Optimal structural topologies with transmissible loads In optimal topological design of structures one obtains the configuration of optimal structures when the design domain, the displacement boundary conditions and the applied loads are specified. In the optimal structure one often notices a marked difference between the main bearing structure and the load transfer zones. The latter are composed of relatively light elements the exact nature of which is not always very distinct. The main purpose of this paper is to allow the main bearing part of the structure to emerge. Moreover the actual location of the load along its line of action is not always a design requirement. In order to include this relaxed condition regarding the loading position the concept of transmissible or sliding forces is introduced in topological design of structures. A transmissible force is a force of given magnitude and direction which can be applied at any point along the line of action of the force. The optimization formulation is similar to standard topological design procedure in addition to the condition of transmissability of the forces. It is shown that this condition reduces to an equal displacement constraint along the line of action of the forces. The method is illustrated by typical structural examples. It is observed that this numerical method produces indeed crisp images of the main structural components, unblurred by the secondary load transfer elements. It is also indicated that many results are often replicas of Prager structures which were previously obtained by analytical methods.

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


Five decades of Computer-Aided Ship Design This article will present a synoptical review of key developments in Computer-Aided Ship Design since its inception about five decades ago. Milestone events and major innovations will be identified in several categories of ship design application with the principal emphasis on the methodologies, the modeling and the integration of the ship design process. The discussion will address many specific subtasks of ship design on the common platform of a human-guided, computer-based decision process.

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

computer-aided ship design
design methodology
systems analysis
optimization
product modeling
process modeling


Ez-Channel: A distributed MAC protocol for efficient channelization in wireless networks There is a significant interest in new wireless multiple access protocols that adaptively split a wide frequency channel into multiple sub-channelsperhaps of varying widthsand assign these sub-channels to competing transmissions. Existing protocols suffer from various limitations such as considerable protocol overhead, dependence on a centralized controller, and use of fixed-size channels. We introduce Ez-Channel, a novel MAC protocol that parsimoniously utilizes the OFDM sub-carriers to perform channelization and assignment of sub-channels to competing links. In addition to circumventing hidden and exposed terminal problems, Ez-Channel adapts channel assignments to the network topology. To eliminate the need for a centralized controller and to avoid an overwhelming amount of information exchange, the protocol uses a randomization technique enabling provably efficient localized decision making. Our extensive analytical and simulation studies show that Ez-Channel yields significant throughput improvements as compared to the state-of-the-art protocols.

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 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


Which wavelet best reproduces the Fourier power spectrum? ? The article compares the radially averaged Fourier power spectrum against the global wavelet power spectrum (global scalogram) for seven continuous, two-dimensional wavelets: Derivative of Gaussian, Halo, Morlet, Paul, Perrier and Poisson wavelets, and a new wavelet based on a superposition of rotated Morlet wavelets, named the Fan wavelet. This wavelet is complex, yet is able to give quasi-isotropic wavelet phase spectra. All seven wavelets were applied to synthetic and real data to test their ability to reproduce the Fourier spectrum: the Fan, Halo and Morlet wavelets reproduced this spectrum exactly; the Poisson wavelet performed very poorly. However, in tests of the space domain resolution of these wavelets with real and synthetic data, the Poisson wavelet gave by far the best results.

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

continuous wavelet transform
fourier transform
isotropic wavelets


estimation of maximum power-up current Power gating is emerging as a viable solution to reduction of leakage current. However, power gated circuits are different from the conventional designs in the sense that a power-gated circuit must be brought to a valid state from the power-off state, when all nodes in the circuit are at logic zero state, before useful computation can begin. Thus, estimation of the maximum current in a power gated circuit must determine the maximum of all possible power-up and normal switching current. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based ATPG algorithm to estimate the maximum power-up current for combinational circuits. Our method achieves substantial improvement over simulation-based methods and also over the previously proposed ATPG-based methods. Further, we also formulate the sequential circuit maximum current problem as a combinational ATPG problem, and solve it using the cluster-based estimation algorithm. Experimental results show that the maximum power-up current for sequential circuits can be up to 73\% larger than the maximum normal switching current.

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


Information dissemination in unknown radio networks with large labels We consider the problems of deterministic broadcasting and gossiping in completely unknown ad-hoc radio networks. It is assumed that nothing is known to the nodes of the network about the topology of the network, that is even the size of the network is not known, except that n>1 n > 1 . This lack of knowledge, about the value of n, is what distinguishes this setting from the vanilla model. For this setting, protocols for the vanilla model, may be executed with multiplicatively large estimates, say 2i 2 i in the ith phase, on the upper bound on the size of the network n . When the respective protocol with estimate 2i?n 2 i ? n on the size of the network is run, it will accomplish the task successfully. However, the problem that still remains is to determine when this process should terminate. Thus, to apply this design paradigm successful completion or incompletion of the process should be detected and this knowledge circulated in the network after appropriate number of rounds/phases of the protocol. In radio networks literature, this setting is known as the Acknowledged setting and broadcasting and gossiping problems for it are referred to as Acknowledged broadcasting and gossiping. An important feature of dynamic radio networks is that radio nodes can be dynamically introduced in the network from time to time and can be assigned labels in a much larger range, say polynomial in the size of the network, e.g. [1,,nc] [ 1 , , n c ] for some constant c. It is easy to see that protocols can be designed for the acknowledged setting only when the underlying communication network is strongly connected. We present the following results for these networks: (a) A deterministic protocol for Acknowledged broadcasting which takes NRG(n,nc) NRG ( n , n c ) rounds, where NRG(n,nc) NRG ( n , n c ) is the round complexity of deterministic gossiping for vanilla model. (b) A deterministic protocol for acknowledged gossiping, which takes O ( n 2 lg n ) rounds when collision detection mechanism is available. The schedule of the transmissions of nodes in the network, to enable them to infer collisions and discover existence of unknown in-neighborhood as a result, is abstracted as a family of sets of natural numbers which we call the Selecting-Colliding family. We prove the existence of Selecting-Colliding families using the probabilistic method and employ them to design protocol for acknowledged gossiping when no collision detection mechanism is available. Finally, we present a deterministic protocol for Acknowledged broadcasting for bidirectional networks, with a round complexity of O ( n lg n ) rounds.

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

unknown radio networks
acknowledged broadcasting and gossiping

polynomially large labels
selecting-colliding families


efficient synchronization for mobile xml data Many handheld applications receive data from a primary database server and operate in an intermittently connected environment these days. They maintain data consistency with data sources through sychronization. In certain applications such as sales force automation, it is highly desirable if updates on the data source can be reflected at the handheld applications immediately. This paper proposes an efficient method to synchronize XML data on multiple mobile devices. Each device retrieves and caches a local copy of data from the database source based on a regular path expression. These local copies may be overlapping or disjoint with each other. An efficient mechanism is proposed to find all the disjoint copies to avoid unnecessary synchronizations. Each update to the data source will then be checked to identify all handheld applications which are affected by the update. Communication costs can be further reduced by eliminating the forwarding of unnecessary operations to groups of mobile clients.

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

information dissemination
path containment
information subscription


NONLINEAR SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL BASED ON MODULAR NEURAL NETWORKS A new approach for nonlinear system identification and control based on modular neural networks (MNN) is proposed in this paper. The computational complexity of neural identification can be greatly reduced if the whole system is decomposed into several subsystems. This is obtained using a partitioning algorithm. Each local nonlinear model is associated with a nonlinear controller. These are also implemented by neural networks. The switching between the neural controllers is done by a dynamical switcher, also implemented by neural networks, that tracks the different operating points. The proposed multiple modelling and control strategy has been successfully tested on simulated laboratory scale liquid-level system.

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

modular neural networks
nonlinear system
identification
control
partitioning algorithm


Sellers' Trust and Continued Use of Online Marketplaces Despite the fact that more and more people are selling things online, the community of sellers is under-investigated by information systems researchers. This research explores the role of sellers' trust in the continued use of online marketplaces. This research differentiates between the sellers' trust in intermediaries and their trust in the community of buyers. In addition, the concept of trust is examined with a balanced view of cognitive and affective trust. A research model is developed. Empirical data collected from sellers at uBid.com confirm the research model and hypotheses. The findings show that, for online sellers, (1) both cognitive and affective components of trust matter; (2) trust in the intermediary impacts trust in the community of buyers through the trust transference mechanism; (3) trust influences sellers' retention to online marketplaces indirectly via perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment of using online marketplaces; and (4) perceived enjoyment is an important antecedent of sellers' retention. This research has implications for information systems research and practice.

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


high scale video mining with forests of fuzzy decision trees In this paper, a video mining method based on the use of Forests of Fuzzy Decision Trees (FFDT) is presented. We focus on the use of such a FFDT in a high scale video mining application and highlight the main advantages of using fuzzy set theory in such a process.

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


Supporting managers' internal control evaluations: an expert system and experimental results Internal control issues are of significance to entities to assure the accuracy, reliability, and timeliness of the financial reports. Although management is responsible for maintaining an effective internal control system, the literature contains no example of a system devised to aid managers detecting internal control weaknesses. This type of system might prove to be highly beneficial. Nonetheless, it is not obvious that this system would yield positive results because managers may not be willing or feel comfortable using it. This study reports on the development of such system, plus empirical testing of its value and managers' perceptions on its usefulness.

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


Strongly Consistent Model Order Selection for Estimating 2-D Sinusoids in Colored Noise The problem of jointly estimating the number as well as the parameters of 2-D sinusoidal signals, observed in the presence of an additive colored noise field, is considered. We begin by establishing the strong consistency of the nonlinear least squares estimator of the parameters of 2-D sinusoids, when the number of sinusoidal signals assumed in the field is incorrect. Based on these results, we prove the strong consistency of a new family of model order selection rules.

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

model order selection
strong consistency

least squares estimation
two-dimensional random fields


Computer simulations of synchrony and oscillations evoked by two coherent inputs Coherent oscillations have been reported in multiple cortical areas. This study examines the characteristics of output spikes through computer simulations when the neural network model receives periodic/aperiodic spatiotemporal spikes with modulated/constant populational activity from two pathways. Synchronous oscillations which have the same period as the input are observed in response to periodic input patterns regardless of populational activity. The results confirm that the output frequency of synchrony is essentially determined by the period of the repeated input patterns. On the other hand, weak periodic outputs are observed when aperiodic spikes are input with modulated populational activity. In this case, higher firing rates are necessary to input for higher frequency oscillations. The spike-timing-dependent plasticity suppresses the spikes which do not contribute to the synchrony for periodic inputs. This effect corresponds to the experimental reports that learning sharpens the synchrony in the motor cortex. These results suggest that spatiotemporal spike patterns should be entrained on modulated populational activity to transmit oscillatory information effectively in the convergent pathway.

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

spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity


adaptive parameter selection for strategy adaptation in differential evolution In order to automatically select the most suitable strategy for a specific problem without any prior knowledge, in this paper, we present an adaptive parameter selection technique for strategy adaptation in differential evolution (DE). First, a simple strategy adaptation mechanism is employed to implement the adaptive strategy selection in DE. Then, the probability- matching-based adaptive parameter selection method is proposed to select the best parameter of the strategy adaptation mechanism; in this way, it can accelerate the strategy adaptation mechanism to choose the most suitable strategy while solving a problem. Experimental results indicate that our method obtains better results in terms of the quality of the final solutions and the convergence speed, compared with the classical DE algorithms with single strategy.

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

strategy adaptation
adaptive parameter selection
differential evolution


Contractivity of linear fractional transformations One possible approach to exact real arithmetic is to use linear fractional transformations (LFTs) to represent real numbers and computations on real numbers. Recursive expressions built from LFTs are only convergent (i.e., denote a well-defined real number) if the involved LFTs are sufficiently contractive. In this paper, we define a notion of contractivity for LFTs. It is used for convergence theorems and for the analysis and improvement of algorithms for elementary functions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

exact real arithmetic
linear fractional transformations


A simple compact fourth-order Poisson solver on polar geometry We present a simple and efficient compact fourth-order Poisson solver in polar coordinates. This solver relies on the truncated Fourier series expansion, where the differential equations of the Fourier coefficients are solved by the compact fourth-order finite difference scheme. By shifting a grid a half mesh away from the origin and incorporating the symmetry constraint of Fourier coefficients, we can easily handle coordinate singularities without pole conditions. The numerical evidence confirms fourth-order accuracy for the problem on an annulus and third-order accuracy for the problem on a disk. In addition, a simple and comparably accurate approximation for the derivatives of the solution is also presented. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

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


Structuring and modelling norms for the recyclability assessment of products during their design Environmental issues, such as product recyclability, are becoming a crucial social concern for manufacturers. Often formulated in natural language, the norms and standards that govern these issues can be difficult to link to the product definition. It becomes necessary to provide the designer with appropriate support tools allowing, for instance, for the compliance of products with environmental criteria to be checked. In the current paper, we show how normative knowledge, coming from textual sources (eco-labels), can be expressed through constraints, allowing checking in a semi-automated process the recyclability of a product.

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

decision support system
knowledge-based system
conceptual modelling
norm
eco-label


The design and implementation of an integrated optimal fertilization decision support system This paper designs fertilization decision support algorithms from the perspective of decision support system with the model of agricultural fertilization principles. These integrated and optimal algorithms can provide accurate scheme of fertilization for users. The fertilization decision support system was designed and implemented in accordance with the B/S structure by using ASP.NET platform and SQL2000 database, which has wide applicability, flexibility and high accuracy. It is practical and interactive to meet the needs of most of the users. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

fertilization algorithm
structure design
asp.net
b/s structure


functional test generation for delay faults in combinational circuits Abstract: We propose a functional fault model for delay faults in combinational circuits and describe a functional test generation procedure based on this model. The proposed method is most suitable when a gate-level description of the circuit-under-test, necessary for employing existing gate-level delay fault test generators, is not available. It is also suitable for generating tests in early design stages of a circuit, before a gate-level implementation is selected. It can also potentially be employed to supplement conventional test generators for gate-level circuits to reduce the cost of branch and bound strategies. A parameter called /spl Delta/ is used to control the number of functional faults targeted and thus the number of tests generated. If /spl Delta/ is unlimited, the functional test set detects every robustly testable path delay fault in any gate-level implementation of the given function. An appropriate subset of tests can be selected once the implementation is known. The test sets generated for various values of /spl Delta/ are fault simulated on gate-level realizations to demonstrate their effectiveness.

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

functional fault model
fault simulated
functional test generation
delay faults
design
model
combinational circuits
control
strategies
method
values
test
functional
implementation
demonstrate
fault
cost
circuits

gate-level realizations
logic testing
generation
simulation
branch-and-bound
delays
fault model
abstraction
test generation
functional testing
logic cad
effect
test generators


The Orthonormalized Generalized Finite Element MethodOGFEM: Efficient and stable reduction of approximation errors through multiple orthonormalized enriched basis functions The shortcomings of generalized/extended finite element methods are illustrated. A procedure to construct orthonormal enriched basis functions is proposed (OGFEM). The condition number of the unconstrained system matrix is equal to one in the OGFEM. We elaborate on the applicability of the OGFEM in finite precision arithmetic. The OGFEM improves the rate at which the approximation solution converges to the exact solution substantially for the 1D modified Helmholtz and Poisson equations.

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

gfem
xfem
sgfem
improved convergence
orthonormality


Relay and jammer selection schemes for improving physical layer security in two-way cooperative networks This paper is concerned with the relay and jammers selection in two-way cooperative networks to improve their physical layer security. Three different categories of selection schemes are proposed which are; selection schemes without jamming, selection schemes with conventional jamming and selection schemes with controlled jamming. The selection process is analyzed for two different network models; single eavesdropper model and multiple cooperating and non-cooperating eavesdroppers model. The proposed schemes select three intermediate nodes during two communication phases and use the Decode-and-Forward (DF) strategy to assist the sources to deliver their data to the corresponding destinations. The performance of the proposed schemes is analyzed in terms of ergodic secrecy rate and secrecy outage probability metrics. The obtained results show that the selection schemes with jamming outperform the schemes without jamming when the intermediate nodes are distributed dispersedly between sources and eavesdropper nodes. However, when the intermediate nodes cluster gets close to one of the sources, they are not superior any more due to the strong interference on the destination nodes. Therefore, a hybrid scheme which switches between selection schemes with jamming and schemes without jamming is introduced to overcome the negative effects of interference. Finally, a comparison between relay and jammers selection schemes in both one-way and two-way cooperative networks is given in terms of both secrecy metrics. The obtained results reveal that, despite the presence of cooperating eavesdroppers, the proposed selection schemes are still able to improve both the secrecy rate and the secrecy outage probability of the two-way cooperative networks.

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

relay and jammer selection
cooperative networks
physical layer security
ergodic secrecy rate
secrecy outage probability


Reduced encoding diffusion spectrum imaging implemented with a bi-Gaussian model Diffusion spectrum imaging (DST) can map complex fiber microstructures in tissues by characterizing their 3-D water diffusion spectra. However, a long acquisition time is required for adequate q-space sampling to completely reconstruct the 3-D diffusion probability density function. Furthermore, to achieve a high q-value encoding for sufficient spatial resolution, the diffusion gradient duration and the diffusion time are usually lengthened on a clinical scanner, resulting in a long echo time and low signal-to-noise ratio of diffusion-weighted images. To bypass long acquisition times and strict gradient requirements, the reduced-encoding DST (RE-DSI) with a bi-Gaussian diffusion model is presented in this study. The bi-Gaussian extrapolation kernel, based on the assumption of the bi-Gaussian diffusion signal curve across biological tissue, is applied to the reduced q-space sampling data in order to fulfill the high q-value requirement. The crossing phantom model and the manganese-enhanced rat model served as standards for accuracy assessment in RE-DSI. The errors of RE-DSI in estimating fiber orientations were close to the noise limit. Meanwhile, evidence from a human study demonstrated that RE-DSI significantly decreased the acquisition time required to resolve complex fiber orientations. The presented method facilitates the application of DST analysis on a clinical magnetic resonance imaging system.

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

diffusion spectrum imaging
phantom model

bi-gaussian model
manganese-enhanced rat model


Tuning the dipole at the High-?/SiO2 interface in advanced metal gate stacks Combining two different electrical characterisation methods on the same MOS capacitors, we demonstrate that the flat band voltage of High-? metal gate stack is determined by a dipole at the High-?/SiO2 interface. Meanwhile, roll-off of flat band voltage, occurring for thin SiO2 inter layer, is also associated to a dipole variation at this same interface. We have measured its value and we show that this dipole is highly influenced by the High-? material in contact with the SiO2. Moreover, we also demonstrate its strong dependence on the process conditions. Finally, for a same metal gate and depending on the High-? in contact with SiO2, we show that this dipole can induce up to 1.7eV variation in the gate effective work function. However, controlling the dipole magnitude remains a strong issue especially for the thinnest EOT.

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

capacitive measurement
internal photoemission
high-?
fermi level pinning


successful approaches in the trec video retrieval evaluations This paper reviews successful approaches in evaluations of video retrieval over the last three years. The task involves the search and retrieval of shots from MPEG digitized video recordings using a combination of automatic speech, image and video analysis and information retrieval technologies. The search evaluations are grouped into interactive (with a human in the loop) and non-interactive (where the human merely enters the query into the system) submissions. Most non-interactive search approaches have relied extensively on text retrieval, and only recently have image-based features contributed reliably to improved search performance. Interactive approaches have substantially outperformed all non-interactive approaches, with most systems relying heavily on the user's ability to refine queries and reject spurious answers. We will examine both the successful automatic search approaches and the user interface techniques that have enabled high performance video retrieval.

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

speech task video performance human paper user search technologies systems retrieval text queries image query

high-performance
video analysis
trecvid
interactive search
evaluation
combinational
records
interaction
review
video retrieval
user interface
feature
information retrieval benchmarks
information retrieval


Imperfect causality Causal reasoning is important to human reasoning. It plays an essential role in day-today human decision-making. Human understanding of causality is necessarily imprecise, imperfect, and uncertain. Soft computing methods may be able to provide the approximation tools needed. In order to algorithmically consider causes, imprecise causal models are needed. A difficulty is striking a good balance between precise formalism and imprecise reality. Determining causes from available data has been a goal throughout human history. Today, data mining holds the promise of extracting unsuspected information from very large databases. The most common methods build rules. In many ways, the interest in rules is that they offer the promise (or illusion) of causal, or at least, predictive relationships. However, the most common rule form (association rules) only calculates a joint occurrence frequency; they do not express a causal relationship. If causal relationships could be discovered, it would be very useful.

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


Complex dynamics and empirical evidence Standard macroeconomics, based on a reductionist approach centered on the representative agent, is badly equipped to explain the empirical evidence where heterogeneity and industrial dynamics are the rule. In this paper we show that a simple agent-based model of heterogeneous financially fragile agents is able to replicate a large number of scaling type stylized facts with a remarkable degree of statistical precision.

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


an algorithm to generate the context-sensitive synchronized control flow graph The verification of industrial systems specified with CSP often implies the analysis of many concurrent and synchronized components. The cost associated to these analyses is usually very high, and sometimes prohibitive, due to the complexity imposed by the non-deterministic execution order of processes and to the restrictions imposed on this order by synchronizations. To overcome this problem, there has been a recent proposal that allows to statically simplify a specification before the analyses. This simplification allows to drastically reduce the time needed by the analyses because it reduces the state explosion. Unfortunately, the approach has been implemented but it has not been formalized neither proved correct. In this paper, we formally define the data structures needed to automatically simplify a CSP specification and we define an algorithm able to automatically generate these data structures.

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


A minimum bandwidth guaranteed service model and its implementation on wireless packet scheduler In this paper, we introduce a concept of minimum bandwidth guaranteed service model for mobile multimedia. In this service model, service is defined in the context of the guaranteed minimum bandwidth and the residual service share. Each flow under this service model is guaranteed with its minimum bandwidth and provided with more in proportion to the residual service share if there is leftover bandwidth. The guaranteed minimum bandwidth assures a flow to keep minimum tolerable quality regardless of the network load, while the leftover bandwidth enhances the quality of service according to the application's adaptivity and the user's interest. We show that the minimum bandwidth guaranteed service model could be implemented by a two-folded wireless packet scheduler consisting of a guaranteed scheduler and a sharing scheduler. Wireless channel condition of each flow is considered in scheduling so that wireless resource can be distributed only to the flows of good channel state, improving total wireless link utilization. We evaluate the service model and the scheduling method by simulation and implementation.

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

wireless packet scheduling
minimum bandwidth.


Solving the ghostgluon system of YangMills theory on GPUs We solve the ghostgluon system of YangMills theory using graphics processing units (GPUs). Working in the Landau gauge, we use the DysonSchwinger formalism for the mathematical description, as this approach is well suited to directly benefit from the computing power of the GPUs. With the help of a Chebyshev expansion for the dressing functions and a subsequent appliance of a NewtonRaphson method, the non-linear system of coupled integral equations is linearized. The resulting Newton matrix is generated in parallel using OpenMPI and CUDA. Our results show that it is possible to cut down the run time by two orders of magnitude as compared to a sequential version of the code. This makes the proposed techniques well suited for DysonSchwinger calculations on more complicated systems where the YangMills sector of QCD serves as a starting point. In addition, the computation of Schwinger functions using GPU devices is studied.

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

ghostgluon system
yangmills
graphics processing units

dysonschwinger equations
parallel computing
cudaprogramming model


THE PING-PONG PROTOCOL WITH A PRIOR PRIVACY AMPLIFICATION A modified version of the well known ping-pong protocol is proposed and analyzed in the paper. The operation of the improved version exploits inevitable errors introduced by the eavesdropping in the message mode - a feature which has not been exploited so far. A proposed protocol improvement is in its role similar to the privacy amplification known from the quantum key distribution schemes, but no randomization of transferred information is introduced and deterministic character of communication is preserved. Messages are processed in blocks which guarantees that an eavesdropper is faced with a computationally infeasible problem as long as the system parameters are within reasonable limits. Information processing does not require quantum memory registers and confidential communication is possible without prior key agreement or some shared secret.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 cryptography
quantum secure direct communication
ping-pong protocol


A Monte Carlo assisted simulation of stochastic molecular dynamics for folding of the protein crambin in a viscous environment We investigate the folding dynamics of the plant-seed protein Crambin in a liquid environment, that usually happens to be water with some certain viscosity. To take into account the viscosity, necessitates a stochastic approach. This can be summarized by a 2D-Langevin equation, even though the simulation is still carried out in 3D. Solution of the Langevin equation will be the basic task in order to proceed with a Molecular Dynamics simulation, which will accompany a delicate Monte Carlo technique. The po-tential wells, used to engineer the energy space assuming the interaction of monomers constituting the protein-chain, are simply modeled by a combination of two parabola. This combination will approximate the real physical interactions, that is given by the well known Lermard Jones potential. Contributions to the total potential from torsion, bending and distance dependent potentials are good to the fourth nearest neighbor. The final image is in a very good geometric agreement with the real shape of the protein chain, which can be obtained from the protein data bank. The quantitative measure of this agreement is the similarity parameter with the native structure, which is found to be 0.91 < 1 for the best sample. The folding time can be determined from Debyerelaxation process. We apply two regimes and calculate the folding time, corresponding to the elastic domain mode, which yields 5.2 ps for the same sample.

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


gradient clock synchronization We introduce the distributed gradient clock synchronization problem. As in traditional distributed clock synchronization, we consider a network of nodes equipped with hardware clocks with bounded drift. Nodes compute logical clock values based on their hardware clocks and message exchanges, and the goal is to synchronize the nodes' logical clocks as closely as possible, while satisfying certain validity conditions. The new feature of gradient clock synchronization ( GCS for short) is to require that the skew between any two nodes' logical clocks be bounded by a nondecreasing function of the uncertainty in message delay (call this the distance ) between the two nodes. That is, we require nearby nodes to be closely synchronized, and allow faraway nodes to be more loosely synchronized. We contrast GCS with traditional clock synchronization, and discuss several practical motivations for GCS, mostly arising in sensor and ad hoc networks. Our main result is that the worst case clock skew between two nodes at distance d from each other is ?( d + log D log log D ), where D is the diameter 1 of the network. This means that clock synchronization is not a local property, in the sense that the clock skew between two nodes depends not only on the distance between the nodes, but also on the size of the network. Our lower bound implies, for example, that the TDMA protocol with a fixed slot granularity will fail as the network grows, even if the maximum degree of each node stays constant.

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

network
clock skew
clock synchronization
sensor
ad hoc networks
log
case
practical
tdma
distance
values
message
size
clock
hardware
distributed
feature

examples
synchronization
motivation
computation
validation
lower bounds
local algorithms
functional


Affection arousal based highlight extraction for soccer video Highlight extraction, as one of the key technologies in soccer video retrieval and summarization, has great academic and application value. According to the principle that the observers affection state would fluctuate with the evolution of game process when watching soccer match video, a novel highlight extraction approach based on the improved affection arousal model is proposed. Compared with the existing works, our main contributions include the following. A novel feature shot intensity is exploited to replace the motion activity, which greatly improves the computational performance of affection arousal model. Another helpful feature replay factor is designed and successfully fused into the affection arousal model. This makes the affection arousal model reflect the variation of the true match process more accurately. In addition, event temporal transition pattern (ETTP) in soccer video is utilized to detect highlights boundaries effectively combined with the affection arousal curve. Experiments conducted on real-world soccer game videos have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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

affection arousal model
highlight extraction


Traffic jam driving with NMV avoidance In recent years, the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) mainly based on lidar and cameras has considerably improved the safety of driving in urban environments. These systems provide warning signals for the driver in the case that any unexpected traffic circumstance is detected. The next step is to develop systems capable not only of warning the driver but also of taking over control of the car to avoid a potential collision. In the present communication, a system capable of autonomously avoiding collisions in traffic jam situations is presented. First, a perception system was developed for urban situationsin which not only vehicles have to be considered, but also pedestrians and other non-motor-vehicles (NMV). It comprises a differential global positioning system (DGPS) and wireless communication for vehicle detection, and an ultrasound sensor for NMV detection. Then, the vehicle's actuators brake and throttle pedals were modified to permit autonomous control. Finally, a fuzzy logic controller was implemented capable of analyzing the information provided by the perception system and of sending control commands to the vehicle's actuators so as to avoid accidents. The feasibility of the integrated system was tested by mounting it in a commercial vehicle, with the results being encouraging.

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

road vehicle control
electro-hydraulic brake
fuzzy control
inter-vehicle communication


A novel LS-SVMs hyper-parameter selection based on particle swarm optimization The selection of hyper-parameters plays an important role to the performance of least-squares support vector machines (LS-SVMs). In this paper, a novel hyper-parameter selection method for LS-SVMs is presented based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO). The proposed method does not need any priori knowledge on the analytic property of the generalization performance measure and can be used to determine multiple hyper-parameters at the same time. The feasibility of this method is examined on benchmark data sets. Different kinds of kernel families are investigated by using the proposed method. Experimental results show that the best or quasi-best test performance could be obtained by using the scaling radial basis kernel function (SRBF) and RBF kernel functions, respectively.

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 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

least-squares support vector machines
parameter selection
classification


Image authentication based on modular embedding We consider a watermark application to assist in the integrity maintenance and verification of the associated images. There is a great benefit in using WM in the context of authentication since it does not require any additional storage space for supplementary metadata, in contrast with cryptographic signatures, for instance. However there is a fundamental problem in the case of exact authentication: How to embed a signature into a cover message in such a way that it would be possible to restore the watermarked cover image into its original state without any error? There are different approaches to solve this problem. We use the watermarking method consisting of modulo addition of a mark and investigate it in detail. Our contribution lies in investigating different modified techniques of both watermark embedding and detection in order to provide the best reliability of watermark authentication. The simulation results for different types of embedders and detectors in combination with the pictures of watermarked images are given.

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

spread-spectrum signals
optimal detection
codebook wiener filtering


Social identity, electronic word-of-mouth and referrals in social network services Purpose - The main aim of this work is to explore the mechanisms that promote the transmission and reception of online opinions (electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and referrals) by travel services buyers in the context of social networks services (SNS). Design/methodology/approach - The research examines two areas of study: social identification theory and word-of-mouth communication in the virtual environment (eWOM). Based on these theories an explicative model has been proposed applying structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis to a sample of SNS users buying travel services. Partial least squares was chosen as a method to conduct an SEM analysis. Findings - First, the results support the central role of social identification in SNS communication. Second, the results show that SNS users give greater importance to the transmission of communication than to its reception. This fact supports the idea that SNS is used more as a tool for highlighting and maintaining social status than as a channel for information. Originality/value - The study highlights the role of social identification as the core element which drives SNS. It then analyses the development of eWOM communication in the new context provided by SNS. In addition eWOM communication is studied from two perspectives: from the standpoint of the communicator, but also the receiver. Finally, it seems appropriate to differentiate between virtual communities discussing tourism (e.g. www.TripAdvisor.com) and the SNS (e.g. www.facebook.com, www.twitter.com). While the former seems to be a growing source of information, the latter acts rather more in a social context.

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

online social networks
information technology
communications technologies
management information systems
e-wom


Developing strategic and reasoning abilities with computer games at primary school level The paper reports a small-scale, long-term pilot project designed to foster strategic and reasoning abilities in young primary school pupils by engaging them in a number of computer games, mainly those usually called mind games (brainteasers, puzzlers, etc.). In this paper, the objectives, work methodology, experimental setting, and tools used in the project are outlined, together with an analysis of some findings. In particular, we perform a brief analysis of some of the cognitive processes involved in playing with the computer games considered; we then discuss software features that, in our experience, help children tackle different cognitive tasks. The quantitative data collected during the pilot allow us, also, to take account of children's performance according to a number of different parameters, such as their level of achievement, the game's degree of difficulty and the type of data handled. Moreover, we reflect on the general impact of the project on children's reasoning abilities. The extent and duration of the study mean that, whilst the findings are not generalizable, they do offer insights into mechanisms underpinning basic strategic and reasoning skills as well as the educational potentialities offered by some of the existing computer games; they also point to some areas for further research. (C) 2006 Elsevier 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

elementary education
pedagogical issues
interactive learning environments


Transformations of sigma-pi nets: obtaining reflected functions by reflecting weight matrices This paper presents a methodology that reflected functions by reflecting the weight matrices of an artificial neural network. One of the major problems with the connectionist approach is that trained neural networks can only associate fixed sets of input-output mappings. We provide a methodology which allows the post-trained net to associate different input-output mappings. The different mappings are reflected in a horizontal axis, reflected in a vertical axis and scaling of the initial mapping. The methodology does not train the net on the different mappings but it transforms the weight matrix of the neural network. This paper describes a novel way of utilising sigma-pi neural networks. Our new methodology manipulates sigma-pi unit's weight matrices which transform the unit's output. The weights are cast in a matrix formulation, and then transformations can be performed on the weight matrix of the sigma-pi net. To test the new methodology, the following three steps were carried out on a neural network: (1) the network was trained to perform a mapping function, f; (2) the weights of the network were transformed; and (3) the network was tested to evaluate whether it performs the reflection in the vertical axis, f(ref-vert)(x) = a - f(x). This reflects the function in one dimension. A reflection transformation was used to manipulate the network's weight matrices to obtain a reflection in the vertical axis. Note that the network was not trained to perform the reflection in the vertical axis. The transformation of the weight matrix transformed the function the output performs. This article explains the theory which enables us to perform transformations of sigma-pi networks and obtain reflections of the output by reflecting the weight matrices. These transforms empower the network to perform related mapping tasks once one mapping task has been learnt. This article explains how each transformation is performed and it considers whether a set of 'standard' transformations can indeed be derived. (C) 2002 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B B O O O O O O O O O O O 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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

neural networks
transformation
reflection


A land-use spatial optimization model based on genetic optimization and game theory A land-use spatial optimization model that emphasizes coordinating local land-use competitions is constructed. An improved genetic algorithm is utilized to optimize the spatial layout of each land-use type. Interest factors are introduced into the land-use coordination through multi-stakeholder games. The model supports decision-making for regional land-use planning.

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

land-use spatial optimization
local land-use competition


On the systematic transformation of requirements to specifications Formal approaches to development are widely acknowledged to have difficulty in the validation of real-world requirements; in contrast, non-formal approaches find it difficult to identify the formal structures in requirements that are useful in a solution. That the problems that computing treats are embedded in the real world with solutions being an essentially formal machine means this dichotomy will always exist, with some new approach to the development needed which can draw a boundary between what is formalised and what can be left informal. In this paper, we show how the natural cause-and-effect structures that can be found in non-formal requirements descriptions can be used systematically to arrive at a software specification. The theoretical contribution of the work is the formalisation of Jacksons idea of problem progression in his Problem Frames framework through the use of a graph grammar to capture problem models as graphs and their manipulation as transformations. The approach is illustrated through a substantial benchmark exampleSwartouts and Balzers package router. We also report on the results of an initial empirical evaluation of the approach based on a prototype problem progression tool we have constructed.

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

requirements
specifications
problem frames
problem progression


A Field Study of End User Computing: Findings and Issues This article reports on a series of interviews on end user computing carried out in twenty locations in St. Louis. The interviews took place between December 1982 and March 1983. Sixty-seven end users from all levels of management and nineteen IS professionals were interviewed in their work locations regarding the practice of interactive computing by non-DP professionals. Though end user computing is still in its early stages, signs of rapid growth are present. In response to this growth, IS departments are attempting to develop policies for its control and support. The picture is complicated by the recent introduction of microcomputers to the business office. The study explores this new phenomenon and examines some of the differences between those who use the mainframe environment and those who use micro-computers. Software used, the varieties of applications developed, and the training background of end users are examined, as well as some of the problems encountered and some of the early results. A prime objective of the study is accomplished in identifying end users' educational goals. Finally, five critical issues are identified which those interviewed saw as needing resolution in the near future.

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

microcomputer
personal computer
education


Cooperative Wireless-Based Obstacle/Object Mapping and See-Through Capabilities in Robotic Networks In this paper, we develop a theoretical and experimental framework for the mapping of obstacles (including occluded ones), in a robotic cooperative network, based on a small number of wireless channel measurements. This would allow the robots to map an area before entering it. We consider three approaches based on coordinated space, random space, and frequency sampling, and show how the robots can exploit the sparse representation of the map in space, wavelet or spatial variations, in order to build it with minimal sensing. We then show the underlying tradeoffs of all the possible sampling, sparsity and reconstruction techniques. Our simulation and experimental results show the feasibility and performance of the proposed framework. More specifically, using our experimental robotic platform, we show preliminary results in successfully mapping a number of real obstacles and having see-through capabilities with real structures, despite the practical challenges presented by multipath fading.

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

autonomous robots
obstacle mapping
wireless communications
compressive sensing


Selecting hierarchical facilities in a service-operations environment This paper presents and solves a hierarchical model for the location of service facilities and further looks at the operational issues associated with managing such facilities. By the very nature of the demand they serve, service systems require that timely service be readily available to those who need it. We argue that the locationallocation of such facilities often involves several layers of service. When all of a facilitys resources are needed to meet each demand for service, and demand cannot be queued, the need for a backup unit may be required. Effective siting decisions must address both the need for a backup response facility for each demand point and a reasonable limit on each facilitys workload. The paper develops an integer linear programming model for locating facilities offering several layers of service. A Lagrangian relaxation methodology coupled with a heuristic is employed. Results of extensive computational experiments are presented to demonstrate the viability of the approach.

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

service operations
service location
mathematical programming
heuristics


Wide Area Monitoring System based on the third generation Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) for event identification Wide area monitoring. Smart grid. Identification of the generator trip. Frequency/voltage monitoring system.

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

wide area measurement
hspa
interconnected power systems
ewams
minimum distance classification (mdc)


Predictive Technology Model for Nano-CMOS Design Exploration A predictive MOSFET model is critical for early circuit design research. In this work, a new generation of Predictive Technology Model (PTM) is developed, covering emerging physical effects and alternative structures, such as the double-gate device (i.e., FinFET). Based on physical models and early stage silicon data, PTM of bulk and double-gate devices are successfully generated from 130nm to 32nm technology nodes, with effective channel length down to 13nm. By tuning only ten primary parameters, PTM can be easily customized to cover a wide range of process uncertainties. The accuracy of PTM predictions is comprehensively verified with published silicon data: the error of the current is below 10% for both NMOS and PMOS. Furthermore, the new PTM correctly captures process sensitivities in the nanometer regime. PTM is available online at http://www.eas.asu.edu/similar to ptm.

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

experimentation
performance
technology scaling
predictive modeling
early design exploration
process variations


Sub-pattern texture recognition using intelligent focal-plane imaging sensor of small window-size In this paper we demonstrate how to use statistical evaluation for texture recognition in the case of window-size of the imaging focal-plane sensor being smaller than the pattern of the texture. The evaluation method is similar to the sub-pixel pattern recognition developed by the first author. We have reported in an earlier publication on the development of a new single-chip texture classifier smart-sensor system, whose main part is a cellular nonlinear network (CNN) VLSI chip. This architecture is very fast but it has a limited window-size. Now we show that this architecture can effectively recognize textures of periodicity larger than the window-size. As a result, we recognized 15 Brodatz-textures by using a 2022 CNN chip with a 0.4% error-rate.

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

smart sensors
genetic algorithm
texture analysis
sub-pixel recognition
density estimation


assessing undergraduate experience of continuous integration and test-driven development A number of agile practices are included in software engineering curricula, including test-driven development. Continuous integration often is not included, despite it becoming increasingly common in industry to code, test, and integrate at the same time. This paper describes a study whereby software engineering undergraduates were given a short intensive experience of test-driven development with continuous integration using an environment that imitated a typical industrial circumstance. Assessment was made of students' agile experience rather than of project deliverables, using a novel set of process measures that examined students' participation and performance in agile testing. Results showed good participation by student pairs, and clear understanding of agile processes and configuration management. Future work will investigate automation of the assessment of continuous integration and configuration management server data.

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

test driven development
software engineering education
junit
assessment process


Disjunctive closures for knowledge compilation ? The knowledge compilation (KC) map [1] can be viewed as a multi-criteria evaluation of a number of target classes of representations for propositional KC. Using this map, the choice of a class for a given application can be made, considering both the space efficiency of it (i.e., its ability to represent information using little space), and its time efficiency, i.e., the queries and transformations which can be achieved in polynomial time, among those of interest for the application under consideration. When no class of propositional representations offers all the transformations one would expect, some of them can be left implicit. This is the key idea underlying the concept of closure introduced here: instead of performing computationally expensive transformations, one just remembers that they have to be done. In this paper, we investigate the disjunctive closure principles, i.e., disjunction, existential quantification, and their combinations. We provide several characterization results concerning the corresponding closures. We also extend the KC map with new propositional languages obtained as disjunctive closures of several incomplete propositional languages, including the well-known KROM (the CNF formulae containing only binary clauses), HORN (the CNF formulae containing only Horn clauses), and AFF (the affine language, which is the set of conjunctions of XOR-clauses). Each introduced language is evaluated along the lines of the KC map.

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

knowledge representation
computational complexity


Minimizing the error near discontinuities in boundary element method This paper presents two types of discontinuity modeling elements (DME) that minimize the error near a discontinuity. The DME are elements that are discontinuous at one end, can satisfy continuity requirement up to seventh order at the other end, and may have polynomials of order up to fifteen. The error of approximation in the density function is measured by the L1 norm, which is minimized with respect to the location of collocation points. Results show that the error for optimum location of collocation points in all cases is smaller than those for uniform location of collocation points and the differences in accuracy grows significantly with the order of polynomials. Two tables report the optimum location of collocation points for the DME for use by other researchers. The DME are used in conjunction with the hr-mesh refinement scheme to study modeling of stress near a stress discontinuity. Results of the study show that the recommendations for modeling density functions near a discontinuity are diametrically opposite to those recommendations for modeling of a smooth density function.

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

interpolation functions
numerical error
adaptive analysis


Development of a data interface for rapid prototyping in STEP-NC Layered manufacturing (LM) technologies, usually referred to as rapid prototyping (RP), have the ability to create a physical part directly from their computer model by adding materials on a layer-by-layer basis. Once a computer model is generated for a physical object, it needs to be communicated to other computer systems or LM machines to be further processed. Although it was developed specifically for the stereolithography process, a polygonal facet representation called stereolithography tessellation language (STL) has become the de facto industry standard for the transfer of geometric data to LM process planning system. However, STL has inevitable drawbacks such as redundancy, inaccuracy and lack of integrity. Furthermore, .STL file format is not compatible with high-level design information such as tolerance, mechanical properties and surface patterns, which will be indispensable for further design applications made by LM technologies. In this paper we propose an EXPRESS data model, an information exchange foundation of modeling operation, for the new data transfer scheme in LM community as one among STEP-NC (ISO 14649) modules.

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


Individual attribute prior setting methods for naive Bayesian classifiers The generalized Dirichlet distribution has been shown to be a more appropriate prior for naive Bayesian classifiers, because it can release both the negative-correlation and the equal-confidence requirements of the Dirichlet distribution. The previous research did not take the impact of individual attributes on classification accuracy into account, and therefore assumed that all attributes follow the same generalized Dirichlet prior. In this study, the selective naive Bayes mechanism is employed to choose and rank attributes, and two methods are then proposed to search for the best prior of each single attribute according to the attribute ranks. The experimental results on 18 data sets show that the best approach is to use selective naive Bayes for filtering and ranking attributes when all of them have Dirichlet priors with Laplace's estimate. After the ranks of the chosen attributes are determined, individual setting is performed to search for the best noninformative generalized Dirichlet prior for each attribute. The selective naive Bayes is also compared with two representative filters for the feature selection, and the experimental results show that it has the best performance. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

dirichlet distribution
selective naive bayes

generalized dirichlet distribution
naive bayesian classifier
prior distribution


The cutoff method for the numerical computation of nonnegative solutions of parabolic PDEs with application to anisotropic diffusion and Lubrication-type equations The cutoff method, which cuts off the values of a function less than a given number, is studied for the numerical computation of nonnegative solutions of parabolic partial differential equations. A convergence analysis is given for a broad class of finite difference methods combined with cutoff for linear parabolic equations. Two applications are investigated, linear anisotropic diffusion problems satisfying the setting of the convergence analysis and nonlinear Lubrication-type equations for which it is unclear if the convergence analysis applies. The numerical results are shown to be consistent with the theory and in good agreement with existing results in the literature. The convergence analysis and applications demonstrate that the cutoff method is an effective tool for use in the computation of nonnegative solutions. Cutoff can also be used with other discretization methods such as collocation, finite volume, finite element, and spectral methods and for the computation of positive solutions.

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

cutoff
finite difference
anisotropic diffusion

projection
nonnegative solution
positive solution
error analysis
lubrication-type equation


a security scheme of electronic commerce for mobile agents uses undetachable digital signatures A security scheme to protect mobile agents against malicious hosts in electronic commerce is proposed. This scheme uses undetachable digital signatures technique and public key encryption algorithms based on ellipse curves to achieve following characteristics: first, the identity of a shop and a customer cannot be forged. Second, the requirements of a customer and the bid of a shop cannot be detached. Third, the identity and the bid information of a shop keep private against other shops. Finally, it's able to resist replay attacks. Furthermore, the scheme also has some computational advantages compared to similar schemes that use RSA cryptosystem.

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

undetachable digital signatures
electronic commerce
mobile agents


Constructing a wireless sensor network to fully cover critical grids by deploying minimum sensors on grid points is NP-complete This paper proves that deploying sensors on grid points to construct a wireless sensor network that fully covers critical grids using minimum sensors (Critical-Grid Coverage Problem) and that fully covers a maximum total weight of grids using a given number of sensors (Weighted-Grid Coverage Problem) are each NP-Complete.

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


Scientific subject categories of Web of Knowledge ranked according to their multidimensional prestige of influential journals A journal may be considered as having dimension-specific prestige when its score, based on a given journal ranking model, exceeds a threshold value. But a journal has multidimensional prestige only if it is a prestigious journal with respect to a number of dimensionse.g., Institute for Scientific Information Impact Factor, immediacy index, eigenfactor score, and article influence score. The multidimensional prestige of influential journals takes into account the fact that several prestige indicators should be used for a distinct analysis of the impact of scholarly journals in a subject category. After having identified the multidimensionally influential journals, their prestige scores can be aggregated to produce a summary measure of multidimensional prestige for a subject category, which satisfies numerous properties. Using this measure of multidimensional prestige to rank subject categories, we have found the top scientific subject categories of Web of Knowledge as of 2010.

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


Clustering in applications with multiple data sourcesA mutual subspace clustering approach In many applications, such as bioinformatics and cross-market customer relationship management, there are data from multiple sources jointly describing the same set of objects. An important data mining task is to find interesting groups of objects that form clusters in subspaces of the data sources jointly supported by those data sources. In this paper, we study a novel problem of mining mutual subspace clusters from multiple sources. We develop two interesting models and the corresponding methods for mutual subspace clustering. The density-based model identifies dense regions in subspaces as clusters. The bottom-up method searches for density-based mutual subspace clusters systematically from low-dimensional subspaces to high-dimensional ones. The partitioning model divides points in a data set into k exclusive clusters and a signature subspace is found for each cluster, where k is the number of clusters desired by a user. The top-down method interleaves the well-known k-means clustering procedures in multiple sources. We use experimental results on synthetic data sets and real data sets to report the effectiveness and the efficiency of the methods.

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


A fast finite field multiplier architecture for high-security elliptic curve cryptosystems A new approach on designing a finite field multiplier architecture is proposed. The proposed architecture trades reduction in the number of clock cycles with resources. This architecture features high performance, simple structure, scalability and independence on the choice of the finite field, and can be used in high security cryptographic applications such as elliptic curve crypto-systems in large prime Galois Fields (GF(2(m))).

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


Numerically stable method of signal subspace estimation based on multistage Wiener filter In this paper, a numerically stable method of signal subspace estimation based on Householder multistage Wiener filter (HMSWF) is proposed. Numerical stability of the method lies on the fact that the Householder matrix in HMSWF ensures the unitary blocking operation and significantly strengthens the orthogonality of basis vectors, especially in the finite-precision implementation. In the following, we analyze the numerical stability of HMSWF and MSWF based on the correlation subtractive structure (CSS-MSWF) by establishing the equivalence between the forward recursion of MSWF and the Arnoldi algorithm in numerical linear algebra. Besides, the equivalence between HMSWF and the Householder QR decomposition (QRD) on the Krylov matrix underlying in MSWF is directly established. Based on the relationship, two theoretical upper bounds of the orthogonality error of basis vectors in signal subspace are obtained and it is demonstrated that the orthogonality of basis vectors based on HMSWF is perfectly preserved by the numerically well-behaved Householder matrix, and the corresponding signal subspace estimation is much more numerically stable than that based on CSS-MSWF. Simulations show the numerical stability of the proposed method of signal subspace estimation by HMSWF.

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

multistage wiener filter
subspace estimation
numerical stability
arnoldi algorithm


An optimal symmetrical null space criterion of Fisher discriminant for feature extraction and recognition Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is one of the most effective feature extraction methods in statistical pattern recognition, which extracts the discriminant features by maximizing the so-called Fishers criterion that is defined as the ratio of between-class scatter matrix to within-class scatter matrix. However, classification of high-dimensional statistical data is usually not amenable to standard pattern recognition techniques because of an underlying small sample size (SSS) problem. A popular approach to the SSS problem is the removal of non-informative features via subspace-based decomposition techniques. Motivated by this viewpoint, many elaborate subspace decomposition methods including Fisherface, direct LDA (D-LDA), complete PCA plus LDA (C-LDA), random discriminant analysis (RDA) and multilinear discriminant analysis (MDA), etc., have been developed, especially in the context of face recognition. Nevertheless, how to search a set of complete optimal subspaces for discriminant analysis is still a hot topic of research in area of LDA. In this paper, we propose a novel discriminant criterion, called optimal symmetrical null space (OSNS) criterion that can be used to compute the Fishers maximal discriminant criterion combined with the minimal one. Meanwhile, by the reformed criterion, the complete symmetrical subspaces based on the within-class and between-class scatter matrices are constructed, respectively. Different from the traditional subspace learning criterion that derives only one principal subspace, in our approach two null subspaces and their orthogonal complements were all obtained through the optimization of OSNS criterion. Therefore, the algorithm based on OSNS has the potential to outperform the traditional LDA algorithms, especially in the cases of small sample size. Experimental results conducted on the ORL, FERET, XM2VTS and NUST603 face image databases demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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

symmetrical null space
feature extraction

fisher discriminant criterion
small sample size problem


Cloud service: automatic construction and evolution of software process problem-solving resource space The automatic construction of networked software and its ability to adapt to dynamic environments are important for cloud services that depend upon these capabilities. We provide a cloud service that browses the stacks of problem solution resources produced in the software process (SP for short) by organizing them into a structured Resource Space according to domain topics. Efforts are made to provide the cloud service with the ability of automatic construction of the SP problem-solving Resource Space, including extracting domain topics from document resources with the TDDF algorithm, transforming the topics into several categories to form the logic Resource Space, and deploying the Resource Space in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P for short) network. We also expect to achieve the online service evolution such as adjusting the resource pool and refining the Resource Space Model (RSM for short) by continuously understanding and adapting to its surroundings. Empirical cases are finally presented. Our investigation promotes the adaptability of cloud services to their changing environment.

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

networked software
resource space
cloud service

software evolution
problem-solving resource


Surveyor: A DSEL for Representing and Analyzing Strongly Typed Surveys Polls and surveys are increasingly employed to gather information about attitudes and experiences of all kinds of populations and user groups. The ultimate purpose of a survey is to identify trends and relationships that can inform decision makers. To this end, the data gathered by a survey must be appropriately analyzed. Most of the currently existing tools focus on the user interface aspect of the data collection task, but pay little attention to the structure and type of the collected data, which are usually represented as potentially tag-annotated, but otherwise unstructured, plain text. This makes the task of writing data analysis programs often difficult and error-prone, whereas a typed data representation could support the writing of type-directed data analysis tools that would enjoy the many benefits of static typing. In this paper we present Surveyor, a DSEL that allows the compositional construction of typed surveys, where the types describe the structure of the data to be collected. A survey can be run to gather typed data, which can then be subjected to analysis tools that are built using Surveyor's typed combinators. Altogether the Surveyor DSEL realizes a strongly typed and type-directed approach to data gathering and analysis. The implementation of our DSEL is based on GADTs to allow a flexible, yet strongly typed representation of surveys. Moreover, the implementation employs the Scrap-Your-Boilerplate library to facilitate the type-dependent traversal, extraction, and combination of data gathered from surveys.

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

domain-specific languages
generic programming
syb
typed data analysis


moving k-7 education into the information age In this paper, we examine the state of K-7 computer science (CS) education research, and propose how it might be advanced---using graph theory as an example. First, issues raised in CS education research are presented and we high-light some of the results upon which current research can be constructed. We further examine some of the challenges that arise when contemplating the introduction of CS topics in elementary education. We present our current efforts in integrating and evaluating CS topics in elementary classrooms and discuss preliminary outcomes of a study on integrating graph theory into elementary classrooms. Finally we discuss possible future directions for research.

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Anisotropic smoothing of point sets The use of point sets instead of meshes became more popular during the last years. We present a new method for anisotropic fairing of a point sampled surface using an anisotropic geometric mean curvature flow. The main advantage of our approach is that the evolution removes noise from a point set while it detects and enhances geometric features of the surface such as edges and corners. We derive a shape operator, principal curvature properties of a point set, and an anisotropic Laplacian of the surface. This anisotropic Laplacian reflects curvature properties which can be understood as the point set analogue of Taubin's curvature-tensor for polyhedral surfaces. We combine these discrete tools with techniques from geometric diffusion and image processing. Several applications demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our method. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

surface
point sets
shape operator
mean curvature flow

curve
solid representations
object representations
anisotropic mean curvature
anisotropic sampling
principal curvatures
anisotropic laplace
feature detection


vrml data sharing in the spin-3d cve In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a VRML97 multi-user layer introduced in SPIN-3D, our Distributed Collaborative Virtual Environment. The main consideration of our multi-user extension is the ease of design of multi-user objects from single-user standard VRML97 objects. Any standard VRML97 browser must at least display the single-user content without taking account of the multi-user description. Whereas other approaches use a VRML node insertion mechanism, such as in Living Worlds, our approach uses a substitution mechanism. And beneath our multi-user extension, we use the Common Object Request Broker Architecture to provide a network communication layer for supporting the virtual meetings.

collaborative virtual environment (cve)
multicast communication platform
multi-user technology


A game theory framework for ISP streaming traffic management ? The overlay/underlay topology mismatch affects the performance of existing P2P platforms that can generate large volumes of unnecessary inter-ISP network traffic. Although recent works have shown the benefits of network awareness P2P solutions, no studies have focused on the investigation of the ISP behavior and their cooperative/non-cooperative attitudes. This paper proposes a game theoretic framework to help the design of techniques promoting the ISP cooperation in P2P streaming platforms and decreasing unnecessary inter-domain streaming traffic. We first analyze some simple scenarios to discuss the existence of Nash equilibria, the Pareto optimality, and a fairness criterion to refine the equilibrium points. Moreover, we apply ideas from Evolutionary Game Theory to design a distributed schemata that the ISPs can use to reach socially acceptable equilibrium points in a large ISP population. Furthermore, we develop a discrete event simulation to evaluate the effectiveness of the Evolutionary Game Theory framework. The study presented in the paper shows that the proposed strategies can effectively stimulate ISP cooperation aiming at the minimization of inter-ISP traffic and help to provide reliable P2P streaming service.

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