Examples of density, orientation, and shape-optimal 2D-design for stiffness and/or strength with orthotropic materials The balance between stiffness and strength design is considered in the present paper. For materials with different levels of orthotropy (including isotropy), we optimize the density distribution as well as the orientational distribution for a short cantilever problem, and discuss the tendencies in design and response (energy distributions and stress directions). For a hole in a biaxial stress field, the shape design of the boundary hole is also incorporated. The resulting tapered density distributions may be difficult to manufacture, for example, in micro-mechanics production. For such problems a penalization approach to obtain "black and white" designs, i.e. uniform material or holes, is often applied in optimal design. A specific example is studied to show the effect of the penalization, but is restricted here to an isotropic material. When the total amount of material is not specified, a conflict between optimal design for stiffness and optimal design for strength appears. The computational results of such a case study are shown.

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 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


Classification of welding flaw types with fuzzy expert systems The fuzzy expert system approach is proposed for the classification of different types of welding flaws. The fuzzy rules are generated from available examples using two different methods. The classification accuracy of fuzzy expert systems using fuzzy rules generated by the two methods is evaluated and compared. In addition, the fuzzy expert system approach is also compared with two other approaches: the fuzzy k-nearest neighbors algorithm and multi-layer perceptron neural networks, based on the bootstrap method. The results indicate that the fuzzy expert system approach outperforms all others in terms of classification accuracy.

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

fuzzy expert systems
welding flaws
classification


MRtrix: Diffusion tractography in crossing fiber regions In recent years, diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging has attracted considerable attention due to its unique potential to delineate the white matter pathways of the brain. However, methodologies currently available and in common use among neuroscientists and clinicians are typically based on the diffusion tensor model, which has comprehensively been shown to be inadequate to characterize diffusion in brain white matter. This is due to the fact that it is only capable of resolving a single fiber orientation per voxel, causing incorrect fiber orientations, and hence pathways, to be estimated through these voxels. Given that the proportion of affected voxels has been recently estimated at 90%, this is a serious limitation. Furthermore, most implementations use simple deterministic streamlines tracking algorithms, which have now been superseded by probabilistic approaches. In this study, we present a robust set of tools to perform tractography, using fiber orientations estimated using the validated constrained spherical deconvolution method, coupled with a probabilistic streamlines tracking algorithm. This methodology is shown to provide superior delineations of a number of known white matter tracts, in a manner robust to crossing fiber effects. These tools have been compiled into a software package, called MRtrix, which has been made freely available for use by the scientific community. 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 22, 5366, 2012

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 O O O O O O 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 mri
fiber tracking
crossing fibers


tcp-aware resource allocation in cdma networks TCP is the dominant transport protocol over both wired and wireless links. It is however, well known that TCP is not suitable for wireless networks and several solutions have been proposed to rectify this shortcoming. In this work, we explore cross-layer optimization of the rate adaptation feature of cellular networks to optimize throughput of a single long-lived TCP session. Modern cellular networks rate RF technology that allows them to dynamically vary the wireless channel rate in response to user demand and channel conditions. However, the set of data rates as well as the scheduler's rate adaptation policy are typically chosen to optimize throughput for inelastic applications. In order to optimize such a system for TCP, we propose a two state TCP-aware scheduler that switches between two chanrates as a function of the TCP sending rate. We develop a fluid model of the steady-state behavior of a TCP session in such a system and derive analytical expressions for TCP throughput that explicitly account for rate variability as well as the dependency between the scheduler and TCP. Using the model we choose RF layer parameters that, in conjunction with the TCP-aware scheduler, improve term throughput of a single TCP flow by 15.25\%. We also compare our analytical results against those obtained from ns-2 simulations and confirm that our model indeed closely approximates TCP behavior in such an environment.

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

rate adaptation
wireless networks
tcp throughput


Watchman routes for lines and line segments ? Given a set L L of non-parallel lines in the plane, a watchman route (tour) for L L is a closed curve contained in the union of the lines in L L such that every line is visited (intersected) by the route; we similarly define a watchman route (tour) for a connected set S S of line segments. The watchman route problem for a given set of lines or line segments is to find a shortest watchman route for the input set, and these problems are natural special cases of the watchman route problem in a polygon with holes (a polygonal domain). In this paper, we show that the problem of computing a shortest watchman route for a set of n non-parallel lines in the plane is polynomially tractable, while it becomes NP-hard in 3D. We give an alternative NP-hardness proof of this problem for line segments in the plane and obtain a polynomial-time approximation algorithm with ratio O ( log 3 n ) . Additionally, we consider some special cases of the watchman route problem on line segments, for which we provide exact algorithms or improved approximations.

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


Sequential diagnosis in the independence Bayesian framework We present a new approach to test selection in sequential diagnosis (or classification) in the independence Bayesian framework that resembles the hypothetico-deductive approach to test selection used by doctors. In spite of its relative simplicity in comparison with previous models of hypothetico-deductive reasoning, the approach retains the advantage that the relevance of a selected test can be explained in strategic terms. We also examine possible approaches to the problem of deciding when there is sufficient evidence to discontinue testing, and thus avoid the risks and costs associated with unnecessary tests.

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

naive bayes
hypothetico-deductive reasoning


Lossless compression of predicted floating-point geometry The size of geometric data sets in scientific and industrial applications is constantly increasing. Storing surface or volume meshes in standard uncompressed formats results in large files that are expensive to store and slow to load and transmit. Scientists and engineers often refrain from using mesh compression because currently available schemes modify the mesh data. While connectivity is encoded in a lossless manner, the floating-point coordinates associated with the vertices are quantized onto a uniform integer grid to enable efficient predictive compression. Although a fine enough grid can usually represent the data with sufficient precision, the original floating-point values will change, regardless of grid resolution. In this paper we describe a method for compressing floating-point coordinates with predictive coding in a completely lossless manner. The initial quantization step is omitted and predictions are calculated in floating-point. The predicted and the actual floating-point values are broken up into sign, exponent, and mantissa and their corrections are compressed separately with context-based arithmetic coding. As the quality of the predictions varies with the exponent, we use the exponent to switch between different arithmetic contexts. We report compression results using the popular parallelogram predictor, but our approach will work with any prediction scheme. The achieved bit-rates for lossless floating-point compression nicely complement those resulting from uniformly quantizing with different precisions.

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


A coupling method based on new MFE and FE for fourth-order parabolic equation In this article, a coupling method of new mixed finite element (MFE) and finite element (FE) is proposed and analyzed for fourth-order parabolic partial differential equation. First, the fourth-order parabolic equation is split into the coupled system of second-order equations. Then, an equation is solved by finite element method, the other equation is approximated by the new mixed finite element method, whose flux belongs to the square integrable space replacing the classical H(div;?) space. The stability for fully discrete scheme is derived, and both semi-discrete and fully discrete error estimates are obtained. Moreover, the optimal a priori error estimates in L 2 and H 1-norm for both the scalar unknown u and the diffusion term ? and apriori error estimate in (L 2)2-norm for its flux ? are derived. Finally, some numerical results are provided to validate our theoretical analysis.

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


Mitigating Attacks on Open Functionality in SMS-Capable Cellular Networks The transformation of telecommunications networks from homogeneous closed systems providing only voice services to Internet-connected open networks that provide voice and data services presents significant security challenges. For example, recent research illustrated that a carefully crafted DoS attack via text messaging could incapacitate all voice communications in a metropolitan area with little more than a cable modem. This attack highlights a growing threat to these systems; namely, cellular networks are increasingly exposed to adversaries both in and outside the network. In this paper, we use a combination of modeling and simulation to demonstrate the feasibility of targeted text messaging attacks. Under realistic network conditions, we show that adversaries can achieve blocking rates of more than 70% with only limited resources. We then develop and characterize five techniques from within two broad classes of countermeasures-queue management and resource provisioning. Our analysis demonstrates that these techniques can eliminate or extensively mitigate even the most intense targeted text messaging attacks. We conclude by considering the tradeoffs inherent to the application of these techniques in current and next generation telecommunications networks.

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 B O


Performance analysis of overloaded CDMA system under imperfect synchronization using Parallel/Successive Interference Cancellation A hybrid Interference cancellation (HIC) technique employing both Parallel and Successive Interference Cancellation (PIC/SIC) is proposed for Overloaded Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA) system under imperfect synchronization. Two types of receivers are proposed to efficiently mitigate the multiuser interference (MUI). In type I receiver, the MUI within group-1 users are first cancelled using Parallel Interference Cancellation (PIC). Then the multistage Successive Interference Cancellation (m-SIC) is performed on the resultant output of PIC to efficiently cancel the interference of group-2 users on group-1 users. The type II receiver is designed by performing PIC immediately followed by SIC and this combined process is repeated till a major chunk of multi user interference is cancelled. The BER performance of type II receiver is proved to be better than other cancellation techniques such as PIC, SIC and the proposed type I receiver.

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

direct sequence code division multiple access

bit error rate
orthogonal gold codes
signal to noise ratio


A representation of a family of secret sharing matroids Deciding whether a matroid is secret sharing or not is a well-known open problem. In Ng and Walker [6] it was shown that a matroid decomposes into uniform matroids under strong connectivity. The question then becomes as follows: when is a matroid M with N uniform components secret sharing? When N = 1, M corresponds to a uniform matroid and hence is secret sharing. In this paper we show, by constructing a representation using projective geometry, that all connected matroids with two uniform components are secret sharing.

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


Quasi-Static Scheduling of CAL Actor Networks for Reconfigurable Video Coding The upcoming Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standard from MPEG (ISO / IEC SC29WG11) defines a library of coding tools to specify existing or new compressed video formats and decoders. The coding tool library has been written in a dataflow/actor-oriented language named CAL. Each coding tool (actor) can be represented with an extended finite state machine and the data communication between the tools are described as dataflow graphs. This paper proposes an approach to model the CAL actor network with Parameterized Synchronous Data Flow and to derive a quasi-static multiprocessor execution schedule for the system. In addition to proposing a scheduling approach for RVC, an extension to the well-known permutation flow shop scheduling problem that enables rapid run-time scheduling of RVC tasks, is introduced.

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

parallel processing
digital signal processors
modeling


A simple architecture for computing moments and orientation of an image In this paper, a new methodology for computing orientation of a gray-tone image by the method of moments is described. Orientation is an essential feature needed in many image processing and pattern recognition tasks. Computation of moments is accomplished by a new projection method that leads to a fast algorithm of determining orientation. Using a simple architecture, the proposed algorithm can be implemented as a special purpose VLSI chip. The hardware cost of the proposed design is significantly lower compared to that of the existing architecture.

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


Benchmark problems for nonlinear system identification and control using Soft Computing methods: Need and overview Collection of 13 benchmark problems described in detail in standardized way. General assessment criteria as well as problem-specific tests specified. Benchmarks span from simple artificial systems to complex entire industrial plants. Many domains covered incl. drives, mechatronics, chemical plants, wind turbines. Examples of use in Soft Computing community are provided for each problem.

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


Systematic and optimal cyclotomic lattices and diagonal space-time block code designs In this correspondence, a new and systematic design of cyclotomic lattices with full diversity is proposed by using some algebraic number theory. This design provides infinitely many full, diversity cyclotomic lattices for a given lattice size. Based on the packing theory and the concrete form of the design, optimal cyclotomic lattices are presented by minimizing the mean transmission signal power for a given minimum (diversity) product (or equivalently maximizing the minimum product for a given mean transmission signal power). The newly proposed cyclotomic lattices can be applied to both space-time code designs for multi-antenna systems and linear precode design for signal space diversity in single antenna systems over fast Rayleigh fading channels. Although there are some cyclotomic lattices/space-time codes existing in the literature, most of them are not optimal.

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

algebraic number theory
cyclotomic lattices

cyclotomic fields
galois theory
space-time block codes


Self-organization models for adaptive environments: Envisioning and evaluation of alternative approaches Ambient intelligence refers to environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people thanks to the integration of computer systems. A particular aim of this kind of system is to enhance the everyday experience of people moving inside the related physical environment according to the narrative description of a designers desiderata. In this kind of situation computer simulation represents a useful way to envision the behaviour of the responsive environments that are being designed, without actually bringing them into existence in the real world, in order to evaluate their adherence to the designers specification. This paper describes two different approaches, respectively based on cellular automata and autonomous agents, to the realization of a self-organization model for an adaptive illumination facility, a physical environment endowed with a set of sensors that perceive the presence of humans (or other entities such as dogs, bicycles, cars) and interact with a set of actuators (lights) that coordinate their state to adapt the ambient illumination to the presence and behaviours of its users. Computer simulation is employed to evaluate the adequacy and feasibility of the approaches in the above scenario.

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


Model of perception: The hierarchy of inclusive sensory characteristics and top-down cascade transfer of excitation The article offers a new view on the organization of the processes of human perception. It introduces the concept of inclusive sensory characteristic, which is a response of a given perceptual level to those features or characteristics of an underlying level whose spatial organization or specific temporal succession constitutes an adaptively meaningful entity. The sequence of inclusive characteristics forms a hierarchy: from features to the highest inclusive characteristics which bind sensory data into unified images and scenes. The highest inclusive characteristic is neither an image nor a scene, but a unique scheme of combination of underlying-level objects, which produces the image or the scene. Specific patterns of electric activity, which map inclusive characteristics, are relayed by feedbacks from upper to lower neuronal levels. This forms a cascade of top-down transfer of excitation, which stimulates those neuronal populations whose signals correspond to the highest inclusive characteristic of a given act of perception. Stimulation from above reduces the time of response of selected neurons at underlying levels to simultaneously arriving spikes to milliseconds. As a result, neuronal. populations at the underlying levels, which are involved in a given act of perception, become, for a short time, coincidence detectors. The hierarchically arranged set of neuronal ensembles of coincidence detectors forms a fast sensory pathway, single and unique for each act of perception.

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

perception
inclusive sensory characteristics


On Modeling of Coevolution of Strategies and Structure in Autonomous Overlay Networks Currently, on one hand, there exist much work about network formation and/or growth models, and on the other hand, cooperative strategy evolutions are extensively investigated in biological, economic, and social systems. Generally, overlay networks are heterogeneous, dynamic, and distributed environments managed by multiple administrative authorities, shared by users with different and competing interests, or even autonomously provided by independent and rational users. Thus, the structure of a whole overlay network and the peers' rational strategies are ever coevolving. However, there are very few approaches that theoretically investigate the coevolution between network structure and individual rational behaviors. The main motivation of our article lies in that: Unlike existing work which empirically illustrates the interaction between rational strategies and network structure (through simulations), based on EGT (Evolutionary Game Theory), we not only infer a condition that could favor the cooperative strategy over defect strategy, but also theoretically characterizes the structural properties of the formed network. Specifically, our contributions are twofold. First, we strictly derive the critical benefit-to-cost ratio (b/c) that would facilitate the evolution of cooperation. The critical ratio depends on the network structure (the number of peers in system and the average degree of each peer), and the evolutionary rule (the strategy and linking mutation probabilities). Then, according to the evolutionary rules, we formally derive the structural properties of the formed network in full cooperative state. Especially, the degree distribution is compatible with the power-law, and the exponent is (4-3 upsilon)/(1-3 upsilon), where v is peer's linking mutation probability. Furthermore, we show that, without being harmful to cooperation evolution, a slight change of the evolutionary rule will evolve the network into a small-world structure (high global efficiency and average clustering coefficient), with the same power-law degree distribution as in the original evolution model.

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


stevens dot patterns for 2d flow visualization This paper describes a new technique to visualize 2D flow fields with a sparse collection of dots. A cognitive model proposed by Kent Stevens describes how spatially local configurations of dots are processed in parallel by the low-level visual system to perceive orientations throughout the image. We integrate this model into a visualization algorithm that converts a sparse grid of dots into patterns that capture flow orientations in an underlying flow field. We describe how our algorithm supports large flow fields that exceed the capabilities of a display device, and demonstrate how to include properties like direction and velocity in our visualizations. We conclude by applying our technique to 2D slices from a simulated supernova collapse.

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

perception color multidimensional vision motion orientation


designing a multistage reverse logistics network problem by hybrid genetic algorithm We formulate a mathematical model of remanufacturing system as multistage reverse Logistics Network Problem (mrLNP) with minimizing the total costs for reverse logistics. The total costs for reverse logistics include shipping cost, fixed cost of opening the disassembly centers and processing centers and inventory holding cost at these centers over finite planning horizons. In this paper, we formulate the mrLNP model as a three stage logistics network model. For solving this problem, in the 1st and the 2nd stages, we propose a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with priority-based encoding method combined with a new crossover operator called as Weight Mapping Crossover (WMX). Additionally also a heuristic approach is applied in the 3rd stage where parts are transported from some processing centers to one manufacturer.

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

genetic algorithm
weight mapping crossover


Two approaches to the problems of self-attacking arguments and general odd-length cycles of attack The problems that arise from the presence of self-attacking arguments and odd-length cycles of attack within argumentation frameworks are widely recognized in the literature on defeasible argumentation. This paper introduces two simple semantics to capture different intuitions about what kinds of arguments should become justified in such scenarios. These semantics are modeled upon two extensions of argumentation frameworks, which we call sustainable and tolerant. Each one is constructed on the common ground of the powerful concept of admissibility introduced by Dung in [P.M.. Dung. On the acceptability of arguments and its fundamental role in non-monotonic reasoning, logic programming, and n-person games, Artificial Intelligence 77 (1995) 321-357]. The novelty of this approach consists in viewing the admissibility of a subset of arguments as relative to potentially challenging subsets of arguments. Both Sustainable and tolerant semantics are more credulous than preferred semantics (i.e. they justify at least the same arguments, and possibly more). Given certain sufficient conditions they coincide among them as well as with other semantics introduced by Dung. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

self-attacking arguments
odd-length cycles of attack
credulous semantics
lottery paradox
game-theory


Neural construction of 3D medial axis from the binocular fusion of 2D MAs The perceptual constancy of shape, including view invariance, is an amazing property of the visual system. Cortical representation by the medial axis (MA) is an attractive candidate for maintaining the constancy of a wide range of arbitrary shapes. Recent physiological studies have reported that neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) show a response to two-dimensional (2D) MAs, and those in the inferior temporal cortex (IT) are selective to three-dimensional (3D) MAs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying the transformation of 2D to 3D MAs. As a first step toward investigating the cortical mechanism, we have proposed as a hypothesis that a pair of monocular 2D MAs is fused to generate a 3D MA. We examined the computational plausibility of the hypothesis; specifically, whether an energy-based fusion model is capable of generating 3D MAs. We generated blob-like, physiologically plausible 2D MAs, and used a standard energy model to detect the disparity between a pair of 2D MAs. The model successfully generated 3D MAs for a variety of objects that included typical shape characteristics. A reconstruction test showed that the computed 3D MAs captured the essential structure of the objects with reasonable accuracy and view invariance. These results indicate that the fusion of monocular blob-like 2D MAs is capable of generating a reasonable 3D MA within the framework of the energy model.

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 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


Scaling observation with complex-valued coefficients: some remarks and prospects Three kinds of observations are usually used in the modelling of general system: Gallilean observation, observation with informational invariance and scaling observation. All these models presuppose the invariance of the dimension of the system under consideration. The Purpose of the present Paper is to examine what happens when the observation process increases this dimension. A 1-D co-ordinate switches to a 2-D co-ordinate, Complex-valued random variables are used to describe this approach Prospects of applications are outlined.

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


Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign: What Does Reference Mean to Academic Library Users? In the library profession there is abundant use of jargon and acronyms to describe library activities. The terminology used is important to both market and describe library services. Often library professionals make assumptions that their users understand what library terminology means. Reference is a term widely understood by librarians and library workers, but is that understanding conveyed to the library user especially in academic institutions? The Regis University Library Reference Services Department faculty were curious to discover whether their students and faculty knew what the word reference meant especially since this word was on the sign above their service desk and used in the name of their department. A survey was developed by the Reference Services Department to answer that question and others. Results from the survey were used to propose a new name for the desk, department and librarians.

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

reference desk
library signage
marketing
library surveys
academic libraries


Some upper bounds on the covering radii of linear codes over F-q and their applications We show that the covering radius R of an [n,k,d] code over F-q is bounded above by R less than or equal to n-n(q)(k, inverted right perpendicular d/q inverted left perpendicular). We strengthen this bound when R less than or equal to d and find conditions under which equality holds. As applications of this and other bounds, we show that all binary linear codes of lengths up to 15, or codimension up to 9, are normal. We also establish the normality of most codes of length 16 and many of codimension 10. These results have applications in the construction of codes that attain t[n,k], the smallest covering radius of any binary linear [n,k] code. We also prove some new results on the amalgamated direct sum ("ADS") construction of Graham and Sloane. We find new conditions assuring normality of the ADS; covering radius 1 less than previously guaranteed for ADS of codes with even norms; good covering codes as ADS without the hypothesis of normality, from concepts p- stable and s- stable; codes with best known covering radii as ADS of two, often cyclic, codes (thus retaining structure so as to be suitable for practical applications).

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

q-ary codes
coset leader
griesmer bound
amalgamated direct sum construction
p-stable
s-stable


On boundedness of solutions of the difference equation \(x_{n+1}=p+\frac{x_{n-1}}{x_{n}}\) for p<1 In this paper, we study the difference equation $$x_{n+1}=p+\frac{x_{n-1}}{x_n}, \quad n=0,1,\ldots, $$ where initial values x ?1,x 0?(0,+?) and 0<p<1, and obtain the set of all initial values (x ?1,x 0)?(0,+?)(0,+?) such that the positive solutions \(\{x_{n}\}_{n=-1}^{\infty}\) are bounded. This answers the Open problem 4.8.11 proposed by Kulenovic and Ladas (Dynamics of Second Order Rational Difference Equations, with Open Problems and Conjectures, 2002).

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


Morphological Diversity and Sparsity for Multichannel Data Restoration Over the last decade, overcomplete dictionaries and the very sparse signal representations they make possible, have raised an intense interest from signal processing theory. In a wide range of signal processing problems, sparsity has been a crucial property leading to high performance. As multichannel data are of growing interest, it seems essential to devise sparsity-based tools accounting for such specific multichannel data. Sparsity has proved its efficiency in a wide range of inverse problems. Hereafter, we address some multichannel inverse problems issues such as multichannel morphological component separation and inpainting from the perspective of sparse representation. In this paper, we introduce a new sparsity-based multichannel analysis tool coined multichannel Morphological Component Analysis (mMCA). This new framework focuses on multichannel morphological diversity to better represent multichannel data. This paper presents conditions under which the mMCA converges and recovers the sparse multichannel representation. Several experiments are presented to demonstrate the applicability of our approach on a set of multichannel inverse problems such as morphological component decomposition and inpainting.

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


Model-Driven

Development

for

scientific

computing.

Computations

of

RHEED

intensities

for

a

disordered

surface.

Part

I

Scientific

computing

is

the

field

of

study

concerned

with

constructing

mathematical

models,

numerical

solution

techniques

and

with

using

computers

to

analyse

and

solve

scientific

and

engineering

problems.

Model-Driven

Development

(MDD)

has

been

proposed

as

a

means

to

support

the

software

development

process

through

the

use

of

a

model-centric

approach.

This

paper

surveys

the

core

MDD

technology

that

was

used

to

develop

an

application

that

allows

computation

of

the

RHEED

intensities

dynamically

for

a

disordered

surface.

Program

title:

Catalogue

identifier:

Program

summary

Program

obtainable

from:

CPC

Program

Library,

Queen's

University,

Belfast,

N.

Ireland

Licensing

provisions:

Standard

CPC

licence,

No.

of

lines

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

No.

of

bytes

in

distributed

program,

including

test

data,

etc.:

Distribution

format:

tar.gz

Programming

language:

Embarcadero

C++

Builder

Computer:

Intel

Core

Duo-based

PC

Operating

system:

Windows

XP,

Vista,

RAM:

more

than

GB

Classification:

Catalogue

identifier

of

previous

version:

Journal

reference

of

previous

version:

Comput.

Phys.

Comm.

Does

the

new

version

supersede

the

previous

version?:

No

Nature

of

problem:

An

application

that

implements

numerical

simulations

should

be

constructed

according

to

the

CSFAR

rules:

clear

and

well-documented,

simple,

fast,

accurate,

and

robust.

A

clearly

written,

externally

and

internally

documented

program

is

much

easier

to

understand

and

modify.

A

simple

program

is

much

less

prone

to

error

and

is

more

easily

modified

than

one

that

is

complicated.

Simplicity

and

clarity

also

help

make

the

program

flexible.

Making

the

program

fast

has

economic

benefits.

It

also

allows

flexibility

because

some

of

the

features

that

make

a

program

efficient

can

be

traded

off

for

greater

accuracy.

Making

the

program

fast

also

has

the

benefit

of

allowing

longer

calculations

with

better

resolution.

The

compromise

between

speed

and

accuracy

has

always

posted

one

of

the

most

troublesome

challenges

for

the

programmer.

Almost

all

advances

in

numerical

analysis

have

come

about

trying

to

reach

these

twin

goals.

Change

in

the

basic

algorithms

will

give

greater

improvements

in

accuracy

and

speed

than

using

special

numerical

tricks

or

changing

programming

language.

A

robust

program

works

correctly

over

a

broad

spectrum

of

input

data.

Solution

method:

The

computational

model

of

the

program

is

based

on

the

use

of

a

dynamical

diffraction

theory

in

which

the

electrons

are

taken

to

be

diffracted

by

a

potential,

which

is

periodic

in

the

dimension

perpendicular

to

the

surface.

In

the

case

of

a

disordered

surface

we

can

use

the

proportional

model

of

the

scattering

potential,

in

which

the

potential

of

a

partially

filled

layer

is

taken

to

be

the

product

of

the

coverage

of

this

layer

and

the

potential

of

a

fully

filled

layer:

Reasons

for

new

version:

Responding

to

the

user

feedback

the

program

has

been

upgraded

to

a

standard

that

allows

carrying

out

computations

of

the

RHEED

intensities

for

a

disordered

surface.

Also,

functionality

and

documentation

of

the

program

have

been

improved.

Summary

of

revisions:

The

logical

structure

of

the

Platform-Specific

Model

of

the

program

has

been

modified

according

to

the

scheme

showed

in

Fig.

The

class

diagram

in

Fig.

is

a

static

view

of

the

main

platform-specific

elements

of

the

architecture.

Fig.

provides

a

dynamic

view

by

showing

the

creation

and

destruction

simplistic

sequence

diagram

for

the

process.

Fig.

shows

the

use

case

model.

As

can

be

seen

in

Fig.

the

has

been

designed

as

a

slave

process

that

runs

as

a

separate

thread

inside

each

transaction

generated

by

the

master

program

(see

A.

Daniluk,

Model-Driven

Development

for

scientific

computing.

Computations

of

RHEED

intensities

for

a

disordered

surface.

Part

II).

The

requires

the

user

to

provide

the

appropriate

parameters

for

the

crystal

structure

under

investigation.

These

parameters

are

loaded

from

the

parameters.ini

file

at

run-time.

Instructions

on

the

preparation

of

the

.ini

files

can

be

found

in

the

new

distribution.

The

requires

the

user

to

provide

the

appropriate

values

of

the

layers

of

coverage

profiles.

The

CoverageProfiles.dat

file

(generated

by

master

application)

at

run-time

loads

these

values.

The

enables

carrying

out

one-dimensional

dynamical

calculations

for

the

fcc

lattice,

with

a

two-atoms

basis

and

fcc

lattice,

with

one

atom

basis

but

yet

the

zeroth

Fourier

component

of

the

scattering

potential

in

the

function

can

be

modified

according

to

users'

specific

application

requirements.

Unusual

features:

The

program

is

distributed

in

the

form

of

main

projects

and

with

associated

files,

and

should

be

compiled

using

Embarcadero

RAD

Studio

along

with

Together

visual-modelling

platform.

The

program

should

be

compiled

with

English/USA

regional

and

language

options.

Additional

comments:

This

version

of

the

RHEED

program

is

designed

to

run

in

conjunction

with

the

program.

It

does

not

replace

the

previous,

stand

alone,

version.

Running

time:

The

typical

running

time

is

machine

and

user-parameters

dependent.

References:

OMG,

Model

Driven

Architecture

Guide

Version

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

reflection high-energy electron diffraction (rheed)


Collective Behavior and Kin Selection in Evolutionary IPD Some strategies can be evolutionarily stronger than others although no evolutionarily stable strategy exists in iterated prisoner's dilemma if the long-term payoff for each player is not insignificant. Li and Kendall (2009) introduced a so-called collective strategy for evolutionary iterated prisoner's dilemma which plays a sequence of predefined moves and then identifies the opponent according to the response. It only cooperates with kin members and defects against any other strategies. A group of collective strategies is especially strong in evolution. In this paper, we study a mixed strategy that assigns probabilities to the collective strategy and the strategy that always defects. A population of mixed strategies has the advantage of expelling fake kin members so that other strategies do not have the chance to indirectly invade. Simulations show that it is evolutionarily strong in maintaining a homogeneous population. Kin selection favors collective behavior among group members which is not necessarily cooperation. We find that defection can also be a kin altruism and there is qualitative benefit as well as quantitative benefit from the altruistic behaviors.

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

collective behavior
evolutionarily stable strategy
kin selection


Simultaneous minimization of total completion time and total deviation of job completion times This paper addresses a single-machine scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing a linear combination of total job completion times and total deviation of job completion times from a common due-date. The due-date is assumed to be non-restrictive, i.e., sufficiently large to have no impact on the optimal sequence. When the weights are job-independent, the problem is shown to have a polynomial time solution, and the optimal schedule is fully characterized as a function of the different parameters. When job-dependent weights are assumed, the problem is known to be NP-hard. We introduce a pseudo-polynomial dynamic programming algorithm, indicating that this case is NP-hard in the ordinary sense. The algorithm is shown experimentally to perform extremely well when tested on high-multiplicity instances with up to 1000 jobs.

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 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

deterministic
single machine
pseudo-polynomial algorithm
multiple criteria


A generalized ordering and recovery policy for reusable items This paper deals with a joint EOQ and EPQ model in which a stationary demand is satisfied by recovered products as well as newly purchased products. It is assumed that a fixed proportion of the used products are collected from customers and later recovered for reuse. We generalize the (P,R) policy in the literature by treating the sequence of orders for newly purchasing products and setups for recovery process within a cycle as a decision variable. Through example problems we illustrate the validity of the model and solution procedure developed.

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


Soft Decision Directed Channel Estimation with Interference Cancellation for a MIMO System Using Iterative Equalization and Decoding This paper proposes a novel channel estimation method for iterative equalization in MIMO systems. The proposed method incorporates co-channel interference (CCI) cancellation in the channel estimator and the channel estimation is successively performed with respect to each stream. Accuracy of Channel estimation holds the key to be successfully converged the iterative equalization and decoding process. Although the channel estimates can be re-estimated by means of LS (Least Square) channel estimation using tentative decisions obtained in the iterative process, its performance is severely limited in a MIMO system because of erroneous decisions and ill-conditioned channel estimation matrix. The proposed method can Suppress the above effects by means of CCI cancellation and successive channel estimation. Computer simulation confirms that the proposed channel estimation method can accurately estimate the channel, and the receiver with iterative equalization and the proposed method achieves excellent decoding performance in a MIMO-SM system.

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

mimo
iterative equalization
channel estimation
interference cancellation


A GPU-accelerated real-time single image de-hazing method using pixel-level optimal de-hazing criterion Single image de-hazing is an important and challenging research topic in computer vision. The computational efficiency and robustness of this issue are key problems in real-time applications. In this paper, a graphic processing unit (GPU)-accelerated real-time image enhancing method is proposed to remove haze from a single hazy input image. The foundation of this method is a novel pixel-level optimal de-hazing criterion proposed to combine a virtual hazy-free candidate image sequence into a final single hazy-free image. This image sequence is estimated from the input hazy image by exhausting all possible discretely sampled scene depth values. The main advantage of proposed method is the single pixel independently computing fashion. Its computing at one single pixel position is independent of others. Based on this property, it is straightforward to implement the proposed method with fully parallel GPU acceleration. The sufficient experimentations on various scenes indicate that the proposed method can process a large hazy image with one megapixel to visually moderate haze-free result at a rate of 80frames/s. Moreover, the proposed method is also less affected by the nonuniform illumination compared to previous methods.

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

image de-hazing
image fusion
real-time gpu computing
optimal de-hazing criterion


dfm issues for 65nm and beyond The 90nm technology node is a mature process and is currently in full production. It was the first node to challenge the limitations of 193 nm lithography in a significant way. Many creative solutions were devised to circumvent those limitations and a lot was learned in the process. Now 65nm, 45nm, and 32nm are pushing the envelope of every aspect of the design and manufacturing flow; not just lithography but also in device engineering, device modeling, and design methodology. Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Yield (DFY) dictate that we optimize every step in the design flow. Here we address a plurality of those challenges.

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


Note on winning positions on pushdown games with omega-regular conditions We consider infinite two-player games on pushdown graphs. For parity winning conditions, we show that the set of winning positions of each player is regular and we give an effective construction of an alternating automaton recognizing it. This provides a DEXPTIME procedure to decide whether 6 position is winning for a given player. Finally, using the same methods, we show, for any omega-regular winning condition, that the set of winning positions for a given player is regular and effective. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

automata
infinite graphs
pushdown processes


A geometric approach to non-parametric density estimation A novel non-parametric density estimator is developed based on geometric principles. A penalised centroidal Voronoi tessellation forms the basis of the estimator, which allows the data to self-organise in order to minimise estimate bias and variance. This approach is a marked departure from usual methods based on local averaging, and has the advantage of being naturally adaptive to local sample density (scale-invariance). The estimator does not require the introduction of a plug-in kernel, thus avoiding assumptions of symmetricity and morphology. A numerical experiment is conducted to illustrate the behaviour of the estimator, and it's characteristics are discussed.

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

centroidal
voronoi
tessellation
density estimation


Design and implementation of a web-based HL7 message generation and validation system Health level 7 (HL7) is the standard of electronic data interchange in the health domain. We have developed a web-based message generation and validation system for testing the message format of the data exchange among hospitals and health organizations. Compared with other existing ones, this system has incorporated several novel functions that optimize medical data exchange and helps medical students in learning HL7 messages. When receiving HL7 message from another system with the hypertext transmission protocol or accepting an uploaded HL7 message file, the system shows the validation result through a web browser. In this platform, users may input and edit medical data on-line to test and generate standard HL7 messages. The system supports various data formats and is capable of transforming HL7 messages between the standard delimiter format and the extensible markup language format. This system has been successfully passed our system evaluation among 139 student users for HL7 training. Most of the users agreed that the system is helpful for medical data exchange.

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

health level 7
electronic data interchange
extensible markup language
validation


Interval forecasting of electricity demand: A novel bivariate EMD-based support vector regression modeling framework Proposing a novel interval-valued electricity demand forecasting approach. BEMD and SVR are integrated for interval forecasting of electricity demand. The EMD-based modeling framework are extended to deal with interval forecasting. BEMD is used to decompose both the lower and upper bounds electricity demand series. The proposed modeling framework is justified with real world data sets.

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

bivariate empirical mode decomposition (bemd)


Efficient Authenticated Key Agreement Protocols for Dynamic Wireless Sensor Networks In a dynamic sensor network, mobile sensor nodes will continuously move around and frequently reconnect to other sensor nodes. However, current security protocols, which were designed for static networks only, cause a significantly large overhead when applied to dynamic networks. In this paper, we propose an efficient authenticated key agreement protocol that reduces the overall processes for the reauthentication of mobile nodes that have been authenticated once in the network. Along with a high efficiency in authentication of frequently reconnecting mobile nodes, we also introduce the "Neighbor Sink List" (NSL) that enables our protocol to be applicable to the irregularly distributed sensor networks in real environments. Our protocol realized computation that is about eight-time more energy efficient than that realized by PKI-based approaches and communication that is about 50% more energy efficient than that realized by approaches based on symmetric key cryptosystems.

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

security
authentication
authenticated key agreement

wireless sensor network
wsn
public key infrastructure
elliptic curve cryptography


Measuring expected effects of interventions based on decision rules Decision rules induced from a data set represent knowledge patterns relating premises and decisions in 'if...., then...' statements. Premise is a conjunction of elementary conditions relative to independent variables and decision is a conclusion relative to dependent variables. Given a set of decision rules induced from a data set, it is useful to estimate possible effects on the dependent variables caused by an intervention on some independent variables. The authors introduce a methodology for quantifying the impact of a strategy of intervention based on a decision rule induced from data. While the usual interestingness measures of decision rules are taking into account only characteristics of universe U' where they come from; the measures of efficiency of intervention depend also on characteristics of universe U where intervention takes place. The authors are considering the intervention on a single independent variable and on a combination of these variables.

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

decision rules
intervention
expected effects


User-oriented quality for OER: understanding teachers' views on re-use, quality, and trust We analysed how teachers as users of open educational resources (OER) repositories act in the re-use process and how they perceive quality. Based on a quantitative empirical study, we also surveyed which quality requirements users have and how they would contribute to the quality process. Trust in resources, organizations, and technologies seem to be of particular importance when looking at quality. In our findings, we derive recommendations for learning object repositories and OER user-oriented quality assurance.

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

learning object repositories
open educational resources
quality
teachers
trust


Parallelizing the Cellular Potts Model on graphics processing units The Cellular Potts Model (CPM) is a lattice based modeling technique used for simulating cellular structures in computational biology. The computational complexity of the model means that current serial implementations restrict the size of simulation to a level well below biological relevance. Parallelization on computing clusters enables scaling the size of the simulation but marginally addresses computational speed due to the limited memory bandwidth between nodes. In this paper we present new data-parallel algorithms and data structures for simulating the Cellular Potts Model on graphics processing units. Our implementations handle most terms in the Hamiltonian, including cellcell adhesion constraint, cell volume constraint, cell surface area constraint, and cell haptotaxis. We use fine level checkerboards with lock mechanisms using atomic operations to enable consistent updates while maintaining a high level of parallelism. A new data-parallel memory allocation algorithm has been developed to handle cell division. Tests show that our implementation enables simulations of >106 > 10 6 cells with lattice sizes of up to 2563 on a single graphics card. Benchmarks show that our implementation runs ?80 faster than serial implementations, and ?5 faster than previous parallel implementations on computing clusters consisting of 25 nodes. The wide availability and economy of graphics cards mean that our techniques will enable simulation of realistically sized models at a fraction of the time and cost of previous implementations and are expected to greatly broaden the scope of CPM applications.

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 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 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

cellular potts model
computational biology


Hierarchical classification and feature reduction for fast face detection with support vector machines We present a two-step method to speed-up object detection systems in computer vision that use support vector machines as classifiers. In the first step we build a hierarchy of classifiers. On the bottom level, a simple and fast linear classifier analyzes the whole image and rejects large parts of the background. On the top level, a slower but more accurate classifier performs the final detection. We propose a new method for automatically building and training a hierarchy of classifiers. In the second step we apply feature reduction to the top level classifier by choosing relevant image features according to a measure derived from statistical learning theory. Experiments with a face detection system show that combining feature reduction with hierarchical classification leads to a speed-up by a factor of 335 with similar classification performance.

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

face detection
object detection
feature reduction
hierarchical classification
support vector machines


Design of an improved lossless halftone image compression codec The popularity of high-resolution digital printers and the growing computational requirements of new applications such as printing-on-demand and personalized printing have increased the need for fast and efficient lossless halftone image compression. In a previous paper, we have shown that the compression performance can be improved significantly by adapting the context template to the halftone parameters. Unfortunately, this variability in data dependency makes the modeling stage more complex and slows down the overall compression scheme. In this paper, we describe the design of an improved block-based software and hardware implementation. The software implementation uses complementary line-shifting to by-pass the adaptivity of the template. The hardware implementation is based on the automated construction of a microcoded program from a given template. Experimental results show that our improved implementation achieves approximately the same processing speed as when the fixed context template is applied. The proposed implementation is also of importance for the emerging JBIG2 standard which uses up to four adaptive template pixels.

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 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 B O O O O O O O O O

bilevel image compression
jbig
compression hardware


A local evaluation of vectorized documents by means of polygon assignments and matching This paper presents a benchmark for evaluating the raster to vector conversion systems. The benchmark is designed for evaluating the performance of graphics recognition systems on images that contain polygons (solid) within the images. Our contribution is two-fold, an object mapping algorithm to spatially locate errors within the drawing and then a cycle graph matching distance that indicates the accuracy of the polygonal approximation. The performance incorporates many aspects and factors based on uniform units while the method remains non-rigid (thresholdless). This benchmark gives a scientific comparison at polygon level of coherency and uses practical performance evaluation methods that can be applied to complete polygonization systems. A system dedicated to cadastral map vectorization was evaluated under this benchmark and its performance results are presented in this paper. By stress testing a given system, we demonstrate that our protocol can reveal strengths and weaknesses of a system. The behavior of our set of indices was analyzed when increasing image degradation. We hope that this benchmark will help assessing the state of the art in graphics recognition and current vectorization technologies.

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

performance evaluation
graphics recognition

vectorized object comparison
polygon assignment
polygonization accuracy
polygon detection quality
machine drawing understanding system


high precision retrieval using relevance-flow graph Traditional bag-of-words information retrieval models use aggregated term statistics to measure the relevance of documents, making it difficult to detect non-relevant documents that contain many query terms by chance or in the wrong context. In-depth document analysis is needed to filter out these deceptive documents. In this paper, we hypothesize that truly relevant documents have relevant sentences in predictable patterns. Our experimental results show that we can successfully identify and exploit these patterns to significantly improve retrieval precision at top ranks.

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

relevant sentence
relevance flow
re-ranking


Antinuclear antibody, is it a risk factor for cerebral ischemia?: Magnetic resonance image analysis, a preliminary study Magnetic resonance images (MRI) of 103 patients were examined to reveal whether positive antinuclear antibody is a risk factor for cerebral ischemia. The most common MRI formation was the presence of small high-intensity spots. The prevalence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus was significantly low. Although seven cases had no medical risk factors; they showed an abnormal MRI reading. Eleven cases exhibited signs of cerebral stroke. Positive antinuclear antibody cases are suggested to be part of the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. Various types of cerebral arterial occlusion may occur, showing lacuna, atheroma generation, and a recurrent major vessel occlusion.

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

atherosclerosis
autoimmune
fibrin thrombosis
recanalization


relationship between the diversity of information and idea generation We attempted to determine whether the provision of diverse information could facilitate creative idea generation. For this purpose, we enlisted 35 students to generate two ideas individually by using the scanning material provided. The results revealed that the participants tended to select similar articles and to reduce their diversity even though diverse materials were provided. Further, the diversity of the materials they used actually was positively correlated with the quality of the generated ideas. We concluded that the diversity of materials that were not provided but nevertheless used had an effect on idea generation.

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

diversity of information
idea generation


Nonlinear random effects mixture models: Maximum likelihood estimation via the EM algorithm Nonlinear random effects models with finite mixture structures are used to identify polymorphism in pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) phenotypes. An EM algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation approach is developed and uses sampling-based methods to implement the expectation step, that results in an analytically tractable maximization step. A benefit of the approach is that no model linearization is performed and the estimation precision can be arbitrarily controlled by the sampling process. A detailed simulation study illustrates the feasibility of the estimation approach and evaluates its performance. Applications of the proposed nonlinear random effects mixture model approach to other population PK/PD problems will be of interest for future investigation.

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

finite mixture models
mixed effects models
pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics


Accurate template-based correction of brain MRI intensity distortion with application to dementia and aging This paper examines an alternative approach to separating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) intensity inhomogeneity from underlying tissue-intensity structure using a direct template-based paradigm. This permits the explicit spatial modeling of subtle intensity variations present in normal anatomy which may confound common retrospective correction techniques using criteria derived from a global intensity model. A fine-scale entropy driven spatial normalisation procedure is employed to map intensity distorted MR images to a tissue reference template. This allows a direct estimation of the relative bias field between template and subject MR images, from the ratio of their low-pass filtered intensity values. A tissue template for an aging individual is constructed and used to correct distortion in a set of data acquired as part of a study on dementia. A careful validation based on manual segmentation and correction of nine datasets with a range of anatomies and distortion levels is carried out. This reveals a consistent improvement in the removal of global intensity variation in terms of the agreement with a global manual bias estimate, and in the reduction in the coefficient of intensity variation in manually delineated regions of white matter.

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

b-spline
template matching
image warping
normalized mutual information


Docking flexible ligands in proteins with a solvent exposure- and distance-dependent dielectric function Physics-based force fields for ligand-protein docking usually determine electrostatic energy with distance-dependent dielectric (DDD) functions, which do not fully account for the dielectric permittivity variance between similar to 2 in the protein core and similar to 80 in bulk water. Here we propose an atom-atom solvent exposure- and distance-dependent dielectric (SEDDD) function, which accounts for both electrostatic and dehydration energy components. Docking was performed using the ZMM program, the AMBER force field, and precomputed libraries of ligand conformers. At the seeding stage, hundreds of thousands of positions and orientations of conformers from the libraries were sampled within the rigid protein. At the refinement stage, the ten lowest-energy structures from the seeding stage were Monte Carlo-minimized with the flexible ligand and flexible protein. A search was considered a success if the root mean square deviation (RMSD) of the ligand atoms in the apparent global minimum from the x-ray structure was < 2 . Calculations on an examining set of 60 ligand-protein complexes with different DDD functions and solvent-exclusion energy revealed outliers in most of which the ligand-binding site was located at the protein surface. Using a training set of 16 ligand-protein complexes, which did not overlap with the examining set, we parameterized the SEDDD function to minimize the RMSD of the apparent global minima from the x-ray structures. Recalculation of the examining set with the SEDDD function demonstrated a 20% increase in the success rate versus the best-performing DDD function.

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

monte carlo-minimization
generalized coordinates
electrostatic interactions


Manipulation of nanoparticles and biomolecules by electric field and surface tension Electric field has become one of the most widely used tools for manipulating cells, biomolecules, and nanoscale particles in microfluidic devices. This paper presents the theory, modeling, and experimental works on manipulation of nano and biomaterials by using an electric field and surface tension. Three-dimensional dynamic assembly of nanowires on various microelectrodes under dielectrophoretic force is presented with discussion on capillary action and electroosmosis effects in the manipulation. The various approaches to manipulate the small scale materials are addressed both numerically and experimentally. For successful prediction and analysis on nanoscale, a hierarchical and multiscale scheme for modeling fluid transportation in nanochannels is suggested. The results show that the combined effects of electric field and capillary action induced forces are crucial for precise control over nanoscale materials.

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

immersed finite element method
electrokinetics
dielectrophoretic assembly
nanomaterials
nanochannel


AN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE SEQUENCING PROBLEM AT INTERSECTIONS: A GENETIC ALGORITHM APPROACH This paper addresses a vehicle sequencing problem for adjacent intersections under the framework of Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM). In the context of AIM, autonomous vehicles are considered to be independent individuals and the traffic control aims at deciding on an efficient vehicle passing sequence. Since there are considerable vehicle passing combinations, how to find an efficient vehicle passing sequence in a short time becomes a big challenge, especially for more than one intersection. In this paper, we present a technique for combining certain vehicles into some basic groups with reference to some properties discussed in our earlier works. A genetic algorithm based on these basic groups is designed to find an optimal or a near-optimal vehicle passing sequence for each intersection. Computational experiments verify that the proposed genetic algorithms can response quickly for several intersections. Simulations with continuous vehicles are carried out with application of the proposed algorithm or existing traffic control methods. The results show that the traffic condition can be significantly improved by our algorithm.

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

autonomous vehicles
autonomous intersection management
genetic algorithm


Weak-perspective structure from motion for strongly contaminated data ? It is widely known that, for the affine camera model, both shape and motion data can be factorised directly from the measurement matrix containing the image coordinates of the tracked feature points. However, classical algorithms for structure from motion (SfM) are not robust: measurement outliers, that is, incorrectly detected or matched feature points can destroy the result. A few methods to robustify SfM have already been proposed. Different outlier detection schemes have been used. We examine an efficient algorithm by Trajkovi? and Hedley [Trajkovi?, M., Hedley, M., 1997. Robust recursive structure and motion recovery under affine projection. In: Proc. British Machine Vision Conference. Available from: ] who use the affine camera model and the least median of squares (LMedS) method to separate inliers from outliers. LMedS is only applicable when the ratio of inliers exceeds 50%. We show that the least trimmed squares (LTS) method is more efficient in robust SfM than LMedS. In particular, we demonstrate that LTS can handle inlier ratios below 50%. We also show that using the real (Euclidean) motion data results in more precise SfM than using the affine motion data. Based on these observations, we propose a novel robust SfM algorithm and discuss its advantages and limits. Furthermore, we introduce a RANSAC based outlier detector that also provides robust results. The proposed methods and the Trajkovi? procedure are quantitatively compared on synthetic data in different simulated situations. The methods are also tested on synthesised and real video sequences.

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

factorisation
robustness
weak perspective


Two Questions of Erd?s on Hypergraphs above the Turn Threshold For ordinary graphs it is known that any graph G with more edges than the Turn number of must contain several copies of , and a copy of , the complete graph on vertices with one missing edge. Erd?s asked if the same result is true for , the complete 3-uniform hypergraph on s vertices. In this note, we show that for small values of n, the number of vertices in G, the answer is negative for . For the second property, that of containing a , we show that for the answer is negative for all large n as well, by proving that the Turn density of is greater than that of .

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


A Concealment Method for Shape Information in MPEG-4 Coded Video Sequences In this paper, we propose a new method for error concealment of shape information in MPEG-4 video bit streams that are transmitted over error prone channels. The proposed method employs a MAP estimator with an MRF as the image a priori model. The MRF is designed for binary shape information and its parameters are adapted based on the information of neighboring blocks. Our experimental results show that the proposed concealment method restores missing shape blocks with high accuracy. Compared to the median filtering method, our method restores 20% more missing shape data, with a much greater subjective improvement. The proposed algorithm requires relatively small number of integer multiplications and additions and simple logic operations, making it suitable for real-time implementations.

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

error resilience coding
markov random fields
mpeg-4
post-processing


web-based 3d media information system This paper introduces web-based 3D media information system. We first address two promising 3D modeling techniques, i.e., image-based 3D modeling and laser scanning based 3D modeling. Especially, we present two approaches of the image-based 3D modeling. One is an off-line approach using multiview images which is captured with single camera and a robot arm. The another one is an on-line approach that extends a commercial triclops camera system. We also utilize a 3D modeling scheme based on a laser scanner and a 3D reverse modeler. Using our 3D modeling environments, we construct several kinds of 3D models. We also implement web-based 3D media information management and retrieval system using XML data server, which provides services of 3D models. Our web-based 3D media information system has a goal of services of various types of 3D models and contents through WWW, which is currently focused on the development and management of 3D models of Korea cultural heritage.

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

laser scanning based 3d modeling
3d media information system


A SAS/IML program for implementing the modified Brown-Forsythe procedure in repeated measures designs In this paper, we present a computer program written in version 9.1 of SAS' interactive matrix language in order to implement a new approach for analyzing repeated measures data. Previous studies reported that the new procedure is as powerful as conventional solutions and generally more robust (i.e., insensitive) to violations of assumptions that underlie conventional solutions. The program also included a step-wise procedure based on the Bonferroni inequality to test comparisons among the repeated measurements. Both univariate and multivariate repeated measures data can be analyzed. Finally, the application of the SAS/IML program is illustrated with a numeric example. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ireland 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

univariate repeated measures
covariance heterogeneity
modified brown-forsythe approximation
sas/iml
multiple post hoc contrasts


Accurate dense optical flow estimation using adaptive structure tensors and a parametric model An accurate optical flow estimation algorithm is proposed in this paper. By combining the three-dimensional (3-D) structure tensor with a parametric flow model, the optical flow estimation problem is converted to a generalized eigenvalue problem. The optical flow can be accurately estimated from the generalized eigenvectors. The confidence measure derived from the generalized eigenvalues is used to adaptively adjust the coherent motion region to further improve the accuracy. Experiments using both synthetic sequences with ground truth and real sequences illustrate our method. Comparisons with classical and recently published methods are also given to demonstrate the accuracy of our algorithm.

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

generalized eigenvalue
optical flow
parametric model
structure tensor


Decentralized Algorithm for Joint Data Placement and Rate Allocation in Content-Aware Networks In this paper a mathematical model of data delivery in Content-Aware Network (CAN) is studied. Such network architecture assumes that users access data objects (content) replicated on a number of cache servers. A CAN operator decides on the placement of data objects on behalf of the content publishers, and decides on the transmission rate allocation of users (content consumers downloading content, and publishers uploading and updating their content). A problem of minimizing the mean transmission delay is considered and formulated as a mixed-integer programming problem. Decomposition-based heuristic is proposed, which utilizes projected gradient descent and greedy strategy. The algorithm is presented as a decentralized protocol, embedded in the network architecture.

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

content-aware network
flow control
facility location


Laterality in the gestural communication of wild chimpanzees We examined hand preference in the intentional gestural communication of wild chimpanzees in the Budongo forest, Uganda. Individuals showed some tendency to be lateralized, although less than has been reported for begging and pointing gestures in captivity; on average, their absolute bias was around 0.25 (where 1.0 represents complete right- or left-hand use and 0.0 represents no bias). Lateralization was incomplete even in individuals with major manual disabilities. Where individuals had a stronger preference, this was more often toward the right hand; moreover, as age increased, the direction (but not the extent) of hand preference shifted toward the right. While the gestural repertoire as a whole was largely employed ambilateraly, object-manipulation gestures showed a strong right-hand bias.

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


Conceptualising health information seeking behaviours and exploratory search: result of a qualitative study The Internet has become an important source of health information for many people, including non-medical experts. While much health information is provided through the Internet, such information is often spread across multiple websites and providers. With the decentralised nature of the Internet, people are often unable to access health information at a single point, and thus extra efforts are needed for seeking information with search engines. The information seeking process is a crucial step for obtaining the needed health information. According to prior research, seekers apply an exploratory approach in the information seeking process of health-related topics. Although information seeking behaviours have been studied extensively in past research, few details specifically about information seeking in the health context can be found. This paper reports on a qualitative study that investigates the information needs and behaviours of health information seekers. Based on the results of the study, we present a model conceptualising health information seeking behaviours as well as the characteristics of the exploratory search approach observed in the health information seeking process.

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

consumer health information
information seeking behaviour


Applying RBF Neural Nets for Position Control of an Inter/Scara Robot This paper describes experimental results applying artificial neural networks to perform the position control of a real scara manipulator robot. The general control strategy consists of a neural controller that operates in parallel with a conventional controller based on the feedback error learning architecture. The main advantage of this architecture is that it does not require any modification of the previous conventional controller algorithm. MLP and RBF neural networks trained on-line have been used, without requiring any previous knowledge about the system to be controlled. These approach has performed very successfully, with better results obtained with the RBF networks when compared to PID and sliding mode positional controllers.

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

manipulator robots
position-force control


Optimum design of single core shear walls Design of reinforced concrete thin walled open sections subjected to combined loading such as axial force, biaxial bending moment and torsional moment is cumbersome. This is due to the fact that such structures possess very little torsional rigidity and the plane cross section does not remain plane after the deformation. In this study, an algorithm is developed for the optimum design of reinforced concrete thin walled sections. Single core lipped channel shape shear walls are considered as a design example. The design algorithm treats the area of reinforcement bars as variables in addition to cross sectional dimensions of the thin walled section. The limit state theory is used in the formulation of the design problem. In addition to displacement constraints the strain limitations in concrete and the yielding constraints for rebars are considered. A numerical procedure is presented for computations of sectional and sectorial properties. The effect of warping due to torsional deformation of the core is included using Vlasov theorems. The solution of the design problem is obtained employing the optimally criteria method. Application of the algorithm is demonstrated in designing a core structure with a lipped channel cross section.

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 B 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

shear walls
optimally criteria method
warping

reinforced concrete sections under combined loading


Reactive ion etching of polymer materials for an energy harvesting device In this paper, we have demonstrated deep reactive ion etching (RIE) of two MEMS compatible polymer materials CYTOP and TOPAS, which may be useful for energy harvesting devices. The CYTOP polymer was patterned and used as the electret for the following corona charging while the TOPAS polymer was used as the wafer bonding material. Three mask materials (Al, photoresist and Si) were investigated for the RIE process. Grass effect was observed for both polymers when Al was used as the etching mask. With an optimized RIE recipe, a 1.5?m-thick photoresist layer served well as an etching mask for 11?m-thick CYTOP and a high selectivity of 9 was achieved. The CYTOP polymer was corona charged with target surface potential after patterning. Wafer-level bonding between CYTOP and TOPAS polymers was successfully performed with a low temperature thermo-compression bonding technique.

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

energy harvesting
reactive ion etching
wafer bonding


The influence of student characteristics on the use of adaptive e-learning material Adaptive e-learning materials can help teachers to educate heterogeneous student groups. This study provides empirical data about the way academic students differ in their learning when using adaptive e-learning materials. Ninety-four students participated in the study. We determined characteristics in a heterogeneous student group by collecting demographic data and measuring motivation and prior knowledge. We also measured the learning paths students followed and learning strategies they used when working with adaptive e-learning material in a molecular biology course. We then combined these data to study if and how student characteristics relate to the learning paths and strategies they used. We observed that students did follow different learning paths. Gender did not have an effect, but (mainly Dutch) BSc students differed from (international) MSc students in the intrinsic motivation they had and the learning paths and strategies they followed when using the adaptive e-learning material. (C) 2011 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

intelligent tutoring systems
interactive learning environments
multimedia/hypermedia systems
post-secondary education
teaching/learning strategies