatically translated to 4W language. The produced sentences then, are analyzed with role posets to produce static model views. Finally the 4W sentences are used to generate dynamic views of the problem. This set of methods maximizes analysis process agility, promotes reusability and constitutes a valuable tool in the learning process of object thinking.

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

set theory
object oriented education
discourse analysis
computational linguistics
object oriented modeling


QoS-aware service composition for distributed video surveillance Quality of Service (QoS) is essential for the ubiquitous access of media services in real-time distributed video surveillance applications. To have ubiquitous access of desired media with emergency officials handheld devices, appropriate media transcoding services are required. Currently, it is challenging to select and compose these services for each of the devices to satisfy the desired QoS demand. To compose these media services so that video stream is available for target pervasive and smart devices, a composition algorithm is required. Thus, this paper presents a QoS-aware service composition algorithm to select the best composition for the target ubiquitous client so that it can optimally provide QoS to heterogeneous users. We have implemented a video surveillance prototype to demonstrate the performance of the proposed QoS-aware composition algorithm. Results from this prototype reveal that the approach is suitable for real-time video surveillance.

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

service composition
distributed video surveillance
qos


Prediction of intraoperative complexity from preoperative patient data for laparoscopic cholecystectomy Different reasons may cause difficult intraoperative surgical situations. This study aims to predict intraoperative complexity by classifying and evaluating preoperative patient data. The basic prediction problem addressed in this paper involves the classification of preoperative data into two classes: easy (Class 0) and complex (Class 1) surgeries. preoperative patient data were collected from 337 patients admitted to the Klinikum rechts der Isar hospital in Munich, Germany for laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LAPCHOL) in the period of 20052008. The data include the patient's body mass index (BMI), sex, inflammation, wall thickening, age and history of previous surgery, as well as the name and level of experience of the operating surgeon. The operating surgeon was asked to label the intraoperative complexity after the surgery: 0 if the surgery was easy and 1 if it was complex. For the classification task a set of classifiers was evaluated, including linear discriminant classifier (LDC), quadratic discriminant classifier (QDC), Parzen and support vector machine (SVM). Moreover, feature-selection was applied to derive the optimal preoperative patient parameters for predicting intraoperative complexity. Classification results indicate a preference for the LDC in terms of classification error, although the SVM classifier is preferred in terms of results concerning the area under the curve. The trained LDC or SVM classifier can therefore be used in preoperative settings to predict complexity from preoperative patient data with classification error rates below 17%. Moreover, feature-selection results identify bias in the process of labelling surgical complexity, although this bias is irrelevant for patients with inflammation, wall thickening, male sex and high BMI. These patients tend to be at high risk for complex LAPCHOL surgeries, regardless of labelling bias. Intraoperative complexity can be predicted before surgery according to preoperative data with accuracy up to 83% using an LDC or SVM classifier. The set of features that are relevant for predicting complexity includes inflammation, wall thickening, sex and BMI score.

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

intraoperative complexity
preoperative data

surgical planning and laparoscopic cholecystectomy


Market segmentation by maximum likelihood clustering using choice elasticities We determine market segments by clustering households on the basis of their average choice elasticities across purchases and brands w.r.t. price, sales promotion and brand loyalty. The cluster analysis technique used is a maximum likelihood method which allows varying size and orientation and assumes constant volume. Elasticities originate from choice models with alternatively linear and nonlinear utility functions. Choice models are estimated on the basis of household scanner data. Segments are interpreted by means of multiple discriminant analysis and multinomial logit models whose predictors are elasticities of predictors and external variables (i.e. number of purchases, number of brands bought, income and household size), respectively.

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

market segmentation
cluster analysis
choice models


Multi-Antenna AF Two-Way Relaying Over Nakagami-\(m\) Fading Channels We present the performance of multi-antenna selective combining amplify-and-forward (SC-AF) two-way relaying systems over independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) Nakagami-\(m\) fading channels. The outage probability and symbol error probability of our relaying system are derived in closed-form. In order to get additional insights into the impact of system parameters, we consider the analysis of system at high signal-to-noise (SNR) regime. Through over high SNR analysis, we assume that the fading channels are independent and non-identically distributed (i.n.i.d). Also, there is no assumption on the fading parameter, \(m\). Moreover, some special cases of practical interest (e.g., Rayleigh fading channels, and single relay system) are also examined. Subsequently, we define an optimization problem using some approximations and then solve it analytically. Lastly, we present numerical simulations to check our analytical formulas.

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

outage probability
symbol error probability

amplify-and-forward
selection combining
multi-antenna
convex optimization


Automated segmentation of human brain MR images using a multi-agent approach Image interpretation consists in finding a correspondence between radiometric information and symbolic labeling with respect to specific spatial constraints. It is intrinsically a distributed process in terms of goals to be reached, zones in the image to be processed and methods to be applied. To cope with the difficulty inherent in this process, several information processing steps are required to gradually extract information from the gray levels in the image and to introduce symbolic information. In this paper we advocate the use of situated cooperative agents as a framework for managing such steps. Dedicated agent behaviors are dynamically adapted depending on their position in the image, of their topographic relationships and of the radiometric information available. The information collected by the agents is gathered, shared via qualitative maps, or used as soon as available by acquaintances. Incremental refinement of interpretation is obtained through a coarse to fine strategy. Our work is essentially focused on radiometry-based tissue interpretation where knowledge is introduced or extracted at several levels to estimate models for tissue-intensity distribution and to cope with noise, intensity non-uniformity and partial volume effect. Several experiments on phantom and real images were performed. A complete volume can be segmented in less than 5min with about 0.84% accuracy of the segmented reference. Comparison with other techniques demonstrates the potential interest of our approach for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scan interpretation.

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

image processing
medical imaging
cooperation
information fusion


Video Coding Focusing on Block Partitioning and Occlusion Among the existing block partitioning schemes, the pattern-based video coding (PVC) has already established its superiority at low bit-rate. Its innovative segmentation process with regular-shaped pattern templates is very fast as it avoids handling the exact shape of the moving objects. It also judiciously encodes the pattern-uncovered background segments capturing high level of interblock temporal redundancy without any motion compensation, which is favoured by the rate-distortion optimizer at low bit-rates. The existing PVC technique, however, uses a number of content-sensitive thresholds and thus setting them to any predefined values risks ignoring some of the macroblocks that would otherwise be encoded with patterns. Furthermore, occluded background can potentially degrade the performance of this technique. In this paper, a robust PVC scheme is proposed by removing all the content-sensitive thresholds, introducing a new similarity metric, considering multiple top-ranked patterns by the rate-distortion optimizer, and refining the Lagrangian multiplier of the H. 264 standard for efficient embedding. A novel pattern-based residual encoding approach is also integrated to address the occlusion issue. Once embedded into the H. 264 Baseline profile, the proposed PVC scheme improves the image quality perceptually significantly by at least 0.5 dB in low bit-rate video coding applications. A similar trend is observed for moderate to high bit-rate applications when the proposed scheme replaces the bi-directional predictive mode in the H. 264 High profile.

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

block partitioning
occlusion
video coding

h.264
motion estimation
pattern-based coding
rate-distortion optimisation
sub-blocking
uncovered background coding


Optical properties of ZnTe doped with transition metals (Ti, Cr and Mn) The electronic and optical properties of \(\text{ Zn }_{1-\mathrm{x}}\text{ M }_\mathrm{x}\text{ Te }\) with (M = Cr, Mn, Ti) have been investigated, within generalized gradient approximation (GGA) using the full potential linear augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method as implemented in the WIEN2K code. This work presents detailed information about optical properties like absorbance, refractive index and reflectivity. The result of this study shows that doped ZnTe material with Ti, Cr and Mn shift the absorption spectrum and reflection to the infrared spectral domain or to the ultra violet region, depending on the nature of the dopant. Dielectric functions for different compositional alloys are calculated for 16-atom cubic supercell structure. The calculated band gaps are fitted with a linear equation: (\(\upalpha \text{ h }\upnu )^{2} = \text{ A }(\text{ h }\upnu -\text{ Eg }\)). For all types of doping the position of critical points (CPs) \(\text{ E }_{0}, \text{ E }_{1}\) and \(\text{ E }_{2}\) show good agreement with the experimental data.

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

dielectric function
critical point
intraband transition
fp-lapw


Directional control of the motion of a rolling disk by using a rotor fixed in the disk's plane This work deals with the stabilization and control of a system which is composed of a disk rolling on a plane, and a circular rotor plate fixed in the disk's plane. The disk's motion is controlled by the above-mentioned rotor, a "tillting moment" and a pedalling moment. It is shown here that by applying a kind of inverse dynamics control, the motion of the disk is stabilized about a given angle, while simultaneously controlling its speed and direction in such a manner that the point of contact between the disk and the horizontal plane will be able, during a given time interval [0, tf], to move from a given point r(A) to a another given point r(B), both of them fixed in the plane. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

rolling disk
circular rotor plate
inverse dynamics control
stabilization

nonholonomic constraints
point-to-point control


Predicting the wind noise from the pantograph cover of a train Finite element and boundary element calculations are combined to predict the how noise radiated from a 1/10th-scale model of an aerodynamic cover used around the pantograph on a train at 250 km h(-1). The solutions of the unsteady air how over the cover and the resulting sound propagation are divided into two parts in order to keep the problem tractable. First the unsteady fluid flow is solved using large-eddy simulation (LES). The pressure histories on the cover are then used to predict the radiated sound, using a boundary element method to solve the Helmholtz equation. The result thus leans heavily on assumptions about the coupling of the two solutions, the propagation of sound in a disturbed medium and the efficacy of LES. The predicted sound pressure levels are compared with experimental measurements made in an anechoic wind tunnel. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

aeroacoustics
time-dependent incompressible flows
large-eddy simulation
acoustic boundary elements


Validation of a Rapid Thermal Processing model in steady-state Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) is widely used in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The present work deals with the heat transfer from infrared lamps to the silicon wafer in a commercial RTP equipment. Both numerical and experimental approaches are considered. For numerical purposes, the RTP system is modelled in two (2D) and three dimensions (3D). Calculations are performed in steady-state. The computational fluid dynamics method (CFD) is used for solving the mass and heat conservation equations. The radiative heat transfer equation is solved with the Monte Carlo method. In order to validate these models, measurements of the wafer temperature are realized for five electric power values supplied to the infrared lamps. The experimental wafer temperature profiles are in good agreement with the numerically calculated ones. Moreover, a confrontation between the experimental temperature of the infrared lamp filaments evaluated from the Ohm law and the one used in the numerical calculations shows a good agreement with the 3D model. The slight difference observed with the 2D model is explained. So the numerical simulations are fully validated. Two relations are established in order to predict the power which has to be applied to infrared lamps to obtain the required wafer temperature.

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

rapid thermal process
modelling
numerical simulation
wafer temperature profile


On the free resolution induced by a Pommaret basis We combine the theory of Pommaret bases with a (slight generalisation of a) recent construction by Skldberg based on discrete Morse theory. This combination allows us the explicit determination of a (generally non-minimal) free resolution for a graded polynomial module with the computation of only one Pommaret basis. If only the Betti numbers are needed, one can considerably simplify the computations by determining only the constant part of the differential. For the special case of a quasi-stable monomial ideal, we show that the induced resolution is a mapping cone resolution. We present an implementation within the CoCoALib and test it with some common benchmark ideals.

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

free resolutions
syzygies
algebraic discrete morse theory
mapping cones