sharp-looking geometric partitioning A new technique, named S HARP , is presented for the partitioning of VLSI integrated circuits. S HARP is a hill-climbing heuristic that is designed to be incorporated into a partitioning-based placement algorithm. Its important features include a geometric decomposition of the layout surface into a '#'-shaped region; a multi-objective function that more accurately represents wire usage than the standard min-cut criterion, and extensive use of Steiner trees. A series of experiments demonstrates that the S HARP technique produces very high quality partitions.

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

decomposition quality use layout placement trees algorithm surface

partition
functional
object
standardization
experience
heuristics
integrated circuit
feature


Robust testing of level changes in interrupted time-series analysis Ramsey and Ramsey [Ramsey, P.P. and Ramsey, P.H., 2003, Comparing lease-squares lines for testing level changes in interrupted time-series analysis. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation , 73, 31-44.] have shown that a composite procedure (CP) can provide accurate tests of level changes in interrupted time-series analysis. A CP combines the Mann-Wald procedure [Gottman, J.M., 1981, Time-Series Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press): Mann, H.B. and Wald, A., 1943, On the statistical treatment of linear stochastic difference equations. Econometrica , 11, 173-220.] with the Kromrey and Foster-Johnson [Kromrey, J.D. and Foster-Johnson, L., 1996, Determining the efficacy of intervention: the use of effect sizes for data analysis in single-subject research. The Journal of Experimental Education , 65, 73-93.] regression procedure allowing for testing changes in level, as well as changes in both trend and level in the presence of trend effects in time-series data. Monte Carlo simulation was used to demonstrate Type I error rates for sample sizes from 5 to 20. A variety of composite procedures were found to provide such control.

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

mann-wald procedure
single versus parallel lines
autocorrelations


An event-driven high level model for the specification of laws in open multi-agent systems The agent development paradigm poses many challenges to software engineering researchers, particularly when the systems are distributed and open. They have little or no control over the actions that agents can perform. Laws are restrictions imposed by a control mechanism to deal with uncertainty and to promote open system dependability. In this paper, we present a high level event-driven conceptual model of laws. XMLaw is an alternative approach to specifying laws in open multi-agent systems that presents high level abstractions and a flexible underlying event-based model. Thus XMLaw allows for flexible composition of the elements from its conceptual model and is flexible enough to accept new elements.

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

interaction laws
multi-agent systems
electronic institutions
governance
event-driven
open systems


Crosstalk-Canceling Multimode Interconnect Using Transmitter Encoding A new implementation approach to cancel crosstalk using modal decomposition on a multiconductor transmission bundle is presented. The proposed approach requires a CODEC only at the transmitter, not at both the transmitter and receiver. This gives potential for more flexibility, lower power, better scaling, and ease of implementation. A circuit is presented along with the simulation results.

O B I O O B 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

encoding
modal decomposition
multiconductor transmission
multimode interconnect


Development of a Mandarin-English bilingual Speech Recognition System for real world music retrieval In recent decades, there has been a great deal of research into the problem of bilingual speech recognition - to develop a recognizer that can handle inter- and intra-sentential language switching between two languages. This paper presents our recent work on the development of a grammar-constrained, Mandarin-English bilingual Speech Recognition System (MESRS) for real world music retrieval. Two of the main difficult issues in handling the bilingual speech recognition systems for real world applications are tackled in this paper. One is to balance the performance and the complexity of the bilingual speech recognition system; the other is to effectively deal with the matrix language accents in embedded language**. In order to process the intra-sentential language switching and reduce the amount of data required to robustly estimate statistical models, a compact single set of bilingual acoustic models derived by phone set merging and clustering is developed instead of using two separate monolingual models for each language. In our study, a novel Two-pass phone clustering method based on Confusion Matrix (TCM) is presented and compared with the log-likelihood measure method. Experiments testify that TCM can achieve better performance. Since potential system users' native language is Mandarin which is regarded as a matrix language in our application, their pronunciations of English as the embedded language usually contain Mandarin accents. In order to deal with the matrix language accents in embedded language, different non-native adaptation approaches are investigated. Experiments show that model retraining method outperforms the other common adaptation methods such as Maximum A Posteriori (MAP). With the effective incorporation of approaches on phone clustering and non-native adaptation, the Phrase Error Rate (PER) of MESRS for English utterances was reduced by 24.47% relatively compared to the baseline monolingual English system while the PER on Mandarin utterances was comparable to that of the baseline monolingual Mandarin system. The performance for bilingual utterances achieved 22.37% relative PER reduction.

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

bilingual speech recognition
phone clustering
tcm

log-likelihood measure
non-native adaptation
mandarin-english


Empirical evaluation of reuse sensitiveness of complexity metrics Measuring software products and processes is essential for improving software productivity and quality. In order to evaluate the complexity of object-oriented software, several complexity metrics have been proposed. Among them, Chidamber and Kemerers metrics are the most well-known for object-oriented software. Their metrics evaluate the complexity of the classes in terms of internal, inheritance, and coupling complexity. Though the reused classes of the class library usually have better quality than the newly-developed ones, their metrics deal with inheritance and coupling complexity in the same way. This article first proposes a revision of the Chidamber and Kemerers metrics which can be applied to software which had been constructed by reusing software components. Then, we give an analysis of data collected from the development of an object-oriented software using a GUI framework. We compare the original metrics with the revised ones by evaluating the accuracy of estimating the effort to fix faults and show the validity and usefulness of the revised metrics.

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 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 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


development of e-commerce statistics and the implications This text has analyzed the development of E-commerce in some developed countries such as Canada, U.S.A., Japan, etc and put forward several suggestions on how to set up the system of E-commerce in our country taking the national conditions of our country into account.

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

statistical survey
e-commerce statistics
e-commerce


A new approach to video format conversion using bidirectional motion estimation and hybrid error concealment To display different image/video sources on different display systems, video format conversion techniques are needed. In this study, a new approach to video format conversion using bidirectional motion estimation and hybrid error concealment is proposed. In the proposed approach, both the spatial information and the temporal information within an image sequence are employed. In particular, the temporal information obtained by means of bidirectional motion estimation is used in both interlaced-to-progressive conversion and frame rate conversion. A hybrid "error" concealment method developed by Chu and Leou [19] is modified to interpolate the remaining (unfilled) pixels within each intermediate frame. Based on the simulation results obtained in this study, the performance of the proposed approach is shown through comparison to be superior to (more robust than) that of several existing approaches.

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

video format conversion
frame rate conversion
bidirectional motion estimation
hybrid error concealment


tight bounds for strategyproof classification Strategyproof (SP) classification considers situations in which a decision-maker must classify a set of input points with binary labels, minimizing expected error. Labels of input points are reported by self-interested agents, who may lie so as to obtain a classifier more closely matching their own labels. These lies would create a bias in the data, and thus motivate the design of truthful mechanisms that discourage false reporting. We here answer questions left open by previous research on strategyproof classification [12, 13, 14], in particular regarding the best approximation ratio (in terms of social welfare) that an SP mechanism can guarantee for n agents. Our primary result is a lower bound of 3--2/ n on the approximation ratio of SP mechanisms under the shared inputs assumption; this shows that the previously known upper bound (for uniform weights) is tight. The proof relies on a result from Social Choice theory, showing that any SP mechanism must select a dictator at random, according to some fixed distribution. We then show how different randomizations can improve the best known mechanism when agents are weighted, matching the lower bound with a tight upper bound. These results contribute both to a better understanding of the limits of SP classification, as well as to the development of similar tools in other, related domains such as SP facility location.

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


Modeling of urban growth dynamics and its impact on surface runoff characteristics A probabilistic constraint based binary CA model is developed to simulate the futuristic scenarios of urban growth. Spatial data exploration techniques were used to derive the transition rules for CA model. NRCS CN method is found to be suitable to assess the runoff characteristics of ungauged catchments. CA model delivers the temporal inputs to the hydrologic model and is consistent with the latter. Integration of these techniques is vital to assess the relative change in the runoff hydrographs on temporal scale.

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

cellular automata
nrcs-cn method
ungauged watersheds


Some lattice attacks on DSA and ECDSA In this paper, using the LLL reduction method and computing the integral points of two classes of conics, we develop attacks on DSA and ECDSA in case where the secret and the ephemeral key of a signed message or theirs modular inverses are sufficiently small and in case where the ephemeral keys or theirs modular inverses of two signed messages are sufficiently small.

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

public key cryptography
digital signature algorithm
elliptic curve algorithm lll
discrete logarithm
diophantine equations


The stable set of associated prime ideals of a polymatroidal ideal The associated prime ideals of powers of polymatroidal ideals are studied, including the stable set of associated prime ideals of this class of ideals. It is shown that polymatroidal ideals have the persistence property and for transversal polymatroids and polymatroidal ideals of Veronese type the index of stability and the stable set of associated ideals is determined explicitly.

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

associated prime ideals
polymatroidal ideals


Optimizing extreme learning machines via ridge regression and batch intrinsic plasticity Extreme learning machines are randomly initialized single-hidden layer feed-forward neural networks where the training is restricted to the output weights in order to achieve fast learning with good performance. This contribution shows how batch intrinsic plasticity, a novel and efficient scheme for input specific tuning of non-linear transfer functions, and ridge regression can be combined to optimize extreme learning machines without searching for a suitable hidden layer size. We show that our scheme achieves excellent performance on a number of standard regression tasks and regression applications from robotics.

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

learning
batch intrinsic plasticity
ridge regression

neural network
extreme learning machine
regularization


Infant cry classification to identify asphyxia using time-frequency analysis and radial basis neural networks A cry is the first verbal communication of infants and it is described as a loud, high-pitched sound made by infants in response to certain situations. Infant cry signals can be used to identify physical or psychological status of an infant. Recently, acoustic analysis of infant cry signal has shown promising results and it has been proven to be an excellent tool to investigate the pathological status of an infant. This paper proposes short-time Fourier transform (SIFT) based time-frequency analysis of infant cry signals. Few statistical features are derived from the time-frequency plot of infant cry signals and used as features to quantify infant cry signals. Two types of radial basis neural networks such as Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) and General Regression Neural Network are employed as classifiers for discriminating infant cry signals. Two classes of infant cry signals are considered such as normal cry signals and pathological cry signals of infants with asphyxia. For comparison, the proposed features are also tested using two neural network models such as Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Time-Delay Neural Network (TDNN) trained by scaled conjugate gradient algorithm. The experimental results show that the PNN and GRNN give very promising classification accuracy compared to MLP and TDNN and the proposed methods can effectively classify normal and pathological infant cries of infants with asphyxia. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

feature extraction
short-time fourier transform


Total energy optimal multicasting in wireless ad hoc networks In this paper, we present our novel algorithm, SOR (Shrinking Overlapped Range), for the minimum energy multicasting in wireless ad hoc networks. The heuristics in the literature have not considered changing the intermediate tree structure and this may result in worse performance even after local improvements at the end. In SOR, we extensively change the intermediate tree structure to maintain tighter structure in terms of energy consumption. We do so by shrinking the overlapped transmission range following the idea of WMA (wireless multicast advantage) property and by allowing the selection of internal transmissions which further changes the tree structure. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results show SOR outperforms other heuristics in the literature.

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

energy efficiency
wireless ad hoc networking


Development of web database portfolio system with PACS connectivity for undergraduate health education and continuing professional development Increasingly, the use of web database portfolio systems is noted in medical and health education, and for continuing professional development (CPD). However, the functions of existing systems are not always aligned with the corresponding pedagogy and hence reflection is often lost. This paper presents the development of a tailored web database portfolio system with Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) connectivity, which is based on the portfolio pedagogy. Following a pre-determined portfolio framework, a system model with the components of web, database and mail servers, server side scripts, and a Query/Retrieve (Q/R) broker for conversion between Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and Q/R service class of Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard, is proposed. The system was piloted with seventy-seven volunteers. A tailored web database portfolio system (http://radep.hti.polyu.edu.hk) was developed. Technological arrangements for reinforcing portfolio pedagogy include popup windows (reminders) with guidelines and probing questions of 'collect', 'select' and 'reflect' on evidence of development/experience, limitation in the number of files (evidence) to be uploaded, the 'Evidence Insertion' functionality to link the individual uploaded artifacts with reflective writing, capability to accommodate diversity of contents and convenient interfaces for reviewing portfolios and communication. Evidence to date suggests the system supports users to build their portfolios with sound hypertext reflection under a facilitator's guidance, and with reviewers to monitor students' progress providing feedback and comments online in a programme-wide situation. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

picture archiving and communication system


A comprehensive method for comparing mental models of dynamic systems Mental models are the basis on which managers make decisions even though external decision support systems may provide help. Research has demonstrated that more comprehensive and dynamic mental models seem to be at the foundation for improved policies and decisions. Eliciting and comparing such models can systematically explicate key variables and their main underlying structures. In addition, superior dynamic mental models can be identified. This paper reviews existing studies which measure and compare mental models. It shows that the methods used to compare such models lack to account for relevant aspects of dynamic systems, such as, time delays in causal links, feedback structures, and the polarities of feedback loops. Mental models without those properties are mostly static models. To overcome these limitations of the methods to compare mental models, we enhance the widely used distance ratio approach (Markczy and Goldberg, 1995) so as to comprehend these dynamic characteristics and detect differences among mental models at three levels: the level of elements, the level of individual feedback loops, and the level of the complete model. Our contribution lies in a new method to compare explicated mental models, not to elicit such models. An application of the method shows that this previously non-existent information is essential for understanding differences between managers mental models of dynamic systems. Thereby, a further path is created to critically analyze and elaborate the models managers use in real world decision making. We discuss the benefits and limitations of our approach for research about mental models and decision making and conclude by identifying directions for further research for operational researchers.

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


Quasilinearization for initial value problems involving differential equations with "maxima" An approximate method for solving initial value problems for first order scalar nonlinear differential equations with "maxima" is given. This method uses lower and upper solutions of the given problem, and in a sense is a variant of the method of quasilinearization. The main features of proposed method are that it is constructive in nature, and the obtained successive approximations of the unknown solution converge quadratically. Each successive approximation is a solution of an appropriately chosen initial value problem. In fact, a new scheme for constructing the initial value problems is suggested. An example which illustrates the advantages of the suggested algorithm is also included. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

B O O O O O B I O B 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 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

differential equations
maxima
quasilinearization


Adjoint-based fluid flow control and optimisation with lattice Boltzmann methods A lattice Boltzmann (LB) framework to solve fluid flow control and optimisation problems numerically is presented. Problems are formulated on a mesoscopic basis. In a side condition, the dynamics of a Newtonian fluid is described by a family of simplified Boltzmann-like equations, namely BGKBoltzmann equations, which are linked to an incompressible NavierStokes equation. It is proposed to solve the non-linear optimisation problem by a line search algorithm. The needed derivatives are obtained by deriving the adjoint equations, referred to as adjoint BGKBoltzmann equations. The primal equations are discretised by standard lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) while for the adjoint equations a novel discretisation strategy is introduced. The approach follows the main ideas behind LBM and is therefore referred to as adjoint lattice Boltzmann methods (ALBM). The corresponding algorithm retains most of the basic features of LB algorithms. In particular, it enables a highly-efficient parallel implementation and thus solving large-scale fluid flow control and optimisation problems. The overall solution strategy, the derivation of a prototype adjoint BGKBoltzmann equation, the novel ALBM and its parallel realisation as well as its validation are discussed in detail in this article. Numerical and performance results are presented for a series of steady-state distributed control problems with up to approximately 1.6 million unknown control parameters obtained on a high performance computer with up to 256 processing units.

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

fluid flow control and optimisation
adjoint bgkboltzmann equation
lattice boltzmann methods

parallelisation
computational fluid dynamics
adjoint lattice boltzmann methods


A GJK-based approach to contact force feasibility and distribution for multi-contact robots This paper presents a new approach to two fundamental problems concerning the equilibrium of a multi-contact robot: the contact force feasibility (CFF) and the contact force distribution (CFD). The CFF is to determine if there exist feasible contact forces to maintain a robot in equilibrium without breaking its contacts with the environment, while the CFD is to compute the minimum contact forces if a feasible solution exists. A general measure of overall contact force magnitude is defined, which includes the traditional measure (i.e., the sum of normal force components) and a more complex measure (i.e., the maximum of normal force components) as special cases. We first reduce the two problems into verifying the existence of nonnegative solutions and determining the nonnegative minimum one-norm solution to a system of linear equations, respectively. To obtain the explicit formulation of the linear system, it is required to compute the Minkowski sum of point sets, which usually is computationally expensive. Then, based on the GJK distance algorithm, we develop an iterative algorithm, which enables us to solve the linear system without calculating the Minkowski sum and compute the CFF and CFD in real time.

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

equilibrium
contact force distribution
gjk distance algorithm

multi-contact robots
linear programming
minimum norm solution


Principal-agent learning In this paper we present a merging, and hence an extension, of two recent learning methods, utility-based learning and strategic or adversarial learning. Recently, utility-based learning brings to the forefront the learner's utility function during induction. Strategic learning anticipates strategic activity in the induction process when the instances are intelligent agents such as in classification problems involving people or organizations. We call the resulting merged model principal-agent learning and present an induction process and example. Our model collapses to utility-based models when the agents do not engage in strategic behavior and to strategic learning when the learner's utility is not considered. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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

discriminant analysis
principal-agent
strategic gaming
utility-based learning


Dynamics of trust revision: Using health infomediaries This study explores the process by which trust evolves over time. There have been a number of studies underscoring the importance of trust in the online environment. However, most trust studies have concentrated on the initial trust, and there is little known about how trust beliefs evolve over time. The dynamics of trust are of particular importance in the use of infomediaries (online information providers), among which health infomediaries are the most important for Web consumers in dealing with their wellness and health issues. We investigate the evolution of trust using the case of health infomediaries. The examination of the temporal changes in trust was carried out through two approaches-comparative statics and dynamic analyses. The research method was laboratory experiment and the data were collected for two episodes of encounters. Two comparative statics models and one dynamic model were estimated in order to examine the parameter changes from one episode of encounter to the next as well as the dynamics of belief changes. The results of analysis show that the structure of trust changes over time and information quality becomes the single most important antecedent in infomediary trust building in the later stages of use. Furthermore, our study also indicates that satisfaction plays an important role in changing Web customers' trust beliefs. Contributions as well as research and managerial implications are discussed.

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

agency theory
change in trust beliefs
emotional trust
information integration theory
trust attitude


Fast algorithms for spherical harmonic expansions, II We provide an efficient algorithm for calculating, at appropriately chosen points on the two-dimensional surface of the unit sphere in R3 R 3 , the values of functions that are specified by their spherical harmonic expansions (a procedure known as the inverse spherical harmonic transform). We also provide an efficient algorithm for calculating the coefficients in the spherical harmonic expansions of functions that are specified by their values at these appropriately chosen points (a procedure known as the forward spherical harmonic transform). The algorithms are numerically stable, and, if the number of points in our standard tensor-product discretization of the surface of the sphere is proportional to l2 l 2 , then the algorithms have costs proportional to l2ln(l) l 2 ln ( l ) at any fixed precision of computations. Several numerical examples illustrate the performance of the algorithms.

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


Measuring transit system accessibility using a modified two-step floating catchment technique Previous research has drawn attention to the importance of measuring accessibility to public transit services for transport planning and decision-making purposes and to the use of GIS to produce accessibility maps. Existing measures have been criticised for their lack of sophistication and reliance on simple operations such as Euclidean buffering. This article introduces an accessibility measure based on enhanced 'floating catchment' techniques, which have to date not been applied to measure access to public transport opportunities. We demonstrate that, after essential modifications to reflect the characteristics of transit service provision, this approach captures many detailed aspects of accessibility including proximity, the balance between service supply and demand, cumulative opportunity and temporal availability. We illustrate its application using a case study based in South Wales, integrating publicly available digital transport timetables and information on bus stop locations with geospatial analysis tools to provide a realistic appraisal of bus transit accessibility. Such measures could clearly form the basis of future studies of social exclusion and access to public transport opportunities. We conclude by drawing attention to the potential for including more intelligent demand-side and supply-side modelling inputs and by reiterating the policy importance of developing more accurate evaluations of the current and future state of the public transport network.

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

public transit
accessibility
floating catchment
wales


An integrated information fusion approach based on the theory of evidence and group decision-making Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence has been employed as a major method for reasoning with multiple evidence. The Dempster's rule of combination is however incapable of managing highly conflicting evidence coming from different information sources at the normalization step. Extending current rules, we incorporate the ideas of group decision-making into the theory of evidence and propose an integrated approach to automatically identify and discount unreliable evidence. An adaptive robust combination rule that incorporates the information contained in the consistent focal elements is then constructed to combine such evidence. This rule adjusts the weights of the conjunctive and disjunctive rules according to a function of the consistency of focal elements. The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical experiments. Compared to existing combination rules, the proposed approach can obtain a reasonable and reliable decision, as well as the level of uncertainty about it. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

adaptive robust combination rule
information fusion
theory of evidence

discount on evidence
group decision making


Utility-based admission control for mobile WiMAX networks This paper presents a novel utility-based connection admission control (CAC) scheme for IEEE 802.16e broadband wireless access networks. We develop specific utility functions for real-time and non-real-time services coupled with a handover process. Given these utility functions we characterize the network utility with respect to the allocated bandwidth, and further propose a CAC algorithm which admits a connection that conducts to the greatest utility so as to maximize the total resource utilization. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CAC algorithm in terms of network utility.

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


Crowdsourcing genomic analyses of ash and ash dieback power to the people Ash dieback is a devastating fungal disease of ash trees that has swept across Europe and recently reached the UK. This emergent pathogen has received little study in the past and its effect threatens to overwhelm the ash population. In response to this we have produced some initial genomics datasets and taken the unusual step of releasing them to the scientific community for analysis without first performing our own. In this manner we hope to crowdsource analyses and bring the expertise of the community to bear on this problem as quickly as possible. Our data has been released through our website at oadb.tsl.ac.uk and a public GitHub repository.

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


Multicloud: Multigrid convergence with a meshless operator The primary objective of this work is to develop and test a new convergence acceleration technique we call multicloud. Multicloud is well-founded in the mathematical basis of multigrid, but relies on a meshless operator on coarse levels. The meshless operator enables extremely simple and automatic coarsening procedures for arbitrary meshes using arbitrary fine level discretization schemes. The performance of multicloud is compared with established multigrid techniques for structured and unstructured meshes for the Euler equations on two-dimensional test cases. Results indicate comparable convergence rates per unit work for multicloud and multigrid. However, because of its mesh and scheme transparency, multicloud may be applied to a wide array of problems with no modification of fine level schemes as is often required with agglomeration techniques. The implication is that multicloud can be implemented in a completely modular fashion, allowing researchers to develop fine level algorithms independent of the convergence accelerator for complex three-dimensional problems.

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

meshfree
gridless
gridfree
radial basis functions
convergence rate


DSP-Based Parallel Implementation of Speeded-Up Robust Features Robust local image features have become crucial components of many state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms. Due to limited hardware resources, computing local features on embedded system is not an easy task. In this paper, we propose an efficient parallel computing framework for speeded-up robust features with an orientation towards multi-DSP based embedded system. We optimize modules in SURF to better utilize the capability of DSP chips. We also design a compact data layout to adapt to the limited memory resource and to increase data access bandwidth. A data-driven barrier and workload balance schemes are presented to synchronize parallel working chips and reduce overall cost. The experiment shows our implementation achieves competitive time efficiency compared with related works.

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

digital signal processing
speeded-up robust features
image matching


Evaluation of mass spectra from organic compounds assumed to be present in cometary grains. Exploratory data analysis From about 60 organic compounds, mass spectra have been measured by Cf-252 ionization mass spectrometry (PDMS). The substances and the data are relevant for future experiments near a comet by the space research project COSIMA (a time-of-flight mass spectrometer for secondary ions) on board of the ESA mission ROSETTA. The spectra have been transformed into a set of appropriate spectral features (x-variables); the corresponding chemical structures have been characterized by binary substructure descriptors (gamma-variables). PLS-2 mappings exhibit good correlations between the x- and the gamma-components. PLS spectrum-substructure mappings supported the detection of structural classes that are well reflected by spectral data. PCA with spectral data was less efficient for this purpose. The found structural classes are candidates for the development of spectral classifiers for the COSIMA project. Interpretation of the loading plots indicated spectral properties which are characteristic for substance classes. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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

spectrum-structure relationships
pls mapping


effects of interface design upon user productivity Eight subjects experienced in the use of both 7000 and 11000 series oscilloscopes performed four typical tasks with each scope. The 7000 interface is a dedicated physical control system, while the 11000 system employs icons, pop-up menus, assignable controls, and a touch panel. On each trial the task time and measurement accuracy were recorded. Each experimental session was video recorded and verbal protocols were collected. These allowed decomposition of the subjects' behaviors into categories that would account for performance differences between the two scopes. A 77\% performance difference is explained in terms of the cognitive factors of strategy selections and recall of operational details.

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

measurement
task
video
use
performance
account
interface design
control
user
decomposition
accuracy
touch
physical

interfaces
timing
select
product
strategies
systems
experimentation
cognition
factor
behavior
assignment
effect
control systems


Perfect (0,+/- 1)-matrices and perfect bidirected graphs Perfect (0, +/-1)-matrices and perfect bidirected graphs are independently defined but are closely related. In this paper, we discuss these relations and give several characterizations of perfectness. The generalized stable set problem associated with bidirected graphs is a generalization of the maximum weighted stable set problem. We also give a brief proof that if a given bidirected graph is perfect, then the problem can be solved in polynomial time. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Steady state modeling and simulation of an industrial sugar continuous crystallizer The profile of supersaturation along a continuous crystallizer of sugar factories, is the decisive factor that determines the performance of this apparatus. In order to control this profile. a mathematical model was developed taking into account the main physicochemical phenomena involved in crystallization process. The model is based on flow pattern, which was assumed and validated against plant measurements using a tracer test. The steady state mathematical model developed describes the most important aspects of the crystallizer behavior in each compartment: supersaturation, crystal size distribution and flow rate of the product crystals. The model can also describe the undesirable behavior such as dissolution and nucleation. Validation of the developed model was performed using industrial data. A parametric sensitivity study confirmed that the syrup supply distribution is the main variable that should be manipulated to achieve good performance for the crystallizer. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

sugar factories
modeling
steady state
crystal size distribution

continuous crystallizers
residence time distribution


The nature of expertise: A review This paper reviews the complex topic of expertise. It begins with an explanation for the range of interest and viewpoints, and moves on to a discussion of the nature and study of expertise. The diversity in definitions, domains, disciplines, and the impact of these factors on approaches to investigation, are offered as possible explanations for some of the differences that appear to run through the literature. Specific attention is given to issues that may concern ergonomists interested in understanding expertise from the perspective of work in complex and dynamic settings. We suggest a move away from traditional novice-expert experimental designs to study of work in a naturalistic way, studying tasks and activities that are sufficiently challenging so that real expertise can be elicited.

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


Query processing techniques for multimedia presentations A multimedia presentation is a synchronized, and possibly interactive, delivery of multimedia data to users. We expect that, in the future, multimedia presentations will be stored into and queried from multimedia databases. In an earlier work, we have designed a graphical query language, called GVISUAL, that allows users to query multimedia presentations based on content information. In this paper, we discuss GVISUAL query processing techniques for multimedia presentations. More specifically, we discuss the translation of GVISUAL queries into an operator-based language, called O-Algebra, with three new operators, and efficient implementations of the new O-Algebra operators using a coding system called nodecodes.

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 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 B I 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

multimedia databases
query processing
multimedia presentations


Phonetically rich and balanced text and speech corpora for Arabic language This paper describes the preparation, recording, analyzing, and evaluation of a new speech corpus for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The speech corpus contains a total of 415 sentences recorded by 40 (20 male and 20 female) Arabic native speakers from 11 different Arab countries representing three major regions (Levant, Gulf, and Africa). Three hundred and sixty seven sentences are considered as phonetically rich and balanced, which are used for training Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems. The rich characteristic is in the sense that it must contain all phonemes of Arabic language, whereas the balanced characteristic is in the sense that it must preserve the phonetic distribution of Arabic language. The remaining 48 sentences are created for testing purposes, which are mostly foreign to the training sentences and there are hardly any similarities in words. In order to evaluate the speech corpus, Arabic ASR systems were developed using the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Sphinx 3 tools at both training and testing/decoding levels. The speech engine uses 3-emitting state Hidden Markov Models (HMM) for tri-phone based acoustic models. Based on experimental analysis of about 8h of training speech data, the acoustic model is best using continuous observations probability model of 16 Gaussian mixture distributions and the state distributions were tied to 500 senones. The language model contains uni-grams, bi-grams, and tri-grams. For same speakers with different sentences, Arabic ASR systems obtained average Word Error Rate (WER) of 9.70%. For different speakers with same sentences, Arabic ASR systems obtained average WER of 4.58%, whereas for different speakers with different sentences, Arabic ASR systems obtained average WER of 12.39%.

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

modern standard arabic
speech corpus
phonetically rich

text corpus
phonetically balanced
automatic continuous speech recognition


Design, navigation, and structure of a hypermedia application for the teaching-learning of pneumatic engineering design drawing This article presents a hypermedia application used to study pneumatics that serves to support the lecturer in the lecture hall and as a self-study tool for the student. The reason behind the creation of this application is as follows: currently, there is no application in the market, which is equipped with a navigational system to guide the student through this subject matter, which has a system for self -assessment, and a system to identify those concepts that are of greatest interest or difficulty for the student. The proposed system monitors the time each user spends studying each section, as well as the dates on which each one was studied. Moreover, students are able to monitor their progress in learning the subject matter and identify those areas in which they have to improve. They are also able to simulate any pneumatic circuit in order to check its feasibility or detect any errors. The application has an open, modular structure, which enables changes to be made without its structure being affected. Use of the hypermedia application has supported the tutorial work of lecturers and reduced time spent elaborating on subject matter in the lecture hall, at the same time as facilitating its study.(C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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

pneumatic engineering educational engineering materials


On solving efficiently the view selection problem under bag and bag-set semantics ? Query subexpressions do not always suffice for finding an optimal solution. Lgviews and subexpression views suffice for solving the bag version of the problem. d-Lgviews and subexpression views suffice for solving the bag-set version of the problem. Path-viewsets can be used to solve the bag version of the problem for path-queries. We prove significant conditions that useful viewsets satisfy under bag-set semantics.

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

query rewriting
bag semantics
bag-set semantics


Robust validity index for a modified subtractive clustering algorithm This study proposes a novel robust validity index that evaluates the fitness of a partition generated by SC algorithm in terms of three properties: compactness, separation and partition index. Several experiments confirm that the preferences of the proposed index outperform all others.

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


Huge progeny production during the transient of a quasi-species model of viral infection, reproduction and mutation Eigen's quasi-species model describes viruses as ensembles of different mutants of a high fitness "master" genotype. Mutants are assumed to have lower fitness than the master type, yet they coexist with it forming the quasi-species. When the mutation rate is sufficiently high, the master type no longer survives and gets replaced by a wide range of mutant types, thus destroying the quasi-species. It is the so-called "error catastrophe". But natural selection acts on phenotypes, not genotypes, and huge amounts of genotypes yield the same phenotype. An important consequence of this is the appearance of beneficial mutations which increase the fitness of mutants. A model has been recently proposed to describe quasi-species in the presence of beneficial mutations. This model lacks the error catastrophe of Eigen's model and predicts a steady state in which the viral population grows exponentially. Extinction can only occur if the infectivity of the quasi-species is so low that this exponential is negative. In this work I investigate the transient of this model when infection is started from a small amount of low fitness virions. I prove that, beyond an initial regime where viral population decreases (and can go extinct), the growth of the population is super-exponential. Hence this population quickly becomes so huge that selection due to lack of host cells to be infected begins to act before the steady state is reached. This result suggests that viral infection may widespread before the virus has developed its optimal form. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

evolution
quasi-species
replicator-mutator
population dynamics


Load mitigation in cellular data networks by peer data sharing over WLAN channels The exponential growth of mobile data users and services places a heavy burden on the limited wireless bandwidth of cellular data networks. The situation will be exacerbated with the advent of high bandwidth multimedia applications for mobile devices. In this paper, we propose an architecture, called the Cellular-based Ad hoc Peer Data Sharing system (CAPS), that can reduce the load on the cellular network while improving the wireless data access latency. In CAPS, mobile hosts in a cellular network form an overlay multi-hop wireless network. This ad hoc network acts as a virtual cache that enables data sharing among mobile hosts. Participating mobiles share the contents of their local caches with other mobiles. A subset of mobile hosts keep track of the location of objects with minimal overhead to facilitate fast location discovery in the peer-to-peer ad hoc network. Using CAPS, popular objects can be obtained over the fast ad hoc channel without accessing the cellular infrastructure, thereby reducing the load on the cellular network and improving data access latency. We evaluate the performance of this proposed architecture through simulations using ns-2, varying control parameters across a variety of scenarios, and find that CAPS reduces the timeouts of the user requests by 7090% and reduces the traffic at the base station by up to 60%.

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

cellular data networks
peer data sharing


From the archives: Reading Stimson's mail Henry L. Stimson is best known to readers of this journal for his quote, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," and his shutting down of Herbert O. Yardley's black chamber. The present piece reveals a second cryptologic episode from his life. During WWII, Stimson made a request of hundreds of libraries that they withdraw all material on explosives, secret inks, and ciphers from circulation and report the names of anyone requesting these materials to the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). A pair of original documents is reproduced for the first time along with some references. A list of libraries contacted is also provided.

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

american library association (ala)
henry i
federal bureau of investigation (fbi)


Location information disclosure in location-based social network services: Privacy calculus, benefit structure, and gender differences Hedonic benefits have stronger impacts on perceived benefits than utilitarian benefits. There is an interaction effect between perceived benefits and privacy risks. Males stress on utilitarian benefits while females stress on hedonic benefits. Males stress on perceived benefits while females stress on privacy risks.

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

information disclosure
privacy calculus
benefit structure

location-based service
social networks
gender difference


Partial iterates for symmetrizing non-parametric color correction Mosaic generation is a central tool in various fields ranging way beyond the scope of photogrammetry and requires the radiometry and color of the images to be corrected. Correction can either be done by a global parametric approach (looking for an optimal gain or gamma for each image of the mosaic), or by iteratively correcting image pairs with a non-parametric approach. Such non-parametric approaches allow for much finer correction but are asymmetric, i.e. they require the choice of a source image that will be corrected to match a target image. Thus the result on the whole mosaic will be very dependant on the order in which images are corrected. In this paper, we propose to use partial iterates to symmetrize non-parametric correction in order to solve this problem. Partial iterates formalize what partially applying a bijective function means and we explain how this can be done in both the continuous and discrete domain. This mechanism is applied to a simple non-parametric approach (histogram transfer of the luminance) to show its potential.

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

mosaic
color correction
radiometry
image


Efficient generation of high-quality unstructured surface and volume grids Procedures are presented for efficient generation of high-quality unstructured surface and volume grids. The overall procedure is based on the well-proven Advancing-Front/Local-Reconnection (AFLR) method. The AFLR triangular/tetrahedral grid generation procedure is a combination of automatic point creation, advancing type ideal point placement, and connectivity optimization schemes. A valid grid is maintained throughout the grid generation process. This provides a framework for implementing efficient local search operations using a simple data structure. It also provides a means for smoothly distributing the desired point spacing in the field using a point distribution function. This function is propagated through the field by interpolation from the boundary point spacing or by specified growth normal to the boundaries. Points are generated using either advancing-front type point placement for isotropic elements, advancing-point type point placement for isotropic right angle elements, or advancing-normal type point placement for high-aspect-ratio elements. The connectivity for new of the points is initially obtained by direct subdivision of elements that contain them. Local-reconnection with a min-max type (minimize the maximum angle) type criterion is then used to optimize the connectivity. The overall procedure is applied repetitively until a complete field grid is obtained. An advancing-normal procedure is coupled with AFLR for anisotropic tetrahedral and pentahedral element grids. Advancing along prescribed normals from solid boundaries generates layers of anisotropic elements. The points are generated such that either pentahedral or tetrahedral elements with an implied connectivity can be directly recovered. The AFLR surface grid procedure uses an approximate physical space grid to define the surface during grid generation. The mapped space coordinates are mapped back to the actual surface at completion. Multiple surface definition patches are grouped into a single surface. A global mapping transformation is generated for the single surface using the grouped surface connectivity. The mapping coordinates are obtained by solving a coupled set of Laplacian equations. The overall procedure has been applied to a wide variety of configurations. Selected results are presented which demonstrate that high-quality unstructured grids can be efficiently and consistently generated for complex configurations.

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

advancing-front
anisotropic meshing
local-reconnection
surface mapping
surface meshing


Modelling dowel action of discrete reinforcing bars for finite element analysis of concrete structures In the finite element analysis of reinforced concrete structures, discrete representation of the steel reinforcing bars is considered advantageous over smeared representation because of the more realistic modelling of their bond-slip behaviour. However, there is up to now limited research on how to simulate the dowel action of discrete reinforcing bars, which is an important component of shear transfer in cracked concrete structures. Herein, a numerical model for the dowel action of discrete reinforcing bars is developed. It features derivation of the dowel stiffness based on the beam-on-elastic-foundation theory and direct assemblage of the dowel stiffness matrix into the stiffness matrices of adjoining concrete elements. The dowel action model is incorporated in a nonlinear finite element program based on secant stiffness formulation and application to deep beams tested by others demonstrates that the incorporation of dowel action can improve the accuracy of the finite element analysis.

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

dowel action
finite element analysis
reinforced concrete


Discussion on Structural reliability analysis through fuzzy number approach, with application to stability We comment on the fuzzy number approach presented by Marco Savoia [Comput. Struct. 80 (2002) 1087]. Savoias statement regarding computational procedures for fuzzy structural analysis is corrected. A general and powerful numerical algorithm for nonlinear fuzzy structural analysis is presented.

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

uncertainty
fuzzy sets
?-discretization
?-level optimization


An exploratory research of elitist probability schema and its applications in evolutionary algorithms An important problem in the study of evolutionary algorithms is how to continuously predict promising solutions while simultaneously escaping from local optima. In this paper, we propose an elitist probability schema (EPS) for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Our schema is an index of binary strings that expresses the similarity of an elitist population at every string position. EPS expresses the accumulative effect of fitness selection with respect to the coding similarity of the population. For each generation, EPS can quantify the coding similarity of the population objectively and quickly. One of our key innovations is that EPS can continuously predict promising solutions while simultaneously escaping from local optima in most cases. To demonstrate the abilities of the EPS, we designed an elitist probability schema genetic algorithm and an elitist probability schema compact genetic algorithm. These algorithms are estimations of distribution algorithms (EDAs). We provided a fair comparison with the persistent elitist compact genetic algorithm (PeCGA), quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QEA), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) for the 01 knapsack problem. The proposed algorithms converged quicker than PeCGA, QEA, and PSO, especially for the large knapsack problem. Furthermore, the computation time of the proposed algorithms was less than some EDAs that are based on building explicit probability models, and was approximately the same as QEA and PSO. This is acceptable for evolutionary algorithms, and satisfactory for EDAs. The proposed algorithms are successful with respect to convergence performance and computation time, which implies that EPS is satisfactory.

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

coding similarity
elitist probability schema
genetic algorithm
evolutionary algorithm


A BEM formulation for homogenization of composites with randomly distributed fibers In recent papers by the authors, deterministic models of distribution of fibers in composite structures have been studied. For example, problems related to optimization, homogenization, localization, etc., have been solved. The extended HashinShtrikman (HS) variational principles served as a starting point (eigenparameters were involved in the formulations), and the comparative medium was introduced. The BEM formulations were then admissible and efficient. The formulations of the above-mentioned problems require the restriction of geometry of the fibers to certain locally reasonable structures, e.g. to periodic or pseudo-periodic cells. Since the condition of regular distribution of fibers is violated in applications, and a random distribution is more probable, another extension of the HS principles is needed. In this paper, the problem is extended to the case of statistically distributed fibers. HS variational principles are formulated in terms of statistical characteristics in the domain and the eigenparameters are also involved, affected by the statistical values. Following the HS principles, an integral formulation is stated (again, thanks to the use of the comparative medium such a formulation is admissible) in a representative volume, which contains no longer regular geometry of the fibers. The boundary element method has then a special form, which is advantageous particularly for two-phase media. The above-mentioned formulation of HS variational principles with randomly distributed fields of fibers can be extended to non-linear problems (plasticity, debonding) by introducing transformation fields (eigenstresses or eigenstrains, which are involved in the formulations for completeness). The results form the research presented in this paper basically apply to homogenization of diaphysal implants. But, there is a wide range of applications of the theory introduced in this paper. Due to results from tests on the bearing composite frame of a bicycle, which has a similar structure for certain types of composites of the diaphysal implants, a typical cross-section of the bearing frame of a bicycle is studied as an example. The frame is built of a graphite-epoxy composite.

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

fiber-reinforced diaphysal implants
randomly distributed constituents


metrics and models for reordering transformations Irregular applications frequently exhibit poor performance on contemporary computer architectures, in large part because of their inefficient use of the memory hierarchy. Run-time data, and iteration-reordering transformations have been shown to improve the locality and therefore the performance of irregular benchmarks. This paper describes models for determining which combination of run-time data- and iteration-reordering heuristics will result in the best performance for a given dataset. We propose that the data- and iteration-reordering transformations be viewed as approximating minimal linear arrangements on two separate hypergraphs: a spatial locality hypergraph and a temporal locality hypergraph. Our results measure the efficacy of locality metrics based on these hypergraphs in guiding the selection of data-and iteration-reordering heuristics. We also introduce new iteration- and data-reordering heuristics based on the hypergraph models that result in better performance than do previous heuristics.

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

applications use hypergraphs performance temporal paper locality minimal spatial data heuristics

measurement
computer architecture
optimization
benchmark
approximation
metrication
timing
model
memory hierarchies
combinational
select
arrangement
locality metrics
inspector/executor
spatial locality graph
run-time reordering transformations
data locality
iter
temporal locality hypergraph


Unified 2-D X-Alignment for Improving the Observability of Response Compactors Despite the advantages of performing response compaction in integrated-circuit testing, unknown response bits (x's) inevitably reflect into loss in test quality. The distribution of these x's within the captured response, which varies for each test pattern, directly impacts the number of scan cells observed through the response compactor. In this paper, we propose a unified 2-D x-alignment technique in order to judiciously manipulate the distribution of x's in the test response prior to its compaction. The controlled response manipulation is performed on a per pattern basis, in the form of scan chain delay and intra-slice rotate operations, and with the objective that x's are aligned within as few scan slices and chains as possible. Consequently, a larger number of scan cells are observed after compaction for any test pattern. In an effort to tackle the unified 2-D x-alignment problem and to achieve maximum overall observability, we first decipher the interaction between 1-D x-alignment operations, and formulate 1-D and 2-D x-alignment operations all as maximum satisfiability (MAX-SAT) problems; a weighted MAX-SAT formulation is necessitated in the 2-D case to identify the best possible 2-D x-alignment, which may differ from back to back application of the individual best possible 1-D alignments in two dimensions. The proposed technique is test set independent, leading to a generic, simple, and cost-effective hardware implementation. While we show in this paper that x-alignment improves horizontal and vertical compactors, covering a wide spectrum of compactors, it is expected to improve other types of compactors as well by manipulating the x-distribution properly.

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

design for testability
scan-based test
test data compression


Continuous Parallel Coordinates Typical scientific data is represented on a grid with appropriate interpolation or approximation schemes, defined on a continuous domain. The visualization of such data in parallel coordinates may reveal patterns latently contained in the data and thus can improve the understanding of multidimensional relations. In this paper, we adopt the concept of continuous scatterplots for the visualization of spatially continuous input data to derive a density model for parallel coordinates. Based on the point-line duality between scatterplots and parallel coordinates, we propose a mathematical model that maps density from a continuous scatterplot to parallel coordinates and present different algorithms for both numerical and analytical computation of the resulting density field. In addition, we show how the 2-D model can be used to successively construct continuous parallel coordinates with an arbitrary number of dimensions. Since continuous parallel coordinates interpolate data values within grid cells, a scalable and dense visualization is achieved, which will be demonstrated for typical multi-variate scientific data.

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

integrating spatial and non-spatial data visualization


Factors affecting the success of business-to-business international Internet marketing (B-to-B IIM): an empirical study of UK companies Business-to-business international Internet marketing is one of the key drivers in sustaining an organisation's competitive advantage. The challenge for organisations today is to understand the factors that play a critical role in utilising Internet capabilities and their implications on business strategic objectives to enable them to compete successfully in the electronic age. Proposes 33 critical factors classified into five categories and validated empirically through a sample of 123 UK companies. Discusses the significance, importance and implications for each category and makes recommendations.

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

critical success factors
business-to-business marketing
united kingdom


Vortex surface method: some numerical problems of the potential calculation The singularities method is used to analyze the flow around an isolated profile or through a plane cascade. In this paper, a numerical study has been developed in order to discuss the accuracy of solutions. The aims of this study are summarized as follows: (1) to expose the elements that influence the method - precision in the geometrical profile definition, trailing-edge geometry, smoothing problems, number of discretization points, precision of calculation, etc.; (2) to provide an accurate solution for these different problems. For example, some profiles, obtained by the Joukowski transformation, present, in spite of an analytical definition, a crossing of the suction and pressure sides at the trailing edge. This crossing causes a serious error in the velocity field computation. A new procedure to solve this problem is presented. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

matrix stability
singularity method
solution accuracy


T-Man: Gossip-based fast overlay topology construction ? Large-scale overlay networks have become crucial ingredients of fully-decentralized applications and peer-to-peer systems. Depending on the task at hand, overlay networks are organized into different topologies, such as rings, trees, semantic and geographic proximity networks. We argue that the central role overlay networks play in decentralized application development requires a more systematic study and effort towards understanding the possibilities and limits of overlay network construction in its generality. Our contribution in this paper is a gossip protocol called T-Man that can build a wide range of overlay networks from scratch, relying only on minimal assumptions. The protocol is fast, robust, and very simple. It is also highly configurable as the desired topology itself is a parameter in the form of a ranking method that orders nodes according to preference for a base node to select them as neighbors. The paper presents extensive empirical analysis of the protocol along with theoretical analysis of certain aspects of its behavior. We also describe a practical application of T-Man for building Chord distributed hash table overlays efficiently from scratch.

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

gossip-based protocols
bootstrapping
self-organizing middleware


A Programming Language Independent Framework for Metrics-based Software Evolution and Analysis Knowledge about different aspects of software quality during software evolution can be valuable information for developers and project managers. It helps to reduce the number of defects and improves the internal structure of software. However, determining software's quality and structure in heterogeneous systems is a difficult task. In this paper, a programming language independent framework for evaluating software metrics and analyzing software structure during software development and its evolution will be presented. The framework consists of the SMIILE tool for calculation of software metrics, extended with an analysis of software structure. The data are stored in a central repository via enriched Concrete Syntax Tree (eCST) for universal source code representation. The framework is demonstrated in a case study. The development of such a framework is a step forward to consistent support for software evolution by providing a change analysis and quality control. The significance of this consistency is growing today, when software projects are more complex, consisting of components developed in diverse programming languages.

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

software evolution
software development
software quality
software structure
software metrics
syntax tree


High Performance Digital Hysteresis Control for Single Source Cascaded Inverters A digital modulation technique for cascaded inverters, which allows achieving high performance with low power losses, is proposed in this paper. It consists in a variable slope-fixed band current hysteresis control applied to a cascaded voltage source inverter structure, fed by a single dc source. The proposed technique can be used to supply ac motors, as well as generic ac loads. A considerable reduction of the switching losses is achieved, without increasing the total harmonic distortion on the load side. This result has been validated by means of a preliminary numeric analysis and confirmed by an experiment implementation.

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

ac drives
digital control
hysteresis modulation
voltage source inverters


a navigation system based on a sensor network without exit and locations In the paper, we design a navigation system based on sensor network to guide a robot to walk out of event region. The navigation system does not require any exit or locations.

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 B O O O O O O O O


On a particular class of minihypers and its applications. I. The result for general q This article is the first in a series of three articles that discuss a particular class of minihypers and its applications. Proving that for small delta and mu < N, a {δv(μ+1) δv(μ); N, q} -minihyper consists of a sum of δ μ-spaces, we show that the excess points of an s-cover with excess δ of PG(N, q), (s + 1) | (N + 1), form a sum of δ s-spaces, and that no maximal partial s-spreads with deficiency δ of PG(N, q), (s + 1) | (N + 1), exist. The case q square will be studied in greater detail in [7] and further applications of these classification results on this class of minihypers will be published in [8].

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


user experiences with sharing and access control The sharing of network-based information is a key component of recreational and professional interaction, from email attachments to P2P networks. However, people need to accommodate technical challenges in successful and secure content sharing. In particular, people have to manage access control policies that are both social and technical: deciding what to share and who to share it with, and how to technically effect their decisions. In this paper, we focus on the usability of access control: how people manage file sharing among various groups, organizations, and tasks. We present survey and interview data regarding content sharing and content protection, and discuss the implications for the design of networked collaboration tools.

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


Species permanence and dynamical behavior analysis of an impulsively controlled ecological system with distributed time delay ? In this paper, on the basis of the theories and methods of ecology and ordinary differential equations, an ecological system with impulsive harvest and distributed time delay is established. By using the theories of impulsive equations, small amplitude perturbation skills and comparison techniques, we get a condition which guarantees the global asymptotical stability of the prey-(x) ( x ) eradication and predator-(z) ( z ) eradication periodic solution. Further, the influences of the impulsive perturbation on the inherent oscillation are studied numerically, and shows rich dynamics, such as period-doubling bifurcation, chaotic bands, periodic windows, chaotic crises, etc. Moreover, the computation of the largest Lyapunov exponent shows the chaotic dynamic behavior of the model. Meanwhile, we investigate the qualitative nature of the strange attractor by using Fourier spectra. All of these results may be useful in the study of the dynamic complexity of ecosystems.

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

impulsive harvest
the largest lyapunov exponent
dynamical behavior
periodic solution
distributed time delay


high-performance polygon rendering This paper describes a system architecture for realtime display of shaded polygons. Performance of 100,000 lighted, 4-sided polygons per second is achieved. Vectors and points draw at the rate of 400,000 per second. High-speed pan and zoom, alpha blending, realtime video input, and antialiased lines are supported. The architecture heavily leverages parallelism in several forms: pipeline, vector, and array processing. It is unique in providing efficient and balanced graphics that support interactive design and manipulation of solid models. After an overview of algorithms and computational requirements, we describe the details of the implementation. Finally, the unique features enabled by the architecture are highlighted.

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

requirements
zoom
video
input
performance
pipeline
graphics
polygon
paper
rendering
architecture
interactive design
implementation
support
manipulation

point
efficiency
drawing
computation
high-performance
arrays
vectorization
solid modeling
graphics systems
parallel
process
algorithm
feature
system architecture


Biomimetic soft lithography on curved nanostructured surfaces In this paper a nano-molding process using a nature-created master is demonstrated. The eye of night moth Agotis exclamationis having 100nm-scale structures on a curved surface is used as biomimetic master mold from which nanostructures are replicated onto a flat substrate. Suitable conditions of this simple and cost-efficient process allows for minimal texture damage. The fabrication consists of two steps: first, a negative PDMS mold of the curved eye surface is made, and second, the flexible mold is replicated into a hybrid UV sensitive polymer, on a flat substrate. An accurate copy of the master surface with dense arrays of 200nm high and 100120nm wide posts are generated, thus preserving the integrity of the nanostructures. The known anti-reflecting optical properties of the moth eye were reproduced with a reflectivity reduced by a factor of 2.

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

biomimetic
soft lithography
nanostructures


FPGA Implementation of Integer Transform and Quantizer for H.264 Encoder This paper deals with the process of Transformation and Quantization that is carried out on each inter-predicted residual block in a video encoding process and their reduced complexity hardware implementation. H.264/AVC utilizes 4??4 integer transform, which is derived from the 4??4 DCT. We propose, a reduced complexity algorithm and a pipelined structure for the Core forward integer transform module. A multiplier-less architecture is realized with less number of shifts and adds compared to existing works. The corresponding inverse transform is exactly reversible. Each of the transformed coefficients is quantized by a scalar quantizer. The quantization step size can be varied from macroblock to macroblock. The proposed unified pipelined architecture outperforms many recent implementations in terms of gate count and is capable of processing a 4??4 residual block in 4 clock cycles.

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 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 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


Self-perception-based versus transference-based trust determinants in computer-mediated transactions: A cross-cultural comparison study This study examines the impact of culture on trust determinants in computer-mediated commerce transactions. Adopting trust-building foundations from cross-culture literature and focusing on a set of well-established cultural constructs as groups of culture (Type I and Type 11), this study develops a theoretical model of self-perception-based versus transference-based consumer trust in e-vendors, and empirically tests the model using cross-cultural data. The results show that transference-based trust determinants (i.e., "perceived importance of third-party seal" and "perceived importance of positive referral") are more positively related to consumer trust in e-vendors in a Type II (i.e., collectivist-strong uncertainty avoidance-high long-term orientation-high context) culture than in a Type I (i.e., individualistic-weak uncertainty avoidance-low long-term orientation-low context) culture. Unlike the initial hypothesized expectations, self-perception-based trust determinants (i.e., perceived security protection, perceived privacy concern, and perceived system reliability) do not show stronger roles to consumer trust in e-vendors in a Type I culture than in a Type II culture, although the stronger negative effect of perceived privacy concerns is observed on consumer trust in e-vendors in a Type I culture than in a Type II culture. Theoretical contributions for e-commerce cross-culture literature and implications for multinational online business managers are discussed.

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

cross-cultural comparison
culture impacts
self-perception-based trust
transference-based trust
trust in e-vendor
type i and type ii cultures


System lifetime optimization for heterogeneous sensor networks with a hub-spoke topology As a specific area of sensor networks, wireless in-home sensor networks differ from general sensor networks in that the networks have nodes with heterogeneous resources and dissimilar mobility attributes. For example, sensors with different radio coverage, energy capacity, and processing capabilities are deployed, and some of the sensors are mobile and others are fixed in position. The architecture and routing protocol for this type of heterogeneous sensor networks must be based on the resources and characteristics of their member nodes. In addition, the sole stress on energy efficiency for performance measurement is not sufficient. System lifetime is more important in this case. In this paper, we propose a hub-spoke network topology that is adaptively formed according to the resources of its members. A protocol named Resource Oriented Protocol (ROP) was developed to build the network topology. This protocol principally divides the network operation into two phases. In the topology formation phase, nodes report their available resource characteristics, based on which network architecture is optimally built. We stress that due to the existence of nodes with limitless resources, a top-down appointment process can build the architecture with minimum resource consumption of ordinary nodes. In the topology update phase, mobile sensors and isolated sensors are accepted into the network with an optimal balance of resources. To avoid overhead of periodic route updates, we use a reactive strategy to maintain route cache. Simulation results show that the hub-spoke topology built by ROP can achieve much longer system lifetime.

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

wireless sensor networks
routing protocols


Numerical methods for stiff index-3 DAEs Space semidiscretization of PDAEs, i.e. coupled systems of PDEs and algebraic equations, give raise to stiff DAEs and thus the standard theory of numerical methods for DAEs is not valid. As the study of numerical methods for stiff ODEs is done in terms of logarithmic norms, it seems natural to use also logarithmic norms for stiff DAEs. In this paper we show how the standard conditions imposed on the PDAE and the semidiscretized problem are formally the same if they are expressed in terms of logarithmic norms. To study the mathematical problem and their numerical approximations, this link between the standard conditions and logarithmic norms allow us to use for stiff DAEs techniques similar to the ones used for stiff ODEs. The analysis is done for problems which appear in the context of elastic multibody systems, but once the tools, i.e., logarithmic norms, are developed, they can also be used for the analysis of other PDAEs/DAEs.

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

daes
elastic multibody systems
logarithmic norms
stiff


High-selectivity switched-capacitor bandpass filter with quasi-continuous quality factor tunability This paper describes the design and implementation of a second-order switched-capacitor (SC) bandpass (BP) filter with very wide quality factor (Q) programmability range. The filter selectivity is digitally programmed by varying the effective sampling frequency of an SC branch, without modifying any capacitor value. The proposed approach allows a quasi-continuous Q-factor tunability avoiding, in principle, the inherent quantization error associated to any traditional programming technique. Automatic Q-factor tuning is performed by using a scheme based on an amplitude-locking loop approach. Experimental results obtained from a 0.8-mum CMOS integrated prototype demonstrate the versatility of the proposed technique for high-Q SC BP filters.

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

cmos analog integrated circuits
switched-capacitor circuits
bandpass filters