a configurable logic architecture for dynamic hardware/software partitioning In previous work, we showed the benefits and feasibility of having a processor dynamically partition its executing software such that critical software kernels are transparently partitioned to execute as a hardware coprocessor on configurable logic -- an approach we call warp processing. The configurable logic place and route step is the most computationally intensive part of such hardware/software partitioning, normally running for many minutes or hours on powerful desktop processors. In contrast, dynamic partitioning requires place and route to execute in just seconds and on a lean embedded processor. We have thereforedesigned a configurable logic architecture specifically for dynamic hardware/software partitioning. Through experiments with popular benchmarks, we show that by specifically focusing on the goal of software kernel speedup when designing the FPGA architecture, rather than on the more general goal of ASIC prototyping, we can perform place and route for our architecture 50 times faster, using 10,000 times less data memory, and 1,000 times less code memory, than popular commercial tools mapping to commercial configurable logic. Yet, we show that we obtain speedups (2x on average, and as much as 4x) and energy savings(33\% on average, and up to 74\%) when partitioning even just one loop, which are comparable to commercial tools and fabrics. Thus, our configurable logic architecture represents a goodcandidate for platforms that will support dynamic hardware/software partitioning, and enables ultra-fast desktop tools for hardware/software partitioning, and even for fast configurable logic design in general.

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

configurable logic
platforms
place and route

reconfigurable computing
dynamic optimization
codesign
hardware/software partitioning
self-improving chips
synthesis
fpga fabric
just-in-timecompilation
warp processors
system-on-a-chip


Towards the next generation of artificial neural networks for civil engineering The purpose of this paper is to stimulate interest within the civil engineering research community for developing the next generation of applied artificial neural networks. In particular, it identifies what the next generation of these devices needs to achieve, and provides direction in terms of how their development may proceed. An analysis of the current situation indicates that progress in the development of artificial neural network applications has largely stagnated. Suggestions are made for advancing the field to the next level of sophistication and application, using genetic algorithms and related techniques. It is shown that this approach will require the design of some very sophisticated genetic coding mechanisms in order to develop the required higher-order network structures, and will utilize development mechanisms observed in nature such as growth, self-organization, and multi-stage objective functions. The capabilities of such an approach and the way in which they can be achieved are explored with reference to the problems of: (a) determining truck attributes from the strain envelopes they induce in structural members when crossing a bridge, and; (b) developing a decision support system for dynamic control of industrialized manufacturing of houses.

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

next generation artificial neural networks


inertia-based distributed channel allocation We consider distributed channel allocation on planar conflict graphs describing interference couplings of wireless networks. We observe that the corresponding graph colouring problem is riddled by topologic defects that are annihilated when they meet the network boundary, or possibly another defect. Greedy algorithms lead to random walk -like motion of these defects. To increase the probability for them to meet the network boundary, we impose rules that add inertia to the motion of these defects. These rules give rise to a self-organizing resource allocation algorithm on the network which is cognicient of the motion of the defects. The example case of four-colouring a regular triangular lattice is considered. The median convergence time is found to be less than quadratic in the network size.

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


face decorating system based on improved active shape models This paper presents a face decorating system, which can do makeup on a face image, such as wearing glass, beard or lipstick. In the framework, an improved face alignment method is proposed to localize the key landmarks of a face, which would be used to locate decorations. Active Shape Models( ASMs ), as a robust image alignment method is employed to localize such landmarks. In this work, the authors review the conventional ASMs algorithm for face alignment, and present several improvements on it. It's believed that traditional ASMs is heavily dependent on initial states and prone to local minima. To improve the stability as well as its efficiency, much work is done. First, the eyes are roughly localized in the face area, which are used to initialize the shape model and evaluate the result. Then conventional point distribution model( PDM ) is replaced by a newly proposed combined PDM . Experiments on a database containing 200 labelled face images show that the proposed method performs significantly better than traditional ASMs . Finally, the improved method was used to implement a face decorating system.

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

human computer interaction
active appearance models


Human age estimation with regression on discriminative aging manifold Recently, extensive studies on human faces in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field reveal significant potentials for designing automatic age estimation systems via face image analysis. The success of such research may bring in many innovative HCI tools used for the applications of human-centered multimedia communication. Due to the temporal property of age progression, face images with aging features may display some sequential patterns with low-dimensional distributions. In this paper, we demonstrate that such aging patterns can he effectively extracted from a discriminant subspace learning algorithm and visualized as distinct manifold structures. Through the manifold method of analysis on face images, the dimensionality redundancy of the original image space can be significantly reduced with subspace learning. A multiple linear regression procedure, especially with a quadratic model function, can be facilitated by the low dimensionality to represent the manifold space embodying the discriminative property. Such a processing has been evaluated by extensive simulations and compared with the state-of-the-art methods. Experimental results on a large size aging database demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed framework.

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

age estimation
manifold
multiple linear regression
subspace learning


How well developed are altmetrics? A cross-disciplinary analysis of the presence of alternative metrics in scientific publications In this paper an analysis of the presence and possibilities of altmetrics for bibliometric and performance analysis is carried out. Using the web based tool Impact Story, we collected metrics for 20,000 random publications from the Web of Science. We studied both the presence and distribution of altmetrics in the set of publications, across fields, document types and over publication years, as well as the extent to which altmetrics correlate with citation indicators. The main result of the study is that the altmetrics source that provides the most metrics is Mendeley, with metrics on readerships for 62.6% of all the publications studied, other sources only provide marginal information. In terms of relation with citations, a moderate spearman correlation (r=0.49) has been found between Mendeley readership counts and citation indicators. Other possibilities and limitations of these indicators are discussed and future research lines are outlined.

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

altmetrics
impact story
citation indicators


A solution approach to find the critical path in a time-constrained activity network Finding the longest path in an activity network, where time constraints are attached to activities, is generalized from the traditional critical path problem. Time constraints have attracted much research interest in recent years, because they can be used to represent a large set of real situations, arising not only in the field of the project management. In this paper, we propose a general approach for finding the critical path in a deterministic activity-on-the-arc network, considering three different types of time constraints. The first one is the time-window constraint, which imposes that an activity can start only in a predefined time interval, whereas no constraints are imposed on the activity completion time. The second one is the time-schedule constraint, which assumes that an activity can start its execution at one of the pre-specified instants of time. The third one is the time-switch constraint, which imposes a specified starting time on the project activities and forces them to be inactive during specified time periods. The algorithm introduced in this paper has been developed by redefining and combining together two procedures well-known in the scientific literature. The former, proposed by Chen, Rinks and Tang in 1997, can be used for finding the critical path in an activity network where time-schedule and time-window constraints are considered. The latter, proposed by Yang and Chen in 2000, can be applied in activity networks with only time-switch constraints. The method, developed in this paper, can be used to find the critical path in all the practical situations, in which the aforementioned time constraints are taken into account simultaneously. The proposed approach has been coded in Java and has been validated by considering two sets of instances: the former has been taken from the public domain project scheduling problem library, developed by Kolisch and Sprecher in 1997, whereas the latter consists of randomly generated activity networks. The computational results collected are very promising, showing that the solution process for the considered instances required at most few seconds, using a commercial Pentium class PC.

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

time-constrained network
time-window constraint
time-schedule constraint
time-switch constraint


Multi-agent role allocation: issues, approaches, and multiple perspectives In cooperative multi-agent systems, roles are used as a design concept when creating large systems, they are known to facilitate specialization of agents, and they can help to reduce interference in multi-robot domains. The types of tasks that the agents are asked to solve and the communicative capabilities of the agents significantly affect the way roles are used in cooperative multi-agent systems. Along with a discussion of these issues about roles in multi-agent systems, this article compares computational models of the role allocation problem, presents the notion of explicitly versus implicitly defined roles, gives a survey of the methods used to approach role allocation problems, and concludes with a list of open research questions related to roles in multi-agent systems.

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


Analysing users reactions in advice-giving dialogues with a socially intelligent ECA In this paper, we investigate the users reactions to received suggestion by an Embodied Conversational Agent playing the role of artificial therapist in the healthy eating domain. Specifically, we analyse the behaviour of people who voluntarily requested to receive information from the agent, and we compare it with the results of a previous evaluation experiment in which subjects were not properly motivated to interact with the agent because they were selected for evaluating the system. This study is part of an ongoing research aimed at developing an intelligent virtual agent that applies natural argumentation techniques to persuade the users to improve their eating habits.

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

human computer interaction
analysis of user behaviour
users reaction to persuasion
natural language user interfaces


Guaranteed Ellipse Fitting with a Confidence Region and an Uncertainty Measure for Centre, Axes, and Orientation A simple and fast ellipse estimation method is presented based on optimisation of the Sampson distance serving as a measure of the quality of fit between a candidate ellipse and data points. Generation of ellipses, not just conics, as estimates is ensured through the use of a parametrisation of the set of all ellipses. Optimisation of the Sampson distance is performed with the aid of a custom variant of the LevenbergMarquardt algorithm. The method is supplemented with a measure of uncertainty of an ellipse fit in two closely related forms. One of these concerns the uncertainty in the algebraic parameters of the fit and the other pertains to the uncertainty in the geometrically meaningful parameters of the fit such as the centre, axes, and major axis orientation. In addition, a means is provided for visualising the uncertainty of an ellipse fit in the form of planar confidence regions. For moderate noise levels, the proposed estimator produces results that are fully comparable in accuracy to those produced by the much slower maximum likelihood estimator. Due to its speed and simplicity, the method may prove useful in numerous industrial applications where a measure of reliability for geometric ellipse parameters is required.

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

ellipse fitting
maximum likelihood
uncertainty measure
centre
orientation

simultaneous confidence region
semi-major and semi-minor axes


Uniform DoS traceback Denial of service (DoS) is a significant security challenge in the Internet. Identifying the attackers so that their attack traffic can be blocked at source is one strategy that can be used to mitigate DoS attacks. However, determining the source can be difficult due to the inherent connectionless nature of IP. Traceback using various marking schemes that overload, mostly unused, fields in the IP header are promising techniques to identify the source of the attack. This paper shows that the marking probability used in two existing techniques: probabilistic packet marking (PPM) and dynamic probabilistic packet marking (DPPM) are not optimal and derives an optimal marking scheme called uniform probabilistic packet marking (UPPM). The performance of UPPM is shown to be improved compared to PPM and DPPM by performing comparative numerical analysis. One significant advantage of UPPM over these earlier techniques is that it performs marking at the level of autonomous systems (ASs) rather than at every router. This has advantages both in terms of marking overhead and allowing the optimal formulation of marking probability by utilizing metrics readily available from BGP-4, the inter-AS routing protocol.

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


temporal logics for normative agent communication protocols We sketch how to express typical features of agent communication protocols in a simple temporal logic and show that conformance verification at runtime reduces to a generalised form of model checking.

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


The Gray code Here we summarise the properties and algorithms of the Gray code. Descriptions are given of the Gray code definition, algorithms and circuits for generating the code and for conversion between binary and Gray code, for incrementing, counting, and adding Gray code words. Some interesting applications of the code are also treated.

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


reversible computation with quantum-dot cellular automata (qca) Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a strategy in which binary data is represented by charge configuration within a multi-dot cell. Data is transmitted to nearest neighbors by the Coulombic interaction. An electric field acts as a clock and imposes directionality on circuits. We have explored the connection between logical reversibility and physical reversibility in the context of a QCA system, explicitly calculating the energy dissipated by performing an erasure as a function of the time over which it is performed [1]. Further, we present a Bennett-style clocking scheme to implement reversible computation that is natural to the circuits to minimize the amount of information that is erased. Molecular QCA may provide a practical implementation of reversible computing

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

molecular electronics
quantum-dot cellular automata


a chain-model genetic algorithm for bayesian network structure learning Bayesian Networks are today used in various fields and domains due to their inherent ability to deal with uncertainty. Learning Bayesian Networks, however is an NP-Hard task [7]. The super exponential growth of the number of possible networks given the number of factors in the studied problem domain has meant that more often, approximate and heuristic rather than exact methods are used. In this paper, a novel genetic algorithm approach for reducing the complexity of Bayesian network structure discovery is presented. We propose a method that uses chain structures as a model for Bayesian networks that can be constructed from given node orderings. The chain model is used to evolve a small number of orderings which are then injected into a greedy search phase which searches for an optimal structure. We present a series of experiments that show a significant reduction can be made in computational cost although with some penalty in success rate.

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 O O O O O O O O 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 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


Error-based segmentation of cloud data for direct rapid prototyping This paper proposes an error-based segmentation approach for direct rapid prototyping (RP) of random cloud data. The objective is to fully integrate reverse engineering and RP for rapid product development. By constructing an intermediate point-based curve model (IPCM), a layer-based RP model is directly generated from the cloud data and served as the input to the RP machine for fabrication. In this process, neither a surface model nor an STL file is generated. This is accomplished via three steps. First, the cloud data is adaptively subdivided into a set of regions according to a given subdivision error, and the data in each region is compressed by keeping the feature points (FPs) within the user-defined shape tolerance using a digital image based reduction method. Second, based on the FPs of each region, an IPCM is constructed, and RP layer contours are then directly extracted from the models. Finally, the RP layer contours are faired with a discrete curvature based fairing method and subsequently closed to generate the final layer-based RP model. This RP model can be directly submitted to the RP machine for prototype manufacturing. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the efficacy of the approach.

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

rapid product development
reverse engineering
rapid prototyping
cloud data
segmentation


Efficient and Effective Aggregate Keyword Search on Relational Databases Keyword search on relational databases is useful and popular for many users without technical background. Recently, aggregate keyword search on relational databases was proposed and has attracted interest. However, two important problems still remain. First, aggregate keyword search can be very costly on large relational databases, partly due to the lack of efficient indexes. Second, finding the top-k answers to an aggregate keyword query has not been addressed systematically, including both the ranking model and the efficient evaluation methods. In this paper, the authors tackle these two problems to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of aggregate keyword search on large relational databases. They designed indexes efficient in both size and construction time. The authors propose a general ranking model and an efficient ranking algorithm. They also report a systematic performance evaluation using real data sets.

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

data cube
data mining
group-by
relational database


On families of categorial grammars of bounded value, their learnability and related complexity questions In Kanazawa (1998) [1], the learnability of several parameterized families of categorial grammar classes was studied. These classes were shown to be learnable in the technical sense of identifiability in the limit from positive data. They are defined in terms of bounds on parameters of the grammars which intuitively correspond to restrictions on linguistic aspects, such as the amount of lexical ambiguity. The time complexity of learning these classes has been studied in Costa Florncio (2003) [2]. It was shown that, for most of these classes, selecting a grammar from the class that is consistent with given data is NP-hard. In this paper existing complexity results are sharpened by demonstrating W[2]-hardness. Additionally, parameters are defined that allow FPT-results; roughly, this implies that if these parameters are fixed, these problems become tractable. We also define the new family G(k-sum-val), which is natural from the viewpoints of Parameterized Complexity, a flourishing area of Complexity Theory (see Downey and Fellows (1999) [3]) and from Descriptional Complexity, a sub-area of Formal Language Theory (see Holzer and Kutrib (2010) [4]). We prove its learnability, analyze its relation to other classes from the literature and prove a hierarchy theorem. This approach is then generalized to a parameterized family defined in terms of a bound on the descriptional complexity expressed as a Holder norm. We show that both the hierarchy result and the property of finite elasticity (and thus learnability) are preserved under this generalization. (c) 2012 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 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 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 B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

finite elasticity
parameterized complexity
categorial grammar

grammar induction
identification in the limit
regular tree languages
holder norms


ANSI: A swarm intelligence-based unicast routing protocol for hybrid ad hoc networks We present a hybrid routing protocol for both pure and hybrid ad hoc networks which uses the mechanisms of swarm intelligence to select next hops. Our protocol, Ad hoc Networking with Swarm Intelligence (ANSI), is a congestion-aware routing protocol, which, owing to the self-organizing mechanisms of swarm intelligence, is able to collect more information about the local network and make more effective routing decisions than traditional MANET protocols. Once routes are found, ANSI maintains routes along a path from source to destination effectively by using swarm intelligence techniques, and is able to gauge the slow deterioration of a link and restore a path along newer links as and when necessary. ANSI is thus more responsive to topological fluctuations. ANSI is designed to work over hybrid ad hoc networks: ad hoc networks which consist of both lower-capability, mobile wireless devices and higher-capability, wireless devices which may or may not be mobile. In addition, ANSI works with multiple interfaces and with both wired and wireless interfaces. Our simulation study compared ANSI with AODV on both hybrid and pure ad hoc network scenarios using both TCP and UDP data flows. The results show that ANSI is able to achieve better results (in terms of packet delivery, number of packets sent, end-to-end delay, and jitter) as compared to AODV in most simulation scenarios. In addition, ANSI achieves this performance with fewer route errors as compared to AODV. Lastly, ANSI is able to perform more consistently, considering the lower variation (measured as the width of the confidence intervals) of the observed values in the results of the experiments. We show that ANSI's performance is aided by both its superior handling of routing information and also its congestion awareness properties, though we see that congestion awareness in ANSI comes at a price. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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


Computer Dealer Demos: Selling Home Computers with Bouncing Balls and Animated Logos Computer dealer demos, such as Boing Ball for the Commodore Amiga, were used to impress trade show audiences and retail customers. Dealer demos, such as those used by Commodore International, Atari, and Apple, illustrate how the home computer was socially constructed as a consumer commodity through the interdependent activities of software companies and user communities rather than simply through the marketing strategies of the hardware industry.

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

computer graphics
history of computing
demonstration
user community
advertisement


an effective tracking technique of public transportation toward passenger generated vehicle location system This paper proposes an automatic vehicle locating (AVL) system which gains the geographic location data of a vehicle by passengers' sending the data via their smartphones in order to support public transportation users. While the existing AVL systems with specialized facilities costs a large amount of money and currently only large cities can introduce the system to their public transportation system, such user-generated approach will reduce the costs to collect the location data of a vehicle, and will enable small transportation system to adopt an AVL system. This paper developed a matching technique of location with a timetable, and demonstrated the system in the route buses in Tottori Prefecture with 70 smart phones, and evaluated its performance.

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

public transportatin
user generated content.


Analog Implementation of a Novel Resistive-Type Sigmoidal Neuron An important part of any hardware implementation of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is realization of the activation function which serves as the output stage of each layer. In this work, a new NMOS/PMOS design is proposed for realizing the sigmoid function as the activation function. Transistors in the proposed neuron are biased using only one biasing voltage. By operating in both triode and saturation regions, the proposed neuron can provide an accurate approximation of the sigmoid function. The neuron circuit is designed and laid out in 90-nm CMOS technology. The proposed neuron can be potentially used in implementation of both analog and hybrid ANNs.

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

activation function
sigmoid function
sigmoidal neuron


Method of best successive approximations for nonlinear operators We present a new approach to the approximation of nonlinear operators in probability spaces. The approach is based on a combination of the specific iterative procedure and the best approximation problem solution with a quadratic approximant. We show that the combination of these new techniques allow us to build a computationally efficient and flexible method. The algorithm of the method and its application to the optimal filtering of stochastic signals are given.

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

operator approximation
functional minimization
best estimation


FAULT MONITORING AND FAULT RECOVERY CONTROL FOR POSITION-MOORED VESSELS This paper addresses fault-tolerant control for position mooring of a shuttle or floating production storage and offloading vessels. A complete framework for fault diagnosis is presented. A loss of a sub-sea mooring line buoyancy element and line breakage are given particular attention, since such failures might cause high-risk abortion of an oil-loading operation. With significant drift forces from waves, non-Gaussian elements dominate forces and the residuals designed for fault diagnosis. Hypothesis testing is designed using dedicated change detection for the type of distribution encountered. A new position recovery algorithm is proposed as a means of fault accommodation in order to keep the mooring system in a safe state, despite faults. The position control is shown to be capable of accommodating serious failures and preventing breakage of a mooring line, or a loss of a buoyancy element, from causing subsequent failures. Properties of the detection and fault-tolerant control algorithms are demonstrated by high fidelity simulations.

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

fault diagnosis
fault recovery
position mooring

fault-tolerant control
non-gaussian change detection


Robust estimation of parameter for fractal inverse problem In this paper, some similarity measures for fractal image compression (FIC) are introduced, which are robust against noises. In the proposed methods, robust estimation technique from statistics is embedded into the encoding procedure of the fractal inverse problem to find the parameters. When the original image is corrupted by noises, we hope that the proposed scheme is insensitive to those noises presented in the corrupted image. This leads to a new concept of robust estimation of fractal inverse problem. The proposed least absolute derivation (LAD), least trimmed squares (LTS), and Wilcoxon FIC are the first attempt toward the design of robust fractal image compression which can remove the noises in the encoding process. The main disadvantage of the robust FIC is the computational cost. To overcome this drawback, particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is utilized to reduce the searching time. Simulation results show that the proposed FIC is robust against the outliers in the image. Also, the PSO method can effectively reduce the encoding time while retaining the quality of the retrieved image.

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

fractal inverse problem
least absolute derivation
least trimmed squares
particle swarm optimization


Numerical analysis of the loosened total hip replacements (THR) The paper deals with mathematical simulation of a loosened hip joint, simulation of mechanical processes taking place during static and dynamic burdening and their mathematical description. The main result of the paper consists of the existence theorem and the analysis of the loosened total hip replacement (THR). (C) 1999 IMACS/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 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

quasi-static contact problems in elasticity


empirical analysis of database server scalability using an n-tier benchmark with read-intensive workload The performance evaluation of database servers in N-tier applications is a serious challenge due to requirements such as non-stationary complex workloads and global consistency management when replicating database servers. We conducted an experimental evaluation of database server scalability and bottleneck identification in N-tier applications using the RUBBoS benchmark. Our experiments are comprised of a full scale-out mesh with up to nine database servers and three application servers. Additionally, the fourtier system was run in a variety of configurations, including two database management systems (MySQL and PostgreSQL), two hardware node types (normal and low-cost), and two database replication techniques (C-JDBC and MySQL Cluster). In this paper we present the analysis of results generated with a read-intensive interaction pattern (browse-only workload) in the client emulator. These empirical data can be divided into two kinds. First, for a relatively small number of servers, we find simple hardware resource bottlenecks. Consequently, system throughput increases with an increasing number of database (and application) servers. Second, when sufficient hardware resources are available, non-obvious database related bottlenecks have been found that limit system throughput. While the first kind of bottlenecks shows that there are similarities between database and application/web server scalability, the second kind of bottlenecks shows that database servers have significantly higher sophistication and complexity that require in-depth evaluation and analysis.

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

distributed systems
n-tier applications
middleware


A photo-polymerization resist for UV nanoimprint lithography A novel liquid photo-polymerization resist was prepared for nanoimprint lithography on transparent flexible plastic substrates. The resist is a mixture of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), methylmethacrylate (MMA), methacylic acid (MAA) and two photo-initiators, (2-isopropyl thioxanthone (ITX) and ethyl 4-(dimethylamino)benzoate (EDAB)). The resist can be imprinted at room temperature with a pressure of 0.25kg/cm2, and then exposed from the transparent substrate side using a broad band UV lamp to obtain nano- and micro-scale patterns. Replications of high-density line and space patterns with resolution of 150nm were obtained on a flexible indium tin oxide/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (ITO/PET) substrate. The liquid resist has low viscosity due to the liquid monomers, and low shrinkage due to the addition of PMMA as a binder.

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

photo-polymerization
flexible transparent plastic substrate


A multi-clustering fusion scheme for data partitioning A multi-clustering fusion method is presented based on combining several runs of a clustering algorithm resulting in a common partition. More specifically, the results of several independent runs of the same clustering algorithm are appropriately combined to obtain a distinct partition of the data which is not affected by initialization and overcomes the instabilities of clustering methods. Subsequently, a fusion procedure is applied to the clusters generated during the previous phase to determine the optimal number of clusters in the data set according to some predefined criteria.

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

ensemble clustering
unsupervised learning
partitions schemes


Motion constraint In this paper, we propose a hybrid postural control approach taking advantage of data-driven and goal-oriented methods while overcoming their limitations. In particular, we take advantage of the latent space characterizing a given motion database. We introduce a motion constraint operating in the latent space to benefit from its much smaller dimension compared to the joint space. This allows its transparent integration into a Prioritized Inverse Kinematics framework. If its priority is high the constraint may restrict the solution to lie within the motion database space. We are more interested in the alternate case of an intermediate priority level that channels the postural control through a spatiotemporal pattern representative of the motion database while achieving a broader range of goals. We illustrate this concept with a sparse database of large range full-body reach motions.

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


Evaluation of the geometric stability and the accuracy potential of digital cameras Comparing mechanical stabilisation versus parameterisation Recent tests on the geometric stability of several digital cameras that were not designed for photogrammetric applications have shown that the accomplished accuracies in object space are either limited or that the accuracy potential is not exploited to the fullest extent. A total of 72 calibrations were calculated with four different software products for eleven digital camera models with different hardware setups, some with mechanical fixation of one or more parts. The calibration procedure was chosen in accord to a German guideline for evaluation of optical 3D measuring systems [VDI/VDE, VDI/VDE 2634 Part 1, 2002. Optical 3D Measuring SystemsImaging Systems with Point-by-point Probing. Beuth Verlag, Berlin]. All images were taken with ringflashes which was considered a standard method for close-range photogrammetry. In cases where the flash was mounted to the lens, the force exerted on the lens tube and the camera mount greatly reduced the accomplished accuracy. Mounting the ringflash to the camera instead resulted in a large improvement of accuracy in object space. For standard calibration best accuracies in object space were accomplished with a Canon EOS 5D and a 35mm Canon lens where the focusing tube was fixed with epoxy (47 ?m maximum absolute length measurement error in object space). The fixation of the Canon lens was fairly easy and inexpensive resulting in a sevenfold increase in accuracy compared with the same lens type without modification. A similar accuracy was accomplished with a Nikon D3 when mounting the ringflash to the camera instead of the lens (52 ?m maximum absolute length measurement error in object space). Parameterisation of geometric instabilities by introduction of an image variant interior orientation in the calibration process improved results for most cameras. In this case, a modified Alpa 12 WA yielded the best results (29 ?m maximum absolute length measurement error in object space). Extending the parameter model with FiBun software to model not only an image variant interior orientation, but also deformations in the sensor domain of the cameras, showed significant improvements only for a small group of cameras. The Nikon D3 camera yielded the best overall accuracy (25 ?m maximum absolute length measurement error in object space) with this calibration procedure indicating at the same time the presence of image invariant error in the sensor domain. Overall, calibration results showed that digital cameras can be applied for an accurate photogrammetric survey and that only a little effort was sufficient to greatly improve the accuracy potential of digital cameras.

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


Biomedical ontologies: What part-of is and isn't Mereological relations such as part-of and its inverse has-part are fundamental to the description of the structure of living organisms. Whereas classical mereology focuses on individual entities, mereological relations in biomedical ontologies are generally asserted between classes of individuals. In general, this practice leaves some basic issues unanswered: type constraints of mereological relations, e.g., concerning artifacts and biological entities, the relation between parthood and time, inferred parts and wholes as well as a delimitation of parthood against spatial inclusion. Furthermore, mereological relations can be asserted not only between physical objects but also between biological processes and medical procedures. We analyze these ambiguities and make suggestions for a standardization of mereological relations in biomedical ontologies. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. 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 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

(bio)medical ontologies
knowledge representation
partonomies
terminological standards


Design considerations for an automotive magnetorheological brake In this paper, design considerations for building an automotive magnetorheological (MR) brake are discussed. The proposed brake consists of multiple rotating disks immersed in a MR fluid and an enclosed electromagnet. When current is applied to the electromagnet, the MR fluid solidifies as its yield stress varies as a function of the magnetic field applied. This controllable yield stress produces shear friction oil the rotating disks, generating the braking torque. In this work, practical design criteria such as material selection, sealing, working surface area, viscous torque generation, applied current density, and MR fluid selection are considered to select a basic automotive MR brake configuration. Then, a finite element analysis is performed to analyze the resulting magnetic circuit and heat distribution within the MR brake configuration. This is followed by a multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) procedure to obtain optimal design parameters that can generate the maximum braking torque in the brake. A prototype MR brake is then built and tested and the experimental results show a good correlation with the finite element Simulation predictions. However, the braking torque generated is still far less than that of a conventional hydraulic brake, which indicates that a radical change in the basic brake configuration is required to build a feasible automotive MR brake. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

magnetic circuit
finite element analysis
multidisciplinary design optimization

mechatronic design
magnetorheological fluid
automotive brake
brake-by-wire


Classification of microarray using MapReduce based proximal support vector machine classifier Feature selection and classification of microarray data using Hadoop framework. MapReduce based statistical tests are proposed for feature selection (FS). MapReduce based PSVM (mrPSVM) classifier is proposed for classification of microarray. Comparative analysis of results is performed with FS methods in permutation with mrPSVM.

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

classification
hadoop
proximal support vector machine
mapreduce
microarray

big data
gene selection
statistical test


improving user interest inference from social neighbors Prior research has provided some evidence of social correlation (i.e., "you are who you know"), which makes it possible to infer one's interests from his or her social neighbors. However, it is also shown to be challenging to consistently obtain high quality inference. This challenge can be partially attributed to the fact that people usually maintain diverse social relationships, in order to tap into diverse information and knowledge. It is unlikely that a person would possess all interests of his/her social neighbors. Instead, s/he may selectively acquire just a subset of them. This paper intends to improve inferring interests from neighbors given this observation. We conduct this study by implementing a privacy-preserving large distributed social sensor system in a large global IT company to capture the multifaceted activities (e.g., emails, instant messaging, social bookmarking, etc.) of 25K+ people. These activities occupy the majority of employees' time, and thus, provide a higher quality view of the diverse aspects of their professional interests compared to the friending activity on online social networking sites. In this paper, we propose a technique that exploits the correlation among the attributes that a person possesses to improve social-correlation-based inference quality. Our technique offers two unique contributions. First, we demonstrate that the proposed technique can significantly improve inference quality by as much as 76.1\%. Second, we study the interaction between the two factors: social correlation and attribute correlation under different situations. The results can inform practical applications how the inference quality would change in various scenarios.

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

social correlation
attribute correlation
inference


Standardized languages for telecommunication systems In this paper, we give a survey of the most important ITU-T languages used in the system modeling and development process. We discuss the goals, the most important features, and the basic syntactic and semantic rules of the languages and notations. We compare the capabilities of the ITU-T languages and the OMG's Unified Modeling Language, considering the modeling and development aspects they support. At the end of the paper, we give an informative example to demonstrate the use of the languages during the different phases of the development process.

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


Effect of the top electrode material on the resistive switching of TiO2 thin film Effect of the top electrode (TE) metal on the resistive switching of (TE)/TiO2/Pt structure was investigated. It was confirmed that the potential barrier height between the metal and TiO2 is an important factor on the resistive switching characteristics. When high Schottky barrier was formed with the TiO2 film, using Pt or Au as a top electrode, both stable URS (unipolar) and BRS (bipolar resistive switching) characteristics were observed depending on the current compliance level. In the case of Ag, which forms a relatively low Schottky barrier, only BRS characteristics were observed, regardless of the current compliance level. In the case of Ni and Al, which have similar work function as Ag, unstable URS and BRS at very low current compliance levels were observed due to a chemical reaction at the interface. For the Ti electrode, resistive switching was not observed, because the work function of Ti is lower than that of TiO2 and TiO phase was formed at the interface (Ti/TiOx contact is ohmic).

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


Itinerant delivery of popular data via WIDE hot spots Wireless Information Delivery Environment (WIDE) is a distributed data dissemination system, which uses IEEE 802.11b technology. WIDE aims to deliver popular information services to registered mobile clients in WLAN hot spots. Data delivery is based on broadcasting and multicasting to provide scalability and efficient use of the wireless channel. Reliability is assured with a combination of Forward Error Correction (FEC), data carousel, and ARQ techniques. This paper presents the proposed system architecture with the details of reliable and secure data dissemination mechanisms. Functional evaluation of the proposed system and mechanisms on the implemented prototype are also included in this paper.

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


Non-optimistic secure circuit evaluation based on ElGamal encryption and its applications We propose a protocol for implementing secure circuit evaluation (SCE) based on the threshold homomorphic ElGamal encryption scheme and present the implementation results of the protocol. To the best of knowledge of the authors, the proposed protocol is more efficient in terms of computational complexity than previously reported protocols. We also introduce applications using SCE and estimate their practicality based on the implementation results.

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

secure circuit evaluation
elgamal encryption
implementation


Efficient support for content-aware request distribution and persistent connection in Web clusters To support Web clusters with efficient dispatching mechanisms and policies, we propose a light-weight TCP connection transfer mechanism, TCP Rebuilding, and use it to develop a content-aware request dispatching platform, LVS-CAD, in which the request dispatcher can extract and analyze the content in requests and then dispatch each request by its content or type of service requested. To efficiently support HTTP/1.1 persistent connection in Web clusters, request scheduling should be performed per request rather than per connection. Consequently, multiple TCP Rebuilding, as an extension to normal TCP Rebuilding, is proposed and implemented. On this platform, we also devise fast TCP module handshaking to process the handshaking between clients and the request dispatcher in the IP layer instead of in the TCP layer for faster response times. Furthermore, we also propose content-aware request distribution policies that consider cache locality and various types of costs for dispatching requests in this platform, which makes the resource utilization of Web servers more effective. Experimental results of a practical implementation on Linux show that the proposed system, mechanisms, and policies can effectively improve the performance of Web clusters. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

cluster-based systems
content-aware dispatching
linux virtual server


Three-stage approaches for optimizing some variations of the resource constrained shortest-path sub-problem in a column generation context This paper presents a unified three-stage approach (TSA), comprising preprocessing, setup, and iterative solution stages, for solving several variations of the resource constrained shortest-path problem (RCSP). TSA is designed specially for column-generation applications in which sub-problems must be solved repetitively. The first two stages are implemented one time and only the third stage need be applied repetitively. In a companion paper, the authors proposed a TSA for solving RCSP on an acyclic graph with upper bound resource-limitation constraints. This paper shows that a TSA can be designed to solve each of several related problems: shortest-path with equality resource-limitation constraints; shortest-path with resource windows; resource-constrained, k-shortest path; and multiple-resource, multiple-choice knapsack. A numerical example demonstrates application of a TSA to design an international assembly system and its supply chain using branch and price with multiple-choice knapsack sub-problems. Computational results show that our TSA can solve this sub-problem effectively in such a column-generation environment.

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

shortest-path problem with resource windows


A note: Common due date assignment for a single machine scheduling with the rate-modifying activity In this paper we study the single machine common due date assignment and scheduling problem with the possibility to perform a rate-modifying activity (RMA) for changing the processing times of the jobs following this activity. The objective is to minimize the total weighted sum of earliness, tardiness and due date costs. Placing the RMA to some position in the schedule can decrease the objective function value. Several properties of the problem are considered which in some cases can reduce the complexity of the solution algorithm.

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

single machine scheduling
common due date assignment
earliness
tardiness


Defect detection of IC wafer based on two-dimension wavelet transform Defect detection of integrated circuit (IC) wafer based on two-dimension wavelet transform (2-D DWT) is presented in this paper. By utilizing the characteristics many of the same chips in a wafer, three images with defects located in the same position and different chips are obtained. The defect images contain the standard image without any defects. 2-D DWT presented in the paper can extract the standard image from the three defect images. The algorithm complexity of the method is close to that of 2-D DWT. After obtaining the standard image, the speed and accuracy of defects detection can be greatly enhanced using the detection method presented in the paper. Using the image gray-scale matching technology, impact of illumination on IC defect detection is solved. Experiments demonstrate that 2-D DWT is fast and accurate to defects detection in an IC image, and the method has high robustness for illumination.

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

integrated circuit (ic) wafer
two-dimension wavelet transform


Cerebrovascular segmentation and planning of depth electrode insertion for epilepsy surgery Depth electrodes are inserted in the brain to locate the epileptogenic zone without craniotomy, but there is risk of surgical hemorrhage. Preoperative planning is required to mitigate this risk. A preoperative imaging, segmentation and three dimensional (3D) visualization procedure was developed to provide neurosurgeons with cortical and vascular anatomy information for surgical planning and neuronavigation.

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

cerebrovascular segmentation
depth electrode insertion
3d visualization

vessel imaging
image-guided neurosurgery


Soft tissue deformation with reaction-diffusion process for surgery simulation This paper presents a new methodology to conduct modelling and analysis of soft tissue deformation from the physicochemical viewpoint of soft tissues for surgery simulation. The novelty of this methodology is that soft tissue deformation is converted into a reaction-diffusion process coupled with a mechanical load, and thus reaction-diffusion of mechanical load and non-rigid mechanics of motion are combined to govern the dynamics of soft tissue deformation. The mechanical load applied to a soft tissue to cause a deformation is incorporated into the reaction-diffusion system and consequently distributed among mass points of the soft tissue. An improved reaction-diffusion model is developed to describe the distribution of the mechanical load in the tissue. A generic finite difference scheme is presented for construction of the reaction-diffusion model on a 3D tissue surface. A gradient method is established for derivation of internal forces from the distribution of the mechanical load. Real-time interactive deformation of virtual human organs with haptic feedback has been achieved by the proposed methodology for surgery simulation. The proposed methodology not only accommodates isotropic, anisotropic and inhomogeneous materials by simply modifying diffusion coefficients, but also accepts local and large-range deformations simultaneously. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

soft tissue deformation
surgery simulation

reaction-diffusion process and haptic feedback


Stability analysis of reactiondiffusion CohenGrossberg neural networks under impulsive control The impulsive control method is developed to stabilize a class of CohenGrossberg neural networks (CGNNs) with reactiondiffusion terms and Dirichlet boundary conditions. With the help of Lyapunov functionals, impulsive delay differential inequality and comparison principle, some sufficient conditions ensuring global exponential stability (GES) of equilibrium point are obtained. In particular, the estimate of the exponential convergence rate is also provided, which depends on system parameters, time delays and impulsive interval. Numerical simulations are presented finally to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed results.

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

cohengrossberg neural networks
reactiondiffusion
global exponential stability
impulsive control


combined dynamic voltage scaling and adaptive body biasing for heterogeneous distributed real-time embedded systems Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) is a powerful technique for reducingdynamic power consumption in a computing system. However, astechnology feature size continues to scale, leakage power is increasing and willlimit power savings obtained by DVS alone. Previous system-level real-timescheduling approaches use DVS alone to optimize power consumption withoutconsidering leakage power. To overcome this limitation, we propose a newscheduling algorithm that combines DVS and adaptive body biasing (ABB)to simultaneously optimize both dynamic power consumption and leakagepower consumption for real-time distributed embedded systems. First, wederive an analytical expression to determine the optimal supply voltage andbody bias voltage under a given clock frequency. Based on this expression, wecompute the optimal energy consumption at a given clock frequency and analyzethe tradeoff between energy consumption and execution time for a set oftasks with precedence relationships and real-time constraints. We then proposea scheduling algorithm to reduce total power consumption under givenreal-time constraints. This algorithm also considers variations in power consumptionof different tasks and characteristics of different voltage-scalableprocessing elements (PEs) to maximize power reduction. Experimental resultsshow that the average power reduction of our technique with respect toDVS alone is 34.7\%, while the average saving compared to no voltage scalingis 68.3\% for the 0.07m technology.

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

use
scale
leakage power
reduction
bias
dynamic voltage scaling
relationships
systems
power consumption
energy consumption
size
dynamic
clock
scheduling algorithm
power
distributed
algorithm
feature

time constraint
computation
express
timing
constraint
real-time
heterogeneity
adapt
technologies
experimentation
optimality
variation
power-save
real-time embedded systems
embedded systems


Dynamical modeling investigation for economy of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in global nuclear energy market Non-linear dynamical analysis for the global nuclear energy market is investigated. Currently, the market means a different characteristics comparing to the past situation which had been done before two severe accidents as the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (NPP) accident in the United States and the Chernobyl NPP disaster in the Soviet Union. For the nuclear related facility, the environmental and safety aspects are the important issues of the analysis. Fundamentally, the economic factor is still a critical matter for the commercial trade between two countries which depend on the energy demand and uranium price. The dynamics simulations show the trend of trade is affected by the several kinds of the aspects. Using system dynamics (SD) method, the event quantification is performed for the event flows, stocks, and feedback where the single and double arrow lines are incorporated.

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

dynamical analysis
system dynamics
feedback
nuclear power plant


A passenger demand model for airline flight scheduling and fleet routing Fleet routing and flight scheduling are essential to a carrier's profitability, its level of service and its competitive capability in the market. This research develops a model and a solution algorithm to help carriers simultaneously solve for better fleet routes and appropriate timetables. The model is formulated as an integer multiple commodity network flow problem. An algorithm based on Lagrangian relaxation, a sub-gradient method, the network simplex method, the least cost flow augmenting algorithm and the flow decomposition algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the problem. The results of a case study, regarding a major Taiwan airline's operations, show the model's good performance. Fleet routing and flight scheduling issues have been widely studied to enhance airline's operation efficiency. Normally, network flow techniques are adopted for modeling and solving such complex mathematical problems. However, traditional approaches, which employ draft timetable as an essential medium, not only involve too much subjective judgement and decision making in the process but also reveal an incapability of directly and systematically managing the interrelation between supply and demand. The purpose of this paper is to develop a network model together with a solution algorithm, that can directly manage the interrelationships between passenger trip demands and flight supplies, in order to effectively assist carriers scheduling.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I I I I O O O O B I O O O O O O O O B I I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 efficient dynamically reconfigurable on-chip network architecture In this paper, we present a reconfigurable architecture for NoCs on which arbitrary application-specific topologies can be implemented. The proposed NoC can dynamically tailor its topology to the traffic pattern of different applications at run-time. The run-time topology construction mechanism involves monitoring the network traffic and changing the inter-node connections in order to reduce the number of intermediate routers between the source and destination nodes of heavy communication flows. This mechanism should also preserve the NoC connectivity. In this paper, we first introduce the proposed reconfigurable topology and then address the problem of run-time topology reconfiguration. Experimental results show that this architecture effectively improves the NoC power and performance over the existing conventional architectures.

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

power noc topology reconfigurable performance


Point set morphological filtering and semantic spatial configuration modeling: Application to microscopic image and bio-structure analysis High-level spatial relation and configuration modeling issues are gaining momentum in the image analysis and pattern recognition fields. In particular, it is deemed important whenever one needs to mine high-content images or large scale image databases in a more expressive way than a purely statistically one. Continuing previous efforts to incorporate structural analysis by developing specific efficient morphological tools performing on mesh representations like Delaunay triangulations, we propose to formalize spatial relation modeling techniques dedicated to unorganized point sets. We provide an original mesh lattice framework which is more convenient for structural representations of large image data by means of interest point sets and their morphological analysis. The set of designed numerical operators is based on a specific dilation operator that makes it possible to handle concepts like between or left of over sparse representations of image data such as graphs. Based on this new theoretical framework for reasoning about images, we are able to process high-level queries over large histopathological images, knowing that digitized histopathology is a new challenge in the field of bio-imaging due to the high-content nature and large size of these images.

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

shape analysis
mesh analysis
unorganized point set
mathematical morphological operator
image exploration
graph representation
semantic query
visual reasoning
digital histopathology


Bounds and trade-offs for Double-Base Number Systems During the past twenty years, elliptic curves have attracted more and more attention from the cryptography community. One of the core operations of elliptic curve cryptography protocols is the scalar multiplication. Any algorithm reducing the complexity of such multiplications will speed up cryptographic primitives based on these algebraic structures. In this paper, we study two recently introduced techniques for scalar multiplication: Double-Base Number System (DBNS) and Double-Base Chain (DBC). Our results are twofold. First, we demonstrate a theoretical bound Omega(log n) on the length of any DBC used to decompose some (log n)-bit integers. Second, we present a new algorithm to obtain a {2, 3}-integer expansion of n. The bound previously computed will imply the optimality of this algorithm. Our scheme represents a trade-off method between the DBNS approach and the DBC technique. Experimentally, our algorithm constructs shorter chains on average than both the binary/ternary method and the greedy algorithm approach. (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 B O O O O O O O O O B O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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

elliptic curve cryptography
double-base number system
double-base chain


Hematopoietic stem cell mobilization strategies for gene therapy of beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease Effective gene therapy for hemoglobinopathies will require high numbers of autologous gene-engineered hematopoetic stem cells to be reintroduced into the patients. Stem cell mobilization using G-CSF is the most convenient and effective approach to achieve this goal, but it can have severe side effects in sickle cell anemia and be potentially harmful in the case of severe thalassemia. Hence, the optimal way of collection of hematopoetic stem cells from patients with thalassemia and sickle cell disease needs to be determined. In this paper, we review the possible risks of G-CSF mobilization in hemoglobinopathies and we outline the approaches used in an on-going clinical trial in which pretreatment with hydroxyurea is used to reduce potential risks of G-CSF administration to patients with severe beta thalassemia.

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

mobilization
thalassemia
sickle cell disease


Comparative study on gene set and pathway topology-based enrichment methods Enrichment analysis is a popular approach to identify pathways or sets of genes which are significantly enriched in the context of differentially expressed genes. The traditional gene set enrichment approach considers a pathway as a simple gene list disregarding any knowledge of gene or protein interactions. In contrast, the new group of so called pathway topology-based methods integrates the topological structure of a pathway into the analysis.

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

gene set analysis
pathway topology
simulations
accuracy
sensitivity


Simultaneous quantitative determination of Amlodipine and Atorvastatin in tablets using artificial neural networks Simultaneous spectrophotometric estimation of Atorvastatin Calcium and Amlodipine Besylate in Amostatine (R) tablets were performed using UV-Vis spectroscopic and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Absorption spectra of two components were recorded in 200-350 (nm) wavelengths region with an interval of 4 nm. The calibration models were thoroughly evaluated at several concentration levels using the spectra of synthetic binary mixture (prepared using orthogonal design). Three layers feed-forward neural networks using the back-propagation algorithm (B.P) has been employed for building and testing models. Several parameters such as the number of neurons in the hidden layer, learning rate and the number of epochs were optimized. A general statistic function, Sum Square Error (SSE), was selected to evaluate the training process of ANN. The single Relative Standard Error (RSE) (%) of prediction for each component in real sample was calculated as 0.62 and 2.00 for Atorvastatin and Amlodipine, respectively. The results showed a very good agreement between true values and predicted concentration values. The proposed procedure is a simple, precise and convenient method for the determination of Atorvastatin and Amlodipine in commercial tablets. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

artificial neural network
back-propagation
uv-vis spectrometric


Mobile user authentication system in cloud environment In order to reach a safe environment that can be automatically used on the Internet and to take precautions against the Internet fishing attack, the system integrates some features including one-time password, Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, voiceprint identification of creatural features, and visual cryptography, designing a formula wherein users do not need to remember any accounts and passwords when they surf the Internet through mobile devices, and it aims at smart phones and the Cloud. The formula is able to improve the problems of rampant Internet fishing and the management of passwords. In techniques, on one hand, it uses PIN information visual passwords in cell phones to improve the security of the account; on the other hand, it uses voiceprint identification features so that the system center can ensure the user's identification with a view to improve the leak in mobile devices rather than only to check mobile devices. And then, it utilizes the voiceprint, which we use when we log in, to produce a one-time password that is able to lower the risk of the account and passwords being attacked by Internet fishing. Through the frame of this research, it can protect our cell phones from being lost and embezzled and can prevent the account and passwords from being attacked by Internet fishing. It can also solve the problem of users forgetting accounts and passwords, and reduce the operational burden of cell phones. Besides, it is capable of preventing the Cloud servers from incurring many malicious registrations and logins, keeping them working efficiently. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

voiceprint identification
visual cryptography
cloud


Hierarchically compressed wavelet synopses The wavelet decomposition is a proven tool for constructing concise synopses of large data sets that can be used to obtain fast approximate answers. Existing research studies focus on selecting an optimal set of wavelet coefficients to store so as to minimize some error metric, without however seeking to reduce the size of the wavelet coefficients themselves. In many real data sets the existence of large spikes in the data values results in many large coefficient values lying on paths of a conceptual tree structure known as the error tree. To exploit this fact, we introduce in this paper a novel compression scheme for wavelet synopses, termed hierarchically compressed wavelet synopses, that fully exploits hierarchical relationships among coefficients in order to reduce their storage. Our proposed compression scheme allows for a larger number of coefficients to be stored for a given space constraint thus resulting in increased accuracy of the produced synopsis. We propose optimal, approximate and greedy algorithms for constructing hierarchically compressed wavelet synopses that minimize the sum squared error while not exceeding a given space budget. Extensive experimental results on both synthetic and real-world data sets validate our novel compression scheme and demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms against existing synopsis construction algorithms.

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


Variational learning of finite Dirichlet mixture models using component splitting Finite Dirichlet mixture models have proved to be an effective knowledge representation and inference engine in several machine learning and data mining applications. In this paper, we address the task of learning and selecting finite Dirichlet mixture models in an incremental variational way. A learning algorithm based on component splitting and local model selection is proposed. The merits of the proposed approach are illustrated using synthetic data as well as real challenging applications involving object detection, text documents clustering and distinguishing photographic images from computer graphics.

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

mixture models
component splitting
object detection

dirichlet distribution
variational inference
text clustering


A high capacity data hiding scheme for binary images based on block patterns The scheme proposes block patterns for a 22 block to enforce specific block-based relationship. The best and worst hiding capacities of our scheme are higher than four existing schemes. Two kinds of matching pair (MP) methods, internal adjustment MP and external adjustment MP decrease the embedding changes.

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

binary image
watermarking
authentication


Feature fatigue analysis in product development using Bayesian networks The construct of "feature fatigue" represents the phenomenon of customer's inconsistent satisfaction: customers prefer to choose products with more features and capacities initially, but once actually worked with a product they will find the complex ones are too hard to use. Clearly, customer's dissatisfaction after use will have a negative effect on company's long-term revenue, and the inconsistence is a big challenge for firm's product development. Researchers have proposed some methods to "defeat" feature fatigue, however, most recent research just analyzes features one by one and ignore the relationships among them. Another problem is that the uncertain nature of customer preferences has not been paid enough attention. To solve these problems, a probability based methodology for feature fatigue analysis is proposed, in which Bayesian network techniques are used to represent the uncertain customer preferences for capacity and usability. And in this method, sensitivity analysis is implemented to identify the key features that affect feature fatigue most, and the relationships among features are analyzed using Bayesian network inference. An example is given to illustrate the usage of the proposed method in product development process. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

feature fatigue analysis
bayesian networks
customer preferences
product development


Viscous flow through slowly expanding or contracting porous walls with low seepage Reynolds number: a model for transport of biological fluids through vessels In this article, the problem of laminar, isothermal, incompressible and viscous flow in a rectangular domain bounded by two moving porous walls, which enable the fluid to enter or exit during successive expansions or contractions, is investigated. The governing non-linear equations and their associated boundary conditions are transformed into a highly non-linear ordinary differential equation. The series solution of the problem is obtained by utilising the homotopy perturbation method. Graphical results are presented to investigate the influence of the non-dimensional wall dilation rate and seepage Reynolds number (Re) on the velocity, normal pressure distribution and wall shear stress. Since the transport of biological fluids through contracting or expanding vessels is characterised by low seepage Res, the current study focuses on the viscous flow driven by small wall contractions and expansions of two weakly permeable walls.

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

expanding or contracting porous walls
seepage reynolds number


Weakly Supervised Learning of Interactions between Humans and Objects We introduce a weakly supervised approach for learning human actions modeled as interactions between humans and objects. Our approach is human-centric: We first localize a human in the image and then determine the object relevant for the action and its spatial relation with the human. The model is learned automatically from a set of still images annotated only with the action label. Our approach relies on a human detector to initialize the model learning. For robustness to various degrees of visibility, we build a detector that learns to combine a set of existing part detectors. Starting from humans detected in a set of images depicting the action, our approach determines the action object and its spatial relation to the human. Its final output is a probabilistic model of the human-object interaction, i.e., the spatial relation between the human and the object. We present an extensive experimental evaluation on the sports action data set from [1], the PASCAL Action 2010 data set [2], and a new human-object interaction data set.

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


Towards a quality model of technical aspects for mobile learning services: An empirical investigation We propose a new model that captures most abstract and generic technical aspects of mobile learning. Four case studies were conducted with selected technical quality aspects in cumulative exercise. The case studies point to set of contextual technical quality factors influence mobile learning. The model evaluates technical aspects while maintaining delivered mobile learning quality. This effort is part of an Omani-funded research project investigating mobile learning in Oman.

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 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 B I 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

software quality
requirements engineering
human computing interaction


A general sufficient condition of four positive solutions of the P3P problem In this paper, it is proved that, given 3 control points A, B and C, if the camera's optical center 0 lies on one of the three planes perpendicular to the plane ABC and going through one of the three altitudes of the triangle ABC, and additionally its projection on the plane ABC is within the circumscribed circle of the triangle, that is, 0 is within the so-called "danger cylinder", then the corresponding P3P problem {O, (ABC)} must have 4 positive solutions. This result is purely geometrical, and more instructive. It can bring some new insight into a better understanding of multiple-solution problem in the PnP problem, and could be used as some theoretical guide to arrange control points in real applications.

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

p3p (perspective-3-point) problem
multiple solutions


Estimating domestic US airline cost of delay based on European model Researchers are applying more holistic approaches to the feedback control of the air transportation system. Many of these approaches rely on economic feedback, including the cost of delays to the airlines. Establishing an accurate mechanism for estimating the cost of a delays for each portion of a flight (gate costs, taxiing in and out costs, and en-route costs) is useful for many aspects of modeling airline behavior and for better understanding the likely impact of regulations. Cook et al. (2004) developed a rigorous methodology and collected data for estimating the components of airline delay costs for various segments of a scheduled flight. The model, based on confidential information from European airlines for 12 types of aircraft ca. 2003, was not transparent with regards to how each of the major components of cost (crew costs, fuel costs, maintenance, depreciation, etc.) impacted that total. This paper describes the development of an airline cost model, based on the Eurocontrol model. The airline cost model explicitly identifies the components of airline costs, is based on US airline cost data, and includes 111 aircraft types. The new model is designed to allow costs to be updated whenever the basic costs change. It considers the type of the aircraft when making calculations, both from the perspective of fuel burn and other costs and uses publically available data on burn rates and block-hour direct operating costs (BHDOC) to obtain these estimates. A case-study analysis of airline costs of operation at 19 major US airports is provided.

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

component
airline delays
economic modeling of airlines


converged communications, video and innovation in pedagogic settings In an environment where academic globalization may become the norm, solutions to contemporary teaching and learning problems frequently include methods that promote effective communication, assist in resolving telecommuting opportunities, and use advanced information technology to support learning at a distance. Of importance, many of the solutions afforded by converged networks apply to traditional as well as distance learning environments. Innovation centered on enhanced communications is often at the center of these solutions. This panel will explore these ideas. It begins with a presentation on Network convergence, the fundamental change permitting the concepts mentioned above. The central theme of the presentation is a focus on video, and an analysis of video options is included. The presentation concludes with the idea of a collaboratory and implications for pedagogic strategies.

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


Visual stability analysis for model selection in graded possibilistic clustering When compared to standard clustering, fuzzy clustering provides more flexible and powerful data representation. Most fuzzy methods require setting some parameters, as is the case for the Graded Possibilistic c-Means clustering method, which has two parameters in addition to number of centroids. However, for this model selection task there is no well established criterion available. Building on our own previous work on fuzzy clustering similarity indexes, we introduce a technique to evaluate the stability of clusterings by using the fuzzy Jaccard index, and use this procedure to select the most suitable values of parameters. The experiments indicate that the procedure is effective for fuzzy and possibilistic clustering.

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

possibilistic clustering
clustering method
fuzzy clustering