A machine-learning approach for analyzing document layout structures with two reading orders The purpose of document layout analysis is to locate textlines and text regions in document images mostly via a series of split-or-merge operations. Before applying such an operation, however, it is necessary to examine the context to decide whether the place chosen for the operation is appropriate. We thus view document layout analysis as a matter of solving a series of binary decision problems, such as whether to apply, or not to apply, a split-or-merge operation to a chosen place. To solve these problems, we use support vector machines to learn whether or not to apply the previously mentioned operations from training documents in which all textlines and text regions have been located and their identifies labeled. The proposed approach is very effective for analyzing documents that allow both horizontal and vertical reading orders. When applied to a test data set composed of eight types of layout structure, the approach's accuracy rates for identifying textlines and text regions are 98.83% and 96.72%, respectively.

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

binary decision
document layout analysis

reading order
support vector machine
taboo box
textline
text region


A compressed sensing approach for efficient ensemble learning A compressed sensing approach for efficient ensemble learning is proposed. A new performance evaluation method (the roulette-wheel kappa-error) is proposed. The ensemble of classifiers is posed as a compressed sensing problem. Roulette-wheel is used to select pairs of classifiers based on their weightings. The proposed method is testified by 25 different public data sets.

O B I O O O B I 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 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

classification
classifier ensemble
sparse reconstruction
roulette-wheel selection
kappa-error


An improved hybrid algorithm for solving the generalized vehicle routing problem ? The generalized vehicle routing problem (GVRP) is a natural extension of the classical vehicle routing problem (VRP). In GVRP, we are given a partition of the customers into groups (clusters) and a depot and we want to design a minimum length collection of routes for the fleet of vehicles, originating and terminating at the depot and visiting exactly one customer from each group, subject to capacity restrictions. The aim of this paper is to present an efficient hybrid heuristic algorithm obtained by combining a genetic algorithm (GA) with a localglobal approach to the GVRP and a powerful local search procedure. The computational experiments on several benchmark instances show that our hybrid algorithm is competitive to all of the known heuristics published to date.

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

generalized vehicle routing problem
local search


Resampling and requantization of band-limited Gaussian stochastic signals with flat power spectrum A theoretical analysis, aimed at characterizing the degradation induced by the resampling and requantization processes applied to band-limited Gaussian signals with flat power spectrum, available through their digitized samples, is presented. The analysis provides an efficient algorithm for computing the complete joint bivariate discrete probability distribution associated with the true quantized version of the Gaussian signal and with the quantity estimated after resampling and requantization of the input digitized sequence. The use of Fourier transform techniques allows deriving approximate analytical expressions for the quantities of interest, as well as implementing their efficient computation. Numerical experiments are found to be in good agreement with the theoretical results, and confirm the validity of the whole approach.

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

quantization
interpolation
statistical signal processing


Study on the vacuum breakdown in field emission of a nest array of multi-walled carbon nanotube/silicon nanoporous pillar array A composite structure, a nest array of multi-walled carbon nanotubes/silicon nanoporous pillar array (NACNT/Si-NPA), with good field emission properties, was synthesized through growing CNT on Si-NPA by thermal chemical vapor deposition. In order to make full use of its good field emission properties, the vacuum breakdown behavior accompanied with field emission from NACNT/Si-NPA was investigated. The results revealed that a positive feedback of field emission and resulted Joule heat ignited a small portion of protruding emitters, which caused spark discharge, destroyed the anode and generated a large amount of heat. The thermal runaway ultimately resulted in the destruction of substrate and vacuum breakdown.

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


Optimized butt coupling between single mode fiber and hollow-core photonic crystal fiber Butt coupling of hollow core photonic crystal fiber with single mode fiber. Gap between HC-PCF and SMF is provided. Theoretically, Fresnel diffracted MFD matches with receiving fiber core diameter. Optimum gap is theoretically calculated and experimentally verified.

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

inter fiber distance optimization
mechanical fiber splicing


Portfolio selection in stochastic markets with HARA utility functions In this paper, we consider the optimal portfolio selection problem where the investor maximizes the expected utility of the terminal wealth. The utility function belongs to the HARA family which includes exponential, logarithmic, and power utility functions. The main feature of the model is that returns of the risky assets and the utility function all depend on an external process that represents the stochastic market. The states of the market describe the prevailing economic, financial, social, political and other conditions that affect the deterministic and probabilistic parameters of the model. We suppose that the random changes in the market states are depicted by a Markov chain. Dynamic programming is used to obtain an explicit characterization of the optimal policy. In particular, it is shown that optimal portfolios satisfy the separation property and the composition of the risky portfolio does not depend on the wealth of the investor. We also provide an explicit construction of the optimal wealth process and use it to determine various quantities of interest. The return-risk frontiers of the terminal wealth are shown to have linear forms. Special cases are discussed together with numerical illustrations.

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 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

dynamic programming
hara utility functions

portfolio optimization
myopic policy
efficient frontier


Supervision control for optimal energy cost management in DC microgrid: Design and simulation Supervision design and optimized powers flow for microgrid based on PV-storage-grid. Powers flow optimization to reduce energy cost while meeting multiple constraints. Constraints: PV and load power forecasts, grid power limitations, energy tariffs. Simulation results prove the microgrid power balancing with reduced energy cost. Supervision designed as interface communication between loads and smart grid.

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

dc microgrid
smart grid
simulation
supervision


Tools for building a comprehensive modeling system for virtual screening under real biological conditions: The Computational Titration algorithm Computational tools utilizing a unique empirical modeling system based on the hydrophobic effect and the measurement of logPo/w (the partition coefficient for solvent transfer between 1-octanol and water) are described. The associated force field, Hydropathic INTeractions (HINT), contains much rich information about non-covalent interactions in the biological environment because of its basis in an experiment that measures interactions in solution. HINT is shown to be the core of an evolving virtual screening system that is capable of taking into account a number of factors often ignored such as entropy, effects of solvent molecules at the active site, and the ionization states of acidic and basic residues and ligand functional groups. The outline of a comprehensive modeling system for virtual screening that incorporates these features is described. In addition, a detailed description of the Computational Titration algorithm is provided. As an example, three complexes of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) are analyzed with our system and these results are compared with the experimental free energies of binding.

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

comprehensive modeling system
virtual screening
computational titration algorithm
hydropathic interactions
hint


Using confidence interval to summarize the evaluating results of DSM systems Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) systems have gained popular acceptance by combining the scalability and low cost of distributed system with the ease of use of single address space. Many new hardware DSM and software DSM systems have been proposed in recent years. In general, benchmarking is widely used to demonstrate the performance advantages of new systems. However, the common method used to summarize the measured results is the arithmetic mean of ratios, which is incorrect in some cases. Furthermore, many published papers list a lot of data only, and do not summarize them effectively, which confuse users greatly. In fact, many users want to get a single number as conclusion, which is not provided in old summarizing techniques. Therefore, a new data-summarizing technique based on confidence interval is proposed in this paper. The new technique includes two data-summarizing methods: (1) paired confidence interval method; (2) unpaired confidence interval method. With this new technique, it is concluded that at some confidence one system is better than others. Four examples are shown to demonstrate the advantages of this new technique. Furthermore, with the help of confidence level, it is proposed to standardize the benchmarks used for evaluating DSM systems so that a convincing result can be got. In addition, the new summarizing technique fits not only for evaluating DSM systems, but also for evaluating other systems, such as memory system and communication 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 B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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-summarizing technique
performance evaluation
dsm system


A GENERALIZED CONSTRUCTION OF OFDM M-QAM SEQUENCES WITH LOW PEAK-TO-AVERAGE POWER RATIO A construction of 2(2n)-QAM sequences is given and an upper bound of the peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR) is determined. Some former work can be viewed as special cases of this construction.

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

orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (ofdm)

peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (pmepr)


Smallest Bipartite Bridge-Connectivity Augmentation This paper addresses two augmentation problems related to bipartite graphs. The first, a fundamental graph-theoretical problem, is how to add a set of edges with the smallest possible cardinality so that the resulting graph is 2-edge-connected, i.e., bridge-connected, and still bipartite. The second problem, which arises naturally from research on the security of statistical data, is how to add edges so that the resulting graph is simple and does not contain any bridges. In both cases, after adding edges, the graph can be either a simple graph or, if necessary, a multi-graph. Our approach then determines whether or not such an augmentation is possible. We propose a number of simple linear-time algorithms to solve both problems. Given the well-known bridge-block data structure for an input graph, the algorithms run in O(log n) parallel time on an EREW PRAM using a linear number of processors, where n is the number of vertices in the input graph. We note that there is already a polynomial time algorithm that solves the first augmentation problem related to graphs with a given general partition constraint in O(n(m+nlog n)log n) time, where m is the number of distinct edges in the input graph. We are unaware of any results for the second problem.

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

2-edge-connectivity
bridge-connectivity
data security
bipartite graph augmentation


Modeling and analyzing multi-agent behaviors using predicate/transition nets How agents accomplish a goal task in a multi-agent system is usually specified by multiagent plans built from basic actions (e.g. operators) of which the agents are capable. The plan specification provides the agents with a shared mental model for how they are supposed to collaborate with each other to achieve the common goal. Making sure that the plans are reliable and fit for the purpose for which they are designed is a critical problem with this approach. To address this problem, this paper presents a formal approach to modeling and analyzing multi-agent behaviors using Predicate/Transition (PrT) nets, a high-level formalism of Petri nets. We model a multi-agent problem by representing agent capabilities as transitions in PrT nets. To analyze a multi-agent PrT model, we adapt the planning graphs as a compact structure for reachability analysis, which is coherent to the concurrent semantics. We also demonstrate that one can analyze whether parallel actions specified in multi-agent plans can be executed in parallel and whether the plans can achieve the goal by analyzing the dependency relations among the transitions in the PrT model.

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

formal methods
predicate/transition nets
multi-agent systems
verification


On the relationships between QoS and software adaptability at the architectural level Definition of a set of architectural metrics that quantify the system adaptability. Study of relationships between adaptability and quality using the proposed metrics. Automation of the study of relations between adaptability and quality through a tool.

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

quality of service
software architectures


New materials in high voltage technology Assets in high voltage technology have to meet harsh service conditions over long lifetimes of 40 years or more. Due to environmental concerns, substitution of conventional insulating materials becomes a necessity. Because robustness and sustainability are serious requirements, only few new materials are really breaking through. At present some promising material technologies emerge with great potential applicability in high voltage engineering. This paper discusses especially nanocomposites and high temperature superconductors.

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

high voltage technologies
hochspannungstechnik
nanokomposite
supraleitern


Alignment of operations strategy: exploring the marketing interface Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that can help managers to overcome bathers to alignment of operations strategy at the interface with marketing. Design/methodology/approach - This objective required the application of a procedure based on strategic consensus and a deeper analysis, such that the delimitation of the study in a single case was mandatory. The strategic processes of interfacing involve managerial attributes that are subject to the influence of human aspects and, therefore, the research method used a qualitative approach. The protocol design included the following data sources: interviews, document reviews and researcher observations. The categorisation was made based on the theoretical references, the frequency of observations, common responses and information from documents. Findings - The balance between intra-functional trade-offs, joint research on the competitive context, reflections on the understanding of customer needs and operational performance, and understanding of inter-functional trade-offs were the main factors verified. They effectively support decisions associated with interface processes and promotes the integration of these processes. They can generate inputs that enable managers to achieve an appropriate balance among alternatives in light of various trade-offs. Practical implications - These factors make possible new connections between strategic processes in the context of operations and marketing functions. The formations of these strategies are aligned through a better understanding of both threats and opportunities by means of a joint analysis of the competitive context. The presented findings can be used to develop a clear definition of strategic objectives of operations and a more appropriate treatment of market needs. Originality/value - The findings from the research can be considered as new elements for promoting alignment in the formation process of the operations strategy. Little research to date has examined the operations-marketing strategic interface of companies in the context of strategic consensus.

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

operations strategy
strategic consensus
strategic interface

operations management
strategic alignment
operations-marketing interface


Shape optimization of electrostatically actuated microbeams for extending static and dynamic operating ranges We present the systematic development and application of a generic shape optimization methodology to enhance the static and dynamic pull-in ranges of electrostatically actuated microbeams. Energy-based techniques are used to extract static and dynamic pull-in parameters of the distributed electromechanical model that accounts for the fringing field capacitance, moderately large deflections, and coupling between the mechanical and electric forces. Versatile parametric width functions are used to characterize the nonprismatic geometries of cantilever and fixed-fixed microbeams, and parameters of the proposed width functions are optimized using the Nelder-Mead method of function minimization together with a penalty method to enforce the constraints. We consider several test cases in order to fully demonstrate the utility of the proposed methodology. Results indicate that an increase in the travel range of as much as 20% can be obtained using our optimization approach. In case of fixed-fixed microbeams, this enhancement in the travel range is found to be dependent on the extent of geometric nonlinearity. We present the optimal shapes of these microbeams, that easily lend themselves to microfabrication, which exhibit the improved pull-in response in both static and dynamic regimes. For a set of representative cases, the enhanced travel range in both static and dynamic modes of actuation is positively verified by 3D finite element analyses performed on the referential and optimized geometries.

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

microelectromechanical systems
nonprismatic beams
pull-in instability
finite element analysis


Probabilistic parameter estimation and predictive uncertainty based on field measurements for unsaturated soil slope A key issue in assessment of rainfall-induced slope failure is a reliable evaluation of pore water pressure distribution and its variations during rainstorm, which in turn requires accurate estimation of soil hydraulic parameters. In this study, the uncertainties of soil hydraulic parameters and their effects on slope stability prediction are evaluated, within the Bayesian framework, using the field measured temporal pore-water pressure data. The probabilistic back analysis and parameter uncertainty estimation is conducted using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. A case study of a natural terrain site is presented to illustrate the proposed method. The 95% total uncertainty bounds for the calibration period are relatively narrow, indicating an overall good performance of the infiltration model for the calibration period. The posterior uncertainty bounds of slope safety factors are much narrower than the prior ones, implying that the reduction of uncertainty in soil hydraulic parameters significantly reduces the uncertainty of slope stability.

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

rainfall infiltration
unsaturated soils
bayesian theory
markov chain simulation


Associative clustering for clusters of arbitrary distribution shapes A novel neural network, named Associative Clustering Neural Network (ACNN), is developed for clustering data whose underlying distribution shapes are arbitrary. ACNN is a dynamic model that collectively measures and updates the similarity of any two patterns through the interaction of a group of patterns. Such a new measure of similarity helps to achieve more robust clustering performance than using the existing measures that are staticly and individually based on the distances among the isolated pairwise data. The efficience of ACNN has been verified through the performance study.

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


Image reconstruction algorithm from compressed sensing measurements by dictionary learning It is a challenge task to reconstruct images from compressed sensing measurement due to its implicit ill-posed property. In this paper, we propose an image reconstruction algorithm for compressed sensing image application based on the adaptive dictionary, which is learned from the reconstructed image itself. The sparsity level is enhanced since the sparse coding of overlapping image patches emphasizes the local image features; accordingly the quality of the reconstructed image is also improved. In addition, Batch-OMP algorithm, linearization technique and dynamic updating sparse coding algorithm are used to reduce the computational complexity of our proposed algorithm. Numerical experiments are conducted on several test images with a variety of sampling ratios. The results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can efficiently reconstruct images from compressed sensing measurements and achieve more than 3dB gain averagely over the current leading CS reconstruction algorithm.

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

compressed sensing
image reconstruction
dictionary learning
linearization technique


Genetic algorithm based neural classifiers for factor subset extraction A clear understanding of risk factors is important to develop appropriate prevention and control strategies for infection caused by such pathogens as Salmonella Typhimurium. In this study, there are 91 risk factors that nonlinearly contribute to the Salmonella Typhimurium infection and many of them are not of significance. It is very important to automatically extract a factor subset with those important risk factors. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm for factor subset extraction in conjunction with neural and statistical classifiers to classify case and control status in Salmonella Typhimurium infection. The results show that the proposed approach is able to find an appropriate factor subset and the proposed neural classifiers outperform the traditional statistical classifiers. A statistical analysis is conducted by varying the parameters in the genetic algorithm based neural classifier to minimise the prediction error and determine the optimal system configuration.

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


Design and evaluation guidelines for mental health technologies It is increasingly recognised that technology has the potential to significantly improve access, engagement, effectiveness and affordability of treatment for mental health problems. The development of such technology has recently become the subject of Human-Computer Interaction research. As an emerging area with a unique set of constraints and design concerns, there is a need to establish guidelines which encapsulate the knowledge gained from existing development projects. We present an initial set of design guidelines extracted from the literature and from a series of development projects for software to support mental health interventions. The first group of guidelines pertain to the design process itself, addressing the limitations in access to clients in mental healthcare settings, and strategies for collaborative design with therapists. The second group considers major design factors in the development of these technologies, including therapeutic models, client factors, and privacy. The third group concerns conduct of the evaluation process, and the constraints on evaluating mental healthcare technologies. We motivate and explain these guidelines with reference to concrete design projects and problems. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

mental health
design guidelines
design process


usage-based dhcp lease time optimization The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used to dynamically allocate address space to hosts on a local area network. Despite its widespread usage, few studies exist on DHCP usage patterns, and even less is known about the importance of setting the lease time (the time that a client retains ownership over some IP address) to an appropriate value. Lease time can greatly affect the tradeoff between address space utilization and the number of both renewal messages and client session expirations. In this paper, using a DHCP trace for 5 weekdays from the Georgia Tech campus network, we present the largest known study of DHCP utilization. We also explore how various strategies for setting lease times can dramatically reduce the number of renewals and expirations without prohibitively increasing address space utilization.

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


a strict evaluation method on the number of conditions for the sha-1 collision search This paper proposes a new algorithm for evaluating the number of chaining variable conditions(CVCs) in the selecting step of a distrubance vector (DV) for the analysis of SHA-1 collision attack. The algorithm is constructed by combining the following four strategies, "Strict Differential Bit Compression", "DV expansion", "Precise Counting Rules in Every Step" and "Differential Path Confirmation for Rounds 2 to 4" , that can evaluate the number of CVCs morestrictly compared with the previous approach.

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


resource virtualization in real-time corba middleware Middleware for parallel and distributed systems is designed to virtualize computation and communication resources so that a more abstract and consistent view of those resources is presented to the applications that use them. Providing such a consistent virtualization in distributed real-time and embedded systems becomes increasingly challenging due to application constraints such as timeliness and resource constraints such as CPU speed, power, memory, and bandwidth limitations, which also must be considered.This paper describes several examples of real-time CORBA middleware and examines how different constraints impact the way in which resources are virtualized in each case. Particular attention is paid to which details are hidden from users of the middleware, which details are exposed in the middleware's programming model, and how the hidden and exposed details interact to shape middleware design and implementation choices.

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 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


Criticality guided energy aware speculation for speculative multithreaded processors Unending quest for performance improvement coupled with the advancements in integrated circuit technology have led to the development of new architectural paradigm. Speculative multithreaded architecture (SpMT) philosophy relies on aggressive speculative execution for improved performance. However, aggressive speculative execution comes with a mixed flavor of improving performance, when successful, and adversely affecting the energy consumption (and performance) because of useless computation in the event of mis-speculation. Dynamic instruction criticality information can be usefully applied to control and guide such an aggressive speculative execution. In this paper, we present a model of micro-execution for SpMT architecture that we have developed to determine the dynamic instruction criticality. We have also developed two novel techniques utilizing the criticality information namely delaying the non-critical loads and the criticality based thread-prediction for reducing useless computations and energy consumption. Experimental results showing break-up of critical instructions and effectiveness of proposed techniques in reducing energy consumption are presented in the context of multiscalar processor that implements SpMT architecture. Our experiments show 17.7% and 11.6% reduction in dynamic energy for criticality based thread prediction and criticality based delayed load scheme respectively while the improvement in dynamic energy delay product is 13.9% and 5.5%, respectively.

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

speculative multithreading
execution modeling
speculation control
energy optimization


Modeling of on-chip bus switching current and its impact on noise in power supply grid In this paper, an analytical model for the current draw of an on-chip bus is presented. The model is combined with an on-chip power supply grid model in order to analyze noise caused by switching buses in a power supply grid. The bus is modeled as distributed resistance-inductance-capacitance (RLC) lines that are capacitively and inductively coupled to each other. Different switching patterns and driver skewing times are also included in the model. The power supply grid is modeled as a network of RLC segments. The model is verified by comparing it to HSPICE. The error was below 8%. The model is applied to determine the influence of driver skewing times on maximum power supply noise.

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 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 B I I


a multi-agent system for collaborative bookmarking In this paper we describe a new distributed collaborative bookmark system, called COWING (for COllaborative Web IndexING system). The COWING system is composed of a set of assistant agents, called WINGS , and a central agent that manages the user's organization. Each user is assisted by a Wing agent that performs two tasks: learning the user's strategy in classifying her/his own bookmarks and interacting with other WING agents in order to fetch new bookmarks that match the local user information need.

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

indexing
organization
order
agent
information need
web
bookmarks
learning
paper
distributed
user

collaboration
strategies
multi-agent systems
systems
matching
collaborative interface agents
classifiation
hybrid neural-cbr classification
locality


Effect of direct current stressing to CuCu bond interface imperfection for three dimensional integrated circuits The ability to be used as both a glue layer and the interconnection line has put Cu metal interconnection as the ultimate goal for 3D-IC. However, the inherent properties of CuCu bond interface that are not always perfect have raised some concerns. This work investigates the evolution of the CuCu bond interface that had been subjected to prolonged electrical current stress. Interface evolutions were characterized by a combination of electrical current stressing and bond interface cross-sectional analysis. While interface improvement was observed in terms of interface void reduction after current stressing, early failures to the interconnection line adjacent to the bond interface were observed. Electromigration had driven void migration from the large bond interface area to the much smaller adjoining interconnect line. This potentially has a significant impact on the future of 3D-IC technology that utilizes CuCu bonding. However, this problem can be mitigated by inserting a barrier layer in between the bond interface and the interconnect line to prevent the migration of the voids into the interconnect line.

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


A cloud based architecture capable of perceiving and predicting multiple vessel behaviour We train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict future vessel's behavior. We study if an ANN is capable of inferring the unique behaviour of a vessel. We design, train and implement a proof of concept ANN as a cloud based web app. The derived ANN has the ability to predict short and long term vessel behaviour.

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

ai artificial intelligence
ais automatic identification system
ann artificial neural network
gps global positioning system
jdl joint directors of laboratories
mda maritime domain awareness
mmsi maritime mobile service identity
mse mean squared error
mvc model view controller
rest representational state transfer
soap simple object access protocol
vhf very high frequency


Availability requirement for a fault-management server in high-availability communication systems This paper investigates the availability requirement for the fault management server in high-availability communication systems. This study shows that the availability of the fault management server does not need to be 99.999% in order to guarantee a 99.999% system availability, as long as the fail-safe ratio (the probability that the failure of the fault management server does not bring down the system) and the fault coverage ratio (probability that the failure in the system can be detected and recovered by the fault management server) are sufficiently high. Tradeoffs can be made among the availability of the fault management server, the fail-safe ratio, and the fault coverage ratio to optimize system availability. A cost-effective design for the fault management server is proposed.

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

availability
coverage ratio
fault management


Improved testing for the binomial distribution using chi-squared components with data-dependent cells A power study suggests that a good test of fit analysis for the binomial distribution is provided by a data-dependent Chernoff-Lehmann X 2 test with class expectations greater than unity, and its components. These data-dependent statistics involve arithmetically simple parameter estimation, convenient approximate distributions and provide a comprehensive assessment of how well the data agree with a binomial distribution. We suggest that a well-performed single test of fit statistic is the Anderson-Darling statistic.

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

goodness-of-fit
dispersion test
non-central chi-squared distribution
partition x-2


Numerical method for optimizing stirrer configurations A numerical approach for the numerical optimization of stirrer configurations is presented. The methodology is based on a parametrized grid generator, a flow solver, and a mathematical optimization tool, which are integrated into an automated procedure. The flow solver is based on the discretization of the Navier-Stokes equations by means of the finite-volume method for block-structured, boundary-fitted grids with multi-grid acceleration and parallelization by grid partitioning. The optimization tool is an implementation of a trust region based derivative-free method. It is designed to minimize smooth functions whose evaluations are considered expensive and whose derivatives are not available or not desirable to approximate. An exemplary application illustrates the functionality and the properties of the proposed method. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

numerical optimisation
derivative-free optimisation
computational fluid dynamics
parallel computing


A statistical approach for person verification using human behavioral patterns We propose a person verification method using behavioral patterns of human upper body motion. Behavioral patterns are represented by three-dimensional features obtained from a time-of-flight camera. We take a statistical approach to model the behavioral patterns using Gaussian mixture models (GMM) and support vector machines. We employ the maximum likelihood linear regression adaptation method to estimate GMM parameters with a limited amount of data. Experimental results show that it reduced by 28.6% the relative equal error rates from a system using the maximum likelihood estimation with 25 samples per subject. We also demonstrate that the proposed approach is robust against variations in body motion over time.

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

behavioral biometrics
svm
time-of-flight camera


MPI for Python: Performance improvements and MPI-2 extensions MPI for Python provides bindings of the message passing interface (MPI) standard for the Python programming language and allows any Python program to exploit multiple processors. In its first release, MPI for Python was constructed on top of the MPI-1 specification defining an object-oriented interface that closely followed the MPI-2 C++ C ++ bindings, and provided support for communications of general Python objects. In the latest release, this package is improved to enable direct blocking/non-blocking communication of numeric arrays, and to support almost all MPI-2 features. Improvements in communication performance have been tested in a Beowulf class cluster. Results showed a negligible overhead in comparison to compiled C code. MPI for Python is open source and available for download on the web (http://mpi4py.scipy.org/).

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


Understanding self-organized regularities in healthcare services based on autonomy oriented modeling Self-organized regularities in terms of patient arrivals and wait times have been discovered in real-world healthcare services. What remains to be a challenge is how to characterize those regularities by taking into account the underlying patients or hospitals behaviors with respect to various impact factors. This paper presents a case study to address such a challenge. Specifically, it models and simulates the cardiac surgery services in Ontario, Canada, based on the methodology of Autonomy-Oriented Computing (AOC). The developed AOC-based cardiac surgery service model (AOC-CSS model) pays a special attention to how individuals (e.g., patients and hospitals) behaviors and interactions with respect to some key factors (i.e., geographic accessibility to services, hospital resourcefulness, and wait times) affect the dynamics and relevant patterns of patient arrivals and wait times. By experimenting with the AOC-CSS model, we observe that certain regularities in patient arrivals and wait times emerge from the simulation, which are similar to those discovered from the real world. It reveals that patients hospital-selection behaviors, hospitals service-adjustment behaviors, and their interactions via wait times may potentially account for the self-organized regularities of wait times in cardiac surgery services.

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

cardiac surgery services
patient arrivals
wait times

autonomy-oriented computing (aoc)
complex systems
self-organized regularities


Fixed-point digital differential analyser with antialiasing (FDDAA) This paper presents a quick, efficient and simple method for drawing straight lines with antialiasing on a discrete display using the DDA algorithm with fixed-point arithmetic. The algorithm permits the drawing of grey tones lines by using a 3-pixels-high and 1-pixel-wide brush. The computing cost is low and only integer arithmetic is used. If a line is understood as a 1-pixel-width (W) and n-pixels-long (L) rectangle, its surface is given by WL. The real length (L) increases (hypotenuse of a rectangle triangle) as the line slope does, and so, the total radiation emitted that is proportional to its real surface. This algorithm takes into account this intensity increment. The algorithm maintains the width of the line perpendicular to its longitudinal axis independent of the slope.

O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 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 non-cooperation on dynamic spectrum cognitive networks In this paper, we present the results of two simulation sets studying the effect of non-cooperation on the cognitive network performance. Simulations are conducted in the dynamic spectrum access ad-hoc cognitive network environment using the joint channel allocation-power control problem. The first simulations set studies the effect of mixing non-cognitive and cognitive nodes on the overall network performance while the second simulations set studies the effect of different selfish behaviors on the overall network performance. Simulation results and their analysis are 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 B I O O O O O O B I I O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

dynamic spectrum access
cognitive network

selfish behavior
cognitive radio network


Failure replacement and preventive maintenance spare parts ordering policy This paper addresses inventory policy for spare parts, when demand for the spare parts arises due to regularly scheduled preventive maintenance, as well as random failure of units in service. A stochastic dynamic programming model is used to characterize an ordering policy which addresses both sources of demand in a unified manner. The optimal policy has the form (s(k),S(k)), where k is the number of periods until the next scheduled preventive maintenance operation. The nature of the (s(k),S(k)) policy is characterized through numeric evaluation. The efficiency of the optimal policy is evaluated, relative to a simpler policy which addresses the failure replacement and preventive maintenance demands with separate ordering policies.

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

inventory
failure replacement
preventive maintenance
dynamic programming


Sparsity-aware multi-source RSS localization ? We tackle the problem of localizing multiple sources in multipath environments. We exploit the information present in the cross-correlations using a novel fingerprinting. We enhance our proposed approach by incorporating the other time lags of the correlation functions. We also present a method which is blind to the statistics of the source signals. Our approaches lead to a significant gain in terms of number of identifiable sources.

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

multi-source localization
rss fingerprinting
sparse reconstruction


Accurate modeling of region data Spatial data appear in numerous applications, such. as GIS [9], [11], [22], multimedia [7] and even traditional databases. Most of the analysis on spatial data has focused on point data, typically using the uniformity assumption, or, more accurately, a fractal distribution [6]. However, no results exist for nonpoint spatial data, like 2D regions (e.g., islands), 3D volumes (e.g., physical objects in the real world), etc. This is exactly the problem we solve in this paper. Based on experimental evidence that real areas and volumes follow a "power law,". that we named REGAL (REGion Area Law), we show 1) the theoretical implications of our model and its connection with the ubiquitous fractals and 2) the first of its practical uses, namely, the selectivity estimation for range queries. Experiments on A variety of real data sets (islands, takes, and hum an-inhabited areas) show that our method is extremely accurate, enjoying a maximum relative error ranging from I to 5 percent, versus 30-70 percent of a naive model that uses the uniformity assumption.

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

gis
region data
range queries
selectivity estimation
fractals


Light-weight resource leak testing based on finalisers Despite garbage collectors, programmers must manually manage many non-memory finite system resources' such as file descriptors and database connections. Unreleased resources result in resource leaks' that degrade application performance and can even result in system crashes. It is hard to test resource leaks because of their no immediate symptoms in the short run. There are analysis techniques to detect resource leaks statically or dynamically. However, all of them require the formal specification as input, which seriously decrease their practicability for common software developers. In this study, the authors propose an easy-to-use yet effective resource leak testing approach for Java programs based on existing finalisers of Java Application Programming Interface (API) classes. They instrument resource classes to check that the cleanup method of a resource object is called before its finaliser's execution. Otherwise, this resource object is leaked. To use this approach, programmers just add a few lines of code into their programs and no formal specifications are required. They carry out experiments on benchmarks in the literature to evaluate the incidence of object finalisation and performance cost of finalisers. Experimental results show that the authors' approach can test leaks of most system resources with high effectiveness and low overhead.

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

java
finalisers
performance cost
object finalisation
resource classes

application program interfaces
program testing
light-weight resource leak testing
resource object cleanup method
java api classes
java programs


Guaranteed cost control for linear periodically time-varying systems with structured uncertainty and a generalized H2 objective This paper considers the problem of finding a controller for a discrete time linear periodically time-varying system with structured parametric uncertainty which achieves robust l(2) semi-norm performance (the equivalent of robust H(2) norm performance for time-varying systems). This problem is shown to be a generalization of a guaranteed cost control problem when the structure of the uncertainty is neglected. To reduce the conservatism when the uncertainty structure is considered, static uncertainty scalings such as those used in the D-K iteration heuristic for mu-synthesis are introduced. Although the problem of simultaneously optimizing the controller and uncertainty scalings in non-convex. it is shown that it lends itself to a solution methodology conceptually similar to D-K iteration in which each step is a convex optimization. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed methodology, the control of a set of hard disk drives with multirate sampling characteristics and uncertain parameters is considered and a controller is designed which minimizes the worst-case l(2) semi-norm performance of the system. It is then shown that the resulting robust controller achieves worst-case l(2) semi-norm performance which is comparable to the best achievable l(2) semi-norm performance for the nominal system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 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

robust multivariable control
dual-stage servos


Non-stationary power signal processing for pattern recognition using HS-transform A new approach to time-frequency transform and pattern recognition of non-stationary power signals is presented in this paper. In the proposed work visual localization, detection and classification of non-stationary power signals are achieved using hyperbolic S-transform known as HS-transform and automatic pattern recognition is carried out using GA based Fuzzy C-means algorithm. Time-frequency analysis and feature extraction from the non-stationary power signals are done by HS-transform. Various non-stationary power signal waveforms are processed through HS-transform with hyperbolic window to generate time-frequency contours for extracting relevant features for pattern classification. The extracted features are clustered using Fuzzy C-means algorithm and finally the algorithm is optimized using genetic algorithm to refine the cluster centers. The average classification accuracy of the disturbances is 93.25% and 95.75% using Fuzzy C-means and genetic based Fuzzy C-means algorithm, respectively.

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

non-stationary power signals
power quality (pq)
hs-transform
fuzzy c-means clustering


Beyond fluid models: Modelling TCP mice in IP networks under non-stationary random traffic Fluid models of IP networks are based on a set of ordinary differential equations, that provide an abstract deterministic description of the average network dynamics. When IP networks operate close to saturation, fluid models were proved to provide reliable performance estimates. Instead, when the network load is well below saturation, standard fluid models lead to wrong performance predictions, since all buffers are forecasted to be always empty, so that the packet discard probability is predicted to be zero. These incorrect predictions are due to the fact that fluid models, being deterministic in nature, do not account for the random traffic variations that may induce temporary congestion of some network elements. In this paper we discuss three different approaches to describe random traffic variations in fluid models, considering randomness at both the flow and packet levels. With these approaches, fluid models allow reliable results to be obtained also in the case of IP networks that operate well below their saturation load. Numerical results are presented to prove the accuracy and the versatility of the proposed approaches, considering both stationary and non-stationary traffic regimes.

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

stochastic processes
queueing theory
simulation


Injective synchronisation: An extension of the authentication hierarchy Authentication is one of the foremost goals of many security protocols. It is most often formalised as a form of agreement, which expresses that the communicating partners agree on the values of a number of variables. In this paper we formalise and study an intensional form of authentication which we call synchronisation. Synchronisation expresses that the messages are transmitted exactly as prescribed by the protocol description. Synchronisation is a strictly stronger property than agreement for the standard intruder model, because it can be used to detect preplay attacks. In order to prevent replay attacks on simple protocols, we also define injective synchronisation. Given a synchronising protocol, we show that a sufficient syntactic criterion exists that guarantees that the protocol is injective as well. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

security protocols
authentication
agreement


Increase in Circulating SDF-1 after Treatment with Sulfated Glycans SDF-1 is a potent chemoattractant for mature white blood cells and hemopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HPCs). An important role for this chemo-kine in mobilization has been postulated, but in vivo studies directly addressing its effects are lacking. After one injection of fucan sulfate (FucS) or dextran sulfate, plasma levels of SDF-1 are greatly increased in mice or primates. Increases are dose-dependent and correlate with mobilization of HPCs. Elevated levels of circulating SDF-1 appear to be uniquely associated with this treatment, as it was not seen with cytokine or anti-integrin antibody treatments that induce mobilization. In vitro, these sulfated glycans specifically bind to SDF-1 and inhibit SDF-1/heparin binding, suggesting a mechanism of release from sequestration on heparan sulfate proteoglycans in vivo. Although other chemokines including IL8 and cytokines like G-CSF also increase, evidence in GCSFR-deficient mice suggests that at least these two factors are unlikely participants in FucS-induced mobilization. Likewise, although the activity of the metalloprotease MMP9 increases after FucS treatment, experiments in MMP9?/? mice indicate its presence is dispensable for mobilization or SDF-1 release. However, effects of other proteases cannot be ruled out by these experiments. Finally, anti-SDF-1 antibodies partially inhibit FucS-induced mobilization, supporting a causative relationship. Our data offer a unique insight into the mechanism of sulfated glycan-induced mobilization and suggest a novel way of disturbing SDF-1 gradients between bone marrow and peripheral blood.

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

stromal-derived factor 1
sdf-1
progenitors
hematopoietic stem cells
fucoidan


Segmentation-based heart sound feature extraction combined with classifier models for a VSD diagnosis system ? A diagnosis system is proposed for diagnosing a VSD. The diagnostic features [FG,FW F G , F W ] based on a novel method are extracted. A classification boundary method based on the SVM is proposed. Ellipse fitting is employed to build ellipse models for boundary curves. The performance is evaluated by clinical heart disease.

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

heart sound segmentation
envelopes et and ef
mwht


Scientific application performance on leading scalar and vector supercomputering platforms The last decade has witnessed a rapid proliferation of superscalar cache-based microprocessors to build high-end computing (HEC) platforms, primarily because of their generality, scalability, and cost effectiveness. However, the growing gap between sustained and peak performance for full-scale scientific applications on conventional supercomputers has become a major concern in high performance computing, requiring significantly larger systems and application scalability than implied by peak performance in order to achieve desired performance. The latest generation of custom-built parallel vector systems have the potential to address this issue for numerical algorithms with sufficient regularity in their computational structure. In this work we explore applications drawn from four areas: magnetic fusion (GTC), plasma physics (LB-MHD-3D), astrophysics (Cactus), and material science (PARATEC). We compare performance of the vector-based Cray X1, X1 E, Earth Simulator, NEC SX-8, with performance of three leading commodity-based super-scalar platforms utilizing the IBM Power3, Intel Itanium2, and AMD Opteron processors. Our work makes several significant contributions: a new data-decomposition scheme for GTC that (for the first time) enables a breakthrough of the teraflop barrier; the introduction of a new three-dimensional lattice Boltzmann magneto-hydrodynamic implementation used to study the onset evolution of plasma turbulence that achieves over 26 Tflop/s on 4800 ES processors; the highest per processor performance (by far) achieved by the full-production version of the Cactus ADM-BSSN; and the largest PARATEC cell size atomistic simulation to date. Overall, results show that the vector architectures attain unprecedented aggregate performance across our application suite, demonstrating the tremendous potential of modern parallel vector systems.

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

performance evaluation
parallel vector architecture
particle-in-cell
density functional theory
method of lines


Solitary wave families of NLPDES via reversible systems theory The Ostrovsky equation is an important canonical model for the undirectional propagation of weakly nonlinear long surface and internal waves in a rotating, mviscid and incompressible fluid. Since solitary wave solutions often play a central role in the long-time evolution of an inital disturbance. we consider such solutions here (via the normal form approach) within the framework of reversible system theory. Resides confirming the existence of the known family of solitary waves and its reduction to the Kdv limit. w we find a second family of multihumped (or N-pulse) solutions, as well as a contimum of delocalized solitary waves (or homoclinics to small-amplitude periodic orbits). On isolated curves in the relevant parameter region, the delocalized waves reduce to genuine embedded solutions. The second and third families of solutions occur in regions of parameter space distinct from the known solitary wave solutions and are thus entirely new directions for future work, including on other NLPDEs, are also mentioned. (C) 2009 IMACS Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

solitary wave families
reversible systems theory


Fast vector quantization for efficient rendering of compressed point-clouds We present a point-cloud compression algorithm that allows fast parallel decompression on the GPU suitable for interactive applications. The algorithm is based on vector quantization of an atlas of height-fields that have been sampled over primitive shapes which approximate the geometry. We introduce novel vector quantization acceleration techniques to facilitate fast compression as well. We achieve bitrates of less than four bits per normal-equipped point. Our method enables hole-free level-of-detail point rendering. We also show that using only up to two bits per point, high-quality renderings can still be obtained if normals are estimated in image-space. Even lower bitrates are obtained for storage on disk if arithmetic coding is used.

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


A neural network approach to fluid quantity measurement in dynamic environments Sloshing causes liquid to fluctuate, making accurate level readings difficult to obtain. Ill this paper, a measurement system has been described that can accurately determine fluid quantity in the presence of slosh. The measurement system uses a single-tube capacitive sensor to obtain instantaneous level of the fluid surface. A neural network based classification technique has been applied to predict the actual quantity of the fluid under sloshing conditions. Effects of temperature variations and contamination on the capacitive sensor have been discussed and it is proposed that these effects can also be eliminated with the proposed neural network based classification system. To examine the performance of the classification system, many field trials were carried out on a running vehicle at various tank volume levels that range from 5 L to 50 L The paper also investigates the effectiveness of signal enhancement on the neural network based signal classification system. Signal enhancement is performed using selected signal smoothing functions such Moving Mean, Moving Median, and Wavelet filters. Results obtained from the investigation are compared with traditionally used statistical averaging methods, and it proved that the neural network based measurement system can produce highly accurate fluid quantity measurements in a dynamic environment. The approach demonstrated herein will enable a wide range of fluid quantity measurement applications in the fields of automotive, naval and aviation industries to produce accurate fluid level readings. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

smart capacitive sensor
accurate fluid quantity measurement
liquid slosh
backpropagation neural network


An integrated method for material properties characterization based on pulsed laser generated surface acoustic waves A novel integrated method for the study of nano-structured materials. The method is based on short laser-generated Surface Acoustic Waves. Combination of a 3D whole-field imaging laser diagnostic and finite element modeling. The applicability and the potentiality of the method are validated.

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

nano-acoustics
dynamic laser interferometry
finite elements
nanostructures


A combined bibliometric indicator to predict article impact In both the UK and Australia there has been a recent move to use citation analysis in the evaluation of the research of individuals. In particular, the future UK Research Excellence Framework (REF), proposes using citation data in the research evaluation of articles published as recently as the year prior to the evaluation. In response to this move, this research develops an indicator at the level of individual articles that, when normalized, can supplement peer review. The new hybrid indicator is the weighted sum of two indicators in common usage: the articles total number of citations in a citation window, and the Impact Factor of the journal in which the article was published. This research compares this new indicator with the articles total number of citations in a longer citation window (the standard indicator of article impact). For citation windows of 0 or 1years, the correlation of the simplified weighted sum with long-term citation is substantially higher than the correlation of the standard indicator of article citation with long-term citation. Moreover, for citation windows of as long as 3years the standard indicator of citation correlates significantly with the month of publication, in that articles published earlier in the year are on average more highly cited than those published later in the year. By contrast, the skewing of the simplified weighted sum towards articles published early in the year is considerably less than that of the standard indicator.

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

research evaluation
ref
citation analysis


A heuristic optimization method inspired by wolf preying behavior Optimization problems can become intractable when the search space undergoes tremendous growth. Heuristic optimization methods have therefore been created that can search the very large spaces of candidate solutions. These methods, also called metaheuristics, are the general skeletons of algorithms that can be modified and extended to suit a wide range of optimization problems. Various researchers have invented a collection of metaheuristics inspired by the movements of animals and insects (e.g., firefly, cuckoos, bats and accelerated PSO) with the advantages of efficient computation and easy implementation. This paper studies a relatively new bio-inspired heuristic optimization algorithm called the Wolf Search Algorithm (WSA) that imitates the way wolves search for food and survive by avoiding their enemies. The WSA is tested quantitatively with different values of parameters and compared to other metaheuristic algorithms under a range of popular non-convex functions used as performance test problems for optimization algorithms, with superior results observed in most tests.

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


Making virtual reality useful: A report on immersive applications at Iowa State University ? This paper presents the research activities in virtual reality (VR) applications at the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology at Iowa State University. We are performing multidisciplinary applied research focused on investigating the potential of immersive environments for science and engineering applications. We present our most recent applications, currently under development, and provide an informal discussion about the features and research topics we are identifying.

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

virtual reality
engineering applications


Inference on reliability P(Y < X) in the Levy distribution In this paper, we consider the estimation of the parameter of the Levy distribution, the right-tail probability, and P(Y < X). We also consider a test of hypothesis. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


Production of CAL-programs in medicine, odontology and veterinary medicine in Sweden At the recommendation of the Swedish Government, the Council for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education was established in 1990. In 1993 the Council was declared a permanent National Agency by Swedish Parliament and became part of the newly established National Agency for Higher Education in 1995. The purpose of the Council for Renewal of Undergraduate Education is to promote and support endeavors to develop quality and renewal of undergraduate education. In particular the council awards grants to development activities. Once a year, teachers at Swedish universities: university colleges and professional schools can apply for funding. Applications are accepted for projects directed towards undergraduate education in all disciplines. The Council selects 15-20 projects and each project is funded for 1-3 years. An advisory group-MEDCAL (Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) in MEDicine, Odontology and Veterinary Medicine)-consisting of representatives from all universities supports the Council with registration and evaluation of programs, offers their opinions on the production of CAL and collaborates with similar organizations in other countries, e.g. Australia, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and USA. In all, 12 projects within the frame of MEDCAL will be reported. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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


general criteria on building decision trees for data classification Decision trees have been widely and successfully applied to data mining and machine learning for data classification. One of the critical components in a decision tree algorithm is the criterion used to select which attribute will become a test attribute in a given branch of the tree. Several algorithms, such as ID3, C4.5, and CART, are investigated and compared for determining attributes as the root and the branches in decision trees. This paper presents the issues of traditional ID3 algorithm that directly affect building decision trees. The goal is to select critical factors in ID3 algorithm that result in an efficient decision tree for classification applications. Examples are given to illustrate what factors may affect the construction of decision trees.

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

decision tree
id3 algorithm
classification


ANFIS-based prediction of the compressive strength of geopolymers with seeded fly ash and rice huskbark ash In the present work, compressive strength of geopolymers made from seeded fly ash and rice huskbark ash has been predicted by adaptive network-based fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS). Different specimens, made from a mixture of fly ash and rice huskbark ash in fine and coarse forms and a mixture of water glass and NaOH mixture as alkali activator, were subjected to compressive strength tests at 7 and 28days of curing. The curing regimes were different: one set of the specimens were cured in water at room temperature until 7 and 28days and the other sets were oven-cured for 36h at the range of 4090C and then cured at room temperature until 7 and 28days. A model based on ANFIS for predicting the compressive strength of the specimens has been presented. To build the model, training and testing using experimental results from 120 specimens were conducted. The used data as the inputs of ANFIS models are arranged in a format of six parameters that cover the percentage of fine fly ash in the ashes mixture, the percentage of coarse fly ash in the ashes mixture, the percentage of fine rice huskbark ash in the ashes mixture, the percentage of coarse rice huskbark ash in the ashes mixture, the temperature of curing, and the time of water curing. According to these input parameters in the ANFIS models, the compressive strength of each specimen was predicted. The training and testing results in ANFIS models showed a strong potential for predicting the compressive strength of the geopolymeric specimens.

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

compressive strength
fly ash
rice huskbark ash
anfis


Notification pending: Online social support from close and nonclose relational ties via Facebook Study revisits role of strong and weak ties in affording social support via Facebook. A lab study assessed characteristics of commenters on Facebook status posts. Findings indicate strong ties still provide greater social support than weak ties. Weak ties are significantly more common on Facebook with high level of social support. Results examined deal with social support, social network sites, weak tie theory.

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 B I 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

network ties
computer-mediated communication
social media


recognition and reasoning in an awareness support system for generation of storyboard-like views of recent activity Awareness support system are based on formal and specific context information such as location, or on video-mediated general context information such asa view into a remote office. We propose a new approach based on fusion of these different kinds of context information. In this approach we distinguish white box context, used by the awareness system for reasoning, and black box context, which can only be interpreted by humans. Our approach uses a variety of perception techniques to obtain white box context from audio and video streams. White box context is then used for further processing of context information, for instance to derive additional context. It is further used to generate a storyboard-like multimedia representation of collected and extracted context information. This storyboard provides a condensed view of recent activity to collaboration partners.

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

groupware
collaboration awareness
context recognition
awareness support systems
context-awareness


Social media use in local government: Linkage of technology, task, and organizational context Social media technologies have begun to enter the governmental workplace as tools to accomplish improved public service and engagement. Widespread recognition of the potential of social media technology for achieving public outcomes does not match our understanding about how and why specific tools are being used for specific purposes. This paper makes use of newly collected national survey data from local government managers in five different agencies to address the questions: which social media tools are being used, for which tasks or purposes; and what organizational characteristics influence the coupling of task and technology. Findings reveal patterns of social media tool application for particular purposes, although organizations do not all use social media tools in the same way. Moreover, regression analysis shows that different organizational factors work characteristics, innovativeness, technology and management capacity and stakeholder influence predict each of the four technologytask couplings social media for dissemination, social media for feedback on service quality, social media for participation, and social media for internal work collaboration. This study demonstrates that social media tools are not a monolithic group and calls for greater research attention to the complex interactions among social media technology, task and organizational context.

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

social media
technology
local government

web 2.0
e-government
technologytask coupling
socio-technical system theory


A prey catching and predator avoidance neural-schema architecture for single and multiple robots The paper presents a biologically inspired multi-level neural-schema architecture for prey catching and predator avoidance in single and multiple autonomous robotic systems. The architecture is inspired on anuran (frogs and toads) neuroethological studies and wolf pack group behaviors. The single robot architecture exploits visuomotor coordination models developed to explain anuran behavior in the presence of preys and predators. The multiple robot architecture extends the individual prey catching and predator avoidance model to experiment with group behavior. The robotic modeling architecture distinguishes between higher-level schemas representing behavior and lower-level neural structures representing brain regions. We present results from single and multiple robot experiments developed using the NSL/ASL/MIRO system and Sony AIBO ERS-210 robots.

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

schemas
behaviors
prey catching
predator avoidance

biorobotics
biologically inspired robotics
neural networks
swarms


exploiting session-like behaviors in tag prediction In social bookmarking systems, existing methods in tag prediction have shown that the performance of prediction can be significantly improved by modeling users' preferences. However, these preferences are usually treated as constant over time, neglecting the temporal factor within users' behaviors. In this paper, we study the problem of session-like behavior in social tagging systems and demonstrate that the predictive performance can be improved by considering sessions. Experiments, conducted on three public datasets, show that our session-based method can outperform baselines and two state-of-the-art algorithms significantly.

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

personalized tag prediction
tag recommendation


Multiaxial mechanical behaviour of the passive ureteral wall: experimental study and mathematical characterisation There is a scarcity of data regarding the mechanical properties of the ureter, although this would facilitate our understanding of its physiology and pathophysiology, and the development of suitable biomaterials for replacement. There is hence an urgent need for multiaxial experimental data and methodical constitutive formulations, which we aim at presenting through this report. The zero-stress state of wall tissue, serving as the starting geometry for biomechanical analyses, was accordingly determined and the 3D passive behaviour of ureteral specimens, isolated from healthy rabbits, was studied under a physiologic range of finite inflation and longitudinal extension. Two most-commonly employed descriptors of soft tissue behaviour were chosen to fit the material response: the Fung-type strain-energy function (SEF) and its combination with a quadratic function. Both SEFs were tested in the thick-walled setting, with incompressibility enforced explicitly or via a Lagrange multiplier. The deformational response of the ureter exhibited an exponential and not the sigmoidal dependency on pressure that requests implementation of two-term SEFs. Indeed, the four-parameter Fung-type SEF resulted in reasonable fit of both the external radius and longitudinal force vs. lumen pressure data, and fitting accuracy was not improved when attempting the seven-parameter Fung-type or biphasic SEFs. There were also serious over-parameterisation problems with those models, favouring the implementation of the SEF with the smallest number of parameters. The material parameters optimised revealed significant mechanical anisotropy, with longitudinal properties being stiffer than circumferential ones under equibiaxial stress states. We conclude that ureter displays a nonlinear anisotropic mechanical response that is well-characterised by the four-parameter Fung-type SEF.

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

phenomenological model
inflation/extension testing
anisotropic pseudo-elasticity
strain-energy function


ten years of the australasian computing education conference The Australasian Computing Education Conference is now in its eleventh year. This paper charts the ups and downs of the conference from its origin in 1996, through its troubled years, to its recent apparently steady state. All 328 papers from the ten conferences are classified according to Simon's system for classifying computing education papers, and features of interest are pointed out. Only one clear trend over time is observed, and that is a steady and distinct increase in the proportion of research papers. The analysis then moves from the papers to their 496 distinct authors, exploring where the authors come from, how many papers each has contributed to the conference, and which authors appear to have made this conference their home. A final look at the number of papers presented each year suggests that the conference might once more be experiencing difficulty, and speculates on its future.

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


Localized positioning in ad hoc networks Position centric approaches, such as Cartesian routing, geographic routing, and the recently proposed trajectory based forwarding, address scalability issues in large ad hoc networks by using Euclidean space as a complementary name space. These approaches require that nodes know their position in a common coordinate system. While a GPS receiver in each node would be ideal, in many cases an approximation algorithm is necessary for networks with only a few GPS enabled nodes. These algorithms however require collaboration of large portions of the network, thus imposing an overhead for nodes which do not need positioning, or are mobile. We propose local positioning system, a method that makes use of local node capabilitiesangle of arrival, range estimations, compasses and accelerometers, in order to internally position only the groups of nodes involved in particular conversations. Localized positioning enables position centric uses, like discovery, flooding and routing in networks where global positioning is not available.

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

position centric routing
local positioning system


interactive painterly stylization of images, videos and 3d animations We introduce a real-time system that converts images, video, or 3D animation sequences to artistic renderings in various painterly styles. The algorithm, which is entirely executed on the GPU, can efficiently process 512 resolution frames containing 60,000 individual strokes at over 30 fps. In order to exploit the parallel nature of GPUs, our algorithm determines the placement of strokes entirely from local pixel neighborhood information. The strokes are rendered as point sprites with textures. Temporal coherence is achieved by treating the brush strokes as particles and moving them based on optical flow. Our system renders high quality results while allowing the user interactive control over many stylistic parameters such as stroke size, texture and density.

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

gpu processing
painterly rendering
non-photorealistic rendering
particle systems
video processing


Model checking XSL transformations We develop a framework to model XSL transformations and XML Schema constraints. We use model checking to verify the correctness of XSL transformations. We provide a tool for XSL verification, including an advanced error reporting. We show how to interactively check and fix XSL transformations in our framework.

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

xml technologies
xslt language
software verification


Modified group delay feature based total variability space modelling for speaker recognition In this paper, modified group delay (MODGD) features are used to model target speakers in the Total Variability Space (TVS) framework for speaker recognition. MODGD based features have been shown to improve speaker recognition performance owing to the ability of group delay functions to emphasise formants. The basis vectors of TVS are estimated using the PPCA algorithm while i-vectors for a speaker are extracted using the conventional technique. The estimation of the total variability space is simplified by a simple transformation of the supervectors. This results in a significant speed up in the estimation of hyperparameters of TVS as the computational complexity of PPCA algorithm is simpler compared to that of the conventaional procedure. This is important as the estimation procedure needs to handle large amounts data for estimation. The technique has already been shown to provide a speed up of 16\(\times \). The performance of the MODGD-based system is compared with that of the MFCC based system on the NIST SRE 2010 benchmark dataset. Two types of fusions are tested in this worksystems fused at the i-vector level and at the score level. A considerable performance improvement is observed in terms of the EER (Equal Error Rate) by employing these fusion techniques. A robust speaker recognition system with decreased development time is obtained as a result.

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

speaker identification
modified group delay features
i-vector


Idle regulation in non-clairvoyant scheduling of parallel jobs The optimization of parallel applications is difficult to achieve by classical optimization techniques because of their diversity and the variety of actual parallel and distributed platforms and/or environments. Adaptive algorithmic schemes, capable of dynamically changing the allocation of jobs during the execution to optimize global system behavior, are the best alternatives for solving this problem. In this paper, we focus on non-clairvoyant scheduling of parallel jobs with known resource requirements but unknown running times, with emphasis on the regulation of idle periods in the context of general list policies. We consider a new family of scheduling strategies based on two phases which successively combine sequential and parallel execution of jobs. We generalize known worst-case performance bounds by considering two extra parameters, in addition to the number of processors and maximum processor requirements considered in the literature, namely, job parallelization penalty and idle regulation factor. Furthermore, we prove that under certain conditions of idle regulation, the performance guarantee of parallel job scheduling in space-sharing mode can be improved.

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

scheduling
parallel jobs
idle regulation


a statistical method for test sequence evaluation* A method for test sequence evaluation based on random sampling of detectable faults is presented. This method can be incorporated into most logic simulation codes which use the parallel machine method of fault detection.

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

method detection use simulation test parallel fault logic sequence evaluation

statistics
fault-detection
random sample