Assessing the implementation of workplace health programs outside of controlled environments The study explored the implementation of workplace health programmes in 14 NHS Trusts (hospitals), it sought to identify different approaches to implementation and measures that could be used to guide future development. The study comprised inter-related elements examining the process of implementing workplace health and the impact on staff. An innovative action research approach was applied to the evaluation. The aims of the evaluation were to generate activity and learning within the organisations which was sustainable (long term) and transferable outside the study organisations. The study is described in terms of the multiple methods and the ways in which these have been brought together in the analysis. The approach has been informed by a shift from an individualistic perspective towards one which sees the health of workers within the broader context of organisational development and management. The research identified a number of dilemmas for workplace health with its focus on the health of the individual. A typology was developed which describes different approaches to workplace health and their impact on sustaining such initiatives. It suggests that for workplace health to be successful it must address the organisational context as well as individual staff needs. Results from a survey of staff in the 14 trusts seems to demonstrate an association between the approaches, described in the typology, and an impact on staff. Workplace health programmes need to shift towards approaches where the individual's health is seen within the wider context of the organisation.

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

workplace health
research
evaluation
typology

organisational health
case-studies
health at work


A splitting extrapolation for solving nonlinear elliptic equations with d-quadratic finite elements Nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations are important to many large scale engineering and science problems. For this kind of equations, this article discusses a splitting extrapolation which possesses a high order of accuracy, a high degree of parallelism, less computational complexity and more flexibility than Richardson extrapolation. According to the problems, some domain decompositions are Constructed and some independent mesh parameters are designed. Multi-parameter asymptotic expansions are proved for the errors of approximations. Based on the expansions, splitting extrapolation formulas are developed to compute approximations with high order of accuracy on a globally fine grid. Because these formulas only require us to solve a set of smaller discrete subproblems on different coarser grids in parallel instead of on the globally fine grid, a large scale multidimensional problem is turned into a set of smaller discrete subproblems. Additionally, this method is efficient for solving interface problems. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

asymptotic expansion
parallel algorithm
domain decomposition
a posteriori error estimate


The numerical solution of three-dimensional Signorini problems with the method of fundamental solutions The method of fundamental solutions (MFS) is formulated for three-dimensional Signorini boundary-value problems. The method is tested on a three-dimensional electropainting problem related to the coating of vehicle roofs. The numerical results are in good agreement with available numerical solutions.

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

method of fundamental solutions
signorini problems
electropainting problem

three-dimensional elliptic boundary-value problems


Distributed control of transient response for best-effort IP packet communications over wireless systems We developed a distributed control algorithm to solve the problem of a trade-off between transient response and stability. We applied it to a congestion control algorithm for transmitting best-effort packets such as transmission control protocol (TCP) packets over the Internet. A new transmission power control algorithm suitable for transmitting best-effort packets over the wireless Internet was also developed using the distributed control algorithm. We showed that in a steady state, TCP connections can use the bandwidth efficiently over both wired and wireless Internet when the proposed control algorithms are used. The transient response was also evaluated and it was found that the packet transmission rate and the transmission power adjusted by the proposed control algorithms converge to a steady state faster than when adjusted by conventional control algorithms while maintaining the stability of network systems.

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

tcp
congestion control
transmission power control


Multi-dimensional modulations of ? and ? cortical dynamics following mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in Major Depressive Disorder To illuminate candidate neural working mechanisms of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) in the treatment of recurrent depressive disorder, parallel to the potential interplays between modulations in electro-cortical dynamics and depressive symptom severity and self-compassionate experience. Linear and nonlinear ? and ? EEG oscillatory dynamics were examined concomitant to an affective Go/NoGo paradigm, pre-to-post MBCT or natural wait-list, in 51 recurrent depressive patients. Specific EEG variables investigated were; (1) induced event-related (de-) synchronisation (ERD/ERS), (2) evoked power, and (3) inter-/intra-hemispheric coherence. Secondary clinical measures included depressive severity and experiences of self-compassion. MBCT significantly downregulated ? and ? power, reflecting increased cortical excitability. Enhanced ?-desynchronisation/ERD was observed for negative material opposed to attenuated ?-ERD towards positively valenced stimuli, suggesting activation of neural networks usually hypoactive in depression, related to positive emotion regulation. MBCT-related increase in left-intra-hemispheric ?-coherence of the fronto-parietal circuit aligned with these synchronisation dynamics. Ameliorated depressive severity and increased self-compassionate experience pre-to-post MBCT correlated with ?-ERD change. The multi-dimensional neural mechanisms of MBCT pertain to task-specific linear and non-linear neural synchronisation and connectivity network dynamics. We propose MBCT-related modulations in differing cortical oscillatory bands have discrete excitatory (enacting positive emotionality) and inhibitory (disengaging from negative material) effects, where mediation in the ? and ? bands relates to the former.

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

mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct)


control and communication performance analysis of embedded dsp systems in the masic methodology The time required by an embedded system to process information does not only depend on the amount of data; it also depends heavily on the synchronization overhead, bus protocol and communication architecture. This paper presents a technique to estimate the performance of the control and communication part of an embedded system modeled using the MASIC methodology. A key concept in MASIC is the strict separation of the computation part from the control and communication. Based on this clear separation of concerns the estimator analyzes the communication delay. Our method targets applications with intense, but regular data flow with a fair amount of complex control. Examples are base stations or mobile terminals. For these applications the method allows a cycle accurate estimation of the delay due to the communication. Hence, different architectures can be evaluated and e.g. the effect of different bus arbitration and different DMA block sizes can be assessed. Thus, the proposed method is an aid for the designer to explore the system with different system level decisions.

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

performance analysis
embedded dsp systems


Themes in Ion Pump Regulation The Na,K-ATPase is an ion pump present in the plasma membrane. It is of vital importance for cell and body homeostasis and as such is under strict hormonal control. The molecular basis for the acute regulation of Na,K-ATPase is multisite phosphorylation by protein kinases that can alter its behavior. This includes direct effects on the Na,K-ATPase activity, regulation by membrane trafficking, and even dynamic regulation of interaction with regulatory proteins. In shark Na,K-ATPase, the latter includes functional interaction with a small hydrophobic protein of the FXYD protein family, phospholemman-like protein from shark, PLMS. This article summarizes our recent work on the mechanisms involved in the acute regulation of the Na,K-ATPase studied using a plasma membrane preparation from shark salt glands as an epithelial transport model.

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

fxyd proteins
protein kinase
leucine zipper


On azimuthally symmetric 2-sphere convolution ? We consider the problem of azimuthally symmetric convolution of signals defined on the 2-Sphere. Applications of such convolution include but are not limited to: geodesy, astronomical data (such as the famous Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data), and 3D beamforming/sensing. We review various definitions of convolution from the literature and show a nontrivial equivalence between different definitions. Some convolution formulations based on SO(3) SO ( 3 ) are shown not to be well formed for applications and we demonstrate a simpler framework to understand, use and generalize azimuthally symmetric convolution.

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

so(3) so ( 3 ) convolution so(3) so ( 3 ) so(3) so ( 3 ) so ( 3 )


Differential RAID: Rethinking RAID for SSD Reliability SSDs exhibit very different failure characteristics compared to hard drives. In particular, the bit error rate (BER) of an SSD climbs as it receives more writes. As a result, RAID arrays composed from SSDs are subject to correlated failures. By balancing writes evenly across the array, RAID schemes can wear out devices at similar times. When a device in the array fails towards the end of its lifetime, the high BER of the remaining devices can result in data loss. We propose Diff-RAID, a parity-based redundancy solution that creates an age differential in an array of SSDs. Diff-RAID distributes parity blocks unevenly across the array, leveraging their higher update rate to age devices at different rates. To maintain this age differential when old devices are replaced by new ones, Diff-RAID reshuffles the parity distribution on each drive replacement. We evaluate Diff-RAID's reliability by using real BER data from 12 flash chips on a simulator and show that it is more reliable than RAID-5, in some cases by multiple orders of magnitude. We also evaluate Diff-RAID's performance using a software implementation on a 5-device array of 80 GB Intel X25-M SSDs and show that it offers a trade-off between throughput and reliability.

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


Mitochondrial Damage in Aging and Apoptosis Mitochondria are essential to cellular aging, and free radical production by mitochondria is increased with aging. The rate of oxidant production by mitochondria correlates inversely with maximal life span of species. In many species, females live longer than males. We report that mitochondrial oxidant production by females is significantly lower than that of males. However, mitochondria from ovariectomized females have a similar oxidant production as those of males. Thus, gender difference in life span can be explained, at least in part, by different oxidant generation by mitochondria. Administration of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, or a Ginkgo biloba extract, protects against age-associated oxidative damage to mitochondrial DNA, oxidation of glutathione, and other signs of oxidative damage to mitochondria.

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

mitochondria aging antioxidants vitamins


A mobile code bundle extension for application-defined routing in delay and disruption tolerant networking In this paper, we introduce software code to improve Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) performance. DTN is extremely useful when source and destination nodes are intermittently connected. DTN implementations use application-specific routing algorithms to overcome those limitations. However, current implementations do not support the concurrent execution of several routing algorithms. In this paper, we contribute to this issue providing a solution that consists on extending the messages being communicated by incorporating software code for forwarding, lifetime control and prioritisation purposes. Our proposal stems from the idea of moving the routing algorithms from the host to the message. This solution is compatible with Bundle Protocol (BP) and facilitates the deployment of applications with new routing needs. A real case study based on an emergency scenario is presented to provide details of a real implementation. Several simulations are presented to prove the feasibility and usability of the system and to analyse its performance in comparison to state-of-the-art approaches.

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

active-dtn
mobile-code
disaster recovery


Queries and materialized views on probabilistic databases We review in this paper some recent yet fundamental results on evaluating queries over probabilistic databases. While one can see this problem as a special instance of general purpose probabilistic inference, we describe in this paper two key database specific techniques that significantly reduce the complexity of query evaluation on probabilistic databases. The first is the separation of the query and the data: we show here that by doing so, one can identify queries whose data complexity is #P-hard, and queries whose data complexity is in PTIME. The second is the aggressive use of previously computed query results (materialized views): in particular, by rewriting a query in terms of views, one can reduce its complexity from #P-complete to PTIME. We describe a notion of a partial representation for views, and show that, once computed and stored, this partial representation can be used to answer subsequent queries on the probabilistic databases. evaluation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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


Upper and lower probabilities induced by a fuzzy random variable We review two existing interpretations of fuzzy random variables. In the first one, the fuzzy random variable is viewed as a linguistic random variable. In the. second case, it represents some incomplete knowledge about an otherwise standard random variable. For each interpretation, the information provided by the fry is described by a specific model, namely a standard probability model and a second-order imprecise model, respectively. In this paper, we deal with an alternative interpretation. Guided by simple examples we will observe the usefulness of each interpretation when applied to particular situations. Then we will demonstrate that the new interpretation leads, in a natural way, to the pair of order infinity capacities. Furthermore, we show that they are formally related to the former models. These results can be applied in future works to make inferences from fuzzy sample data. The use of upper lower models instead of second-order models will enable us in the future to reach crisp decisions in some specific statistical problems. without adding any arbitrary information, and taking into account the imprecision in data. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

imprecise probabilities
second-order possibility measure
belief function
multi-valued mapping


Widely tunable wavelength spacing dual-wavelength single longitudinal mode erbium doped fiber laser The lasing wavelength spacing is widely tunable in a range from 2nm to 18nm. The birefringent fiber filter benefits the simultaneous oscillation of dual-wavelength in a single laser cavity. The output peak power of the lasing dual-wavelength is approximately equalized at room temperature. The single longitudinal mode operation of the lasing dual-wavelength is verified by FabryPerot scanning interferometer. The modulation performance of single lasing wavelength is proved to be good according to the clear eye diagram.

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

single longitudinal mode
erbium doped fiber laser
birefringent fiber filter


Filtering Spam E-Mail from Mixed Arabic and English Messages: A Comparison of Machine Learning Techniques Spam is one of the main problems in emails communications. As the volume of non-english language spam increases, little work is done in this area. For example, in Arab world users receive spam written mostly in arabic, english or mixed Arabic and english. To filter this kind of messages, this research applied several machine learning techniques. Many researchers have used machine learning techniques to filter spam email messages. This study compared six supervised machine learning classifiers which are maximum entropy, decision trees, artificial neural nets, naive bayes, support system machines and k-nearest neighbor. The experiments suggested that words in Arabic messages should be stemmed before applying classifier. In addition, in most cases, experiments showed that classifiers using feature selection techniques can achieve comparable or better performance than filters do not used them.

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


Simulating the Evolution of Market Shares: The Effects of Customer Learning and Local Network Externalities This paper develops a simulation model to investigate competitive technology diffusion, and focuses on examining the influence of customer learning on the evolution of market share when both technologies exhibit local network externalities. Results show that: (1) the equilibrium market share of the new technology is determined by two key factors: the characteristics of customer learning behavior and the strength of local network externalities; (2) moderate network externalities can be beneficial for new technology to dominate the entire market when customers adopt belief-based learning rule; (3) moderate learning rate would facilitate the diffusion of new technology when customers make their decisions based on reinforcement learning; (4) the decay of customer learning and the proportions of imitators in market would help the old technology establish advantage by maintaining demand inertia of customer. The joint effects of psychology of customer behavior and local interactions of customers offer a new mechanism to explain the diffusion of technology in a competitive market with network externalities.

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

technology diffusion
customer learning
local network externalities


Social Interaction in YouTube Text-Based Polylogues: A Study of Coherence Since YouTube was launched, its emblematic video-sharing facility has attracted considerable attention as a social networking system of cultural production. In addition to vlogging, YouTube offers a text facility through which YouTubers share and negotiate opinions. However, research into the latter is scarce, especially within language-based disciplines (Androutsopoulos & Bei?wenger 2009; Zelenkauskaite & Herring 2008). This article contributes to addressing this imbalance by focusing on YouTube text-based conversation (Herring 2010a). Specifically, it examines coherence in a corpus of YouTube postings in Spanish. Although coherence has been the object of much academic debate in other forms of computer-mediated communication, no empirical analysis of coherence in YouTube text has been undertaken to date. Results underline the conversational potential of this facility.

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


SEPARATION OF EVENT AND CONSTRAINT RULES IN UML&OCL MODELS OF SERVICE ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS In this paper, possibilities of advancing Business Process Modelling when joining it with Business Rules approach are analysed. The problem currently under discussion in business rule and business process management communities is that business process (or event) rules are changing independently from structural, or constraint-oriented business rules, and coupling them together requires changing business processes when rules are changing, and vice versa. The paper addresses the problem of modelling - separating business constraint rules from event rules in UML&OCL models. The proposed principles of separation are based on UML 2 state machines applied in the context of Extended Model Driven Approach for Service Oriented Information Systems. Representation of event and constraint rules in SBVR, Template Based Language and OCL is analysed.

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

business rules
event rules
constraint rules
state machines
uml
ocl


HydroJ: Object-oriented pattern matching for evolvable distributed systems In an evolving software system, components must be able to change independently while remaining compatible with their peers. One obstacle to independent evolution is the brittle parameter problem: the ability of two components to communicate can depend on a number of inessential details of the types, structure, and/or contents of the values communicated. If these details change, then the components can no longer communicate, even if the essential parts of the message remain unaffected. We present HydroJ, an extension of Java that addresses this problem. In HydroJ, components communicate using self-describing, semi-structured messages, and programmers use pattern matching to define the handling of messages. This design stems from two central ideas: first, that self-describing messages reduce dependence on inessential message format details; and second, that object-oriented pattern matching naturally focuses on the essential information in a message and is insensitive to inessential information. We have developed these ideas in the context of Rain, a distributed, heterogeneous messaging system for ubiquitous computing. To evaluate the design, we have constructed a prototype HydroJ compiler, implemented some Rain services in HydroJ, studied the evolution of an existing Rain service over time, and formalized HydroJ's key features in a core language.

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

pattern matching
distributed systems
ubiquitous computing
hydroj

languages
dynamic dispatch
xml
semi-structured data
software evolution
object-oriented programming


A numerical comparison of seven grids for polynomial interpolation on the interval Seven types of Chebyshev-like grids in one dimension are compared according to four different criteria for accuracy. The grid which minimizes the Lebesgue constant is the best because it performs fairly well by all four criteria. For the same reason, minimizing the Lebesgue constant seems to be the most useful measure of optimality because grids that are good according to this criterion are good when measured by other criteria, too. CFM-optimality, which is the property that all cardinal functions (Lagrange fundamental polynomials) have maxima at the interpolation points, seems to be the least-discriminating criterion because all seven grids generate cardinal functions that have maxima at or very near the interpolation points. The difference between these grids on all four criteria, always less than a factor of two and usually much smaller, are sufficiently modest so that the final choice between grids should probably not be made because of accuracy, but rather based on other criteria such as ease-of-programming analytical simplicity, conformality with other approximations, and timestep in applications to partial differential equations. To explore such nonaccuracy issues, we also compared six of the grids on the basis of maximum allowed timestep when the grid is used to discretize the spatial coordinate and an explicit scheme is used for time-marching. The Lebesgue-optimal grid is also nearly optimal in the sense of allowing the longest timestep. With a pseudospectral (collocation) algorithm, the Lebesgue grid allows a timestep three-halves as long as that of the Legendre-Lobatto spectral element method. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

lagrange interpolation
fekete grid
lebesgue constants


A lambda-Cut and Goal-Programming-Based Algorithm for Fuzzy-Linear Multiple-Objective Bilevel Optimization Bilevel-programming techniques are developed to handle decentralized problems with two-level decision makers, which are leaders and followers, who may have more than one objective to achieve. This paper proposes a lambda-cut and goal-programming- based algorithm to solve fuzzy-linear multiple-objective bilevel (FLMOB) decision problems. First, based on the definition of a distance measure between two fuzzy vectors using.-cut, a fuzzy-linear bilevel goal (FLBG) model is formatted, and related theorems are proved. Then, using a.-cut for fuzzy coefficients and a goal-programming strategy for multiple objectives, a.-cut and goal-programming-based algorithm to solve FLMOB decision problems is presented. A case study for a newsboy problem is adopted to illustrate the application and executing procedure of this algorithm. Finally, experiments are carried out to discuss and analyze the performance of this algorithm.

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

bilevel programming
decision making
fuzzy sets
goal programming
multiple-objective linear programming


A green-switch controller IC for cascade buckboost converter with seamless transition over entire input and load range ? To raise the utilization ratio of lithium-ion battery in portable devices, a novel green-switch controller IC is proposed to constitute a 4-switch cascade buckboost prototype, which is capable of outputting non-inverting step down and step up voltages. According to the relations between the input and output voltages through duty ratio, a finite state machine automatically determines the work method of converter namely buck method, boost method or transition method by combining peak and valley current programmed mode so as to improve the line regulation over the entire input voltage range. A three-phase seamless transition method is introduced into the controller. Its additional advantage is to lower output ripples. Furthermore, a special burst mode is added to reduce the power consumption during light-load operation. An elaborately designed circuitry and rigorous stability analysis further improves the seamless performance. The controller IC is designed and fabricated in 1.5?m BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) technology with an area of 8.75mm2 and applied to a 2.7V4.2V/3.3V, maximum output power 1.65W buckboost converter. It features over 90% conversion efficiency during normal application and still remains over 80% under standby mode. The experimental results show that all functional and performance targets are successfully achieved as expected.

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

dc power systems
integrated circuit design
power electronics
switched mode power supplies


Autopoiesis and natural drift: Genetic information, reproduction, and evolution revisited The contribution of the theory of autopoiesis to the definition of life and biological theory affirms biological autonomy as a central notion of scientific and philosophical inquiry, and opposes other biological approaches, based on the notion of genetic information, that consider reproduction and evolution to be the central aspects of life and living phenomenology. This article reviews the autopoietic criticisms of genetic information, reproduction, and evolution in the light of a biology that can solve the problem of living organization.

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

autopoiesis
evolution
genetic information
organization
reproduction


Multiple object tracking with partial occlusion handling using salient feature points We propose a multiple object tracking method in the presence of partial occlusion. An object is represented by a bounding rectangle that encloses salient feature points. We track objects by the feature points instead of an object itself for effectiveness. The incorrectly tracked feature points due to occlusion are corrected by outlier analysis. The proposed method demonstrates high effectiveness in tracking multiple occluded objects.

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

multiple object tracking
partial occlusion

salient feature point
particle filter
corner detection


Practical simulation application: Evaluation of process control parameters in Twisted-Pair Cables manufacturing system Intensive competition and rapid technology development of Twisted-Pair Cables (TPC) industry have left no room for competing manufacturers to harbour system inefficiencies. TPC are used in various communication and networks hardware applications; their manufacturing facilities face many challenges including various product configurations with different equipment settings, different product flows and Work in Process (WIP) space limitations. The quest for internal efficiency and external effectiveness forces companies to align their internal settings and resources with external requirements/orders, or in different words, significant factors must be set appropriately and identified prior to manufacturing processes. Integrated definition models (IDEF0, IDEF3) in conjunction with a simulation model and a design of experiments (DOE) have been developed to characterize the TPC production system, identify the significant process parameters and examine various production setting scenarios aiming to get the best product flow time.

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

twisted-pair cables
idef modelling language
simulation modelling
design of experiment


A deadlock detection tool for concurrent Java programs This paper presents some issues related to the design and implementation of a concurrency analysis toot able to detect deadlock situations in Java programs that make use of multithreading mechanisms. An abstract formal model is generated from the Java source using the Java2Spin translator. The model is expressed in the PROMELA language, and the SPIN tool is used to perform its formal analysis, The paper mainly focuses on the design of the Java2Spin translator. A set of experiments, carried out to evaluate the performances of the analysis tool, is also presented. Copyright (C) 1999 John Whey & Sons, Ltd.

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

deadlock
formal analysis
java
promela
spin


relevance judgments between trec and non-trec assessors This paper investigates the agreement of relevance assessments between official TREC judgments and those generated from an interactive IR experiment. Results show that 63\% of documents judged relevant by our users matched official TREC judgments. Several factors contributed to differences in the agreements: the number of retrieved relevant documents; the number of relevant documents judged; system effectiveness per topic and the ranking of relevant documents.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 geometric-process maintenance model for a deteriorating system under a random environment This paper studies a geometric-process maintenance-model for a deteriorating system under a random environment. Assume that the number of random shocks, up to time t, produced by the random environment forms a counting process. Whenever a random shock arrives, the system operating time is reduced. The successive reductions in the system operating time are statistically independent and identically distributed random variables. Assume that the consecutive repair times of the system after failures, form an increasing geometric process; under the condition that the system suffers no random shock, the successive operating times of the system after repairs constitute a decreasing geometric process. A replacement policy N, by which the system is replaced at the time of the failure N, is adopted. An explicit expression for the average cost rate (long-run average cost per unit time) is derived. Then, an optimal replacement policy is determined analytically. As a particular case, a compound Poisson process model is also studied.

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

compound poisson process
geometric process
random shocks
replacement policy


GPS-Free, Boundary-Recognition-Free, and Reliable Double-Ruling-Based Information Brokerage Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks We study the information brokerage schemes in wireless sensor networks, which allow consumers to obtain data from producers by replicating and retrieving data in a certain set of sensors, and propose a novel information brokerage scheme, termed RDRIB. Unlike existing information brokerage schemes, RDRIB guarantees successful data retrieval without using any boundary detection algorithm and the geographic location information acquired by the global positioning system (GPS). In RDRIB, the double-ruling technique is used to replicate and retrieve the data within a constructed virtual boundary, and simulations show that RDRIB has good performance in terms of the replication memory overhead, the replication message overhead, the retrieval message overhead, the retrieval latency, and the construction message overhead.

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 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

gps-free
boundary-recognition-free
wireless sensor network


Dimension-independent multi-resolution Morse complexes Morse and Morse-Smale complexes have been recognized as a suitable model for representing topological information extracted from discrete scalar fields. Here, we propose a dimension-independent multi-resolution model for Morse complexes built on a graph representation of the complexes, that we call a Multi-Resolution Morse Incidence Graph (MMIG). We define data structures for encoding the MMIG and we discuss how to extract from an MMIG topological representations of the scalar field over its domain M at both uniform and variable resolutions. We present experimental results evaluating the storage cost of the data structures encoding the MMIG, and timings for building and querying an MMIG. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

morse complexes
topological representations

morse theory
simplification operators
multi-resolution


Recognizing DNA graphs is difficult DNA graphs are the vertex induced subgraphs of De Bruijn graphs over a four letter alphabet. In this paper, we prove the NP-hardness of various recognition problems for subgraphs of De Bruijn graphs; in particular, the recognition of DNA graphs is shown to be NP-hard. As a consequence, two open questions from a recent paper by B?a?ewicz et al. (Discrete Appl. Math. 98, (1999) 1) are answered in the negative.

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

graph theory
recognition algorithm
computational complexity
np-hardness
de bruijn graph
dna computing


Analysis of the BOLD characteristics in pass-band bSSFP fMRI Balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) has been proposed as an alternative method to acquire the blood oxygenation level dependent contrast. Particularly, pass-band bSSFP functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is believed to utilize the T2 sensitivity of bSSFP in a relatively wide and flat off-resonance frequency band of the bSSFP profile. The method has a potential to provide higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) efficiency with reduced imaging artifacts compared to conventional approaches. Previous experimental results suggested that the level of the functional contrast and its characteristics are significantly influenced by the sequence parameters. However, few of these contrast characteristics have been investigated systematically. In this study, a computer simulation was performed to investigate the sources of functional contrast and the influence of scan parameters on the functional contrast to elucidate the contrast characteristics of pass-band bSSFP fMRI. Experiments were performed to validate the simulation results. 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 22, 2332, 2012

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

pass-band bssfp fmri
monte-carlo simulation
bold contrast


Magnetic Resonance Poroelastography: An Algorithm for Estimating the Mechanical Properties of Fluid-Saturated Soft Tissues Magnetic resonance poroelastography (MRPE) is introduced as an alternative to single-phase model-based elastographic reconstruction methods. A 3-D finite element poroelastic inversion algorithm was developed to recover the mechanical properties of fluid-saturated tissues. The performance of this algorithm was assessed through a variety of numerical experiments, using synthetic data to probe its stability and sensitivity to the relevant model parameters. Preliminary results suggest the algorithm is robust in the presence of noise and capable of producing accurate assessments of the underlying mechanical properties in simulated phantoms. Furthermore, a 3-D time-harmonic motion field was recorded for a poroelastic phantom containing a single cylindrical inclusion and used to assess the feasibility of MRPE image reconstruction from experimental data. The elastograms obtained from the proposed poroelastic algorithm demonstrate significant improvement over linearly elastic MRE images generated using the same data. In addition, MRPE offers the opportunity to estimate the time-harmonic pressure field resulting from tissue excitation, highlighting the potential for its application in the diagnosis and monitoring of disease processes associated with changes in interstitial pressure.

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

finite element method
inverse problems
magnetic resonance elastography (mre)
poroelasticity


A New Insight into Pathophysiological Mechanisms of Zinc in Diarrhea An increasing amount of data showing the beneficial use of zinc (Zn) in treating diarrhea continues to emerge from epidemiological and clinical trials. However, without a thorough understanding of physiological mechanisms of Zn, it does not support policy recommendation to advocate the therapeutic use of Zn. Our data demonstrate that Zn is a potential antidiarrheal agent that provides substantial benefit by stimulating sodium absorption and inhibiting chloride secretion in intestinal epithelial cells. Thus, inclusion of Zn in oral rehydration solution (ORS) has the potential to markedly augment the effectiveness of ORS in the treatment of diarrhea.

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


On the Bright Side of Type Classes: Instance Arguments in Agda We present instance arguments: an alternative to type classes and related features in the dependently typed, purely functional programming language/proof assistant Agda. They are a new, general type of function arguments, resolved from call-site scope in a type-directed way. The mechanism is inspired by both Scala's implicits and Agda's existing implicit arguments, but differs from both in important ways. Our mechanism is designed and implemented for Agda, but our design choices can be applied to other programming languages as well. Like Scala's implicits, we do not provide a separate structure for type classes and their instances, but instead rely on Agda's standard dependently typed records, so that standard language mechanisms provide features that are missing or expensive in other proposals. Like Scala, we support the equivalent of local instances. Unlike Scala, functions taking our new arguments are first-class citizens and can be abstracted over and manipulated in standard ways. Compared to other proposals, we avoid the pitfall of introducing a separate type-level computational model through the instance search mechanism. All values in scope are automatically candidates for instance resolution. A final novelty of our approach is that existing Agda libraries using records gain the benefits of type classes without any modification. We discuss our implementation in Agda (to be part of Agda 2.2.12) and we use monads as an example to show how it allows existing concepts in the Agda standard library to be used in a similar way as corresponding Haskell code using type classes. We also demonstrate and discuss equivalents and alternatives to some advanced type class-related patterns from the literature and some new patterns specific to our system.

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

languages
agda
instance arguments
type classes


Estimation of the population spectrum with replicated time series A random sample of r objects from a certain population is considered, measuring for each of them and at the same time points a stationary process Xi(t) whose spectral distribution is absolutely continuous. Each spectral density function fi(?) may be considered as a realization of a stationary process R(?), for which a population spectrum f(?) is defined as E[R(?)]. Thus, r time series are available to estimate the population spectrum f(?). It is well known that when a single time series is analysed, the periodogram is a poor estimate of the spectral density. However, when using replicated time series, the average periodogram behaves adequately as an estimate of the population spectrum if the number of objects is large. The asymptotic properties of the average periodogram are analysed and confidence intervals for the population spectrum are constructed. An alternative bootstrap method is proposed for the estimation of the population spectrum and the asymptotic validity, in the sense of Bickel and Freedman, is proved when the number of objects is large. Replicated time series simulated from a moving average process with random coefficients and confidence intervals are constructed for the population spectrum using the bootstrap approach. These intervals are compared with the intervals obtained by means of the asymptotic properties of the average periodogram.

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

replicated time series
average periodogram
bootstrap


Application of Fuzzy Multi-Objective Linear Programming Model in a Multi-Period Multi-Product Production Planning Problem The Multi-Period Multi-Product (MPMP) production planning, as a well known problem in literature, attempts to match production rates of individual products with fluctuated market demand over planning horizon. This study, demonstrates how the conventional MPMP Linear Programming (LP) model may fail to utilize available capacity of machines, and also a novel Multi Objective Linear Programming (MOLP) model is developed to simultaneously minimize net present value of production costs and maximize machine utilization. The proposed model consists of production constraints such as available labor, inventory, maximum subcontracting levels and also forecasted demands. The proposed MOLP model is further converted to a Fuzzy Multi Objective Linear Programming (FMOLP) model utilizing piecewise linear membership functions. The model, accommodates the Decision Maker (DM) with a more systematic decision making approach enabling the DM to adjust the search direction during the solving procedure to achieve the most satisfactory result.

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

multi-period multi-product production planning

fuzzy multi-objective linear programming


Covering points with orthogonal polygons ? We address the problem of covering points with orthogonal polygons. Specifically, given a set of n n points in the plane, we investigate the existence of an orthogonal polygon such that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the points and the edges of the polygon. In an earlier paper, we have shown that constructing such a covering with an orthogonally convex polygon, if any, can be done in O(nlogn) O ( n log n ) time. In case an orthogonally convex polygon cannot cover the point set, we show in this paper that the problem of deciding whether such a point set can be covered with any orthogonal polygon is NP-complete. The problem remains NP-complete even if the orientations of the edges covering each point are specified in advance as part of the input.

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


3D modified unitary matrix pencil method with automatic grouping of unknown parameters of far field signals In this paper, we propose a 3-dimensional modified unitary matrix pencil (3D MUMP) method for simultaneous estimation of azimuth and elevation angles along with the frequencies of multiple plane wave signals. The unitary transformation is utilized in the 3-dimensional matrix pencil (3D MP) method in order to reduce the computational complexity since it very efficiently converts complex computations into real ones. The proposed method can be considered as an extension to the existing 2-dimensional unitary matrix pencil (2D UMP) method with the following advantages. First, the computationally expensive grouping algorithm is avoided by exploiting the similar eigen-structure property of the matrices (in 3D UMP method) whose eigenvalues yield the required 3D poles. Furthermore, the possibility of wrong groupings is also reduced significantly. Some simulation results are presented at the end to compare the performance of the proposed method with the existing methods.

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

matrix pencil method
unitary transformation
unitary matrix pencil
automatic grouping
computational complexity


Bayesian and profile likelihood change point methods for modeling cognitive function over time Change point models are often used to model longitudinal data. To estimate the change point, Bayesian (Biometrika 62 (1975) 407; Appl. Statist. 41 (1992) 389; Biometrics 51 (1995) 236) or profile likelihood (Statist. Med. 19 (2000) 1555) methods may be used. We compare and contrast the two methods in analyzing longitudinal cognitive data from the Bronx Aging Study. The Bayesian method has advantages over the profile likelihood method in that it does not require all subjects to have the same change point. Caution must be taken regarding sensitivity to choice of prior distribution, identifiability, and goodness of fit. Analyses show that decline in memory precedes diagnosis of dementia by 7.5-8 years, and individual change points are not needed to model heterogeneity across subjects. (C) 2002 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

mixed models
cognitive aging
bayesian analyses
markov chain monte carlo


Automated graph-based analysis and correction of cortical volume topology The human cerebral cortex is topologically equivalent to a sheet and can be considered topologically spherical if it is closed at the brain stem. Low-level segmentation of magnetic resonance (MR) imagery typically produces cerebral volumes whose tessellations are not topologically spherical. We present a novel algorithm that analyzes and constrains the topology of a volumetric object. Graphs are formed that represent the connectivity of voxel segments in the foreground and background of the image. These graphs are analyzed and minimal corrections to the volume are made prior to tessellation. We apply the algorithm to a simple test object and to cerebral white matter masks generated by a low-level tissue identification sequence. We tessellate the resulting objects using the marching cubes algorithm and verify their topology by computing their Euler characteristics. A key benefit of the algorithm is that it localizes the change to a volume to the specific areas of its topological defects.

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

magnetic resonance imaging
topological correction


Failure-tolerant distributed storage with compressed (1 out-of N) codes Deletion-tolerant codes provide data availability despite storage failures and are commonly used for disk arrays and reliable storage in distributed systems. The codes used for that base on binary parity or on sophisticated cyclic codes with minimal storage overhead. But the calculations for these codes cause either a noticeable number of computation cycles or require a huge number of logic gates. In this paper, a different class of deletion-tolerant codes compressed (1 out-of N) codes are analyzed with a focus on their application for distributed storage systems. It is shown that these codes when combined with compression can provide nearly the same low storage overhead as the traditional codes and allow a proper parallelization. Several variants of the code within the design space are discussed. A projection of the (1 out-of N) coding principle to a distributed protocol across storage units shows that the compression effort can be hidden in the communication and storage 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

deletion-tolerant code
storage system
distributed system
reliability


joint action in man and autonomous systems This talk presents recent functional insights derived from behavioural and neuroimaging studies into the cognitive mechanisms underlying human joint action. The main question is how the cognitive system of one actor can organize the perceptual consequences of the movements of another actor such that effective joint action in the two actors can take place. Particularly, the issue of complementing each other's action in contrast to merely imitating the actions that one observes will be discussed. Other issues that have been investigated are motivational states (cooperative or competitive), error-monitoring and the interaction between actors at the level of motor control. The talk is completed with presenting recent attempts to implement the functional insights from these experiments into autonomous systems being capable of collaborating intelligently on shared motor tasks.

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


Quantum-like interference effect in gene expression: glucose-lactose destructive interference In this note we illustrate on a few examples of cells and proteins behavior that microscopic biological systems can exhibit a complex probabilistic behavior which cannot be described by classical probabilistic dynamics. These examples support authors conjecture that behavior of microscopic biological systems can be described by quantum-like models, i.e., models inspired by quantum-mechanics. At the same time we do not couple quantum-like behavior with quantum physical processes in bio-systems. We present arguments that such a behavior can be induced by information complexity of even smallest bio-systems, their adaptivity to context changes. Although our examples of the quantum-like behavior are rather simple (lactose-glucose interference in E. coli growth, interference effect for differentiation of tooth stem cell induced by the presence of mesenchymal cell, interference in behavior of PrP C and PrP Sc prions), these examples may stimulate the interest in systems biology to quantum-like models of adaptive dynamics and lead to more complex examples of nonclassical probabilistic behavior in molecular biology.

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

nonclassical probabilistic behavior
differentiation of tooth stem cell
mesenchymal cell

quantum-like interference
lactose-glucose interference
e. coli growth
interference of prp c and prp sc prions


An information-theoretic perspective of tfidf measures ? This paper presents a mathematical definition of the probability-weighted amount of information (PWI), a measure of specificity of terms in documents that is based on an information-theoretic view of retrieval events. The proposed PWI is expressed as a product of the occurrence probabilities of terms and their amounts of information, and corresponds well with the conventional term frequencyinverse document frequency measures that are commonly used in todays information retrieval systems. The mathematical definition of the PWI is shown, together with some illustrative examples of the calculation.

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

term weighting theories
information theory
text categorization


A log-Birnbaum-Saunders regression model with asymmetric errors This paper introduces a skewed log-Birnbaum-Saunders regression model based on the skewed sinh-normal distribution proposed by Leiva et al. [A skewed sinh-normal distribution and its properties and application to air pollution, Comm. Statist. Theory Methods 39 (2010), pp. 426-443]. Some influence methods, such as the local influence and generalized leverage, are presented. Additionally, we derived the normal curvatures of local influence under some perturbation schemes. An empirical application to a real data set is presented in order to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed model.

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

birnbaum-saunders distribution
fatigue life distribution
influence diagnostic
sinh-normal distribution
skew-normal distribution


Grouping and sequencing PCB assembly jobs with minimum feeder setups Printed circuit boards are manufactured in automated assembly lines, where high-speed placement machines put components on the boards. These machines are frequently bottlenecks in the production. This is true especially in high-mix low-volume environments, where time consuming setup operations of the machines have to be done repeatedly. Therefore, one can improve productivity with a proper setup strategy. The most popular strategies are the so-called group setup strategy and minimum setup strategy. In this paper, we consider the machine setup problem as a combination of a job grouping problem and a minimum setup problem. We formulate this joint problem as an Integer Programming model, where the objective is to minimize the weighted sum of the number of setup occasions and the total number of component feeder changes. We also present and evaluate hybrid algorithms based on both grouping and minimum setup heuristics. The best results are achieved by a method which uses both these strategies simultaneously.

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

minimum feeder setup
flexible manufacturing
printed circuit board


A local refinement algorithm for the longest-edge trisection of triangle meshes In this paper we present a local refinement algorithm based on the longest-edge trisection of triangles. Local trisection patterns are used to generate a conforming triangulation, depending on the number of non-conforming nodes per edge presented. We describe the algorithm and provide a study of the efficiency (cost analysis) of the triangulation refinement problem. The algorithm presented, and its associated triangle partition, afford a valid strategy to refine triangular meshes. Some numerical studies are analysed together with examples of applications in the field of mesh refinement. (c) 2011 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

triangle trisection
longest-edge algorithms


Cross-community context management in Cooperating Smart Spaces Recently, social networks have become the most prevalent IT paradigm, as the vast majority of Internet users maintain one or multiple social networking accounts. These accounts, irrespectively of the underlying service, contain rich information and data for the owners preferences, social skills, everyday activities, beliefs and interests. Along with these services, the computation, sensing and networking capabilities of the state of the art mobile and portable devices, with their always-on mode, assist users in their everyday lives. Thus, the integration of social networking services with current pervasive computing systems could provide the users with the potential to interact with other users that have similar interests, preferences and expectations; and in general, the same or similar context, for limited or not time periods, in order to ameliorate their overall experience, communicate, socialise and improve their everyday activities with minimal effort. This paper introduces a cross-community context management framework that is suitable for Cooperating Smart Spaces, which couple the advantages of pervasive computing and social networking. This framework goes beyond the state of the art, among others, in that cross-community context from a multitude of sources is collected and processed to enhance the end user experience and increase the perceived value of the services provided.

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

context awareness
community context
cross-community context management
cooperating smart space


Single- and multi-objective shape design of Y-noise barriers using evolutionary computation and boundary elements The optimum shape design of Y-noise barriers is carried out using single and multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and the Boundary Element Method (BEM). Reduction of noise impact efficiency (using the insertion loss-IL-magnitude) and cost of the barrier (using its total length magnitude) are considered. A two-dimensional problem of sound propagation in the frequency domain is handled, defined by a fixed position emitting source, which pulses in a frequency range, and receptor. A noise barrier (limiting its maximum effective height) is situated between both. Its shape is modified to minimize the receptor measured sound level, which is calculated using BEM. Results of an inverse problem using the IL barrier curve as reference are successfully performed to validate the methodology. The proposed methodology is then used to obtain Y-barriers with 15% and 30% improved IL spectrum. Finally, six non-dominated solutions of the multi-objective optimum design problem are presented in detail.

O O O O O O O O O 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

noise barriers
shape optimization
genetic algorithms
multi-objective optimization
noise attenuation


State feedback control of continuous-time T-S fuzzy systems via switched fuzzy controllers This paper studies the problem of state feedback control of continuous-time T-S fuzzy systems. Switched fuzzy controllers are exploited in the control design, which are switched based on the values of membership functions, and the control scheme is an extension of the parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme. Sufficient conditions for designing switched state feedback controllers are obtained with meeting an H-infinity norm bound requirement and quadratic D stability constraints. It is shown that the new control design method provides less conservative results than the corresponding ones via the parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

switched fuzzy controllers
state feedback
d stability

takagi-sugeno (t-s) fuzzy systems
h-infinity control
linear matrix inequalities (lmis)


Simplified procedure for seismic analysis of asymmetric buildings A simplified procedure, which is a modification of the shear beam model, has been developed and applied to treat the seismic analysis of asymmetric buildings. This three dimensional procedure accounts for torsional coupling and the bending rotations at beamcolumn junctions and it can be used with a personal computer to give fast and reasonably accurate results, which compare well with those from comprehensive finite element analysis. This procedure will therefore be useful for preliminary seismic analysis and design of buildings.

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 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 B I O O O O

seismic analysis
torsional coupling
bending rotations


a reward field model generation in q-learning by dynamic programming Many obstacles and paths exist in a real environment, and hence, it is difficult for an agent to learn such an environment. Q-learning is suitable in such cases because it does not define any learning model. By Q-learning, an agent learns to reach a state wherein it can receive a reward for selecting an action. However, no information on how to receive a reward is available. In the initial learning stage, an agent sometimes selects an action that makes it move to a state wherein it cannot receive a reward. Hence, the learning time and learning cost to select an optimal action is increased. In order to assist an agent to learn by Q-learning, if a model is created automatically, both the problems of time and cost can be solved together. In this paper, we propose a method that creates such a model automatically by dynamic programming. This model causes an agent be able to notice when it is close to the state wherein it can receive a reward. An agent is driven by the model to the state wherein it can receive a reward when it enters the field of reward affection. By conducting experiments, we also compared the success rate between conventional Q-learning and the proposed method. Our results showed that the success rate of the proposed method was approximately 187\% higher than that of Q-learning.

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


A 4k(2) Kernel for Feedback Vertex Set We prove that given an undirected graph G on n vertices and an integer k, one can compute, in polynomial time in n, a graph G' with at most 4k(2) vertices and an integer k' such that G has a feedback vertex set of size at most k iff G' has a feedback vertex set of size at most k'. This result improves a previous O(k(11)) kernel of Burrage et al., and a more recent cubic kernel of Bodlaender. This problem was communicated by Fellows.

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 B I I 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

algorithms
kernelization
matching
fixed parameter tractability


Mathematical morphology based on linear combined metric spaces on Z(2) (Part I): Fast distance transforms Mathematical Morphology (MM) is a general method for image processing based on set theory. The two basic morphological operators are dilation and erosion. From these, several non linear filters have been developed usually with polynomial complexity, and this because the two basic operators depend strongly on the definition of the structural element. Most efforts to improve the algorithm's speed for each operator are based on structural element decomposition and/or efficient codification. A new framework and a theoretical basis toward the construction of fast morphological operators (of zero complexity) for an infinite (countable) family of regular metric spaces are presented in work. The framework is completely defined by the three axioms of metric. The theoretical basis here developed points out properties of some metric spaces and relationships between metric spaces in the same family, just in terms of the properties of the four basic metrics stated in this work. Concepts such as bounds, neighborhoods and contours are also related by the same framework. The presented results, are general in the sense that they cover the most commonly used metrics such as the chamfer, the city block and the chess board metrics. Generalizations and new results related with distances and distance transforms, which in turn are used to develop the morphologic operations in constant time, in contrast with the polynomial time algorithms are also given.

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

fast distance transform
zero order complexity
constant time algorithms


New linear PIC detectors based on non-monotone line-search techniques In this communication, three novel linear parallel interference cancellation (LPIC) detectors that exhibit fast convergence, low complexity, low memory requirements and can be used to efficiently approximate the decorrelator/MMSE detector in large-scale wireless communication systems are proposed. Unlike conjugate gradient based LPIC detectors, the proposed LPIC detectors maintain their efficiency and do not break down quickly if the matrixvector products are performed only approximately. These detectors employ non-monotone line search techniques and use a pre-conditioner that exploits the structure of the inter-carrier interference (ICI) matrix to speed up the convergence of the conventional LPIC detector. Moreover, the chaotic behavior observed in the convergence of the proposed detector in AWGN channel is greatly reduced, thanks to the time-varying nature of the fading channel. Simulation results support well our theoretical findings.

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


Musculoskeletal, visual and psychosocial stress in VDU operators after moving to an ergonomically designed office landscape This study investigated the effect of moving from single occupancy offices to a landscape environment. Thirty-four Visual Display Unit (VDU) operators reported significantly worsened condition of lighting and glare in addition to increased visual discomfort. For visual discomfort, the difference with 95% confidence interval was 10.7 (1.919.5) Visual Analog Scale (VAS) as group mean value. The most reasonable explanation for these results may be that the operators were glared from high luminance from the windows, when the Venetian blinds were not properly used. Glare was significantly correlated with visual discomfort, rs=0.35. Both illuminance and luminance in the work area, and contrast reduction on the VDU screen were in line with recommendations from CIE for VDU work. In a regression analysis, the visual discomfort explained 53% of the variance in the neck and shoulder pain. In the office landscape, the eye blink rate during habitual VDU work was recorded for 12 randomly selected operators from the 34 participants. A marked drop in eye blink rate during VDU work was found when this was compared to easy conversation (VDU work, mean=9.7 blinks per minute; easy conversation, mean=21.4 blinks per minute). Participants reported many of the organizational and psychosocial conditions and work factors worse when landscape office was compared to single occupancy office. These factors may have influenced the musculoskeletal pain. However, the pain level was still low at 6 years and not significantly different when compared with the start of the study period, except for a small but significant increase in shoulder pain. In this study, visual discomfort is clearly associated with pain in the neck and shoulder area.

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

vdu workplaces
lighting conditions
visual conditions
musculoskeletal illness
eye blinking


Movie browsing system based on character and emotion A variety of research is in progress to detect wanted scenes from videos. A method of detecting scenes wanted by a user through scene rearrangement based on calculated visual similarity is limited in that such a method does not reflect elements along the storyline through which a user remembers a movie. A movies story is built up by characters, and such build-up is closely related with emotions of characters in a film. A movie browsing system based on storyline is executable by applying characters and those characters emotions. Thus, methods of extracting key characters in each scene and of clustering scenes through extraction of emotion vectors from dialogues in each scene are hereby suggested. This paper also proposes to develop a movie browsing method and a system based on emotions of characters.

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

character
emotion
browsing system
scene
similarity


Linear state-space models for blind source separation We apply a type of generative modelling to the problem of blind source separation in which prior knowledge about the latent source signals, such as time-varying auto-correlation and quasi-periodicity, are incorporated into a linear state-space model. In simulations, we show that in terms of signal-to-error ratio, the sources are inferred more accurately as a result of the inclusion of strong prior knowledge. We explore different schemes of maximum-likelihood optimization for the purpose of learning the model parameters. The Expectation Maximization algorithm, which is often considered the standard optimization method in this context, results in slow convergence when the noise variance is small. In such scenarios, quasi-Newton optimization yields substantial improvements in a range of signal to noise ratios. We analyze the performance of the methods on convolutive mixtures of speech signals.

O O O O B I I 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

state-space model
independent component analysis
convolutive model
em
speech modelling


experimental characterization of 802.11n link quality at high rates 802.11n has made a quantum leap over legacy 802.11 systems by supporting extremely higher transmission rates at the physical layer. In this paper, we ask whether such high rates translate to high quality links in a real deployment. Our experimental investigation in an indoor wireless testbed reveals that the highest transmission rates advertised by the 802.11n standard typically produce losses (or even outages) even in interference-free environments. Such losses become more acute and persist at high SNR values, even at low interference intensity. We find that these problems are partly due to bad configurations that do not allow exploitation of spatial diversity, partly due to the wider 802.11n channels that expose these sensitive high rates to more interference. We show that these problems can be alleviated using the 802.11n MAC layer enhancements jointly with packet size adaptation.

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


IEEE Latin America Transactions Vol9 Issue2 April2011 This is the first special issue of the IEEE Latin America Transactions of the year 2011. Special issues are published, out of regular issues schedule, according to the availability of extended best papers from recognized high level conferences that claim for a special issue. The current issue includes I2TS 2010 and WTA 2009-2010 Conferences.

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


Sampling average approximation method for a class of stochastic Nash equilibrium problems We consider a class of stochastic Nash equilibrium problems (SNEP). Under some mild conditions, we reformulate the SNEP as a stochastic mixed complementarity problem (SMCP). We apply the well-known sample average approximation (SAA) method to solve the SMCP. We further introduce a semismooth Newton method to solve the SAA problems. The comprehensive convergence analysis is given as well. In addition, we demonstrate the proposed approach on a stochastic Nash equilibrium model in the wholesale gas-oil markets.

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

stochastic nash equilibrium problem
sample average approximation method


Towards robust 3D visual tracking for motion compensation in beating heart surgery In the context of minimally invasive cardiac surgery, active vision-based motion compensation schemes have been proposed for mitigating problems related to physiological motion. However, robust and accurate visual tracking remains a difficult task. The purpose of this paper is to present a robust visual tracking method that estimates the 3D temporal and spatial deformation of the heart surface using stereo endoscopic images. The novelty is the combination of a visual tracking method based on a Thin-Plate Spline (TPS) model for representing the heart surface deformations with a temporal heart motion model based on a time-varying dual Fourier series for overcoming tracking disturbances or failures. The considerable improvements in tracking robustness facing specular reflections and occlusions are demonstrated through experiments using images of in vivo porcine and human beating hearts.

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

medical robotics
physiological motion compensation
heart motion prediction


Modified adaptive local-global upscaling method for discontinuous permeability distribution The paper is devoted to the upscaling method appropriate for single-phase flow in media with discontinuous permeability distribution. The suggested algorithm is a modification of the iterative adaptive local-global upscaling developed by Chen and coauthors. The key feature of this method is a consistency between local and coarse global calculated characteristics. In this work, we apply a modified procedure to determine the boundary conditions used in the local fine-scale computation. To increase the accuracy of these boundary conditions on each iteration, we involve an additional preliminary step based on the results of coarse scale calculations from the previous iteration. Numerical tests show an essential improvement of the accuracy of upscaled flow rates for most of the realizations of statistical permeability distribution. Although the developed method is universal, its efficiency increases with increasing of permeability contrast.

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

adaptive local-global upscaling
deformation bands
transmissibility


Minimal founded semantics for disjunctive logic programs and deductive databases In this paper, we propose a variant of stable model semantics for disjunctive logic programming and deductive databases. The semantics, called minimal founded, generalizes stable model semantics for normal (i.e. non-disjunctive) programs, but differs from disjunctive stable model semantics (the extension of stable model semantics for disjunctive programs). Compared with disjunctive stable model semantics, minimal founded semantics seems to be more intuitive, it gives meaning to programs which are meaningless under stable model semantics and is no harder to compute. More specifically, minimal founded semantics differs from stable model semantics only for disjunctive programs having constraint rules or rules working as constraints. We study the expressive power of the semantics, and show that for general disjunctive datalog programs it has the same power as disjunctive stable model semantics.

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

disjunctive deductive databases
minimal models
stable models


Recursive scan-matching SLAM This paper presents Scan-SLAM, a new generalization of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). SLAM implementations based on extended Kalman filter (EKF) data fusion have traditionally relied on simple geometric models for defining landmarks. This limits EKF-SLAM to environments suited to such models and tends to discard much potentially useful data. The approach presented in this paper is a marriage of EKF-SLAM and scan correlation. Landmarks are no longer defined by analytical models; instead they are defined by templates composed of raw sensed data. These templates can be augmented as more data become available so that the landmark definition improves with time. A new generic observation model is derived that is generated by scan correlation, and this permits stochastic location estimation for landmarks with arbitrary shape within the Kalman filter framework. The statistical advantages of an EKF representation are augmented with the general applicability of scan matching. Scan matching also serves to enhance data association reliability by providing a shape metric for landmark disambiguation. Experimental results in an outdoor environment are presented which validate the algorithm.

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

simultaneous localisation and mapping (slam)


Simultaneous targeting and design for cooling water systems with multiple cooling water supplies This paper presents a technique for simultaneous targeting and design in cooling water systems comprising of at least two cooling towers and several cooling water using operations. The presented technique is based on a superstructure from which a mathematical formulation is derived using system specific variables and parameters. It is demonstrated that in a system like this, true optimality can only be realized by a holistic consideration of the entire cooling water system. Consideration of individual subsets of cooling towers with their dedicated cooling water operations yields suboptimal results. Four operational cases are considered and structural considerations of corresponding mathematical formulations presented. The first case results in a linear programming (LP) formulation, the second case yields a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation whilst the other two cases yield mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulations which cannot be exactly linearized. However, in all cases significant improvements in excess of 40% were realized in targeting, without compromising the heat duty of the cooling water using operations. The main objective of this investigation is to debottleneck the overall cooling water supply for the cooling water network. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Creational Object-oriented Design Pattern Applied to the Development of Software Tools for Electric Power Systems Dynamic Simulations The development of software for dynamic simulation of electrical power systems requires a comprehensive range of complex studies, which encompasses many areas of electrical engineering as well as software engineering. This study aims at to develop an efficient strategy applied to the development of software tools for dynamic power systems simulations studies. The proposed strategy is based on the object-oriented creational pattern. This approach has the advantage of makes easy the application development process, by performing a mapping between block diagram model representation and the corresponding specialized classes. Firstly, a conceptual mapping between block diagram and the object-oriented paradigm, based on the Factory Method, is carried out. After that, some flexible strategies are presented in order to obtain an improved efficiency for the numerical routines, based on the Builder standard. This allows for the parameterization of the selected numerical integration techniques. The proposed strategy was evaluated by using a 4-generator multi-machine power system. The simulation results shown that the proposed strategy was able to provides a good power system dynamic performance.

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

factory method
mapping
builder
dynamic simulation
numerical routines
power systems


PACS AND PATIENT DATA MANAGEMENT-SYSTEMS It is important for a PACS to have access to the patient data, as well as to the images themselves, for the purpose of sophisticated image archiving, retrieving, viewing and interpretation. There are many kinds of patient data concerning image examinations (i.e., patient name, ID, age, examination date and time, examined regions, methods, findings on images. diagnoses or diagnostic impressions, etc.). Some of them are acquired from image examination apparatus, some are supplied by diagnostic radiologists, while some need be retrieved from the radiology and hospital information systems- To facilitate this data exchange, a PACS-RIS-HIS coupling is required. The author has constructed at Tokyo University Hospital a small PACS called TRACS, which adopts one of the possible PACS-RIS-HIS coupling configurations.

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


stop the software architecture erosion During the evolution of a software system, it becomes more and more difficult to understand the originally planned software architecture. Often an architectural degeneration happens because of various reasons during the development phases. In this tutorial we will be looking how to avoid such architectural decay and degeneration and how continuous monitoring can improve the situation and avoid architectural violations. In addition we will look at "refactoring in the large" and how refactoring can be simulated. We will also look at some popular open source projects like ant, findbugs and eclipse (CDT/JDT) and see if and how far architectural an erosion happens/ed there. The participants will analyze a system and search with tool support for erosion areas and subsequently simulate virtual refactoring for improving the software. At the end participants will improve the system and have a good feeling how far an automated and tool supported approach can lead to better results.

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

refactoring erosion software architecture