On k-convex polygons ? We introduce a notion of k-convexity and explore polygons in the plane that have this property. Polygons which are k -convex can be triangulated with fast yet simple algorithms. However, recognizing them in general is a 3SUM-hard problem. We give a characterization of 2-convex polygons, a particularly interesting class, and show how to recognize them in O ( n log n ) time. A description of their shape is given as well, which leads to Erd?sSzekeres type results regarding subconfigurations of their vertex sets. Finally, we introduce the concept of generalized geometric permutations, and show that their number can be exponential in the number of 2-convex objects considered.

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


Robot formation motion planning using Fast Marching This paper presents the application of the Voronoi Fast Marching (VFM) method to path planning of mobile formation robots. The VFM method uses the propagation of a wave (Fast Marching) operating on the world model to determine a motion plan over a viscosity map (similar to the refraction index in optics) extracted from the updated map model. The computational efficiency of the method allows the planner to operate at high rate sensor frequencies. This method allows us to maintain good response time and smooth and safe planned trajectories. The navigation function can be classified as a type of potential field, but it has no local minima, it is complete (it finds the solution path if it exists) and it has a complexity of order n(O(n)) n ( O ( n ) ) , where n n is the number of cells in the environment map. The results presented in this paper show how the proposed method behaves with mobile robot formations and generates trajectories of good quality without problems of local minima when the formation encounters non-convex obstacles.

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

robot formation motion planning
fast marching


Optimization of CAMD techniques 3. Virtual screening enrichment studies: a help or hindrance in tool selection? Over the last few years many articles have been published in an attempt to provide performance benchmarks for virtual screening tools. While this research has imparted useful insights, the myriad variables controlling said studies place significant limits on results interpretability. Here we investigate the effects of these variables, including analysis of calculation setup variation, the effect of target choice, active/decoy set selection (with particular emphasis on the effect of analogue bias) and enrichment data interpretation. In addition the optimization of the publicly available DUD benchmark sets through analogue bias removal is discussed, as is their augmentation through the addition of large diverse data sets collated using WOMBAT.

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

virtual screening
enrichment
analogue bias
dud
wombat


Identification of stock market forces in the system adaptation framework Based on the system adaptation framework which has been proposed in our previous work, this paper focuses on the input selection of this framework to identify crucial market influential factors. We first carry out an empirical research to preselect influential factors from economic and sentimental aspects. The causal relationship between each of them and the internal residue of the market is then tested. Lastly, a multicollinearity test is applied to those factors that show significant causality to the internal residue of the market to exclude the redundant indicators. As the causal relationship plays an essential role in this method, both linear time-varying and nonlinear causality tests are employed based on the predictive ability of our framework. This double selection method is applied to the US and China stock markets, and it is shown to be efficient in identifying market influential factors. We also find that these influential factors are market-dependent and frequency-dependent. Some well-tested factors in the developed market and literature may not work in the emerging market.

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

financial system modeling
market input selection
causality test


mixed-integer quadrangulation We present a novel method for quadrangulating a given triangle mesh. After constructing an as smooth as possible symmetric cross field satisfying a sparse set of directional constraints (to capture the geometric structure of the surface), the mesh is cut open in order to enable a low distortion unfolding. Then a seamless globally smooth parametrization is computed whose iso-parameter lines follow the cross field directions. In contrast to previous methods, sparsely distributed directional constraints are sufficient to automatically determine the appropriate number, type and position of singularities in the quadrangulation. Both steps of the algorithm (cross field and parametrization) can be formulated as a mixed-integer problem which we solve very efficiently by an adaptive greedy solver. We show several complex examples where high quality quad meshes are generated in a fully automatic manner.

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 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 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


Holographic reduction, interpolation and hardness We introduce the method of proving complexity dichotomy theorems by holographic reductions. Combined with interpolation, we present a unified strategy to prove #P-hardness. Specifically, we prove a complexity dichotomy theorem for a class of counting problems on 2-3 regular graphs expressible by Boolean signatures. For these problems, whenever a holographic reduction followed by interpolation fails to prove #P-hardness, we can show that the problem is solvable in polynomial time.

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

polynomial interpolation
#p-hard
counting complexity


Intention Learning From Human Demonstration Equipped with better sensing and learning capabilities, robots nowadays are meant to perform versatile tasks. To remove the load of detailed analysis and programming from the engineer, a concept has been proposed that the robot may learn how to execute the task from human demonstration by itself Following the idea, in this paper, we propose an approach for the robot to learn the intention of the demonstrator from the resultant trajectory during task execution. The proposed approach, identifies the portions of the trajectory that correspond to delicate and skillful maneuvering. Those portions, referred to as motion features, may implicate the intention of the demonstrator. As the trajectory may result from so many possible intentions, it poses a severe challenge on finding the correct one's. We first formulate the problem into a realizable mathematical form and then employ the method of dynamic programming for the search. Experiments based on the pouring and also fruit jam tasks are performed to demonstrate the proposed approach, in which the derived intention is used to execute the same task under different experimental settings.

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

motion feature
robot imitation
skill transfer


Port partitioning and dynamic queueing for IP forwarding With the increase of internet protocol (IP) packets the performance of routers became an important issue in internet/working. In this paper we examine the matching algorithm in gigabit router which has input queue with virtual output queueing. Dynamic queue scheduling is also proposed to reduce the packet delay and packet loss probability. Port partitioning is employed to reduce the computational burden of the scheduler in a switch which matches the input and output ports for fast packet switching. Each port is divided into two groups such that the matching algorithm is implemented within each pair of groups in parallel. The matching is performed by exchanging the pair of groups at every time slot. Two algorithms, maximal weight matching by port partitioning (MPP) and modified maximal weight matching by port partitioning (MMPP) are presented. In dynamic queue scheduling, a popup decision rule for each delay critical packet is made to reduce both the delay of the delay critical packet and the loss probability of loss critical packet. Computational results show that MMPP has the lowest delay and requires the least buffer size. The throughput is illustrated to be linear to the packet arrival rate, which can be achieved under highly efficient matching algorithm. The dynamic queue scheduling is illustrated to be highly effective when the occupancy of the input buffer is relatively high. To cope with the increasing internet traffic, it is necessary to improve the performance of routers. To accelerate the switching from input ports to output in the router partitioning of ports and dynamic queueing are proposed. Input and output ports are partitioned into two groups A/B and a/b, respectively. The matching for the packet switching is performed between group pairs (A, a) and (B, b) in parallel at one time slot and (A, b) and (B, a) at the next time slot. Dynamic queueing is proposed at each input port to reduce the packet delay and packet loss probability by employing the popup decision rule and applying it to each delay critical packet. The partitioning of ports is illustrated to be highly effective in view of delay, required buffer size and throughput. The dynamic queueing also demonstrates good performance when the traffic volume is high.

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


Learning and diagnosis of individual and class conceptual perspectives: an intelligent systems approach using clustering techniques In a classroom, a teacher attempts to convey his or her knowledge to the students. and thus it is important for the teacher to obtain formative feedback about how well students are understanding the new material. By gaining insight into the students' understanding and possible misconceptions. the teacher will be able to adjust the teaching and to supply more useful learning materials as necessary. Therefore. the diagnosis of formative student evaluations is critical for teachers and learners, as is the diagnosis of patterns in the overall learning by a class in order to inform a teacher about the efficacy of his or her teaching. This paper investigates what might be called the "class learning diagnosis problem" by embedding important concepts in a test and analyzing the results with a hierarchical coding scheme. Based on previous research. the part-of and type-of relationships among concepts are used to construct a concept hierarchy that may then be coded hierarchically. All concepts embedded in the test items then can be formulated into concept matrices, and the answer sheets of the learners in a class are then analyzed to indicate particular types of concept errors. The trajectories of concept errors are studied to identify both individual misconceptions students might have as well as patterns of misunderstanding in the overall class. In particular, a clustering algorithm is employed to distinguish student groups who might share similar misconceptions. These approaches are implemented as an integrated module in a previously developed system and applied to two real classroom data sets, the results of which show the practicability of this proposed method. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


A modified ABC algorithm for the stage shop scheduling problem A modified artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed for the stage shop scheduling problem. The stage shop is a new extension for the mixed shop problem and as a result, for job shop and open shop problems. In employed bee phase of ABC, a potent neighborhood of the stage shop is used and a tabu search manner is substituted for greedy selection. In onlooker bee phase of ABC, particle swarm optimization idea is applied instead of completely random search. The proposed algorithm obtained new optimal solutions and upper bounds for benchmark problems.

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

scheduling
stage shop
artificial bee colony
particle swarm optimization


demonstrating remote operation of industrial devices using mobile phones In the SmartFactory KL , the intelligent factory of the future, a consortium of companies and research facilities explores new, intelligent technologies. Being a development and demonstration center for industrial applications, the SmartFactory KL is arbitrarily modifiable and expandable (flexible), connects components from multiple manufacturers (networked), enables its components to perform context-related tasks autonomously (self-organizing), and emphasizes user-friendliness (user-oriented). In this paper, we present a prototypical system that enables commercial mobile phones to monitor, diagnose, and remotely control plant components via Bluetooth.

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

mobile interaction
flexible automation
wireless system integration
agile control
smartphone


Modulation diversity for frequency-selective fading channels In this correspondence, modulation diversity (MD) for frequency-selective fading channels is proposed. The achievable performance with MD is analyzed and a simple design criterion for MD codes for Rayleigh-fading channels is deduced from an upper bound on the pairwise error probability (PEP) for single-symbol transmission. This design rule is similar to the well-known design rule for MD codes for flat fading and does not depend on the power-delay profile of the fading channel. Several examples for MD codes with prescribed properties are given and compared. Besides the computationally costly optimum receiver, efficient low-complexity linear equalization (LE) and decision-feedback equalization (DFE) schemes for MD codes are also introduced. Simulations for the widely accepted COST fading models show that performance gains of several decibels can be achieved by MD combined with LE or DFE at bit-error rates (BERs) of practical interest. In addition, MD also enables the suppression of cochannel interference.

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


team work in software development student projects To enhance students' capabilities regarding team work in real software development projects, should be a major objective for any Computer Science department within a University. Starting from the authors' experience in coordinating student teams for the development of complex projects, this paper outlines a set of considerations in this regard.

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


Gas desorption electron stimulated during operation of field emitter phosphor screen pairs Gas desorption from field emitter array (FEA) cathode and phosphor screen anode in a flat panel display during lifetime operation can affect cathode electron emission and degrade display performance and uniformity. We have measured the outgassing products from selected FEA-phosphor pairs in an ultrahigh vacuum system equipped with a calibrated quadrople residual gas analyzer. Different low voltage phosphors and blank anodes were studied. A Spindt-type FEA was used as the electron source. A unique carousel was used so the desorption from all these different anodes could be measured without intervening vacuum breaks. this allowed the desorption from the different anodes to be directly compared to each other. Quantitative outgassing rates are given and the implications of the results for the pumping of the flat panel and emission from the FEAs an discussed. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Application of the sznajd sociophysics model to small-world networks The Sznajd model for the opinion formation is generalized to small-world networks. This generalization destroyed the stalemate fixed point, Then a simple definition of leaders is included. No fixed points are observed. This model displays some interesting aspects in sociology. The model is investigated using time series analysis.

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

ising model
opinion formation models
small-world networks


interactive modular programming in scheme This paper presents a module system and a programming environment designed to support interactive program development in Scheme. The module system extends lexical scoping while maintainig its flavor and benefits and supports mutually recursive modules. The programming environment supports dynamic linking, separate compilation, production code compilation, and a window-based user interface with multiple read-eval-print contexts.

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

program
code
dynamic
module
user interface
compilation
modular
support
paper
programming environment
linking
scheme

interaction
printing
product
systems
recursion
developer
context
separate compilation
windows
read


Subword balance, position indices and power sums In this paper, we investigate various ways of characterizing words, mainly over a binary alphabet, using information about the positions of occurrences of letters in words. We introduce two new measures associated with words, the position index and sum of position indices. We establish some characterizations, connections with Parikh matrices, and connections with power sums. One particular emphasis concerns the effect of morphisms and iterated morphisms on words. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

position of letter
parikh matrix
power sum
iterated morphism
thue morphism
fibonacci morphism


An intelligent approach to integration and control of textile processes This paper introduces a methodology to integrate and control effectively major plant processes with strong couplings between them. The proposed integration philosophy consists of causeeffect relationships and decides upon control setpoints for the individual processes by optimizing a global objective function which aims at improving process yield. A neuro-fuzzy model and a fuzzy objective function are employed to address the integration and control tasks. Such models and objective functions are defined and developed using experimental data or an operator's experience. The objective is to maximize productivity and at the same time, reduce defects in each of the subsequent operations. A textile plant is considered as a testbed and three major processes warping, slashing and weaving are employed to illustrate the feasibility of the approach. The supervisory level of the control architecture is intended to continuously improve the control setpoints depending upon feedback information from the weave room, slasher operator, and warping data.

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

polynomial fuzzy neural networks
fuzzy logic control
causeeffect relation
genetic algorithms
hybrid genetic optimization


Wavelet based multiresolution expectation maximization image reconstruction algorithm for positron emission tomography Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation based Expectation Maximization (EM) [IEEE Trans Med Imag, MI-1 (2) (1982) 113] reconstruction algorithm has shown to provide good quality reconstruction for positron emission tomography (PET). Our previous work [IEEE Trans Med Imag, 7(4) (1988) 273; Proc IEEE EMBS Conf, 20(2/6) (1998) 759] introduced the multigrid (MG) and multiresolution (MR) concept for PET image reconstruction using EM. This work transforms the MGEM and MREM algorithm to a Wavelet based Multiresolution EM (WMREM) algorithm by extending the concept of switching resolutions in both image and data spaces. The MR data space is generated by performing a 2D-wavelet transform on the acquired tube data that is used to reconstruct images at different spatial resolutions. Wavelet transform is used for MR reconstruction as well as adapted in the criterion for switching resolution levels. The advantage of the wavelet transform is that it provides very good frequency and spatial (time) localization and allows the use of these coarse resolution data spaces in the EM estimation process. The MR algorithm recovers low-frequency components of the reconstructed image at coarser resolutions in fewer iterations, reducing the number of iterations required at finer resolution to recover high-frequency components. This paper also presents the design of customized biorthogonal wavelet filters using the lifting method that are used for data decomposition and image reconstruction and compares them to other commonly known wavelets.

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

wavelets
expectation maximization
positron emission tomography

multiresolution reconstruction
lifting scheme


Process models for agent-based development A great deal of research in the area of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) focuses on proposing methodologies for agent systems, i.e., on identifying the guidelines to drive the various phases of agent-based software development and the abstractions to be exploited in these phases. However, very little attention has been paid so far to the engineering process subjacent to the development activity, disciplining the execution of the different phases involved in the software development. In this paper, we focus on process models for software development and put these in relation with current researches in AOSE. First, we introduce the key concepts and issues related to software processes and present the various software process models currently adopted in mainstream software engineering. Then, we survey the characteristics of a number of agent-oriented methodologies, as they pertain to software processes. In particular, for each methodology, we analyze which software process model it (often implicitly) underlies and which phases of the process are covered by it, thus enabling us to identify some key limitations of currently methodology-centered researches. On this basis, we eventually identify and analyze several open issues in the area of software process models for agent-based development, calling for further researches and experiences.

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

software engineering
methodologies
process models

agent-based computing
agent software development


decentralized computation For a decentralized computing system of many computing elements (whether geographically distributed mainframe computers, or miniature computing elements within a single board or even chip), a naturally decentralized model is prerequisite for the organization of computation. This will allow a large number of computer elements to cooperate in the execution of a program. Computational models used in parallel computers (data flow, control flow, and reduction) help to identify the attributes of such a decentralized and general-purpose model. This paper examines data flow, control flow, and reduction models and presents a classification for their underlying concepts. In addition, it describes a computational model called recursive control flow, which is a synthesis of these concepts and which directly supports data flow, control flow, and reduction computation.

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

help
organization
computation
reduction
data
flow control
flow
attributes
synthesis
paper
distributed
model
classification

systems
recursion
computer modeling
concept
control flow
general
parallel computation
decentralization


Fuzzy hybrid simulated annealing algorithms for topology design of switched local area networks Topology design of switched local area networks (SLAN) is classified as an NP-hard problem since a number of objectives, such as monetary cost, network delay, hop count between communicating pairs, and reliability need to be simultaneously optimized under a set of constraints. This paper presents a multiobjective heuristic based on a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm for topology design of SLAN. Fuzzy logic has been incorporated in the SA algorithm to handle the imprecise multiobjective nature of the SLAN topology design problem, since the logic provides a suitable mathematical framework to address the multiobjective aspects of the problem. To enhance the performance of the proposed fuzzy simulated annealing (FSA) algorithm, two variants of FSA are also proposed. These variants incorporate characteristics of tabu search (TS) and simulated evolution (SimE) algorithms. The three proposed fuzzy heuristics are mutually compared with each other. Furthermore, two fuzzy operators, namely, ordered weighted average (OWA) and unified AND-OR (UAO) are also applied in certain steps of these algorithms. Results show that in general, the variant which embeds characteristics of SimE and TS into the fuzzy SA algorithm exhibits more intelligent search of the solution subspace and was able to find better solutions than the other two variants of the fuzzy SA. Also, the OWA and UAO operators exhibited relatively similar performance.

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

fuzzy logic
simulated annealing
simulated evolution


applicative functors and fully transparent higher-order modules we present a variety of the Standard ML module system where parameterized abstract types (i.e. functors returning generative types) map provably equal arguments to compatible abstract types, instead of generating distinct types at each applications as in Standard ML. This extension solves the full transparency problem (how to give syntactic signatures for higher-order functors that express exactly their propagation of type equations), and also provides better support for non-closed code fragments.

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

ml applications transparency code types module support propagation

fragmentation order generation systems abstraction standardization extensibility signature argument


ImageAdmixture: Putting Together Dissimilar Objects from Groups We present a semiautomatic image editing framework dedicated to individual structured object replacement from groups. The major technical difficulty is element separation with irregular spatial distribution, hampering previous texture, and image synthesis methods from easily producing visually compelling results. Our method uses the object-level operations and finds grouped elements based on appearance similarity and curvilinear features. This framework enables a number of image editing applications, including natural image mixing, structure preserving appearance transfer, and texture mixing.

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


Pel recursive motion estimation and compensation in subbands In this correspondence, the problem of recursive motion estimation and compensation in image subbands is considered. A pel recursive algorithm is presented for this purpose and it is shown experimentally that the motion can be compensated almost as well as in the original fields. Based on this algorithm, a scalable and recursive video coding scheme is outlined which is compared successfully to a hybrid coding scheme based on block matching.

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

subband decomposition
motion compensation
pel-recursive


an approach based on metrics for monitoring web accessibility in brazilian municipalities web sites Monitoring and measuring the accessibility of government Web sites is an important challenge for regulators and policy makers. Moreover, over the next few years, e-government (e-gov) services are expected to expand and it is necessary to ensure access for everyone. In this paper, we present a metric based approach for evaluating municipalities Web pages using automatic accessibility evaluation tools. The sampling of the pages was done by the tool E-GOVMeter, and the accessibility evaluation and generation of the metrics was done by means of an adaptation of the tool Hera. The results show that much work should be done to improve the accessibility of Brazilian municipalities Web sites. Although it has limitations, the use of automatically generated accessibility metrics is a powerful tool for helping measuring and monitoring the accessibility of e-gov Web sites.

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

web accessibility evaluation
web metrics
e-government


Humanlike conversation with gestures and verbal cues based on a three-layer attention-drawing model When describing a physical object, we indicate which object by pointing and using reference terms, such as 'this' and 'that', to inform the listener quickly of an indicated object's location. Therefore, this research proposes using a three-layer attention-drawing model for humanoid robots that incorporates such gestures and verbal cues. The proposed three-layer model consists of three sub-models: the Reference Term Model (RTM); the Limit Distance Model (LDM); and the Object Property Model (OPM). The RTM selects an appropriate reference term for distance, based on a quantitative analysis of human behaviour. The LDM decides whether to use a property of the object, such as colour, as an additional term for distinguishing the object from its neighbours. The OPM determines which property should be used for this additional reference. Based on this concept, an attention-drawing system was developed for a communication robot named 'Robovie', and its effectiveness was tested.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-robot interface
human-robot interaction
deictic gestures


A Low-Voltage and Low-Power 3-GHz CMOS LC VCO for S-Band Wireless Applications A fully integrated 0.18-\(\upmu \hbox {m}\) CMOS LC-tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) suitable for low-voltage and low-power S-band wireless applications is proposed in this paper. In order to meet the requirement of low voltage applications, a differential configuration with two cross-coupled pairs by adopting admittance-transforming technique is employed. By using forward-body-biased metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors, the proposed VCO can operate at 0.4V supply voltage. Despite the low power supply near threshold voltage, the VCO achieves wide tuning range by using a voltage-boosting circuit and the standard mode PMOS varactors in the proposed oscillator architecture. The simulation results show that the proposed VCO achieves phase noise of \(-\)120.1dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset and 39.3% tuning range while consuming only \(594~\upmu \hbox {W}\) in 0.4V supply. Figure-of-merit with tuning range of the proposed VCO is \(-\)192.1dB at 3GHz.

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

voltage-controlled oscillator (vco)
forward-body-biased
admittance-transforming
voltage-boosting


Identifying Web Spam with the Wisdom of the Crowds Combating Web spam has become one of the top challenges for Web search engines. State-of-the-art spam-detection techniques are usually designed for specific, known types of Web spam and are incapable of dealing with newly appearing spam types efficiently. With user-behavior analyses from Web access logs, a spam page-detection algorithm is proposed based on a learning scheme. The main contributions are the following. (1) User-visiting patterns of spam pages are studied, and a number of user-behavior features are proposed for separating Web spam pages from ordinary pages. (2) A novel spam-detection framework is proposed that can detect various kinds of Web spam, including newly appearing ones, with the help of the user-behavior analysis. Experiments on large-scale practical Web access log data show the effectiveness of the proposed features and the detection framework.

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

measurement
experimentation
human factors
spam detection
web search engine
user behavior analysis


image schemata in animated metaphors for insight problem solving While most of the work on metaphors has focused on conceptual ones, less attention has been paid to the visual metaphors for insight problems. This paper investigates the role of dynamism and realism in visual metaphors for cueing the insight problem solving process. To match the visual-kinesthetic feature of the eight-coin insight problem, the developed metaphors represented the insight cues, both kinetically and kinesthetically. An experimental study showed the superiority of metaphors as realistic and continuous animations over schematic and discrete animations.

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

visual insight problem
animation
image schemata.


English-Thai structure-based machine translation We propose an alternative method of machine-aided translation: Structure-Based Machine Translation (SBMT). SBMT uses language structure matching techniques to reduce complicated grammar rules and provide efficient and feasible translation results. SBMT comprises the following four features: (1) source language input sentence analysis; (2) source language sentence transformation into target language structured (3) dictionary lookup: and (4) semantic disambiguation or word sense disambiguation (WSD) for correct output Selection, SBMT has been designed and a prototype system has been implemented that generates satisfactory translations.

O O B I O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 existence and uniform decay rates for the semi-linear wave equation with damping and source terms In this paper, we consider a semi-linear wave equation with damping and source terms. Using a potential well method, we prove the existence and uniqueness of global solutions of the wave equation and investigate uniform decay rates of solutions. Moreover, an example is given to illustrate our results.

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

existence of solution
energy decay
source term
numerical result


ARGOS: Automatically extracting repeating objects from multimedia streams Many media streams consist of distinct objects that repeat. For example, broadcast television and radio signals contain advertisements, call sign jingles, songs, and even whole programs that repeat. The problem we address is to explicitly identify the underlying structure in repetitive streams and de-construct them into their component objects. Our algorithm exploits dimension reduction techniques on the audio portion of a multimedia stream to make search and buffering feasible. Our architecture assumes no a priori knowledge of the streams, and does not require that the repeating objects (ROs) be known. Everything the system needs, including the position and duration of the ROs, is learned on the fly. We demonstrate that it is perfectly feasible to identify in real-time ROs that occur days or even weeks apart in audio or video streams. Both the compute and buffering requirements are comfortably within reach for a basic desktop computer. We outline the algorithms, enumerate several applications and present results from real broadcast streams.

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 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

audio fingerprint
low-dimension representation
repeats
segmentation


A matched interface and boundary method for solving multi-flow NavierStokes equations with applications to geodynamics We have developed a second-order numerical method, based on the matched interface and boundary (MIB) approach, to solve the NavierStokes equations with discontinuous viscosity and density on non-staggered Cartesian grids. We have derived for the first time the interface conditions for the intermediate velocity field and the pressure potential function that are introduced in the projection method. Differentiation of the velocity components on stencils across the interface is aided by the coupled fictitious velocity values, whose representations are solved by using the coupled velocity interface conditions. These fictitious values and the non-staggered grid allow a convenient and accurate approximation of the pressure and potential jump conditions. A compact finite difference method was adopted to explicitly compute the pressure derivatives at regular nodes to avoid the pressurevelocity decoupling. Numerical experiments verified the desired accuracy of the numerical method. Applications to geophysical problems demonstrated that the sharp pressure jumps on the clast-Newtonian matrix are accurately captured for various shear conditions, moderate viscosity contrasts and a wide range of density contrasts. We showed that large transfer errors will be introduced to the jumps of the pressure and the potential function in case of a large absolute difference of the viscosity across the interface; these errors will cause simulations to become unstable.

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

navierstokes equations
jump conditions
projection method

geophysics
multi-flow
interface method
non-staggered grid
stability


Eliciting Web application requirements an industrial case study A small variety of methods and techniques are presented in the literature as solutions to manage requirements elicitation for Web applications. However, the existing state of the art is lacking research regarding practical functioning solutions that would match Web application characteristics. The main concern for this paper is how requirements for Web applications can be elicited. The Viewpoint-Oriented Requirements Definition method (VORD) is chosen for eliciting and formulating Web application requirements in an industrial case study. VORD is helpful because it allows structuring of requirements around viewpoints and formulating very detailed requirements specifications. Requirements were understandable to the client with minimal explanation but failed to capture the business vision, strategy, and daily business operations, and could not anticipate the changes in the business process as a consequence of introducing the Web application within the organisation. The paper concludes by a discussion of how to adapt and extend VORD to suit Web applications.

viewpoint-oriented requirements definition (vord)


Differential approximation results for the traveling salesman and related problems This paper deals with the problem of constructing a Hamiltonian cycle of optimal weight, called TSP. We show that TSP is 2/3-differential approximable and cannot be differential approximable greater than 649/650. Next, we demonstrate that, when dealing with edge-costs 1 and 2, the same algorithm idea improves this ratio to 3/4 and we obtain a differential non-approximation threshold equal to 741/742. Remark that the 3/4-differential approximation result has been recently proved by a way more specific to the 1-, 2-case and with another algorithm in the recent conference, Symposium on Fundamentals of Computation Theory, 2001. Based upon these results, we establish new bounds for standard ratio: 5/6 for Mar TSP[a, 2a] and 7/8 for MaxTSP[1, 2]. We also derive some approximation results on partition graph problems by paths. (C) 2001 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

approximation algorithms
differential ratio
performance ratio
analysis of algorithms


Quantum Bayesian game with symmetric and asymmetric information We use one of the influential quantum game models, the MarinattoWeber model, to investigate quantum Bayesian game. We show that in a quantum Bayesian game which has more than one Nash equilibrium, one equilibrium stands out as the compelling solution, whereas two Nash equilibria seem equally compelling in the classical Bayesian game.

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

bayesian game
quantum game
nash equilibrium


A framework for flexible summarization of racquet sports video using multiple modalities While most existing sports video research focuses on detecting event from soccer and baseball etc., little work has been contributed to flexible content summarization on racquet sports video, e.g. tennis, table tennis etc. By taking advantages of the periodicity of video shot content and audio keywords in the racquet sports video, we propose a novel flexible video content summarization framework. Our approach combines the structure event detection method with the highlight ranking algorithm. Firstly, unsupervised shot clustering and supervised audio classification are performed to obtain the visual and audio mid-level patterns respectively. Then, a temporal voting scheme for structure event detection is proposed by utilizing the correspondence between audio and video content. Finally, by using the affective features extracted from the detected events, a linear highlight model is adopted to rank the detected events in terms of their exciting degrees. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is effective. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

sports video summarization
scene segmentation
temporal voting strategy


Unambiguous stereo matching using reliability-based dynamic programming An efficient unambiguous stereo matching technique is presented in this paper. Our main contribution is to introduce a new reliability measure to dynamic programming approaches in general. For stereo vision application, the reliability of a proposed match on a scanline is defined as the cost difference between the globally best disparity assignment that includes the match and the globally best assignment that does not include the match. A reliability-based dynamic programming algorithm is derived accordingly, which can selectively assign disparities to pixels when the corresponding reliabilities exceed a given threshold. The experimental results show that the new approach can produce dense (>70 percent of the unoccluded pixels) and reliable (error rate <0.5 percent) matches efficiently (<0.2 sec on a 2GHz P4) for the four Middlebury stereo data sets.

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


Contribution of fuzzy reasoning method to knowledge integration in a defect recognition system This article presents the improvement of a defect recognition system for wooden boards by using knowledge integration from two expert fields. These two kinds of knowledge to integrate respectively concern wood expertise and industrial vision expertise. First of all, extraction, modelling and integration of knowledge use the Natural Language Information Analysis method (NIAM) to be formalized from their natural language expression. Then, to improve a classical industrial vision system, we propose to use the resulting symbolic model of knowledge to partially build a numeric model of wood defect recognition. This model is created according to a tree structure where each inference engine is a fuzzy rule based inference system. The expert knowledge model previously obtained is used to configure each node of the resulting hierarchical structure. The practical results we obtained in industrial conditions show the efficiency of such an approach.

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

niam method
orm model
pattern recognition
fuzzy logic


The free surface of a coupled ocean-atmosphere model due to forcing effects In this work, we consider external effects on a coupled shallow water ocean-atmosphere model. The forced shallow water equation due to the wind action is studied through a decomposition technique. Induced free perturbations of the permanent response are identified by using a spectral operator basis that is generated by a dynamical Green function. This later was determined through a spectral technique. By using the semi-lagrangian method, we compute the non-linear response of the full model due to a shear stress that comes from the action of the wind at the ocean surface. (c) 2006 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 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

forced response
semi-lagrangian method
dynamic green function
geophysical modelling


Research on Inventory Control Policies for Nonstationary Demand based on TOC An effective inventory replenishment method employed in the supply chain is one of the key factors to achieving low inventory while maintaining high customer delivery performance. The state of demand process is often not directly observed by the decision maker. Thus, in many literatures, the inventory control problem is a composite-state, partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP), which is an appropriate model for a number of dynamic demand problems. In practice, managers often use certainty equivalent control (CEC) policies to solve such a problem. However, in reality, Theory of Constraints (TOC) has brought a practical control policy that almost always provides much better solutions for this problem than the CEC policies commonly used in practice. In this paper, we proposed three different inventory control policies based on TOC buffer management framework, and use simulation approach to compare them with traditional adaptive (s,S,T) policy. The computational results indicate how specific problem characteristics influence the performance of whole system and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed control policy.

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

nonstationary demand
theory of constraints
buffer management


boosting topic-based publish-subscribe systems with dynamic clustering We consider in this paper a class of Publish-Subscribe (pub-sub) systems called topic-based systems, where users subscribe to topics and are notified on events that belong to those subscribed topics. With the recent flourishing of RSS news syndication, these systems are regaining popularity and are raising new challenging problems. In most of the modern topics-based systems, the events in each topic are delivered to the subscribers via a supporting, distributed, data structure (typically a multicast tree). Since peers in the network may come and go frequently, this supporting structure must be continuously maintained so that "holes" do not disrupt the events delivery. The dissemination of events in each topic thus incurs two main costs: (1) the actual transmission cost for the topic events,and (2) the maintenance cost for its supporting structure. This maintenance overhead becomes particularly dominating when a pub-sub system supports a large number of topics with moderate event frequency; a typical scenario in nowadays news syndication scene. The goal of this paper is to devise a method for reducing this maintenance overhead to the minimum. Our aim is not to invent yet another topic-based pub-sub system, but rather to develop a generic technique for better utilization of existing platforms. Our solution is based on a novel distributed clustering algorithm that utilizes correlations between user subscriptions to dynamically group topics together, into virtual topics (called topic-clusters ), andt hereby unifies their supporting structures and reduces costs. Our technique continuously adapts the topic-clusters and the user subscriptions to the system state, and incurs only very minimal overhead. We have implemented our solution in the Tamara pub-sub system. Our experimental study shows this approach to be extremely effective, improving the performance by an order of magnitude.

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


3dtv and 3d video communications With wider availability of low cost multi-view cameras, 3D displays, and broadband communication options, 3D media is destined to move from the movie theater to home and mobile platforms. In the near term, popular 3D media will most likely be in the form of stereoscopic video with associated spatial audio. Recent trials indicate that consumers are willing to watch stereoscopic 3D media on their TVs, laptops, and mobile phones. While it is possible to broadcast 3D stereoscopic media (two-views) over digital TV platforms today, streaming over IP will provide a more flexible approach for distribution of 3D media to users with different connection bandwidths and different 3D displays. In the intermediate term, free-view 3D video and 3DTV with multi-view capture are next steps in the evolution of 3D media technology. Recent free-view 3D auto-stereoscopic displays can display multi-view video, ranging from 5 to 200 views. Transmission of multi-view 3D media, via broadcast or on-demand, to end users with varying 3D display terminals and bandwidths is one of the biggest challenges to realize the vision of bringing 3D media experience to the home and mobile devices. This requires flexible rate-scalable, resolution-scalable, view-scalable, view-selective, and packet-loss resilient transport methods. In this talk, first I will briefly review the state of the art in 3D video formats, coding methods, IP streaming protocols and streaming architectures. We will then take a look at 3D video transport options. There are two main platforms for 3D broadcasting: standard digital television (DTV) platforms and the IP platform. I will summarize the approach of European project DIOMEDES which is developing novel methods for adaptive streaming of multi-view video over a combination of DVB and IP platforms. I will also summarize additional challenges associated with real-time interactive 3D video communications for applications such as 3D telepresence. Finally, open research challenges for the long term vision of haptic video and holographic 3D video will be presented.

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 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


Association between objective and subjective measurements of comfort and discomfort in hand tools In the current study, the relationship between objective measurements and subjective experienced comfort and discomfort in using handsaws was examined. Twelve carpenters evaluated five different handsaws. Objective measures of contact pressure (average pressure, pressure area and pressuretime (Pt) integral) in static and dynamic conditions, muscle activity (electromyography) of five muscles of the upper extremity, and productivity were obtained during a sawing task. Subjective comfort and discomfort were assessed using the comfort questionnaire for hand tools and a scale for local perceived discomfort (LPD). We did not find any relationship between muscle activity and comfort or discomfort. The Pt integral during the static measurement (beta=?0.24, p<0.01) was the best predictor of comfort and the pressure area during static measurement was the best predictor of LPD (beta=0.45, p<0.01). Additionally, productivity was highly correlated to comfort (beta=0.31, p<0.01) and discomfort (beta=?0.49, p<0.01).

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 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


Using pore space 3D geometrical modelling to simulate biological activity: Impact of soil structure This study is the follow-up to a previous one devoted to soil pore space modelling. In the previous study, we proposed algorithms to represent soil pore space by means of optimal piecewise approximation using simple 3D geometrical primitives: balls, cylinders, cones, etc. In the present study, we use the ball-based piecewise approximation to simulate biological activity. The basic idea for modelling pore space consists in representing pore space using a minimal set of maximal balls (Delaunay spheres) recovering the shape skeleton. In this representation, each ball is considered as a maximal local cavity corresponding to the intuitive notion of a pore as described in the literature. The space segmentation induced by the network of balls (pores) is then used to spatialise biological dynamics. Organic matter and microbial decomposers are distributed within the balls (pores). A valuated graph representing the pore network, organic matter and microorganism distribution is then defined. Microbial soil organic matter decomposition is simulated by updating this valuated graph. The method has been implemented and tested on real data. As far as we know, this approach is the first one to formally link pore space geometry and biological dynamics. The long-term goal is to define geometrical typologies of pore space shape that can be attached to specific biological dynamic properties. This paper is a first attempt to achieve this goal.

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

3d computer vision
biological dynamics simulation
computed tomography
computational geometry
microbial decomposition


Design of a Comb Generator for High Capacity Coherent-WDM Systems This paper presents a theoretical model developed for estimating the power, the optical signal to noise ratio and the number of generated carriers in a comb generator, having as a reference the minimum optical signal do noise ratio at the receiver input, for a given fiber link. Based on the recirculating frequency shifting technique, the generator relies on the use of coherent and orthogonal multi-carriers (Coherent-WDM) that makes use of a single laser source (seed) for feeding high capacity (above 100 Gb/s) systems. The theoretical model has been validated by an experimental demonstration, where 23 comb lines with an optical signal to noise ratio ranging from 25 to 33 dB, in a spectral window of similar to 3.5 nm, are obtained.

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

comb generator
recirculating frequency shifting

orthogonal frequency division multiplexing


safety verification in murphy using fault tree analysis MURPHY is a language-independent, experimental methodology for building safety-critical, real time software, which will include an integrated tool set. Using Ada as an example, this paper presents a technique for verifying the safety of complex, real-time software using Software Fault Tree Analysis. The templates for Ada are presented along with an example of applying the technique to an Ada program. The tools in the MURPHY tool set to aid in this type of analysis are described.

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

tree software methodology analysis verification tool fault paper tools

examples
experimentation
language
complexity
safety critical
template
real-time
integrability


News Recommendations from Social Media Opinion Leaders: Effects on Media Trust and Information Seeking Polls show a strong decline in public trust of traditional news outlets; however, social media offers new avenues for receiving news content. This experiment used the Facebook API to manipulate whether a news story appeared to have been posted on Facebook by one of the respondent's real-life Facebook friends. Results show that social media recommendations improve levels of media trust, and also make people want to follow more news from that particular media outlet in the future. Moreover, these effects are amplified when the real-life friend sharing the story on social media is perceived as an opinion leader. Implications for democracy and the news business are discussed.

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

social media
experiment
opinion leader
media trust

news media effects
two-step flow
interpersonal communication


Numerical methods for instability mitigation in the modeling of laser wakefield accelerators in a Lorentz-boosted frame Modeling of laser-plasma wakefield accelerators in an optimal frame of reference [1] has been shown to produce orders of magnitude speed-up of calculations from first principles. Obtaining these speedups required mitigation of a high-frequency instability that otherwise limits effectiveness. In this paper, methods are presented which mitigated the observed instability, including an electromagnetic solver with tunable coefficients, its extension to accommodate Perfectly Matched Layers and Friedmans damping algorithms, as well as an efficient large bandwidth digital filter. It is observed that choosing the frame of the wake as the frame of reference allows for higher levels of filtering or damping than is possible in other frames for the same accuracy. Detailed testing also revealed the existence of a singular time step at which the instability level is minimized, independently of numerical dispersion. A combination of the techniques presented in this paper prove to be very efficient at controlling the instability, allowing for efficient direct modeling of 10GeV class laser plasma accelerator stages. The methods developed in this paper may have broader application, to other Lorentz-boosted simulations and Particle-In-Cell simulations in general.

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

laser wakefield acceleration
particle-in-cell
plasma simulation
special relativity
boosted frame
numerical instability


Online scheduling on batching machines to minimise the total weighted completion time of jobs with precedence constraints and identical processing times This article studies online scheduling of equal length jobs with precedence constraints on m parallel batching machines. The jobs arrive over time. The objective is to minimise the total weighted completion time of jobs. Denote the size of each batch by b with b = in the unbounded batching and b in the bounded batching. For the unbounded batching version, we provide an online algorithm with a best possible competitive ratio of m, where m is the positive solution of m+1 - = 1. The algorithm is also best possible when the jobs have identical weights. For the bounded batching version with identical weights of jobs, we provide an online algorithm with a competitive ratio of 2.

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

online scheduling
precedence constraints


a study of multiaccess computer communications The communications characteristics of multiaccess computing are generating new needs for communications. The results of a study of multiaccess computer communications are the topic of this paper. The analyses made are based on a model of the user-computer interactive process that is described and on data that were collected from operating computer systems. Insight into the performance of multiaccess computer systems can be gleaned from these analyses. In this paper emphasis is placed on communications considerations . For this reason, the conclusions presented deal with the characteristics of communications systems and services appropriate for multiaccess computer 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 B O O O O O O O B O O O O B O O O O O B O O O O O O B O O O B O O O B O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O B

data process systems model paper performance

interaction
communication
operability
service
communication systems
user
computation


Trends in built environment semantic Web applications: Where are we today? BIM, Semantic Web and Linked Data are key technologies for construction information. Progress is being made from often too-common ontological concepts to Linked Data. Semantic Web sustainable construction applications are now emerging.

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


management of keyword variation with frequency based generation of word forms in ir This paper presents a new management method for morphological variation of keywords. The method is called FCG, Frequent Case Generation. It is based on the skewed distributions of word forms in natural languages and is suitable for languages that have either fair amount of morphological variation or are morphologically very rich. The proposed method has been evaluated so far with four languages, Finnish, Swedish, German and Russian, which show varying degrees of morphological complexity.

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

evaluation
word form generation
monolingual information retrieval
management of morphological variation


The extension of the van der Pauw method to anisotropic media The method for calculating the specific conductivity tensor of an anisotropically conductive medium, proposed in this paper, distinguishes itself by the simplicity of physical measurements: it suffices to make an equally thick rectangle-shaped sample with four electrodes fixed on its sides and to take various measurements of current intensity and differences of potentials. The necessary mathematical calculations can be promptly performed, even without using a complex computing technique. The accuracy of the results obtained depends on the dimensions of the sample and on the ratios of the conductivity tensor components.

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 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

modelling
electrical conductivity
current flow
numerical methods


Analysis of uniform circular arrays for adaptive beamforming applications using particle swarm optimization algorithm In this article, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to calculate the complex excitations, amplitudes and phases, of the adaptive circular array elements. To illustrate the performance of this method for steering a signal in the desired direction and imposing nulls in the direction of interfering signals by controlling the complex excitation of each array element, two types of arrays are considered. A uniform circular array (UCA) and a planar uniform circular array (PUCA) with 16 elements of half-wave dipoles are examined. Also, the performance of an adaptive array using 3-bit amplitude and 4-bit phase shifters are studied. In our analysis, the method of moments is used to estimate the response of the dipole UCAs in a mutual coupling environment.

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

adaptive beamforming
method of moments
mutual coupling
uniform circular arrays
particle swarm optimization algorithm
adaptive array


Parallel algorithms to solve two-stage stochastic linear programs with robustness constraints ? In this paper we present a parallel method for solving two-stage stochastic linear programs with restricted recourse. The mathematical model considered here can be used to represent several real-world applications, including financial and production planning problems, for which significant changes in the recourse solutions should be avoided because of their difficulty to be implemented. Our parallel method is based on a primal-dual path-following interior point algorithm, and exploits fruitfully the dual block-angular structure of the constraint matrix and the special block structure of the matrices involved in the restricted recourse model. We describe and discuss both message-passing and shared-memory implementations and we present the numerical results collected on the Origin2000.

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

stochastic programming
interior point methods
numa multiprocessor system
pvm
openmp


SCOMDY models based on pair-copula constructions with application to exchange rates Vine pair-copula constructions (PCCs) provide an important milestone for the usage of multivariate copulas to model dependence. At present time PCCs are recognized to be the most flexible class of multivariate copulas. Vine PCCs and semiparametric copula-based dynamic (SCOMDY) models with ARMA-GARCH margins are combined. As building blocks of the PCCs, bivariate t t -copulas are used. Exchange rates are considered as an application and their dependence structure is modelled using regular and canonical vines. A non-nested model comparison of the above SCOMDY models is performed using the adapted Voungs test.

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

multivariate copula
garch-arma margins
pair-copula construction


Routing strategy in disconnected mobile ad hoc networks with group mobility Most of the current proposed routing protocols in delay-tolerant network (DTN) are designed based on the entity mobility. In this article, we consider the routing in DTN with group mobility, which is useful in modeling those cooperative activities. The new proposed routing scheme is called group-epidemic routing (G-ER). G-ER is designed on the basis of one DTN protocol called epidemic routing (ER). In G-ER, two strategies related to the unique characteristics of the group mobility have been proposed to greatly improve ER. The first is to treat each group as a single node and exchange packets between groups instead of individual nodes. Thus, the resource-consuming problem of ER could be much alleviated. In the meantime, exchanging packets between two groups could speed up the packet delivery. The second is the buffer sharing inside a group, which is supported by the cooperative nature in group mobility. Moreover, we specifically propose a group dynamic model for group mobility to realize group splitting and merging. The performance of G-ER is studied by extensive simulations and compared with ER and dynamic source routing (DSR). Results show that G-ER outperforms ER and DSR in different network scenarios even with group dynamics.

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

group mobility
epidemic routing
group dynamic model

delay-tolerant network
group-epidemic routing


Efficient and Quality Contouring Algorithms on the GPU Interactive isosurface extraction has recently become possible through successful efforts to map algorithms such as Marching Cubes (MC) and Marching Tetrahedra (MT) to modern Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) architectures. Other isosurfacing algorithms, however, are not so easily portable to GPUs, either because they involve more complex operations or because they are not based on discrete case tables, as is the case with most marching techniques. In this paper, we revisit the Dual Contouring (MC) and Macet isosurface extraction algorithms and propose, respectively: (i) a novel, efficient and parallelizable version of Dual Contouring and (ii) a set of GPU modules which extend the original Marching Cubes algorithm. Similar to marching methods, our novel technique is based on a case table, which allows for a very efficient GPU implementation. In addition, we enumerate and evaluate several alternatives to implement efficient contouring algorithms on the GPU, and present trade-offs among all approaches. Finally, we validate the efficiency and quality of the tessellations produced in all these alternatives.

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


Cellular Automata Pattern Recognition and Rule Evolution Through a Neuro-Genetic Approach Cellular Automata rules often produce spatial patterns which make them recognizable by human observers. Nevertheless, it is generally difficult, if not impossible, to identify the characteristic(s) that make a rule produce a particular pattern. Discovering rules that produce spatial patterns that a human being would find "similar" to another given pattern is a very important task, given its numerous possible applications in many complex systems models. In this paper, we propose a general framework to accomplish this task, based on a combination of Machine Learning strategies including Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks. This framework is tested on a 3-values, 6-neighbors, k-totalistic cellular automata rule called the "burning paper" rule. Results are encouraging and should pave the way for the use of our framework in real-life complex systems models.

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

spatial patterns
pattern recognition
rule evolution
machine learning
neural networks
genetic algorithms


Graphical Gaussian modeling for gene association structures based on expression deviation patterns induced by various chemical stimuli Activity patterns of metabolic subnetworks, each of which can be regarded as a biological function module, were focused on in order to clarify biological meanings of observed deviation patterns of gene expressions induced by various chemical stimuli. We tried to infer association structures of genes by applying the multivariate statistical method called graphical Gaussian modeling to the gene expression data in a subnetwork-wise manner. It can be expected that the obtained graphical models will provide reasonable relationships between gene expressions and macroscopic biological functions. In this study, the gene expression patterns in nematodes under various conditions (stresses by chemicals such as heavy metals and endocrine disrupters) were observed using DNA microarrays. The graphical models for metabolic subnetworks were obtained from these expression data. The obtained models (independence graph) represent gene association structures of cooperativities of genes. We compared each independence graph with a corresponding metabolic subnetwork. Then we obtained a pattern that is a set of characteristic values for these graphs, and found that the pattern of heavy metals differs considerably from that of endocrine disrupters. This implies that a set of characteristic values of the graphs can representative a macroscopic biological meaning.

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 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

gene expression pattern
association structure
metabolic network


story driven testing - sdt In the last years, SCESM community has studied a number of synthesis approaches that turn scenario descriptions into some kind of state machine. In our story driven modeling approach, the statechart synthesis is done manually. Many other approaches rely on human interaction, too. Frequently, the resulting state machines are just the starting point for further system development. The manual steps and the human interaction and the subsequent development steps are subject to the introduction of errors. Thus, it is not guaranteed that the final implementation still covers the initial scenarios. Therefore, this paper proposes the exploitation of scenarios for the derivation of automatic tests. These tests may be used to force the implementation to implement at least the behavior outlined in the requirements scenarios. In addition, this approach raises the value of formal scenarios for requirements elicitation and analysis since such scenarios are turned into automatic tests that may be used to drive iterative development processes according to test-first principles.

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


ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF BENT FUNCTIONS OF n+2 VARIABLES FROM BENT FUNCTIONS OF n VARIABLES In this paper we present a method to construct iteratively new bent functions of n+2 variables from bent functions of n variables using minterms of n variables and minterms of two variables. Also, we provide the number of bent functions of n+2 variables that we can obtain with the method here presented.

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

boolean function
bent function
linear function
balanced function
nonlinearity
truth table
hamming weight
minterm


computational complexity versus virtual worlds The ability to simulate complex physical situations in real-time is a critical element of any "virtual world" scenario, as well as being key for many engineering and robotics applications. Unfortunately the computation cost of standard physical simulation methods increases rapidly as the situation becomes more complex. The result is that even when using the fastest supercomputers we are still able to interactively simulate only small, toy worlds. To solve this problem I propose changing the way we represent and simulate physics in order to reduce the computational complexity of physical simulation, thus making possible interactive simulation of complex situations.

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

scenario
order
applications
simulation
computation
physical
robotics
complexity
cost
virtual world

interaction
situated
method
engine
supercomputer
physical simulation
standardization
critic
real-time
computational complexity


Efficient and fair scheduling for two-level information broadcasting systems In a ubiquitous environment, there are many applications where a server disseminates information of common interest to pervasive clients and devices. For an example, an advertisement server sends information from a broadcast server to display devices. We propose an efficient information scheduling scheme for information broadcast systems to reduce average waiting time for information access while maintaining fairness between information items. Our scheme allocates information items adaptively according to relative popularity for each local server. Simulation results show that our scheme van reduce the waiting time up to 30% compared with the round robin scheme while maintaining cost-effective fairness. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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


Separating touching objects in remote sensing imagery: The restricted growing concept and implementations This paper defines the restricted growing concept (RGC) for object separation and provides an algorithmic analysis of its implementations. Our concept decomposes the problem of object separation into two stages. First, separation is achieved by shrinking the objects to their cores while keeping track of their originals as masks, Then the core is grown within the masks obeying the guidelines of a restricted growing algorithm. In this paper, we apply RGC to the remote sensing domain, particularly the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sea ice images.

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

object separation
remote sensing imagery
restricted growing


Digital Distribution of Academic Journals and its Impact on Scholarly Communication: Looking Back After 20Years It has been approximately 20years since distributing scholarly journals digitally became feasible. This article discusses the broad implications of the transition to digital distributed scholarship from a historical perspective and focuses on the development of open access (OA) and the various models for funding OA in the context of the roles scholarly journals play in scientific communities.

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


an evaluation of product review modalities for mobile phones Research has shown that product reviews on the Internet not only support consumers when shopping, but also lead to increased sales for retailers. Recent approaches successfully use smart phones to directly relate products (e.g. via barcode or RFID) to corresponding reviews, making these available to consumers on the go. However, it is unknown what modality (star ratings/text/video) users consider useful for creating reviews and using reviews on their mobile phone, and how the preferred modalities are different from those on the Web. To shed light on this we conduct two experiments, one of them in a quasi-realistic shopping environment. The results indicate that, in contrast to the known approaches, stars and pre-structured text blocks should be implemented on mobile phones rather than long texts and videos. Users prefer less and rather well-aggregated product information while on the go. This accounts both for entering and, surprisingly, also for using product reviews.

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 B I

product recommendations
mobile interaction
product ratings
user interfaces
mobile applications


A distributed collision resolution scheme for improving the performance in wireless LANs The IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) provides a contention-based distribution channel access mechanism for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of the DCF drops dramatically due to high collision probability as the number of active stations becomes larger. In this paper, we propose a simple and effective collision resolution scheme for improving the performance of the DCF mechanism. Our idea is based on the estimation of the channels contention level, by measuring duration of busy and idle periods observed on the channel at each station. In order to reduce collision probability, the proposed scheme limits the number of contending stations at the same time according to the channel contention level. Performance of the proposed scheme is investigated by numerical analysis and simulation. Our results show that the proposed scheme is very effective and improves the performance under a wide range of contention levels.

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


cryptographic link signatures for spectrum usage authentication in cognitive radio It was shown that most of the radio frequency spectrum was inefficiently utilized. To fully use these spectrums, cognitive radio networks have been proposed. The idea is to allow secondary users to use a spectrum if the primary user (i.e., the legitimate owner of the spectrum) is not using it. To achieve this, secondary users should constantly monitor the usage of the spectrum to avoid interference with the primary user. However, achieving a trustworthy monitoring is not easy. A malicious secondary user who wants to gain an unfair use of a spectrum can emulate the primary user, and can thus trick the other secondary users into believing that the primary user is using the spectrum when it is not. This attack is called the Primary User Emulation (PUE) attack. To prevent this attack, there should be a way to authenticate primary users' spectrum usage. We propose a method that allows primary users to add a cryptographic link signature to its signal so the spectrum usage by primary users can be authenticated. This signature is added to the signal in a transparent way, such that the receivers (who do not care about the signature) still function as usual, while the cognitive radio receivers can retrieve the signature from the signal. We describe two schemes to add a signature, one using modulation, and the other using coding. We have analyzed the performance of both schemes.

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

primary user emulation attack
physical-layer authentication


an end-user oriented graph-based visualization for spreadsheets One of the difficulties in understanding and debugging spreadsheets is due to the invisibility of the data flow structure which is associated with cell formulas. In this paper, we present a spreadsheet visualization approach that is mainly based on the Markov Clustering (MCL) algorithm in an attempt to help spreadsheet users understand and debug their spreadsheets. The MCL algorithm helps in visualizing large graphs by generating clusters of cells. In our visualization approach, we also use compound fisheye views and treemaps to help in the navigation of the generated clusters. Compound fish eye views help to view members of a particular cluster while showing their linkages with other clusters. Treemaps help to visualize the depth we are at while navigating a cluster tree. Our initial experiments show that graph-based spreadsheet visualization using the MCL algorithm generates clusters which match with the corresponding logical areas of a given spreadsheet. Our experiments also show that analysis of the clusters helps us to identify some errors in the spreadsheets.

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

visualization
spreadsheets
mcl algorithm

visual programming
end-user software engineering


Pallet operation sequencing based on network part program logic CAPP systems play a relevant role in aiding planners during setup planning, operation sequencing and pallet configuration activities. The support and automation granted by these techniques, together with the use of non-linear process planning logic, lead to a reduction in the planning time and costs, thus making manufacturers more competitive. This paper presents an approach that integrating process and production planning leads to the definition at the shop-floor level of the optimal operation sequence to machine all of the workpieces on a pallet using a four-axis machine tool. Part programs of non-production movements for each possible sequence of two operations are automatically generated at the shop-floor level and are simulated to obtain the non-production time. The complete sequence of operations is then defined on the basis of the minimisation of the estimated non-production time. This minimisation is performed using a mathematical model that defines a good sequence of operations. Four algorithms are adopted to analyse the proposed solution and to reduce the gap from optimality. The approach is tested on some cases taken from literature and on a real case. The real case was provided by a company that produces mechanical components. The obtained results underline a reduction on production and planning time, and consequently an increment in the company profit.

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

operation sequencing
network part program


Robust Capon beamforming against large DOA mismatch In the presence of significant direction-of-arrival (DOA) mismatch, existing robust Capon beamformers based on the uncertainty set of the steering vector require a large size of uncertainty set for providing sufficient robustness against the increased mismatch. Under such circumstance, however, their output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs) degrade. In this paper, a new robust Capon beamformer is proposed to achieve robustness against large DOA mismatch. The basic idea of the proposed method is to express the estimate of the desired steering vector corresponding to the signal of interest (SOI) as a linear combination of the basis vectors of an orthogonal subspace, then we can easily obtain the estimate of the desired steering vector by rotating this subspace. Different from the uncertainty set based methods, the proposed method does not make any assumptions on the size of the uncertainty set. Thus, compared to the uncertainty set based robust beamformers, the proposed method achieves a higher output SINR performance by preserving its interference-plus-noise suppression abilities in the presence of large DOA mismatch. In addition, computationally efficient online implementation of the proposed method has also been developed. Computer simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the proposed method.

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

capon beamformer
doa mismatch
robustness