Levitation-guidance stabilization of superconducting maglev through LSM currents This paper presents a modeling and simulation of a superconducting maglev vehicle with a levitation and guidance assist method we have proposed. The assist system stabilizes and assists the vehicle operation so that the vehicle does not need to depend on the mechanical wheels as much as possible at low speeds. By controlling the LSM armature currents, the auxiliary levitation and guidance forces are provided. The results show that the assist system produces appropriate levitation and guidance forces, establishing the reference levitation height and a sufficient guidance at low speeds even against the disturbance force of lateral wind. (c) 2006 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


A 270ps 20mW 108-bit End-around Carry Adder for Multiply-Add Fused Floating Point Unit A power and area efficient 108-bit end-around carry adder is implemented using IBM 65nm SOI technology. The adder is used for a multiply-add fused (MAF) floating point unit. Careful balance of the adder structure and structure-aware layout techniques enabled this adder to have a latency of 270ps at power consumption of 20mW with 1V supply.

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

floating-point
multiply-add fused
end-around carry


exploring benefits of non-linear time compression In comparison to text, audio-video content is much more challenging to browse. Time-compression has been suggested as a key technology that can support browsing-time compression speeds up the playback of audio-video content without causing the pitch to change. Simple forms of time-compression are starting to appear in commercial streaming-media products from Microsoft and Real Networks.In this paper we explore the potential benefits of more recent and advanced types of time compression, called non-linear time compression . The most advanced of these algorithms exploit fine-grain structure of human speech (e.g., phonemes) to differentially speedup segments of speech, so that the overall speedup can be higher. In this paper we explore what are the actual gains achieved by end-users from these advanced algorithms. Our results indicate that the gains are actually quite small in common cases and come with significant system complexity and some audio/video synchronization issues.

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

speech
speedup
synchronization
human
time compression
browse
paper
change
structure
exploit
types
text
support
complexity
compression

network
streamed media
video
digital library
end-user
timing
comparisons
audio
exploration
contention
product
systems
technologies
user evaluation
segmentation
multimedia browsing
algorithm


O(1)-reception routing for sensor networks In traditional approaches to energy-efficient routing, a node needs to receive routing messages from all of its neighbors to be able to select the best route. In this work, we propose a technique that enables the best route selection based on exactly one message reception. We call the resulting routing protocol O(1)-reception. In O(1)-reception, each node delays forwarding of routing messages (RREQs) for an interval inversely proportional to its residual energy. This energy-delay mapping technique makes it possible to enhance an existing min-delay routing protocol into an energy-aware routing that maximizes the lifetime of sensor networks. We also identify comparative elements that help us to perform a thorough a posteriori comparison of the mapping functions in terms of the route selection precision. Simulation results show that our mapping functions select routes with very high precision while keeping the propagation delay of routing messages reasonable. In addition, we show that redundant messages filtering significantly extends lifetime of sensor networks compared to classical maximum lifetime approaches in which no filtering is applied. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

multihop networks
energy-efficient protocols
routing protocols
maximum lifetime routing


Bidirectional and asymmetric quantum controlled teleportation via maximally eight-qubit entangled state We propose a new protocol of bidirectional and asymmetric quantum controlled teleportation, using a maximally eight-qubit entangled state as the quantum channel. We compared the aspects of quantum resource consumption, operation complexity, classical resource consumption, quantum information bits transmitted and efficiency with other schemes.

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


Computational chemistry on Fujitsu vectorparallel processors: Hardware and programming environment In this and the following paper, we provide an introduction to the Fujitsu VPP range of vectorparallel supercomputers and to some of the computational chemistry software available for the VPP. Here, we consider the hardware and the design of software to exploit its capabilities. The VPP employs proprietary vector processors connected via a crossbar switch in a distributed-memory architecture. High single-node performance requires consideration of vector operand lengths, arithmetic pipe utilisation and memory-to-CPU bandwidth. Most parallel chemistry applications use either explicit `message-passing' or a global-memory paradigm, and benchmark results are presented for the communications performance of MPI, Linda and the Global Arrays.

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

fujitsu supercomputers
vectorisation
parallelisation
latency


social navigation as a model for usable security As interest in usable security spreads, the use of visual approaches in which the functioning of a distributed system is made visually available to end users is an approach that a number of researchers have examined. In this paper, we discuss the use of the social navigation paradigm as a way of organizing visual displays of system action. Drawing on a previous study of security in the Kazaa peer to peer system, we present some examples of the ways in which social navigation can be incorporated in support of usable security.

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

use
examples
drawing
support
social navigation
model
paper
usable security
action

organization
visualization
research
systems
peer-to-peer
collaborative interfaces
end-user
secure
display
peer-to-peer filesharing
distributed systems


Fractional biometrics: safeguarding privacy in biometric applications This paper presents a biometric system solution that "masks" a fraction of a person's biometric image before submission, to reduce the possibility of forgery and collusion. A prototype system was constructed for the fingerprint biometric and tested in three security scenarios. It is shown that implementing the fractional biometric system does not significantly affect accuracy. We provide theoretical security analysis on the guessing entropy of a Fractional Template and the security against collusion. We demonstrate that by masking above 50% of the biometric features, we achieve a sufficient mix of security, robustness and accuracy to warrant further study. When 75% of the features are masked, we found that the theoretical guessing entropy is 42 bits, and we found that, on average, 5 authenticators had to collude before the system would be compromised.

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


An asynchronous scheme with local time stepping for multi-scale transport problems: Application to gas discharges This paper presents an asynchronous integration scheme with local time stepping for transport problems. The concept consists in associating refresh time tags to the interface fluxes between cells and to the source terms within the cells rather than to the cell themselves. This scheme is less diffusive numerically than its synchronous equivalent. This method is very effective in terms of computation time for problems with localized sharp minima in the CFL condition. The method is then applied to dielectric barrier discharges for aerodynamic flow control. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

asynchronous
local time stepping
gas discharges
cfl condition


MODEL SELECTION OF C-SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES BASED ON MULTI-THREADING GENETIC ALGORITHM Since generalization performance of support vector machines depends a lot on parameter values of kernel functions, it is important to select optimal parameter values. How to finish optimal model selection of C-Support Vector Machines (C-SVM) with satisfiable speed is the main focus of this paper. We can hardly finish training process for large data sets with traditional methods because of long time-consuming cost. To take advantage of multi-threading and genetic algorithms, we studied a hybrid model selection method to select C and sigma of RBF kernel function for C-SVM classifier. This new method not only chooses global optimal parameters, but also saves training time based on parallel computing process. Experimental results show the efficiency and feasibility of the new method.

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

support vector machines
rbf kernel
model selection
classifier


The effect of scaling on land cover classification from satellite data Multisensor data applications have seen considerable development in the field of remote sensing in recent years. The combination of various sources of satellite data opens a new field for research providing different viewpoints on subjects under study. This paper summarises the basic conclusions of work in which the scale of satellite imagery, related to the factor of scale for land cover classification, was investigated. Optical data collected by two different sensors (advanced very high-resolution radiometer and thematic mapper) were tested against the ability to classify correctly specific land cover classes at different scales of observation. It was found that traditional image processing techniques such as resampling can lead to significant differences in the quality of the information extracted. The nature of the spectral signature for some land cover classes may also vary depending on the scale of the observation and on the type of data used. Understanding the role of scale on the spectral signatures of satellite data will help secure the correct interpretation of any classification results.

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

remote sensing
scaling
land cover classification
spectral signatures


Can information and communication technologies be pro-poor? ? There is over 20 years of accumulated cross-country evidence on the link between telecommunications provision and economic growth. Looking at micro-studies from a range of countries including Bangladesh, Botswana and Zimbabwe, there is also some evidence that provision of telephony has a dramatic effect on the income and quality of life of the rural poor. This paper examines cross-country evidence to discover if teledensity (the number of telephones per capita) has a pro-poor growth impactfostering increased average incomes while reducing inequality. It also examines the impact of telecommunications rollout on quality of life variables including infant mortality and literacy. It finds that, historically, telecommunications rollout has had a positive and significant impact on increasing inequality and little impact on quality of life variables. A reason for this is tested and preliminarily confirmed that rollout has (historically) only benefited the wealthy. The paper will then turn to emerging evidence on the role of the Internet in poverty relief and statistics on the access gap in provision between rich and poor, suggesting that this new ICT will also be a force for income divergence. Using the results of the cross-country analysis on telecommunications, the paper will conclude with a discussion of potential policy responses (such as sector reform and universal access programs) to turn telecommunications from a source of growth that also increases inequality to a source of growth that diminishes it.

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

telecommunications
poverty
inequality
economic growth


Analysis of statistical question classification for fact-based questions Question classification systems play an important role in question answering systems and can be used in a wide range of other domains. The goal of question classification is to accurately assign labels to questions based on expected answer type. Most approaches in the past have relied on matching questions against hand-crafted rules. However, rules require laborious effort to create and often suffer from being too specific. Statistical question classification methods overcome these issues by employing machine learning techniques. We empirically show that a statistical approach is robust and achieves good performance on three diverse data sets with little or no hand tuning. Furthermore, we examine the role different syntactic and semantic features have on performance. We find that semantic features tend to increase performance more than purely syntactic features. Finally, we analyze common causes of misclassification error and provide insight into ways they may be overcome.

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

question classification
question answering
machine learning
syntactic features
semantic features


Semantic adaptation of sport videos with user-centred performance analysis In semantic video adaptation measures of performance must consider the impact of the errors in the automatic annotation over the adaptation in relationship with the preferences and expectations of the user. In this paper, we define two new performance measures Viewing Quality Loss and Bit-rate Cost Increase, that are obtained from classical peak signal-to-noise ration (PSNR) and bit rate, and relate the results of semantic adaptation to the errors in the annotation of events and objects and the user's preferences and expectations. We present and discuss results obtained with a system that performs automatic annotation of soccer sport video highlights and applies different coding strategies to different parts of the video according to their relative importance for the end user. With reference to this framework, we analyze how highlights' statistics and the errors of the annotation engine influence the performance of semantic adaptation and reflect into the quality of the video displayed at the user's client and the increase of transmission costs.

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

automatic annotation
performance analysis
semantic video adaptation
soccer sport video

object- and event-level compression
performance indices


india.gov.in - india's approach in constructing one-stop-solution towards e-government Speedy advancements in ICT and the advent of the Internet have given new attributes to citizen services and thus redefining public expectations from the government and its services. Driven by demands for a more responsive government, India has been grappling with how to a one stop government solution using the best technologies to deliver services to the people. Government's use of technology, particularly Web-based Internet applications, to enhance citizen access to government services and to enable citizens to use online services is not only migrating traditionally paper-based and face-to-face services to the Internet, but also has the potential to provide citizens with the fastest and most convenient way of using government services. E-Governance has given new dimensions to the system of governing nations and enhancing citizen services by making the process of governance and public administration much more efficient and effective. E-Government reveals the ultimate vision for public administrations and governments to undergo a huge modernisation and reorganisation. E-Governance has also played an essential role in improving governmental processes (e-administration), connecting citizens (e-citizens and e-services) and building external interactions (e-society). With the inclusion if e-governance in governing process came the concept of Single Entry National Portal i.e. One Stop Government which efficiently integrates public services from a citizen's point of view. Such Portals help the citizens and other stakeholders to have a 24x7x365 access to public service authorities and the services being provided by them at a single point. Various Government Departments at Central, State and Local level collect, use and manage large volumes of information and services. To ensure effective access to government policymaking and operations as well as to ensure government accountability, the public needs consistent, predictable access to government information. One Stop Government Portals provide full entry to its citizens making their lives easy and smooth. This paper discourses the significance of One Stop Government accentuating india.gov.in - the National Portal of India; a comprehensive repository of information regarding the citizen services available in India.

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

good governance
government portal
e-government
e-governance
government to business (g2b)
government to citizen (g2c)
one-stop government


enabling scientific workflows in virtual reality To advance research and improve the scientific return on data collection and interpretation efforts in the geosciences, we have developed methods of interactive visualization, with a special focus on immersive virtual reality (VR) environments. Earth sciences employ a strongly visual approach to the measurement and analysis of geologic data due to the spatial and temporal scales over which such data ranges. As observations and simulations increase in size and complexity, the Earth sciences are challenged to manage and interpret increasing amounts of data. Reaping the full intellectual benefits of immersive VR requires us to tailor exploratory approaches to scientific problems. These applications build on the visualization method's strengths, using both 3D perception and interaction with data and models, to take advantage of the skills and training of the geological scientists exploring their data in the VR environment. This interactive approach has enabled us to develop a suite of tools that are adaptable to a range of problems in the geosciences and beyond.

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


an adaptive two-level management for the flash translation layer in embedded systems While the capacity of flash-memory storage systems keeps increasing significantly, effective and efficient management of flash-memory space has become a critical design issue! Different granularities in space management impose different management costs and mapping efficiency. In this paper, we explore an address translation mechanism that can dynamically and adaptively switch between two granularities in the mapping of logical block addresses into physical block addresses in flash memory management. The objective is to provide good performance in address mapping and space utilization and, at the same time, to have the memory space requirements, and the garbage collection overhead under proper management. The experimental results show that the proposed adaptive mechanism could provide significant performance improvement over the well-known coarsegrained management mechanism NFTL (NAND Flash Translation Layer) over realistic workloads.

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

embedded systems
flash memory
storage systems
flash translation layer


Invariant pattern recognition using analog recurrent associative memories A novel invariant pattern recognition approach is proposed based on a special gradient-type recurrent analog associative memory. The system exhibits stable equilibrium points in predefined positions specified by feature vectors extracted from the training set, while invariance to geometrical transformations is inferred by using the tangent distance. Experimental results for handwritten character recognition and face recognition tasks indicate that the proposed approach may yield superior performances over classical solutions based on the Euclidean distance metric. Possible extensions towards modular and sequential pattern recognition are finally outlined.

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

associative memory
invariance
tangent distance


Propagation via lazy clause generation Finite domain propagation solvers effectively represent the possible values of variables by a set of choices which can be naturally modelled as Boolean variables. In this paper we describe how to mimic a finite domain propagation engine, by mapping propagators into clauses in a SAT solver. This immediately results in strong nogoods for finite domain propagation. But a naive static translation is impractical except in limited cases. We show how to convert propagators to lazy clause generators for a SAT solver. The resulting system introduces flexibility in modelling since variables are modelled dually in the propagation engine and the SAT solver, and we explore various approaches to the dual modelling. We show that the resulting system solves many finite domain problems significantly faster than other techniques.

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

finite domain propagation
boolean variables
sat solver


Indicators

for

a

webometric

ranking

of

open

access

repositories

The

Ranking

Web

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World

Repositories

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introduced.

The

objective

is

to

promote

Open

access

initiatives

(OAI)

supporting

the

use

of

repositories

for

scientific

evaluation

purposes.

A

set

of

metrics

based

on

web

presence,

impact

and

usage

is

discussed.

The

Ranking

is

built

on

indicators

obtained

from

web

search

engines

following

a

model

close

to

the

Impact

Factor

one.

The

activity

accounts

for

a

of

the

index,

including

number

of

pages,

pdf

files

and

items

in

Google

Scholar

database,

while

the

visibility

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account

the

external

inlinks

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by

the

repository

(the

other

The

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provides

the

Top

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a

total

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worldwide,

with

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strong

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US,

German

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British

institutional

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the

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the

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the

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other

file

formats

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the

usage

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an

option

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not

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

repositories
open access
indicators
visibility
usage
ranking


Texture classification for liver tissues from ultrasonic B-scan images using testified PNN Visual criteria for diagnosing liver diseases, such as cirrhosis, from ultrasound images can be assisted by computerized texture classification. This paper proposes a system applying a PNN (Pyramid Neural Network) for classifying the hepatic parenchymal diseases in ultrasonic B-scan texture. In this study, we propose a multifractal-dimensions method to select the patterns for the training set and the validation sets. A modified box-counting algorithm is used to calculate the dimensions of the B-scan images. FDWT (Fast Discrete Wavelet Transform) is applied for feature extraction during the preprocessing. The structure of the proposed neural network is testified by training and validation sets by cross-validation method. The performance of the proposed system and a system based on the conventional multilayer network architecture is compared. The results show that, compared with the conventional 3-layer neural network, the performance of the proposed pyramid neural network is improved by efficiently utilizing the lower layer of the neural network.

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

fractal dimension
multifractal
dbc (differential boxing-counting)
pnn (pyramid neural network)
cross-validation


Lattice Boltzmann study of flow and mixing characteristics of two-dimensional confined impinging streams with uniform and non-uniform inlet jets Previous works have shown that impinging streams are susceptible to instabilities which will lead to asymmetric and deflecting flows. The inlet velocity profiles as one factor may affect the flow, temperature and mixing characteristics of this flow, which are very important in practical applications and little considered in previous works. In the present work, these characteristics for two inlet velocity profiles (uniform velocity and parabolic velocity, two representative profiles) at different configuration parameters (H/W=14 H / W = 1 4 , H H and W W are the jets separation and inlet width) and Reynolds numbers (Re=10200 R e = 10 200 ) are studied numerically via lattice Boltzmann method and compared in detail. In particular, the temperature characteristics with and without the buoyancy effects are investigated. The simulation results show that the inlet velocity profiles have strong influences on these characteristics at larger H/W H / W and Re R e , which confirm that impinging streams are easily affected by the inlet velocity profiles.

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

impinging streams
inlet velocity profiles
mixing characteristics


Bivariate models of optimism and pessimism in multi-criteria decision-making based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets This paper presents a useful method of relating optimism and pessimism to multiple criteria decision analysis in the context of intuitionistic fuzzy sets based on the unipolar bivariate model. We use eight point operators to estimate the adaptational outcome expectations of optimism and/or pessimism and then determine the net predisposition, the aggregated effect of positive and negative evaluations. A series of new net predispositions for bivariate evaluations are proposed for neutrality; for complete, moderate, and rational optimism; for complete, moderate, and rational pessimism; and for complete and moderate optimismpessimism. The suitability function, which measures the overall evaluation of each alternative, is then presented. Because positive or negative leniency may exist, such that most of the criteria may be assigned unduly high or low ratings, respectively, we introduce deviation variables to mitigate the effects of such ratings on the apparent importance of various criteria. Based on the two objectives of maximal weighted suitability and minimal deviation values, an integrated programming model is used to compute the optimal weights for the criteria and the corresponding degrees of suitability of the alternative rankings. We establish flexible algorithms that incorporate both objective and subjective information to compute the optimal optimistic and pessimistic decisions. The proposed methods are illustrated and discussed using a numerical example, a multi-criteria supplier selection problem. Finally, an empirical study of job choices is conducted to establish the feasibility and applicability of the current method.

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

unipolar bivariate model
optimism
pessimism
multiple criteria decision analysis
net predisposition
integrated programming model


HSC: A multi-resolution clustering strategy in Self-Organizing Maps applied to astronomical observations This work presents a strategy for the classification of astronomical objects based on spectrophotometric data and the use of unsupervised neural networks and statistical classification algorithms. Our strategy constitutes an essential part of the preparation phase of the automatic classification and parameterization algorithms for the data that are to be collected by the Gaia satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), whose launch is foreseen for the spring of 2012. The proposed algorithm is based on a hierarchical structure of neural networks composed of various tree-structured SOM networks. The classification of possible astronomical objects (stars, galaxies, quasars, multiple objects, etc.) basically consists in the iterative segmentation of the inputs space and the ensuing generation of initial classifications and increase in classification precision by means of a refining process. Apart from providing a classification, our technique also measures the quality and precision of the classifications and segments the objects for which it cannot determine whether or not they belong to a pre-established class of astronomical objects (outliers).

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-organizing map
clustering technique
astronomical datamining
esa gaia mission


The linear arrangement problem on recursively constructed graphs The linear arrangement problem on graphs is a relatively old and quite well-known problem. Hard in general, it remains open on general recursive graphs (i.e., partial k-trees, etc.), which is somewhat frustrating since most hard graph problems are easily solved on recursive graphs. In this paper, we examine the linear arrangement problem with respect to these structures. Included are some negative (complexity) results as well as a solvable case. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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


Advocacy in Epidemiology and Demography This paper is a summary of a panel discussion at the Conference on Epidemiology and Demography held at Georgetown University, in Washington D.C. on February 8-9, 2001. The participants were Al Hermalin, Linda Martin, Mike Stoto, Robert Wallace, Douglas Weed, and Rose Li (who chaired the session). A list of questions similar to the section headings in this paper was prepared in advance of the conference, and each of the participants was asked to address specific issues, although the presentations typically covered a range of topics. This summary also includes comments from the floor.

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

advocacy epidemiology demography discussion


generating efficient protocol code from an abstract specification A protocol compiler takes as input an abstract specification of a protocol and generates an implementation of that protocol. Protocol compilers usually produce inefficient code both in terms of code speed and code size. In this paper, we show that the combination of two techniques makes it possible to build protocol compilers that generate efficient code. These techniques are i) the use of a compiler that generates from the specification a unique tree-shaped automaton (rather than multiple independent automata), and ii) the use of optimization techniques applied at the automaton level, i.e. on the branches of the trees.We have developed a protocol compiler that uses both these techniques. The compiler takes as input a protocol specification written in the synchronous language Esterel. The specification is compiled into a unique automaton by the Esterel front end compiler. The automaton is then optimized and converted into C code by our protocol optimizer called HIPPCO. HIPPCO improves code performance and reduces code size by simultaneously optimizing the performance of the common path and optimizing the size of the uncommon path. We evaluate the gain expected with our approach on a real-life example, namely a working subset of the TCP protocol generated from an Esterel specification. We compare the protocol code generated with our approach to that derived from the standard BSD TCP implementation. The results are very encouraging. HIPPCO-generated code executes up to 25 \% fewer instructions than the BSD code for input packet processing while maintaining comparable code size.

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

efficiency
abstraction
code optimization
formal languages
transport protocols


A hierarchical compositional model for face representation and sketching This paper presents a hierarchical-compositional model of human faces, as a three-layer AND-OR graph to account for the structural variabilities over multiple resolutions. In the AND-OR graph, an AND-node represents a decomposition of certain graphical structure, which expands to a set of OR-nodes with associated relations; an OR-node serves as a switch variable pointing to alternative AND-nodes. Faces are then represented hierarchically: The first layer treats each face as a whole, the second layer refines the local facial parts jointly as a set of individual templates, and the third layer further divides the face into 15 zones and models detail facial features such as eye corners, marks, or wrinkles. Transitions between the layers are realized by measuring the minimum description length (MDL) given the complexity of an input face image. Diverse face representations are formed by drawing from dictionaries of global faces, parts, and skin detail features. A sketch captures the most informative part of a face in a much more concise and potentially robust representation. However, generating good facial sketches is extremely challenging because of the rich facial details and large structural variations, especially in the high-resolution images. The representing power of our generative model is demonstrated by reconstructing high-resolution face images and generating the cartoon facial sketches. Our model is useful for a wide variety of applications, including recognition, nonphotorealisitc rendering, superresolution, and low-bit rate face coding.

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


Traffic grooming, routing, and wavelength assignment in WDM transport networks with sparse grooming resources While a single fiber strand in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) has over a terabit-per-second bandwidth and a wavelength channel has over a gigabit-per-second transmission speed, the network may still be required to support traffic requests at rates that are lower than the full wavelength capacity. To avoid assigning an entire lightpath to a small request, many researchers have looked at adding traffic grooming to the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem. In this work, we consider the RWA problem with traffic grooming (GRWA) for mesh networks under static and dynamic lightpath connection requests. The GRWA problem is NP-Complete since it is a generalization of the RWA problem which is known to be NP-Complete. We propose an integer linear programming (ILP) model that accurately depicts the GRWA problem. Because it is very hard to find a solution for large networks using ILP, we solve the GRWA problem by proposing two novel heuristics. The strength of the proposed heuristics stems from their simplicity, efficiency, and applicability to large-scale networks. Our simulation results demonstrate that deploying traffic grooming resources on the edge of optical networks is more cost effective and results in a similar blocking performance to that obtained when distributing the grooming resources throughout the optical network domain. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

rwa
wavelength assignment
traffic grooming


Characterization and Design of Logic Circuits in the Presence of Carbon Nanotube Density Variations Variations in the spatial density of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), resulting from the lack of precise control over CNT positioning during chemical synthesis, is a major hurdle to the scalability of carbon nanotube field effect transistor (CNFET) circuits. Such CNT density variations can lead to non-functional CNFET circuits. This paper presents a probabilistic framework for modeling the CNT count distribution contained in a CNFET of given width, and establishes the accuracy of the model using experimental data obtained from CNT growth. Using this model, we estimate the impact of CNT density variations on the yield of CNFET very large-scale integrated circuits. Our estimation results demonstrate that CNT density variations can significantly degrade the yield of CNFETs, and can be a major concern for scaled CNFET circuits. Finally, we analyze the impact of CNT correlation (i.e., correlation of CNT count between CNFETs) that exists in CNT growth, and demonstrate how the yield of a CNFET storage circuit (primarily limited by its noise immunity) can be significantly improved by taking advantage of such correlation.

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

carbon nanotubes (cnt)
cnt density variation


On tradeoffs between cross-ISP P2P traffic and P2P streaming performance Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology greatly scales up traditional Internet streaming service. However, the philosophy that peers help one another distribute video content produces a large amount of cross-ISP P2P traffic. Newly proposed ISP-friendly P2P mechanisms reduce the cross-ISP P2P traffic by using locality-based peer selection mechanisms, in which the peers tend to connect to other peers in the same ISP domain. However, one unanswered question is how can we achieve the tradeoffs between the cross-ISP P2P traffic and the P2P streaming performance if there are conflicts between them. In this paper, we propose a rate allocation mechanism for achieving the tradeoffs between the cross-ISP P2P traffic and the P2P streaming performance. We model the tradeoffs as a multiobjective optimization problem and solve it using the Goal Attainment method. The evaluation result shows that our mechanism is able to achieve the tradeoffs between the conflicts and maintain good fairness among the peers and the streaming overlays. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

peer-assisted video-on-demand streaming
cross-isp p2p traffic
media server load


learning sequences of actions in collectives of autonomous agents In this paper we focus on the problem of designing a collective of autonomous agents that individually learn sequences of actions such that the resultant sequence of joint actions achieves a predetermined global objective. Directly applying Reinforcement Learning (RL) concepts to multi-agent systems often proves problematic, as agents may work at cross-purposes, or have difficulty in evaluating their contribution to achievement of the global objective, or both. Accordingly, the crucial design step in designing multi-agent systems focuses on how to set the rewards for the RL algorithm of each agent so that as the agents attempt to maximize those rewards, the system reaches a globally "desirable" solution. In this work we consider a version of this problem involving multiple autonomous agents in a grid world. We use concepts from collective intelligence [15,23] to design rewards for the agents that are "aligned" with the global reward, and are "learnable" in that agents can readily see how their behavior affects their reward. We show that reinforcement learning agents using those rewards outperform both "natural" extensions of single agent algorithms and global reinforcement learning solutions based on "team games".

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


Improved clustering criterion for image clustering with artificial bee colony algorithm In this paper, a new objective function is proposed for image clustering and is applied with the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, the particle swarm optimization algorithm and the genetic algorithm. The performance of the proposed objective function is tested on seven benchmark images by comparing it with the three well-known objective functions in the literature and the K-means algorithm in terms of separateness and compactness which are the main criterions of the clustering problem. Moreover, the DaviesBouldin Index and the XB Index are also employed to compare the quality of the proposed objective function with the other objective functions. The simulated results show that the ABC-based image clustering method with the improved objective function obtains well-distinguished clusters.

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

image clustering
artificial bee colony algorithm
particle swarm optimization

genetic algorithms
k-means
validity indexes


Analysis of assessment opportunities of learning spaces: On-line versus face to face methodologies New assessment activities have been introduced in higher education with ICTs. Moreover, assessment activities should evaluate student learning progression. This paper evaluates assessment activities by means of information theory measures. Results indicate that methodologies based on ICTs entails a better learning process. Continuous assessment activities based on ICTs involves better grades in final exam.

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

assessment activities
information theory measures

information and communication technologies


Records out and archives in: early modern cities as creators of records and as communities of archives Cities in Italy, Germany and England experienced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a scriptural revolution. The city registers served the functional and archival memories of the city and its citizens. The creation, storage and use of records were social and cultural practices, embedded in and constituting communities of memory. The records were re-organized and re-used, repositioning the text in timespace within different communicational spectra. Records created and maintained by cities in early modern history were archives, the city archives were records.

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

communities cities italy germany england

recordkeeping
liber civitatis
ghent rebellion


Using Google Analytics to measure visitor statistics: The case of food composition websites Measuring visitor statistics is a core activity for any website provider. However, the analytical methods have so far been quite limited, difficult, expensive, or cumbersome. Google Analytics (GA) offers a free tool for measuring and analysing visitor statistics. GA was tested on three food composition websites (Denmark, Finland, and Switzerland). All the websites had a considerable number of visitors, which seemed to increase with the maturity of the website. The results also suggested that there were a considerable number of potential unreached users in Denmark and particularly in Switzerland, thus suggesting that promotion be increased and search engines be taken into account more during website design. About 1520% of users visited the website more than nine times and about 20% spent there more than 10min on the site. Following traffic from referring websites showed that most of the visitors could not be categorised as food or nutrition professionals. Our experience showed that GA was quite easy to use and gave useful and versatile information that can be used to compare different websites and improve the website design. Finally, we would like to encourage other food composition website providers to utilise either GA or another of the similar tools available.

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


MarketAnalyzer: An Interactive Visual Analytics System for Analyzing Competitive Advantage Using Point of Sale Data Competitive intelligence is a systematic approach for gathering, analyzing, and managing information to make informed business decisions. Many companies use competitive intelligence to identify risks and opportunities within markets. Point of sale data that retailers share with vendors is of critical importance in developing competitive intelligence. However, existing tools do not easily enable the analysis of such large and complex data. therefore, new approaches are needed in order to facilitate better analysis and decision making. In this paper, we present MarketAnalyzer, an interactive visual analytics system designed to allow vendors to increase their competitive intelligence. MarketAnalyzer utilizes pixel-based matrices to present sale data, trends, and market share growths of products of the entire market within a single display. These matrices are augmented by advanced underlying analytical methods to enable the quick evaluation of growth and risk within market sectors. Furthermore, our system enables the aggregation of point of sale data in geographical views that provide analysts with the ability to explore the impact of regional demographics and trends. Additionally, overview and detailed information is provided through a series of coordinated multiple views. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our system, we provide two use-case scenarios as well as feedback from market analysts.

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

i.3.3 [computer graphics]: pixel-based visualization, linked views, geospatial, temporal, multi-variate, business intelligence, competitive intelligence, market analysis


Bit-parallel string matching under Hamming distance in O(n[m/w]) worst case time Given two strings, a pattern P of length in and a text T of length n over some alphabet Sigma, we consider the string matching problem under k mismatches. The well-known Shift-Add algorithm [R.A. Baeza-Yates, G.H. Gonnet, A new approach to text searching, Comm. ACM 35 (10) (1992) 74-82] solves the problem in O(n[m log(k)/w]) worst case time, where w is the number of bits in a computer word. We present two algorithms that improve this result to 0(n fin log log(k)/w]) and O(n[m/w]), respectively. The algorithms make use of nested varying length bit-strings, that represent the search state. We call these Matryoshka counters. The techniques we developed are of more general use for string matching problems. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

approximate string matching
bit-parallelism


Tone diversity for OFDMA in broadband wireless communications This paper presents two group-based tone diversity schemes, namely, group-orthogonal tone-combining-diversity (GO-TCD) and group-optimal tone-selection-diversity (GO-TSD), for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system in broadband wireless communications. In both schemes, the entire frequency band of N sub-carriers is divided into N-G = N/L-f sub-carrier groups with each having L-f sub-carriers. When the channel knowledge is not available at the transmitter, GO-TCD, which has a split-and-group structure to reduce the peak-toaverage ratio (PAR) and employs the multi-user detection for maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation to increase the number of active users, is proposed and shown to provide a lower PAR and similar performance as compared with the group-orthogonal multi-carrier CDMA, and outperforms the random-hopping (RH)-OFDMA and matched-filter based MC-CDMA. When the channel knowledge is available at the transmitter, GO-TSD can be used to select the best sub-carrier in a given sub-carrier group for any active user and shown to offer a throughput comparable to the optimal tone selection but with much less complexity. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

group-orthogonal
multiple-access
reduced par


Verification of distributed control systems in intelligent manufacturing This paper presents an application of formal methods for validation of flexible manufacturing systems controlled by distributed controllers. A software tool verification environment for distributed applications (VEDA) is developed for modeling and verification of distributed control systems. The tool provides an intergrated environment for formal, model-based verification of the execution control of function blocks following the new international standard IEC61499. The modeling is performed in a closed-loop way using manually developed models of plants and automatically generated models of controllers.

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


user experience management post mergers and acquisitions This panel will discuss the prominent trend of business consolidations in the enterprise software industry and proffer best practice management techniques for user experience teams following a successfully achieved merger or acquisition. Our panelists are UX managers who have experienced multiple mergers or acquisitions and will represent both the acquiring and acquired companies' perspectives. This panel builds on the success of a SIG organized at CH 2010. It will focus in on the UX management aspect post M&A, since this was most interesting to our audience. We will discuss design and technical challenges such as multiple UI technologies and platforms, navigation paradigms and menu structures, interaction behaviors, visual designs, as well as cultural and organizational challenges such as different maturity levels of UX teams, User Centered Design practices, job titles, talent management, geographical distribution and other cultural differences. Our goal is to explore best practice solutions that could help other UX managers facing similar challenges.

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

user experience management
enterprise software

mergers and acquisition
ux strategy
organizational change
design management


A novel volume constrained smoothing method for meshes In general, mesh smoothing is performed by minimizing the discrete energy function for the surface. One of the major problems in mesh smoothing is to prevent the mesh from shrinking. In this paper, we propose a novel volume constraint to address the shrinking problem in mesh smoothing. Our key observation is that the mesh can be efficiently smoothed patch by patch in a signal processing manner, and then a local volume preserving constraint can be easily imposed to the energy minimization problem associated with the small patch, called the smoothing stencil, so as to effectively avoid the mesh shrinkage. In our implementation, the smoothing stencil is the 1-ring neighboring region of an edge or a triangle. And the constrained minimization problem is solved by a 2-step approximation method for efficiency. A series of examples demonstrate that the proposed smoothing method can be applied to remove noise from a mesh or remove rough detail from an original mesh to generate a smooth model in object reconstruction and geometry modeling. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

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

curves and surfaces
mesh generation
surface fairing and smoothing


distance join queries on spatial networks The result of a distance join operation on two sets of objects R, S on a spatial network G is a set P of object pairs pq , p R , q S such that the distance of an object pair pq is the shortest distance from p to q in G . Several variations to the distance join operation such as U n O rdered , I ncremental , topk, S emi -J oin impose additional constraints on the distance between the object pairs in P , the ordering of object pairs in P , and on the cardinality of P . A distance join algorithm on spatial networks is proposed that works in conjunction with the SILC framework, which is a new approach to query processing on spatial networks. Experimental results demonstrate up to an order of magnitude speed up when compared with a prominent existing technique.

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

silc framework
spatial networks
query processing

path coherence
spatial databases
location-based services


Grobner bases in function rings - A guide for introducing reduction relations to algebraic structures Grobner bases as a means of studying ideals in polynomial rings have been generalized to other algebraic structures. The purpose of this paper is to present a general setting for Grobner bases developed by the author in her habilitation thesis. This thesis was co-refereed by Volker Weispfenning who has contributed to the field of Grobner bases in various publications. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

algebraic structures
function rings
polynomial rings
ideals
grobner bases
reduction relations


Anomalous diffusion modeling by fractal and fractional derivatives This paper makes an attempt to develop a fractal derivative model of anomalous diffusion. We also derive the fundamental solution of the fractal derivative equation for anomalous diffusion, which characterizes a clear power law. This new model is compared with the corresponding fractional derivative model in terms of computational efficiency, diffusion velocity, and heavy tail property. The merits and distinctions of these two models of anomalous diffusion are then summarized. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

heavy tail
anomalous diffusion
fractal derivative
fractional derivative
power law


Top-K data source selection for keyword queries over multiple XML data sources With the proliferation of XML data, searching XML data using keyword queries has attracted much attention. However, most of the current approaches focus on keyword-based searches over a single XML document. Searching over a system integrating hundreds or even thousands of data sources by sequentially querying every single source is extremely costly, and thus may be impractical. In this article we propose a novel approach for selecting the top-K data sources by relying on their relevance to a given query, to avoid the high cost of searching in numerous, potentially irrelevant data sources. Our approach summarizes the data sources as succinct synopses for the rapid filtering of non-promising sources. We maintain both structural and value distribution information of each data source, and propose a novel ranking function to measure effectively the relevance of the data source to the given query. We conducted experiments with real datasets, and results show that our approach achieves high performances in all evaluation metrics: recall, precision and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient with different experimental parameters.

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

database selection
keyword search
query estimation
query pattern
xml query


predictive client-side profiles for personalized advertising Personalization is ubiquitous in modern online applications as it provides significant improvements in user experience by adapting it to inferred user preferences. However, there are increasing concerns related to issues of privacy and control of the user data that is aggregated by online systems to power personalized experiences. These concerns are particularly significant for user profile aggregation in online advertising. This paper describes a practical, learning-driven client-side personalization approach for keyword advertising platforms, an emerging application previously not addressed in literature. Our approach relies on storing user-specific information entirely within the user's control (in a browser cookie or browser local storage), thus allowing the user to view, edit or purge it at any time (e.g., via a dedicated webpage). We develop a principled, utility-based formulation for the problem of iteratively updating user profiles stored client-side, which relies on calibrated prediction of future user activity. While optimal profile construction is NP-hard for pay-per-click advertising with bid increments, it can be efficiently solved via a greedy approximation algorithm guaranteed to provide a near-optimal solution due to the fact that keyword profile utility is submodular: it exhibits the property of diminishing returns with increasing profile size. We empirically evaluate client-side keyword profiles for keyword advertising on a large-scale dataset from a major search engine. Experiments demonstrate that predictive client-side personalization allows ad platforms to retain almost all of the revenue gains from personalization even if they give users the freedom to opt out of behavior tracking backed by server-side storage. Additionally, we show that advertisers can potentially increase their return on investment significantly by utilizing bid increments for keyword profiles in their ad campaigns.

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


user action interpretation for personalized content optimization in recommender systems User interaction plays a vital role in recommender systems. Previous studies on algorithmic recommender systems have mainly focused on modeling techniques and feature development. Traditionally, implicit user feedback or explicit user ratings on the recommended items form the basis for designing and training of recommendation algorithms. But user interactions in real-world Web applications (e.g., a portal website with different recommendation modules in the interface) are unlikely to be as ideal as those assumed by previously proposed models. To address this problem, we build an online learning framework for personalized recommendation. We argue that appropriate user action interpretation is critical for a recommender system. The main contribution in this paper is an approach of interpreting users' actions for the online learning to achieve better item relevance estimation. Our experiments on the large-scale data from a commercial Web recommender system demonstrate significant improvement in terms of a precision metric over the baseline model that does not incorporate user action interpretation. The efficacy of this new algorithm is also proved by the online test results on real user traffic.

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

action interpretation
content optimization


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


TrustSets: using trust to detect deceitful agents in a distributed information collecting system This paper addresses the issue of maintaining information coherence and its robustness in a multi-agent system, that collectively gathers information from distributed sources and where some sources may be defective (deliberately or not). In this context, the collective information gathered by the system is a progressive (non linear) aggregation of information collected individually by each agent. Therefore, each agent has direct information (collected by itself) and indirect information (obtained through communication with other agents). System coherence is defined by compatibility of collected information about the explored environment with actual information of the environment. System resilience is defined by the capability to maintain information coherence, despite the existence and increase of faulty agents within the system. In this context, we propose a new trust-based mechanism to detect defective agents and limit the dissemination of deceitful information in the system, thus reducing its impact on the process of collective information gathering.

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

multi-agents system
self-organizing
trustnet
mapping


Spanners for bounded tree-length graphs This paper concerns construction of additive stretched spanners with few edges for n-vertex graphs having a tree-decomposition into bags of diameter at most delta, i.e., the tree-length delta graphs. For such graphs we construct additive 2 delta-spanners with O(delta n+n log n) edges, and additive 4 delta-spanners with O(delta n) edges. This provides new upper bounds for chordal graphs for which delta = 1. We also show a lower bound, and prove that there are graphs of tree-length delta for which every multiplicative delta-spanner (and thus every additive (delta - 1)-spanner) requires Omega(n(1+1/Theta(delta))) edges. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

additive spanner
tree-decomposition
tree-length
chordality


Characterizing software architecture changes: A systematic review With todays ever increasing demands on software, software developers must produce software that can be changed without the risk of degrading the software architecture. One way to address software changes is to characterize their causes and effects. A software change characterization mechanism allows developers to characterize the effects of a change using different criteria, e.g. the cause of the change, the type of change that needs to be made, and the part of the system where the change must take place. This information then can be used to illustrate the potential impact of the change. This paper presents a systematic literature review of software architecture change characteristics. The results of this systematic review were used to create the Software Architecture Change Characterization Scheme (SACCS). This report addresses key areas involved in making changes to software architecture. SACCSs purpose is to identify the characteristics of a software change that will have an impact on the high-level software architecture.

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

software architecture
change characterization
systematic review
software changes


On the solution of multi-point constraints Application to FE analysis of reinforced concrete structures The paper presents an efficient way of implementing general multi-point constraint conditions in a finite element solver. The proposed method of applying and processing the multi-point constraints on the primary unknown variables of finite element method is computationally efficient and memory economical, because all constrained degrees of freedoms (DOFs) are already eliminated during the assembly of the global stiffness matrix and right-hand side vectors. The adopted concept has a wide range of use, and several of its possibilities are discussed. At the end of the paper, sample analyses of reinforced concrete structures are presented that demonstrate the advantages of the developed form for modelling discrete reinforcement bars in non-linear FE calculation in engineering practice.

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

finite element method
engineering practice

dirichlet boundary conditions
multi-point constraints
embedded reinforcement modelling
mesh generation


Confluence problems for trace rewriting systems Rewriting systems over trace monoids. briefly trace rewriting systems, generalize both semi-Thue systems and vector replacement systems. In [21], a particular trace monoid Al is presented such that confluence is undecidable for the class of length-reducing trace rewriting systems over M. In this paper, we show that this result holds for every trace monoid, which is neither free nor free commutative. Furthermore we show that confluence for special trace rewriting systems over a fixed trace monoid is decidable in polynomial time. (C) 2001 Academic Press.

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


The conjugacy search problem in public key cryptography: Unnecessary and insufficient The conjugacy search problem in a group G is the problem of recovering an x is an element of G from given g is an element of G and h = x(-1)gx. This problem is in the core of several recently suggested public key exchange protocols, most notably the one due to Anshel, Anshel, and Goldfeld, and the one due to Ko, Lee et al. In this note, we make two observations that seem to have eluded most people's attention. The first observation is that solving the conjugacy search problem is not necessary for an adversary to get the common secret key in the Ko - Lee protocol. It is sufficient to solve an apparently easier problem of finding x, y is an element of G such that h = ygx for given g, h. G. Another observation is that solving the conjugacy search problem is not sufficient for an adversary to get the common secret key in the Anshel - Anshel - Goldfeld protocol.

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

public key exchange
conjugacy search problem


A Monte Carlo configuration generation computer program for the calculation of electronic states of atoms, molecules, and quantum dots The program mcci (Monte Carlo configuration interaction) is a simple to use and efficient means for performing configuration interaction (CI) calculations. As with all forms of CI, the basic problem is how to select new configurations for the expansion of the wavefunction and this is the issue addressed by mcci. The mcci program selects configurations through a Monte Carlo generation procedure and then iteratively refines the wavefunction. As a consequence, a compact CI vector results as opposed to traditional approaches such as excitation truncation. The program has been applied to the study of the ground state correlation energy of small molecules, to molecular dissociation problems, and to the calculation of the excited state spectra of atoms. The code performs well on single workstations or PCs and its use on parallel computers is discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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

configuration interaction
correlation energy

electronic spectra
variational wavefunctions
davidson algorithm
exact spin coupling


a formal approach to protocols and strategies for (legal) negotiation We propose a formal and executable framework for expressing protocols and strategies for automated (legal) negotiation. In this framework a party involved in a negotiation is represented through a software agent composed of four modules: (i) a communication module which manages the interaction with the other agents; (ii) a control module; (iii) a reasoning module specified as a defeasible theory; and (iv) a knowledge base which bridges the control and the reasoning modules, while keeping track of past decisions and interactions. The choice of defeasible logic is justified against a set of desirable criteria for negotiation automation languages. Moreover, the suitability of the framework is illustrated through two case studies.

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 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

defeasible logic
automated legal negotiation


Ensemble methods for uplift modeling Uplift modeling is a branch of machine learning which aims at predicting the causal effect of an action such as a marketing campaign or a medical treatment on a given individual by taking into account responses in a treatment group, containing individuals subject to the action, and a control group serving as a background. The resulting model can then be used to select individuals for whom the action will be most profitable. This paper analyzes the use of ensemble methods: bagging and random forests in uplift modeling. We perform an extensive experimental evaluation to demonstrate that the application of those methods often results in spectacular gains in model performance, turning almost useless single models into highly capable uplift ensembles. The gains are much larger than those achieved in case of standard classification. We show that those gains are a result of high ensemble diversity, which in turn is a result of the differences between class probabilities in the treatment and control groups being harder to model than the class probabilities themselves. The feature of uplift modeling which makes it difficult thus also makes it amenable to the application of ensemble methods. As a result, bagging and random forests emerge from our evaluation as key tools in the uplift modeling toolbox.

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

uplift modeling
ensemble methods
bagging
random forests


A software test and evaluation environment based on longitudinal database To assure the quality of software by running test cases and evaluating the results is one of the difficult parts of the entire software development project. The difficulty usually comes from the lack of appropriate supporting tools and the complexity of the software. In the past ad hoc supporting tools were made for each project and test results were usually not used across projects. This conventional way of test and evaluation (T&E) is time consuming, and the most important decision "When is this software ready to ship?" is left to the engineers depending on their experiences. Our objective is to build a knowledge-based T&E environment such that tests cases, test results, object snapshots and other information are accumulated in a database. These longitudinal data can be automatically tracked and analyzed to provide decision support information. As a result, test, results can be reviewed repeatedly and software quality can be assured by analyzing these data from various perspectives.

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 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 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

test manager
test analyzer
programming object base


Linear inter-frame dependencies for very low bit-rate speech coding ? We have studied experimentally the operational rate-distortion performance for very low bit-rate speech coding using linear inter-frame dependencies. We propose an algorithm that efficiently combines quantization and linear interpolation procedures. With a maximum delay of 200 ms, for the spectral envelope information and using line spectrum pair (LSP) parameters as input space the proposed algorithm performs best at rates of between 200 and 300 b/s. For comparison's sake several other procedures such as the multi-frame encoder (Kemp D., Collura J., Tremain T., Multi-Frame Coding of LPC Parameters at 600800 bps. In: IEEE ICASSP-91, 1991, pp. 609612) and matrix quantizer (Tsao C., Gray R., Matrix quantizer design for LPC speech using the generalized Lloyd algorithm. IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing ASSP-33, 1985, 537545) are simulated. Furthermore, a mono-dimensional version of the proposed procedure is shown experimentally to provide the best operational rate-distortion trade-off when coding a parametric representation (pitch, gain and voicing information) of the excitation signal.

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

speech coding
quantization
interpolation


A hardware friendly algorithm for action recognition using spatio-temporal motion-field patches A VLSI-hardware-friendly action recognition algorithm using spatio-temporal motion-field patches has been developed. The system employs a hierarchical structure so that the robust recognition can be achieved gradually. At the lower level, motion fields representing local features such as speed and direction are directly calculated from video sequences and further blurred by max filters. At the higher level, a collection of so-called prototype patches are used to recognize query actions by comparing local features in the query videos with those prototypes. In addition, in order to design a system for real-time performance, we intentionally simplify all the calculations into summation operations or boolean operations so that the algorithm can be directly implemented on ultra high speed VLSI chips without much effort. Finally, We tested our system on a gesture perception database as well as widely used action recognition database, and promising recognition performance has been demonstrated.

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

action recognition
gesture perception
patches


evaluating multi-port frame buffer designs for a mesh-connected multicomputer Multicomputers can be effectively used for interactive graphics rendering only if there are mechanisms available to rapidly composite and transfer images to an external display device. One method for achieving the necessary bandwidth for this operation is to provide multiple high-bandwidth ports into a frame buffer. In this paper, we evaluate the design space of a multiport frame buffer design for the Intel Paragon mesh routing network. We use an instrumented rendering system to capture the graphics operations needed for rendering a number of three-dimensional scenes; we then use those workloads as input to test programs running on the Paragon to estimate the performance of our hardware. Our experiments consider three major design questions: how many network ports the frame buffer needs, whether Z-Buffering should be done in hardware on the frame buffer or in software on the computing nodes, and whether the design alternatives are scalable.

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

network
mesh
use
design space
input
design
performance
graphics
paper
software
method
test
rendering
device
bandwidth
routing
hardware

estimates scalability computation experience imaging buffers compositing evaluation interaction program systems operability


Transforming an enterprise model into a use case model in business process systems We propose a transformation of stakeholder requirements into software requirements. The transformation uses an enterprise model and a use case model. We describe the metamodels, rules, and tool for the proposed transformation. An experiment analyzes the use of the approach and its benefits.

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


Two-machine flowshop scheduling with a secondary criterion This paper develops mathematical programming formulations, a branch-and-bound algorithm, and a heuristic algorithm for solving the two-machine flowshop scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing total completion time, subject to the constraint that the makespan is minimum. The proposed branch-and-bound algorithm uses several lower bounding schemes, which are based on problem relaxations. Several dominance conditions are used in the algorithm to limit the size of the search tree. Results of extensive computational tests show that the proposed branch-and-bound algorithm is effective in solving problems with up to 35 jobs. For problems containing larger number of jobs, the proposed heuristic algorithm, which is also used as an upper bound in the proposed branch-and-bound algorithm, is quite effective in finding an optimal or near-optimal schedule. Planning and scheduling have been often considered in the literature and have many pratical issues as in production management and computers science. Works mostly deal with the optimization of a single criterion measuring either a production cost, the tardiness of jobs compared to due dates or production completion time. However, from a practical point of view the optimization of multiple conflictuous criteria yields to the computation of a more realistic schedule for the decision maker. In this paper, we investigate a particular workshop scheduling problem where all the orders have to be processed in the same manner. A schedule is optimal with regard to the completion time of the whole orders and to the total completion time. Due to the hardness of the tackled problem, both heuristic and exact algorithms are provided. We present new theoretical results as well as how they are implemented in an exact algorithm. Numerous computational experiments report the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.

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

bicriteria scheduling
integer programming
dynamic programming
branch-and-bound
heuristics


Semantics of constructions (I) - The traditional approach It is well known that impredicative type systems do not have set theoretical semantics. This paper takes a look at semantics of inductive types in impredicative type systems. A generalized inductive type is interpreted as an omega set generated by effectivizing a certain rule set. The result provides a semantic justification of inductive types in the calculus of constructions.

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Application of classification methods when group sizes are unequal by incorporation of prior probabilities to three common approaches: Application to simulations and mouse urinary chemosignals Four common classification methods are described, Euclidean Distance to Centroids (EDC), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Quadratic Discriminant Analysis (QDA) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). In many applications of chemometrics e.g. in medicine and biology it is common for there to be unequal sample sizes in different groups. When class sizes are unequal the performance of some of these methods may be biased according to class size. This paper describes approaches for incorporating prior probabilities of class membership using Bayesian approaches to three of the methods LDA, QDA and SVM, either assuming equal probability or assuming that the relative sample sizes relate to the relative probabilities. EDC is used as a benchmark to determine model stabilities. The methods are illustrated by four simulated datasets of different structures and one real dataset consisting of the gas chromatographic profile of mouse urine comparing controls to those on a diet. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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classification
linear discriminant analysis
quadratic discriminant analysis
support vector machines


The Correlation Conversion property of quantum channels Transmission of quantum entanglement will play a crucial role in future networks and long-distance quantum communications. Quantum key distribution, the working mechanism of quantum repeaters and the various quantum communication protocols are all based on quantum entanglement. On the other hand, quantum entanglement is extremely fragile and sensitive to the noise of the communication channel over which it has been transmitted. To share entanglement between distant points, high fidelity quantum channels are needed. In practice, these communication links are noisy, which makes it impossible or extremely difficult and expensive to distribute entanglement. In this work, we first show that quantum entanglement can be generated by a new idea, exploiting the most natural effect of the communication channels: the noise itself of the link. We prove that the noise transformation of quantum channels that are not able to transmit quantum entanglement can be used to generate distillable (useable) entanglement from classically correlated input. We call this new phenomenon the Correlation Conversion property of quantum channels. The proposed solution does not require any non-local operation or local measurement by the parties, only the use of standard quantum channels. Our results have implications and consequences for the future quantum communications and for global-scale quantum communication networks. The discovery also revealed that entanglement generation by local operations is possible.

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

quantum communication
quantum entanglement
correlation conversion


Performance, reliability, and performability of a hybrid RAID array and a comparison with traditional RAID1 arrays We describe a hybrid mirrored disk organization patented by LSI Logic Corp. and compare its performance, reliability, and performability with traditional mirrored RAID1 disk organizations and RAID(4+?), ??1. LSI RAID has the same level of redundancy as mirrored disks, but also utilizes parity coding. Unlike RAID1, which cannot tolerate all two disk failures, LSI RAID similarly to RAID6 is 2Disk Failure Tolerant (2DFT), but in addition it can tolerate almost all three disk failures, while RAID1 organizations are generally 1DFT. We list analytic expressions for the reliability of various RAID1 organizations and use enumeration when the reliability expression cannot be obtained analytically. An asymptotic expansion method based on disk unreliabilities is used for an easy comparison of RAID reliabilities. LSI RAID performance is evaluated with the Read-Modify-Write (RMW) and ReConstruct Write (RCW) methods to update parities. The combination of the two methods is used to balance data and parity disk loads, which results in maximizing the I/O throughput. The analysis shows that LSI RAID has an inferior performance with respect to basic mirroring in processing an OLTP workload, but it outperforms RAID6. LSI RAID in spite of its higher Mean Time to Data Loss (MTTDL) is outperformed by other RAID1 organizations as far as its performability is concerned, i.e., the number of I/Os carried out by the disk array operating at maximum I/Os Per Second (IOPS) until data loss occurs. A survey of RAID1 organizations and distributed replicated systems is also included.

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

raid1 organizations
lsi raid
raid6
performability

disk mirroring
parity encoding
hybrid mirrored disks
sspiral raid
raid5
multiway replication
performance analysis
reliability analysis